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5 Secrets to Becoming More Successful, According to 'Shark Tank's Daymond John

By:
Mike Ayers
4 min read
Daymond John is a "Shark" on ABC's "Shark Tank." - Patrick Ecclesine—ABC
Daymond John is a "Shark" on ABC's "Shark Tank." Patrick Ecclesine—ABC

In Daymond John’s new book Rise and Grind, the Shark Tank investor lays out a game plan for being more productive in your day-to-day life and career. He mines tips and anecdotes from numerous high-profile people to illustrate his points, too. For example, he details how Catherine Zeta Jones, who John has collaborated with on her home-design line, keeps herself laser-sharp focused. Or how entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk starts his day and how musician Carlos Santana finds balance in his life. Alongside these anecdotes, John weaves in his own personal philosophies on how you can be more productive in your own day-to-day and work life. Here are five of his most important tips.

Find a State of Being

“Your frame of mind can often be 'I gotta go out there and do it.' It’s always the numbers, the numbers, the numbers. Before you can even get to that, what are your disciplines that gets you up every day? So it’s a state of being. It’s how you maximize your 24 hours a day that every one of us has. Why would you be more successful if we all have the exact same 24 hours? What are our methods that we’re accomplishing that? That all starts with your mind.”

Go on the Offense, Avoid Defense

“I notice that a lot of people [in the book] who get up in the morning, they won’t touch their emails. They look at all the emails coming in as doing what everybody else wants. That’s their defense. Instead, they won’t answer them or they will put them in different areas. Instead, they will send out stuff — that’s their offense. They just want to send things out.”

Find Alone Time

“People don’t realize, they need time alone. We’re so connected. There’s no place where we can talk to ourselves and find out what we want to do. We get up in the morning and there’s a million emails, the family is running around. You get on your transportation going to work, the world is blowing up. And you get to work, you’re dealing with everybody there and social media. You’re not taking time for yourself at all. What I notice is a lot of people find the time, daily, to [be alone]. You end up being on the hamster wheel when you do that."

Seek Disconnect

“I also need to look at more places to find disconnect [from technology]. You can never get enough of it. It’s like a team. If a team is playing whatever type of sport and you don’t have time to warm up and you don’t have a half time, when the hell do you have time to go over strategy? You’re just playing all day.”

Live Life Like a Kung Fu Master

“A kung fu master could be the ultimate at 40 years old, and you think he doesn’t need to learn any more moves. But a kung fu master needs to learn a different set of moves at 70, when his muscle retention and reflexes aren’t the same. To still be a master, he has to find other things to do to replace what is gone. And so I think [work] is a constant learning curve."

Rise and Grind: Outperform, Outwork, and Outhustle Your Way to a More Successful and Rewarding Life is out this week.

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