Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Daymond John: Learn to Earn, How The People's Shark is Raising a New Generation of Financially-Savvy People | Entrepreneurship | E216

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Growing up in Queens, New York, Daymond John had big dreams and an early knack for entrepreneurship. He sold everything from pencils to reconditioned cars, and while working full-time at Red Lobster, he started his clothing brand FUBU. Because of the tenacity instilled in him by his mother, FUBU eventually became a multi-billion dollar global clothing and lifestyle brand. In this episode, Daymond will share his rags-to-riches story and the lessons he has learned as a seasoned investor on Shark Tank. Daymond will break down his latest book, Little Daymond Learns to Earn, a kid's book written to instill financial and entrepreneurial literacy in younger generations. Daymond will also share how we can instill hope in our youth! Daymond John is a New York Times bestselling author and the CEO and founder of FUBU, the $6 billion global lifestyle brand created to represent overlooked communities. He is also a star and original member of ABC’s four-time Emmy Award–winning TV show Shark Tank, where he invests and helps entrepreneurs grow their own businesses. In this episode, Hala and Daymond will discuss:  - Daymond’s early entrepreneurial itch - How Daymond’s side hustle became the global brand FUBU - Common Sense marketing tactics - What Daymond learned from Jay Abraham - Daymond’s mother’s influence on his life - Becoming a Shark on the hit show Shark Tank - Why most of America does not have financial literacy - How to teach financial intelligence to our kids - Daymond’s 3-dollar rule - Why kids need new national role models - How to take your parent hat off and think like a kid - And other topics… Daymond John was born with a passion for entrepreneurship. Daymond is CEO and founder of FUBU, the $6 billion global lifestyle brand created to represent overlooked communities. He is also a star and original member of ABC’s four-time Emmy Award–winning TV show Shark Tank, helping entrepreneurs and business owners grow their own businesses. His work as an entrepreneur has been recognized by Barack Obama who named him a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, and he has won four Webby Awards for his work in creating, producing, and hosting Black Entrepreneurs Day.  He continues to work with a number of philanthropic organizations to educate and empower future generations, including My Brother’s Keeper, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and the NAACP, to name a few. Daymond is a New York Times bestselling author, and Little Daymond Learns to Earn is his first book for children. Of all of his accomplishments, Daymond is most proud of his role as a dad to his daughters. Win 15 minutes with Daymond John: Go to littledaymond.com, purchase your bundle, and enter code ‘YAP’ at checkout! Resources Mentioned: Daymond’s Website: https://daymondjohn.com/ Daymond’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daymondjohn/ Daymond’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesharkdaymond Daymond’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesharkdaymond/ Daymond’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheSharkDaymond/ Daymond’s Podcast Rise and Grind with Daymond John: Rise and Grind with Daymond John Daymond’s Book Little Daymond Learns to Earn: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Daymond-Learns-Earn-John/dp/0593567277 LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course. More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/

I was three months later in the mortgage, and I only delivered 20% of clothes, and I was about to be bankrupt and homeless, lose my mother's house, and also lose my business. Because I didn't have any financial intelligence, and it wasn't that I spent money on lavish things. So as much as mom helped me and as great as she is, my lack of financial intelligence, I was about to lose everything that she ever worked for. Our school system is antiquated. It is teaching our children right now how to go to shop. It teaches us how to be good employees. If you don't teach them financial intelligence to any way and how money works, the colleges are lined up to give them and issue them $600,000 worth of student debt that they will not pay off until they're into their 50s.

I'm going to go and get this $500,000, $600,000 education that I don't even know if I need. What is up Young and Profiters? You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast, where we interview the brightest minds in the world and unpack their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. I'm your host, Halitaha. Thanks for tuning in and get ready to listen, learn, and profit.

Damon, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited. Yappam, it is a special day today on the podcast, and that's because today we have Damon John on the show. He's one of the world's most respected entrepreneurs and somebody I have personally looked up to my entire adult life. Damon John is an investor. He's an entrepreneur and a philanthropist. He's the CEO and founder of Fubu, a multi-billion dollar global lifestyle brand created to represent

overlooked communities. In addition, Damon is one of the original sharks on ABC's four-time Emmy Award-winning TV show Shark Tank, which some of you may know is my all-time favorite TV show. and in fact, Shark Tank was the only TV show I allowed myself to watch for three years when I was growing this podcast and my company Yapp Media as a side hustle. Damon is also a New York Times bestselling author, and he recently released his first book for children Little Damon learns to earn earlier in March. In today's episode, Damon and I will cover his rags to church's story. We'll gain insight as to why he created Fubu and will hear his lessons learned as a seasoned investor on Shark Tank.

We'll also break down how to instill financial and entrepreneurial literacy in our younger generations, and we'll hear how Damon thinks we can instill hope in our youth. So, Damon, I'd love to start off with your incredible come-up story. You grew up in Hollis, Queens in New York City, and around 10, 12 years old, your parents separated, and your mother ended up working multiple jobs to put food on the table. From my research, I found out that you had an early entrepreneurial itch, even as a kid and teen. You sold everything from pencil to recondition cars. So take us back to Memory Lane.

What were you like as a younger kid? And what were your first experiences in entrepreneurship and business? Well, I think you covered it. You know, as a young kid, I was an only child. My parents, when they were together, I mean, life happened. They got divorced. I would never see my father or hear from them again after 10 years old. They were hardworking individuals.

They worked day jobs. And then they come home and they would work on trying to build little things around the house for the house itself to build it. They would, my mother would, you know, flea markets on the weekends and various other things. So I'm very hardworking people, but as an only child, I wanted to create a community, a community of friends. I had no way to play with. I think that's what entrepreneurs do, right? I always wanted to find a way to solve other people's problems or bring them joy, so I can play with them.

Because everybody had brothers and sisters, right? So at the day, I'd be like, hey, you want to come home with my house to play? No, I'll go my brother and sister. Well, I got Tonka trucks. I don't like Tonka trucks. I make a grilled cheese sandwich. I don't like grocery sandwich. I got a cat.

You want to play my cat? I think that's also what entrepreneurs do. They go, I got a product and I got something that I really love. I thought, I just think that I made just a little bit of tweaks to something that already exist and I want to make it better. I want to share it with the rest of the world. Do you want to share it with me? And that's what happened.

But I also had to be creative about how was I going to help mom, help mom pay the bills because dad wasn't there. And I knew my mother worked really hard and I didn't have anybody else too. I didn't have other siblings. And I said, I got to be the man of the house. So I found ways to make money. I love that. I definitely want to get into all your different stories about how you used to sell as a child.

We can talk about that later when we talk about a little Damon and your new book. Little Damon learns to earn. But let's talk about Fubu first. So you have this global lifestyle brand that you created in your younger years. It stands for For Us, Buy Us. How did you first get the idea to launch Fubu? And what did it represent to you at the time? Well, how did I get the idea to launch that I basically, bottom line is,

Timbalin had said, we don't make or sell up. It was a drug dealers, and I was a hardworking young man at Red Lobster. And I said, I'm not a drug dealer. Why would they say that about me? But it wasn't the first time that I heard something like that. We had already been, as a community of hip-hop. Hip-hop was very young at the time. If I was brand new, but I loved it.

I knew that it was something that was going to, I don't care of it. I didn't know if it was going to dominate the world like it did today, but it was dominating my world. And you insulted me. I was going out of our way, my way to buy those type of companies. So I came up with a brand, food before, with bias. Who's ever going to love and support and value? Now, people think that, number one, that this was this visionary idea.

No, I was downstairs in my basement with my buddy and drinking some 40 dogs. I was like, what are you going to name it? Man, we should name it Bufu. Well, buy us for us. All right. And then we did name it Bufu first. And then we went outside with a couple of Bufu shirts on. And we found out at that time, Bufu meant something totally different.

So, to go back and we changed the Fulbu, for us bias. Now, a lot of people would think that we had made this off of forest bias. What was for us bias? It was black people. And it was only for black people by black people. While then, I would be guilty of being a bigot just like Timberlin was in a sense if I did that. But, you know, the story is that when my father left when I was 10 years old, I was fortunate enough to my mother to date another man who I call my stepfather who happens to be of the Jewish faith. He always told me, Damon, never become the thing you're fighting against. And you better be pro-black, but never anti anything else. So it was always about a color because I was dressing MC Search and the BC boys just as fast as I was dressing LL Koujah and run DMC.

And I was generated off of an African-American culture of young men between the ages of around 12 years old to 30 years old who came out of the Bronx who were talking about the trials and tribulations of the streets. Yes. But it was a cultural thing to share with everybody. And when I did actually take out my first ad, my mail order ad and rap pages, the first areas that bought the product were the kids in Japan who were wearing not as blackface. They were tanning their skins and wearing New York Yankee hats and Nick jerseys and break dancing because they were trying to emulate the African Americans on the streets of New York. Or it was the skateboarding white kids in Seattle, Washington that were trying to rebel within the system that were wearing

Navan shirts and various other things that are saying, F you, we are down who is rebellious, no matter what color you are. So that's how I came up with Fubel. I love it. And every good business has a mission beyond just what they sell. And it sounds like your company represented much more than just the clothes. It represented an identity, which is really cool. So I learned that you actually did this as a side hustle. You worked full time at Red Lobster for three years while you were building Fubu as a side hustle. I also grew my company as a side hustle. I grew it to $5 million in our first year. And at first it was just a side hustle and I was working at Disney. So I agree with that type of approach when starting a business. And I'd love to understand from you

why you decided to start your business as a side hustle. So I'm fortunate enough to live in Hollis Queens or come up from Hollis Queens. And I have no idea what's in the water from Hollis Queens. But who came out of Hollis Queens is what I'm not even going to talk about James Brown and everybody else who live in Hollis Queens. Run DMT, LLUJ, some of the Fat Boys, Salt and Pepper, Tribe Coal Quest, Onics, Lost Boys, 50 cents, Jarl Rule, intro. Aaron Hall from Guy, the young MC, a lot of people, right, in this square five miles. I was fortunate to see them ride by and stuff like that and all these beautiful cars and things of nature. So here's why I created Fulhu, because I couldn't rap, singer, dance, and I need to get my ass on a video set.

And every time me and all the kids get on the video set, everybody get kicked off of the video set. And I was like, hold on, I'm dressing the artist. Now, I wasn't dressed an artist. And I'm like, what are you doing? I'm dressing the artist. So I got to stay on the video set. I'm on the video set and I get to eat for free because of the craft services. I get to watch Run DMC and LL KooJ.

I remember watching Biggie Smalls on that video set because I grew up with three other kids. One was called, named Irv Gotti, the other name Hype Williams. And the other kid was a big drug deal that Hype wrote the movie Belly about. Just came home after 30 years. But everybody get kicked on the video set, but I didn't because I got the shirt. And now I'm able to eat the craft services, try to talk to all the video victims who really would never talk to me. And then look at all these amazing artists creating these videos. So it wasn't a business.

It was my ability like anybody who was buying something or having something to belong to a community. And it was something that I would have paid to do. You think that when I was growing up, you know how much I would have paid to be on set to see LL KooJ do Hey Lover with boys and men right there in the middle of the hood. So I was still working around with a lot of them. But then all of a sudden I started to see that there was a way to get paid and more people were resonating with what I was doing. This new idea of founders need to start this and raise a bunch of capital is a bunch of bullshit. That's not the way you stay in business because if I would have just raised capital, first of all, nobody would invest it in me. But if I did, then the kind of money that I would have had to do in the first year to keep Puba alive, I would have never done it.

But I was able to work at Red Lobster and sacrifice having a life. but I was able to do that for five years. And Red Lobster was about 10% of my time. I mean, excuse me, Fubu was 10% of my time. Then it became, and Red Lobster was 90% of my time. And then slowly 20, 80, 30, 70. And I was able to close Fubber down three times from 89 to 92. But then I'd be globally recognized doing $350 million by 97 because I kept my day job.

I love that. It's almost like you didn't really have this grin. vision for Fubu as a billion dollar company, you just kept putting one foot in front of the other and doing what you felt passionate about and where you wanted to get involved. You just wanted to be involved in the community. For the people to understand right now about Fubu, during the time of there was no internet, there was no cell phones, and there was only call can I and cross-cullers who had happened prior to us. If I sold you a shirt on the street, there was no way for me to sell you another one. I would have to find you. There was no way for me to sell you another one.

If I took a picture and put out an ad, I would take a picture today. By the time the ad came out, it would be six months from now that somebody would see it. And then the stores, if I sold it to a store today, I didn't sell it online, I would be selling something to a store that wouldn't make it to the store for one year. It was a very slow period of time in building this communication and things of that nation. It was a very hard time to do it. But I knew that I would wake up before everybody and go to sleep after everybody. There's four of us on the Fubu Hang Tag. When I first went to the department store,

they said, we can't have your clothes here, or you've got to take the hang tag off. I said, why? He said, there's four African-Americans on a hang tag. You look like a gang. We don't want people coming in here and having shootouts and shoplifting. You have shootouts in your store

because you have a size 32 and I want to buy the size 32 and I'm arguing with you. What kind of should we talk about it? So it wasn't the way it is today, and I couldn't reach the customers directly because there was no internet. So this was a very,

challenging time comparison today. And by the way, the hip-hop community at that time was a very homophobic community. So when I was hanging out with the artists a lot of times and their crews and, you know, my boys were like, yeah, I'm going to go back and sell drug. I'm like, I don't sell drug. Man, I can't do that. And I'm like, I mean, you got to see this pattern of strawberries. I got a pattern of a strawberry shirt. I'm going to go home and make strawberry shirts and strawberry-looking hats is going to match my sneakers. They were like, huh? It wasn't a very welcoming time. There were no known male designers at the time, really, but it was a great time. It was not easy, and thank God it wasn't. Yeah. And so I know that you had pretty limited resources and you were

really scrappy entrepreneur. You described yourself as scrappy in an interview that I read. So I'd love to understand, what are some of the guerrilla marketing things that you did as a scrappy entrepreneur? You got to have common sense and a lot of people try to overanalyze things and everybody thinks, well, if analytics, you know, you've got to analyze things because of analytics show everything. If you scrape the right data from analytics, it is. You know, you call up BlackBerry or Blockbuster and Kodax, see how that analytics is working for them.

They're no longer around. Now, I was crappy. So I had money for 50 shirts at one time to buy. Now, I have an idea here. I'm going to buy 50 shirts. Now, I want to give them away to a couple of music artists and their friends, but if I give them away to all the cool kids, they're going to wear it one time and get rid of it

because they don't want to be seen twice in it. But wait a minute, all the guys that wear four. X and 5x and 6x, the big guys in the neighborhood, well, they have limited choices. They can either go to Rochester big and tall and get a big old white shirt, big old black shirt. They've got to pay a lot of money to get something custom made. I'm going to make those Fubu shirts for them, and I'm going to name them Fubu, and I'm going to say on their back, official security of Fubu, right, Fubu Nation or something like that. I give out these shirts of 50 guys. Well, those 50 guys didn't wear one time. There's the only stylish shirt they had. They wore it 10 times a month. By the way, you know where these guys were?

They were in front of the red ropes at clubs. They were the body guards for those music artists. They were the big joyful guys in the neighborhood. They were huge billboards. So now all of a sudden, the music artists are saying to them, hey, man, I like that foolbook stuff. Why don't you all, you know, tell that God, to give me some football?

You know what they said? No, man, because you know what you're going to do? He doesn't have a lot of money. You're going to wear it one time and throw it away, and then he's going to give me nothing. You better wear it, and you better wear it in the next video. That's guerrilla marketing, right? But, you know, but what else did I do?

Well, you know, I saw these security gates. see storm gets to pull down right now in front of the stores, right? They're graffiti on them. I look at them and I look at the bus stop. I go, wait a minute, how much people pay right there to put that, whatever, that poster in the bus stop? That's twice as big. I go to them, hey, can I clean up your gates?

I'll take that profanity off. Can I put a local company on there, name us kids, and people are going to know that you support a local company? Who will come support you? I don't care. I spray paint 300 gates from New York City, New Jersey, authorized food dealer. I don't care that you're selling Chinese food. You're an authorized food dealer.

What else for you really? Well, I finally started making money. When you think because you made money that all of a sudden is no problem. Well, all of a sudden, you know what happened? MTV is 30 seconds. For 30 seconds, it's like, I don't know, $10,000 for 30 seconds because to run a commercial. But BET is like $500. Why? Well, more people, according to the Niel's ratings, watching MTV.

I'm from the hood. Ain't nobody who's paying for that cable in the hood. And by the way, in the projects, it ain't one person. in the house, is 19 in the house, and because there's not a lot of stations out there that show stuff for African Americans, they're not watching 15 stations, they're watching one.

I own the entire damn network. For, you know, the same money would have been for empty because I just had common sense. You just have to have common sense sometimes. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is

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Jay Abraham, who also came on the show in the past. And he told you, everything in the world is a source of something that you can find and make work for you. I love this quote and I'd love to understand how you use that advice in your early career. Oh, 100%. I mean, you know, so every transaction ever in the world, somebody makes a profit, even when somebody's losing, going bankrupt, or when somebody's throwing out garbage. There is always something that there is another person that have a need. And we all know the red paperclip story. It is just how do you target it and package to those that need the need or have the need for it. I've made it work. I've made it work. in multiple type of ways.

Obviously, Fubu was, you know, paying attention to kids that were being neglected. I'll give you example. The first time I got $50,000 in order, well, you know, they didn't want to give me $50,000 because they knew that if they gave me a young starving kid, they gave me $50,000, I was going to buy a brand new Hyundai with rims, and I was going to keep them clean. I didn't do that. And everything is something. So normally somebody would have went to the banks and whatever and said got turned down by it.

Well, I also didn't have a company where you can invest the money into it because I didn't have a company. Well, I go to somebody else and I realize what the something was. A man, a guy who was screen printing shirts for me was screenprinted shirts for, let's say, $6.25. So I'm thinking, what does this guy need? Number one, he wants to screenprint the shirts, but I don't have the money to give it to him. But he also wants to extend his business. And if he gave me a shot, it doesn't mean anything. I'm one kid.

He doesn't know if I'm going to be anybody. why don't I go and have him sign a contract with me that I will let the store buy directly from him and give him the $50,000. But here's what I'm going to do. Instead of him charging me $6.25 for the shirt, I'm going to have him charge me $7 for the shirt. So he's going to make more. But now I'm going to connect him with the store and they're going to buy more goods from him in different ways. I was able to do that. He made more on the goods.

The store was sure that they were going to get the goods. I gave up zero my company and I got to finance. So everything is something in a different way. you don't take something you have and say, I just don't have nothing because there's somebody who wants to barter and trade for it. Jay Abraham is the master of trading. And that's why a lot of people get very literal in the fact that we need money to make money. But the best way that Jay Abraham said it is OPM is, other people's mind power, manpower, manufacturing, marketing, mentors, and sometimes like Timlin, other people's mistakes. There's always ways to make

profit. You don't have to be so literal that it is a dollar. That is such good advice. I want to talk about your mom and then we're going to move on to financial literacy and talk about Shark Tank. So your mom was a huge help to you, especially when you were first starting out with Fuba. I learned that at one point you had $300,000 in orders. You needed a bank loan. You were rejected by 27 banks. And then your mom ended up taking $100,000 loan out on the house to support you, which you, of course, obviously probably paid her back a million times over for. Let's talk about your mom. What was her influence on like you growing up? And do you feel like you would have had

such a successful business without the support of your mother? I wouldn't have had a successful business without the support of my mother because first of all, if she wasn't around, I wouldn't be alive. So she gave me birth. But to talk about the business,

no. Because first of all, way before the business that we will get into Little Damon learn to earn, my mother gave me the mentality to understand how to hustle and to always be working,

creating ways to think about the value for the customer and always having common sense. So she was a great, great entrepreneur and is still. great entrepreneurial thinking person. And most, you know, when people talk about being an entrepreneur, I always say the number one entrepreneur is in every day as a mother. Nothing against

dads, but when a woman risked her life to bring a life into this world, there's nobody's, no book is going to show her step by step on what to do with this life. She's going to have to figure it out, pivot, bob, weave. I said that my mother was very creative. And so, yes, she was huge in regards to me and my business. And then getting to the part of funding my business. And so, I mean, there's a story of mom that's got a $100,000 loan on my house. First of all, she wouldn't have taken it out just to take it out. This was after six or seven years of her seeing me do food, but I have $300,000 in orders.

Then she goes, all right, I see you working on this. You have $300,000 in orders. I'm going to take this loan out for a hundred. You know, she took out all she could in the house. Now, I have no idea how. She got $100,000 because the house was worth $75 until today I haven't asked of what she did for the rest of the money. But she got $100,000. She goes, this is all I have.

have. But Damien, you can't go. I don't want you think that somebody else is going to be able to manufacture this for you. This 100. Remember, Alibaba's not out. The internet doesn't exist. I don't know who to check out. She said, you can't give our money to people that you don't know and just trust them. You're going to have to learn to sew this stuff yourself and create. So I create a factory in the middle of my house. But the real story is at the end of the day that right before I got that deal, I was three months later in the mortgage and I didn't deliver, I only delivered 20% of clothes. and I was about to be bankrupt and homeless, lose my mother's house, and also lose my business. Because I didn't have any financial intelligence.

And it wasn't that I spent money on lavish things. But as any operator would know today that I was paying for raw goods 90 days ahead of time to get the goods in. I'm paying for machines. I'm paying for a staff. I'm paying the ship. Again, the internet doesn't exist. I don't know about factoring. You didn't get what do you call it pre-orders.

There was none of that crap out there. was the store would give you the money in 30 and 60, 90 days. I was flushed out of the cash because it wasn't where we are today. So as much as his mom helped me and as great as she is, my lack of financial intelligence, I was about to lose everything that she ever worked for. But then you ended up becoming an international global brandon and doing really well. Only by the way, because of mom, because you know what she did? She came home. She says you ran out all the money. I have one last idea. I says what? She said, I need $2,000. I go back to Red Lobster and I sling as many biscuits as I can. And after one month, I come home and give her $2,000. I said,

what is this bright idea you have, Ma? She took the money and put her in her pocketbook and said, I'm going to take an ad in the newspaper. I said, that's got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. And you know what happened? She took an ad in the newspaper. I said, Ma, I forbid you to do it. So she definitely did it. And the ads read one million. dollars in orders need financing. 33 people call that ad. 30 of them alone sharks, but three of them were real. Because if you look on Shark Tank, what did she basically do?

She put out near the world. We have proof of concept. We just need fun. And that's what happened. I love that. Okay, this is a perfect timing to get into your Shark Tank journey and understand how you ended up getting on Shark Tank because I learned that you actually initially rejected the offer twice.

So tell us that story. How did you end up on Shark Tank? I go back to my desk at the time. You know how that was back then. Well, I don't know how many people know, but we had hard lines. We still had phones at the time, cell phones at time. But my normal recording had 50 people on there. You know, I checked all the recordings, 48 of them were,

I want to borrow this or I want to sell you some whatever stocks of bonds or I want to open a new store. But two of them were real. And one was a guy named Mark Burnett's office, Mark Burnett, the famous producer. And he said, hey, I want to put you on a show. of course, Shartank, and it was like, all right, great, I love it. You know, he's like, you're going to have to spend your own money. And I was like, collect these goddamn pimps in Hollywood. I heard that, damn, I heard the black people didn't get paid.

But that's one thing. But damn, now we have to pay. And then it was 07. A lot of people weren't buying more clothes when they couldn't pay their rent. And I had 10 clothing brands and eight of them were dead. So I weren't diversify my portfolio and get pitched other things like electronics or whatever the case is to take a more real estate in the stores. And so then I say, okay, I'm going to do the show. They said, you can't do any other show but hours. I said, okay, but I have three friends that are

opening a store in California and I'm going to be on a new cable show three separate times, three minutes apiece, nine minutes total. Can't do any other show but hours. Well, then I said, well, I have to pass. Respectfully, thank you. I'm a man of my word. I'm not a, I don't know, reality star, actor, actress. That's not what I do. And then I get a, I said to pass. Thank you. I get a call about, I don't know, a couple of days later from a book agent, not even my agent, said, I heard you gave up a show on ABC with Mark Burnett for three girls named the Kardashians that nobody will have a hero. And he said, you could be on ABC. You could be the new Black Fonzie.

I said, no, can't do it. I get a call from the producer, the Kardashian, I think two days later. And she says, you know, I don't think he really fit the motto. We don't want you in the show no more. You're fired. Goodbye. And then I get a call from Mark Burnett, one hour after that. And he goes, so I heard you're available.

And so Chloe Kardashian found out that I was going to turn down the show because I was representing the girls. And she said that the world needs to know who I am. And she would never get in my way. That's why Chloe fired me. What a good story. I mean, having the Kardashians involved and all that. And it was totally fate. So I'm going to share a little story about how Shark Tank has impacted my life.

And then we're going to get into your new children's book. So, Damon, I actually, my. My family was one of the first families impacted by COVID in March 2020. And I remember going to my parents' house, my mom, my dad, my uncle, my brother all had COVID. I ended up being quarantined at my parents' house for three months because I got sick. None of my friends wanted to hang out with me. I was working from home from Disney. And my dad ended up getting so sick, he was in the hospital and basically was dying for three months.

And I remember being so depressed. I was binge watching Shark Tank every single night. So I'm going to like cry. And you guys got me through it because that was me, my dad's favorite show. And that's when I decided to take this podcast and really turn it up a notch. I started my own company called YAP Media. It's a social media agency. The company blew up.

My first client paid us $800 a month. My second client was $30,000 a month. And then I kept getting one huge client after the next. And I have to say that Shark Tank was one of the main reasons why I, I was inspired to become an entrepreneur. It taught me so much. I literally only watched that show for three or four years and didn't allow myself to watch any other TV.

And you've just been a huge inspiration, so thank you. Wow. I can hear how passionate you are about it. You know, we wanted the show initially thinking it was going to be great opportunities to get great deals and the show became something bigger and better. And Mark Cuban than being the tech guy is when everybody else, the show is going to be canceled

the first three years. It wasn't doing well like it hasn't done in many markets, but the data showed that it was. it would jump in three, four years because it's very hard to explain that show. Who wins? Are they in his on Discovery Channel during Shark Week? Are they, do they get dumped into some shark, you know, sharks or when do they get the money? And Mark Cuban found out that it was one of the top shows who watched kids and parents together

and kids five to 15 and the ones taught in school. And all these so-called famous celebrity entrepreneurs at the time, many of them been on our show after that, they wouldn't go on to the show because they didn't know who a dame and a Barbara Kevin and whatever it was because they were like, they're not famous. But Mark Cuban said that this is helping American families bond to be together and creating, you know, new sharks. I'm going to go on the show. So Mark goes on the show. And now he can walk onto Jimmy Kimmel. He can walk on the late night show because he's Mark Cuban. We couldn't walk on there. And because of him, season three, the show is out of here. And what it is, it is an institution. It is a,

It is one of the only shows on TV that families like a daughter and a father could watch. It's the only show on TV where you cannot know what it is to be an entrepreneur, but then, you know, watch it for two years straight and walk into the room and know the questions that a millionaire and billionaire are going to ask you. And that's why it's a huge honor to be on the show and to have that experience that you have shared with me. Yeah, I really thank you for all your work on that show. So let's talk about financial literacy. What did being on Shark Tank teach you about financial literacy in America or the lack of it? It told me that we are not taught financial literacy in America. It taught me that most of the people that come on the show, not the most, but a lot in the earlier days,

they were only in those situations because they did not have financial literacy or financial intelligence. And there was nothing wrong with them. And nothing wrong with that because we weren't taught it. As I go through the data of 65% a lot of winners and athletes are bankrupt three years after leaving the league. or winning the lotto because they weren't toward that. It's not, you know, everybody wants to call, that's why people call athletes, big, dumb athletes. No, they're not.

They're the most prime beings and understanding of running plays and understanding how to be the ultimate person. Remember, there's only 3,000 professional athletes all combined in the United States. You know how rare that is? But it doesn't mean that they understand finance. I know, you know, who does not understand often finance? Doctors, they don't.

They know how to cut you open and save your life, and that's way more important. But we're not taught that, and that's why we are in the jam we're in. We are a country of renters now because the American dream is moving away from us. The American dream of buying a house at a certain price and it growing in equity and then you raising your family and then the house is worth a lot of money. You take that equity out of it. You then go and move to a very small place and reduce your imprint and you live off of that

for the rest of your life. That American dream is gone. And it's going away because we don't have financial intelligence. And that's the point and that's the problem. So I know, Damon, that you've written multiple bestselling books and you basically have made it your life's work to pass on your hard earned business acumen. How come you're focusing on children now? How come I'm focusing on children now? Do you have any children yet?

Not yet, no. You have nieces and nephews? Yes. How old are they? They are six and eight. Six and eight. My perfect, that's my target market. And the best thing, guess what about those six and eight year olds?

They don't have credit cards. But those six and those eight year old, oh, by the way, I got to put this on. Sorry, excuse me. What does that represent? What does this represent? Yes. When I'm talking to a six and eight year old, do you think they give a shit about my $10,000 Tom Ford suit when I'm sitting on TV?

No. You got to meet your customer where they're at. And when I put this on, guess what? You're going to do magic? Oh, I'm going to do some magic. Yeah. I'm going to teach you how to make $1 to two. I'm going to teach you how to be success. I'm going to teach you how to get out of your mommy and daddy's house whenever you want to. So, all right, let's get into the story here. This is a little Dame learns to earn. Let me tell you something. This is the first book in history that I see like its kind because we are not taught financial intelligence in school. And the reason why we're

not taught is not because it is a scam. It's not our school system is antiquated. It is is teaching our children right now how to go to shop. We needed to learn how to go to shop when we were at war and we needed to understand a trade and the skill. It teaches us how to be good employees. However, if we are not teaching them at first grade, second grade, how a dollar works, what is compounding interest?

And not in saying what's compounding interest. We don't tell them that they're supposed to be in school. We're not supposed to be talking about how much they're supposed to get, $6 an hour, $8 an hour? No, when we start talking about if a train leaves a station at six and arrives at nine, what's it worth? That's time. And when we break it down in the way of, and if you do this, you either have to leave later so you can have more time to play with your friends or more time to eat candy. Or if you do that, then you start to break down and let them understand how to understand financial intelligence because here's the problem. If you don't teach them financial intelligence in any way and how money works, well, then as 16 and 17 years old, the credit card companies are lined up, and they all have CFOs. The colleges are lined up, and they all have CFOs. They're lined up to give them and issue them $600,000 worth of student debt that they will not pay off until they're into their 50s, because they don't have financial intelligence. And what are they going to do? They're going to spend

that on the education. They're not even sure if they want. The stats and the data is 50% of the kids that are graduating today will retire with a job title that doesn't exist today. If I told you 20 years ago, you were going to be an AI expert or a podcast. or a pay-per-click manager, a social media manager, or a drone operator, you would have said, what the hell is that? I'm going to go and get this $500,000, $600,000 education that I don't even know if I need. Yeah. But now, don't get me wrong, it is not a scam because, by the way, they teach you finance

and accounting in college. But you just took the $600,000 loan, and now they're going to teach you finance? Well, you might as well just enroll in the Navy. I'm going to teach you how to swim after you're out in the ocean in a war with 20 foot swells. You can't do that. Yeah. And that's why this is going to be my legacy of my life's work. This is what I am going to the grave for because here's why.

This is what I call my three-peed. I changed the world in the way that African-Americans as well as culturally people thought of African-Americans and the culture of hip-hop because Fulibu is the number one exported hard goods in America. in history. I would also affect and change the world to 14 years being on a show that showed families that you can do this. If somebody was laying on the couch, they decided and understood what it is to be a shark. And there is going to be kids who are right now watching me on Shark Tank who will grow up and they will change the world and be bigger and better than I ever will be. But this is what I'm going to the grave with because it's not about a book. This is about teaching out kids financial intelligence and this is about getting the school system and other people to

say there's a whole lot of financial intelligence, financial literacy things out there. And oh, my God, Atlanta, you just put this into the school system and it's starting to work better. Detroit, why aren't you doing something similar with other products out there? Houston, why aren't you? Arizona. And I want to make it a thing for people to start to say, this is good. I want Chase to say, why don't we come up with financial intelligence programs that we gift

to schools? and then when I die, I want my little girls to say, my daddy's starting a movement that everybody got behind. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hello, Yap Gang. I know my young improfiting listeners want bigger businesses and a better life, and the New Year is the perfect moment to reset and commit to your growth. But let's be real.

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slash yapfrey. I love that. I hear the passion in your voice on this and it's really, really moving. So do you feel like kids right now don't have the right role models? Do you feel like kids today are actually worse off than they were 10, 20 years ago in terms of this? You know, kids today have the right role models. I'm not going to be the old phobia. I don't listen to that music. It's the wrong role models that are showing them that all of a sudden they are just, you know, it's easy to be rich.

kids have other role models and unfortunately have come from really bad areas and all they're doing is talking about what they know because that's all they have because they have been marginalized and come from a lot of systemic issues. But kids have other role models who have overthrown governments by not picking up a gun by picking up something called Twitter. Kids have other role models who are their age who are like the generation before us have destroyed this planet. I'm going to take all the plastics out of this ocean. I looked at all I have a little girl one day and I said, what do you want to be when you grow up? She was about four years old. She said, what do you want to do? She said, I want to pick up trash. I said, what do you want to pick up trash? I'm paying $60,000

for you to pick up trash. This has nothing to do with the great men and the great women in our cities who bust their ass to pick up trash to make sure that we don't have diseases and rats and roaches. But then I said, why do you want to pick up trash? You know, my little girl said to me what her big, beautiful eyes? What's that? Because I want to clean up the world, daddy. Now, picking up trash to her may be reducing the carbon imprint on this planet. It may be making, taking plastics out of our waterways that then go into our bloodstream. So there are a lot of role models for kids out there. But the problem is today's generation of children, your nieces and nephews, they don't have any national role models. Why? Because after five or six years old, they tap out

of Peppa Pig, Daniel Tiger, Thomas the Train. When I grew up, I had a national. national role model. I had Mr. Rogers, Steve Roth, whatever case is, even what Mr. Cogh was putting out, I had the Muppets. We all went around that. Even my older kids had Steve from Blue's Clues, Dorey, the Explorer. Now, who do the kids have? They pick up an iPad, and there's a thousand splintered families showing how to play with toys, and they're more excited about unboxing than creating what's in the box. But guess what? I'm the only, and this is sad, I'm the only African-American man on a national television show for 14 years that does not come from music, sports, or politics. And I've been in these kids' room for 14 years. I don't have a superpower. You don't

need to know, think that I was the only one who could dunk a ball like and sing. If my dumb ass can do it, you can do it. I love that. So let's talk about what's inside this book, Damon. So I believe that you're teaching kids about entrepreneurship, financial literacy. And basically in your book, Damon, he wants to buy a music poster, he doesn't have enough money to buy it. And then his mom points out that, hey, you've got talents that you could use to solve problems. And Little Damon becomes an entrepreneur. So what are some of the lessons if my young improfitors go out by this book for their young kids? What are some of the lessons that they're going to learn and their kids are going to learn? Well, first of all, I want them to take their parent hat off because

as you became a parent and adult, it was a trap. You had to grow up. So first of all, I want you to think like a kid. So first of all, when Little Damon opens up this business, guess what happens at first? He fails horribly. I love this teacher that is in my teacher's group. I got advisors. I got teachers. You know what she tells her kids?

She says, Monday is this kind of day? Tuesday is this kind of day? You know what Wednesday is? Wednesday is Curbball Wednesday. And then she has Thursday and Friday. Kids and I've taught Curbball Wednesday, right? We always think things are going to go well. So Damon's first business fails.

He comes back. Depressed. What I want to do? What happened? Mom says, you got to find out what are your friends best skills because you need friends. See, entrepreneurship is a team sport. You may have, you know, you may be a single owner entrepreneur, but you're working with various people to get your goods. Well, then Damon tries and finds a way to get his friends. You can sing, you can dance, you can draw it. Let's start to sell these things because I want you to draw it. But I want you to stand outside and sing, oh, you're going to get people over to a booth by with this. Oh, you're really good at math. And all of them start to profit off of it. Little Damon starts to win. At the end, when they divvy everything up, because they got a reorder and whatever the case is, everybody gets to profit. And that is another key because our kids grew up thinking a boss is somebody who tells you get coffee. A boss is the first of the office, the last leave, the one who thanks everybody for their success and blames only one person for their failure.

And that's the key. But I don't want to read to my little girl any more princesses and pony books, because how many times am I going to read to my little girl to wait around for some prince because there's going to be some glass slipper that you're going to drop or to pull your hair out of some damn tower because a prince is going to come around? I'm trying to teach my little girl how to sell glass slippers. I don't want to teach my little boy if I had a little boy that the web's going to come out of his wrist or he's going to fly. No, you know what?

If he thinks that the Avengers are great because they all come together, use their superpower to stop evil, all his little friends have superpowers. Why don't you bring your superpowers together to bring joy to your friends and to create something and create fun things that you love? And if you fail and making money, at least you had fun. You're the super friends. You are the Avengers. That's the critical thinking that kids need to know.

And that's what little Damon learns to earn is about. And I want the parents to take their goddamn parent hat off. When I read Catcher in the Rye as a kid, I read it one time and said, What the hell am I doing? I read it one time. A kid is repetitive. You don't read this book once. You read it once a month to them because they go out and they go, oh, man, they didn't get

the first, second time, but they love the way you told a story, maybe the third month. They go, wow, my friend knows I do this. And you know what? After they get tired of in a year or two you, you know what you do, you give it to another family. I love this mission. I want to help you. I have a lot of successful listeners who listen to the show. How can we help you get the word out?

How many suggestions? You know what? When is this going to be out? This is going to be out. March 27th. March 27. I'll tell you what I'll do. You know what?

Here you go. Just help me and spread the word because we have a great program, a buy one, gift one. Because it's you, they buy a book and go to little damon.com and you will, little enter into something where one person will be picked by your crew that I'll spend the 15 minute one-on-one with them and give them all the advice I can on how to become more successful or do something else. the day, it's just about getting the word out. You know what? And double dare everybody else to take on the same journey and come out with other products like this that I will highlight on my platform to give them a voice, to hopefully just change this narrative in our country. And do you see Little Damon moving on to have some sort of a T, I could totally see a TV show or something like that? Yeah, you know, Little Damon will move on to having more things in more ways

but because we're coming up with the system. So the children understand what to do with $3, $300, $3,000, $3,000, $3 million. People don't understand America how it's supposed to work. The first dollar goes to what you have to pay for. The second goal is for an investment. And the third goes for what you would like to have, but don't have to have. But what do we do as Americans? Well, we put number three is number one.

We'll never get to number two. And number one, we'll get to at the end or we get kicked out. So start to learn that. We have systems that we will be bringing. out, but what do you want to do with your kids think? Show them the $3. You know what else to do? You know your nieces and nephews? You know what to do with them? Every year, get them. You want to get them a toy, right? Because they're kids, right? Well, when you get them something, buy you the boy. He likes trucks. Buy him one share in Caterpillar. But buy him a little Caterpillar truck. Because

it's a share, he's Susan Caterpillar. You go, what the hell is that? Why I'm a Caterpillar truck and take a picture of you with him in the truck at that time, right? And that's for Christmas. for a birthday, well, then I don't know what he likes, but maybe like, I don't know, whatever the toy it is, buy a share in Mattel. I don't know if it's a public company. Before you know it, you know, and every parent can do this. You know, American girl, I think, is owned by Mattel or something like, before you know it, by the time they're 16 years old, that one share would have changed to this amount. They would have been like, well, if you would have put that in the bank, you would have got 3, 4%. But you put that there, it averaged out to probably about 15, 16, 17%. Here's the picture of me

or my auntie, but my truck, but this, with that, you got to get them accustomed to these things in the way that they think about it. Remember, if they see one quarter and two pennies, they think that two pennies is more than the one quarter. But if they see one quarter, equate to how many damn gummy bears they can buy against two pennies. Oh, now they know the difference. Little things we got to do. Yeah, I love this, Damon. Thank you so much for your time. I want to be respectful of your time. I'm going to end the show with two last questions. The first one is, what is one actionable thing, our young improfitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? It all depends. They have to reinvest in whatever they love, right? But financial intelligence

is a thing to be more profitable about. And if you want to have more financial intelligence and you are concerned about the way to do it, well, how can I meet you exactly where you are, not me, but the same way that you have all those accounts on Instagram where you know all the places to go for dinner, all the bags you want to shop for, or all the places to travel, put on 30 accounts to have something to do with financial intelligence, but do not buy anything. And I'm telling you now, after a year or two years of scrolling through there, you will have a way better understanding. The same way that you watch Shark Tank to become who you are, I almost went bankrupt three times, two times when I was poor, and one time when I had $10 million. I did the same thing,

and I watched a show call. Man money by Jim Kramer every single day for two years. And guess what happened? After that, nobody can mess with me when it came to financial intelligence. I love that. You always got to level up young improfitors. And Damon, what is your secret to profiting in life? What is my secret of profiting in life? It is three tent poles to how you profit in life and anybody to be successful. Number one, know your why.

Number two, set goals to accomplish that why. And number three, you got to keep learning and do your homework. Here's the only problem. Many of us don't want to admit what our why is and many of our whys are being done for somebody else, what society thinks. So here's the bigger problem. If you are saying you have the wrong why, well, then what kind of goals are you going to set because you're setting the wrong goals? And if you have the wrong goals, well, then the education you have to enforce the wrong goals is going to be the wrong stuff. You are the only one to have the blueprint to yourself, but you want to be famous.

Well, then set some goals to be famous. I got nothing against that. You know, one of my favorite rappers were old dirty bastard, and he set some goals that he was going to be an old dirty bastard. And he did his homework and not to be an old dirty bastard. God bless his soul, but he was an old dirty bastard. That's it. I mean, he was the only one who knew what he wanted to do.

The problem is too many people lying to themselves about their why. Don't do it for your mother, your father. Don't do it because you think it looks cool. You're the only one who's got to sleep with yourself at night. I love that. Great advice, Damon. Thank you so much for coming on the show, guys. Little Damon learns to earn is on the shelves. Now, if you have any kids, make sure you cop that book right away. Damon, it was honestly a dream come true to have you on the show. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I love what you do. I love the fact that we had to a little bit of connection and so emotional about what you do because it's clear your passion. And I appreciate you bringing me on that show and giving me this opportunity. Thank you to all the entrepreneurs out there. And, you know, if you think I look stupid in the hat, I want you to know that you're playing yourself because you love Willy Wonka. You love Clint Eastwood.

You love Harry Houdini. You love Rossi and Snowman. Stop playing yourself. I look really cool on this. I agree. You look fly, Damon. And your kids think I look cool. So I'm going to be attractive for your kids because it's had and teach him financial intelligence.

I look anyway. Call me stupid. This is for our kids. I love it. Thanks so much, Damon. You got it. Thank you. Man, young impofitors.

What a dream come true it was to interview. Damon John. I teared up in the middle of this interview thinking about how much his work on Shark Tank impacted me. Shark Tank was actually the only show that I allowed myself to watch for four entire years. When I was building Yap as a podcast, I had a full-time job and I wanted it to be a huge show and that means I needed to invest a lot of time in it. I had to remove all my unproductive time, which included things like reality TV, mindlessly scrolling on social media, and lots of things that I didn't really need to do that was sucking up my time. And my only bit of edutainment was Shark Tank, thanks to Damon John. And I love what Damon is focused on. He's teaching financial literacy

to today's youth, and that is such an important job. And who better than Damon John? He's one of the most respected entrepreneurs in the world. He's somebody that kids recognize from TV. And I'm so proud of everything Damon accomplished in his life. From working at Red Lobster to selling hats and queens, to taking Fubu to a $6 billion company, to rocking primetime national TV. Damon is truly the epitome of the American dream. And you know, it's kind of scary to meet your idols in real life.

It's funny to think that for so many years, I would watch Damon on TV with my dad in the living room. And then fast forward to 2023. he's sitting directly across from me on the screen chatting directly to me. He knows my name. He knows my podcast. And it's just crazy. Like, what a surreal moment.

And luckily for me, Damon was an absolute sweetheart. Sometimes these huge celebrities come on the show and they're kind of standoffish and they're just not in a good mood and they have no idea who I am and they could be a little rude. But Damon was nothing like that. He was a sweetheart and he even got a little silly towards the end after he warmed up a bit. And he goes without saying, that our world and our youth is a little better

with Damon John in it. And if you have kids, make sure you go get Damon's new children's book. If you want to enter a chance to win 15 minutes of Damon John's time, go to littledaemon.com, purchase your bundle, and then enter code Yap at checkout. Again, go to little damon.com, purchase your bundle, and enter code Yap at checkout to enter the contest.

Thanks for listening to Young Improfiting Podcast. If you listen, learned, and profited, share this episode with your friends and family and take a minute to drop a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like watching your podcast videos, check us out on YouTube. And I highly recommend that you check out this specific episode on YouTube because there's some really funny parts at the end of it.

And you can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. Big shout out to my amazing, talented Yap production team. Shout out to my executive producer, Jason Ames. Shout out to Critty, my VP of AdOps, Amelia, Greta, Paul, the whole team really appreciate everything you guys do. This is your host, Halitaha, signing off.