John Paul DeJoria: The Business Mindset That Turns Setbacks Into Billion-Dollar Success | Entrepreneurship | Lost Files

John Paul DeJoria launched his startup, Paul Mitchell, with just $700 after his investor pulled out, leaving him to convince skeptical suppliers, distributors, and clients to trust an unproven brand. Raised in poverty and hardened by years of door-to-door sales, he had already learned to expect rejection and push forward. That persistence eventually helped him build two billion-dollar businesses. In this “lost files” episode, the first recording of an episode published earlier this year, John Paul shares the business lessons he learned throughout his entrepreneurial journey and explains why he believes “success unshared is failure.” In this episode, Hala and John will discuss: (00:00) Growing Up Poor but Feeling Rich (06:25) Generosity and Sharing Success (11:52) Business Lessons From Door-to-Door Sales (24:14) Bootstrapping Paul Mitchell With Only $700 (35:54) Positive Thinking During Business Setbacks (40:20) Protecting Customer Trust Over Bigger Profits (49:27) Why Product Quality Drives Reorders (56:02) Building Patrón Tequila Into a Billion-Dollar Brand (1:09:05) Embedding Generosity Into Entrepreneurship (1:15:27) Staying Politically Independent as a Businessman (1:20:45) Why He Wrote Success Unshared Is Failure (1:25:55) Career Advice for Young Entrepreneurs John Paul DeJoria is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and co-founder and chairman of John Paul Mitchell Systems, one of the world’s largest privately held professional haircare companies. He later co-founded Patrón Spirits Company, which Bacardi acquired in a deal valuing Patrón at $5.1 billion in 2018. John Paul is also the author of Success Unshared Is Failure and the founder of JP’s Peace, Love & Happiness Foundation, which supports people, animals, and environmental causes worldwide. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone - Master practical AI skills without the complexity with Mindstone’s AI Competency Programme. Head to experience.mindstone.com/yap and get 10% off. AT&T Business - Stay connected with reliable, secure internet built for entrepreneurs. Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com. HoneyLove - Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Save 20% off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/PROFITING! #honeylovepod ElevenLabs - ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs helps businesses deliver better customer experiences. Start with a demo at ElevenLabs.io/profiting Quo - Bring your calls, texts, and contacts together in one place. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting. Resources Mentioned: John Paul’s Book, Success Unshared Is Failure: bit.ly/JP-SuccessUnshared The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason: bit.ly/GSC-RichestMan Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Networking

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by HeyGen, Shopify, Life at the Speed of Play, and Indeed. HeyGen helps you create AI avatar videos without constantly being behind the camera. Get your first three videos free at heygen.com/profitting. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com/profitting. Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus helps entrepreneurs quickly test ideas and find the ones worth pursuing. Get two books for the price of one at GetMark'sBook.com/yap. Indeed helps you attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/podcast.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at YoungAndProfiting.com/deals. What's up, young and profiteers? Today's episode is a special audio exclusive bonus just for you guys. So here's the backstory. I had the absolute honor of sitting down with John Paul DeJoria. He's the incredible self-made billionaire behind Paul Mitchell and Patron Tequila. Unfortunately, the video files got corrupted. I was so bummed. We had to rerecord the interview. But the first conversation was just so magical. And we're finally going to release it to you because I feel like it's something I want you guys to hear. You're going to hear him open up about his journey from sleeping in his car to becoming a billion-dollar brand, and why he believes success means nothing unless you share it with others.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  So stick around because there's a lot of wisdom packed in this conversation. Now, here's my original sit-down with John Paul DeJoria. Enjoy.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  John Paul, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Well, thank you, Hall. It's really a pleasure being here. I like the focus of your podcast, helping others out.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  Thank you. Well, we are so honored to have such a successful entrepreneur on the show like yourself. And you have an epic rags to riches story. And so when I was learning about you, I found out that you grew up in Echo Park, Los Angeles, which is now gentrified, but back then it wasn't such a nice town to live in. You grew up in poverty with a single mom. So let's start there. Take us back to your times in Echo Park. If we walked into your home, what would we see? What would we feel?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing you would feel if you walked in my house is, wow, this is a little box. The house I grew up in is just a little bigger than your studio room here. It was a little one-bedroom house. My father was a deadbeat dad, so by two years old, we really didn't have a dad, my brother and I. But my mom did a good job raising us. So you would find a very small place with a very humble means. For example, we did not have a refrigerator. We had an icebox. Iceboxes were real, where the ice man would come around for 25 cents a week. I remember and put a big giant block of ice in there. It would last the entire week. We had the vegetable man blowing a horn as his truck went up and down Scott Avenue or Fairbanks Avenue there. I mean, it was just really unusual times.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  We never had a television, though this is 1949, 1950, 51, 52. We didn't have a TV, so we didn't know what it was like in, shall we say, the outside world. But our community was made up in those days of a lot of Europeans and Hispanic people, mostly Europeans. And everyone just got along with everybody. It was just an interesting thing. Everyone from every race, color, creed, whatever, kind of lived in the neighborhood. And my mother gave us love, nothing but love. So we grew up with a lot of love. That's one thing my mother gave us, and we thought we had everything in the world. We didn't know any better. And then along the way, we had many great experiences.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  So you could have grown up with this victim mindset because you didn't have a lot of money. Your dad had left when you were two years old, but your mother really instilled confidence in you. And she taught you so many lessons about generosity and positivity and the meaning of wealth. Can you share some of your favorite stories with us?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  And then around five years old, my mother became very, very ill. So my brother and I went into foster care. So we were foster children until the time I was about nine and a half years old. But we were the lucky ones because we got to come home almost every weekend and see our mom. Where many other just kids couldn't. So we kind of experienced that, but my mom did something different. She'd made sure that we had to experience a lot of things, a lot of people experience that we consider to be wealthy, to have much more money. One great example of it was this. My mom, I can remember, brought home once a little, small piece of filet mignon steak. And she cut it in three pieces, just about little square in chunks or something, just three little pieces,

• 4:35Speaker 01

  and said, "Boys, this is something called filet mignon, and it's what the rich people eat. We eat just like the rich people." We thought, great, whoever they are, this is wonderful. And another time, but in those days, it was a lot less expensive. She brought a little bit of caviar and said, "Boys, this is caviar." You know, she was European when she came over. She says, "That's what these rich people eat also. We eat just like they do." I said, "How cool." Another thing that really sucks in my head, we were finally home there at 10, 11 years old, and we had paper routes in the morning. And one day, I'll never forget this day, we were home, it was on a Friday, and my mom said, "Get whatever money you had." We saw a few pennies. Anyways, we raised between us 27 cents.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  And mom said, "We have life made." Boy, we are so rich because, one, we have vegetables that we were growing in our little teeny garden there. We're happy, our bills are paid, and we still have 27 cents left over. Aren't we wonderful? We thought, yay. That was the kind of mom that we had. I know at seven years old, when I was out there selling Christmas cards off the back of a comic book, they would send you in some six samples or so, and you would sell them. And then someone would put their private name or message on there, and then they would get it back. So the way it worked was, I'd go to my neighbors. I'd say, "Here's six Christmas cards you could pick from," and we'd put your name on it. And I gave them examples, right? And then they would give me a 50% deposit, which was something like maybe $2.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  I would send it into the company. They would print them up. Because everyone trusted everybody in those days. Amazing how those things went on. Anyway, so they'd come back. I would deliver it to them and get the other $2 and got to keep it. So I thought, boy, this is cool, only at Christmas time. But my mother encouraged us to look at people and smile and just come from your heart when you tell people things. So we grew up with little to nothing, but we had everything. So we had a lot of love and a very caring mom. It's interesting when that happens in life, when you are really, really loving and people care about it. There was a place there in East LA we'd go to when I was in foster care called the Variety Boys Club, where we would hang out and make flower boxes that we would go out and sell to somebody else.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  So it was a unique way of living up, even though we had very, very little. We lived on an upper scale because we had the love, we were excited, we were happy. And my mother was incapable of lying and was one of the most positive people on the planet. We had so little, but she did so much for us.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Well, that's so wonderful. Like, what a great story about your mother. And it's so awesome that she was able to instill that generosity and confidence and positivity in you. And look where it took you because you had that really strong mindset since you were growing up. So where did this passion for generosity come from?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Good question. That's going back to mom, too. At six years old in Echo Park at Christmas time, my mother took my brother and I, we had trolley cars in those days. They actually had real trolley cars, right? Anyways, we took downtown LA, maybe a five-minute ride by trolley car. Because at Christmas time, and downtown LA was a bit different than today. They had the Bullocks, the May Company, Saks Fifth Avenue, all the big department stores by Seventh and Spring, that general vicinity. Anyways, we would go down there, and there'd be like puppet shows going on on the windows, little trolley cars going around, little, I should say, little trains that we got to ride. We thought we were the luckiest kids in the world to see all this stuff, right? Anyway, so mom gave us a dime and said, "Boys, I want you to hold the dime together,

• 8:07Speaker 01

  walk over and give it to that man with the red bucket ringing the bell." So we did. And we said, "Mom," this is now 1950, okay? "Mom, that's two soda pops and three candy bars. Why do we give that guy with the bell and the red bucket our dime?" And she said, "Boys, that's a Salvation Army. There are people that have no food and no place to live, and they help those people out. We could only afford a dime this year, and I'm going to volunteer a little bit of time with them and what little time I have to volunteer. But, boys, always remember this is when you grow up. And as you grow up, there'll always be somebody that needs something more than you do. Lend a helping hand. And if you don't have a dime to put or any money, volunteer a little bit of time." And that's stuck with me.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  I love that. And you have a new book called Success Unshared is Failure.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  So talk to us about why that is such an important mantra for you. And also, failure is a pretty strong word. So why is it actually failure?

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Well, when you grow up, the way I grew up with a lot of challenges throughout my whole life, even when I started my first company, Paul Mitchell, I was homeless. I was homeless. So I lived in my car because of circumstances. But so I've been through it all. At 22 years old, I was married very, very young, had a two and a half year old son, and my wife could not handle being a mom anymore. She just split, took what little money we had, the car, and left me with a kid sitting there. And here I am in my early twenties. What are you gonna do? So I've been through a whole lot. I've been in places, for example, where when I was down and out with a little child, one of my dear buddies who, shall we say, traveled a lot with the Hells Angels, he would have the Hells Angels come over and give us a helping hand. Some of the mamas would help take care of my kid while I went

• 9:49Speaker 01

  to work. And I would ride motorcycles with the Hells Angels, never had to really join the club, because they knew I was working all the time, and I couldn't attend their Thursday meeting, which they call church. But they liked me. So we kind of rode together a bit out of Griffith Park and other areas. But growing up, I ran across so many things, not having any money, having to live in a car, just a lot of different things and a variety of jobs that I experienced, till all of a sudden, finally making it on my own through great difficulty. Well, with all this information, all of a sudden, coming from nothing, like with Paul Mitchell and later on Patron, all of a sudden, I had money where I could pay my bills on time. And then I realized so many people weren't quite as

• 10:29Speaker 01

  lucky or so positive. So I started volunteering when I had no money at Griffith Park, at Lovins, where you would feed people at, or you would be in line helping feed people at Thanksgiving and Christmas, even brought my little boy with me when I had custody of him, he was living with me, and kind of just grew up helping. And it made me always feel good, not just because mom said, don't forget, but always made me feel good. So as time went along, and I was able to afford it, I not only gave some of my time, but I started giving money. Today, it's millions of dollars a year. But we don't consider it charity. What I consider with my family is we're investing in the future of our nation and the planet Earth, and the future for others to treat our great, great, great, great,

• 11:14Speaker 01

  great grandchildren even better and have more opportunities. That's how we figure. So when I say success unshared is failure, I do know quite a few people that are also billionaires and other very wealthy people, that are so stingy with their money, they don't really want to help anybody out. They talk about it, but they don't. Or when they do, they want credit for it, whatever. And that's not really where it's at. So I say in the book, success unshared is failure, because throughout the book, it points out how we started with lemon and beans, and then by being nice to people, and being kind to people, how we could achieve something, but give a little back. Let's put it this way, if there was an epitaph, which people asked me, and I had to think about this one,

• 11:55Speaker 01

  if you did have a tombstone, an epitaph was on that tombstone, what would it say? And I said, you know what it would say, I think? And I thought about this a little bit, is this, he came to this planet with nothing, like most everybody does, nothing, but just a body and a being in the body. But he left, and when he left, he made the planet a better place to live for millions of other people. He was one of the good guys here. So put in a good star seed that was here to help this planet evolve. That's what he was here for. That was his purpose. And he went through a lot of bullshit, had a lot of problems along the way. But he came out okay. But he understands where other people were at, what they're trying to fight, and could do it a bit easier.

• 12:35Speaker 00

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  time of year. Yap fam, if you want to start your mornings off right, go to drinkag1.com/profiting and for a limited time, get a free immune support bundle, including a bottle of omega three fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/profiting. Drinkag1.com/profiting. That's amazing. Like, you're such an incredible human being. And I'm just so thankful that you're here and able to share your stories with us, and so much that you've done for humanity so far. And we'll unpack all of that. But first, I want to get into your background in sales.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  Because I found out that you were working since seven or eight years old, going door to door. Was that normal back then? Or was that something unique to you?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't normal.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  It wasn't normal. Okay.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, the newspaper route was, excuse me, if you could get a newspaper route. But the first one I would say in selling would have been the Christmas cards. And that was followed up by the planter boxes that we made in, at the Variety Boys Club. They were about maybe two feet wide and flat on the bottom and kind of curved with an opening and two little loopholes that you could actually hang it up if you wanted to. So it was 25 cents worth of wood. But the Variety Boys Club would give you credit. I learned about credit, right? So I'm a little kid, whoa, 25 cents. So my brother and I built one. It took us a couple days, early little kids, but we built it. We went out to sell it. Finally, we sold it for 50 cents, went back, gave them their 25 cents, and the other 25 cents,

• 16:59Speaker 01

  we bought another one. And the other one, we made it. You know, we bought the one, and we made it, sand it, shellac it, everything. We went out and sold it. We had 50 cents. Now, 50 cents in the early 50s is a lot of money. It's like a kid having five or $10 today. We thought, wow, this is really, really cool. And then later on, around 10, 11 years old, I had a paper route, so did my brother, with the morning LA examiner. And we made only about $30 a month each approximately. Get up early in the morning, pedal our bicycles, fold the papers, go out and deliver them. On Sundays, it was fold these giant papers, shove them in your bags, and have somebody stronger than you help you on your bicycle. If you fell down, you're in trouble. It took forever to get it back up again. And

• 17:43Speaker 01

  we would deliver it. But you would get an extra dollar if you could go out there and get new subscriptions. And that's exactly what we did. We went out there, we got new subscriptions, you know, maybe worked half of a Saturday, maybe got one or two, put me an extra couple of dollars. And that was really cool. And we learned how to look people right in the eye. Because when you're looking around, they're telling you, well, I'm over here. You know, you're a little kid. You're kind of, you know, anyways, to look them in the eye and give your presentation. We even had a song. A kid up the street, his name was Michael Vucic. And I would go out together, we thought, let's team up and get, you know, these little dollars each, right? We'll just split it all. We even made up a little song. Now, we're kids, we're 11, 12 years old. We made, I forget it was, good

• 18:26Speaker 01

  evening, good evening, we're the examiner boys. If you'll subscribe to the examiner, we'll sing a song for you, right? And we do one of these. First time we did it, we were so embarrassed. When we were done, we looked at each other and ran away. And the guy in the door, just, what the heck is this all about? So you try different things.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  But Encyclopes was a big one.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Yes. That was your first, like, real sales job. Most reps quit the first couple of days, but you actually lasted like three and a half years and became a top seller.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  That is, if they still had door to door sales, I would insist that every one of my children do it for at least a minimum of three months, because it was unusual days. And I'd just gotten out of the United States Navy, looking for something to get into. And I was interviewed and very impressed by it. The way it worked is this, for five days, you're in a training class to learn a word for word presentation. Then you go out in the field. It's all commission only. You don't get paid money unless you sell something. But they said something to me I never forgot. And they said this, some of you are not going to make it. In fact, they didn't tell us this, but I found out later, the average lifespan of an encyclopedia salesman on commission only, no leads, it

• 19:38Speaker 01

  wasn't Britannica or World Book, it was Collier's Encyclopedia, I heard right, was three and a half days. Because once you get out there with your training, and people are closing doors to your faces, it's, I don't want this. I'm out of here. There's no money. But he told me something I believed. And it's going to pass on to all your entrepreneurs. I don't care what age they are. And it's this. Be prepared for rejection.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  The way they explained it was that you may call on 50 doors and they're either politely saying no, or maybe not so politely close to your face. You have to be just as enthusiastic on door number 51 as you were on the first 50. Well, I believe what they said. It wasn't door 51 for me. It was a hundred and something, but I believed I was just as enthusiastic and it worked. And then, oh, let's say maybe I have to do 10 presentations to make one sale. Maybe. Finally, as I learned more and more how to do it better and better. If I gave three presentations, I did at least one sale and as commission only. And that lasted about three and a half years and it worked out well until I finally got burnt out on knocking on doors, even as a sales manager with them.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  You were still required to go out there and every weekend at least one order. And I said, now I gotta go into something else. So I went into a variety of things, but I learned so much. Overcoming rejection, believing your product is of high quality. Everybody needed it. And I would say to all entrepreneurs, I learned this when I started my first company, Paul Mitchell, is another big secret to really making it in life is not only be prepared for a lot of rejection in business or even in your personal life. Cause people are gonna tell you things you don't wanna hear.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  If you're prepared for it, it goes off one shoulder and into the air. Be prepared for it. You're gonna get it anyways, right? The other part was make sure you'd never go into the selling business. Now let me explain what I mean there, okay? Most people or companies create something in a presentation to sell to somebody else.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Okay, there's a need in your marketplace. This is it. I don't. With Paul Mitchell and Patron especially, we went into the reorder business. Paul Mitchell had no money, no nothing. You know, just door to door and three products to start with, but they were so darn good that we knew if we put them in the hands of hairstylists, okay? They say this is really good stuff.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  And then recommended to their customer to use in between visits to look the same. In other words, we were in the reorder business. Now, if you have a service that's not a physical product, you still wanna go in the reorder business, meaning this, what you're giving them is so good, not only will they wanna use you again, but there's nothing to happen. It's a one-time sale. They'll tell people about it.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  So those are the two big things. Be ready for rejection and know it's coming. And when it comes, don't let it bug you. The second thing is whatever your product or service is, is so good. People will reorder it. They wanna reorder.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel like that's such great advice because you don't wanna be in the business of just having to spend endless amounts of money on marketing and branding and trying to like push out your products and services. You want it to be so good that people just order it on their own, spread it by word of mouth.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  We had to. We had no money to advertise for market or anything. And also we had to start a company with Paul Mitchell or the backer pulled out.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  And that was a big deal because we could do it for half a million dollars. Today they'd be two or three million in 1980, pulled out. So it was a matter of I left everything I was doing, everything I was doing and said, what the heck? Left everything behind, better car, the house, everything else, went down the hill with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket and son of a gun, okay? The guy didn't come through. Another lesson for everyone to learn here. People are asking, especially the youth of America or even people that are older, can you do today what you did in 1980? You know, you started at difficult times. How the world did you get an office? How did you get people to pay you immediately? How did you do all this stuff? That's almost impossible.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Well, it's all in the book, step for step. How we got an office for $16 and how we got somebody that was used to paying in 45 days to pay us immediately, how we did it. There's ways to do these things, but it's a process of learning along the way as you do these things. So there was nothing there. We had to create all this on our own. And it's interesting, when you've got to create something on your own, the entity in us, that God form that is in us is very smart. Just leave yourself open to the universe. It's gonna guide you. Prior to that, I was fired from three companies.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  All in the beauty industry. One, because I complained all the time about them testing on animals. They were hair care products, you know, not skin. They're putting a rabbit's eyes till they die or injected in them, but they wanted to look to be the scientific approach. Well, they got tired of me in upper management complaining. They said, JP, we love you, but you gotta go because you're now telling everybody the same thing. That's not how you run a major corporation, whether we're right or wrong, you stick by it. I didn't wanna stick by something that was wrong and I had a good job. Went to work for another company, Synthex, just bought Fermedel and they needed someone to train their people in sales and marketing, which is what I did. After one year, I wasn't one of them. In other words, you're not one of us, okay? You're not with us playing canisters on the weekends.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  You're to love it and grift the park, right? And other things too, that's no need to mention right now, but they were really mean. It's one of those types. So they fired me. I said, great, no problem. Fine, believe. Then I went to work for another company that was a little dinky company and they needed me to almost run their company for them, which I did. I quadrupled or tripled their sales in one year. By the way, with Fermedel Synthex, I increased our business by 50% in one year. And then with the other company, I tripled their sales or doubled. No, actually I tripled them, but they fired me after a year. Now the way they fired me, this is interesting, but what came out of it is the more important part about leaving yourself open to the universe. Okay? They fired me because they said, JP, you made more money than the owner of the company. I said, what are you talking about?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  You know, this is in the mid 70s, right?

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  I said, I agreed to work for you for only $3,000 a month and 6% of new sales. They said, that's what got you, the new sales. You created so many new sales, you made more than the owner of the company. I said, but your company is bigger now. It's worth more. And how about I get 10% of your company? I'll buy it from you, but give me a couple of years to pay for it, right? And maybe take a little less that you're paying me and put it towards that purchase. They said, absolutely not. We have a fellow named, I'll never forget this, David Chapman, that'll do it at one third the price. I said, oh, well. And so I went on. Long story short, I consulted a little bit after that. Then I started John Paul Mitchell Systems. It took us two years as people said, when did you become successful?

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  It took us two years. And the reason we knew we were successful was because we could pay our bills on time. We didn't pay them up, but we paid them on time. But all of a sudden around that time, something hit me just out of the blue. I said, oh my God, there is a God. There is something real called fate. Had I not worked for all three companies, learned something different from all three in the professional beauty industry, I would have never been able to start Paul Mitchell, whether it was with $700 or whether it was with 10 million, I wouldn't have had the knowledge.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  It's almost like I was doing a darn good job at each company, but it wasn't my destiny. It wasn't my purpose. I couldn't help enough people out. I couldn't make enough money to do some of the things I wanna do to help the plant. I couldn't. So the universe said, okay, you're not doing it. We're gonna do it for you. This is not right, but you gotta learn. You gotta learn. You gotta learn. So when people are down and out, just remember that. Don't think about how bad things are because you can't change yesterday's newspaper. You can't. It's already happened. Leave it behind you. Leave it behind you and just go forward and leave yourself open to the universe. It works and it works really well.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  We're here to learn lessons and some of the bad stuff are good lessons for us to learn to be better.

• 27:44Speaker 00

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• 28:43Speaker 00

  What's up, Yap fam? You guys know we love reading on this show. So I'm always excited when I find a book I genuinely think is worth sharing. Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love by Mark Pincus is one of those books. Mark is a legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor. And this fast-paced 170-page book is his playbook for testing ideas quickly, navigating uncertainty, and figuring out what's actually worth pursuing. One of my favorite concepts is what he calls "the abyss." Those moments when you feel stuck or unsure of what's next. Instead of fearing uncertainty, he shows you how to use it as a tool for discovery. Right now, Mark is doing a buy-one-get-one offer for Yap listeners.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Go to GetMark'sBook.com/Yap, buy one copy for $32 and get a second copy free. So you can keep one for yourself and give the second to a friend, future co-founder, or someone who needs a little push.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  What's up, Yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've got to be paying attention to live selling, because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious, so I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat, and building a real relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping. It felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. And for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore. Sellers on Whatnot can sell up to 10 times more than traditional marketplaces. And the number of sellers making over $1 million a year on the platform has doubled.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  So if you've got products to sell and you're looking for a new way to reach customers, search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store. Download it and you can start selling right away. That's Whatnot in the App Store. It's so true. Hindsight is 2020, right? A lot of times you get fired or something bad goes on and you think like, oh, woe is me. But in reality, the universe is actually just preparing you to do what you're really meant to do.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  That is correct.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  And a lot of 20 and 30-year-olds especially, they feel like they need to do everything right now. They need to start companies in college. But in reality, you started Paul Mitchell. How old were you, 36 years old or something like that? And it turned into a billion-dollar company?

• 31:05Speaker 01

  I believe it was 34.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  34 years old, yeah.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Well, we're global. We're the largest privately-owned salon hair care company in the world, but we give a lot. But also, I might want to say, we may have the smallest turnover of any company in the beauty industry, because we take care of our people and we love them.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. There's so much that I want to unpack in your story. So first of all, you mentioned that you started Paul Mitchell Systems with $700.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  You had an investor who was going to invest like half a million dollars or something, and he pulled out.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  But you decided to continue on anyway. Why did you believe in the idea so much? What gap did you see? Or why did you decide, like, you know what? I'm just going to do this anyway, even though my investor pulled out?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  That's a very good question. By the way, no one ever asked me that particular question. That's a good one. Well, for me, it was very, very simple. I left everything behind. The work I was doing, the better car, took the older car. It was a cool car, but down the hill, right? And I just left everything with a few hundred bucks. And I just realized that I left everything because that's not my destiny. This must be my destiny. I knew our products were great, because I had good friends of mine help me formulate them properly. And I knew that if I could only talk to enough people, just put it in their hands. Just let me put this in your hands, okay? That the majority will reorder, because it's that high of a quality product. And I firmly believed in it. So I went through all the difficulties and eating, sleeping, and paying bills late all the time,

• 32:28Speaker 01

  everything you could ever imagine, but we made it. And that was another reason for me coming out with the book, to show others how to do it. So people say today, JP, can you do it today like you did in 1980?

• 32:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  No, you could do it easier today. Why? In 1980, inflation was 12.5% in the United States. Unemployment was 10.5%. If you could get a loan, which we never could, if you could, the lowest interest rate was 12%. And we waited in line to get gasoline. And we had the biggest competitors in the world going after. Today, life is different. One, you have computers, so you could communicate. You could write your own stationery, your own business cards. You'd own everything on your computer. We didn't have that in those days, okay? And that could be your business office. But another thing, too, that I'd love to share with your entire audience is, okay, you have a little business, you have a product going,

• 33:24Speaker 01

  but you don't have the money to market it, sell it, or you've got a bunch of, let's say you don't have a lot of money. You want to raise money, you have old clothes, an old bicycle, or you just have stuff you want to get rid of. How do you move stuff out? There's something you could go to. It costs you $15 a month. One five, that's all it costs you, right? And it's called Global SKU. You take your camera, and you could take a picture of anything. Something that's old and used, something new. I could take your purse. I could take anything, right? You take a picture of it. AI is involved in this, by the way, all right? And I invested in this company because it's so cool. Anyways, you take a picture. Instantly, I'm talking about like in a second, it shows you the picture you took, what it is, right?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  And it tells you what it sold for brand new, the last time it was sold, and how much it sold for used. And you push this other button, okay? And all of a sudden, it gets you on something like eBay. So like a lot of our students, for example, okay? Have old clothes, old things, they want to raise some money. Just go take pictures of your old clothes. Now, does this work? Recently, I wanted to see it work. Two guys went into a thrift store for $2, bought two t-shirts, right? And one said Illinois on it, the other had some kind of scribbling on it, whatever. They bought them, went paid for them, but when they bought them, they took a picture, knowing they're going to pay the two bucks for each one, right? Took a picture. When they left the store, one of them already sold for almost $100. The other one, oh, 20, 30 bucks, whatever. That something like this really works.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  It's a way for someone to have something. All of a sudden, you now have an audience and you're going to millions of people, millions. And then they send you the money right away. It's really tricky.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  That's amazing. It's called Global SKU?

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Yep, Global SKU.com.

• 35:07Speaker 00

  SKU.com, cool.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  And it's an app that you have, but it's 15 bucks a month. Now, if you've got a giant business, we have some people that have such huge businesses, they've got so much stuff to put in. It could cost you up to something like that, maybe 500 bucks a month, maybe a giant thing. But you know, if you have like 20, 25 things, whatever you want to sell, 15 bucks, that's it. No more money.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  I have so much things to get rid of. I definitely want to check it out.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  A lot of people try and throw them in the trash in your room. Here, you could recycle, reuse, and get money. If you had a wheel off a bicycle, little frame, it's amazing what people buy. All the stuff you want to get it rid of, do it. Global SKU.com.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  I love that. I know you don't want to give away in the book, but let's unpack some lessons for the entrepreneurs tuning in.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  You grew Paul Mitchell super popular, but you had no money. So how did you actually start to manufacture products? And convince suppliers and manufacturers to actually support your business?

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, great, I gladly share that with you. We didn't know the money was not coming in. So while I was putting the company together the couple of months before, I would go to like Setco for my bottles and say, hey. And they knew me from the industry, right? Because I did, I made it, I'm in the industry, right? Nice, good guy. And I said, we're doing this here, and my first order will be for 100,000 bottles. I'll mix them up with three different products. It'll be that, and I like to have 30-day terms. Here's what we're doing. And I really made an impression. He goes, oh, we'd love to have your business. I said, great. Then I went to the Silk Screener, did exactly the same thing. You know, everybody down the line in the filler, the place that filled it all up. Well, when no money came in, what do you do?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Now, that's one, if you leave yourself open to the universe, things come to you. So I said, that's not going to stop us, right? We're going to get this done, because it was all set up. So I came up with the idea of, let me call each one and say this. We are so excited. And I was excited, right? We're getting going, right? But I need a sample order. How about only 10,000 bottles? 3,000 shampoo, one, 3,000 shampoo, two, 3,000, I mean, 4,000 for the conditioner. Oh, sure, JP. We're wondering why you don't want a smaller order to start with. You got the same terms. Immediately, same day, Silk Screener, okay? Hey, we only want 10. Can we do it? Oh, of course. God, of course we'll do a sample run for you. Still 30-day terms. Went to the filler. Oh, of course we'll do a sample run for you, right? It was, wow, great.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  But then, our money disappeared. We went to the artwork, where they did our black and white artwork of our Paul Mitchell product. It was going to be $1,000. And we told him the truth. We only have 700. Can we give you a few hundred more and pay you the rest? You know, is that okay? And he said, no. He says, I want all 700, because I'll probably never see the other few hundred dollars at all. That's it. We gave them all the money. We got the artwork. Now I'm out of money, right? So I went by my mom's house and I had lunch with my mom. She didn't know what we were, how bad things were. She didn't know I left everything behind. She had no idea. It's all happening like a day or two, right? All happened like real fast. And it was, I said, so I had lunch with her and boy, I ate everything on that plate.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Boy, son, you were hungry. Have some more. Anyways, I said, Mom, I want to borrow $300 from you if I can. And she said, well, son, you have a good job. You make good money. I said, Mom, I'm starting a new business. I'll pay you back in a month. Okay, here. She gave me $300, right? That had to last me a long time. And that's when I learned not only how to sleep in my car, because I did it once before when I was in my twenties, with my son, but how to eat off $2.50 a day. It was like the freeway cafe had a 99 cent special between nine and 11 when nobody came there. One egg, one piece of toast, and one either piece of bacon or one piece of sausage, and your choice of either orange juice or coffee. Well, of course, I took the orange juice, the sausage, it was bigger.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  I just took whatever I could. And then I discovered this company, a restaurant chain. It was called El Torito, that started something called Happy Hour. Nobody came in, let's say between four and six o'clock. Happy Hour, 99 cents. Whoa, great. But not only did you get a margarita, and it wasn't Patron, okay? But it was just a real inexpensive margarita, but they gave you little chicken wings, salsa, and all that. So after you're about 10 or 15 chicken wings, you're full. The salsa is your vegetable. And I had a margarita and had a quarter. I could leave her as a tip. Well, after about four or five days, people kind of caught on a little bit to, you know, what's going on with these guys? And I told them exactly. They were so kind. Occasionally, they'd bring me an enchilada,

• 39:39Speaker 01

  or they'd bring me a car. It was just unbelievably such beautiful people. When I made money, I went back and I found them and they were still there. And I gave them the biggest tips they've ever had in their life. This is kind of a thank you. We learn and manage things. It was like, I'll share this one with you, okay? Because it's also in the book. How do you get money right away when you have no money? Because I had the product to deliver. Well, first of all, how do you even get business going? I went knocking door to door, just like I would do selling encyclopedias, got 12 different salons to buy anywhere from $25 to $130 approximately in product. And they would give me a check. And it took me over a week to do this. And I'm a pretty good salesman,

• 40:20Speaker 01

  but unknown product, unknown name, why should we get this? You know, anyways. So I got them. And then I went to a distributor, but they did not fill out the top who was made out to. And I delivered on the spot. Went to a distributor, I'll just give you one part of it. And I made my presentation. He was a nice man. He said, great presentation, but we're Perase Speedy Supply, the biggest distributors in Southern California. Number one, we have all the big brands. You have no money, no advertising, no promotion, no people, just you and your hairdressing friend, Paul Mitchell. That's it. I can't invest in building your brand. I just can't do that. He says, unless you give me another reason, I want to wish you well and hope you get some money. I said, I have another reason. He goes, what is it?

• 41:04Speaker 01

  So out of my pocket, I pulled out 12 checks. I put them all in front of them. I said, that's why. That's your first 12 customers. I've already sold it. You're paid for it. I've already made your first delivery. If you'll only order $2,000 worth of Paul Mitchell, we will really hard up, right? You can have all of LA and Orange County. That's like Southern California, right? And he laughed his head off and said, okay, but you better be here and help my people sell it, okay? And under those circumstances, I'll do it. I said, okay. I said, but one more thing I'd ask you. I said, we're kind of new and can you give me a check when this is delivered? He laughed his head off, came to our 25th anniversary, by the way, we've been in business 45 years, and told it to all my distributors. He says, and then JP leaves my office.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  And I finally agreed. I said, okay, I'll do it, but you better be here, okay, tomorrow morning. He says, in five minutes or less, my warehouse is calling me and saying, there's some guy here unloading these boxes on our warehouse entrance here, wanting a check for $2,000. He laughed his head off, went back, gave me the check. He said, I'll see you in the morning. So he gave us a break. And that's, and from there, then I decided, well, if that's the case, and I want to go forward, I need that extra money. So I built into the pricing, I raised all the wholesale prices by 5% and told everybody, if you pay your bill within 10 days, it's a 5% discount. Well, everybody wanted that. That's one of the things we did and a couple of other things to get our money right away.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's really great. So you did that so you could get more cash flow and get more cash on hand.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  We had no money.

• 42:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  And our bills were due from the time we had product to the time Setco, the bottlers' first bills were due, was 15 days. We had 15 days. And then everyone else was due right the same week. We had that time to have to raise that money. So it was very, very difficult doing it. And we had to have money right away, or we're out of business. Our first stakes, we had no money.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's a couple of things that I want to talk through here. One of the things that you keep saying is that you've got to be open to what the universe is going to provide for you. You've got to be open. So how do you suggest that people stay open? Like, what is the type of mindset you need to have? Or what do you do to be more lucky, so to speak?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  And luck comes along with a combination of things. One, the biggest thing is your thought pattern. Our thoughts are so powerful. I could give you an example of that, and you can see how it changes for other people. A good friend of mine and one of my business associates, for several years, just kept on saying, I have the worst luck. I have this new promotional thing going on. It's just not working, this new product. I have the worst luck. I have the worst luck. I have the worst luck. So I called them here, just the end of last year, and I said, I found out why you have all the worst luck. And who's responsible? He goes, well, JP, who, who? I said, you, because whatever you say or think and you put out to the universe, the universe wants to help you. If you're saying, I have the worst luck, well, it'll help you. It's black and white.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  It doesn't know reason. It's black and white. Well, then you'll continue to have bad luck. How about people, their New Year's resolution, next year, I'm going to try and lose 10 pounds or 20 pounds. Universe says, great, we'll let you keep on trying to lose that. The power of thought and the power of the words you speak are so powerful. If they're positive and they're going in a good direction, the universe is going to give you that. Open up to it. And don't have all the baggage of, oh, my God, I wish I would have done that differently. It would have never happened like this. That person was mean to me. You've got to get all that garbage off your shoulders. You have to, or you're not going to go forward. So when times are really bad, realize this, and it's what keeps you going.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  That was one of the many lessons the universe gave me to learn. I am here to learn lessons on this planet, in this body. It's one of the many lessons that'll learn to something that's even better and better and better in the future. Leave yourself open. Leave everything in the past and open eyes. It's amazing what comes to you. I didn't plan on calling everybody up and saying, hey, could I have a sample of only 10,000 bottles at all? But it just came to me. I said, whatever's going to happen is going to happen. And all of a sudden, these ideas, these thoughts just started coming in my mind. But I always thought positive. I would say 99% of the time, I was a positive thinker. There was a time, maybe during my, shall we call it biker years, my early twenties. And maybe I wasn't the best human being on the planet, okay?

• 45:28Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of things I did that I would regret. But it was a lesson learned to never do that again, or treat people a bit differently than you did then. Leave yourself to the universe and openly, and not the negative thoughts, before you go to bed. If you have all these thoughts, I can't pay my bills, she left me, he left me, no matter what it is. And you can't sleep. It goes through your head over and over again. Get a piece of paper, write it down, put that pen and pad either by your bed or by your sink in the bathroom. When you go to the bathroom in the morning, you could read it. Then if it goes in your head, hey, I don't have to have it in my head anymore. It's already written down. These are little things that help out. So no matter what the problem is, it's behind you. You cannot change yesterday's newspaper. Leave yourself open to new thinking and new thoughts.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  The other thing I hear from you is that you asked for help. You asked for things that were really uncommon, and you got lucky because you were able to actually ask for those things. And you didn't just ask and not give any effort. For example, you got 12 customers before you went to your first distributor and showed them proof, like, here, I've got your first customers for you. So talk to us about the importance of Asking for help and not being shy to ask for help.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Oh, you bet you. A lot of people are shy to ask for help. One time someone had said, hey, is it good to have consultants when you started a business? I said, I never had to, and I don't think so. Just do it yourself. Well, that was wrong because when you ask people that have done it before, they could give you some great advice because they've already been through the mistakes and overcame in most situations, your challenge. Very, very important. Okay. Or people call me occasionally. I don't have, I can't answer them all. And say, well, JP, here's my challenge. It's not a problem. I call it a challenge. Right? What can I do to overcome it? Or just go to someone, go to a mentor, go to the local boys or girls club and the Rotary Society, all the Lions Club, all these great groups, many for women, and ask, what do you think?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  I need a little bit of advice. People love to help other people out.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yeah. So let's talk about how you built trust with the salon owners. You were able to give money back guarantees, which I thought were really interesting. And then you also did things to connect with them on a community level, to make them feel more connected to your brand. Can you tell us about those things?

• 47:43Speaker 01

  A couple of things we did. One, let me say, tell people, one of my closes on one of my sales presentations is this. I would say, if you would be in a position, okay, and agree to let me come in here, hold a little class for your stylists when they're off, after work or before work, and display my products at eye level because they look really good at eye level, like a tuxedo on it, right? Makes everything around it look good. Let me hold a little class and let me show your staff how to use a product, which I could do in five minutes. I'll make this agreement with you that in 30 days, if it's not the best product you've ever used and you really want to keep it, I will come back and take every bottle, I would pick up the bottles I presented. I would take every bottle that I have sold that you haven't used

• 48:26Speaker 01

  or sold already and give you your money back. Now that's fair enough, isn't it? I would lick them in the eye and nod. Now that's fair enough, isn't it? If they would say no, which quite a few of them would, you know, why? All these other products are an unknown. I'd say, you know, I agree. Instead of taking a dozen each, how about only six each? And I will give you the same agreement that if in 30 days, it's not the best thing you've ever used, as long as you let me come in and hold a class to help you display it, right? I'll take everything back and so little by six of each. We only have three products. Is that fair enough? And if they said no again, and they would give me a reason why, too many, overloaded, don't have time. I say, I could appreciate that. If I was in your shoes, I'd think the same way.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  But I'm so convinced you're going to love it if you only take three of each. Okay? And a lot of it was no, no, no, no, no. But then little by little, I learned to give a better presentation. But that's how I got my first 12 orders. And I, but I knew in advance that I had to have something because the distributor's not going to want to talk to me. And when I'd have to really try and sell them to take something that is unadvertised, unknown, everything else. So I thought, and no one's going to buy my product. So I'd have to go knocking door to door like I did when I sold books. Good experience, right? And keep on going. And it took me again, over a week, maybe a week and a half, which today would probably take me a day, right? To get them. And then in my mind was, leave it open, leave it open. You might need that for someone else.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  And then I went straight to the biggest distributor, not a little distributor, but the biggest one, with everything I could put in a presentation. And after he said no, I gave him the extra reason to do it.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's incredible. And so didn't you do like charity work or things with the salon owners and hairstylists to make them feel more connected with the brand?

• 50:07Speaker 01

  After we got going, oh, definitely.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. So later on.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Once we got going, we're able to do that and get involved in sports marketing, local philanthropic events, which we still do, by the way, at Paul Mitchell. And it, it just my whole life, every coming, I'm involved in, I make sure that we're doing that. All of a sudden, they feel like they're part of it. An example is I was on the West Coast once in the office and the office was almost totally empty. And this was on a Friday. I said, oh, I came in late in the day. Where did everybody go? Oh, they said JP. We gave them the other half of the day off because they're down at Santa Monica Beach picking up trash. They want to add to the beach and the environment. So, you know, we kind of embedded ourselves that we want to help out and makes us feel really, really good.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. And you had multiple opportunities to take Paul Mitchell to retail, but you always refused to do that. Why was that so important for you? And what were you actually protecting with that decision?

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Actually, it was one of the best things we ever did. And the way we did it, we said this, because I worked for other companies, the beauty industry. And we would see, for example, companies like, oh my God, Maureen, Jerrimac, okay? Just, it'd be so many. I'd go on and on. All of a sudden saying, we're here in the beauty industry just for you. And the next thing you know, it's on drugstore shelves everywhere and they're selling it just openly. Okay? So my promise was this, we're going to be the first to support salons all the way. And if distribution changes, you're still going to be involved, period. Okay? You will. Because trust us, we'll be the first not to let you down. Well, in 2004, a young lady, a student raised her hand and said,

• 51:45Speaker 01

  in an audience that we were talking to, and said, JP, every company has sold in this industry and we understand that, reckon sold, they all sold. Okay? We understand JP that you have, not only have you never sold to anybody because you don't want anyone, if you were to sell, to all of a sudden take it retail. First thing they'll do is go full blown retail, right? And already there's black market stuff going in and people selling Paul Mitchell out the back door. But what if you die? Then what happens? I said, whoa, never thought of that one. One found a 360 year trust in the United States. I own more than 51% of the company. I put it in there. So for 360 years, starting 2004, nobody could take the company and sell it to anybody or take it to the major market. They couldn't do it.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  But then some challenges came up. COVID. Oh my God, here's COVID, right? Salons were closed for months at a time in many states. They were going out of business. Our customers wanted a product. So we made a deal with Amazon that number one, they had about 2,000 places on there that were selling either counterfeit or black market Paul Mitchell. So the deal was this, take them all off, take Paul Mitchell on. But what we need to do is this, is when we make the sales, we need to know everything you're doing, the money that we're getting. And we're going to give the salons that carry Paul Mitchell, we'll divide it among them, right? We're going to give them a big percentage of all the money we make off Amazon. So the customer still has the customer. And then when we went back to where they were starting to open up, they were broke.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  They were out of business for months at a time. So we took our customers that took Paul Mitchell, put another $4 million into it and gave them all free product, gave them product for the back bar hair color, shampoos, conditioners, to get them back in business again, asking nothing in return, because that's what they deserved. So we feel that, you know, giving back all along the way is definitely the way to do it. And more recently, when the big chains that was black marketing Paul Mitchell from all over the United States, salon would buy it. And a lot of them did this and sell it out the back door to make a quick 20% as much as they could possibly order. Right? Or they would be going out there and people would have old licenses, but walk into a distributor and they could buy it off the shelf, right?

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Tons of it legally and then sell it to these big chains. Right? One chain came to us and said, how can we change this to benefit salons? We're going to get it one way or another. So we made a deal with them. If they'll put up a sign in their big stores, right? That says, here's a few products for take home use in between visits. See your professional beauty salon for professional products and do it right. If you will do that, then all of a sudden, what you're getting through the black market, you won't get anymore, right? We'll get it to you. And we did get it to them. All of a sudden, we realized what salons were getting any product anymore. And even a couple of distributors who sales went straight down. They may have been black marketing it. We don't know. But it's things like this where you kept the promise. So for as long as John Paul Mitchell Systems is in business,

• 54:43Speaker 01

  which is another 350 so odd years or almost, as long as it's in business, whenever the distribution changed or anything, salons must be involved, either for a kickback on the money or something. We will always support them. When we had nothing, they believed us and supported us. So even when all of them are dead, I owe it to the industry.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  I love that. Integrity and loyalty is so important to you from you leaving a really cushy job because you didn't believe in animal testing

• 55:10Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  to then not going into retail, even though you probably would have made money faster had you gone that route.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Oh, a bunch.

• 55:17Speaker 00

  Why is integrity so important to you? And how do you think about integrity as a leader?

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Well, for one, when you are true to yourself, you are easily, shall we say, have the truth for everyone else. Being true to yourself is when no one has something and you're telling them something that I'm going to stay by you and you have nothing and they helped build you up. If that really builds a major company worldwide, you owe them. And the other companies, it's like you're cheating the people that you promised. You cheating them? You're not including them in what you're doing now. You say, well, thank you for doing this. Now we're going to move on. And I know a lot of the big retail companies do that still. They'll sell something to salons and then they'll change it a little bit and sell to the retail industry to say, well, we're also in the beauty industry. And this is not right.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Because when eventually you told them that you're going to give them all the support and all of a sudden you give to somebody else, it's just not right. And it's going to be some baggage you're going to carry on your shoulder. And your being knows inside that you screwed up. You know, you screwed somebody over.

• 56:16Speaker 00

  And that's not being open to the universe, right?

• 56:18Speaker 01

  No, it's not. And the universe says, okay, you want to do that? You continue to do that and people continue to screw you over. You want to, you want to make a promise you won't keep? Hey, no problem. That's what you want in the universe? That's what you're going to get back? And that's how it happens. My goodness, it's just, whoa. That's so good.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  So I know one of your core principles as an entrepreneur is to have like really quality product.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  So talk to us about how you knew that Paul Mitchell was like incredible product and the things that you did to ensure that you have the highest quality products possible.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Certainly, working for three other companies in the professional beauty industry, I knew quite well what was in those products. And one of the top formulators, Dr. Ron DeSalvo, was a dear friend of mine. And as a favor, I said, Ron, we need a couple of these things newer. And Paul Mitchell, my partner, tried to come out with a product line, but it never did too well because it wasn't that quality. And Paul didn't have a marketing or any business sense. So we took some products and my friend pitched in and helped us make it the best formula ever, no matter what it costs. It's just got to be the best product, right? Where if a hairdresser used it, and that's why with hairdressers, they would know the difference. And so that's how we got our quality in there. That was a quality. Patron was a little different story with quality, which we'll get to when we get to Patron. But that was all about it.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  How we can make it that good. And then we would continuously, if we made something new, make it the best. But here's something to learn about making somebody of high quality, okay? We started with actually three products and we invented sculpting lotion for the wet look or dry look. And freeze and shine hairspray in the eighties for the big hair. But it didn't build up on you. Those five products, 45 years later, are still top sellers for us. Top sellers for us still today because of the quality.

• 58:00Speaker 00

  That's amazing. And so you were talking about how reordering is so important. How do you know if a product is reorder worthy?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Well, if you know if it's being reordered, it's because you're getting an order for it. You're getting an order for it. If you're not getting your order for it, it's like, oh my gosh. There was a time, oh, maybe 15 years ago, where Mr. Jacob Ellis and I sat down. He was my CEO at the time. And we were looking at some of our products. And there were five products, and we're a very big company. Five products that collectively, they did less than $2 million. So we thought, well, maybe we should make room for some that, you know, make several million per product, whatever. But then we realized, well, wait a minute. If we started the company and we made almost $2 million in annual sales off five products, we'd have been the happiest guys in the world. Our first big year was $400, I think, $50,000. Second big year was a million three. I mean, God, we would have just been in heaven at the time.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  So we really had to think that one out.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, like which, which ones do you discontinue? Which ones don't you? So you actually had black and white bottles.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:01Speaker 00

  And probably at the time you were thinking like, that's not great. Everybody else has colored bottles, but it turned out to be an advantage.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, well, well, also a necessity. Black and white, what you bought the white bottle and for two cents, you got a silk strain. If you had color on it, it was six cents or seven cents. We couldn't afford it. Well, little did we know that that black and white would all of a sudden make us unisex. Now to this day, many of our products have color on them, some color on it. But we still have the basic black and white there, other than maybe an envelope with a color. We're lucky on that one.

• 59:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's great because it's like, everybody knows what it looks like because it stands out so much. Cause all the other bottles are all different colors. So do you think with all social media and hype cycles and influencers, that if somebody had, what is $700 back then is $3,000 now, that somebody could start Paul Mitchell today?

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Oh, easy. Easier than we did it. If you did the same thing we did, but you had $3,000. I mean, because today you have social media, you got advertising and you have computers. You could type up your own stationery, your own bills. There's so many things you could do today with technology. We couldn't do in those days. We could not do it. You know, we could not follow through unless we went there personally or called them on a phone. How's it going? You know, and that's what we do a lot. We follow through with people. And we have seminars every year where 3,000 hairdressers come, you know, and we teach them new techniques, new ideas, how to improve their business. We continuously do something to upgrade our industry continuously. But I do say to people, when you see Paul Mitchell, get it from a hairdressing salon.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Because not only do you know for sure it's a real Paul Mitchell and not counterfeit or anything else, but they'll show you how to use it with your type of hair, hair at no cost.

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  Last question on Paul Mitchell is about your employees. So you've been in situations over the years where you could have laid off your employees because it was maybe the right thing to do for the business, but you decided not to. What was your reasoning behind that? And how did you come up with other creative solutions to not have to let people go?

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  I don't know how you found out about all these things, but our own employees, you're 100% correct. During COVID, people were laying off left and right or asking for subsidies from the government. We said, we did so well and we were so happy and we're making such good money. We didn't lay off one person. We kept them on full pay. And those that could go into the office would go in, which was kind of rare. If you stayed home all this time, you got your full pay because we love you and you're not going to suffer just because of this stupid stuff that's going on with the COVID and the shots that, you know. Well, anyways, that's the whole, so we don't want to get into that. So that was Ron. The, the, the administration screwed up big time on that one. Just hurt people bad. But anyways, but we have a new administration, so things change all the time.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  But we took care of them. And then right afterwards, when salons came back, we gave them free product. So we take care of our people. Now during that time, it cost us so much money. Cause remember, sales were down. Now salons are closed, right?

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  And you were giving back to the salons too.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  So for a couple of years, my partner of the time and I, okay? My minority partner, myself, did not take any dividends out of the company. We couldn't because we did it to help our own staff out. It helped salon sales. So it was a couple of years, we didn't take any dividends out of the company. We just left it in just to try and make up for, you know, what we lost during that time.

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  You're such a good man, such a good boss.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  But I'm happy. We, we have the smallest turnover of maybe any industry. I don't know, but in the professional beauty industry, we have the fewest turnover. In fact, I would say we're in about 128 countries. And I think with Paul Mitchell's staff alone, God, in the last 46 years, let us just say, our turnover is much less, but let's say it's less than 500 people. I haven't heard of a corporation this big that's banded out.

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  But people stay. In fact, one of our oldest employees, Bill Peplo, Peppy, worked with us until he was 86 years old.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  And he was just a great guy, but he was, he couldn't get around, but he could answer the phone. And we made a little job for him so he could make some money, plus his social security. We would call up our accounts, how's it going? This is Peppy. Is everything going okay?

• 1:03:04Speaker 00

  That's so cute.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, we like, we love to take care of people.

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  So let's move on to Patron. So you started Patron in your 40s.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  What translated from shampoo to tequila?

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  It was just a freak thing that the universe just let it happen. I was building a major house and I was in, living at that time in California. I've only been in Texas 26 years now, but in California, I was living there. And I was building a big house in Malibu, so I was making pretty good money. And my builder came to me and said, this friend of mine, Martin Crowley, he's a great designer. He was in the hospitality business, just went bankrupt. JP, would you go into business with him, kind of be the bank? And, uh, you know, in architectural business? I said, sure, why not? Wasn't that much. So he would go to Mexico by furniture and pavers for model homes or for restaurants, furnitures, things like that. Very inexpensively for architectural model homes. I was building that house there.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  He was going down on a delivery. We were drinking regular tequila of the day, right? Salt, shoot it, lime, okay? And, you know, you get a little burn there and, you know, anyways, there you mix the margarita and get that. And I said, Martin, when you go down to Mexico to buy some pavers or when you come back, bring us a couple of bottles of what the aristocrats drink down there. It's got to be something smoother than what we're drinking, right? And then the average bottle of tequila was about, I think, $5. The best one ever made was $14. Okay, no, this is 1989, right? Anyway, so he comes back and he brings these two long bottles and it was smoother than anything we had. Much smoother than anything we had. He said, but JP, I met this guy, Francisco Alcaraz, he can make it smoother. I said, really? Go back down.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  So Martin went back down again and he brought back it and he found these bottles down there with Ilan, who helped him start the company, right? These beautiful bottles, a blown glass, same bottle we use today at Patron.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  He said, JP, we could put in this bottle. It was the smoothest we ever had and even smoother. I said, oh my God, Martin, let's do this. I'll order a thousand cases of 12. That's 12,000 bottles. We'll bring it back. Now it was expensive to make. I said, I know it's expensive to make, but let's say nobody bought it. For the next 10 years, every birthday, anyone had a, they got a bottle of great tequila, Christmas, whatever you celebrate here, you know, you got this, right? Period. That was the worst that would happen. Because we had to sell it for $37.95, nobody wanted to take us on. Oh my God. Other than my buddy, Wolfgang Puckett Spago's wanted to buy it. He was a friend. He said, this is smooth. My clientele needs this.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  And Baja Cantina, who Martin you, Marina Del Rey said, this is really good stuff. We finally Found a wine dealer that only distributed wine and nothing else. And we talked him into doing it if we could give him Spago's and Bal Cantina, which we already landed anyways. He goes, yeah, are you kidding? So we did. And we tried to teach him how to sell it. Didn't work too good. After a year, they sold only about a thousand cases. So we dropped them. Went with a big, major distributor, a big brand like Jim Beam, right? Well, now we had to put another level. So now we, they got a piece of it. The distributor got a piece of it. The wholesaler got a piece of it. And then the public bought it. And so our margins went down. After about a year and a half, maybe two years,

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  we went to Jim Beam and said, guys, you're only doing about 12,000 cases a year. We think we could do one day 50,000 cases. They were so sweet. They said, guys, you're really nice people. But we're going to tell you the truth. You have the best tequila in the world, but it's too expensive. You're selling for 37.95. Others are selling theirs for five, six dollars. Cause we brought ultra-premium tequila. We're the ones that embed ultra-premium tequila and marketed it. So we said, well, thank you very much. We really appreciate it, but we're going to change distributors. We were nice to one another. Then we took on Seagram's, even a bigger distributor, right? Yay, let's go together, right? So we still had the other layer in there. But after a couple of years, they got it up to between 60 and 70,000 cases.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  And we thought that was good, but we knew we could do better than that. We really did. So we went to court and bought them out of their court agreement. We bought them out of, we paid the money for it and we took over distribution. Now here's the lesson to learn. When you go to big companies that tell you, you're not going to do so well. It's got to be cheaper in price, anything other than, let's really give it a good shot, get behind it, right? Anything other than that, don't agree with them. We went with the biggest people. They only got it so high. When I sold Patron, almost eight years ago, we were doing 3,500,000 cases. Just in our tequila. It was the biggest sale ever in the professional alcohol business. No one ever sold the company for that much money.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  And it was the biggest success in the world. And we were around the world in 135 countries. So you got to believe in yourself and what you have is really, really good. And how do you do it when you have no money in alcohol? You know nothing about alcohol. It's in the book too. How the hell do we do it? How do we get the darn thing out there, you know, and get it distributed?

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  Patron became part of the culture. Like Patron was mentioned in so many different movies. And it became very luxurious and everybody wanted Patron in the club if you were wealthy. Was that by design or?

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  I'm going to tell you about two of them, okay? Two of those are just like, wow, that was so cool. It was like a little, shall we say, just a, a universal force coming and giving us helping hand. Clint Eastwood was a friend of mine. We started in 1989. Come 1991, or it was either 90, it was 91, I believe. Clint came out with a movie called In the Line of Fire. He was the Secret Service agent, all that. He calls me one day and says, JP, I have this premiere of a new movie and you're dating this girl Eloise. You could really impress her. Come to the premiere of my new movie. You know, we were living in Southern California at the time and it was at the theater in Westwood there. So I said, oh, cool. So I come on down with Eloise, who by the way is my wife. You know, we, we married. So maybe it worked. I don't know. But we went there and son of a gun, Clint wasn't there. He was at some other opening somewhere else.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  But his producer met us, gave us a seat right next to the producers and free popcorn and free Pepsi. I'll never forget that because most theaters have Coca-Cola. So I said, next to the producer, the best seats in the house, free popcorn, free Pepsi. I was really impressed. I think, no, pretty cool, huh? That wasn't the surprise. And he didn't even tell me. The only thing he drank in the movie was Patron tequila. And the most intense movement, he's there on the telephone with the terrorist killing the president, trying to chalk him out of it, sipping Patron with a bottle of Patron in front of him. And then that same year when Playboy interviewed him, that's when Playboy was a really great one to get on for interview. They asked him, what do you drink? He said, only good red wine and Patron tequila.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  So that was kind of nice. So people along the way, all of a sudden, years go by, right? As the years are going by, people are saying, wow, that 50 cents is really cool with your Patron. I said, who's 50 cents? He said JP's one of the new rap singers that's out here. And he talks about Patron, sings about Patron, even has a bottle of Patron with diamonds on it. And then all of a sudden, the country and western field, they made a song, which was a big hit. I think it was tequila makes my girl's pants fall down or something like that, right? All about Patron. And we did spend a time, they just did it because they loved it. We had rap singers left and right drinking Patron, singing about it, the country and western industry. And it just took off like a cult.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  But during that time, I was working on, what's the next generation of tequila? We created the generation of ultra-premium tequila, especially in the United States. Okay, we created all that, right? What's the next generation? I had not sold Patron yet. So what do they want? They want something that has no additives, smoother than even anything you could ever imagine. And they would like this, this and this. So I started working on a formula to do it. But hadn't bottled it yet or sold it yet. I just had worked on the formula and the idea of this thing. And we will call it Bandero. And they said, JP, they were really kind to me when they bought the company. You haven't bottled it. You haven't sold it yet. We're going to let you keep it. But you'll have a five-year non-compete for anything in the alcohol business.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  It's a deal. Because even if you asked me to, and not in writing, because he gave me so much money, I would have done it anyways. He gave me a lot of money, okay? I would have done it anyways. So that's what happened. So I had it. I sat on it. And then when the non-compete was up a couple of years ago, I gave it to my daughters, who just kind of sat on it, didn't do very much, and my partner at the time, but couldn't do very much. Anyways, the non-compete's up, went right back at it again a year and a half ago. And now we're in seven states in the United States. And we won, a little over a year ago, the gold medal in the Latin American awards. That means everything south of the border has the best tequila. We won the gold medal for that.

• 1:11:52Speaker 00

  That's incredible.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  So you can imagine, so whenever we do taste tests with people, they go, wow, that's great. But sometimes people say, JP, what's better Patron or your Bandero tequila, especially your Bandero coffee? What's better? My answer is very easy. Even though I've already been paid by Patron, I don't have to owe them anything like this. In my own heart, I know this and I tell them, they're both two of the greatest tequilas you'll ever have. Why don't you yourself taste them both out and see what's one you would like? You're talking about two great ones, just a little bit different each. The new Bandero is not part of Patron. It's a whole different thing, right? And Patron is its own different thing. Taste them both, see what you like the most. And we're, we're doing extremely well. It's a tough market now because the market is down for all, for every alcohol, right?

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  But we're making inroads and we, I think 70% of all people, maybe 80 that taste it, will get it again, will be in the reorder business. We made it so that it'll approach those kind of people.

• 1:12:48Speaker 00

  And this is just like kind of rounding out everything that we were just talking about in terms of, you know, you didn't spend a lot of marketing dollars on Patron. It just got spread by word of mouth because it was such a premier product. It was a category of one and it was super well-made that people just liked it. Now, it was $37, which was really high priced.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  At those days it was 37.95, but call it $40 a bottle, very high priced.

• 1:13:11Speaker 00

  But do you think that actually helped it become like a luxurious alcohol brand?

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Maybe, possibly. We never looked at it. We looked at it at the quality of the product, no matter what it costs. For example, Bandero, Bandero is wow, okay? It's like a wow. It should be about $125 a bottle. But nope, I introduced as a suggested retail price of 49.95 is the suggested price. In fact, one of the big groups now in Southern California is promoting the heck out of it for quite a bit less. They just want to get it out there for us. We thought, well, that's nice. Very, very good. With a big sign saying, it's 49.95, but here, here's our price to just to get it out, right? And they're, they're doing pretty good with that.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  So you've made billions of dollars at this point. I think you sold Patron for 5.1 billion dollars.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  That was the valuation I sold.

• 1:13:57Speaker 00

  That was the valuation, okay.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Seventy percent of the company.

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  It made, it's, it's, it's common knowledge. I wouldn't be talking about it.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. Why bother starting another business?

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  I'm a serial entrepreneur. For me to sit back and do nothing but spend money makes no sense. But for me to be back in business and now have more money, I think we're into about 167, I think it is charities that we're into. I mean, I could change people's lives. Here in Austin, Texas, one of my big charities is Mobile Loaves and Fishes. We have now, we're working on our second 500 people to have homes of their own. And I built entrepreneur centers to learn trades. And we have 2,000 altogether we're committed to. The other 1,000 will be built. And I'd say within two years, all 2,000 are occupied by homeless people. Our centers for skill centers, we did another one with Toof, the other one's foundation that are mentally challenged, let's say they have mental challenges, okay?

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  So we built them homes also and a skill center to learn how to be a plumber, electrician, auto mechanic. And quite a few of them are working now where you would think they would never have a job. Sociologists that are there, employment people, food to eat, gardens I built for them so they could have their own food and eat fresh vegetables. It changes people's lives. At Mobile Loaves and Fishes, they said JP has spent way over a million dollars at an entrepreneur center for mobile loaves and fish. All homeless people, they don't want to work. I said, no, you give them a chance. So there they could go and learn pottery, jewelry, art, just so many. Alcohol, so many different things. In the first 18 months, those so-called homeless people don't want to work,

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  sold almost $200,000 worth of product. They got to keep all the money themselves. But even at Mobile Loaves and Fishes, we have auto shop, auto mechanics. We have metal shop. We have wood shop. We have all these things they can learn there. Plus our entrepreneur center on top of it. It's helping people help one another. Why do I give? I give because I've been so fortunate with such an abundance that I could help so many people out. It's kind of like, if you could take care of you and your grandkids and grandkids' grandkids, and you have all that money, why not share some and bring some other people along the way? And that's how we live our life.

• 1:16:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that goes back to your new book.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  Which is incredible. And I think one of the big lessons in the book is you explaining why it's important for entrepreneurs to actually embed generosity within their business. So what's your advice in terms of like entrepreneurs out there that are listening in, that have small businesses? Why is it so important to actually align to a charity and what's the right way to go about it?

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  If you align with a charity and you don't have the extra money to give, which is so often the fact, it was with me for quite a while there, is align with the charity, one that you like, one that touches your heart, that makes you feel good. Not someone else feel good, okay? Get aligned with them because if you're in volunteering, you're going to meet people that you'll run across in your life that may end up be your customers or those that give you advice on something because they've been extremely successful. Most charities have a few people like that somehow attached to them. And when you're working there at the charity, Like some of the mobile ops and fishes people have come to me. I even gone out the whole little seminars for groups on how to start businesses with little to no money. That's why you got involved and you feel good. That's another thing, if you don't mind me just saying this.

• 1:17:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Why do we do these things? What is it all about? Okay. When you do something for somebody else and ask absolutely nothing in return, you get the greatest high you'll ever get in your life. And I'm a child that went through the sixties. There's nothing we smoked in the sixties that'll get you that high. The fact you did something for somebody else and asked nothing in return. It's the greatest high you'll ever get and it's a natural high and that exceeds other highs.

• 1:17:43Speaker 00

  I know one of the things that you recommend is that we actually formalize our relationship with charities or like have it be more formal or structured. Why is that?

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Well, it's because a lot of people that have charities don't know what they're doing or how to put it together and how to have a system that's out there like, okay, here's we have money coming in, how, here's how it's best spent. Here's how we help other people help themselves. And that's what we do with most, all of our charities. They're all geared towards, we'll put the money in, we'll train you for this. But now from this point, can you please help yourself or jump into charity and help us in that way?

• 1:18:15Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Something that's unique to you is that you often like roll up your sleeves. Like you've been in some like really crazy situations where you've inserted yourself into political situations. Talk to us about some of the war stories that you have rolling up your sleeves and getting involved in philanthropy.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  Well, the worst stories.

• 1:18:33Speaker 00

  War stories.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  A war story. So give us some war stories.

• 1:18:37Speaker 00

  No, no, not war stories.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  Not war, oh, they were starting, they're all good.

• 1:18:40Speaker 00

  No, they're all good stories.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I would say, uh, you know, some of them that are just like unusual, but the end result was really good. Okay, really good. Well, let me start with a real biggie that's in the book. I call it giving back for the planet. All right. It's in the book. They allowed me to put it in the book yet I've already cleared it through the CIA, FBI, everybody has it. JP, it happened, you know, more than 20 years ago, it's okay to put in the book. But I'm the guy that went in to Libya to convince Gaddafi to release the two suspected terrorists of Pan Am Flight 103.

• 1:19:09Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  I'm the guy that went in the mid nineties into North Korea. Kim Jong Il's dad had just died. He took over to help convince them to get on the four way talks instead of the three way talks. And a few other things like that, which are an extension of the things I was already doing with people. Rolling up your sleeves, mobile, when I started Grow Appalachia, all the people there that were unemployed from the coal mines and everything else that I had started there. I went out there to teach them and I paid the money and I worked with Brea College. I'll buy the seeds, I'll buy the fertilizer, I'll buy the equipment. I'm going to pay for people to teach how to do your own farming so at least you could have your own food. I would go out there and I'd buy a tractor for them.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  For example, a good use tractor, if there's 50 of you in one garden, 50 families, right? I would jump in, I would drive the tractor, I would help dig stuff. I do all that stuff. I get out there and help them out. And mobile ops and fishes, I go out there and visit them. I buy stuff from them. I give little classes and I help people out like, you know, how to start business with no money. And we're just getting involved. There were a couple of Christmases and Thanksgivings where my family, my wife, my son and I, we went out there and helped serve the food. There was one year and this is really getting it done. They were supposed to have turkeys donated, they did it and I found out about it. What are you going to serve them? They said Frito pie. You can't serve Frito pie. You have to serve, you know, Thanksgiving turkey.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  So we bought them all the turkeys and we went out there and helped serve them all and carve them all. So we get into the trenches. We want to be part of it. In Africa, for example, we have a program going called Keep Africa Fed. In fact, the thing is actually food for the number four, Africa, where we feed right now with our schools, all of our Paul Mitchell schools, over a hundred of them, right? Have a give back program too. We take care of about 17,000 orphans every day. Most of their parents have died today's of birth to let's say they're early teens. We give them a place to live, good food, eat nutritious, everything to give them a chance in life. We go over there and work with them. In fact, I took my wife and son over once for a photo shoot.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  It's in the book where you have all these kids there, these little kids in Africa. We did a photo shoot, but we brought them into it. In that photo shoot, there's one kid in my wife's left hand. And the pictures there of the whole, all those little kids with us, he's not smiling. And we asked, well, why is he so unhappy? They said, we just took him out of a trash can on our way here. We went through a city on the way here to drive the kids here. And they said, oh, wait, you're food for Africa here and you take care of these orphans. This kid just came out of a, we just, he was just crying and we brought him out and there's nobody around. They took him with them. Well, after a couple of Coca Colas at a candy bar, that kid was out of this kid in the world, which we brought for the little kids out there, you know? But it makes you feel good. Things I did with Nelson Mandela, he was a good friend of mine.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  He would help change the world down there. Prostitution, human trafficking in Thailand. My head of, actually my executive director, the Peace, Love and Happiness Foundation. Her first job was to go there to Thailand, live over there for a while, what she wanted to do, and get those girls, save them, get new passports for them and get them back home again. So we get in the trenches. We feel that you could give by volunteering. And if you give money, and that's good too. But to be able to give money and do what they're doing or helping out makes you feel twice as good. So we get the bigger high and we get the better satisfaction.

• 1:22:33Speaker 00

  Okay, so another question that I have for you as I've been talking to you, getting to know you better is like, why aren't you getting involved in politics? Like as a young, younger person, we're in like a bad situation with our leaders. And like, it feels like our leaders don't care about us, don't care about people. There's so much bad stuff going on that like everyone's starting to find out about.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:54Speaker 00

  And you are somebody who has a lot of money, a lot of power. Like you could run for president, you know? So, so why not take that angle?

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  That's another very, very good question. So I could answer that politically, okay? I am an independent. I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican. And I noticed so often promises are kept that are never delivered, you know? So how could I best work? I was offered, and I don't want to go into detail, but I was offered a vice presidency a short time ago of the United States of America. And I turned it down because I knew I could not do what I wanted to do, what I'd want to do, because you've got constraints. The people that donate the money, a great example is we saw no disrespect, okay? But a horrible last four years where people came across, I mean, we just, I don't want to put anybody down. It was really, really bad. Well, how the world can we humans help out with that?

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Okay, I mean, and I could help out more by not being on one side or the other. And today it got so polarized and some of our media has a lot to do with this, okay? Where they're kind of pitting these guys against these guys. And the best example I could give you is this. I was asked to go on one of the major television shows, which I did, by the way, okay? And they said, JP, you're representing the, the higher 1%. And this was in the last administration, okay? But a major TV show. And they said, JP, because they thought I would be representing, you know, the 1%ers. They said, JP, you're going to represent the 1%ers, right? They got me on, they said, well, JP, what's it like being a 1%er, right? You know, in these troubled times that we have now with everyone come across the border, inflation, everything just going crazy here.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  And I said, you got it wrong. I'm not part of the 1%ers. I'm part of the 100%ers. It's just that I made a little more money than somebody else because I got lucky. It's we, the people of the United States of America, not go to the left, go to the right, have all this happen. It's we, the people. What's better for we, the people? And with all due respect, no, it's not you're pitching people one against the other. That's not it. It's we, the people. Well, they did not ask me any questions. That interview went very, very short and they got me off the, off there as quick as I can. But it was live. They couldn't stop that part there. But that's what it is, we, the people. So I try and help out as best we can.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  There were times where administrations, a couple administrations ago called me and said, well, JP, you got this Grow Appalachia where we're helping people. We like it, we're trying to do that ourselves. We want to, and this is right before the reelection, okay? We want to join you now in doing this. We thought, great. They said, yeah, we're going to set you up and the president of that day, okay? We'll come over and work with you and everything else on this because he's in helping everybody else. I said, great. They dropped the ball totally. It was only so that on TV, I wouldn't say it again, that, you know, they're not doing anything for really we, the people, just one of those things. So, but people have to realize it's we, the people. Stop not liking somebody because they believe differently.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  I have friends of mine that because I'm in the middle of the way and not the other way and not, I'll give you one. So far to the left, you got to be to the left. They won't even talk to me anymore because I say, I will hear out everything you have. But let me tell you what the other guys are doing and vice versa, right? I mean, America has got so polarized, it's like, what is the matter with you people? Don't listen to your party when they say hate the other guy. Don't listen when they say go out there and march and you have to have violence, it's okay. Don't listen to that. It's wrong. It's we, the people. We're brothers and sisters. If your brother did something wrong, would you talk to him? If your sister did not agree with you, would you at least hear her out? Of course you would. They're polarizing us. We shouldn't be polarized. We should be we, the people of the United States of America.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  We are the greatest nation the world has ever known and we don't deserve to be in a situation like that. And as things are being exposed more and more, I think it's a good thing. When you get the Epstein list, look what they did. Bad, bad, bad. Don't do it. Look at what these people lied about even during election. Well, this guy, for example, was involved with the Russians. And you find out later it was a lie or this person did this or that person did that, okay? It's crazy or this person is too far to the left. Yeah, but they did do some good things. It's we, the people. We, the people of the United States of America. And if everybody thought that way, we wouldn't have this fighting, this terrorizing and this, well, we got to be with this group, we got to be with that group. No, it's we, the people of the United States of America. Let's do something to keep our country.

• 1:27:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  And during the Olympics, look at the team that just won. Our girls won the gold medal in playing hockey. The guys won the gold medal, right? And all of a sudden, some people with one part of their political thinking didn't think it was a good deal. They didn't want to praise the United States because of it. And they came back and said, no, we're Americans. We represented American, came back and, you know, anyways, it's just, it's we, the people, the United States of America. It's we, the people. Let's be one family and not let anybody split us apart like they've been doing.

• 1:27:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love that message. And I feel like it really relates to your new book.

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:56Speaker 00

  Talk to us about why you wrote this book in the first place.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  Oh, you betcha. The reason I wrote it was people asked me for years, JP, you've got to share your information, how you did all these things, how you did things politically without a party behind you to solve international problems like, you know, Gaddafi, what I do with them and other things too, that maybe the book will talk about a little bit, okay? So they said it so much that I tried to write a book and I was a failure at it. Okay, I've never written a book before. So about two and a half years ago, I said, I'm going to do it. And I got ahold of a wonderful gentleman, Mark Victor Hansen, and he wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul, a really good man with a big heart. I asked him if he would help me with my book and he knows me from a Horatio Alger Award, where I'm a Horatio Alger awardee in Washington DC.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  Only, only award ever given in the Supreme Court of the United States for people that really showed the American way and made it the American way. He was one of us, right? He says, JP, I'll only help you. I'll get you two of my best writers. It's your autobiography, but we'll help you write it. Took two and a half years to finally get it. It was like, I think about 280 pages. And I thought, you know what? This will answer not only how one can start in America with nothing and maybe no dad, like a lot of kids have today, no dad, but how you could make it and how as a mom and a family, you could influence your kids when they're young to come out good, even though you have little to nothing and not blame it on society, you know?

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  How you can do this and how overcome all these problems of being fired from jobs and not, no place to live. I mean, just all these problems you ran across, right? But still came out okay. How did you do it? And you could only do that in a book, JP, unless someone's going to interview you for several days and you're there talking for several days. So that's what we did. That's how we did it. Now, this book right now is quite a book, okay? I must say, it's only about $20 in hard copy, right? Amazon likes it so much that we're on Amazon right now for pre-orders. The actual delivery, I had 150 made right away. So this is what I'm gonna give to you, obviously.

• 1:30:01Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  But the first edition is only 10,000 copies and that'll go straight to probably Amazon. So I say to people, preorder now. Success unshared is failure. Because if you preorder right now, when the book comes out, then you'll get one of the first printed copies. There's only 10,000 of them being on the first printing. The rest will be maybe 100,000 or who knows what at a time. So it's like kind of a collector's item and for sure you've got it. And I guarantee you, when someone reads it, you'll want to read it to all of your children. Let all of your friends read it. It shows not only does America work from no political view, just a straight out view on how to be better in life and all the steps we went through

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  and all the problems that we went through, how we overcame them and put it behind us to have success, but also how to change the world is inner, how we're changing the world for thousands and now millions of people because of our philosophy and what we do. So, you know, take the time, go out there, preorder it on Amazon, preorder. Success unshared is failure. You'll never regret it. When the first copies come in, you'll be in the first printing that comes in. You will get it. When you read it, you'll know what I mean. Not only will you want to read it and you may want to read it a second time, but you'll want to give it to everybody you know, especially your children to see this is real and just be kind to one another. The big secret is being kind.

• 1:31:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel like this is such a great book, especially for young entrepreneurs, business owners who are trying to make it. It gives like a different lens of how you can go about business. Usually it's like just so tactical, but this is more about like business with a heart.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 1:31:35Speaker 00

  And, and so it's just a really different perspective that I enjoyed reading.

• 1:31:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And I've started, by the way, several, I have another couple of big companies going on right now, one in AI and one another. I have some big things going on right now too. And the reason why is because I'm so excited about doing things right and doing it with kindness and helping others along the way. I'll never retire. This is my lifestyle. It's not work. I stopped working when I started living in my cars and started Paul Mitchell. I stopped working. I was just fun. It's what I love to do and I hire thousands of people. And an example is like when growing Appalachia. God, I don't know how many thousands of families we have now growing their own gardens and how many tons of food that is produced by some of these people.

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  In other words, I see the world around me and my purpose is to make life better because I'm here. And I do it. The reward that I want is I just feel great. But along the way, all these wonderful things happen for me, like the Paul Mitchell experience, the Patron experience, Bandero now, all the rocket companies that I'm involved with and other medical breakthroughs right now that I got pieces of their company and doctors I'm working with right now that are changing medicine as we know it today and coming up with cures where things that you only get little things to keep you going, but never to cure it. It's amazing what's going out there right now and just, and wonderful with good people that don't rip people off.

• 1:33:00Speaker 00

  What's your advice to the young people out there who are struggling to get jobs and worried about AI and not able to really get experience? The way that you got experience working door to door and before you actually started Paul Mitchell.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:33:15Speaker 00

  What's your advice to those people?

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  To them is don't give up and leave everything that is a no behind you. Okay, you'll see that in the book. Leave it all behind you, the no's behind you. And I'm here right now. Here's what I have. Here's what I think I want to have. Now, a lot of people don't know what they want to do in life. Okay, but they know what they don't want to do. Don't do anything for money you don't want to do unless it's very short-term potential. Have your goals set up there, no matter what it is. You could do it easier today than before, like with this global SKU. You could actually go into business and have your distribution from sitting at home with your idea, your things, things in your closet, you're taking pictures of your new invention, your new handkerchief, your new tire. You could do things like that right now.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Easier, there's tools out there for you that we've never had before. Now, AI is another thing. When we talk about AI, because I have an AI company, when we talk about AI, I give everyone the same message. Today, today, there are tens of thousands of jobs out there no one can fill. Hairdressers, for example, we need 10,000 more right now. 10,000 more would have a job instantly if they actually were hairdressers or barbers, okay? They'd have it right away. Auto mechanics, thousands that don't qualify. One of the things we teach people at TOOF, the Other People's Foundation, that have challenges mentally is how to be an auto mechanic. You could do that, no problem. So many jobs. And I ask everybody in every audience I talk to, raise your hand.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  Who out there knows a plumber or an electrician or a wood carving man to handle wood things in your house that will charge less than $150 an hour? Raise your hand. Nobody has ever raised their hand in every conference I've ever given or talked to. Because these are jobs that are out there that still need people with electric backgrounds, backgrounds in, you know, whether it's in the sciences and something needed or those. How about tow trucks? Who's going to drive the tow truck? Do you know how much money those guys make? A lot and they just love driving. So you find something you like to do and then you could also make money to survive on. But don't get a job just because you're going to make more money. Get the job because you like it. Then you're not working. You have a beautiful career where you are happy in life.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  Very important. Don't all of a sudden become 65, 70 years old and say, boy, I wish I would have changed that years ago. Or be in a relationship that sucks and you've done everything to improve it. It just doesn't go anywhere. Leave. You don't want to be 60, 70 years old and saying, God, I wish I would have changed when I was 20, 30, 40, even 50 or 60 years old. My life's been miserable. Do it now. There's a lot out there for you. There's a whole world of love in such a big way. Go out there and see it from a positive point of view. Don't bring along with you negativity. Don't bring gossip along. Bring just good energy because it's going to show. And people that are aware of seeing things will start to see and say, well, wait a minute. There seems to be around you some kind of a glow. What is that?

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Well, it's kind of your aura also, but it's also your frequency as a human on this planet, in a human body.

• 1:36:23Speaker 00

  I'm going to close out the show with three questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one is, what is one truth about entrepreneurship that you feel like you learned too late?

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  Well, I learned it pretty young, but not knowing I was an entrepreneur, okay?

• 1:36:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  But things that I learned later on that were very, very important, that I wish I would have learned even younger. Okay. And the thing is this, be prepared for a lot of rejection. You're going to get it. And when it comes, just let it go the other way. That was a big one, you know? And that happened learning encyclopedia sales. That was a big one. I wish, if I learned that younger, it would have been even better. And a lot of times teachers will tell me, no, you're not good enough for that, so don't do it. You should be doing something else, right? That I would know that, no, that's rejection, but I'm gonna overcome it. I'm gonna just do it, prove myself, not necessarily a teacher.

• 1:37:10Speaker 00

  If you could give one actionable thing our young improffitters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow, what would it be?

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Oh, immediately go on that global SKU because you can start selling things right away. And know that there's hope for you out there. Believe in what you want to do. And once again, you're going to get rejection. I keep repeating this. It's the biggest thing that stops people. You're going to get it. Know it's going to happen. Let it go the other way and learn a lesson from it and move on in life. And the next thing is whatever you're working in entrepreneur, whatever idea, whatever it might be, make sure you go into the reorder business with it. Those are the two biggest things I can do and don't give up. You have a whole life ahead of you. If you're older in life, you're 50, 60s, you still have a life ahead of you. My God, you can start a business, you can do so many wonderful things. Needing money, try that global SKU and you'll get it.

• 1:38:00Speaker 00

  Okay, and last question for you. What is your secret to profiting in life?

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Kindness. One word kindness, be kind. Be kind. There was a time in my life in my early twenties where I wasn't the kindest first. I did things I didn't even know I was doing wrong, but I did them wrong. I wasn't kind. Be kind. The world works for you much better.

• 1:38:19Speaker 00

  I love that. And where can everybody learn more about you and everything you do and grab your new book?

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  You got it. Success unshared is failure.

• 1:38:26Speaker 00

  Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Great job.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  My pleasure. Peace, love and happiness.

• 1:38:31Speaker 00

  Well, guys, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. What an extraordinary conversation with John Paul. From being homeless and living out of his car to building Paul Mitchell and Patron. His story is proof that resilience, integrity and generosity are not soft values. They are competitive advantages. JP made one thing clear. Rejection is not a stop sign. It's training. He got turned down over and over again and instead of shrinking, he sharpened his pitch and kept on knocking. He didn't obsess over closing one big deal. He focused on building a product so good that customers reordered. That's the shift. Stop chasing one-time wins. Build something people come back for. Second, he bootstrapped with creativity, not capital.

• 1:39:14Speaker 00

  When suppliers said the minimum order was too high, he negotiated smaller runs with the same terms. He offered incentives for early payment to manage cash flow. He proved demand before scaling. That's scrappy entrepreneurship. Shrink the risk, secure the terms, deliver excellence, then expand. And finally, his philosophy says it all. Success unshared is failure. He stood by his partners. He guaranteed quality. He built community around his brands. For JP, wealth without contribution is empty. Real success multiplies when it improves other people's lives. So take this with you, Yap fam. Outlast rejection, engineer reorders, negotiate boldly. Protect your reputation like it's your greatest asset. And when you win, share it.

• 1:39:59Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you listened, learned and profited from this conversation with the incredible John Paul DeJoria, share this episode with a friend or a fellow entrepreneur. This is your host, Halataha, AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.