daymond john interview

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www.LIandBusiness.com

Daymond John Interviewed by Jay Abraham October 2011

Jay Abraham: Hi, and welcome. This is Jay Abraham, and I am on cloud nine. AndIm on cloud nine because I have a privilege honor and really, really wonderful treattoday. I get the pleasure to interview somebody whos a friend, whos somebody Iadmire, whos accomplished, an extraordinary abundance of things most people dontknow about, who has navigated the business world, the fashion world, the televisionworld, and a bunch of other worlds you dont even know about. And he is a Phnom, andhes a wonderful man. And were going to interview him today about a number of

things, social and otherwise. His name is Daymond John. Many of you know him fromhis participation every week on the runaway, you know, successful show on ABC, SharkTank, where hes one of the sharks. They, each week, at all these hopeful peoplepresenting them with these business deals, and these proposition startup and existingbusinesses, and Damon and the sharks have the chance to bid against each other andtogether to finance them, take them over, acquire them, grow them. And its a veryexciting process. Most people know him just in that context, which is good and bad. Itsgood because hes a very masterful, charismatic guy, but its bad because hes probably amillion times more accomplished in his life. And Im going to give him a very quickbasically foundational background. Youre mind is going to want you to reallyappreciate the mind, the methods, the ideas that come out the mouth, and the experiences

of this man. Then were going to roll up our sleeves and get to it. So lets start when hewas younger, and he had an idea for a fashion item. And he was working at the RedLobster, and he told it to his mother. And his mother believed enough in him to put herhouse on the market or mortgage it for a hundred thousand so he had started capital. Andfrom that beginning, fast forward, a lot of dynamics happened, like an internationallydouble L Cool J who helped get the brand on the market. But the bottom line, six billiondollars later, six billion, he has a worldwide very specialty brand that was created becausethe man is masterful, genius level at branding, at getting a brand distinction, at getting abrand a personality a persona at animating a brand with a spirit that resonates to themarket. He is not just a branding fashion man. He is an entrepreneur. He is an investor.He owns a portfolio of diverse businesses well find out much more about it. Today,

besides being a television personality extraordinaire, he is a consultant and speaker tomany large corporations on branding. Hes helped everybody from Pit-bull, therunaway, successful artist, to Miss Universe. And were going to plummet and pummelhis mind and penetrate him in ways hopefully he will allow to teach you. Everything heknows that he can re-articulate for you about social media, business building, branding.So before we begin, Daymond, I hope I havent dominated too much to beginning, butyoure an extraordinary man. You deserve the extraordinary background.

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Daymond John: Well, Jay, thank you for the eloquent compliment and introduction.And hopefully, I can even just the 10% of that guy you just described. Hopefully, I couldbe 10% of him because I dont know who you were talking about before you You just But .

Jay Abraham: Youre gracious, but .

Daymond John: But thank you very much.

Jay Abraham: But Im looking at awards Im looking at awards for brandingadvertising, entrepreneurism that are like a whos. So were going to start. This is thecover-story interview for a magazine about LinkedIn, so we would be remiss if we didnttalk about social media and expand it to all forms that youre masterful or at least haveperspective on Facebook, Google, and Twitter. But truthfully, with your permission,Im going to be a little transcendent. Once we get your foundational ideas, guidance,recommendations, warnings, Im going to take you then in to the dynamic world ofbusiness because we have fourteen million men and women reading this who are

entrepreneurs, professionals, PNL-oriented managers, business owners, start-ups, Galore.And you can give them perspective and ideas that can transform and forever positivelyalter their life. So were going to start with some fundamental questions. And Daymondis a friend of mine. Thats very important for you to know because friends dont takecriticisms seriously. Im not talking about him taking mine. I wont take his. If I asked aquestion thats dumb, inappropriate, or doesnt honor the scope of understanding or depthof expertise Daymond has, hes going to politely smack me on the fingers and take overthe answer. So its all about you, were both doing this for you, the listener/reader, whocan get the most action ability out of it. So lets start in the social realm and move fromthere. Im going to ask you some relevancy questions. What is your take just on therelevancy of social media today for business owners any kind, offline, online? You can

answer as general or specific as you like.

Daymond John: Well, I think the thing over it is massive. I think that theres a goodand a bad element on it, but no matter what, Im always going to go with why itsbeneficial to us and not how it can be detrimental to us. So a couple of things, you know.The competition on the market cannot influence the social media not influence, excuseme influence the consumers as easy as they historically have been. Its no longermake it and they will come because transparency is in an all-time level now, and youcant necessarily fool the consumer because you can have this kind of corporate outlookand be, instead of thinking inward as in What does the consumer want from you? youcan have the approach of thinking outward as This is what we want to tell everybody,

but it can easily be either accredited as something viable or as being a trick because ofsocial media and the fact that people, at their fingertips, can research whether the stats aresaying theyre true, whether its employees or people at the company who are saying thisis not true after their leaving by, you know, posting on Facebook and Twitters andpictures. So I think whats good to summarize that aspect of what I was thinking is thefact that truth is the easiest thing to sell. I always say that. And if youre coming to basewith a great product or brand and you are selling the truth, its really hard to second-guess a question because of social media. That gives you a leg up on everybody else who


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are weaving lies or doing things for the wrong reasons or trying to unmask somethingthat is not in the best interest of the consumer. So I think that, that is one of the firstaspects, and were talking about from large corporations. I think that at the everydayentrepreneur whos trying to get out there, you know, when I started with FUBU, youknow its been 20 years now, and Im shocked that its moved that fast but there was

only one way to get it out to everybody and that was walking to a person and trying topitch them yourself personally and selling them a product that they can touch and feel.Now, your report card is very easy. You put out a product whether its on YouTube,Facebook, Twitter, whatever the case may be. You come off with a campaign. You canshoot something with your iPhone and chop of a video and put it out or create a Web site.And the consumer now, when a total stranger decides to go in his pocket and buy yourproduct and comment on your product, you can get your report card quickly. Thatspretty hard sometimes. When I went out there to the world, and I pitched at somebodyand you know, they like me, family, their grandma, theyre a friend of mine, theyregoing to buy the product. Theyre going to come back to me and say they love it. Andthats a lot of times they were emotionally based on the fact that they knew me. But now,

in the world, when youre putting out in cyberspace and somebody does not know youand theyre buying it just like most of the consumers when you get to a level that youwant to get to will not know you personally, youre getting the true reaction of whytheyre buying the product; and you can easily now gauge whether its the right pricepoint, whether its the right type of product colors, this that. You can get a lot ofinformation from the everyday consumer. And those are my two angles when I speakabout big corporations all the way to the everyday person doing something out of theirbasement.

Jay Abraham: Okay now, lets take it more granular. Theres LinkedIn. TheresTwitter. Theres Facebook. Theres YouTube. Theres Google. Theres Google nowplus sort of. And this interview is being conducted for LinkedIn, but weve thrown awaythe rules and weve transcended it so it applies to any and all areas of social media. Canyou give us a take, almost like a Rorschach, like an ink blot blotch? Give us your takeon each one for small, medium, large businesses, dangers, the advantages, and some ofthe nuances because you have a lot I mean, Im privy to some of the places and peopleyou hang in and youve got a lot of friends who are, masterfuls an understatement, atutilizing some of these mediums and some of these social networks extraordinarily,brilliantly. And youve seen the impact, and youve also probably seen the you knowthe carnage of doing it wrong. So give us your take on each one separately if you would.

Daymond John: On each one of the outlets or ?

Jay Abraham: Yeah, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. If you like, and if youdont like, you can change the rules because this is your interview, not mine.

Daymond John: Well, its a really long conversation when I really think about it, butIm going to go with the ones that I know because even though I know this area, theyre,every one of these outlets have a very specific DNA on why people like them. And theone that Im attracted to the most is Twitter. The reason why Im attracted to it the mostis because its easy to see who you are associated with as well as the information. Im


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really a person who can only read with so much bits and pieces. You get it in such reallysmall granular pieces of information. You can digest it quickly, and you can review whateverybodys saying quickly and, you know, really just looking over your Twitter page.So thats why I like the information. And if you decide that you want to go a little furtherin, in Twitter, you can put out that information in the granular aspect but then also have

the link where people can go and read a broader amount of information, whether be a linkto a blog or anything else. One of the reasons that I like Twitter is because of the hashtagging. And for those who dont know, obviously, hash tagging is when youre talkingabout a certain topic. So if youre a person like me, when I was re-launching FUBU, Iwanted to see what was the thought of the consumer today of FUBU. So before you havea prescription, you always at least have a diagnosis. And a lot of people, if they were tore-launch a product, they would say, Well, we look like the new product of today, andwe are going after that market. But first of all, you have to understand, what does themarket think of you? So once I put the name in, FUBU, and I hash tagged it You canthave thin skin when youre looking at this product especially, you know, because youregoing to hear what everybody in the entire Twitter universe is saying about you, not what

your followers are saying. Youre followers are going to say great things about yougenerally but what everybody is saying in the universe. And what I realized was this:First of all, everybody thought FUBU was sold to And weve been partners withSamsung America for the last fifteen years. And so first of all, I had to understand thateverybody thought it was sold. Second of all, everybody thought that FUBU only madebaggy clothes, so I had to understand that aspect. Third of all, our footwear was out inthe market, and that was the main thing that was in the United States. And the footwearwas a lower-price-point footwear, so the perception is the footwear was cheap. And thefourth thing was the fact that because of the high quality of product that we put out in themarket in the past, we realized that we hadnt shipped that many products in the malls inmostly of the five years in the United States. But we thought to realize that people whowere seeing our products were seeing products sold ten, fifteen years old on the street andare counterfeit. But now, before we can start telling everybody about all the great stuffthat FUBU is, we had to attack them with an education. And we had to educate the newconsumer.

Jay Abraham: How did you do that?

Daymond John: What was it? So heres the education process. So we had to let themknow that in regards to how youre thinking FUBUs baggy clothes, that was theAmerican brand that was popular in 97, 98. But we were making it formfitting and theway that it should be in Europe for the last fifteen years. So we thought to interject a lotof the European campaign in to the social media to let the people see these clothes worn

this way. We had to also start making it a point to speak in our campaign, the Not Copythat we still owned the brand and that is the version of urban American brand. Its theversion of Levis but with the intercity kids. And thats where it kind of started off. Thenext thing is that we had to educate the consumers that we did not distribute the productin the last five to eight years and people had to understand that the product they wereseeing was old product and that the only places that it really was distributed was withinthe music videos and the artist because we were making custom goods. And thats when


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we started to change their outlook on the product and on the brand itself. And you know,it takes a while. A lot of people really overestimated what they could do in one year andunderestimate what they can accomplish in ten. And you know, it has taken us onlyabout two years at this point just the start of getting the information of their work peopleand start to say, Okay, now I understand that I was misdirected, and Im starting to look

towards this brand, and let me be open to what they have coming next. So that was ourapproach on Twitter.

Jay Abraham: Interesting. Let me take you to another realm. And we still want to talkabout social, but Im going to take the gloves off and give you free form to go really intoyour stronger suit which is just business building, marketing, branding, etc. But okay, iftheres one opportunity, and lets start with medium-sized businesses and lets go becausewe have all reading this. Its not just one vertical or homogenous category. We got smallentrepreneurs, professionals. And you know we got CEOs from bigger corporations.What do you think the biggest single opportunity that social media offers business todayis? And perhaps a modification, whats the biggest its either myth or the biggest mistakethat businesses are overlooking about that opportunity. If youve got a take on it.

Daymond John: Well, you know, what is the biggest opportunity? I think the biggestopportunity is to From a marketing and branding perspective, if you can strategicallycreate a great campaign or mission statement that youre going to take out to the public, Ithink, with the fact that social media is moving so fast, you can hit millions and millionsof people way easier and know and break down who they are exactly the crowd andsegment it to a city, an age group, a race, a sex, any kind of demographic. You can targetthem very, very accurately. Im not saying theyre going to necessarily consume theinformation youre giving, but youll at least know that its getting there. You know, inthe past, a lot of the newspapers and the radio and the television, we didnt sincerelyknow who was listening to whom. You know, we didnt know grandma, you know,

walked down, left the radio on so to keep the cat company so its [Jay Abraham: Sure]quiet in the house, right? Now we know that this person at a forty-five years old within amale with an income of thirty thousand dollars who lives in Iowa is watching thisinformation. And you know if you look at companies like, Oh. Really, the companies,they really frustrated me enough to create FUBU. If Timberland were around and socialmedia were around and the time when they said, Well, we dont make our boots for drugdealers, you know, one of the points that I always mention is that Timberland comes outand it does create the best boot in the world.

Jay Abraham: Okay.

Daymond John: And if it creates the best boot in the world, if youre a hiker or aconstruction worker or somebody the boot for technical reason, you probably dont haveto buy a new Timberland for one, two, or four years because its the best boot in theworld. But if you are one of the kids who are buying Timberland because of the fashionaspect, like I was as a waiter and I was buying every time I got a scuff on myTimberland, I was buying two or three pairs a month. You would realize that when youare saying that about a certain segment of the market, thats probably the normal, the 8020 rule, and its 80% of your business that you are creating you know a situation where


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you may lose a large amount of income and if you can, you want social media anunderstanding target and see who your majority of sales are coming from, you will not bemaking those mistakes in those comments. So I think thats the biggest and mostadvantageous aspect of social media is to know exactly who your consumer is if youwanted to pay attention to it.

Jay Abraham: Its good, and Ive looked at a lot of data too to see most people who areusing it dont really grasp, even to the minors way, how in the world to optimize it forstrategic purposes. I dont think most people online and I dont think most people insocial media understand authenticity. And you use truth, and they dont understand,basically, contribution, connection, and communicate like the four Cs communicationwith the community. Got any thoughts about that?

Daymond John: Yeah, youre asking me how you find it amazing that most peopleusing the social media from a corporate standpoint or a business standpoint do notunderstand how detailed they can get in regards to who is, whos supporting them

Jay Abraham: Well, Im even taking a more macro, Im saying. And it probably comesback to a discussion I hope you and I will have time to have today. I dont think most ofthese people are strategic, and I dont mean strategic in manipulative, I mean strategic inknowing what the goal, what the purpose, what the outcome, you know, how theyretrying to get it, what the recipient is thinking whos on the receiving end. What do youthink?

Daymond John: No, I dont think so, I think that right now the biggest The thing thatthey want the most, and they always say, Whats the ROI? and, you know, return oninvestment and the biggest thing they want is how many people are getting it. They dontreally look at what people are getting at and, you know, there are several arguments that

say that, you know, LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook or something like that wellLinkedIn is a little more successful on it because of the high amount of professionals but theyre saying that a lot of people are not being converted, meaning that you, youknow you find out that you cannot sell anything to them. So I think that what that gets atis that just because companies are looking at CPM, how many people theyre hitting,theyre valuing that more than are they hitting the right people and you know go aheadJay

Jay Abraham: Ive looked at a couple of very esoteric but very, very profound analysisand diagnostic studies people have done with all kinds of algorithms where theyrerecalibrating the whole judgmental criteria. Theyre looking at the momentum. Theyre

looking at real impact. Theyre looking at import. Theyre looking at all kinds of slicesand dices that they dont discount quantity but quantity is such a subordinate factor in thewhole quotient and thats pretty interesting.

Daymond John: Yeah, it is, it really is. You know, like, I understand the most thatpeople ever go, and you have Google Analytics and you have a lot of other things likethat but generally what people do is, as deep as they go into it as well, somebody going into your Web site and the average person is staying on there four minutes to seven


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minutes. And they asked to how long the person is staying on, but I really dont see themgoing much, much deeper than that.

Jay Abraham: And I agree, and Im going to break from social media for a minutebecause I adore your mind and the agility of it when it comes to understanding business

in general. And almost everybody reading, listening to this is a business owner, anentrepreneur. They may be online. Theyre trying to be more effective online, but theyhave an enterprise, and most of their enterprises have, basically, dysfunctional brands.They have brands devoid of identity, brands devoid of persona, brands devoid of passion,devoid of connection and Im going to ask you to take off the gloves and get into super-colossal-Daymond-branding-uber-maiden mode, and let me ask you some questions,okay?

Daymond John: Sure.

Jay Abraham: Okay, so lets start with you got two books on branding. What is yourstory about how you did it with FUBU, your first company, and the other is basically

teaching individuals, businesses alike large, small with personal and business branding isa foundation of success, competitive superiority, distinction, positioning I cant even doit justice. You want to do whatever your three or four paragraphs soliloquy would be soyou can help me set the context of appreciation for you know the Omni power ofbranding and the overlooked implications of it?

Daymond John: Yeah, so you know, about the second book? That goes deeper in thesecond book?

Jay Abraham: Yeah, I think the second book has probably got more clarity in this point.I mean the first one tells your story, which is great. The second one, gets right to it and

basically shows the world whatever size, how branding is really the most negotiable forceyou can harness, dont you think?

Daymond John: Yeah, I mean, I love to say that I think the only organization thatdoesnt need to brand is the U.S. mint or the Department of Treasury and even theybrand because theres no new invention, to me, theres no new invention, theres just anew form of delivery. And to brand, you have to make sure that people understand orwant to be part of a movement. By human nature, we want to be part of the moment, wewant to be socially accepted and everything that you do, I believe in my case, is to brandyourself. Now, you may not be a person who does not want to wear labels and this andthat, but youre branding yourself as a person who is not into the material things. And,

you know, youre driving a Range Rover with a thermal cup, you know, up in the naturewith a North Face jacket? But, you know, youre branding yourself as Im all aboutnature.

And well, branding starts from going back to saying the easiest thing to sell is the truth branding starts from the person and the person the way they look and view life, youknow. I always say that you know we invest into, not real estate, but Donald Trumpwhen we buy certain buildings or into Bill Gates or into Steve Jobs or in to Phil Knight


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because of their theories and their beliefs. Now, we brand ourselves a million times aday, whether we know it or not. They say that a jury will convict or exonerate somebodywithin the first fifteen seconds of seeing them by just visually how they look at them, andthat is what we do all day. You know, sometimes I say in my speaking engagements, Ifwe take this same exact suit, a black suit. It can be worn three separate ways. Now, if

you would see somebody who is in the financial industry, theyre going to wear thatsvery tight and formfitting to their body because theyre going to seem like they are veryconservative with money. And if youre investing in them, whether a banker orsomething of that nature or accountant, you want them to have that appearance.Somebody who is more in the business field a stock broker, you know a deal maker, anattorney generally has a medium-fitting suit, a little loose. And then somebody in theentertainment field will most likely wear a turtle neck and a looser-fitting suit almostlike theyre dancing or some of that nature and tend to have a little bit of jewelry. Lasttype of banker you ever want to deal with is the one with the little suit and the jewelrybecause thats how perception is thats what hes going to be like with your money.And I told you that example as branding, and hopefully that is the one that people

understand with most clarity.

Jay Abraham: So lets take branding now, and lets talk about it. Im going to use a bitof an [ASO torcher] but its a catalyst. Its a catalyst that can transform the value, thedesirability, the exclusivity, the word of mouth, the prestige of the product, the service,the company, or person behind it. Give me some thoughts on that.

Daymond John: Oh, absolutely. A product is an extension of what you believe in thebrand, the direction of the brand. Most of the time, you know companies, unless it wasntbuilt up a strong base You look at somebody, you know, I love to use Steve Jobs. Ithink that he is one you know of the handful I had to count with my hand anybody elsewhos changed history and changed who we are as a society due to his, you know his

sticking to his branding and his creative mind. But you look at somebody like Steve whoreally created Macintosh and created this business, he had a very strong understanding ofthe branding that he wanted to do, and he would not bend or veer off with that. But oncehe let go from that and he was fired from Apple or Macintosh, at the point he left, hewasnt able to create the strong-enough base because he wasnt there long enough or thepeople that held the reins, that took the reins, afterwards decided to not believe in how hecreated his foundation. It started to go down almost immediately, and it was almost thehunk before he came back to what was there to come back and to bring back the brand bythe same beliefs that he had, though I always use Apple as an extension now. Steve, youknow after his interview, he just has stepped down in to some capacity. But over thecourse of the last fifteen years, hes establishing what it can run now on its own. You

know, because of the beliefs, because of the core three-word brand, the world in Apple isThink different. But he lived by that mission statement, Think different. And Ialways tell people, You have to be able to put your brand, your name into two to or fourwords. So whether its TBSs Very funny, White Castles What you crave,Terminator Ill be back, Shock and awe, whatever it may be, Nike Just do it,FUBU For us by us. They all are a mission statement, and you have to be able to


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follow that as well as your employees have to be able to follow that and let the entireknow what the mission statement is. And you have to stick as close to that as possible.

Jay Abraham: Now, you get the chance in three realms to look at a lot of businesses.Realm one is Shark Tank, the show, which you get to look at a lot of start-ups or first-

stage business that may or may not have much of any brand distinction. You get to lookat Im sure in your personal life as an investor and an entrepreneur an enormousamount of deal flow thats pitched to you. You get to speak at large corporations andalso at large conferences. And youre beginning to look a whole spectrum there ofdisparate and different, different business with or without strong brands. Whats yourtake on the majority of business and their strength, weaknesses, their current eitherpositive or negative utilization and mastery of their own branding as a company, as aproduct, as an individual, or whatever, any of the three or all of the three or whateverintegration makes sense?

Daymond John: Well, you know, I can break down the ones in order. So on the show,most of the brand that come up there are people, whether with an idea or somebody doinga range of a low-end a hundred thousand dollars of business up to maybe about twentymillion dollars in business. And what stands out about those brands generally are thepeople. The people in the brand that we want to invest in first and foremost because welook at the people and they usually, they may not have an as much knowledge as theymay need, but they created something incredible and it came, as I said initially, it camefrom the fact that they were a strong person of the brand and this is an extension of them.And we invest into mostly this company because we know that this company, if it goeswell, would be great, but even if it doesnt go well, we would have a new partner who wecan start something new with. And thats generally what we do. You know, there arethose guys on the show that we dont show with the person themselves that they have agreat product idea. And thats when you see offers go out where we say, Well give you

two million dollars for the entire company and the patent. And I want you to step awayfrom this. Because we dont like the person. So that happens when I talk to those smallbrands and people. You know, when I talk to the big corporations, the things that theyreusually Im sorry, Jay, you said that people were neglecting. Correct?

Jay Abraham: No, you can go both, it doesnt matter what I ask. What I want from youis cool answers that will help us understand your brain and how we can capitalize onwhat you know that we dont better so we can be more successful in our businesses.

Daymond John: What I find the challenges that bigger corporations have is the normalred tape and its the fact that people in those big corporations dont get awarded for

success but they get penalized for anything that hurts the corporation. So theyre nottaught to think outside the box. Theyre not thought to be you know entrepreneurs.People were in businesses and in companies who are have the entrepreneurs in spirit andmind. Also, a lot of the CEOs, the VPs, they are not as hands on as they should be. Theyleave these businesses to people who they think are going to do a good job, and then theyfind out that their jobs not being done way too late. And one of the most importantaspects of the big corporations is the left hand is almost never talking to the right hand.So sales is not necessarily talking to production, and production is not talking to


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marketing. And those big machines, that becomes the challenges. What those bigmachines also do is, because they move so slow, by the time they catch up to what ishappening in the market, its already too late. Something new was there. And that tendsto be the biggest challenge with the big corporations that I see.

Jay Abraham: Yes, so let me take another question. So if branding is critical, which iswhat you stand for, and branding can redefine not only a company but their connection tothe market, what does a company thats got a weak or a non-perceived or a non-distinctive brand? What can they do first, second, or third depending over the littlecompany, big company, product service? And maybe there are some universal, maybethey are to get, to kick their brand in the gear and getting the maximum leverage it canover them.

Daymond John: I mean, well, first of all, they have to define in those three to fourwords, what is their brand? And it has to be cohesive to what they think it is. Now, a lotof people think of branding is Well, we are , you know, branding is, you know, luxuryitems or goods that everybody needs to know about but sometimes branding is the factthat its an affordable product. You know, sometimes lesser is more when you say it. Sowe have to understand what it is. And next thing after what we understand What is themission statement? as I said, the disconnect cannot happen, you have to really be in linewith every single department production, sales, distribution, and branding, andmarketing. And those people all have to know what the other is doing to know what theother needs, you know. If youre producing something, but sales knows that theres aprice-sensitive threshold that it must be produced under, you need to listen to that. Oncesales knows theres a price, you know, sensitive aspect, then marketing needs to knowwhat the angle is this angle that this is a luxury good that enriches your life and makesyour quality of life better because its a high-priced good, and people, you know, this hasgood quality in it. Or is it because this is a high-priced luxury good and there will be few

people that will have it but you can afford it. What is the angle and how will you beputting it out there? Is this a price-sensitive good? And you need to know that youregoing out there next to goods right at just as the same price but you offer a better service,a different type of style? Or is it a price-sensitive good that you are saying to people,You dont need to go out there and spend all that money on that big goods, this is theonly thing you need. So after, you know sales needs to understand that with marketing.And then, and Im not doing it in the chronological order, where is the distribution going?And then you can pick out exactly who youre marketing with. Now, I find that brandleveraging is something that is very attractive to me, and if you can find somebody inyour same space that you are basically coupling with them, making them look good,making you look good because its the space you want to be and youre basically leasing

theyre entire audience and giving them .

Jay Abraham: Thats a great visual. Thats the great visual when you extend to thebrand and you make some alignment with them.

Daymond John: Yeah, and Nike is really a master at doing that. You know, by the timethis interview goes out, I think Nike is putting out in conjunction with Back to the Future.I think theyre putting out that sneaker that whats-the-name wore in Back to the Future.


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And I think that they just did something where one of the first production pieces went for$37,000. Its hip. Retro was in. Its retro. You know, youll have people of all ages, notjust the young kids; youll have people of all ages knowing about that shoes that MichaelJ. Fox wore and say, Hey, son, you dont know about those shoes. Thats from Back tothe Future, man. I really always wanted a pair like that, and now I guess Nike actually

really made one. And you know, that thing is saying something to his son; and his sonwill go, Okay, Dad, well, you would look stupid wearing it, but I want to wear one now.You know its brand leveraging. And Im sure it helped back to the Future, and itdefinitely helped Nike.

Jay Abraham: Thats great. So you get paid oodles and gobs of money to go intocorporations and do either what Ill call makeovers, immersions, interventions or I knowthat you work with certain corporations long term to engineer and mastermind what Illcall brand makeovers or complete new brand introductions. Can I ask If I were a fly onthe wall, is there a sequence or order or a process that you go through trying eitherremediate or repair or resuscitate a bad brand or create one from scratch?

Daymond John: Theres no particular process because its like, you know, its the sameas, you know, having a diagnosis for a patient. But unfortunately, many of the brands,they have their own idea of what they want. And, you know, Ive learned that, you know,you give them a lot of time things that are in their best interest; but they really wantthings they want instead. Of the challenge of what I deal with a lot of brands are youknow, the life of a brand manager or VP of marketing is twenty-four months. And for thefirst twelve months, theyre cleaning up the crap that somebody else left. The nexttwelve months, theyre building something of their own idea, but because they spenttwelve months cleaning up the crap, the new idea is not catching fire enough time. Andtheyre out of the door.

The CEOs that tend to work and be a little more aggressive are CEOs who either are veryhighly respected and theyve learned that if, obviously, the meaning of infamy is doingthe same thing over and over again and expecting different results, they come in to someplace and they really have an aggressive were going to try something crazy attitude or theyre CEOs who are basically on their last leg and its six months out the door andtheyre looking at me as somebody who can come and give them a lifeline.

Jay Abraham: Yeah, Ive been there. Been there and done that. Its interesting. Of allthe interventions youve done Im going to go back to FUBU for a minute but because Ithink its story deserves me giving you much more of a showcase. But of all the externalrelationships youve had with other peoples brands, products it can be as little as a

person with a lemonade stand or something as major as a multitrillion-dollar worldwidecorporation tell us whats been, in your opinion, your greatest pride and success and iftheres anything about the process that youre not you know bound by confidentiality thatyou can tell us about because that would be very interesting.

Daymond John: Well, I mean, by far, its still going to be FUBU because, you know, Istill no matter what Im learning every single day. You know and I just did a huge dealwith Wal-Mart to, as Ive said it before, to put FUBU in Wal-Mart now after expanding it


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overseas and bringing it back to United States. And its always been a challenge becausewe made a lot of mistakes with FUBU. And I look at other clothing brands that are outthere, and generally, the lifetime of a clothing brand is usually around three to six years.And weve been around for twenty years and have really penetrated Asia and all of theworld and coming back to the United States. And Im always shocked even though I will

preach and tell everybody its really, when you have a global brand and a good name,people will always come back to it. But Im always shocked by the fact that Im able toget these new and bigger deals with FUBU because FUBU had such a skyrocket, such anastronomical rise to fame that theres always a bad side to it. And the negative and thepush back was so hard and so challenging that whenever we score even an inkling of amore inch of advancement on FUBU, I am very, very happy. So FUBU is still by far theone that Im going to

Jay Abraham: And I think thats just Im going to make a comment and then ask aquestion. Youre stature and your posture and your prominence probably is a pretty goodcatalyst now to help facilitate and open up deals for FUBU now, isnt it?

Daymond John: Yeah, it is. And you know even when I do these big FUBU deals, youknow Im human; Im just like everybody else. Im always looking some place else thegrass is greener. And the reason why I got in a show is because I was always gettingpitched clothing deals. So there is only twenty-four hours in a day, and Im starting totake on more things that are just exciting to me. So my show and my celebrities at themoment is an advantageous of FUBU, but I use that energy for the newer brand becausetheres just some place even though FUBU is my heart and fashion is my heart, Im justexcited about learning and the challenges all for the new brands and any type ofcompanies and different challenges.

Jay Abraham: It makes great sense. So towards that, lets move in the direction you

just Youre like the pilot of our riverboat. Lets take it down this trail. Youre lookingin four different venues: Youre looking at the deals that come to you privately, which areprobably significant, the deals that you see publicly in terms of the show, the deals thatcome to you through your relationships, and deals that you initiate and see and take toother people. Where do you think the big opportunities are that youre comfortablesharing that dont compromise your own deals and your own you know not-yet-revealedbreakthroughs? What do you think if somebodys looking right now for the direction forthe opportunity for the overlooked huge, huge, you know, huge mother lode or at least fora huge directional area of demand that hasnt been met yet? Where is it? What is it?

Daymond John: Ive learned that the areas of demand that have been met actually, but

are changing so fast is really, really the tech area, whether its in medical tech, you knowbiotech, you know also the Facebook, the Twitter, the LinkedIns of the world, the tech.Tech is moving so quick and it gets out so fast and its so scalable. I think that SiliconValley is the hottest, you know, its a hotbed for activity and venture. I think the moneyis available for there. And I think that the product itself, the tech product, can movequickly, globally because even if I make a product now or design a clothing line now, Iwont have any, in the stores for another nine months to a year. You know, but if I create


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an application or some form of tech that improves peoples lives in some sense, youknow, it can sell a million units in a day or minute actually.

Jay Abraham: Yeah, the rollout or the scalability if its done right is rather incredibletoo, dont you think?

Daymond John: Absolutely, and that, you know, and just like anything else a lot oftimes a patent is not of value in that world because its just first the market, because itmoves so fast. If you look at it again, then I dont want to be a one trick pony or, youknow, concentrate on only one, but if you look at something like Apple up until 1990, Ibelieve, they only filed and only had one patent but they moved so quickly. Yeah, andeverybody worries about, oh, a patent, a proprietary, this and that. Be first to market. Ididnt have a patent on a shirt. I just made people believe that it enriched their life and Iwas first, to market, first to market but I was one of the first to market with this category,and thats why I was scaled 1, thats why I took off so quick.

Jay Abraham: Interesting. I want to talk about your book. Youve written 2 books.

Both of them are very, very intriguing. The first one sort of chronicled the FUBU storyand had lessons. The new one is really all about personal and business branding,

The Brand Within:The Power of Branding from Birth to the Boardroom.Are you comfortable talking about them both?

Daymond John: Yeah, absolutely. Sure.

Jay Abraham: Okay, cool. So I wanted to go more into The Brand Within, because Ithink its got so much currency and relevancy but I dont want to dismiss the first onebecause it told, very intimately, your story. What do you think the best elements, lessons,

message in the first book are? And what do you think; you wrote it so that people wouldget one thing more than anything else? Usually, thats the overwriting purpose of thenovelist to book Ive written. What did you want that book to tell people and whats thebig message we can take away from it right now?

Daymond John: Well, you know, I initially thought of writing because I had limitedtime and I was unable to go out and speak to as many people that may need thisinformation, and I speak to corporations that can afford me, but they, a lot of times, canafford me and may not use the information more than the people that cannot afford mewho need the information. So, I wanted to put a book together and it was for variousreasons. First of all, because when people need it to get information from me, I wanted

them to put the time in and read the book because everybody wants it. Something fornothing and, you know, for me to take a year or 2 years to write a book, you can take acouple of days to read it or, you know, dont ask me for the advice.

Jay Abraham: Uh huh.

Daymond John: But going into the branding world and the marketing world, I need towrite a book with my, you know, for you to understand my thesis and what Im thinking,


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you need to know where I came from to understand if you can relate to me, and theres alot more people that come from my background than come from other backgrounds thatreally, you know, a kid growing up with little to no direction. You know, decently toughenvironment, you know? And with a dream, and not knowing how to navigate a mappingto get from point A to B and, or point A to Z actually, and to have one thing and its the

most important thing people need when trying to get from A to Z is just desire but withlittle knowledge. And what Ive tried to do in there is show people that life wasntcheery. There were a lot of ups and downs but regardless, Ive learned from thoselessons and I educated myself and I know that, you know, life is about educating yourselfevery day, so the first book was really to do that. And I started about the last 20% of thebook going into then how FUBU changed the world in regards to branding and marketingfrom our perspective, and started to educate people. Now they know about me but nowthey need to be educated about FUBU. 50 International stores and, you know, so manyfirst things that weve done in fashion history that a lot of people did not know. So you ifyou had this one skewed idea of FUBU whether you want to like FUBU or not, you atleast respect the accomplishments that we have.

Jay Abraham: Well, you also choose people on the process too. You showed themwhat you were doing; now you did it, and you gave them a real interesting intimateunderstanding on how things can use the word leverage, but leverage, very masterful, butthat was really cool.

Daymond John: Thank you, we did that and I want people to understand that we didmost of things by trial and error. It was not this big blueprint and these guys who weregeniuses, we went, with a lot of times, our heart and we learned and we failed way morethan we succeeded, and after I tried to share in the book, how many times we failed morethan we succeeded. A lot of times, we want to put out books for the purpose ofadvertising and marching, patting themselves on the back, when I figured thats exactly

the opposite. We got there because we hit so many brick walls, but we would not stopbecause of our desire. So that was really the first book.

Jay Abraham: Then absolutely taking The Brand Within.

Daymond John: Right. The second one was The Brand Within and the reason

Jay Abraham: Yep. So tell us about it.

Daymond John: Okay, so the reason I decided to write The Brand Within was it was afollow-up to the first book, but now it was all about branding and I wanted to show

people not this highly-educated analytical approach to branding thats, you know, howmany studies of people look at the color blue, and this and that. I didnt want to do that.I wanted somebody who wanted to do everything from brand a teddy bear theyremaking at home to a corporation who wants to brand their new vehicle. And I wantedpeople to look at it in kind of a dumb down laymans way of speaking of just simplecommon sense, so I tried to break it out in various different ways. I gave examples of, ifyou wanted to come up with a product on how to think about the process, create and putit out, and the fact that you will by far learn the process in doing it and youll fail a


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couple of times but every road that you get roadblocks on or you fail, is one less road togo down and that its not just as smooth and as simple. You have to be agile and ready tochange in midstream putting out your brand until you find out, and you get into yourrhythm and you get the true DNA of it. So I try to show people that from a smallperspective. Then I try to show people as well that you are the brand yourself as we have

talked about a little earlier and who is around you are part of this movement becausepeople all want to be part of a movement whether it be youre 6 people who on yourtrustees or youre board, or whether it be the people who are buying into your product towant to be part of that movement. So those are the 2 things that Ive tried to reallydescribe in regards to the second book and give a lot of examples because if you didntget it one way, hopefully, youll get it another way.

Jay Abraham: Now Im looking at the table of contents, and, you know, the case book,the case book, the case book, the case book. You got a lot of case studies and Ivelearned from masters that the easiest best way for people to grasp something is to see thestory. See how it unfolded. See the implications. See the lesson learned. See the realworld implication. You do it there a lot. Youve also got The Four Stages of ProductEvolution. Is that something we can get into quickly or is it too esoteric?

Daymond John: Sure, we can get into The Four Stages of Product Evolution, and, youknow, The Four Stages of Product Evolution is and we wont always necessarily hit aproduct the 4 stages. So its an item, then its a product, and then its a brand, and thenits a lifestyle, and those are the four. And so everything goes through those stages. So,as an item, we can look at something as simple as water. Water is a substance and itswidely available. Its in lakes, river streams, and it falls down from the sky, and thatswhat it is. Its an item. And if we look at it as a product, water becomes now a productwhere we bottle it and use it as something you reach in a refrigerator for but youre justlooking because youre thirsty. When you go into the store and you buy just water. Its a

product thats bottled water. If it goes and lucky enough to be called a brand, it issomething that has a name and you start to relate with it. Its a name where you can say,Well, thats Avion or thats Dasani, and thats something of that nature. If itsfortunate enough to become a lifestyle, I cant stay that waters necessarily a lifestyle. Ithink Evian maybe. You know, Perrier probably is the best form of lifestyle. Its beenaround long enough where you get this idea of this green bottle and this spring where it isfrom or France, or whatever the case is of this water, but lifestyle is usually in differenttype of products. So I would say if you were fortunate enough to become a lifestyle, youare the name for the entire category. So if I want to copy a piece of paper, I say, Go toXerox that piece of paper, or if I want a soda that is a cola, I would say, Go get me aCoke, or if Im listening to an MP3 Player, I would say, Wheres my iPod at?. And

thats when your name is synonymous for the entire category and you can become alifestyle. FUBU, fortunately or unfortunately, became a lifestyle. You thought ofsomebody wearing FUBU, you thought of the baggy jeans rapper, you know, with theurban clothes, you know. So we became a lifestyle in that sense, but those are the 4stages that brands go through.

Jay Abraham: Its pretty interesting. Im sorry, go ahead.


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Daymond John: Im sorry, one second. I even tried to break it down in variousdifferent ways. I broke it down as far as even a family organization goes through thatand, you know, if you say lifestyle, you know, the Royal Family is a lifestyle or certainother things, and even, you know, in Europe, crests and shields have been around foryears and people have branded their families and organizations for years. So people

think branding is only a product but it can be an entire organization, a person, you know acorporation, or an item, you know.

Jay Abraham: Thats great but you also talked in your book about, Wheres themovie? Want to talk about that for a minute?

Daymond John: Yes.

Jay Abraham: Because I like that.

Daymond John: So, Wheres the movie?, is my way of saying, Where is themovement?, like how are people going to just understand this like a movie like you see a

trailer and youre ready to see a movie. I can see this, when I look at this shirt standingthere, I fall into a daze and I see myself wearing it at a certain place with a certain type ofpeople around me and Im feeling this way when Im looking at it. Thats the movie.What is the movie? You know, when you look at a car whether we want to admit it ornot, you know, it could be, you know, it could be a rugged Jeep and were thinking aboutthe mud all over the tires with the bikes on top of it, us up in the mountains, eating agranola bar or outside camping. Thats the movie. So when I say, Can you come upwith a product and think about how will it give me the movie?, so thats my movieanalogy.

Jay Abraham: But its good. If then you dont see it, theres something wrong with

this picture right?

Daymond John: Exactly. If you dont see it then youre not buying a brand, yourebuying an item or a product.

Jay Abraham: Yeah, weve had a couple of different people asking and theirrepresentatives some of them regressed for a minute because the story of you and whenyou started with FUBU and L.L. Cool J. is sort of cool, I heard you tell it. I watched youin front of 9, 10 thousand people, tell it to a group of women in a Maria Shriver event andI was very taken by it myself. If you dont mind, and you want to consolidate it into ashort one, its a cool story and I think it shows whats possible and if youll tell it, I think

people would appreciate it.

Daymond John: Well, you know, L.L. has always been, you know, a legend in the [E]you know I was so grateful to have grown up very close to him. And, you know, L.L., Iused to go on tour with L.L. Cool J., the rowdy, and do very, you know, menial jobs.You know, taking laundry back to Queens, you know, when he was in some place, and,you know, go get him a sandwich or something like that, but, you know, I would start tosee that all these kids were really part of this movement that, you know, this hip hop is


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not something, you know, its something you do, its something you live. And I thoughtthat L.L. was the best person, you know, to represent my brand but, you know, we werefriends. So I wanted his advice more than anything else because they want to ask him foranything, and I knew that he had a great tight circle of well-known friends RunD.M.C,Russel Simmons, Salt & Pepper, and a lot of legends; but I went to L.L. and I said to him,

You know, L? I want you to wear my brand but, you know, youll wear it a couple oftimes but do you know anybody else I can go to who would wear my brand? So L. said,First of all, I dont really want to wear your stuff because the F and the B in the productis always purple and I can never match it with any of my clothes. So this was the logothat I created in my company was a purple F and B. So I said, All right, no problem,and he said, Next thing, you know, is you have to go out there and you got to go andstalk people. And Im talking about stalk Russell Simmons. And the expression heused was, A pregnant woman looking for her husband in the daytime with a flashlight.That was the expression he used and Im thinking. Okay, well, no problem. So I, youknow, looked in to finding where I can get a hold of Russell Simmons, and RunD.M.C,and this and that, and I couldnt find them, so I said, Well, the most person I know was

L.L., so I decided that afternoon, I went and me and my friends, we set up camp on hisfront lawn, and we decided that he was the person that we had to stalk like a pregnantwoman with a flashlight. And, you know, but I did do one change and I said, You haveto be agile. You know, I was stuck on FUBU for 5 years having this purple logo butwhat I do was I changed the logo and I changed it where it will be more appealing and toL.L. because I figured that that was the only angle I had. Now most people do hard to dothat. So I made the logo. I changed it. I said to him, and he came out. He didnt want tocome out the house but I had information that he was filming a show called In the Housein California, and I saw a limo sitting outside and L.L. was out there peeking through theshades and he wouldnt come out, and he finally came out. And I said, L., listen, man.Ive changed my entire company around to suit you even if you wear this shirt just onetime but I really want you to consider please wear my product. And he looked at meand he said, You know, people like Nike and this huge corporation are looking at me towear their product. If I wear your product, they will never touch me again and mostlikely, you wont get away with this but this is going to be my version of investing in youand I will do it, but do me a favor. Make sure you take care of me if you ever get wear.And you dont have to sign a piece of paper for nothing, and he took that product and hestarted wearing it religiously. And that was really one of the main reasons that Ive evergotten anywhere because of L.L., you know, believed in us and when he decided to createthe movie, talk about a movie is when a big ass commercial said to L.L., We want youto be the face of The Gap for this year and we want you to do a rap in The Gap Ad. Andhe said, Well, you know what? I have this little company that Im a part of and cantwear the hat. They said, Sure, wear the hat. Who cares? No way. That companys notgoing to get anywhere. Nobody would know what it is. And L.L. did this rap and in therap, he said, For us, by us, on the low. You know? And then in hip hop, Turn on thelow means, you know, keep it a secret. And he did this rap and the Executive, notunderstanding the culture, or not understand their targeted audience, or whatever it mayhave been, didnt realize that he embedded the FUBU word into The Gap ad and they ran30 million dollars of this ad, and back then, it was around 1996-97, 30 million dollarsthen was like 90 million now. This created a movement, a movie. It became the movie.


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It became the small guy are now beating the big guys. L.L. has it on and everybodyheard about this commercial and that put FUBU into the stratosphere. Now the mostinteresting aspect about it, everybody got fired who was on that campaign, but I have toreally, you know, new [seal] or a new marketing first to came in, and I have to get up forThe Gap because they were smart enough. Now these were guys who were looking at

their numbers. They realized a year later that because the FUBU was so small at the timethat African-Americans and Latinos business spiked 500% in The Gap stores becausethey went to The Gap looking for FUBU.

Jay Abraham: Oh, thats interesting.

Daymond John: And then they re-ran that Ad. Thats 60 million re-running an ad andif youre really, look I think it was around 97 98 that was Gaps best year.

Jay Abraham: So that was an incredible propellant. It hurdled you.

Daymond John: Yes.

Jay Abraham: Thats incredible. Times tied. Youve been very great. I want to talk alittle bit about Shark Tank and then I want to ask some reflective questions aboutentrepreneurialism in general because you get to see it at all sides. You speak to bigcorporations, you speak to industries, you speak to private, and I know youre speaking atone of the great entrepreneurial colleges, and theyve made you a, you know veryprominent force there which you should be very, very proud of but lets talk a little bitabout Shark Tank. So you started doing it. Did you have a vision for not just thepopularity but what it would produce in deal flow, in attitude, and in all the implicationswhen you started?

Daymond John: Yeah, I mean absolutely. One of the biggest and most exciting brandsthat anybody can ever work on and who I have worked on is me, personally, as a person and that is a constant challenge but, you know, its really, you know, I set the barextremely high. So when I was asked to be on Shark Tank, you know, I declined and Ithink I declined because, at that time, I was mentoring and helping some girls inCalifornia who had a new show coming out but they were just, you know, really greatgirls and really good friends, and their names are the Kardashians. And I helpedbranding them and I promised that I would be a mentor on their show when they came toNew York and that I would mentor them. And when I sent my contract over and ABCwas talking to me, they said I could no longer be on The Kardashian show and I, youknow, I wasnt raised that way. I gave the Kardashians my word and even though it was

going to be maybe on 3 episodes for 2 minutes apiece. It was, you know, my word is mybrand and it was a big challenge to finding time with me because I said, You knowwhat? First, you people get a chance to be on a major network like ABC and with MarkBennett, one of the number one producers in the world and so many televisions, I have toturn this down but I gave somebody my word and I wouldnt be able to go back on that.Now, you lucky enough for me, that ABC or one of the producers called over and talkedwith the producer, I think, of The Kardashian show and they had a little privateconversation that I wasnt aware of and all of a sudden, I get a call maybe a day or 2,


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days later and they say, You know, Daymond, we dont need you. Were not shootingthe show in New York. And then all of a sudden that producer from Shark Tank calledme back, So I heard youre unemployed and youre fired. So, you know, I wasfortunate enough now to then be on the show but my personal brand was, you know,when most people would hear about the FUBU guy, they would again think of the

lifestyle that FUBU is. That I was more of a rapper type, gold chain wearing, you know,I was going to come in a room and start break dancing or something of that nature, andthey didnt understand that, you know, that I was a business person. So it was fortunateenough for me to get onto the show to understand that I dont care what youre selling.You have to be a business person. Understand financial instruments and distribution, andmarketing, and branding, and the way the corporate structure is, and financing. So it wasa really good platform for me getting onto the show to highlight these things as well aswhether I want to admit it or not. I learned an extremely large amount of information andunderstanding of global markets from the other 4 sharks on the panel. So its aneducating process for me as well.

Jay Abraham: I know and they are bright. Youre very gracious. They invited me acouple of times to watch and its very interesting. Each one has either an analytical, orintuitive, you know, a category prejudice, or an understanding of not just the good but ofthe lets call it of the treacherous part. You know the dark side and its very interesting tohear the different context that gets shared. Its got to be fascinating.

Daymond John: It is fascinating. You know, the panel up there, we all have exitwounds of really bad experiences in life thats only made us stronger. We all have areason why we are looking to invest in companies. Some are emotionally based, believeit or not. Theyre all financial based at the end of the day, but someone hard numbers andbelieve that I am a disciplined investor and then that number has to be a certain way toget this way. You know some of us believed if the number was so great then you

wouldnt be here and I want to get into little things at the moment because Im not goingto kill you on your evaluation because at the end of the day, $200,000 doesnt mean crapto you and I was going to make 50 million and the other people, you know, may believethat its a brand or, you know, the entrepreneurs a brand and somebody else might saythis just helps and adds to my portfolio my distribution, and its another offering to myexisting customer.

Jay Abraham: Thats interesting. Well, you know, Ive watched and you said that allthe ones Ive found most interesting about Mark Cuban, he seems to be the most, and Imgoing to call it enlightened. I wouldnt really send a say its benevolent, but itspragmatic and light almost like an enlightened [desk], but he gets very carefully that it

doesnt really matter what, you know, what you own. If its big and it doesnt matterwhat you own if it blows up.

Daymond John: Yeah, absolutely. I mean thats Marks theory. Marks theory is, youknow, if it blows up, it doesnt matter, you know? And Im the best thing in this smallidea. A lot of times I look at Cuban, I go, you know, This guy is running NBA teamsand things of that nature. How much time will he have to spend with the entrepreneur atthe end of the day? But he may be just the way he feels. Im really hands-on and Mark is


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hands-on to an extent but he may feel like Im going to do 20 deals that are $500,000apiece, because only one or two need to take off to really, really, you know, make myreturn and weigh more than that. Im the kind of guy that feels that I understand theresgoing to be a lot of loss and leakage, but I want to do 8 deals and I want to give my besteffort to 5 and if the other 3 are people I feel dont need me to help them sail the boat, I

can kind of do that and hopefully, you know, 2 or 3 of mines will make the cut because Iput in my energy. So we both have 2 different philosophies.

Jay Abraham: Thats interesting strategy there. Now Im going to ask you a questionbecause its probably a lesson metaphor, very, very powerful observation for people.When I watch, and Ive been very blessed with you guys let me watch a number of theproduction, I see people trying to really raise money, sell pieces of their business, whoare so ill-prepared for the pitch and the presentation, and Im fascinated why that wouldbe, not why the show would let them because Im sure that just makes it more interestingbut why people wouldnt, why do you think most human beings even if they get theopportunity, blow it because they dont know how to, first of all, how to understand theinterest, the criteria, the motivation, the hot buttons of the other side, in this case, theinvestor? You got to notice that its fascinating.

Daymond John: I find that fascinating and Im in loss, you know, as well. You knowbefore the show came out, and the first season, I can understand that; but, you know, ifyou already know the show exists and you dont have this information and you dontresearch it. I mean there are various things in the show that can give you a result toeducation. First of all, when you ever see hard negotiation between millionaires,billionaires in their everyday person, and what theyre looking for. If youre getting asneak peek into this world so this is valuable information because these questions aregoing to be asked. I get countless calls from venture capitalists and angel investorssaying, Thank God that show is on because everybodys into this. We tell them before

they come here, go look at Shark Tank because were going to be 10 times worth. so

Jay Abraham: Thats great.

Daymond John: Im shocked because you get that information appraisal. Second of all,you now know who the Sharks are and you can research as you said what are their hotbuttons? How can you add to their existing portfolio? Come up with different angles.Dont tell Mark, you know, Hey, well, you got a basketball team and Im going to pitchanother basketball team. Find out his other interest in life and find out, you know, thathe owns Magnolia Distribution and Landmark Theaters, and other things like that andhow can you enrich his life better. You know, be sitting on the other side of the table.

People always want whats best for them. How can you enrich their life? You know?

Jay Abraham: And thats a great insight.

Daymond John: I find it fascinating.

Jay Abraham: Yeah, well, Im so intrigued and its fascinating the double team, or thetriple team, or the quadruple teaming but the spectrum of questions/perspectives that gets


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shout out by your colleagues, the Sharks, I love it because they are coming at it fromdifferent, some are correlating it, some are looking at it, and the truth of the matter, I toldmy son who wants to go to a business course, You should watch every re-run. If I wereyou, I would actually have it transcribed. I would look at everything that happens. Iwould put it in categories, and I would say, Whats the lesson learned? and Id look at

the ones that closed and if not, Id look at the parenthetical comments that they show andthey have the after discussion. All that stuff is so illustrative to life. I got trained,Daymond, by guys about raising money and they said, Okay, first thing you got to do isshow somebody that the odds are that theyre going to get their money back. Second,they got to show them the odds are that the things going to fly. Third, you got to showthem that theyre going to get hired and then market yield. And fourth, you got to showthem how its protected and if you cant do that, theyre not going to give you the money.

Daymond John: Right. Exactly.

Jay Abraham: This is my term. Im not saying its yours. Im just saying most peopledont even think about those issues.

Daymond John: No, because most people want to sell gratification and whats in it forthem. You know, I actually seen plenty of people come there, well, I need, you know,usually in a conversation when youre pitching the word I is almost the like mostvenomous word you can ever use.

Yeah, exactly. The only way you can ever use the I is I have an intent to bring this toyou and to make your life this, and your life that. And if this happens for you, I will berewarded another way. But, thats the word you can use. But most people go in therethinking that way, What is it theyre getting out of something? And unfortunately, thatwhat happens.

Jay Abraham: But heres the thing, it transcends actually and this is getting a little into my [Indiscernible] [1:30:30], but they dont grasp that its not about them. Theyrealmost transparent. What theyre there for is really enhancing the life, the value, theprotection of the consumer. I mean, everything about business is external contributionand really everything flows from it, dont you think?

Daymond John: Absolutely. You will be blessed as you make other lives if youenrich other lives. And people just dont look at the when theyre pitching to thesharks, the sharks thats exactly what they are. Theyre just a consumer. Youreselling them something your business, yourself, most likely youre selling them a

product, but you are selling the shark something. Theyre just buying an enormousamount of it. But its still you are selling something.

Jay Abraham: Now, is there because I want to be respectful and youve been verygracious here. You did this interview between filming, and Im very gracious in behalfof all our readers, help me about by the way, you books are great. I want to make apoint that is you hit on something profound and most people dont get it. When I was


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much younger, I had a mentor and he wanted me to learn about the greatest marketingadvertising person that had lived in that time.

And he made me read the guys autobiography and then read his life story, and then readhis life from a third context, from some third person reporting, because he said, if you

understand the thing and the events that happened in his life. And then you see how heinterprets it, and then you see it from a bigger context like the company he worked with,telling it, now you really grasped it and youre two books together do an incredible job ofdoing that. You understand the background, the struggle, the hopes, the dreams, thebelief system, the psychology, you see it executed, then after its executed in words, thenyou take the lessons learned and you translate it in the second book to how it applies toany individual, any company, outside the company, in life, big corporation, product, andits really cool.

And whats even cooler, Ive got to interject this, you are [Indiscernible] [1:32:44] a verygiving member, talking about contribution, and youve graciously allowed us to give thedigital versions of both of them, to all of our readers because you realize I think, and Imgoing to put a word or words in your mouth, people can become better branded factors intheir life and their reality and their world, theyll be more impactful, more respected,more effective, make greater achievement, make better just add more value, dont youthink?

Daymond John: Oh, I absolutely agree with that. Im a giving person only because thereason I stand here and I exist in this only because so much has been given to me. And Iknow youve been very, very kind with the words, but you and I just met over a briefphone call once, and I think you do the same model that I do, once I came to you, youshared with me and gained the access to any knowledge or anything that you can do forme.

And I think the way the way I dont want to call it, I dont want to get all the warm andfuzzy and call it Carmel [Phonetics] [1:33:53] whatever it maybe. But, as you think andgo through life and only think about giving to others, others will give back to you but youwill be enriched. Its just the way of the world and thats really how I believe.

One other thing I want to share with you, it is a fact that third parties generally, inbranding yourself or youre thinking about giving, third parties by far are whorecommends you and does more for you. You see, when you meet that person who is justa third party, they meet you and youre a great handyman, you go out, that person will goout and they will say, You know, what I met this great guy, and hes a handyman. And

say, Well, Im looking for someone So, they will listen, I think he does a goodwork. I dont know, but maybe you should check into him. And theyll refer for you.

But now, if I was the persons cousin and he was a handyman, a lot of times, they go, Idont know, you know Daymond is this and that. I dont want to get embarrassed andsend my cousin over to you. And that is how I feel about when I put out my product,you know, when I give it to people. I want people to look at me as a businessman, wheresomebody would say, Daymond gave us something. Yeah, that guy. Have you ever


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heard of Daymonds job? Hes a good guy. Have you ever heard Jay Abraham? Hes agood guy, maybe you should check into that. And that works for me.

Jay Abraham: Youre very humble. I see you as being very astute in a benevolent way.You know that if you invest richly and freely, lets call it the marketplace, youre going

to help everybody. Now, are most of them going to be people like can directly helpyou? Perhaps not, but are they going to be people who will have access ultimately topeople as you said who will help you? Absolutely, and it will comeback, Ive done itmyself. Im a lot older than you. But Ive always invested in resources, training,expertise, and people who look like they deserved it, and pretty things happen.

Some grow into very substantial companies and it comes back to benefit meeconomically. Some grow into very respectful people who achieve extraordinary thingsthat arent necessary economic, but youre proud to have had a role in the achievementand the benefits it brings to society. Some of them just basically they influence peopleand they might be a little company, but they have big clients they serve. And some ofthem are big companies who would never normally even can see until they get to see youin a different context and it always comes back.

And if youre making a difference, somebody thought me something very profound. AndI know that they can grow rich as your favorite book, but Ive learned two big lessonsthat you share always because Ive spent time around and youll live this, too. Wheneveryoure around somebody, you make them better off because youre in their life. Andwhenever you can make a reasonable contribution, you dont need to write a blank checkfor a million dollars for somebody, you didnt have [Indiscernible] [1:37:11] of doing it,but if you can invest in somebody and give them clarity, hope, passion, possibility,purpose, and a higher understanding of how to do it right or better, the odds are, youregoing to make youre enriching the process to people, its going to come back to you.

My final questions, with your permission are three there are three specific ones butthey can go nowhere or they can as many places as you want, but Ill give you all threeand then you can answer any one or all of them.

The first one is you get asked a lot of questions in a lot of places, you get a lot ofquestions asked on TV when youre interviewed for the media, you get asked a lot ofquestion at the college circuit, you get asked a lot of questions at the conferences and theon-sites you do for corporations and organizations, from those questions, whats the onebiggest question that would be useful to share and honestly, answer of here. Second,whats the one question I should have ask you, but Im too lame to know to, that would

have been the greatest contribution in revealing beneficial piece of Daymonds secretcolossal sauce advice that I didnt even tapped into? And finally, whats the one thingyou want to be remembered most from; from this interview that I hope people will takeaway from it? You can answer any, all, or you could say, Jay, I want to answer thosequestions but I want to answer these three.


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Daymond John: Well, they were all the same answer, all three. So, the one thing thatyou didnt ask me is not because your lame or anything else as that, thats your questionnumber two, is the question that you asked as number three.

So the first thing is, and Ill answer them in chronological order, the first thing is what

do people asked me the most, and I find that they need the information the most, and itsvery, very simple and youre going to master it, and you know this already, and Im surethey were always asked, this is what is the number one or number two words or advicethat you can give any and all entrepreneurs? And the secret sauce to success? And Imalways asked that and I always say theres a couple of things.

First of all, by far, the only thing that I know that every single person that has success, theonly thing thats in common with all the mens successes is not necessarily monetary.Let me just always make that clear. Success can be a great father or a great mother whotakes care of their children and theyre living a very happy life, and theyre happy withtheir husband or wife or whatever may be, thats success. When you wake up, everysingle day and before you go to sleep, youre doing something you love, that is a form ofsuccess. And the bottom line is doing something that you love.

Ive met so many entrepreneurs and like, they are doing something for monetary gain orfor social gain, or something else of that nature, and the people that Ive met that havedone things for monetary gain have, first of all, rarely seen money. Second of all, theyveseen money, a lot of times, its been it goes away, really, really quickly once they get it,or they sometime have to pay in another form of going to jail or something else like that.So dont ever do anything for money, because, when I stop doing things for money and Idid it for love and I love seeing that person walk with that Fubu shirt, and I accepted thefact that I may have a modest job for the rest of life and I did that, thats seven years thatI created, that I did Fubu and I closed it down three times, because I didnt have anymore

money, but I opened a back up because I had found some more money that I can do itwith, those seven years, because it was never done before in my world, and I was neverpromised anything like that, those seven years, I was ecstatic. It was nothing like seeingsomebody wear my products. And that is what Ive learned with every single person whohas success; they were doing something they love. And thats the bottom line of what Ialways tell people. I know it sounds old. It sounds corny, and funny, and warm andfuzzy, but that is really the truth.

And so the second thing asked me if theres anything you didnt ask about, it was it. Andthe third thing you asked me was what is the thing that I will share with everybody? Soits all the same answer, doing something you love.

Jay Abraham: And youre a very impressive young man, and I have been honored,privileged to be around you and watch you and watch you conduct yourself not just whatyou express yourself so I could judge your intellect, your acuity, your business mastery.But watch you conduct yourself as a human being, watch you conduct yourself as acolleague or friend, you know, somebody with respect and empathy for humanity.Youre very remarkable and I have appreciated and enjoyed this thoroughly and if theresanything else that we, meaning, these magazines can do for you because we have reached


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tell us what it is. If you want to ask questions to the audience, you want them to sendyou anything, and you want to know about anything, please ask us because we have thecommitment to wherewithal and the access to do that for you.

Daymond John: No, I appreciate it and I think that its a valuable place to, you know

and Im glad you put it together because there will be information Ill need, and lookingalso on how can I improve my personal brand, how can I improve my commercial brand,because Im still, no matter what, Im astute and delight and the only reason I help peopleis, believe it or not, because they helped me. And on the show, a lot of times, they sitdown and learn from the panelist, but I learned from the entrepreneurs as well. Trust me,there are a lot of people they get up there, they are really brilliant, make what Ive done,even though they may not have the same kind of monetary success, make what Ive done,make me feel small because of the challenge theyve faced and what they go through. Soa lot of times, you know in fact, we learn from a student, and the tail has to wag fordog and so a lot of times, that I will use this outlet to get information and maybe meetthat new guy, that new cool guy, that new entrepreneur that I can invest in. So Im reallyexcited about the platform.

Jay Abraham: Well, thank you. Youre a very, very gracious contributor and youre agood friend, and I enjoy you personally and Ive enjoyed this thoroughly. Youre very,very, very, very kind. Thank you.


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