The Shark's Roadmap: Insights from Daymond John on Success and Building a Business That Lasts with Daymond John at Joe Polish’s Genius Network - I Love Marketing Episode #469

I always think is what is my latest outcome and what am I doing it for? You know, going down to that deep, she's probably here, but that deep. Why? Because what I've learned in life is when I see people succeed, it's three very specific pillars. It's knowing their why, you know, setting the goals to accomplish and doing the homework. But a lot of us have not really dug into the why. The why often is what my parents thought success was or what I'm afraid of what society is going to think of. So think of me. So if you set those different whys like that, well, then your goal is going to be the wrong goal because it's coming from the wrong place. And then how are you going to do the proper homework on the wrong goal for the wrong why?

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius network, go to www.gienstruitnetwork.com. good to be doing this. We've done a few interviews. And what is the latest in your world? Like, how do you keep up with all this crazy stuff?

I'm.

I'm kind of finishing off the year and just thinking about all the things we have to deal with. Do we bring people back to work? How many do we bring? How many people do we bring back to work? In one sense, am I still working virtual? How to access a lot of AI? I gotta tell you something though. I was fully remote for many years.

And if you have common sense in this country, you're gonna be okay.

I miss the days where you just go and talk to people. Everything's not so damn automated because that's how you develop socialization skills is you go and talk to other human beings. And the more that you try to make everything about technology, you can create all kinds of incredible tech efficiencies in optimization, but what it's doing to the human mind and the ability to connect. So I guess I will ask you a question of, you know, you navigate a tremendous amount of relationships. You're on Shark Tank. There are people that are constantly pitching you fund my deal, fund my deal, believe my thing, endorse my stuff. How do you know what, what are some suggestions you can give on, you know, just navigating being a connected human and what to say yes to and what to say no to. Who do you align yourself with? Stuff like that. I'd love to get your, like the Damon John rules of engagement and how you go about just developing relationships with people that you want to and how you nicely say no to the ones you don't.

Yeah, that's a great question. I don't think I've been asked that before, but, you know, I kind of reevaluate my time Action inventory every quarter and see how many. And my day is ran on half an hour slots.

I, at the end of the year is around this time of the year. And I find I started doing this about 10 years ago. I realized who I'm going to cut off in my life every year. And it can be for various reasons. Maybe I don't like them, they don't like me. But I realized when I haven't, when I'm not a person who's of service to these people, then there's a reason why I don't want to be of service. And also I also realize a lot of these people who are not good friends to themselves, they'll never be good friends to me. And I need to make time and opportunity for those who maybe I have neglected or deserve my love and I deserve theirs. So I started doing that about 10 years ago and it started off with about 10 people and now it gotten down to like one or two.

Right.

Because I've pretty much cleared that out of the deck in regards to investments, you know, when I say no, I say no. And various reasons, you know, there are people I have obviously services and places to go for those things, but I generally say, if it's a young startup, I go, you don't want an investment? You want the power of broke? You want to learn this? Oh, I want to sit with you, Mr. John. I want to sit with you. Go read a book. Not even by me. Go read it by Tim Ferriss or Lean Startup or any of this type of stuff. When it gets to people who are much bigger in business, often I say, you know, I would say something in the nature of I'm not spending enough time on my own businesses. And I always got to put it back on them, on how, you know, how it is. Because people think that they're the only ones with the issue. And you're not the one with the issue. No. I'm 55 years old, I just beat cancer. I have two girls that I really didn't get to see them grow up because I was running around the world like anybody else here who would. Even if I was one of these great people cleaning up the streets, sanitation, who was saving us from diseases, even if I was doing that, I'd be working overtime because every single parent here knows that they would sleep in A refrigerator box for their two little girls to have medicine and education. So I didn't get to see them grow up, and I'm not gonna fuck that up with the young one that I have now. So why would I give you more time? And they understand.

So I talked earlier, you know, this morning when I opened up, about success and having money. You know, the. The how you get it versus what you get are two different things.

Yeah.

And I know some really incredibly successful, happier, more humans that also contribute to a lot of people, because there's. I get really annoyed when I see people posting in some celebratory way that you can make all kinds of money with not having to produce a lot of stuff or, you know, not having to reach a lot of people you can make. It's like, well, okay, so, like, you have enough money. I have enough money that if we wanted to just go on vacation and do nothing in the world, we can do that. I don't need to work for a living at that point, you know, unless I do something really stupid with the money that I have, you know, I have no debt. I. You know, I. I can live quite well. I don't have to be having genius recovery. I don't have to run genius network, but I'm driven. You know, it's like the guy that wrote the book driven, Dr. Doug Brackman, sitting back here. Right? So you got these driven entrepreneurs that have to do stuff, but you. You know, you can make a lot of money and leave a ton of scorched earth along the way, or you can be a more contributing person. I mean, I know a lot of very wealthy people that will not have many people, if any show up at their funerals, if they die, because they're just miserable, mean people. Here's what I would say. You take a hunter. So a hunter or a farmer, you know, Doug Brackman stuff here. You know, there's 5% of the population, approximately, he says, are hunters. They have the D2D4 gene. It's a genetic mutation. And then there's the farmers. So the vast majority of people that go to mastermind groups, type A quick start, Colby. Add all the labels and all the different ways. You can look at the driven entrepreneur. The people, they're tribal, so that's why they join groups. Yeah, they come. That sort of stuff. A. A hunter without good boundaries is a tyrant. You. They're. They're the people that are doing real damage. But a hunter with ethics and with compassion and with empathy, not that they can't be intense not that they can't, but there's a certain level of, of, of, of care in, in, in awareness of what it is they do. And when that awareness is not there, it's. You're. You're talking about a ticking time bomb. So there's stages, though. And so how do you keep yourself in check? Because you have a lot of energy coming at you all the time. I mean, I've been around you enough where a lot of people are trying to get.

Yeah, you know what? I think that obviously there's way more people super overqualified in this room to answer that. So I think why? And they can answer from a technical or scientifical aspect. I think I'm the best one to answer that in a sense, because I've lived this weird life, right, of coming from the hood, being the only African American on television in an educational way that doesn't come from music, sports or politics, which is absolutely disgusting.

Right.

But I am a form of the American dream, and I am in a room full of highly educated people often. And many of those PhDs or CEOs or billionaires come to me for advice because they want to look at things through a simple lens. So as I rehack myself and what I do.

I always think is what is my latest outcome and what am I doing it for? Going down to that deep. She's probably here, but that deep. Why? Because what I've learned in life is when I see people succeed, it's three very specific pillars. It's knowing their why, you know, setting the goals to accomplish and doing the homework. But a lot of us have not really dug into the why. The why often is what my parents thought success was or what I'm afraid of what society is going to think of. So think of me. So if you set those different whys like that well, then your goal is going to be the wrong goal because it's coming from the wrong place. And then how are you going to do the proper homework on the wrong goal for the wrong why? And it's really an animalistic thing. I've had to, you know, my first divorce, I had to face it. I've seen so many people go through this. Well, we're just staying together so the kids will be happy. The kids see the, see the pain, and you're just prolonging the inevitable. Right. No matter how much you love your wife or husband, but you may not get along this way or. Right. So I've always been a person to. Just immediately after I thought about it, just immediately make the decision, live by the decisions that I made.

So that's really it. So I look at today, if I look at my why like today, what are the three things I'm really doing? I love, I love the children's education book. And going into that space, I want to be the new Mr. Rogers in the space because our kids don't have any more national heroes after five years old, they, they're online and all they have are Instagram families tell them to do or various other things. They don't grow up like we did. Well, we had electric company, Mr. Rogers, the Muppets and various other things. And I want to teach them financial intelligence.

Is this why you're wearing a sweater?

No. Why?

Mr. Roger?

Mr. Roger? No.

But I, I, I mean you're getting closer.

I had the top hat on. But when I, when, when I do that. Because what's happening right now in our country, well, we're working off of an 80 year old school system that taught us how to build ships and become good employees. But a kid today who is not taught any financial intelligence or wellness between, you know, 6 to 10 years old, well, the data is that the kids graduating today, 50% of them will have a, will retire with a job title that doesn't actually exist today. That's like telling somebody 20 years ago you were going to be a drone operator or a pay per click expert, right? So if a kid doesn't have any financial intelligence, but at 16 to 17 years old, they get marketed by predatory lenders for a career they're not sure they want to have and they can take $700,000 to $800,000 worth of student debt that they won't pay off until their 50s. Well then we're all fucked, right? Because if you don't have money, what happens? I mean, I'm in a room full of some of the healthiest people in the world, body hackers and stuff like that. But the cheapest things to consume in this country are made of butter, sugar and salt. And that's why we have gang violence, that's why we have domestic issues because of the lack of money. And it all starts from not teaching our children, you know, how to do this. And so that's one of my journeys. And so when I look at it, then I look at my old picture, what am I going to do? How am I going to cut up my life? 20% with that, 20% with this, 20% with this, and 20% with this, and I start moving forward, set goals and I readjust yeah, yeah.

Well, you've put a lot. So I think we went and hiked Camelback Mountain in 2014 of that video. And you've put a lot of emphasis on health and getting yourself in better shape since. What do you do? What's sort of like the way you treat exercise and diet and stuff? Because I know you put.

Yeah, well, it's everything. Well, it's of course going doctor on to get EBOO to pull the, you know, pull the inflammation on my body.

I work with EBOO is ozone dialysis.

Cherie, actually, doctor, she is amazing, I'm telling you. And you know what's more amazing about her is that my wife doesn't travel a lot. Um, and I think the machine she has is only like 25 of them in the country. I believe she has two of them. She said, no problem. She called the manufacturer and said, where else have you sold a machine? And then didn't know the person and called that doctor and said, I want you to check this person out. So when you were. When you're a person of giving, it will. You said that. A long time ago, when I first started getting into the public space, I reached out to. And I know his daughter's here. I reached out to my favorite person, Jay Abraham, to mentor me and Joe, and Joe and Jay both said, you just gotta give, give, give, give, give. You're gonna do it anyway, but give and keep giving. Because one day, I mean, we're all one tweet away from a crack house. So he said, they're gonna get us, every one of us, right? So one day when they come for you, you will have enough brand and IP equity. And he said, but when you give and you are a service just like we are to our everyday clients, people want to give more. Good people don't like going, yimme. Thank you, thank you, thank you. They like going, what can I do? What can I do for you? Come on, what can I. Is that why I'm here for free? That's why I'm here for free?

I think so.

Because you're my man. I. I don't even think about it anymore. Not that, not, not that we wouldn't work something out, but again, you know, down the road.

Where were we?

No, you, here's.

Oh, my body.

And so health and fitness and stuff. And I have a follow up, so I've been.

So listen, so we are in such an advanced stage, the way medicine is moving, so whether it's at this thing called a pernuvo machine where it Went and scanned my whole body. No radiation. I'm heading over to Italy. What do they find in there? They find a little bump. It's called a baker's cyst. I don't know what this is when the doctors say, but it said something of baker's or potentially aneurysm. Now, of course, I'm going to Italy.

You sure it's not Kevin o' Leary that somehow embedded himself in your leg?

No, he. No, he more. He's more pain in my neck, but.

But I go and get it checked out, and now, you know, I'm. It was nothing, right? But I have that right. I go to Gary, break stem cell exosomes, all these things, but it is rejuvenated my life. Yeah. And you know what? Talking about goal setting. I was goal setting, and I keep goal setting. I learned it from, obviously, Napoleon Hill. Think and grow rich. We all know what we should do, but we don't want to do it right? A lot of times. And I wasn't dropping the weight, even when I was going up with you on that mountain, I wasn't dropping the weight until you know what I realized? I literally just had to stop drinking. It was in my face all the time. But people in this room, just like you and I, when we are traveling the world, I'm on the road 250 days, right? You don't get any release. You can't. I've seen the world 10 times prior to that, when I was 35. And it was always a boardroom, an airport, you know, a hotel and a bar. Because you can't work out. You can't. We can't shut our minds off. So what is the natural boom? Right? You do this right because you can work out, no problem. But on those hours, you can. And you have to have two dinners with clients you can't stand. So you gotta drink to be numb, right? You have to. And then when you finally catch up with some friends, you wanna drink. Cause you're fucking happy, right? So. But I realized that. And when I changed my goals from, you know, just moving that pie out of my goals, I dropped 40 pounds, naturally, in six months. Yeah, right. No nutritionist, no chef. So it really is about goal setting and really being honest with what you want. Sometimes when you're honest with it, it's going to hurt other people, end of the day.

Oh. I mean, we live in a world of food pushing, alcohol pushing. I mean, it's just. It's just so.

Well, what would this country be if they didn't have alcohol. Think about the hotels, the bars, all the places. Think about that. You got to follow the money. Yeah, but it is, you know, it's. We all know it's not good.

At this point, you have sold billions of dollars worth of stuff from, you know, your clothing brand to everything. How many deals have you invested in Shark Tank now?

I think I've invested in 112.

112. So what do you look for where it's an. It's a. Hell yes. When. If you hear something or see something. What are some of the elements to know that this is something worth investing in?

I learned, you know, the first maybe five season, six seasons I'll really. And everything I've. And I'm excited about. The hardest thing on Shark Tank often is to say no, because so many great people have made it through so many stages to get there. I mean, there's some people that are just like, all right, get the hell out of here. But most people, and I used to get really excited about the product and all this stuff, and I still do. It is purely the person. Most of the. You know, because if you look at all my investments, let's say out of 112, let's say I have 90 left. I put them in buckets, three buckets, right. One third of them are the walking dead. You know, nothing to do, right. I'm not gonna call them, ask them for the money. I'm gonna. Within three years, I'm gonna do a write off and whatever it is, another third of them superstars, they're rock stars. If I call, I'm gonna interrupt the business. Call me when you need me for me to do some of the heavy lifting, right? And then the one third is right in the middle. But I've really looked at the founders period. And same as we were talking about communication. Chris Sacca will say that all the biggest deal in San Fran. He had 12 meetings a day. They were always when somebody went up to his house and they got to hang out for a while. And almost all my deals that I find value and I'm excited about is because I like the person. And we keep. It's like Christmas every time we talk. It's like when you and I talk, we don't want to talk because we got too much work to do after that. Oh, shit, you just told Joel I was going to do this, this, and you get excited about it, right? And it's always been the person because that deal will shift, that business will grow, or we'll just start another one. But it's always been the person.

You then have dissolved this whole belief. Then when people say, oh, I could have invented that. Someone came up with this idea. But I had that idea. It's not that. It's the person, though.

No, it's bullshit, right? Because first of all, look, I went on the Shark Tank because the last thing I wanted to do was get pitched at the clothing company. It was 08. Nobody was buying clothing when they couldn't sell, pay their mortgage, right? And Jay Abraham has always said that there's only three ways to deal with a customer, right? You acquire a new one, you upsell a current one, or you make one buy more frequently. So try to supersize everybody's fries, right? And I was sitting there saying, well, what is my skill set? Taking inventory. Am I a great designer? No, there's nothing great about putting a big ass 05 on a sweatshirt. There's no great design in that, right? I'm a great marketer, but now I have the pipes, I have Samsung, and I have distribution. So I'm gonna go to Macy's and say, the buyer, listen, I got 10 clothing lines. Eight of them are dead. But because, you know, I'm authorized vendor, I'll take back goods, I'll support marketing, whatever the case is, right? I want more real estate, I want electronics, I want cosmetics, I want dishware or whatever the case is. I'm only getting pitch. Clothing company. I go on Shark Tank, and the only thing I don't want is clothing companies. Guess what happens? I do Bomba stocks. They'll do $1.4 billion this year, right? I couldn't even sell my own socks. The way that I sold socks was when you're sleeping, I sneak into your laundry room and steal one so you can go buy another pair. That's the only way that I know how to sell socks. But these guys go out there and sell socks and do $1.4 billion. By the way, I'm the number one. I have the number one company ever invested in our Shark Tank. So when you see those other underachievers, I call my fellow sharks, you remind them of that. Call them the socks, though. That's what I. So, you know. So the bottom line is it was the people because. And let me tell you something. When they called me, I called them first after they do the deal. Great socks, guys, let me tell you something. First of all, giving back. Absolutely. To the homeless, 100% what you should do. All right, all right. I want to create some Flavor Flav socks. I Had all these brands and they were like, no. I was like, why? Narrow and deep. So what would they do? They would do Sesame Street. Why? Because daddies and daughters can't dress the same. But now all of a sudden, my little girls come to my room going, daddy, put on your Elmo socks.

Right?

My daughter and I and my kids and I are like, oh, man, we're buying for today because we've given away to these people in need, and we're going to buy these for Christmas gifts and tell other people they're giving to the people in need. So they changed my entire way of thinking. And it was because purely, they were great operators, but we got to know each other and like each other. Chariot.

Very cool. Very cool. So.

Everyone here has their business that has their ambitions. They want to build and grow it. They, you know, there's certain levels of the. The. The person in this room will endure more risk, more pain, more navigation. There's incredible resourcefulness in here, and there's a lot of. In the midst of all that, there's a lot of angst. There's a lot of navigating things that they don't know how to do, and a lot of decisions you have to make with very. Either fractured focus or just not having a lot of information. So I'd love to, you know, if you were to advise everyone here on decision making in things that you have learned that were fundamental in building and growing not only your own business, your first business, but you're now in the position all the time where you're having to guide and direct people that you can't learn everything about their business. So there's some fundamentals that are. That you have learned and that you employ that have helped you build and grow. So I'd love to have you speak about that as the business advice that I'm going to ask you about as the person like, you know, how do you. This fame. How do you deploy? I'll ask you some of the things you're. You're doing, but, like, how do you deploy this fame and this leverage? Because you've now got Daymond John, the investor, the guy that, you know, looks at businesses and helps build them. Then you have the. The brand of Damon John. So you've got these in. In a lot of people in the room here have those two things. They have their life, and then they have this Persona that what the world views them as.

Yeah, I look at growing the business as the business. The biggest mistakes I made is actually when I had money, because I Didn't trust my ego. I see my. I didn't trust my gut, and my ego got in the way. And I would think that that's why I wrote the Power of bro. I always say, well, the person looks good, or I can make a lot of money, or I'm Damon John or I should do this. And I made the decision because of. Purely because the ego didn't trust my gut. And out of all those, If I did 10 of those things, eight of them I lost on, and the two that I didn't lose on, I'll go, thank God I'm out of it. So it's just, you know, you can't necessarily articulate what your gut is saying, but it's not up to anybody else. It's really up to you and trusting our gut. I've also learned that prior to doing any kind of business or going anywhere, the biggest amount of investment is the time and education in it. Prior on, what do you want to do? What part of it do you want to do? What will you need? What don't. What do you. Not basically a SWOT analysis, right? But being really honest with yourself about the people. Next step is anybody that I bring in or meet, we date, you know, 30, 60, 90 days. Even when you bring in new employees or team members, you have that oddness. If you don't say, hey, I'm bringing you in. We're gonna start doing business 90 days, period. If they feel that they are not stepping up, they'll quit before that. If not, you will have that time where you sit down, you redefine the relationship in whatever capacity you want to. Also, the way that I hire people, if I try to do this, I say, this is your job.

And it's three pillars. The next one is you jump in where you feel you can add value. If you can't add value, don't worry about it. And if you both of those really good, then we will do something together. Because there's so many a type personality people I do. You know, Batman always needs Robin, right? But the good Robins out there, if they don't feel that they're being rewarded, and sometimes reward is acknowledgement. But more than likely, they want whatever they want out of life is you find that they'll be stolen or they'll become your competitor, right? And then last thing is, what is in it for the person you're serving, meaning a team member? Because I'll give you an example. I had somebody who was a great salesperson for many years at another job. I Brought him over. And I was offered. It was her. And I was offering her more and more money. She wasn't closing deals. And I was wondering why. And I realized the basic thing she loves to do is her little brother, who lived in Thailand, was old enough, 15 or 18 years old, that she wanted to travel with him. And that was a great incentive. So I said, listen, I'm connected around the world with hotels, but I'll give you a little more time off. I will give you these credits to help you fly with him places. And her sales tripled because the motivation people all believe. People think often that the motivation of why somebody's doing a job is the same reason we're doing it. No, it's not. You may be doing a job because it's your bridge between this and becoming a doctor. You may be doing a job you want to get out of the house. You want to feel of value. You may do a job because of money. You may be doing a job because you want to get paid to understand this business in the future. But we too often don't ask what is the driving force of that person working for us.

Right. There's a lot of people that are fetishizing entrepreneurship where they're like, be an entrepreneur, be an entrepreneur. Not everyone's built to be an entrepreneur.

Not at all.

You know, and so you have a lot of people that have the fantasy of, I wish I could do this, I wish I could do that. But they, they, they, they're not built for it, or they don't learn the skills or whatever, whatever, whatever the skill.

But I always tell every entrepreneur, I say, here's what you're signing up for.

You know, you have to be the first at work, the last to leave. Thank everybody for your success. Blame one person for your failure. You walk on water, you can't tell anybody your problems. Cause imagine an employee coming in, seeing you, and you're like.

Well, the good ones are gonna leave. It's the people like Chauncey who doesn't quit. The bad ones never quit.

Right? Yeah.

You have financial stress at home. You never take money off the damn table. I know. You know how many people I know who say I'm the richest, poorest person in the room? I got a $800 million business. I even found out in the newspaper that Robert sold his LaFerrari. Now, he has 80 cars, but he sold it to make payroll about, about three years ago. All right? Now he just exited and SM and sold a small piece of his company for like 800 million. But that's. As entrepreneurs, that's what we are. We're seen as these people that we can't tell any problems to, and we have everything at risk. And often we will go through a business and the bell curve of the business happens here, and you realize you didn't exit at the right time and all of that shit. Everybody else got paid but you. Yeah, in the first three years of my business was booming. The person who made the most money, guy named Johnny Wong, guy out of Hong Kong, he was like, listen, I'll make a jean for you. You know, he'll source it. He said, I'll take a dollar per gene. I don't care if you make the gene for $7 or $90. A dollar per gene. Three years in, we sold 30 million jeans. I'm sitting there putting the money back into the business, worrying about warehousing, staff, everything else. He's got $30 million in Hong Kong children. I ain't seen him since.

That was 2001.

That is hysterical. Yeah. Okay, so.

So that's entrepreneurship.

Exactly, exactly. So who do you look for in mentors? Like, what do you look for? And how. What advice would you have? Because that's kind of what you. You do.

I look for mentors. I look for. I look for in very different places, you know, and so I will look at a doctor for a mentor. I will look at people who are body hacking all day. People like you, who. I don't know. I don't know what other weird shit you're on, pay OD or whatever the fuck are you doing, but I look at a lot of other people. I look at my kids, you know, some of my best investments. I beat the streets on Kramer three years in a row. And people said, well, how did you call those? Well, I'm not a professional stock person or an advisor, but when I would walk in my room, I'd walk in my daughter's room, and she's watching TV on her iPad. She's shopping, zooming, or doing something with her boyfriend and her homework and lying to me all at the same time. And instead of going, what are you doing? I was like, what are you doing? So I got into some of the best products and. Or things just by asking them. Reverse mentorship. So that's what happened. I always find I always learn from everybody I'm in the room with.

Yeah. So talk about your children's book and what we can do to help you with that.

The children's book is Lil Damon Learns to Earn at Any Given Time, you know, just recommend it to people, but, you know, read it yourself, you know, because a lot of people, their eyes glaze over when they talk about investing. And I understand, but. But when you understand financial intelligence, it's pretty simple. You know, I'm not up here to sell books or anything like that. I just want people to know about it. Because honestly, the reason why I'm doing it is that it has been New York Times bestseller, got into schools, and I want other celebrity known people to do the same thing and come up with other books like that. And now that I've broken that door open a little bit, let the smarter people, the educators do it. Cause I'm sure there's a million books like that. They just didn't have a public stage to push it out.

Yeah.

So we can break that system in this country and teach our kids how to have financial intelligence at an early age. You don't teach a child how to be an athlete at 19 years old and put them right on the field, or her on the field. You don't teach them how to play an instrument at 19 years old and put her right on the orchestra. You teach them at 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. And the data is, if you want to be selfish about it, is, you know, the data is our kids will take care of us two times longer than we took care of them. So. So if you don't want to be standing outside of Piggly Wiggly in a shitty diaper, you better teach your kids some financial intelligence.

Not bad advice. I would agree with that.

At the end of the day, Whether you're running seven people or a team of 500,000, you really have generally seven people you speak to. And each one of the seven speak to. It exponentially grows. So you should have good management in there. But I allocate, I try to go, I try to read 30 to 40 books a year, and I allocate the sections that I need to do, the ones that I need to revisit, the 10, I need to revisit. The ones also that I think are moving in a new direction of what I was revisiting. Right. Finance, where finance is going today, and then other areas in health and religion and other things. So same now with AI, I gotta know the basics and the fundamentals of the. So whether it's the AI newsletter they were talking about over there, the AI assistant. I mean, AI is not going away. So if I understand some of the fundamentals, at least I can understand what it is when somebody's talking to me. And there's going to be places that I naturally just grow and attach it. I mean, it's. What's it called? Force technology. Or you create this. You create this. You didn't know that they were going to create this. So I allocate probably about 10% of my time to learn new things, new ways to operate my body. My body cannot operate the same way that it was operating 20 years ago or 30 years ago. New ways for security for myself, for my family time, rehacking. You know, I love the fact that, you know, Steve Jobs was a habitual tweaker. You know, that's the only, you know, it's always just tweaking. And I'm not for the dyslexic people. I'm not saying twerking, I said tweaking.

So, again, I'm always trying to learn brand new things. But I think that's the quest for life, that's the thirst of what we have. And then when I think that it's too big to learn, but I know it well enough, I then call in a person or whatever and I try to then use what's my asset to barter to get them in to say, where can I have value of what I really know? You start to bring value of that new information and how we can collectively do something. Something. I always try to get a little bit into the new areas and new space, and that's my agenda at the beginning of the year when I set my goals for the year.

The areas where I never learned how to do have sometimes cost me an enormous amount of loss because I just didn't understand enough about the mechanics. But if you get too deeply in the weeds, then it's really hard to.

I'll give you one perfect example. I'm not a big real estate investor. Real estate, for some reason has not gotten me. I haven't figured it out, but they've been building buildings since the beginning of time. So I will go to, like, my buddy Andrew Cohen here, really big developer, other big developers. I will say, listen, I mean, and this is what I love to do. I love to work with people that don't need me. And I'll go, listen, my money's crackhead money to Andrew, right? It's like, there you go. Now, how can I be a service to you? And could you just put this was something that you have now my job is, I'm gonna put that money to sleep, but I'm gonna bust my ass every single day saying how and what am I seeing out there? Because is it. Andrew's wife wants to start a company. Andrew loves philanthropy, health, whatever it is. And I got 30 Andrews in 30 different other areas. It's always, you know, synergistically tapping into people like Jay Abraham would say opm, other people, mind power, manpower, manufacturing, marketing, mentorships, mistakes. That's how you're gonna make the money. Money.

Well, okay, so, so one of the things you tell me that you're working on is you're, you're, you're going to charge 15 million a year for people to shadow you.

Yeah. So it's not that easy, but yeah.

Yeah.

So how's, how's that gonna work? I'm curious.

Well, here's what happened, right? I was talking to somebody, you know, I have, I have something called Rise Mastermind. And by the way, Aaron, can you stand up? And where's John's at? He probably stand it. Aaron, right there, there my two guys right here, brilliant people. Aaron's a thought leader. Chauncey helped launch careers of people like Eminem, Dr. Dre, Marilyn Manson. He's been very much in, in the community. But I have different levels. Right. I have a mastermind to be in. But then I do something with like CEOs. It's, it's, it's called CEO Access. Usually CEOs doing. I don't probably about 4 or 500 million. It's, it's showing them how to become the Mark Cuban, Damon, John Barbara Corcoran of the world, where you're a thought leader in the market for what you're respected for and how to reduce that curve from 10 years to two years and not be out of so much. And then the shadow me one was somebody that actually said to me, damon, if I gave you $20 million, can I shadow you for a year? And I said, what do you mean? Every day they're like, no, no, no, maybe like eight months. But I'd go to all your speaking, I'll go to you with the Oscars, the Grammys. I was like, I would think about it. And I said but why? He said well, you kind of have become the person who doesn't want to help suit a successful person people. I said, I didn't say that. He said, but you always talking about helping the everyday person. I said that's the people who need the help. He said, but if I'm going to go out there and change the world and be a better, you know, make a better world for people and I have 2,3000 people working with me, why don't you help me so I can help them? Wouldn't it be quicker? And I realized I was trying. I was actually pushing away good people because I had met so many people that wanted to hang out because, I don't know, they want to be on Instagram, they want to party. I want to meet people who want change. People like, you know, people like you, Joe, who are, like, artists for addiction. You know, we want to make sure that people understand what these people go through. So I had done something where somebody shouted me for a week, and they were like, this is phenomenal. So there's no. There's no call to action on that, you know?

No, no. I think. I think it's interesting, though, because if it's an awesome person and it's really, like, collaborative and aligned, it'd be pretty cool. And it's an interesting way to leverage what you're doing anyway.

Yeah.

If the person's total pain in the ass. Oh, my God, you're just like, that's the most expensive money I think I've ever taken.

100%. But. But the one that I think for more CEOs are the CEO access one. And you can go to Andrew or call you. I mean, whatever the case is, you. You'll. You've been very giving. And then my other one that I love is, you know, is I just love bartering. It's fun.

So how do you barter? How do you barter?

I just realized the value of bar from Jay Abraham. You know how he's triangulated if anyone's.

Ever been to Jay's house? This guy has more freaking statues and that he's bar.

You know what? I don'. Know if I'm like. I'm like one of the guys on Pawn Stars or whatever the case is, but when I see things of value, I realize that we have been so stuck in what money provides to people where the value is not. The money is something way different and way bigger than that. So I look at remnant time and inventory, and anybody here can do that. You have a good skill set. What are the cases? You know, a Carnival Cruise Line ship, you know, if it has, whatever, 2,000 rooms, you know, they're leaving with 1,000. But you're an excellent marketer or something else like that. Well, then them barter for, you know, whatever, 40, 50 rooms, and then hand that over to your customers. Often when I do speaking engagements, I go, you got Varter? Yeah, well, I'll spend an extra hour with your top clients. Do me a favor. Who are you well, I'm Ford, I'm a local Ford dealer. Give me three cars that I can tell you what 501c3 to donate them to takes an hour of my time. Why Normally would be a lot of money. It can be a year old car, van or truck. They donate it directly to a 501C3 that I may run across that I see that I like. They get the tax write off, right. The 501C3 gets to feel good about what they have and help them. And I didn't take in the actual money. I don't have to deal with any structure, but I help give to somebody else. Imagine I do that 50 times a year. It doesn't always have to be just give me right, it's have to be me. I know you have something. Listen, if a hotel has 500 rooms and it's 12 o' clock and they only have 200 rooms left, what do you think they're going to do with the rest? It's remnant time. You donate that to a family in need or some, you know, some, some people who organization that of people who, I don't know, whatever it is and give them a special night out in the city. Didn't cost anything.

What if someone showed up with something right now that you're looking for? What would you, I mean, do you have anything in mind that you're like, you know.

You mean that truck outside the, the.

Oh, the big sprinter van?

Yeah, they showed up to me.

Well, we got the CEO. Where's he? Where'd Jeffrey Hunter go? Where's he at? He's okay.

Yeah, they all leave when I film.

Yeah. So that I want to introduce him to Jeffrey, you know, because it has.

To be someone valiant. It has to be people that I like. Right. People that would say something like, hey, well I'm part of an organization. Can you help speak to these kids or, or whatever the case is. Or it wouldn't be about, hey, can I be all over your social media? That, that's, that's a different story, right? It has to be something I like with people I like to do it with. Because usually like in any business, whether it's a transaction, barter or cash, that's just the entry level to the, to the relationship. You know, after that, you know, that's where you monetize the business over the next 10 years or 20 years, the relationship. And so it's really about relationships. The question is, where do you go narrow and deep and where would you, where do you see yourself? Five, ten and twenty years from now, and in the event that that thing fails, you still were really happy that you took that path. That's. That's the most critical thing. Everything I've done for money or I've seen people do for money, they've either ended up on the wrong place, or when they got the money, they spent it right away, or they were miserable. I joke about Kevin, he's a really amazing guy, but, you know, Kevin's not about money. You know what Kevin's about? He's about creating financial, really complicated financial structures that manage his downside. That's what he loves to do.

So it really, again, it's going to be the good old saying, do what you love, but do what you love, that you can take affordable steps to do it. And you're excited every day about doing it. Every single person in the room has found success in something they were super, super excited about. If they had a partner that they didn't like, they got rid of the partner and they kept doing it, or they reinvented themselves. And if it was something they did because of money and, and they didn't like the partner, they closed the whole damn business and moved on.

Yeah, thank you. What didn't I ask you that I should have.

How many people here have been. Is this the first time here?

Yeah, I think we got it. Yeah, we've got 400 people. We've got about a hundred and three, think ten that it'll be the first time.

Well, I got to tell you.

I come here and do it for love, number one. But I think this is the most powerful room.

That you can be in. And even my CEO, one of my CEO access people that I was telling, I was like, listen, you want to be known as the voice of AI and hearing, and he has a billion dollar company. I said, you have to come here. He couldn't come here.

But you gotta take advantage of this room. You really do. And why do I say it's the most powerful room I ever thought have ever been in is because, you know, if we all go to CES or magic trade show sema, we see people in passing and you meet a lot of great people. But this is one time of the year where you find people who dig really, really deep into what they're doing. And because of Joe and his real, his huge heart, his form of. You gotta give. You gotta give. You find that the egos are not no longer, you know, in the room. Anybody here in my rise mastermind at all. Okay, there you go, Right there you Go. All right, well, I think we have to. I think I'm gonna be here next week. We're going lunch, right? Great Financial advisors and stuff like that, but this is the most powerful room. If you hear one time. I'm not. I'm not. I don't get any of this. This is not. I'm just doing this purely out of love for Joe. You didn't even ask me to talk about you. But this, you have to. You have to take advantage of the people in this room. I got to tell you that. So thank you.

Thank you. And how do they follow you? Where's the best place? So you're. You're on a lot of social. You're.

Yeah, I'm the shark Damon. My name is spelled like Raymond with a D. The shark Damon. You can follow me on all platforms. Hopefully you know my name. And after, maybe it's not up there. Damon John. John's my last name.

I gotta tell people that every time I check in someplace. John's your last name? John's your last name. I never heard of that before. You never heard of Elton John, Papa John, Little John?

That is. That is funny. That is funny.

So John John.

Yeah.

You know, I'm. I'm just sitting there thinking of like the barter things. Very interesting. And all of the different things you bring to the table.

It is an un. You know, Jay is the best at it. You know, I know Richard Branson started Virgin Airlines at barter. I know Arison started Carnival Cruise Line with bartering. It is something that is so undervalued because it's either done by preppers, or I'll wash your laundry, you do my hair, or it's either done by government, you. I'll give you X amount of missiles or X amount of barrels of oil. But it's such. Such a. It's something so powerful. If you don't have a car, you go down to a local deal and you. You speak Spanish and say, hey to the local car dealer and say, hey, hey. I will hold Spanish speaking lessons for four hours every single Saturday here. You get your best clients here. You want somebody to watch your kids, I'll do that. And do me a favor. Let me use one of your cars with a dealer plate on them, you know, for a week at a time. Right? You didn't take in the car, you didn't take in the insurance. It's going to be probably brand new. You spent some time. You probably got some more private lessons at the, you know, from the kids and the parents. Who want to book you privately. The dealership is happy. It's a very simple bargain decision Stone that you would have had to make how much money to use that car?

Yeah, it's fantastic. No, lots. Lots of good strategy. So last thing, if you can recall or think of like the best life advice that you've ever been given that you live to. To this day, that helps guide and direct the way you, you live.

Well, it'll be a couple. One will be money as a great slave, but a horrible master.

Her.

It was when I was driving. I'll show you my mother. We lived by JFK and John F. Kenny airport in the car. And I said, mom, look at all these massive machines, these planes. She said, son, every. Everything we see in this world, this car we're in the streets, the building. It all started with one person that had one idea that took one action. Why couldn't be you? And as I start to grow and I started to meet people from around the world.

It all started one person. It was somebody who just took the blindfold off and just said they can do it. Now the dedication. What are you willing to risk for that is the question. Or what are you willing to give up for that? That's gonna be always the bigger question. Right. I see people come on the show all the time. I wanna be a Walmart. Why do you wanna be a Walmart? They put just as many people out of business as they did in business because so strict tight margins. They got a big business to run. Run. It still goes back to the, the initial conversation we had. What is really the why? What's driving you right now? I don't want to be. I don't want. I can be a billionaire if I want because I can just open a fund. I got enough guys, I'm well known enough to raise a fund. Why would I want to do that? To travel around the world and keep raising more money to then instead not being around my little girl. What am I going to do? Sleep in 3 beds, 7 beds, 9 beds? Why would I. I'm going to give all my money away anyway at the end, end of the day. So I don't need to sa anything. Why would I want to be a billionaire? What's it going to do for me?

Good questions asked.

It's a good question to ask. People want to ask that question here. You know, why are you in that relationship? Have you had that communication with that person? When do you think it's going to magically get better if you, if you stop talking to each other or you growing apart. You know, you met at 25 years old. You love the way each other were and you fell in love and then all of a sudden kids came in your life and your life became about, about, you know, who's sick in the house, what schedule, soccer, this and that. You turned around, it's 50 years old. Both of you, you have different lights and things. You never, you know, you were passing each other in the night time, you know, then you never really had the conversation. You don't even know what sex is anymore. You have sex with your wife and then she, you know, the kids out of the house, and then you say, let's do something new and she does a new position. You're like, where the hell that new position come from? You don't know each other.

Right.

You gotta, you got. I mean these things are really, really. They're basics. It's just. And simple. It's just hard to do, to have these discussions.

Totally. But do you know the picture you just painted in everyone's head? Yeah, no, but you, but the husband too.

Hey, hey, honey, I want to do this. Well, you didn't want to do that 30 years. That was 30 years ago. I wasn't into that.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

Boy. On that note.

Let me think. How do I tie a bow on this one? First off, as always, you're awesome. Thank you for making the time to come out here and thank you for.

Thank you all. Thank you.

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