Daymond John at a
young age had a vision for his passion of hip-hop and fashion, as he planned to
create a brand line of attire for the culture of hip-hop. It all started with
placing his t-shirts into videos. The public believed that FuBu was a huge
company, even though he only had 10 t-shirts made up, while working at a
restaurant as a day job. His motivation for FuBu was his love and passion for
Hip-Hop even though he considers himself a poor rapper and dancer.
His connection for
working with LL Cool J as a sandwich runner and his productivity and ambition
to get his product out was the beginning of something greater than he realized.
Daymond John sees
“Entrepreneur” as “somebody who is responsible for every single failure that
stops at them. They are somebody that needs to figure something out and they
are not going to figure it out right away, but sooner or later it will unlock a
way for them to be productive. An Entrepreneur is about taking responsibility for your own actions and realize that there
are many people that will help you in regards to your success, but only you
will be the one responsible for your failures.”
For Daymond, it was
easier at the start of his business for him, but now he says “It is easier now
to fail”. At his level, he feels he has too many options and not enough
information. He tends to throw money into projects and 80% – 90% of them don’t
work out. But in contrast, he also has plenty of resources which allows him to
wait and look at other opportunities that some wouldn’t take on.
As an entrepreneur
“you never stop learning”. Even though he failed way more than succeeded, he
can see his strengths and weaknesses from his failures, which allows him to grow
in areas, he’s passionate about and thrives in.
Advice On A Worthy
Project For Entrepreneurs
Set your goals in
order to achieve milestones. Even if you have a side project with a minimum of
7 hours a week, set affordable steps and goals that you feel you can hit. This
may help you discern your priorities to apply continual effort towards your
project.
Is your priority to
make thousands of dollars a week? Or to make a change in the world, in service
to someone’s life? What are you in it for?
“At the end of the
day, you’re the customer. What are you going to get out of it? My quest right
now is to change people’s lives, have one at the same time, and challenge
people.” – Daymond John
The Joy In His
Workmanship
“I wanted at first
to empower a culture and I was fortunate enough that many people helped me.”
says Daymond John, “I felt bad when I was making a lot of money and I had a lot
of people around me but they were around for the wrong reasons” When business
spiraled downward, he started seeing how people were.
This made him
realize that he wanted to have fun, but also make money with people he admired.
The passion for his FuBu project in his early days was about having fun, and
bringing something to those around him. To Daymond, it’s more about the
lifestyle. The family, friends, health, and people around him that can
experience his service. Profit of money to him comes after.
It’s Business,
Nothing Personal
A line is to be
created between business, and personal. Don’t believe that other businessmen
are out to cut you down. Daymond himself has fired many friends and humorously
said “Are you coming to the barbecue tomorrow?“. The only problem is that they
can’t do business together.
Business and
personal both require a covenant that must be kept. for example, to a customer,
if you’ve made an agreement to provide for that customer, and you break the
agreement. That customer will move elsewhere.
It’s the same with
friends. If you give your friend a number of hours to work with you. He agrees,
but then only works 5 hours a day. The covenant is broken. Both parties must be
functioning cooperatively. Daymond from experience has had to let go of many
friends in hard positions.
Daymond John
personally does not work on something new often, but instead continues striving
at what he knows he’s good at, and continues to improve. There are no shortcuts
when it comes to attaining goals and results. You either learn the abilities in
order to grow, or find someone in that area of expertise.
“I try to partner
up, and strategic partners are way more important than money. I’d rather split
a dollar in half with somebody and make way more than go try and learn it
myself and lose trying to learn a whole other industry.” – Daymond John
Learning From
Failures
Even though Fubu’s
exposure was globally extensive. There were many mistakes and fall-backs that
the company endured. Creatively Daymond John understood his business. But he
didn’t know “the business behind it”. They lost about $5 million on an album
they were working on with an artist.
At that time he
learnt that there is no shortcuts. He didn’t hit a record executive and he
wasn’t keeping track of numbers. “Did we get a lot of exposure? Yes! But from
the business model, we died.” Daymond also learned that unless you have goals
set, you don’t know what you’re doing.
When it comes to
salaries, create a formula. “Surround yourself with a mastermind group. What
are your liabilities and assets? Take affordable next steps and keep growing
and growing.”
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