A Vision for Success — in Life, Fitness, and Beyond

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Transcript: A Vision for Success — in Life, Fitness, and Beyond

Season 7, Episode 6  | September 26, 2023

Jamie Martin:
Welcome to Life Time Talks, the podcast that’s aimed at helping you achieve your health, fitness, and life goals. I’m Jamie Martin, editor in chief of Experience Life, Life Time’s whole life health and fitness magazine.

David Freeman:
And I’m David Freeman, director of Alpha, one of Life Time’s signature group training programs. We’re all in different places along our health and fitness journey but no matter what we’re working toward, there’s some essential things we can do to keep moving in the direction of a healthy purpose driven life.

Jamie Martin:
In each episode, we break down various elements of healthy living, including fitness and nutrition, mindset and community, and health issues. We’ll also share real inspiring stories of transformation.

David Freeman:
And we’ll be talking to experts from Life Time and Beyond who will share their insights and knowledge, so you have the tools and information you need to take charge of your next steps. Here we go.

Jamie Martin:
Hey everyone. Welcome to Life Time Talks. I’m Jamie Martin.

David Freeman:
And I’m David Freeman.

Jamie Martin:
And in this episode we are really excited to be talking to Daymond John. You probably know him from the Shark Tank, but he is on the September October issue of Experience Life Magazine and we’re talking a lot about his own health journey as well as the work he’s doing to kind raise financial literacy in our youth and in the next generations coming up. So, Daymond, we’re so excited to have you.

Daymond John:
Oh my God. Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. It’s an honor.

Jamie Martin:
Well, I’m just going to do a quick little bio just for anybody who might not know you Daymond as the entrepreneur, an investor who is known for his role as the people’s shark on ABC’s the Shark Tank where he’s given countless entrepreneurs the opportunity to work alongside of him and grow their businesses. He is also the CEO of a brand agency the Shark Group as well as the founder and CEO of FUBU. He is also a New York Times bestselling author and motivational speaker, and with that we’re going to jump right in. David, go ahead.

David Freeman:
Yeah. Daymond, so you obviously have a true success story around grit, sacrifice, and hard work. For those who aren’t familiar with your story can you kind of walk us through your journey, where you started and how it got to where you are today?

Daymond John:
Man, that’s a 54-year journey and I want to make sure we give people a lot of stuff that they don’t have but I’ll just try to knock it out in like two minutes where, you know, I was born and raised in New York. Born in Brooklyn. Raised in Hollis Queens, and my parents got divorced when I was 10. Never spoke with my father after that. I’m half Trinidadian as well as African American and was instilled with my parents when they were together hard work and growing up didn’t have much. Had way more than many people do around the world. I’ve seen a lot of people complain what we don’t have in this country when I’ve seen a lot of other things but what I did have though was a love for this new kind of emerging music. Today I guess they would call it a new emerging technology.

The music is called hip hop. It’s our form of social media back then because we didn’t see what was going on in the streets of California or the streets of Detroit or Japan for that matter. We didn’t see it on the six-o clock news, but I believe there are two forms of music, country and hip hop that are really reflecting the plights and or the love and passion of the everyday person, and they were sharing that within this music that was up on Instagram and Snapchat, right. It wasn’t something you listened to. It came with the way you walked, talked, and dressed. I didn’t see a lot of people that were making clothing that we were loving. They weren’t respecting people who were buying it. They were taking our money and going thank you, but we don’t like you. Whether because we’re African American, whether it’s because we’re rappers.

You make a 36 pair of pants or a pair of 32s, but we buy 36 as we have it hanging off our ass and you say well I didn’t design it for that, but I bought it for that. Well, you shouldn’t wear it like that. Why? Maybe I bought that pair of pants because I’m a breakdancer and I need it to be a little bit looser. Maybe it was a hand me down from my brother. Maybe it’s the only time I’m ever going to think I could afford a designer and it’s my biggest investment. I’m going to wear it the rest of my life and I’ll grow into it. It didn’t matter. They didn’t care why we may have appreciated their brand. So, I was frustrated and there was this hat on the market, and it looked like a ski cap, but it was really a cut off sleeve with a tie on top, and I went to buy it and I ended up buying it one day and I said man I can make these hats and I’ll be able to kind of be able to get on video sets and talk to people.

So, one day I stood on the corner in 1989 and I sold 800 dollars’ worth of hats in one hour and I realized it was my love and passion for this emerging music, and I realized that I was going to hopefully run my own company and I was never going to work for anybody else ever again, but I ended working at Red Lobster for five years after that. The story goes I opened the business of clothing from 89 to 92. Some friends came in to help me partner. We didn’t have any money. We bartered and traded our way all the up to the point of, you know, risking everything and by 1998 I was doing 350 million dollars a year in gross revenue, and we were licensed, and we were in 30 countries. We would have a great ride.

I would then acquire other brands like Heatherette, and Cooji, and Atomic, and Married to the Mob, and Drunken Monkey and a bunch of other brands through that time period. I was also investing in other brands as well and I got called in 2006, 2007. I was in the middle of branding these three girls named Kardashians that everybody said nobody would ever hear of and I was branding them and helping them with their new project the reality show where I was supposed to be the person in charge of getting all the brands in there. Nobody believed me. So, if you look at the Kardashians, the first three years they’re all wearing my brand Coogi, which I basically only paid 75 thousand dollars for the entire family to wear it the entire season, and I went to all my buddies and tried to get them to do it, but they were like no they’re never going to be anybody.

Now they call me, hey, can I get that product placement for 75 thousand dollars? You can’t even get a tweet for 75 thousand dollars, but some show called Shark Tank, I don’t know, it’s called Dragon in another country, they want me on the show. I decided I’d go on because I realized it was five other sharks that really needed my guidance on the show. I go onto that show thinking it’s only going to be one season and I’m now about to shoot my 15 year of Shark Tank, and that show we get to having the honor of investing in other people’s dreams allowing them to share that dream with them and hopefully do for them what was done for us, mentorship.

Jamie Martin:
Well, and you alluded to this in your response already. You obviously had some different setbacks in your own career as an entrepreneur. All entrepreneurs do at different points along the way. All humans do, you know, depending on our experience but what’s your mindset in those instances and how do you approach moving forward and not dwelling?

Daymond John:
Well, it’s always an internal question that I ask myself because the three pillars of success are very, very clear. It’s knowing your why and setting appropriate goals and then doing your homework to accomplish those goals. Those three things will never change in life, ever. Purpose, you know, target, and information. Those are what we’re always going to deal with, and it always starts and ends with you at the end of the day. When’s the why the right why. Did I do it for the right reasons? Did I do it for my parents who told me that’s what success is because society said if I don’t do it I’m not cool, or I was embarrassed, or I did it to impress somebody, or I did it because I had a lack of education. I was too lazy to go and educate myself because I was sitting there thinking that just because so forth told me something that’s what I should do.

They why can be very challenging too. If you’re not in tune with that why well it all starts from there because then how can I set the right goals to accomplish what I’m trying to accomplish. You know it’s very funny, when I was sitting with Kim Kardashian years ago I said what do you want to do. She said I want to be famous. Now we may laugh and joke but there’s so many people that want to be famous and don’t say it. I want to sing. Some people want to sing. You see those beautiful artists in churches, on the streets, anywhere because all they want to do is sing but then you’ll see other people that they don’t make it anywhere and even though that is supposedly a talent even though there’s a day job they won’t go someplace and enrich other people’s lives at night with the art of music.

So, when people say they know their why they really need to know their why. So, that’s really what it came down to every time that I failed but every time I succeeded the why was always in place. You know, the why was…and the why started to unravel. I was on a stage with another speaker and he’s Steven. He’s a young man who’s a dragon on the show Dragons in London and he said something, and he articulated it the best. He said before you get out the end of the week with this goal that you have, we have failed, my staff and I have failed collectively a thousand times to get to that goal. You are trying to make it perfect by starting at the end of the week. We failed a thousand times on the way to it so now we’re better prepared to get that goal because we know all the shit that we don’t have to do or that doesn’t work and that is what has happened throughout my career.

These whys and these purposes have unfolded in front of my for greatness as well as it has unfolded in front of me to I really don’t like it. I had the wrong idea what it was. I picked the wrong strategic partners. I didn’t have enough passion to really even do the homework. I let my ego get in front of me. I thought it was easier than it really was. You got to be brutally honest with yourself and a lot of us don’t want to be brutally honest.

David Freeman:
I want to tap right into the why. I’m big on why. I’m super intentional whenever I’m working my athletes on understanding their why behind their health and fitness objectives and a lot of individuals obviously they know you for the space of business, entrepreneurship, so on and so forth. In your cover story, you stated at one point you had a goal of getting to a hundred and seventy-five pounds and getting back to the season one Shark Tank suit that you had, and you failed, and it took you six years to hit that goal because it wasn’t substantial enough.

So, versus when the goal became I want to walk my girls down the aisle, suddenly you were able to drop those 40 pounds. So, can you kind of take us through because once again we know the business Daymond but as far as when it comes to health and fitness and how that is so valuable and important to you, can you explain what happened when you started to see your why intrinsically versus extrinsically when it comes to your goals?

Daymond John:
Great question and it applies to anything and everything, and a lot of times we don’t ask ourselves the outcome and we don’t want to be realistic with some things we need to do. We all know what we need to do. We really do, you know. Very simple, right. You want to lose weight, you burn more calories and you eat less. That’s super easy to comprehend but really hard to do and if after six years I’m looking at this goal and you know I’m a goal expert. Does not mean I’ll accomplish them all. Does not mean I don’t need to recalibrate how I execute what I do, right. And so, as I was naming goals I wasn’t getting there, and I knew what it was. I knew what it was. Drinking. And I have gotten down to the point my goals have worked because if you look season one Shark Tank I had lost 50, 60 pounds in a year to do it because I’m all about doing it naturally.

I do not believe in people want to get things sucked out of their body and move fat to one place or the other or a whole bunch of pills. Not my business. Nobody can judge you but God. I believe in doing all these things naturally because if not you’re putting a band aid on something. I did it before but what I didn’t realize is after my life had gotten so busy that I realized I was drinking six to seven doubles damn near an evening and I wasn’t a sloppy person, but it was that kind of form of calibrating my time on the road and I had no release. So, by nature I’m a person that sleeps three hours, four hours. I don’t want to. I think sleep is a very critical aspect of health and I’m frustrated when I only sleep four hours, but my mind does not turn off. So, there’s only two ways to relax my mind. It is getting a run in or getting a workout to relieve that stress but if you’re on the road constantly and there’s no place to run, you know, that’s why I don’t know why airports don’t have little gyms. That would be very, very profitable. I was drinking. I was casually drinking, you know, but the casually drinking was you know.

I did exactly what I did looking at the entrepreneur problem. What is the problem here. What exists? Let me look at this. Oh my God, wait a minute. Every shot is 75 empty calories. It’s all sugar. It slows down your metabolism approximately an hour. Then that time that you were drinking could have been spent time, you know, air squats or push ups and various other things, and then you wake up an hour two hours later and you want to substitute that with a fatty bacon cheeseburger and I just looked at the switching. It’s like money, right. Money was going out instead of coming in. Healthy calories burning, I just looked it. I said why am I doing it.

Well, I go to two meetings a night with clients that I don’t want to hear their shit, so I got to get numb, then when I’m finally around people I love then I got to loosen up. You know what, it’s not worth your health. Stop doing all those. Move those to calls and in the morning don’t do any zoom on camera for the first three hours of the day. Make your calls where you don’t have to be on Zoom. Walk while you do them and I walk 10 miles a day now doing the same thing. I just rescheduled or refit the inventory, boom, and the weight dropped off.

Jamie Martin:
I love that. It’s a reprioritizing as you said and really thinking about those goals. Yeah. So, one thing that we’re really big on at Life Time and I think David is really so good at this with his…he leads our Alpha program which is like kind of Life Time’s answer to Cross Fit, right. It’s about building community. It’s about creating these places where people come and feel that they belong and all of that. So, when you think about the value of community and who you surround yourself with, what do you think about and who are those people?

Daymond John:
I surround myself with people who don’t need me, that I trust. I surround myself with people that we are morally on the same wavelength, and we are always thinking about adding value to each other and more importantly to the world, and I think of people who get me, who understand what my life is about. I stick with people that I can have a good conversation with, and we can keep learning from each other. They don’t have to be publicly brilliant people. Everybody to me has a level of brilliance in them. So, I had a little boat ride for my company the other day and I said I want to introduce a couple of people that know me for a while. I introduced several people that’ve known me for 48 years and I’m 54. So, I have people in my life that go all the way from, you know, six all the way up that still work for me. So, I try to surround myself with them.

On the flip side, every year it’s been easier now as the years go on because the list gets shorter, but I cut off people every single year. I clean house. I look at it and go…or I change the dynamic of our relationship. I cut them off because I basically say there’s always tension or conflict or this person is not a good friend to themselves, they’re not going to be a good friend to me or I’m not a good friend to them. Some reason there’s an underlying issue why I’m not a good friend to them. Maybe I’m just an asshole. I hope I’m not but maybe there’s something about them that I just don’t like. What do you want me to do? I’m not going to keep arguing with this person and I’m not going to be disrespected by this person. I’m 54 years old. I got a really good 20 summers left being…a really good 20 summers then after that maybe another 10 or 15 summers. I’m not sure how that’s going to go but I don’t got time to waste, and I got to make room for people that I love and give them more time because maybe they only got five summers left.

Jamie Martin:
I love that level of self-awareness of yourself realizing they’re maybe not being the great friend but maybe it’s you and being real with yourself and that’s a level of honesty that takes a lot of reflection and just being like okay this is what it is and owning it.

Daymond John:
You got to own it and I don’t like it. Thank God. I’m saying that. I don’t see myself as being too problematic. Maybe that’s another problem. Where I’m like yeah, I’m a one out of a hundred. I don’t have that much time to think about it that much. I mean I try. I try to go deep and have open, honest conversations with people.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah. I want to double down on that. When you are set up for success in the sense of whatever you have your eyes on the prize that’s in front of you, those individuals you surround yourself with can really deter and can slow up that progress. So, I like that you call that out. Being aware, knowing where you got to cut ties. It may not be like we never talk again but obviously they need to understand the vision that they’re going to slow up that process and they kind of got to get off that bus. So, I like that awareness there. One thing I want to throw at you once again going back to we got IQ, we got EQ, right, and that intelligence takes us but so far. I think the experiences in a sense also shape us and bring value too.

One part that I want to double down on is the EQ, right, the emotion, and the reason I want to go back to that is because when we went to your goal and understanding that you said I want to walk girls down the aisle and the business side of Daymond John is what the world knows. When we start to pull back some of those layers and we understand your health journey, in 2017, right, at the age of 48 you were diagnosed with stage two thyroid cancer. If you feel comfortable with us, can you tell us what getting that diagnosis and going through that was like and how it prompted you to think differently about health.

Daymond John:
Yeah. So, the way it came about was the fact that I had always gotten physicals. So, it’s not like somebody who did not go to the doctor and the physicals were very general and somebody said to me, a very experienced person, said why do you want to be around people that don’t need you. He said with all the money you have why don’t you get an executive physical. I said I never even heard of executive physical. What are you talking about. Somebody like me who didn’t have anything up until the age of 25, 26, I never heard of that. He said well it’s not covered by insurance. I said whatever. I go and get it. ____00:20:29. Anyway, it’s a ____00:20:30 you can run through a thousand different machines and they can see what’s going on. So, I ran through as many as I could. While they were checking my carotid veins for calcium or whatever is in there, stroke prevention, they found a little nodule on my thyroid. I go and they say hey we’re going to do a biopsy. There’s 10 percent chance we don’t know what it is. Of course, there’s a 10 percent chance.

They said well you’re 48. If you were 90, I’d say don’t do anything about it, but you never know. Thank God thyroid cancer is the slowest growing cancer. They said we suggest you take out your thyroid or half of it. I go get the thyroid taken out. Doctor sees a mass. He says I pulled out a mass the size of a golf ball, a very hard mass. I said was it cancer and what do you think the doctor says. They all go I don’t know, got to check it out. Of course they’ve got to check it out, right. They can’t say no and then it is. They can’t say yes and then it isn’t. Two weeks to go and figure it out. I say okay. I go home I start thinking all my shit’s in order. Thank god it all was but I start really getting myself again with my goal. What is my goal now. Well, I’ve lived the greatest life ever. I have 10 lives. Great daughters. Super-hot smoking wife. Mom is still alive. All good shit. Here you go, you don’t know if you’re going to go tomorrow. Make sure you get this next 10 years.

Stop dealing with all these businesses and do something that’s going to change other people’s lives. Do something. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy your kids, whatever. I start to think about that but then I think about how selfish I am in saying I do have a smoking hot wife. I do have a little girl. I do have my mom. She shouldn’t be burying her son. God does what he’s supposed to do. I should be burying her. She should have a very well fulfilled life. I say you know what, I’m going to start ____00:22:15 on my health even more than ever before. It was kind of like I’m going to get to it. I’m going to get to it. I’m going to get to it thing. You never get to it. Then I turn around and then the doctor called me, and it was probably about a week into that two weeks that I made that change. Two weeks in the doctor called me. I pick up the phone and say hey what’s up doc. He said I got to let you know that was cancer. I was like what. He’s like that was cancer.

I got so mentally focused on what I was going to do with my life that I forgot I was even waiting for a call. By the time he called me and told me it was cancer I tell him tell cancer it ain’t going to get a hold of me because I’m going to be on this thing so crazy, you know, cancer hates me. It hates me. As soon as it gets in there somewhere, I don’t care if it’s going off of sugar. My body is so oxidized with so much natural shit going on and if it gets in there I’m going to know it because I’m checking myself every two seconds. It moves on to a softer target. I’m known in the cancer world don’t fuck with him. He’s going to get you.

Jamie Martin:
Oh my gosh. I just love that determination and that mindset. It’s like this is not going to get me. I think that alludes to…it’s interesting because you obviously have a lot of resources at your fingertips and there’s a lot of new things that people can be doing. There’s a lot of things that aren’t quite mainstream yet but like what have you done that’s kind of not mainstream to optimize your health that maybe is coming. You know the issue of the magazine that you’re in is our what’s next issue looking ahead and are there things that you’re tying that you’re excited for other people to be able to do down the road?

Daymond John:
hundred percent and it’s getting easier and easier but these markers where they test your saliva and your blood to check for like 1500 different markers in your body is a machine called an Eboo machine, Eboo. There’s only several of them in the country. You can obviously go and get it but it’s like a dialysis of your blood and they take out all the heavy metals and vaccine related various things. they take the sludge out of your blood and look at your blood also and see any other determining marker. You can move forward with other people. There’s exosomes which is a form of stem cell that can go and attack different things in your body to improve. There’s of course there’s drips and things. You know, inflammation is the most important thing to really fight, right. So, whether you’re doing cold plunges in the morning before you exercise.

Scientists haven’t proved that. It’s not active exercise when you do the cold because your body is pushing out the necessities to grow and expand your muscle and the oxygen after you exercise and rip it down. So, the new science is proving that the plunges earlier in the day are actually what is working. Now scientists say something different tomorrow but right now it looks like it’s good. There’s red light therapy to try to reduce inflammation but always at the end of the day our body contains…we are made of water, so what are you taking in and what’s the quality of water. How much are you taking in.

Do I have shortcomings, yeah. I tell people I still take energy drinks. That’s the worst thing you can ever do. Why am I pumping artificial caffeine and sweetener into my body? I know that already, but you know, you don’t go through life…to me it’s not a cold turkey because before that I was drinking coffee and eating out late and hanging out and liquor. Cut 90 percent of that out, and carbs. Cut 90 percent of that out. Now I got to work on this, right. So, I work on a lot of different aspects of my body. You know, saunas and various other things. Simple things. Get as hot as you can to let the largest organ in your body breathe and get out all the toxins in your body as much as possible and try not to put heavy metals in your body with all these whether it’s chloride or whether it’s deodorants. When you can go natural, and don’t get me wrong, I got to wear something that has a little more stuff in it, or I smell like a damn Billy goat sitting next to you but if it’s the wintertime I’m going to use something with some charcoal in it.

So, listen, whether it’s finance or whether it’s your nutrition or whether it’s your relationship with your significant other, there’s something you have to take time to concentrate on, but we don’t necessarily take time in those areas. We’ll take time on other people’s shit. Hey boss, you need me to do that. Hey, what time you need me to be on that plane, that train, that automobile, that Zoom, but we’ll take very little time whether it’s educating our kids or my relationship with my wife on how she’s feeling on something or how I communicate about something or the nutrition right now or various other things. So, we tend to not do the research on the most important things in our life.

David Freeman:
You hit the nail on the head with that one. So, you kind of alluded to it earlier and I’m going to come back to it. So, as an investor obviously you need to be pragmatic but also a visionary having the ability to look ahead. So, you kind of said if airports had some health centers or some treadmills going on. So, if you think about the field of health and wellness, are there any upcoming ideas or opportunities you see or get excited about?

Daymond John:
Well, first of all, humans by nature want to always have a solution that is pill or end of the day related instead of addressing the core of the problem. So, it’s about education. So, I think that the…someone’s always going to sell you a drink or a weight or something else or a program to do it. I think I like the solution of being able to find out what’s going on in your system prior to solve that. So, that’s what I like. Whether it’s talking about those markers or those things but even these devices now, you know how long you’re sleeping. You know, you know that it’s not good or it is good or where your resting heart rate is. You see your resting heart rate is crazy like why aren’t you going someplace and figuring that out. We know what it is. Some people go because I like soul food. I know why I’m not going. So, any of the tools that you may have out in front of you that can be the most innovative things in the world, if you’re not ready to and willing to absorb that, and I’m not perfect. I mean I swear to you I’m saying these things, but I have to constantly every day address these things myself.

I know my daughter is watching the iPad a little bit longer than she should, but you know, I got shit to do. Let’s be real, right. I need to cut that three hours down to one hour, right, because she’s taking in information that is not really beneficial for her and when we were kids mom and dad told us to cut the TV we went upstairs and went to sleep. She’ll lay in the car with this thing. This thing is going in her mind. The same way I talk about goals, well the subconscious mind can’t filter out the truth or false things and in these things she’s hearing explosions and talking about this and talking about that. Well, that’s going into her head. Am I a bad father, no, but I have to tackle each one of these things because now I got to stop her from eating chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese too. I don’t want to argue all the damn time. So, we all know what we go to do. It’s the steady thing. Life is about fighting for.

Jamie Martin:
I mean it’s stuff we talk about all the time on this podcast. It’s like these lifestyle choices that we have to make day and day again and knowing that there’s going to be give and take within that at any given time depending on what our unique circumstances are, right. Like every day is different, so just give yourself some grace within that when you can, right. You have mentioned goals several times on this, and you say I’m kind of a goal expert. I know you’ve said like you always have goals set and that you review them regularly and that you’re constantly looking at them. Can you talk a little about that and why that is so important. You mentioned the why, the goal, and homework but let’s really dig into goals for a second here.

Daymond John:
So, this is not something that I came up with. This is something that I always tell people that Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, one of the greatest non-religious books ever written that attribute to success. Many people have read it. It started off with me reading that book at 16 years old. I think I’ve read it I think 27 times from 16 to now because I’m dyslexic and I try to absorb the information different ways and sometimes I may have read something 10 years ago that I didn’t go through something in life and now it makes me reflect and understand what they were talking about but it’s very simple. You have to fill your mind with the conscious goal that you want to acquire in the same way that I said that the subconscious mind cannot tell the difference, but we see people setting goals every single day, every single minute.

We all on this call set a goal to be here. We knew that we needed our lights on, the camera ready. Where are we going to sit. What are we going to wear. What are we going to ask questions on, and you have probably about 40 other goals that you’re going to do tonight from where are you going to eat. Who are you going to be with. Put the kids to bed. Everything else like that. But we need a continuity goal in us, so what happens when you read these goals is you fill your mind with what you want to think about the most. Many times people who are in challenging situations think about that challenging situation the most. I’m always going to be in abusive relationship. I’m never going to have anybody to love me. I didn’t come from a generationally wealthy family. I didn’t have any money, so all those people out there are special. They have money and we’re never going to be like that in this family. And then you set that tone, right.

So, if you read these goals every single morning, every single night before you go to bed it becomes the most common thing in your life that you think about. So, I read 10 goals every single night when I go to bed and every single morning when I wake up. It’s pretty simple. They are listed in my calendar not calendar, they’re listed in my notepad under goals. There you go, right there. I want to start off on a goal. You’ve got to envision yourself somewhere, so I love to envision myself at that nice little shot right there of why God has called me to take the stage, right, and you sort of envision yourself here. Now why am I there. I’m not there because of anything special. I’m there because I’m consistent with what I’m going to do. So, I read these six goals that expire in six months. The other goals expire in two years, five years, 10 years and 20 years. Now this vision of me here in various forms, that vision believe it or not, that’s the vision I had. I had a very similar vision of me there at the 20 year goal 20 years ago standing up in a mass of people in one way or another, right.

So, now the six-year goal they expire…the six-month goal, excuse me. The range from wealth to family to health to various other things. That’s how I know that I wasn’t able to accomplish that goal for six years which was 12 sessions of goals of reducing my weight because I have it scheduled. What do I do, I read them before I go to bed at night. Why? Because I want it to be the last thing that I think about. If when I go to sleep at night and that goal about working out says something like drinking 10 bottles of water a day, substituting your first meal with a green drink, air squats or one hour working on whatever, when I’m going to sleep at night, I’m dreaming of me at the rack. I’m dreaming of me looking at this. I’m dreaming and when I’m waking up, I’m going where the hell is the damn green drink. If my goal is to make five calls on this new business a day, when I wake up, because this business is going to grow from here to here, well the first five calls I’m making guess where it’s going to be, or two calls I’m making.

So, when I wake up in the morning too, the reason I’m reading them again is because if I don’t I’m going to pick up this and I’m going to look at this and I’m going to see a bunch of sexy looking people like David in Jamaica. I’m not going to wake up with social media depression because David probably has got his shirt off. He’s looking all glossy somewhere. I’m sitting there going what the hell am I doing with myself. I can’t look like David. So, I’m going to get social media depression, right, and then I’m going to pick up emails. So, I got to read these goals first and that’s what happens, and when you read the five-, 10-, and 20-year goals you got to see yourself there. You’ve got to see yourself on that stage, or you got to see how that house looks or how that healthy, beautiful family of yours looks with no other issues besides the regular issues of life.

David Freeman:
You said the three within those goals as far as like wealth, health, and family, I go back to how we kicked off this conversation and you were giving a background on your foundation, coming from a single parent household and how you had the mother and the grit and the example. Something that stands out to me that you’re starting to work towards is you want to transform the lack of financial education in our schools. Can you speak to the why that’s something you’re passionate about and why you’re doing it in that area?

Daymond John:
Thank you. So, I don’t think I have any of them around here. If you see me I will grab you one, but the reason why is that I have many New York Times bestselling books that I speak to adults with but going back to the problem instead of the solution is I realized that a country of debt or a country of people who don’t know about financial intelligence ____00:36:17 myself. I almost went bankrupt twice when I was broke and once when I had 10 million liquid in the bank, and then I looked at the problem and I go well how would we ever have it if we’re never taught it. So, if none of us were ever taught how to read, why would we be mad if we didn’t know how to read. So, ____00:36:40 but if you look at people on Shark Tank because of this book right here little Daymond Learns to Earn. I didn’t necessarily know we were talking about it but thank you for giving to do that. So, anyway, I came out with the book Little Daymond learns to Earn and it’s about financial intelligence as well as working as an entrepreneur within a system, and again like anybody else I don’t know if this book is going to work.

So, all of a sudden, I come out and I start talking about it because I thought I taught my daughter financial intelligence, my oldest daughter, right. So, my oldest daughter wanted to buy a car and I was like all right, you work hard, I’m going to match the money. You know, whatever you get we’ll get a car. The same friend of mine actually who told me about this…actually, I’m going to tell you who it is, a guy named Bernie Yuman. He discovered these Austrian or German people who were playing with lions and tigers probably 40 years ago. Their name was Sigmund and Royd and he said you know what I think that maybe we should go to Vegas. They don’t have any shows out there and he kind of found them. And then he saw this kid riding home at 16, 17 years old out here in Miami Beach on Fifth Street and he liked the kid, and he was on his bike and the kid was laying down. He said why don’t you get on my handlebars. I’m going to take you home to my parents because I want to tell everybody about you, and he took this kid home on his handlebars to his parents, a Jewish fellow, and he says mom, dad, this guy his name is Cassius Clay. He says he’s going to be the biggest boxer in the world ever, and he was next to Cassius Clay and was next to Muhammed Ali every single day for the rest of his life until the day he passed.

An amazing interview but he said to me when I said hey, I taught my daughter this financial intelligence lesson or whatever the case and he said yes you want your daughter riding around in the 40 or 30 safest car on the road. He said I know what you’re trying to accomplish but you don’t want her to be in a car…you happen to have money, I get it, but you don’t want her to be in a car in a split second because you’re trying to teach her financial intelligence and you taught her a different lesson and she’s no longer here with you. So, of course I bought her a BMW the next day. Now what did I teach her. I taught her hard work, but I didn’t teach her financial intelligence and I realize that. So, you know, I decided at this point to go down the path of teaching children this because when I teach adults or when I’m sharing with adults stuff we’re changing. We do want to be an entrepreneur. We don’t want to be an entrepreneur. I don’t need to make it this way. Some adults are just assholes, you know.

We have kids who act like kids, adults who act like kids and we have a bunch of adults who act like adults but the adults that act like kids, so you know what I decided…so, this book came out and it went to Amazon number one in the country with the prediction of maybe number one in the world out of all books. New York Times bestseller five six weeks. Starting to go into schools I said this is where I want to be because when I get on shows and stuff nobody cares about Democrat, Republican. They care about this. If I’m talking to a roomful of adults, maybe you like it maybe not, but you know when I’m talking in front of a roomful of kids, I don’t care where you come from, you maybe be going through the hardest thing in your life, you didn’t ask to be brought here. You’re a child and whether you take this information I’m giving you today or it hits you 30 years from now, that’s the faith that we have as parents and educators in our children and it’s the most beautiful thing. So, I will do this forever.

I’m taking nothing away from the adults, but this is exactly where I want to be, to change the narrative in this country because the reality is we’re going to take care of our parents two times longer than they take care of us. So, if I don’t get these kids in the right frame of mind, then there’s going to be a whole lot of parents sitting outside of Publix in dirty diapers asking for some change.

Jamie Martin:
Just getting into that, it’s financial health as well and it ties into this larger, it’s another aspect of health and wellness that we absolutely care about and we want to make sure people are aware of and we love that you’re sharing that.

Daymond John:
Listen, we all know here. Jamie and David know this for sure. You know, to be healthy is expensive in most cases, right, because you either have to be able to cook at home and if you’re not trying to work, we’re not in the day and age where one parent can stay home, it’s costly. You’re on the run outside, well the things that are really made for you are expensive but what are the cheapest things to sell in this country. Butter, sugar, and salt. So, you don’t have financial intelligence and you don’t have a better way to live and then you acquire a bunch of things to keep us staying to survive to fulfill you for the day and now you have to pay millions and millions and millions to fix that problem, cancer, hypertension and various other things because it all started from the fact that you did not have the money to be able to do the right things with that type of stuff, right. So, the lack of money, it’s the only thing we all trade on for the most part and it’s a critical issue.

It’s the core of violence. It’s the core of domestic violence. Nobody wants to be in a gang. They feel like there’s no other option. Nobody wants to see George Floyd happen and burn businesses when they should be building businesses, but they feel frustrated like those are not only not giving them access to money but they’re also hurting them. If you had access to money and you can put people around you and change the vote, I got to tell you something, cops wouldn’t be hurting people if they knew that your vote was so powerful and you had the ways to change laws. They wouldn’t be touching you, right. So, it all goes to money.

Jamie Martin:
Well, I want to be respectful of your time. I know you have other commitments happening. So, if there’s anything else you want to add, otherwise David usually has one final question that he throws out there for us.

Daymond John:
No. Listen, I just love being featured on the book. I want to give people an example of this. You know, everybody thinks that when you get to a certain point in life people just roll out the red carpet for you and everything is simple. I’m a fan of the book, a fan of the messaging and I called you and I want people to be very aware of that. You met me with open arms, and it was great, but you would have never known if I liked the book, if I even know the book. I have to constantly pitch myself and I have no problem pitching myself and I want people to know that, you know, nobody has a crystal ball out here. Unless you tell them when you walk in a room and you have a level of success…if you walk in the room and you have your arms folded and you stand in the corner and you’re not approachable why would everybody think you got it. It’s okay to be vulnerable. I mean what if you guys would have said you’re not for us. Hey, ____00:43:45 hates you. It’s fine.

It’s fine, right, but you would have never known unless I would have reached out and called. I remember somebody one day we were driving a car and they said to me hey you know I’m going to go meet this person and ____00:44:03 one of my friends said…because we recapped with somebody else who had a very similar experience and he said that guy is an asshole. That guy’s a this, that. I said have you ever met him. No. And you’re calling him an asshole. Yeah. You know anything about him? No. Who do you think is the asshole. Oh, wait a minute am I an asshole. So, all of a sudden, I got to tell people too many people are on social media acting like they’re cool and you get to a certain level have my people call your people. No. Take a moment, pick up the phone. If you’re really a fan of somebody then be a fan of somebody. I’m a fan of what you guys do and that’s why I called and it’s an honor for me to participate in something that you have built. You have very loyal followers, so thank you.

Jamie Martin:
Well, I appreciate that so much and we appreciate you and that means the world. So, thank you.

David Freeman:
Yeah. Truly appreciate. We got to get into the mic drop moment before we let you go. Yeah. So, you know, born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens. You talked about it already. Music is super instrumental, and it is a universal language in so many different ways. So, I want to go back to when you were in Brooklyn and Queens and when you started, you know, having the mindset of growing businesses, what album or what artist holds true to you.

Daymond John:
Why would you insult me and not know that it’s Rock Kim the God of soul.

David Freeman:
I just had to make sure. I just had to make sure.

Daymond John:
Don’t play it so…

David Freeman:
Hey, so Rock Kim. Let me see if you know the song, right. I don’t need the spotlight when I got light. What is it?

Daymond John:
No. I have no idea. Which one is that.

David Freeman:
That was from his original album. I don’t need the spotlight when I got light.

Daymond John:
That sounds like album number two, and it could be on the subway. What’s that song. He has such a big body of work. Yeah. You know listen, at the end of the day, a lot of people don’t know this. I grew up in a very, very, very special time in the world. So, when you come from Hollis Queens, you know Hollis Queens is the mecca of where popular hip hoppers started to grow from. It started in the Bronx, but you go to Hollis Queens…where are you from David?

David Freeman:
Fayetteville, North Carolina. ____00:46:46.

Daymond John:
Okay. Okay. Jamie.

Jamie Martin:
I’m in the twin cities, Minneapolis, Saint Paul. Midwest.

Daymond John:
You grow up in Hollis Queens…here are the people from Hollis Queens. LL Cool J, Run DMC, Salt n Pepper, Fat Boyz, ____00:46:58, Onyx, Intro, James Brown, 50 Cents, Ja Rule, ____00:47:05 Williams, obviously the FUBU guys, Lost Boys and Young MC, you know, Ed Lover, Doctor Dre. So, I grew up going on the first rap tours ever. The first rap tour I went on I was pushing speakers, but I was 14 years old. It was Fat Boys, LL Cool J, Houdini, I think Bobby Brown was on the Public Enemy. So, I grew up in the middle of things as it was transforming. You know, if you ever look at the NAA thing I was there when the court finally got to Detroit and at that point I’ll be very honest New York rap was very disrespectful to everybody else.

They thought everybody else was jerry curl people. Run DMC was the baddest of the bad but until we saw these guys, they all had jerry curls on and khaki suits and they would sing F the police and throwing bottles at the police in Detroit. We were like rap has changed but I got to see a lot of emerging music. I went down to Dallas, and we saw these people called the Ghetto Boys and we were like oh it’s rough, and then we went over to Miami and we saw Nook. I like that type of rap, but I was there at a very really, really time. Many, many videos from One More Chance. I’m somewhere in the background. If you ever had like a little microscope, you’ll see me on a lot of different videos. So, it’s been really great ride and hip hop has been very good to us. So, thank you for that and thank you for taking me on that road and I will look up that Rock Kim song.

David Freeman:
Set them straight. That’s what it was.

Jamie Martin:
Well, thank you Daymond for taking the time with us today. I want our listeners to know that they can find you at DaymondJohn.com and on Instagram @the Shark Daymond. They can find you there. Yeah. We’ll have your story. Your issue of the magazine is September October, and we’ll have this landing around the same time. So, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate you.

Daymond John:
Excellent. Of course, get the book Little Daymond Learns to Earn, and by the way, I have a podcast called That Moment with Daymond John.

Jamie Martin:
Awesome. We’ll include links to that in our show notes. Thank you again.

Daymond John:
Thank you all. Bye.

David Freeman:
Thanks for joining us for this episode. As always, we love to hear your thoughts on our conversation today and how you approach this aspect of healthy living in your own life. What works for you, where do you run into challenges, where do you need help.

Jamie Martin:
And if you have topics for future episodes, you can share those with us too. Email us at LTtalks@lifetime.life or reach out to us on Instagram @lifetime.life, @jamiemartinel and @freezy30 and use the hashtag #LifeTimeTalks. You can also learn more about the podcast at Experiencelife.LifeTime.life/podcasts.

David Freeman:
And if you’re enjoying Life Time Talks, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing, we invite you to rate and review the podcasts and share it on your social channels too.

Jamie Martin:
Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next time on Life Time Talks. Life Time Talks is a production of Life Time Healthy Way of Life. It is produced by Molly Kopischke and Sara Ellingsworth with audio engineering by Peter Perkins, video production and editing by Kevin Dickson, sound and video consulting by Corey Larson and support from George Norman and the rest of the team at Life Time Motion.

David Freeman:
A big thank you to everyone who helps create each episode and provides feedback.