Daymond John - FUBU Founder & Shark Tank Investor ($6B in Global Sales) | If Nobody Knows Your Name You've Already Lost

You are like the original growth hacker. Was that the moment in your life when you realized how important attention was? Way before that. You hacked when there was no social media, no internet. So how do you think about attention when there's no distribution? Start super small, get the proof of concept, and then you blow it up. When you're starting small, you hear your audience. They tell you what they like. They tell you what they don't like. Today's guest is Damon John, entrepreneur, investor, and founder of FUBU. From building a global fashion brand to investing in hundreds of businesses, he's dedicated his career to helping entrepreneurs grow. In this conversation, he shares how to earn attention, build a personal brand, and stay ahead in the age of AI. Why do you think so many people do not understand how to use personal brand properly? This is an age-old challenge of people not understanding what marketing is. Personal branding, it's important. Most CEO and founders should be thinking about three things right now. Live selling. Number two, of course, AI. The most important is you have to brand yourself. People want to know not only what are you doing for them, but who are you. My fitness pal is a success story partner. Now here's something I've noticed after interviewing hundreds of founders, the ones that are performing at the highest level, the ones that are truly winning. They aren't just optimizing their business or their calendar or their team. They're paying attention to what they eat. And the ones who aren't paying attention, they're usually the first ones to burn out. And that pattern is consistent enough that it got me thinking about my own nutrition. Not whether I was eating well, but whether I actually knew what the big picture looked like. That's why I started using the MyFitnessPal app. I wanted to see what I was actually eating, not what I assumed I was eating, but the real numbers, what my protein intake looked like, what my macronutrient breakdown was, where my calories were actually going throughout the day. And the app gives you all of that. Now, what kept me using it is that there's zero friction. If I eat something, I scan the barcode, it pulls everything up. I can also verbally log what I eat. And it remembers my regular meals. So most days I'm logging my food in under a minute. See, food is a foundation for your energy, your sleep, your recovery, and your performance. It's not one of many inputs. It is the one input. So go to podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code SCOTT. All uppercades for 15% off MyFitnessPal Premium. That's podcast.myfitnesspal.com, code SCOTT. All right, Damon, I appreciate you being here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's going to be fun. I want to talk about going way back in your story with LL Cool J sneaking FUBU into a Gap commercial. You are like the original growth hacker, marketer, personal brand builder, whatever you want to call it. Was that the moment in your life when you realized how important attention was? No, way, way before that. I was mentally ready for that, but I knew attention. You know, I grew up in Queens, you know, 30 miles from where we're shooting today. I remember the attention as soon as you got, because growing up in Queens, there were so many rappers that came from Queens, right? LL Cool J, Salt-N-Pepa, Run DMC, Tropical Quest, Lost Boys, Irv Gotti, 50 Cent, da-da-da-da-da-da. But attention came with Fat Gold Chains. You know, I was there. I was on the first national tour for rap. It was the Run DMC Raising Hell, right before it was called Fresh Fest. And I realized that once they had a chain, an Adidas chain or a Run DMC chain, people wanted that attention. And then Def Jam would come out with the Def Jam jackets and everybody wanted a jacket. And so I knew that I saw branding from that perspective. I didn't know it was branding. I was like, everybody wants their team jacket. I don't care if you were a drug dealer with a drug dealer chain, which I wasn't, or Def Jam jacket or whatever the case is, or the small entrepreneurs in the neighborhood. They used to be a guy named a cab company called Woods Cabs and another guy named Poor Freddy. Poor Freddy made tires. These are small entrepreneurs when you think about it in my level, but these were everyday entrepreneurs that were known around the world. You're the son of poor Freddie. You got a Def Jam jacket. That's when I understood the power of branding and attention. And I don't think I've ever told anybody it in that way ever in my life. So, you know, you usually get the same questions. Thank you for asking that. Because I just see you as, and you didn't call it attention and personal brand back then, but I see you as somebody that tapped into it for everybody else understood how to tap into it. Well, of course, you know, yes, in the modern way, but there were many who came before me who understood it. But I just took it to another level, you know, with FUBU, knowing that I wanted to create a global brand. And now I stand on the shoulders of giants like Kalkanai and Cross Colors who... who helped me, who inspired me, walk away, stuff like that. But, you know, I started to understand that it can be a global brand instead of poor Freddy's in the hood, right, or this one just in America. I understood that why not make it bigger? You know, my mother had a, I tell this story, my mother had a can opener in the house. It was over the kitchen table. It was about two feet long. And it always said, think big. And I used to, it was way up in the, and I used to say, when are we going to open this? this 10 pound can of beans with this can opener. But she would always say to me, oh, bigger. No, no, no. Well, mom, I want to open a store in the neighborhood. Nice. Bigger. Well, I want to sell it to the United States. Bigger. How do you get attention at scale? Because this is what, you know, I was researching, and I know people know the story of FUBU, and you've told this story a thousand times, but some of the shit that you did was very impressive. Like very growth hacky. Like you had five jerseys, you made it look like every rapper in New York was wearing a FUBU jersey. You sold $800 worth of hats at one point with no brand. Like you hacked. When there was no media, there was no social media. There was no internet. No internet. So how do you think about attention when there's no distribution? Cell phones, very few people have it. How do I think about it? Attention when there was no distribution. You already got attention somehow. You got to start with a local team. You know, you got to put in, as you and I were talking about, you put in 1,400 reps, you said. Well, nobody pays attention to you for the 100 reps. People think you're going to die at the 300 reps. 500 reps. 500 reps, they start paying attention to you, and then they start, you know, saying, okay, whatever. When you start, and the 100 or 200 or 400 people that listen to you, they started to become the ambassador. Oh, I want to listen to this podcast. Are you crazy? I've been on this forever. Are you stupid? Like, you should have been on it, a-hole. So, you know, I did that with, again, I started small. I started with, I had the 50 t-shirts. I put them on 50... large guys, 5X and 6X, people don't remember, if they haven't heard the story, I didn't have money to have 50 shirts given away to all the cool kids that would wear it once, so I said, who needs this the most? Well, the big guys, they don't have places to shop. They have Rochester big and tall, and they can either get a white shirt or a black shirt or a custom-made piece, which costs a lot. I gave the 50 shirts to those big guys. Those are 4Xs and 5Xs. Well, guess what? They wore it 10 times a month. They were in front of the red ropes at the clubs. They were the bodyguards to the rappers. Rappers start saying, wait, when can I get a piece? And they were like, no, because you're going to wear it one time, and the little man is not going to give me another piece. No. Right? I went to eight stores. I sold in eight stores only in New York City. Everybody wants to say, oh, you know, I'm all over. Now, don't get me wrong. It said FUBU, and it said New York, London, and Paris. Okay? Okay. I got a cousin named Pookie. He bought a shirt. He lived in Paris. And I mailed one to London. So I didn't lie. I just romanced the truth. But I sold the eight stores. Now, you would normally want to come on Shark Tank and say, well, I'm all over the country. No, when I was in the eight stores, I knew that I was selling an average of, let's say, 12 shirts a week. Well, then how can I get up to 14 shirts a week? And then how can I then add shirts, jackets? And then when I finally got an offer by Samsung Textile Division, the store owner said he's selling more goods than Nike. If you look at the percentage, if I would have sent my stuff to DC and California, they listen to different music. They wear, if I send it to Mexico, they wear different sizes. So, you know, again, start super small and you get the proof of concept and then you blow it up. But you also know your audience. 100%. Better than anyone else. And when you're starting small, you hear your audience. They tell you what they like. They tell you what they don't like. When you go big and broad, you just don't know. Yeah, listen, it's the same for growing a podcast, building a business. You know, I just had a Mad Zingler in here. He's a co-founder of Rolling Loud. And he was saying like how he expands to different cities as he goes to live in that city. And then once he lives there and he experiences the culture and the music and the taste, then he can expand. And he has like 100% hit rate. He's always successful with the expansions overseas everywhere it takes rolling out because he lives there. You know, when we licensed it globally, we would license it and we would send somebody who lived there for a little while. But whoever took it in that country... they would need to be able to make 50% of their own versions of FUBU off of our design package. Now, most companies would have said at the time, that's it. This is the brand, right? But we realized at that time in Asia, people were dressing in almost like character, right? Right. So they would get the packaging, they would get our logo and everything and make the character. Like I just said, in Mexico, they were like, we're made a little bit smaller here. You know what I mean? In Africa, it was totally different. So you would have 50% of it, but we needed to talk to the people on their level and what they were doing. FUBU in Korea is a huge skate brand. It's not a hip hop brand. It's hardcore skate because that's how they interpret it. In my opinion, you're going to be very humble. Maybe, I don't know. I'm going to say that you invented some version of influencer marketing way back in the 90s. A lot of people probably figured out attention, but you did a good job of it. I did a decent job of it. Yeah. You know, I think that the name FUBU itself is a hashtag, right? Yeah. I think that, and I didn't have all this stuff figured out. I wish I could tell you I had this figured out. It took a lot of 40 dogs and a lot of pork rinds to figure this stuff out and a lot of failures, a lot of getting punched in the face, a lot of arguing with people. Yeah. And then you look back at it and, you know, I think I was seeing I saw an article the other day of what Elon Musk said when they asked him, what do you think is the the real trait for success? And it was, you know, some people said drive. Some people said this. He said the success really is willing to endure the most pain for the longest period of time. And I'm going to tell you it hurt. But again, there's two things that I know. Number one, I'm not that bright. Number two, I don't know when to stop. Add those two things, they could be dangerous. After FUBU came Shark Tank, more attention. So you always were comfortable putting yourself front and center. Is that what drove? Do you feel like that drove a lot of success? Was that like a key sort of linchpin and a common denominator and all the things that worked out? I wasn't super comfortable, but I was in a sense. So FUBU, we always wanted to be the four guys, and if all four was like something, whether it's grunge or other than that, we didn't want to rely purely on the LL Cool Jays of the world because if somebody didn't like LL or LL got into a challenging situation, then the whole brand would collapse. So as we looked at the marketing of the brand, we would have one segment of the marketing was LL Cool J. He's the rock star. He's the GOAT. The next one was a story about the four founders. If you didn't like LL, well, I like the story of the founders. The next one was models because you didn't like the founders. You don't like LL, but that is a beautiful man or woman. And the next one was, I don't like A-Dos. We just laid out the quality of the product to make you envision yourself in the product. So I was always that kind of like a little bit behind the scenes, but kind of upfront because somebody had to be able to talk on behalf of the company. LL is not available all the time and the models ain't talking. I started to understand and study right around 2000. We were getting into a very highly visual world and I was representing a lot of artists and I started to understand that maybe I need media training because if somebody asked me a question, I don't want to sound like an idiot. And because I'm placing, I place in 300 music videos a year and TV shows. I placed my goods in other people's goods. If you ever look at the Kardashians, the first couple of years is my goods in it because I was kind of representing the girls. I realized that I needed to know media, not only from the front of the camera, but how does the camera work? You go to a Hype Williams set and you got $50,000 to put in FUBU, but they're shooting on a certain lens. And if you don't say at that time, change that lens or change this and that, or I'm not paying you, that video comes out three months later. The rapper smoked the $50,000. There's no going back. So I started to learn that. And that is when I got called for the kind of audition on Shark Tank. But I already had full media training myself. And I knew the camera angles and knew what was moving. And that's why, you know, I was able to sustain being there. Because Kevin and Robert were already Dragon Den people. They knew it. Barbara was already on CNBC morning shows. Lori was QVC. So you're the only one who didn't have- I was the only one who didn't have active camera time. But again, it was all creating the brand, understanding that I need to be part of it from the front of the camera and the back of the camera, and that's how that happened. So you understood influencer marketing, you understood personal brand ahead of most people, which is- We're going back years, not to date you, but the influencer marketing was in the 90s, and then Shark Tank, how many seasons ago was that? 18 years on Shark Tank. So I started the company in 89, and I failed three times until 92. But to your point also in knowing your market, I'll give you one more example. When we first started to have budgets of $2 and $3 and $5 million to spend on media, we'd go to MTV and all these places, and MTV was charging like $1,000, I don't know, $10,000 for a 30-second commercial. But to know my market, of course, their Nielsen rating, right? But I knew my market. I knew my market that BET was $1,000 for that. Well, you would think BET was a fraction of it, right? 10%. No. No. When's the last time you've seen a dude in the project fill out a Nielsen rating form or it's all it's all illegal cable. And in those homes, it wasn't one person around the TV. It was 400 people around the TV. So I bought damn near the whole BET for the same price out. I had 20 commercials on MTV. And and, you know, you just have to sometimes apply common sense. The way that you look at, like knowing your audience, understanding media, and I was teeing up the question of you've been doing this for so long, but so many people, yourself obviously excluded, still get attention and personal brand completely wrong. Why do you think so many people do not understand or do not get how to use social, how to use personal brand properly? Because when you use it, it is a force multiplier. But I really don't think that many people do get it. I'll give you one more thought on this. I was just thinking about why these Fortune 500 brands use Gen Z high schoolers for their marketing strategy. Because that high schooler or that 19, 20, 21, 25 year old gets how to communicate with an audience better than their CEO. Yes. Why? It's a big world. You don't know what you don't know, I think. This is not anything new. You know, the car industry made muscle cars, you know, for many years. And they didn't consider one thing in the late 60s and 70s that you can make all the muscle cars you want, but it's by far women are dictating the purchasing of a car. Women are dictating it because, first of all, if you're a mother, you are saying what you need to use to operate the home. And I'm going to tell you something. You know, if I'm attracted to a woman and she says she likes this car, oh, boy, that's the car I'm getting. You should be getting that car. All right. So until they started to change the colors and various other things, they didn't understand that. And if women buy 10 times every one time a man buys. So this is an age-old challenge of people not understanding what marketing is. You know? Yeah. But personal branding, it's important. But people don't think about it the way that they react. If you know somebody and you are, if you see you and you meet someplace, where are you going to look you up at? Are you going to go to Google or are you going to go on Instagram, LinkedIn? But yet those same executives don't have it. And they wonder why they're not getting an option to move to this company or that company when maybe they have a problem. And they don't realize that that's the first place people look. And if you're on there, and even if you're on there and they're looking there, but your husband or your wife is a bigot or a misogynistic person, they're following the trail. But you'll never know why they never called you. Or when the president of my company says we're hiring these kids, but no problem. Put their data through the information where you have these people who scrape social media and know what you said in the last 10 years. And the kids never know. I have no idea why people, they do the same. They'll Google, they'll look up your social, but they're not improving there. Crazy, right? You know, I don't get it. I see a shift. I see a shift for sure. Like, you know, I get, because of the podcast, I speak with some people who've sold big companies who are still running companies. And now I start to see the shift of people that are trying to build brands on social media and whatnot. But it still seems like the average entrepreneur I don't know. I feel like I'm in a bubble where I know a lot of people that are doing it, but I feel like that's not the common experience for most CEOs or founders. Most CEOs and founders should be thinking about three things right now. They should be thinking about, number one, live selling. I'm not going to put, you know, why? They have to be touching their customers directly, whether it's that little patch or talking to an influencer who's talking to their customer to find out what they're thinking about it because that's where the world is going. As you know, Gary Vee will talk about this until he blew in the face. I just did a tour of his office the other day, and he has, by the way, he has employees that work for him that are now turning into influencers, all have their little studios in the office, all doing all the different, you know, whatnot and all the live shopping. And that's, I mean, that's following China that's been doing it for years now. but that's where it's going. You may make money, but if not, it's a loss leader. But what you're doing is you're getting the data in real time. You're not waiting for a retailer to tell you. You're not waiting to be on somebody else's platform to tell you. You're getting real information and seeing what's working, what's not. Number two, and these are in no specific order. Of course, AI. You have to use AI as much as possible to reduce the friction, the workflow, so that, again, you don't use AI as 100% of your solution. You try to get to it being 60 or 80, and then you put the other human touches in there. And then last but not least, but this is the most important, is you have to brand yourself, the founders, and everybody in the company. You have a bigger job. That's why, you know, obviously I shared with you I do this thing called CEO Access is because – People want to know not only what are you doing for them, but who are you because they want to brag about you in the room the next day. Right now, it's you have a fiduciary duty to do it as well, because if God forbid, if Gary, if one of those kids working in his office got disgruntled for whatever reason, they decide to say some negative stuff about Gary. He can get right in front of it. It doesn't pull down VaynerMedia. A hundred people don't have to get, you know, fired and let down because these CEOs today are thinking, well, you know, we have a PR firm and we have spin doctors, right? We'll hire a spin doctor. The news cycle is 48 hours. By the time you get the spin person on the phone, you're done. Now, let's think about the upside of it. You get to make yourself known as a voice of authority and you will move into other markets and you will get better deals offered to you. You'll get better opportunities. So on behalf of your company, you're getting better options. You know, Robert Herjavec said, I want under Shark Tank because I can call America. He's one of the top 10 cybercrime experts in the world. He says, I can call American Express, you know, before you got on Shark Tank and say, I want to redo your firewall. They'll say, what? But when I'm Robert Herjavec, I can come in there and I can get that bid. I say all the time, there's a million real estate brokers. There's only one Barbara Corcoran. And not to get into politics, there's a million real estate developers. But somebody who learned how to brand himself in the 80s and the 90s is now literally probably the most powerful man in the world. This is what you have to do because no matter what, If you want in charge of your brand, they're reinterpreting it whatever way they want. You know, it's funny. Two of the three things you mentioned. So AI, of course. But two of the three things. Live shopping and personal brand. You know what that's doing? That is just removing the gap between you and your customers. That's it. Personal brand is you're posting. You're talking to them. You're getting live feedback. You're not going through... a billboard or a TV, it's like you remove the gap. And what is entrepreneurship at the end of the day? What makes people successful? It's them removing the gap between the customers and the founders. And there's a story. And so somebody said, well, you know what? My company's too big to do that type of stuff. Well, I got an idea. Maybe you should check out this little company called Walmart, who now is taking a portion of their stores and allowing influencers to come in and do podcasts there. For real. they're starting to do that. They did that with one source of beta. And what do you think is going to happen after that? It's going to be, do your podcast here. You can use it anytime, right? Oh, by the way, you want to start putting up links to some stuff here. What do you think is going to happen? That's what's going to happen. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now, customers are using traditional search less and less to find the businesses they want to buy from. Now, when a buyer or a customer asks AI for a solution like yours, does your business come up? They're looking for a product. They're looking for a service. And they're going into some AI chat tool. And they're saying, hey, help me find the best one. If your company isn't showing up, you're missing out. And most companies have no idea if their business is showing up or even how to show up. that figured out AI. This is what AEO is. Answer Engine Optimization. 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Use code success at monarch.com and get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code success. I saw this firsthand. One of my best friends is Leo Pereira. He's the CEO of VXP. They have 86,000 agents. I think they're one of the largest right up there with Compass and whatnot. And he is all in on content now for himself, posting a couple times a day, launched a podcast, all in on his exec team, creating content as well. And the difference, we speak about this a lot, the difference between when he started in that role and his job as CEO is still to attract agents to come join from other brokerages. He started in that role. When he jumped on a call with a big agent or a big team, he'd have to explain who he is, where he came from. Now when he jumps on the call, they know the story. They know who he is. They're like, some of them, they fan a little bit around him because he's not millions of followers. But in real estate, there's not many CEOs that are putting out content every single day. And it's changed the dynamic of every single call he jumps on. Yeah, if we say right now, Sirhan. Of course. There you go. Right. Yeah. You got to be able to do it. But it also leads you into different rooms. I'll give you an example. I know little to nothing about sports. I don't watch it. I don't have time for it. You know, I want to be a baseball player coming up and I like the UFC. OK, no problem. Five years ago, Steve Aoki and Gary and those guys are hitting me with, hey, man, you need to get into our sports card world. And I was like, guys, I don't really know nothing about it. They were like, it's becoming an asset class now. I was like, really? Wow, that's cool. I look at things. I don't jump on it right away. I'm cool. Then I see Kevin walking around with some stupid little ... You seen Kevin O'Leary walking around with this stupid little Mr. T-Chain with a little card in there? Yeah, I know. I see it all the time. The guy's fried. He's extra crispy. He doesn't know what he's doing or anything. Anyway. Anyway. So I started looking at this thing and going, wait a minute, this thing is interesting. But I want to find a reason why I would like it. I don't want to do it. I don't chase anything. But then I started realizing my daughter was like, daddy, I want to collect Pokemon cards. Now I get warmer in it. Okay. You know what I decided to do? I decided to go to fan fest last week, a fanatics fest, right? I realized I'm a retail, I'm a retail operator. I love the fact that it brings families together. I love the fact that a, a, a dad and his daughter or Dan can collect cards and talk about how maybe we can make money down the road, but let's do something we love. And so then I just did a deal with Tom Brady and I'm rolling out all the, uh, the card vault, Tom Brady, uh, machines and all the airports. Right. Uh, Now, if I was still the guy that didn't brand himself, I'd walk in the room, they'd go, aren't you making T-shirts? Yeah, Tom Brady's not doing a deal with somebody who's anonymous. Maybe I want a T-shirt, but aren't you making T-shirts? Because people, first of all, love to put us, you know, they love to put us right here. If I want to walk in right now to a real estate market and do a deal, if I want to walk into a CPG company and do a deal, a service company and do a deal, a charity company and do a deal, I can do anything I want because people got to hear how I think. And they can either say, I object with this guy, get him out of here, or I can't wait to talk to him. I even heard you were just on a podcast recently talking about how a bank came up to you and was going to put money behind your name to do a ton of acquisitions. And, you know, I respect that you're trying to architect your life in a certain way so that you don't take on too much and you're not at that level. It's a different game. But I think that's the true thing about a personal brand. You get the opportunity. You get the opportunity. And then you also, though, if they really know you, they respect why you said no or why you say yes, because they know they've invested in your brand. Right. You know what I mean? They kind of have a vested interest. You said if people don't know who you are, they don't trust what you sell because selling is all about trust at the end of the day and whether or not they're going to... And now, like, the modern buyer... is doing all the research without talking to somebody from the company. So they are scrolling on social media. I mean, my background's in enterprise tech. And I think that 10, 15 years ago, it was like if they're trying to buy a $100,000, million dollar solution, they'd still do 70 to 80% of the research on that thing before they ever spoke to a sales rep. So personal brand from the CEO is more touch points, is more information they can learn from and they can figure out who the company is, who the CEO is, what the product is. They're checking the website. They're checking the emails they get from the company. They're going to the CEO's Instagram. But the point is it's all about building trust and personal brand is like one more sort of thing that builds trust for the customer. And that's more powerful now than ever before because of what AI is and information is readily available, there's one thing that CEOs have that very few people have. They have a legacy. They have a history. They have something you can't buy. And so I always say to a CEO, why are you trying so hard to keep your success a secret? You know, the easiest thing to sell is the truth. But you think, you know, a CEO thinks again, well, I wouldn't go and check the person out. I know. But your daughter and your son are going, oh, my God, you're going to do a deal with so forth. The secretary or the executive assistant or the people you respect are like, oh, my God, you're going to go deal do. Or your wife or husband at the dinner table going, you're going to do a deal with that asshole. Those are the people that are watching. You know how many times I'm someplace and people step over my wife and they have no idea sometimes she's with me or they is and they walk over, walk past her. And, you know, you know, like Oprah or Maya Angelou says, you know, when somebody tells you who they are, believe them. You know, later on, who do you think of looking them up going? And telling me, okay, or this or that, or by the way, or you know what, that person had cancer like you had, or that, or that person was an a-hole. And guess what? I just pulled out all the things that certified that that person was an a-hole. I don't have time to do that. But Ted's gonna do it, my wife's gonna do it, my kids are gonna do it, my team. So don't think that social media is just that one-on-one with you and that person. There's a lot of other people who are surrounding important people who are sharing that information. If you don't use social, if you don't use influence to craft a narrative around who you are, like you said before, you already have, you already have, People already make an assumption of who you are online. So you either control it or you let. You let them run with it. And I understand for CEOs, right? Big CEOs, that's why we advise them because who do you go to? Do you go to your PR? Do you go to your secretary? Your social team is young kids. And yes, they understand social. But you may not want to be TikTok dancing. You know what I mean? Because they don't understand some of the consequences. So this is not something to just go. This is something you got to articulate and do it the right way. Biggest mistakes that you see, I mean, like again, I've said you are the master of personal brand. What are the biggest mistakes people make? Being ingenuine. Be genuine with who you are. Because that buzzword authenticity, it gets thrown around, nobody knows what it means. You know what authenticity is? Daymond John can never say the things that Kevin O'Leary says. Kevin O'Leary has invested in a lot in being an asshole. He's the only man on TV who can shit on you with a twinkle in his eye. It's like Santa Claus go tell you go fuck yourself. Right? That's his brand. I tell Ted all the time. Sometimes I'm like, yo, Snoop did it. Why can't I? He's like, yeah, Snoop. You see, Snoop can host the Olympics, then smoke weed with Martha Stewart, then he could be talking about gangbanging and bees and hoes, and then all of a sudden he's holding a church. That's Snoop. You're not Snoop. And so, you know, be authentic with who your brand is. If your brand is, I got a little tolerance for a lot of stuff, but when I'm into something, I'm into something. If your brand is Bethany, I ain't going to apologize about nothing. Barbara is like, listen, I'm going to stick my foot in my mouth several times, but I don't know how to do anything else. you enough people will resonate with that brand. So then follow up question is, how do you actually figure out who you are online? I think that's the biggest issue because I would say it's just who you are, not online. But I'll tell you after sitting down with this podcast for now, like over seven years, you know, You don't do it. People that are comfortable with media don't do it. But a lot of people are one person before the camera goes on. And then they're a whole other person when the camera goes on sitting in that chair. It's like their personality just shifts completely and they turn into this thing that they think is acceptable. Well, if they're a showman, a showwoman, maybe that's their thing and say it. I can only tell you what I listen. I can tell you we architect brands for people and stuff like that. But I can tell you what I do. And then I'll give you an example. When I post, I post and I think I'm talking to seven different people. Number one, I post something that I can that if I was talking to God, God would be OK with me posting it. Then the next thing is my family. Are they okay? Because I don't need my family at the grocery store and somebody says, hey, what's wrong with your husband? He's a disgusting pig or he's a racist or he, whatever it is. I don't, I don't have that, those type of thoughts. I'm just giving you examples. The next one is the people that work for me. Can they go home and their husband, wife, father, son go, you work for that guy? I want them to feel good about who they work for. The next one is the extended partners, right? It's ABC. It's this and that, right? I got to make sure I don't talk about cannabis. I'm on Disney. You won't hear me talk about that stuff. The following one is the people I'm trying to do business with. Here's who I am. Know who I am. I want to work with you. And the final one is the people I don't want to do business with. Know that I'm not going to go here. So I think of that component. But, you know, again, it's coming out with the little pieces of authenticity. It's great the way the algorithm is working now that, and even I'm trying to dig into it where instead of hitting your followers, it's hitting points of interest. Right. So you can go on there and start talking casually. And why don't you just recap what happened? Do the safe things at first. Right. This is what happened in the office today. And this is how I hope we solve the problem. Remember, it needs to be in it for that other person. Here's how we solve the problem. Maybe you can use some of those methods or techniques to yourself. Not, here's how we did it all for today. And by the way, buy it tomorrow. Yeah. It's just like you're turning your life to a degree into TV. Yeah. Social media is the media. That's what it is. It's TV. It's even getting to the point with algorithm we were talking about today. where they want to start showing almost like your stories chronologically, like series. Well, you know, it's crazy. We're talking about live shopping and that's something that already happens overseas in Asia. And then that, you know, 30 to 60 second, um, real that's actually a story in that third, that's already these micro dramas that are already happening over again, like Asia's leading the way. Then you see now like Kim Kardashian is doing this 60 second micro drop, Sir Hans doing a 60 second vertical shot micro drama about real estate. So everything is going to vertical social media. So whether or not it's like true storying where it's a super casual or it's actually like a more produced little micro TV show in a 60 second format, it's all on social. End of the day, somebody asked me the other day, what hobbies do I have? And I said, I don't have any more. I had them. But as of two years ago, I've been all out on AI and all out on social. I spend anywhere from three to four hours a day on social. Two to three of them are at my own level. You know, I'm trying to do it just to understand it more and more and studying. And then I would be working with the team. I have a great team who does it and they do it efficiently. But that's where I'm investing in because the time I put in now on these topics, the live selling, you know, the AI and then the social. Yeah. I'm going to now be able to do this in five, 10 years when everybody is like still stressing it. I'm going to have so many lumps on my head and figured out that I'm going to be able to convert into where it's going much easier than stumbling. Everyone who's not on social right now, they're thinking I don't have time for it. It's not a priority. I don't get the point. It doesn't drive revenue. Whatever the excuse is. they are falling further and further and further behind. There was some sort of, I was trying to figure out the stats on this, but it's something like, you know, for every, it's similar with AI. If you aren't investing in AI for your business, like you are being just destroyed and outpaced by every company that it is. And like, it's just going to get worse and worse and worse and worse. You're done. And, you know, it's really the Nike just do it syndrome. syndrome. I know why people don't want to go on social a lot of time. Who likes listening to themselves and looking at themselves? You hate it, right? You know what? Then put up stats or graphs of things that you find are of value, but make sure you start to learn, well, we got to put up every day, every Monday at 9 a.m., whatever. Things in your market that are working and say, encircle things and say, you could do this or you shouldn't do this. Just put that up. You start seeing people go, wow, thank you. I didn't know about the real estate. I could do this. You don't have to be on there smiling and laughing and dancing. There's so many ways to do it. I was going to ask, where does somebody start? The founder that's overwhelmed, the CEO that is back to back to back to back and no white space in the calendar. Where do they start? I would say right now, go on to chat, spill all your guts and say, here's what I want to accomplish. I'm scared. I'm doing this and that. But here's what my company stands for. Here's how long my staff has been here. Do me a favor. Write out 30 posts for the next. Give me 30 posts. And then also go on there and create a post on how I'm going to start posting. Right. for me and then try to put it up every day, put it up every day, put it up every day, put it up every day. Has the skillset that you look for in a founder that you put money into, has that changed with AI and social over the, I mean, you've been doing this for like, what, you said 19 years. So 19 years ago, what did you look for? Today, what do you look for? Is it the same plus stuff? No, so all the sharks are growing every single season, everything we do. The first years I was looking for a return on my investment, you know, that was it, right? Then I had to realize, wait a minute, I'm doing a lot of babysitting here. The whole reason I don't own the company is because I don't want that job, right? Then I had to start putting salespeople around me, licensing people around me. And then as I started to grow, I started to then look at, yeah, I'm going to are they using social to any component? You know what I mean? Like, you know, opening stores or whatever the case is because, you know, it started to grow. Now I'm looking at, are they using AI and live selling? I don't want to do a deal with anybody who's not doing live selling to any extent who haven't tried it. They may go, I haven't figured it out yet, but I got a TikTok shop. I got this, I got that. I want to hear there's something there. When I hear, huh? No, that learning curve is going to be way too much if you don't even know what I'm talking. If you don't know what not is at all and TikTok shops, I don't really have anything to say to you. Crazy. What's the personality trait of somebody that is always exploring and trying? If you give advice to somebody who's just starting out, maybe they don't know what not is. Is it curiosity? Is it... just trying shit, and if it fails, doesn't matter. What's the personality trait of it? In a pitch, so an average pitch is anywhere from half an hour to an hour long. In a pitch, the personality trait of that person is somebody told you how they overcome adversity in the past several times within a casual way of saying it, so you know they're going to figure this shit out. That's really that. And then they're not talking to you as you're a crush. They're talking to you as the train's leaving the station. I'm confident in the will. I'm not sure where I'm going, but it's leaving the station. I want you on it. There is this kind of feeling of through your adversity, through your life, you have figured things out, and I appreciate that. And you still have the passion, the gut, and the patience to take that pain. And even if today you get a no, no. You're going to figure this thing out. Now, you've got to be careful about figuring this thing out because they just need money, money, money, money, solves everything. And they go, well, we're going to figure it out. That means they're going to go raise too much money without the solution. But what I'm talking about, they're going, man, we're going to figure it out. You know what? I had to cut people. We pivoted. I had to go to different buyers. I had to go to different resources because of whatever is over here and there. And then I found new customers here. I found new customers. I get rid of customers here. I figured it out, I got rid of this person, I figured out how to build that thing, you know what I mean? That's the type of person you're like, this person's about figuring it out, you know, shaving the dog, taking the hair off the dog. You know what's crazy though? Every successful entrepreneur that I know, even if they aren't in the space where live shopping even makes sense, the truly successful ones, they know about it. Yes. They have a finger on the pulse. They're aware. They're very aware. It's crazy. It's like it's not, I mean, AI is so obvious, but even live shopping is a little bit more niche, right? It's for certain kinds of businesses in particular, like if you're running a real estate business or a lawn care business, I don't know if you can find a way to leverage it. But the point is that the best ones still know about it. You can have a lawn care business and you can do a lot of shopping, right? You're going to be talking about them and saying all the products that you use and if they just buy it because you're buying it bulk from someplace else. And then you're saying for one or two people, I'll come cut your grass on Saturday. There's something for everything. But again, they know about it. Even if it's a charity, they know about it because they're looking at all the opportunities on how to create more value to people and how to bring more people into what they do. NetSuite Next is a success story partner. So they say that every day your business is late to using AI, you fall two days behind and the competition is only moving faster. So how do you keep up? 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You mentioned figuring shit out is a big one. What else? They keep going back to how can they provide more value to somebody. They keep, they're obsessed at the end of the day throughout their conversation with their customer, the results it brought to somebody, whether it's bringing them joy or solving a problem, their end customer, they are customer obsessed with, obsessed. They wake up every day and say, how can I be of more value to the customer today than I was yesterday? What is your favorite story of customer obsession? Like the biggest example of somebody that went above and beyond to figure something out. I'll tell you, I'll tell you one quick that I thought was incredible. Um, I have a friend, his name's Aaron Spivak. He's a founder of Hush Blankets. He sold for, I think, plus minus 50 million to Sleep Country Canada. And throughout the entire journey of the company, he would jump on Zoom calls with his customers who were buying his blankets. And just to get feedback, every single week, a few customers. And he found out not only did they have great feedback, the people that jumped on Zoom calls with him became huge evangelists and fans and ended up buying. Normally, when you buy a blanket, you buy one. They ended up buying two, three, four for their families and friends because they had this chat with the founder. But he said that was like the most important competitive intelligence that he ever gained from having those one-on-one conversations. Like it was not like live shopping before live shopping existed. This was years ago. But that's my favorite story. And I have stories for almost every entrepreneur that I've ever spoken to about why proximity to customer is the most important thing. Yeah, you know, I have hundreds of stories of people who lost money doing something for somebody, but they need, they want to do the right thing. I think a good story on that though is the Chewy model. Are you aware of the Chewy model? How if, so for those who are not aware, you know, if Chewy understands that animals are gonna live less lives than we are, and or shorter than we are, and when an animal passes, often people call back and say either I wanna cut my delivery of food or I wanna send back something, they say well for health reasons we cannot send back the food. And then all of a sudden, a bouquet of flowers arrives with that customer. And, you know, sorry for your loss. I mean, this person has lost the dearest friend of their life many times. And they know. And what they did, though, when they started doing it, they started doing it just purely out of because they had so many loyal customers that they just felt they knew the pet. And they did that. And you know what they found out? That that is a replaceable action that's almost always gonna happen. And that it really increased their customer retention, various other things. And it's just a simple thing like that. I want to pivot and just talk about some of the ideas and mental models that you have from some of your past work, which are great for entrepreneurs who are listening. But before we pivot, one last thought on where personal brand is going. You mentioned before that you are figuring it out now as we all are, as I am, as many people who come on this show, you're on the podcast, you're probably thinking about personal brand, you're listening to this, you probably are, or you should be if you want to be successful. Yeah. Where does personal brand go in five years, 10 years from now? Like how important is it? And think about it from the context of we're getting inundated with AI. I think that personal is going to be even more important than ever. That's my opinion. But where does it go in five, 10 years? What is CEO Access actually doing to help prepare people for the future? Because that's really where we're going anyways. Well, you know, I think the personal branding is going to be, like you said, I don't know if I'm going to be looking at a human on a screen or not. And I think there's going to be a lot more human interaction because I think a lot of free time is going to be, time is going to be freed up. And I think there's going to be a lot of that. I think Gary said it's something like you're going to have to act like you in the 1950s, call people to see how they're doing. And that's it with no alternative motive. It has to be genuine. I do think that CEOs and founders are the new rock stars. I think that entertainment and a lot of things are going to be condensed due to AI or you can make your own track tomorrow. And I think people are going to want to know all these extensions out of the founders, the CEOs, and the thought leaders because they're going to want to know that, What is your unique perspective on it because of what you've experienced? You can't necessarily get that from AI. You can read everything from AI. The same way we talk about the Wright brothers, they say that AI could have told the Wright brothers everything about flying, but they couldn't have told them to dream. And you're gonna get a lot of that human perspective. As I'm a public speaker and I speak a lot, my conversations more and more, I just literally left Google. My conversations more and more and more, and those rooms are, Work-life balance. How do you raise your children in this environment? Biohacking. What are you doing about health? How do you respond to your wife? It's becoming way more personal, and people want to know that from the CEOs and the founders. I think that the future is going to be anything human, anything personal is going to have a premium on it. Yeah, I believe that. And I really, I don't know if the future is going to be listening to AI influencers on social. I don't really think so because I think that humans still like knowing there's another human behind the camera. I think that AI can augment a personal brand, but it can't replace it with an AI influencer. Correct. I think the pendulum is going to keep swinging really dramatically. CEO access is available. People want to figure out personal brand. Yeah. If anybody's interested in us vetting them to see, because we honestly can take very, very few, because it's a lot of work, but they can go to CEOaccess.com. And that's where, you know, we would tell them if we think we can add value and if they're the right fit. Where do they where do they end up on the other side after they go through the journey of CEO access and working with you? Look, you mean what happens with their journey? Because it's usually a two, three year journey. They end up becoming a shark on Shark Tank. That's the best way to sum it up. You end up being invited to Davos instead of begging to go to Davos. You know, the big box retailers, you don't call them for a meeting. They fly you out and pay you to come to a meeting. So you said before that entrepreneurship isn't all or nothing. What does that mean? A lot of people think that entrepreneurship is this concept of, you know, balls to the wall and, you know, and go hard or go home. And it's not really, you know, it's this kind of and by the way, you know, you know, balls to the wall mean? Yeah, it means you're like, no plan B. But it's not, I want to make sure that people don't think I'm being graphic. Wall to the wall comes from when they used to put a plane in full motion, the two knots, nods. I knew the saying. I never knew where it came from. Right, because I said it one time and somebody was like, ew, I was like, whoa. I didn't know where it came from. So it just means like full throttle. Full throttle. Okay, cool. All right, so... It is not that. Now, it is a good amount. What you're doing is you're sacrificing something of lesser value for something of greater value. But it really is you're working a nine to five and you're starting to accumulate information on what you want to do. You're starting to talk to three people, four people, seven people. You're starting to send out 100 DMs a day for two months and you're growing the business that way. But you have to think about, you know, what? entrepreneurship the first three to five years, you most likely are not going to just be a rock star. You have to sift through it and that's when you grow. But again, if you don't have work life balance with an entrepreneur, the business generally implodes. That's one, that's a really powerful lesson. I think that a season of your life will be imbalanced. Like it's not, it's not easy when you start. But I think that the biggest issue is when people never, never move away from that season where it's like they always have shitty relationships, shitty health, shitty mental health. And it's dragging them down. And if they took a time to step back and reflect on it now, I can only tell you this because I was that guy. I lost the first marriage. Right. I was 35 pounds overweight. I end up having cancer. I was drinking way too much than I should have been drinking. So I can only tell you because I was that guy and I have counterparts who weren't that guy or girl. And they were more disciplined and they were looking at their body and their life and their time like the inventory in the business. And they made decisions that most people would say, well, you're never going to grow up to be this kind of that kind of company. And they did. Ice-T told you the time you save cutting corners today becomes the wall you hit tomorrow. No, he said, and I got it wrong. He called me and said, I got a little wrong. He said. If you keep cutting corners, you're going to wonder why you keep going around in circles. I like that too. They're both good. Both good. Your rendition of it was also- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's the same thing. Same shit. Stop cutting corners. Stop cutting corners. So when did you learn that lesson? I learned that lesson really young and it's only because I'm dyslexic. Because being dyslexic, I think that I would read something and I wasn't sure if I retained the information the right way. So I'd either have to read it 10 times or I'd have to go out and try it. And I realized that whenever I put the action to what I thought, I got way more results. You know, at the company, you know, of course, you have to hear some of the things I do in my company. They're so minuscule. And I know the newer people in the company are like, this is an idiot. This guy is the guy on Shark Tank. Why are we sending out boxes ourselves? But I've learned that if you get that stuff out of the way at an early stage, then you're ready for growth when it happens. And later on, 10 years down the road, new people come in like, man, this is great. You don't know what we did the first two, three years. But it's just been a habit of mine, and it worked out. Now, when that did not work out was when I started throwing money at businesses prior to Shark Tank, and I threw a couple of million at a couple of businesses, and I said, well, I'm Damon John. My ego is in a way. Let me invest in the company. I'll make a couple of calls. I didn't roll up my sleeves. I was not operating the way I would. If we didn't have sales, I didn't realize the salesperson's job was to sell me. Not anybody else would sell me to come and say, oh, yeah, they weren't ready for it, but if you make it in turquoise, they'll buy it next year. So now all of a sudden they got a job for another six months. This, this is a, this is a, I love this idea. You know who Paul Graham is? And he wrote an essay on this, like do things that don't scale. Yeah. Like do things that don't scale. Like that is how you build a business. And I think that too many people, I don't know if it's because they think entrepreneurship should be comfortable or cozy or whatever. They just want it to be frictionless and easy and automated out of the gate. You gotta look at it, like I'll give you an example of what I said about the boxes, and I'm gonna make sure I send you one. They're really great boxes, but I started out sending out these boxes to people. And I got to look at a couple of routes it could be. Now, why do I want to send out boxes to people? Because I get a lot of goods coming from Shark Tank, this and that. I have a list of 1,500 really amazing celebrities and important people that normally you can't get to. I'm sending it directly to their home. It's not their office and their family loves it. And you know what? Sometimes they post about it. And if one or two of those, if Forrest Whitaker posts about it, a couple of people... That's more than enough for the brand, right? But I'm sending out casually, and I'm going like this. I'm saying to myself, listen, here's a couple outcomes. Number one, I'm going to get sick and tired of this. And you know what? I didn't lay out a lot of resources, so I kill it, right? And I don't get ego on my face, right? And you call me up and say, Damon, where's that box? It was free. Leave me alone, right? What is the next option? The next option is I find ways to monetize it. What's the next option? I liked it, didn't have the resources, didn't want to do it, but I don't know if it's going to come into something else. Well, what really happened with the boxes? They do really well. They go out really well. But you know what happened? I decided to create a vending machine for those boxes. Vending machine for the stuff in the vending. It worked okay, but what happened after that? Hi, I'm Tom Brady. I really need somebody who knows vending machines in airports. Oh, is that right? Right? You never know where it's gonna go. When I started with hats, I didn't think the hats were gonna turn into FUBU. I didn't think FUBU was gonna turn into me because my company was dying. I started acquiring other companies like Coogee, Drunken Monkey, and I didn't think that was gonna turn into, wait a minute, you're an investor. Well, no, I'm just acquiring companies. You're an investor, I'm just acquiring companies. We have a show called Shark Tank, you're an investor. Oh yeah, I'm an investor. I didn't think the understanding how the camera angles work or I didn't understand where it would go. And there's a hundred other things that I started that you would never hear about them because I even forgot that I was doing them. But you threw yourself into hard shit. And by doing that, look at where you ended up in five years, 10 years. You lean into the hard stuff and then some of it pays off, some of it doesn't. But the stuff that pays off really pays off. Yeah, there you go. And you know what? You end up finding out whether you like it or not. Small. You're gonna make the same mistake small that you're gonna make big. It's better to make them small. Nobody cares. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody knows. You said that when you have nothing, you have to be creative. You can't fake it. Great superpower as an entrepreneur when you have to be growth, hacky, crafty, whatever. How do you maintain that when you do have resources? The power of broke, thought process. The power broke thought process is still utilized on the most major levels. You know, uh... I tell the story about during the COVID, you know, Jeff Bezos, he's doing okay these days. He's all right, all right. He realized he was having a problem with shipping. I just got a Christmas card from COVID, right? And so, you know, it was all bottleneck. But because he's one of the top shippers in the world, right, and then he wanted to retain his workforce. So what did he do? Well, he told the people at his company they can get paid extra for taking boxes home. freed up a little bit of the shipping problem, retained more people. And I work in a warehouse, but now I'm making just as much driving packages home, knowing that it was going to get to the house by somebody who was already employed, so there's less opportunity for theft. That's thinking entrepreneur. That's the power broke. Intercontinental Hotels, I believe is Intercontinental. I don't want to be wrong, but they realized they had a whole lot of skilled workers. Nobody's coming to hotels. It's COVID. We're going to lose these people. What are we going to do? Well, Walgreens, Walmart, they need people on the front line. Well, will I give you these people? You're going to employ them. They're highly skilled. They're also going to be great people. And you know what? You're not going to poach them because... When the time is up and we come back, they're going to come back to us. The power of broke is triangulating and maximizing opportunity for other people. It's thinking about all the things. It's the commercials on BET and MTV. It's when I didn't have money for billboards outside, but I would look at a bus counter, a bus thing, and I see that billboard there. I called them. How much is that billboard? $1,000 a month. That gate that's pulled down right next to it, owned by a local store owner, it cost me three bottles, three cans of spray paint to spray paint it for you. And that's going to be up for three years. You ever get pissed off at people you invest in to get lazy because they have money? I do. I get disappointed. But again, I have this thing in my head that it's not my area. That's why growing with the Sharks, first year we would deploy all the money to people. Now we'll deploy 25%. You hit these markers, 25%. Whatever the case is, we'll do something like that. So again, I have to respect the fact that these people have created a company so they don't have a boss. I'm a minority shareholder. I'm 5%, 10%, 30%. I got to leave it up to them. You do. You do. I mean, but at the end of the day, you have an idea of what works and what doesn't. I do, but, you know, listen, Bombas, we do the deal. I call them up. You know, hey, we got to do licensing. I want to get you Flavor Flav socks, Snoop Doggy Dog socks, every kind of socks. They're like, thank you. Click. All of a sudden, they come out with a license. It's Sesame Street. I'm like, Sesame Street? What the hell are they coming out with Sesame Street for? These idiots. And as a dad, my daughter was about two years old. She comes in the room. And dad and daughters can never dress together. She said, Daddy, put on your Elmos. And all of a sudden, this little tear came down my eye, not because of Elmos, because I was like, I'm going to make a lot of money. So it's not for me to object. It's for me to understand, see how it goes, because I don't know everything. That was, for people who don't know, that was the most successful Shark Tank deal ever. Ever? Ever. Have you ever interviewed any other sharks? No. All right. Well, I want you to make sure you remember that whenever they claim, right? Because there's 54 Shark Tanks around the world. I have the number one invested product in all of Shark Tank invested in. Ring did not get an investment, but we gave him an offer. Kevin did. I have the number one invested Shark Tank product invested. ever, ever. Why do you think it worked out the way it did? Cause I liked the guys. I went under shark tank. I didn't want to get clothing companies cause I had 10 clothing companies. They were dead. Yeah. The guys wag the dog. I like them a lot. And they are true operators. They understood what they were doing. And I just like them. And I thought that thing was going to zero on a bullet. But again, I wish I could tell you I saw it coming. But I can't. Three sharks are dyslexic, including yourself. No. Oh, no. I think eight. Eight? Eight. If you look at Richard Branson, Barbara, myself, Kevin, I thought Rohan was, and I remember two other ones were, yeah. When eight sharks have dyslexia, what's the skill that dyslexia forces you to have that someone else can be like, that's a skill that's going to make me successful? I think dyslexia forces you to cut through the chase because you're not blurred by words and various other things. I have a very unique way of looking at what it is Barbara does, too. If you ever see a cut right through it, I didn't know I had that. I think also it makes us work and think harder because internally we're sitting there going, I don't understand what that says or I may not have understood what that says and I need to check it out. It makes us put more action together. than just theory to things. And I think, I think that's really it. But, you know, I haven't said this in a long time. Um, There's also a high level of incarcerated people with dyslexia too. The number is over indexing in that area as far as I'm told. And why? Because for all the parents listening right now, if your kid is not diagnosed or you understand what dyslexia is, at the earliest stage, first grade, second grade, third grade, it's unlike ADD, ADHD where there are drugs and the drug company makes money so they can actually put out literature to help you. A lot of dyslexic kids are ADD, ADHD. There's not a pill. If a kid is diagnosed with dyslexia, they have to actually work harder. It's not an escape. But if it's either the lack of hearing, because I work with starky hearing, or dyslexia, these are invisible. And a kid doesn't want to do this in school. Huh? Huh? And if it's not treated right, if they don't have a great support system around them, there's people out there who say, I don't think you're dumb, you wanna stand on this corner and make some money? And so, it's something that's invisible and I was very hard on my daughter, who got expelled in school. I didn't know she was dyslexic and I didn't even pick it up. I didn't pick up I was dyslexic until my late 20s. So, you know, I got to tell you, if you're a parent and you think your kid is struggling, there are a lot of ways to go and study and find out about dyslexia or lack of hearing. do that because they don't want to get bullied in school by going home. You know what I mean? I think that there is some stats out there that most successful entrepreneurs are neurodivergent to a degree. And the same skill, I didn't realize it's that about incarceration, but the same skill that makes you successful because you have laser focus, you don't get distracted with all the other BS that can sideline you, that same skill can totally derail some kid's life. And any neurodivergence to a degree. I mean, this is, I don't have kids yet. That's sort of next for us, but that's, that's the, I mean, all the stuff we're talking about, the, the, the most important lesson is for the parents to figure out how to help your kid navigate life and when they're growing up, because that gives you, I mean, even the, the, the courage and, and the. the mindset that I have that came from my parents creating this like psychologically safe environment for me to try it as random shit. And they didn't, they didn't hate if it didn't work out, which is why I podcast for a living. Now this is not a normal career. It's not what like, I didn't have like a podcasting uncle or something. So I think that this, like, you know, that last lesson for parents is so crucial. Like, Give your kids a safe place to try things, to explore, to be curious. If they have some sort of neurodivergent tendency to any degree, like find a way to help them become successful, navigate that because it'll all work out at the end of the day. It will. But they have to navigate this like early childhood. Damon, I appreciate you so much for coming on. Obviously, people know who you are, but where do you want to send them to, you know, CEOaccess.com? CEOaccess.com. You can check me out. I'm at TheSharkDamon. You know, my name is like Raymond with a D. Uh, you know, we probably air, I don't know how many times on CNBC, you know, with the Kardashians at CNBC. And of course, the new season of Shark Tank is coming out, uh, uh, you know, and, uh, we have great stars like Mr. Beast is now, uh, gonna be, he's a guest shark. So it's showing that it's hitting a brand new audience and also, uh, A lot of the CEOs can learn from a guy like him. I was going to say, speaking of personal brand, billion dollar media company. Billion dollar media company. His own amusement park. Crazy. And if you actually want to study him, he didn't know what the hell he was doing when he started. And you know what he said? He only watched Shark Tank. He doesn't watch any other show. And he said Shark Tank was some of the things that, so it's coming full circle. I think the show is way bigger than I am. Uh, and I look for, I look forward to just all the families that helps and the, and truly just reinforcing the American dream. Now, so you could package up all the wisdom that you've learned over your life and you have the ability to pass on one lesson to your kids. What is that lesson and why? Your legacy is all you're going to have. I say that because, as you hopefully will be a parent soon, you know, every one of us as parents, we do all we can to protect our kids and give them the things that we never had or even we had. But if we leave them like Epstein and Weinstein and Cosby and Diddy and R. Kelly, if we leave them with a legacy where they can't never walk in a room and their kids can never walk in a room and their kids can never walk in a room, then we've we've hurt them for the rest of their life. And so your legacy is exactly who you will be. We'll all make mistakes. Thank God social media wasn't on when I was 30 because I wouldn't be here with you right now. But be very mindful that we're all watching because it wasn't like that before. I just want to add on one point and just bringing it back to that first thing about who you speak to when you create content. like that's just a good filter for life. Like you mentioned like all these people that you don't want to disappoint when you create content, putting content aside for a second, like all actions that you take in life, maybe think through those, those same people. Yes. And, um, I, We assume everybody has a great upbringing. I know people haven't had a great upbringing. You know, I know people who come up with rough times and tough times, but they all got that elder in their house, that aunt, that uncle, that dad who maybe they know what they're talking about. So remember to talk like you were talking to them.