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There are certain individuals that aren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and instead carve a path of their own and go on to become wildly successful.

In the social media era, one of the first ones that comes to my mind is that of Daymond Garfield John.

Daymond John is an American businessman, fashion designer, author, motivational speaker, and television personality.

Many of us know him as a successful investor on the reality series titled Shark Tank.

However, some of us also know him as the person who created the clothing line, FUBU, that went viral back in the late 80s and early 90s.

Having a current net worth of $300 million, John has indeed managed to create quite a name for himself.

Let me take you through his life, his career, his current ventures, and everything that makes him such an enigmatic personality to look up to.

The popularity of John can be linked to his present role as a Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank.

On this show, the contestant come up with business ideas to propose in front of a panel of investors. However, this wasn’t his ticket to success.

He sprung to popularity at a period when social media wasn’t even around, and all of us were still only getting used to the idea of technology causing major changes.

This was when he started his clothing brand known as FUBU, which stood for “For Us By Us”.

The company started out small and took birth in the house of John’s mother in Hollis, Queens. He wanted to make clothes for young men, and his mother supported him greatly, and also taught him how to sew.

During this period, one of the things that was popular in the world of fashion was wool ski hats with their tips tied off with fishing line, and John decided to take advantage of this.

These hats were sold for $20, and John knew even then that they were too expensive.

Therefore, he and his neighbor got together to sew about 90 such hats.

These homemade hats were being sold by them for $10, and the duo managed to earn $800 on the same day.

After this success, John decided to delve deeper into the clothing world, and they began creating t-shirts that were screen-printed.

This was John’s way into the world of selling, where he made money through orders and large events that took place all over the northeastern part of the United States.

While this does indeed sound like a golden scenario to us, John knew that the road was still much longer. This is probably why he continued working at Red Lobster, and did his work for FUBU in between his shifts.

As we’ve already seen before, John’s mother was a vital part of his overall success.

Once John’s clothing business started to take off, she ended up mortgaging their house for $100,000, and this money enabled them to get the startup capital they needed for FUBU.

John made use of this money to hire his friends, Alexander Martin and Keith Perrin, for his business. The logo on FUBU was sewed on several of the clothing items, such as t-shirts, sweatshirts, as well as jerseys.

John and his team knew even back then that the best way to reach out to their audience was by going after the people everyone looked up to.

This is why they loaned about 10 of their hockey jerseys to rappers who made hit music videos. Therefore, this serves as one of the examples how John used smart marketing to get the word out about his business.

Can you imagine what would have happened if social media marketing existed at that time? FUBU probably would have been able to reach out to its target audience sooner.

The importance of intellectual marketing, therefore, can never be overstated, and that’s the first lesson for anyone trying to open a new business.

With the help of a comprehensive marketing platform such as Systeme.io, we can aid our business touch the peak of success that we have envisioned, much like Daymond John did himself.

Once these jerseys were sent out, the reaction was impeccable, and John even managed to convince an old neighborhood friend, LL Cool J, to put on a FUBU tee at one of his promotional campaigns in 1993.

FUBU received even more attention when Cool J was seen wearing a FUBU hat in an ad for The Gap. The commercial even had “For Us By Us” incorporated into the rap.