By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Daymond John, the creator of FUBU and star of ABC’s “Shark Tank” told a packed crowd at Fort Hays State University on Wednesday the story of how he rose from a waiter at Red Lobster to the CEO of a $6 billion company.
In 2013, President Barack Obama appointed John a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, a position focused on promoting the power and importance of entrepreneurship on a global scale. “Shark Tank” has won four Emmy Awards. John is also the author of the books, “The Power of Broke” and “Rise and Grind.”
John, 49, grew up in the Hollis neighborhood of Queens. His parents divorced when he was 10. He was raised by his mother who worked three jobs to put food on the table. At times, the family did not have electricity or gas, because they had no money to pay the bills.
“I didn’t want to see my mother work that hard,” he said. “Who would want to see their mother work that hard?”
John started working before he finished high school to help support his family. His first job was standing outside handing out flyers for the local mall for $2.25 an hour.
As he put his money into the family cookie jar for bills, his mother told him, “Responsibility is something that is taken, it is not given. You know that, and you will be successful.”
As John was growing up in Queens, there were two kinds of people who he saw driving fancy cars, drug dealers and the new hip hop artists.
Hip hop gave a voice to his generation. They would pull the power cords out of the street lights to play music and maybe 100 kids would dance in the streets until 3 a.m.
In 1986, John attended a hip hop concert in Philadelphia with a crowd of 18,000 people. The kids at that concert where wearing a uniform — the same Adidas or Reebok shoes as the rappers. This was a time before cellphones and the Internet.
“I was thinking, ‘Who sent the memo?’ ” he said.
“Every single one of us has a time where we come to a decision in our lives,” John said. “Mine came to me in 1 second, and I went from black-and-white to Technicolor.”
Set goals
He started to set goals, which he says is the first in his key SHARK points to success. He wanted to find a way to make money off of hip hop. He wanted to meet Michael Jackson, Muhammad Ali and attend a Prince concert.
He knew he wanted to be a part of the hip hop culture, but he had no musical talent. He was also working as a waiter at Red Lobster to make ends meet. He thought, “There has to be a better way.”
FUBU started humbly in 1989 when John’s mother taught him how to sew so he could make wool ski hats similar to one he had seen a local rapper wear. He sold the hats for $10 each, making $800 in an hour.
Unfortunately, he was so excited as he drove home that he rear-ended another car. He had to pay all his newly won earnings to fix the other person’s car.
His mother urged him to take stock of his personal assets. John, who never attended college and was dyslexic, started to bring in friends to build his business who had skills he did not.
Spokesperson
He and his friends created screen-printed T-shirts and sold them in local stores on consignment.
He went to 300 local stores in New York and New Jersey and offered to paint their front metal security gates with the FUBU logo and words “authorized dealer.” Not all of these stores were clothing stores. It could be a Chinese food restaurant, but the signs gained him premium ad space that was visible during the morning and evening rush hours. Some of these painted gates are still visible today. He estimates that spray paint campaign earned him $3 million in free advertising.
He then took 10 FUBU shirts and convinced local rap stars to wear them in videos. He didn’t have the inventory to give the shirts to the rappers, so after they were used in the videos, he took the shirts back and gave them to other rappers to wear. He later concluded he had received $15 million in free advertising by doing that.
Finally he enlisted the help of Queens rapper LL Cool J to serve as a spokesperson for the product. LL Cool J had just been picked up to star in the show “In the House.”
He was fielding contract requests from big-name clothing companies to endorse their products, so he was initially reluctant to allow young John and his friends to use him in any advertising. He finally relented and allowed John to take a single photo of him wearing a FUBU shirt.
Homework
After doing some research, he determined all of the big clothing retailers gathered annually in Las Vegas for the MAGIC trade show. They couldn’t afford a booth at the show, nor could they get tickets to get into the show. They set up their clothing in a hotel room and snuck into the trade show armed with flyers of LL Cool J wearing the FUBU shirt.
They came home from the show with $300,000 in orders, but had no way to produce that much inventory. John sought capital, but was turned down by 27 banks.
His mother agreed to mortgage their home for $100,000, and John turned their house into a manufacturing hub for FUBU.
But the money ran out before the stores paid off their orders. The family was in danger of losing the house. He scrapped up $2,000 from working shifts at Red Lobster, and his mother used that money to put an ad in the New York Times looking for capital.
Based on the ad, Samsung Textiles reached out and offered the cash needed to keep FUBU going.
Samsung wanted the brand to make $5 million in three years in order for FUBU to pay back their investment. John’s company took off and did $30 million in three months.
Amor
Things started to happen for John. His dreams were coming true. He met Michael Jackson. He had the opportunity to work with Muhammad Ali. He played air guitar on stage with Prince.
However, he was losing touch with things that were important to him — his wife and his two young daughters.
His wife was from the neighborhood just like John, and she could not relate to her new rich neighbors. She also felt separated from her friends back in Queens. John was spending a lot of time away from home and even out of the country.
She finally left and took the girls with her. John realized he needed to find a balance between work and home.
Remember you are the brand
In 2009, Mark Burnett came calling for John to be a part of “Shark Tank.” He told Burnett he had to honor an obligation to appear on the Kardashians. Burnett would not allow this, so John initially turned him down. He said he had to keep his prior obligation. The Kardashians canceled his appearance, so that freed him up to do “Shark Tank.”
On “Shark Tank,” he said he invests in people, not products. He reminded young people in the crowd to be careful of what they post on social media. He said he has rejected applications from otherwise qualified candidates for jobs at his company based on their posts on social media.
Keep swimming
Before closing his speech, John related his story of battling cancer. He had a tumor removed from his thyroid in 2017.
He encouraged the audience to love and really embrace life. He said the last thing he thought of before he went under anesthesia was his youngest daughter.
“I really felt like I was put on the planet for her,” he said.
He urged others to stay on top of their health screenings. His cancer was caught early, and he is cancer free today.