Daymond John quotes:

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Five days a week, I read my goals before I go to sleep and when I wake up. There are 10 goals around health, family and business with expiration dates, and I update them every six months.

When you have a large amount of the workforce being laid off, some of them have no other choice but to go out there and invent something.

Learn as many mistakes and what not to do while your business or product is small. Don't be in such a hurry to grow your brand. Make sure that you and the market can sustain any bumps that may occur down the road.

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.

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.

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

I've come to learn that my initial investment is more about the person versus the product that I am buying into. I've also learned that I really do enjoy giving worthy people an opportunity of a lifetime.

Every problem can be solved as long as they use common sense and apply the right research and techniques.

When I first came into money, I bought six or seven homes. One weekend I went to Miami and bought an apartment and a mansion several blocks from each other, which was not that bright!

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.

I always tried to align myself with strategic partners, friends, and information to help me with the things that I did not know, and ultimately, I made it.

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

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

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?'

I'm a big advocate of financial intelligence.

As an entrepreneur, you love your business like a child, and you're taught to be laser-focused on the business.

The things that I've learned is, try to make all the mistakes with your own money and on a small level so that when you are responsible for a partner's money or assets, you've learned, and you don't make bigger mistakes.

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

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.

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

As an entrepreneur, you never stop learning.

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

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.

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.

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.

FUBU is pretty well licensed out in China and Asia. In America it's a little more of a challenge, obviously, because it's a branded sport.

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.

An entrepreneur needs to know what they need, period. Then they need to find an investor who can build off whatever their weaknesses are - whether that's through money, strategic partnerships or knowledge.

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 had a little delivery van, and I did work around Queens. I was also a waiter at Red Lobster, so I was working on the business in between jobs.

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

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.

A lot of times, I can put a product together with a distributor when I go into my Rolodex for distributors. I can then put it together with a face, such as an artist. And then I can go into my databank of retailers and people that I've been working with through the years of retail, and then also manufacturing.

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

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

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

I do today what people won't, so I achieve tomorrow what other people can't.

Life is a cruel teacher. She loves to give you the test first and the lesson later.

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.

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

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

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.

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

We all want the freedom to make our own decisions.

Product is always king.

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.

Truth is the easiest thing to sell.

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.

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

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.

Money is a great slave but a horrible master.

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

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

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

I consider each business investment based on concept and revenue.

Pioneers get slaughtered, and the settlers prosper.

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.

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

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.

If you can't come clean and tell investors how and why you failed, that raises a red flag. They need to see that you learned from it and came back stronger.

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.

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

Strategic partners are way more important than money.

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 think a great entrepreneur is learning every day. An entrepreneur is somebody that doesn't take no for an answer - they're going to figure something out. They also take responsibility. They don't blame anybody else. And they're dreamers in one sense but they're also realistic and they take affordable steps when they can.