Daymond John, an award-winning entrepreneur, spoke about the five fundamentals for success in business and life Tuesday at the Memorial Union.

John is widely recognized for his role on the critically acclaimed business reality show “Shark Tank,” which has won five Emmy Awards. He is also the founder and CEO of FUBU, a global fashion brand.

He serves as a presidential ambassador for global entrepreneurship, a position he was appointed to by the Obama administration, and is affectionately referred to as “the people’s shark” worldwide.

Additionally, John is the author of six books, including his latest children’s book “Little Daymond Learns to Earn,” which has become a New York Times bestseller.

John’s marketing strategies and ability to build successful brands have made him a highly influential and motivational speaker today. This expertise inspired him to create his foundation based on five key principles—his “shark points”—that outline the fundamentals for success in both business and life.

“What I am going to give you is my shark points, super simple but super complicated,” John said. 

“For the more mature people in this room, these five shark points, I’m gonna tell you, I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t already know. But for the young adults, […] every time I have failed, just one of them was missing,” John said. “The fundamentals of what I’ve seen about life and business, and they’re both together life and business.”

John’s first of five shark points was to “set a goal.” 

“I had set a goal,” John said. “Every single decision you’ve made in your life happens in one second. It was a culmination of thoughts and actions that may have been a week, a month, two years, ten years. When you decided to risk it all, it took one second when you made that decision to set a goal.”

John said he reads “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. He has read the same book over 23 times, reading the same 10 goals every morning and night. 

He aims for the goals he set to be the last thing on his mind at night and the first thing he thinks about each morning.

“If we are not in charge of our goal, we often let other people take our goals away from us,” John said.

John’s next shark point was “homework.” 

“You will want to call it analytics, I want to call it homework,” John said. “I do my homework.”

John expressed the need for “doing your homework”  to understand your company, yourself and your competitor. 

The next shark point was “amor.” 

“The biggest challenge you’re going to have in life is going to be work-life balance,” John said. 

John expressed how he lost the focus of work-life balance, specifically his love life. 

“The beautiful thing about kids these days… you know about how it is at the moment,” John said. “You will pay more for the experience than for material things. I didn’t do that. I was working for material things instead of experience.”

John expressed that the real reason we do what we do is not because we necessarily love it, but because we love our families. 

“We spend so much time trying to please others, and we don’t reinvest in the most valuable thing we have,” John said. 

John’s fourth and fifth shark points were “remember your brand” and “keep swimming.”

If you don’t know what your “two to five words” are that you stand for, you leave it for others to interpret, John said.

The fifth point to keep swimming came to him after undergoing surgery to remove a cancerous nodule from his thyroid. 

He expressed to the audience to be early and active about your health because it is not always guaranteed.

“And if I have provoked you today to tell your mother, father or a family member to get checked out by a doctor, then I have done my job,” John said. “Because you know what? Now I’m here in the middle of Iowa State University and I am cancer-free.”

“I thought Daymond John’s presentation was very interesting as a student,” Ally Brant, a senior studying management, said. “I loved learning about his five shark points and how I can apply them to my education and my future.”

The event was sponsored by Eventure, the Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship, the Ivy College of Business, the Student Innovation Center and the Committee on Lectures. 

The event will be available online for those with an ISU Net ID in two weeks.