Long before he launched what would grow to be the 6-billion-dollar hip-hop culture clothing line Fubu and starred in the hit ABC show "Shark Tank," Daymond John leveraged every dollar he could get his hands on to throw what he hoped would be a life-changing party.

The goal of the party was clear: John wanted to make money. Lots of it. He hoped the party would make him rich.

John's father left the family when John was 10, so John spent most of his childhood growing up in New York City with only his mother. Money was tight. They couldn't always afford to heat the apartment in winter.

John started his first business as a kid: He stole pencils from the boys in school he didn't like, painted them with the names of the girls in his class and sold them to the girls. Later he got a job distributing flyers for a new mall being built near his home in Hollis, Queens. When the mall opened, he started working there.

But while these jobs helped the family, they certainly weren't making John wealthy. So a teenage John developed a new plan: He would throw a hugely successful party on a boat.

To pull off the massive social event, one that John expected would turn his life around, he scraped together $20,000 by leveraging all of his credit cards and borrowing where he could. He spent every dime he could gather on one night in what was, he admits now, a real gamble.