Daymond John, chief executive officer of apparel company FUBU and television investor on Shark Tank, recently revealed his biggest financial mistake.
John made it clear it had something to do with his own personal background.
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He was asked by The Root what exactly his biggest mistake was.
"Not having financial intelligence early enough in my life, because I didn't know what I didn't know," he said.
In his thoughts on the subject, John talked a bit about how his family history played a role.
"As African Americans, you know, many of us haven't come from legacy wealth. So we don't have a grandfather or maybe grandmother to maybe tell us that," he explained. "And when I was coming up, there were, maybe there was the encyclopedia and some other stuff that was written and was 10, 20, 30 years old."
"Not like today when you can go online and immediately see what's happening in the market or various other things, so my information was limited," he added.
John went bankrupt three times, he confessed, before touching on financial intelligence with regard to many people who encounter sudden wealth.
"If you notice, 65% of athletes and lottery winners are bankrupt three years after leaving the league or winning the lotto," John said. "And we look at them, and we look at people, 'oh, you blew it.'"
"No, they were the best physical specimen in the world, right? And they competed against millions and milliions of people to be somebody that we can value and respect," he continued. "But they weren't taught financial intelligence. There's nothing wrong with what they did. You don't know what you don't know."
John talked about what can happen when a person goes from making a normal salary to being suddenly rich, without substantive knowledge of how to handle finances.
"Instead of a $100,000 house, you're going to buy a $3 million or $5 million dollar home," he said. "You're going to spend accordingly up to what you have, right? And then you're going to lose it just as fast."
"And thank god, when I started making money, it wasn't like an athlete when they make the peak of their income at 22 to 28. I kept making money."
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