Redefining Success | Daymond John

0:00Remember when people used to talk about saving money? I literally you and I grew up in an era where that was a conversation that people were like that was a word that people said there's not a motherfucker under 25 years old that even wraps their head around the idea of like I'm gonna work and I'm not gonna go into credit card debt I'm gonna live within my means and save 10 or 10 20 percent of my take home we are now in a place of zero savings full debt full debt full debt and we don't own all to buy shit all to buy shit that doesn't mean shit damon nation what is good a pretty exciting podcast today uh we continue to try to bring some of the brightest and most exciting minds in the world uh this uh gentleman is one of the few people that has been on the podcast more than once he's putting on all sorts of helmets if you're listening at home there's a sparrow helmet now we got an army hat if you're watching the videos, you'll see it.

0:57Damon John, world renowned entrepreneur, investor, but all around good dude. And so it's really nice to have you on the show, brother. I hope you've been having a great summer. The last time I physically saw you, we were sitting apart from each other at a Knicks Heat playoff game and I was texting you. I don't think so. I think I was at VCon after that, was I? Oh, you're right. That was after, was it? You're right. Thank you, sir. You're right. I just want to bring up the Knicks heat thing because I'm still a little salty because I felt like you were clapping for the heat in Miami. And I was like, wait a minute.

1:32Tell me. Educate me. You know, I got some closure at VCon because I know at VCon you stood up there and you said, yo, cats don't get to me. You've got to understand in high school, you know, I've been a Jets fan. You said something like you was like, so nothing can get to me. So, you know, we'll get back to this helmet later. But, you know, I realize that the Knicks have lost for 40 years. Now, Gary, I want to make sure that you understand. I know that you somewhat think you understand business and pretty good at it, but they have a job. Their job is to win. For 40 years, they have lost. Yes. I'm not sure if any of our employees, if you would say, hey.

2:20Oh, wait, it's 50, by the way. 1973, it's actually 50 now. 50. Okay. So, Gary, you know, the chef, you know, or the person who does the catering, if after two weeks you're starving and you're like, I didn't eat, I think you would fire the person. Well, good news. The Knicks have gone through a lot of players in the last 50 years. Anyway, look, I know we don't have a lot of time and I'm excited to have you on. I just want to go right into this. I think one of the reasons I was excited to have you on is I've been thinking about just having people that I think are doing things I admire, I think can bring value to the audience in a podcast.

2:59And literally the only question, and then I just want to spring off of it, is what are you up to? What's on your mind? What are you most passionate about? What's interesting? What are some of your observations? What are some of your conclusions? What's brewing or what do you have closure on that's a full belief? Those are the things running through my mind. Yeah, things running through my mind. That is a big question. But, you know, I think all of us really go through that every single day unless we're blindsided by the fact that we're having a temporary form of success in one way or another. And we're thinking that for some reason it's not going to go away.

3:34But usually normally we have a healthy paranoia. So if I have to think about the entire scope of everything I'm doing right now is number one, of course, I have a dedication to entrepreneurs from Shark Tank because it's not a game right there. Their livelihoods are there. And even if I quit today, I still have five to 10 years of being somebody of value to the ones I invested in. I'm thinking about what do I do as this world has changed? I have remote employees. I have other employees that work next to me every single day. I, knowing taking my inventory, I do not want to have, I don't want to be a Gary where I have a thousand, two thousand people.

4:17It's a lot of responsibility. When I, when I topped out, it was 500, 400 employees. So what do I do where I get to really be the point where I have a small amount of people that I know all their names, right? I know everything they want to do in life. Because when I had 500 employees, you know, every time there was, we had to stop doing birthday cakes because birthday cakes were coming in every day. And I was like, well, who is Tanya? Yeah, exactly. Right? So how do I keep it small, but yet how do I make a major impact globally using all these new devices and AI and all the things that are changing?

4:54And then, of course, you know, sometimes you can drown an opportunity. People like us, I'm offered billion-dollar funds every single day. hey, Damon, let's do a fund, a luxury fund, and this and that. And it sounds good, but at 55 years old, it's not that easy. When you are raising capital from people, and if I go around to whatever, 20, 30 people, and raise these funds, well, the teacher's union or pension, they're not giving you$50 million without you showing up in Geneva or some other place every other day. Now, you times that by 20 people, and then you have somewhat a billion-dollar fund. You have a A lot of people reporting to you, you have to report to a lot of people.

5:32And then my quality of life goes away because I'm giving it all away and not to my children. So I don't need 20 houses. So what the hell do I need a billion dollars for? So I have to think about purpose at the end of the day. And how does that equate to my health, my family, my friends and my time? And your joy. Yeah, my joy. I hear it right through your mouth. Like it's a very it's I love the last minute or two because what I'm hearing and it's so right, which is it's a three dimensional game of, you know, entrepreneurship in life. Right. Of course, you know, of course, especially for you and I and for many people listening when you the money part, especially when you don't have any of it early on, it's just so black and white.

6:21It's like that's a thing. Yeah. Yeah. I need to feed my family. It's pretty simple. you don't have anything yes but then as you like go through the processes that we've gone through whether our own accumulation of more paper or more interestingly for me and i have a feeling you're going to jump in on this you start looking at the people that are a generation or two ahead of you now that we're 47 and 55 we have a lot of contemporaries ourselves who are in places of achieving certain things and you just kind of get to this place with where you're like man I know unlimited, sad, anxious, depressed, miserable, wealthy people.

6:58And like, what the fuck is that about? That's not, there's nothing interesting about that. And then you get into a place of like, oh, if I'm gonna play this, you know, I hope you're thinking the same way I am. My great hope for you is with modern medicine and the way we all roll now, you know, 110 is not impossible for us, you know? And so if you've got 55 more, God willing, you know, you'd like to kind of fucking enjoy it to the best of your ability. And that definitely isn't going to be money at all costs. It comes in impact, purpose, joy, you know, it matters. I mean, you're spot on. We are at the greatest time and you agree with me.

7:32We have the greatest moment in our lives where, listen, you know what, put it like this. If you're that everyday person right now who is growing, I'll give you an example. You know, because we are so tempted and it is our ego too, that is a little bit of a, I can do this. But you go to a place and I love I invested in a restaurant. I remember about 10 years ago because I love the chicken wing. They were amazing. I said, you know what? Great. I go there. I have a good time. The feel of everything. Chicken wing. I'm going to make you know what? I'm going to then start doing these chicken wings frozen.

8:02I'm going to make them all over the place, whatever. When I started having to deal with the labor and the inventory and all that, I never went back to that goddamn place again because I just wanted to enjoy the damn chicken wings. And I should have just left it at that. Yeah. Right. And but today, like you're saying, you know, I heard listen, Kim Kardashian had has gotten a lot of different hate mail because she went to a place called Pernubo that I went to about a month ago. I went and get this full body scan, no radiation. They find an aneurysm or a Baker cyst in my leg, in the back of my leg.

8:41Now, my friend who just owned the, who unfortunately passed away, J.R. Redinger, who first vacation he took in 30 years on his$85 million yacht, he had a pain in his leg. He went downstairs and unfortunately he's no longer here because of an aneurysm. So immediately I was petrified. But because I got that$25 ,000 or$3 ,000, Now that I understand, I don't want to be told that I got that, that, that, that, uh, that prenuvo thing. I went, I was able to check it and realize it was just a Baker assist, but I have a freedom of, uh, of, of, you know, thought to know that I'm okay. That's what technology is today.

9:19But why am I saying that? Because technology is to the point where, uh, you know, I'm having things on the E-boom machine and I'm draining my blood to see. And what I'm doing is ozone in my blood to see how much inflammation in my body. Technology is a great point, but we can live forever. And I'm going to pay it. I'm going to touch on that Kim Kardashian thing for a second. Everybody's slander. Kim,$2 ,500,$3 ,000. But you know what? Unfortunately, maybe then some of those people standing outside of those luxury stores that I see online all day long that ain't got it. Maybe they won't be able to afford a bag for another six months, but they'll be able to live for the next 20 years of their life.

9:58Or take the point of where we are today and forget if you can't afford a$25 ,000 or$3 ,000 thing like that. If you work at McDonald's and you know you get every year one physical, go get your blood check to see if your white blood cells are in line or whatever it is. Right, Gary? My point is that technology today is there. My favorite thing Oprah did ever, and she's done so many iconic things, was she had a huge audience really go to the doctor on their birthday. The big agenda she put on her show. And I watched women across this whole country during that era where she was that person in society create new behaviors in a positive way.

10:38And to your point, in a world we live in now, this is my number one point of social media to a lot of friends. you I tell my friends you posting a picture of you on a private plane break down for me how that's valuable for the person that's receiving on the other end and and you know what they'll do they'll try to be like no it's aspirational Gary I'll motivate them it ain't aspirational fuck you I'm like I don't want to see that shit yeah I'm like that's gonna make people upset on the flip side you coming on this podcast right now and saying hey I'm empathetic I've been on both sides of the financial equation but even if you're making minimum wage you do have Most of us, God bless, no matter what the financial situation, your ability to check your white blood cells on a blood test around the world is high.

11:21Of course, there's third world countries. Of course, there's North Korea. I get it. There's edge cases. But starting to have these conversations where there's value, like I'm with you 100 percent. Gary, you know, we're not we're not we're not we're not crucifying anybody who is talking about how many planes and trains they're on and or drinking, you know, X amount of champagne and cars or crucifying her. But you know what? The point of the matter is, Gary, you and I, we both come from immigrant parents. We come from a day and age where we didn't have social media to say, what is the right thing to do?

11:50You know what? Maybe I can't afford that, but I know how to put a bunch of ice in a damn tub and reduce my inflammation. You and I come from parents and people who didn't have this information, who they said, listen, we never go to the doctor because we can't afford the doctor or they're wrong or whatever. the same way that I get motivated from following whether Gary Vee or somebody about medicine and everything else. Well, then you know what? If you're going to have all these feeds on places to go and things to buy and music, no problem. Put some feeds on there of AI, financial intelligence, how to help your health.

12:24And you know what? Slowly in the morning, when you look through these feeds, maybe you start in a year to realize, maybe I should do something else. DJ, I'm so proud of you, brother. I'm loving everything. This is going so well. I literally just was in Australia. And, you know, we both speak a lot. We've been able to cross paths. I still always finally smile when I think. I love the gangsterness of how long that goddamn trip took because everybody, like you said, they see the stages and they don't realize your ass was up for I don't know how long. It's no joke. But go ahead. Let's go. That's that's what I want people to see.

12:57But let's go. You and I, you know, I've always liked your speaking style as well, because I think you, you know, you don't have the same deck. And so in this talk, I did three cities real quick and I did in the first place. So I brought it back in both spots. Improv kind of. I was like, hey, by the way, talk about these feeds. When I open my Instagram, when I open my TikTok, I'm seeing people save a kitten off a tree. I'm seeing a three-year-old hug another two-year-old. I'm seeing Jets videos. I'm seeing sports. Like you find what you're looking for. the fact that you just went there as well which is like you can say that like that we're getting all this bad stuff why don't you engage and spend time on good stuff you are more than welcome like damon just said to go to instagram and tiktok right now which are the predominant feeds for a lot of people go to the search type in financial literacy enter things will show up you can then follow nine of them you don't buy anything just don't buy anything don't buy a course don't buy get educated back out type in eat cleaner and healthier enter follow 912 people enter back out how to fix back pain enter find a bunch of content follow that tomorrow and i have a funny feeling both of us are going to get some tweets on this everyone listening can change their feed tomorrow by searching 20 positive or informational or thoughtful things following 20 to 50 accounts through your little discovery of that and watch what changes.

14:31You become what you think about most of the time, Oprah said, and we can do these in simple forms. You know what I've learned? Listen, they say that, I don't know, whatever it is, all the PhDs will correct me, there's 100 and whatever, right? 105 ,000 words in English language. We use about 6 ,000 or 7 ,000 of those words. And if you want to make immediate changes too, my little girl is seven years old. She's taught a new word every single week. And the words that we use are the people we are. If we use words in our 5 ,000 to 7 ,000 words, if we use words like drama, hate, broke, fight, ignorant, you know what I mean?

15:09Then we're going to start moving there. So the words that I teach my daughter every week is something like interest. If you know about interest, you'll earn it. If you don't know about it, you'll pay it. Or love or compassion or empathy or save, you know, these type of words. It's the same as the feeds we're watching, right? It's all of these things that we use that slowly can change us. We always think too literal. We got to go to school and learn financial intelligence right now. We got to do this. it's the small habits that get us because when you when you stick to those small habits you know we stick to bad habits no problem or how i say the devil sinks in your life i'll give you an example you know i think about i told somebody the other day they said well i can't get nowhere in life i said when you go on vacation when you say i'm gonna get that pina colada with a double 151 shot as soon as i land i promise you as soon as you land you got that goddamn pina colada with a double And then you go into more.

16:06You came out with the 151, my God. You know, I worked at Red Lobster. You had that 151 in there, double shot of that, baby. Oh, my God. When I was a kid in the liquor store, the people that bought the 151, I was like, ooh, they're playing a dick. Let me tell you who's really gangster. Mark Cuban used to drink Mad Dog 2020. So that shows you he was on some other shit, right? I mean, I thought it was only Grady on Sanford and Son who drank that and Ripple, right, or Wild Irish Coast. The bottom line is you're not going to let yourself down when you say I'm going to do that. But you know what? When you say I'm going to go home and read a chapter every night, you get to other things.

16:41It's the ones who break those habits and are just as disciplined about the positive things, whether it's scrolling through those things or getting there one by one. In the back half of this podcast, let's go micro. We went very macro about perspective, mindset. I think everything we just touched on is going to bring a ton of value, especially because we went a little deeper on like change your algorithms. Talk to me about in the micro, any sectors, any startups, anything that has got you going, anything what's going on with actually how about five minutes about what's going on with you? Like what do you like?

17:16What's going on with you with content or podcasts or. You know, it's a good question. So I think that obviously the biggest to utilize what I have at my my disposal. I've come from a business where I had to make a shirt, warehouse it. I love content, but I love content and education. My my my three feet, if I'm going to call it or the rest of my life is going to be spent on drilling down on education and giving access. Now, there's a couple of forms of access to give. Right. There's what we do every day. You and I have written many books on this. I'm on Shark Tank. I do that. But I've become a little more of a Gary Vee, Kevin O 'Leary kind of guy where I'm like, all right, I wrote five books on it.

18:00If you guys don't get it, then that's your goddamn problem. But the people that I want to get it is the kids. So my thing is that hopefully I've made an impact with FUBU. Hopefully I've made an impact with Shark Tank. But my my my my my really goal now is financial intelligence and education for children six to 10 years old to start them off thinking this and break the school system that does not teach them this. because what happens if you don't teach them this and then it's at 18 years old they can go get 500 ,000 worth of student debt for a for a career they're not even sure they want to have then you set our country up for failure because then they don't have enough money and when you don't have enough money like we talked about earlier the cheapest things to consume for food are made out of salt sugar and butter and also we have a bigger issue that's what that's my that's my that's my other amazing people to either compete with him or see the value.

18:58And that's why I had that book, Little Day to Learns to Earn, that did really well, hit Amazon number one for 24 hours. So that's where I'm going. Good for you. I love it. You know, it's funny. I love that. And you know, what's crazy is I said something, ironically, on this point this last week, last week, I also improv'd into the standup keynote style that I talk. I'm like, remember when people used to and talk about saving money. I literally, you and I grew up in an era where that was a conversation that people were like, that was a word that people said. There's not a motherfucker under 25 years old that even wraps their head around the idea of like, I'm gonna work and I'm not gonna go into credit card debt.

19:42I'm gonna live within my means and save 10 or 10, 20 % of my take home. We are now in a place of zero savings. full debt full debt full debt and we don't own all to buy shit all to buy shit that doesn't mean shit and we don't own because now we rent an airbnb or we take you know we don't own any equity and and and that's critical but you know listen even even as i talk about investing like this you know listen you are you are obviously somebody who broke into the market and really have educated us on nfts you know i i just did a post i said you know when it's not sexy anymore and you really love it that's when it's time to invest because if you know that you know you know you know e and you know you need bitcoin but you need e to power all these nfts and nobody's talking about it no more fucking bitcoin just went up from from i don't know 15 or 18 dollars to to whatever it doubled in six months right so you already know that this stuff is not going away but But if you get financial intelligence from us, you could think about when would your money have doubled in six months ever?

20:53Yeah. But if you're not thinking like what you're talking about, ownership, saving, investing in early, like Barbara says, buy houses now. Why? Interest rates are too much. You know why? Because nobody else is buying and the interest rate is going to reset in another six months or a year. This is the time to buy. Own. Love. I love. And listen, I think the six to 10 thing is massive. And I think you're so on it because I think, look, VFriends, all this crazy shit, right? The NFT part, obviously, that's a very volatile asset, similar to internet stocks in the 90s. We talked about that at Nausea.

21:27On the flip side, the mission, like what I'm doing with the cards and the comic books and the toys and the animations, teaching kids at six to 10, which is my target's five to 10 in a lot of ways with what I'm doing now. Later, it will be more like - Yeah, same thing, five to 10, same thing. Later, I'm going to convert them into the stuff like Marvel movies, 18 to 25, all that. But teaching accountable. When people ask me, what's your favorite befriend? It's like children. I love them all. I created them. But when I tell you accountable aunt, if I can get accountable aunt to be cool as fuck and a real thing to five to 10 year olds and humans at 18 to 30, like think it's a good thing to be accountable, it will literally reverse.

22:09Forget about COVID. The great pandemic of the last decade is a complete lack of accountability. Literally everyone on earth is walking around pointing fingers. It's the government's fault. It's that person's fault. It's technology's fault. It's everyone's fault but themselves. Right, exactly. It's crazy. Accountability, it is critical. I mean, you know, those are the type of books I'm trying to put out, right? Little Damon Learns to Barter. Little Damon Learns Responsibility. Little Damon Learns all those type things. And, you know, you know, and it's also we have a job and that's the problem.

22:44Right. You know, as we know, our children are growing up and they all want to be singers and dancers and TikTok people. And China is changing the whole game and they're showing them. But we want our children to understand these processes early. Like I said, you know, you don't teach. I mean, maybe that this is exactly what they probably did to all the players on the Jets and the Knicks. You don't teach people to be a professional athlete when they're 18 years old. You teach them when they're five. Now, most of the Jets and the Knicks were probably taught at 18 years old. But you don't teach people to play an instrument at 20 and put them in an orchestra.

23:14You teach them at five and six. And I always break down the very simple way that any person should activate three dollars. When three dollars, three million or three billion come in the first dollar. And if you teach kids this in the right way, they'll start thinking like this. The first dollar goes to what exactly they need to buy because they need to live. The second is an investment. And an investment can be in their public company, in their education, whatever the case is. And the third dollar goes for what you would like to have but don't have to have. If you don't buy it, then put it into number two.

23:46Number two sooner or later grows because their investments end to bucket number one and number three. But the way that we live today, like you said, with no ownership and no accountability, we work really hard. I get that. We go and buy number three first because we want to treat ourselves. That means we have no money for number two, and then we're paying 18 % to 24 % credit card interest on number one, and we never, ever get out of the cycle. Teach kids that at five to six to seven years old. They will start off with the fundamentals on what to use with financial intelligence. And while you battle on that, which is gonna be massive, I'm gonna be battling on redefining success for some of these kids of like, hey, if you're happy, like real talk, if you're 24 and you wake up, if you're 33 and you wake up, and you live within your means of making 79 ,000 a year, telling y 'all you're winning.

24:40I know all the glitz and glamor. I know the Hollywoodification. Listen, I'm a capitalist and an entrepreneur, but the capitalist entrepreneur, Hollywood American thing. Do not get tricked. You need to fight for happiness and being content. That doesn't mean being passive. Being content and happy is unstoppable. Like, I'm ambitious as fuck, but there's a level of contentness that doesn't lead to the anxiety. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to share with you a story that, you know, I've never shared with anybody and I just thought about it. You know, so FUBU was obviously doing really well, But I knew when I did my math, I was like, listen, you know what?

25:20When I came into the market, Levi was doing$18 billion. It's doing$3 billion now. I don't even know where United Color or Benetons are. I don't know where these are. So naturally, I'm not going to put myself first as an ego. Sooner or later, FUBU will have its up and its down. I realized I lived across the street at the time from my office, and I had a Maybach because I wanted to pull up, of course, all the time at the parties and the club at the Maybach. When I think about it, I'm paying for a Maybach. I can pay for all this stuff. I'm flying private, by the way. You know, I got to fly private that time because I'm rich.

25:50Right. When I really thought about it, the five people that saw me in first class going to L.A. and the five people that saw me coming back, I got them maybe two hours later. But you know what? It was a difference of sixty thousand dollars. Why do I give a shit about those 10 people that saw me or not? Why did I need the Maybach to go across the street to my office? Right. What I did was I went and bought a little property. It didn't cost much, but it was in the middle of the woods, way upstate New York. And I said, if everything goes to shit, I got this little place and I'm not going to have to be.

26:21And I can live. I had enough money to live. I can now live and not have to worry about being scrutinized. Hey, weren't you the fubu dude? Oh, fubu suck. Yo, you're broke. I did that. I put that away. And thank God I did. But today now you can live anywhere you want in the world. And you don't have to walk down the block. You can have a shit ass little farm that you're super happy with. You can live in a little ass apartment no matter what. And you can really be financially secure with what you're going to do and put that money into what you really need and not have to. Who gives a shit about what other people are going to think about you?

26:56Because you know who's important? What your kids and your family and your wife and your husband, your parents to be OK. And today we're in the world where you don't have to live in the city. You don't have to have a big car. You don't have to have that shit because this is the only place they really need to see you. So who are you trying to impress at the end of the day? And that's the important part of what success is to you. Success needs to be are you happy with the ones that you love? I couldn't agree more, man. Listen, I'm sitting here and having an out-of-body view of our convo, and I'm like, man, there's a chance.