March 1, 2021 • 31 mins
On the premiere episode of Big Money Energy, Ryan is joined by entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” star Daymond John to discuss why becoming financially literate is the most important part of your education. The FUBU founder recalls his humble beginnings as a pencil salesman in elementary school, shares important lessons from his new book “Powershift,” and reveals how to go from having $40 to $6 billion.
For more about the episode and a blueprint you can use to take action based on Daymond John's story, go to bigmoneyenergy.com/podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome everybody to the first episode of Big Money Energy,
where I speak to very successful, self made people to
learn exactly how they did it. We cover the stories
in between the paths of their successes and how they
overcame the obstacles in their way. And specifically, I talked
to people who not only have big Money Energy, but
those who started with nothing, because I really really want
(00:23):
to learn how you went from nothing to something, because
big money Energy is the vibe you get from someone
who is succeeding at life in every direction. And today
we have Damon John. And in this episode, if you
were interested in anything relating to entrepreneurship, building wealth, and
learning from failure, you need to stick around. We go
(00:43):
through his first business, selling pencils and getting beaten up.
We talked about his bankruptcies. We talked about dealing with morons,
how to be a shark, and most importantly, how you
go from forty bucks to six billion. All Right, today
is an insanely, insanely special day because my guest is
(01:07):
none other than Damon John. Hey, Damon, how are you?
I'm good man? Now you look good with like the
leather and the Yankees had, and I'm trying to be cool. Now.
If you don't know Damon, I don't know who you are,
and I don't know why you're even listening to this,
because you should. Damon is a serial entrepreneur, investor, TV personality,
five time best selling author. He's got his new book
(01:28):
out right now, Power Shift, which is incredible. He's also
on a little TV show, Um, I can't remember, it's
a fish the fish Hit the fish Bowl, Shark Shark Tank.
That one nominated for fifteen Emmy's one four of them,
which is amazing. Damon, thank you for being here, Thank
you for having me. Yeah, man, how's your day? So
for it is great? It's Monday. I'm calling it more
(01:49):
on Monday. Yeah. There's a lot of morons on the world, man,
there are, dude, It's amazing. So I'm really excited about
that because that means I can make more and more money,
and so that everybody listening can make more and more
money because morons buy more stuff. Well, morons and idiots,
and if you have common sense and you're willing to
work hard and bust your ask for the morons won't.
So it's more on Monday. I gotta gotta got it
(02:10):
right because you can outwork everybody else who's just because
they're just not doing getting information from one source and
or they're idiots. I mean, it's really More on Monday.
I'm telling you now. You know, it's funny. I moved
to New York City in two thousands six when I
graduated college, and a way to make money for me
when I first got here because I was trying to
be an actor, and I was before I ever got
into real estate. In two I would do little things
like I passed up flyers on the street for gyms,
(02:32):
like I would do odds and end jobs. And one
of the things that I got was like a stock
photo job modeling Fu Bou nice. Yeah. I don't know
where those photos are because I think they were burned.
But I was probably the worst Foo Boo model not
anyone has ever seen. Do you remember those? Do you
remember those? I didn't remember yours? No? Maybe not? I
(02:53):
mean thinking about that, that that was probably about fifteen years ago.
I mean, but we always had really attractive and people
we felt fit the part. And you know what, I
think a good point of it is that a lot
of times, you know, talking about More on Monday, A
lot of times people thought that food was only for
people of a certain color, and we wouldn't have used
obviously not not the color that they're thinking, different color,
and obviously we had probably used the photo because you know,
(03:16):
we we used people of bolt colors and our ads.
We thank you man, thank you for being part of
the brand. So listen, one thing I want to start
with this. I'm gonna keep it super simple and let's
see how you respond. Okay, how did you go from
nothing to something? And what does that mean to you? Um?
I went through it through massive amount of failures. Um,
(03:37):
but I was failing small and quick and now learning
from them. I went through life as a series of mentors.
So I went through so many different mentors to try
to obtain the information that I didn't know I had
that I didn't know what to do, because when you
start out and anything, you don't know what you don't know.
I went through a lot of soul searching and realized
(03:57):
what was my why and why was I doing this?
And what did I want to get out of it?
And what was my line in the sand and what
I would agree upon or not agree upon. I went
through a lot of common sense too. You know, I
looked around, and everybody said you can't do what I was.
I was like, well, why all these buildings here, in
all these cars here? Who who did it? You know?
Was it was it the gods who did it? Or
(04:19):
was it one person with one idea that took one action.
I was like, this common sense, you can do this something.
And I just read a lot. I read, I read
a lot, and I and I and I noticed that
the things that I would read if I found the
same underlying truth in these twenty or forty books that
were written by different people at different times in their life,
(04:40):
in different times in history, what are they all lying
to me? Like? It's it's right there, it's right there.
Just a lot of common sense and drive. So so
you saw success from other people and that's what drove you.
That was your kind of your wire driver? What was
the what was the why? My why initially was get
some funky sneakers from for myself because mom wasn't making
(05:01):
any money. Why why make her work for mine? Uh?
Then it was supporting a household of me and dressed
my mother honestly, but I didn't want to be on
the streets. And then then then I made mistakes going
through their own businesses to try to make money, thinking
that you know, I was going to be a bazillionaire
by twenty and I was in and I was broke
by twenty because I was doing it only for money
I had. I had no passion to drive for it,
(05:21):
so sure I didn't want to work on it. Then
my wife became wait a minute, it's an untapped market
that that we're being neglected by all the big designers.
They think that hip hop kids are like, you know,
or rappers or whatever or not a value. And I
want to make clothes for people who I love the
genre music, you know. And that's when I created Foobu
and it was forced bias was by the culture. I mean,
(05:43):
I would I would dress the beastie boys. I would
address at local J run D M C, Salt and Pepper.
And that was my wife then. And then my wife
would change over the lives over my time of running
a business to say, Okay, everybody's gonna laugh at me
if this thing fails, uh, and they're gonna think I
hit the lotto or that one by the Apple. I
gotta keep going because my egos in place. And then
(06:03):
I had two little baby girls and my wife, and
then employees, and my wife just kept changing. What was
your first business? You mentioned cars, and my first business
was selling pencils at six years old. My pencils at
six Was there a good return on those pencils? Amazing return?
Because what I what I realized when the boys like
the girls in school at that age, they would try
(06:24):
to knock their teeth out. So I think there's gotta
be a way I can make a profit over this, right,
So I would out to find these pencils. I would
scrape the paint off the pencils, and I'd paint the
names of the prettiest girls in school and the pencils,
and I walk over the guys and go, you don't
want to knock or teeth out. If you buy this
box of pencils from me with your lunch money, you're
gonna be able to sit with the girls and give
them the pencils. I get to talk to them, and
then the guys would try to knock my teeth out.
(06:46):
So I was about to throw the pencils away, and
I remember one of the girls saying, Hey, that's my
name on that pencil. Is that mine? I was like, yeah,
it is. The girls paid me two times the amount
of money that I was trying to sell it to
the guys for. It's a market idea right there, But
my principle made me close that business after one month.
What where's that principle right now? And what do they do?
She had no vision. That's exactly the problem, because one
(07:08):
of the boys squealed on me and told her that
I was stealing the pencils from the guys that I
hated in school. So my cost of goods with zero
I think. I think it was a good business, but
there was some personal risk involved in in the selling
pencils to two people business when you're six, right, Uh,
as far as it us. If they punched your lights out, right,
if they knocked you out, but then they're still a
return I guess if the girls. But listen, I practiced
(07:29):
the oldest form of self defense there is running. Yes,
you can never cash me. I was really short and
really fast. The question, though, like, was your and I
know your why has changed over the years, but you know,
don't go back to when you're ten years old. I'm
just thinking, like what motivates you to come up with
different business ideas and think about different ways to make money.
(07:49):
I know back then it was like sneakers and make
some cash, But was it al also to do something different?
Like where you was there a hunger for you to
create something instead of just you know, making money. Because
we talked to a lot of people too. It's it's
just the money, right And you can see it on them,
you can smell it when they walk in the room. Yeah,
the people that I've always met that have been really
(08:10):
successful entrepreneurs. Okay, yeah, if you're in the financial trade
market and the systems like that, and it is money,
but they still love to kill. They still love the game,
the game, They still love the way that their mind works,
you know what I mean. I don't care if you're
a professional gambler. It money is the outcome, but they
still love the chase, the game, the way they break
things down, the way they see opportunity. My real y
(08:32):
came around with Foo and that was when I found
my love. I love fashion ever since I was ten
years old, and I loved hip hop ever since I
was ten years old. I blended them together when I
was nineteen, not realizing that I can make money off them,
and then I failed a bunch of times up until
nineteen and I would I would still fail with Foobo
from nineteen to twenty two. I would close it three
times by running out of capital. But then I started
(08:53):
it again and that's where the real love came. They
came around, like when I close it, but then people
saw us saying, I have what that shirt from you,
and I really want to it again. I started again.
I closed it and I kept closing it, but it
kept calling me back. And that's when I found my
real love and my really my real why. Yeah. I
was just giving people what they want. You know, it
did a lot of things. It gave people what they want.
I would I would make a shirt and then somebody
(09:15):
wear it and I would and they would wear it
a certain way, and I would go I never thought
about it like that, that ship is hid I love,
you know, or somebody when they boughted, I felt like
they said, and you know, I know that you feel
this way. You know you have to feel this way,
and being successful what you do is I made them
feel like they've arrived in some way or another, even
if it was that one moment that they took a
girl out or they were out with a guy and
(09:36):
they were wearing their brand new food blue shirt, right
like statement piece. But yeah, for that moment, they felt
like they arrived and I would I would address people
for the rest of my life for free if I
could have. I just loved it. So what happened in
what was that shift? I mean what? Because you shut
it down a couple of times and brought it back
and I've read and we know you know how how
important your mom was to a lot of this, right, Yeah,
(09:58):
and ninety two, I realized that I was going to
make a stand and I was not going to quit
this thing, and I need to educate myself more. And
I brought in uh partners, my three other partners that
are still my partner still today. And I had already
made all the mistakes prior, so now I knew what
I didn't need to do. You know a lot of
people who were successful in business, they go to things
and they may have five or ten businesses. The first
business they didn't have enough funding, so they shut it down.
(10:20):
The second business they had enough funding, but they didn't
have distribution. They shut it down. The third one they
had funding distribution, but they're legal wasn't in order. Boom boom,
boom boom by by business and attend. They're like, holy
sh it, I you know, I may have something here.
I think that's super important to all the listeners that
are watching and listening now who are growing up or
are learning how to start a business. And they are
They've got Instagram, they've got Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok. How
(10:43):
do you get the word out about clothing? Um the
way you guys started in the early nineties, without millions
and millions and millions of dollars to spend and commercials
and magazine ads. How do you do that? You know?
And that's exactly what I know. We'll get into power
ship about. It's about the building of influence prior and
that's what we're talking about. I'm gonna tell you now,
(11:05):
if I if social media was out when I started,
Bubu would have not been a six billion dollar brand.
It would have been a hundred billion dollar brand over
the years, because like you look at a Nike right
now doing about thirty billion a year, right, we would
have probably done about ten billion dollars a year annually.
For how had you started now? Had I start it now,
I mean I had to literally I sold your shirt,
(11:26):
I had to find you. The Internet did not exist,
cell phones didn't exist. I had to find where you
lived to sell you another shirt. And how did you
keep track of all those customers and to be able
to build your fanily school. I used to keep their
phone number. I used to tell them book like literally
at a book. I had a book. I used to
tell them, you know, listen Friday nights. You know I'm
(11:46):
gonna be in the corner of the Apollo Theater at
twelve o'clock when that thing lets out. I'm telling you now,
you better be there to get your shirt first, because
I'm gonna sell out that. Not only was I giving
them consistency of where I was going to be, I
was telling I knew their aims, and I was telling
them where to find me. I promised. I kept that promise.
I don't care if it was ten degrees. I was
there that day so people could expect you at night. Also,
(12:09):
I was getting feedback. Here's the best thing. You want feedback.
You stand on the corner of the Apollo Theater at
midnight when those drunk people let out, and they would
tell me about what they thought about my and my mother.
You want feedback, Oh my God, and it grew us
safer behind Instagram in person, much safer. But I had
(12:30):
to work with my partner and I we worked it
for about eight years like that, and I don't care
eight insistency. Yeah, it had to be consistent. When did
you get into office space? When did you first kind
(12:50):
of take a step back and realize, you know, what,
things are gonna be okay, and they might be better
than okay if we keep doing this. Yeah, it was
never gonna be okay. It was either gonna be guys,
all right now the real journey is starting, right, we're
playing at a big level. Nineteen nineties seven, UH Samsung's
textile division and this guy named Bruce and Norman gave
(13:12):
me a call and they gave us an opportunity um
to to come up there and were the agreement. I
think we had to sell five million dollars worth of
clothes and five in in three years to keep this
distribution deal that they were going to distribute our clothes.
It's like a record label getting a record, you know,
million and three years. Yeah, but I did thirty million
dollars in three months. And because we had already built
(13:33):
up this influence for ten years or nine years, all
of a sudden, they gave you a megaphone, gave us
a megaphone. They were like, okay, now we can manufacture
and distribute, do what you do best. And that was it.
We were dressing everybody in every single video. We were
every place, we want, every corner, and those ambassadors that
we had built that influence with, somebody would say, hey,
(13:54):
you know, I'm the Foobu guy who I'm the fooble
girl in Detroit And we would have a hundred of
the holes in Detroit, a hundred of those in Atlanta,
a hundred of those in Carolina Organic. And this is
viral before was viral, right, we build this relationship with
l J. He goes and puts Foobu in the gap ad,
he does a gap at and he puts for us
by us on the low in the gap at. Gap
(14:15):
spends thirty million dollars airing that commercial. It's a Foolbu commercial.
They're basically airing um. So many big things had happened
at that time for us, But it was a culmination
of if you really think about it, I started in
eighty nine. By that time, nine years or whatever, the
cases of just just pounding the ground. Now, it's going
(14:37):
back to what you talked about. You know, one of
the things I think people don't really understand these days
when they like when they look at somebody like you
and they say, okay, successful, Yeah, I know he's got
some sort of backstory. But is the red lobster working
red Lobster? That is a hustle that people just don't
get anymore. Like what you said, your your job when
you started was you worked at Red Lobster. The majority
of your day was working Red lobster, right, and then
(14:58):
it was getting food off the ground, watching it failed,
getting it back off the ground, watching it fail. What
was the red Lobster to you? Yeah, just like you
with the flyers, Red Lobster was my basis. I had
to keep the lights on. And everybody talks about, you know,
burn the bridges and quit your day job there. Whoever
said that's an idiot, because if you look and I
worked the Red Lobster for five years and I got
(15:18):
paid thirty thousand dollars a year, I had medical I
was taking all the food home, so now I didn't
have to pay for food anymore. I was having an
entire staff of red Lobster come to flea markets with
me on Saturdays and helped me. I was trying to
sell the customers right if they bought their shrimp, do
you want a T shirt? You know? And then at
the same time my house, I was renting out all
the rooms in my house. I had four rooms, so
(15:39):
I was renting a while out for twenty five dollars
a week to strangers. And I was sleeping on the couch.
So now I had some of the mortgage paid. I
was working all those hours of red Lobster, and I
had to do that for five years. I would have
to do two million dollars in sales and food to
take the same money away from there, and I wouldn't
have done two million dollars of sales. I was sleeping
next to sewing machines, you know, I was. I had
a old eat up car gelopy. I mean that thing was.
(16:03):
I don't know where it is, but you should find
that car. It's not trust me, it's not around anymore.
It's not around anymore. It can't be. And now you're
successful and everybody knows it too. Why shark tank, I mean,
is it just because you're you're hungry for more. You
want to meet more people, you want to help more people.
You invest in all these different businesses. You know, that's
it sounds almost like a stupid question, but it's kind
(16:24):
of not because you've You've lived so much life and
had so much business that people could only even dream of.
Why Shark Tank is? Why? Why has changed on Shark Tank?
You know? Initially when I turned down the show because
they said I couldn't do any of the show while
doing Shark Tank, and I was representing the Kardashians and
I was doing various things with the Kardashians, so I
said no. Chloe Kardashian fired me off the show because
(16:44):
she heard that I was turning down Shark Tank because
of her. Then I heard that on Shark Tank you
have to use your own money. I'm like, these these
guys in Hollywood a pimps. You suppose to get paid
to be on the show. Are you crazy? And then
somebody said to me, well, Daman, you're only getting pitched
clothing ideas. And I had ten clothing comings at the time,
and eight of them were dead. This is oh, seven
oh eight, when retail not working. I said, I'll go
(17:05):
on the show because if I'm talking to a retailer.
I want to take a more real estate in their
in their area, and I only have clothing. So I'll
go and get some lotions I'll get I'll get electronics,
I'll get whatever. So then when i'm talking to you,
I'll go can I be in these other departments? And
because we have a nurtured relationship, like we always talking about,
you'll say yes. I'm more comfortable with you because I
know you're a good vendor. You've been a good vendor
record for years. Something goes wrong, you'll take it back.
(17:26):
We have a good relationship going there. Then I start
to realize the power of it the show, and I
start to realize I'm learning more on the show than
the people on the show. I don't learn too much
from the Morons on the Other Sharks, they're the chairman
of Moron. But I learned from these other kids who
are coming up now. All of a sudden, they're selling
clothes a different way, their online, they're doing social media conversion,
(17:48):
they're doing this, they're doing that, And I'm learning all
these other industries and I'm applying it to myself. I
wasn't thinking about what we do now content creation. I
wasn't thinking about all these other things. I would have
been like my old up like some of like colleagues
in the industry, would have been the same old guy going,
let me make a shirt. Hopefully a buyer buys it.
Hopefully they put it on the rack in a dying
retail environment, and maybe somebody walks by the rack and
(18:10):
buys it. I would have been that same person. But again,
shark Tank has grown to something else and it changed
my Why Yeah, so how many different businesses are you
involved with? Now? You remember I would say that a
shark town by eight um. But and I know it
sounds daunting. So let me clara, let me my jaw
just dropped. Let me clarify that one third of them
are the walking dead giving them the money, or we've
(18:32):
done a deal and they're dead and or they are
trying to come around. There's nothing for me to do.
They call them up and ask them for the money. Now,
I mean, I'm a partner, right and things may work out,
it may not. Another third of them, like bomba Socks,
are brilliant. They don't need me. If I call them,
I may suck it up. They don't need me at
all to call them and say, Yo, you should make
the locals bigger. They'd be like, thank you, Damon click.
(18:54):
So now the ones I got a concentrar on the
ones right on the fence, they're gonna move either over
to one of those other lay means, and they call
me when they need me, and we work it out
and they need your help if they need my help. Absolutely,
And I'm here. What's your favorite business you're working on
right now? My favorite business? Well, of course, because we're here,
I'm gonna talk about the book. But other than that
because content. But you know, I I like my I
like my curriculum, my Damon on demand. I give step
(19:16):
by step lessons and and the information people need to
know to run a business and understand the difference between
if you need a trademark or you need a patent,
or you need a d b A or you need
a design trademark against a utility patent or whatever the cases.
Because in financing, when you get financing, how do you
get financing? Who do you get financing from? So I
like that one because it helps people. It saves them
(19:37):
from the mistakes that I made. When did you put
that course out? I put the course out about a year.
It's you can go to gaming on Demand dot com
and get that course. And you know, I'm starting to
see the students come back who are growing their business
or starting a business and saying, this is actually working.
So it's your it's your whole life and everything you
know and all if you're experts and people you work
with all boiled down in eight hours, so you can
get it. Basically, you can get your business degree. I'll
(19:59):
give example right now. Everybody always wants a patent. Patent
can cost anywhere from seventeen that if you do it yourself, right,
a utility patent in one of the cases, you do
it just yourself, no attorney. Of course, you maybe three
thousand dollars, but but you could probably you know, an attorney,
seventeen thousand all the way to a hundred because how
many claims you have in a pattern. I have a
hundred patterns. I haven't been able to defend that one
of them. However, a trademark f you be you cost dollars.
(20:24):
You can't put foubu on anything. That's it now per category,
then you get more categories at three hundred four hundred dollars.
That means you have it in category twenty four and
the category seventeen and twenty five maybe clothing. But think
about it like this. Somebody right now who has been
told they need a patent has spent fifty thousand dollars
when they just need to spend trademard what they really
(20:46):
they didn't know what they needed yet. If you could
go back in time and stand in front of your
twenty year old self, to go back to in right
on that corner, that inflection point, that aha moment when
that happened, you yourself right now, right, you take the
(21:07):
delore and you go back there, What do you say
to him without fucking him up? Funny? I watched the
Generous of the day, Do Alive not comedy. She was
just doing her speech or her whatever, Q and A,
she says. She She says she wouldn't tell her older,
her younger self anything because then she wouldn't be who
she is today. Me on all this hand, I get it,
you're right, um, but I would have I would have said, damon,
(21:27):
you've got to learn financial intelligence. You've gotta learn how
money works. Man, You've got to learn how money works.
The system has not been set up to let you
know how money works. You are and you're the only
thing you're not gonna learn in the school system, or
not the only thing, but you're not gonna learn how
financial intelligence works, because then you can't get three hundred thousand,
four hundred thousand dollars worth of loans on the education.
You're not certain if you want, I need a financial intelligence,
(21:50):
I would go i'ld go home with bankrupt three times
after that. Now, two of the times I almost went bankrupt,
I didn't have anything so bankrupt. Wasn't you know, wasn't
that you know, wasn't that much of a law it was.
It was it was almost like a you know, break even.
But after that I would I would blow about. I
would not blow because it wasn't on stupid things, but
I would go through about ten million fairly quickly. Thank god,
I'm not an athlete of somebody who peaks at the
(22:12):
beginning of their career. But you know, I had many
more bites to the apple and I was fine. But
I learned from that. I said that with a ten
million go now, I just didn't know how it worked.
Become financially literate. That's what you'd say to your financial
work on finding I'm still working on finding every you know,
the richest and wealthiest people. I know, billionaires. I mean,
guys are big money. They walk around with and they're
(22:34):
just older, but they walk around a book and all
they do generally is discuss or when they hear about
different ways to legally save on taxes, that's what they write.
And I always say why do you? And I noticed
like it was four different guys and said why do
you do that? He said, Well, I can either risk
at all and start a whole new business to hopefully
do two hundred million dollars a year, or I can
just save two hundred million that I already made. Why
(22:55):
the hell do I need to do this? Instead of
do this? But I gotta pay a billion all the taxes.
I'd rather only pay six hundred million dollars in tax
seven hundred million dollars And why start a whole new business?
Pretty smart? That already made it exactly. I love that man,
because you also because you have your course and you're
learning every day. Education has been such a big part
(23:17):
of your life every day as you go on every day.
You said big money there, What does big money energy
mean to you? If I just said that phrase to you,
what would you think about? I can interpret in different
ways I've ever heard before until you said, a big
money energy to me means either you know, you think
of the big money Wolf of Wall Street energy, like
in a room like that where I'm not sure that's good.
(23:39):
I'm just saying that, or you think of big money.
They come in when a person just has that thing
that they think big. They operate big. You know, they
just think big. You know. When I'm out with those
guys a lot of times there they're talking about you know,
so I'm gonna rule wealthy people and super wealthy people.
The difference between wealthy and super wealthy is the wealthy
(23:59):
people that I see or the rich. I don't want
to say wealth because wealthy is a lot of different
things in life. They talked about how big their parties are,
how big their houses are, and stuff like that. They
really really rich people. They talk about how much money
they gave away this year. So I was in the
house a little while back, and I remember this woman
walking walking to us all around and she's like, look
(24:21):
how big this house is, Look how big this is.
And then she just came into money and I remember
somebody who having an OVC said, wow, you live really well.
You live better than Warren Buffett. She shut the funk
up after that. So you know, big money energy is
just you know, really really really just thinking big and
being humble. I think also, I think, sure, talk to
(24:42):
me about your book, power Shift. Power Shift book number five.
All right, So I wrote this book because it was
like one week that a lot of people came to
me and they were asking me about or trying to
get advice about changing their lives and various other things.
And I'd asked them what did they do? And they
a lot of people felt that they were inundated, or
they did know where to start, or they needed a
lot of money, or they needed this, they needed that,
(25:03):
when it was really their mentality of how to change
your life, of what they can do with what they
have right now. And uh, and then I also started
to realize that people think that power shift and shifting
power is either taking it away and being just just
massively mean personal lots of time. Power shift is passing
the power onto you on the all the side of
the table. You appreciate it, and and and I wanted
(25:25):
people to understand how uh to become powerful. It's a
three step process. First, you have to build influence, like
you and I were talking, right, You have to build influences,
Then you negotiate what you want for both parties, and
then you nurture the relationship afterwards. But people are so transactional,
they're so just like this. So what do you do
when you run into a Ryan in the elevator and
(25:47):
you have a nineties second pitch and you didn't have
time to build influence with them? Well, if you have
the pitch and I do a lot of pitches in
here that are rock solid, Ryan, and damon, we're gonna
look at you or at your Instagram later on, did
you build influence through there to the right way? Because
I'm gonna look at the language and everything you're doing
and how you're representing yourself. If you happen to be
(26:09):
taking pictures with a massogic race and racist friend all
the time and you're wondering why I'm never calling you back,
Well maybe because I've just followed all the things around
you and realized that it's a facade you're putting out
there and this is actually where you believe nothing wrong
with that. Maybe you'll find somebody else who's a racist, massageist,
the pick who wants to be down with you. But
you know, it's all about this, this this form of
(26:29):
taking power back. Because people think that they'd be the
lost power. Somebody had to give it to him. That's
why I told you that good Friday. I realized nobody
had to give me power. I was in charge of myself.
And so I have a lot of subjects in here,
from Chris Jenner to uh, clay you Bill a guy
who is you know, Mark Vannette. But Clayton new Bill
is the producer of our show. He's had to see
(26:49):
thousands of pitches to get people to come in front
of the Sharks, probably like ten thousand, Right, what got
you pass clay new Bill to go to the Sharks?
I got Mark Cuban in there. I got pit Bull,
I got people you won't know in there who are
extremely successful people and how they have used power in
their lives. Look at the Kardashians. It's a subtle power
that they use, but it's in the book on how
they have built influence over the course of their lives
(27:12):
and how they're so powerful. Right, So it's a blueprint.
It's a powerfue print. It's a movement. The reason why
I put so many different subjects in there because I
got I got in there Billy Jean King, who changed
the face of tennis. You know what I mean. This
is not all about money. This is about power and
movement and giving. And that's why I put the blueprint
in by Barris different people, because you'll start to see
something that underlines other things, from body language when you're
(27:33):
discussing with people, to negotiation tactics to pitching. And if
you just take one or two of them, you're not
gonna absorb the whole thing. And maybe not it's not
for everybody, but you take one or two of them tomorrow,
and it starts making you better and stronger. You keep
adding to your artillery. You're gonna realize. I mean, the
only difference with anybody in the world is what we
have ever negotiated. That's it. Yeah, man, I live my
(27:56):
dad negotiating. Oh day long. Yeah. The first person you
got to go sha is a one year old Yeah, exactly. Well,
your he is manipulative. You will see you will see
that in her. I mean I'm sure you're seeing it now,
like but when when they're two. They know how to
play daddy against mommy, against caretakers, against teachers, against everybody.
It's a natural thing that we have. But a lot
(28:19):
of people don't realize how to master A two year
old knows how to master it. They just forget it
because people move them into a corner or they don't
get what they want. But two year old was learning.
They're learning. Yeah, you know how you learned super early
on how to how to manage people and manage expectations. Absolutely. Yeah, awesome, man,
I'm super excited about the book. I want to wrap
(28:40):
up one minute. You got it for me? Yea, guys,
super quick. What's your favorite movie? I don't know. Tropic Thunder.
That's a good movie. What you mean you people? Um? Well,
what's the worst job you ever had? Running b X
cable and burned down buildings in the Bronx? Yeah that's
pretty bad. That's pretty bad. Do you have a favorite quote?
(29:01):
One is a great slave with a horrible master. That's
a good one or no way? Wait wait, wait, don't
tell anybody your problem. Don't care that all are really
happy you have them. What's your favorite word? Fuck? Yeah?
If you could be any animal, what animal would you be.
Come on, you know what I gotta say on that one.
But maybe it's not that one. Maybe it's a different one.
(29:24):
Maybe it's like a platypus or like something weird no
one ever thought about. You're like, dude, no one knows this,
but I really, really, really uh um. I would have
to say a shark, I guess because I'm on Pisces
as well. I've always related to it, good old Pisces.
If you can live anywhere in the world other than
New York Miami, Yeah, what's your favorite song from the nineties?
(29:46):
Paid in full? I don't know if that's that's eighties,
actually Rocky, I'm paid in full nineties? I don't know. Sorry,
what's the last lie you told? The last lie that
I've told. I'm not going back to Golden Corral again.
Thank you, Mann, Thank you so much for coming on.
You're the best, Damon John. Your book Power Shift everywhere
(30:07):
the course everyone knows where to get it. Uh, You're
the man. You've got big money energy. Thank you, dude.
I appreciate it. If you're ready to take action today.
Based on Damon John's entire blueprint for how he got
to where he is, go to Big Money Energy dot
com slash podcast to download an action plan I put
(30:28):
together for you, as well as the show notes. That's
Big Money Energy dot com slash podcast. Find more podcasts
like Big Money Energy on the I Heart Radio app
or wherever you get your podcasts. Big Money Energy is
hosted by me Ryan Sir Hint and it's produced by
Mike Coscarelli and Joe Loresca and executive produced by Christina
(30:50):
Everett
Welcome everybody to the first episode of Big Money Energy,
where I speak to very successful, self made people to
learn exactly how they did it. We cover the stories
in between the paths of their successes and how they
overcame the obstacles in their way. And specifically, I talked
to people who not only have big Money Energy, but
those who started with nothing, because I really really want
(00:23):
to learn how you went from nothing to something, because
big money Energy is the vibe you get from someone
who is succeeding at life in every direction. And today
we have Damon John. And in this episode, if you
were interested in anything relating to entrepreneurship, building wealth, and
learning from failure, you need to stick around. We go
(00:43):
through his first business, selling pencils and getting beaten up.
We talked about his bankruptcies. We talked about dealing with morons,
how to be a shark, and most importantly, how you
go from forty bucks to six billion. All Right, today
is an insanely, insanely special day because my guest is
(01:07):
none other than Damon John. Hey, Damon, how are you?
I'm good man? Now you look good with like the
leather and the Yankees had, and I'm trying to be cool. Now.
If you don't know Damon, I don't know who you are,
and I don't know why you're even listening to this,
because you should. Damon is a serial entrepreneur, investor, TV personality,
five time best selling author. He's got his new book
(01:28):
out right now, Power Shift, which is incredible. He's also
on a little TV show, Um, I can't remember, it's
a fish the fish Hit the fish Bowl, Shark Shark Tank.
That one nominated for fifteen Emmy's one four of them,
which is amazing. Damon, thank you for being here, Thank
you for having me. Yeah, man, how's your day? So
for it is great? It's Monday. I'm calling it more
(01:49):
on Monday. Yeah. There's a lot of morons on the world, man,
there are, dude, It's amazing. So I'm really excited about
that because that means I can make more and more money,
and so that everybody listening can make more and more
money because morons buy more stuff. Well, morons and idiots,
and if you have common sense and you're willing to
work hard and bust your ask for the morons won't.
So it's more on Monday. I gotta gotta got it
(02:10):
right because you can outwork everybody else who's just because
they're just not doing getting information from one source and
or they're idiots. I mean, it's really More on Monday.
I'm telling you now. You know, it's funny. I moved
to New York City in two thousands six when I
graduated college, and a way to make money for me
when I first got here because I was trying to
be an actor, and I was before I ever got
into real estate. In two I would do little things
like I passed up flyers on the street for gyms,
(02:32):
like I would do odds and end jobs. And one
of the things that I got was like a stock
photo job modeling Fu Bou nice. Yeah. I don't know
where those photos are because I think they were burned.
But I was probably the worst Foo Boo model not
anyone has ever seen. Do you remember those? Do you
remember those? I didn't remember yours? No? Maybe not? I
(02:53):
mean thinking about that, that that was probably about fifteen years ago.
I mean, but we always had really attractive and people
we felt fit the part. And you know what, I
think a good point of it is that a lot
of times, you know, talking about More on Monday, A
lot of times people thought that food was only for
people of a certain color, and we wouldn't have used
obviously not not the color that they're thinking, different color,
and obviously we had probably used the photo because you know,
(03:16):
we we used people of bolt colors and our ads.
We thank you man, thank you for being part of
the brand. So listen, one thing I want to start
with this. I'm gonna keep it super simple and let's
see how you respond. Okay, how did you go from
nothing to something? And what does that mean to you? Um?
I went through it through massive amount of failures. Um,
(03:37):
but I was failing small and quick and now learning
from them. I went through life as a series of mentors.
So I went through so many different mentors to try
to obtain the information that I didn't know I had
that I didn't know what to do, because when you
start out and anything, you don't know what you don't know.
I went through a lot of soul searching and realized
(03:57):
what was my why and why was I doing this?
And what did I want to get out of it?
And what was my line in the sand and what
I would agree upon or not agree upon. I went
through a lot of common sense too. You know, I
looked around, and everybody said you can't do what I was.
I was like, well, why all these buildings here, in
all these cars here? Who who did it? You know?
Was it was it the gods who did it? Or
(04:19):
was it one person with one idea that took one action.
I was like, this common sense, you can do this something.
And I just read a lot. I read, I read
a lot, and I and I and I noticed that
the things that I would read if I found the
same underlying truth in these twenty or forty books that
were written by different people at different times in their life,
(04:40):
in different times in history, what are they all lying
to me? Like? It's it's right there, it's right there.
Just a lot of common sense and drive. So so
you saw success from other people and that's what drove you.
That was your kind of your wire driver? What was
the what was the why? My why initially was get
some funky sneakers from for myself because mom wasn't making
(05:01):
any money. Why why make her work for mine? Uh?
Then it was supporting a household of me and dressed
my mother honestly, but I didn't want to be on
the streets. And then then then I made mistakes going
through their own businesses to try to make money, thinking
that you know, I was going to be a bazillionaire
by twenty and I was in and I was broke
by twenty because I was doing it only for money
I had. I had no passion to drive for it,
(05:21):
so sure I didn't want to work on it. Then
my wife became wait a minute, it's an untapped market
that that we're being neglected by all the big designers.
They think that hip hop kids are like, you know,
or rappers or whatever or not a value. And I
want to make clothes for people who I love the
genre music, you know. And that's when I created Foobu
and it was forced bias was by the culture. I mean,
(05:43):
I would I would dress the beastie boys. I would
address at local J run D M C, Salt and Pepper.
And that was my wife then. And then my wife
would change over the lives over my time of running
a business to say, Okay, everybody's gonna laugh at me
if this thing fails, uh, and they're gonna think I
hit the lotto or that one by the Apple. I
gotta keep going because my egos in place. And then
(06:03):
I had two little baby girls and my wife, and
then employees, and my wife just kept changing. What was
your first business? You mentioned cars, and my first business
was selling pencils at six years old. My pencils at
six Was there a good return on those pencils? Amazing return?
Because what I what I realized when the boys like
the girls in school at that age, they would try
(06:24):
to knock their teeth out. So I think there's gotta
be a way I can make a profit over this, right,
So I would out to find these pencils. I would
scrape the paint off the pencils, and I'd paint the
names of the prettiest girls in school and the pencils,
and I walk over the guys and go, you don't
want to knock or teeth out. If you buy this
box of pencils from me with your lunch money, you're
gonna be able to sit with the girls and give
them the pencils. I get to talk to them, and
then the guys would try to knock my teeth out.
(06:46):
So I was about to throw the pencils away, and
I remember one of the girls saying, Hey, that's my
name on that pencil. Is that mine? I was like, yeah,
it is. The girls paid me two times the amount
of money that I was trying to sell it to
the guys for. It's a market idea right there, But
my principle made me close that business after one month.
What where's that principle right now? And what do they do?
She had no vision. That's exactly the problem, because one
(07:08):
of the boys squealed on me and told her that
I was stealing the pencils from the guys that I
hated in school. So my cost of goods with zero
I think. I think it was a good business, but
there was some personal risk involved in in the selling
pencils to two people business when you're six, right, Uh,
as far as it us. If they punched your lights out, right,
if they knocked you out, but then they're still a
return I guess if the girls. But listen, I practiced
(07:29):
the oldest form of self defense there is running. Yes,
you can never cash me. I was really short and
really fast. The question, though, like, was your and I
know your why has changed over the years, but you know,
don't go back to when you're ten years old. I'm
just thinking, like what motivates you to come up with
different business ideas and think about different ways to make money.
(07:49):
I know back then it was like sneakers and make
some cash, But was it al also to do something different?
Like where you was there a hunger for you to
create something instead of just you know, making money. Because
we talked to a lot of people too. It's it's
just the money, right And you can see it on them,
you can smell it when they walk in the room. Yeah,
the people that I've always met that have been really
(08:10):
successful entrepreneurs. Okay, yeah, if you're in the financial trade
market and the systems like that, and it is money,
but they still love to kill. They still love the game,
the game, They still love the way that their mind works,
you know what I mean. I don't care if you're
a professional gambler. It money is the outcome, but they
still love the chase, the game, the way they break
things down, the way they see opportunity. My real y
(08:32):
came around with Foo and that was when I found
my love. I love fashion ever since I was ten
years old, and I loved hip hop ever since I
was ten years old. I blended them together when I
was nineteen, not realizing that I can make money off them,
and then I failed a bunch of times up until
nineteen and I would I would still fail with Foobo
from nineteen to twenty two. I would close it three
times by running out of capital. But then I started
(08:53):
it again and that's where the real love came. They
came around, like when I close it, but then people
saw us saying, I have what that shirt from you,
and I really want to it again. I started again.
I closed it and I kept closing it, but it
kept calling me back. And that's when I found my
real love and my really my real why. Yeah. I
was just giving people what they want. You know, it
did a lot of things. It gave people what they want.
I would I would make a shirt and then somebody
(09:15):
wear it and I would and they would wear it
a certain way, and I would go I never thought
about it like that, that ship is hid I love,
you know, or somebody when they boughted, I felt like
they said, and you know, I know that you feel
this way. You know you have to feel this way,
and being successful what you do is I made them
feel like they've arrived in some way or another, even
if it was that one moment that they took a
girl out or they were out with a guy and
(09:36):
they were wearing their brand new food blue shirt, right
like statement piece. But yeah, for that moment, they felt
like they arrived and I would I would address people
for the rest of my life for free if I
could have. I just loved it. So what happened in
what was that shift? I mean what? Because you shut
it down a couple of times and brought it back
and I've read and we know you know how how
important your mom was to a lot of this, right, Yeah,
(09:58):
and ninety two, I realized that I was going to
make a stand and I was not going to quit
this thing, and I need to educate myself more. And
I brought in uh partners, my three other partners that
are still my partner still today. And I had already
made all the mistakes prior, so now I knew what
I didn't need to do. You know a lot of
people who were successful in business, they go to things
and they may have five or ten businesses. The first
business they didn't have enough funding, so they shut it down.
(10:20):
The second business they had enough funding, but they didn't
have distribution. They shut it down. The third one they
had funding distribution, but they're legal wasn't in order. Boom boom,
boom boom by by business and attend. They're like, holy
sh it, I you know, I may have something here.
I think that's super important to all the listeners that
are watching and listening now who are growing up or
are learning how to start a business. And they are
They've got Instagram, they've got Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok. How
(10:43):
do you get the word out about clothing? Um the
way you guys started in the early nineties, without millions
and millions and millions of dollars to spend and commercials
and magazine ads. How do you do that? You know?
And that's exactly what I know. We'll get into power
ship about. It's about the building of influence prior and
that's what we're talking about. I'm gonna tell you now,
(11:05):
if I if social media was out when I started,
Bubu would have not been a six billion dollar brand.
It would have been a hundred billion dollar brand over
the years, because like you look at a Nike right
now doing about thirty billion a year, right, we would
have probably done about ten billion dollars a year annually.
For how had you started now? Had I start it now,
I mean I had to literally I sold your shirt,
(11:26):
I had to find you. The Internet did not exist,
cell phones didn't exist. I had to find where you
lived to sell you another shirt. And how did you
keep track of all those customers and to be able
to build your fanily school. I used to keep their
phone number. I used to tell them book like literally
at a book. I had a book. I used to
tell them, you know, listen Friday nights. You know I'm
(11:46):
gonna be in the corner of the Apollo Theater at
twelve o'clock when that thing lets out. I'm telling you now,
you better be there to get your shirt first, because
I'm gonna sell out that. Not only was I giving
them consistency of where I was going to be, I
was telling I knew their aims, and I was telling
them where to find me. I promised. I kept that promise.
I don't care if it was ten degrees. I was
there that day so people could expect you at night. Also,
(12:09):
I was getting feedback. Here's the best thing. You want feedback.
You stand on the corner of the Apollo Theater at
midnight when those drunk people let out, and they would
tell me about what they thought about my and my mother.
You want feedback, Oh my God, and it grew us
safer behind Instagram in person, much safer. But I had
(12:30):
to work with my partner and I we worked it
for about eight years like that, and I don't care
eight insistency. Yeah, it had to be consistent. When did
you get into office space? When did you first kind
(12:50):
of take a step back and realize, you know, what,
things are gonna be okay, and they might be better
than okay if we keep doing this. Yeah, it was
never gonna be okay. It was either gonna be guys,
all right now the real journey is starting, right, we're
playing at a big level. Nineteen nineties seven, UH Samsung's
textile division and this guy named Bruce and Norman gave
(13:12):
me a call and they gave us an opportunity um
to to come up there and were the agreement. I
think we had to sell five million dollars worth of
clothes and five in in three years to keep this
distribution deal that they were going to distribute our clothes.
It's like a record label getting a record, you know,
million and three years. Yeah, but I did thirty million
dollars in three months. And because we had already built
(13:33):
up this influence for ten years or nine years, all
of a sudden, they gave you a megaphone, gave us
a megaphone. They were like, okay, now we can manufacture
and distribute, do what you do best. And that was it.
We were dressing everybody in every single video. We were
every place, we want, every corner, and those ambassadors that
we had built that influence with, somebody would say, hey,
(13:54):
you know, I'm the Foobu guy who I'm the fooble
girl in Detroit And we would have a hundred of
the holes in Detroit, a hundred of those in Atlanta,
a hundred of those in Carolina Organic. And this is
viral before was viral, right, we build this relationship with
l J. He goes and puts Foobu in the gap ad,
he does a gap at and he puts for us
by us on the low in the gap at. Gap
(14:15):
spends thirty million dollars airing that commercial. It's a Foolbu commercial.
They're basically airing um. So many big things had happened
at that time for us, But it was a culmination
of if you really think about it, I started in
eighty nine. By that time, nine years or whatever, the
cases of just just pounding the ground. Now, it's going
(14:37):
back to what you talked about. You know, one of
the things I think people don't really understand these days
when they like when they look at somebody like you
and they say, okay, successful, Yeah, I know he's got
some sort of backstory. But is the red lobster working
red Lobster? That is a hustle that people just don't
get anymore. Like what you said, your your job when
you started was you worked at Red Lobster. The majority
of your day was working Red lobster, right, and then
(14:58):
it was getting food off the ground, watching it failed,
getting it back off the ground, watching it fail. What
was the red Lobster to you? Yeah, just like you
with the flyers, Red Lobster was my basis. I had
to keep the lights on. And everybody talks about, you know,
burn the bridges and quit your day job there. Whoever
said that's an idiot, because if you look and I
worked the Red Lobster for five years and I got
(15:18):
paid thirty thousand dollars a year, I had medical I
was taking all the food home, so now I didn't
have to pay for food anymore. I was having an
entire staff of red Lobster come to flea markets with
me on Saturdays and helped me. I was trying to
sell the customers right if they bought their shrimp, do
you want a T shirt? You know? And then at
the same time my house, I was renting out all
the rooms in my house. I had four rooms, so
(15:39):
I was renting a while out for twenty five dollars
a week to strangers. And I was sleeping on the couch.
So now I had some of the mortgage paid. I
was working all those hours of red Lobster, and I
had to do that for five years. I would have
to do two million dollars in sales and food to
take the same money away from there, and I wouldn't
have done two million dollars of sales. I was sleeping
next to sewing machines, you know, I was. I had
a old eat up car gelopy. I mean that thing was.
(16:03):
I don't know where it is, but you should find
that car. It's not trust me, it's not around anymore.
It's not around anymore. It can't be. And now you're
successful and everybody knows it too. Why shark tank, I mean,
is it just because you're you're hungry for more. You
want to meet more people, you want to help more people.
You invest in all these different businesses. You know, that's
it sounds almost like a stupid question, but it's kind
(16:24):
of not because you've You've lived so much life and
had so much business that people could only even dream of.
Why Shark Tank is? Why? Why has changed on Shark Tank?
You know? Initially when I turned down the show because
they said I couldn't do any of the show while
doing Shark Tank, and I was representing the Kardashians and
I was doing various things with the Kardashians, so I
said no. Chloe Kardashian fired me off the show because
(16:44):
she heard that I was turning down Shark Tank because
of her. Then I heard that on Shark Tank you
have to use your own money. I'm like, these these
guys in Hollywood a pimps. You suppose to get paid
to be on the show. Are you crazy? And then
somebody said to me, well, Daman, you're only getting pitched
clothing ideas. And I had ten clothing comings at the time,
and eight of them were dead. This is oh, seven
oh eight, when retail not working. I said, I'll go
(17:05):
on the show because if I'm talking to a retailer.
I want to take a more real estate in their
in their area, and I only have clothing. So I'll
go and get some lotions I'll get I'll get electronics,
I'll get whatever. So then when i'm talking to you,
I'll go can I be in these other departments? And
because we have a nurtured relationship, like we always talking about,
you'll say yes. I'm more comfortable with you because I
know you're a good vendor. You've been a good vendor
record for years. Something goes wrong, you'll take it back.
(17:26):
We have a good relationship going there. Then I start
to realize the power of it the show, and I
start to realize I'm learning more on the show than
the people on the show. I don't learn too much
from the Morons on the Other Sharks, they're the chairman
of Moron. But I learned from these other kids who
are coming up now. All of a sudden, they're selling
clothes a different way, their online, they're doing social media conversion,
(17:48):
they're doing this, they're doing that, And I'm learning all
these other industries and I'm applying it to myself. I
wasn't thinking about what we do now content creation. I
wasn't thinking about all these other things. I would have
been like my old up like some of like colleagues
in the industry, would have been the same old guy going,
let me make a shirt. Hopefully a buyer buys it.
Hopefully they put it on the rack in a dying
retail environment, and maybe somebody walks by the rack and
(18:10):
buys it. I would have been that same person. But again,
shark Tank has grown to something else and it changed
my Why Yeah, so how many different businesses are you
involved with? Now? You remember I would say that a
shark town by eight um. But and I know it
sounds daunting. So let me clara, let me my jaw
just dropped. Let me clarify that one third of them
are the walking dead giving them the money, or we've
(18:32):
done a deal and they're dead and or they are
trying to come around. There's nothing for me to do.
They call them up and ask them for the money. Now,
I mean, I'm a partner, right and things may work out,
it may not. Another third of them, like bomba Socks,
are brilliant. They don't need me. If I call them,
I may suck it up. They don't need me at
all to call them and say, Yo, you should make
the locals bigger. They'd be like, thank you, Damon click.
(18:54):
So now the ones I got a concentrar on the
ones right on the fence, they're gonna move either over
to one of those other lay means, and they call
me when they need me, and we work it out
and they need your help if they need my help. Absolutely,
And I'm here. What's your favorite business you're working on
right now? My favorite business? Well, of course, because we're here,
I'm gonna talk about the book. But other than that
because content. But you know, I I like my I
like my curriculum, my Damon on demand. I give step
(19:16):
by step lessons and and the information people need to
know to run a business and understand the difference between
if you need a trademark or you need a patent,
or you need a d b A or you need
a design trademark against a utility patent or whatever the cases.
Because in financing, when you get financing, how do you
get financing? Who do you get financing from? So I
like that one because it helps people. It saves them
(19:37):
from the mistakes that I made. When did you put
that course out? I put the course out about a year.
It's you can go to gaming on Demand dot com
and get that course. And you know, I'm starting to
see the students come back who are growing their business
or starting a business and saying, this is actually working.
So it's your it's your whole life and everything you
know and all if you're experts and people you work
with all boiled down in eight hours, so you can
get it. Basically, you can get your business degree. I'll
(19:59):
give example right now. Everybody always wants a patent. Patent
can cost anywhere from seventeen that if you do it yourself, right,
a utility patent in one of the cases, you do
it just yourself, no attorney. Of course, you maybe three
thousand dollars, but but you could probably you know, an attorney,
seventeen thousand all the way to a hundred because how
many claims you have in a pattern. I have a
hundred patterns. I haven't been able to defend that one
of them. However, a trademark f you be you cost dollars.
(20:24):
You can't put foubu on anything. That's it now per category,
then you get more categories at three hundred four hundred dollars.
That means you have it in category twenty four and
the category seventeen and twenty five maybe clothing. But think
about it like this. Somebody right now who has been
told they need a patent has spent fifty thousand dollars
when they just need to spend trademard what they really
(20:46):
they didn't know what they needed yet. If you could
go back in time and stand in front of your
twenty year old self, to go back to in right
on that corner, that inflection point, that aha moment when
that happened, you yourself right now, right, you take the
(21:07):
delore and you go back there, What do you say
to him without fucking him up? Funny? I watched the
Generous of the day, Do Alive not comedy. She was
just doing her speech or her whatever, Q and A,
she says. She She says she wouldn't tell her older,
her younger self anything because then she wouldn't be who
she is today. Me on all this hand, I get it,
you're right, um, but I would have I would have said, damon,
(21:27):
you've got to learn financial intelligence. You've gotta learn how
money works. Man, You've got to learn how money works.
The system has not been set up to let you
know how money works. You are and you're the only
thing you're not gonna learn in the school system, or
not the only thing, but you're not gonna learn how
financial intelligence works, because then you can't get three hundred thousand,
four hundred thousand dollars worth of loans on the education.
You're not certain if you want, I need a financial intelligence,
(21:50):
I would go i'ld go home with bankrupt three times
after that. Now, two of the times I almost went bankrupt,
I didn't have anything so bankrupt. Wasn't you know, wasn't
that you know, wasn't that much of a law it was.
It was it was almost like a you know, break even.
But after that I would I would blow about. I
would not blow because it wasn't on stupid things, but
I would go through about ten million fairly quickly. Thank god,
I'm not an athlete of somebody who peaks at the
(22:12):
beginning of their career. But you know, I had many
more bites to the apple and I was fine. But
I learned from that. I said that with a ten
million go now, I just didn't know how it worked.
Become financially literate. That's what you'd say to your financial
work on finding I'm still working on finding every you know,
the richest and wealthiest people. I know, billionaires. I mean,
guys are big money. They walk around with and they're
(22:34):
just older, but they walk around a book and all
they do generally is discuss or when they hear about
different ways to legally save on taxes, that's what they write.
And I always say why do you? And I noticed
like it was four different guys and said why do
you do that? He said, Well, I can either risk
at all and start a whole new business to hopefully
do two hundred million dollars a year, or I can
just save two hundred million that I already made. Why
(22:55):
the hell do I need to do this? Instead of
do this? But I gotta pay a billion all the taxes.
I'd rather only pay six hundred million dollars in tax
seven hundred million dollars And why start a whole new business?
Pretty smart? That already made it exactly. I love that man,
because you also because you have your course and you're
learning every day. Education has been such a big part
(23:17):
of your life every day as you go on every day.
You said big money there, What does big money energy
mean to you? If I just said that phrase to you,
what would you think about? I can interpret in different
ways I've ever heard before until you said, a big
money energy to me means either you know, you think
of the big money Wolf of Wall Street energy, like
in a room like that where I'm not sure that's good.
(23:39):
I'm just saying that, or you think of big money.
They come in when a person just has that thing
that they think big. They operate big. You know, they
just think big. You know. When I'm out with those
guys a lot of times there they're talking about you know,
so I'm gonna rule wealthy people and super wealthy people.
The difference between wealthy and super wealthy is the wealthy
(23:59):
people that I see or the rich. I don't want
to say wealth because wealthy is a lot of different
things in life. They talked about how big their parties are,
how big their houses are, and stuff like that. They
really really rich people. They talk about how much money
they gave away this year. So I was in the
house a little while back, and I remember this woman
walking walking to us all around and she's like, look
(24:21):
how big this house is, Look how big this is.
And then she just came into money and I remember
somebody who having an OVC said, wow, you live really well.
You live better than Warren Buffett. She shut the funk
up after that. So you know, big money energy is
just you know, really really really just thinking big and
being humble. I think also, I think, sure, talk to
(24:42):
me about your book, power Shift. Power Shift book number five.
All right, So I wrote this book because it was
like one week that a lot of people came to
me and they were asking me about or trying to
get advice about changing their lives and various other things.
And I'd asked them what did they do? And they
a lot of people felt that they were inundated, or
they did know where to start, or they needed a
lot of money, or they needed this, they needed that,
(25:03):
when it was really their mentality of how to change
your life, of what they can do with what they
have right now. And uh, and then I also started
to realize that people think that power shift and shifting
power is either taking it away and being just just
massively mean personal lots of time. Power shift is passing
the power onto you on the all the side of
the table. You appreciate it, and and and I wanted
(25:25):
people to understand how uh to become powerful. It's a
three step process. First, you have to build influence, like
you and I were talking, right, You have to build influences,
Then you negotiate what you want for both parties, and
then you nurture the relationship afterwards. But people are so transactional,
they're so just like this. So what do you do
when you run into a Ryan in the elevator and
(25:47):
you have a nineties second pitch and you didn't have
time to build influence with them? Well, if you have
the pitch and I do a lot of pitches in
here that are rock solid, Ryan, and damon, we're gonna
look at you or at your Instagram later on, did
you build influence through there to the right way? Because
I'm gonna look at the language and everything you're doing
and how you're representing yourself. If you happen to be
(26:09):
taking pictures with a massogic race and racist friend all
the time and you're wondering why I'm never calling you back,
Well maybe because I've just followed all the things around
you and realized that it's a facade you're putting out
there and this is actually where you believe nothing wrong
with that. Maybe you'll find somebody else who's a racist, massageist,
the pick who wants to be down with you. But
you know, it's all about this, this this form of
(26:29):
taking power back. Because people think that they'd be the
lost power. Somebody had to give it to him. That's
why I told you that good Friday. I realized nobody
had to give me power. I was in charge of myself.
And so I have a lot of subjects in here,
from Chris Jenner to uh, clay you Bill a guy
who is you know, Mark Vannette. But Clayton new Bill
is the producer of our show. He's had to see
(26:49):
thousands of pitches to get people to come in front
of the Sharks, probably like ten thousand, Right, what got
you pass clay new Bill to go to the Sharks?
I got Mark Cuban in there. I got pit Bull,
I got people you won't know in there who are
extremely successful people and how they have used power in
their lives. Look at the Kardashians. It's a subtle power
that they use, but it's in the book on how
they have built influence over the course of their lives
(27:12):
and how they're so powerful. Right, So it's a blueprint.
It's a powerfue print. It's a movement. The reason why
I put so many different subjects in there because I
got I got in there Billy Jean King, who changed
the face of tennis. You know what I mean. This
is not all about money. This is about power and
movement and giving. And that's why I put the blueprint
in by Barris different people, because you'll start to see
something that underlines other things, from body language when you're
(27:33):
discussing with people, to negotiation tactics to pitching. And if
you just take one or two of them, you're not
gonna absorb the whole thing. And maybe not it's not
for everybody, but you take one or two of them tomorrow,
and it starts making you better and stronger. You keep
adding to your artillery. You're gonna realize. I mean, the
only difference with anybody in the world is what we
have ever negotiated. That's it. Yeah, man, I live my
(27:56):
dad negotiating. Oh day long. Yeah. The first person you
got to go sha is a one year old Yeah, exactly. Well,
your he is manipulative. You will see you will see
that in her. I mean I'm sure you're seeing it now,
like but when when they're two. They know how to
play daddy against mommy, against caretakers, against teachers, against everybody.
It's a natural thing that we have. But a lot
(28:19):
of people don't realize how to master A two year
old knows how to master it. They just forget it
because people move them into a corner or they don't
get what they want. But two year old was learning.
They're learning. Yeah, you know how you learned super early
on how to how to manage people and manage expectations. Absolutely. Yeah, awesome, man,
I'm super excited about the book. I want to wrap
(28:40):
up one minute. You got it for me? Yea, guys,
super quick. What's your favorite movie? I don't know. Tropic Thunder.
That's a good movie. What you mean you people? Um? Well,
what's the worst job you ever had? Running b X
cable and burned down buildings in the Bronx? Yeah that's
pretty bad. That's pretty bad. Do you have a favorite quote?
(29:01):
One is a great slave with a horrible master. That's
a good one or no way? Wait wait, wait, don't
tell anybody your problem. Don't care that all are really
happy you have them. What's your favorite word? Fuck? Yeah?
If you could be any animal, what animal would you be.
Come on, you know what I gotta say on that one.
But maybe it's not that one. Maybe it's a different one.
(29:24):
Maybe it's like a platypus or like something weird no
one ever thought about. You're like, dude, no one knows this,
but I really, really, really uh um. I would have
to say a shark, I guess because I'm on Pisces
as well. I've always related to it, good old Pisces.
If you can live anywhere in the world other than
New York Miami, Yeah, what's your favorite song from the nineties?
(29:46):
Paid in full? I don't know if that's that's eighties,
actually Rocky, I'm paid in full nineties? I don't know. Sorry,
what's the last lie you told? The last lie that
I've told. I'm not going back to Golden Corral again.
Thank you, Mann, Thank you so much for coming on.
You're the best, Damon John. Your book Power Shift everywhere
(30:07):
the course everyone knows where to get it. Uh, You're
the man. You've got big money energy. Thank you, dude.
I appreciate it. If you're ready to take action today.
Based on Damon John's entire blueprint for how he got
to where he is, go to Big Money Energy dot
com slash podcast to download an action plan I put
(30:28):
together for you, as well as the show notes. That's
Big Money Energy dot com slash podcast. Find more podcasts
like Big Money Energy on the I Heart Radio app
or wherever you get your podcasts. Big Money Energy is
hosted by me Ryan Sir Hint and it's produced by
Mike Coscarelli and Joe Loresca and executive produced by Christina
(30:50):
Everett
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