THE ED MYLETT SHOW - John Paul DeJoria- From Homeless to Billionaire

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

You can't change yesterday's newspaper, so why are you still carrying it around?   I have wanted to sit down with this man for so long. Imagine going from living in your car to building two multibillion dollar brands. It doesn't even sound real when you say it out loud. But that's not what I admire most about him. It's how he carries the success: with humility, generosity and kindness. So today I got out of the way and let him teach.   I've interviewed some of the top entrepreneurs on the planet, and I don't know that I've ever met a better communicator. This conversation is a masterclass, and I'm fired up for you to hear it.   John Paul DeJoria is the co-founder of John Paul Mitchell Systems and Patrón Spirits Company. He started Paul Mitchell with $700 and lived in his car to make it happen. Then he built Patrón into a brand selling millions of cases a year.   Here's what you'll gain from this episode: The Two Rules of Success: two rules to live by if you want to see more success in every area of your life. You Can't Change Yesterday's Newspaper: Why he wouldn't change a single thing about the hard times, and how to move forward after hardship Watch Your Words: Why saying "I'll try" keeps you trying forever, and how to break the pattern. The Richest Man's Regret: What John Paul DeJoria said he would give up just to have been happy, and what that says about money. Kindness Works, Even for Jerks: How humor and kindness disarms, and why you should never knock your competitor.   Whatever you're still carrying from yesterday, consider this your permission to put it down. I don't want you to just listen to this one. I want you to feel it, then go live it. If you run a business or handle customer operations across support, sales, or marketing, you can start with a demo at https://elevenlabs.io/mylett Go to https://ButcherBox.com/MYLETT to get $20 off your first box, plus your choice of free ribeye, new york strip, or filet mignon in every box for a year — with free shipping always. For a better way to stay hydrated, go to https://instanthydration.com/MYLETT and use my promo code MYLETT for over 40% off your first subscription order - it’s Instant Hydration’s best offer available If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get your free guide “Aligning for the Agentic Era”: How AI Is Changing Everyday Work" at https://NetSuite.com/MYLETT.   👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈→ → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ←➡️ INSTAGRAM➡️ FACEBOOK➡️ LINKEDIN➡️ X➡️ WEBSITE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Real growth, fast funding, Cardiff, borrow better. This is the Edmireland show. Welcome back to the show. So I've wanted to talk to this man for so long because obviously his story is crazy. Imagine going from living in your car and being homeless to becoming a billionaire. It doesn't even sound real when you say it out loud, but it's actually his story. And he's founded a couple different brands, whether it's John Paul Mitchell Systems or Padron Tequila. You're talking about two multi-billion-dollar brands and companies that he's co-fold.

founded or founded. And it's an incredible story, but that's actually not what I've admired the most about him. What I've admired the most about him is how he handles this success. He's always appeared to me to have such great humility and to be such a generous soul for the success that he's had. And so I've just wanted to meet him. And so I'm using the show today to get to know somebody I've admired from a distance and you're going to get to share this time up close and learn from him. So John Paul DeGiorio, welcome to the show finally. Great to have you. Yeah, Ed, thank you very, very much and you got a great show here and I'm really happy to be on it. Thank you. Well, I'm so thrilled you're here. Like I said, everybody, two different gigantic pieces of success and that's

just the beginning of the resume in the list. Can we do something first? Because I think a lot of people listen or watch my show and they probably find themselves at a stage of their life where they may not be homeless or living in their car, but they thought they'd be further ahead than they are. You know what I mean. They had a dream. I know exactly what you mean. Exactly what you mean. Yeah, what would you say to them based on your experience and what was it like for you and what would you say to somebody who feels behind? Well, you got to look at a little different way. Let's say, for example, my own experience, this is a good way to say instead of what I think will happen. Okay, my own experience is when I started John Paul Mitchell Systems and our backer pulled out, we never got a dime from it.

And we started it on a shoestring of $700, even lived in my car for the first several weeks, just, be able to make it. So what had happened? All of a sudden I was in a beautiful situation where I thought I'd be doing really good. We had a backer to start our company with. The guy pulled out. I left the relationship I was in at the time because it wasn't working out. I took the older of the two cars down the hill, the couple hundred bucks in my fog and turned out to have nothing. So all of a sudden, I thought I'd be doing really good. But what happened? All of a sudden, something happened in my life where everything I thought would happen isn't happening. Not as good as I thought, period. but I knew that what I had was really, really great.

So there's two things I love to share with everybody, entrepreneurs, either in your personal life or in your business life and entrepreneur. And there's the two things to success. One of them is this, be prepared in life. And all of you get to that point for rejection. If things aren't going as well as they're going, then something was rejected. That success was rejected or somebody told you you can't do it. There's rejection somehow along the way.

If you know along the way you're going to rejection and you're going to get it, it's not going to affect you as much, opposed to, oh, my God, I got rejected. I never expected that, okay? That's one thing. Number two, make sure the quality of your product or your own personality in your personal life or your business life is not in the selling business. You want to go into the reorder business. What does that mean? It means that, for example, in business, your product or service is so good. People will want to reorder it again. Don't work on a product or a service and how to sell the darn thing. It's how good can I make this? So if somebody actually has it, they could buy it again and again or tell other people about. Those are the two things. In your own personal life, it's the same thing. What you present to your partner in life or your friends

should be something that wants them be around you for a long time. For example, if you in front of your friends always talk about what you have and how great life is going for you and maybe it's not going that good for them, they're going to listen to you as a courtesy, but if you keep on bragging on what you're all about, you're going to start losing friends along the way. Keep some of it to yourself, okay? That's one thing. Also, today is the first day of the rest of your life. We would say that in the 60s. In fact, a fellow named Bobby Romdos wrote a book about it called Be Here Now. In other words, you're here now. You cannot change yesterday's newspapers, it already happened. And that's the other big thing. You've got to get it off your shoulders.

If only, I would have done that differently. If only I would have said that differently, if only this, if you could change it. When people ask me, J.P, what would you change in your life? I mean, my God, you were homeless, you and your mom and brother struggled. You created a business out of nothing, and all of a sudden you got money. You know, oh my God, JP, what is the secret? What would you change if you wanted to, especially the hard times you had in your life, which were a lot of them. being fired, having no money, more than one occasion, right? I can't change it. And if it wasn't for all those steps, I wouldn't be who I am today. So my answer is quite clear. I wouldn't change the thing. I forgive myself for anything I did in the past. I wish I didn't do it the same way,

but I can't change it, but I can forgive myself, meaning that I will never think again, oh, if only I did something different with Susie, if only I would have done this different in my life, if only I had invested in this, things would have been doing. different. You cannot change yesterday's newspaper. Just know that. So when it comes on your shoulder or you start thinking about it, you should switch a little bit to maybe moving more towards, well, that happened, but I can't do anything about. I forgive it. And then when it comes in your mind, say, well, wait a minute, that's yesterday. Why is that still in my mind? I can't change that. Why am I even thinking about that? Okay. That's the past. It cannot be changed. Why are we on

the planet Earth? One of the reasons we're here is to learn. If everything was peachy keen and you were cool and yet all the money you wanted and everything else, and I'll tell you a little story about J. Paul Getty Jr. before we get off this podcast, what's really important in life, okay? You can't change that. So what you do is you leave the garbage behind you. Nothing I can do about it, right? That's the past. You cannot change the past. Oh my God, I'm still in love with her. Look what she did to me. Or I'm still in love with him. Look what he did to me. You can't change that. It lets you move on. to what you're destined to have. A lot of things in life happen because of fate. Why? Because your purpose here was something else. So some maybe things happen to you that aren't that bad,

but it's to get you the next step. When you look at the book I brought out, that's why I brought out this book, okay, success and share in his failure. People ask me all the time, JP, can you do what you did with no money and all of a sudden build two billion dollar corporations? Can you do that still today? Yes, you can. J.P., how did you? How do you? You you get money out of a distributor? How did you even sell them? We had no money. How did you make an office up? How did you do all that when you had dollars to work with? How the hell can you do it today? You can. That's the reason I wrote the book. It took me two and a half years. Have you ever written a book? I have. And I'm a terrible writer. It took me a long time too.

It took me two and a half years to write this book. I'd read. I want to change. But the whole concept was, how can I tell others in the world how they could still do it today for a little and nothing, but with kindness involved? How you could grow companies with kindness. Too often you get someone that's unruly, okay, and they're not kind. Well, let me give you a little phrase, kindness works even for jerks. When I went into Libya to convince Omar Gaddafi, and by the way, it's in the book, okay? Yep, I'm the guy that went in to convince Omar Gaddafi to release a two suspected terrorists of Pan Am flight 103 to go on trial, right? There's a lot of things I do because of me. I'm not an agent of the CIA. I'm not an agent of the FBI of nobody, right? I did because I wanted

to be an American and help out. But all the things you could do and expand on no matter where your life is, where did I start? Living in my car with a few hundred bucks in my pocket, needing a few more to borrow from my mom, too proud to tell my mom I'm down and out, too proud. So I could have stayed in a old room. She can offend me. Too proud. But how do you go about these things? How do you get the worst things in the world being fired? Sometimes the best thing for you, especially when you don't deserve to be fired. But maybe it's because you're not moving on. Fate is going to move you on to what you're said for. And I didn't know this until after I started Paul Mitchell. Two years later, it was, my God, if it wasn't for all those lessons learned and being fired, but being through these three different

companies, each one taught me something different. I could have never started my first company, Paul Mitchell with $10 million, let alone with $700 between me and my partner. So a lot of things in life are meant to be, but you treat him with kindness. There's been situations where with Gaddafi, he wanted to kill me. And I came up with something out of kindness and made him laugh his head off, right? And then he took a picture with me and they went into the talks. I helped out with that in a big way. So there's various things you could do.

I was just thinking listening to you, by the way, I didn't mean to jump in. I just want to say this. I'm looking at you. Oh, please do. It's your show. No, no, no, no, no. This shows about you. And I'm getting out of the way today. That's obvious. This is going to be a banger, everybody. You can tell, obviously, in the first 10 minutes. But I'm looking at you, and then I'm thinking about your life story. You're kind of like the dos Echis guy. You're like the most interesting man in the world. You've had this very diverse, you know, experience. And by the way, guys, on books, I have a lot of people on here who write books. Let me tell you what's rare in this day and age. I'd like to think this of myself as well. Someone teaching you lessons who's actually done it. In other words, this book and J.P. This isn't theory. This is stuff that he's practiced in his life. And the book is called Success Unshared as Failure. That's unique in the world, guys, that someone who's done it

shares exactly what they did. And if we could, just before we keep moving on, I want to unpack something because I forget the name of the book, but we had a guy come in to speak to my group. I think it's called Unreasonable Hospitality. Maybe I've got the book name wrong. But his philosophy is very similar to what you started to. And I want to unpack it because you are a genius in so many different things as an entrepreneur, but this one area about referral business that you said, return business, that makes me believe that you believed,

the experience has to be so pleasing, so pleasant, so wonderful, so incredible, that they want to come back. Tactically, strategically, how did you do that? What were your thoughts? Was there something specific you would do in a client encounter or when you'd go into a salon to get the account? What were you thinking and doing?

That's a very good question, by the way, an excellent question indeed. What we're thinking about doing is this is we have no money, we have no anything. Why don't I even go into this industry after working for others, okay? I knew the industry and I knew that you could make things a little bit better. Like my dear partner at the time, Paul, wonderful human being, he died unfortunately quite a few years ago through pancreatic cancer. But Paul was a great guy. I tried to come out of the product line, but it just didn't work. But I had the knowledge from working for all these three companies who I would go.

to to make it better. How do you make a shampoo better or maybe use it one time and set it twice? How do you make a conditioner that you could leave in your hair and it's good for your hair and your skin and a pomade and it gets wrinkle, I mean, tags out of your hair easily? You can blow dry it with less damage. Let's create products like that, not knowing I wouldn't have any money to promote it. So when we had no money, we had to promote it on its merit, knowing darn well that when a hairdresser used it, they could go ahead and run a recommender to use it again. Also, salon retailing was not a big deal at all when I started Paul Mitchell. Some salons would sell a few products. Some didn't. We introduced success to salons through recommendation.

People aren't in a salon's chair. And the salon knows your hair better than anybody else, better than any drugstore ad will ever know it. But they could use some of our Paul Mitchell products that worked exceptionally well, still do today, by the way. they can use those products and say, by the way, I use shampoo one on your hair. You only need one shampoo. You don't need two with this one. Your ears and that they can, and dirty, right?

And by the way, here's how much of the conditioner we use. Here's how much of this. And by the way, with this new freeze and shine spray, I'm holding your hair up with a brush. I'm spraying it. I'm just counting to three and then I let it go. So it holds it, yet the back part falls. Show them how to use it and what you use in salon

and saying these are the products that I use it on you. You may want to pick up a few. before you leave. And then they would all of a sudden, retailing started in salons. Salons could actually do that. At the same time, I made a promise to all salons that I will somehow always stay in the professional beauty industry with you and not do what all the other companies do. It's only going to be in salons, but when I go retail, you're not going to benefit by it, but thank you for helping me build. I would never do that. And even when distribution changed, an example, during COVID, a lot of salons were closed for weeks and months. It were closed.

their customers could not get it. Instead of having to switch them, we made a really good deal with Amazon where they would order straight through Amazon. It would be delivered. We would get, obviously, our share of the money back, but we would take a portion of it. This is being two to your word, a portion of it, and give it back to salons that were really into Paul Mitchell.

It's kind of like when salons started opening up. A lot of salons brought a business for several weeks and months had no product left, no money to buy it with. We gave the salons that, supported us a whole bunch, like several million dollars worth of product free. Here's back bar, here's color, here's shampoos. Let's put you back in business again. You care about your customer and what their needs are.

And by the way, I don't want to forget to say this. For a lot of people today, well, my God, I have very little money. I started a business. I got a hell of a good product. But I don't have a distribution network set up. And how do I get money right away? Okay. It's in the buck.

Okay. How do you go into Patron? J.P. What did you know about alcohol or tequila? than drinking it before you start at Patron. Absolutely nothing. Nothing, nada. Well, how did you learn the industry that quick

and build it to one of the biggest companies ever in the liquor business? Part of it is learning their vocabulary first. So people have to go and find these things that still work. So now let me go with Patron. Another example to answer your question. When I entered Petron in the marketplace, the average tequila was about $5 a bottle.

Nothing was anywhere near the $37. $99.95. We had to charge for a bottle. It was too expensive. When we launched Petron, nobody would take us. Nobody Ed would take us on. Not one distributor. I said, guys, you have a great tequila. It's the best of the world. But man, it's just no one's going to pay that kind of money for it, right? So we had to go with someone that only sold wine and nothing else. That's all they sold. We talked him into it saying, hey, if we could get Spagos, which was the number one restaurant in 1989, when we launched it in anywhere, and Baja Cantina Marina Del Rey. Well, Wolfgang Puck was a friend of mine.

Already Drake has said, this is the best stuff I want to carry it. Baja Cantina did the same for my friend Martin. Okay, we'll carry it. They said, you can get those accounts. We said, sure, we'll take it. After one year, they were only selling about a thousand cases for the year. That's nothing in the industry, right? That's nothing.

So we dropped them. We took on a big giant. This is a real good lesson to learn. A giant. Jim Beam. great guys, by the way, okay? After about a year and a half or so, they were only selling 12,000 cases a year. That's 12,000 of 12, you know, 12 in a case, 12,000. We went and met with them and said, you know, guys, we think we could do a lot better than this. And they were really smart and

you their business. They said, guys, let me show you the tequila business. You're going at 3795, up against five and six dollar bottles, okay? The most expensive thing I think at that time that they could find was maybe $14, $15. Something had that was it. J.P. Guys, we love you. You have the best or but we'll tell you the truth. You'll never do more than 20,000 cases a year, which is a lot. You'll still make some money. We didn't believe it. Okay. We dropped them and took up Seagrams. This is a giant company, okay? Seagrams got it up to about 50,000, right? And we knew we could do so much better. We were learning now. We were learning. We dropped them and took it over ourselves. Now, here's a lesson to be learned here. Very important lesson, okay? What was our deal? We had the best there

was and we're going to stick it out until enough people know about it. Whether it's having a seminar, Paul Mitchell, where people are given Patron free to treat themselves, or whether it's changing one word in marketing. I did it with Paul Mitchell and it worked, and the word was this. You want to treat yourself today? Treat yourself to the best there is. Patron. Simply perfect, okay we took on the promotion advertising herself we took all the pretty girls out of it and the bottle the ad was all about the bottle simply perfect we concentrated something different on the bottle and then we told people in restaurants please when you serve somebody you want to make a couple extra dollars tell them this you want a margarita we make a good margarita but for two dollars more you can

treat yourself today to patrone the best of cala in the world what is this all amount to. When I sold Patron, which was about eight years ago, that brand that was never supposed to do more than 20,000 cases a year, we were doing, and that alone, about 3,500,000 cases a year, broke all records for a selling price for everything. In other words, there's always something in there you could do differently, and you can learn in an industry immediately and find the little things. I'm listening to you, and let's just be real for a minute. By the way, this is a master class. That's why I just want you to do. keep going. But I want to, I'm listening to you and I've been fortunate that I've

interviewed some of the top entrepreneurs on the planet. I've done okay myself. But I've been around Phil Knight. I've been around Tim Cook. I've watched videos of Steve Jobs. I'm listening to you. You're a promoter. And I don't know that enough entrepreneurs become the, I remember thinking back in the day, remember Don King, the boxing promoter. I know you do. Oh yeah. I remember thinking, even in his case, if you had a big fight back in those days and you had you'd want the best promoter to promote. it. And I often look at entrepreneurs, and I think so many of them, they don't utilize their social media that way. They're not over the top, dramatic, deep believers in their mission, their cause,

or their product like I see in you. It's in your pores. It's coming out of you. And I think a lot of people are, what's my strategy? What's my social media picture going to look like? You know, what's our tagline going to be? And all of that stuff matters. But at the end of the day, you've got to be a true believer in what you do and constantly feed that belief because you can't transfer to somebody that which you're not really feeling and experiencing. Is that accurate read of you? Ed, it's beyond accurate. Beyond accurate. An example, I sold Encyclopedias door to door for three and a half years for colliers. No appointments, no salary, commission sales only. And it wasn't a real known Encyclopedia set. But I believed that every house need an encyclopedia. I never had an encyclopedia.

It'd be so much help. I might even do my homework at home. I might even do my homework, period. I believed in it. What you said is one of the greatest things that, Ed, you know that. And hopefully all your listeners know it also. You must believe what you have is the best. That's what keeps you going. Like one of the things I talk about in the book that I learned selling encyclopedias is if you knock on 50 doors and they're all either politely or maybe not so politely closing your face, right? You must be just as enthusiastic on door number 51. For me, it was door number 100 and something, right? But I believe what they said. The average life of an encyclopedia salesman for colliers, door-to-door commission only three and a half days. I was going to say three days, yeah. Several years with them, but I've made pretty good money.

But you're right. You've got to believe what you have. Or make sure what you have is so believable that, hey, 50 people don't know it, 51 is going to know it. And this is the same thing we did with Paul Mitchell. We had no money, no advertising, but we knew the product was so good if they used it. All of a sudden, we'd be getting some reorders out of it without any advertising, no promotion. I just think, like, I think one thing you said it's so profound. I want to dig on that a little bit, and I want to ask you about being worth it. What happens in life and business, especially if you're in some type of sales,

is you start getting this rejection, and then you shift to where you almost expect it, And so now it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And to your point of maybe 0 for 50, you've got to go to 51 like it's the first one and you know you're going to get it and you believe it. What happens is the failure and the rejection begins to morph into someone's mind where they almost start to say things that create it because they've expecting the rejection to happen. Exactly. What are the power of words? Whatever you think, whatever you say is more than likely going to happen. people have to understand that. I'm going to give you an example of that. Example would be this.

How often does somebody say, this next year, my New Year's resolution is going to be, I'm going to try and lose 10 pounds, and they never do. Next year, the same thing. Or I'm going to try and learn Spanish this next year, okay? What people have to know is the universe listens to you, but the universe only thinks in black and white. So if you're saying there every year that I'm going to try and learn it, the universe says, I'm going to to give you exactly what you want. You're going to keep on trying and trying and trying and trying, and you just keep on trying to do it. Because you said you were going and you thought, I'm going to try and do this, right? Here's the difference. If you were to say, I am going to lose 10 pounds in this next year, and I'm going to look at the scale right now. I'm going to visualize the scale

and me weighing 10 pounds less, or I'm going to step on the scale and see me wearing 10 pounds less, and I am going to do it. I am, right? You're going to lose those 10 pounds. Now, I'm giving you example of how that works. Dear friend of mine was telling me for years, I have the worst bad luck. Oh my God, I get something going really good. It goes, but then something goes wrong. I have the worst bad luck on this, this and this. I said, after years of doing this, this was last November, six months ago. I said to him, or seven months ago, I ever heard eight months ago. I said to him, look, I know why you're having all the bad luck. Oh, JP, really? Yeah, I do. And I know who's causing it. Really? Tell me.

What is it? I said, it's you because you keep on saying it and putting out to the universe and thinking of the worst bad luck, you think about it. And everything goes wrong. This is I think about it in night, probably before I go to bed. I want you to change something immediately. When you ever think I have bad luck, even think it. Immediately change that thinking to. My life has changed. I'm going to have a best luck this next year, okay? Whenever you say it, no, you're telling the universe you want bad look. It's in black and white. Stop saying that. Just all wake up every morning and say two things. One, I am a healthy human being. I'm healthy. Number two, I'm having the best of luck. I am going to have the best of luck. I am right now going to do that.

And whenever something else enters your mind say, that was yesterday, okay? It's the new me. This is an honest God's truth, okay? November to December, January, February, March, April, May, June, going to July, whatever, okay? Three of the project, he was working, I had bad luck with along the way, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, got more orders than he could handle. things exploded and problems resolved themselves. Only thing he did difference is in what he said, because speech on what you say and what you think is that powerful, it goes out to the universe and it goes out to your destiny. So if you speak more positive things, if you gossip about other people, you're going to be in a gossiping world. If you talk about bad about other people,

you're putting bad vibes out. If you get so polarized with some of these, no disrespect to politics, but you get so polarized with one end or another, then nobody could tell you the other side, you're too polarized. Whatever you think, whatever you say is going out to the universe, be very careful with your words going out to the universe or your thinking,

and this works. Yeah. Do you, is it been work, like, and real talk, too, we were talking off camera about, you know, you made a move for your family to Austin many years ago, et cetera.

Take us into, you know, I'm sure there were moments where you're like, ah, maybe I'm going to throw my hands up and quit. I don't know if there were a moment. moments like that. Tell us that first. But secondly, what's the other side look like? I mean, not everyone's going to be a billionaire. But what's it like to have a vision and a dream for something? Go through just the crazy early mornings, late nights, rejections, probably betrayals, all these things that came with being you. Truly, is it what you thought it would be getting here? Is it worth it?

Is it better than you thought? It is beyond what I, I never even dreamed about stuff like this. Are you kidding? Our first goal when Paul and I started the company was, God, we may be able to do five million dollars a year in business, which means we could each get a quarter of a million dollars we would be set for life, had no idea in the world. But you know what? This is a great time for the story I wanted to say sometime during your presentations. It's about Jay Paul Getty Jr. What is important?

What is success? Success, I'll give you two quick little stories. Success isn't how much money you have. Success is how far have you come in life? life with the lessons you've learned to do something really, really good, successful. Let me give you an example. I'm going to go, personal examples are better because you say, well, how the hell is he? No, he's never done it before. Let me give you high school. I've always worked in my life, okay, and had some kind of a full-time thing going, even though it was a part-time full-time thing,

since I was 11 years old and had my paperouts every morning I'd show up. So I always had a job. In high school, I worked at Stewart's cleaners, and he paid me a dollar in a quarter an hour. Stewart was so cheap. He would have paid me 75 cents if you get away with it. But the law says, oh, you got to pay you to at least a dollar in a quarter an hour, especially a kid. So I made a buck in a quarter an hour. One day I come home from high school and Stewart says, Johnny, I want to talk to you. That was my name in those days, Johnny, John Paul for short now.

Oh, I think, what the hell did I do, right? So we sit down and he says, yesterday I was working late and I have a message that being upstairs, which of course you clean. He says, I set my watch down the little table to lay in my cot. and the watch fell on the floor. In those days, the cots were made out of metal, little thing on top, the bottom was open. He said, I reached down and got my watch off the floor,

and I noticed there wasn't any dust under my cot. He says, I pulled it away. There was no dust behind it, and none behind the file cabinets were on each side of it. He says, you're cleaning this place as if I'm watching you all the time. And then he stopped talking. Just look to me. I said, Stuart, I want my job.

I'm not only the janitor. I put the little drapes on the hangars, the little sleeves, I brush the blankets. I said, it's my job. My mom taught me how to clean when I was a kid, because my brother and I would help clean the darn house, right? That, he says, I've never seen someone work like that. He says, when no one is watching, what is your character? What do you do when nobody is watching?

I did the best. Stewart gave me a 25 cent an hour raise. It may not sound like a lot to you right now, but to go from a dollar and a quarter to $1.50 an hour, for where I went to high school, I was probably the richest guy in high school, the highest paid other than the teachers, right? But what did I do? I was the best janitor in the world.

I was happy. Now the story that goes with the multi-billionaire, okay? Multi-billionaire. Jay Paul Getty Jr. was the richest man in the world in the 50s and 60s. Nobody even knew what a billionaire was. He was. He started in Oklahoma with an oil and gas company.

All of a sudden went to England, had a giant estate in England and started Aramco, the Saudi Arabian oil company. This guy was the first multi-billionaire. But he was cheap. He was so cheap like many people are sometimes when they make a lot of money. They just want more, more, more, none for you, more, more, more, more, okay? That he found once in his mail a bill from the phone company that he looked at this bill. And it was for 250 British pounds.

That was the equivalent of about 500 U.S. dollars in the time. at that particular time, and said, people are using my phone. We had toll calls in those days before you were born. If you call to another city or another state, they charge a couple extra pennies. And he said, you know, and people are using it. So what did he do? He disconnected in his living quarters that people were around, every telephone, and put in a phone booth. I know that's cheap, right?

But now I'm getting to the climax of it all. In one of the rarest interviews the man ever had, very rare interview, the lady asked him. Jay Paul Getty Jr., you are the richest man in the world. What would you change if you could? You are the richest. There's none richer than you. He said, young lady, you're wrong. I'm not only the richest man in the world. I am the most powerful man in the world. I can change governments and I have with the money that I have.

He said, but would I change something different and all that time? He said, yes, I would give up the majority of my wealth and the majority of all my power to have been happy in my life. I've been married seven times, didn't love any of them. A lot of people I know didn't like me, but they were afraid of me because of my power. I've never been happy in my life.

So the lady said to him, my God, with your wealth and everything you do now, why don't you just start now being happy? His answer was, it's too late for me. I'm too old. I'm going to be dead in a few years anyways. He said, but I wish I would have been happy in my life. That would have been success.

Even one of his grandsons, and they made a movie on this 10 years ago with DiCaprio, cut off his ear to send it in for ransom. I mean, I would have been happy. So what is really, truly in life? What do we want? And if we had millions and millions, like people who say, well, if I had a couple million bucks, I'd be the happiest guy in the world to solve all my problems.

No, it won't solve all your problems. No, you won't be the happiest person, okay? It's what do you want in life to be happy? If my dream, when I was a kid, was if one day I could own a house, it was American dream, just a little house that I could own anywhere and make $150 a week. Now, this is back, guys, in the 1950s, the 60s. I'd be the happiest guy in the world.

I'd have a house I could live in. I'd go out to mow my lawn. I'd be okay. And when I retire, I got my Social Security. Maybe I've had a little savings to the side. I'd be the happiest guy, and I could do things in life. Maybe take a trip on my car to Yosemite or someplace every year. You know, I'd be just really happy.

So, guys, what is happiness? Happiness is not. How much you have? They could help, maybe. make you feel better in some areas, but happiness is how do you feel? What makes you happy? And it's only money, money, money, no, I can't see the family this weekend. Money, money, money, money. That's the case. You're not happy. Take a look at it. What's important in your life? And that's happiness when you want to go over. If you're working at a job and you're not happy and you say, I've got to do something else. Maybe it's the

universe telling you. You're not right for this. Quit or get fired, okay? That's not what you're destiny is. You want to do work for somebody or yourself on what you want to do, who you want to do with, and the kind of people you want to do it for. That is just so important in life. And then somebody could be happy in life. They could be happy. Like, hey, I'm happy. Things are really good. And then when you are happy, share it with others. You don't have to have money. It talks in the book about a dime that my brother and I gave the Salvation Army because my mother made the brother and I do it. So we can learn about giving in her life. We had no money in those days, but she could afford to die them that year and taught us what to do with it. In other words, you give and you're happy. And why do some of these

monks in Tibet you hear about, okay? Go away and meditate in a cave or just on their own. They're just in full meditation. They don't have money. They don't have big houses for stage. They have a cave, a little house to live in. But their happiness was to be one with the universe and just feel that incredible happiness. Like think about one in your life. You could think back when I was really happy elated. That's the kind of thing we're talking about. When you're really happy and elated, right? That's what you want to be.

And sometimes money just doesn't buy that. Yeah, I'm listening to you, brother. I don't think I've ever met a better communicator in my life. I'm listening to, and a lot of you that want to be high-level entrepreneurs, one of the things you have to be good at it, you've got to be a great storyteller. This man is remarkable. I mean, I'm listening to you today, and I'm like, it's beautiful. to listen to you when you speak. The way you paint pictures with words, your depth of wisdom.

It's just, it's really a pleasure. And I, I have, we're going to run out of time, but I want to let you kind of go on this topic because it's at the root of the book, which is, you know, the book's about, hey, success, unshared is failure. And when I was reading, prepping for this, I was thinking about a conversation. I want to share with you, and then I'd like you just take this and run with it to the end. I, um, I had a chance to get to know Steve Wozniak. And first I interviewed him, when I got to know him, one of the founders of Apple. And kind of one of my heroes from a distance all these years was Jobs, was Steve, because he's made him or Musk, maybe one of the most influential entrepreneurs of the last century.

I thought, this guy, Jobs, wow, that's the guy to be. Then I meet Waz. And what a beautiful man. And, you know, he, frankly, might be one of the two or three wealthiest men in the world, except, except, and I know you know this. When they were going to let Apple go public, jobs didn't really want to do it. it and Steve wanted to share the wealth and share the success and so Steve gave as you know shares to assistants and janitors and secretary middle-level people and you

know they're both successful men but when I think in my life about which one would I rather be would I rather be the guy that kind of maybe I'm not I don't know jobs but seemed to be relatively angry guy and didn't take care of his health and you know I made a big dent in the world but then there's his other beautiful man over here who helped a whole lot of other people along the way. And he shared that success. I'm just guessing, having not known Steve, that I think Wozniak's the happier guy. I think he's a happy guy. And he is because he was kind. He's low-keyed and he was very giving. I want to give one more example since we have some time here, okay, about never knock your competitor. I sold Petron for a whole lot of money, okay,

about eight years ago. And I had a non-compete for five years. I would have non-competeen anyway, so they gave me so much money, okay? But I, I had another idea in that a time for a new tequila to come out that was the next generation called Bandero. Now, I did not touch it. My daughter's had it for five years. When I finally got into it, a whole different company, right, different formulation, everything else. People had asked me all the time, we're only in seven states now, okay? JP, what was your favorite?

Okay. Between the two, you started Petron, still a hell of a big one, right? And now you have your new Bandero. What is your favorite? you know and i tell them very honestly is this i like them both which would you pick i like them both they're both different i never knocked patron one i started the darn thing but two if they were to ask me the same question about another tequila i'd say i don't know and it's for you it's a great tequila by gosh stay with it whatever it might be or another one example is this for your people is how do you

launch a new tequila when launch patron there was nothing like it right and we just skyrocketed today There's over 200 brands out there that say they're like the next patron. I will never knock any one of them. They'll see, well, when you go into a bar, what do you tell a bartender that's 20 tequilas or 10 tequila? Why should they take yours? It's very simple because this one, the gold medal, has no additives. And you taste it. You just taste it.

You make up your own mind. But I know the quality is there's so much that they would. We're only in seven states right now. And we're growing it state for state for state. But we are in seven states right now and growing. But it was the reason to buy without knocking anybody. And that's important to know. Don't knock your competitor.

There's no need. Just say, I can appreciate that. However, here's the feature and benefit to you with my product. So good. I love it today. And I want to ask you last question. We got a couple minutes here. Were you ever going to quit?

Was there ever a point where you're going to throw your hands up? You never came to that moment ever in your career. I get that ass all the time, Matt. Absolutely not. And he said, well, J.P. You can be tired. you could retire many years ago, okay? Why, like right now I'm working on 10 different projects.

Three of them will be potentially billion-dollar projects, okay? But with money I'll make out of it just means this. Once my family's taking care of, I could change things. Like, for example, whether it's in Africa, 17,000 orphans we feed today, well, how about we just expand that out to 100,000? How about the United States for the foster care and all the homeless that I'm building homes for right now? And hundreds of homes are building through mobile lobes and fishes. I'm one of the main contributors to it.

I could do that many more. I could overcome homelessness for people by giving them like things that I do, like build entrepreneur centers where you can learn new trades, skill centers for the mentally challenge that they can see what they could actually do and get a job. I can do more of that. Everyone can do more of that. But so I just keep going.

I will never stop. My daughter, Mike Alaine, who is brilliant and she's a chief executive officer, just a little, I think she's 41 now, okay? Chief Executive of Paul Mitchell became that at 37 years old. She is a genius. When she was a little girl, she said, Dad, I'm going to be CEO of Paul Mitchell. I said, well, honey, I'll always remain chairman of the board

and help you along the way. And she says, and I said, I'll never retire. She says, I know that, Dad, because you love what you do and who you do it for and who you do it with. She says, but I'm younger than you are. I will outlast you and maybe become chairman one day. But my thing is, why? If you're happy, why not keep doing it?

It's like at Paul Mitchell, we do not have mandatory retirement when you're 65. You know, we like a lot of people that are qualified to go on by Pepe, Bill Pethle, I think it was 86 years old still with us. You know, in other words, you keep on going in life. What makes you happy? Your people after they retire die. You know, you don't die. You want to do something in life that you love what you're doing and who you're doing it with. So I'll never retire.

There's no need to. I love it. Such a great lesson for me. You know, everybody, I want you to take one thing away from today, above everything. And that is all these lessons this wonderful man's taught you. But you know what's unseen? Success has an energy. It has a frequency.

It has a rhythm. When you tap into that, there's something special about you. You become magnetic. Things begin to come drawn to you into your life that don't otherwise. What you just witnessed for the last 50 minutes or so is what that frequency and energy should feel like. You might want to go back and listen to it again. And just even at this advanced age, this man's energy, his frequency is the success frequency. There's a rhythm to it.

And you can say all the exact same words as somebody else without the appropriate energy, and it falls on deaf ears. And so just a little thing you may not pick up in the podcast today is what this man has. He's got the special sauce. And by the way, John Paul, thank you for being here. I mean, I mean that sincerely. I could sit kind of at your feet and listen all day long. I know you've got a bunch of other things you want to do today.

But I want to make sure everybody leaves knowing how grateful I am for you. And that success unshared is failure is the book. and you guys should go grab it. Okay, everybody? All right, God bless you. John Paul, thank you so much. God bless you all. Max out your life.

This is the Edm Island Show.