#441: John Paul DeJoria — From Homelessness to Building Paul Mitchell and Patrón Tequila

John Paul DeJoria — From Homelessness to Building Paul Mitchell and Patrón Tequila | Brought to you by eero http://eero.com/tim and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions http://linkedin.com/tfs "Don't limit yourself in life by your age, or what you think you're capable of doing. You're always as old as your mind leads you to believe." — John Paul DeJoria John Paul DeJoria is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who has launched multiple global enterprises and is renowned as one of the “100 Greatest Living Business Minds https://www.facebook.com/peacelovehappinessfoundation/posts/john-paul-was-named-one-of-the-100-greatest-living-business-minds-by-forbes-http/1422597961122382/” by Forbes. John Paul DeJoria’s rags-to-riches biography is incredible and truly exemplifies the American dream. Once homeless, he has struggled against the odds to craft a unique life and many unique businesses. In 1980, John Paul and hair stylist Paul Mitchell converted a partially borrowed $700 into John Paul Mitchell Systems https://www.paulmitchell.com/, which is today the largest privately held salon hair care line. In 1989, he co-founded Patrón https://www.patrontequila.com/, the first ultra-premium tequila, and now the world’s number-one ultra-premium tequila, which he sold to Bacardi in 2018. John Paul went on to co-found John Paul Pet http://johnpaulpet.com/, ROKiT https://rokitphones.com/us/, and many other enterprises. He has signed The Giving Pledge https://givingpledge.org/, along with others like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, as a formal promise to continue giving back, and he has also established JP’s Peace, Love & Happiness Foundation https://www.peacelovehappinessfoundation.org/ as a hub for his charitable investments, which span the core values of his companies: sustainability, social responsibility, and animal-friendliness. This episode was recorded in March of 2020. Due to technical issues, we moved from Skype to phone partway through the interview. This episode is brought to you by eero http://eero.com/tim! eero http://eero.com/tim is the WiFi your home deserves, blanketing it with fast, reliable WiFi. And not just inside but outside too. eero extends your coverage so you can enjoy the nicer weather and get work done from your deck. eero http://eero.com/tim eliminates poor coverage, dead spots, and buffering. You’ll have a consistently strong signal wherever you need it. eero http://eero.com/tim sets up in minutes, plugging right into your modem or modem/router box. And you manage it from a super-simple app with some very cool features—like pausing the WiFi for dinner and receiving alerts if any device attempts to join your network. Go to eero.com/tim http://eero.com/tim and enter code “tim” at checkout to get free next-day shipping with your order! 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• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Eero, E E R O. I love Eero. And I don't know about you guys, but since COVID hit, Wi-Fi has also taken a hit because everyone's home and spending much more time home at least. And my girlfriend and I were using the Wi-Fi constantly. We noticed dead spots throughout the house. Things would drop off, calls, recordings, you name it. It was a huge pain in the ass. And ultimately, I grabbed Eero, which was originally recommended to me by Kevin Rose. And it is the Wi-Fi your home deserves. It blankets it with fast, reliable Wi-Fi, not just inside, but outside too. So you're creating a mesh network and it can extend your coverage so you can enjoy the nicer weather out on your deck, get work

• 1:07Tim Ferriss?

  done wherever. So this has been a absolute game changer for me. It's super, super easy to set up. It sets up in minutes. I, despite having been involved with tech for so long, am not really fantastic at setting things up. And this was dead simple. You just plug it right into your modem or modem router box and you manage it from a super simple app with some very cool features like pausing the Wi-Fi for dinner, receiving alerts if any device attempts to join your network. It's really, really easy. Eero eliminates poor coverage, dead spots, and buffering. You'll have a consistently strong signal wherever you need it. So for instance, my girlfriend's upstairs, I'm downstairs, and we had very erratic coverage prior to using it. Now it's very, very consistent. Apple

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  HomeKit users, Eero's got you covered with enhanced privacy and safety controls that give connected devices only the permissions they need to do what you want in your home and on the internet. So Eero has fixed my issues with Wi-Fi at home. You can get your Wi-Fi issues fixed as soon as tomorrow. Go to ero.com/tim and enter code

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  Tim, T I M, at checkout to get free next day shipping with your order. That's E E R O dot com slash Tim. Code Tim at checkout to get your Euro delivered with free next day shipping. You must use this URL to receive this offer. One more time, check it out. Euro dot com slash Tim. Code Tim.

• 2:34Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Right now, the world is changing, a lot is changing, and businesses are adapting in different ways. So in these uncertain times, how do you ensure your marketing goals are met? How do you ensure your marketing gets the results that you need and want? With more than 62 million decision makers on LinkedIn, you're able to connect with the right business leaders, as well as people who are looking to find products, services, and education to help their companies. It's no surprise that 78% of B2B marketers rate LinkedIn as the most effective social media platform at helping their organization achieve specific objectives. LinkedIn Marketing can help you build campaigns using objective-based advertising, allowing you to customize the campaign experience based on the action you want your customer to take. In other words, that's true whether you're trying to drive clicks to a website, generate leads,

• 3:19Tim Ferriss?

  or even generate video views. My team, that is, the Tim Ferriss Show team, is using the platform right now on LinkedIn to invite people to sign up for my Five Bullet Friday newsletter. LinkedIn has the targeting tools that can help you focus on reaching your precise audience, down to their job title, company name, location, and more. In fact, you can reach people you already know based on who has visited your site or who you've contacted in the past. LinkedIn Ads can help all types of businesses get the marketing results that they need today. See how LinkedIn can help you with a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign. Just visit LinkedIn dot com slash T F S. That's LinkedIn dot com slash T F S. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by AG1,

• 4:04Tim Ferriss?

  the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement? And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim.

• 4:49Tim Ferriss?

  That's drink AG1, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 5:02Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and squirrels. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where it's my job every episode to interview and deconstruct world-class performers. In other words, to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on, that you can apply to your own lives. This episode has a lot. There are a lot of strategies, a lot of tactics, a lot of incredible stories. And my guest is John Paul DeJoria, D-E-J-O-R-I-A. John Paul DeJoria is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who has launched multiple global enterprises and is renowned as one of the 100 Greatest Living Business Minds by Forbes. John Paul DeJoria's Rags to Riches bio is truly incredible.

• 5:45Tim Ferriss?

  It exemplifies the American dream in a lot of ways. Once homeless, he has struggled against the odds to craft a unique life and many unique businesses that you know. In 1980, John Paul and hairstylist Paul Mitchell converted a partially borrowed $700 Into John Paul Mitchell Systems, which is today the largest privately held salon hair care line. In 1989, doing something totally different, he co-founded Patron, the first ultra-premium tequila, and now the world's number one ultra-premium tequila, which he sold to Bacardi in 2018. John Paul went on to co-found John Paul Pet, Rocket, and many other enterprises. He's done a lot, and he continues to do a lot. He's also signed the Giving Pledge, along with others like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, as a formal

• 6:29Tim Ferriss?

  promise to continue giving back. And he has established JP's Peace, Love, and Happiness Foundation as a hub for his charitable investments, which span the core values of his companies: sustainability, social responsibility, and animal friendliness. This episode was recorded in March of 2020, and due to some technical issues we ran into, we moved partway through from Skype to phone. So you will notice that transition. There is a lot of actionable advice in this conversation, and John Paul does not disappoint. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with none other than John Paul DeJoria.

• 7:11Tim Ferriss?

  John Paul, welcome to the show.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Well, thank you, Tim. Nice to be here on your show. You've got a great show, and you're helping a lot of people out along the way by giving them good, positive direction.

• 7:21Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you, sir. I have looked forward to this and been looking forward to this for at least a year, probably two years now. And we have a mutual friend, Robert Rodriguez, who's certainly a fixture here in Austin, longtime resident. And I thought we would start, this might seem like a strange place to start, but start with a text exchange that I was having with him not long ago, where I was asking him about topics or questions that we might explore off the beaten path. And one thing that stood out and that he highlighted was that he saw a picture of you, shown by your wife, from last December at a Christmas party where you and Smokey Robinson were showing feats of physicality.

• 8:06Tim Ferriss?

  And Robert said that his mind was blown because it looked Like you were doing full planches and moves that you might only see at the top levels of gymnastics. Could you speak to fitness in your life?

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Sure, you bet, you bet you. In fact, Smokey, by the way, I'm seventy five, be seventy six here in a few more months or a few more weeks. Smokey's about eighty and he's unbelievably fit. Now, what people have to know is this, and I'm going to quote an old blues friend of mine, old blues singer. He died about a decade ago. I was at his funeral. That's John Lee Hooker. I knew John Lee for maybe forty years before he passed on. And John Lee would call me for the last seven years on my birthday, every year, as well as my wife. He calls on her birthday and he make up some blues riff and sing it to us.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  And for those last seven years, my daughter Alexis, a race car driver, and I went to his house, whether he was at his Long Beach house or San Jose house, to hang out with him on his birthday. So he called, he said, JP, I want you to record this. I said, okay. He never asked me to record anything. So we went out and bought one of these twenty nine dollar recorders you plug into your telephone. So you can record the conversation on a cassette tape and we did. So he made up a blues riff, a really cool blues riff. He kind of made it up as he went along the way singing. And then he stopped in the middle of it. Now, what I'm going to tell you is quite amazing because John Lee Hooker was illiterate until the day he died. Couldn't even write out his own name, just his initials, illiterate to the day he died.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  In the middle of this blues riff, he stopped and said, remember, you will always be as old as your mind leads you to believe. And then went right back to the blues riff again. Smokey, my dear buddy, Smokey Robinson, knew that he wants to be on stage and he's one of the best performers and best singers in the world, the world's ever known. Smokey knows he's got to be fit. So Smokey learned along the time in his life, no matter what age he is, that if he were to do not only sit-ups, but raises feet up in the air, lay flat and raise your feet up in the air, which really tightens up your entire core. If he keeps on doing that, by gosh, he's going to do it for a long time. He's 80, he's doing it beautifully. He looks like a gymnastics person. When I was in high

• 10:27Speaker 03

  school, 16 and 17 years old, I was in gymnastics. My thing was the pommel horse, the side horse, the rope climb. But I also learned how to do things like from a handstand, go into a full lever, where your whole body is parallel with the ground, and you're holding yourself up with actually 10 fingertips, two hands, that's it. So what I did was, I started doing that, oh gosh, I'd say maybe 20 years ago, once or twice a year, I would do it. And then I was with a lot of super cool people. My buddy Matthew McConaughey had his birthday, and I went to his birthday. And these guys were so fit, it's incredible. Matthew being a nice guy, I was in a tank top, we were in the middle of the desert, and with 50 of

• 11:08Speaker 03

  his best pals. And he kind of rubbed me down with oil on my shoulders, saying, JP, here, let's put some oil on you. And all those guys were lifting weights, they were all buff. These guys looked like Mr. America. But you know, Matthew McConaughey is a very, you know, well-preserved, very buff person himself. Anyways, they said, JP, you know, lift 20, 30 pounds, lift whatever you can. I said, I bet I can do something you guys can't do. He goes, wait a minute. He stopped, he brought everybody over, right? And I did exactly what you saw in that picture. In other words, I was able to raise myself up with my two fingers, with my two hands, totally parallel with the ground. Nobody else could do it. So when Smokey and I got together over at his house around the holidays, we were visiting each other, his wife, my wife, and some dear friends, we both did that, let's get our

• 11:51Speaker 03

  feet up in the air together. And we did that. And right afterwards, I went into that full plank, expanded in the air. But the whole thing is this, don't limit yourself in life by your age, or what you think you're capable of doing. You're always as old as your mind leads you to believe. And there's a lot of things you could do if you truly believe you could do it. And if you can't do it now, do little portions of it until you can do

• 12:13Tim Ferriss?

  That's incredible. He, he meaning Robert, described you as looking like Spider-Man. What does your weekly exercise routine look like if, if you have a somewhat consistent routine?

• 12:26Speaker 03

  It's not really consistent. I'd say though, probably three times a week. I will do what they call Navy SEAL pushups, these things you hold on to and twist. And I'll do maybe 25 of them, two, three times a week. That's about the extent of it. Maybe once or twice a month, I'll pick up 25 pounds in each hands and you know, do a couple of curls or something that takes me a minute and a half. And that's the extent of it.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  I walk a lot and I walk fast.

• 12:55Tim Ferriss?

  You walk a lot, you walk fast.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 12:57Tim Ferriss?

  I think walking is definitely underrated. And what does your diet look like?

• 13:01Speaker 03

  My diet is probably 90% to 95% vegetarian. I still, you know, like my fish, uh, my shrimp, uh, my, uh, organic, free range, no antibiotic chicken. But I'm pulling away from that. In fact, I used to eat a little bit of meat, but I'm pulling away from that also. So I think and eventually it'll be more vegetarian with just a little bit of fish in there, but much more vegetarian. I think that's where it's going to end up. And a lot of people think that, I think because of whatever old school medical people ever said is you gotta have meat in your body to be strong. But then again, I said, well, wait a minute, an elephant is the strongest animal on the planet.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  It eats no meat. Whales eat krill. They don't even eat fish. And they're pretty strong too. And I believe to the best of my knowledge that apes, monkeys, gorillas, who are very, very strong are vegetarians. So that I'm kind of changing my eating habits. I don't, I don't think man was made to eat meat. And, uh, I didn't believe that till more recently. So I'm kind of changing in that direction.

• 14:06Tim Ferriss?

  I've had a guest on the podcast, a previous world champion in Olympic, uh, or say world record holder in Olympic weightlifting named Jersey Gregorik, originally from Poland, who also, uh, primarily for prostate, uh, reasons, to lower inflammatory markers, has moved more to a vegetarian diet. And he is one of the fittest humans I know. So certainly there are ways, I think, uh, to. Deviate from a meat heavy diet without a doubt. I'd love to jump back in time.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  Can I go before you do that, can I go to back and die? Cause it's something good to share with everybody.

• 14:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, please.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Oatmeal is one of the, I eat oatmeal almost every morning. And what I've done here is because apples are very good for you. If you take a whole apple and you'll of course, cut out the core and chop it into little pieces. Cook it with your oatmeal. Cook it with the oatmeal. Put a little bit of honey on it. Number one, you've got one of the most greatest foods ever, an apple in you to start your day. And oatmeal is one of the best things ever for your system and clearing you out. Another thing too, and you could get it over the internet. It's called daily restore, like R E S T O R, you know, restore, restore some daily restore. It's a probiotic that's made up of, I believe it's nine probiotics and, oh God, I want to say maybe just as many enzymes.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  But they're doing research with it right now where it's found to do things that are so unbelievable to the immune system. It's even hard to believe, but if you go online, they have their medical research on there. You can look at it. But I've been taking those also, these super probiotics that they make, that daily restore makes that are just phenomenal. I mean, there's, I haven't had a cold, I don't think in, in 25, 30 years, I haven't even had a cold.

• 15:53Tim Ferriss?

  Is there anything else that you consume on a daily basis or do on a daily basis besides the oatmeal?

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Very good. Most days, not all, but most days I have a nice glass or two of a good red wine.

• 16:07Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have a favorite wine?

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Well, I have, there's quite a few. I have quite a few. Yeah, there's, there's some really good ones out there from Italy, from France. And from the United States, there's some really good ones out there, really good ones out there. So I'll let everybody take their choice. For me, I would say from, from the United States of America wine. I like a Camus private reserve. Camus is a good red wine, but their private reserve Cabernet is really incredible. That's a really good one. And there's others there too. There's other really good wines out there. You know, the Chateau Lafitte Rothschilds, the Chateau Margaux are very good too. But you know, even though you go to South Africa, they've got good wines out of Australia.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Good wines are coming. I even had a great wine out of Chile and a great wine out of, of Spain. So there's some really good red wines out there. Try and get them without any sulfates in them. They're better.

• 17:00Tim Ferriss?

  Let's strike a contrast with the Kamis Private Reserve and jump to a quote that I read in research for this conversation, which may or may not be accurate, but it's, we'll jump from Kamis Private Reserve to 27 cents. So the quote I have in front of me is attributed to your mother saying to your brother and yourself, quote, "You know, between us, we only have 27 cents, but we have food in the refrigerator, we have our little garden out back, and we're happy, so we're rich." Can you put that in context?

• 17:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I sure can. We grew up with very, very little. It was my mother, we had a deadbeat dad. I never saw him after two years old until I was a teenager, still a deadbeat dad. Anyways, so it was really my mom struggling to raise two boys.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  So my mom really struggled a lot to raise those kids. She worked in downtown LA designing hats. But from the time I was 11 years old, my brother was 13, we had paper routes with the LA Examiner in the morning. We give our mom just about all the money we made out of the paper routes, so we could have a little better way of life, because it was a bit of a struggle. So one day, we were home, and my mom said, and there's a lot of love in my house. Mom was just the most loving mom, and she did everything. She took the place of a mom and dad both. She was just great. Anyway, she said, "Boys, let's see how much money we have, because we have food in the refrigerator, we have food on the shelves, and we have our little garden around back, and it's the weekend, let's see what we have." So we all put our money together. We came up with 27 cents between the three of us,

• 18:30Speaker 04

  my mother, my brother, and I. And mom said, she said, "We're the richest people in the world. Look at this. We have everything. We're happy. We have love, and we still have some money. Isn't that wonderful?" And we 100% agreed with her. And that's where you go into what is the true meaning of success in life and rich. Success is not how much money you have or how powerful you are. Success is how well do you do what you do when nobody else is looking? When I was in high school, I worked for Stuart's Cleaners, one of my jobs after school. And one day Stuart came up to me and he said, Johnny, you by gosh are the best, most successful janitor in the world. I was upstairs the other night, looking around, I dropped something on the floor, looked under the bunk

• 19:14Speaker 04

  in my mezzanine and there was no dust. I moved it, there was no dust. The cabinets were moved, there was no dust behind them. You did what nobody else does. You worked as if I was watching you every single minute. I'm gonna give you a 25 cent raise. Now, when you're making a dollar and a quarter an hour and you get a 25 cent raise, that is a big deal when you're, you know, in high school. That was at least for me, when I was in high school, the late 50s, early 60s, that was a big deal. So I do, wow, I was the most successful person. So success is how well do you do what you're doing and continue to do it at your best? When nobody else is looking and how far have you come? If somebody came from being homeless to having a job, they're successful.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  If somebody went from being a janitor to all of a sudden getting raises or a supervisory job, boy, are they successful? How well do you do what you do when no one else is looking? What is rich? Rich isn't money. You could have all the money in the world and there's few people like this that are unhappy and unhealthy. Rich is, let's look at the priorities. Number one is happiness. Number two is health. If you don't have happiness, you're not gonna have the best of health. If you have happiness and health, you have two of the richest things on the planet. Everything else comes after that, but part of it has to be, you have to have a giving heart and be able to give to others and know that you're here, not just take care of yourself on the planet, but do something to make life better for other people.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  You have all those things going, boy, you're just rich in soul and in heart and in thinking and then whatever comes along after that's gonna come along even more beautifully.

• 20:49Speaker 05

  You mentioned homeless. I think that we might as well segue there.

• 20:55Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 20:56Speaker 05

  I have many questions for you and we'll probably bounce around, but you mentioned being homeless. Is it true that you've been homeless on not, not one occasion, like two occasions?

• 21:06Speaker 04

  Right, that is correct.

• 21:07Speaker 05

  Could you, could you describe how those, those two periods of homelessness happened?

• 21:13Speaker 04

  Sure, it sucked, but it happened. First time I was twenty-two years old and I was working as a master ceremonies at the second annual sports vacation recreational vehicle show. I was young, twenty-two years old, but I got the job. Anyways, I came home from that job and when I came home from it, it was down in Anaheim. I was living in the Atwater area at that time of Los Angeles and I was a young wife, very young wife. We were like a year apart. We shouldn't have even had kids. We had a two-year-old child. So I came home and as I came home and pulled the only car into the driveway, she came down the stairs and said, oh, I've got to run over to the store. So she took the keys and jumped in the car and took off. Well, by the time I got upstairs, she was long gone.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  Right there smack in the middle of our little living room was our two-year-old son with my clothes piled there, little pile of clothes, and a note basically saying that I can't handle being a mom anymore. You'll do better off with you. Goodbye and good luck. Unbeknownst to me, what little we had in the bank, she totally took out. This is all manipulated by her. She totally took out everything out of the bank the day before, everything. What little we had, it wasn't a lot of little. She had not paid the rent or the utility bill for three months, meaning that she pocketed all that money. I was not going to get paid for another week to ten days for the show that I did. They give you a week, you put in your request a week before you get paid.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  I had almost nothing on me and then the next day, surprise, they were there to evict us. They had already put up notices, which she ripped up for the eviction. So there we are, you know, down and out, flat out. And no car, no nothing. So I got a hold of this nineteen fifty-one Caddy with a broken water pump. You had to put water in it every four hours and we were on the street and the way we got around was, you know, when you're down and out, you can only think about, okay, the next thing is survival. We got a place to live, we got pillows, couches, towels, we got all this stuff we just piled in the car there and some clothes. Got to eat. So I went around to vacant lots and picked up soda pop bottles. In those days, grocery stores and liquor stores took them from you.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  You got two cents for a little one, five cents for a big one. And we just went around collecting them off vacant lots, Coke machines, wherever we could find them, seven up machines, cashing them in and that's how we got by. A short time later, ran across this friend of mine, who was, you would call a really hardcore biker. And his name was Lee Meyer. He said, JP, I got an extra room in my house. Why don't you come on over? You and your son could be there and some of our biker mamas will help take care of them while you're out there working. So by that time, I had landed another job. Uh, but of course I wasn't paid either for another job for another two weeks until I finally got a paycheck out of that. And, and that's how we kind of got out of it. Second time was when I started Paul Mitchell. We needed a half a million dollars. There was no way I could start a hair care company for under half a million dollars. So we got a half a million dollars.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  A fellow named Dick Holt House, worked for Citicorp, arranged it for a European investor to invest it. So, everything I was doing at the time, I left. A, I'm starting my own business with my pal Paul Mitchell. We're going to start our own business. He's a hairdresser, I'm a businessman and a formulator. This is going to be great. I don't do hair, he doesn't do business. What a perfect combination and we've been buddies for the last nine years, right? And the money's coming. So I left everything I did. My relationship wasn't going well at all at that time. So I left the newer car, even though it was a good used car, the newer car with my wife at the time, who had my child and, uh, and a daughter at that time. And, uh, I took the older car down the hill and to get the money, because it's coming in at Bank of America. It never showed up.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  Long story short, the guy pulled out. Why did he pull out? It's nineteen eighty. In nineteen eighty, our hostages were still held in Iran. Nineteen eighty and eighty-one, we went through some bad times. We stayed in line to get gasoline. Inflation in the United States was twelve percent.

• 25:17Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  Unemployment in the United States was ten and a half percent. If you could get a loan, and I say if you could get a loan, prime rate on a loan was seventeen percent, if you could even get a loan. Terrible times. But between Paul and I, we came up with three hundred and fifty bucks each, had a couple hundred bucks in my pocket, live in my car once again. And that's how we started John Paul Mitchell Systems. We believed what we have was so good, and all the people we had already set up gave us thirty day billing. So it was a matter of, okay, we better do this, we better do that. In fact, if your listening audience has a chance, pick up the documentary Good Fortune, like A Good Fortune.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  Good Fortune is a documentary I did about three and a half, four years ago. It talks about the whole story, how to survive through homelessness, and how to create not one, but two businesses after that that turned out to be billion dollar businesses each.

• 26:14Speaker 05

  See, you've done so many things in your life, and we won't go through the entire list, but you mentioned Janitor.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 26:20Speaker 05

  And I want you, I want you to fact check me if I get anything wrong here.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  I also have door to door encyclopedias.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  Oh, for three years, sold encyclopedias, door to door, Colliers, it's commission only.

• 26:31Speaker 05

  Right, so you have, you have this long period of many different hats that you've worn. How did you get to formulating and the, the John Paul Mitchell Systems?

• 26:42Speaker 04

  Very good question. Along the way, I was twenty-six years old, and one of my jobs was working for Time Inc. in their circulation department of sports, Fortune Sports Illustrated, and Life Magazine. It was basically a boiler room where people would call to get people to renew their subscriptions or get new subscriptions. Well, I went to my Vice President, I said, look, you know, what do I have to do to become a Vice President? Because I don't want to do this rest of my life, you know, I'd like to know how to go ahead. He said, "You have no college, you're only a high school graduate, and you're only twenty-six years old. Come back and ask me when you're thirty-five." Well, I sure didn't want to wait at a job I did not like and offer nine more years. So a friend of mine, John Capra, was an employment counselor where people would pay him to get

• 27:27Speaker 04

  people to go to work for them. So he sent me on several jobs, and I ended up, after trying a few of them out, to working for a company in the professional beauty industry, has a salesman, period, to sell beauty supplies. Well, why was that with that company? I went all the way up to national manager of two of their divisions with the company, but I got involved in learning how they formulated some of these products, who did it, how they did it, what they did. And then I worked after that. They fired me, by the way, because I complained that they were testing on animals, it was the wrong thing to do. Well, that didn't go very good with management, so they fired me until it was wrong, wrong, wrong. They said, "Well, you care more about animals and people than you do about the corporation. You're not a corporate guy." So they fired me. Right, and that was Redken, by the way. Redken was a company.

• 28:12Speaker 04

  But I said, "But you're firing me, but why are you testing on animals? It's stupid." They said, "Because it makes us look good. We're the scientific approach." Anyway, so just as well I was gone, the next company I went to work for was a company purchased by Syntex, a big pharmaceutical company, a company called Firmadol. And Firmadol was doing about eight million a year in business there in the United States, and they hired me to train their management, their sales management, their sales staff, and educators. Well, in one year, we increased the business by fifty percent. But I learned while I was there more about formulating and where to go to get different things. And they ended up firing me because, once again, I wasn't part of management. I cared more about people and getting them off the road and not leaving them out there

• 28:55Speaker 04

  for many, many weeks than I did about the company's expenses and what was cheaper for the company, so. And also, they had some things I didn't agree with that weren't very, very nice. Anyways. I went for work for a third company and I did very well. I tripled their sales. They were very little, but I tripled their sales that first year I was with them. And they came before they said, we could get somebody to do your job for only uh what half of what you're making or less. They said so there. I said, well, wait a minute, guys. I just tripled your sales. You're little, but your sales tripled. How about this? You pay me the $3,000 a month, which my salary was, but the 6% that you're giving me for sales increases, you cut that in half and let me buy with the other half. 10% of your company.

• 29:38Speaker 04

  He said, no way. Absolutely not. I said, but guys, you know, most of the money I made was off increased sales. They said, I know, but the increased sales was so much that you mean more than the owner of the company. I said, well, let me get involved with them. Anyway, so I left. But at that company, at that company, I learned more about formulating, where to buy bottles, where to get silk screening and all this. So I was set up beautifully to be able to start my own company after that. And then I did. I started a consulting company, but I told you everything you needed to know in three months. You didn't need me anymore. So I'd have to go through a lot of clients. So that's when I decided, let's start my own thing.

• 30:13Speaker 05

  So let's, let's, let's look at one of the themes, the through lines here is being very good at increasing sales. You became the national manager of two divisions, if I'm remembering correctly, we just said at Redken, tripled sales at this company you just mentioned. How did you become so good at sales? And what made you good at increasing sales?

• 30:37Speaker 04

  When I was selling newspapers door to door and delivering in the morning, uh, we would deliver in the morning and the way we sold it door to door was we would go by after school and knock door to door and try to convince them to take the LA Examiner for the morning delivery in our area. Everyone we got, we got $1 for. So I learned how to knock on a lot of doors and take a lot of rejection. But the big one. Was when I was in my twenties and I sold encyclopedias door to door. I got out of the Navy and I went to work for PF Collier Incorporated, Collier's Encyclopedia. And I learned how to sell encyclopedias door to door. Now, in my training class, they said this to you.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  Look, and by the way, it was commission only. You, and even during training, you made no money. It was commission only with every sale. And there were no leads. You were door to door knocking. But they said something to me that I believed. They said, "The people that make it will make good money are the people that don't give up. A lot of doors can be slammed in your face, but you must be just as enthusiastic on door number 101 if a hundred were closed in front of you." And I believed them, and they were right. It took me over a week to get my first order, but I did. And I lasted three and a half years while I was doing that, which was more than the average three days an encyclopedia salesman lasted in those days.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  So I learned how to overcome rejection, which was very healthy. And then when I got along the way and I started, say, other products, I could only sell what I believed in. So I sell to people is this. If you're gonna sell something, don't really be in the selling business. You don't wanna be in the selling business. It's one of the big secrets I give everybody. Whether it's a service you're selling or a product you're selling, whether you work for yourself or somebody else, don't be in the selling business. Be in the reorder business. In other words, your service is so good, or your product is so good, that whoever you sold it to is wanna order it and reorder it again, or tell somebody if it's a one-time product,

• 32:42Speaker 04

  how great that product or that service was. That's why things work. You don't lie to people. You don't con people. You tell them the truth about it, but in such a way where you could go back and see them a month, a year later, and what you sold them, service or product was so good, they're already reordering. And that's how I build and how I treat people and how I train them. Be kind to people. Be nice to them. But at the same time, look them in the eye and make sure that what you have is so darn good that you would convince your mother, if you love your mother, to get it, and here's why.

• 33:15Speaker 05

  This is excellent. So then we flash forward to, I guess, forward and backward to a few hundred dollars along with Paul Mitchell, and you guys are gonna take on the world.

• 33:27Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 33:28Speaker 05

  What is, what is the, what is the pitch and who are you pitching?

• 33:31Speaker 04

  Well, we had it set up where all of our vendors, the bottle maker, the silk screener, the filler, and the warehouse that filled it for us, uh, had some of the, uh, ingredients, were all set up for thirty days. They knew what we're doing was gonna be big. They knew we had this money coming in. So what happened was this, how do you deal when you have no money now? Well, it was a hundred thousand bottles was our first run. So I called up the, uh, bottle maker, and I said, can I just have a sample run? I didn't tell them we were broke. I just said, can we have a sample run of only ten thousand bottles? They said, oh, of course, we understand a sample run. I told the silk screener, we have a sample run coming, only ten thousand bottles, and I told, uh, the filler, same

• 34:13Speaker 04

  exact thing. So we would have four thousand bottles of the conditioner, three thousand of shampoo one, three thousand shampoo two. And it took them, from the time we said go, it took them two weeks to make it. And by the way, we had seven hundred dollars in our hand. The key thing was, we needed the artwork for the silk screener. We went to them and told them the truth. Hey, your bill's a thousand dollars for this artwork. It's in black and white. Thank God we stopped putting any color on it, because we couldn't afford that. We only have seven hundred dollars. Can we give you three hundred dollars now? Give you the rest later? He said, no. He said, because I'll never get the rest later. Give me seven hundred dollars. It's a three hundred dollar discount. I'll give you your artwork. Well, we did. So all I had was a few hundred bucks in my pocket. I borrowed

• 34:57Speaker 04

  some money from my mom. A few hundred bucks in my pocket. Paul had the same thing. He was on his last money. And, uh, that's how we started. I piled stuff in my car and drove up in Los Angeles, Ventura Boulevard, going salon to salon to salon. Now, why do we pick salons? We had no advertising money, no promotional money. The three companies I worked for, the Redken and the Fermodale and the Tri, all three of those were selling to beauty salons. So we knew the industry. And we knew also that if you have something really good, we had a darn good product, like, really good. And we knew if we had something that good, and we gave it to a salon, or a salon was using it, they would buy it from us and use it, they would see how good it was for their hands and the person's hair, that they would

• 35:39Speaker 04

  wanna reorder and recommend it to people to take home in between visits. And they did. So that's, that's the market we went after, and we stayed with that market. In fact, even today, even today. If you ever see a Paul Mitchell product in any drugstore or supermarket, it is either out the back door through the black gray market or it's counterfeit or mixed together. We only sell to salons and the demand sometime is so big that some stores will go to a salon, pay full price for it, take it up at one or two dollars as a lot as a leader and have it on their shelves. It's amazing. You know, it's just amazing. Many times counterfeit gets mixed with the gray market product and that's sold to people also. And of course they figure, well, how can some of these big stores,

• 36:21Speaker 04

  these my God, these big chain groups have counterfeit or black market product? But they do because they know they could get away with it legally.

• 36:31Speaker 05

  That's wild.

• 36:32Speaker 04

  I know.

• 36:32Speaker 05

  You mentioned something earlier that I want to come back to and that is working with your suppliers and manufacturers and you said they knew it was going to be big. So they were working with you on net thirty terms, a thirty day payment term.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 36:49Speaker 05

  Uh, how did they, how did you convince them that it was going to be big? So they should bet on you and give you those, those types of terms?

• 36:58Speaker 04

  Very darn good question. I presented to them here, National Manager of Reckons, Chain Salon Division, School Division, from it all, response for all training and education for their management team and selling team. Institute of Psychology, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Paul Mitchell, one of the most avant garde hairdressers of the day. So here's our credentials. So it was based on that and I took them all and I showed them the letters about the five hundred thousand coming in that were sent to me, showed them all that, you know? So they said, wow, this is cool. I said, so guys, will you work with me on this one? I'd like thirty day billing and here's what I would like. And that's, that's how it happened.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  And of course I was, I was very presentable at the time and looked right in the eyeball and I was very sincere, very honest. And they realized that nobody thought someone would pull out the very end. So it's, it's really funny because I know getting our first distributor in Los Angeles, I went to Parasase Beauty Supply. Jim Hendrietta was the general manager and president of that whole operation. Big beauty supply store, huge, salesman going everywhere. And I went down there to show them our products and I said, you know, God, if you, if you'll take our product line on, we will, you know, give you an exclusive on all of LA and Orange County, big area, right? And he laughed and he said to me, "Well, why should I take your products on?

• 38:22Speaker 04

  We're Parasase Beauty Supply. We have all the big lines. Why do we want to spend time to build your line when you guys have an unknown line? It doesn't make any sense." Well, what I did two weeks prior was, I went up into a boulevard knocking door to door on salons. After a week, I got 12 orders. I delivered them on the spot and got 12 checks. But they left the top line blank. So when he said that to me, I said, "Here's why you should get us." In front of him, I put out 12 orders and 12 checks. I said, "See that top line? Parasase Beauty Supply is going in it. I've already got your first 12 customers. And if you will let me give you this line, just buy 2,000 from me. If you have 2,000, because we were really hard up.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  Just buy 2,000 dollars from us, you can have all of LA in Orange County, right?" He laughed his head off and said, "Oh, my God." He said, "Okay, but you better be here every single day, working with all my salesmen till they sell it all." I said, "It's a deal." I said, "There's one more thing, too. We started out with virtually very, very little here. But can you please pay your bill when the orders arrives?" He laughed and said, "No, we're Parasase Beauty Supply. We don't pay our bill for 45 days." So I said, "Well, I'll give you a 5% discount if you'll pay your bill when it arrives." I said, "I could do that much for you." He laughed and said, "Okay. This is nothing I normally do, but I'll give you a break. But you better show up." Well, he came to our 25th anniversary 15 years ago.

• 39:49Speaker 04

  And he told all of our distributors, so within five minutes of the time JP was in my office, my loading dock man called me and said, "Hey, there's some guy here unloaded a bunch of black and white products on our steps here, and he wants a check for 2,000 dollars." Jim said, "I laughed my head off. He said, "He was just in my office." And I went back and I gave JP the check.

• 40:10Speaker 05

  So that is what some of my friends would call chutzpah.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  Well, I think it was a lot of that, Ben. He's just a great guy. Jim Turner, he just gave us a break. He was a good guy. Then Paul Mitchell took a whole bunch with him back to Hawaii where he was living and would go around and sell it to all his friends at Hatzelons.

• 40:31Speaker 05

  Did you get the, uh, I mean, chutzpah is a good word for it. The, the, uh, I'd say courage would be another. Persuasion, the sort of art of the sell. Did you get that from anyone in your family growing up? Is it something you developed on your own? Where did that, how was that forged?

• 40:53Speaker 04

  I, I would say twofold. Number one, my mother was always very positive. Boys, you could do anything. She was very positive supportive. Second of all, in the three and a half years I'd sold in encyclopedia's door to door, no leads.

• 41:10Speaker 04

  I learned more about selling and about people than one could ever imagine. They're no longer, they haven't been, I don't think for 20 years anymore, door to door encyclopedia salesman. I don't think that exists anymore. Maybe no more encyclopedia salesman exists anymore. But boy, if they sure did, every one of my kids would be doing that for at least three months out of their life to learn what it's really like and really learn how to talk to people and convince them to at least listen to you and give you a chance to tell your story.

• 41:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  And of course, since that time, you refined it. You learned more and more better things. So I look at it as I'm not really a salesman, uh, though the word salesman describes it. But I really go out there and try and help people make the right decision on something that's could be good for them and better than what they have or something they could probably need.

• 41:54Speaker 05

  So one of the, one of the best salespeople I ever met was not technically a salesperson. He was, he's actually a systems engineer in technology. This was at a storage area networking company a long time ago. Jason, if you're listening, I'm talking about you. And he was also at one point a door to door encyclopedia salesman for some period of time and became, I want to say a regional manager. And he said the same thing, that it taught him more about selling and persuasion and negotiating and so on than anything else he's done. What made you better, aside from just sheer persistence in the face of rejection? Were there other insights or techniques that made you better than the competition?

• 42:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I try to tell people the truth. Here's what you get, even though the presentation was kind of an unusually unique presentation, where you're paying for everything, but you get the main encyclopedia as free. When in reality, you're actually paying for everything, but it's all, they call it a combination offer, right? That to be honorable, like, here's what you get, and here's what you're paying, and here's why I think it's good for you, and here's why I think you might think it's good for you, and we would talk about it a little bit. In other words, you included, I included the people in the conversation.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  In other words, what you want to do is find a need in the marketplace and fill it. If the need doesn't exist, then create a need that maybe wasn't there. For example, encyclopedia sales. I would have to go to the library to look up things for homework in an encyclopedia. If I had one at home, it would have been great. Well, we could never afford it. So I thought, boy, it'd be great if someone could afford to have a set of encyclopedias in their house, it'd be a wonderful thing. They could look it up right there. We didn't have computers in those days.

• 43:38Speaker 05

  How does this translate to your experience with Patron? How did that come about?

• 43:46Speaker 04

  Well, Patron, I started in 1989. And that came about, I was sitting around with a friend of mine who went bankrupt in the hospitality business, Martin. He went bankrupt, so I went ahead and I was introduced to him, and I was a joint venture partner with him, where I put up the money, he did the work, in a unique architectural product company. He would go to Mexico, buy pavers and furniture, come back to the United States and sell it to architects for their model homes, or to restaurants. You'd buy it real cheap there, very nicely made furniture, by the way, and bring it up here. Well, that did okay, but after a year, it wasn't really making a lot of money, but it was existing. And then Martin was going down there to purchase some things.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  And I said, Martin, we were at my house making margaritas out of the tequila of the day. And I said, Martin, when you're down there, why don't you find out what the Mexican aristocrats drink? I bet you they drink tequila a lot better than what we're drinking now, where you gotta hold your breath to drink it, or you do a shot, you know, or mix it with a margarita. He, okay. So Martin came back with a couple of bottles, just long, thin bottles, and it was the smoothest tequila I ever had. He said, but JP, I met a guy down there named Francisco Alcaraz, and he said he can make it smoother. So, make a long story short, he found this bottle that was made out of recycled glass. And I said, Martin, here's what I'll do. It is smoother, and he's making it even smoother. I will go ahead and buy, by this time I was doing pretty good with the Paul Mitchell products.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  I'll go ahead and I'll buy 1,000 cases, that's 12,000 bottles. And even though it's very expensive to make, if everything went wrong, I'd be able to have some of the best tequila in the world and give my friends for the next 10 years for every occasion that came up, no matter what it is there, great bottle of tequila. So anyways, we did it. Well, when we first brought it to the United States here, nobody wanted to carry it. It was $37 a bottle, and the average tequila was around $4 or $5 a bottle. The most expensive one, I think, was $14 a bottle at the time. Nobody wanted to carry it. We convinced a wine merchant who only sold wine to carry the product and sell it. And we would promise that if they would do that, I personally would go down and hold

• 45:58Speaker 04

  their sales meeting, and, you know, we would show them how to sell it. And if they took us on, I would get them one of the top accounts in Beverly Hills, and Martin would get them one of the top Mexican restaurants. And they said, well, if you guys could do that, let's give it a try. So we did. Martin went to his friends at Baja Cantina in Marina Del Rey. I went to my friend Wolfgang Puck at Spago's, the hottest restaurant of the day there in West Hollywood, and he took it on. So we kept our promise, but after a year, they were selling very, very little. And so we dropped them. We took on Jim Beam. This is a good story for your listeners. We took on Jim Beam. Very big company, by the way, they had distribution everywhere, and they had some very, very good alcohol that they sold themselves that they made, but they decided to take us on.

• 46:41Speaker 04

  After about a year and a half, they were only selling, I believe it was about 12,000 cases a year. So Martin and I sat down with them and said, guys, you know, we've been going around opening up little nightclubs or restaurants for you, and you know, and we contributed something, but you know, you guys only do 12,000, you should be doing, you know, we thought we could do like 50, 60,000 one day of this product cases a year, you know? They said, guys, let's tell you the truth, okay? You do have the best tequila in the world, there's no doubt, but your price is too high. People don't want to pay that kind of money. I'm gonna tell you guys, you will one day reach 20,000 cases a year, but that's about it, guys. We dropped Jim Beam and took on Seagram's.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  Seagram's took us up to 70,000 cases a year. And we thought we could do a heck of a lot better, we went to cart with them, ended up buying them out of their agreement with us, which we did, and we took over the distribution ourselves. And it started going up, up, up, up, up, up, up. And then Martin Crowley, unfortunately, died of a heart attack back in the early 2000s, and Mr. Ed Brown, who's our president, he was vice president of sales at the time, immediately he should have been president, I made him president of the company. And we focused on really doing this property. And Ed Brown gets 90% of the credit for all of this, he really does, he's a sensational man. He brought on a great team, and we built, and we built, and we focused on Patron being

• 48:06Speaker 04

  the star, not beautiful girls, you know, in the ad, but Patron was the star. And then we started bringing it out to other people in other channels, and through Paul Mitchell, my hair care company, we would have a big event every year where two or three thousand of the top hairdressers throughout the United States and the world would come to it. And we would serve them free Patron, well, they would go back home and ask for it because it was so good. I'm gonna make a very long story short, I sold my interest in Patron a year and a half ago. When I did, we were approaching, overall with everything in the company, we were approaching close to four million cases a year. That's just under 50 million bottles. And I think the Patron sales alone were, oh god, I know, maybe 3 million, 300,000, something

• 48:50Speaker 04

  like that, but with all the rest of the things, it was approaching four million cases. So the lesson to be learned here is, if anybody tells you something where there's limitations, you don't necessarily have to believe them. When Patron sold, it sold for the highest amount ever paid a company in the alcohol business.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  Why? It was the finest product ever again, going back to the very, very best that you have. Your service, your products ought to be the best here in the reorder business. And we did a lot of good things to make people happy and honorable. We would throw big events for charities. We would take care of orphanages. We're still in fact rebuilding houses down at the St. Bernard project in New Orleans. At least we were up until the time I sold to Tuba Cardi. I don't know if they're still doing that or not. So, you know, it was all built on some of the principles that I learned along the way and our other people learned to. And of course, Ed Brown really instilled a lot of it in the people.

• 49:44Speaker 05

  How was it for you in the beginning, uh, learning to navigate? And maybe there are similar regulations and legal limitations and so on with, uh, with Paul Mitchell, but with Patron, I would imagine there's, there's a lot to navigate from a

• 50:03Speaker 04

  Yes, sir.

• 50:04Speaker 05

  regulatory and legal standpoint. Was that

• 50:05Speaker 04

  That is correct.

• 50:06Speaker 05

  Was that difficult? What was that like for you?

• 50:08Speaker 04

  Well, no, because the reason it wasn't difficult was because I knew certain things attorneys had to do. And as we started growing bigger, Ed Brown knew everything else had to be done. But Martin and I at the very beginning knew there were certain things to do. And Martin, I financed the thing. Martin was able to go out there and get it registered the way we were. So Martin gets the credit for that and Ed Brown for once it took off, uh, by God, he put all the other things into place.

• 50:30Speaker 05

  If someone were to, and I'm sure this has been done, but let's just say Harvard Business School does a case study on Patron. What do you think some of the, the best decisions would be strategic or otherwise that they would highlight in that case study?

• 50:45Speaker 04

  I'd say first of all, if you want to see the raw side of it, uh, a lady named Ilana Edelstein wrote a book called The Patron Way. And she shows the other side behind the doors of Patron, what went on in her life and Martin's life. That was Martin's girlfriend. What went on in their lives, which was very unusual to have a successful business, very unusual. But it worked. You know, we went into this business not knowing anything about alcohol, but we learned along the way. But it's very interesting to read that book of hers. It's a great book to study off of. And what I would say is this. You could start a business and as long as you believe what you have, which Martin did, okay, and I did, is going to be the very, very best. There's no limit to what you can do. But there's certain things you've got to do.

• 51:28Speaker 04

  And once again, it would have never been as successful as it is if we did not have the best product on the market that people wanted to reorder. And again, we told people the truth about Patron. We gave them samples of Patron so they could taste it without even buying it many times. And, uh, you know, these are just some of the secrets. And if you also take a look at, again, Good Fortune, the documentary, it lets you know how to build a company from, uh, from basically scratch. Gives you a lot of advice there, too.

• 51:57Speaker 05

  So, so let's, if you don't mind, look at the pricing for a second. Because this is, uh, this is, this is fascinating to me. I've always been a proponent of, of ultra-premium when possible, because there seems to always be a market for the best, whatever that category might be. So you have, you have bottles of tequila in the landscape in the U.S. when you enter the market, selling for four to five dollars.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 52:23Speaker 05

  And then you come out with a bottle that sells for thirty-seven dollars, right? So let's just pretend that we're talking cups of coffee, right? So four to five dollar cup of coffee right now, let's say Starbucks, and you want to sell to retailers, Starbucks are independent, on a thirty-seven dollar cup of coffee that is the best in the world. What were some of the things that you taught the retailers in your sales meetings, coming down to help them?

• 52:49Speaker 04

  Oh, that's such a great question. We told them this, when you sell it to a bar, or you sell it to a, uh, a liquor store, tell them this, if somebody wants tequila, you could say, yes, we can get your favorite one, or you could treat yourself and get a bottle of Patron. Yes, we can give you a margarita, or for a dollar more, you could treat yourself and we can make your margarita with Patron, the best in the world.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  Little things like that of tremendous, tremendous help, tremendous help.

• 53:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. You know, a dollar, a dollar per mixed drink involving tequila, and that certainly provides a significant revenue stream for that given bar, for instance.

• 53:33Speaker 04

  And then that turned out, by the way, you're right. And it turned out to be later on, for three dollars more, you could have Patron.

• 53:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, amazing.

• 53:44Tim Ferriss?

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• 54:28Tim Ferriss?

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• 54:38Speaker 05

  Now, I've read the profile. This is, this is an older profile, 2013. This is an ink magazine, at least at the time that, and I'll just, I'll just read this. And this may have changed, but I'd love to hear, certainly 2013, email was ubiquitous. "The headquarters for Paul Mitchell and Patron each have a fax machine for one purpose, communicating with me," that's referring to you. "I don't use email or a computer. I would be so inundated that I wouldn't be able to get any work done. Instead, I do everything in person or by phone. I have a phone book that's 15 years old, filled with white-out rewrites. I carry that everywhere." That may have changed, but can you speak to how you did business at that time?

• 55:16Speaker 04

  I really like your questions because it's hard for people to believe. Nothing has changed. Today, the majority of what I do is philanthropic, whether it's representing, you know, Paul Mitchell or Rock Mobile, any of those companies, philanthropic the majority of what I do these days, even with Patron, you know, and philanthropic associated with some of these companies. They give good credit for that, too. But I do not have email. I do not have a computer that I turn on. All my, all the companies I'm involved with are very computerized, state-of-the-art. But all my companies have a fax machine that I'm involved with, and I have a fax machine, whatever house I'm in at the time, I have fax machines. And here's the reason why, if I was on the internet and I had email, I'd be so inundated,

• 56:00Speaker 04

  I couldn't do all the wonderful things that I do right now. I couldn't do it. I'd be fully inundated. And I also, I'm from the old school. I like personal contact. If you call me or you write me, chances are I'll either take that same letter and answer you back on that same piece of paper, or I'll pick up the phone and call you. And hey, how you doing? You know, nice to talk to you here. You know, and I'd like to communicate with people. I think that's missing a lot in life today, where you don't communicate with people. And also, by not having email, I'm able to pay attention to the vital few and ignore the trivia many.

• 56:36Speaker 05

  Hmm. I'd love to hear you expand on that, because this is something so many people strive to do and so many people fail to do consistently. How do you determine for yourself what the vital few are? And happy to look at philanthropic activities, but it's also helpful to hear a few business examples.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  I think it's just for me, example of like what's important. For example, one of our Paul Mitchell schools is concerned about a challenge they have. And they write me and ask me about it. Well, I'm liable just to pick up the phone and call them and say, well, here's your challenge. Here's, I think you should overcome it. And we talk about it a little bit together to overcome it. Or if we have our peace, love and happiness ride. For example, I do that with my friend Gary every year. Around my birthday, we have the peace, love and happiness motorcycle ride. Well, we had a big challenge this time. Uh, no, nobody's gonna get together with more than 50 people because of this stupid virus that's going around right now, which is very bad. So Gary and I said, okay, we talked about it over the phone. And he's one of my neighbors, so it wasn't long before he

• 57:41Speaker 04

  ended up coming down to the house here. But over the phone, we talked about it. Gary, let's do this. Let us both have the ride. If it's only you and me riding, this ride will still continue. It's gone on now for 17 years. We're gonna still have the peace, love and happiness ride, because whatever money we raise goes to first responders that are injured or killed in the line of duty, like paramedics, firemen, police officers, things like that. We're gonna, we're gonna still do that. And a lot of it goes to, to the military. We do it for the Navy SEALs also. And first, shall we say, military people that come back injured. We'd try and take care of them too. But so we'd have a together, let's make that, let's do it ourselves. So that's something we personally could do. Then Gary came down the next day and we planned the whole thing out together to still have our ride.

• 58:25Speaker 04

  Uh, it's, it's things of that nature. You know, that, you know, it's just nice to pick up a phone and talk to somebody. Uh, if you have a, if you have a big account, let's hear in business, uh, either for yourself or representing somebody else. They're so used to everything being emailed. It's kind of nice every now and then make a call to them and just say, hi, I'm just calling to see how you're doing. Or there's something really good going on here and I saw you let you know about it that, uh, you know, I'm a hundred percent behind you. I'm doing something really nice for you. Instead of asking them for something, just tell them something you're doing nice for them. People like that ever, that, that hasn't happened a long time in our, uh, our business community. I think you should come back more people to people communication.

• 59:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think, uh, also with the perceived isolation that a lot of people are going to have, uh, in response to this virus. It, it makes it all the more important. And I, I also want to take a second just to thank you for supporting first responders. And these are really, uh, the, the frontline and the safety net for us all in many respects. Whether that's military or certainly at this point, healthcare workers and, uh, frontline medicine. Uh, in, in response to the COVID and all the ramifications of that. So I, I really appreciate you supporting such a integral part. Uh, support system for our entire society.

• 59:46Speaker 05

  I just think it's, I think it's, it's easy to miss these people when you don't need them, obviously, or you don't realize that you need them. And it's in times like this when it becomes so obvious how much they have dedicated their lives to helping others.

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  These guys, these people are heroes. You know, we come onto this world with absolutely nothing. Every one of us came here naked and we have nothing when we come into this world. Regardless of what our parents have, we have nothing. But I think it's a little bit like paying rent for being on the planet Earth and being alive on this planet, regardless of your financial situation, to do something for somebody else, asking nothing in return. So a lot of these first responders, it's their job, but they go out there and do it. And after they save lives, or save houses, or people, or animals, they go and say, hey, I'm the one that saved, to thank me. They do it because it's their job. They picked out that as their job, to be of service to others. Those are true heroes. Doing it, asking nothing in return, but they're doing their job.

• 1:00:45Speaker 04

  Or we people that are involved in philanthropy, and anyone just helping somebody out by caring something for them, is still entropic. Whenever you do something for somebody else, and you ask absolutely nothing in return, it's the greatest high you will ever get. Higher than whatever we spoke in the sixties.

• 1:01:02Speaker 05

  That's true. That's true. I've spoken to some of these first responders in the medical systems, ER, ICU in New York City, and Washington, and so on. And it's just incredible how grounded many of them are in their sincerity with the oaths that they took.

• 1:01:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:27Speaker 05

  In beginning their medical careers. It's really just incredibly admirable. So, I don't want to necessarily take the conversation totally in that direction, but I think it's important to at least mention. I have a note here on annual retreats, and I'd be curious to hear you expand on the importance of annual retreats.

• 1:01:55Speaker 04

  Certainly.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  I don't know if you do this, but yeah, if you could speak to what you do on these retreats, and how you think of them.

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  I try and take, it used to be once a year, now I do it twice a year. Or maybe every six months, I try to do it every six months. Where you take off by yourself, go someplace by yourself, cook your own food, do everything by yourself to take care of yourself. And in those days, I usually do it for three days, in that time, you have a piece of paper, like a tablet with you, and you write down on there, at least I do, I write down on there all the things in my life, that I like that I'm doing. And the people. I can't write all the people because a lot of them, okay, but you know, just just ones that really stand out. And then I write all the people I'm involved with or situations that I'm involved with. That don't make me happy, I really don't want to be involved with.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  And then my goal the next year is to get rid of those. And it's very seldom do people ever stop and think of what, who do I want in my life? Who do I not want in my life and why? It gives me a chance to see who I want in my life, who I don't want in my life and why. And what I like that I'm doing and what I don't like, what I have that I don't need and what I want to get rid of. It was just kind of looking at yourself and the first night I'll cook dinner, have a nice glass of wine. And that next day morning, I'll write pages worth. By the time I leave, I'm down to maybe ten items. Because I've really condensed it to like, here's what's really important. Here's what I want to change. Here's who should not be in my life anymore. I'm gonna make plans to immediately get them out of my life. Here's what I don't want to eat anymore. Here's what I don't want to do anymore. Here's what business I don't want to be in anymore.

• 1:03:28Speaker 04

  You know, whatever it is that you want to change your life to be happier, you could do it in that period of time. At least give you a good start on it and kind of reassess yourself. Because life is short. I don't get me, I plan to live to be a hundred and twenty-five years old. But life is short and even that hundred and twenty-five years is gonna go by very, very fast. So you know, try and take each year because you never know what's gonna happen. Uh, my God, I have a book full of people, probably over forty people that I've known. Over the last, uh, forty years, they're no longer with us. They they left their earthly bodies, they dropped them and they're elsewhere right now. So you never know when that's gonna happen. So it gives you a chance to at least every six months, if you could do it, or at least once a year if you can't. To take a few days to yourself, even with only two days to yourself.

• 1:04:09Speaker 04

  You know, and look at your life, what you like, what you don't like, what you want to change, what you don't want to change. And not wait for something to happen to make you change it. Your lousy relationship. Well, I'll wait till it gets really better. She says something, then I'll leave, or he says something, then I'll leave. Well, no, that's not gonna happen. You're gonna be in misery until it does happen, if it ever happens or it doesn't happen. Or I hate the job I'm in, but I'm sure one day something else will come along. And you sit in that job. Well, why not look for something and make a change? You don't want to be, you know, older in your life, you look back and say, God, if only I would have changed that when I was ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years old, I wish, or seventy years old, I wish I would have not done that anymore. Changed or done something different. Well.

• 1:04:50Speaker 04

  It's an old saying that we had in the nineteen sixties, probably before you and all your listeners were even born, or they were little children at that time. It was this, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."

• 1:05:03Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:05Speaker 04

  And it is, each day is the first day of the rest of your life. Make it go more in your direction.

• 1:05:11Speaker 05

  This is, this is something I'd really love to, love to dig into a little bit. The biannual or annual retreat. And specifically, you, you strike me as someone that's very decisive, uh, very strategic.

• 1:05:26Speaker 05

  What language or approach do you use to cut ties with the people that you no longer want to have in your life? What is your approach? Or how would you suggest people approach that?

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  I would say in many ways, number one, if it's a social contact, don't get involved anymore in any social things that they're doing, or that you, they advise you to, or you don't advise them to anything that you have. Don't call them on the phone and, uh, just kind of, you know, let them go. I mean, it's not like, there, there could be some good people that you love, but you know they're just not good for you in your life. So it's a matter of, and I got this from this wonderful lady, this Greek friend of mine that said this, "You could always love people, but if they're not right for you, or they're negative people, especially negative people that just gossip about everybody else, love them from afar." Like, "I love you, but stay over there, stay away from me." Love them from afar. In other words, start disconnecting physically or telephonically from them. Just stop doing it.

• 1:06:25Speaker 04

  Just stop, just stop, period.

• 1:06:28Speaker 05

  And if they're contacting you or reaching out to contact you, do you ignore? Do you have a, a particular response to that? How, how would you, how would you?

• 1:06:38Speaker 04

  I would say, well, what my normal thing would be to be kind, I don't want to be mean to anybody. If especially they've done nothing wrong to me, but I've seen them do wrong to other people, and I just don't want them around me, I would just say to them, for example, one thing would be, "You know, thank you very much, but I'm really involved with some other things right now. Do you mind if I get back to you in a month or two? Would that be okay?" That's it.

• 1:06:58Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. That's it. Keep it simple.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not saying I'm gonna call you the month. You might get back to you the month or do you just kind of keep that distance and little by little it goes away, little by little it goes away.

• 1:07:08Speaker 05

  When you are looking at.

• 1:07:09Speaker 04

  Or flat out, or flat out, if in your own personal life, they're there with you saying, hey, you're wonderful and I'm wonderful, but together, things just aren't going right. We've got to make a change for your sake and my sake. This way, nobody's wrong. The worst thing you could ever do is say, you're wrong, you're bad for me, I don't want anything to do with you. Then the person really feels, uh, uh, you know, uh, invalidated. Oh, my God, they feel terrible. But if you approach it where you know it's, hey, I'm not the best thing for you, it's obvious because it's turning out you're not the best thing for me because I'm not the best thing for you. And we're both good people. I think we should go our own ways. And that's tough to do. That is so tough to do.

• 1:07:46Speaker 05

  Sounds tough to do. And, uh, I, I would also be curious to, to, to ask you about any patterns you may have seen in these retreats when, uh, when you have looked at the column of things that you want to do more of.

• 1:08:02Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:08:03Speaker 05

  Uh, or the things you want to do less of, or the people you want to spend more time with versus less time with. Have any patterns emerged that you've, that have helped you make better decisions moving forward? Really, you know what? Consistently, this pops up in the positive column, or consistently, this pops up in the negative column. Have you seen anything?

• 1:08:20Speaker 04

  Yes. And let me throw, yeah, and let me throw a negative in there also. The hardest thing that I found to do, but it's easier now in the last year or two of my life, is to say, no. I got this great, I want to show you. No, thank you. Can we do this? No. You want to go here? No. If I really want to, no. Hardest thing was to say, no, or I don't want to. But you can. You have nothing to lose. Other than, and the only person that's hurt by you not doing that is you.

• 1:08:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. How did you, how did you, uh, become better at that? Why did it change two years ago?

• 1:08:53Speaker 04

  I did, I, I did have, by the way, uh, let, let's call it a divine revelation happened to me. You know, I was fired from those three companies, Redken, uh, Fermodal, as well as Sia. I'm fired from all three companies. But when I started Paul Mitchell a couple of years later, I realized something. One, they fired me. Two, I was doing a good job. But more important, this is fate. Had I not worked for all three companies and learned something different from all three. I could have never started Paul Mitchell with $700, let alone $500,000. I could have never done it. So a lot of times, things are done because it's fate. It's fate that dictates

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  you in that direction. And that's something you've got to remember. There's fate. Many times, you can help direct fate by being able to say no, or look at an opportunity, and go for it.

• 1:09:49Speaker 05

  Hmm. No. There's a short and powerful word that I think almost everyone needs to use more of.

• 1:09:57Speaker 04

  You know, a lot of things that I've told you could also go into one sentence. And it's this.

• 1:10:02Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:10:02Speaker 04

  Successful or happy people do all the things unsuccessful or unhappy people don't want to do.

• 1:10:11Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:10:13Speaker 04

  Like say no, or don't do this, because there's something that'd be better for you if you didn't.

• 1:10:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, on that, uh, on that theme, in the last handful of years, doesn't have to be anything specific, are there any new beliefs or behaviors, habits, that have most positively affected your life?

• 1:10:34Speaker 04

  I think the one that most positively, sure, I think the one that most positively affected my life these last few years is the ability to say, no, I'm not interested. No, don't even present it to me with all due respect, because I'm over, I'm overloaded with things to do. But I do it in a kind way. I don't, I don't do it sharp and cut anybody off. I do it in a very nice way, is the ability to say, no, I don't want this. I don't want to do this. No, I don't want to hear this. To be able to say no, but say it in a nice way. That was one of the biggest things. Next thing is to learn how to just be. And then I've learned the last few years, how to just be. You could enter a room and just have your presence in that room without having to talk to everybody if you don't want to. In other words, how to just be, or by yourself, just be. Just be like you

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  in the room, or you in the middle of a crowd. Just be. Not having to talk to someone because you feel, well, I gotta talk to someone. I can't just stand here. Talk to them because you want to. Be able to be on your own and like yourself and just be. I was one that I go in a room, I'll talk to everybody in that room. Hi, how you doing? You know, talk to everybody. But sometimes it's good to, you can still do that, but just know the power of just being. Just be you as the entity that's within your body. So let's put it this way, regardless of what your beliefs are, we all know there's some kind of a life form in us. Because when we go and we die, all that's left is, let's just call it meat that's starting to rot. Okay, there's, there was something in us, whatever your beliefs are, what happens when you die, that's, that's up to the individual.

• 1:12:04Speaker 04

  But, so there's something in you. Well, if there's something in you, why can't you just be? And all of a sudden, look through your eyes and feel that maybe that entity isn't inside my brain. Maybe the entity is surrounding my body by about a foot or two around me. When you do that, all of a sudden, your space starts expanding, you say, oh, wow. I feel like my space is expanding. I was looking through my eyes and my brain, I thought, but now I'm kind of looking at the world a little different way. Just learn how to be. And as, as life form in you, even though you're looking through the eyes, could be expanding around you. It's, it's a different outlook that you have on things, a big different outlook.

• 1:12:44Speaker 05

  Do you ever practice that being or that expanded consciousness outside of your body at home? Is that something that you have as a regular practice?

• 1:12:55Speaker 04

  Uh, no, it's not a practice, just that as, as time goes on, it just, it just, it's just with you, whether you're inside or outside, it's just with you. In other words, if I were to stop right now and say, okay, where am I? Well, me, the entity is surrounding my body by a few feet. I'm still seeing through the eyes, but I can feel the energy around me. I could go in a room and do the same thing. I could be in a crowd, a bunch of people, it's the same thing. It's just been developed over time. And there's many, many different practices that'll get you there. Many different practices and it's not rites and rituals that you pick up out of a, no disrespect to any good books that are written. There are a lot of really good ones there. It's, uh, it's the acknowledgement of realizing it yourself, that you actually realize and see and feel it.

• 1:13:38Speaker 04

  Uh, it's like whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind will achieve. It's pretty strong.

• 1:13:43Speaker 05

  Now, you, you have a treasure trove of, of quotes and maxims. Uh, is there a particular?

• 1:13:51Speaker 05

  Quote, and it could be the one you just said, but is there any particular quote or maxim that you live your life by or think of?

• 1:13:59Speaker 04

  Yes, there is, and it's probably one of the oldest one around. People talk about it, but very fear for practice it. And it's one quick little sentence. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  It's an oldie but a goodie, but it sure is real.

• 1:14:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, it is a goodie. Are there any, uh, any books that you have gifted frequently to other people? Or any books you've reread?

• 1:14:30Speaker 04

  Yes, there is. The one I've given away the most, and I suggest to people, is seventy or eighty years old. The name of the book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This book is one of the best books ever written on how to acknowledge and make people feel good when you talk to them. It's basically in words, how to be respectful, it's like do unto others as you'd have others do unto you. But it's one of the best books, and I recommend it to so many people. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Maybe it's nineteen dollars in paperback, maybe it's less than that, but it is a great book, and people should read it twice because it's that good.

• 1:15:13Speaker 04

  And it did really teach you how to talk to your fellow man and, and you'll be confronted by your fellow man, they confront you, how to communicate with people and make them feel good.

• 1:15:23Speaker 05

  That is an excellent book. I just want to second that recommendation. I read that many, many years ago and have read it multiple times. It's an older book, so of course there are aspects of it that have aged, but the principles uh, really stand the test of time. That's, that's a fantastic, fantastic book. Uh, are there any others that come to mind?

• 1:15:48Speaker 04

  Uh, well, I, I would say for people to understand that you could be fired from jobs. And the book hasn't been written yet, just the documentary was made and still make it in life because you help other people out. And that was what I mentioned earlier in your show. Get the documentary, A Good Fortune. I think it's four dollars to rent it if you wanted to on Amazon or YouTube or one of those. But it lets people know. But the important thing is how to not only succeed and grow, but do it by helping others along the way and asking nothing in return. And I'm sorry to write a book on that right now. It's taken a long time to write this book, but I'll eventually get it done.

• 1:16:29Speaker 05

  You, you've spoken about, we've spoken about the times that you were fired. Uh, are there any particular failures of yours that you think were extremely important in terms of teaching you lessons or somehow setting you up for later success? Are there any that come to mind?

• 1:16:51Speaker 04

  Definitely. I'd say quite a few of them. For example, uh, oh, many years ago, when telephone reselling was popular, I got into that business, I invested money in it. We invest money in a company and then they buy so many telephone minutes real cheap and they turn around and sell it to somebody else for a little bit more. Well, you know, I, I'd lost a lot of money in that thing. It didn't go well, but I learned a little bit about that business, but the business failed, but some of the knowledge stayed with me. And then later on, I got involved in another business about 10 years ago that was going to revolutionize cellular phones, how we communicate with the world. Well, today that business, I stuck with it. Today, that business is Rocket, R-O-K-I-T, Rocket Phones

• 1:17:34Speaker 04

  and Wi-Fi Systems. Rocket, R-O-K-I-T. We now have a telephone that's out that we just started selling here in the last year, that it's a regular smartphone, but it has on it. Three D without glasses, yes, three D movies without glasses on a cellphone, on a smartphone. It also has what the world needs right now, and that is telemedicine. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, a doctor's on the phone with you, looking at you, you're looking at them diagnosing you. Uh, it also has wifi for the world, where someone could buy the cheapest SIM card they could have, like just for talk and text for maybe twenty-five dollars, whatever, for just talk and text.

• 1:18:14Speaker 04

  So you have the number, but you put it in this phone, and with the worldwide wifi we have, you call anywhere in the world, and it doesn't cost you anything. And it has a lot of other things on it, but if you go online to Rocket, or OKIT, you could, someone could look it up, Rocket phones, and what it does, but the revolutionary thing was, I learned how you have a lot of expensive things, but sometimes having the very best and being too expensive doesn't work either, and I learned that with telephones, some failing. I tried before to come out with telephones years ago, it went nowhere, never even got off the ground. So I learned, if you have the very, very best, and you could put it in everyone's hands realistically, wow, well, the top phone that Rocket sells, this is the top smartphone, this is a first-class smartphone all the way,

• 1:19:00Speaker 04

  is two-hundred-and-ninety-nine dollars, that's the most expensive one they have. And then I learned also by working with people like NASA, you know, the Space Agency and others, that there's a lot of good agencies out there that are government-type agencies or related-type agencies that wanna work with you. NASA just became our partner, we now can develop phones, and hopefully we'll have the first ones out in a couple of months, that when you touch the phone, the back of the phone neutralizes all the bad stuff in your hands. See, when you're in outer space, there's a lot of bad stuff up there, and you can't have bacteria floating around or viruses or anything. So they have a coating that goes on the back of a phone, that is going back on the back of our phones, or our partner,

• 1:19:40Speaker 04

  that when you touch it, all of a sudden, all that junk and all those diseases on your hand are neutralized by just picking up your cellphone. So what I learned through failures trying to be in the technical industry that you knew nothing about was get for some people that are very honest and get with people that are really on top of, on top of their game, make them your partners, one way or another, and all of a sudden, offer a better product, a better quality, of better things that others don't have, and don't have to charge them the fifteen hundred dollars that our research said we should charge for these phones. Now, of course, we have phones that's, you know, less than that, quite a bit less, ninety-nine dollars, fifty bucks and so forth, but I learned that through failure. Today, uh, we're doing really good. We're rolling out through stores

• 1:20:22Speaker 04

  right now, over the internet, and it's doing quite well, not just in our country, but several other countries, too.

• 1:20:30Speaker 05

  Now, if, if we take, we could take Rocket as an example.

• 1:20:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:34Speaker 05

  Uh, you mentioned you're not, you're not on email because you'd be inundated.

• 1:20:39Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:20:39Speaker 05

  How do you, how do you choose the for-profit and philanthropic projects that you dedicate your energies to? Because you have, I would imagine, a, an embarrassment of riches in the sense that you have more opportunities to choose from than you could possibly ever take advantage of.

• 1:20:59Speaker 04

  That is correct.

• 1:21:00Speaker 05

  How do you, how do, how do you choose?

• 1:21:02Speaker 04

  The first thing is, whatever I'm gonna get involved in, it's mainly as an investor these days, whatever I get involved in, a little bit of advice and a lot of PR, whatever I get involved in, is it gonna do the greatest good for the greatest number, and does it excite me to think this could happen? Even in your technological fields, I'm not a technocrat, so I'm not technologically well-educated, but I know enough to know what the end result of that technical advancement is. And I say, oh, this would be great for everybody. Well, I'm excited about it. Are you kidding? This is super. I know the first time I was, uh, overseas, and I made phone calls to the United States on one of our phones, and it cost me absolutely nothing through rock Wi-Fi, and I'm used to having, when I'm overseas,

• 1:21:47Speaker 04

  very expensive cellular phone bills. I thought, this is great. I can't wait till everybody hears about this thing. I can't wait. My God, think of all the money they're gonna save. If they save that money, they could buy something nice for their family, or invest it someplace. You know, those little, those tens and twenties dollars and the hundred dollars a month adds up. So I got excited. It's what excites me. It's what excites me. And right now, I'm over inundated. I get more things thrown at me for it. Also, a lot of them are for no money. JP, just get involved with us. And you help direct us a little bit. My answer is, guys, I don't have the time. Philanthropically, I'm more involved in anything else than what businesses I'm involved in now. My investments are really what they are. You know, I'm kind of tapped out right now. I'm over inundated because I spend less than 20% of my time on business.

• 1:22:32Speaker 04

  The rest is doing something good to change the world.

• 1:22:36Speaker 05

  Could you describe what that looks like for you? That 80% that is non-business? How do you currently spend your time that way?

• 1:22:46Speaker 04

  Oh, my goodness. So, well, I told you about the Peace, Love and Happiness Ride. We talk about the Sea Shepherd. Big supporter of the Sea Shepherd. They had a movie on about them, a TV series called Well Wars with Paul Watson. And what we do is we go on the open seas and we stop those that are poaching illegally, like the Japanese that were killing illegal wells illegally on the open seas. You're exposed to it all through that Well Wars thing. Anyways, we were chasing them down. And they're also poachers. They're poaching turtles, things like that. And, oh, my God, it's terrible. They're killing sharks needlessly. It's crazy stuff. So my involvement is, I talk with Paul, I talk with Sea Shepherds, I hold events for them, I go to events for them.

• 1:23:29Speaker 04

  And when a lot of the poachers were out running our ships, I bought them a Coast Guard cutter. And we refitted the whole thing, painted camouflage blue. So we go right after those poachers and stop the destruction of these species going on on the planet right now. On Grow Appalachia, I went around the country trying to find out how I could help out our nation. In 2009, 10, and 11, when unemployment was very high and a lot of people were on food stamps, and I decided the food industry. So I went out and I partnered up. I looked for a good partner. I found Brea College out of the area of Kentucky, and they partnered with me on this, and I financed the entire thing. Well, we went out, and my goal was, let's take, there's 150,000 people in the Appalachia Mountains. That's about six or seven states.

• 1:24:15Speaker 04

  That are on food stamps. I'm gonna get at least half of them off food stamps. So we started Appalachia. Where we had teams that we paid for and others that were volunteers. We would go out and teach people in the Appalachian Mountains. How to garden. I would pay for their irrigation. Their supplies. Their tools, their seeds. And their know-how to teach them how to grow their own gardens. Number one was you grow enough food for you and your family. And here's how you can. So there's a lot of food for the winter by putting in these jars. Here's how you can food, right? So that your first year, you're self-sufficient. Your second year, you grow more. This was the goal and a lot of them did it. You grow more than you would normally grow. And now you sell the excess to farmers markets.

• 1:24:59Speaker 04

  Or local grocery stores has organically grown. Local produce and make yourself some money. Eventually you won't need the food stamps anymore. But when you send the food stamps back. Please have a letter. Do not put this back into the pile for food stamps. Take this off the federal deficit. The deficit is too high. Because while I had nothing. I got food stamps. Now it's time for me to pay back and lower that US deficit. And I asked them to do that and hopefully they did. Well, a lot of them went now all of a sudden saying, well, let's expand it. So we bought them a dozen chickens. Now they have all the eggs they could possibly want. Some have honey. We have bees there now and it expanded, expanded, expanded. So I would spend time going back and forth from there.

• 1:25:43Speaker 04

  Talking to people, doing interviews about it. Uh, for the homeless. We have the most incredible things here in Austin, Texas. We started, it's called the community. Mobile Loaves and Fishes, the community. We built and Alan Graham was the genius behind this. I just pitched him the money and some of my time. We built. Two hundred and forty little houses.

• 1:26:06Speaker 04

  For homeless people, chronic homeless people, people that have been without any kind of a shelter for at least a year, those are those living under bridges, living in tents, but no place to go into. They'd be the first ones of the priority to go into Mobile Oats and Fishes, Bud Community here in Austin. And to go there, you gotta pay rent. You gotta pay some rent, not a lot, but a little bit of rent, so you feel like you're part of it. If you give somebody a handout, they feel like, uh, this is charity, they don't feel good. If you give them a handup, they feel good. So you charge a little bit of rent there, and we also have gardens, woodshop, metal shop, craft shop, and so forth, and a lot of them now have an income because they can make crafts, they can go in the garden, they can work, they can sell all the extra stuff.

• 1:26:49Speaker 04

  And I just built recently, we're building right now, actually, an entrepreneur center, a big one, so that if they have an idea, they go to that one center, and there's little things in that center set up to help them make their entrepreneurial spirits come true. And then I'm building for them also, we're helping them build, an aqua center, so they can grow their own fish there. So now they have vegetables, they have fish, they have a way to start making an income. And, uh, these are ways that make people that before were on the burden of the community, now, a lot of them are getting jobs, and they're paying taxes, and they still have a beautiful place to live in a beautiful community. I did the same in Los Angeles, uh, because that's where I was homeless, and I'm a, was a big contributor for many years, and up until this last year, I haven't got around

• 1:27:32Speaker 04

  to this last year, but I'd go down at least once a year and lecture to them on homelessness. Hey, I was homeless, here's all I got out of it, guys, you know, and if I could do it, you could do it. And that's, that's just a couple of examples of some of the things that we do, they're enormous. With Bobby Kennedy, uh, Waterkeeper Alliance, my God, saving the waterways of the world. We started with the United States, where we would go in, raise money, and we would bust the polluters, even the big guys, we would bust them in court. One of the biggest cases took us 16 years, but we won. And what do we do? We leave all the money locally, so the local community, we leave it all locally, we raise our own money. So the local waterkeeper group can be able to have boats or hire people to make sure that they patrol the area, and that it's never redone again.

• 1:28:17Speaker 04

  Worked out really well.

• 1:28:20Speaker 05

  You mentioned quite a few things, including the community. I'm here in Austin as well, and I have not yet been. I have friends who have been to the community and have said it's just incredible. That it's, it's, it's, it's really, uh, it boggles the mind as to how well many of the elements are working.

• 1:28:43Speaker 04

  Oh, oh, let me tell you about a new one. Oh, I gotta tell you about a new one. Oh, God, I gotta tell you about, I don't want to forget to tell you this one. This I just got involved with a couple of months ago, and there was an article in our review journal here in Austin about it. Is a little group started, and I gave them, you know, six figures to make it a little bigger group. Uh, you know, they have a little more there because they need it that badly. Here's what they do, and I'm a hundred percent behind these guys. They have a hundred and seventy some odd volunteers. Only one person was on payroll. Now they have a second person because I was able to handle that for them too. But here's what they do. They go around to, they have about fifty, and I want to expand it now to three hundred. They go to fifty different restaurants, grocery stores, catering services,

• 1:29:29Speaker 04

  and they get all the leftover food. For example, if you make a fresh sandwich to sell and it doesn't sell in eight hours, well, they get rid of it. Well, this is all picked up by the volunteers. And they take it directly to, whether it's mobile loaves and fishes or food banks for those that are, are hungry. They take it directly to the source. So all this food that is wasted, the United States probably wastes thirty, forty percent of its food, goes directly to the people that need it. And someone's already picking it up so they don't have to destroy it and delivering to the other people. This is going to be an answer, by the way, to the United States and other parts of the world on people that need food. All the food that's thrown away, the companies, the restaurants, the caterers,

• 1:30:11Speaker 04

  the, uh, the people that have it, the sandwich shops or whatever, still have the same customers, but instead of throwing it away. The good food is going to people that really need it, that aren't their customers anyways. Everyone benefits and that's really exciting. This, I think, is going to be a beautiful, beautiful example of how the rest of the communities throughout the whole United States and other parts of the world could do it. It's very exciting.

• 1:30:35Speaker 05

  It's exciting and I will include links to everything that you've mentioned in the show notes for people, which they'll be able to find at tim.blog for such podcasts. And I just have a few more questions. You've been very generous with your time and I'd want to chew up your entire afternoon, but just, just a few final questions. And I'll start with one that, that I always like to ask because you are clearly very high energy. You have been massively productive. You've been focused to an extraordinary degree in many chapters in your life. Could you speak to a, and you did mention some hard times, but could you, could you speak

• 1:31:20Speaker 05

  to what you do in moments of doubt, if you have them, or when you've gone through emotionally difficult times? What are the, the, the tools in the toolkit that have helped you to get through those times or out of those, those lower periods?

• 1:31:39Speaker 04

  The old way was I would get a piece of paper and on half of it, write all the challenges and things not so good about that. On the other half of it, I would write what I could have learned from it and not make happen again. And then I always remember that whatever happens, and this is the hardest part of it all, whatever happens, no matter how bad it seems, one or two years from now, you're going to look back and say, oh God, I wish I didn't get that upset about it. So I'm going to give you a one liner that I remember and hopefully you're listening to us remember also, because it proves to be true in 99% of all cases. Here's the one liner. In the end, everything will be okay.

• 1:32:24Speaker 04

  And if it's not okay, it's not the end.

• 1:32:30Speaker 04

  Think about all the things that were a hassle in your life. Think of all the things that were a hassle in your life. And you look back at it a year or two later and well, if I, we got, I got through it. It was okay. I got through it. But the time you don't think that, but if you just put in your head, no matter what happened to the past, all the bad things even happened to you or any person out there. In the end, everything will be okay. And if it's not okay, it's not the end.

• 1:32:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:32:54Speaker 04

  Cause many times when things are really bad, oh, this is the end. Oh my God, it's terrible. I hate it. It's never gonna end. Good thing to remember.

• 1:33:02Speaker 05

  It is a good thing to remember. Is that, is that the type of reminder or mantra that you used early on in your career? Or for instance, when you were homeless, the first or second time?

• 1:33:15Speaker 04

  No, no, no, it wasn't. Nope. That was only recent. My first or second time homeless, it was, okay, I gotta eat. Where do I get money to get food? That was, that was my first, that was the only thought. Are you kidding? I wanna eat, you know? Where do I get money to get food? Where do I get money to get food? I got the shelter of my car. Where do I get money? My, my thought was, first of all, was the next part is food. Where do I eat? Gotta eat, right? Gotta eat. Now you've got food. I got clothing already, shelter. I didn't need care. It was okay. It was the first thing. Next thing was, okay, how do I get a job? You know, what do I do here? Or how do I, how do I create something there? Like one step at a time. It's, it's kind of like it's a cinch by the inch and it's hard by the yard.

• 1:33:55Speaker 05

  That's a great one.

• 1:33:57Speaker 04

  One at a time, take what, take one, one at a time, you gotta win. Soon as you get a win, it gives you that energy to go on to the next one. One step at a time.

• 1:34:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:06Speaker 05

  You, you have a, a really, uh, just incredibly

• 1:34:13Speaker 05

  broad spectrum of, of, uh, of, of lines. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna be greedy. I wanna ask this question. Feel free to say I've given you enough or you, you can give me another. But if you had a, a gigantic billboard, uh, metaphorically speaking, I mean, let's just call it a billboard to put a, a quote, a question, an image, a word on which would be transmitted to billions of people. What would you consider putting, what might you consider putting on that billboard?

• 1:34:45Speaker 04

  In big letters, do unto others, dot, dot, dot, as you would have others do unto you. And in the end, everything will be okay. And if it's not okay, it's not the end. That's what I would put out there.

• 1:34:58Speaker 05

  I love it. Well, Joe Paul, this has been so much fun.

• 1:35:03Speaker 04

  It's a pleasure, sir.

• 1:35:05Speaker 05

  You're a real pleasure to spend time with. Hopefully we'll have a chance, once we get through the storm of coronavirus, to spend some time in person. And I thank you on behalf of my listeners for all of the incredible stories and lessons learned. And I hope we get a chance to do it again.

• 1:35:28Speaker 04

  You have that, buddy. Thank you so much. And my love, peace, and happiness to all your listeners.

• 1:35:34Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends,

• 1:36:14Tim Ferriss?

  for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Right now, the world is changing, a lot is changing, and businesses are adapting in different ways. So in these uncertain times, how do you ensure your marketing goals are met? How do you ensure your marketing gets the results that you need and want? With more than 62 million decision makers on LinkedIn, you're able to connect with the right business leaders, as well as people who are looking to find products, services, and education to help their companies.

• 1:36:59Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:37:44Tim Ferriss?

  LinkedIn Ads can help all types of businesses get the marketing results that they need today. See how LinkedIn can help you with a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign. Just visit LinkedIn.com/TFS. That's LinkedIn.com/TFS. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Eero. E E R O. I love Eero. And I don't know about you guys, but since COVID hit, Wi-Fi has also taken a hit because everyone's home and spending much more time home at least. And my girlfriend and I were using the Wi-Fi constantly. We noticed dead spots throughout the house. Things would drop off, calls, recordings, you name it. It was a huge pain in the ass.

• 1:38:28Tim Ferriss?

  And ultimately, I grabbed Eero, which was originally recommended to me by Kevin Rose, and it is the Wi-Fi your home deserves. It blankets it with fast, reliable Wi-Fi, not just inside but outside too. So you're creating a mesh network, and it can extend your coverage so you can enjoy the nicer weather out. On your deck, get work done wherever. So this has been a absolute game changer. For me, it's super, super easy to set up. Sets up in minutes. I, despite having been involved with tech for so long, am not really fantastic at setting things up, and this was dead simple. You just plug it right into your modem or modem router box and you manage it from a super simple app with some very cool features like pausing the Wi-Fi for dinner, receiving alerts if any device attempts to join your network.

• 1:39:12Tim Ferriss?

  It's really, really easy. Eero eliminates poor coverage, dead spots, and buffering. You'll have consistently strong signal wherever you need it. So for instance, my girlfriend's upstairs, I'm downstairs, and we had very erratic coverage prior to using it, and now it's very, very consistent. Apple HomeKit users, Eero's got you covered with enhanced privacy and safety controls that give connected devices only the permissions they need to do what you want in your home and on the internet. So, Eero has fixed my issues with Wi-Fi at home. You can get your Wi-Fi issues fixed as soon as tomorrow. Go to ero.com/tim and enter code TIM, T-I-M, at checkout to get free next-day shipping with your order. That's E-E-R-O dot com slash TIM.

• 1:39:58Tim Ferriss?

  Code TIM at checkout to get your Eero delivered with free next-day shipping. You must use this URL to receive this offer. One more time, check it out. Eero dot com slash TIM, code TIM.