Business Idea: FUBU

FUBU is a major line of sportswear and the company of the same name. The name is an acronym for “For Us, By Us”, referring that the product line was made for blacks, by blacks. Other suggested acronyms include “For Uganda By Uganda, or “Five Urban Brothers United” (referring to the five creators).

The company was founded in 1992 by entrepreneur Daymond John with a line of hats made in his house in Queens, New York. With seed money of around $5,000, John and a group of five neighborhood friends turned half of his house into a factory and the other half into living space for the five, which included J. Alexander Martin, Keith Perrin, and Carl Brown. In fact, the “05” motif commonly found on FUBU jerseys is a reference to these five founders of the clothing line.

FUBU staff started the company for their local youth community. The founders intended to compete with sportswear companies such as Nike, which use inner-city youth in New York and elsewhere to research what is cool, then make products from the feedback. FUBU felt that Nike was profiting from the authenticity of New York street fashion without giving enough back to the community, and that to this extent African-American culture was being exploited In targeting city youth and defining their competitors this way, FUBU stirred controversy as to whether the company intended to shut out non-blacks, although many people of other backgrounds wear their clothing. FUBU insists they are not intentionally exclusive, and their marketing targets all races.

The FUBU collection consists of T-shirts, rugby shirts, hockey and football jerseys, baseball caps, shoes and denim jeans. All are embroidered with the FUBU logo. Most of the products, such as the jeans, are imported from around the world. FUBU has now expanded to include various lines such as Platinum FUBU, FUBU footwear for men and women, intimate apparel, active wear, swimwear, watches, FUBU suits, and FUBU tuxedos. The Platinum FUBU collection also includes the Fat Albert and Harlem Globetrotters clothing lines.

At its peak, FUBU grossed over $350 million dollars in annual worldwide billings. FUBU have received several honors for their entrepreneurial achievements. These include two Congressional Awards, two NAACP Awards, the Pratt Institute Award, the Christopher Wallace Award, the Online Hip-Hop Award and a Citation of Honor from the Queens Borough President. Today, FUBU popularity steeply declined being actually one of the most unpopular urbanwear brands in the United States, but remains a competitive brand in the international market.

FUBU clothing is distributed by the South Korean company Samsung.

website: http://www.fubu.com/mainpage.html

Rags to Riches: Dani Johnson

 

Dani Johnson gained and lost significant sums before she learned about true success.

As part of their lifestyle, she and husband Hans have chosen to give away 90 percent of their income and live on the remaining 10 percent. This wasn’t always the case.

Today, Dani is a powerful speaker and motivator who lead others to life-changing success, but her early life in no way predicted this. Dani’s parents were drug addicts, and her step-dad violently abused and molested her. At about 13, Dani was invited to a church service and accepted Christ, but didn’t feel a lot of His love through His people.

She got pregnant at seventeen, refused to have an abortion, and gave the baby up for adoption. This was a very emotional time in her life when she was looking for forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. Instead, she felt judged and condemned by people at her church. That’s when she decided she wanted nothing to do with God if this is what it meant to be a Christian.

As a teen, Dani began to find success as an entrepreneur and vigorously sought to gain fulfillment through material possessions. At 21, she became one of the top sales people in her company. Around this time she met a man and quickly married him. They moved to Hawaii.

Her new husband turned out to be a con man, who left her broke and with a huge credit card debt. She then lost her job and was soon evicted from her apartment. Dani was homeless and living out of her car with only $2.03 to her name.

This was the lowest point of her life. She was depressed and suicidal. Dani fell into drugs and went to a beach party. She snorted cocaine, and was jumping in the ocean when she heard a voice say, Pick up your mat and walk. This word of God changed her life and direction; she knew it was time to rise up and do something.

Using limited resources and the burning desire to succeed, Dani started a business out of the trunk of her car and a phone booth, and made $250, 000 in 12 months. She rededicated her life to Christ and became a millionaire at 23.

SPIRIT DRIVEN SUCCESS

The Johnsons went through several ups and downs but learned many valuable lessons.Earlier as a business trainer, Dani taught people how to become wealthy in a worldly way. However, as she drew closer to the Lord, she thought what she was teaching people was not useful for God’s Kingdom. Eight years ago, she retired from her consulting business. She was doing training seminars for companies. She got sick and tired of selling the world in a pretty package, and didn’t feel like she was able to speak freely for God.

She became a full-time mother after she quit and found that she was miserable because there was a void from not being able to do what she loved to do. However, four years ago she received a mandate from God and her life has never been the same. Dani thought she would never speak or teach again, but she says, God gave it back…this time it was renewed, refreshed, and refined. Today she has over 100,000 clients and she’s working part-time.

One of the first big changes in Dani’s life was how she saw God and her business no longer would be separated. She realized that God is looking for people to rise up out of the bounds of religion and straight into a walk with Him and Him alone, to do the mandate that He has given. God has called many people to succeed in the marketplace.

She also learned that Christians falsely see God as a poverty lottery God.Poverty and lottery both nullify the laws of success that are written in the Bible. Dani says one cannot sow a seed and sit, then expect something to happen — it’s against the laws of success in the Bible. The Bible says ask, seek, and knock. These are action words. So people give to God and wait for their blessings, which can sometimes be like playing the lottery.

Dani uses the example of some teachings that say, God’s going to cancel your debt this year. God is not going to cancel somebody’s debt that is irresponsible and continues to be, she says. God gives a person whatever he/she can be trusted with, like the parable of the talents in the book of Matthew. The person with five talents turned their talents into ten.

THE BATTLE

Dani says we fight a two-front battle with money, and we need to understand its spiritual significnce.

Making money is spiritual warfare. Your ungodly competitor will take profits and use them for his own glory, greed, and gluttony. But God desires to give the profits to someone He can trust…you, the Christian, to use for His purposes.

Your influence. Financial wealth gives you influence, which can in turn generate a message that people are hearing.

Profits When you give your first 10 percent to God, as He requires, your profits are going into God’s Kingdom.

GOD’S FORMULA FOR WEALTH

Based on certain scripture passages, Dani says there are essentially ten steps associated with God’s formula for wealth:

1. Don’t love money more than you love Your God.

2. Work with a spirit of excellence as unto Him.

3. Know that the money that He is blessing you with is for a much bigger purpose than just your stuff. God wants to bless you with stuff, but He doesn’t want the ‘stuff’ to own your life.

The Lord taught Dani this lesson the hard way. When her family prospered early on, they were living in a 6,000 square foot house and made a fortune. God told Dani to sell everything they had and move into a smaller house.God provided a house for them to live in down the street that wasn’t as extravagant.It was in this house that God set Dani free from thebondage of stuff. He showed her everything that was in her that wasn’t of God, a very humbling experience.

4. You have to know that it’s God’s money (It’s not yours).

5. Be generous. Don’t hoard. Don’t be stingy. God wants to bless you with more, but He won’t unless you’re a giver. He loves a cheerful giver.

6. Give into the right soil. You have to think about where you are sowing your seed. If you want your money to return back to you a hundred fold, you have to sow it into fertile ground.

7. You need to realize that there is a time of plenty and a preparation for a time of famine. If you’re in a season of famine and you are prospering where you’re planted and you can be trusted with what you have, you will gain more. If you’re in a season of famine, you’d better take care of everything you have. Have a spirit of excellence during this time and God will cause you to prosper when other people are failingf inancially.

8. You have to prosper where you’re planted.

9.You need to ask and ask big. Ask God for His provision and ask for help. Ask and God will give it to you.

10. You need to understand that it is okay to fail.

TEACHING OTHERS

Dani’s reputation as a marketing professional grew as her business grew. People soon offered to pay her for her knowledge. She started a training company spending one weekend a month to teach others her business skills. Attendance at her training seminars grew as people got good results by applying what they learned.

Through her coaching and training seminars, Dani has developed several top producing sales forces. The foundation of her teachings and principles are biblically based, and you won’t hear anything from Dani that she hasn’t personally used or done herself. Dani regularly coaches business people on leadership from successful executives, 6, 7 figure earners as well as newbie entrepreneurs. She teaches principles focused on the issues of overcoming fear, business growth, time management, relationship marketing, prospecting, closing, teamwork, motivating others, wealth development, spiritual issues, and more.

Dani is now married with four children by her husband, Hans. She was reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption, who is married with two children (Dani’s granddaughters).

Author’s website: http://www.danijohnson.com/video.php

source: http://cbn.com/700club/guests/bios/dani_johnson042108.aspx

Rags to riches: Ryan Blair

Ryan Blair grew up in an environment all too familiar within today’s American society. As a child, Blair was the product of an appalling upbringing. Abandoned, neglected, and abused, his story of triumph over tragedy, to become a highly successful entrepreneur and industry visionary, inspires his audience to overcome life’s struggles, living the American dream of financial and emotional independence. In his upcoming memoirs “Uniting Minds” (Spring 2005), Blair describes his early suburban childhood as content and worriless. But at the age of 11 his environment changed and his whole world was flipped upside due to his drug and alcohol addicted parents. Blair’s story shares the emotional lows of a young boy who had it all, and then had it all taken away being forced to live in poverty and on his own. “Uniting Minds” details his first fifty memories as the most terrible experiences a young boy could endure ranging from his mother’s attempted suicide to later rescuing his mother from his fathers attempt to murder her. However, Blair did not let this adversity hold him down for long. Blair takes the reader on a mind numbing journey through the dark area of his past into the brightness of the present. By 22, Blair overcame great obstacles to live a life that far exceed his wildest dreams.

As a result of Blair’s early childhood he adapted some poor behaviors and beliefs about life. By the time he was a young adult his path was headed in the wrong direction, he had been kicked out of high school, couldn’t read beyond a remedial level and considered by many to be a rebellious troublemaker. By his own admission he was a single decision away from prison or death. For a period of time, Blair’s future did not seem promising. However, a mentor intervened and rescued him from his disempowering beliefs and poverty stricken environment. Blair’s mentor saw in him something that no one else previously had; he saw potential. His mentor began working with him, helping him set and achieve his goals, creating empowering beliefs and developing the self confidence necessary to pursue a career as an entrepreneur. Leveraging his new found attitude, at 21 years old Blair founded 24×7 Tech, his first startup, applying his street smarts and natural ability to lead people he grew the company to over $1MM in sales within just 12 months. By the end of his second year as an entrepreneur he successfully sold his interest in the company and achieved his first independence event. Yet, he wanted more, so he risked everything and in July of 2001, he founded his second venture, SkyPipeline. This time Blair wanted to test his capabilities and take his game to the “next level.” He wanted to prove that he could build an industry pioneering wireless communications company. To do so he would need to raise millions of dollars and that’s exactly what he did. In his book he describes the process that he used to convince the greatest venture capitalist in the world to back him. With just a few months of fundraising in the most difficult money raising economy ever, (just after September 11th 2001), Blair raised millions in venture capital and began his mentorship under one of the venture industries’ greatest capitalists of all time. Under Blair’s visionary leadership, SkyPipeline became the fastest growing most profitable Wireless Broadband Communications Company in the USA and was named the 29th fastest growing company in Southern California. In March, 2004 less than three years after founding the company, SkyPipeline was acquired by Nextweb in a $25,000,000 transaction.

Blair was recently named to the Business Times “Forty under Forty” and “Who’s Who in Tech & Telecom Enterprises”. He has been published and featured in many prestigious publications and news services such as the LA Times, Daily News, MSNBC, and CNBC.

Blair has conducted hundreds of lectures and seminars to leading corporations, universities, colleges, high schools, youth organizations and conferences. In addition to writing and speaking, he is an executive producer for his upcoming documentary about the start of his 3rd company PathConnect.

Blair’s upcoming media engagements include an interview on the October 4th award wining television show “Voices of Tomorrow” he will also be a guest host on the 4th season kickoff show of KidsTalk TV and has several upcoming interviews in national newspapers and magazines.

Ryan is on the board of directors of the Los Angles based KidsTalk Foundation and is an executive producer for the foundation’s award wining television show KidsTalk. KidsTalk is an educational TV talk show designed to provide an intelligent alternative for youth to voice their opinions in family TV programming. The show has garnered ten Telly Awards, bringing the total number of accolades the show has received to 45 awards across the USA.

Blair is an expert speaker in several key areas that include: Inspiration, Influence, Leadership, Overcoming Obstacles, Becoming Successful, Becoming an Entrepreneur, Raising Venture Capital, Goal Setting, Sales & Marketing, and Technology and Communications. Having experience in a variety of subjects, one of his key abilities is to customize a speech or a workshop to fit his audience’s specific needs.

A partial client list includes: MIT Entrepreneurial Forum, World Broadband Wireless Forum 2002 & 2003 Keynotes, Wireless Communications Association Keynote, Pepperdine University, California State Northridge University/School of Education, Westlake Village High School, Thousand Oaks High School, Newbury Park High School, Conejo Valley High School, Remax, Century 21, Hyatt, Holiday Inn, Xircom, Intel, Ambertel, Del Rey Laser, CalNet Technologies, Tri-Core Securities and many more.

Blair’s most popular speech is the true story of a boy born into a violently abusive, drug addicted family. This sad tale does not end in tragedy however. It rises above the situations to show how a challenge can turn into the foundation for major success. Blair inspires people (both young and old) to leverage the challenges and obstacles of life to become successful. He sets an example of how he overcame his personal obstacles himself. Having reached a high-level of success at such a young age, Blair’s story is an example of how a person can go from rags to riches in just a few years with the right tools and attitude.

His personality is passionate and inspiring. His speaking style is humorous and easy to identify with, creating a feeling of comfort and connection with his audience. He awakens people to the simple formula he discovered to be successful. Set goals, create empowering beliefs, focus and get the right mentors behind you. You will be amazed at the emotional journey that Blair will take you on, in merely an hour this empowering story of triumph encourages all to think of themselves and their mistakes not as a negative but rather as an advantage in life.

Source material: http://www.happytalk.org/ryanblair.html