Daymond John - FUBU Founder & Shark Tank Investor ($6B in Global Sales) | If Nobody Knows Your Name You've Already Lost

Summary

Success Story Podcast with Scott D. Clary

Episode: Daymond John – FUBU Founder & Shark Tank Investor ($6B in Global Sales)

Title Highlight: "If Nobody Knows Your Name You've Already Lost"
Date: July 31, 2026
Guest: Daymond John (@thesharkdaymond)
Host: Scott D. Clary (@scottdclary)

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Episode Overview

This episode features a deep and candid conversation with Daymond John—iconic founder of FUBU, prolific investor, and longtime Shark Tank panelist. Scott and Daymond dive into the evolution and critical importance of personal branding, earning and scaling attention, the rise of influencer marketing, and how entrepreneurs can thrive in today’s landscape dominated by social media and AI. They unpack Daymond’s personal journey, strategies for standing out, the lessons of legacy, and the persistent need for “the power of broke”—entrepreneurial scrappiness no matter how much you have.

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Main Themes & Key Discussion Points

1. The Power of Attention and Personal Branding

• Branding Before Social Media:

  • Daymond shares stories from his upbringing in Queens, learning early about the power of “attention” and branding—before the terms were even defined—with rap tours, gold chains, and local neighborhood entrepreneurs (05:19).
  • Quote: “I was on the first national tour for rap… I realized that once you had…an Adidas chain or a Run DMC chain, people wanted that attention. …I saw branding from that perspective. I didn’t know it was branding.” (Daymond John, 04:15)

• Personal Brand as a Force Multiplier:

  • Daymond explains how personal brand multiplies opportunity and trust, especially in the era of social media and AI (26:51).
  • Quote: “You have to brand yourself…People want to know not only what are you doing for them, but who are you.” (Daymond John, 24:06)

• Personal Brand in Leadership:

  • CEOs must actively curate their public image—customers, partners, and prospective hires check online first. Not controlling the narrative is a liability (21:02).
  • Quote: “If you don’t use social, if you don’t use influence to craft a narrative around who you are…you already have, people already make an assumption of who you are online. So you either control it or you let them run with it.” (Scott Clary, 36:58)

• Authenticity is Key:

  • Being disingenuous online is the fastest way to fail. Each brand archetype works only if it’s true to the person's real personality (37:48).
  • Memorable Moment: Daymond on why he can’t act like Kevin O’Leary or Snoop Dogg:
    “Kevin o’ Leary has invested a lot in being an asshole. He’s the only man on TV who can shit on you with a twinkle in his eye… That’s his brand.” (Daymond John, 37:57)

2. Building Attention Without Scale—Origin Stories

• FUBU’s Grassroots Branding (06:44–09:51):

  • No internet, no social media.
  • Daymond describes “growth hacking” by targeting “big guys” with free shirts since they wore them more, hung around rappers, and served as natural brand ambassadors.
  • He kept sales hyper-local, focusing on eight New York stores, maximizing focus before scaling. “I didn’t have money to have 50 shirts…So I said, who needs this the most? Well, the big guys, they don’t have places to shop…They wore [the shirts] 10 times a month” (07:23–09:23).

• Proof of Concept:

  • Starting small allows intimate knowledge of the audience, collecting real feedback before scaling or taking outside investment:
    “When you’re starting small, you hear your audience. They tell you what they like, they tell you what they don’t like…When you go big and broad, you just don’t know.” (Daymond John, 09:54)

3. Influencer Marketing Before Social Media

• Inventing “Influencer Marketing” (11:38):

  • FUBU actively seeded their clothes with musicians and celebrities, making the brand visible in music videos and TV long before “influencer marketing” was a concept.
  • Daymond reflects on this:
    “The name FUBU itself is a hashtag, right?... It took a lot of failures…But again, you know, there’s two things I know: Number one, I’m not that bright. Number two, I don’t know when to stop.” (Daymond John, 11:48)

• Ad Spend & Audience:

  • Used common sense over “Nielsen ratings”—bought ads where his audience really was, even if data didn’t show it (e.g., BET over MTV), disproving established industry “truths” (19:07–20:10).

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Technology, Live Selling, and AI

The Modern Founder's Playbook

• Three Musts for Modern CEOs (23:27):

  1. Live Selling: Direct, real-time selling and interaction with customers.
  2. AI: Use to reduce friction—but not a total replacement for human touch.
  3. Personal Brand: Most critical. The CEO’s brand builds trust and opens doors.

  Quote: “What this is, the most important is you have to brand yourself, the founders and everybody in the company. …People want to know not only what are you doing for them, but who are you, because they want to brag about you.” (Daymond John, 24:06)

• On Live Shopping:

  • Scott marvels at how platforms like Whatnot and Chinese e-commerce have normalized live shopping as the new sales channel.

Personal Brand & Trust

• Branding as a Trust Builder (34:21):

  • Buyers do their research online first; each piece of content by a founder is a new “trust touchpoint”.

• Quote:

  • “The easiest thing to sell is the truth…If you want in charge of your brand, they’re reinterpreting it whatever way they want.” (Daymond John, 35:16)

• Humanity Becomes Premium:

  • In an AI-saturated future, genuine human interaction and personal narrative will become ever more valuable (57:29–59:34).

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Lessons on Entrepreneurship & Founder Growth

Starting Small, Staying Scrappy

• “Power of Broke” Mentality (68:05):

  • The best entrepreneurs maintain creativity and resourcefulness even with abundant resources.
  • Example: During Covid, Jeff Bezos innovated by paying employees to deliver packages themselves, freeing logistics and retaining staff.

• Mistakes on a Small Scale:

  • Encourages founders to make mistakes while “nobody knows your name”—low stakes, high learning; “It’s better to make mistakes small. And nobody cares. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody knows.” (Daymond John, 67:51)

The Real Qualities of Successful Founders

• Customer Obsession (53:56):

  • Relentless focus on delivering value and solving the customer’s problem, not just chasing money.
    “They wake up every day and say how can I be of more value to the customer today than I was yesterday?” (Daymond John, 53:56)
  • Anecdotes: Chewy’s model of sending flowers when a pet dies; entrepreneurs jumping on Zoom to talk to every customer.

• Curiosity & Adaptability (46:24):

  • Successful founders show curiosity, awareness, and willingness to figure things out—even in industries or channels new to them (like live shopping).

• Dyslexia as Advantage—and Warning (73:07):

  • Daymond, Barbara Corcoran, and other sharks are dyslexic—forcing action orientation and laser focus.
  • Warns parents: Undiagnosed neurodivergence can hinder or derail a child’s life; psychological safety and support are a game-changer.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Brand Expansion:

  • “If people don’t know who you are, they don’t trust what you sell. Because selling is all about trust at the end of the day.” (Scott Clary, 34:21)

• On Authenticity:

  • “Be authentic with who your brand is…You enough people will resonate with that brand.” (Daymond John, 39:01)

• On Starting Small:

  • “Start super small, get the proof of concept, and then you blow it up.” (Daymond John, 01:12 & 09:23)

• On Influence:

  • “There’s a million real estate brokers. There’s only one Barbara Corcoran.” (Daymond John, 25:39)

• On Mistakes:

  • “You end up finding out whether you like it or not. Small, you’re gonna make the same mistake small that you’re gonna make big.” (Daymond John, 67:49)

• On Legacy:

  • “Your legacy is all you’re gonna have…If we leave [our kids] with a legacy where they can’t walk in a room, we’ve hurt them for the rest of their life.” (Daymond John, 78:09)

• Ice T wisdom:

  • “If you keep cutting corners, you’re gonna wonder why you keep going around in circles.” (Ice T via Daymond John, 62:57)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:44] – Early influences: branding, Queens, attention & local entrepreneurs
• [06:44] – “Growth hacking” before the Internet; FUBU’s starting tactics
• [09:54] – The power of starting small and really knowing your audience
• [11:38] – FUBU as early influencer marketing
• [16:07] – The transition to Shark Tank and mastering media
• [19:07] – Knowing your market, ad spend lessons
• [23:27] – The three priorities for CEOs: live selling, AI, personal brand
• [34:21] – Personal brand equals trust and opportunity
• [37:48] – Authenticity and the danger of faking it online
• [44:30] – How even busy founders can start with social media—using tools like ChatGPT
• [46:24] – What personality trait signals a winning entrepreneur
• [53:56] – Customer obsession as the defining entrepreneurial habit
• [57:29] – The future: personal brand, AI, and the human premium
• [68:05] – “Power of broke” at scale, and why scrappiness never goes out of style
• [73:07] – How dyslexia shaped Daymond and the importance of neurodiversity support
• [78:09] – The ultimate lesson: legacy and living for the respect of those who know you best

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Actionable Takeaways

• For Founders:

  • Start small and know your audience—don’t rush to “go national” before the local base loves you.
  • Invest in and manage your personal brand intentionally, no matter your scale.
  • Embrace live selling and AI, but never let go of the personal touch.
  • Keep experimenting—your most valuable learning (and opportunities) will come from direct, messy action.

• For Executives:

  • Don’t delegate your online reputation—prospects, customers, and new hires judge you by it.
  • Your social presence isn’t just marketing; it builds trust and opens closed doors.

• For Parents & Mentors:

  • Create psychological safety for your kids to try and fail; neurodiversity is a superpower if nurtured.
  • The legacy you leave—how you’re seen and spoken of by those who matter—is your truest asset.

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Closing Note

Daymond and Scott end by underscoring that entrepreneurship is a journey, not a destination—and that in a world of AI and automation, being genuinely known and trusted is the most defensible “moat” anyone can build.

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For More

• Daymond John: @thesharkdaymond | ceoaccess.com
• Scott D. Clary: @scottdclary | www.successstorypodcast.com

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Summary prepared for listeners seeking actionable insights and inspiration from one of entrepreneurship’s defining voices.

Transcript

[Scott Clary]

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[Daymond John]

Way before that you hacked when there

[Scott Clary]

was no social media, no Internet. So how do you think about attention when there's no distribution?

[Daymond John]

Start super small, get the proof of concept and then you blow it up. When you're starting small, you. You hear your audience. They tell you what they like. They tell you what they don't like.

[Scott Clary]

Today's guest is Daymond John, entrepreneur, investor and founder of fubu. From building a global fashion brand to investing in hundreds of businesses, he's dedicated his career to helping entrepreneurs grow. In this conversation, he shares how to earn attention, build a personal brand and stay ahead in the age of AI. Why do you think so many people do not understand how to use personal brand properly?

[Daymond John]

This is an age old challenge of people not understanding what marketing is. Personal branding, it's important. Most CEO and founders should be thinking about three things right now. Live selling number two. Of course, AI. The most important is you have to brand yourself. People want to know not only what are you doing for them, but who are you?

[Scott Clary]

My fitness pal is a success story partner. Now here's something I've noticed. After interviewing hundreds of founders. The ones that are performing at the highest level, the ones that are truly winning, they aren't just optimizing their business or their calendar or their team, they're paying attention to what they eat. And the ones who aren't paying attention, they're usually the first ones to burn out. And that pattern is consistent enough that it got me thinking about my own nutrition. Not whether I was eating well, but whether I actually knew what the big picture looked like. That's why I started using the MyFitnessPal app. I wanted to see what I was actually eating. Not what I assumed I was eating, but the real numbers. What my protein intake looked like, what my macronutrient breakdown was, where my calories were actually going throughout the day. And. And the app gives you all of that. Now, what kept me using it is that there's zero friction. If I eat something, I scan the barcode. It pulls everything up. I can also verbally log what I eat, and it remembers my regular meals. The most days, I'm logging my food in under a minute. See, food is a foundation for your energy, your sleep, your recovery, and your performance. It's not one of many inputs. It is the one input. So go to podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott. All uppercase for 15% off MyFitnessPal premium. That's podcast myfitnesspal.com code Scott. All right, Damon, I appreciate you being here.

[Daymond John]

Thank you for having me.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, it's going to be fun. I want to talk about going way back in your story with LL Cool J sneaking Fubu into a GoT commercial. You are like the original growth hacker, marketer, personal brand builder, whatever you want to call it. Was that the moment in your life when you realized how important attention was?

[Daymond John]

No way. Way before that. I was mentally ready for that. But I knew attention. You know, I grew up in queens, you know, 30 miles from where we're shooting today, I am. I remember the attention as soon as you got. Because growing up in Queens, there was so many rappers that came from Queens, right? And LL Cool J, Salt N Pepper, Run DMC, Tropical Quest, Lost Boys, Irv Gotti, 50 Cent. But attention came with fat gold chains. You know, I. I was there. I was on the. I was on the first national tour for rap. It was the Run DMC Raising Hell right before this called Fresh Fest. And I realized that once you had it, they had a chain, an Adidas chain or a Run DMC chain. People wanted that attention. And then Def Jam will come out with the Def Jam jackets, and everybody wanted a jacket. And so I knew that I saw branding from that perspective. I didn't know it was branding. I was like, everybody wants their team jacket. I don't care if you were a drug dealer with a drug dealer chain, which I wasn't Or Def Jam Jacket or whatever the case is, or the small entrepreneurs in the neighborhood. They used to be a guy named Cab company called Woods Cabs and another guy named Poor Freddy. Poor Freddie made tires. These are small entrepreneurs, when you think about it, in my level. But these were everyday entrepreneurs that were known around the world. You're the son of Poor Freddie.

[Scott Clary]

You got a Def Jam jacket.

[Daymond John]

So that's when I understood the power of branding and attention. And I don't think I've ever told anybody it in that way, ever in my life. So, you know, usually you get the same questions. Thank you for asking that.

[Scott Clary]

Because I just see you as. And you didn't call it attention and personal brand back then, but I see you as something that tapped into it for everybody else, understood how to tap into it.

[Daymond John]

Well, no, of course, you know, I. Yes, in the modern way. But there were many who came before me who understood it. But I just took it to another level, you know, with fubu knowing that I wanted to create a global brand. And now I stand on the shoulders of giants like Kalk and I and Cross Colors, who, who, who helped me, who inspired me, Walkawear, stuff like that. But, you know, I started to understand that it can be a global brand instead of Poor Freddy's in the hood, right? Or this one just in America. I understood that. Why not make it bigger? You know, my mother had a. I tell the story. My mother had a can opener in the house. It was over the kitchen table. It was about 2ft long. And it always said, think big. And I used to. It was way up in the. And I used to say, when are we gonna open this, this 10 pound can of beans with this can opener? But she would always say to me, bigger. No, no, no. Well, mom, I want to. I want to open a store in the neighborhood. Nice. Bigger. Well, I want to sell to the United States bigger.

[Scott Clary]

How do you get attention at scale? Because this is what, you know, I was researching and I know people know the story of fubu, and you've told this story a thousand times. But like, some of the shit that you did was very impressive. Like, very growth hacky. Like, you had five jerseys. You made it look like every rapper in New York was wearing a FUBU Jersey. You sold 800 worth of hats at one point with no brand like you, you hacked when there was no media. There was no. There was no social media.

[Daymond John]

There was no Internet.

[Scott Clary]

No Internet. So how do you think about attention

[Daymond John]

cell phones when there's no distribution? How do I think about Attention.

[Scott Clary]

When there was no distribution, you already got attention somehow.

[Daymond John]

Yeah, Got to start with a local team. You know, you got to put in. As you and I were talking about, you put in 1400 reps. You said, well, nobody pays attention to you for the 100 reps. People think you're going to die at the 300, 500 reps, 500 reps. They start paying attention to you. And then they start, you know, saying, okay, whatever, when you start and, and, and, and the, the 100 or 200 or 400 people that listen to you, they started become the ambassador. Oh, I want to listen to this podcast. Are you crazy? I've been on this forever. Are you stupid? Like you should have been on it a hole. So, you know, I did that with again. I started small. I started with the, I had the 50 T shirts. I put them on 50 large guys. 5x and 6x. People don't remember people if they haven't heard the story. I didn't have money to have 50 shirts giving away to all the cool kids that would wear it once. So I said, who, who needs this the most? Well, the big guys, they don't have places to shop. They have Rochester big and tall. And they can either get a white shirt or black shirt or a custom made piece, which costs a lot. I gave the 50 shirts to those big guys. Those are four Xs and five X's. Well, guess what they wore 10 times a month. They were in front of the red ropes at the clubs. They were the bodyguards to the rappers. Rappers start saying, hey, when can I get a piece? And they were like, no, because you're going to wear it one time. And the little man not going to give me another piece. No. Right. I went to eight stores. I sold in eight stores. Only in New York City, everybody wants to say, oh, you know, I'm all over now. Don't get me wrong. It said fubu and it said New York, London and Paris. Okay? I got a cousin named Pookie. He bought a shirt, he lived in Paris, and I mailed one to London. So I didn't lie, I just romance the truth. But I sold the eight stores. Now you would normally want to come on Shark Tank and say, well, I'm all over the country. No, when I was in the eight stores, I knew that I was selling an average of, let's say, 12 shirts a week. Well, then how can I get up to 14 shirts a week? And then how can I then add shirts, jackets? And then when I finally got an offer by Samsung Textile Division. The store owner said he's selling more goods than Nike. If you look at the percentage, if I would have sent my stuff to D.C. and California, they listen to different music, they wear, if I send it to Mexico, they wear different sizes. So, you know, again, start super small and you get the proof of concept and then you blow it up.

[Scott Clary]

But you also know your audience 100% better than anyone else.

[Daymond John]

And when you're starting small, you hear your audience, they tell you what they like, they tell you what they don't like. When you go big and broad, you're just, you just don't know.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, it's the same. Listen, it's the same for growing a podcast, building a business. You know, I just had Matt Zingler on here, he's a co founder of Rolling Loud and he was saying like how he expands to different cities is he goes to live in that city and then once he lives there and he experiences the culture and the music and the taste, then he can expand and he has like 100% hit rate. He's always successful with the expansions overseas. Everywhere it takes rolling out because he lives there.

[Daymond John]

You know, when we would, when we licensed it globally, we would license it and we would send somebody who lived there for a little while. But whoever took it in that country, they would need to be able to make 50% of their own versions of FUBU off of our design package. Now, most companies would have said at the time, that's it, this is the, this is the brand right here. Didn't. But we realized at that time in Asia, people were dressing in almost like character, right? They. So they would, they would, they would get the packaging, they would get a logo and everything and make the character. Like I just said in Mexico, they were like, we're made a little bit smaller here. You know what I mean? In Africa, it was totally different. So you would have 50% of it. But we needed to talk to the people on their level and what they were doing. FUBU in Korea is a huge skate brand. It's not a hip hop brand. It's hardcore skate. Because that's how they interpret it, in my opinion.

[Scott Clary]

You're going to be very humble. Maybe. I don't know. I'm going to say that you invented some version of influencer marketing way back in the 90s. A lot of people probably figured out attention, but you did a good job of it.

[Daymond John]

I did a decent job of it, yeah. I think that the name FUBU itself is a hashtag, right? Yeah, I think that and I didn't have all this stuff figured out. I wish I could tell you I had this figured out. It took a lot of 40 dogs and a lot of pork rinds to figure this stuff out. And a lot of failures. A lot of getting punched in the face, a lot of arguing with people. And then you look back at it and, you know, I think I was seeing, I saw an article the other day of what Elon Musk said when they asked him, what do you think is the, the real trait for success? And it was, you know, some people said drive, some people said this. He said, the success really is willing to endure the most pain for the longest period of time. And I'm going to tell you it hurt, you know. But again, you know, there's two things that I know. Number one, I'm not that bright. Number two, I don't know when to stop. Add those two things.

[Scott Clary]

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[Daymond John]

Dangerous.

[Scott Clary]

After FUBU came Shark Tank more attention. So you always were Comfortable putting yourself front and center. Is that what drove. Do you feel like that drove a lot of success? Was that like a key sort of linchpin and common denominator and all the things that worked out?

[Daymond John]

I wasn't super comfortable, but I was, in a sense, because so. So fubu. We always wanted to be the four guys. And if all four was like something, you know, whether it's grunge or we didn't want to rely purely on the LL Cool Js of the world, because if somebody didn't like LL or LL got into a challenging situation, then the whole brand would collapse. So as we looked at the marketing of the brand, we would have. One segment of the marketing was LL Cool J. He's the rock star. He is. He is. He's the goat. The next one was a story about the four founders. If you didn't like ll, well, I like the story of the founders. The next one was models. Because you didn't like the founders, you don't like ll, but that is a beautiful man or woman. And the next one was I don't like ADOs. We just laid out the quality of the product to make you envision yourself in the product. So I was always that kind of like a little bit behind the scenes, but kind of up front because somebody had to be able to talk on behalf of the company. LL is not available all the time, and the models ain't talking about. I started to understand and study right around 2000. We were getting into a very highly visual world, and I was representing a lot of artists, and I started to understand that maybe I need media training because if somebody asked me a question, I don't want to sound like an idiot. And because I'm placing, I place in 300 music videos a year and TV shows. I place my goods in other people's goods. If you ever looked at the Kardashians the first couple years, and my goods in there, because I was kind of rep representing the girls. I realized that I need to know media not only from the front of the camera, but how does the camera work. You go to a Hype Williams set and you got $50,000 to put in FUBU, but they're. They're shooting on a certain lens. And if you don't say at that time, change that lens or change this and that, or I'm not paying you, that video comes out three months later. The rapper smoked the $50,000. There's no going back. So I started to learn that, and that is when I got called for the kind of audition on Shark Tank. But I already had full media myself and I knew the camera angles and knew what was moving. And that's why, you know, I was able to sustain being there because Kevin and Robert were already Dragon Den people, they knew it. Barbara was already on a CNBC morning shows. Lori was qvc.

[Scott Clary]

So you're the only one didn't have.

[Daymond John]

I was the only one who didn't have active camera time. But again, it was all creating the brand, understanding that I need to be part of it from the front of the camera and the back of the camera. And that's how that happened.

[Scott Clary]

So you understood influencer marketing, you understood personal brand ahead of most people, which is like we're going back years, not to date you, but like the influencer marketing was in the 90s and then shark Tank. How many seasons ago Was that?

[Daymond John]

Like 18 years on Shark Tank. So I really, I started the company in 89 and I failed three times till 92. But to your point, also knowing your market, I'll give you one more example. When we first started to have budgets of 2 and 3 and $5 million to spend on media, we'd go to MTV and all these places and they were. MTV was charging like I don't know, $10,000 for a 30 second commercial. But to know my market, of course they're Nielsen rating, right? They wouldn't, right? But I knew my market. I knew my market. That bet was $1,000 for that. Well, you would think bet was a fraction of it, right? 10%? No. When's the last time you seen a dude in the project fill out a Nielsen rating form? Or it's all illegal cable. And in those homes, it wasn't one person around the TV, it was 400 people around the TV. So I bought damn near the whole bet for the same price. I'd had 20 commercials on MTV. And you know, you just have to sometimes apply common sense the way that

[Scott Clary]

you look at like knowing your audience, understanding media. And I, I was teeing up the question of you've been doing this for so long, but so many people yourself, obviously excluded, still get attention. And personal brand, completely wrong. Why do you think so many people do not understand or do not get how to use social, how to use personal brand properly? Because when you use it, it is a force multiplier. But I really don't think that many people do get it. I'll give you one more thought on this, just brief. Like I was just thinking about why these Fortune 500 brands use gen Z high schoolers for their marketing strategy because that high schooler or that 19, 20, 21, 25 year old gets how to communicate with an audience better than their CEO.

[Daymond John]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

Why?

[Daymond John]

It's a big world. You don't know what you don't know. I think this is not anything new. You know, the car industry made muscle cars, you know, for many years and they didn't consider one thing in the late 60s and 70s that you can make all the muscle cars you want. But it's by far. Women are dictating the purchasing of a car. Women are dictating it because first of all, if you're a mother, you are saying what you need to use to operate the home. And I'm gonna tell you something, you know, if I'm attracted to a woman, she says she like, she likes this car. Oh boy, that's the car. I'm getting that car. All right. So until they started change the colors and various other things. Understand that. And if women buy 10 times, every one time a man buys. So this is a age old challenge of people not understanding what marketing is. You know, I don't but you know, personal branding, it's important, you know, but people don't think about it the way that they react. If you know somebody and you are, if you see you and you meet someplace, where are you going to look you up at? You're going to go to Google or you're going to go on Instagram, LinkedIn. But yet those same executives don't have it. And they wonder why they're not getting an option to move to this company or that company when maybe they have a problem and they don't realize that that's the first place people look. And if you're on there and even if you're on there and they're looking there, but your husband or your wife is a bigot or misogynistic person. They're, they're following the trail, but you'll never know why they never called you or when the president of my company says we're hiring these kids. But no problem, put them through the, put their data through the information where you have these people who scrape social media to know what you said in the last 10 years. And the kids never know. I have no idea why these white people, they do the same. They'll google you, they'll look up your social. But they're not improving their crazy right. You know, I don't, I don't get it.

[Scott Clary]

I see a shift. I see a shift for sure. Like you know, I get, because of the podcast, I speak with some, some people who've sold big companies who are still running companies. And now I start to see the shift of people that are trying to build brands on social media and whatnot. But it still seems like the average entrepreneur, I don't know, like I, I feel like I'm in a bubble where I know a lot of people that are doing it, but I feel like that's not the common experience for most CEOs or founders.

[Daymond John]

Most CEO and founders should be thinking about three things right now, right? They should be thinking about, number one, live selling. I'm not going to put, you know, why they have to be touching their customers directly, whether it's that little patch or talking to influencer, who's talking to the customer to find out what they're thinking about it, because that's where the world is going. As you know, Gary Vee will talk about this till he blew in the face.

[Scott Clary]

I just did a tour of his office the other day and he has, by the way, he has employees that work for him that are now turning into influencers. All have their little studios in the office, all doing all the different, you know, whatnot and all the live shop. And that's, I mean, that's following China, that's been doing it for years now.

[Daymond John]

But, you know, you may make money, but not. It's a loss leader. But what you're doing is you're getting the data in real time. You're not waiting for a retailer to tell you. You're not waiting to be on somebody else's platform to tell you. You're getting real information and seeing what's working, what's not. Number two, and these are in no specific order, of course, AI. You have to use AI as much as possible to reduce the friction, the workflow, so that again, you don't make, you don't use AI as 100% of your solution. You use, you try to get to it being 60 or 80, and then you put the other human touches in there. And then last but not least, what this is, the most important is you have to brand yourself, the founders and everybody in the company. You have a bigger job. That's why, you know, obviously I shared with you, I do this thing called CEO access is because people want to know not only what are you doing for them, but who are you, because they want to brag about you in the room the next day. Right now, it's a, you have a fiduciary duty to do it as well. Because if, God forbid, if Gary of one of those kids working in his office got disgruntled for whatever reason, they decide to say some negative stuff about Gary, he can get right in front of doesn't. It doesn't pull down. VaynerMedia 100 people don't have to get, you know, fired and let down because these CEOs today are thinking, well, you know, we have a PR firm and we have spin doctors, right? We'll hire a spin doctor. The news cycle is 48 hours. By the time you get the spin person on the phone, you're done. Now, let's think about the upside of it. You get to make yourself known as a voice of authority, and you will move into other markets and you will get better deals offered to you. You'll get better opportunities. So on behalf of your company, you're getting better options. You know, Robert Herjavec said, I wanted a shark tank because I can call America. He's one of top 10 cybercrime experts in the world. He says, I can call American Express, you know, before he got on Shark Tank, and say, I want to redo your firewall. They'll say, what? Well, when I'm Robert Herjavec, I can come in there and I can get that bid. I say all the time, there's a million real estate brokers. There's only one Barbara Corcoran. And not to get into politics, there's a million real estate developers. But somebody who learned how to brand himself in the 80s and the 90s is now literally probably the most powerful man in the world. This is what you have to do. Because no matter what, if you want in charge of your brand, they're reinterpreting it whatever way they want.

[Scott Clary]

You know, it's funny, two of the three things you mentioned, so AI, of course, but two of the three things, live shopping and personal brand. You know what that's doing? That is just removing the gap between you and your customers.

[Daymond John]

That's it.

[Scott Clary]

Personal brand is you're posting, you're talking to them, you're getting live feedback. You're not going through a billboard or tv. It's like you remove the gap. And what is entrepreneurship at the end of the day, like, what makes people successful? It's them removing the gap between the customers and the founder.

[Daymond John]

And this is. Sorry. And so somebody said, well, you know what? My company's too big to do that type of stuff. Well, I got an idea. Maybe you should check out this little company called Walmart, who now is taking a portion of their stores and allowing influencers to come in and do podcasts there for real. They're starting to do that. They did that with one source of beta. And what do you think is going to happen after that? It's going to be do your podcast here. You can use it anytime, right? Oh, by the way, you want to start putting up links to some stuff here. What do you think is going to happen? That's what's going to happen.

[Scott Clary]

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[Daymond John]

Done.

[Scott Clary]

I'm good for two hours. And the Daily Greens is more of a health thing. 42 vitamins, minerals and superfoods in one bottle. It's developed by registered nutritionist 25 calories 4 grams of fiber and 1 gram of sugar. I'll have one first thing in the morning. It's the easiest win of my day. Now 15 off for new customers. Use my code [e-mail] Scott and do the post checkout survey. It helps to show. Go to Huell.com Scott Code Scott Monarch is a success story partner. Now quick question. Do you know where your money went last month? Not roughly, but exactly. And most people don't and I didn't for years. And that is most of our money stories right when we first start our career, we have one income and one account and you can kind of wing it. But once you're running businesses, once you're investing, once you're carrying 50 different subscriptions that you stop paying attention to winging it gets super expensive. Monarch fixed that. For me it is the personal finance app that tracks everything. So that means accounts, investment, savings goals, spending, all on one screen. The first week I had it, it flagged recurring charges. I've been paying for months without realizing. And every single week the AI recap tells me if spending spiked, if my net worth moved and what bills are coming. And I can just ask, hey, can I afford this trip without touching my savings? And I can get a real answer based on my actual numbers. It is a financial advisor in your pocket. It costs less than an hour with a real one. So write your own money story with Monarch. Use code successonarch.com and get your first year of Monarch Core Half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code success. I saw this firsthand. One of my best friends is Leo Pareja. He's a CEO of exp. They have 86,000 agents. I think they're, you know, one of the largest right up there with compass and whatnot. And, and he is all in on content now for himself, posting, you know, a couple times a day. Launched a podcast all in on his exec team creating content as well. And the difference, we speak about this a lot. The difference between when he started in that role and his job as CEO is still to attract agents to come join from other brokerages. He started in that role. You know, when he jump on a call with a big agent or a big team, he'd have to explain who he is, where he came from. Now when he jumps on the call, they know the story, they know who he is. They're like some of them, they, you know, they, they, they fan a little bit around him because, you know, he's he's not millions of followers, but in, you know, real estate, there's not many CEOs that are putting out content every single day. And it's changed the dynamic of every single call he jumps on.

[Daymond John]

Yeah, if we say right now, Sirhant.

[Scott Clary]

Of course.

[Daymond John]

There you go.

[Scott Clary]

Right?

[Daymond John]

Yeah. You gotta be able to do that. But it also leads you into different rooms. I'll give you an example. I know little to nothing about sports. I don't watch it. I don't have time for it. You know, I want to be a baseball player coming up, and I like the ufc. Okay, no problem. Five years ago, you know, Steve Aoki and Gary and those guys are hitting me with, hey, man, you can either get into our sports card world. And I was like, guys, I don't really know nothing about it. They were like, it's becoming an asset class now. I was like, really? Wow, that's cool. I. I look at things. I don't jump on it right away. I'm cool. Then I see Kevin walking around with some stupid little. You seen Kevin O' Leary walking on this stupid little, like. Like Mr. T chain with a little card in there? Yeah, I know. I see it. The guy's fried. He's extra crispy. He doesn't know what he's doing. E. Anyway, so I started looking at this thing and going, wait a minute. This thing is interesting, but I want to find a reason why I would like it. I don't want to do it. I don't chase anything. But then I started realizing my daughter was like, daddy, I want to collect Pokemon cards. Now I get warmer in it. Okay, you know what I decided to do? I decided to go to Fan Fest last week. Fanatics Fest. Right. I realized I'm a retailer. I'm a retail operator. I love the fact that it brings families together. I love the fact that a dad and his daughter, or dad who can collect cards and talk about how maybe we can make money down the road, but let's do something we love. And so then I just did a deal with Tom Brady, and I'm rolling out all the card vault Tom Brady machines and all the airports right now. If I was still the guy that didn't brand himself, they would. I'd walk in the room, they go, aren't you making T shirts?

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, Tom Brady's not doing a deal with somebody.

[Daymond John]

Maybe I want a T shirt, but aren't you making T shirts? Because people, first of all, love to put us. You know, they love to put us right here. If I want to walk in right now to a real estate market and do a deal, if I want to walk into a CPG company and do a deal, a service company and do a deal, a charity company, do a deal, I can do anything I want because people got to hear how I think. And they can either say, I object with this guy, get him out of here, or I can't wait to talk to him.

[Scott Clary]

I haven't heard. You were just on a podcast recently talking about how a bank came up to you and was going to put money behind your name to do a ton of acquisitions. And you know, I respect that you're trying to architect your life in a certain way so that you don't take on too much and you're not at that level, it's a different game.

[Daymond John]

But I think that's, that's, that's the true thing about a, about a personal brand. You get the opportunity, you get the opportunity. And then you also though, if they really know you, they respect why you said no or why you say yes because they know they've invested in your brand. You know what I mean? They, they kind of have a vested interest.

[Scott Clary]

You said if people don't know who you are, they don't trust what you sell. Because selling is all about trust at the end of the day and whether or not they're going to. And now like the, the modern buyer is doing all the research though, talking to somebody from the company. So they are scrolling on social media. I mean, my background's in enterprise tech and I think that, you know, 10, 15 years ago, it was like if they're trying to buy a hundred thousand dollar, million dollar solution, they'd still do 70 to 80% of their research on that thing before they ever spoke to a sales rep. So personal brand from the CEO is more touch points, is more information they can, they can learn from and they can figure out who the company is, who the CEO is, what the product is. They're checking the website, they're checking the emails they get from the company, they going to the CEO's Instagram. But the point is it's all about building trust. And personal brand is like one more sort of thing that builds trust for

[Daymond John]

the customer and that's more powerful now than ever before because of what AI is and information is readily available. There's One thing that CEOs have that very few people have. They have a legacy, they have a history, they have something you can't buy. And so I always say to a CEO, why are you Trying so hard to keep your success a secret. You know, the easiest thing to sell is the truth. But you think, you know, a CEO thinks again. Well, I wouldn't go and check the person out. I know, but your daughter and your son are going, oh my God, you're going to do a deal with so forth, the secretary or the executive assistant or the people you respect, they're like, oh my God, you're going to go deal, do. Or your wife or husband at the dinner table going, you're going to do a deal with that asshole. Those are the people that are watching. You know how many times I'm someplace and people step over my wife and they have no idea. Sometimes she's with me or they is, and they walk over, walk past her and you know, you know, like Oprah, Maya Angelou says, you know, when somebody tells you who they are, believe them, you know, later on, who do you think looking them up, going. And telling me, okay, or this or that, or by the way, or you know what that person I cancel like you had or da da da da. Or that person was an A hole. And guess what? I just pulled out all the things that certified that that person was an A hole. I don't have time to do that. But Ted's gonna do it, my wife's gonna do it, my kids are gonna do it, my team. So don't think that social media is just that one on one with you and that person. There's a lot of other people who are surrounding important people who are sharing that information.

[Scott Clary]

If you don't use social, if you don't use influence to craft a narrative around who you are. Like you said before, like you already have, you already have, people already make an assumption of who you are online. So you either control it or you

[Daymond John]

let, you let them run with it. And, and I understand for CEOs, right, big CEOs, that's why we advise them. Because who do you go to? Do you go to your pr, do you go to your secretary, you know, to, to try to, you know, your social team is young kids. And yes, they understand social, but, but you may not want to be tick tock dancing, you know what I mean? Because they don't understand some of the consequences. So this is not something to just go. This is something you got to articulate and do it the right way.

[Scott Clary]

Biggest mistakes that you see. I mean like again, I've said you are the master of personal brand. What are the biggest mistakes people make?

[Daymond John]

Being in genuine, be genuine with who you are.

[Scott Clary]

Because that the buzzword authenticity, it gets thrown around. Nobody knows what it means.

[Daymond John]

You know what authenticity is? Daymond John can never say the things that Kevin o' Leary says. Kevin o' Leary has invested in a lot in being an asshole. He's the only man on TV who can shit on you with a twinkle in his eye. It's like Santa Claus go to. You go fuck yourself, right? That's his brand. I tell Ted all the time, sometimes my person might come in. I'm like, yo, Snoop did it. Why can't I? He's like, yeah, Snoop. You see, Snoop can host Olympics, then smoke weed with Martha Stewart. Then he could be talking about gang banging and bees and hoes, and then all of a sudden, he's holding a church. That's Snoop. You're not Snoop. And so, you know, be authentic with who your brand is. If your brand is. I got a little tolerance for a lot of stuff, but when I'm into something, I'm into something. If your brand is Bethany, I ain't gonna apologize about nothing. Barbara is like, listen, I'm gonna stick my foot in my mouth several times, but I don't know how to do anything else. You enough people will resonate with that brand.

[Scott Clary]

So then follow up question is, how do you actually figure out who you are online? I think that's the biggest issue because I would say it's just who you are, not online. But I'll tell you after sitting down with this podcast for now, like, over seven years, you don't do it. People that are comfortable with media don't do it. But a lot of people are one person before the camera goes on, and then they're a whole other person when the camera goes on sitting in that chair, it's like their personality just shifts completely and they turn into this. This thing that they think is acceptable.

[Daymond John]

Well, if they're a showman or show woman, maybe that's their thing and say it. I can only tell you what I. Oh, listen, I can tell you we architect brands for people and stuff like that, but I can tell you what I do. And then I'll give you an example. When I post, I post and I think I'm talking to seven different people. Number one, I post something that I can. That if I was talking to God, God would be okay with me posting it. Then the next thing is my family. Are they okay? Because I don't need my family at the grocery store and somebody says, hey, what's wrong with your husband? He's a disgusting pig. Or he's a racist or he, whatever it is. I don't have those type of thoughts, but I'm just giving you examples. The next one is the people that work for me. Can they go home and their husband, wife, father, son go, you work for that guy. I want them to feel good about who they work for. The next one is the extended partners. Right? It's abc. It's this and that, right. I gotta make sure I don't talk about cannabis. I don't talk about. I'm on Disney, you won't hear me talk about that stuff. The following one is the people I'm trying to do business with. Here's who I am, know who I am, I wanna work with you. And the final one is the people I don't wanna do business with. It know that I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go here. So I think of that component. But you know, again, it's coming out, the little pieces of authenticity. It's great the way the algorithm is working now. That and even I'm trying to dig into it where instead of it hitting your followers, it's hitting points of interest. So you can go on there and start talking casually and why don't you just recap what happened, do the safe things at first, right? This is what happened in the office today. And this is how I hope we solve the problem. Remember, it needs to be in it for that other person. Here's how we solve the problem. Maybe you can use some of those methods or techniques to yourself. Not here's how we did the office today and by the way, buy it tomorrow.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, it's just like, it's like you're turning your life to a degree into tv. Social media is.

[Daymond John]

That's what it is, it's tv. It's even getting to the point with algorithm, we were talking about it today, where they want to start showing almost like your stories chronologically, like series.

[Scott Clary]

Well, you know, it's crazy. We're talking about live shopping and that's something that already happens overseas in Asia. And then that, you know, 30 to 60 second reel, that's actually a story in that. That's already these micro dramas that are already happening over again. Like Asia's leading the way. Then you see now like Kim Kardashian is doing these 60 second micro drop. Sirhant's doing a 60 second vertical shot micro drama about real estate. So everything is going to vertical social media. So whether or not it's like true storying where it's a super casual or it's actually like a more produced little micro TV show in a 60 second format. It's all on social end of the day.

[Daymond John]

Somebody asked me the other, other day, what hobbies do I have? And I said I don't have anymore. I had them. But as of two years ago I've been all out on AI and all out on social. I spend anywhere from three to four hours a day on social. Two or two to three of them are at my own. You know, I'm trying to do it just to understand it more and more and studying and another hour would be working with the team. I have a great team who does it and they do it efficiently. But that's where I'm investing in because the time I put in now on these topics, the live selling, you know, the AI and then the social media, I'm going to now be able to do this in five, 10 years when everybody's like still stressing it. I'm going to have so many lumps on my head and figured out that I'm going to be able to convert into where it's going. Much easier than stumbling.

[Scott Clary]

Everyone who's not on social right now, they're thinking, I don't have time for it, it's not a priority. I don't get the point. Doesn't drive revenue. Whatever the excuse is, they are falling further and further and further behind. There was some sort of, I was trying to figure out the stats on this but it's something like, you know, for every. It's similar with AI. If you aren't investing in AI for your business, like you are being just destroyed and outpaced by every company that it is. And like it's just going to get worse and worse and worse and worse.

[Daymond John]

You are, you're done. And you know, it's really the Nike just do a syndrome. I know why people don't want to go on social A lot of time who, who likes listening to themselves and looking at themselves? You hate it, right? You know what then put up stats or graphs of things that you find are of value. But make sure you start to learn. Well, we got to put up every day, Every Monday at 9am Whatever things in your market that are working and say encircle things and say you could do this or you shouldn't do this. Just put that up. You start seeing people go wow, thank you. I didn't know about the real estate. I could do this. You don't have to be on there smiling and laughing and dancing. There's so many ways to do it.

[Scott Clary]

I was going to ask, where does somebody start? The founder that's overwhelmed, the CEO that you know is back to back to back to back with no white space in the calendar, where do they start?

[Daymond John]

I would say right now, Go on to chat, spill all your guts and say, here's what I want to accomplish. I'm scared. I'm doing this and that, but here's what my company stands for. Here's how long my staff has been here. Do me a Favor, write out 30 posts for the next. Give me 30 posts. And then also go on there and create a post on how I'm going to start posting for me and then try to put it up every day. Put it up every day, Put it up every day, Put it up every day.

[Scott Clary]

Has the skill set that you look for in a founder that you put money into, has that changed with AI and social over the. I mean, you've been doing this for like what you said 19 years. So 19 years ago, what did you look for today? What do you look for? Is it the same plus stuff?

[Daymond John]

No. So all the sharks are growing every single season. Everything we do. The first years, I was looking for return on my investment, you know, that was it. Right then I had to realize, wait a minute, I'm doing a lot of babysitting here. The whole reason I don't own the company, because I don't want that job. Right Then I start putting salespeople around me, licensing people around me. And then as I started to grow, I started to then look at, yeah, are they using social to any component, you know what I mean? Like, you know, opening stores or whatever the case is because, you know, it started to grow. Now I'm looking at, are they using AI and live selling? I don't want to do a deal with anybody who's not doing live selling to any, to any extent, who haven't tried it. They may go, I haven't figured it out yet, but I got a TikTok shop, I got this, I got that, that I want to hear. There's something there. When I hear, no, there's two. That learning curve is going to be way too much if you don't even know what I'm talking. If you don't know what not is at all and tick tock shops. I don't, I don't really have anything to say to you.

[Scott Clary]

Crazy. It's. What's the personality trait of somebody that is always exploring and trying? Like, what's that? If you give advice to somebody who's just Starting out, maybe they don't know what, what not. Is it curiosity? Is it just trying? And if it fails, doesn't matter. Like, what's the personality? Creative.

[Daymond John]

In a picture, an average pitch is anywhere from half an hour to an hour long. All right? In a pitch, the personality trait of that person is somebody told you how they told you they, they overcome adversity in the past several times within a. Within a casual way of saying it. So, you know, they're going to figure this out. That's really that. And then they're not talking to you as you're a crush. They're talking to you as the train's leaving the station. I'm confident it will. I'm not sure where I'm going, but it's leaving the station. I want you on it. There's this kind of feeling of through your adversity, through your life, you have figured things out, and I appreciate that. And you still have the passion and the gut and the patience to take that pain. And even if today you get a no, you're going to figure this thing out. Now you got to be careful about to figure this thing out. Because if they just need money, money, money, money solves everything. And they go, well, we're going to. That means they're going to go raise too much money without the solution. But I'm talking about, they're going, man, we're going to figure out, you know, what. I had to cut people, we pivoted. I had to go to different buyers, you know, I had to go to different resources because of, you know, whatever is over here and there. And then I, I found new customers here. I found new customers. I get rid of customers here. I figured it out. I got rid of this person. I figured out how to build that thing. You know what I mean? That's the type of person you're like, this person's about figuring it out. You know, take shaving the dog, taking the hair off the dog.

[Scott Clary]

You know what's crazy, though? Every successful entrepreneur that I know, even if they aren't in the space where live shopping even makes sense, the truly successful ones, they know about it. Yes, they have a finger on the pulse.

[Daymond John]

They're aware.

[Scott Clary]

They're very aware. It's crazy. It's like, it's not. I mean, AI is so obvious, but even live shopping is a little bit more niche, right? It's for certain kinds of businesses in particular, like if you're running a, a real estate business or a lawn care business. I don't know if you can find a way to leverage it. But the point is, the best ones still know about it.

[Daymond John]

You can have a lawn care business and you could do real life shopping, right? You can be talking about them and saying all the products that you use. And if they just buy it because you're buying in bulk from someplace else and then you're saying, for one or two people, I'll come cut your grass on Saturday, there's something for everything. But again, they know about it. Even if it's a charity, they know about it because they're looking at all the opportunities on how to create more value to people and how to bring more people into what they do.

[Scott Clary]

Netsuite Next is a success story partner. So they say that every day your business is late to using AI, you fall two days behind and the competition is only moving faster. So how do you keep up? Well, fortunately, there is NetSuite Next. Now, you probably already know NetSuite. NetSuite is the AI powered business management suite, is trusted by over 43,000 customers. It securely connects all of your data, financials, inventory, commerce, HR, CRM into one single source of truth. But NetSuite Next is the next huge leap in how businesses get done because AI is built into everything you do. So NetSuite Next automatically shows you all these custom insights for your business. Throughout your day, you'll have AI agents work alongside you to solve problems and handle routine work. And anytime you have a question about anything in your business, you just ask like you're having a conversation with a colleague. And NetSuite Next will give you an answer. NetSuite is customized for a wide range of industries, so it supports the way that your business truly works. Whether your company earns millions or hundreds of millions, it's time for NetSuite next, where your business meets AI. If I needed a solution like this, it's what I'd use. For the first time ever, you can try netsuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in these seven figures, go to NetSuite AI Scottclair. It's built for every industry. It's ready for every boardroom. Netsuite AI ScottClary MyFitnessPal is a success story partner. On this show, I speak to tons of high performers and the people that sustain that high performance. Not just Sprint and Crash and Burn, but they actually sustain. They all treat nutrition like a system, not an afterthought. The same way they treat revenue or hiring or product. It is key to their business. They pay attention, they look at the data and that really stuck with me and it's how I started thinking about my own health and wellness and what I put into my own body. Not in like a restrictive diet way, but in a data way. See, most people take a look at daily calorie total and they think they have the full picture. That's just one number. The MyFitnessPal App Premium. It shows me macros that means proteins, carbs, fats broken down by meal. So I can see am I getting enough protein at breakfast versus dinner. And it also shows me how my food is distributed across the day because of course I can take a look at my total calorie number. But to see everything broken down by meal, those are two completely different things. Even if your daily total looks fine and you're going to feel the difference, if you eat proper nutrition across your entire day and you track it, your energy is going to allow you to sustain that high performance. Also, the food analysis picks up trends over the week that I'd miss just going by feeling. See, this information makes good food choices automatic. See, food is a foundation, right? Energy, focus, performance, recovery. It all starts with food. So do yourself a favor. Go visit podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott all uppercase letters for 15% off MyFitnessPal premium. That's podcast.myfitnesspal.Com code Scott Noom is a success story, partner. Now, here's the thing that nobody tells you about losing weight. Losing it isn't the hard part. Keeping it off is. Almost anyone can white knuckle a few good months of diet and exercise, but then work gets crazy and routines break. And it all comes right back. I have built my entire career and my life around one idea. Systems beat motivation. And weight loss is no different. You need something that holds up when life doesn't cooperate. And that's exactly what NOOM is built for. Noom is a health and wellness app that combines GLP1 medication. That's the weight loss medication that everyone's talking about with behavioral support. So the medication kickstarts the weight loss and then the psychology side, the daily lessons, the food logging, the real coaching that builds the habits that make it stick. Even if you stop the medication and it works, people lose 37% more weight with Noom than with GLP1 alone. Noom helps you lose weight and keep it off. And that's the difference. The Noom DLP1 program starts at $39. It's delivered to your door in as little as seven days. So start your GLP1 journey today at Noom.com that's n o m.com Noom lose for keeps initial one month subscription from $39 plus tax and $99 plus tax per month thereafter. Cost of medication not included. Final pricing depends on program selection. Results Based on a January 2026 analysis of 14,203 Noom GLP1RX program members who logged weight over a 40 week period, higher app engagement was associated with greater weight loss at 16 weeks. You have had tons of experience reading successful entrepreneurs. You mentioned some of the personality I

[Daymond John]

can't read, I'm dyslexic. So I didn't read them. I just looked at them.

[Scott Clary]

Can you tell in 30 seconds if someone's going to be successful?

[Daymond John]

No.

[Scott Clary]

What do you need? What's the, what's the biggest signal that someone's going to be successful in their business? Outside you mentioned figuring out is a big one.

[Daymond John]

What else they keep going back to how can they provide more value to somebody? They keep they're obsessed at the end of the day, throughout their conversation with their customer, the results it brought to somebody, whether it's bringing them joy or solving a problem. Their end customer. They are customer obsessed obsessed. They wake up every day and say how can I be of more value to the customer today than I was yesterday?

[Scott Clary]

What is your favorite story of customer obsession? Like the biggest example of somebody that went above and beyond to figure something out. I'll tell you one quick that I thought was incredible. I have a friend, his name is Aaron Spivak. He's a founder of Hush Blankets. He sold for I think plus minus 50 million to sleep country Canada. And throughout the entire journey of the company he would jump on Zoom calls with his customers who were buying his blankets and just to get feedback every single week, a few customers. And he found out not only did he have great feedback, the people that jumped on Zoom calls with him became huge evangelists and fans and ended up buying. Normally when you buy a blanket, you buy one. They ended up buying two, three, four for their families and friends because they had this chat with the founder but said that was like the most important competitive intelligence that he ever gained from having those one on one conversations. Like it was on like live shopping before live shopping existed. This was years ago. But that's my favorite story and I have stories for almost every entrepreneur that I've ever spoken to about why proximity to customer is the most important thing.

[Daymond John]

Yeah, you know, I have hundreds of stories of people who lost money doing something for somebody but they need, they Want to do the right thing. I think a good story on that, though, is the chewy model. Are you aware of the chewy model? How, if so, for those who are not aware, you know, if, you know, chewy understands that, you know, animals are going to live less, less lives than we are and. Or shorter than we are. And when an animal passes, often people call back and say, either I want to cut my delivery of food or I want to send back something. They say, well, for health reasons, we cannot send back the food. And then all of a sudden, a bouquet of flowers arrives with that customer and, you know, sorry for your loss. I mean, this person has lost the dearest friend of their life many times. And they know. And what they did, though, when they started doing, they started doing it just purely out of. Because they had so many loyal customers that they just felt they knew the pet. And they did that. And you know what? They found out that that is a replaceable action that's almost always going to happen and that it really increased their customer retention, various other things. And it's just a simple thing like that.

[Scott Clary]

I want to pivot and just talk about some of the ideas and mental models that you have from some of your past work, which are great for entrepreneurs who are listening. But before we pivot, one last thought on where personal brand is going. You mentioned before that you are figuring it out now, as we all are, as I am, as many people who come on this show. You're on a podcast. You're probably thinking about personal brand. You're listening to this. You probably are, or you should be if you want to be successful. Where does personal brand go in five years, ten years from now? How important is it? And think about it from the context of we're getting inundated with AI, I think that personal is going to be even more important than ever. That's my opinion. But where does it go in five, 10 years? What is CEO Access actually doing to help prepare people for the future? Because that's really where we're going anyways.

[Daymond John]

Well, you know, I think the personal branding is going to be, like you said, I don't know if I'm going to be looking at a human on a screen or not. And I think there's going to be a lot more human interaction because I think a lot of free time is going to be. Time is going to be freed up, and I think there's going to be a lot of that. I think Gary is. Gary said it's something like you're going to have to act like you in the 1950s, call people to see how they're doing, and that's it. With no alternative motive. It has to be genuine. I do think that CEOs and founders are the new rock stars. I think that, you know, entertainment, a lot of things are going to, you know, be, you know, condensed due to AI or like, you can make your own track tomorrow. And I think people are going to want to know all these extensions out of the founders, the CEOs and the thought leaders because they're going to want to know that what is your unique perspective on it? Because what you've experienced, you can't necessarily get that from AI. You can read everything from AI the same way we talk about the Wright brothers. They say that AI could have told the Wright brothers everything about flying, but they couldn't have told them to dream. And you're going to get a lot of that human perspective. As I'm a public speaker and I speak a lot, my conversation more and more, I just literally left Google my conversation more and more and more in those rooms are work, life balance. How do you raise your children in this environment? Biohacking, what are you doing about health? How do you respond to your wife? You know, it's becoming way more personal. And people want to know that from the CEOs and the founders.

[Scott Clary]

I think that the future is going to be anything human, anything personal is going to have a premium on it. Yeah, I believe that. And I don't know if the future is going to be listening to AI influencers on social. I don't really think so because I think that humans still like knowing there's another human behind the camera. I think that AI can augment a personal brand, but it can't replace it with an AI influencer.

[Daymond John]

I think the pendulum is going to keep swinging. Yeah, really dramatically.

[Scott Clary]

CEO access is available. People want to figure out personal brand.

[Daymond John]

Yeah. Anybody's interested in us vetting them to see if. Because we honestly can take very, very few because it's a lot of work. But they can go to ceoaccess.com and that's where, you know, we, we would tell them if we think we can add value and if they're the right fit.

[Scott Clary]

Where do they, where do they end up on the other side after they go through the journey of CEO access

[Daymond John]

and working with the look. You mean what happens with their journey? Because it's usually a two, three year journey. They end up becoming a shark on Shark Tank. That that's the best way to sum it up, you end up being invited to Davos instead of begging to go to Davos. You know, you. You know, the big box retailers, you don't call them for a meeting. They fly you out and pay you to come to a meeting.

[Scott Clary]

So you said before that entrepreneurship isn't all or nothing. What does that mean?

[Daymond John]

A lot of people think that entrepreneurship is this concept of, you know, ball to the wall and, you know, and go hard or go home. And it's not really, you know, it's this kind of. And by the way, you know, you know what balls to the wall mean?

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. It means you, like, no plan B, but it's not.

[Daymond John]

I want to make sure the people don't think I'm being graphic. Balls to the wall was is it comes from when they used to put a plane in full motion. The two knots. Nods.

[Scott Clary]

I knew the saying.

[Daymond John]

I never knew where it came from, Right. Because I said it one time and somebody like, ew. I was like, whoa.

[Scott Clary]

I didn't know where it came from. So it just means, like, you, like, full throttle.

[Daymond John]

Full throttle.

[Scott Clary]

Okay, cool.

[Daymond John]

All right. So it is not that now. It is a good amount. What you're doing is you're sacrificing something of lesser value for something of greater value, but it really is. You're working a 9 to 5, and you're starting to accumulate information on what you want to do. You're starting to talk to three people, four people, seven people. You're starting to send out a hundred dms a day for two months, and you're growing the business that way. But you have to think about, you know, entrepreneurship the first three to five years. You most likely are not going to just be a rock star. You have to sift through it, and that's when you grow. But again, if you don't have work, life, balance with an entre, with an entrepreneur, the business generally implodes.

[Scott Clary]

That's one. That's a really powerful lesson. I think that a season of your life will be imbalanced. Like, it's not. It's not easy when you start. But I think that the biggest issue is when people never, never move away from that season where it's like, they always have shitty relationships, shitty health, shitty

[Daymond John]

mental health, and it's dragging them down. And if they took a time to step back and reflect on it. Now, I can only tell you this because I was that guy, because I lost the first marriage, right? I was 35 pounds overweight. I end up having cancer. I was drinking way too much than I Should have been drinking. So I can only tell you because I was that guy, and I have counterparts who weren't that guy or girl. And they were more disciplined. And they were looking at their body and their life and their time, like the inventory in the business. And they made decisions that most people would have said, well, you're never going to, you know, grow up to be this kind of. That kind of company. And they did.

[Scott Clary]

Ice T told you, the time you save cutting corners today becomes the wall you hit tomorrow.

[Daymond John]

No, he said, and I got it wrong. He called me and said, I got it a little wrong. He said, if you keep cutting corners, you're gonna wonder why you keep going around in circles.

[Scott Clary]

I like that, too. They're both good.

[Daymond John]

Yeah, both good.

[Scott Clary]

Your rendition of it was also. It was also.

[Daymond John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's the same thing.

[Scott Clary]

Same shit.

[Daymond John]

Stop cutting corners.

[Scott Clary]

Stop cutting corners. So when did you learn that lesson?

[Daymond John]

I learned that lesson really young. And it's only because I'm dyslexic. Because being dyslexic, I think that I would read something, and I wasn't sure if I retained the information the right way. So I'd either have to read it 10 times or I'd have to go out and try it. And I realized that whenever I put my. Put the action to what I thought, I got way more results, you know, at the company. You know, of course, I. You have to hear some of the things I do in my company, they're so minuscule. And I know the newer people in the company are like, this is an idiot. This guy is the guy on Shark Tank. Why are we sending out boxes ourselves? But I've learned that if you get that stuff out of the way at an early stage, then you're ready for growth when it happens. And later on, 10 years down the road, people, you know, new people come in like, man, this is great. You don't know what we did the first two, three years, but it's just been a habit of mine, and it worked out. Now, when that did not work out was when I started throwing money at businesses prior to Shark Tank. And I threw a couple of million at a couple of businesses. And I said, well, I'm Damon John. My ego's in the way. Let me invest in the company. I'll make a couple of calls. I didn't roll up my sleeves. I was not. I was not operating the way I would. If we didn't have sales, I didn't realize the salesperson job was to sell Me, not anybody else to sell me to come and say, oh, yeah, they weren't ready for it, but if you make it in turquoise, they'll buy next year. So now all of a sudden, they got a job for another six months.

[Scott Clary]

This. This is a. This is a. I love this idea. You know who Paul Graham is? And he wrote an essay on this. Like, do things that don't scale. Yeah, like do things that don't scale. Like, that is how you build a business. And I think that too many people, I don't know, it's because if. Because they think entrepreneurship should be comfortable or cozy or whatever. They just want it to be frictionless and easy and automated out of the gate.

[Daymond John]

You gotta look at it. Like, I'll give you an example. What I said about the boxes. I'm gonna make sure I send you one. They're really great boxes. But I started out sending out these boxes to people and I gotta look at a couple of routes it could be. Now why did I wanna send out boxes to people? Because I get a lot of goods come in from Shark Tank, this and that. I have a list of 1500 really amazing celebrities, people that normally you can't get to. I'm sending it directly to their home. It's not their. Their office and their family loves it. And you know what? Sometimes they post about it. And I. If one or two of those, if Forest Whitaker posts about it, a couple of people, that's more than enough for the brand, right? So, but I'm sending out casually and I'm going like this. I'm saying to myself, listen, here's a couple out. Here's a couple outcomes. Number one, I'm going to get sick and tired of this. And you know what? I didn't lay out a lot of resources. So I kill it, right? I don't. And I don't get Eggo on my face, right? And you call me up and say, dame, with that box, it was free. Leave me al right, what is the next option? The next option is I find ways to monetize it. What's the next option? I liked it. Didn't have the resources, didn't want to do it. But I don't know if it's going to come into something else. Well, what really happened with the boxes? They do. They do really well. They go out really well. But you know what happened? I decided to create a vending machine for those boxes. Vending machine for the stuff in the vending. It worked okay, but what happened after that? Hi, I'm Tom Brady. I really need somebody who knows vending machines in airports. Oh, is that right? Right. You never know where it's gonna go. When I started with hats, I didn't think the hats were gonna turn into fubu. I didn't think FUBU was gonna turn into me because my company was dying. I started acquiring other companies like Coogee, Drunken Monkey, and I didn't think that was gonna turn into. Wait a minute. You're an investor? Well, no, I'm just acquiring companies. You're an investor? I'm just acquiring companies. We have a show called Shark Tank. You're an investor? Oh, yeah, I'm an investor. I didn't think the understanding how the camera angles work or I didn't understand where it would go. And there's a hundred other things that I started that you would never hear about them, because I even forgot that I was doing them.

[Scott Clary]

But you threw yourself into hardship. And by doing that, look at where you ended up. In five years, 10 years, you lean into the hard stuff, and then some of it pays off, some of it doesn't. But the stuff that pays off really pays off.

[Daymond John]

Yeah, there you go. And you know. And you know what? You end up finding out whether you like it or not. Small, you're gonna make the same mistake small that you're gonna make big.

[Scott Clary]

It's better to make them small. And nobody cares.

[Daymond John]

Nobody knows who you are. Nobody knows.

[Scott Clary]

You said that when you have nothing, you have to be creative. You can't fake it. Great superpowers and entrepreneur. When you have to be, you know, growth, hockey, crafty, whatever. How do you maintain that when you do have reason?

[Daymond John]

The power of broke thought process. The power broke thought process is still utilized on the most major levels. You know, I. I tell the story about during the COVID you know, Jeff Bezos, he's doing okay these days. He's all right.

[Scott Clary]

All right.

[Daymond John]

He realized he was having a problem with shipping. I just got a Christmas card from COVID right? So, you know, it was all bottlenecked, but because he's one of the top shippers in the world, right? And then he wanted to retain his workforce. So what did he do? Well, he told the people at his company they can get paid extra for taking boxes home. Freed up a little bit of the shipping problem, retain more people, and I work in a warehouse. But now I'm making just as much, driving packages home, knowing that it was going to get to the house by somebody who was already employed. So there's less opportunity for theft. That's thinking entrepreneur. That's the. That's the power. Broke Intercontinental Hotels, I believe, is Intercontinental. I don't want to be wrong, but they realized they had a whole lot of skilled workers. Nobody's coming to hotels. It's Covid. We're going to lose these people. What are we going to do? Well, Walgreens, Walmart, they need people on the front line. Well, will I give you these people? You're going to employ them. They're highly skilled. They're also going to be great people. And you know what? You're not going to poach them because. And when the time is up and we come back, they're going to come back to us. The power of broke is triangulating and maximizing opportunity for other people. It's thinking about all the things. It's the commercials on BET against mtv. It's when I didn't have money for billboards outside, but I would look at a bus counter, a bus thing, and I see that billboard there. I called him. How much? That billboard, $1,000 a month. That gate that's pulled down right next to it, owned by a local store owner. It cost me three bottles, three cans of spray paint to spray paint it for you. And that's gonna be up for three years.

[Scott Clary]

You ever get pissed off at people you invest in to get lazy because they have money?

[Daymond John]

I do. I get disappointed. But again, I have this thing in my head that it's not my area to. That's why growing with the sharks first year, we would deploy all the money to people. Now it's, we'll deploy 25%. You hit these markers. 25. You know, whatever the case is, or we do something like that. So again, I have to respect the fact that these people create a company so they don't have a boss. I'm a minority shareholder. You know, I'm 5%, 10%, 30%. I gotta leave it up to them.

[Scott Clary]

You do, you do. I mean, but at the end of the day, you have an idea of what works and what doesn't.

[Daymond John]

I do. But you know, listen, bombas, we do the deal, I call them up, you know, hey, we gotta do licensing. I want to get you Flavor Flav socks, Snoop doggy dog socks, every kind of socks. They're like, thank you. Click. All of a sudden, they come out with a license. It's Sesame Street. I'm like, sesame Street? What the hell are they coming out with Sesame street for? These idiots. And as a dad, my daughter was about two years old, she comes in the room and dad. And dad and daughters could never dress together. She said, daddy, put on your Elmos. And all of a sudden, this little tear came down my eye. Not cause of Elmos, because I was like, I'm gonna make a lot of money. So it's not for me to object. It's for me to understand, see how it goes. Because I don't know everything that was the.

[Scott Clary]

That was. For people who don't know, that was the most successful Shark Tank deal ever.

[Daymond John]

Ever.

[Scott Clary]

Ever.

[Daymond John]

Have you ever interviewed any other shark?

[Scott Clary]

No.

[Daymond John]

All right, well, I want you to make sure you remember that whenever they claim. Right. Because there's 54 shark tanks around the world. I have the number one invested product in all of Shark Tank. Invested in Ring did not get an investment. But, but, but we gave him an offer. I mean, Kevin did. I have the number one invested Shark Tank product ever. Ever.

[Scott Clary]

Why do you think it worked out the way it did?

[Daymond John]

Because I like the guys. I went under Shark Tank. I didn't want to get clothing companies because I had 10 clothing companies. They were dead. The guys wagged the dog. I like them a lot, and they're true operators. They understood what they were doing, and I just liked them. And I thought that thing was going to zero on a bullet. But again, I wish I could tell you I saw it coming, but I. I can't.

[Scott Clary]

Three sharks are dyslexic, including yourself.

[Daymond John]

No.

[Scott Clary]

Oh, no.

[Daymond John]

I think 8.

[Scott Clary]

8.

[Daymond John]

8. If you look at Richard Branson, Barbara, myself, Kevin, I thought Rohan was. And I remember two other. Two other ones were.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. When eight sharks have dyslexia, what's the skill that dyslexia forces you to have that someone else can be like, That's a skill that's going to make me successful.

[Daymond John]

I think dyslexia forces you to cut through the chase because you're not blurred by words and various other things. I have a very. I have a very unique way of looking at what it is. Barbara does, too. If you ever see a cut right through it. I didn't know I had that. I think also it makes us work and think harder because internally we're sitting there going, I. I don't understand what that says, or I may not have understood what that says, and I need to check it out. It makes us put more action than just theory to things. And I think. I think that's really it. But, you know, I haven't said this in a long time. There's also a high level of incarcerated people with dyslexia, too. The number is over indexing in that area, as far as I'm told. And why? Because for all the parents listening right now, if your kid is not diagnosed or you understand what dyslexia is at the earliest stage, first grade, second grade, third grade. It's unlike ADD adhd, where there are drugs and the drug company makes money, so they can actually put out literature to help you. A lot of dyslexic kids are ADD adhd. There's not a pill. If a kid is diagnosed with dyslexia, they have to actually work harder. It's not an escape. But if it's either the lack of hearing, because I work with Starkey hearing, or dyslexia, these are invisible. And a kid doesn't want to do this in school, huh? And if it's not treated right, if they don't have a great support system around them, there's people out there who say, I don't think you're dumb. You want to stand on this corner and make some money. And so, you know, it's something that's invisible. And I was very hard on my daughter who got expelled in school. I didn't know she was dyslexic, and I didn't even pick it up. I didn't pick up. I was dyslexic until my late 20s. So, you know, I gotta tell you, if you're a parent and you know, you think your kid is struggling, there are a lot of ways to go and study and find out about dyslexia or lack of hearing. Do that because they don't want to get bullied in school by going, huh? You know what I mean?

[Scott Clary]

I think that there is some stats out there that most successful entrepreneurs are neurodivergent to a degree. And the same skill. I didn't realize it's that about incarceration. But the same skill that makes you successful because you have laser focus, you don't get distracted with all the other BS that can, you know, sideline you. That same skill can totally derail some kid's life and any neurodivergence to a degree. I mean, this is, I don't have kids yet. That's sort of next for us. But, but that's, that's the, I mean, all the stuff we're talking about, the, the, the most important lesson is for the parents to figure out how to help your kid navigate life and, and when they're growing up, because that gives you, I mean, even the, the, the courage and, and the, the mindset that I have that came from my parents creating this like, psychologically safe environment for me to try. And they didn't, they didn't hate if it didn't worked out, which is why I podcast for a living now. This is not a normal career. It's not what, like, I didn't have like a podcasting uncle or something. So I think that this, like, you know, that last lesson for parents is so crucial. Like, give your kids a safe place to try things, to explore, to be curious. If they have some sort of neurodivergent tendency to any degree, like, like find a way to help them become successful. Navigate that. Because it'll all work out at the end of the day.

[Daymond John]

It will.

[Scott Clary]

But they have to navigate this, like, early childhood.

[Daymond John]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Damon, I appreciate you so much for coming on. Obviously people know who you are, but where do you want to send them

[Daymond John]

to, you know, ceoaccess.com ceox.com you can check me out. I'm, I'm at the shark, Damon. You know, my name is all like, Raymond with a date. You know, we probably air I don't know how many times on cnbc, you know, with the Kardashians of cnbc. And of course, the new season of Shark Tank is coming out, you know, and we have great stars like Mr. Beast is now gonna be. He's a guest shark. So it's showing that it's hitting a brand new audience. And also a lot of the CEOs can learn from, you know, a guy like him.

[Scott Clary]

I was gonna say, speaking of personal brand, billion dollar media company.

[Daymond John]

Billion dollar media company, his own amusement park.

[Scott Clary]

Crazy. And, you know, if you actually, you want to study him, like, he didn't know what the hell he was doing when he started.

[Daymond John]

You know what he said he only watched Shark Tank. He doesn't watch any other show. And he said Shark Tank was some of the things that. So it's coming full circle. I think the show is way bigger than I am and I look for. I look forward to just all the families it helps and truly just reinforcing the American dream.

[Scott Clary]

Now say you could package up all the wisdom that you've learned over your life and you have the ability to pass on one lesson to your kids. What is that lesson and why your

[Daymond John]

legacy is all you're gonna have? I say that because as you hopefully will be a parent soon, you're gonna, you know, every one of us as parents, we, we do all we can to protect our kids and give them the things that we never had or even we had. But if we leave them, like Epstein and Weinstein and Cosby and Diddy and R. Kelly, if we leave them with a legacy where they can't never walk in a room and their kids can never walk in a room and their kids can never walk in a room, then we've hurt them for the rest of their life. And so your legacy is exactly who you will be. We'll all make mistakes. Thank God social media wasn't on when I was 30 because I wouldn't be here with you right now. But be very mindful that we're all watching, because it wasn't like that before.

[Scott Clary]

I just want to add on one point and just bringing it back to that first thing about who you speak to when you create content. Like, that's just a good filter for life. Like you mentioned all these people that you don't want to disappoint when you create content, putting content aside for a second, like all actions that you take in life, maybe think through those same people.

[Daymond John]

Yes. And. And we assume everybody has a great upbringing. I know people haven't had a great upbringing. You know, I know people will come up with rough times and tough times, but they all got that elder in their house, that aunt, that uncle, that dad who maybe they know what they're talking about. So remember to talk like you were talking.