0:00
[MUSIC PLAYING] People are always watching you one way or another, when you're putting in the work, and the time, and the effort. Their due diligence starts way before you even meet somebody, especially in the day and age today, where we could pick up a cell phone and we can look at what people are doing. And he said, I'm going to support you because I'm here because Russell Simmons supported me, and the neighborhood supports me, and everybody who out there buys my record supports me. And I wouldn't be able to look you in the face if I didn't support you.
0:27
So I'm going to take this picture. Now, the picture I wanted to take of LL Cool J was not in the time when digital cameras are out. So if I take this picture and I can't see what picture I'm taking, he's leaving California, I'm never going to see him again, I'm not going to get a second chance at this. And because digital cameras aren't out, when I developed this film in a day, two days, a week, a month, whatever the case is, if he's blinking, it's going to look like he's dead in FUBU.
0:52
I won't be able to use it. He won't approve that at all. I take the picture, bang, I go home. I develop the picture. A week later, the picture come back, it's clear, it's crystal clear. I send that picture to every single store that I can find in the white pages and in the yellow pages, and anyplace else that listed any sportswear store. I send that picture to 300 stores I believe, and I put on there, you've seen in the videos, the kid's been asking for it.
1:22
And FUBU just signed his first multi-million dollar deal with LL Cool J and we will be at the magic show. Now here's the biggest problem, I didn't have any money to get to the magic show. So I had to find creative ways to get to the magic show with my friends. And my mother happened to work for American airlines and we went on buddy passes standby. Someone was flown into California and to the Greyhound, and some flew into other cities and took buses over there to the magic show, because the magic show itself, Vegas was very packed, because everybody was flying in for the magic show.
1:57
We get there, we don't have any way to get to Vegas. We don't have any money to set up a booth. We don't even have money to get badges to enter the magic show. So we get a small hotel room at the Mirage hotel a couple of miles away, and we put our clothes up in the corner of the rooms. We then go and sneak into the magic show past the security guards. So now everybody is on the lookout. You got six really young street urban guys with afros running around talking to all the buyers.
2:26
Psst, I got some FUBU back at the hotel. I got FUBU back at the hotel. But like I said, just like LL Cool J was watching us, those buyers were watching us, because those kids were watching those videos. And we had already seeded a good amount of stuff out there. We were making our mistakes extremely small. We didn't go on to a bunch of advertising, and marketing, and branding, where we spent everything.
2:49
We had proof of concept. And out of that small hotel room in Las Vegas, we wrote $300,000 in orders. $300,000 in orders is more money than I ever thought that I would ever acquire in my entire life. You're talking about a kid who was making $30,000 or $25,000 a year, that's 10 years worth of work in one shot. In two days I wrote $300,000 worth of orders.
3:13
I remember on the flight home, I was counting that money and I was thinking about what I was going to buy with that money, all the things I was going to do with that money. And then it hit me like it hits everybody else. I have to actually make $300,000 worth of product now. I have to go out and find a way to source it, I have to go out to find a way to build it and ship it.
3:37
And I have to become a vendor of record. I have to become a merchant to take credit cards. I have to be able to take in cash and then I have to advertise. And who's going to manufacture it? Who's going to tag it? And that's when the real challenge of do you want to own a business comes into play. [MUSIC PLAYING]