Daymond John | The New York Times Best-Selling Author, FUBU Founder and Shark Tank “Shark” On How to Transform Any Situation, Close Any Deal, and Achieve Any Outcome

Audio Transcription

Daymond John:
Really great having this interview. It’s one of the best interviews that I think I’ve had and I’ve had the most fun with it. So I really appreciate what you’re doing.

Clay Clark:
Today’s guest grew a $40 budget, into a $6 billion brand. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s show is a mind expanding, wallet growing edition to the Thrive Time show on your radio and podcast download. On today’s show, we’re interviewing the founder of FUBU, Daymond John, about his new book Power Shift. How you can transform any situation, close any deal and achieve any outcome. Now, folks, if you aren’t excited enough just by recognizing the name of today’s guest, consider this, on today’s show Daymond John’s going to teach you how to make a lasting connection. He’s going to share with you about his favorite old school jams. He’s going to share with you how, both he and his mom had already won the mental battle, because they were all in when it came to putting their home up as collateral, to build the FUBU brand.

Clay Clark:
He’s going to share with you how they sold all their furniture, to make room for the factory equipment they needed to move into their house to make the brand happen. He’s going to share with you how we sold FUBU at trade shows, without having a trade show booth and that’s the truth. He’s going to explain how he did not let dyslexia stop him from turning his dreams into reality. He’s going to share with you about how, it took him from 1989 to 1997 to build FUBU into a sustainably profitable business model. He’s going to share with you about President Obama’s nasty jump shot. He will teach you why he’s a prolific note taker. He also shares with you why approximately 50% of the Shark Tank contestants do not really know their financials. On today’s show, Daymond John will share with you how Tim, the owner of the local corner store, was actually his first real deal mentor.

Daymond John:
I want to talk to you and talk to everybody out there about what I have learned is the most important and efficient way to get where you want to be. It’s to visualize.

Speaker 3:
Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. Two men, eight kids, co created by two different women, 13 multimillion dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thrive Time show.

Clay Clark:
Yes, yes, yes and yes. Alright, nation. On today’s show you are in for a laser show. As we enter into the dojo of Mojo for sure, to interview the man with the plan. The guy that you know from the Shark Tank show Daymond John. Welcome on to the Thrive Time show. How are you sir?

Daymond John:
Thank you for having me.

Clay Clark:
Hey man, I am fired up to interview you. I remember seeing your stuff being rocked by LL Cool J back in the day and going, who is the guy who made that hat?

Daymond John:
Yeah, well, It wasn’t just me, it was me and three other partners, but it was an amazing time in hip hop history and cultural history and I’m glad to be part of it.

Clay Clark:
Well, I want to ask you here, because we all know about your success, but I’d like to start off if we can, at the very bottom and the very beginning of your career. What was your life like growing up in New York?

Daymond John:
I grew up in a lower middle class area, in Hollis, Queens and that Hollis, Queens area is right in between JFK and LaGuardia and also in between Aqueduct horse racetrack and Belmont racetrack. So, most of the people in the community, if they weren’t going to the city and then the Ideal toy factory. We either worked that Ideal toy factory, or we shoveled horse manure, or we shoveled bags onto airplanes. Unfortunately, the other place near us was Rikers Island. So you either work there or you were visiting for a long time. That’s the area I grew up in.

Daymond John:
My father left, my life after my parents got divorced. My father left when I was about 12 years old or 10 years old. I will never see or speak to him again. I was an only child, I didn’t have any other siblings. So we were just my mother and I. She worked three jobs. Put food on the table, three part time jobs, as well as trying to keep me off the streets.

Daymond John:
Right around 1986 something would happen in my neighborhood like it would happen in every other neighborhood. Crack would come into the neighborhood and would devastate the neighborhood and many of my friends would die or go to jail. The entrepreneurs that we saw there, being an African American we never saw really saw entrepreneurs that looked like us on television, except for Reggie Sanford the jump man and it didn’t look like he was doing that well. We would see entrepreneurs called drug dealers in our neighborhood and many of us would want to emulate the thing closest to us.

Daymond John:
However, I wasn’t a drug dealer, but at the same exact time in 86′, there must be something in the water of Hollis, Queens, because we started to see these people who looked like us, talk and walk like us, but they weren’t drug dealers and they were making a lot of money. Their name would be LL Cool J, Salt and Pepper, Run DMC, Ja Rule, 50 Cent or A Tribe Called Quest, Young M.C. All these people would come out of the square four miles of Hollis Queens, five miles of this Hollis, Queens and I wanted to be part of that movement, but I couldn’t rap sing or dance.

Clay Clark:
Oh, come on you can dance.

Daymond John:
I had to find a way.

Clay Clark:
You could dance-

Daymond John:
I could dance.

Clay Clark:
I can sense you could dance. Now I want to ask you this. I started my first company, back in the day it was called, DJ connection. It became one of the nation’s largest wedding entertainment companies and I grew up loving LL Cool J, Loving Run DMC. Who is your favorite old school artist?

Daymond John:
Eric B and Rakim would be my favorite, but I don’t know. I grew up in the era where Eric B and Rakim would be public enemy and LL and they all had a different DNA to their delivery. Unlike what’s your favorite food, but once you get to your favorite food of sushi, is it temporary? Is it a roll? Is it a Kobayashi? I would say, Eric B and Rakim probably would be my favorite.

Clay Clark:
Now do you have like a favorite old school jam? I mean, is there a certain old school jam, where you go, “That right there was the jam.”

Daymond John:
I guess because at Shark Tank maybe this was always… I never thought of it like this until you just blurt it out, but if you looked at rap, one of my favorite old school song was paid in full. If you look at R&B one of my favorite old school songs would be, Ain’t No Stopping Us Now or Risin’ To The Top by Keni Burke. It would always be and I’m just thinking about this now, as you did this the first time in 51 years, I’ve never thought about that and I’m going to go on social media and say those were my favorite songs. They were always about empowerment, rising to the top or making money in a good way, a legal way and it was absolutely amazing.

Clay Clark:
When you go back into that old school flow. If you can go back to your eighth grade dance, sophomore dance. Were you the cool guy, that went on the dance floor first or were you the guy who was standing around the wall and you waited for that last song to come out there.

Daymond John:
I was the cool guy, but I was not the cool guy who got on the dance floor. I was the cool guy who waited on the wall and played cool, but I was nervous as hell, because when we grew up, you would get on the dance floor and I knew how to break dance a little bit. So, I would get on the dance floor and do that, but when the slow songs came on and all the girls went to their seats, or they were all sitting and you had to physically walk 20 feet across the dance floor to ask the girl to dance. That 20 feet was like walking two miles. My heart was pounding and then you put out your hand and you ask her to dance and she said no. That walk back, was the longest walk back in your life, but if she said yes.

Clay Clark:
Now, do you remember was there a particular old school slow song jam, you remember from back in the day that was just… I mean, give me just one old school slow song. Just one song, you just marinate on it. I need you to just marinate on that moment.

Daymond John:
I don’t even need to marinate on it. I was listening to it the other day. There’s two, but I’ll tell you, the first one would be, [inaudible 00:09:32] and the other one will be GQ, I do love you.

Clay Clark:
GQ, I do love you, this is the stuff here of thrivers. The GQ, I do love you. We’re going through a weird time with this whole coronavirus stuff. I think everybody needs to cue up some GQ, I do love you.

Daymond John:
I do love you.

Clay Clark:
Oh, there we go. Come on now, let’s just do 30 seconds real quick. Now tell me, who is the first girl who said yes on the dance floor? What was her name? The first girl.

Daymond John:
Her name was Nicole. She had some big old braces.

Clay Clark:
Nicole with those big old braces, this song goes out to you, from me to you and from the entire Thrive nation, we dedicate this song to you, because you’re a good babe. Oh, man, it’s beautiful. Did you have a disco ball and black lights?

Daymond John:
Oh, yeah.

Clay Clark:
Oh, man. Was it in a gym or where was it?

Daymond John:
It was in the lunch room.

Clay Clark:
In the lunch room?

Daymond John:
Cafeteria. They pulled all the tables out of the cafeteria.

Clay Clark:
Oh, man. I tell you what, I appreciate you Daymond John for taking an old school right there, man. I appreciate you taking us back. Now, you started FUBU and I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way, I just mean it with all due respect. You can sew, but you would look a guy who more could be like a baller, just from the outside, but you could sew. Did you play sports and sew or were you just learning to sew. Tell us about where you got those sewing skills?

Daymond John:
I think that, I didn’t play sports. I love baseball and I wish I could, but I got caught up in the love of hip hop. I think if you look at Malcolm Gladwell outliers, most of us in the industry who have gotten to a certain level, whether it’s Diddy, or Jay Z or myself, or Latifa, we were at that ripe age, where we were young enough to do anything we want, but not old enough to have to pay bills and I just immersed myself in hip hop for that age of 12 to 18 years old and that’s all I knew, because it was this emerging voice of the streets. It was like our version of Instagram and Twitter right now. It was a new technology, as far as I’m concerned.

Daymond John:
I learned how to sew out of necessity, because when you were a break dancer, or a hip hop, kid, you would go and buy clothes that you would need to reinterpret for the streets. If you’re a break dancer and you’re doing windmills you can’t have a lot of looseness on the bottoms of your jeans. So, you would have to be able to take a straight line and tighten the bottom of your jeans, so they didn’t hit against each other when you are break dancing, because you didn’t want your clothes to fade a lot of times and you had to iron your clothes.

Daymond John:
You know how you get in your jeans or your pants, you get nine creases at the front of the line and you don’t look well kept. Well, if you would do a permanent crease and sew a small stitch and pinch just the front of your pants all the way down to the bottom, then you would be able… So, I started to learn how to do these really straight lines to all of my clothes, but it wasn’t glamorous being somebody who could sew a little bit, when I decided to start sewing hats and come out with clothing, because in 89 when I first came out and I started selling hats on a corner, my friends who were drug dealers and everybody else, at that time the perception of a designer, like you’re saying, I look like a young guy who can hang out and do other things.

Clay Clark:
You’re a cool dude. You look like a beautiful man, a cool guy. The guy who everyone says, “That guy’s cool.” I wouldn’t think you could sew.

Daymond John:
I was old school, during school and then when I started sewing hats and stuff like that, the hood guys were trying to keep it real and my hands are up in parentheses right now. They stopped talking to me, because they thought at that time, the perception of a man in fashion was, an Italian flamboyant gay guy.

Clay Clark:
Yeah, absolutely.

Daymond John:
So, they thought I was gay and they really started distancing themselves away. Yeah, in the hood, listen, it is what it is and there’s a lot of people who have different sexual preferences and I have no issue with that and I didn’t have an issue back then, because actually my uncle was gay. I was always the independent kid and I said “You know what? I’m an only child anyway, I didn’t have no siblings. If you think that I’m gay and if you don’t like gay people then, I won’t hang out with you either screw you.” and I really got shunned from all the guys. They just said “hey, don’t hang out with him.”

Clay Clark:
Now let’s talk about this. Once you started making these hats you reached out to LL Cool J, who was one of the coolest dudes in the world. How did you get ahold of him? And then, how did you get him to start wearing the FUBU? Because he is like, at the time he was the goat. For hip hop for rap? I mean, he was one of the top, in terms of record sales. How did you convince LL Cool J to start wearing your stuff?

Daymond John:
Yeah, so LL was the ultimate at that time, because there were only a dozen rappers in the entire world that anybody knew and he was one of the top four, but because he was going on tours and we happen to grow up next to him or around his area, by about eight blocks. We would hear other kids and cousins and brothers of his or whatever he was going on tour, being road managers or bodyguards, whatever the case is, they would tell us where the next tour date is and we’ll go up to the tour date and we would just warm to him one time. I didn’t know LL that well. He was like, “Well, who’re all these kids?” They were like, “These kids all from Hollis, Queens.” He was like, “All right.”

Daymond John:
Well, he gave me a bag of the dirty laundry, with underwear and said, “Are you driving back home?” because we used to drive our own cars to like Troy, New York or Philadelphia and he would say “Take my underwear home to my grandmother to wash.” and we would be happy to take his underwear home. However, I put it in my new book Power Shift. I know, we’ll touch on it in a minute, but here’s how I did it. I realized that LL would never wear a shirt of mine, because he didn’t really know who I was and I wasn’t great. The brand wasn’t out yet. But I had the money for 50 shirts. So what I’d do with the 50 shirts was, I made 50 shirts that were five x and six x because I realized one thing that the large guys in my neighborhood, they had no choice of fashionable products. They only had Rochester big and tall or they had to wear a white shirt or big black shirt and then they all have to make custom products for themselves which cost a lot.

Daymond John:
I made 55 X and six x shirts and I put my big logo on all those shirts. I gave it to all those guys and because those guys are so happy to finally have somebody with a fashionable product, they would wear those shirts, 10 times a month unlike a cool kid, who would wear it one time a month. Those guys ended up being in front of the red ropes in the clubs, body guarding LL Cool J, body guarding Run DMC. The ones in the front of video and after about a year of LL Cool J seeing all these guys wearing the shirts, he started to become accustom with my brand and then he said to one of those guys, “Hey, what am I chopped liver? Why don’t you see if… I’ll take a shirt from him.” and that was one of the introductions to LL Cool J, but I had to build influence with the people around him before going to him, because obviously everybody in the world was going directly to him.

Clay Clark:
Now before we get into your new book here. I know this about you and I don’t think a lot of people know this about you. You started to get some traction and you said your mom or your mom said to you. Somebody said to somebody, let’s take out a mortgage or let’s take out some equity out of our home or let’s cut… Am I understanding, she put your house up to get 100 grand needed, to build a makeshift factory in your home. Is that correct? Tell us about that?

Daymond John:
Yeah, so I would go out to the trade show and I would have a couple of shirts and I would take $300,000 in orders off of the shirts that I had. I would come back and I would get turned down by 27 banks. I didn’t know what I was doing and my mother said Listen, if you have $300,000 in orders, we have this. All we have is a nest egg. You’ve been working and putting as much money in this house as I have. Let’s go out and take all the money we can out of this house. You then deliver the shirts and you make the $300,000, you put the money back in. I have no idea how my mother goes out and gets a $300,000 dollar, I mean a $100,000 loan on our house and our house is only worth $75,000. So shout out to moms with the creativity of a mother.

Daymond John:
We would take that up and we would leverage that whole thing and we would turn the house and we’d burn all… We’d sell all the furniture we could, anything we couldn’t sell, because the furniture was really old, we’d burn it and we’d move industrial sewing machines into the house. I was sleeping in sleeping bags next to the house. My mother would move out and get an apartment and we would have seamstresses sewing the clothes in the house. We turned the house into a factory.

Clay Clark:
After you turned your house into a factory, I understand that you would go to trade shows, but not have a booth and you went to the magic trade show in Vegas without an actual booth, but yet you came back with orders, is that real.

Daymond John:
Well, that’s how we got the $300,000 orders. Prior to us mortgaging the house and then we’d go to the trade show and get more orders and more orders and we couldn’t keep up with them, because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know, I ran out of the money. I ran out of the $100,000 dollars, because I didn’t have any financial intelligence.

Clay Clark:
How do you sell stuff at a trade show without having a booth? What was your pitch man? How did you do it? You are like the Wizard of trade shows.

Daymond John:
My pitch is exactly what I tell everybody listening right now. If you have an idea, you build some kind of value in the market by marketing. You go out to a trade show, you don’t get a booth you walk around, you walk up to all the buyers and you say here’s who I am and here’s my followers or here’s my sales and you don’t need a booth, because you’ll end up spending $20,000 on a booth. You’ll be stuck in one place, you won’t be able to rotate and work the whole show. I was working the whole show and prior to even going to the show, I knew who my targets were. All those stores that were going out there, I would mail them a picture that I took of LL Cool J in our shirts and I would say you’ve seen it in the videos and the kids have been asking for it and FUBU will be at the trade show, but we’re not going to have a booth. Look out for us.

Clay Clark:
You’re blowing my mind. You’re just blowing my mind. Now you sold, I believe 350 million dollars of annual sales with FUBU. I mean, you guys have gotten to the point where… Have you hit 350 million dollars of sales in the year before? Is that correct?

Daymond John:
Yeah, so right around 99 we started to, about maybe 99. I mean 1999 we started to hit about 300, 350 and we would do that for about four or five years and that’s probably Yeah. Those years. Those are the good years of FUBU 97 I think. End of 97 to around 2004.

Clay Clark:
You know what, I’m going to give you a mega point. I’m giving you a mega point. There you go one mega point for you. You get one mega point for every year that you do $350 million of sales. Now, let’s talk about your new book here and I have a couple of your fans, a couple business guys, joining me in the studio, who have some questions for you. So your new book Power Shift, transform any situation, close any deal and achieve any outcome. You obviously are busy with Shark Tank. People want you to speak, do consulting. Why write the new book? What inspired you to write this new book, Power Shift, transform any situation, close any deal and achieve any outcome?

Daymond John:
I think you just really said it, because I’m involved with Shark Tank and I do public speaking and my last two books. Well, listen, I’m dyslexic and to come up with three books in five years, is very challenging. I don’t write a book, just to write a book. I don’t really need to. You can see me on TV, right? So it’s not for a vanity thing. One of my biggest books were, The Power of Broke, you don’t need money to make money. Then I’ll come back with Listen, how do you maximize 24 hours a day? We all have the same 24 hours. What I realized after that, as the most commonly asked question after that was, people were saying, “I don’t have any power, I’m just this type of person” or “Somebody took the power from me.” or “who’s going to give me power. My boss is not going to let me my husband or my wife.” Whatever the case and I realized that people don’t understand the power starts with you.

Daymond John:
Nobody’s here to give you power. I’m not going to come to your house and take you off the couch and make you more successful than I am. Do I want to be successful? Yes, but I got my own damn days and I’m not going to do that for you, but power is something that we all have and the ability to negotiate. The only thing that separates you from me or me from somebody else and who is successful or not, or more successful. It’s what they negotiated through life, but I noticed that people all thought that negotiation is a very transactional thing and it happens on, that one hour you’re sitting in front of the sharks, on Shark Tank. No, it doesn’t.

Daymond John:
It happens when you create some form of influence the same way I did with the bodyguards, before I got the LL Cool J. Then it’s the negotiation and the negotiation is not what’s in it for you, it’s what’s in it for the person on the other side of the table and furthermore, after that, it’s going to be the relationship that you nurtured after that, because the first deal of the first time you meet somebody, a deal almost never happens, the first time you meet them.

Daymond John:
It usually happens at the various different forms of contact after the person goes back and finds out how you influence them or other people, or the relationships that you’ve already nurtured, and they circle back and tell this person why you guys or you girls need to do the deal. That’s what the book is about. It’s about giving people advice, how to empower themselves, especially in this day and age, whether it’s getting the remote control away from a significant other or getting a deal with, somebody you want to work with.

Clay Clark:
How long were you nurturing those relationships with bodyguards before you saw any fruit from it?

Daymond John:
About five years, I was nurturing those relationships. I want to be very clear, I was nurturing these before I had FUBU, because I always had known that, I just always found a way to respect others in their position and a lot of people don’t realize, the gatekeeper is often the significant, other than the child, the mother, the bodyguard, the best friend, and I just always realize to be kind to others and it will pay to pay back in large dividends after that.

Clay Clark:
How long did it take food to become profitable?

Daymond John:
I started FUBU approval in 89. I closed it down three times from 89 to 92, because I ran out of capital, I would finally get my deal with Norman and Bruce Weisner from Samsung textile division around late, early 97 and we started making profit in end of 97.

Clay Clark:
So it took you eight years to become profitable?

Daymond John:
Yeah, it took us eight years to become profitable with a bunch of different-

Clay Clark:
That’s powerful.

Daymond John:
Closures and hurdles and various other things.

Clay Clark:
That’s powerful. People don’t realize, Tesla took over 10 years to become profitable. ESPN took over 10 years. Amazon took almost 10 years. Paul Hood, you look as cool as Daymond John. You’re a CPA. You’re a cool looking CPA. You dress sharp, you two are very similar. What questions would you have for Daymond John on you two beautiful people.

Paul Hood:
You really think he’s that handsome?

Clay Clark:
I do, I’ve looked at pictures. You guys look like twin brothers. I tell you what, It’s unbelievable.

Paul Hood:
We may need to get a picture together. Hey, I got a question for you. I grew up single mom, alcoholic father, blah, blah, blah and I’ve read books that say a lot of successful people have kind of over doting moms. Like one book said that, If I told my mom I was going to be a bank robber, she would say baby, you’d be the best bank robber ever. Talk to me about how you became, when this first got started, because it sounds like you had tenacity. You didn’t place your value on you and your beliefs based on what other people around you thought and said. Tell me how do you think you became that person to be able to elevate to where you are today?

Daymond John:
I think we have like minded thinking mothers, because she told me the same thing. I was driving in the car with her one day and she said look around. You can look at every single building, every single car. Everything in this world was created with one person, who had one idea that took one action. He just said, “Why can’t you do that? I didn’t have an answer for her. Being dyslexic, she always told me, that I can do anything I want to do, and she would support me and she would say to me one day, some stuff like, you go out there and do what you can do and as long as you put the most effort into this thing, I’m going to put the most effort into anything that I can do to support you.

Daymond John:
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t value some time until one time, I would let her down or stuff like that and I would see my mother just so depressed, not the fact that I failed, but the fact that my attitude was that it was okay to fail and that I let her down and I would never want to see her brokenhearted like that again and I wanted to make sure that I did the best for her, because I saw how much she worked and how she would listen to her boss.

Daymond John:
I think we have like minded mothers. My mother would send me away to a different city or country every single year, because she wanted me to see the world. I would say one summer in Barbados, the other one in Hawaii and other places. Most people listen to that right now and be like, “Wow, well, your mother was rich.” No, my mother wasn’t rich. My mother would do this. She would have a female friend that lives on a naval base in Awahua. She would say “Can you take Daymond and I will take your son over here in Queens.” And then my mother would buy a 17 connecting flight from New York to Awahua, that would cost $100 to buy three years earlier. It would take me two months to get there, but I would get there and that’s just what it is. Mum was a hustler.

Clay Clark:
Now Daymond John I want to know. Your mom sounds like a great lady. I just want to know how great she was. Did your mom ever send you to Tulsa Oklahoma, to experience the culture and the sod farms we have out here?

Daymond John:
No, she didn’t. I didn’t get to see them until I was older.

Clay Clark:
Why would she not send you to Tulsa.

Daymond John:
She did send me to California one year. The one country, I forgot where it was. I was about 11 years old and I didn’t drink any water and I was in that desert. I felt like I was dying. Well not yet. She sent me anywhere she could.

Clay Clark:
Have you been to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Have you been out here yet?

Daymond John:
I have been to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was there, I think it was one of my last trips, before this tragic situation.

Clay Clark:
So where are you today? For listeners out there who are navigating this coronavirus together. Where are you right now?

Daymond John:
I am in Miami. Miami, Florida.

Clay Clark:
Okay. All right. Well, Cory Mintor, this guy, Cory Mintor, he has built one of the Midwest’s top staffing firms and Cory I’m sure you have a question for the shark, for the founder of FUBU, Daymond John. What’s your question?

Cory Mintor:
I’ve always been interested, since I’m sure all of us entrepreneurs have watched Shark Tank for a good good amount of time, but if you’ve been in business long enough, you’re always thinking, alright, these guys, the sharks, they’re bringing on all these new businesses, they’ve got a really interesting perspective on business, in that you bring on this new business into your company and now you’re going to see what’s really going on. You’ve got to see the highlight reel in their presentation, but now you’re seeing the real deal. Is there a common denominator that you’ve noticed, as a common problem in businesses as your first analysis when you’re beginning to ramp them up into your system?

Daymond John:
Oh, good question. The common denominator, why we will not do business with people. When we start to ramp them, one common denominator probably is, they don’t… and I understand they’re coming to the sharks for cash flow and backing, but they’re not they’re not being creative with their dollars and they’re thinking, they can buy every other asset they need, instead of rolling up their sleeves and understanding social media and various other things. They think somebody else is going to solve their problem and then that’s where a lot of the much needed capital goes, because they go and build a $50,000 website, when they needed a $1,000 Facebook page, or they say, “Well, look at this inventory I have let me go and spend more advertising on the inventory, but the question is, they don’t realize a lot of time, money highlights their weaknesses.

Daymond John:
If you need more money for your advertising for your product, you have either two things. You have a weak advertising campaign and or target marketing and you’re spending more money hitting people that either the wrong customer or the wrong messaging or you have a bunch of bad inventory and all you’re doing is highlighting the crappy inventory you have or it’s at a bad price. You’re not figuring things out and you’re thinking money’s going to solve all the problems.

Clay Clark:
Well, in part one of your new book here, Power Shift, transform any situation, close any deal and achieve any outcome. You talk about making an impression. So, let’s just pretend that all the listeners out there are… you’re talking to the right person. You’re talking to the right ideal and likely buyer, you’re talking to the right potential connection. Talk to us about how we’re supposed to make a good impression or maybe some of the concepts you teach in the book about making an impression.

Daymond John:
Al right so there are a couple of ways. You may run into a Mark Cuban in the elevator and you say, How the hell could I have made a good impression and built influence with Mark Cuban. I got 90 seconds with the guy. So first of all, you walk into the elevator and you tell the person, “Hey, Mark Cuban I value what you do. I think that I can bring value to you in these ways, but here’s what I’ve been doing really quick and if you have any interests, please, here’s a way to look me up or have one of your staff members look you up.” You give him a card or you say, “I’ll reach you through whatever.” Mark Cuban by the way answers every single email he gets, I have no idea how he does it. You leave the elevator.

Daymond John:
The influence you built right there and you didn’t tell him your problem. You told him some solutions and how you’re doing great, you’re going to move on with or without him. You’ve also given them him an easy way to contact you or you to follow up and you’ve also not pressed him for his number and or you said, “I’ll follow up with somebody else.” But Mark Cuban’s going to leave that elevator and if you made some kind of good impression. I can’t say you did, because maybe it was the way that you were acting that made him like you or not, he’s going to look you up on his phone or he’s going to have somebody else look you up, then they’re going to scrape through all your social media and they’re going to look not only with about you, but they’re going to look at who you hang out with. What time are you doing these things?

Daymond John:
Because when I looked through social media, I’ve literally seen people who will pitch me on their companies. I’ve pulled them up and their husband was next to them at a dinner party wearing a T shirt with a confederate flag. They’re not going to know why I didn’t call the guy or why I didn’t call them back. I’ve also seen people on social media, when I looked them up there at a bunch of charitable events. Every single time they put a post, it’s about how spiritual they are or how you should help others and every time I see them, they’re smiling, even when its tough times and I say, I need a mentor like that in my business, because when I’m not there, I need somebody else to make sure the room is smiling, and everybody is on the same level.

Daymond John:
So, that’s how you can build influence in those situations. When you walk into a meeting though, however, when you walk into a meeting, you really need to try to understand the target. What’s in it for them and when people say no, you say, when you’re asking, you’re pitching, you can say “What is in your way, what is making this difficult for you? How can I make this easier for you?” People will generally tell you exactly what’s their challenge. They may be saying no, not because they don’t like you, because they’re overwhelmed. They don’t have a person in that area of the business. They don’t know enough about the business.

Daymond John:
So, you’ll give them reasons to say, “Listen, if you come back with this,” but people are so transactional, they believe when you just said, No, you didn’t love me. It’s not about that. That person across the table has their own issues. In this interview right now, in this book, I did interviews with so many amazing people and I did them in person with the people, but Mark Cuban who’d sit next to me on Shark Tank for years. I know he only communicates through text and at first if I went to him, and he would have said, I can’t do the interview, I don’t have time to meet with you D. Some people would have got offended.

Daymond John:
I did the entire interview over texting on my phone with the guy and I got it out. I made it easy. I made a barrier entry as easy as possible for him and a lot of people don’t think about that, when it comes to, who’s on the other side of the table.

Clay Clark:
I don’t know if you talk about this in your book at all, but let’s go back to Confederate flags for a second. As a general rule, do you frown upon angry, aggressive rednecks, who are a big fan of the Confederate flag. Is that sort of a pro tip? A bonus tip for the listeners out there?

Daymond John:
No, it’s an assumption of something and it’s an assumption of what you think this person believes in. We all have 10 seconds to deter somebody or attract somebody and there’s a lot of opportunity for every one of us in the world. So, that’s going to immediately turn me off personally. It may attract other people that’s up to you, that’s your brand and whatever you’re trying to put out there. I’m not telling you whether it’s good bad or indifferent. It’s just not for me.

Clay Clark:
In your book you talked about, at part one of your book you talk about, you got to stand for something. Okay and you mentioned that the Confederate flag is not something you stand for. Not something you’re going to be a part of, but you got to stand for something. So, talk to us in this politically correct world. How do you know what to stand for and what not to stand for? Something like “I want to stand for something, but what if somebody doesn’t agree with me?” What do you stand for? What are you not stand for? What’s your take on standing for something in the book.

Daymond John:
Listen, in the hood, you call it keep it 100, in other towns, they say keep it real. You stand for whatever you stand for. I’m not here to tell you what your moral stance should be. I happen to like a rapper named old dirty and guess what, he was an old dirty, he stood for what he said he was and in this political environment, you can stand with somebody, you can support somebody and say, “Hey, I love everything you’re doing here, but you shouldn’t have said that, you’re wrong about this, but I love everything else. It’s okay.” You do that with your parents. You do that with your children. You do that with the ones you love.

Daymond John:
I was an ambassador for President Obama. I didn’t like a lot, not a lot, but I didn’t like some of the things that he did and somebody would have been across the dinner table arguing with me and saying, well, he was wrong for that, I’m not going to go. “Well, just because I’m an ambassador, just because he’s black, just because I like this. He’s right.” He’s not necessarily right.

Clay Clark:
Daymond, I know what you don’t like about Obama. You don’t like his basketball game? How wack or how good is his basketball game? Tell us, what do you know about Obama’s?

Daymond John:
In a basketball game, he’s nasty when it comes to basketball and I liked his basketball game, because I can’t play basketball so who cares, but don’t let him go against me on the sewing machine. I’ll-

Cory Mintor:
Bring it on.

Daymond John:
I’ll win on that.

Clay Clark:
Now, did President Obama have a nasty kind of old man hook. Did he have the pump fakes? Did he have a couple of crossovers?

Daymond John:
He had a nice jumper. He had a really good crossovers and a nice jumper.

Clay Clark:
Hey, why don’t you go head to head? Practice social distancing, if you don’t want to get too close to each other, but why don’t you guys go head to head one on one you two?

Daymond John:
Who?

Clay Clark:
Obama.

Daymond John:
You mean President Obama?

Clay Clark:
Yeah, you should do that man.

Daymond John:
Well, you know what I was out. I was an ambassador for him, but I’m not going to lie and act like I knew him like that. I used to call him his man’s, man’s, man’s, man, to get a hold of him so, I can’t act like I knew him That well.

Clay Clark:
I’m just saying.

Daymond John:
I was in the room with him about five times.

Clay Clark:
I’m just saying a lot of you guys are, holed up right now, quarantining and stuff. I’m just saying as long as there’s 10 people or less, you should get in there and play it like a cage match. It’s like Daymond John versus President Obama.

Daymond John:
I’d play ball, he’s the president and Trump too. I’d play ball with any standing president or ex president, because it doesn’t matter. They’re people who are leading our amazing country so, it doesn’t matter.

Paul Hood:
Clay, I was going to say, this is Paul hood again. Hood CPAs. Clay I was going to say a funner game to watch would be him and Trump playing one on one.

Speaker 3:
Oh, that’s good.

Clay Clark:
Oh, that would be interesting.

Paul Hood:
That would be fun.

Clay Clark:
I think David john would win there?

Paul Hood:
I think so.

Daymond John:
I don’t know. I don’t know about his jumper, he plays tennis, you never know. Don’t you beef on him.

Clay Clark:
His hair might get down in his eyes. That’s the secret there.

Paul Hood:
That would be your number one thing.

Daymond John:
The best part is the way he puts his hands out, he’s definitely got a great guard.

Paul Hood:
Oh, yeah, that’s exactly right.

Daymond John:
I wouldn’t get around those hands.

Paul Hood:
My last name is hood and so, I’ve got a shirt that says it’s all good in the hood. So, you just keep talking about the hood. I love that. That kind of gives me some publicity when this thing comes out.

Daymond John:
What’s your company called? Hood what?

Paul Hood:
Hood CPAs. Hood CPAs.com

Daymond John:
I love it.

Paul Hood:
Yeah, we came from nothing. We have offices in four cities and have clients in about 35 different states. So God’s good. Hey, I had a question for you. How do you bridge that gap? Because, see, I’m the same thing I grew up, there was a point in my life where I was the only white kid in class. I went to North Tulsa and went to school [inaudible 00:39:20] and I was the only white kid in class. So, I didn’t see color, but I did see if somebody wore something or dressed a certain way. I may say, that’s not for me, but I’m not going to judge them necessarily for that.

Paul Hood:
So in our world it’s refreshing to hear other people say that especially, out here in Tulsa, we have a view of people that are celebrities and all of that and you seem like a phenomenally great guy. So, how do you think we could bridge that gap with, “Hey, I don’t agree with that guy, but that don’t mean I don’t like him or yeah you know.

Clay Clark:
That’s a pro tip.

Daymond John:
I don’t know, I think it’s the upbringing. I think that when people…I just really don’t know how people have that level of ignorance. It was my upbringing. So, when my mother got divorced from my father, at age 16 she’d bring another man in my life who became her boyfriend for a long period of time, but I call him my stepdad. He happens to be of the Jewish faith and he happens to be white and his brother was one of the lead attorneys who were fighting in America to free Mandela from the American side, from a coalition.

Daymond John:
He taught me a couple of things. He told me that love doesn’t come in a color or gender and he showed me through love that, white people are just as crazy as black people. We all have our same issues and we all have our same aspirations or love. So, I grew up knowing that love doesn’t come in a color or a gender.

Daymond John:
So, I think it’s from an early stage. I don’t know how to tell people that, it really is about a man or a woman’s content. I did a post on social media the other day and I was talking about what was going on in this world and I was saying, whether it was the Holocaust, or whether it was the civil rights movement, none of these things ever happened without people of all colors, all shapes and all sizes, getting together to abolish what they thought was wrong and I think that people just see only one thing.

Daymond John:
They’re very small minded and maybe that was my mother, sending me to a different place every year to see Hawaiians or people in, barb asia or whites or blacks and seeing that everybody had a commonality. They just want to support their family. They don’t want to be judged for things that they haven’t done and they want to be able to test themselves and love and worship who they want to worship. I’m not trying to make it warm and fuzzy. I have no idea when I see people with ignorance over sexual preference or color or size. I have no understanding of why that happens. I really don’t.

Clay Clark:
It’s jackassery It’s a new word. That’s the word I’ve been coining. It’s jackassery. Now, Daymond, I want to ask you this, in your book, again in your book folks, if you haven’t bought the book yet, pick up the book today. It’s called Power Shift, transform any situation, close any deal and achieve any outcome. In the book you talk about making a connection last. Now, I know for me whenever I want to make a connection last I queue up, Kenny G, the song songbird and I’ll have this play in the background. Something memorable happens. Usually I get booed by people. But again, I mean, that’s my move, but how do you make a connection last?

Daymond John:
So, it’s called a negotiation, because I go into the book into very fine ways of negotiating. Meaning body language, meaning ways that you can negotiate. When we call a person, we call that opening a new file. If you go into a room with somebody, and there’s a lot of commonalities you can ask them. You can open a new file. You can say something like, Listen, “where are you from?” “Well, I’m from Niagara Falls.” “Okay. I heard that people went over the falls in a barrel.” I’m sure you’re asked that all the time. How many people actually went over the falls in a barrel?” What are you going to say? That’s just something simple, but you probably know because you’re from Niagara Falls, you’ve always heard that.

Daymond John:
What that will do is open a file because every time you think about the going over the falls in a barrel, or vice versa, whatever the case is, you’ll remember that guy, Daymond John. A lot of people know me now from what I do on social media. I do dad jokes, I’m stupid with dad jokes. I like them. I have a three year old and I have a 22 and a 27 year old and all of them are pissed off when I tell them a dad joke and when people come in the room, they tell me Dad jokes. When I tell dad jokes again, I remember that person. That’s called opening a new file. You can also… You don’t have to be a historian. You can say “How many kids do you have?” “Oh, I got three.” and then you talk about your kids and you find this place of similarity to connect to each other and that really opens a new file. It gives people more of a mentality of thinking about you. You can also do it by having a hood accounting with CPA.

Daymond John:
I’m always gonna remember that, because it’s Hood CPAs. I’m going to remember that forever. I’m going to remember Kenny G in Songbird the next time I talk to you, it was your song. You’re opening new files but you have to be conscious about how you do it.

Clay Clark:
Now if you could and I know you’re not a preacher, you’re more of a teacher than a preacher, but if you had to just, preach one knowledge bomb for our listeners out there. Do you have something you want to… If you had the mic, before you drop the mic. Just one more thing you’re going to inspire with some fire. What’s the one thing you would share with all the Thrive Nation out there?

Daymond John:
I would say that, in this good day in this land, this thing is going to change. Change is inevitable. Whether it was ’98, the crash. Whether it was 2000, the.com bubble. Whether it was 2001 with planes, crashing the buildings in 2008. You are always going to find change and people are always going to be scared. This has happening for the last 100 years or 200 years, a million years of our life, but what can you change? What are you in charge of changing? Can I hear Amen?

Paul Hood:
Amen.

Daymond John:
You’re in charge of changing the only thing that you’ll ever have for the rest of your life and that’s called yourself, that’s called your brain. The only way you could change them is when you constantly educate yourself. You got to learn something every morning and not at night, because if you learn something in the morning, that may be something that saved your life so, you can be around that night. It’s all about education, so you can create change.

Clay Clark:
Oh, that right there was hot, my face just melted. Unbelievable.

Daymond John:
Shout out the reverent Floyd Flake my neighbor.

Clay Clark:
All right now, in your book, you’re talking about doing your homework, in this book, Power Shift. You say, you got to do your homework. What do you mean by doing your homework?

Daymond John:
I’m going to make sure that I talk about one lady who did her homework, where it’s applicable to people who are home today like the entire world is. I have in the book everybody. I’ve studied all these subjects who created change such as Pitbull and Lindsey Vonn, who practices for years just to win a millisecond over the best athletes in the entire world. She’s the most awarded skier in history, men, women on anything else.

Daymond John:
I’m going to talk about one woman who did her homework one on one. Her name is Crystal. She worked at a university and she took her maternity leave, she goes and has a child comes back. She did her homework, though while she was on maternity leave, she comes back and says to them, “Listen, I have a premature baby. I cannot give you the 40 hours that I would love to give you, can I just work for a couple hours, half my hours at home. I’ve done my homework on how to work from home virtually.” and they said, “We really love you too, but unfortunately, the school and the policy will not allow us to do that. So you either have to give us 40 hours or unfortunately we’re going to have to let you go.”

Daymond John:
But the homework that she did is the fact that she researched and realized that the number one job for females in this country is executive assistants and things of that nature, of course, there are many females that are CEOs as well and she realized that people outsource a lot of virtual work to places like India and Singapore, but people wanted to work with American virtual assistants.

Daymond John:
So she found a company called Belay and she became a virtual assistant and put her time into that while she was home. That’s what she was preparing to do when she worked at the university. Now she lives in Ohio. She gives me 20 hours, give another person five hours another person 10 hours and by the way, after this whole thing came when everybody had to stay at home, I’ve asked her, because she gave me 35 hours to teach my team how to be virtual and she did that, thank God. I had to beg her to do that, because she’s so overwhelmed with business. She does not have to trek through the snow go through the heat, sit in any office. She gets to sit home, watch her baby, have fun, dictate the hours that she wants to work with and the people that she wants to work with.

Daymond John:
She’s making two times the amount of money that she’s ever made in her entire life and she will never be at the mercy of an employer ever again, because she did her homework and understood how to move into the next segment, or where we’re going as a country or as technology is taking us and that’s, because she did her homework.

Clay Clark:
That’s a good word. Al right now, we’re going to go into the rapid fire final 90 seconds. I want to respect your time. I got final 90 seconds. I got for rapid fire questions. Two from me, one from Paul, one from Cory. Here we go. You come across as a very proactive person and by the way, a very beautiful man, how do you organize the first four hours of every day?

Daymond John:
I organized the first hour that I do as much cardio as I can and then I get my brain running and the juices flowing and then I meditate plus, do my goals every single day for the second hour, excuse me and I read the same goals that I read right before I went to sleep and they are 10 goals, six of them expire in six months, the other four expire in two years, five years, 10 years and 20 years. The ones they expire in six months range from health to wealth to faith, to family time and the reason I read them before I go to bed is, because the last thing I want to think about when I go to sleep, because science has proven that almost 75% of the things that you think about when you go to bed, is either what you fear is going to happen or you hope is going to happen.

Daymond John:
The reason I read them when I wake up in the morning is, because I take one action towards every one of those goals and I never hit those six months goals, because I set them so high but if I’m supposed to argument’s sake make $100 in that six months, I’m going to make $50 and I’m going to reset it to make $200 the next six months. Then after that< I spend about an hour on the phone answering all the things that I can do without being in the office or the plane, on the train, so I can have some silence around me and not be disturbed by anybody else and then after that, I would probably eat my first meal which would be around lunch.

Clay Clark:
Wow. Okay, that right there folks, the first hour cardio, the second hour planning goals, the third hour making calls and then after that, you eat some lunch. Okay, I’m getting this. I’m taking notes here. Making calls, I’m typing this up here.

Daymond John:
I wish I could say that, It all ran that smooth all the time, because half the time I’m running, to a plane or whatever the case is, but if I can get that day in 50% of the time, I’m already ahead of the game.

Clay Clark:
Okay, so here we go now. My final question I have for you and then Paul has a question and so, does Cory. A lot of entrepreneurs do stuff that, everyone else says is weird, like an idiosyncrasy, but it’s kind of like their superpower. Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day, Zuckerberg does that, Obama started wearing the same thing or similar things every day. Do you have like a superpower or like an idiosyncrasy that maybe some people think is weird, but for you it’s like a superpower?

Daymond John:
I personally think so. I think I write down a bunch of notes on pieces of paper and I have a million pieces of paper in my hand and in my pocket and then I go and jot them down. During that, when I said I go to bed at two in the morning, it’s when I’m organizing all those notes. That’s probably about it and then most people know me from wearing my suits and being somewhat fashionable, but I’m usually in a hoodie and sweats all the time. So I’m comfortable, because I do wear suits so often and when I have that time to relax I don’t want to think about what I need to wear. I just throw it on. Very much a Zuckerberg look, but with sweatpants and run around and people are just really surprised at that.

Clay Clark:
All right, well, Paul Hood, you got time for one final question and Corey Mintor. So Paul, what’s your final question?

Paul Hood:
I got you, well, I messaged my team, which two of them are my sons and one of my sons wants to know how proactive is your accountant, but I told him it’s probably not appropriate. So, here’s one question. How many people who make it to Shark Tank, don’t know their financials or don’t have an accurate financial?

Daymond John:
I would say probably about 50%.

Clay Clark:
50%. Okay, Cory.

Daymond John:
It’s not that they don’t know it. They’re not accurate. They’re not taking in a certain amount of things such as, what’s their salary, who are they paying elsewhere? How much? They don’t know how much interest they’re paying and they don’t realize how it’s going to end up.

Paul Hood:
Well, we teach our clients that, if you’re trying to lose weight, you never step on the scale or the scale is in Chinese. It doesn’t do any good. So, you got to know those numbers.

Clay Clark:
Why are you ripping on Chinese scales all the time? It’s like the third or fourth time. Okay, Cory, what is your final question for Daymond John?

Cory Mintor:
Last question here, Daymond. You’d mentioned just briefly, the influences that your mother and your stepdad had on you growing up and how they shaped your perspective. I’m curious, did you have a mentor specifically in the area, of a business mentor? And then, was there any lessons that you learned from them that were really, difference maker type changes in your pathway to business?

Daymond John:
Wow, excellent question. I have mentors, I didn’t realize that they were mentoring me at the time, but my first external mentor was a guy who owned the corner store in my neighborhood, his name was Tim. He was a veteran and I used to go and I didn’t know what interning was, but I’d go at 10 years old, 11 years old, I’d sweep up the store for candy, but he understood the fundamentals of business, so a lot of people out there looking for mentors, they don’t need the Bill Gates and the Warren Buffets of the world. I think that what you’re doing right now, if you know somebody who’s been in business 20 years. I don’t care what they own, they’ve learned how to deal with… they know their numbers. They’ve learned how to deal with financing and competition and all kinds of different changes.

Daymond John:
So, Tim used to teach me about how to deal with customers. How about my inventory. There’re two ways operate business. Increase sales or reduce costs. There’s only three ways to deal with a customer. There’s acquire a new one, upsell a current one or make one buy more frequently and I would learn these things from Tim, and I’d later go on and I would learn from different other mentors about customer service, about over providing for the customer about quality insurance, but I would do that over the course of my 20 years growing. I would always seek mentors and even till today, I still go on out to seek other mentors, depending on where my life is going. So, I think life is a series of mentors.

Clay Clark:
Daymond John, I appreciate you so much for being on the show and if you’re out there today and your quarantined, and you’re stuck at home, you might be looking for something to do and I might recommend that you read a book, because your mind becomes what the mind is fed. So, pick up a copy today of Daymond John’s new book Power Shift, transform any situation, close any deal and achieve any outcome, and if you’re looking to lose weight, don’t eat for the next two days, save the 20 bucks needed and buy a copy of Power Shift, transform any situation, close any deal and achieve any outcome. Daymond John, thank you so much boss.

Daymond John:
I really had a good time and there’s about four questions on here that I’ve never been asked and it’s going to make me think about, how I can share that with my audience too. So I really appreciate the conversation we had and the music. I may have to do some of that music too. So thank you for inquiring.

Clay Clark:
We like to each and every show with a boom, because boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic, momentum and that’s what it takes to build a business and to grow a brand to the next level. Ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, let’s end this show with a boom say it with me. Three, two, one, boom!

Speaker 3:
Hear the rest of TD Jakes incredible, life changing and mind altering sermon. Nothing as powerful as a changed mind today, by looking up TD Jakes on YouTube and typing in nothing as powerful as a changed mind. That is a biblical miracle rap.