Daymond John on Why You Need to Keep a "Broke" Mindset in Business

In this episode of MarieTV, we do have some adult language. So if you do have little ones around, grab your headphones now.

In this episode of MarieTV we do have some adult language. So if you have little ones around, grab your headphones now.

Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and life you love. And if you’ve been thinking about starting your own business but you just don’t think it’s possible because you don’t have enough money, you don’t have the right connections, or any other limitation, this episode is for you.

Daymond John is an entrepreneur in every sense of the word. He’s the CEO and founder of Fubu, a celebrated global lifestyle brand and a pioneer in the fashion industry with over 6 billion in product sales. He’s also one of the Sharks on the Emmy Award winning TV show Shark Tank. His ability to build successful brands has made him a highly influential consultant and motivational speaker. In 2015 he was named by President Obama as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. He’s also the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Power of Broke.

Daymond, thank you so much for the time to be here.

I am happy. It’s been too long.

I know. We’ve been wanting to make this come to life. So I want to start off with – in The Power of Broke you share that “desperation can breed innovation.” So I want to go back to the early days in Hollis, Queens. From when I was researching you even more, you didn’t know that you had dyslexia in school. There’s a little bit of struggle there. Right?

Yeah, I didn’t know I had dyslexia till I was probably about 35. Because when – at that time prior to that your communication was generally through paper and a teacher marks it up as a zero. Right? Well, when these things called two-way pagers came out and I started communicating with people externally and they started going, “You okay?” I didn’t know what they were talking about. But emails and all that stuff, we started communicating externally, and then people started saying, “Why are things backwards? You don’t make any sense.” So that’s how I started to really find out about it.

So back when you were still in high school and figuring out what you wanted to be when you grew up, was fashion a long-held dream, or was that another entrepreneurial idea? Like you just started coming out? Because I know you sold pencils. I mean, you did so much stuff.

Yeah. It was never an entrepreneurial dream, but fashion was my love. You know, because hip-hop really started to take place, you know, and spread right around when I was 10 or 11 years old. Right? And hip-hop at that time, I like to say it was kind of a disruptive technology. It was a way that the kids were communicating through the music very similar to a Twitter or a Snapchat today, because we didn’t know what was going on in the streets of Detroit or Compton. You didn’t see that on the news. The internet wasn’t out and they weren’t writing about that in the papers. So how was I gonna find out about what was going on over there? It was this new music that was made by kids who didn’t have to sing and they didn’t have to be able to play an instrument. All they were doing was communicating through it.

When they were communicating through it, there was a way to dress, there was a way to walk, to talk, ebonics. There was everything else that came with it, and I had a love for fashion. But I would only think about it as something that I was a consumer of, a purchaser of, because my mind was very closed that, you know what? If you’re gonna get fashion, it’s from a funny talking person with a beret on that lives in Paris. Right? That’s the only person that’s gonna make fashion for you. So I didn’t have a passion in regards to selling it at the time. I didn’t think I could do it.

And so what gave you the inspiration? I think it was caps that you started out with. Right?

Yeah, there was – at that time we started to see a lot of brands that were being supported by the hip-hop industry, and they didn’t care about us. And I started to see these one caps that were kinda made on the street and I said, “Wait a minute. This is not an Adidas or Avila. This is just regular people making this.”

And then there was a company that came out called Cross Colors and another guy named Karl Konai and I started to see that, “wait a minute, these people look like me. They go to the same clubs. They act like me. This is not the Wizard of Oz in Paris who talks funny and eats croissants all the time.” I said, so I can do this myself. And there was a stigmatism too. At that time in our community, they thought that if you did fashion or were a fashion designer, you were gay. And I wasn’t. And all my friends were drug dealers. So when I started telling my friends I’m gonna go sell hats on the corner, they kinda like pushed me aside and said, “Hey, you’re one of those.” And I said “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just selling hats.” But it wasn’t easy. It was the kind of, you know, I got kinda like pushed out of my group.

Your social circle.

But I found a new group, which that’s what happens when you find something that you have a passion about, a goal. You find the group that has the same goals. Right?

I felt that way when I was like working at magazines and having the steady paycheck, and all my friends were climbing the corporate ladder and doing all that stuff, and I wanted to do my own thing, but I felt like a freak because no one else I knew was doing their own thing. And it is so important to find that crew that gets what you’re trying to create.

And at every single level. A friend of my mother’s is somebody who’s in the interior design sector, and she’s about 55 years old. She’s not doing that well in interior design right now, and unlike our history of our parents growing up and they really didn’t have to re-educate themselves in their current business. Today you have to re-educate yourself. And I said to her, I said, “Well, why aren’t you understanding about technology and Instagram?” And she said, “Well, all my friends who are doing bad, we can’t believe that anybody will ever hire an interior decorator off of Instagram.” And I said, “That’s why you have the problem you have right now. You’re doing exactly the same thing you’ve been doing since ‘08. You think somebody in the world, government, something or that is going to save you, and you’re not changing at all and you’re not finding new friends that are doing things a different way.”

So it’s not about no longer when we were kids, when we were 18 years old. It’s about everybody in the world has to reprogram the way they think.

Yeah. And constantly reinvent yourself.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Because what worked even – especially I think as technology continues to advance at more increasing and rapid rates, you have to reinvent quicker and quicker.

You have to. This is no longer the days when you were doing one job – you know what? It’s like a doctor in the 1900’s trying to be a doctor right now. If you show up at my house with a hacksaw and some opium to cut off my arm, there’s a different – there’s a problem we have right now. You know, why don’t you just give me an x-ray first?

Yes. So I want to go back to the point where when you were, again, in the early days, at one point you only had 10 shirts. How did you utilize the power of broke to get the word out?

So when you – Jay Abraham, who is really my mentor. He loves to say OPM is other people’s manufacturing, manpower, marketing, mentors, and you can make money off of other people’s mistakes. And I took inventory on myself and I knew I wanted to get into this area of business, but my inventory was that my liabilities were I knew nothing about manufacturing. But my assets were that everybody was shooting these little videos around the neighborhood. They weren’t like these big Diddy videos at a million dollars. I mean, this guy, this was like a guy with a little camcorder or something.

And I knew that these people wanted, they needed clothing. And when they would have the Nike send stuff to them, Nike didn’t appreciate them. So I would go to the set and see an LL Cool J, and I would … I would sit on the set 18 hours, I’d get kicked off of three or four of those sets, but the one time that somebody allowed me to put a shirt on them, I’d put a shirt on them and then I’d take it back. And I’d keep putting it on different rappers and different rappers and taking it back, and I made sure that I didn’t dry clean these things, so they made sure they gave them back because they stank. Right? So I knew that…

You gave some stanky ass shirts.

I gave them some stanky ass shirts. You’re goddamn right. Now…

I love it.

But these videos started to rotate and corporate America didn’t understand the power of videos at that time. And I started becoming known as a huge clothing company. Meanwhile, I’m still a waiter in Baldwin, Long Island and I have these 10 little stinky t-shirts in my basement. But I was doing something I loved. I would’ve went on those video sets for free. I was talking to a video chick, I was eating the free food over there, I was watching Old Dirty Bastard be Old Dirty Bastard. So, you know, I would’ve paid to be on those sets. I was doing something I loved.

Yeah. Oh, my God. You’re bringing me back. I still cannot get past how much I love the hip-hop of the 90’s and early days. And that’s what – I actually want to talk about this, because a lot of people in our audience and I’ll meet entrepreneurs out, they have this idea that even when they start getting their business out there and maybe have some modicum of success, that they should be able to do it full time. And for you, when LL Cool J and some famous artists started to wear your clothes, you were still full time at Red Lobster.

I was full time, you know, because we’ve seen too many movies where it says “go balls to the wall, burn every bridge. Oh, by the way, other people’s money, it’s wreckable.” That’s bullshit. Right?

Totally.

The bottom line is don’t quit your day job. Alright? Because here’s what was happening. As a waiter at Red Lobster, maybe I made 30 or 40 thousand dollars. Right? But if I did that, which I did for 5 years, and I would work my 60 hours at Red Lobster, then I’d put in another maybe 15 or 20 hours working on Fubu.

But if I had to pay myself for those 5 years, that would’ve been 200 thousand dollars. Now I’m 200 thousand – I had 200 thousand dollars, I had medical, I was eating as many shrimp as I would like, I was using my network at Red Lobster to get things. I was learning from the network, the Red Lobster network of their corporation, their books, on how they do business. And I was able to do my business longer and go through the pitfalls of it, and the business started to call me. I started to now work 20% on the business, 80% on Red Lobster, then all of a sudden 80% on the business and 20% there. But all these people who hear all those stories about take out large loans and just go for it? It’s a lie. They should never do that.

I didn’t do that. I always tell people, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I’m real happy I did it. When I started my coaching business at 23, which was nuts, I bartended and waited tables and taught fitness and taught all kinds of things for seven years before I had the confidence and the revenue to be able to say, “Okay, now I’m gonna shift and go full time online,” and it’s been almost 20 years. But so many people, they want these instant results and it’s like that’s not the way to do it.
Listen, every overnight success has taken 15 years, and that’s just the way it goes. And they’ve just watched too many people – you know who tells them all this? The people that are trying to take their money. You know? The people that are trying to take your money work twice as hard so they go, “Take this pill. You’re gonna lose weight. I’m gonna educate you, just come to my seminar and buy 100 thousand dollar…” Those are the people that are full of crap, and other people who are out there that don’t want to put in the work, unfortunately nobody’s gonna help you.

Yeah. So I also read that there was a time when 27 banks rejected you.

Yeah.

And your mom and her advice won the day.

Yeah, so the 27 banks rejected me, and they did it for a good reason. Because I didn’t have any financial intelligence and I didn’t know what I was doing to fill out the right application and express what I was going to do the right way. Plus I had no collateral. My mother and I, we had always had a house that we kept contributing to. I was contributing, she was as well. And I had $300,000 in orders. That’s an important part. It wasn’t good, old mom with just mortgage and the house. I had $300,000 in orders and she said, “If you have $300,000 in orders, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to take as much money as we can out of the house, you’re gonna go make and sell the clothes and deliver the clothes, and put the money back in the house.” So she took all the money we can, and this is, you know, it’s really a tribute to women and my mother. She went out and got $100,000 loan on my house. The house was worth 75. I still haven’t asked her what she did for the rest of the money.

Moms are resourceful.

I don’t wanna hear it, what she did for the rest of the money. I’m sure it was all above board. And that’s what we did, and we turned the house into a factory. Mom moved out, my friends moved in, we created like an AirBnB for my friends. Right? We all contributed $50. We all had a room in the house, $50 a week for the rent. And we would work and we then took all of the furniture we could in the house that we couldn’t sell, we sold what we could. Whatever we couldn’t sell we burned in the backyard, and we brought in a bunch of industrial sewing machines and hired a bunch of seamstresses, because I didn’t know what Ali Baba was. I didn’t wanna trust my money with people overseas or even domestically that I didn’t know. I wanted to be in control of making this product, so I turned my house into a factory and for two years we would operate this factory.

That’s amazing. Do you look back at those times just like, “man, the good old days?”

Yes and no. I look back at those times and say how stupid was I? Right? Because I didn’t have financial intelligence, and I think that that is something that we should be teaching kids in the 3rd grade, not when they get to college. Right?

I agree 100%. I mean, we don’t talk about money enough as a culture.

We don’t talk about money at all. We don’t give this education to kids. Then they go and they’re able to get up to $300,000 in school loans on 75% of education they’ll never use.

Yes.

At 16 or 17 years old when we can be teaching them something different and how financially to do this. Because then they’re gonna be in debt until they’re 35 years old. Right? And I was a kid who didn’t have any financial intelligence, and I did almost lose it all. So the story that I’m sharing with you now, I want to make sure that people don’t go out and start mortgaging their homes. I mean, if you have financial intelligence and you know your downside and you know you have orders, there’s a couple of different ways you can do it.

I look back at those as the good old days, but I also look back at those days and say “how did I survive? Why am I here today? Why am I here?” Because so many people have gone through just as much or worse, and what has God given me to be here today with you?

Well, part of it is your heart. I mean, I’m a fan of the show, I’m a fan of Shark Tank, and I love your book and, you know, any time that you and I have interacted it’s just been nothing but…

We’ve had a good time. Yeah.

Yeah! Absolutely. Transitioning now to Shark Tank. So when it launched like 2008, 2009, had you been very experienced as an investor? What was that process like for you to say yes? Because that was a whole new world.

Yeah so, you know, it was a little bit about being naive but it was a little bit about always knowing that the cheese is gonna move and you need to go in a new area. So when we were approached about the show, I actually declined it because they said I was gonna use my own money. And I said “I’m supposed to get paid to be on TV. Why the hell would I do that?”

But, you know, a lot of people started feeling the pinch in ‘08. When you’re selling clothing – I started feeling it in ‘06 because when somebody can’t pay their mortgage, the last thing they’re doing is buying another t-shirt, because they can wear the same one. So I started to feel it. And I had 10 clothing companies, 8 of them were dead, and all I was getting pitched in my business were other clothing companies.

So I said “I want to go on this show because I’m gonna be able to maximize my real estate in the retailers and have apparel, lotions, bedding, electronics. Let me go on the show.” So I go on the show and for the first three years – well, year one I lost 750. Year two I lost 500 thousand. And year three we started to make the money back. Because year one I just thought throwing money at it could solve the problem. Well, you need support systems and you need – no matter how well I know how to make a pair of pants or shirt, it doesn’t mean that I know how to make a dress, deliver flowers. And so I needed to hire staff around it. And so it was a learning curve for all the sharks just as well.

Yeah. So I think that that was one of the most important lessons, it’s something I’ve learned and I continue to relearn. You know, when you’re first starting out and it is The Power of Broke, you don’t have resources. Right? You don’t have money, you don’t have connections. And so that creativity is forced up. But then once you start to make it and then you have a little bit of cushion, and we’ve made this mistake in our business where it’s like you start – I did this a few times and I look back and I’m like, “okay, that was dumb but I learned my lesson.” You start paying out thinking that money can solve a problem, and it can’t. And it comes back to always keeping this mentality of staying scrappy.
It does, because if I would’ve – let’s say the first investment I would’ve had, which was 250, and they said I need 250. Instead of giving them 250, if I didn’t have it, I found out that the 250, and this is just an example, but I found out the 250 was they built a 50 thousand dollar website instead of a one thousand dollar Facebook page. Right? They bought 50 thousand dollars worth of inventory. They only had 10 thousand dollars worth of orders. Instead of taking pre-orders, making it right, and then using the pre-order money. They wanted to sell it to stores instead of online because online was starting to do better. When you have 120% margin online but you only have a 50% margin in stores.

So I didn’t know that and I’m sitting there just giving, “Alright, here’s your 250,” instead of asking a question. You know, when you are activating the power of broke, you ask questions. When you are not activating the power of broke, you just give the money. “How much you need? Here you go. Here you go.” And it just doesn’t work. Not to me.

No, no. It hasn’t worked for me either. And I keep going back to those scrappy roots, because they’re also – it’s also a lot of fun. And I feel like it – in our team and in our culture, it also just keeps us humble and it keeps us focused on the right things. How do we get the most out of the least amount of investment and money and do something that’s new and innovative and always question those kind of big deals that come.

And it also points out the people on your team that rise to the top, the ones who are not thinking outside the box, and it points out the weak ones who you can make stronger, and it points out the strong ones who you can have help you in different other ways. So it shows creativity.

How have you grown as a creative, as an entrepreneur, as a human from doing Shark Tank? How many seasons now is it? How many years?

We’re gonna start shooting our 9th season. I’ve grown immensely. I mean, you know, I would’ve never thought that I would’ve almost spent a decade on national television. You know, and you think about that, that me becoming a young man at 20 years old, that’d be 30% of my life as an adult. Right? It has raised my awareness for so many things, the power of entrepreneurship. It has made me a much, I think, much more educated and kind person in regards to all the things that I seek on, a much more worldly person. And it also made me a little bit more of a Mr. Wonderful skeptic because I start to see a lot of people who think that there’s a shortcut, that I have this magic wand, and I’ve heard some really good, really, really good, sob stories that are – they’re full of shit.

Really?

Yeah.

I was gonna ask you about that, because one of the things that I love about you and I love about watching you on the show is I feel like not just you, there’s Robert, there’s Laurie, there’s Mark. But I always feel your heart. Like I always feel your heart, I feel of course your intelligence is always there, but I also feel your heart. And so have you learned some lessons about that? People tugging on your heartstrings and going like…?

Yeah, people tug on my heart strings all the time, but I’m, you know, I think I’m a nice person, but, don’t get me wrong, I’m not that nice. I always put myself in the position of that person and what is their end goal? Their end goal generally is to feed their family and give their people they love a better way of life.

Now, there are times on the show that I am nasty, and I’m nasty in two different ways. Whether it’s a person who has been through round A, round B, round C, they have a couple million dollars worth of investors around, and they just happen to be on the show, and they think they’re giving us a shot. And the reason why I’m mad at that person is because there’s a mother and father who risked everything they got and they risked their child’s college education and they’ve proven and they’ve gotten to the point where they just need a little bit of a break. And that person, that greedy bastard who’s taking up that carpet at that time, who has so many other opportunities, is taking that shot away from those people. Those are people that I dislike.

The other people that I have a challenge with are those that have spent their grandmother’s 401k, their wife is working, and they’re not doing the business for the right reason. They’re doing the business because they want to be a star. They want to be on the cover of every bottle they sell, and the business is calling them saying, “It’s not working,” and they don’t care. They are – they just keep want to go on because they have this vanity aspect and the rest of their family is investing everything they have in them, and they just won’t stop for the sake of their family. Those are the two that I get nasty with. Other than that, everybody else, they’re just trying to – they either need to know or they don’t know what they don’t know, or they just need a helping hand.

Yeah. And sometimes I love when you guys turn down investments, because they don’t need it. Like, they’re actually doing quite well.
Exactly, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Why give up 50% of your company right now for 100 thousand dollars? Because if you get to 10 million dollars and you need to raise another two million, well, I’m not giving up the 50% that I just took from you. So now you’re gonna have to give up 40%, now you’re at 10%, now you don’t want to work for the company. So a lot of times they just need that education. And I think that’s what’s great about Shark Tank. I want everybody to win. If they don’t get a deal, it doesn’t mean they’re not gonna win.

That’s right.

For somebody to go on and say, “I proved the sharks wrong.” We only judge what’s a good investment for each one of us. We have no right to judge you as a person, individual, or in general.

Yes. So speaking of that and that idea of learning and seeing the lessons, you know, you and I have both been mentors for Shopify.

Yup.

Which is a great experience.

Amazing, yeah.

I love that company. You wrote in your book, “Mentors are great, but sometimes a cheerleader is even better.” Let’s talk about some people watching right now, I think one of the things that they may lack, whether it’s in perception or reality, is a support system around them. People who get it. What are some ways that they can either see what’s in front of them and harness the support they might have but might not recognize, or build it?

Yeah. So first of all, you know, Fubu, we’ve always known how the big old obnoxious ‘05 on all our jerseys. And the reason why is because there was always 5 members of Fubu, but that fifth member would always leave. So there’s five – fifth Beatle of Fubu.

And the reason why is because the ambassadors and/or the people working, I’d always had a structure. “Hey, if you work this amount of hours, you get to this point, then we’ll consider taking you in the company,” this and that. And making sure they had the right mindset. So it started internally with a team that all had the same objectives.

Then the next objective was who the people are selling to and how can we make them feel like the most important person in the world? It doesn’t matter, your customer is the most important person in the world. And we would often sell it to somebody and they would go back to Detroit and say, “I’m the Fubu representative in Detroit.” You can’t – you really can’t buy that type of dedication and ownership from people like that.

And when you start making sure they feel good about you and you value them, you start to get real responses and you have to always listen to your customers. You know, one of the stats that MIT put out is that 90% of the most profitable products in corporations are created due to customer complaints. By listening to the people that are supporting you, and you have to create that. You have to listen to your customer just as much as they’re listening to you.

And also, everybody’s a customer. You know, if you’re the person that thinks a window shopper is not a customer, no. The window shopper may be that person that may be aspiring for your brand. They can’t afford it now, but they keep going out, they’re going, “When I get some money I’m getting that dress. When I get some money I’m getting that…” and they’re talking about it all. When you push those people away, “Oh, you don’t have any money. Get outta here.” You know what they say? “That dress is shit. Don’t ever buy those dresses. They’re shit.” They’re some of the … you know what they’re called? They’re called critics.

Yeah.

Right? None of these movie critics we ever see has ever shot a movie in their life.

It drives me nuts.

But they’re critics. Right? And they’re valued.

So in terms of also finding support, let’s say you’re just starting out and maybe you don’t even know what your business is yet. So you don’t have customers.

Sure.
Where can people go to start to find other people like them who would believe in business or someone would believe in their ideas? Let’s say if their spouse or their kids or their other friends are in the corporate world and just don’t get it.

First of all, I mean, the easiest thing of course is gonna be on social networks. Right? Go and start hashtagging and learning these little groups of people. You know, I always say there’s nothing gonna be new in this world again. And a social network is only a network that may have been a bar 50 years ago or train station 100 years ago or a gas station 50 years ago. And start finding these social networks.

And then when you can, go out and network. You know, networking is one of the most powerful ways to extend your brand. You know, because if, you know, I give the example often that if you come to me and ask me about, “hey, I need a plumber.” Well, my cousin could be a plumber, but he kicked me in my ass when I was eight years old, he burned the turkey at the last Thanksgiving dinner, and I have some emotions about him. I don’t know if I want to hook you up with him, because if he screws it up, you know, then you’re gonna be looking at me.

But if I met you at a bar the other night and you happen to have a plumbing business, I’ll go, “You know, this girl Marie, she seemed like she had a really good business. I don’t know her that well. Maybe you should give her a call.” I’ve already given you the disclaimer. I’m giving you the advertising. And that’s how networking goes. I mean, that’s what a social network is for the most part, right?

Yeah.

So I think that when people are out there and they don’t know what they wanna do, I think first of all they should go into a field where they would do it for free. Right? And they’re fascinated and they have a passion about it, and then look for like-minded people around there. You know?

Absolutely. So let’s shift gears for a minute, because I know you just went through a health scare and you discovered a nodule on your thyroid, and so tell me about that experience, because it sounds like you had an executive physical that was just like kinda routine, you didn’t feel anything was wrong.

Yeah. So I want to make sure that you know and that everybody knows, and I know you know, but, you know, because people do this, what do you call it? Clickbait and all that crap. I’m okay. I’m fine. I’m going to discos like I normally do, showing my age. I’m doing the damn thing. Turning it up. Woot woot! Now, I don’t have nothing to worry about. Right.

But what happened was, I was sitting with a friend of mine named Bernie Newman. Legendary guy. He managed Muhammad Ali and he found this small group called Siegfried and Roy and brought them to Vegas. And he said to me one day, he said, “With all the money you have, why don’t you get executive physicals?” And I said, “What the hell is an executive physical?”

Yeah. I don’t know what that is.

Yeah. I go to a normal guy. I mean, he grabs my beanbag, he tells me to cough, and he takes my blood.

That’s it. Yes. Totally.

I’m fine. He said, “No. Get an executive physical.”I said, “I’ll go check into it.” So an executive physical is an extensive physical. It costs about 10 thousand dollars for 99% of the world. They can afford Coach bags and Gucci, but they can’t afford an executive physical, of course. Right? That’s not where they’re gonna spend their money. They put you through so many machines in one day, and then they tell you what’s going on. So they’re looking through the machines at me and they look at these two veins here, I can’t ever get the word right. Whatever veins here. They notice a little nodule right here and they say, “Hey.” You know, they give me my diagnosis, my report, I go to my general doctor. They say, “Hey, you have a nodule.” It’s an inch big. They do a check up on me, and they do a – what’s it called?

Biopsy?

Biopsy and they say, “hey, this is one of those biopsies that come back that we don’t know what’s going on with it. So, you know what? There’s 50% chance that this thing could be cancer, 50% not. You don’t need your entire thyroid. You should get half of it cut off. If you were 90 years old I would say don’t do this, but you’re 50 years old so you should probably check this out.” I go to the doctor, I go to sleep, he takes half of it out. Two weeks later he says, “It was stage 2 cancer.”

Wow.

I would’ve never known about this, but I didn’t miss a beat. I’m telling you, I was back doing whatever I do right out of the surgery two days later. And the reason why I decided to share this information is not because necessarily everybody can get an executive physical, but they can get colonoscopies, they can get pap smears, they can get endoscopies. All the things that they need to do every single year, because if you catch things early there’s a really good chance that you can get rid of it.

And all these people who put their head in the sand and go, “I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to know.” It’s not gonna go away. Right? So if you can do that, that’s what success is. Success is access. Success is access to information on maybe how you can live a better life, how you can spend more time with your family, how you can make more money, how you can go to the island or, you know, every single year or how you can spend six months working and six months with your kids. Success is access to information. It’s not money. Because I know a lot of really – and I joke, but I’m serious. I know a lot of filthy rich people that are miserable.

Yes.

Like Kevin O’Leary. He’s miserable, right? He’s a miserable bastard, but he’s rich.

Okay, wait. But do you guys ever hang out – all the Sharks? You must be asked this shit all the time. Like, is he really a miserable bastard?

No. No, he’s great. See, I’m the meat of a moron sandwich when it comes to the Sharks. I hang out with all of them. They all call me. Mark Cuban, I hang out with him, we eat beers and chips and hang out. Robert, our daughters kinda hang out and go away for the summer and stuff like that.

That’s so sweet.

Yeah. Barbara has a beach house, so I make sure I know her really well so I can go to her beach house and use her beach house. I don’t talk to her much. Kevin O’Leary, I take him to the nastiest hip-hop clubs in the country.

Yes.

I’m talking I take him to the bowels of hip-hop clubs.

This makes me so happy.

Yeah, and he’s in there and he’s like the only white man. Well, the fire inspector is the other white guy in the club. And I take Kevin O’Leary there and he has a blast. He has his earplugs in and all the black guys are smacking him on the head. “Mr. Wonderful! Mr. Wonderful!” So I hang out with all of them. Yeah.

I love it. I love it. It’s – I mean, you guys have such a good crew. So you’ve got two new exciting things underway that I know about. I know you have many, but let’s talk about Daymond on Demand and Blueprint and Co.

Perfect. So Daymond on Demand is my new interactive curriculum for people who are starting a business or they may be a little bit in business. Now, it’s a platform where it’s interactive, so you go on there and you can find out and have information on how to get trademarks or you need a trademark or a patent or how to pitch, where to find funding. And like an app, it’s updated constantly. So let’s say if you bought Daymond on Demand a year ago and we were – I’m gonna just arguments sake, we were talking about Instagram and now Snapchat is something else. It would be updated with more information on the newest form. You don’t have to buy it again. Right?

Awesome.

And that’s what I’ve done because, you know, I’ve put in there what I consider 20 million dollars worth of my mistakes. The things you need to know. Step by step of what we’re touching on today, but maybe people need to go a little bit deeper into it. You know, a lot of people don’t know. Everybody says, “Hey, I need a patent,” but a trademark is more valuable than a patent. Because patents can get around, but you can’t create another Nike. The word Nike you can’t – you can create another Air Jordan in a way or another or this way.

And patents cost more. Patents are 20, 30 thousand dollars. A good, hardcore trademark? I don’t care if you ever try to go out and name something else Mercedes, they are gonna do a colonoscopy on you for free because you’re using the word Mercedes. So there’s a lot of information that people – and we call it “the power of broke.” Now, it’s not cheap. It’s about a thousand dollars. And, of course, maybe with you we’ll try to discount it and stuff like that. But if you don’t have a thousand dollars to then go and open up a bigger business, you know, then you have bigger issues. Right?

But I also, I do a lot of Facebook live, free broadcasts, and a lot of those for those people who need to get up to that level. So I try to put as much content out into the world. But this is when people wanna try to get at a PhD level of this. Right?

Absolutely. Well, I also wanna say too, I mean, you have several books and people watching you on the show all the time. So you put out a ton of amazing information.

I really try to.

You do.

But I just can’t get around the country, and I don’t think that people at this moment need to go and spend a four year education in business and not realize what they want to do. There’s certain steps, the power of broke, to take it to that level.

That’s right.

Blueprint and Co is my new coworking shared space. And it is, again, the power of broke but for executives. So it is a coworking shared space where you can rent a desk for a certain amount. You have to be vetted to be in the community. This is not for startups. This is not for somebody who is looking to raise 10 or 20 thousand dollars or needs to know what a trademark is. I think that the products that are out there, the other coworking shared spaces, are amazing. I think that that’s what you should do. Don’t go out there and get a 5 year lease and all this kind of – go to a We Work, go to a Regents, go to those places. Be around likeminded entrepreneurs. When you get to the level of us, of Sharks or executives, and you need to be around people like us who know we still need to learn, that is what Blueprint and Co is for.

So a couple of members we have there is our buddy Randy Zuckerberg is probably gonna be there. I have Catherine Zeta Jones company there, Desmond Tutu’s company is there, Lisa Mattress from the Shopify winners, probably doing about 80 million dollars in business.

They’re crushing it.
Ashley Stuart, a big ladies brand. I’ve gotta connect you with Ashley Stuart. They are redefining the way that the full figured woman is being appreciated in this country, and it’s about time. A lot of known companies – they might have 300 employees in Jersey, but 3 of their employees there. So people like you and I don’t have to do 9 meetings in LA, 10 cigar bars, and lunches. We just go there. “Hey, your team is there, your team is there. Let’s all follow up and let’s get this done.” So that’s what it is. It’s showing that even at our level, we still have to keep learning and being around like-minded people.

And evolving. Where we started out, it’s like the world – none of us can sit on our laurels. You’ve gotta keep reinventing.

Nobody is going to save you at all.

Yes.
At all.

Yes. Daymond, you’re amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Absolutely. Now Daymond and I would love to hear from you. From all the things that we talked about, what’s the single biggest insight that you’re taking away from this conversation today? Leave a comment below and let me know. Now, as always, the best conversations happen over at the fantastic land of MarieForleo.com, so head on over there and leave a comment now. And when you’re there, be sure to subscribe to our email list and become an MF Insider. You’ll get instant access to an audio I created called How To Get Anything You Want, and you’ll get some exclusive content, special giveaways, and personal updates from me that I just don’t share anywhere else.

Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams, because the world needs that special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching, and I’ll catch you next time on MarieTV.

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And I made sure that I didn’t dry clean these things, so they made sure they gave them back because they stank. Right? So I knew that…

You gave some stanky ass shirts.

I gave them some stanky ass shirts. You’re goddamn right. Now …