International Bestselling Author of Sell It Like Serhant and Big Money Energy
A conversation with

Daymond John

CEO @thesharkgroup & Fubu.com Founder
On the premiere episode of Big Money Energy, Ryan is joined by entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” star Daymond John to discuss why becoming financially literate is the most important part of your education.
Episode 01

Download the Daymond John Action Plan

Ready to take action based on Daymond John’s entire blueprint for how he got to where he is, click below!
Listen to the Episode
On the premiere episode of Big Money Energy, Ryan is joined by entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” star Daymond John to discuss why becoming financially literate is the most important part of your education. The FUBU founder recalls his humble beginnings as a pencil salesman in elementary school, shares important lessons from his new book “Powershift,” and reveals how to go from having $40 to $6 billion.
Watch the Episode
Audio Transcript
Ryan: 00:01 Welcome everybody to another episode of Big Money Energy where I speak to very successful self-made people to learn exactly how they did it. We cover the stories in between, the path to their successes and how they overcame the obstacles in their way. And specifically, I talk to people who not only have big money energy, but those who started with nothing, because I really, really want to learn how you went from nothing to something. Because big money energy’s the vibe you get from someone who is succeeding at life in every direction. And today we have Daymond John, and in this episode, if you are interested in anything relating to entrepreneurship, building wealth and learning from failure, you need to stick around. We go through his first business, selling pencils and getting beaten up. We talk about his bankruptcies. We talk about dealing with morons, how to be a Shark and most importantly, how you go from 40 bucks to 6 billion.
All right. Today is an insanely, insanely special day because my guest is none other than Daymond John.
Daymond John: 00:01 Hey.
Ryan: 01:11 Hey man, how are you?
Daymond John: 01:12 I’m good, man.
Ryan: 01:12 Now you look good with like the leather and the Yankees hat.
Daymond John: 01:15 Yeah man, I’m trying to be cool.
Ryan: 01:16 Now, if you don’t know Daymond, I don’t know who you are and I don’t know why you’re even listening to this because you should. Daymond is a serial entrepreneur, investor or a TV personality, five time bestselling author. He’s got his new book out right now, Powershift which is incredible and a motivational speaker. He’s also on a little TV show. I can’t remember. It’s a fish, the fish, the fish bowl, Shark.
Daymond John: 01:38 Yeah.
Ryan: 01:38 Shark Tank.
Daymond John: 01:39 The Shark Tank.
Ryan: 01:39 That one. Nominated for 15 Emmys, won four of them, which is amazing. Daymond, thank you for being here.
Daymond John: 01:46 Thank you for having me.
Ryan: 01:47 Yeah, man. How’s your day? So far so good?
Daymond John: 01:48 Great. It is great. It’s Monday.
Ryan: 01:50 Yeah and your birthday was yesterday.
Daymond John: 01:51 My birthday was yesterday. I’m calling it moron Monday. Yeah, there’s a lot of morons out in the world, man.
Ryan: 01:57 They are, dude.
Daymond John: 01:58 It’s amazing. So I’m really excited about that because that means I can make more and more money. And so everybody listening can make more and more money if they-
Ryan: 02:05 Because morons buy more stuff.
Daymond John: 02:07 Well, morons are idiots and if you have common sense and you’re willing to work hard and bust your ass for it, the morons won’t so it’s moron Monday.
Ryan: 02:15 Got it, got it, got it. Right. Because you can outwork everybody else who’s just-
Daymond John: 02:15 Yeah because they’re just-
Ryan: 02:18 … not doing it.
Daymond John: 02:18 … they’re getting information from one source and or they’re idiots. I mean, it’s really moron Monday, I’m telling you now.
Ryan: 02:23 You know what’s funny? One of the reasons I was excited about having you on, and I don’t remember if I told you this before, but when I moved to New York city in 2006, when I graduated college and a way to make money for me when I first got here, because I was trying to be an actor, before I ever got into real estate in 2008, I would do little things. Like I’d pass out flyers on the street for gyms, like I would do odds and end jobs and one of the things that I got was like a stock photo job modeling FUBU.
Daymond John: 02:48 Nice.
Ryan: 02:49 Yeah. I don’t know where those photos are because I think they were burned-
Daymond John: 02:53 Why? It was not.
Ryan: 02:53 But I was probably the worst FUBU model anyone has ever seen.
Daymond John: 02:56 No, no, no. You still could be a great FUBU model.
Ryan: 02:58 Do you remember those? Do you remember photos?
Daymond John: 03:00 I don’t remember yours.
Ryan: 03:00 Okay because they were terrible?
Daymond John: 03:02 Maybe not, I mean, thinking about that, that was probably about 15 years but we always had really attractive and people we felt fit the part and you know what? I think a good point of that is that a lot of times, talking about moron Monday, a lot of times people thought that FUBU was only for people of a certain color and we wouldn’t have used… Obviously you’re not the color that they’re thinking.
Ryan: 03:21 I’m a different color.
Daymond John: 03:22 And obviously we probably used the photo because we used people of all colors on our ads. Well, thank you, man.
Ryan: 03:28 Yeah I remember.
Daymond John: 03:29 Thank you for being part of the brand.
Ryan: 03:30 Yeah, it’s great. So listen, one thing I want to start with this. I’m going to keep it super simple and we’ll see how you respond. How did you go from nothing to something? And what does that mean to you?
Daymond John: 03:42 I went through massive amount of failures but I was failing small and quick and I was learning from them. I went through life as a series of mentors. So I went through so many different mentors to try to obtain the information that I didn’t know I had, that I didn’t know what to do because when you start out in anything, you don’t know what you don’t know. I went through a lot of soul searching and realized what was my why and why was I doing this and what did I want to get out of it and what was my line in the sand and what I would agree upon or not agree upon.
I went through a lot of common sense too. I looked around and everybody said, “You can’t do it.” I was, I was like, “Well, why all these buildings here and all these cars here? Who did it? Was it the gods who did it or it was one person with one idea that took one action?” I was like, “It’s common sense. You can do this.” And I just read a lot. I read a lot. I noticed that the things that I would read if I found the same underlying truth in these 20 or 40 books that were written by different people at different times in their life, in different times in history, what are they all lying to me? It’s right there. It’s right there. Just a lot of common sense and drive.
Ryan: 04:57 So you saw success from other people and that’s what drove you? That was kind of your why or your drive or what was the why?
Daymond John: 05:05 My why initially was get some funky sneakers for myself because mom wasn’t making any money, why make her work for mine? Then it was supporting a household of me and just my mother, honestly, but I didn’t want to be on the streets. Then I made mistakes going to the wrong businesses to try to make money selling crash cars, selling this and that and thinking that, I was going to be a gazillionaire by 20 and I was broke by 20. Because I was doing it only for money, I had no passion or drive for it.
Ryan: 05:33 Sure.
Daymond John: 05:33 I didn’t want to work on it. Then my why became, “Wait a minute, there’s an untapped market that we’re being neglected by all the big designers. They think that hip hop kids or rappers or whatever are not of value. And I want to make clothes for people who love this genre of music,” and that’s when I created a FUBU and it was For Us, By Us, it was about a culture. I would dress the Beastie Boys, I would dress LL cool J, Run-D.M.C., Salt-N-Pepa, and that was my why then.
And then my why would change over my time of running a business to say, “Okay, everybody’s going to laugh at me if this thing fails, and they’re going to think I hit the lotto or got one bite of the Apple. I got to keep going because my ego’s in place.” And then had two little baby girls and my wife and then employees. My why just kept changing.
Ryan: 06:19 What was your first business? You mentioned cars and…
Daymond John: 06:23 My first business was selling pencils at six years old-
Ryan: 06:25 Pencils at six?
Daymond John: 06:26 Yeah, pencils at six.
Ryan: 06:27 Was there a good return on those pencils?
Daymond John: 06:29 Amazing return. Because what I realized when the boys liked the girls in school that age, they would try to knock their teeth out. So I figured there’s got to be a way I can make a profit off of this. I would go and find these pencils, I would scrape the paint off the pencils and I’d paint the names of the prettiest girls in school in the pencils-
Ryan: 06:29 Shut up.
Daymond John: 06:45 … and I walk over to the guys and go, “You don’t want to knock her teeth out. If you bought this box of pencils from me with your lunch money, you’re going to be able to sit with the girls and give them the pencils and get to talk to them.”
Ryan: 06:45 Wow.
Daymond John: 06:55 And then the guys would try to knock my teeth out. So I was about to throw the pencils away and I remember one of the girls saying, “Hey, that’s my name on that pencil, is that mine?” I was like, “Yeah, it is.” The girls paid me two times the amount of money that I was trying to sell it to the guys for.
Ryan: 07:10 It’s a market idea right there.
Daymond John: 07:11 But my principal made me close that business after one month.
Ryan: 07:14 What! Where’s that principal right now and what are they doing?
Daymond John: 07:17 She had no vision. That’s exactly the problem. Because one of the boys squealed on me and told her that I was stealing the pencils from the guys that I hated in school. So my cost of goods was zero. I think it was good business.
Ryan: 07:27 But there was some personal risk involved in the selling pencils to people business when you’re six, right?
Daymond John: 07:33 As far as I…
Ryan: 07:34 Or if they punch your lights out, if they knocked you out, but then there’s still a return I guess if the girl bought it.
Daymond John: 07:39 But I didn’t listen. I practiced the oldest form of self-defense there is. Running.
Ryan: 07:43 Yes.
Daymond John: 07:44 You can never catch me. I was really short and really fast.
Ryan: 07:47 Question though, and I know your why has changed over the years, but don’t go back to when you’re 10 years old, I’m just thinking like what motivates you to come up with different business ideas and think about different ways to make money. I know back then it was like sneakers and make some cash. But was it also to do something different? Like, was there a hunger for you to create something instead of just making money? Because we talk to a lot of people too, which it’s just the money and you can see it on them, you can smell it when they walk in the room.
Daymond John: 07:47 Really?
Ryan: 08:17 Yeah.
Daymond John: 08:18 The people that I’ve always met that have been really successful entrepreneurs, okay yeah, if you’re in the financial trade market and the systems like that, and it is money, but they still love the kill. They still love the-
Ryan: 08:30 The game.
Daymond John: 08:31 The game. They still love the way that their mind works. You know what I mean? I don’t care if you’re a professional gambler, money is the outcome, but they still love the chase, the game, the way they break things down, the way they see opportunity. My real why came around with FUBU. And that was when I found my love. I had a love of fashion ever since I was 10 years old and I loved hip hop ever since I was 10 years old. I blended them together when I was 19, not realizing that I can make money off them then I failed a bunch of times up until 19. I would still fail with FUBU from 19 to 22, I would close it three times by running out of capital. But then in ’92 I started it again. And that’s where the real love came.
It came around like when I close it, but then people started saying, “I bought that shirt from you and I really want to see it again,” I started again. I closed it and I kept closing it, but it kept calling me back. And that’s when I found my real love and my real why.
Ryan: 09:18 Yeah, was just giving people what they want.
Daymond John: 09:21 It did a lot of things. It gave people what they want. I would make a shirt and then somebody would wear it and they would wear it a certain way and I’d go, “I never thought about it like that. That shit is hot.” Or somebody when they bought it, I felt like they said, and I know that you feel this way. You have to feel this way being successful what you do is I made them feel like they’ve arrived in some way or another. Even if it was that one moment that they took a girl out or they were out with a guy and they were wearing their brand new FUBU shirt.
Ryan: 09:50 Yeah. A statement piece.
Daymond John: 09:52 For that moment, they felt like they have arrived. And I would have dressed people for the rest of my life for free if I could. I just loved it.
Ryan: 09:58 So what happened in 1992? What was that shift? Because you shut it down a couple of times and brought it back and I’ve read and we know how important your mom was to a lot of this.
Daymond John: 10:09 Yeah. In ’92, I realized that I was going to make a stand and I was not going to quit this thing and I need to educate myself more and I brought in partners, my three other partners that are still my partners still today. And I had already made all the mistakes prior. So now I knew what I didn’t need to do. A lot of people who are successful in business, they go through things and they may have 5 or 10 businesses. The first business, they didn’t have enough funding so they shut it down. The second business, they had enough funding, but they didn’t have distribution, they shut it down. The third one, they had funding, distribution, but their legal wasn’t in order. Boom, boom, boom, boom. By business number 10 they’re like, “Holy shit, I may have something here.”
Ryan: 10:43 Yeah I think that’s super important to all the listeners that are watching, listening now who are growing up or are learning how to start a business and they’ve got Instagram, they’ve got Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, how do you get the word out about clothing the way you guys started in the early 90s, without millions and millions and millions of dollars to spend in commercials and magazine ads, how do you do that?
Daymond John: 11:07 Yeah. And that’s exactly, I know we’ll get into Powershift it’s about. It’s about the building of influence prior and that’s what we’re talking about. I’m going to tell you now, if social media was out when I started, FUBU would have not been a $6 billion brand, it would have been $100 billion brand over the years. Because you look at Nike right now doing about 30 billion a year. We would have probably done about $10 billion a year annually for-
Ryan: 11:32 Had you started now.
Daymond John: 11:34 Had I started now. I sold you a shirt, I had to find you.
Ryan: 11:39 Yeah.
Daymond John: 11:40 The internet did not exist. Cell phones didn’t exist. I had to find where you lived to sell you another shirt.
Ryan: 11:47 And how did you keep track of all those customers and to be able to build your fan base?
Daymond John: 11:50 Old school, I used to keep their phone number, I used to tell-
Ryan: 11:54 Do you have a book? Like literally you had a book?
Daymond John: 11:55 I had a book. I used to tell them, “Listen, Friday nights, I’m going to be in the little corner of the Apollo Theater at 12 o’clock. When that thing lets out, I’m telling you now you better be there to get your shirt first because I’m going to sell out.” Not only was I giving them consistency of where I was going to be, I knew their names and I was telling them where to find me. I promise, I kept that promise. I don’t care if it was 10 degrees, I was there that day and that night.
Ryan: 12:19 So people did expect you.
Daymond John: 12:20 That night. Also, I was getting feedback. Here’s the best thing you want feedback, you stand on the corner of the Apollo Theater at midnight when those drunk people let out and they would tell me about what they thought about my shirt and my mother. You want feedback? Oh my god. And it grew and I had-
Ryan: 12:38 Much safer behind Instagram. In person and midnight.
Daymond John: 12:41 Much safer, but I had to work. My partners and I, we worked it for about eight years like that. And I don’t care. Consistency.
Ryan: 12:41 Eight years?
Daymond John: 12:50 Yeah we had to be consistent.
Ryan: 12:52 When did you get into office space? When did you first kind of take a step back and realize, “You know what things are going to be okay and they might be better than okay if we keep doing this”?
Daymond John: 13:01 Yeah it was never going to be okay. It was either going to be, “Guys, all right now the real journey is starting. We’re playing at a big level.” 1997, Samsung’s textile division and these guys named Bruce and Norman gave me a call and they gave us an opportunity to come up there. The agreement, I think we had to sell $5 million worth of clothes in three years to keep this distribution deal. Because they were going to distribute our clothes. It was like a record label getting a record.
Ryan: 13:32 Yeah, yeah for five million in three years.
Daymond John: 13:34 Yeah but I did $30 million in three months because we had already built up this influence for 10 years or 9 years.
Ryan: 13:41 All of a sudden they gave you a megaphone, right?
Daymond John: 13:43 Gave us a megaphone. They were like, “Okay, now we can manufacture and distribute, do what you do best.” And that was it. We were dressing everybody in every single video, we were every place, we were on every corner. And those ambassadors that we had built that influence with somebody who would say, “Hey, I’m the FUBU guy,” or “I’m the FUBU girl in Detroit,” and we would have 100 of those in Detroit, 100 of those in Atlanta, 100 of those in-
Ryan: 14:08 And it’s organic?
Daymond John: 14:09 … North Carolina. Organic, and this was viral before it was viral. We build this relationship with LL cool J he goes and puts FUBU in the Gap ad. He does a Gap ad and he puts For US, By Us on the low in the Gap ad. Gap spends $30 million airing that commercial. It’s a FUBU commercial they’re basically airing. There’s so many big things had happened at that time for us but it was a culmination of, if you really think about, I started in ’89, by that time nine years or whatever the case is of just pounding the ground.
Ryan: 14:40 Now, it’s going back to what you talked about. One of the things I think people don’t really understand these days when they look at somebody like you and they say, “Okay, TV,” or “Okay successful, yeah I know got some sort of backstory,” but is the Red Lobster. Working Red Lobster, that is a hustle that people just don’t get anymore. Like what you said your job when you started was you worked at Red Lobster. The majority of your day was working at Red Lobster, right?
Daymond John: 15:03 Yeah.
Ryan: 15:04 And then it was getting FUBU off the ground, watching it fail, getting it back off the ground, watching it fail. What was Red Lobster to you?
Daymond John: 15:12 Yeah. Just like you with the flyers. Red Lobster was my basis. I had to keep the lights on and everybody talks about, burn the bridges and quit your day job. Whoever said, that’s an idiot. Because if you look I worked at Red Lobster for five years and I got paid $30,000 a year, I had medical, I was taking all the food home. So now I didn’t have to pay for food anymore. I was having an entire staff of Red Lobster come to flea markets with me on Saturdays and help me. I was trying to sell the customers. If they bought their shrimp, “Do you want a t-shirt?”
And then at the same time, my house, I was renting out all the rooms in my house. I had four rooms. So I was renting them all out for $25 a week to strangers. And I was sleeping on the couch. So now I have some of the mortgage paid. I was working all those hours at Red Lobster and I had to do that for five years. I would have to do $2 million in sales in FUBU to take the same money away from there and I wouldn’t have done $2 million in sales. I was sleeping next to sewing machines. I had an old beat up car, a jalopy. I mean, that thing was… I don’t know where it is, but-
Ryan: 16:10 You should find that car.
Daymond John: 16:11 Trust me, it’s not around anymore. It’s not around anymore, it can’t be.
Ryan: 16:15 And now you’re successful and everybody knows it. So why Shark Tank? I mean, is it just because you’re hungry for more? You want to meet more people? You want to help more people? You invest in all these different businesses, it sounds almost like a stupid question, but it’s kind of not because you’ve lived so much life and had so much business that people could only even dream of, why Shark Tank? What odes it do for you?
Daymond John: 16:37 My why has changed on Shark Tank. Initially, when I turned down the show, because they said I couldn’t do any of the show while I was doing Shark Tank and I was representing the Kardashians and I was doing various things with the Kardashians so I said, “No.” Chloe Kardashian fired me off the show because she heard that I was turning down Shark Tank because of her. Then I heard that on Shark Tank, you got to use your own money. I’m like “These guys in Hollywood are pimps. You’re supposed to get paid to be on a show. Are you crazy?” And then somebody said to me, “Well, Daymond, you’re only getting pitch clothing ideas.” And I had 10 clothing companies at the time and 8 of them were dead. This is ’07, ’08 when retail was not working.
I said, “I’ll go on the show because if I’m talking to a retailer, I want to take a more real estate in their area and I only have clothing so I’ll go and get some lotions, I’ll get electronics, I’ll get whatever,” so then when I’m talking to you, I’ll go, “Can I be in these other departments?” And because we have a nurtured relationship, like we’re always talking about, you’ll say, “Yes, I’m more comfortable with you because I know you’re a good vendor. You’ve been a good vendor of record for years. If something goes wrong, you’ll take it back. We have a good relationship.” I go in there.
Then I start to realize the power of it, the show. And I start to realize I’m learning more on the show than the people on the show. I don’t learn too much from the morons, on the other sharks. They’re the chairmen of moron Monday. But I learned from these other kids who are coming up now all of a sudden, they’re selling clothes a different way. They’re online, they’re doing social media conversion. They’re doing this, they’re doing that. And I’m learning all these other industries and I’m applying it to myself. I wasn’t thinking about what we do now, content creation. I wasn’t thinking about all these other things.
I would have been like some of my colleagues in the industry I’d have been the same old guy going, “Let me make a shirt. Hopefully a buyer buys it. Hopefully they put it on the rack in a dying retail environment and maybe somebody walks by the rack and buys it.” I’d have been that same person. But again, Shark Tank has grown to something else and it changed my why.
Ryan: 18:23 Yeah. So how many different businesses are you involved with now? Can you remember?
Daymond John: 18:27 I would say out of Shark Tank probably by 80, and I know it sounds daunting. So let me-
Ryan: 18:31 That is daunting.
Daymond John: 18:32 It would be.
Ryan: 18:32 My jaw just dropped.
Daymond John: 18:34 Let me clarify that. One third of them are the walking dead. Give them the money or we’ve done a deal and they’re dead or they are trying to come around. There’s nothing for me to do there. Call them up and ask them for the money, no, I mean, I’m a partner, and things may work out, it may not. Another third of them like Bombas Socks are brilliant, they don’t need me. If I call them, I may fuck it up. They don’t need me at all to call them and say, “Yoh, you should make the logo bigger.” They’d be like, “Thank you, Daymond,” click.
So now the ones that I got to concentrate are the ones right on the fence. They’re going to move either over to one of those other lanes and they call me when they need me and we work it out.
Ryan: 19:08 And they need your help.
Daymond John: 19:09 If they need my help, absolutely and I’m here.
Ryan: 19:11 What’s your favorite business you’re working on right now?
Daymond John: 19:13 My favorite business well of course because we’re here, I’m going to talk about the book. But other than that, because it’s content. But I like my curriculum, my Daymond on Demand. I give step-by-step lessons and the information people need to know to run a business and understand the difference between if you need a trademark or you need a patent or you need a DBA, or you need a design trademark against a utility patent or whatever the case is and financing. When you get financing, how do you get financing? Who do you get financing from? So I like that one because it helps people, it saves them from the mistakes that I made.
Ryan: 19:44 When did you put that course out?
Daymond John: 19:45 I put the course out about a year. You can go to daymondondemand.com and get that course. And I’m starting to see the students come back who are growing their business or are starting a business and saying, “This is actually working.”
Ryan: 19:57 So it’s your whole life and everything, and all of your experts and people you work with all boiled down in eight hours?
Daymond John: 20:02 Absolutely.
Ryan: 20:03 So you can get basically-
Daymond John: 20:04 You can get everything.
Ryan: 20:05 … your business degree.
Daymond John: 20:05 I’ll give an example right now. Everybody always wants a patent. Well a patent can cost anywhere from 17,000. And if you do it yourself, a utility patent, whatever the case is, you do it just yourself no attorney, it could cost you maybe $3,000, but you could probably, an attorney 17,000 all the way to a 100 because of how many claims you have in the patent. I have 100 patents, I haven’t been able to defend not one of them.
However, a trademark, FUBU, FUBU cost $2,500. You can’t put FUBU on anything. That’s it. Now $2,500 per category, then you get more categories at $300 or $400. That means you have it in category 24 and then categories 17 and 24, 25, maybe clothing. But think about it like this, somebody right now, who has been told, they need a patent has spent $50,000 when they just need to spend 2,500-
Ryan: 20:51 On the trademark.
Daymond John: 20:51 … because they didn’t know what they needed.
Ryan: 20:54 If you could go back in time and stand in front of your 20 year old self or go back to 1989, on that corner, that inflection point, that aha moment, when that happened, you yourself right now, you take the DeLorean, you go back there. What do you say to him without fucking him up?
Daymond John: 21:08 Funny I watched on DeGeneres the other day do a live, not comedy. She was just doing her speech or her whatever Q&A. She said she wouldn’t tell her younger self anything because then she wouldn’t be who she is today. Me on the other hand, I get it you’re right but I would’ve said, “Daymond, you’ve got to learn financial intelligence. You’ve got to learn how money works, man. You’ve got to learn how money works.” The system has not been set up to let you know how money works. The only thing you’re not going to learn in the school system, well, not the only thing, but you’re not going to learn how financial intelligence works, because then you can’t get $300,000, $400,000 worth of loans on an education you’re not certain if you want.”
I need a financial intelligence. I’d go almost bankrupt three times after that. Now two of the times I almost went bankrupt I didn’t have anything so bankrupt wasn’t that much of a loss. It was almost like a breakeven. But after that I would blow, I would not blow because it wasn’t on stupid things, but I would go through about 10 million fairly quickly. Thank God, I’m not an athlete as somebody who peaks at the beginning of their career. But I had many more bites of the apple and I was fine, but I learned from that, I said, “Where did that 10 million go?” I just didn’t know how it worked.
Ryan: 22:19 So you’d say, “Become financially literate,” that’s what you’d say to your 20 year old?
Daymond John: 22:22 Get financial intelligence. Work on… I’m still working on… The richest and wealthiest people I know, billionaires, I mean, guys have big money, they walk around with and they’re just older, but they walk around with a book and all they do generally is discuss or when they hear about different ways to legally save on taxes, that’s what they write. I noticed like it was four different guys and I said, “Why did you do that?” He said, “Well, I can either risk it all and start a whole new business to hopefully do $200 million a year or I can just save 200 million that I already made. Why the hell do I need to do this instead of do this? If I got to pay a billion dollars in taxes, I’d rather only pay $600 million in taxes, $700 million. Why start a whole new business?” Pretty smart?
Ryan: 23:08 Yeah. I love that.
Daymond John: 23:09 I already made it.
Ryan: 23:10 Yeah, exactly. I love that man, because you have your course and you’re learning every day, education has been such a big part of your life.
Daymond John: 23:17 100% yeah.
Ryan: 23:18 Every day as you go on.
Daymond John: 23:20 Every day.
Ryan: 23:20 You said big money there. What does big money energy mean to you? If I just said that phrase to you, what would you think about?
Daymond John: 23:26 I can interpret it different ways. I’ve never heard of it before until you said it. Big money energy to me means either, you think of the big money Wolf of Wall Street, energy, like in a room like that where I’m not sure that’s good. I’m just saying that. Or you think of big money they come in when a person just has that thing and they think big, they operate big. They just think big. When I’m out with those guys, a lot of times they’re talking about…
So I’ve been around with wealthy people, and super wealthy people, the difference between wealthy and super wealthy is the wealthy people that I see or the rich, I don’t want to say wealthy because wealthy is a lot of different things in life.
Ryan: 24:04 Sure.
Daymond John: 24:05 They talk about how big their parties are, how big their houses are and stuff like that. The really, really rich people, they talk about how much money they gave away this year. So I was in a house a little while back and I remember this woman walking us all around and she’s like, “Oh, look how big this house is. Look how big this is.” And then she just came into money. And I remember somebody who I happened to know, VC said, “Wow, you live really well. You live better than Warren Buffet.” She shut the fuck up after that.
So, big money energy is just, really, really, really just thinking big and being humble, I think also. I think-
Ryan: 24:40 For sure. Talk to me about your book?
Daymond John: 24:40 Powershift.
Ryan: 24:43 Powershift, book number five.
Daymond John: 24:44 All right. So I wrote this book because it was like one week that a lot of people came to me and they were asking me about, or trying to get advice about change in their lives and various other things. And I’d asked them, what did they do. A lot of people felt that they were inundated or they didn’t know where to start, or they needed a lot of money or they needed this, they needed that when it was really their mentality of how to change your life and what they can do with what they have right now. And then I also started realizing that people think that power shift and shifting power is either taking it away and being just this massive, the mean person. And lots of time, power shift is passing the power on to you on the other side of the table, you appreciating it, and I wanted people to understand how to become powerful.
It’s a three-step process. First, you have to build influence like you and I were talking.
Ryan: 25:31 Sure.
Daymond John: 25:32 You have to build influence. Then you negotiate what you want for both parties and then you nurture the relationship afterwards, but people are so transactional. They’re so just like this. So what do you do when you run into a Ryan in the elevator and you have a 90 second pitch and you didn’t have time to build influence with him? Well, if you have the pitch and I do a lot of pitches in here that are rock solid, Ryan and Daymond, we’re going to look at your Instagram later on. Did you build influence through there through the right way? Because I’m going to look at his language and everything you’re doing and how you’re representing yourself.
If you happen to be taking pictures with a misogynic, racist friend all the time, and you’re wondering why I’m never calling you back well, maybe because I just followed all the things around you and realized that it’s a facade you’re putting out there and this is actually what you believe. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe you’ll find somebody else who’s like a racist, misogynistic pig who wants to be down with you. But it’s all about this form of taking power back because people think that they’ve either lost power or somebody had to give it to them.
That’s what I told you in 1989 and that Good Friday, I realized nobody had to give me power. I was in charge of myself. And so I have a lot of subjects in here from Kris Jenner to Clay Newbill the guy who is, you know Mark Burnett, but Clay Newbill is the producer of our show. He’s had to see thousands of pitches to get people to come in front of the Sharks. Probably like 10,000. What got you past Clay Newbill to go to the Sharks? I got Mark Cuban in there, I got Pitbull, I got people you won’t know in there who are extremely successful people and how they have used power in their lives.
Look at the Kardashians. It’s a subtle power that they use, but it’s in the book on how they have built influence over the course of their lives and how they’re so powerful.
Ryan: 27:12 So it’s the blueprint, right? It’s the power of blueprint?
Daymond John: 27:14 It’s a blueprint. The reason why I put so many different subjects in there is because I got… I got in there Billie Jean King, who changed the face of tennis. You know what I mean? This is not all about money. This is about power and movement and giving. And that’s why I put the blueprint in by various different people because you’ll start to see something that underlines other things, from body language when you’re discussing with people to negotiation tactics, to pitching. And if you just take one or two of them, you’re not going to absorb the whole thing. And maybe it’s not for everybody, but you take one or two of them tomorrow and it starts making you better and stronger, you keep adding to your artillery, you’re going to realize. I mean, the only difference with anybody in the world is what we have ever negotiated.
Ryan: 27:52 Yep. 1000%.
Daymond John: 27:53 That’s it.
Ryan: 27:54 Yeah, man. I live my day negotiating all day long.
Daymond John: 27:57 Yeah. The first person you got to negotiate with is a one-year-old.
Ryan: 27:59 Yeah, exactly.
Daymond John: 28:01 Well, the first person is yourself.
Ryan: 28:01 She is manipulative for sure.
Daymond John: 28:05 You will see that in her. I mean, I’m sure you’re seeing it now. When they’re two, they know how to play daddy against mommy, against caretakers, against teachers, against everybody. It’s a natural thing that we have. But a lot of people don’t realize how to master it. A two-year-old knows how to master it. They just forget it because people move them into a corner or they don’t get where they want but-
Ryan: 28:27 You’re learning.
Daymond John: 28:28 … two year old is learning. They’re learning.
Ryan: 28:29 Yeah. You learned super early on how to manage people and manage expectations.
Daymond John: 28:34 Absolutely.
Ryan: 28:35 Yeah. Awesome, man. I’m super excited about the book. I want to wrap up. One minute, you got it for me?
Daymond John: 28:41 Yep.
Ryan: 28:41 Okay. Super quick. What’s your favorite movie?
Daymond John: 28:43 Shit, I don’t know. Tropic Thunder.
Ryan: 28:45 That’s a good movie.
Daymond John: 28:46 What do you mean “You people”?
Ryan: 28:48 That’s a good movie. What’s the worst job you ever had?
Daymond John: 28:52 Running BX Cable in burned down buildings in the Bronx.
Ryan: 28:56 Argh.
Daymond John: 28:57 Yeah.
Ryan: 28:57 That’s pretty bad. That’s pretty bad. Do you have a favorite quote?
Daymond John: 29:00 One is a great slave but a horrible master.
Ryan: 29:02 That’s a good one.
Daymond John: 29:03 Oh no. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don’t tell anybody your problems, 20% don’t care. The 80% are really happy you have them.
Ryan: 29:10 What’s your favorite word?
Daymond John: 29:12 Fuck.
Ryan: 29:13 Yeah. If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?
Daymond John: 29:17 Come on, you know what I got to say with that one.
Ryan: 29:19 But maybe it’s not that one. Maybe it’s a different one. Maybe it’s like a platypus or like something weird no one ever thought about. You’re like, “Dude, no one knows this, but I really, really, really…”
Daymond John: 29:28 I’d have to say a shark, I guess because I’m a Pisces as well I’ve always related to it.
Ryan: 29:34 Good old Pisces. If you could live anywhere in the world other than New York?
Daymond John: 29:39 Miami.
Ryan: 29:41 Yeah. What’s your favorite song from the 90s?
Daymond John: 29:44 Paid in Full.
Ryan: 29:45 Cool.
Daymond John: 29:45 I don’t know if that’s ’90, that’s 80s actually. Rakim, Paid in Full. 90s, I don’t know. Sorry.
Ryan: 29:53 What’s the last lie you told?
Daymond John: 29:55 The last lie that I’ve told. I’m not going back to Golden Corral again.
Ryan: 30:01 Thank you, man, thank you so much for coming on. You are the best, Daymond John, your book, Powershift, everywhere, the course, everyone knows where to get it. You are the man, you got-
Daymond John: 30:10 Thank you [crosstalk 00:30:10] as always.
Ryan: 30:09 … big money energy. Thank you, dude, I appreciate it.
Daymond John: 30:11 Thank you, man.

 

Order Big Money Energy!