Fireside Chat with Daymond John

Daymond John

From his wildly successful role on ABC’s smash hit, Shark Tank, to his distinguished status as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, Daymond John has become globally recognized for his relentless commitment to promoting and supporting entrepreneurs.

I always try to walk in the room as the dumbest person and try to talk to who I feel are the smartest people in the room, and I retain that information. Mentors don’t have to always be older than you, or wiser than you, they can just be scrappier than you!

How can I learn and take the tools from these people to make myself more effective?

I’m going to make fifty calls.

 

Fifty calls a day. Not answering calls and things of that nature. Fifty new calls. And ten will be in understanding finance and looking for a mentor or somebody who could help show me finance. Production. Design. Marketing.

When I hit rock bottom, this was my solution to get myself out. And I kept calling fifty people. Fifty different people, fifty different places. After a year, that starts to pay off.

You need to visualize your goal.

 

I visualized who I was by thirty. I became that person. But I was so far away from that goal at 22, 23, 24, 25, but I kept reading those goals every single night before I went to bed, and every single morning when I woke up. My goals all are broken down and I read ten goals every single night before I go to bed, because it’s the last thing I think about. And in the morning, I read them because it’s the first action I take. Six of those goals, or seven of those goals expire in six months. I just reset them when I don’t get all the way to

 

the goal. The other three expire in five years, ten years, and twenty years, and

I envision myself there.

 

Your mind is the most powerful thing in the world and your subconscious mind cannot filter what’s good or not.

People in your life who are reinforcing that negative visualization—cut them

out!

 

If you write down a) all the things that you love, and write down b) all the things you hate, and you read those every single day, what you’ll start to realize are the things you hate. This will help you to either cut out the people who are creating the hate of that, you’ll outsource it, or find a more efficient way to get it done and remove the hate.

Do not answer any e-mails for the first hour of the day!

 

If you do, what happens is the first hour of your day, you’re answering

e-mails. You’re usually answering super urgent ones, and you’re caring about everybody else’s goddamn problems. And your inbox is supposed to be your offense, and your outbox is supposed to be your defense.

Next, don’t check social media for the first hour of the day.

 

Why? If you check it, everybody on there is skinnier, smarter, richer, and cuter than you. When you know they’re all full of shit, right? I’m telling you the  truth, right?

But if you start off your day answering e-mails and dealing with everybody else’s problems, and then go look at all the other people on social media with their carefully curated pictures of their lives, you start your day off thinking about everybody else.

“Hey, the train’s leaving the station. You can get on or get off if you want. But guess what? The train’s leaving the station.”

They’re telling you a story, and you wanna get down with it. The energy’s so beautiful you’re like, “I can’t wait!” Then all of a sudden, it’s scalable, and they show that they have some proof of concept, and you’re like, “Wait a

 

minute. Okay, how many have you sold? Oh, only fifty dollars worth, but wait a minute, you sold it in ten minutes outside of a mall and it’s only a dollar a piece? We can scale that outside of every single mall around the world. Wait a minute.” Oh, and then all of a sudden you find out that they failed a bunch of times and they learned what they didn’t know and now they still have the love and the passion, and drive, and they’re ready to rock.

 

What’s in it for the mentor?

 

We’re always thinking about what’s in it for us. And the mentors don’t always have to be the Ryans and the Daymonds and the Cubans of the world because I always say that, I think the first external mentor after your family

is always the great, underappreciated commodity in this country called the teacher.

I want to master being and knowing my weaknesses. I’ve become the poster child of entrepreneurship. And if I can do it, trust me, anybody can do it.

“That Shark Tank carpet is the ultimate equalizer. It doesn’t care about your race, color, creed, or anything else like that.”

 

  • Rise and Grind: Outperform, Outwork, and Outhustle Your Way to a More Successful and Rewarding Life by Daymond John
  • The Power of Broke: How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can Become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage by Daymond John
  • www.DaymondOnDemand.com