Daymond John, Part 2: How to partner like a shark

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Welcome to part two of my conversation about authentic partnerships with Fubu co-founder Damon John. If you missed part one. Go back and listen. It's in your masters of scale feed. Previously.

Damon told us about the rise of Fubu. From a one man operation. an iconic streetwear brand. But Damon has another claim to fame. as one of the founding cast members of ABC's Shark Tank.

So think of part one as Damon's journey to becoming a shark. And part two as the story of how he learned to operate like one. It's a journey. That will take us far from his home town of Hollis Queens. Tell A?

To Hollywood. even to a memorable collaboration with the Kardashians. This chapter begins in 2008. By this time, Damon had not only scaled Fubu, But had become an author.

Investor. An occasional presence on cable TV. I've just done Donny Deutsch's the big idea or something like that. I come in my office. that time we still had all our office phones.

Where you know our executive assistants will listen to the messages. I would have eighty a day and they would all be how they could spend my money. Every time Damon made a TV appearance, it tended to generate some calls. But one day. It was a call Damon wasn't expecting.

One was by Mark Burnett or uh producer for Mark Burnett. Burnett was and is one of the founders of modern reality television. And he was calling to talk to Damon about a new idea he had, creating an American version of a show about entrepreneurs. It's a Sony property. It's originally called Dragons Den. It was in London and Japan and Canada. Dragon's Den had been a big hit outside the US.

But Damon was a bit skeptical when he heard the pitch for the American version. Called Shark Tank. Nice and come on. I said, All right, well what am I doing? Yeah, you listen to bitches. Okay. And they said, Well then you're gonna uh spend your own money and invest in these fishes and we average out We think you're gonna spend about a million dollars a year.

And I said uh No. And uh say goodbye. And then I said to myself, these people are crazy.

It's understandable why Damon thought this partnership made No sense. It sounded Like paying a million dollars for the dubious privilege of going on television. They told me that initially Mark Cuban was going to be on the show. I was like, that guy, the billionaire guy is going to be investing in sponges. This is crap.

This was also at the start of the great recession. Which was wreaking havoc on Damon's portfolio. Along with everyone else's. We feel it in the clothing industry before anybody else when great recessions come around because nobody buys another shirt if they can't pay their mortgage. And I said, I'm only getting pitched clothing companies and I have to diversify my portfolio. I'll go on the show. Damon's hopes for the pilot were modest at best.

What he really wanted was to pitch some show ideas of his own to Mark Burnett. I go to breakfast with Mark Beneck to tell him my three beautiful ideas because I was gonna come up with, you know, the next thorn with the wind. He knocks down those ideas before I think even the orange juice comes. Okay. So the exact partnership Damon had planned for didn't work out.

But to his surprise Shark Tank did. In fact, it became a world class TV show. Bringing entrepreneurship lessons to aspiring founders and families alike. Damon himself would become known as

The People Shark. A national platform not just as an investor. But a mentor. Business leader. In short, it would become one of the defining partnerships of his career.

And it happened because Damon and the other sharks eventually found alignment between their goals and the goals of the show. Even though that alignment wasn't immediately obvious. That's why I believe the best partnerships are built on authenticity and alignment. Even when that alignment isn't initially obvious. Leaving room for unconventional opportunities means each partner has space to learn and expand their networks.

You gotta have incredible talent at every position. It's like this gets a huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. So I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working out of a free bedroom apartment. We haven't made it. Just how you do it. This is masters of scale.

I'm Reed Hoffman. Co founder of LinkedIn. Partner at Greylock. And your host. And I believe the best partnerships are built on authenticity.

And alignment. Even When that alignment isn't initially obvious. Leaving room for unconventional opportunities means each partner has space to learn and expand their networks. In part one of my conversation with Damon John, you may remember that I likened

Strategic partnerships to certain delightful combinations of food. Because some partnerships really do go together, like chocolate and peanut butter. Or. Chicken and waffles. But what about those other pairings that may seem like more of an acquired taste?

Think. Pickles and ice cream. Lots of mutually beneficial partnerships look unlikely at first. And for that matter, some partnerships that seem like no brainers end up collapsing.

Not every odd couple partnership is a good one. But unconventional pairings leave room for incredible opportunity across your networks, so long as each party is actually aligned on goals. Damon John understands this both as an entrepreneur. And as an investor, forging partnerships in front of millions of viewers. And we'll be getting back to a shark tank trajectory.

In a moment. But first, let's reflect on a story Damon told us in part one. You may remember. This story he shared from Fubu's early days when he and his co founders partnered with small business owners across New York and New Jersey. Fubu wanted advertising with local shopkeepers, and shopkeepers had problems keeping rust and graffiti off their security gates.

So we spray painted three hundred gates from New York to New Jersey, put authorized Fu woo dealer. I don't care if you were selling furniture or Chinese food. You were an authorized food dealer. This partnership between Fubu and these local shops was both unconventional and inspired. And this was exactly the kind of strategic alignment Damon and his partners as they scaled. You may also remember that Fubu's first major scale partner was Samsung Electronics.

An unusual choice for an up and coming apparel brand. But it worked. And it led to Fubu scale. By nineteen ninety eight. Sales of Fubu reached over three hundred and fifty million.

And that's more or less where we left Damon at the end of part one. Now, if this was a Hollywood story, this would of course be the ride in the sunset and it's kind of all clean sailing from here. But instead you really started expanding And all of a sudden it was kind of like Oh sh I'm getting over my skis. Say a little bit about Those experiences.

So as we start expanding You know, I felt very comfortable about our ability uh capability to make other product. I acquired a young company called Heather Rick. Two really amazing designers who made really great custom clothing for runways.

They're all the right things they were like the poo boo of the young women's industry guy named travel rain Yeah, Richy Rich. And they trusted us to do the right thing with their brand. On the surface, this acquisition of Hellerette made all the sense in the world.

Fu Bu streetwear styles had focused on male and unisex fashion. partnering with Heatherit could potentially double their customer base. Their goals were totally aligned. There was just one flaw in this plan. And

It was a big one. Women's clothing is not the same. Women their clothing is very close to their body so the measurements have to be extremely accurate. It's not like a man. Who could be an intraw on the pan and nobody would notice.

Then of course I talk to my manufacturers. because I'm doing a hundred million dollars is one denim manufacturer I say, hey, make lady jeans. He or she would say, Okay. They'll try to figure out later. They're not gonna tell me that they don't know how to make it. In the rush to make this partnership work.

Some crucial details. So all of a sudden I spent six million dollars making a bunch of this product that I didn't know how. And Trevor and Richie, the ones that I invested in, they were probably like, Well, the guy's successful, let me listen to him. We lost six million now because we didn't know what we were doing. Fundamentally, Damon and his team had misdiagnosed their strengths. This is actually a common mistake at scaled companies.

You can find the evidence in the failed product launches of otherwise successful organizations. Think Crystal Pepsi or the first iteration of Google Glass. In fact. It's more common for entrepreneurs to misdiagnose the root of their successes than

than the root of their failures. Why? Because when you're failing It's hard to fool yourself about why. You might not know which of the five or six possible reasons is the one that's causing you to struggle.

But ultimately. The right answer is probably on that list. But when you've enjoyed Massive success as a company. It's easy to tell yourself.

Well It's because we're good at everything. And that's rarely actually true. You might owe your success to your marketing genius. Or maybe your edge isn't predicting market timing.

But whatever it is, if you forget which specific expertise led you to victory. You may end up generalizing back to Because we're geniuses. And that. tends not to be the best attitude for partnerships, as Damon found out.

They got cocky about it. We were so cocky that we started telling stores You have to buy a pre pack. We're gonna sell you a 12 pack of jeans, and there's two thirty twos in there, two thirty fours, all the way up to forty or forty two. They'll say, Well, we don't have customers that size. I don't care. Take the goods. That's your problem. I don't care if you only have people that come and use for the word thirty two and thirty four. If you don't, then we're not gonna say we'll sell the guy down the block.

In the short term Retailers agreed to take the twelve packs of Fubu merchandise. They took the goods in. They would sell the 32s, 34s. They would pile all the other 36, 38s, and 40s up in the corner. A kid comes in six months later.

And says Well, why is that fool over there eighty dollars and that's over there for five dollars? I'm not buying this crap anymore. Unsold Fubu overran the stores, and brand erosion set in. Fans moved on.

And Fubu's rivals were right behind them. The other competitors came in and you know what they said. I will give you as many thirty two's as you like. Not only Had Damon and his team misdiagnosed their core competencies.

They had started to take key partnerships for granted. Fubu had once been in tune with her retailers. Now their respective interests had become deeply misaligned. Rather than the win win scenario you want in a partnership. They were making decisions that were lose lose.

And Fubu ended up paying the price. So then where did that all then lead to? What was the consequence? How did you learn those lessons and correct? Well what that led to was us doing some real soul searching on what our inventory was and what our capabilities were. My capabilities were not that we were great designers of capability, we were great marketers at direct pipelines to buy. Manufacturers

And we knew all the artists. This was a critical piece of self discovery Damon and his partners. Knowing your own strengths is not always easy. But it's the necessary bedrock of a solid strategic partnership. Once Fubu fully absorbed that lesson, they leaned into their expertise.

Namely. Creating refreshing partnerships with artists. We would still always try to think outside a box and add different tentacles to the way that we were Doing things. So You know, in uh two thousand one, we decided to create an album.

Not an album of us. The album was of new artists and known artists. This compilation album called The Good Life album. Was produced with Universal Records.

It featured artists you heard mentioned in part one. Like LL Cool J. as well as ludicrous. Nah, it's India R eight.

And others. We wanted the kids to understand that we were much different than other clothing companies. We actually lived the culture The album itself. Did not turn a profit. But as a strategic loss leader.

The album was effective. We had a single call Fatty Girl. The song was produced by an early career Pharrell Williams and features Ludacris and LL Cool J, with Damon John himself popping up in an uncredited cameo. The lyrics feature Fubu and Jeans, as well as the first documented Padonka dunk.

In the strictest sense, this is branded content. But it plays. Well Like a hit song. I remember us selling eighty million dollar worth of fatty girl jeans.

We were always thinking scrappy on how can we show our consumer that we're really in this business, but just not stamping a name on something. For all of the partnerships. Fubu discovered. They didn't do so well. For example

Making women's clothes with nuanced sizing. This was a collaboration they were able to pull off. With Panache. Because of their creative partnerships, innovations with artists and cultural leaders, Fubu was able to stay true to their name and motto. They made things, quote.

For us. Bias. Their partnerships with artists only deepened. Based on authentic alignment. And a dash of the unexpected.

This new understanding of win win partnerships would soon guide Damon as an investor. And A shark. When you build substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious.

Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity. When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years. Building. Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative plating dot com slash masters of scale.

Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There can be two types of companies. Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Calyubi.

And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.

Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely. From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. We're back. With part two of my conversation with Damon John.

If you're enjoying this episode and want to share it with friends, send them the link, masterthe scale.com Slash Damon Two. That's D A Y M O N D And the number two.

And to hear my full conversation with Damon. Become a member at masterscale dot com slash membership. There. You'll hear about even more partners we couldn't get to in this episode, like Damon's work with Shopify. You'll also learn Damon's signature approach to branding.

In two to five words. You won't want to miss it. Before the break. We were talking about unexpected partnerships that accelerate scale. And in the early two thousands, that's what Damon came to specialize in.

As a response. To market saturation. Fubu started to withdraw from the US markets in the early two thousands, concentrating abroad. And stateside. They leaned into acquiring new brands, whose names hadn't had a chance to dominate the streetwear scene.

We bought four or five other brands. Then we bought a brand out of bankruptcy called Coji. It was an Australian brand and biggie small is the wear. And and then we replaced the same fool pipeline with the Koji brand. We also bought e tonic the footwear company and various other things and use what our real capability was wheel great marketers and manufacturers. Just as when they had first scaled Fubu, Damon John and company brought their scrappy marketing instincts to bear. armed with the knowledge of what they actually did best.

They knew how to create inspired and unexpected partnerships that would elevate a brand. Even When that brand bore a name that wasn't Fubu. Take Koji. The brand Damon just mentioned.

Kuji had a truly unique road to revitalization, thanks in part To one inspired partnership. The story begins with Damon mentoring a female led family startup. Mm-hmm. Three young women with a clothing boutique.

with ambitions to open another. They also had a reality cable show. Dayman co-managed the young women and would appear on screen from time to time. He also handled product placement for the show. I walk them around to all my designer friends.

Said for seventy-five thousand dollars. This whole family will wear your clothes the whole year. They said they'll never be anybody, so I paid the seventy five thousand dollars of put cool game on everybody's

This is a natural alignment. of Damon's partnerships. He got exposure for Kuji. The brand he co owned. And he got his young clients designer clothes to wear.

As with the best strategic partnerships. Each side helped the other amplify. What they could do for each other. But this partnership Didn't end with product placement.

Damon was committed to this family. And wanted to help them succeed as entrepreneurs. And when Damon was tapped for Shark Tank in two thousand and nine. His partnership with her show became a sticking point. Contract comes over.

Can't do any other show but ours. Instead of mentoring three girls, we're gonna open up a store in New York. gonna be on their show three separate times, three minutes apiece. So you can't do any of the show but hours.

Say goodbye. Thank you. I appreciate it. You heard that right. Damon turned down. His shark tank offer.

To honor his commitment to this family business. News of his choice traveled fast. Get a call from somebody in Hollywood, uh book agent, not even my agent. He said, I heard he gave up a ABC show with Mark Burnett for three girls that no one will ever hear of called the Kardashians. Now of course we know that many, many people would come to learn the name Kardashian. And Damon's bet on them was massively prescient, to say the least.

If you ever look at the Kardashians the first two seasons, they're wearing that bread. I told you about Coji. At the time, though, the people closest to Damon assumed he was making a big mistake. Including a Kardashian herself. Chloe Kardashian found out that I was turning down Shark Tank because I was I was really tight with her and I was co manager. She fired me.

She says she believes that the world needs to know who I am. Chloe Kardashian fired Damon to release him to this other bigger opportunity. Such was the authenticity and strength of their partnership. In fact. A great test of strategic partnerships is

Would you be happy? If only your counterpart. Found success. This isn't about one side. Winning at the expense of the other.

Rather It's about taking the long view. of asymmetric growth. If you gain a little, but your partner gains ten X more. That's still a win on both sides.

A healthy partnership. Can not only tolerate uneven growth. It can celebrate it. When one partner succeeds The other is often soon behind.

It's this spirit of mutually beneficial partnerships that would drive Shark Tank to its success. Because, of course, Damon did eventually accept the show's terms. But in the beginning. Success was not guaranteed. People didn't know what Shark Tank was. They didn't understand it. It was very hard to promote the show for the first three to four or five years because people would say, All right, well, when do you get the money? Who wins?

If you're a regular Shark Tank viewer. You already know the answer. Several contestants can win on Shark Tank. Over the course of a single episode. What's more, the shark wins too.

If one of their investments hits big. But to Damon's eye. In the beginning. There were some inefficiencies in how entrepreneurs got booked on the show. The casting agents were casting agents.

They didn't know about companies. They didn't talk about, you know, like what you and me and the rest of our fellow sharks are doing. They didn't know what margins were or what distribution was or convertible notes or bridges or mezzanine financing. They didn't know any of that stuff. Once again, it was time for an honest evaluation. Of core competencies. Whereas Damon and the other sharks had clear expertise as investors, that expertise wasn't necessarily translating over to casting. Because casting directors have very different core strengths.

They know how to find people. Who are engaging. And tell their story well. But they would need to learn from the investment experts on their show how to also select contestants on the viability of their businesses. Another relationship that needed to evolve?

The one between the sharks. And the contestants. In the beginning. Damon remembers a focus on simply how much they were choosing to invest. Us as the sharks, we thought this was just a financial play. Hey, we'll give you twenty, we'll give you fifty. But you know, these people needed coddling like a startup does. Everyone has a different need, and we didn't have the staff to man that. So the deal we're we were closing, we're about thirty percent closure.

The startups who went on Shark Tank. didn't just need financing from their investors. They also needed mentorship and support. And something that's unique to Shark Tank. For founders, the act of fundraising is also the act of building a network.

Every source of finance you approach will have valuable knowledge, resources, and networks of their own. And all of these resources are just as valuable to your growth as the money itself. The investing moment is a moment of crystallization. You're constantly articulating. To anyone who will listen.

Why you and your mission are a great bet. And you waste that moment. If all you get out of it is the money. The partnership Is just as necessary.

If not more so. As Shark Tank progressed. Damon and the other sharks started to recognize Just how important this aspect was to their aspiring entrepreneurs. And the more expertise they shared.

The more The shark tank deal started to yield. As the years went on, every season the closing rate got higher. I would hire licensing people, I would have more salespeople, I would be more in touch with manufacturing. And I also would now ask, well, what's the use of proceeds? What's the use of funds? And make sure that they stayed on track. And now the show's grown to closing, we're trying to close about 80% every year. We would love to close that and really great entrepreneurs who are doing

Big, big, big business. In fact. Several of Damon's most lucrative investments started out. As shark tank contestants. One is Bubba's Q, it's boneless ribs. Another one that I really love is called Sunstashes.

Sunstashes Costume sunglasses Very simple, but in this Instagram world, when you put these eyeglasses on, they have every license ever. Marvel and Peppa Pig, and it's very Instagramable. And then that was one of Damon's favorite investments. Bombas.

It's called Bomba's Sox. Slow, steady growth. Brilliant, brilliant founders. The product is king, it's very comfortable. More importantly, they give away a pair of socks and now they've grown to underwear and t shirts every time they sell a pair that gives the homeless and they give away over fifty million pieces to those in need. So it feels good. From what it's doing is just amazing. It's educated me and that's what I call reverse mentorship.

I love this idea of reverse mentorship and it doesn't get enough attention. The best mentor partnerships aren't just one way. Almost every thinking DC has experienced this at least once. Investing in a founder.

That is so sharp and insightful, they end up teaching you. What Damon learned from working with new founders on Shark Tank was He needed to create a scaffolding to help them. Doing what he did best. So we created a brand management and consulting firm.

He called it the shark group. So the Shark group really tries to help with whether it's brands or personalities or whether it's curriculums or any of my strategic relationships. Myself, I'm a client. We really did it because listen, when you're bringing in a lot of these startups, they don't need everything, right? And we need a group that was behind that. After being an entrepreneur in need of a strategic partner. Damon is now being that partner.

to the startups and scale ups he's invested in. As well as to anyone. Who's read his books. Watch his show. Or taken as advice.

And recently, Damon has been partnering with other platforms whose mission is to empow entrepreneurs. And we invited one of them. It started with an event that we were hosting. It was in the middle of twenty twenty. We reached out to Damon as a keynote speaker. We thought, how are we gonna connect with him remotely when normally you bring a speaker in, you talk to them in the green room.

That's Chris Ronzo. Founder and CO of Trannual. Which creates onboarding and training software for companies. What Drainwell does is help write down and formalize the company way of doing things. And then it lets every person in the company suggest new best practices that you can roll out across the team. And so

It's all about alignment. Chris and his team. wanted a way to align with Damon before he started his keynote address. So they surfaced a moment to share with him. From deep in Chris's past.

When he came on to the live event, I had this newspaper clip that my mom sent me from when I was a little kid. And it was me and a friend of mine wearing Fubu jerseys on stage at our middle school talent show, throwing out Monopoly money and rapping. And so he had these jerseys on. And that's what I showed Damon as soon as he joined. So he's laughing. We're talking about the jerseys I had and the graffiti I put in my childhood basement with his Fubu logo. And so we hit it off. When it comes to showing a guest. Your respect and love of their work.

It's hard to get more authentic. than a twenty year old picture showing yourself wearing the brand. After the event, he and his team said, We like what they're doing. How do we get involved? Think back to part one of Damon's episode. When he and his partn stood outside L Cool J'house

Hoping he'd wear their logo. In a way. The stories come full circle. With a new partnership. Forming around a shirt.

And a shared mission. I was impressed by what work they were doing. You know, they were saving people time and time's the only thing that you could sell people is the only thing you can't get back. Within a year of that first meeting, Damon became a spokesperson for Trannual. A content contributor. And

Eventually. An investor. We started the conversations, is it a marketing partnership? Is it a investor relationship? Is it an affiliate relationship? What's the right path to go down? And what we ended up on is that it's kind of all of those things. It's like there's a lot of ways that we can benefit each other. At essence. This is what makes for an ideal strategic partnership.

An authentic alignment of mission is what guides it. More than checking off one or two specific boxes. In fact, you might say the more aligned the partners are, The less the actual structure matters. Which doesn't mean you shouldn't legally define that structure.

Only That it shouldn't come. First. Instead of the contract. Driving the partnership.

The partnership. Dictates. The contract. We've had a lot of partners approach us wanting us to sell what they have. And I think when a partnership is really all about sales.

It's transactional. And transactional partnerships don't really succeed. You can have sales as part of a partnership, but it's gotta really fit in and make sense and not be all about how do we add this? to the receipt and charge another ten percent for this and pay a commission here. And I think when it becomes just about the money, then the partnerships are really Fake. They don't last long. If you're just after

One win. Win win can feel even transactional. But when you've got something lasting, like you create a partnership that leads to introductions, that lead to other open doors, that lead to other networks, then it's a series of wins that you couldn't have even predicted. Then your customers know it's not just a transactional thing. I'm not being sold, I'm being helped. And I think that's how good partnerships work. That's exactly right.

Good partnerships. Transcend the transactional. They can take on unconventional structures. They can be unexpected. They can last for years or as long as a single event.

What's important is that all parties are aligned on mission. And pulling in the same direction. As entrepreneurs, we don't wake up as a manufacturer, an advertiser, a training course, an accountant, a warehouse manager, a retail, all these type of things. So you need a strategic partner. I'm Reed Hoffman. Thank you for listening.

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