Daymond John’s Net Worth

Information

Net Worth:	$300+ million
Name:	Daymond Garfield John
Nickname	None
Age:	50
Occupation:	Businessman, Investor, TV Personality, Author, Motivational Speaker.
Born:	February 23, 1969
Spouse:	Heather Teroz
Zodiac Sign:	Pisces
Children	3
Last Updated:	2019

Interesting Inception 

You probably know Daymond John from being the CEO of the famous clothing brand “Fubu” that he founded or as the investor in the popular TV Series “Shark Tank” with fellow investors Barbara Corcoran, Kevin O’Leary, Kevin Harrington and others. This great businessman, investor, and author managed to accumulate, as of 2019, a net worth of more than $300 million by doing what he loved.

To discover more on him and how he did it keep reading. 

Early life

He was born in Brooklyn, NY, on February 23, 1969, growing up in the neighborhood of Hollis with his mother and grandmother as his father died when he was only 10. During his childhood, he worked as a flier deliverer, but his entrepreneurial spirit soon started to manifest after high school, where he began his commuter van service. 

Career and Struggle

His idea to start with a clothing business came out when he saw that wolf hats were sold for $20 each. He thought those hats to be overpriced and so, together with a friend of him, he started FUBU. H only had $40 in Hollis, Queens where she taught him how to sew the hats. 

They started selling their hats for $10 each, making $800 in one single day. His business seems like it had a future, but Daymond still couldn’t fully support himself by selling hats only. That’s why he accepted a job at Red Lobster while working at FUBU when he had the time. 

Apart from hats, they started selling printed screen t-shirt. Feeling like the business could become successful, Daymond and his mother mortgaged their house for $100.000 to get enough startup capital. Later he hired his friends Jay Alexander Martin and Key Parent into the business.

They started sewing sweaters, hockey jersey and other clothing items with the logo FUBU. How did FUBU become famous then? Their marketing plan was one of the significant factors that helped them succeed as they started loaning around 10 of the hockey jerseys out to rappers for their music videos for 2 years. 

Thanks to their positioning, they started to be perceived as a big company.

The big turning point occurred when he convinced LL Cool J to wear his FUBU T-shirt in a GAP promo campaign. GAP later found out that he was promoting the brand FUBU and fired the executives responsible for the ad. This was an excellent move from Daymond’s side; in fact, it gave him enough visibility to make the brand even more famous so that he got 300.000 in orders in 1994. 

Now FUBU earns more than $6 Billion.

His Success

Things weren’t easy; they needed to take another mortgage on their house as the orders were very high. They were also turned down from 27 banks being almost broke. In the end, his mother decided to use the money for another promotional campaign that turned out to be very successful that ended up in a deal between FUBU and Samsung textiles. 

In 2009 he was proposed to become part of Shank Tank’s cast that he accepted. To date, he invested more than $8 Million of his capital. His favorite investment is reportedly the once on Bubba’ s-Q Boneless Ribs where he helped grow the company from $154,000 in sales to $16 million in just 3 years.

Apart from his exceptional skills as an entrepreneur, Daymond also works as a motivational speaker, giving speeches at AT&T history makers tour and Babson College School of Entrepreneurship. In 2015, John co-founded a program designed to teach business owners and entrepreneurs business skills and how to bring up their companies.

5 Tips to Succeed

Tip #1: Understand your Why

What you have to ask yourself is why you’re doing what you’re doing. Especially if you want to become more aware of who you are and get a boost on motivation. Understanding your why is what comes before the reach of every goal because they should be a consequence of your why’s. 

Tip #2: Adapt your Mind to Circumstances

The world is in constant change, and if you keep thinking (and thus acting) in the same way forever, then your results will probably be unsatisfying. That’s especially true in our fast-changing world where there’s innovation everywhere and new demands from people. Reprogram your thinking so that you start accepting new ideas and new ways of doing things and you’ll have many more chances to succeed by thinking differently. 

Tip #3: Apply the 80/20 rule

Understand that 80% of your results in life are only dictated by those 20% activities related to those results. He stresses a lot the importance of applying this rule to his business activities as that’s the best way to get the maximum returns with the least possible focussed effort. He doesn’t apply this rule only on business anyway as he says that you gotta find what those 20% things that give you also joy, time, etc. are. 

Tip #4: Don’t chase money

“A lot of people out there chasing their dream but their dream is just to be rich, that’s not a dream” He says that if your only purpose is to be rich and you only go after money, you might end up in the wrong place and you’ll also probably feel unfulfilled even if you’ll get rich one day.

Tip #5: Create a Great Team

Daymond John claimed to have excellent team-building skills, and that’s undoubtedly obvious; otherwise, he wouldn’t have gotten to where he is. He claims that it’s essential to pick the right people and choose the ones that have a vision and a clear direction to take in life. His advice on building your team is looking for people that think outside the box, are driven and can communicate with the rest of the team. 

Favorite Quotes

• “Everybody in the world has to reprogram the way they think.”
• “Don’t focus on you; focus on what you can give others.”
• “If you want something, stop chasing it.”
• “The only difference between you and me is that I have a camera on me.”

3 Lessons we can learn from his story

Lesson 1: Take calculated risks

When FUBU had some potential, he decided along with his mother to mortgage his house. This anyway wasn’t a move that was done just for the sake of taking a risk. He knew that FUBU had a lot of potentials, and even though he risked a lot with this action, the results eventually paid off. Life is always a risk, what’s important is which risks we decide to get ourself into and usually the craziest, but calculated ones are the best.

Lesson 2: Be endorsed by influencers

Daymond understood the power of influencers back then, even when Facebook and Instagram didn’t exist. At their place were the TV channels only that were the most platforms with the highest influencing capabilities, just like many marketing experts understood. He leveraged the power of personal brands to make his FUBU brand even more impactful as, after all, people don’t buy products per se but the perceptions that they have of the products along with the perceived benefits they’ll give them. 

Lesson 3: Help others succeed

If you do it just for yourself then it you’ll hardly feel fulfilled in your life

Curiosities

• He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal, best-selling author
• His favorite books are “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” and “Think and Grow Rich.”
• He wrote 3 books even if he has dyslexia. 
• In 2015, he was appointed as an ambassador from President Obama to promote underserved entrepreneurs.
• He first lost $750k on the first season of short tank

Conclusion

Daymond John is undoubtedly a great entrepreneur but what he exudes the most out of himself is the drive and passion for helping others in their life. He understands that everybody has untapped potential within himself with which great goals can be achieved.