Daymond John wanted to get something out of the way right up front during his presentation at the University of Toledo. He wasn’t going to be getting into microeconomics or financial best practices.
“The professors here do that on a PhD level. They could teach me,” he said. “I’m here to do a couple things. No. 1, I’m here to inspire you.”
Mr. John, 47, made his millions from FUBU, a clothing line that came up with the emergence of hip hop music as a cultural and commercial force in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Founded in 1992 when Mr. John was just 23 years old, FUBU became a near immediate success.
Nowadays, Mr. John is best known as the sharp-dressed angel investor on ABC’s Shark Tank show, where fledgling entrepreneurs pitch their products and services to a panel of potential investors.
On Tuesday, he made his own pitch at UT’s Jesup Scott Honors College Distinguished Lecture Series. In a presentation that bordered somewhere between a motivational speech and a one-man play, Mr. John detailed his path to success and offered budding entrepreneurs a map to build their own businesses.
Growing up in Queens, he saw the style of hip hop and relentlessly worked to develop a clothing brand that would become, in his words, the uniform of the community. Through some luck — he was friends with rapper LL Cool J — and risk — his mom pulled $100,000 equity from her home to help finance his manufacturing operation after he sold $300,000 worth of clothing that didn’t yet exist — he built a company that became ubiquitous with the late 1990s music scene.
While circumstances for others may be different, Mr. John said the basic roadmap is the same. Set a goal, do your homework, love what you do, keep at it in times of success and failure, and brand yourself and remember that everything you do reflects upon your own personal brand.
“Life is a series of presentations,” he said. “That’s what it is. When we pitch, if you don’t know what your two to five words are how are you going to describe what you’re selling?”
Contact Tyrel Linkhorn at tlinkhorn@theblade.com or 419-724-6134.
First Published October 19, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
