How Daymond John Stays on Top of the Food Chain: From Shark Tank to Shark Gevity

We’ve seen him in his power suit in the iconic Shark Tank chair—sharp, witty, and always ready to invest. But beyond the screen, Daymond John’s influence spans presidential consulting for Barack Obama, to social media, and his next venture may be his most compelling yet.

BY LAURA VALLINA

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF JOHN

Daymond John’s latest creative evolution begins with a space. When I arrived at what appeared to be his garage studio, I realized I could not have been more wrong. What he’s building is a living ecosystem: part live-selling studio, part art gallery, part biohacking lab. It’s designed not for foot traffic, but for immediate global virtual reach.

“This is my representation,” John (56), a long-time Shark on ABC Network’s Shark Tank, explains. “Nobody’s going to come here physically; it’s just how I show up to the world now.”

The space brings together three lifelong passions that have quietly been converging for years: products, art, and biohacking. We all know John’s sixth sense for products, but this was business, modernized. Cameras and ring lights were positioned for live selling, or what John calls “QVC in your pocket,” a nod to platforms like Whatnot and TikTok Shop.

At this point, I became fully convinced livestream shopping isn’t a trend — it’s a shift. Because when John, one of the most influential investors and entrepreneurs of our time, is going live, that’s not experimentation. That’s the future.

“Was I really a designer?” he questions candidly. “I was a connector and a marketer.”

Live selling puts those skills front and center, cutting out unnecessary middlemen and giving creators, artists, and entrepreneurs direct access to their audiences.

Surprisingly, art didn’t enter John’s life as a business strategy, but as a solution to monotony. During the pandemic, after hundreds of virtual interviews and speaking engagements, he grew tired of the same branded backdrops. So he switched up the scenery — literally.

He began using art behind him as backdrops during interviews. Then something unexpected happened: artists started sending him pieces simply because their work was visible. “I’d tag them, or mention them casually on TMZ, and the artists started calling me saying, ‘I just sold that piece,'” he recalls.

What started organically has since evolved into Shark Art, a community-driven platform designed to uplift artists, especially those overlooked by traditional galleries. Although John is known for his hard truths, his genuine mentorship shines in each endeavor. He’s deeply aware of the struggles many artists face, particularly with addiction, financial instability, and exploitation.

“Artists don’t have the same safety nets as athletes or entertainers do,” he states. “When they make it, people are almost waiting for them to self-destruct.”

Shark Art brings accessible art into mainstream spaces, from galleries to mass retail, through a tiered system that ranges from exposure to full representation, often eliminating upfront licensing fees and instead sharing in success. It’s a model rooted in access, fairness, and sustainability — one that helps keep artists alive, not just relevant.

His latest chapters may catch others off guard — but not him. “Don’t think of me as the guy in the expensive suits,” he notes. “People think we were born like that.”

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“I worked at Red Lobster for five years while building FUBU,” he says proudly. “I wanted to be a reality star who had their own business. In my little world, I wanted to do what Bethenny Frankel did.”

Despite being one of the most recognizable investors in the world, John measures success differently. Out of more than 140 Shark Tank investments, only a handful became major wins. Bombas, the standout, went on to become the most successful Shark Tank company globally.

“But I failed at 135 of them,” he admits.

He wrote three books before they became New York Times bestsellers. He gave up speaking in 2003 before going on to become one of the most sought-after voices in business, averaging 150 speaking engagements a year. “My first serious relationship failed, then the 10 clothing lines I had failed, I quit my religion when I was younger, I had cancer and was unhealthy,” John admits.

But throughout what can be seen as losses, his life was rebuilt after each fall.

“Failure is the foundation,” he says. “That’s the part people don’t want to talk about.” The skepticism he encounters, often from the people closest to him, is not something he resists. He welcomes it.

“They push you back,” he reflects. “You need people who question you.”

After spending a day with John, I learned he doesn’t stop; he just recalibrates. But the secret to how he consistently locks in, levels up, and still has energy to spare? Biohacking. That’s how this shark stays on top of the food chain.

Ultimately, Shark Gevity, his new longevity-focused venture, evolved with a clear conviction that longevity can be accessible. Not everyone can afford cryo chambers or six-figure biohacking machines. Instead, Shark Gevity is built around scalable, everyday practices that anyone can adopt: cold showers instead of cryotherapy, reducing inflammation through diet and movement, practical strategies for achieving truly restorative sleep, and sharing information that empowers people to take control of their health.

Not everyone gets invited into a biohacker’s kitchen alongside his private chef, but Haute Living did. We left with answers to some of wellness’s most polarizing questions.

Avocado oil — healthy or not?

Skip most oils and butter altogether and opt for ghee, or clarified butter, in its most natural form.

Best LED mask?

Dr. Dennis Gross. John swears by it.

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Aside from all the businesses and ideas in motion, the most grounding force in John’s life is his relationship with his wife, Heather. Their bond isn’t rooted in spectacle, but in shared values and longevity rituals.

“Nothing in the world can get in between evolution,” he says at one point, almost offhand. “People can’t get in between it.” That belief — steady, inevitable growth — mirrors the way he speaks about his marriage. There’s no performative romance or overstatement.

“We just have a sincere love for each other,” he explains.

Their relationship flourished years before Shark Tank. When the show launched, Daymond went from traveling 60 days a year to nearly 250. “You’d think the honeymoon wears off,” he says. “It didn’t.”

What endured was consistency and the ability to let one another be fully themselves.

He’s coined a term for the way he and his wife move through it all together: “couple-gevity”—an idea that longevity isn’t a solo pursuit but a shared practice.

After returning home from a long trip, John slips into a superhuman recovery ritual. It begins with an hour in an oxygen chamber, a pressurized environment where concentrated oxygen is delivered at higher-than-normal pressure to help accelerate cellular repair, reduce inflammation, and restore energy after physical or cognitive strain.

From there, he transitions to the Demi bed, a high-performance recovery and sleep system designed to optimize the body’s reset, combining temperature regulation, gentle therapeutic stimulation, and deep-rest technology to bring the nervous system back into balance.

Then comes the moment they share.

John meets his wife beside a BioCharger, a device that emits a combination of light and subtle electrical frequencies designed to promote energy, circulation, and detoxification.

For 20 minutes, there is a strict no-phones, no-distractions rule (ignore it, and you risk a literal zap). The combination of the BioCharger and phones’ strong electromagnetic fields collide and knock phones into submission, screens going blank the moment they wander too close. Left with no choice but to sit side by side, they let the noise of the outside world fall away.

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If the BioCharger felt like the future, what came next felt like science fiction.

Inside a softly glowing room, Heather demonstrates one of their newest fascinations: the Ammortal Chamber. An immersive, multi-sensory environment that combines temperature contrast, light therapy, and frequency-based stimulation to support resilience, recovery, and long-term vitality. Part ritual, part technology, it’s designed to challenge the body just enough to remind it how to renew itself.

“It’s never the end,” he remarks. “It’s always just the beginning.”

At this chapter of his life, John is cultivating endurance. He’s proving that the most powerful empires aren’t built to peak, but to last. If longevity is the ultimate luxury, John is living it — one biohacking machine at a time.

Yet Daymond did acknowledge there was once a time he was less concerned about durability. Owning seven homes, various cars, and properties, he barely slept.

“I realized I wanted to reduce everything,” he shares.

That instinct, to strip life down to what actually matters, guides both his personal philosophy and his current ventures.

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“The more you own, the more it owns you,” he declares.

Longevity, to John, isn’t about extending life for the sake of it — it’s about clarity, presence, and energy.

My day with John began with art, moved through business, offered health lessons, and even gave us a glimpse into his marriage. Through it all, one truth kept resurfacing: as it turns out, longevity isn’t about living forever; it’s about living fully, every time life asks you to begin again.

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