John Paul DeJoria: Business Lessons That Turned a $700 Startup Into Billion-Dollar Brands | Entrepreneurship | E407

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Go into the selling business, go into the rear end business, and people put a product together, many times they'll do it to sell. Do it so it's so darn good or your service is so darn good that they'll tell other people about it. I'm sitting down in person with billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist, John Paul

Jjoria. You might know him as co-founder of Paul Mitchell Haircare Products and Petrone to Kila. But what you may not know is that J.P. was homeless and living out of his car before building not one, but two billion dollar brands. When I started Paul Mitchell, we started with $700.

How do you start a company like that?

“With no money and get money, and I'll gladly share that with you.”

Number one is... You had lots of sales jobs before you actually started your own company. Talk to us about what you learned with door to door sales. You're gonna get rejections in life. As long as you know you can get rejections, don't let it affect you.

Like if the first 50 doors were closed on you whether it's politely or not so politely, you got to be just enthusiastic. The big difference is successful people do all the things on successful people that want to do. Influencer marketing is so popular now.

What is the danger behind a product where you've got to put so much marketing dollars behind it in order to get sales? Well there is danger because... J.P. welcomed to young and profiting podcasts. Well, Halla, thank you. It's a pleasure being with you.

I've heard a lot about you and how you help people out in such a great way. And disseminates this great positive words that made the planet a better place to live. Good for you. I'm happy to be here with you. You're just as sweet. You're known to be such a kind, generous man.

But something that people may not know is that you actually grew up very poor. That's right.

And you've got this incredible rags for which a story.

Now you're a billionaire. You've sold $2 billion companies. But you actually grew up really poor in Echo Park. And your mother taught you a lot about money and what it really means to be wealthy. And I wouldn't say we grew up poor because we were at so many riches from my mother.

I mean we didn't know we didn't ever. I would say we grew up without any money. In a very poor part up to out there. But no you weren't right. My mother was wonderful.

We had a deadbeat dad so a two-year-old. He kind of left the family, you know, and no money, no nothing. And my mom had a really, really difficult in fact. Even for about four years, which has some medical problems. My brother and I were in foster care.

But we were the lucky kids because every weekend or every other weekend, we'd be able to come home with mom and a lot of the kids we were with no one ever visited at them. You know, other than maybe a Christmas time. So we grew up with British. So my mom was really a kind person.

We never, she never told us that, you know, we were doing without.

And we didn't have a TV.

“So we didn't know, but remember, this is a 40, really 50.”

So you didn't know what you're missing. Exactly. We didn't know. So it was okay. Yeah.

And you've got this great story about 27 cents and how your mom really taught you about abundance. Yeah. So it was amazing. At that time, I was nine and a half, ten years old, actually.

And we were finally home together with my mom or brother and I, little area called Outwater in Los Angeles. We lived a little thinking house there. But one day, my mom said, okay, boys, come here. Let's see how much money we have.

So we went into everything we had, piggy banks, whatever. Anyways, we ended up with 27 cents period. We had to look garden around back. And my mom said, you know, kids, we have 27 cents, but we have food in the refrigerator. Our bills are paid on time.

We have to look garden around back. And we have love with one another. We're rich. Isn't this wonderful? And that's where I learned the meaning of rich.

Are you happy? Are you healthy? You're definitely rich. And you also learned a lot about generosity for more mother.

Yeah, there was a time. In fact, that was six years old, this would be 1950, that year 4950. And she took my brother and I to downtown LA, Christmas time. We had trolley cars at that time. They took them away.

“I think, you know, in the late 50s, whatever they took them all away.”

But they were there. So we've taken downtown LA and all these big, beautiful department stores, the bogus, the Bullx made, uh, make company, uh, just sex that they have big stores for down there. And they'd have all kinds of entertainment and the big windows. The stupid shows for Christmas outside maybe a little triangle to round to take kids on

with little toy trains. And we thought we were the luckiest kids in the world. And then my mom gave my brother and I a diamond said boys, hold half of it each. Walk over and put in that red bucket with a man ringing the bell. And we did.

Then we went back and said to mom, you know, it's one of my favorite stories. Mom, why do we get my money? Because in those days, that's two big soda pops or three big candy bars. She said, boys, that's the salvation of me. There are people that have no food and no place to live.

They help them out. And that's, we could donate something. We could only donate because we only have it an extra dime. That's it. But we're donating something.

And always remember boys that as long as you live, there's always something that needs

to more than you do to matter where you're at and try to lend a helping hand. If we didn't have a dime, we would also be contributing or help to them. How do you think that gave you more power later on as an entrepreneur? I never forgot it, never forgot in fact, even during the days when I had no money to contribute financially, just some really good causes out there, I would volunteer like

in my late teens, early 20s, after I got the Navy in my 20s, I would go at Thanksgiving and Christmas time and help serve food and Griffith Park for homeless people to be the wanted to have for free meal.

“They were there and I was a server there, that's how I could contribute.”

It was a big deal. In your early 20s, you had another really big hardship. You were first wife, left you, with a two and a half year old, and you were evicted from your house, your broke, I think living in your car, talked to us about what you learned about community and resourcefulness at this time.

It is amazing that when you have experiences and we're all here on this planet Earth for

experiences, we enter this body, we learn, we either learn and hold the bad things with us by remembering them, or learn and make sure it doesn't happen again, but learn a lesson so we don't carry it with us anymore, and that's very, very important for someone to do. So here we were. The money was supposed to come through, for example, one company in the other case, whatever

little money we had, for example, the first time I was homeless, was we had a little bit of money in the bank, not a lot. I was at that time 22, 23 years old at that time, it was two and a half years old. We had a little, little money in the bank, we had a nice little apartment we lived in at the time with my wife and a little one, so I came home and I drove up in the car, and

she came down the steps and said, "Oh, I've got to run to the store." So she took the one car we had to the store. When I got upstairs, there's my little two and a half year old kid, sitting in the middle and living room on a pile of clothes with a note, and it says, "I cannot handle being a mom anymore, he's going to be better off with you, I wish you good luck, and I know

you're not in the best standings."

That's when I found out the next day, because she never told me, she did not pay the rent

for three months. She kept all the money, the little money we had in the bank, because it was like, "Come out of box, she took that," and the utility was being shut off the next day. She just kept it going and going and going until she could get it no further and then split. So there we were, and it was the time when you're down and out of people say, "Well,

when you're down, what happens?" Well, when you're down and out, you think about at least most people do, "Oh, my God, it's terrible, so-and-so's fault," I mean, all this other stuff on your shoulders. My only thought was a good lesson to learn, but it was only thought I had was, "Uh-oh, I got to get all of a car, I've got to eat, I have nothing, and I'm too proud to tell

my mother who lived in the same town. Mom, I'm down and out, look what happened. I didn't want her to know." So I became resourceful, one, I found someone that was a wonderful lady that had a car with a busted water pump, you put water in the car, every four hours, but it was a car that

ran. Okay. And then we wanted money. And again, I was too proud to even tell my mom about it. So in those days, if you had a soda-pop bottle, little one, the normal size one, it's

two cents. You would get a big one, five cents, okay? But every grocery store, and every liquor store, in the 1950s, and according to the 1960s, had to give you the money for those. So we would go around and vacant lots by little boy and I and collect them all, or at night

go to gas stations when they close and just take them right off the coat machine, cash

“him in, and that's how we kind of survived.”

So a good lesson was that when you are down and out, your next thought should be, okay, I'm down here. I'm not going to further down. I'm not going to further down.

Right? Okay.

What do I have to do to get to the next step?

That should be the only thought, because you cannot change yesterday's newspapers.

“Paula, how often do people go through life, thinking about only if I did that differently?”

Yeah. It would be the same way. It would be the same way. Okay. And we should have done that.

Definitely, or look how mean something was to me, you know, all this, what if, they care on their shoulders. They think about it. I still hate Mary because she broke up with me. I don't like Phil because he punched me in the tummy in junior high school.

You can't change yesterday's newspapers. You get it off your shoulders. What you must look at is the future. Now you're a whole change human being, because now you're looking at where I'm at now and where I get to go.

Just too many people, too many people, Paula, don't realize the power of words and the power of thought. May I give you an example of that? Yes. Okay.

Two often in life. And we hear this all the time. Let's say a lady or gentleman says in December, "My New Year's Resolution is going to be. I'm going to try and lose 10 pounds."

Okay. Okay. Okay, or my new rest of the loose instead of being, I'm going to try and learn a language. Okay. It is never happens.

Well why doesn't it happen? We are in a universe where the universe listens to you and wants to please you. But at the university's in black and white, not without any emotion. So if people are saying I want to try and lose 10 pounds this next year, the universe

“is basically saying to them, "Fine, that's what you wish.”

You will try, and you'll keep on trying and trying and trying." Okay. Big difference. Until you, unless you were to say, "I am going to lose 10 pounds this next year." And I could visually see one year from now, the scales with me stepping on them and I'm

10 pounds less than a way right now. Now that's conviction. Now your mind is set that way, that's all you're going to think about. And that's all you're going to do.

So if you think about it and you see the end result, it's amazing how this will happen.

And I'm going to give you an example of how powerful this says. I told a friend of mine, "Last November," which is your little over six months ago. Last November that, "Hey, you have a lot of bad luck because you've been telling me for three years, you have the worst luck, you go see up, JP and I do. I think about all the time, how could this happen to me?"

And I tell you, "I have the worst luck. We're doing good. We do have a lot better." I said bad luck. It just happens to me in life.

And I said, "I found out why you have all the bad luck." This is really, I said, "I know who's responsible. JP, who?" I said, "You because you're putting out to the universe to me and to your self, you think about I just have the best luck.

The universe is giving you that. You caused it." Yeah. He says, "Really?" I said, "Yes.

I want you to try something. Just try this for a month." Whenever that even comes into your mind, just say, "I'm having the best luck now. Now I'm having the best luck. Don't you dare say you've had bad luck."

Okay. I'm now having the best luck there is. I am going to have one of the luckiest years ever. That's all I want you to say. This is no kidding.

Okay. So that's November. December, January, February, March, April, May, May, July, June, June, whatever. Anyways, everything changed. Three of the main product lines that he worked on.

All of a sudden, on one of them, you can't even fill the orders. That's how many orders are coming in. The other two are doing great now. All because of this change about it. Not J.P. that works, I said it sure does.

Those that think that, "Oh my God, I'm too short to fat too ugly. I don't have any money. I don't have an education. Oh my God. Jack broke up with me or Mary broke up with me, or you know, I sprayed my ankle or I have

half of a foot, whatever. Every reason in the world other than, "No, I am going to do it and here's how I am going to do it." And I could see myself at the end of this, having a done, huge change in life. Of people changes, we could change the whole world, the power of words.

“Power of words and your thought is so important.”

I'm a believer of this and I always try to stop myself of them ever having any sort of negative

thinking I love to think positively. And a really great example that I have in my own life of how your words can just come into existence. Sure. When I started my podcast eight years ago and all my friends kind of were like, again,

start, like, just thought it was weird that I was starting a podcast and then it was to be like, well, what do you want in five years, like, what do you expect to happen in five years? And I was like, I want to have the biggest podcast network in the world. And I had no idea what that meant.

I didn't know the mechanics behind it. And I remember five years later, I literally had a top self improvement network. We're now like, number 17 in the world of podcast. Well, a crucial way shows that I grow and monetize and it all happens so organically, where it was just like one step after the other and before I knew it, I was new had to do

a network under, like, you know, was able to just have it happen and it happened so like seamlessly. And I really think it's because I want, I believed it.

I'd always say it. And one day, it just came true. Very.

“So you know, as you see it working, it's like a one kind of every morning said, I, at the”

words, I am, are very powerful.

I am healthy. Yeah. You are going to be healthier. I am healthy. Today, my, they's going to be happy.

Today, I'm going to start being the observer without judgment. But you still got to work hard. Oh, you have to work hard. You got to work hard. You got to work hard.

Oh, I catch myself all. I'm still doing that. But look, then I'll catch myself and stop immediately and go back to, you know, making an normal thing not to do that. Young and profiteers, your logo is not a business identity.

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QU-I-N-C-E.com/propheting quince.com/propheting. So speaking of working hard, you had lots of sales jobs before you actually started your own company. Talk to us about what you learned with Dordidour sales. Oh, that was one of the best educations I was in my 20s and it was selling colliers in

Saclipedia, Dordidour.

“Best lessons summer and so we'll talk about that, okay?”

In selling in Saclipedia's colliers because you nobody knew about it. You know, and you're knocking physically Dordidour. We had no leads. No people say, "Please come and see me. No level of this guy could be a young couple.

Much as if it was Dordidour cold sales and it was four days of training. You're not paid for it. You're just trained in a pitch to sell your bucks and give it a little briefcase. Go out there. You make no money to you make a sale.

Now they told us something that I believed.

First of all, the average lifespan and they didn't tell me this.

I've found out later of an in Saclipedia salesman, Dordidour Commission only, is three and half days. I mean, after three and half days, nobody just closed the door. They said something to me and I believed them. So I lasted like you know, my God, three and a half years.

I did very well with them. They said some of you are going to make it. A lot of you won't. Those that make it will be just as enthusiastic on Dordidour number 51, if the first 50 doors were closed on you, whether it's politely or not so politely.

You got to be just as enthusiastic. I believe them. It wasn't Dordidour number 51 for me. It was Dordidour 100 and something before you were going to go through. And it was true.

The big difference is successful people do all the things on successful people that want to do, especially on Dordidour number 100, be just as enthusiastic as you were on the first door. But these things do work and there are a lot of things that contributed to what I was doing. Another thing was that if it's eight o'clock in night and you haven't made a sale yet,

they're still a lie down by gosh, at least not kind of a few more doors say it happened to be here. The light was on. I'm doing a market research on education. Could I ask you a few questions because when the goings tough, the tough get going, that's

a little thing. I learned there. It's amazing. You think of these little typists along the way, best education in the world and selling. Another thing, if you don't mind like to share with all of your people and I learned

“this over time too, starting with a sack of pedicails, okay?”

Don't, don't go in the selling business, go in the reorder business. I thought that, for example, it's a one time sale with colliers of sack of pedia. But it was so good.

I never had a sack of pedia.

But if I had one of those that I'd actually probably do on my homework, right, then I believe everybody needed one. And I thought colliers was the great one. It was written on a high school level, high school language. I thought everybody really needed one.

It was the best program in the world. If you got it, you would remember for years to come that you bought it, that you would be long-term. You're in the reorder business or when I started Paul Mitchell, if I had the best shampoo they've ever used the best conditioner, they'll want to reorder.

So when people put a product together, many times they'll do it to sell. Do it so it's so darn good or your service is so darn good that they'll tell other people about it or they'll appreciate it. Reorder businesses is so important and a lot of people really focus on marketing, influencer marketing is so popular now, pay dads are so popular.

What is the danger behind a product where you've got to put so much marketing dollars behind it in order to get sales? Well, there is danger because many times I could give you an example, somebody entered the professional beauty industry and spent, oh, this is my got 25, 30 years ago and spent immediately three or four million dollars on ads and hardly had the distribution at all.

Within six months they went out of business. So it's not just the ads and marketing, it's a lot ethical behind it. But today you have things I don't have.

Like for me when I started Paul Mitchell and our money never came through so we started

with $700 and it's in the book that I wrote does success and shared his failure.

“But we had no money, but how the world do you get a product out?”

Well we had to go door to door like a sold-in-saclipideos to try and get salons to get the product from a stored and door to door to door. We picked salons because I was in the industry previously and I had been fired from three different companies but I learned something different from each company that allowed me to

But unusual reasons why one was, hey, you're complaining about his testing on animals and

“that's what the corporation's doing, but even though it doesn't make sense it makes us”

look at where the scientific approach for you're telling other executive managers like you, JP, you got to stop doing that. I said, but I can't because what you're doing is wrong, well they fired me and my divisions were up. In company, I increased their sales by 50 percent from a doll I bought, I mean, since Texas

bought a company called Firmadell and I was hired to train their sales force in their educational force which I did and 50 percent of the first year they went up in sales. They fired me because I wasn't one of them, the inter-click with them, didn't think it would ever. I got fired and then with the Institute of Psychology I tripled their sales, but I was mainly

on a commission basis, made more than the owner of the company, they said, ah, this

will never stop, we'll get somebody else to your job for one third of the amount of money.

If it wasn't for all three of those companies and the experience I had, I could have never started job hall Mitchell systems with ten million dollars, let alone seven hundred dollars. Yeah, the experience was so important. Oh yeah, so we're learning whenever something happens that isn't good, maybe it's destiny or the plan that's saying you don't belong here, you're going to get fired because you're

“destiny, your purpose in life is yet to come, you're not leaving, we're making you”

move because I did go with every company, but I wasn't right for that company, it wasn't right for me, I moved on, John Paul Mitchell says, so this was a great start and today obviously it's a world's largest, privately owned salon here, care company that puts everything back into the salon and makes sure they always benefit no matter how you distribute. So I recently was having a conversation with Naveen Jane and he was actually talking about

how it's such an advantage to be an outsider of an industry before you join it, but you had the advantage of being an insider of an industry. So what was it that you wanted to change when you started Palm Mitchell?

Well, I wanted the products to be so incredible that people when they use it want to

reuse it again, right, not that there's not other products like that there are, but I want to make sure the hairdresser knew what we had was so good and if they used it, we know they would recommend it, but we also thought that what is missing, I know it's missing, the salons aren't really in the take home business in the retail business and I said, wait a minute, if I could show them out this shampoo, you'll only use one time, this condition

you leave in your hair, the sculpting lotion adds all this body and teach the hairdresser, how to explain it to their customer while they're using it, like I'm using this much conditioner, I'm putting in your hair, I'm going to leave it in your hair because it'll eliminate love that damage the blow dryer is doing, okay, or I just neutralize the chemicals to my hands when I did then it's the leave in condition, it's like a palm made, you can

use the two, or all the reasons why they're like, show it to the customer while you're doing it. And when they go home, you go say, here's the same products I used on you, they are available by the way, you know, at the front desk, but I would recommend out of these five, for

“sure you should get these two, okay, because you're going to need these particular two,”

but if you get all five, get all five, come back at the rest, we started salon retaining. And all of a sudden it helped salon take off and became more successful. Well that's so smart because your hairdresser actually became your sales person, so you were selling to the hairdresser and then the hairdresser was selling to their customers. Yes.

And that was before we could ever afford as we had no ads, all we had was the products quality that they would like it so much they'd want to reorder. That's all we took me to go from idea to a $500 million storefront, no tech team, no coding, just my LinkedIn knowledge, a business idea and Shopify.

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Let's talk about the origin story of Paul Mitchell.

“You team up with a very, he was, was he already famous, like a famous hair stylist?”

Yeah, my partner Paul was a famous, Paul wasn't his name, by the way, was there? Zero T Mitchell. But for a hairdressing name, he called himself Paul Mitchell. To the day he died, his passport was Cyril Thomas Mitchell, a hairdresser, right? Now we was switched off, your chairman of the board one day on president.

You know, next day, I'm president of the board, because we had no employees. So Paul was very, very well known as a, about 5% of the hairdressers' humor being very, very off on guard. But because we had a product line and we went around doing a lot of shows, quite a few more work.

He was just one of the greatest guys, but we had a great relationship. We were pals for nine years before we started. I didn't do hair, he didn't do business.

We never argued about anything, it was just so wonderful.

And we wanted to have the very, very best of it turned out that way. Today we are 46 years old. In this industry, you change your products about every three years, right? My first original four products are still good sellers. Wow.

That's the quality of the products that Paul Mitchell made. And that's the quality of the products that hairdressers use and recommend to their customers. And they wanted to reuse again, because of the quality of the product. So when you guys started, you originally had an investor.

“And I think he was supposed to give you like $500,000, but he pulled out last minute.”

And you guys were left with $700. So my question to you is, why did you decide, all right, well, we only have 700 bucks, but we're just going to move on. Great question, okay. He didn't give it to us, by the way, the way it worked out was the money was coming

in down the hill, okay. And by relationship was going good, so I was out of my relationship. I took the use car, the more use car down the hill, left the better one with my wife and daughter, left them all the money, went down the hill there. The money never came in.

I mean, that's the story is an interesting story. It never came in. So when I finally found out about it, but I found out why it didn't come in. That night, someone got a hold of me. They found me and said, JP, what we know were to find you, okay, wasn't in my house.

And this is JP, Dick Holthouse from City Corp, is trying to get a hold of you. Please call him Colact, okay. For him, it will be the middle of the morning, he's going to pick up and he said, JP, the guy changes mind the lessment and it was 500,000 dollars. He changes mind the lessment.

He says, the rest day changes mind, this is 1980. In 1988 and '81, inflation in the United States was 12 and a half percent. Bad time to start a business. An unemployment in the United States was 10 and a half percent. You had to wait and line for gasoline and if you wanted to loan, if you could get

all when we never could, interest rates, prime rate was 17 percent interest.

Worst time for us to start any currency pulled out. I found this thought, I said, and Paul had flown over, he was in a while at the time. And he said, well, Paul, listen, I've already got the product set up, we've already made the products. I have the silk, everybody's set up, right?

Paul, how much money do you have the conspiracies, JP, I'm on my last dollars. I can spare maybe $350 that said. I said, I have a couple of letter books, but I'm going to go borrow that 350 bucks from my mom. And with the $700, we are going to start a company and it's going to happen.

He's got JP, I hope so. Now my mom, once again, I was too proud to tell her mom for the second time. I'm down and out, I don't even have a place to limp, grab my room back.

So I did it. So I lived in my car once again. I gave her a few weeks as anyways, and we started to cut me so now how the world you started to cut me like that is in the book also.

“How do you start a company like that with no money and get money?”

And I'll gladly share that with you. Number one is, from the time I said go, we were ordering initially 100,000 bottles. And the new I was from my experience with all these other companies had a great experience in the industry. So I said, guys, we're going to do it.

I set up 30 day billing. Well when the money different come through, I had to be creative. So I called up the bottle man and said, "Look, can I get a sample order of only a hundred? I'm only 10,000 bottles, not 100,000."

3,000 shampoo, 1, 3,000 shampoo, 2 would 4,000 the conditioner.

He goes, "Of course, I'm what I was wondering why you never got a sample order before."

I said, "Great. I said, ship it as quick as you can, the empty bottles, the list of the screener." I call this a screener up. Hey, we're having a run of only 10,000 bottles. Can you do this, right?

All we needed now was the artwork. And I did the same thing with the filler who filled our products for us. So I had everything ready to go, only 10,000, right? So I had 30 day credit with each one that was arranged. If they knew what we were out of that time, we were ready for that.

So I called this silk screener and I called the filler. He said it over immediately from the time and went from the bottle company, which was

“said code to the silk screener, to the actual filler along the way, right?”

That was two weeks. I had two weeks to pay the first bill. Now let me back up, what did I do with the 700 dollars, right? I'd had it. I started to earn company with that.

We went to the person that did the artwork. You cannot get a silk screen list, you have the artwork, right? It was a thousand dollars. We didn't have it. So I barred for my mother a few dollars, obviously, to get it the 700, have a few dollars

of my pocket, a few hundred bucks left of my pocket, which I came down the hill with. That was it.

So I told the guy the truth he goes, "Well, if you only have 700 bucks, I'll never

get my other 300, you want the artwork, it's 700 dollars, he took it all." What little money I had left, I got as an address, a PO box in Universal City, $16 for a little PO box to go to the whole TV, this is 1980, right? So I had an address. And then in those days, we didn't have computers, we didn't have cell phones.

We had tap setters. So I went to a printing store and had them type up for me for I think it was about $5. John Paul Mitchell says, "It was Peel box, 105, 97, whatever, Universal City, California. You set the type for me and made me one copy of a photo copy. Then I drew lines on it, like for an invoice, and I had to make me for $4 cents a copy,

zerox copies of it. That was my invoice, stationary, and at the top of those pieces of paper, we had our John Paul Mitchell says, "It's Universal Box. In our friend's house, I used their telephone with a $49 answer machine on it. And the girl that answered the machine was the friend of mine in Catholic.

My friend of mine Kathleen was a lady that was from England, and very strong English accent, right?" So when you called, they would say, "Oh, no, John Paul Mitchell says, "This is Carol. I was Carol. I was her name.

Oh, how can we help you? I'm out right now. We're all out. We have you such an exciting time. I'll call you back later.

Today, if I don't, I'll try and get John Paul the first to call you back. Hey, have a nice day. We are so happy." And that was it. Well, she did it one time as a favor.

I would be always the one that called back.

But what happened? We had an office. We had stationary. And we had to build them. We had an asking machine.

That's how we started. And there's other things we did for no money to create a business. Once you create, and you have no money, how do you get your money immediately? The professional beauty industry, and their distributors, and their warehouses, paid their bills in 45 days, I needed the money immediately.

So I came up with a way with the orders, the few orders that I got, and to get the money from him immediately, and he gave it to us. And that's how we started.

“And that's how we started a trend of within 10 days getting your money from distributors”

to use to paying for 45 days. And not to take up all of your time here. It's in the book. How we did it. Which you become resourceful, and you find ways to do things.

Even when we kept our promise, we'll save the beauty industry. So let's say distribution change. And it did during COVID, especially, right? Everyone said, oh, you can't get outside. And a lot of people close their shops and everything, right?

They were out of business for months at a time. They had nothing left. Nothing left. A lot of them couldn't go back to business again if they did. They had no products.

So what happened was, at the end of COVID, towards the end, which was up and up, we took several million dollars of our own money from Paul Mitchell and bought all these products. And those salons are really into Paul Mitchell. We gave it to them to start their business again. Free, no charge.

So nice. Talk to our distributors and to give them some timing for re-orders and things that

So if you use what you have, tell your customers out and help achieve and grow it after that we just continue to grow and grow and grow. I have so many questions on this. I think the first question I have to ask is about the salons and the hairdressers and your loyalty to them.

Because you never went commercial.

You always stayed in the salons and you didn't want your product to be sold elsewhere.

“Why was it so important for you to be loyal to the salons?”

Right. And then let me tell you what we did, especially during COVID, okay. When we started, we told the salons, no matter what happens in distribution, if it changes, we will always be in the professional salon business and include you. So COVID comes along, right?

Salons are close. What are you going to do? We worked with Amazon to go on Amazon with our products. One, to get rid of all the black market products that were on Amazon, there were a lot of ones on their, a lot of them counterfeit right.

And they did remove them. But also, we knew what ourselves were in different parts of the country because you're on Amazon, they tell you, we took a percentage of our money that we got back from this and gave it right back to salons. Salons that were using Paul Mitchell, we gave it right back to them.

Many of them were in what you would call credit slips. For hey, you could buy all these products at wholesale right from Paul Mitchell. And maybe you could use your whole backbar just off of what we are sending you from what we're getting from Amazon, your purchase, so matter what happens, another one was a big store throughout the United States said, was black marketing, Paul Mitchell, up it, black

marketed in old products, salons, a buy extra salot to them under the table.

“So we, and they had a lot of it, so we said, look, how about this?”

How about we cut a deal with you, okay, that we will help provide you not with all of our products. But just some that support take home use at home for your products, right period. But you will put a big sign up in your stores that says that, you know, these are for take home to assist, but to go see your professional beauty salons and see how to use them.

And they're the ones who did the professional products for you, where they had to promote with a big sign in that. So what happened? We took another black market, so they have to eat black marketing more. They can have the real stuff, but there was a big sign in there.

And we gave part of all those profits back to the salons again. So we kept our promise, why do we do this? Because when you had companies like Vadelsa soon, Jeremy, can I could go on and on, okay?

They said, oh, we'll always say in the beauty industry, we'll include you.

They got big enough. They went full blown retail and it's kind of forgot about the signs a little bit, okay? And for God, what we said, and no, yeah, and then they sold their coming to someone else and made a lot of money. But we said, we had no money when we started nothing.

You believe we would do something and some I'll get money back to you forever and that's what we're going to do. And I'm not going to get away from that. Was your objective with Paul Mitchell to make the most money possible? Or did you have another goal?

Our goal with Paul Mitchell originally was if we could only do $5 million a year in business, Paul, you can make $250,000. I can make $250,000. We'd be set for life and give hairdressers the best products ever. We had no idea.

We'd get as big as we aren't going to $100 million to $100,000. We had no idea that we could be able to achieve this unbelievable sales, but learned has to be went along how we did it. And we just learned as we went along and had no idea. But then, Michel Motivation was to give them the best products ever so we could be proud

we'd just make a quarter of a million dollars. That was our potential. I had no idea of all the rest. I guess I want to dig deeper on why you decided to stay loyal to the salons where your business could have made more money.

Oh, exactly. It's veryず to tell you. We were also offered more money for Paul Mitchell than any company has ever been offered or received the professional beauty industry. It's all no, no, no.

Why is this? Why did we turn down our word for money? Because we had absolutely nothing. And because we had absolutely nothing and they believed us, we got a whole bunch of something. We owe you.

Yeah. And my feeling is, be respectful, you owe them. We owe you, no matter.

And I told them no matter how distribution changes, I will always keep it in the professional

beauty industry with money somehow.

“And that's what we did through these other examples I gave you.”

Because in our heart, success, unsheritous failure, part of it is your word. If you tell somebody to do something and you became really famous or really, really good, right? And it's going great. And now, all of a sudden, you jumped to get greedy and more money.

Well, wait a minute, nothing, they helped me get somebody because I didn't have any money. I owe them. And I think ethics in business is extremely important. Yeah. And we just gave that up for money.

We had enough. We were growing. And you know, obviously, when I finally started patrol nine years later, the money was really flowing in. But it was mainly because of our word.

And I think a lot of hairdressers used our product before during and even these days, because they see we kept our word. And you've been put it in a trust for like 306 years. That's right. It's an atrocity.

Because many times someone will die and say, OK, well, that was what he said.

Let's listen. No. I put it in a trust where nobody runs it other than my children and their grandchildren can observe it and help direct it as an executive in it. But all the money goes into one pile.

No one controls it. And they goes out to all my siblings and all my children and great, great, great, great, great grandchildren.

So let's see in the one or 200 years from now, they'll always get something, they'll always

be something left there. And my kids cannot, no one could rate it. And they must keep it somehow in their professional beauty industry where even of distribution changes like it does today, so money goes back to those hairdressers. I love that.

Let's talk about Palm Mitchell product and marketing. So one of your constraints actually turned out to be something that was really great for the company, which was, you could only afford black. Black for white, yeah, you like the story that is, we was too sense, too sense, take a white bottle and put black writing on it.

We didn't know we would have created unisec packaging and appealed to both, we didn't order it. Today we had some color, two of them. And those days the difference was seven cents for color, two cents, way to go for two cents.

And then we said, well, I kind of get stood out like to this day.

I remember a Palm Mitchell packaging because it stands out because it's black and white.

And the letters went sideways at that time.

“Reordering, I think, is one of the best principles of your book as an entrepreneur.”

There's so many entrepreneurs tuning in. And we really want to be in the reorder business. We don't want to be in the selling business. And it's correct. And part of that is having a product so good that doesn't require marketing or as much

marketing. Exactly. I mean, you want to have some marketing. But if you can get a requirement, let me give you an example. In fact, this is good for your audience to know.

There is a site you go to, okay, called global like GEOBAL, S like in Sam, K like in Kentucky, you like universe, global SKU.com. Now why is this great? We didn't have that in my day. I wish we did.

I'll give you an example how this works. You could take your camera, take a picture, let's say, of an old t-shirt in your closet. Half a bicycle in your garage, whatever. And then you take it with your camera in a matter of seconds. It's like AI, right, matter of seconds.

The picture comes up of what you had and what it looked like, you know, new and underneath it, what it sold for use last, okay, all pops up like that, right, in seconds. Then you could push the button. Do I want it on, you know, on this place to be sold? Do I want it over here to be sold?

“For example, if you want to go online and sell something in your mind, what's the”

first place you would go to to sell it?

If you were going to go online. eBay or, okay, okay, okay. So what happens is, now you have the sold in seconds, now you have a choice you push a button. Do you want that to be sold as now, you know what the price was?

What price do you want? Or do you want it auctioned off, okay? Do you want it going eBay? Or do you want to go on three or four of these other sources you could go on? Or on both of them to sell what you have, all instantly.

Then some might this cost $15 a month up to, I think, a maximum $400 a month. I believe for $15, you get about 20, 25 sales, no, I wanted to see this work. So they sent two guys into a thrift store to buy t-shirts. One had Illinois believe across a ball and boss, so must have been a special t-shirt for $2.

The other one's some artwork on it for $2. They paid it by the time they left the store, the guy that got the one with the Illinois store, the state on it sold it for almost $100 or some special that t-shirts somebody realized. Because it went out to millions of people, right?

The other guy took a several month piece sold his also for $20, so my dollars that wow, that is really cool. Yeah. It gives somebody a way to sell something now without having a bunch of money to be able to get all these distributors.

Now, you have millions of people or multi. Why is this so powerful?

“It goes to all these different sites, or you want to go just to one eBay?”

You just push eBay. It's on you want these other sites. You push it, you're on changes, and no money, you get from your home, have a business. Now you have distribution and then cost you anything. It's easier than ever to be an entrepreneur.

You used to have to go door to door to the distributors and we get things that's like global skew and even our social media sites are free marketing distribution, and so we've got a lot of distribution online that you don't have when you were starting your account. Amazing. Let's talk about patrone and how you ended up going into the beverage industry.

So give us the origin story of patrone. How did you come up with the idea and tell us the importance of storytelling when it came to the market. So storytelling is so good, because then you can tell somebody what your feature is and how it benefits you.

So patrone. We're in business now at Paul Mitchell, and this is on 1988, when it's in 1989. I'm building a house on the West Coast from my whole family, like a vacation house, and

And a friend of mine, it introduced me to this fellow named Martin who just went bankrupt in the hospitality business. He's a JP. Give my helping hand if you could. I said, okay, so I was the bank.

“He would go to Mexico by pavers for nature, come back and sell it to architects from”

model homes or restaurants by the Mexico really cheap back in the United States here. And one time he was going down there on building this place to get me some stone, it's in Martin, and we were drinking tequila. It was the type that, where you would lick the salt, shoot the tequila, and squeeze the lime, and see, don't get that burning taste of the boat or make it into Marguerita.

So I said, Martin, when you go down there to buy this stuff, what do you find out with the aristocrats drink, bring a bottle or back, so we could drink something good. You do nothing about the business. He came back with these two long bottles, like just normal bottles of tequila, but it was really smooth.

He's a JP, I met a guy named Francisco Alcarés, who knows how to get the stuff made in this plant, and more important can make it even smoother. I said, really, I said, Martin, go back down, he's a money, he's going to take it right, bring back a few bottles of the new stuff. And he did, that he made the new stuff for us brought it back.

We found these incredible recycled bottles to put it in, and I said, okay, we're going

to the business. I'll order 1,000 cases, which is 12,000 bottles, 12 to a case. Let's see what we could do with that. My mind was working well. Let's see, I know it's expensive.

We'd have to sell it for $37.95, when the average tequila was $5 a bottle of those days, okay? I knew that, but if nobody bought it, I was doing good, Paul Mitchell. For 10 years, every holiday you had, you had a new baby. Here's a bottle of a trophy.

“He got married, it'd be gifts, Christmas time, anything, it'd be gifts to everybody, okay?”

That'd be the worst scenario, because it was so good, it'd be so proud. So we came back, we wanted distribution, right? Nobody would take us. Nobody.

They said, it's great, I've never tasted a kilo like this, but it's too expensive.

Yeah. Now, just to get into bars, Martin and I would go around, and you could do it this in 1989. It was in LA where we started it, we would go in there and say, to the bartender, I'd like to buy you a shot at tequila. Here's $3, that's what it was.

So, they don't thank you, it takes a shot, and then we'd pull out of our briefcase up a drone, kind of an empty glass, say, would you taste that, whoa, that is smooth. What is it? That's the new world of tequila, it's called Petron, and it is the smoothest tequila. It's a hairdresser model, but for bars.

Exactly, exactly. And then, we went door to door, I knew someone at Spogos, I knew Wolfgang Pug. He took it. Martin did also, but we went door to door with that little taster to do it to get it going.

No one would take us. We finally convinced a wine company that only sold wine to be our distributor. If we can, Spogos and Baja Cantina, we knew we would. So, he said, yes, after one year, they were only selling about a thousand cases. That was it.

So, we brought him and took on a big company, Jim B, that's a big one. We had it one more layer in. We had to give them money, and of course, they would make money, then their distributors are all the biggest servers, they would make money, then it goes to the wholesalers and the retailers.

There's too many cuts. We'd make less money, but at least they would take it on. After about a year and a half approximately, they called us on in, and we sat down with them. We said, we were really thinking that by now we do 20, 30,000 cases, and one day, we do 50,000 cases.

They were so nice to us, they said, guys, you have the best to kill in the world, but it's too expensive. You know, you're competing at somebody's seven, eight times the cost of their tequila. 37, 95 guys, the most she'll ever do, you'll do gigs and it's the best there's nothing like it.

But you'll never do more than 20,000 cases a year, and they were nice about it.

We dropped them. We were going to see them. They took it up to about 50, okay? We dropped them and took it on ourselves and changed everything. We changed the market and we changed instead of having beautiful girls promoting stuff right.

We'd have the bottle eventually as the star of the ad. Did everything. I'm going to make a real long story short. Okay. We continue to learn selling in cyclopedis, bar to bar, door to door, liquor, start to liquor

store until we got the salesmen to do the same. All right. That's what we did. It was exactly the same thing over and over and over and over again.

“So from all these past experiences we learned, but what was the end result?”

I sold the throne about eight years ago. When I sold the throne, maybe nine years ago. When I sold the throne, we were doing about three million, 500,000 cases a year. We sold the company for more than 200 percent more than any company in the liquor industry is ever sold for it.

Now another thing that for your people to really know, if somebody that's the smartest people in the world tell you only do so good, but you know you could do better.

Don't let somebody that's an expert saying you only do 20 when we thought we could do more. You'll only do 50. Now we got you to 50 with another company. We knew we could do better.

We believed it.

So when we sold it three and a half million cases, okay, because we believed it, then

we could do better. And that's something people have to realize. We believe we could do it. Well, I want to unpack also the branding and storytelling around Petron because it was really marketed as this premium luxurious product from the price points to like the way

that it was crafted in the storytelling that you told around that.

“It was really like the Chanel of the killer, right?”

You want to know the magic. I'll tell you the magic for you. Okay. So we get this thing rolling. What was the magic behind this, especially for a high price?

The magic was when we start promoting it, not just as the best to heal every here, you taste it. And we told bars to promote it the same way. And it would be this. How would you like to treat yourself today?

Someone goes to a restaurant, for example, can have a margarita? Yes, sure. We make a good margarita, but how would you like to treat yourself today? For $2 more, you could have the finest to heal it in the world, Petron, probably $2 more to treat yourself.

Oh, everyone wants to treat themselves. Those are the words we use. Okay. We would tell people, liquor stores, sell them, they come up with something. Hey, you want to treat yourself.

We have that new Petron to heal it in here. That's the best ever made. You could treat yourself. We have it here. We started converting it to, it's simply perfect and treat yourself, treat yourself, treat

yourself. Now, when we started Petron, we knew nothing about the alcohol business. So I tell people, if you started business, you're going into, you know, nothing about

it, learn the vocabulary first.

Now, I used the same techniques I did to Paul Mitchell, the same things I did selling in

“Saclipedios to get it out there and new marketing ideas, new, everything ideas, right?”

And it worked really, really well. But I used what I learned along the way to be able to do it. And new vocabulary using their vocabulary in the industry and what it meant. And that's your learning industry really quick. Yeah, that's really interesting.

And then where did you come up with the name Petron? By accident, Martin, I were sitting around saying, what are we going to do? And name this new tequila, the best writer, super cool, super mellow, whatever. And we said, yeah, you know, we'll be just really good Petron's Petron's Petron means like the good boss, right?

Yeah. Can we get that name, Martin? I don't know. So Martin went after it, right? Nobody ever applied for it.

We polite for Petron and we got it. We were almost in shock. And then when we started making a little bit of money off Petron, we found some other coming in Mexico, called Reserva del Lel Petron.

We bought that name from them immediately so we can never come up in the future.

And I know Petron, like, really took off in a hip hop world, right? That was by accident. Yeah, I was like, I got a call one day to say, JP, you know, this is one word in business for a while and hip hop started it, right? There's some kind of name, 50 cents.

I think 50 cents. Yeah, 50 cents. Yeah, 50 cents. 50 cents. But it's like 50 cents, right?

He's walking around the bottle of Petron and empty bottle. The diamonds all over it. I said, "God, that's nice." I said, "Set him a case of it until thank you, my God." All of a sudden organically it took off over 200 songs were written with Petron in it.

I think there were three or maybe four country and western songs. One of them was the biggest song of the time. It was called, uh, some about Tequila makes my wife's pants fall down or something like that, right? But it was all about Petron.

I gave her Petron, right? So all of a sudden, and that cost us nothing, people just loved it and wanted to show off that day. Petron is cool. We drink it.

It's kind of like many years ago, well, we drink Kovasa, okay, as a Koniak, right? Yeah. The energy, we drink Petron. That was it. That was the, because they loved it and they could have 40 give themselves the best.

And they just took off like the world ever knew. Did you end up leaning into that demographic and marketing to that demographic or you just let it take off organically? They took off organically and that area also that all ears just took organically and in the hip-hop area, it just took off organically, just exploded because they wanted to treat

themselves and they did even before we told them to treat themselves. They realize they're treating themselves. Go deeper on how you made Petron a luxury brand. Certainly.

“First thing is, you have to, let's take a Tequila.”

It's got to be different than other Tequila's. Whereas was the mellowest gourmet and we did not have that in the United States at all. So that was number one. Second thing was when they tasted it, they saw the difference or when they put your shirt on and they saw the quality, whatever you had, it was different.

So one, it's got to be different and better where it supports treats yourself. That's number one. And then number two is you've got to teach that to the salesmen that sell it.

reminding them, they could use that same thing when they called on an on-premiser off-premise, which means in a bar or restaurant or in a liquor store. Same philosophy. We have it all the way down. So they knew something to say that was simple.

“Had to be one or two simple things, they could say one or two simple things, right?”

Or they're not going to remember it.

You went on to sell Petron for how many billions of dollars, five billion dollars?

Can you tell us? I normally don't talk about it. It was public information made the Wall Street Journal everything. I didn't want to sell it. And that was in the role.

I did not want to sell it. So they came in to JP, we want to be your partner, we want to buy the whole company. Well, I wish you want for us. I don't want to sell it. And I said, well, but this can be, I said, nope, I don't want to sell it.

I'm not being a blast, but then we're making lots of money. So they asked me the question. Very good question. They asked, they said, JP, if you did sell it, only if, how much was you want for it? Now, I had no idea what these things sold for.

So I thought I'll just throw a crazy thing around. And I did. It had to be more than $5 billion.

“They led us to JP, the biggest brand in the industry sold for $2.2 billion.”

That was great goose. You want more than twice that. Never going to happen. I said, I don't want to sell it. You asked me.

I don't want to sell that. That's it. Anyway, Simon, buy it. Okay. This approach, I'm not interested.

Then they came back to me, but Cardi and said, would you take $5 billion, $100 million has the valuation? And I said, yes, immediately, yes, I'll do it.

I would never do that with Paul Mitchell with Petron.

Yes, I did it immediately. And I had the majority, obviously, in the company and got the majority of all the money there. And I also shared it to my staff. I made people at work with me, helped me get their millionaires and a few of them, multi-millionaires. So every walked way really heavy.

That's incredible.

“And that is why your book is titled, "Success the Cheers."”

I'm sure it is failure. It's on Amazon now, by the way, they start delivering this next week. They've been taken pre-orders on it hundreds of people in pre-ordering. So I would suggest, guys, get as quick as you can because the first edition is what they're selling.

And they think they're going to sell out of it within the first month. Get it while you can. I could just guarantee that if you read it, it's not only an autobiography, but it's how to do all these things, how we did, how we got money earlier, how America still works. And other things you could do, other things you could do in your life that you'll find

in that book that I'm allowed to talk about now. And I'll give you one quick example, okay?

I am not, and never have been an agent of the CIA.

I am not, and never have been an agent of the FBI. But I trained, and I have trained more than once, both of them. I trained them on it to be a more loving, caring manager, because they have turned all like everybody else. You're like, "If I had made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, have a good hair

day at the CIA, okay?" You can't be here here, but go teach them about how to be more of a loving manager. But anyways, but that's the preset of for this. And how is in the book, I'm the guy who in 2000, 2001, I'm the guy that went into Libya and convinced Colonel Cadafi to re-list the two suspected terrorist-dependent flight 103 released

him to go on trial in the hay. I'm the one that helped do that. I'm the guy that went in and out. It was able to talk to him. He wanted to kill me.

Okay, after I started talking, the guy that was with me was, I mean, I wouldn't think being in this pants. He said he spilled tea on his pants. Those stories in there, but with him, I was wanting to kill me at him within two minutes laughing with me, and that's when I said I took my $8 a throwaway camera.

That's where you had 35 pictures. You took it down. They developed it to his chief of staff over and on tosser, I said, "Could you take a picture with us? He's insured."

So I ran over, I had Cadafi. He smiled and I smiled, and we got the pictures in the book of Cadafi and I liked that. So in other words, once you're into it, and you have confidence on yourself, you know you could do amazing things, and I have a saying that's this, being nice, even works, and being real, even works on jerks, being good to everybody, it really works even on jerks,

even on jerks. So I was nice to Cadafi and I made him laugh, even though he was ready to kill me for something I'd said, just minutes before. So these are some lessons we learn along the way, and we apply him to people. We apply them.

I read the book twice now, and there's so many incredible worst stories, there's so much inspiration in it, especially for young entrepreneurs who are bootstrapping their companies and having to be scrappy and resourceful, so I absolutely loved it, I highly recommend that people go. So JPE, I want to play a game called Would You Rather, I'm going to ask you a question.

Tell me which one you'd rather do and why. Okay, number one, would you rather have a great product with no marketing or great marketing with an average product? I would rather have the best product that there is with little marketing because I know me get reorders.

If I have a social product, I can spend all the money doing it, but I'll get a one-time

I want to be in the reorder business. Would you rather start a new business with $700 and full control, or start a business

with $7 million from investors, but lose control?

I would rather have $700 and a full control if I could build a business and have it myself and control the way I'd like to do it the way I envisioned it if that's possible.

“Would you rather be first to market or be the first to truly get the product right?”

I would like to be the first to get the product really, really right and the very, very best. Then once again, you're in the reorder business. Would you rather have a thousand loyal customers or one million followers on social media? I'd rather have a thousand loyal customers than one million on social media because they're loyal

customers and they'll help me get the other customers, they're not listening to it. They are actually using the product and their loyalty to talk about issues, not just advertising that's thrown out at somebody. Would you rather build another Paul Mitchell where customers reorder for decades or another Patron, where you create a premium category and cultural status?

Both. Oh no, holy cow, boy, that's a tough one because you're trying to about two and believably successful products are really, really good. If you had to just choose one that would have been your legacy, which one would it be? God, that's, that's, boy, well, I would say Paul Mitchell because it was the first.

Yeah, you couldn't have done Patron without Paul Mitchell. No, that's correct.

“Would you rather grow up rich or grow up poor?”

In my case, and knowing what I know, I'd rather grow up poor than rich. Now, why would I do this? They say, are you on your mind? You're putting us on. You know what he wants to do that.

If I grew up rich with all the money in the world, I would have never learned the lessons

I have learned in this life, in this body, this time around. I would have not for learned them and also the humility on what people go through in life and how to give them a helping hand to raise them up, which makes me even happier. To close out this interview, I want to talk about the main model of your book, success, Unshared is failure.

Why do you take it so far? Why is it not just like in complete or bad? Why is it failure to not share your success? In the 1950s, Jay Paul Getty Jr. was the richest man in the world. He was a multi-billionaire.

He was an oilman from Oklahoma that ended up starting a Ramco, the big oil company in Saudi Arabia is one of the guys who helped it going and he lived in a huge, huge place in London, England. And he noticed once, this back in the 50s, we had what's called toll calls.

We had a million United States, if we call across town, it's an extra two cents a minute.

You call across states, maybe it's an extra nickel a minute, whatever. Anyways, he looked at his bill in London and it was like 250 pounds, which was equivalent of about 500 U.S. dollars in the 1950s, and he said, "My God, they're taking advantage of me. My guess, this is the richest man in the world, they're taking advantage of me."

So he put a pay phone in his house. If somebody wanted to make a telephone call, they'd make it off a pay phone. I mean, that guy was really cheap. Anyways, but here's the lesson to learn and answer the question really, really well from the richest man in the world, in one of the very few interviews he ever did.

The lady interview said, "J-Paul Getty, you're the richest man in the world. Is there anything in your life that you would do differently?" And he looked at her and said, "Man, and one of these rare interviews that he had, you're wrong. You only have right.

I'm not only the richest man in the world, I'm the most powerful man in the world. I could change governments. I could change governments with my money and my wealth and I have, by the way. He's the one where I change something, as I would. He says, "I would change the majority of my wealth and my power to have been happy in life.

I've been married seven times, didn't love any of them. One of my grandkids cut off his ear and sent it in for ransom. I have not been happy in my whole life. I've just been unhappy, but wealthy and strong and powerful and a lot of people didn't lie to me."

So she said to him, "Well, what did she start doing in now, J-Paul, Getty Junior?" And his answer was, "Can't, it's too late for me, only got a couple of years late. It's just too late for me. I wish I would have learned that less than early, and if I could train, go back and change and now I would, it's too late for me."

So what is really, what is happiness? If you have all the money in the world, you're not happy. Is that worth it?

“Would you rather have a hell of a lot less or just get and buy, put your happy in life?”

Yeah. Big less than to learn. I know that you want to be remembered not for your companies, but for your kindness. And you've got so many examples, I think, even with Paul Mitchell, like your first $2,000 of profit that you ever made, you, like, bought out the restaurant and, like, paid for

everyone's dinner. If they helped a bunch of kids who were interested in children that can order a whole lot. That's so sweet. Talk to us about the way that you've shared your wealth over the years and how you're

Of course. Well, let's go to the sharing the wealth part here.

The first part of your question is says, if you're like Jay Paul Getty Jr., you became

the riches of all rich and you haven't shared it any at all here on happy. Well, that's not very good. But if you're blessed enough, and God gave you the ability in these bodies and helped you out a little bit, okay, getting what you have, well, isn't it only proper to share it?

I know in the past, there was one fellow named Huey Long in New Orleans back the 1930s that was running. There was a really a weird guy, right?

“He was the most honest guy who was running for, I think it was Senator of the Great”

State Louisiana and set something one time that made all the sense in the world, even though he did not practice it. And what he said then was this, I'm the radio. He said, Mr. Mrs. Rockefeller up there in New York City, okay, that have all the money. I want you to have a big banquet and have so much food that your kids, your grandkids,

your great-grandkids, have all they could possibly at least some for them, okay? There's going to be a lot left on the table, which you send those extra data to the poor people that we see and I'll say could eat too.

In other words, when you have something and you don't give, you're not happy.

In life, when you give something to somebody else and you ask nothing in return, your height is a kite. I mean, there's no weed you're going to smoke doesn't really get you that high. You are so high and you're feeling just so great, it changes your life. Are you a true success of you made millions or billions, no?

If you made millions or billions and did something to help change the world with some of it or your time and energy, now you're sharing, I was asked many times, JP, what would you have on your epitaph? Let's say you were buried and not cremated, let's say you were buried or just yet it's stone that was your epitaph.

What would you have on there? And I said, oh, this is so easy. He came to this world with absolutely nothing. John Paul, the jury, but made a change to make millions of lives better because he was here. Period.

That's it. Well, and it makes you feel better.

“That's why you should share your failure if you don't.”

And I know quite a few people that are extremely wealthy, but they don't share, they don't share, which is wrong. You've got to make you an happy inside. Do you feel like because you share your wealth, the universe continues to reward you? Definitely.

When you're good in you share, you are rewarded. Whether it's immediately or whether it's ten years later or it could be your next life around, somehow it's going to come back to you. It does. Success and share it is failure because if you don't share, you ordered something not

so good. It's going to happen to you eventually because that's what you told the world you want to do. I want to have money, money, money, money. I don't want to share.

I don't want to share. Okay, fine. You'll have this money. You're not going to share, but at the same time, you're not going to get the benefits of sharing.

What's one of the benefits? You're happy. You did something for somebody else to want anything. That makes you happy. Success and share it is failure.

And if you don't have any money, you don't have money to be successful and share. Share of your time. Very valuable. Volunteer to do some gift, somebody helping hand, smile at people every morning. If you get on an elevator, get on an elevator, say good morning, everybody.

It's just little things like that is sharing goodness with the world. And you've got so many stories in the book of how you've supported different communities and really went and helped and you're not only your money, but your status, your connections to help people. That is correct.

And it works and it makes me very, very happy. So I'm very wealthy. I'm happy. I'm very, very wealthy. I'm happy.

Yeah. So I am my show with two questions I ask all of my guests. Okay.

The first one is what is one actionable thing our young and profiteers can do today to become

more profitable tomorrow. Okay. Part of what you earn is yours to keep.

“And I read this in a book when I was selling in Saclipedias, I think it was called the”

richest man in Babylon, where he was a poor guy, but he would get a little rug enough to buy a rug, he was selling rugs for something else and sell it. But he says, I got to keep some of this for me. So people get a check, especially if you're starting a very little money. Immediately with every dollar you see, start out taking 5% of, if you found $10 on the, on

the, on the street, take 50 cents of it. Okay. Put it in the bank. Take something. Because whenever we get checks or money, first thing we just pay all our bills, whatever

is left is discretionary. Do the reverse. Take 5th eventually take 10% but say 5% of whatever you earn or whatever you find. And put it in the savings account, even though you make nothing off the bank and the savings account, right?

But you're not going to touch as the savings account. You'll be blown away how that attracts other money. Pretty soon you'll be making enough where 10% you'll put in there. It's starting building your wealth when you have none by getting to that little habit. The next thing is, believe in yourself more than anybody else.

And learn the lesson is some of these lessons in the book, but the big lesson is not kind of door number 51 or door number 101 has enthusiastic as you will be.

You're in business, hopefully for the rest of your life or in a good business or you switch businesses. Those are the biggest things.

The two things I will say, always remember, number one, don't go into the selling

business. Go into the rear of business we talked about. And the second thing is that you're going to get rejections in life. As long as you know you get rejections, don't let it affect you. Like the 50 doors, whether they're closed professionally, nicely, or rudely, number

door 51, number 110, whatever it be, is just as enthusiastic and happy. You're finally going to break through because you'll learn in all the other ones, how did you live a better? Yeah, you got fired from three jobs and then started Paul Mitchell. Exactly.

Yeah. So your experience is really what leads you to be able to create some amazing later on.

“What would you say you're secret to profiting in life as?”

It's being a happy person because that's going to be when you're a biggest profits in life. It's being a happy person in life and not cheating anybody, you know, give them something a duller's value and don't cheat them along the way and you're a very, very happy person in business. And where can everybody go to learn more about you and your new book?

Well, they would go on Amazon. That's one example. Amazon you buy it right now. They ship it out next week. But, but I would say this to all your listing audience.

If you're an adult, when you read the book, read it with your children or let your children read it next. And if you have grandchildren, let them read it also. It shows America works and how you could start in a variety of businesses with no money become successful with the same exact principles and many things we haven't talked about

now. I love it. JP, thank you so much for you. So pleasure. You're a superstar again.

These good messages out. Thank you very much. Thank you.

“Well, yapp gang, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.”

What an extraordinary conversation with John Paul the Jorya. For being homeless and living out of his car to building Paul Mitchell and Patron to

billion dollar businesses, his story is proof that resilience, integrity, and generosity

are not just soft values. They are competitive advantages as an entrepreneur. 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 that people come back for and you'll build a legacy. Second, he bootstrapped with creativity not capital. 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 scrappy entrepreneur ship, shrink the risk, secure the terms, deliver excellence, and then expand. And finally, his philosophy says it all, success and shared his 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, app fam, outlast rejection, engineer reorders, negotiate, boldly protect your reputation like it's your greatest asset. And when you win, share it.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Young Improveding Podcast. If you listen, learn to profit it from this conversation with the incredible John Paul de Joria, share this episode with a friend or fellow entrepreneur. Even better, write us a few words about what hit home for you. I genuinely read every single review and they remind me why I record these podcasts each

and every week. Yeah, fam, I love reading your review, so take a couple of minutes right now and write us a five-star review on Apple Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can also watch the full conversation of me and JP on video on YouTube and Spotify video. You can find me on Instagram @yapathala or connect with me on LinkedIn, just search for

my name. It's Hala Taha. I love hearing from you guys, so don't be shy and shoot me a DM.

And finally, the biggest shout out to my amazing guest outreach and production team, shout

out to you for con Joshua, Hisham, Jayreen, Nina, Michael, Gdundra, Caleb, Paul, Maxi, there's so many people on the team that work on this show. I couldn't do without you guys saying you guys so much for all your hard work and of course the social team, I appreciate you guys as well. This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the podcast princess signing off.