Turning Passion into Profit | Daymond John EP 559

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11What got you into or being interested into the fashion world? Well, it was this new music that was coming out of the Bronx right around 1982, 83. It was called, you know, rap music. And it made its way into Queens where I lived. And this music was amazing. It was fascinating. And before that, I would listen to music, you know, great, great people. like, of course, you know, rest in peace, David Bowie and Rolling Stones and Donna Summer, Stevie Wonder, Barry White. But all these people had this beautiful way of singing. They had this orchestra and everything else. And they touched on some of the political issues in the world.

0:49But this music that was coming out of the Bronx named Rap, it was kind of like our version of Twitter today, I always say. It was like a disruptive technology because I started to hear about other kids, their hopes and their dreams, their aspirations, the plights. So the neighborhood, things that I wouldn't be able to see on the news. And they were putting it in a rhythmic form. And it was starting to educate us. And it came with a way not only to listen to music, but a way to walk, talk, and even dress. And you felt like you were part of this society if you wore your Adidas with fat laces on or you knew how to breakdance.

1:23And that's where I started to find my identity as a young man. So that's really where fashion started. it i wouldn't know till probably about another 10 years 15 years that maybe we should all do something uh that we love right i tried everything else but i never thought about fashion it's kind of like you know you bust your butt to go uh and and work and make a living and then you go out and on the weekends you kind of snowboard and do all stuff like that but you never thought about Busting your butt building snowboarding or snowboarding and making money. So how old were you when you sold your first article of clothing?

2:03It was 1989, Good Friday, 3 o 'clock in the afternoon, 37 degrees outside. I stood outside the Coliseum Mall in 1989, so I was 20 years old. Wow, okay. Yeah. Well, 20 years old. 20 years old. When did you have, how old were you when you said you had the passion for? I had the passion of 10, 11, 12. Well, I had a passion for fashion earlier on in my life prior to that as well, but it was really my mother was dressing me because we didn't, you know, not really when I was four or five or six because we didn't have money, enough money to go buy clothes. So she was sold. Interesting. Sometimes the pocket would be hanging up in the back somewhere, but it was okay.

2:37When did you decide that you had the permission to go create your own things or sew them in the basement and then go sell them? What gave you that, you know, belief in yourself that you could create this? again like like most of us start there was no belief that i could do it but i remember walking into a store and um i started to see cross colors everywhere and i walked in the store and i saw this picture of this guy who like looked like a young mike tyson hanging off a pair of jeans and it was uh carl can i and then it just hit me i thought prior to that we always thought that you had to be from italy and france to design you had to be older and like a you know you know the guys with the tape around their neck, you know, the tailors, right?

3:19And so, or whatever the fashion designers had looked like in those days. And I thought I just, I'm just supposed to buy from them. When I saw that, I was like, wow, that's amazing. Okay, no problem. Then I'm watching a De La Soul video, I remember, and seeing them wearing these hats. It almost looked like a ski cap, but it has like a tie on the top. And I couldn't find that hat anywhere in Queens. I finally found one uptown Manhattan. I pay for the hat. I come home. I show my mother. I said, look, Ma, I always say a joke. I pay$6 in gas,$900 in tolls, and$20 for the hat. Check this out. And she goes, that's a piece of crap.

3:54But I could show you how to sew hats like that so you can sew as many as you want so you can wear them. You don't have to do that. So go get$40 worth of fabric. I go to the store. Get$40 worth of fabric. I come home. I give my mother the stuff to sew the hats. And she says, I'm not sewing this. You're sewing this. I sew. Crap. Now I got to work at this? I sew the hats. And then all of a sudden, I have all these hats and only one head. And that's when I went out and sold those hats outside on that Good Friday. And I sold$800 worth of hats in one hour. And that's when it just snapped. I just said to myself, wait a minute.

4:25I made this with my own hands. I went and sold this to individuals. And nobody was in my way. I didn't have to get a check from a boss. Nobody told me when to come to work or go to work. I can't get fired from this because of my color creed or whatever the case is. I'm responsible for what's happening here. and I will either fail because every decision I make or I'll succeed because every decision I make. Was that the first time that you made money on your own as an entrepreneur or were you? No, no, no, no. I made money on my own and lost money on my own as an entrepreneur. It took me a long time to really decide what I want to do and what was my first business.

4:59It took me forever to decide my first business. My first business, I finally decided what I wanted to do when I was six years old. It took me forever, right? I was selling pencils in school. Wow. And then I would go ahead and sell candy. And then when it snowed, I would shovel snow in the winter, rake leaves in the fall. And then I remember when I used to shovel snow, I used to go and kids would want to help me because I started getting everybody in the blocks that I wanted to. I would travel about three miles and take care of it. Kids would want to help me, so I would tell them, okay, no problem.

5:36Here's what you're going to do. If you're going to help me, I'm going to let you work. I'm going to give you a couple. Let's split the money with you. But you got to do a spring cleanup for free so we can go back into spring. And then I would go to the owners of the house and say, well, everybody else in the block, if they shovel your snow, they're showing you$3. If I shovel your snow three times during the winter, I'm going to give you a free spring cleanup. So I was leveraging all those little guys in the neighborhood. I love it. Ah, man, that was a great business. now when did you realize that you kind of you know the$800 first day we might have been a great first day but when you realize like okay I have something actually that consistently getting results I mean was it just easy for you after that for the next year you were just making 800 bucks every day and then it just kept growing or was there like oh there's some dry spells here or I need to change where I'm promoting like anything in business it was always a dry spell here dry for there but in all reality you know my friends and i we love selling the hats why because there was a reason to talk to girls on the street there you go right then i would start going to the black expos where there was like a basically market on the road and i would try to sell shirts there why because girls were there right right but also we started we were really passionate about what we were doing and and we started getting that high when we sold stuff at a black expo you know and then we go to another one and we see somebody wearing it wow that's pretty cool and that's when they came back and started saying man you know i tell everybody about this shirt and they asked me for so i need to buy three now because i gotta buy for everybody and we said wow i would have normally paid to go to the black expo to go around and buy stuff or see stuff and then you know we happen to live in hollis queens there's a lot of music artists in hollis queens you know obviously uh salt and pepper run dmc ll cool j tribal quest a lot of them come from there We didn't really know them, but we knew all their friends.

7:29But then all of a sudden we heard, we were saying, well, can we get something in a video? And they would go, yeah, come on down. We'd go down to the video, and there's craft services. It's free to eat as much food as you want. You get to see somebody like LL Cool J performing a song. There's video vixens running around. There's everywhere. I would have paid to go there. Meanwhile, I'm going to go ahead and put on a shirt. They put on a shirt, and then I'd say, man, I don't have any money. I have a small company, so I really can't afford to lose that shirt. Can I have it back? Really? Yeah. And they would give it back?

7:59And they would give it back, yeah. Wow. There's only one rapper who never gave the shirt back to me. Old Dirty Bastard, of course. Okay, awesome. If you expect to get anything back from a man named Old Dirty Bastard, there's bigger issues. So 20 years ago, you were essentially the true branding expert who was leveraging the Instagram influencers of today. You were leveraging the music stars, the MTV stars. Yes. And getting that social media out there on MTV as opposed to on Instagram, which is what brands are doing today. They're trying to find the top influencers and get their clothing on them.

8:33Yeah, we always call FooWoo the first hashtag of clothing. There you go.

8:43Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

9:39Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.