Daymond John Quotes

I don't care if you're my brother - if we go play football, I'm gonna try to crack your head open. It doesn't mean that I don't love you. It doesn't mean that I don't respect you.

When I first got into business, I made a lot of bad decisions.

I believe the last thing I read at night will likely manifest when I'm sleeping. You become what you think about the most.

It takes the same energy to think small as it does to think big. So dream big and think bigger.

Always dress to what is accurate to who and what you are.

An entrepreneur must pitch a potential investor for what the company is worth as well as sell the dream on how much of a profit can be made.

I don't want to leave my kids an inheritance, I want to leave them a legacy

I've learned, like with anything else, business is only as good as your connections and your resources. And some of the resources that I have are the fact that I work with huge artists.

In the founders, I look for a person I feel is trustworthy, driven and smart. I invest in the person first, because in the event the business fails, the person and I can move forward and create another business.

There really is no shortcut just because you have a name, or you have some kind of access or some way you can solve all the problems. And I think one of the things I learned with FUBU, you have to understand that there's really only two ways of operating a business: more sales, or lower overhead.

I value an entrepreneur I can get behind and trust, because I know they are attempting to move forward in life.

Life is like business, 20% of what happens to you is 80% of how you react.

I'm not a golf player. I think golf and fishing are the same, but at the end of the day, you can't fry up and golf ball and dip it in tartar sauce. So I'm a fisherman.

You don't have to work for a big corporation if you don't want to.

The perfect breakfast is fish with grits and scrambled eggs with onions. I'm getting hungry thinking about that.

I think the single biggest turn off is people who think that they need money and they need all these people around them so if they get the money they can just buy all the things they need to help the company ... [without] hav[ing] to put in the work themselves.

Most brands started from a strong base and kept a strong belief.

No matter what business you're in, business is business, and financing and money are critical. I would have made a lot fewer mistakes if I had more schooling in that area.

It is very, very hard to do that ballroom dancing and I am going to be nowhere near it. Now if you have a hot dog eating contest, call me.

If you don't educate yourself, you'll never get out of the starting block because you'll spend all your money making foolish decisions.

If I invest in a CEO, I need him or her to have experience in sales.

While good business ideas are plentiful, many entrepreneurs struggle to understand payroll taxes, health care and other thorny issues ... In other words, they don't have the financial literacy to scale their businesses and attract investors.

Good grooming is integral and impeccable style is a must. If you don't look the part, no one will want to give you time or money.

I like to look at things that have been developed and re-developed over the course of time so I know the bugs are worked out of it. And in the business itself, I like to look at sales, by far. I want to see that there is a vetted track record of sales to show the price point has worked.

In my mind, there are too many copycat web products out there that are doing the same thing.

I think it's only failure if you put the word failure on it. I think it's part of the process of learning where you're going to go and what doesn't work.

I'm the kind of person that when I saw a lack of African Americans in the apparel business, that was something I set out to do, and I lead by example.

I think that in the earlier days, when I was a 'wantrepreneur,' I was really doing things because I thought what I wanted was to be rich.

When you sell a product or service, you're making a promise to your audience. If you don't understand your audience, you'll never be able to keep that promise and you'll ultimately let them down.

I'm a big advocate of financial intelligence.

In entrepreneurship, you decide to give up your day job at the point where either (A) the hobby/new business is at least making some form of ends meet, or (B) you feel that you need to dedicate yourself for a certain amount of time to it and give yourself the last hoorah.

I'm a firm believer in utilizing celebrities because they tap into people on an emotional basis.

Poor people put a low value on themselves and their efforts.

Mentors don't have to be the Daymond Johns or the Mark Cubans. A person running a successful bodega or a tax firm in your community for the last 20 years, that person is working just as much as the individual who's running General Mills.

Everyone has an idea, but it's taking those first steps toward turning that idea into a reality that are always the toughest.

A savvy entrepreneur will not always look for investment money, first.

Mentors, by far, are the most important aspects of businesses.

I look to work with businesses that know what they are doing but need larger distribution or exposure.

You can make up your own opinion, but you can't make up your own facts, go sell.

When looking at trends I always ask myself basic and timeless questions about business, and the one I seem to always come back to is, 'How is this different than anything else in the marketplace?'

When you succeed you have a million people to thank, but when you fail there is only one person to blame.

One of my business partners would remind me that no fashion line lasts forever, that we would hit the down curve eventually, and that we needed to look for new brands that complement the first one.

The thing about branding is it isn't etched in stone. A brand is a mark or an image or a perception we stamp on a product, a concept or an ideal, but it doesn't last forever. Like anything else, it needs to be nurtured and reinforced, or it will start to fade.

Make sure you're doing something that you love, that you're willing to do for the rest of your life. If you're doing it for money, that's the only thing you won't make.

It will never be a perfect time, you can only make time perfect.

I've failed way more than I've succeeded.

Fortunately, right now 'entrepreneurship' is one of the business world's biggest buzz words and so many young people in our country are looking up to this new generation of CEO's as their modern day rock stars. Whenever you have that effect, it makes the job of promoting entrepreneurship much easier.

I think Wall Street is very important, especially to tech companies. Wall Street will get in their rhythm and go fund tech companies, and tech companies will go create jobs and employ a lot of people, so there's that aspect of Wall Street.

Success is waking up every day and doing what you want to do

The only thing that scares me in the tech area is that it moves so fast that you have to be ready to invest in 20 things. Because if you just invest in one, next week, somebody has a better mousetrap, and you get taken to the cleaners.

My parents always taught me that my day job would never make me rich; it'd be my homework.

I think African Americans are resilient and hustlers by nature. I think they need to understand that you can take that hustle to the boardroom, but it has to be an education process.

If you go out there and start making noise and making sales - people will find you. Sales cure all. You can talk about how great your business plan is and how well you are going to do. You can make up your own opinions, but you cannot make up your own facts. Sales cure all.

I started FUBU in 1989 but ran out of money three times and closed it down.

Truth is the easiest thing to sell.

You don't get rich off your day job, you get rich off your homework.

Whether people know it or not, I'm a big nature guy. I like snowboarding, I like fishing, and those are my ways to wind down.

If you aren't living your dreams then you're living your fears.

Money is a great slave but a horrible master.