Daymond John on The Skills You Need to Build A Multi-Million Dollar Business| Impact Theory

[Music] hey everybody welcome to another episode of impact theory i am here with damon john what is up man thank you so much for coming on the show thank you for having me man absolutely a pleasure i have to say that uh in researching you i really resonate with some of the ideas from the power of broke to nobody's coming to save you nobody's going to get you off the couch that's on you um where did that mindset develop for you you know i um i've written uh several books and um i i i'm dyslexic so it's challenging for me to write write books and i realized that the mindset of being able to apply something is first the negotiation you have to have with yourself on why do you deserve it why are you in your circumstances uh you know what have you done wrong and they're not too late to change it or you know whatever it is i mean mental chains are the hardest to break um so i i get i usually get them all i compile like the most commonly asked questions because usually when i write my book to my ask request i go go read that book go read tim ferriss book go read you know whatever the case is but i realize a lot of people just didn't mentally think they had the power so i wrote powershift um because uh like you said nobody's gonna come to your house and take you off the couch i mean especially today right everybody right now is scared they're they're excited they're concerned they're not they're they're they're they're angry um they're not thinking of you right now uh they're thinking about survival mode themselves so until you understand uh that you are in charge of uh you know your mental aptitude in the way that you're going to handle life and take on the the bumps and bruises you know so you understand it's up to you buck's up to you then you're never going to get anywhere so yeah one thing that that i have found um very difficult to deal with is that it's really hard if somebody has a mentality that they somebody has to give them power or that somebody could even take power away from them it's hard to get them to start taking action that's really going to help them do you have say magic words if somebody's listening to this right now and they want you to be right do you have sort of that key insight that helps people see no no i really can do this yeah you know um if they looked at all their successes where they're happy or where they've overcome things in life um they realize they dug deep into something you know they realize that they didn't take no for an answer um if they look at where they are stuck or challenged they need to reflect and say at what point in my life did that that starry-eyed person where did it go you know and what what took that away um and you'll realize at the end of the day i mean you know listen if you're somebody who's that that middle-aged person who turns back around says you know i was al bundy i was the star of the football team i had that time or whatever i was that beautiful woman i was that smart loved my life and now you know you know something's going wrong um once you accept that you'll realize you can get back to where you were or that good moment but you just have to take a hard look and take inventory you have to write your obituary down right now and you want to know you're going to live like that now god willing you're still going to be here tomorrow next year 10 years and 20 years from now but until you create that change yourself like what do you expect to get out of it you're gonna get zero right and if you're miserable right now then obviously you have done a lot of things or made a lot of excuses or had the wrong influences around you that has created the environment you're in and what are you going to do to change it i mean we're seeing it every day i mean i think that's why shark tank is such a great show you know you're sitting at home and you know you used to think millionaires and billionaires are born with money or everything happening you're seeing moms and dads and kids and people of all colors and genders and race and sexual preference come on there and say no i was home i had zero and i took this one sock and i made two and then i made four and then guess what um and i think that's why uh you know it is so to give you the short answer it's taking a hard deep look at your inventory of you know uh what in life was your successes what were your failures and how did you learn from them taking an inventory of where you want to go how do you want to be seen taking inventory of what is your uh you know your assets right now do you have a certain amount of time are you somebody that lights up the room when you come in do you want to cure somebody's problem do people love you you know uh you know are you willing to work harder than everybody else uh you know where is the where the empathy you see in the world is going to need to be changed so you take inventory all these and you do some real soul searching and you're the first step of uh living a very fruitful life and even if you don't get to where you want to be at least you know you left it all on the damn field what do you say though to people for whom the deck really is stacked against them like they're coming at it from a place that's harder than somebody else you know for better or worse i think we'd all agree for worse that um the luck um who you know all of that stuff is not evenly distributed right so some people are they're they're certainly starting from a deficit um do you give them a pass or to you is it just sort of the nature of the beast that you have to outwork outperform i'm never going to give them a pass because um my father left when i was 10 years old raised by a single mother i started working when i was 10 years old i haven't stopped working ever since i'm dyslexic i got left back in school i never went to college i didn't know anybody with wealth i grew up in a community that was riddled with crap and half of my friends were dead or in jail by the age of 21. i'm sure that i have no athletic skill i can't sing and i can't dance really well um and i'm black and i've been at uh i've been at uh i've been at the barrel of a cop's gun three separate times when my only crime was i had t-shirts in my back trunk and i was reaching for the stars i'm told i've never been able to do anything in life and now i'm a motivational speaker five-time author best-selling author i've been on a major network for 12 years i've uh created a company that has influenced a good portion of the plan and i've employed thousands of people and uh and been able to change people's lives um you know the reality is i'm never going to get away from being black short and and dyslexic that's just what it is uh so let's get past that i'm not going to get away from the fact that covet is here that's just what it is right um so if i can do it and this is one of the main reasons that i do write the books and i put things out because i'm a prime example of simplicity hard work and common sense with morals and uh and being able to embarrass yourself take affordable steps and learn from them and you apply that you can you can do it i do know it's hard and reality is i've met people that are more successful me that had it harder than me people that grew up in countries where they have to drink out of the same water the animals drink out of you know that they've seen tragic tragic uh things happen on a daily basis you know so uh you know it's out there but we have two choices to sit there and say well with me and just be another one of the statistics or if you sit there and give it out give it our best and learn from people like me who say my dumbass can make it then you can you can do it too dude one thing that really inspired me in your story is your mom i love the story of you taking her to the meeting with samsung and uh i thought that was brilliant you're like look my mom's smart why wouldn't i bring her um what was it that she like gave you mentally because it seems like you're and and maybe you had to overcome some crazy [ __ ] that was like problematic from a belief system standpoint but you seem to have been on the right beliefs pretty early did she instill you with stuff that allowed you to reach for the stars even though you had what looked like from anybody's perspective to you know to be a lot of things that had to be overcome you know i think the beauty of my mother is that um she always tried and she always educated herself and even though she had a day job she worked on some kind of night job or an other way to make money but the key to her was that she educated herself and she tried to educate me and educate me in real life experience she um you know listen we're in a day and age right now where people are it's tough right and people are thinking that white people are the oppressor or they have it better maybe they do maybe they don't black people are being tortured and there is no way out maybe maybe that is a challenge but what my mother did when my father left um she did a couple of things number one the man who came into my life who i happened to call my stepfather uh he dated my mother for about three or four years happens to be of the jewish faith he happens to be white and i learned at that time i educated myself i learned the people of people and we have more in common than we have against each other and his brother actually was one of the lead attorneys over here who helped to uh free mandela uh and and and i and i realized at that time you really look back that whether it's civil rights war by civil war the civil rights or apartheid no no oppressor was never overthrown without unity of all colors so number one that opened my mind to a world of accepting people for people and vice versa not being not letting people make me feel lesser of a person because of my color i walked into the room as a man and when i walked in the room with a man a proud man if you happen not to see my vision then there's nothing for us to do but the other side of it is because we're different we're going to get innovation because i'm going to share things with you that you may not know you're going to share things with me that we may not know we're going to make money together so she educated me in regards to that but then also she would send me away to some place different every summer for various reasons and and she wanted me to get out of the inner city where my friends were obviously you know being having challenges because they didn't have the right resources around but she wanted me to see the world so she would send me to barbados or toronto or i lived in hawaii for you know the summer now somebody would sit there and go oh okay david well sounds like you had a lot of resources living in hawaii for the summer no my mother had a friend that worked on it that were that was in the navy and that woman had a son my mother said i will take your son for the summer you take my son for the summer and this would be 11. you can buy a ticket in advance so my mother would buy a 17 connecting flight ticket from new york to hawaii three years earlier so i will leave in june to get to hawaii i'll get there in september but my mind was open to all these things and the last thing um my mother did for me is at an early age she she made me understand that i'm in charge of my own destiny and this is the hardest thing to teach kids because i have i have the challenge to teach that to my daughter now and i believe that if you give somebody everything you make them the poorest person in the world and when i was in a school right when my parents got divorced i thought you know messing up would get my parents together because i was in the seventh grade and and and i remember the teachers telling my mother if damon only passed one test one last test that we know he's rebelling we will let him go if not he's going to have to get left back and i went out that night before the test and i played as much basketball as i could and rode my bike and choose bubble gum do whatever i did i i get a 30 on the test my father goes into the school and the teachers go we know about the divorce we see what he's doing we're gonna allow him to move on from seventh grade to eighth grade and this was a catholic school at the time because my mother said she said no no you're not you're not going to allow him to move on because he needs to understand that his destiny is in his hands and i'm and and i don't have any money anymore so the little four thousand dollar of the year i would pay for a catholic school i don't have it um and i'm taking damon out and putting him in public school well of course during that summer i said first of all my mother said i'm gonna be a punishment for the whole summer i'm not gonna be able to go out but guess what she has two jobs there's no way in the world that she's gonna be able to tell if i'm going out or not and by the way that public school she wants to send me to they eat their young over there i mean they are horrible people my mother wouldn't send her little only child to that public school and guess what happened my mother goes out and gets a third job so she gets a babysitter to watch me she whips me the old school way lay down she took a belt pulled down my pants whipped my ass and then when i got to school in september it was not with my cold little friends i knew for seven years i was in public school getting my ass whipped and it's soaked in my rice nobody's gonna save me um and so i learned responsibility at that time and that would that would i think it would it would follow me for the rest of my life that the buck stops with me dude your mom is legit that gave me the chills when you were telling that story um i have i didn't get into quite that much trouble but i had a similar my mom was so [ __ ] hardcore she was not for play and she was just like look if i have to discipline you till the cows come home then so be it that's how it's going to be you're going to be on the straight and arrow you're going to get your [ __ ] done and that really did have an impact on me and so i ended up not having kids and part of the reason that i didn't have kids was two one like you said i think if you give somebody everything you make them the poorest person in the world that is so well put and i've been very successful and so i was afraid if i if i say this super super raw i was afraid i did not have the strength of character to deny my children something when they look at you with those big you know doughy eyes you you recount that story so powerfully in your new book powershift where of course we don't know you're talking about your three-year-old daughter but you're telling the story of this like really intense negotiation and you reveal that it is your daughter and i thought yeah that that's the moment where i thought i was going to be weak so mad props to your mom i think that is um that is so powerful and forcing somebody to see the consequences of their actions i think is is really intense now there's a couple ways though that you could have gone in that and i'm super curious to know whether it was something else that she gave you that that you know brought you back around i can't do this or something else but one way is you know get so angry with her that you just continue to rebel and not do your thing and fine you want to send me to this school then i'm gonna start hanging out with the bad kids and doing drugs or whatever um why didn't you why'd you i mean you end up obviously killing it in life i well initially with initially with my mother well you know listen i had common sense too i realized that you know it's got to be a bigger world out there than the little world that i knew in hollis queens and i would hear of people getting beat up or dying or going to jail and i would say i i i'm just not i couldn't understand living in a cage for five six seven ten years and i mean listen when we're thinking about this quarantine people can't even uh they can't they can't stand living in their home for a month right um so i realized it was what i didn't want out of life i didn't know that i could potentially become successful and uh and that would happen later on in life but i also broke my mother's heart when i heard her one night i was listening in her bedroom and she was sobbing uh she was very she's a very uh strong woman and i remember why she was sobbing it was because i was not doing the right thing and i was getting whatever you know bad grades and i think that i heard her on the phone and she was saying how much she was working and why was i doing to this to her and i think it was my love for her that made me want to do this go on the straight and narrow um so it was two things it was i didn't want to end up where i was seeing most people end up because uh i i just had common sense and you know being a drug dealer was short-lived and next thing i was breaking uh the heart of the only person in my life and i just didn't want to do that and then and then i i started to to apply myself in various different ways and i started to find my meaning in life on what i want to do how i wanted to challenge myself and uh how i wanted to create a difference and and i think that they all kind of started to flow together you know but again that didn't happen until i was like 20 21 22 but you know that's what kids do we're trying to find ourselves yeah for sure speaking of kids man if um so i know you had a health scare with thyroid cancer um congratulations by the way for finding it so early and and taking aggressive measures um but if it had gone the other way and you could only like sort of package up for your your kids um like three ideas it doesn't have to be three but just like a couple core ideas um that you think maximize their chance for success like what are those foundational ideas that have led to your success yeah um it would have been to to constantly keep moving in different circles and finding mentors uh and people that you are are smarter than you or they're complementary to you they're all reaching for the stars in a methodical way that your moral compass understands so keep expanding your circle uh number one why is that important because it's interesting when you talk about getting shipped around a lot as a kid to obviously experience different things how does that help yeah i think the world view and i think different views make you a more well-rounded person you know um and i think that having empathy for other people makes you uh somebody who people want to be with and and and you have better answers for things you know i think that you all see different races religions or colors of people and you all start to say um it'll broaden your mind it really will make you want to educate yourself in different ways and you may find something that you never would have thought of you may find a love and a passion in a different area that you want to go into um you know when i was uh when i was coming up there was uh two companies across colors and carl can i that were started and um i remember seeing carl and i on a hang tag and i remember saying i mean this just this light went off on my head it said wait a minute i can i can actually make and design my own clothes because prior to that we had only seen um people who are flamboyant european why you know designer right we never saw that so the the seeing of that person opened me up to say maybe i want to try to make my own clothes and t-shirts now that's that's point number one but also in my travels i met a lot of people who were uh gay and i and white and brown and whatever the case is and i and i and they became good friends of mine in my neighborhood and you know listen poogle was very close to rap and was awful it was about uh uh you know a music that i wanted people to enjoy and i wanted to dress people for it but it's a very homophobic culture and to make a long story short by opening up my mind to see that picture of that young man by knowing uh people who uh have different sexual preferences but knowing and loving them for who they were i didn't mind becoming a designer but all of my friends thought that i was gay at the time and they stopped talking to me but i was i was comfortable with my sexuality because i knew people who happened to be gay that were great people i was comfortable being able to design because i saw this thing so it was all these exposures to things that made me say i'm going to do this because a lot of the things that we see people uh you know that that hinder them is because they don't think it could be done because they think people will laugh at them because uh uh they haven't seen somebody else do it that looks like them or who believes in the same thing they they believe in and i just think that those are the things that i that's why i will share with my daughters to go out and meet as many people in the world as they can and also to not lock themselves down until they're 35 years old or older because you know for the first 15 years of your life lock themselves down meaning marriage marriage yeah because i believe that for the first 15 years you're somebody's uh daughter or son right and if you're going to live to hopefully be 100 years old you know after that you're going to be somebody's uh husband or wife then somebody's parent than somebody's grandparents i want my daughters uh to travel the world and know who they are just for 10 years right from 20 to 30 20 35 whatever case is that other person you want to get married to if they're not there then screw them i didn't say don't have a boyfriend but don't let them be you for a period of time know who you are what you truly want out of life and then last but not least uh you know i would tell my daughter to constantly educate themselves you know so those are the things that i would uh uh i would push on them now i love that man i think those are amazing things to push on somebody you mentioned education with your mom as well and and i wanted to ask you then um how did she educate herself was it just buying books library card i'm guessing this is way before the internet so um what was she doing to further her education yeah she would read uh you know newspapers uh she would go and go to the library and and pick up books and stuff and she would also if there was a way to do it meaning she read a book or no she wanted to make a blouse for herself she would then actually hands-on try to do it uh she would also teach me about everything uh myself because um and she did it you know being very slick about it she would say hey damian you know i gotta i gotta get the food ready then i gotta go to work so do me a favor can you read me the the new york times and so i would stand there next to her for an hour a day and i would read the new york times and then she would ask me questions about it um and it got me used to reading and i i gotta say um you know i know that you know like your interviews we go up on different topics and stuff like that but something fascinating happened to me um yesterday my my friend called me and he said you know my son who was 12 years old i bought him something very expensive and i told him to read that whole manual that book you know front page to the last page and he was online and he said all his friends were laughing at them because kids no longer want to read um that's crazy they're reading memes or they hit the top hit on google and they want to read little things like this um because there there's too much information out there whether it's good better and different they don't have the attention span anymore because you know our buddy seth golden will say they're not making more attention in this world and the other thing which is not that important but his son does not not know how to really write cursive we're going into a new world where the kids are not educating themselves in certain ways or so i think that my mother teaching me even though dyslexic how to sit down and have the patience to read something fully through a full book is extremely important for parents to teach their kids today to get that discipline going early yeah no question and that whole notion of education what it is what topics matter i think is really interesting and i've heard you answer the question a lot of times like what would you have done different you always say financial literacy you would have gotten that early what are the topics that you think like right now if somebody's listening to this and let's say they're 14 or 15 and you just want to make sure that they're set up what are the the core things that they should be educating themselves on so obviously financial literacy um what else um i think i think technology any form of coding in any form uh uh so they can write down code they're online i don't know how to do it myself but i mean this is where the world is going to be going um so i think operating those two things and um you know not as much as necessarily as you uh you know as when we grew up but of course uh uh health you know um but you know a young kid at 14 years old they're not thinking about much you know they're not thinking about you know drinking a green drink but you know that investment pays off and and and so many more dividends when you're 30 40 50 60 years old but but fully definitely educating yourself on some kind of the digital divide as well obviously is a big challenge and um financial intelligence those are the two keys what do you think so a lot of your advice i find sort of circles around leadership you have you have really counter-intuitive and i would say as a as an entrepreneur really insightful notions about motivating a staff keeping them excited keeping high functioning talent around for the long term so where do you come down on is leadership something that people can learn about um if so sort of what are some key tenants um and then you know how do you think about um deciding am am i an entrepreneur am i an entrepreneur is there anything around those things people should be getting clarity on yeah so the first part about entrepreneurial and entrepreneur is i think that all people should think like entrepreneurs even working within a system um because then you'll have what does that mean exactly uh you know that is um the basics of entrepreneurship is that you're seeing a problem that that you figured at first somebody else is going to solve when you decide that nobody else is solving it you're going to take on that problem it is taking affordable steps um and uh you know so you can act learn in the repeat um so i because i've read your stuff i know what you mean by affordable steps but give people like a super quick example from the early days of fubu this is um your rise is one of the most instructional educational inspirational rises of any entrepreneur ever yeah it'd be great for people to get just a little taste yeah so you know the theory of me having a clothing company and going into stores and you know there's one way to look at it um hey i'm gonna have a clothing company and i'm going to take out a loan and i'm going to um you know get some samples and then i'm going to go around the store or i'm going to market it or i'm going to go online and i'm going to put up a store and uh you know and i'm going to invest in an online site i'm going to invest in social media maybe i'm going to do some facebook ads and i'm going to have a good amount of inventory right and that wasn't my my unders my way of doing it not because um that that couldn't be possible it could be possible in whatever form back then meaning i'll get a boutique or i'll get a kiosk or whatever case is but i didn't have any money so um taking affordable theft was something that i was able to do i was uh able to uh make make to get forty dollars and make eighty hats and go on the corner and stand on the corner and sell them and make eight hundred dollars and then um you know get a couple of t-shirts and sell them and it always went affordable you know boom boom and then a step back right because i would but i would be learning during the course of the process right so i made the hats made eight hundred dollars all right so let me go and buy eight hundred dollars worth of t-shirts at ten dollars a pop that is 80 t-shirts and what i'm going to do is i'm going to buy 10 i'm gonna buy eight colors right i'm gonna buy black blue green right but because i did that what did i learn well out of the 80 t-shirts in fashion 65 of all sales are black 20 20 is white and uh the other small percent than anything else so now i got eight heaters and i sold all the blacks and all the whites now i'm sitting on top of 60 t-shirts that i can't sell all right so now i fall back so the next time i then finally get some money i buy more black i am why more white right i took an affordable step well then i realized that my customer wanted only double a double xl because at that time double xl was cool baggy i didn't if the kid was 95 pounds holding a brick soaking wet you know what i did i took a small shirt and i cut the small out and i put double xl in the damn shirt so you know um i i so that's why affordable steps are important because you act learn and repeat and i closed full down three times from 89 to 92 because i ran out of capital but i ran out of five hundred dollars i ran out of a thousand dollars and the business kept calling me back i you know people would say i saw the shirt i love it and i got this euphoria feeling i said i'm gonna do it again i'm gonna start off again so when i see really truly successful entrepreneurs they failed six or seven or eight times they started a company they didn't have all their their legal in place they closed the company now started it again they didn't have their accounting they had illegal but they didn't have accounting started again legal accounting they didn't have distribution started again by the time they get to their eighth company they're like yo i got all this [ __ ] worked out but they took affordable steps yeah i love that idea of affordable stuff so i think that's so important people also should know that you're when you first really started getting recognized you were already 10 years in like you said you'd shut it down almost three times so getting that this is a long road that you're going to be going that it better be something that you're passionate about i always tell people look the the success is not guaranteed but the struggle is so if the struggle is guaranteed you know the [ __ ] is going to be hard no matter what you do then it better be something that you care about because that's going to be the only thing that keeps you sane as you're trying to build this thing yeah that that makes a lot of sense to me for sure yeah and as we talk about the leadership stuff and you know and i love to simplify it i think that's what makes me um excited about stuff you know i've been to many speak engagements and i've seen a lot of things where people are you know their phds and they're talking so so great about the information that's going over my head i love to share with people my story and what i've done because i shared in simplistic form because sometimes people can get intimidated by what they see out there and people they see out there but my leadership uh my leadership theory is that as a person of color who felt like they were the glass ceiling in various places that i made at work um i never wanted people to feel like there's a glass ceiling working for me also that's really interesting can we drill into that so when you were coming up and are we talking at red lobster that's the only place i've heard of i'm sure there were more in life in life yeah in life i you know because when i was coming up how did that internalize for you were you like man [ __ ] i just i know i'm not getting opportunities because i'm black or what did that what was that no my my my feeling was um it'd be hard for me to go after opportunities because i've never seen somebody uh on tv that looks like me that wasn't music related or at par or or in sports and at that time we didn't have the internet so we couldn't get to see amazing business people of color which there are millions of them and they're amazing people i would work at uh i would work as a foot messenger for a company called first boston that happens to be a venture capital firm and when i would have my uh paycheck every two weeks and i could afford a four dollar hamburger i would go upstairs to the corporate uh dining room and there were no women and there were no people of color there so i felt that the society only rewarded a certain person or they actually held other people back um so as i would grow my career in my um you know my office uh my office was united nation i couldn't care who you were whether it's your education level or whether it's your color okay yes i did want you to be educated if you were my attorney i was behind the intern for my attorney but other than that um i believed also that i mean the theory of being an entrepreneur is i'm making ten dollars right now but i'd rather give you two and i'd only take eight because collectively now we're going to make 12 and vice versa but i never believe that no matter what job you were doing were you ever beneath anybody else you had to be able in my company you talked to the boy or the girl in the mail room the same way that you talk with respect to the ceo because somebody's dedicating themselves to you have no right to say that you are a better man or woman than that person because that person has family that person has love and that person is a person so i think that that is where my leadership uh mentality has come in from and as well as how can i have people be entrepreneurs in my company if they can't if they're not rewarded for potentially taking small steps and trying to do things outside the box as long as it's morally uh correct with what we're doing and long nobody else gets hurt uh so i i have those that's just been my way of leader leadership and i'd be very honest i don't like you know one when my company was big and we had three or four hundred people working for us internally and another couple of thousand externally i didn't like it um so i also take my hat off to those who can move ten thousand what was it that you didn't like you know i felt like at that time you know listen i i came up you know in the streets and i wasn't as educated a lot of times a certain leadership and i didn't realize for every 50 people you may need one hr person so i i had an open door policy and i felt like i was a shrink you know all the time and i did want my people to feel comfortable to come and and be able to speak to me um but again i also and that is my leadership way i also have a massive amount of respect for people who can who can move 10 000 people in unison um and and and and lead lead people so there's going to be a million different ways to be a leader so if you're not looking for education for most roles i get the thing about you want your attorney to be really well educated but if you're not looking at education you don't give a [ __ ] about skin color what is it about what is it you're looking for is it a trait uh personality type like what what do you go for yeah so definitely it is a trait it is a problem-solving trait um personality-wise is i have to like you or i feel the team has to like you because you're not going to get too much production out of people that uh have conflict and or don't want to work with each other because whether it's on zoom whether it's an investment whether i'm employing somebody you know can i sit next to you for eight hours a day five days a week for the next five years of my life um and if i can and i'm excited about it and your problem solver well then we're going to have innovation um we're going to have uh it's going to be um uh you know infectious for the rest of the team and we're going to set a culture that that people want to be part of and you're going to retain more people because if you have heavy turnover a lot of work stops number one you may be creating a competitor of yours because that person sees where you're doing wrong and says i can do it better um you know or a lot of industry secrets are being let out so i i don't want heavy turnover i want people we can trust and just like in any relationship when a couple of things happen bad well if you get somebody new you're going to have your own form of problems anyway let's let's realize what happened how can we learn from it how can we get that out of the way because no longer will that happen because we've gotten that out of the way and you know so that that's that's how i feel about it skill set that um certainly in the new book i mean is largely about this um that seems pretty important to your skill set is negotiating um people see you negotiate uh episode after episode on the shark tank so what what are some things you hope people take away from the book um what makes for a good negotiator i thought you've really approached us in a unique way you were giving advice you don't usually hear um so i'd love for you to lay out some of the basics yeah you know shark tank has spoiled uh people in regards to how they think the theory of negotiation goes because again some of those pictures could be two hours long but you only see eight minutes and it's very simple high sharks and my name and so forth and so on and within eight minutes you have a deal you not and it's very very you know boom boom boom boom boom right when you know the reality is the negotiation almost never closes the first time that you speak to somebody almost never um and there's three parts to a negotiation uh number one it is how do you build influence whether in the room that minute on zoom or whether when people do have that first point of interaction with you um when they pick up their phone and look and research you when they look at your social media uh are you able to build influence there because they already were kind of on the fence that's really interesting so are you saying that the the things you put out into the world the content that you create for your own social media account is a form of influence even if you're you know only followed by your friends yeah very true i mean that is you know before you know we used to uh you know get somebody's card or call their references or you know whatever the case but we're no longer doing that you know uh we're meeting people and we're pulling up who they are as soon as we leave the elevator you know so so so example you know um i was in an elevator and uh you know somebody is somebody said to me what damon it's 90 seconds in an elevator how can i build influence at that time well you know you said to me um listen i know you are never thought out here's what i'm doing uh you know and uh you know i love to solve these problems for people and you know what if you ever want to uh you know have somebody from your team call i'm willing to do this for you do that for you whatever the case is and you know what either you know i can over provide for you or um we'll just shake hands and you know never see each other again but i appreciate it whatever the case is i'm gonna leave that elevator and i'm gonna probably pull you up and it's the same as kids when kids come over to my company to work and we look on their social media you know we look at what they're saying you know we look at when they're posting if you if you're coming over and you're an accountant and you want to work in my company well you know if you've got six tick tock videos that are popping up every single day and you're not in social media well then when are you making those videos you know and you you so and we're looking at the things are you in do you love charitable organizations are you uh you know are you always on there with a smile hey everybody you know like we're looking at these things we're human beings and we're looking at these things so you know that's where influence now is because no matter what somebody's gonna look at what you're doing they're going to look you up no question so there was two parts to that influence that side of things is really powerful and i think people seem willfully blind or certainly unintentionally blind to how much they're broadcasting about themselves then the other part was them making an offer hey look maybe never call me whatever maybe it doesn't work out but here are the things that i can do for you how do you feel about people making that pitch because one thing that drives me crazy i get people coming up to me all the time tom just let me know how i can help you and my thing is don't make me think of how you can help me like that's the first thing you can do so yeah what what how do you like what way actually moves you if somebody comes up and only has 90 seconds to to give you a reason to go check their instagram yeah they need to see they need to they need to feel like they can add value in a certain way and they need to highlight their strengths on how they can bring that to the team and maybe there's something there maybe not but yes that happens to me all the time hey man you know uh let me get a job how can i help you i don't need that i i don't know if i had all the answers on how you can help me you know i'm still not going to look for you i would have had the end i would have had the solution already um so yeah i mean you know that is that is how the best way people to pitch people is saying how can i be of value to you okay well here's what i do and i know you're in apparel damon um you know uh you know i do this or i do that you know i'm a paper clip expert on google you know i i can do this on facebook pages i'm a great editor uh you know and here's where i can help you with an apparel i may say my apparel is covered but i didn't realize that you can do that you know what i'll give you a shot at another company that i'm working on is this within your is this within your you know skill set and you need to say yes no or i'm different yeah that's huge letting somebody know like even what you do i'm always telling people look just tell people what you're up to tell them what your skill set is when you find somebody that needs that thing then it can be a tremendous fit like there's invariably something that i mean this is even more true for you because you have such a portfolio but there are so many different things i'm looking for in sort of abstract areas of the business that if somebody lines up on one of those abstract things and you tell me in an elevator or elsewhere it's like oh [ __ ] okay i actually do really need that thing that's super interesting but if you're just asking me i don't know what you know so then it becomes this impossible situation where you're asking me to do work just to like possibly have something to do with a random stranger that i actually have no incentive to figure out how we can work together so all right if influence is the the first of the three parts of your strategy here with shifting power um what are the other two well the next one's gonna be negotiation and i love the old sayings i mean they're around for for a reason you know it's not what you accept is what you negotiate and uh but people again like shark tank you know uh they don't realize that the best part of negotiation what's in it for the other person on the other side of the table because that person has their own challenges and a lot of people uh get thrown off a negotiation because they don't ask the right questions uh and they may not have the amount of empathy they need you know if i'm talking to you and you know you say empathy empathy yeah uh because remember everybody is you know you're negotiating when you're trying to get into the bathroom before your husband and wife you're trying to tell your child get on the school bus and take you to chuck e cheese on the weekend right uh so negotiating is something you're doing all day long um but sometimes people don't know the right questions to ask you know i've seen people take things that i have said and said well you know he doesn't want to do the deal but sometimes they don't say what's in your way how can i make this more attractive what else can i come back and bring to you is there any references that you would like to know because i'm telling you i've done this several times and and and by the way even if we do this if you have a challenge and we i'll find ways to dissolve it fairly quickly you'll get your money back whatever the case is but a lot of people are are so transactional and they just want to have the the you know the conversation and and and that's part of the negotiation process but however you know most deals don't happen as i said the first time you see somebody negotiate but uh you see somebody or you talk to somebody but the following part is how do you nurture that relationship way after the initial contact point because that person is either going to recommend you to many people not recommend you to many people they may do a deal later on down the road because you uh you know they felt that you had empathy they felt that you knew what you wanted they felt that you knew your value and your offering and more importantly you wanted to make sure that that they were okay and you know the cost of the barrier entry is nothing with you or easy um and they can take affordable steps with you and that is where you have to nurture those relationships so you can do 10 deals after that or you have that person go on your board or be an ambassador or be a reference so things of that nature yeah that that's critical and um so the the third part there is um how to how to because that is really that right the ongoing deal flow that you get with the different people if i remember right from the book yeah so it's three parts it's how do you build influence how do you negotiate what's in it for the person you're negotiating with and then how do you nurture that relationship to to bring more value and get more value out of that relationship whether the negotiation has happened or not yeah damon to me this this is really um man the the three killer pillars to not just shifting power which in a second you should walk us through why you called it power shift but isn't just the key to that which is already interesting but it is it is how you let your successes stack and one of the things that's so intriguing about your career is that you've been able to branch out into different areas and continue to win you know obviously as an entrepreneur but now as talent as well as an investor as a motivational speaker which we haven't even touched on so it's you've really gone into all these different areas but when i think about the three things that you just outlaid that is what i i talk a lot about the physics of something like when you get to the place where it can't be reduced anymore and the way that you laid that out especially nurturing a relationship because you never know where that is going to go having empathy which is interesting i don't hear a lot of people talk about that certainly not in the context of negotiation it really adds up to something pretty special which is that it will get better and better and better for you over time so even if you sort of lost in one deal if if you have a good relationship with them that is it's like that loss will pay dividends and i'm assuming that the loss is just you left some money on the table out of empathy or just not being overly aggressive or whatever the case may be but now it's like you've got a partner that you can go back to again in the future is that is that sort of one of the core things that you teach young entrepreneurs i do i teach them that they're they're solving a problem um and they need to have empathy for everybody on the other side of the table people want to always feel like you're in their corner they want to feel like you understand their challenges and you respect and value them if they're looking at it as you're just a number and or they're just a number then they're not going to want to do necessarily more with you um that's what i find of course there there are the exceptions but having empathy is what i think is the biggest thing that all people uh should have and i just think that it makes you a better person and it makes people feel appreciated people just want to feel appreciated so if you're rocking the empathy and you're really asking yourself like how do i make this a win for the other person how do you avoid getting taken advantage of one the other person might not be as empathetic as you two they might just outright be going for the jugular um and especially if you're new man there's there's so many creative ways to negotiate that a lot of people just don't know don't understand um what are some principles for how to not be taken advantage of yeah well first of all when i'm saying be empathetic i'm saying that it needs to be a win-win for both parties but i'm not saying to be taken advantage of but i think what you bring up is a really good point is no way your line is drawn know what you are willing to deal with or not go in the room knowing what you're willing to deal with and stand firm by it and have no problem telling somebody where it's at you know um you know some people are going to go for the jugular and that's okay maybe they've been trained like that maybe they're you know they grew up watching too many uh wall street movies and that's just what it is or they're not as mature at that point in life or just that's what they do um but you can still have empathy for somebody going for their jugular too you have to find empathy for anybody mr scrooge still has a heart there's something you know kevin o'leary has a heart believe it or not um but if you're empathetic to him saying all right are you a vc that basically says you know what you need to be out of all your you know you need to have your business uh open and close your investment in seven years three years is that what you need for the projections do you need to tranche the money in different ways okay if we do that hard deal of yours i think i can over provide there's some triggers that i can get some bonuses because listen we're going to do it your way well then how are you going to incentivize me well dude i love that you're out there trying to inspire people and motivate them i think it's critical and i also think that your advice is real and it's good and if people take it their lives will be better which is the barometer by which i judge all advice um so man keep doing it i think it is absolutely fantastic and you know we're obviously in a super weird time but your message about no one is coming to save you but you can do this um you can make the change you can learn you can educate yourself uh no matter how the deck is stacked against you like you got this um i think it's phenomenal man and i hope people continue to flock to you in that message and uh thanks again for being on the show oh where can people find you that is the right question yeah i know thank you for all you doing look we got to do this again because the time went by so quickly because we're having a really great conversation um of course people can find me on time yeah people can find me on social media i'm at the shark damon my name is spelled damon like raymond with a d and uh you know what you can get like my digital curriculums and all that stuff on you know and some good nuggets to to to to really get what you want out of life at uh nailyourpitch.com so if you want to nail your pitch go to nailyourfish.com and get some stuff and then you can find me fighting with kevin o'leary every uh you know friday night so you know so uh all the best man thank you so much for this time oh for sure man thank you guys if you haven't be sure to dive into stuff read his books they're incredible um and if you haven't already subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care you're 20 in your 20s who's gonna who's going to make it and who's not so you know you treat everybody properly and respectfully and you stay in touch and very often those relationships merge their heads years later decades later