Editor's note: This is the fourth installment in a weeklong series on branding. Earlier this week, Portfolio.com ranked the top 25 brands for small- to mid-sized businesses; offered a design expert's take on branding and interactivity; and looked at a new trend of rival hotel brands competing side-by-side, literally.

You have to be able to describe your brand in three words, says Daymond John, one of the co-founders of the successful apparel line FUBU and part of the panel of tycoons on ABC’s Shark Tank.

“If it’s BMW, it’s fine, German, engineering,” John says. “If it’s TBS, it’s ‘we know drama.’” When asked to describe Brand Daymond, the 41-year-old simply says “thinker, morality, determination.” The thinker element he attributes to his mom, who encouraged him “to think big and keep an open mind.” The morality aspect he learned the hard way by hanging out with a less-than-savory crowd growing up in New York City. And determination is one that others use to describe him.

That determination—and some good motherly advice—is what helped him start a fashion empire with FUBU, the “for us, by us” brand that was loved by entertainers, rappers, urban, and suburban people alike. And it’s also what led him to write two business books, the latest The Brand Within: The Power of Branding from Birth to the Boardroom, debuts today, and John says it aims to teach anyone from a budding entrepreneur to a CEO about the critical importance of branding.

“My mom taught me to always think big, because it takes the same amount of energy to think big as it does to think small,” says John. “She also told me that I won’t get rich off my day job. She knew that my goal was to at least make a million dollars, but she wanted me to go about it the right way.”

As John developed his clothing line in his 20s, he found out that just being focused on the money can lead the business to crash and burn. “Those companies who don’t understand what their brand is and what it stands for tend to be those who are just in it for the money,” he says. “If you look at the successful entertainer/designers like Gwen Stefani, Puff Daddy, and Jay-Z, they were fashionable before they decided to have a fashion line. Now, if Eminem tried to get into the designing thing and he was selling suits, it wouldn’t resonate with customers because they know it’s something he would never wear. They won’t buy it.”

So when John is shopping for a new investment, buying into the concept is at the top of his mind. But he says he considers the value of the people behind the brand when making his decisions. “The first thing you invest in when putting money into a brand is the person in front of you,” he says. “This is a person you’re going to be dealing with anywhere from the next six months to hopefully the next 20 years. So ask yourself if you want to deal with this person for the duration.”

More recently, John has looked at a parade of entrepreneurs who have faced him and the other four big fish of Shark Tank looking for funding. In the show’s first season, John agreed to invest $605,000 in nine companies—among them, a three-way venture with fellow sharks real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran and infomercial king Kevin Harrington, for Mr. Tod’s Pie Factory. Since their investments, sales at the pie factory have tripled and Mr. Tod has sold tens of thousands of pies on QVC.

Working with Daymond can be an intense experience. Says Corcoran, "my first impression of him was that he’s a cat who’s highly wound. But as I got to know him over the course of taping the first few shows, I realized that what I had taken as quiet intensity was actually hyper-focused listening. Every detail is important to him."

John is quick to point out that he knows what entrepreneurs feel when they face him either as a Shark Tank panelist or in his boardroom when they’re pitching his own newly-launched branding and marketing company, which happens to be called Shark Branding.

“I didn’t just wake up with all of my contacts and business opportunities. I started somewhere, and I’m not going to say that it was an easy process. But my approach is that if you’re doing something you love, it doesn’t feel like work,” John explains. “That said, being an entrepreneur is really about being in there for the long haul, having drive and determination, and not wanting to give up.”

Not that he hasn’t suffered any missteps of his own. FUBU first came onto the fashion scene in 1993, and at its peak in 1998, sales topped $350 million.

John and his three partners had some major contacts in the music world and with some quick hustling were able to dress big-shot rappers, like LL Cool J, in their music videos.

But the FUBU brand grew too fast, and eventually its value stumbled. Counterfeit goods flooded the market, helping to push margins lower. “It got to the point where FUBU took its course. People had 10 years of it in their closet, and there were a lot of other brands starting to come in at the time.”

John and his partners pulled out of the U.S. market in 2003 and focused on sales abroad—where the brand was coveted and held in higher esteem, not to mention that profit margins were higher and counterfeiters less of a problem. The gamble paid off. While stateside revenues tumbled to $150 million, overseas results (the brand is sold in over 20 countries including South Africa, Turkey, Korea, China, Philippines and Italy) came in at $200 million in 2009.

Seven years after it left the U.S. market, John thinks now is the time for a revival. Relaunching in July under the new name FUBU Legacy, the company carries the tagline “Trend is short, style is forever.”

How did he know consumers were ready for the line to return? He turned to social media. "Twitter is a vital tool for any business," he argues. "I put on my thick skin and hash-marked FUBU to see what people were saying. It's like having a focus group where you know they're telling you the truth because you didn't just pay four kids to come up to your office and talk to you about your brand."

His adroit use of Twitter is one of the elements of his success, says Corcoran. "He uses Twitter very effectively. People tweeting back and forth with him feel that they know him intimately," she explains. "And that's because Daymond tells it like it is no matter what medium he's on. Be it TV, online or in person, with Daymond, what you see is what you get."

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Romy Ribitzky is an associate editor at Portfolio.com.