Daymond John runs three companies and invests in dozens more while traveling 250 days a year, relying on intermittent fasting, biohacking, and ruthless time management to sustain the pace.
The founder of FUBU and longtime investor on ABC's Shark Tank starts his mornings at 6:15 without reaching for his phone. No breakfast, either. John practices intermittent fasting, restricting all his meals to a six-hour window between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., and once a week he extends that fast to a full 24 to 36 hours. It is a routine that reflects a broader shift among entrepreneurs who view physical optimization not as a luxury but as infrastructure for high performance.
As Business Insider recently detailed in its Power Hours series, the 57-year-old built his routine around the reality of managing FUBU, his brand management agency The Shark Group, and a coworking space called Blueprint + Co, all while maintaining an active investment portfolio spanning more than 30 brands. That portfolio includes companies like Bombas socks and the custom apparel platform Bubs Naturals, investments that require ongoing founder engagement. John meets with founders from his portfolio twice a month for roughly six hours at a stretch.
His mornings, when he is not on the road, follow a deliberate sequence. After checking his phone only for emergencies, he walks his nine-year-old daughter to school, then walks for about an hour to his Miami office. Physical movement is woven throughout his day rather than siloed into a single gym session. He does explosive exercises, squats, box jumps, push-ups, for 15 to 20 minutes whenever he can fit them in, and he does it without a personal trainer.
John's interest in longevity goes beyond casual wellness. His home is equipped with commercial-grade biohacking technology: red light therapy beds, electric muscle stimulation devices, and other recovery tools that were once confined to professional sports facilities. The global longevity and anti-aging market is projected to surpass $93 billion by 2027, according to Research and Markets, and a significant share of that growth is being driven not by healthcare systems but by individual consumers, many of them entrepreneurs and executives, willing to spend aggressively on maintaining cognitive and physical edge.
The logic is straightforward. If your net worth and your company's trajectory depend on your decision-making capacity for the next two or three decades, then investing in recovery, sleep quality, and metabolic health is not an indulgence. It is risk mitigation. Figures like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and biohacking advocate Dave Asprey have popularized this mindset, but it has since trickled down to a much wider tier of founders and operators who see longevity protocols as essential as cloud infrastructure or legal counsel.
The Operational Realities Behind the Routine
What makes John's schedule worth examining is not the biohacking itself but the context in which it operates. He built FUBU from his mother's house in Hollis, Queens, after she mortgaged her home to provide $100,000 in seed funding. Within six years, the company was generating $350 million in revenue. That trajectory, from sewing wool caps at $10 each to running a global apparel brand, required a tolerance for risk and sustained effort that his current routine is explicitly designed to protect.
His eating habits reflect the same utilitarian approach. Lunch is not a break. At 2 p.m., protein, usually fish or beef, arrives at his office alongside fresh produce. No processed foods, no alcohol. Three cold-brew coffees are spaced throughout the day, supplemented by unsweetened iced tea and an all-natural energy drink. A chef delivers prepared meals to his home once or twice a week for dinner. The goal is to eliminate decision fatigue around food entirely.
Evenings follow a similarly structured cadence. John aims to be home by 7:30 p.m. to put his daughter to bed. After that comes time with his wife, followed by sessions in his biohacking equipment. The routine is engineered to maximize both family presence and physical recovery, acknowledging that one supports the other over the long term.
For founders watching this space, the takeaway is not to replicate John's fasting window or buy a red light bed. It is to recognize that sustainable high output requires deliberate systems. The entrepreneurs who perform best over decades tend to be those who treat their own biology as an asset requiring the same maintenance and investment as any other part of their business. Expect longevity-obsessed routines like this to become standard executive infrastructure, not fringe behavior, as the startup ecosystem continues to reward endurance over sprints.
