Build Financial Freedom and Achieve Success with Shark Tank Investors EP 1188

This is episode number 1188 on building Financial Freedom. Welcome to the school of greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former Pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin. Over the years, I've had some of the biggest and best entrepreneurs join me on the School of Greatness. And today, I wanted to bring together some of my favorite moments with Kevin O'Leary, Barbara Corcoran, and Damon John, who are also known as the hosts of the hit show Shark Tank, to break down the different ways to think about success. In this episode, we discuss how to develop a rich mindset, why our society has failed to teach financial literacy, how to fix that, the top qualities every entrepreneur should have, how to set ambitious goals and negotiate with your mind to achieve them, and so much more. And if you're enjoying this at any moment, make sure to spread this message to someone that you think would be inspired by this as well. You can text a few friends, you can post it on social media, but get the message out there so we can spread this message of greatness to more people. And I want to give a shout out to the fan of the week. This is from Nicole who left a review over on Apple podcast that said, I love this podcast. so much every topic from nutrition to finances to managing anxiety and so much more. It inspires me and gives me ideas to try on my quest to achieve my own version of greatness in all aspects of my life. Thank you for all that you do to make the world a better place. So Nicole, thank you for that shout out for the review over on Apple podcast. And if you are new here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review for your chance to be shouted out as a fan of the week in the future. Okay, in just a moment, it's time to upgrade your mindset around finance. financial success. In this first section, Kevin O'Leary shares how to develop a rich mindset, what conversations we should have around money, the differences between those who make money and those who don't, and the best investment he's ever made. How does someone develop a rich mindset if they've always been told that people with money are bad or money makes you evil or whatever people have heard when they're growing up? How does someone shift out of that and start seeing money in a different light, in a positive light, in a powerful light in their benefit and in an abundance mindset as well. How do we shift that if we've always been conditioned otherwise?

Yeah, but you have to understand why a third of the population seeks entrepreneurship. It's not out of the greed of money, it's the pursuit of personal freedom. In America, what sets you free is to have enough financial resources to spend your day doing things that you want to do. It's one of the greatest freedoms you can have. And what I learned about it, you know, when I had my first liquidity event, I was young and we sold the learning company for $4.2 billion. There were 10 of us who were founders. So what I found so amazing is everybody showed up the next day after we closed right back at their desks because they didn't know anything else. That's what they wanted to do. They wanted to work. And what I found in life is I work harder today than I ever have. and I don't need to, but I still want to and this is what I know. And so the whole idea that I don't have to do something, you know, I work with Nancy Chong who sort of manages my day and I block it off into 30-minute things and each week, you know, maybe on Saturday morning or something we review the next week and I look at all the things that are in book and if I see something I don't want to do, I just say, Take it off, I'm not doing it. And there's nothing anybody can do about that. That is my ability to be free to choose the things that mean something to me and avoid the ones that don't because my most valuable asset at this point is my time. That's what I care about and I wish that for everybody. That's my whole point. But something about money you should understand and everybody should think about is the danger of money in a family. is entitlement. If you entitle somebody and you de-risk their future, you have actually cursed them. You've cursed them. You have almost guaranteed that they will fail, that they will never launch. I experienced this myself when I was graduating from college, undergrad, and my mother came to that. Again, she was a big influence in my life from events like this. And she said to me, great news is I'm coming to the graduation, but I I want you to know the dead bird under the nest never learned how to fly. And I said, Mom, what the hell does that mean? She said, There's no more checks. I've paid from birth to last day of college. That's my deal and you get nothing else from me. And I went, Wow, like I don't have a job. I can't even pay my rent. And like, she said, you,'re gonna have to work it out. I mean, look, I've done my job and now you're gonna have to learn how to fly. And I had a tough couple of years, but what she was really saying was, she hated entitlement and she didn't want to entitle me and I had to go figure it out. It was very tough. And years later, you know, I always look at these things that you, these moments you learn something and then you apply them later because they've, you know, they've steeped, they've aged in your head. They've actually come, you know, it's like a wine. It's aged to a perfect flavor and now you have to use it because it's been something you experienced. so when I had that big liquidity event, my kids were four and six and I went across the river, we were in Cambridge, I went to Boston and I set up generational skipping trusts that did exactly that. They took from any child from birth to last day of college at any degree, they could go right to a PhD if they wanted. They could stay in school their whole lives if they wanted and that the trust would pay for them long after I'm gone. But after they graduate, nothing. Zero. And I said that to my kids and they were four and six and they just laughed at me. And then later in Boston when my son was in high school doing really poorly, not applying himself, one day I guess he had talked to one of his friends in his class that was telling him all about his family trust and all that stuff. I don't know why he brought this up, but my bet is that's what happened. He said to me, Dad, walk me through the trust that My trust, I said, Sure. Mom and I going out to dinner, if we get run over by a bus, you don't have to worry, you're going to get to finish high school. But it doesn't look like you're going to get to college because your marks are terrible. And then he said, well, okay, then what happens? I said, well, I'm dead and you have no money. And that was the first-- the wake-up call. Yeah, well, that was the wake-up call. And it may sound cruel, and people may say, that's terrible. Today, he has started his first week as a full-time engineer at Tesla after, you know, going through the whole system and graduating as an engineer. I paid for the whole thing, but now he's on his own. But I think the wake-up call motivated him. That's the whole idea of entitlement. If he thought he didn't have to do anything, maybe he wouldn't have taken that path. How many rich kids, screwed-up rich kids, Do you know? Plenty. There's lots of them. They're entitled. Mine'll never be. And they may not like me for doing what I did to them, but if they have children, the trust pays for them, and those are expensive, and I'll be gone. But that's my whole point. Wow.

And I know you know a lot of wealthy individuals who've had big exits, billionaires, you know, all these different things. What advice do you give them, or what would you give them? Maybe they wouldn't ask you for the advice, but what would you give them on how to raise better kids who have all the money in the world to their disposal.

Don't give it to them. Don't let them think that they are de-risked. Don't let them think they're entitled. They will act differently. They will take a different path. They will focus on their own lives and try and achieve things on their own. There's no reason you can't support them and you can't help with them in emergencies like medical emergencies or whatever it is, but if you entitle them, that they never have to work? You've cursed them. You've cursed them. You've totally written them off in terms of people that could have achieved greatness because they were motivated to do so for reasons that everybody in the world, you have to find your own path. That's the whole idea. If you're granted a free pass, you've wasted a whole lifetime. That's my view. Not everybody agrees, but this is the way we run our family and so far so good. And you know, the one thing that I think we failed as a society on, because you're getting into an area that I spend a lot of time on here, is financial literacy. We have failed an entire generation. There's a hundred million people in America that have, and some of them are in their 60s, that have nothing set aside for their retirement. They never were taught how to invest. There's a big difference between saving and investing. A savings account gives you nothing now. Interest rates are basically zero. The markets give you 6-8% a year, but you've got to learn how to harness them. Nobody teaches those kids anything. And that's like, it's a good segue into something I want to talk to you about called Bean Stocks, which is, you know, a big initiative for me to build a robo that invests like I do and like my mother did, a really conservative robo that you can download and actually tries to help you do this without you understanding how to buy and sell stocks. stocks. So let's talk about that for a minute.

Yeah, what is it? How do we get it?

So you download it off any phone, on any app store, and the whole idea, here's what I learned. The first time I took a stab at this, I assumed that everybody knew how to buy a stock and sell it and how to build a diverse portfolio. I was 100% wrong. I brought out an incredibly sophisticated product, but 99% of people don't actually invest directly themselves. Some massive percentage of the population don't do that. They either have an advisor or they don't have an advisor because they don't have a lot of money and so we ignore them. If somebody only has $400 to put aside a month, generally the financial services industry ignores them because they can't make any money off them and that's 100 million people. So I helped a whole team develop bean stocks and there's a zillion different Robos on the market and I think anything that helps you invest is great. but I couldn't find anything that invested with my personal philosophy. And so, you know, I really wanted something that was about value, about getting paid dividends, so get paid to wait, conservative in nature and above all diverse. And so I like to use exchange traded funds. I use that in my own family trust and that's what we built Bean Stocks around. So the whole idea is that you put aside a hundred bucks a week and if you're in your, you know, early 20s and you do this, you find the discipline to put $100 aside a week. And that's the hardest part, by the way, because there's always some piece of crap you want to buy that you don't need. But you put it into Beanstalks and it automatically diversifies it into a portfolio designed specifically for you when you set it up. And so you can put projects that you want to, maybe you want to buy a car or a house that helps you do that. It helps you just diversify into a wide range of of ETFs and just it's a place where you build a nest egg. That's the whole idea. Now it doesn't mean you can't day trade. You can have a Robinhood account. You can do whatever you like. You can do an online broker, whatever. But this is for the part that you're putting aside for yourself for the future when you turn 65, which might be 10% of your paycheck or 10% of your winnings if you're a day trader. But it's completely different. It's not day trading. It's investing. and that's why I built Bean Stocks. I'm very proud of it. It's out there. It's a relatively new product I've gotten behind. And people that use it really like it, so I urge everybody to try it. Download it, it's for free. Give it a shot, see if you.

Want to sign up. And it's BeanSTOX, is that right?

Yeah, B-E-A-N-S-T-O-X.

Please try it. Okay, awesome. Yeah, we'll have people go there for sure. And it's just a way to automate you're saving so it turns into investing as well by doing that. So I think that's a great product. I'm curious, what do you think are three things that rich people do differently than the poor people or people that aren't thinking about building wealth in that way? Yeah.

Number one, and you'll be surprised to hear me say this, They don't take inordinate risk. You're gonna find that the majority of very wealthy people are extremely conservative in how they invest. They don't need to beat the market. They've already done that. They just need to preserve their capital. So what you find them doing, and I don't know what that number is for you, wealth means different things to different people. But when you are fortunate and you become wealthy, what you'll find is most of those people do not take a lot of risk. And they invest in things that are very long term. They don't use a lot of debt. In most cases, they don't use leverage when they're investing. They don't take very speculative positions on. You hear that they might buy Bitcoin or they may buy speculative stock, but if you look at it as a percentage of what they're worth, it's nothing. And so they're willing, when they're making that investment, they're saying I'm willing to lose it. It's entertainment almost for me. It's not something I think that I'm going to have to live off.

And.

The other thing I found, because I advise a lot of wealthy people, because my companies that I invest in, of which I have over 30, at any one time 10% of them are being acquired by a private equity firm or being bought by a strategic, and I've known the entrepreneur and maybe it's their first liquidity event, I try and help them on that journey and some of them get $100 million or $80 million. We've got plenty of situations like that and they're young. What happens is you find out later that entrepreneurs are actually really bad investors. They're very good at running a business and they focus myopically on that their whole lives but when they actually get liquidity it's usually their husband or wife that was the person that was taking care of the family and mitigating the risks. and they're the ones that are the better investor. And that's why I say in a family you have to have a team approach. But I've learned this that you really, you'll find that what's successful about families is they know what they're good at or wealthy people and they know what they're not good at. And they don't try and do things they don't understand. And this is, it's important because you have to say I have limits on my skills. I know what I'm good at but I've been very fortunate and I'm not going to go risk anything now doing something I don't know. I see that characteristic a lot and the other thing that I would say is different and this may have a lot to do with the concept of karma. Another lesson I learned from my mother. If you're successful and you talk to wealthy people you'll always find that there's something that motivates them to be philanthropic, to give money to something that matters to them.

And.

That'S the whole idea of giving back. You've been successful and you have to find the cause that motivates you, you're willing to spend your time and money supporting. That is a big difference because if you believe in karma, and I do, when you do that it kind of protects you against the horrific downside of something bad happening to you because you're just so greedy. You can't, when you have success and you're a wealthy person, if you show me a greedy wealthy person, just wait 10 years, then you'll just show me a person. Somehow karma will separate their money from them. That's what I find.

Or they'll get sick or something will happen where.

I really believe this. I really believe it. And you've got to find those things that you can give back on that means something to you. But if you abuse karma, it's got a special gift coming for you.

So finding ways to give back, are you giving back in a lot of other ways philanthropically right now as well?

Yeah, you know, I like to have a concentrated approach. I call it five and five. I prefer to pick five charities or in our case we support a dance company, we support some hospitals, some educational institutions and give enough that it's a material gift and that I have a say in how it's spent very often. And above all I like to see expense ratios reported. I generally don't support charities that can't provide just like an investment, some kind of a statement on where my money went.

Right.

And that is actually something I think Bill Gates is famous for early on saying, why can't I treat my charitable investments as I do my private ones and ask for some performance metrics? And I kind of believe that he's right.

Yeah, it's something smart. And what would you say is one other thing that rich people do differently that poor people don't do?

This may have a lot to do with you know, the access to, but in the last five years I've realized how important food is and how if you're, you know, you say poor, how you should be, or even you should focus on what you put in your body. Because in our society we do two things very badly. We eat too much sodium and we eat too much sugar, white cane sugar. And We have been trained to do that since the 40s by a whole industrial complex that wants to sell us that shit. And we eat it. And I'm guilty of it and so is everybody else. Salt and sugar feel good. They're comfort foods, snacks and all that. It's the worst thing you can put in your body. And I have learned, it's kind of weird, but the older I get and the more I experience this, because I'm actually a classically trained chef in French fusion, I have a job on QVC as Chef Wonderful. I sell millions of dollars of food and wine each year there. It's because I grew up for a few years in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. And that's a place where it was a French colonized place. My dad was working in the United Nations and the two women that were the housekeepers and the cook used to go to the market. It was on the Mekong River in Phnom Penh and take me with them at four in the morning. and it's very hot there. And so they were classically trained French chefs. So in French cooking, particularly if you're a sous chef, which is really hard to get that designation, and I'm pretty proud of what I can do in that area, is you work with a lot of heavy butter and cream. But you can't do that in an environment where it's 110 degrees, 100% humidity every day. You can't eat like that. What those chefs taught me was how to replace the butter and the cream with things like a mango puree or lime and lemon juice or guava crushed. I mean, all kinds of different flavors. So they would take a classic dish like crpe flambe, which is one of my specialties, or escargot. And those are classic French dishes. They're very time consuming to make. particularly Escargot if it's made properly, with real shells and real snails. But you don't have to put all that butter in it. You can have a different flavor set based on using a fusion of citrus. Anyways, the whole idea of eating better for me is part of my DNA and growing up. So now I look at what I eat every day. I used to, when I was young, I eat three steaks a week. I used to love that. I don't think I've had a piece of red meat in months. I eat fish, I eat fruit and vegetables, and it really helps you feel better. So if you're asking me what's different, but I'm proud to see that many people are exploring plant-based and regardless of their financial income, meat is actually very expensive and very inefficient. And there's ways to get protein. You don't have to become a vegan. I'm just saying you have to choose to focus on the things that are better for you regardless of your income and you will get more energy, you'll feel better, that kind of thing. That's a difference as well.

That's powerful. I love that. I'm curious, do you think the middle class is financially stuck? And if so, what can they do to start achieving more financial freedom?

No, they're not stuck. And one thing that's democratized and we learned it since this whole pandemic started, You can create a new opportunity for yourself online with virtually no barrier to entry. Many, many people did it as a side hustle and it's now producing more income than their first job. The whole idea of trying to solve for customer acquisition using creativity, using video, using music, using photography, using storytelling, animatics, graphics, to actually sell a service or product starting locally and then expanding. There's millions of new businesses that have been started during the pandemic. We see them every day on Shark Tank, but they are basically taking middle class people out of middle class. They're, and I'd say if you look at Shark Tank, we have plenty of people that have been working in the middle class for years and all of a sudden exploded to the upside with a great service or idea that they did online. And that's why I really think people people should empower themselves. You can try things online, you can see what works, you don't have to get the first one right. But those tools are there for you. And most of this is done on Facebook in geo-locked advertising. 80 cents on the dollar of what my company spend is on Facebook. So I always find it very funny to see people bashing Facebook saying how evil it is when really it's running small business in America because they have that unique geo-locking advertising feature. so, you know, we shouldn't shut it down till we find something better. Yeah.

And what would you say are a couple of qualities that you really look for when you're, when you're looking to invest in someone or when someone has an idea and you, whether you invest them or not, you're like, this person's going to be successful, whether it's in this thing or something else. What are those two or three qualities that all of them seem to have in your mind, whether it be a leadership skill or Clarity, what would that be?

I prefer to invest in entrepreneurs that have failed once or twice before, that have felt the sting of failure and have gone down the road and not had success the first time because their motivations are completely different than a more arrogant first timer that thinks everything they do is going to make $100 million. It just doesn't work that way. And so that's one thing. I love there's three things you have to have the ability to do and know if you're going to be successful in business. Number one is you have to be able to articulate your idea 90 seconds or less, explaining to me why anybody would want that product or service. And if you take more than a minute and a half, you're never going to be successful. You're just not. And number two is you have to be able to explain why you're the right person to execute on that idea. In other words, what is it about you that knows how to take this idea, which good ideas are dime a dozen, executional skills are really hard to find. So what is it about you that can execute on this business and make it work? I mean those two together start to be really interesting because then as an investor looks at it and says, well, I'm going to mitigate my risk. I got a great executional, you know, expert here and I've got a great idea. And then lastly, the one that I think you have to have, a good command of, you have to know your numbers. You have to be able to explain gross margins, market share, break even analysis, how many competitors, how fast can you grow? If you don't know your numbers, you deserve to burn in hell and I'll put you there myself. Because you really, those are the three things that define success. And I think, you know, that's who I want to invest in, someone who has the command of all three of those. That's probably got more than a 50% chance of being successful if they can do that right.

Yeah. I love your take on things. I wanted to know for those that are in their late teens, early 20s, what conversations should they be having with friends or mentors around money? I feel like a lot of people are afraid to talk about it or they don't share how much they make or how much a home costs or whatever. It's just like this hush-hush mentality. What should we be talking about in our late teens, early 20s or even 30s? But What types of conversations should we be having to shift the narrative around money so we can start attracting it in our favor as opposed to rejecting it?

Well, first of all, we need to teach it in high school. Luckily here in Florida it's been put into the curriculum and I'm very proud of that. You know, I used to be in the educational software business. There's 110,000 school buildings in America, majority of them in New York, and Florida, Texas, and California, and abysmally most of them don't teach even debt. They don't even teach how to use a credit card, which is ridiculous. We've got to change that. And luckily we are. We're starting to see it creep into the curriculums in all the major states, which is good. But I think parents have a responsibility to talk about money, which is always sitting at the table every day. It always is. And, you know, getting their kids to understand how a credit card works is very important. And again, I talked about not entitling. That's important, too. But within, within your friends, I mean, don't be embarrassed to talk about money. You're going to be talking about money for the rest of your life. It's always going to be part you can't live without it. You have to deal with it. It can cause great joy and give you personal freedom or can be catastrophic in your life, destroy your happiness completely. Your choice is where does it fit? Do you want it to destroy your life or would you prefer that you understand how it works and respect it for what it is and deal with it? That's a personal choice people have to make. And I would say the best way to do that is learn more, talk more about it and don't be afraid to discuss it. I don't care what age you're at, but certainly at the age of 16, you should be discussing that. And above all, taking 10% of whatever anybody gives you, your grandmother, your birthday gift, whatever it is, and set it aside and start investing it. The earlier you start, the less pressure you have when you're in your 60s. Because you've got to have at least a million and a half bucks in the bank, and you can if you just save $100 a week. That's what Bean Stocks is all about.

That's why I got involved in Bean Stocks. That's the whole idea. Do you think someone in their late 40s and 50s, do you think it's too late for them to start learning about financial literacy if they've struggled in their 20s and 30s and 40s? Do you think it's too late to start investing and saving? What should people do in their 40s and early 50s?

No, they should at any age. I mean, the truth is changing your spending behavior in your 40s is difficult, but you can do it. And at that age, you should start saving 20 to 25% of what you're taking in, which sounds hard to do, but it isn't. You just stop buying those $5 coffees and you stop buying stuff you don't use. Anybody can go look in their closet and see all the crap they bought that they never used. And basically you killed that money when you did that. You bought something that you could have had invested and it could have grown 6% to 8% a year for you, but instead you bought some piece of junk that you're throwing out now. Everybody's guilty of that. I actually think my mother was right. She's always said that people can save 20%, they just don't have the backbone to do it. And she did. And she died a very wealthy woman. She had a secret account she kept from both of her husbands. And I was the older brother and was executor for the state. And I remember the lawyers calling me up saying, you got to come down here. Your mother had a lot of money. And I always wondered how she did it. She basically bought dividend paying stocks in her 20s. and a whole bunch of Telco bonds, 50-50 portfolio. She loved Telco bonds. They used to yield 6% in those days. And she loved dividend paying stocks, S&P stocks. And over the 50 years that she had this account, it just provided massive appreciation.

Should people die wealthy or should they die broke because they spent their wealth on charity or giving back or whatever you're living your life and going on trips and adventures, what's your philosophy there?

You know, the trouble these days is you don't know when you're going to die. You make certain assumptions and then you live an extra 10 years or 20 years and you live at a time in your life when you really needed that money for your comfort. You know, it's probably better to not make an assumption, oh, I think I'm going to die when I'm 88, because you don't know what technology is going to provide or what your genes really have in store for you. I would prefer to die with a good chunk of dough in the bank and then gift it to a cat.

A cat?

Yeah.

You know, cats only last 14 years. We break 14 years for them. I'm just kidding. I probably give it to a combination of, you know, in my case, I feel safe because I can roll it into a trust that doesn't provide for you after you finish college. So I don't feel I'm entitling anybody or cursing anybody's future. So I'll just probably roll it into one of my family trusts and say, I don't need it anymore. The only thing I'm taking with me to the afterlife is my watch collection. All of them.

They're all coming.

I'm going to eternity. I got a lot. I don't even say anymore how many I've got. I really am very proud of my watch collection and it's incredibly, it's got some amazing pieces in it. It's taken me years to build this collection and I'm going to need it to tell time in eternity, so I'm taking it all with me.

What do you think is the best investment you've ever made? in yourself?

Well, the best investment I ever made in myself was myself. You know, you often doubt yourself, but you know, it was, it was, you know, I went through some very tough times right from when my mother cut me off through several business ventures I failed in, and then you just don't know. Serendipity knocks on the door. The thing is, as an entrepreneur, you just got to keep getting up every day. You have to stay in the game. You have to stay in the race. very, very hard. It's like that story of the guy with his fiance, you know, you just have to focus and you have to find somebody that's willing to focus with you. But I'm glad I did what I did. I wouldn't change a thing. I've made plenty of mistakes, but it is who I am today and I'm very, you know, proud to be able to offer the things I do to my family and to support different initiatives and charities and support the arts and collect watches and guitars and cook and all these things are made available because I've been able to focus on being successful in business. That is the great American dream. It's going to remain that way forever. The essence of why Shark Tank works, I'm very proud to be part of the platform. I can guarantee you 13 years ago when we started this thing we had no idea what was going to happen. I mean it's just who knew? But now nine-year-old girls to 99-year-old men come up to me saying, Look, let's talk about that deal last week on Shark Tank. And I'm happy to do it. I mean, I think it's a wonderful outcome and we're proud of it. And as we start to work on season 13, I mean, it's, you know, no television show lasts 13 years, practically none, less than 5% of them. It's amazing. So it's great and we're proud to do it. And I don't know, that's the whole idea that I encourage people, don't pursue entrepreneurship out of greed of money. You will fail for sure. 'Cause every time I talk to anybody that's had a big liquidity event, I say, you know, did you see it coming? And how did it happen? They said, we never saw it coming. We were just working one day and then boom, I was poor, now I'm rich. That's always the way it is. It's not that you're saying you're counting your dollars. You don't have any until one day, boom, something happens. And then the funny thing is you find yourself right back to work.

In this section, Barbara Corcoran shares the qualities she always looks for in an entrepreneur. the importance of using social media to grow your business, what makes someone a strong salesman, and what to do once your business starts to become profitable. How do you keep the attention on you, the relevancy of yourself as an entrepreneur or an individual when people are focused on themselves so much? How do you keep them thinking about you, your brand, your business, your work, your mission?

You have to think of a way to grandstand, you know? What do you mean by that? Good old-fashioned grandstanding. Like I built my Corcoran Group brand on the backs of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, without a doubt. I would think of all kinds of crap to get media attention, okay? As long as my brand name was in there. Really? The best, single best thing I thought of, which was really just an attempt to get publicity when I couldn't afford advertising, 'cause it was a bad market, was my Corcoran Report. And all that was, was a one-page report giving, Giving the average sale price of apartments in Manhattan is how I labeled it. I was too stupid to know that that was a wrong label. It was just my 11 sales, but it was on the front page of the real estate section. I was quoted on the first line. And boy, that was an eye-opener. That's how I learned that publicity can build a brand. Today's version of publicity that I look for in all the entrepreneurs I invest in is how good are you at social media? I don't care if you're in the sock business, if you're in hardware, what's going on? How good are your social media? What's your following? Those are the key questions now. How good are you? at building attention through social media, 'cause that's the new free ride, not really free, but to a large degree free, just like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are my free ride, okay? So you have to be creative, I think, in thinking of how you can grandstand. And so what's, like, I don't know, I'm thinking, what's a business right today? Like, well, I don't wanna use cousins, we already talked about cousins, like Greyson Larkes, which started out as a baby sock company. Phenomenal entrepreneurs I have. Is this the long, like the long-- Lady stocking?

Yeah, with a little lace on top.

I bought some of those for a girl before, yeah. And they make girls look sexy.

They make them look great.

And they're well priced, and they're beautifully made. Yeah, they're nice, they're elegant, they're sexy. Well now it's a full fashion line, and it's, I think, $17 million in sales this year.

Wow.

But what are they particularly good at? There's a husband and a wife team, Melissa, the wife of the team, has gorgeous long legs. You may remember her from Shark Tank. Her husband's more of a nuts and bolts guy. but great at business. What she does is she constantly models and talks directly to the camera. She has so many people that love her. She has limited edition, she sells out constantly, constantly. She's great at social media. She knows how to primp herself, look sexy, talk to the ladies, and get sales.

So she uses her assets, her skills.

She uses that, but she does it on social media, and that's built their entire business, social media. And did I answer your question? Because I feel like I somehow got.

Lost in my- How do you stay relevant when things are going good? Because when things are going bad, they'll look at you for a moment, maybe, where it seems like everyone's looking at you, but then they forget. How do you stay relevant while you're growing or while things are kind of going the same?

I'll give you another example. I have a company I just bought in this past season. I was out of my mind to buy into them. It was two guys with a product called Comfy. It was a sweatshirt. blanket. You slip into it, it's like a sweatshirt, but it's actually a blanket. Okay. Why I say it was crazy to buy into it, none of the sharks, they were smart enough not to, is because they're two loudmouth guys having a good time pitching their product, and they had no inventory. They had handmade their own product. Two prototypes, they had no idea what it would cost to make, what they'd sell for, who they'd sell to. They had none of the answers. But they're great salesmen. And I said, I'll take 15 or 40% whenever I got it. Boom. Just because they're great salespeople. And what they have done is they've done in their first year $11 million in sales. They found a way to produce it and sell it. But a couple of weeks ago, it was very quiet. They have had social media coverage to the moon and back, but it was very quiet and they hand-delivered and I wish I could remember the famous actress name, sexy, cool, long legged actress. I'm so bad with names. Whoever she was, they sent hand delivered to her front door how they found it in Hollywood, the package, and she put on video her jumping on her bed in it. They quicker than a second started a social media campaign, people competing with the jumps. They're Johnny on the spot. That's smart business. They're causing attention. They made it happen, and then they're gonna write it again, and it's gonna be all over social media. me all over. They're annoyed with me that I'm here because I don't have their product because they want me jumping on the beds. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna put the hood on. I have one girlfriend that has gorgeous long legs. There you go. I'm gonna Photoshop my head in to.

Her long legs and I'm gonna win the contest. Perfect. I like that. What are you think some of the smart ideas in business right now? The smart industries to go into if someone's maybe talented, maybe they sold a company or they're trying to start as an entrepreneur, what's an industry you really like? A product, a section you really like? Software, is it coaching, is it consulting, is it an agency, is it physical goods, food, what's the type of category you really think?

You know, really none of the above. Okay? It's not my cup of tea to think of an industry that you can, this certainly leading industries, I don't believe that's where your head should be if you're thinking of going into business. I think your head should be is what do you enjoy? What are you naturally inclined to be good at? What were you always good at? Things these disabilities don't change much. If you're gregarious as a young kid, you generally don't wind up as a bookworm. When you get older and get a head on your shoulders, you're still gregarious. So I think what you have to do is think what would suit me? What could I visualize myself doing where I could picture a happy picture of myself? and I think most people are capable of dreaming that up. I don't think it's an analytical kind of left brain kind of thing where you apply yourself to your best shot, like going and playing blackjack and putting your chips on the right thing. No, I think you have to figure out you're the table, where should you put your chips? What's on you? What's true to you? Okay. And so for me, it took me 22 jobs to find real estate. But the minute I was out opening keys, opening the doors and chatting people up and it didn't feel like work and I was the boss. I knew I was going to be the queen of New York real estate. I knew it as sure as I knew my middle name was Anne. I just could see it in my mind's eye. I never had that vision when I worked my other 22 jobs. And the other thing, it's sort of related to what you ask. I think it's such wrong thinking that you have to choose your spot. I think it's like, Finding out what clothing you look good in, you gotta go try a lot of shit on the rack and see what works with you. And then you kinda, little by little kinda get your look on what looks well on your body type, your personality, the colors that are good. I think you find yourself little by little, it's very hard to sharpshoot. It's not that kind of a thing. And you know, often the people, I know so many entrepreneurs well beyond or well before Shark Tank, peers of mine in many industries that have succeeded, no one ever went out for that industry. And so that's what I wanna do. But you know, you know what made the biggest difference in a myriad of those, if that's a word, a selection of those people that made the biggest difference was they came along someone they worked for who believed in them. Getting one good boss that gives you an opportunity is worth a million intellectual thoughts and Harvard MBAs grouped up in a pile. Because you kind of can sometimes need somebody else to see that light or you get into something you never thought you'd be interested in and you really love your job. And then that winds up being what you do for a lifetime. And so I don't believe that you've named the big industries. That's more of a Mark Cuban stuff. He's like high level investment strategy stuff. But I'll put my businesses against his any day, one to one. Because I think I'm so good at seeing who's got that talent that matches where they are.

If someone's approaching you for, investment or to partner with you. And you could choose only three qualities that you would dream that they would have, whether that's, you know, never giving up a grid, a positive energy, whatever the quality might be. And you could say if they had these three qualities, it doesn't matter what business they ran, maybe timing and the economy might play a little bit of part here and there, but like if they had these three qualities, they're most like, I would bet on them any day.

Yeah, well that's what I do every day on Shark Tank. And I've gotten better at it because I've learned to hone in on those. I could think of two, maybe I'll come up with a third if I keep talking. All right, number one is salesmanship. I have never succeeded with any business where the principal didn't know how to sell. I mean sales is the guts of every business. If you don't have sales, you're not in business, any business applies to everything, okay? So okay if you're a technology nerd and really are in a technology space, but you better have a partner who could sell the shit out of it or it ain't gonna go go anywhere. Okay, so selling is number one. The other thing I look for, and maybe it sounds weird to you, but I've learned it to be a great almost insurance policy. I look for injury. I look for anger in the individual. If I could find someone, and this is true of all my successful business, interestingly enough, if I could find someone who had injury at an early age and has something to prove, I got myself a winner. It's like insurance. Okay, so when I say injury, meaning they were Dunstan school, like three out of four, three out of five sharks were Dunstans at school. They're out to prove, you know, I don't wanna out them, so I'm inclined to use the names, but I won't. I have entrepreneurs, usually successful, never had a father. And then when they went on Shark Tank, their father, after 35 years was back into how insulting, enraged them, okay? I have entrepreneurs who were sports figures, almost going to be professional sports people, had an injury, but were fiercely competitive with someone who wound up in their space. They hate that person. 'Cause they played against them in ice hockey. Crazy. All I have to do is name the other person, their sales go up.

Wow.

So anger and proving is very much part of a lot of successful stories out there. It's an overcompensation, overproving, overdriving, like, I'll show you. Give me the, I show you, something that went wrong earlier, and you've got a motivated person, and it gets you through hard times really well. And then I'm coming up with a third, there's a million other ones, None of them as serious as that. It's those two. You have to be able to sell and if you have injury to prove something, it's a wonderful insurance policy.

How important is a positive attitude with those two things? Like if you were negative- Oh, you.

Don'T, let me tell you.

I don't know.

You're not even going to get out of the gate. Well, there's negative people.

All right, you know what? You might be trying to prove people.

Wrong and always nasty about it. You know, I get it. Let me tell you what's true about a negative person. You won't meet them in the entrepreneurial space. You know why? Because they are far more comfortable criticizing the next guy than doing. Negative people are bloodsuckers. They just suck your energy away. You know, the nicest thing I did for all the people that worked with me over the years was get rid of negative people the minute I spotted them. I didn't care if I had cause. They were out. You know why? Because it's like letting the enemy quietly into your camp and giving them free reign. Negative energy is the enemy of all business, especially, I've always been in sales related businesses. You let a negative person into a sales force, worst, they have a pity party. All of a sudden, they need one more person to feel sorry for them or point out what's wrong. It's terrible. I would spot them out. I feel their vibe. Do you have a few minutes on Friday? I'd love to have a chat with you. Wow. Because I felt like I was saving my good people. You know, they were good, positive people. I don't mean criticism. It's invaluable in business. You need to have your criticsizers to let you know when you're off and what you could do better. But I'm just talking about real bloodsuckers, you know? Everybody's met a few.

I hear you, I hear you. Now sales is number one for you, if they're a great salesman, you would bet on them. If they're a great salesman with something to prove, that's like the golden ticket, it sounds like. So how does someone train to be a great salesman if they don't know how to? Is it something they can learn or is it something you just have to be a part of your energy?

Well, you had question about positive. That's the blood that goes through a great salesman. Seeing the positive side of anything, and a lot of people see that as baloney. I don't. It's just like, you show me a negative and I'll say, you know, you're right, it's a negative. But I can tell you what the upside of that negative is. So you have a bend toward being positive. So you must have that, okay, to be a salesman. If you don't, you'll never become a salesman. I don't care how hard you try. I think it's an intrinsic quality of personality trait. I know you're not supposed to say that. Everybody's supposed to believe you could become a salesman. I think if you're inclined to be outgoing and positive, you can become a better salesperson. But the real phenomenal sales people that I have worked with and I've made my living my whole life in different venues with phenomenal sales people, I am telling you they come out of the gate, maybe not out of the womb, but they come out of the adolescent gate as salespeople, it's very hard to teach that. It's an artistic gift to be able to sell really well. Because think of how complicated it is. You have to read the situation accurately. You have to read the person and think of how you could use them in the way that they want to use themselves and thank you in a thank you note 12 hours later thinking it was their idea. That's a complicated little thing, right? And you need to think of how that person could be used for your long-term goal of the picture you want to create. So that's very complicated math in the head. And that's what great salespeople do. They're from all the best salesmen, I hate to say it, that I ever met in my life and spent endless hours with him. Miss Donald Trump.

Really?

Unbelievable salesmen.

How so? What was it that made him so great?

He he can read the vulnerability of people. You walk into the room, he could see what's wrong with you. He could just feel and know accurately what's wrong with you and how he's gonna use that to get his way. It's an instinctive trait. I don't know if he was that way at 12, but I met him at, I guess I worked with him since he was 27, 28. He is just a couple of years older than and we were in the same industry, the same town. So I had so many good dealings with him over the years until, of course, he owed me money. And I had assumed that he didn't like me anymore. That's all right. I got the money. That's all that counts. But he is-- he could sell anyone anything. I witnessed it again and again, firsthand, in his office, in meetings. Unbelievable salesman. And that's exactly what he did with the American people. He sold them.

Wow.

He's a great salesman.

What's the vulnerabilities that he would look for and how would he use those to get people to buy what he was selling?

Oh, God. I'm thinking of a million stories of him using my own vulnerabilities.

Really?

Yeah. But they're kind of too long-winded to tell, I guess.

What's one he would use with you and then one you saw him use with someone else? Like a vulnerability they have and then what he did to lean into that.

Well, you know, actually I'm like a scary turf here because I don't want, I've been sued by him. He's relentless.

Okay.

Yes, so, but let me just, in a positive way. Okay, in my most positive self.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So for example, I saw him, maybe a silly example, but I saw him interviewing huge ad agencies in New York for an advertising campaign done all the time by large developers, right? And I saw him-- To promote a.

Building that he's going to build.

To promote a building, he's going to spend a lot of money advertising. That's a sizable account for any ad agency in New York. And also how to market it, how to frame it, how to name it, marketing slash sales, but most importantly sales and advertising. And I saw him sit at a meeting, because I was there judging who was the best person along with them for a development site. And I saw him meet person after person, like a beauty contest, person after person after person. and then blow up the ego of one team. Unbelievable what you created here. Unbelievable. And I'm like, I don't get it. I'm a marketing person. I don't get it. I don't get it. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Can you do this? Can you do that? And that was all done. And then he did the advertising on his own. But I could see, why is he doing this? But now, in hindsight, I see he knew that guy was gonna float and work for free because he needed the ego pet so much. Wow.

Yeah.

And I'll give you a story of me that will sound, you'll think I'm a witchcraft person. I'm really not, you know. But I had a situation where my husband was a Navy captain and was sinking tanks along the East Coast. And Donald had just bought MaR-A-Largo and they were erosion issues. So my husband said to me, why don't you call Donald Trump and ask him if he wants me to sink those tanks in there? you know, I'll do it right along his coast, courtesy of the US Navy. We need the exercise. I got the tanks. I said, I'm not gonna ask him for anything. I said, no, it's a favorite. I'm not asking for it. He's not the kind of man I want to owe anything to. No, thank you, Bill. My husband badgered me, badgered me. Finally, I wrote a note saying, Just on the off chance you're interested, cowardly way to do it. I'm writing him a note. I saw the man all the time. Just on the off chance you're interested, I thought maybe, I rewrote it, rewrote it, rewrote it, because I didn't want it to look like a favor. I was careful. Okay, my danger gene, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo. Sent them the note, got hired for a big job. We were at a big board meeting with like 30 people there. Every captain of the industry of the different trades was there. He's building me up for weeks, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara. And then he decided he got out of me what he needed, and he said, Did I ever tell you guys about the time Barbara wrote the note? I'm like sitting there going, no. She goes, Yep. She was so afraid to ask me.

Wow.

That she must have written the note. How many times, Barbara, four or five times?

No way.

I was like, oh my God. I thought I was in some kind of a horrible, everybody's looking at me. She writes a note, she's afraid of you only the week before. I was amazing. He was done with me. I knew it. Didn't want to pay the commission. Done. Contract never got done.

No way.

So that is acute ability to read vulnerability. How would he know that? To this day, I'm like, but I saw him do that over and over. He's just, he, yeah.

Wow.

Do you know, when I was selling real estate, I could always pick up between the lines, between what people said they would buy and what they'd actually buy. So they'd say they wanted a terrace, had to have a terrorist, had to have a terrorist. They were leaving for the terrorists. And I knew as sure as I knew my name that they weren't gonna buy a terrorist. That I was gonna sell them instead on a view apartment, a new building versus a terrorist in an old building that they wanted. 'Cause what they were really looking for was charisma. That's an ability to read people, okay? And be able to substitute.

So that's another version of that, but.

On the negative side. Wow. Does that make sense?

You did it in a positive way.

Yeah.

I think I could have done a negative way if I had that ability. I didn't.

Wow. Yeah.

So how did you see this with people then where you could shift what they wanted to something that you could still sell them in a positive way? Like you said, they wanted the terrace, but I knew they just wanted charisma. How do you spot that personally when you're selling a home or something else?

I think most of us, if we listen well, could sense it. I think what it is, it's all in the delivery. First of all, very often you're selling couples or a single person and you have time to chat. If you get below below the person's skin and kind of figure out what kind of person you are. Very often you know better than they know what's gonna make them happy. They could be repeating what their peers said they should have or the way they, you know, you don't know where it comes from, but get to know them and you could reach your own conclusions. So I really found that the old saying buyers are liars is really true. They don't mean to lie, but what you've really got to do is in any sales situation, really get into the person, ask a lot of questions and try it. Like if you, after you were visiting with someone, trying to sell them something, someone said, what do they like? What would you say about them? What do they really like? What would you say about them? That's where you find where the soft material to sell is, I think.

If you were given three questions to ask any buyer, potential buyer, that came into you, you can only ask them three questions.

Yes.

Try to figure out who they really were, what they were really interested in or what you could potentially sell them. We'll just say maybe two or three of these questions that you would ask to see what you could get out of them.

Yeah.

The first question I would ask is, when do you need it for? Urgency is 90% of it.

Interesting.

The second question I would ask is, when do you need it for? And the third is, when do you need it for?

Really? The rest doesn't matter.

Because if you have a motivated person who needs something, you've got a sale.

Doesn't matter. They're like, we need it this week.

It doesn't matter. You have time to figure it out. But you get instead, like as a real estate salesman in a typical qualifying and all my qualifying forms that I taught every sales and every manager used my entire life, first question, Bolder, the only one Bolder, when do you need it for? Because salespeople say, oh, so what are you looking for? No, they miss the big question, when do you need it for? Interesting. Because they will move all over the board as to what they'll actually see and what they'll actually buy. And you have all the time in the world, because how do you really know that? Because you haven't spent time with them. you're going to actually believe what you hear. It's crazy. You need to spend the time to form your own impression of what they're really going to buy or what is just really where the sale is or where's the opportunities. Doesn't just have to be in sales, it's in business dealings, it's everything. You need to have the ability to spend time enough to read them well. But the one thing you can ask up front is when do you need it for? Because I had more sales people in the early years spin their wheels endlessly with the high priced customer, all cash, this and that. Price is no limit. But they didn't need it.

For years.

And they were gonna work with them for years and spend all that cat fare and car services. No, the need is the most important question you want in any sales situation. And any salesman that comes in and doesn't vet that out right away or on the phone is not a good salesman. I could tell right away, not a good salesman. They missed the main question.

Yeah.

That's good. I like that. Any type of sale you're looking for, you need to ask that question. And in this section, Damon John shares how being diagnosed with cancer changed his perspective on life and business. We then go on to talk about negotiating with yourself to achieve big goals and big investments that he's made. Biggest lesson he's learned from a decade of being on Shark Tank. There's a lot of great advice on how to pitch your company to an investor that I think will bring you a ton of value. You went through some health stuff the last couple of years?

Yes.

I went and got an executive physical, which a lot of people don't know what that is, you know, because usually we get physicals and I go to the doctor, he grabs something off me, it's hairy and tells me to cough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's it. I had a little nodule on my thyroid. I went to go and get it removed. It was a one hour surgery, turned to three and a half hours of removing what I didn't know at the time was stage two cancer. The doctor knew what it was. It was the size of a golf ball, but thank God it was the slowest growing cancer, which is thyroid cancer. But if you don't treat it, it can go to your lymph nodes and then move to your brain. And when they sent the, that rock that was in my throat, when they sent it away to get tested. It was about two weeks until I would get the actual test. So I had to really negotiate with myself. And I. I went to. I'm not gonna call it a dark place, but this is reality is that I said to myself, am I prepared to die? And I said, you know, listen, I've lived. I lived. I lived the life of 10 men and women.

Right.

My oldest girls are beautiful. They're old. Older now, my 27 and 22 year they're great contributors to society. My ex-wife raised them really well. My mother, let me be selfish, I don't want to see her die, right? So maybe if I die before her by something that was not in my power, I got a young daughter, she's three years old, guess what? She won't even remember me. You won't remember me. And then my wife, my current wife, is super hot. She's gonna have another man with no problem after she gets over whatever it is. So I said, let me start, let me think about unraveling the businesses that I have, spending more time with my kids, and really accepting that whether two, five or ten years, I won't be on the rock no more, right? But then the other negotiation was, no, no mother should bury her son. My two oldest girls, I want to still be around to protect them, and maybe I'm going to have grandkids one day. My littlest baby, she needs to have the best father who loves her the most that can be there for her. And my wife is super hot and I get to go to sleep with a super hot woman every night of my life. And so one week out of the two weeks waiting for the diagnosis to come back had passed. But after I decided and I negotiated with myself, what's my why? Why am I doing this? What am I willing to put in to fight this thing? I forgot I even had it. I forgot that.

Really?

Yeah, in the one other week that I was coming, when the doctor finally called me and he told me that it was cancerous, but he said, Let me come and check your lymph nodes and everything else. I forgot that I even had cancer. I forgot that I was even waiting for the call.

How'd you forget it?

I was so focused on resetting my goals and adjusting them. My goals have always been very aggressive. Resetting them, adjusting them. telling the ones that I love how much I love them and understanding that, you know, they loved me and they needed me. And I just started looking at all the, the best things in my life, the people that I get to motivate, the fact that a little brown boy who's dyslexic from Queens with no money, no nothing, came up in the world and, and hopefully I can Empower the next little brown boy, little brown girl, or anybody of any color, culture or sexual preference to not the next David JOns, be the next Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, or President Barack Obama. If I can do that, then maybe that's what my life was, you know, that's what God put me on this earth for. So it was a power shift. It was a mental power shift that I had to do myself. And I've always done that over the course of many years of my life, but I didn't realize that there was a method to what I was doing.

And so.

When I met a couple of people, it happened in a very short period of time and they were telling me, I can't get nowhere in life or I don't have money, I have this and that. And I realized the only difference between me, them, or any of us is what we negotiate through life. If we're not born in silver spooning, how many born with a silver spoon in them?

What?

5%? 2% of the world? 2% of the world. So the rest of us have gotten to a level of success or broken the cycle in our families or or even just become a better person by purely negotiating with themselves and then with others.

How do we negotiate with our mind to achieve something we've never achieved?

Yeah, so the first thing to achieve is why do you want to achieve it? Like what is your outcome? Many of us walk into the room, even into the room we're talking to ourselves, and they're not honest about the outcome. What is the outcome? Why are you going through the motion? is it because society has told you that that's what it should be? Or is it that your parents always wanted that from you? Or is it that you have been neglected in some way and you're trying to please a bunch of people that you can't stand? Or is it that you want to change the world? Is it that you know that you being healthier is going to be able to be around in your family's life much longer? Or you're going to be able to stop some social injustices? Like, what is your why, first of all.

That's the first step. That's why you want that.

That's the first step. I always use this example is, but people always say, I want to be a millionaire. What are you going to do when you get a million dollars? What are you gonna do with the money? Some people go, I'm just gonna keep making money. Well, how are. Okay, you're gonna be a millionaire. So if over 65 of the lotto winners are broke three years after winning lotto, same thing with athletes and football players. Yeah. And football players, three years out. Really, they didn't know their why. The football player knew his why or, you know, he knew his why, oh, I want to get that ball or run that play. I want to become part of a championship team. Did I love it or because it.

Makes me fulfilled or it's fun or...

I love going to the gym. I love, I love that, I love, I'm there for competition. You know better than I do because obviously you are an athlete. But if you don't know your why for a million dollars, well, when you get the money, you're gonna buy a Bugatti. you're gonna buy 10 cars?

And then what?

Yeah, but then you just have the Bugatti, right? So now what else you need, right? Are you gonna buy 10 cars? Are you going to move to Bali and live off $30,000 a year for 10 years, carve canoes, save the turtles, and invest in some stocks? Because stocks is gonna average out 12% every year and you're gonna turn the $600,000 into whatever the case is. And then when you come come back? What are you gonna do? Yeah, yeah, right. Are you gonna buy investment properties and keep doubling down? Many people go through life without their why. And so when they're working at nine to five that they're sick of, they're going home and complaining. And I forgot what I was watching a show where a girl was, she was now living in nature. But she said, I lived in Ireland and I was fighting every weekend in clubs and bars. And I realized I was working and I was so miserable so that was my release. So I was working to fight because I was so damn miserable with my life. And then she started to find causes that she liked. She saved the job, but she would go home at night and put some time into causes that she liked. And she got able to get out of that circumstance and move to someplace else. And now she's doing what she loves. But people don't know their why.

Yeah.

What's your why right now? You've been doing Shark Tank for 11 years now. 11 years.

Going on 12 years.

You've been investing a billion businesses, helping entrepreneurs grow. You've got, you know, amazing kids.

Yeah. So, so my why is, as I said before, first of all, you know, it's to take care of my family and my, my wife and my, my youngest daughter, because my oldest daughter, daughters, when, when, when they were born, I was poor. And all I knew was I gotta go out and make as much money as I can to give these, to get these girls in an area where more protected where they can have a good education and have a medical and things in case something happens to them. And to break the cycle in my family of people who were just average people. My mother helped break that cycle by being one of the first to go to college. And me, I'm going to break that cycle. Next. But then I said to myself, but the little girl, now that I have the resources available, it's more how much love health can I give her? Because I never had experienced the wanting to come home purely for love. I was just so focused on trying to make money because if I wasn't successful, then like most parents, I'll sleep in a refrigerator box on the street if I have to, to make sure those girls had just one place to live. So that's one of my whys. Also, you know, I've been on a show for 11 years that has changed the way that people have understood or get to educate themselves on being entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. I'm invested in various companies. I'm these people's, you know, they allowed me to invest in their dreams. So who am I to give up? And also, I'm on the Petco board and Petco Foundation, you know, saving animals. I want to stop human trafficking. I have much more to do. And if I have a public platform that I can come and sit with you or go on GMA and stuff like that, I can help change people's perception of whatever the case is, sex, gender, religion, whatever the case is, to make them realize that if I can do it, they can do it, then I'm doing my job, you know?

Where do you think you'd be had you not had your two oldest daughters? Do you think you'd have been as hungry to go earn, make a build a business, earn money, grow, or do you think like, okay, well, I've got enough money for me?

I don't know. You know what? I was worth many millions of dollars by the age of 30 years old. absolutely broke and poor and sleeping on the ground at 27. At the ground of my house.

How were you when you had your daughter, your first daughter?

20, 27, 26.

Got you.

Right.

And because of my daughters and my ex-wife, I think that they leveled me to some extent because you don't give a 30 year old guy from the hood millions of dollars in the bank at 30 years old because I think I would have, I never tried cocaine or any of that stuff, but if I didn't have my girls, I probably would have been a huge supporter of cocaine because it looked like it was fun with the people having it. So I think that they governed me in a certain way.

In a positive way.

In a very positive way.

And.

It made me also want to live to leave my daughters a legacy. I wanted them to be proud of their father. So I refrained from doing and having a lot of the temptations that I've seen a lot of people fall short and get caught up in nothing wrong with that. we're all human.

Sure, sure. So I've interviewed a lot of people and there's one side of the spectrum where the successful entrepreneurs say, you know what, Louis, the key to growing your business is going all in on one focus. That's the key, right? That's what some say. But there's others like yourself who've invested in every business in the world it seems like and seen lots of them grow and been successful in that that way. Do you feel like, is that just like your creative nature where it's like you want to invest, this is your part of your path right now where you want to invest in lots of brands because you did so much in one thing for so long?

No, I think I'm more towards the person here. So when I invest in brands and companies, I invest in them because they're allowing me to be part of their dream, but I'm also learning earning from them, which is in return, allowing me to go back to my special skill set and improve it. So I'll give you exactly.

You're learning from the people you invest in.

I'm constantly learning every single day. So in power shift, I, I highlighted my investment on Bomba socks. Now, these guys are the number one sock, the number one investment in Shark Tank history. The only, the only The ring who did not get an investment went and did really well.

He did a billion dollar.

He did a billion two sale.

It's crazy, right?

Yeah.

And good for Jamie.

You were there when?

Yeah, I said no. And you know, Jamie ended up becoming a guest shark one time. And he said when he came in the tank, he was asking too much money. But I believe that because we tenderized him like that and he went out and raised money, I think we deserve five percent. But that's just, I'll leave it up to him.

Yeah, exactly.

I send him an email every other day saying, Hey, just five percent. All right, I'm willing to go four and a quarter. But the socks.

But the socks is the best investment you made.

And it's the number one product in Shark Tank history.

Really, in terms of how much it's grown?

How much is grown and how much is gross. Now, I want to make sure that you want to, 'cause I know you interview a lot of people. So if you ever interview the underachievers that sit next to me in the tank, I want to make sure that.

You remind them that you're the number one investor.

I am King Kamehameha on your tank. All right, just make sure it was clear. But let's give you that.

What was that deal? What was that deal? And how big is it grown?

They've done over 200 million dollars. I think it's 280 million dollars. More importantly, they're very. So their deal is a sock. And every time you buy a pair of socks, they give a pay away to the homeless because they have a big challenge. And we don't normally talk about the remember, it's more important that we've given away 30 million pairs of socks. All right. Thank you. Thank you. And it's really, it's really, you know, Dave and Randy's company, and they, they've done it all. I, they've gotten very little to almost no advice for me because they're so great. Yeah. But I'm gonna give you an example on the negotiation. They come into the tank. The only shark that doesn't want clothes is somebody who has 10 clothing companies.

And eight are dead.

I, my, my, my reason for being on a tank, besides investing other people, is to diversify my portfolio. So When I talk to a retailer, I go, well, I'm already taking a real estate in the clothing area. I want real estate in electronics area. I want real estate in lotion, da-da-da. The last thing I want is socks. Also, I have, I don't know, 20,000 units of socks that I can't sell. You know, when I can't sell socks, I just send people over to people's houses. They steal one. Yeah, yeah. And then you have to buy a pair because you just think you lost it, right? So I still can't sell it. Plus, if I do the deal, I'm the logo whore. you can't. If anybody in this room or in this building were wearing bomber socks, you couldn't tell. So how do I get the advertising out of it? But they managed to make me understand that today's generation wants to give every time they purchase instead of at the end of the year. They want impact. They want impact. They. And they don't want to buy from people who are just making money. They want to know, what did you do for somebody else? So that's one thing I learned that I applied to all my businesses, because I. You couldn't do Before social media, you.

Could, but you can't get the word out that much.

And then plus you'd have to advertise off of people's hardships, right? You wouldn't have self-generated content of people saying thank you, right? So I learned that. I also learned that because the consumer purchased and it was part of a movement, they talk about it at the dinner table, at the water cooler, and that's your advertisers. You don't need the traditional form of advertising because people want to brag when they're doing something well. And then last but not least, they were showing me how to sell directly to my consumer and not being at the mercy of a retailer who still doesn't know what they're doing. So they shifted the power in the room to get me to do a deal.

So you weren't interested?

I wasn't interested.

Everyone else was.

Everyone? No, not everyone else was interested, but I was the last shot to be interested because I'm too jaded by the fashion industry. Lo and behold, I do the deal and that's what a power shift is, being able to know your target, know what's beneficial for that person, know where you're willing to draw the line and really know how to relate to that person and communicate with them.

What is it that they said that shifted the power inside of your mind.

And say, okay, I gotta get into this? Well, they showed me that the technology on the socks were really good because they didn't have the toe, the seam in the toe when me being a manufacturer, I didn't know how they did that at first. It was a simple change, but I used to get irritated in toes when they're doing that. They then, but more importantly, you have.

To put it on a certain way.

Yeah, of course. More importantly, they've shown me that the data they received from their consumer was able to give them the ability to keep selling their consumer and keep talking directly to them, and that they no longer were at the mercy of if a retailer makes the best decision or puts your socks out over here or advertises your socks or discounts them or anything. else, right? So they were showing me how to control the business. It's very much like content sending it out and getting to know a dashboard of your consumer. And I learned so much from them, but it was them understanding that, Damon, I'm going to take you out of the old way of you doing business and move you into the new way of doing business. And guess what? If it doesn't work out, we're going to do another business together and we're going to make some money or change the world and more than likely have some fun.

That's cool. Who has taught you the most in the last 11 years of the show.

Them?

Them.

They have. I learned, I learned, you know, I joke about my fellow sharks, but I definitely learned from them.

Is that just because they pay you the most every month? You get a check every month?

I see the business operating. I see them being laser focused. I see a lot of things that they do. They have probably taught me the most.

Yeah. Who was someone that you didn't invest in and taught you the most? Whether it be like a good lesson or a lesson, you're like, okay, that's not but that's what not to do.

Somebody that I didn't.

Or maybe someone inspired you, but you didn't see a right fit for you and they taught you something.

Listen, I learned, I learned, I'm not saying to be warm and fuzzy. I learned from every single one of these entrepreneurs how they operate the business or how they fail. A lot of time when they fail, it confirms theories that I have. Because, you know, whenever I fail, I look a checklist of all the things and I go, why did I do this? This is not what I do. Why did I not take my own damn advice? So I can't name just one of them.

Sure.

Tell the truth. But I look at entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and learn and go, as big as you are, you are affecting the world and you will still be scrappy enough to say, Hey Amazon workers, you want to make a couple extra When you're going home, you can take a package home and you let, why is that beneficial? Well, first of all, the worker gets to drive home and takes home a package and makes more money. You're a worker of Amazon, so Amazon trusts you with the box. And Amazon saves on shipping.

Like, takes a package home that you bought for something.

No, meaning.

Just take anything you want.

No, take it and drop it off.

Oh, drop it off someone in your neighborhood.

Yeah, wherever. Hey, hey, I gotta drive two miles, I gotta drive 10 miles. But I looked in the system and seven houses on the way, the 10 miles. Wow.

Let me-- you- can make extra money doing that.

You can make extra-- yeah.

That's pretty smart.

I'll be picking up whole truckloads. And it wins for everybody, right? When I look at an entrepreneur like Jeff Bezos who does stuff like that, I go, He's still scrappy.

He's still thinking, you know what I mean?

Got all this money in the bank.

But he's still trying to maximize it. He's still scrappy. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple podcast as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now Now it's time to go out there and do something great.