you're on a social media platform you want to go after this big person hit the smaller people that really value you and would really be your ambassador the big people will talk about it sooner or later but if you go right to them you know they're going to look at you
like everybody else who just comes straight to them and they're going to say well why am i going to be the first one to invest in your brand when nobody else does and it's just all done on just a different platform today [Music] hey everyone welcome back to on purpose
the number one health and wellness podcast in the world thanks to each and every single one of you now i know you're excited about this one i know i am i have so many great questions to ask i'm always trying to find entrepreneurs and business people that can help raise
our minds and raise our awareness in our own businesses and our own passions and in our purpose and today's guest as you know is none other than damon john he's the founder and ceo of fubu a celebrated global lifestyle brand with a multi-billion dollar empire which he
built from the ground up he's among the country's most visible entrepreneurs as one of the stars of abc's emmy award-winning series shark tank damond is a new york times instant best-selling author with multiple books and today i'm excited to talk with him about what it
takes to be an outstanding entrepreneur and his new book powershift which is out on march 10th damon welcome to the podcast thank you for having me yeah really happy to have you man excited to learn from you excited to hear your insights i'm excited to learn from you
as well yeah i wanted to start on a bit of a personal tone because i always feel like with with entrepreneurs and business people everyone always asking you business questions and i wanted to ask you what's the latest adventure you've been on with minka you're your daughter
what's the latest thing uh i don't know i bought two donkeys you did yeah what's your donkey true story yes oh wow okay okay so one name felicia one named debo because i wanted to you know when we drive when we leave i wanted her to say bye felicia and um and she wakes me up every day to say i want
to go see the donkeys but she won't touch him okay yeah she'll just stay in the car she'd be like yo i'm cool from over here so i gotta i gotta i gotta get her to touch the donkey so that's my uh my newest thing with her i love that man i was not expecting that see i love them
what do you expect no i didn't know i didn't know what to expect i was like that's that's cool i i i'll find i'm gonna need to find any other fathers that go go do that i love that i think that's awesome tell us about tell us about one of the biggest lessons you've
learned by being a father like what's what's come to you from that experience in your life uh well this is my third time being a father my my oldest girl they're 27 and 21 or 26 and 21 i can't be yet i can't remember but um i don't know what the best i mean being
a father you learn so many different lessons um that you know i think it's human nature to uh be able to figure things out and manipulate the situation as a kid you know i mean you know she's she's my youngest minka and just like all my other ones they they they realize how to
negotiate how to manipulate at a very very very young age interesting um it comes natural to them yeah yeah they got it from you no no no come natural kids kids figure it out right they'll figure out they can get away with this person with this they can get away i remember you know we were
probably in a car brian about a month ago she said well if i don't get this i'm going to cry yeah and she she she messed it up for herself because now i know that she knows that when she cries she gets this and she she slipped up you know in the negotiation
process right there right she told you she told me basically i know my i know your weakness if i don't get this i'm gonna cry now you know she's crying whenever she's crying she doesn't get anything i don't care she needs nine stitches i don't care if she's crying
you know yeah what's your weakness when it comes to negotiation or what's the one you've had to build the most on that you saw in your early days i think trust i think that um what is the difference i trust too much i just you know you know when you i'm a person i try not to lie i i to say that
i don't lie would be a lie right but i think that when i see people and they're um they're talking about something and i mean when there's somebody who's really fouled a straight line i can't believe you're just lying i just it just doesn't come to me as a concept
i mean unless you're just don't get me wrong if i see someone and i feel like they're a con man or con woman i understand they're trying to get over but when people are just like well let's say a shark tank you know when they're like um i did eight hundred thousand dollars in
sales in a year and i said eight hundred thousand dollars in sales and i find out that it was eight hundred thousand dollars in sales in ten years i actually believe that they heard it wrong they heard the question wrong right because you know i'm going to find
out like why are you lying so i think that's my my biggest challenge i'm a i'm a very optimistic person i believe in people you like to give people the benefit of the doubt i give them the benefit of that they're trying to do that yeah it it always ends up with the
same results don't get me wrong i mean you know i end up i end up you know smashing them or cutting them off or whatever the case is but it's just the process it's just like ah damn yeah you have to lie yeah well i think it's worse for that person who's done that like it makes them look worse
because you actually gave them an opportunity to shine it makes no sense yeah yeah it doesn't make any sense but unfortunately i think we live in this fear-based society where we're more scared of telling the truth because the truth may be less impressive
it may be less respectable it may be less powerful yeah i had i had somebody who was domestic helpful a caretaker um she wasn't supposed to use uber unless she was picking up the baby or something she used about 8 000 worth of ubers in like a year and and she kept lying you know
it was on the car and i said you you i was so surprised i said to uh you know i said i'm not disappointed that you stole i'm disappointed that all the uber drivers made the money and not you so true you should keep lying i was like that's so stupid if you're gonna lie about it
you should have stole some jewelry or something what's wrong with you you idiot yeah anyway so true well yeah cool that makes sense i love that i think that's great advice i think it's nice to see though that people when they understand this hopefully people
are listening and watching to this if they're ever going to ask for investment be truthful be honest it's great we'll find out sooner or later yeah people are going to find out anyway no i love that man and you obviously started your first job if i if i'm correct ever was giving out flyers
yeah by somebody else who's giving out fly was handing off live 2025 cents per hour two dollars 25 cents an hour yeah it's what i pay my employees now who who gets that their ceo who's getting paid that much uh but yeah so when you're getting asked to do that 10 years old what was the biggest lesson
you learned as a 10 year old getting 2 dollars 25 cents an hour i was in charge of my own destiny i mean i took the job because i wanted the job because my father left and i became the man of the house i was only child and my mother had to start working so many like
several jobs to put the same amount of food on the table and i learned responsibility and you know i say to my speeches responsibility something must be taken it can't be given and i didn't want to be a burden to her so whether it was me giving in my little bit of money to help
with the bills or for groceries or listen i wanted fresh kicks i wanted something like that and i didn't and it felt funny like she could barely pay the bills but yet i'm asking her to buy me clothes when the clothes that i have are fine if i have to wear the same exact clothes
every single day i have clothes i've been in countries where people don't even have clothes right so um i think responsibility is the thing that that that was the most you know that i took from that yeah i love that that's a great lesson i think it was gandhi who
said that i was sad because i didn't have any shoes and then i saw a man with no feet and it's that same principle that you're saying that when you look at that perspective that difference yeah we're just looking at what we don't have right not realizing the people around us
actually don't have a lot more than that exactly and so yeah that's a beautiful lesson at 10 to learn that it's pretty early to learn that as well yeah well you know you're not you're not you're not realizing you'll learn a lesson when you're doing it you know when you're
doing it and you reflect back on the lessons you've learned often you didn't realize at the time that you were learning the lesson that was a lesson you know yeah what i love about this book powershift is that you've looked at a lot of research on negotiation yeah
and you've been a serial negotiator your whole life what was the thing that surprised you the most from the research if anything because obviously you've done this practically you never sat down and read a textbook on how to negotiate yeah and i i think you brought up a good
point when i wrote the book uh about powershift about negotiations i realized i was exercising a lot of these tactics and or methods to negotiate but i didn't have an actual plan or method to do it so i started applying these common threads with a lot of people who negotiated um
what i didn't realize about negotiation is that negotiation doesn't start when you get to the table it starts way before you get to the table so that's why the book is not solely on negotiation the book is on creating influence then negotiating the deal and more
importantly after negotiating the deal what more can you get out of the relationship afterwards because hopefully the process gave you or such a great relationship that the initial deal is only five percent of all the benefits you'll get out of the relationship afterwards
but when somebody says well how am i going to build influence what if you run into damon john in the elevator you have a 90 second pitch how can you build influence in that 90 seconds that's the problem people are very transactional they think right then is the negotiation
that's not the negotiation the negotiation is when i leave that elevator and i pull your name up on instagram and that's where my due diligence and influence has started because then all the things you said to me in the elevator i either looked on your social media or pulled you up or looked at the
company work and i need to go i'm interested in this person i can't wait to i needed somebody like that in my life or on my staff or somebody to invest in or i go wait a minute that person keeps taking pictures with this is the person's husband
and why does the husband always put up confederate flags on his stuff and as a racist that person must be a racist too of course uh oh look at when this person is uh the person said they work in the finance department but they're not doing any references to any financial books or
financial intelligence and they're out there talking that person will never know why i never called them back yeah and negotiations started way earlier i love that and so people the mistake people make is they're going straight in for the win and the kill in the 90 second because
you probably get if anyone bumps into you i'm sure they're pitching business ideas all the time and you're actually saying that's the biggest mistake because they built zero influence with you they built their implant or the influence that they've laid down that we're gonna look
at you know listen you gotta their reputation is going to proceed them because i'm gonna go follow back up on that yeah right and so then the negotiation starts whatever that negotiation may be and how do you care about what i want in the negotiation a lot of people think what they want to
get and then after that how do you nurture the relationship afterwards even if that first negotiation didn't really necessarily go as well how do you nurture that relationship because now you have an in with me to some extent let's let's circle back to that
beginning part because i love what you're saying about building influence tell me what was different about building influence when you started versus the way you're seeing it now when people trying to build influence with you because you obviously built influence in a non-social media age in a
non-digital age was it harder was it slower was it it was much slower it wasn't different it was just a different platform right it was much slower it was much harder it was in a much smaller circle but i had to build influence there you know when i went out
to you know if we want to we want to let's say we want to talk about it today you want to go get a big influencer to uh you know wear your stuff or support your brand i wanted to as well when i was a kid i didn't go right to ll cool j i went to all the big bodyguards around because i
knew that the big guys didn't have options for clothing they only had a white you know rochester big and tall white shirt black shirt or custom-made clothing so if i gave i only had money for 50 shares so if i gave the 50 shares to all the cool kids they'd wear it one time
throw it away the big guys wore it 10 times a month and where were those big guys they were always in front of the red rope they was always in front of the club they were always the guys who were the bodyguards they were always big so what happened was i built influence with them first
then the ll cool js and the running emc's the world would say hey man where's mine yeah what am i shop liver no you're too cool no i'm not no you're too cool but after six months of them seeing this brand around that's how i built it it's the same thing today if
you're on a social media platform you want to go after this big person hit the smaller people that really value you and would really be your ambassador the big people will talk about it sooner or just comes straight to later and they're going to say well why am i going to be
the first one to invest in your brand when nobody else does and it's it's just all done on just a different platform today yeah i love that though what you just shared with your story that's genius i mean just understanding the positioning of bouncers because i think
sometimes people in a negative impact on ourselves is we look at oh look these people are not they're not big enough you know they're not important right they're the best exactly exactly like that's actually where it starts and and you've got to value those people as much
as you'd value the big person listen you know i use the example of window shoppers you know there's a lot of people and we've all felt like this whoever's watching or maybe you that maybe a certain point in time in your life you didn't look right or the people
didn't treat you right when you walked into a store they think they thought that maybe you weren't their customer or you got it like that that happened a lot of times right so you know window shoppers are the best i'll tell you why you know i have a couple of
dollars now i'm okay you know if i go and buy a brand new i wanna wear some y3s today i'm not gonna i'm not gonna brag about it there's no reason now you know i have money but if a window shopper sits there and goes into the store and doesn't have any money and they go you know
one day i want them to get money i'm gonna buy those y3s you know how many people are gonna tell that to they're gonna tell it to a million people man which i get those wide threes baby where'd they get that became your ambassador that person just shared it with a thousand people
you know and those people are extremely extremely important and that's where power should happen because what happens is you build an influence with people they're influencers too they are just talking about it in a different way so we actually totally don't understand powershift
we don't understand what a lot of people do a lot of people a lot of people are doing it and they don't realize they're doing it they don't have a method to it yeah and so you know but why not have a method to negotiating because you know the only thing that separates you and me
and from everybody else is what we have negotiated in life that's it it's the deals we've taken the deals we haven't taken a lot of time not the deals that you haven't uh taken it's the deals you did take to screw you up right yeah and the only thing that separates us and
i've seen thousands of pitches only that separates us his ability to negotiate yeah i was telling my team just now like before i really got into all of this i was this close i was offered this podcast deal and it was before this one when we did it for real and i was this
close to taking it because at that time i was positioning myself for considering myself less influential than the person who was offering it to me right and so i was going to sign this pretty bad deal for me because i thought oh it's going to get my foot in the door it's going to
give me that break luckily my lawyers held me back and we did it the right way but tell me when is that time when you're kind of like up and coming and you're trying to you're trying to break into that space what is your best advice for someone like that when it comes to
the deals they should and shouldn't take because sometimes in our desperation or in our lack of influence we kind of get we make big mistakes in what we say yes to you know that's a good question all those are personal decisions that need to be made right um because you
could have taken a crappy deal here because you felt that you were going to do more in this world or whatever the cases meaning bethany on um she's in the book bethany on housewives she wanted to put out skinny girls so she didn't care how much housewives was
paying her initially so it all depends on where is the value and and i think the question right there that if somebody asks themselves is what's their why and what do they want to get out of it what's the reason you're doing it for yeah i see a lot of people who say
well i want to make a million dollars all right what are you gonna do you get the million dollars and they're like i don't know yeah you're gonna you're gonna buy one really expensive car like a bugatti you're gonna buy uh investment homes to help pay you know
pay for your way of life or you know or are you going to live off 30 000 a year in bali uh for 10 years and uh you know and and and carve canoes so you know what i mean but what is it right yeah and a lot of people when they get to that point of i'm assigned to deal with the podcast or
i'm going to do this show or i'm going to marry this woman or i'm going to what is the what's the why the true why and we we so often don't know our why absolutely and you talk about finding your light right like finding that light in your book and it's i feel like but do we not know the why
because we're just seeing shiny objects and it's like that shiny object syndrome where we just go chase things what is that reason that we don't stop back like why are you pushing so much because we haven't taken inventory of ourselves the proper way you know because
some are in some some are in shiny objects some are my parents my parents uh you know my parents grew up as uh they're both doctors and that's what the family should be doctors but you don't want to be a doctor but you would just believe that that's what it was right or you know what you know
what whatever it is uh it's society it's fear most a lot of times it's fear you know i can't quit my job uh because i'm not gonna be able to make money but you know did you really realize were you making money or not you know what i mean what's your why i remember a woman
who used to work for me uh she she started working for me and she had left uh a job and i i was like well why'd you leave the job she said i realized that i was going to work to get paid to fight and i was like what do you mean she said i would work nine to five every single day
uh five days a week and then on the weekends i would get shit-faced and just have fights at bars because i was so miserable with my job and the people around me and she worked in a very violent kind of situation she didn't know her why anymore then she
came to me and started working in a charitable area and she never had a fight again and she was she was happy but she had to check herself and check her why yeah absolutely i always joke i was i grew up in a family where i could be a doctor a lawyer or a failure like
those are my free options right it was like you either those two or you kind of didn't make it because you didn't do anything right and you're so right that self-inventory check of wait what is my purpose like why am i doing this like do i even care about being this what's
become your why as time has changed like how has your why changed has it upgraded has it become deeper better what what's what's really i say this is upgraded because i can't i can't doubt anybody for whatever their why is right there's no there's no better why yours is not
better than mine has it changed absolutely i'm 50 years old now and my why has changed uh uh 10 times um but the core to my why it was a friend of mine who explained to me the core of my why the one thing that didn't change is that i wanted to serve others and i
said wow i was like i don't want to serve others he was like yes you do i was like no i don't he was like listen you start a brand fool before it's biased you want to empower a culture you could have called it like many designers ralph lauren and tommy hilfiger call it their
own name you could have called it daymond john not sure if it'll work they're not but whatever the case is right uh then you go and you start acquiring other brands and helping people then you start writing books too and the books weren't about my lifestyle the books were display of
power how you and i have the same power the brand within you're the brand powerful yeah then you go on you start investing on people uh and people on shark tank and start giving back educational stuff there and then you start becoming a motivational speaker
you're always thinking about how empowering somebody else and i thought about it and i said well maybe i guess you know and um um but that didn't start off like that i started off wanting to just dress hip-hop people and i loved hip-hop you know i never thought of it like that so
you start to define you know yourself and see clarity down the road but you know maybe you're 18 years old right now listen to this and you have the clarity i mean you know my my youngest my oldest daughter is a is a championship ballroom dancer she's been wanting to do that since she was born
she she always knew her why um yeah for some of us we know it straight away for most of us yeah it takes a bit of a journey yeah and and i think you're right it's like you just got to be honest with what your why is right now take inventory yeah exactly sometimes
we're trying to figure out like what's my y gonna be in like five ten years fifteen you don't change yeah you change you don't know like you can't predict it you right you gotta figure out right now and i know that for me my why's been you know there's been wise that have been
simple like what you said like wanting to serve people and make a difference yeah and then when i was a kid like my wife was just i just want to be happy i just want to have fun right and it changes and i think that a lot of people today we can get closer
to our why by taking that self-awareness check by just taking that inventory i love that advice so in your book you talk about being diagnosed and with cancer yeah and like for me i feel like no matter how powerful or strong or anyone would be shaken by that news yeah
and and and i there can be a shift in someone's life there's a power shot right 100 yeah tell us about that moment when you find out yeah i share a very personal story about about the cancer thing so i go into the hospital uh because i got an executive physical and
then they said well let's check your uh what are these veins here court uh karata yeah check your karate veins to see if they're clogged at all or whatever so it could reduce you're feeling some pain or something no no no so so all right so if i want to back it up and i know that you
talk about health and wellness a lot uh a gentleman of mine a good friend of mine who uh was actually the manager of uh secret android and muhammad ali said listen with all your money why don't you ever go get an executive physical and i said never heard of that i said i get a
physical every year i said you know the doctor grabs my bean bag and then turns me around smacks me in my ass and told me to go about my business and everything is fine i caught up and everything's fine right yeah he's like no no get executive physical i go down to
ucla it's two days of running through all kinds of things six million dollar man type of stuff right and they check everything on your body and then they give that report back to your doctor so they're checking my carotid veins and they're saying you know let's make sure
there's no clogging there so you know no possibility of a stroke and they say okay rejected but they go you know you have a little nodule on your thyroid you need to go check that out go down to the doctor my doctor he says all right i'm gonna take a biopsy 90 chance we know
what it is 10 chance we don't know what it is of course 10 chance they don't know what it is go to a surgeon he says you're 50 years old uh let me tell you something right now if you were 90 i would say no matter what don't do anything but you're 50. and so we're you have a choice we could
take out your thyroid but here's the issue 50 chance we're taking out a perfectly good thyroid 50 chance of taking out something that could be challenging to you i go and get the surgery the one hour surgery becomes three and a half hours and they move a mass in my in my throat
the size of a golf ball out of my out of my neck doctors you know they never tell you anything so i go what is it the cancer he says i don't know i gotta send it to the lab and it's about two weeks so he sends it to the lab and i know you're taking and
he this is the top surgeon in the world where it comes this he knew what it was and i can tell so i had to mentally debate with myself if that that mass was that large and and potentially moved into my lymph nodes and then it would move into my brain and i could potentially have that and take
the radiation pills and chemotherapy what's the chance of me dying right and it could be a very long road of recovery and i could die so i said to myself listen i have to wait take inventory two daughters 121 to 126 beautiful women my ex-wife great these girls are uh
benefits of society they're great girls right my mother i don't want to ever see my mother get old and have to bury her i know i'm being selfish right now so i won't see that i'd also don't want to be 90 years old you know pooping on myself and rolling around with no teeth right let
me go out while i'm on top and i got three-year-old she's not gonna remember me and i got a beautiful wife who's super hot she's definitely gonna be able to get another husband i'm gonna drink myself to death no problem i'm gonna go fishing every single day i've lived the better a
better life than i've lived 10 lives already you can't believe what i do i'm cool i've accepted death or just the flip side i want to walk my daughters down the aisle my mother should not have to bury me my three-year-old she's gonna need me my wife is super hot i get to sleep with
that woman all every night every day holy so i had to negotiate with myself first that's a power shift you have to negotiate with yourself first am i going to take this on and when i shifted my mind to saying that i'm not going to allow this cancer and even if
it is moving to my brain and we still don't know you know you have to always get checked um you know if it isn't our brain it's not gonna it's not gonna beat me right and before the two weeks came back because it was like a week and a half into that
i totally forgot i even was waiting for results and when the results came back thank god i was clear um but would they still check me out but you know that made me say to myself that's what we always have to do we have to have this negotiation with ourselves before taking a podcast
or walking away from it because your attorneys are like don't do it and you're like but this is not your life this is my life this is my only shot right now as far as i'm concerned this person's bigger than i am but you had to negotiate with yourself saying you know what
you're here for a reason because you're you're my attorney you've probably seen this before i know that i'm not going to stop and you know what it's a shitty deal and why should i take a shitty deal yeah i'd rather i'd rather because that shitty deals i'm probably still gonna be broke
or not whatever the case is but i'll be broke underneath somebody else i'd rather be broke knowing i made the right decision that i was in charge of my destiny and that's what happened you had to have negotiation with yourself yeah i love that thank you for sharing that by
the way the full picture of it because the way you just gave those two framings yeah i mean both i mean one was really well told and hilarious and one was like how most people would see it and for me hearing both those perspectives i mean i've got a mentor a spiritual mentor who's helped
thousands of people back in london he's currently got stage four brain cancer oh my god and but the amazing thing that he's done and i think he may not say in the same words as you but he's negotiated with himself and all he emanates his gratitude yeah you could
just not see this man in pain like you you know anyone else would just be falling apart all he does is thank everyone for the work they've done the service they've given others how they've served god because that's his world like he's just emanating this gratitude to
everyone and you can see that even in like the peak of pain yeah someone's able to reframe that sure like you were able to do which is which is phenomenal and and i'm glad that you know we we pray and hope that you get to continue doing all the incredible work in that way man
thank you yeah but that's awesome i love that tell us about let's go back a bit to building a personal brand yeah because i feel like that is such a hot topic today everyone's trying to do it where are you seeing the mistake between building a brand versus actually building yourself
to be the brand if you know what i mean like the perception i i where's your take on again inaccurate inventory of yourself and not knowing your why and also projecting something that you [Music] you know you don't it's not real you know um people perceive that brands are only
built on positive things um and i hope that everybody here listening will lead a life that's morally correct and things of that nature but old dirty bastard was an old dirty bastard i mean this is what it is right and he lived off of that right and there
are a lot of brands out there and people will resonate with you if you you know for a lack of a better word keep it 100 right um and that's the brand that you got to build because today with transparency with all social media and various other things your brand can be
stripped apart in a minute and you we see it happen all the time right we we can talk about all the kardashians of the world and this and that who build nice brands but how many people in the news every other week you're saying that person's done you know their their morals and their
ethics were off off kilter and what they what they what they acted like they were yeah you know so um what i'm not i'm not about politics but look at our president you know some people hate him some people absolutely love him but he's he's true to his brand however you want to
uh perceive it and some of us have discussed it and some of us are like that's my guy but and and you know listen he's the most powerful man in the world and changing the way that a presidency has been looked at for you know hundreds of years think about
that yeah absolutely and it's a powerful brand either way uh yeah brand either way yeah tell you you say that your super power is picking good people yeah now as a growing entrepreneur with multiple businesses that are growing for myself i find and i speak to entrepreneurs in
the same space all the time we find recruitment is probably the hardest thing like it's a it's a genuine challenge and i want to know some of your advice when i'm recruiting what have you seen to be those giveaways those tips those techniques the the principles that
you've noticed when you're hiring and the the you know you've got like decades of experience of hiring the wrong and the right yeah tell tell us a bit about that process well most of my most of my most of my staff started as a third-party vendors or interns
the dating process um and i noticed that the interns when they came to the office before people who got paid to come to office they leave after they are the ones who i would end up hiring that year or five years down the road and and they they came into office they were problem solvers they were
swiss army knives um but they were likable too you know my businesses that have failed and my employees that have not really uh grown we just didn't like you know a lot of people think that uh you know you know don't get me wrong don't hire an intern for your attorney
that that's probably that's probably not a great idea right or you're for a doctor right now i don't have an intern but um you know once you give a resume to somebody that just gets your foot in the door after that i want to know can i sit next to you for eight hours a day five days a week for the next five
years of my life yeah right and same with an investment my my entrepreneurs uh that we failed at a lot of times i didn't like them when they didn't like me whatever the case is but if there were 10 problems i'm not picking up the phone 10 times to talk to
you i don't like you maybe one time we'll pick up the phone right uh the other ones were successful some of those businesses failed but then we did another business together so i look for people that take responsibility i love asking people you know there's two questions i like to ask
them you know do you look in the toilet after you get up right um also what has ever happened to you that was out of your control after you were 15 or 16 years old now if they don't tell me something unfortunately devastating like i was part of california fires or i grew
up in darfur or a drunk driver hit me then nothing else was out of your control and you want people who take responsibility you know i put a post up online the other day and it was like me in one a hallway shot in vegas and i said man 30 days in for the new year and i've been on the
road 18 or 20 days and i have to thank my wife she's allowing me to be who i am um but i got to tell you everybody i this is me and i'm very selfish and you got to be selfish because if you're not selfish for yourself then you're not going to be able to be
you know you're not going to be able to be um good for anybody else you have to be selfish and know your priorities and couple people wrote back what are you talking about i can't be selfish i have kids those are my priorities and i can't be selfish right you knew that you had a
kid right yeah it's not the kid's fault definitely not the kid's fault that was your priority that is a decision you made that you're ignoring through the process of everything else no that should be part of your selfishness or i got to take care of my kids however i got to put in hours here
to help help my kid whatever the case is but don't neglect it it's like people you know you're a man of color like i am i don't want to hear you telling me that you're a person of course i understand system uh systemic racism has happened and everything else but
i'm not waking up chinese tomorrow or purple or white okay let me get over it how am i going to now move on with life and and and and and be uh somebody who's responsible and contribute and that's what i look for for in my employees yeah that's great advice man now i know i'm definitely
going to ask a few of those questions some of the some of the funny ones to catch them out but also some of the real ones and i think the dating phase as you put it is makes complete sense i feel like interviews and dates are too alike yeah but the dating phase of
experimenting taking someone with you i know for me with my videographers i'm always like travel with me for a week yeah because i want to see if i can like you for a week we can be together for a week you can deal with me having a good day and a bad day yeah you can deal with
me being not interesting and really interesting the next day like you can deal with the fact that i'm a normal human being sure i'm not always on and off and and you know even even if i was with somebody like that i'm also watching other things are you now learning editing
are you learning um cg are you learning you know while you're out there because if you're only going to do this are you learning new equipment are you learning new ways because i want to see you being a problem solver because what you're going to do you're going to plateau at a
certain point now i got to get another videographer and an editor when you can maybe solve that challenge for me and if you can i know you're trying yes and if you can't work it out you know what you're going to do that person they're going to say i'm not really good
at it but i kind of learned the basics and let me bring this other person in or let me help you like a problem solver yeah i can relate to what you said earlier like i feel like i'm someone who likes to give people the benefit of the doubt yeah i like to trust rather than
like micromanage and like switch over people's shoulder what do you like when you feel someone has intentionally screwed you over or manipulated you or taken advantage how do you respond and react to that and how have you seen that response be more effective as you become more
mature in business i'd love some training basically i'm asking for free coaching right now yeah no problem yeah um well first of all i i try to understand first of all i don't take it personal number one because i say to myself i don't know if that person's mother
told them all their life you know the only way you're gonna get anywhere is to stab people in the back or they grew up in a we there's a lot of people grow growing up in very challenging areas so i don't hold it personal they're just trying to win that whatever they did was their
form of uh trying to win right so uh i think it was what's the book there's a book uh habits of influential people you know yeah so the seven habits of highly effective yeah yeah and they talk about when you're playing chess with somebody
if they make a move and do you get mad at them and curse them out because they made that move no because they're trying to win right so i look at the same way also then i look at it are they a good especially with friends i always say to myself because i cut off people here and
there because i meet new people and i not that they're replacing others but i always say if you're not a good enough friend to yourself then you'll never be a good friend of me right so i do those two things i normally don't try to get people back i always say it is what it is
appreciate it nice knowing you yeah however this is where it goes into negotiations and building influence if somebody does come to me about that person down the road i'm gonna tell them what happened yeah you know um and that person that screwed me will will not know i'll
i'll tell i'm probably not talking to them anymore but they don't realize how detrimental that was because now what if they screwed 50 people and those 50 people all told 50 people totally and and if they exclude someone who has some influence yeah and i'm not going to go out of my
way in public tell people but if you come to me and say hey i'm supposed to work with so forth and so on i may say depends on the on the relationship violation i may go well if i ain't got anything good to say i'm not going to say anything at all yeah or i might go
oh no that person's a thief a person stole yeah yeah because you want to be honest with that person too yeah 100 because then what if i didn't say that and then they screw you yeah and then now you were checked with and it reflects badly on you again yeah people just don't think
about that yeah they don't think about that i'm actually going through that scenario right now in a particular area of my work and i was just sharing the same thing with my team who in here screwed you it was not no one in this room you know you know it works on it works in the
opposite way too you know um yeah about negotiation and building influence that you know we look at the social networks and stuff like that we look at that as how powerful it is but it really started from one thing networking now what i've noticed that uh you know if i just meet
you at a bar and uh you're you have a small commercial building you're looking for a great plumber i'm not gonna recommend my um my uncle zeke because uh he burnt the turkey during thanksgiving he named he never paid me back ten dollars from you know for three
years and he punched me in my my mouth six six you know when i was six years old but if i met somebody else who's a plumber recently i'd say i don't really know this person that well they seem like they were really buttoned up organized person i don't
know them that well but you know what why don't you take the card and you call them see what happens yeah because i have no vested interest there but yet i shared it with somebody else and that's exactly what social media and retweeting whatever the case is and that builds influence
that's why networking is so big uh but a lot of people just don't grasp the simplicity of what we're talking about here yeah when we talk about that we're talking about networking and even now when i was asking you for coaching you talk a lot about how the biggest mistake
entrepreneurs make is not having mentors in their life i 100 agree with you i think the challenge right now is that you have a group of people who want people to be their mentor i'm so i mean i don't know how many times you get asked that question like david will you
be my mentor will you be my mentor what is the process to ask someone to be a mentor what does that look like when someone's asking that that's a good question so first of all why do you want them to be the mentor because um you know do you want them because they understand
the fundamentals because a health mentor and a business mentor embarrass other people going to be different ways uh you know also what's in it for the mentor i have a lot of people come and tell me their problems right and it's cool but there's an old saying don't tell me about your problems
20 don't care and the other 80 are really happy you have them right so why the hell are you telling me you got damn problems i got my own problems what's in it for the mentor that's the challenge that i find with a lot of the the people that seek out mentors and
also are the mentors accessible uh you can try to get a hold of me as a mentor and hopefully i can be one but that's why i write the books and do social media but you're gonna talk to me well one time every six months but if you have somebody that that has a car dealership locally in your
neighborhood who's been there for 20 years that person understands the fundamentals of business just like anybody else they've been through inflation they've been through changing of technology they've been through all kinds of stuff right for 20 years why are you looking to me
you're going to talk to me once every six months where you can go over there and wash those cars for that person and get your uh you know uh your karate kid on over there yeah a wipe on wipe off whatever it is and talk to that person right what's in it for the mentor right
so you want me to teach you about business clean some damn cars over here yeah or you want damon john to teach you well you know that i love to save animals go donate some time at the aspca or animal shelter three days two days a week argument's sake and i'll spend one
hour a day speaking you what's in it for that person yeah i think that's great advice and because i think sometimes mentorship now is it's growing in its popularity it's become like a popularity contest to some degree so you just want to be able to say someone's your mentor
yeah you know it's as it grows in popularity like i feel the same way i say this all the time i'm like half the time richard branson or you or whoever may not be the right mentor this person in your local business could be the right person and then like what you said i've i talk
a lot about how you can be mentored by people you've never met by reading their books by studying i was mentored by napoleon hill that's who you told me think and grow rich i i've read the book now 17 times yeah yeah and for me i've always said
people like martin luther king steve jobs einstein like i've studied their lives i've looked at how they made good and bad decisions what they got right how they did it how they thought about stuff yeah and i've learned so much more i never met any of them and and i think
there's so much power in that well that's the power that's that's why you're you're sharing people the power of reading or audio books because what you'll find is that a lot of the people didn't know each other steve jobs may not have known this person that person but when you start to
find defining and similarities and all these great uh pieces of information you're getting i mean is everybody wrong yeah you know yeah exactly and you find patterns right like there's patterns they may be different they're all goal setters right they all are
focused on something they all are driven they all have failed but they fail fast they've all reset their goals they all you know focus generally on some level of family spirituality or health there's something you know and and yeah you can find it all in all these books yeah what
are some of the mistakes you're seeing people make in negotiations we talked about a few of them of like you know going straight in for the kill stream for the win what are the other common mistakes not knowing where they're willing to settle or where they're will or or or what they want to
get out of what they're doing so you don't have your boundaries set up you don't have your boundaries set up um not stating in the beginning or you know you know everybody feels that if they say the number first they're the one who loses a lot of time you set the
boundaries for it and you just know where it's at right not caring about the other person what they want and not listening to them cutting them off you know when when you know you're supposed to communicate like your face is built right like you have one mouth and two
ears right you're supposed to listen twice as much as you um talk and if i said to you right now uh you know i'm not really feeling that well but so i think i'm gonna go to the store and get you know you may if you cut me off you don't know if i'm gonna say i'm gonna go
to the store and get some medicine or i'm gonna go get some food or i'm gonna go to sort of pick up my wife and she's gonna take me home from there you've never heard the last part of the information and when people are communicating with you almost the most valuable piece of information
they're trying to share is at the end a lot of people try to cut people off and stuff like that also not understanding body language and how people communicate you know over sixty percent of communication is body language only eight percent is what people
care about is only eight percent is what you say and the rest is how you say it yeah that's for sure that is 100 for sure what's the worst body language in a negotiation that you've seen or you've perceived is it as simple as like you know closed body language crosstans or
is it more like just lack of eye contact and lack of like what are the what is it first of all it's a handshake yeah second of all it's not remembering people's names right um but it depends on what side of the table you're on you know with i'm uh you know if i'm a guy and i'm
negotiating with you and i feel like um it's okay if i want to do the deal or not but if your legs are cocked spread wide open and or you're you know you're you're you're your legs on a triangle and you're leaning back i'm feeling like you're trying to assert dominance on me
right so what am i going to do i'm going to start either leaning back or doing the same right so it all depends on how you're looking at at the individual you know what i mean and and and and and listen you could be in a cold room and somebody's crossing their arms
it doesn't necessarily mean that uh it's because you know they're trying to play off you know um so those are a lot of things that people can do like when you're looking at body language is very important if you walk into a room and you want to have more of an intimate
discussion don't put any objects between you now we have mics between us but you'll see people and they don't they're not conscious they're doing it but they'll put big trays in between people and big phone because they want to create this distance because they don't
they they don't want to be that close you know what i mean yeah big table and trays and then yeah yeah and listen this is a lot of little keys you can use you know uh people believe that you're less likely to lie when you're touching them so make sure when you're leaving you
know you shake their hand and say at that moment i can't wait to do further business with you that's how you feel that's going to be twice as more effective than just saying it when you leave yeah totally the thing i find though that with the people who do this
maturely and immaturely is like sometimes you see someone who's following the textbook version but it's a technique it's not real right and i feel like that's what you always sense that you know you can sense when someone like knows all the nlp and the perfect way to look at someone yeah like you
know and you learn all those techniques but then when it's not genuine when when that person doesn't believe it someone like you who's been in business for many many years is going to sense that straight away yeah you know when you sense that when they're they're
they're all buttoned up they're printing and every time you ask a question they go and you know what that's a really good question you know that's not a good question and i ask them stupid ass questions sometimes so then they tell me that's a really good question i go okay no problem i i wanna
can i one day just watch you into yourself i just wanna watch like i just wanna literally i can just hide anywhere behind the curtain or whatever it is i just wanna watch honestly i'm not even joking it'd be hilarious we should film it we should edit it up like we should
do that we should show you catching people out it should be in addition to shark tank it should be an added moment oh it's one shark tank because yeah pictures sometimes an hour and a half long and you don't see when we're when we're saying stuff like that yeah you
know what i mean yeah but you must laugh a lot in between of course yeah you must laugh a lot in between the kind of stuff if you think i'm saying crazy you should usually hear barbara and kevin oh really oh my god but they don't say on camera but you say they say it on camera they
say abc edits it out because you got these poor little kids watching the show tell me about you know having been in business i mean since you worked at 10 years old so four decades of of experience what challenges you now in a negotiation a persuasion in
business what is like the thing that challenges you now and it may not even be business it might be more personal what's what keeps you excited and focused saying no saying no challenging me now because you know you want to say yes to everything right and it's and it's and the only
thing you can't get back is time so your inventory is your time um i think that's the most challenging thing um because listen at 50 if i do deals right now um it may be around until i'm 70. do i know that that's what i want to still do you know and work that hard on new
businesses but i just love business too and the opportunity is there right so i think that's the biggest challenge um uh yeah that's it and time yeah because i need more time to take care of my health and be with my my little girl so it's really time i look at was there
a deal that you're like i wish i never passed on that were any of those have you always felt good about no no never because um it doesn't mean that if i did the deal that the outcome would have been the same and um some deals i've passed on um have turned to be
really big big big deals however if i if i if i go in life being concerned about the ones i pass on but what about all the ones that failed that i passed on right i can't you know you can't have it all yeah yeah but it seems like you have that sense of like that detachment and
that bird's eye view because i feel like that that takes a lot of maturity too to be able to no it takes being screwed a bunch of times and losing a bunch of money on shitty deals and then going wait a minute wait a minute mr know it all yeah yeah did you check those boxes
prior to doing the deals that you know you need to check no you emotionally was invested in and you got too excited about it yeah tell us that actually i like that because it when i'm listening to you like you know you have a big heart you're optimistic you want people to win yeah
which are all beautiful emotional qualities when is it right to let emotion be useful in business and when it can it be wrong i think gut in motion two different things i think your gut told you not to do the podcast yeah um so i think we don't trust our gut i
didn't start to learn to trust my gut until i was about 35 years old for two reasons i think that at first i was like nobody who you david mr know-it-all why you know whatever you know what i mean or the numbers look good on paper yeah or whatever cases and i didn't learn to trust my gut um
emotion is fine but you still gotta check the boxes you still gotta say man i really wanna do this you know like you know listen it's like meeting a beautiful girl for me but for other people it could be guy or girl whatever the case is and everything's right
it only goes down after that usually you know yeah when you think everything's right you know you go on a date with her and and it's really nice and then she takes her teeth out you know the table nothing wrong with having fake teeth but you didn't tell me about those yeah you know what i mean
and then she just she smells really bad i didn't i didn't it sounds like it's happened to you before no um and that's what happens usually with businesses and stuff like that you get really excited over it but maybe you didn't look at all the boxes is the
distribution right is the operator the partner is there are they a great partner you know um so it just happened so it has happened to me in the past a lot um so now i'm i'm almost like you know i like to say like i'm a i don't get buyer's remorse as much because it's like if i go to the
store and i see something i really like i don't buy it right away yeah i go home but if i can't get that off my mind i'll go back yeah right and it's the same thing in the business you see shark tank you know it it it it's it's it's all speeded up because we're right there in
the room that time and i gotta make that decision but normally other businesses i can look at it for two months three months six months they're like well we got another deal coming all right take it if not you know yeah i'll look at it for a little while yeah you were mentioning
that you were spending a lot more time on your health and wellness now like that's become a priority what are some of the routines or aspects that have become key for you personally in the way you're doing it um i try to get an iv every week okay uh you know um
i started taking testosterone because uh i had a low low testosterone level but i didn't realize and right around the time with the cancer i didn't realize that maybe half the reason i was thinking so negatively because i had low testosterone like that almost puts you in depression
right you know so you know i make sure i take that um uh i'm trying to stop cut down on alcohol and on um meats uh and go more um plant-based um of course uh you know i'm being on the road a lot i need i i rip my my shoulder but i need to you know obviously try to
put in an hour to two hours worth of some level of cardio every single day and i go to the doctor as much as i acupuncture as well um and then i go to the doctor as much as i can to have my blood levels checked and everything else to make sure that everything's in line i
make that a priority over everything else yeah and those all sound like good easy to do things now yeah and i try and i try to alkaline my body as much as possible yeah you know green juices and everything else yeah that's a huge one i i've been taking celery juice for the
past three months it's changed my life yeah i heard celery it's really great life-changing i mean i had a lot of people there was a lot of we we had the king of celery juice on the podcast the medical medium and it's like a lot of people are like oh he's just trying to make money i was like he
doesn't own celery like you know yeah but like you know the guy doesn't maybe he owned celery first you drink it every morning yeah i drink it every morning it's changed my life and i was the same like it was to outline my body it was the same thing and and i started doing
it for the past three months and i feel phenomenal and i was and i can't and it's it's not just a placebo effect because i know how my stomach feels right right you know what i mean it's not just how i feel up here it's like i can tell them i go do they sell it like
that oh you gotta go get it blended at the whole at the um the natural foods so there's a method of blending it perfectly to have its most like rich form at home which he talks about his book but i just get it i just pick it up like creation or catholic gratitude or one of these health stores
but you can do it to the perfect kind of consistency and the celery juice king told you that yeah well that's not his name his name is the medical medium but he's like well known for okay so he didn't name himself celery juice he did not call himself that i just called him
that yeah call him celery juice king yeah is that a good name i guess make you listen no no he's like he's the guy who's like most well known for being the movement bringer of like drink more celery got it that's what i mean but but it worked as if my point is
it works i feel better so it's got it it's great uh a few more things that i want to touch on you've just you know even from today's the first time we're meeting you know we never met a lot of people who have on the podcast i've met them before i'm friends with them i know
them i didn't i was fascinated by you because i find you hilarious i find you real uh i find you someone who leads with their heart but takes their head with them effectively sure uh in the way you make decisions where you talk about legacy in your book and building legacy
what's building your legacy right now like where are you seeing your legacy go i think my legacy is being built um by men women people of color people who felt that they didn't have the the wherewithal or the resources to become successful and i think that they see me
because i make it very transparent about dyslexia and lack of having a great upbringing slash education and resources that i think they see me and they say that they can do it and i i just hope that the next oprah winfrey of steve jobs is you know uh you know at home 10 years old
in their pajamas eating some cereal watching me on tv and saying well why can't i do it you know because when i grew up i didn't see anybody who could do it who looked like me um and when i did see them they had something to do with sports or music and if you didn't have a talent or you
couldn't have you know you weren't an athlete then how can i do it right um but when you see me and unfortunately you know i'm one of the few people of color on tv business orientated that's globally recognized that created a brand unfortunately um and there's many who
have done that many right but when you see me that's that's that's what i think is gonna be my legacy yeah that's beautiful and i think that's an awesome one it's definitely for me too you know i never grew up seeing anyone who looked like me on tv but now people
get to see you yeah right and and um you know i don't know much about your your your history i know a little bit about it and um my team was uh sharing with me but you know you're gonna change people's lives there's gonna be somebody out there who wants to do exactly well
you probably are already you're probably doing it from different ways but they're going to want to emulate you so a lot of times when the kids come up to me and say i want to be on shark tank and go yeah we need somebody to replace kevin i want you to sit i don't want you to be
there i want you to be here yeah like well i'm gonna be like you i'm like no you're not gonna be like me because then you're gonna fail i want you to be bigger than me yeah yeah that's beautiful yeah i i find that mentors who can say that that's the real deal when you say i'm
happy for you to be bigger than me that's that's really beautiful yeah yeah that's beautiful man thank you again for that i really appreciate it you've talked a lot your book just focused on relationships relationship relationship but what i liked about your book is that
it's simple yet profound like it's easy for anyone to understand yeah but it's like you're breaking it down and one of the ones that i love and you say be slow to judge and quick to forgive yeah and i feel like that is so powerful and counterintuitive to where
we are today we're very fast a job judge and we take ages to forgive right or we never get there tell us how you learn that and how you learn to do that in business and in life well it goes back to a little bit of what we were saying earlier that you know who am i to judge you i mean listen
only god can judge you right i i when i make a decision on shark tank it's only if this investment is good for me it's not if you're gonna be good in life or not right um and you know i've learned that i've made the wrong judgments often you know and i
i and and then i should have forgave those people you know there was a i don't know if i put in this in the book but there was a one a woman who worked for me one day and this is when i first started football when food was just getting going and i was like she kept coming to
the office at 11 she's supposed to be there at nine okay now here's the challenge in the fashion business on monday morning if people sold out of your clothes on the during the weekend or friday they're calling all the vendors on monday morning if you're not
picking up the phone at nine then that person is not going to pick up fubu they're gonna call uh levi's next and nike and whoever else they sold out so i'm gonna miss a lot of money she wasn't coming in until 11 o'clock and i felt like i took it very personal you are ruining my shot you know what
i've done for the last 12 years to get to this point in my life i'm paying you i didn't ask you to come here and apply for a job you're applying for a job and then my uh partner who was a mentor an older guy said to me ever ask her what's going on do you know maybe she's uh
maybe she has a mother who's sick with cancer and she knows that she's going to lose her job but the only way that she can ever help her mother in the daytime is just hold on as long as possible get to work here and do whatever do you know what's going on i said i don't and i and then i
said i'll go and ask her what's going on not as bad as that but something that really wasn't great and i could understand we shifted around for her to come in a little later somebody else who stayed later to come in earlier the woman ended up working for me for 20 years one of my
best employees and it was because i cared about her and i just asked her you know powershift is not about only power in you the power shifts is about reversing the power and giving it to your staff giving it to your husband your wife your whoever the case
is because they'll value you more and give you more power you know when i'm at work you know i'm batman and everybody else is robin and then i'm robbing and i allowed them to be batman too because if i hired you to do this then why am i acting like i know more no
no no you're batman tell me what to do right so you know that that's that's how i came up with that theory over the course of time though and over the course of time my turnover my staff has been much much less i almost have zero turnover in my staff just because of the
flexibility and being able to just tell people you care about them people have to i just want to know that you give a yeah you know yeah that's phenomenal damon thank you so much we end every interview with a final five so it's our rapid fire round so you have to answer all of these questions in
one word or one sentence maximum sure yeah okay so here's your first one so i'm gonna name a title of your books each of them and i want you to give us one powerful lesson from each of them sound good okay cool all right so let's start with display of power
you and i both have the same power which one is going to display it i love that that's awesome the brand within your brand or describe yourself in two to five words nice okay the power of broke you don't need money to make money nice rising grind how are you using 24 hours a day and
power shift that's it how do you take back the power not lose the power don't let anybody take power from you yeah i love that idea that what you just said about the power shift of like the power shift sometimes is you to your employees you to other people that empowers you more
than trying to hoard all that power that's so powerful i love that okay uh second questions what's a you just asked me five questions no i know i know but that was in one i put it all in one i'm gonna ask you four more if that's okay no it's fine yeah i just didn't know you
didn't know how to count fair enough fair enough i wanted to get more out of you all right no problem no problem i get it i got a lot of good stuff to say i get it i get it you know guys brag three times the amount of what they've really done yeah and women reduce it
three times a month you know so yeah so you know there will be more opportunity yeah so if you tell me one he's five if a woman tells me five is really what two two and a half whatever tell me about a mentor in your life who's made the who's the mentor in your
life in your entrepreneurial journey that's made the biggest impact biggest implant biggest no um first of all that's mom but uh i would have to just think of somebody else uh because that's the easy one uh jay abraham yeah yeah absolutely yeah awesome okay great uh a business that you admire the
most business that i admire the most or company would be nice yeah company yeah nike nike okay cool uh what's your favorite thing about your wife her ass i didn't ask yeah we asked him all right my wife got the best ass in the business man you should see these things i'm i'm okay
i don't want to no you're she's your wife all right she's she's your wife i respect man i miss her i miss you boo where is she right now right here right here and your biggest lesson or take away from the last 12 months in your life the last 12 months
great question never been asked that before biggest takeaway for the last 12 months in l and business or in life could be anything whatever you're gonna be live cause that'll be different in business gen z doesn't like credit cards or credit because they grew up
after 08 and they don't trust banks and how can i sell to them when you find the answer you come and tell us no we'll watch you do it everyone that was damon john powershift out 10th of march transform any situation close any deal and achieve any outcome go grab the book we will put the
link into the bio into the comments so you can go and grab a copy of this book if you want to learn more about negotiations closing deals and of course all the great business advice he shared today thank you so much thank you so grateful to meet you honestly thank you
so much if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here i'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monkbook.com check below in the description to make sure you order today