The Tim Ferriss Show - #441: John Paul DeJoria — From Homelessness to Building Paul Mitchell and Patrón Tequila

Starting point is 00:00:00 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seen an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by Eero. E-E-R-O. I love Eero. And I don't know about you guys, but since COVID hit, Wi-Fi has also taken a hit because everyone's home and spending much more

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Starting point is 00:01:59 internet. So Eero has fixed my issues with Wi-Fi at home. You can get your Wi-Fi issues fixed as soon as tomorrow. Go to Eero.com slash Tim and enter code Tim, T-I-M, at checkout to get free next day shipping with your order. That's E-E-R-O dot com slash Tim, code Tim at checkout to get your Eero delivered with free next day shipping. You must use this URL to receive this offer. One more time, check it out, Eero.com slash Tim, code Tim. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Right now, the world is

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Starting point is 00:03:55 TFS. That's linkedin.com slash TFS. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free

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Starting point is 00:06:10 It's a lot of fun. Five bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with five bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and squirrels. This is Tim Ferriss. And welcome to another episode of if the spirit moves you. to your own lives. This episode has a lot. There are a lot of strategies, a lot of tactics, a lot of incredible stories. And my guest is John Paul DeGioia, D-E-J-O-R-I-A. John Paul DeGioia

Starting point is 00:07:14 is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who has launched multiple global enterprises and is renowned as one of the 100 greatest living business minds by Forbes. John Paul DeGioia's rags-to-riches bio is truly incredible. It exemplifies the American dream in a lot of ways. Once homeless, he has struggled against the odds to craft a unique life and many unique businesses that you know. In 1980, John Paul and hairstylist Paul Mitchell converted a partially borrowed $700

Starting point is 00:07:42 into John Paul Mitchell Systems, which is today the largest privately held salon hair care line. In 1989, doing something totally different, he co-founded Patron, the first ultra-premium tequila and now the world's number one ultra-premium tequila, which he sold to Bacardi in 2018. John Paul went on to co-found John Paul Pet, Rocket, and many other enterprises. He's done a lot and he continues to do a lot. He's also signed the Giving Pledge, along with others like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, as a formal promise to continue giving back. And he has established JP's Peace, Love, and Happiness Foundation as a hub for his charitable investments, which span

Starting point is 00:08:20 the core values of his companies, sustainability, social responsibility, and animal friendliness. This episode was recorded in March of 2020, and due to some technical issues we ran into, we moved partway through from Skype to phone, so you will notice that transition. There is a lot of actionable advice in this conversation, and John Paul does not disappoint. Without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with none other than John Paul does not disappoint. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with none other than John Paul DeGioia. John Paul, welcome to the show. Well, thank you, Tim. Nice to be here on your show. You've got a great show,

Starting point is 00:09:03 and you're helping a lot of people out along the way by giving them good positive direction. Thank you, sir. I have looked forward to this and been looking forward to this for at least a year, probably two years now. And we have a mutual friend, Robert Rodriguez, who's certainly a fixture here in Austin, longtime resident. And I thought we would start, this might seem like a strange place to start, but start with a text exchange that I was having with him not long ago, where I was asking him about topics or questions that we might explore off the beaten path. And one thing that stood out and that he highlighted was that he saw a picture of you, shown by your wife, from last December at a Christmas party where you and Smokey Robinson were showing feats of physicality. And Robert said that his mind was blown because

Starting point is 00:09:52 it looked like you were doing full planches and moves that you might only see at the top levels of gymnastics. Could you speak to fitness in your life? Sure, you bet you. In fact, Smokey, by the way, I'm 75. I'll be 76 here in a few more months or a few more weeks. Smokey's about 80, and he's unbelievably fit. Now, what people have to know is this, and I'm going to quote an old blues friend of mine, an old blues singer. He died about a decade ago.

Starting point is 00:10:25 I was at his funeral, and that's John Lee Hooker. I knew John Lee for maybe 40 years before he passed on. And John Lee would call me for the last seven years on my birthday every year, as well as my wife. He calls on her birthday, and he'd make up some blues riff and sing it to us. And for those last seven years, my daughter Alexis, a race car driver, and I went to his house, whether he was in his Long Beach house or a San Jose house, to hang out with him on his birthday. So he called, he said, JP, I want you to record this. I said, okay. He never asked me to record anything. So we went out and bought one of these $29 recorders you plug into your telephone so you can record the conversation on a cassette tape. And we did. So he made up a

Starting point is 00:11:05 blues riff, a really cool blues riff. He kind of made it up as he went along the way singing, and then he stopped in the middle of it. Now, what I'm going to tell you is quite amazing, because John Lee Hooker was illiterate until the day he died, couldn't even write out his own name, just his initials. Illiterate to the day he died, in the middle of this blues rift, he stopped and said, remember, you will always be as old as your mind leads you to believe. And then went right back to the blues rift again. Smokey, my dear buddy, Smokey Robinson knew that he wants to be on stage and he's one of the best performers and best singers in the world, the world's ever known. Smokey knows he's got to be fit. So Smokey learned along the time in his life, no matter what age he is, that if he were to do not only sit-ups, but raise his feet up

Starting point is 00:11:57 in the air, lay flat and raise your feet up in the air, which really tightens up your entire core, if he keeps on doing that, by gosh, he's going to do it for a long time. He's 80. He's doing it beautifully. He looks like a gymnastics person. When I was in high school, 16 and 17 years old, I was in gymnastics. My thing was the pommel horse, the side horse, the rope climb. But I also learned how to do things like from a handstand going to a full lever where your whole body is parallel with the ground and you're holding yourself up with actually 10 fingertips, two hands, that's it. So what I did was I started doing that, oh gosh, I'd say maybe 20 years ago, once or twice a year, I would do it. And then I was with a lot of super cool people. My buddy, Matthew McConaughey had his birthday

Starting point is 00:12:41 and I went to his birthday and these guys were so fit. It's incredible. Matthew being a nice guy, I was in a tank top. We were in the middle of the desert and with his 50 of his best pals. And he kind of rubbed me down with oil on my shoulder saying, JP, here, let's put some oil on you. And all those guys were lifted away. They were all buff. These guys look like Mr. America, but you know, Matthew McConaughey is a very well-preserved, very buff person himself. Anyways, they said, JP, you know a very well-preserved, very buff person himself. Anyways, they said, JP, lift 20, 30 pounds, lift whatever you can. I said, I bet I can do something you guys can't do. He goes, wait a minute. He stopped me, brought everybody over, right? And I did exactly what you saw in that picture. In other words, I was able to

Starting point is 00:13:18 raise myself up with my two hands totally parallel with the ground. Nobody else could do it. So when Smokey and I got together over at his house around the holidays, we were visiting each other, his wife, my wife, and some dear friends. We both did that, let's get our feet up in the air together. And we did that, and right afterwards, I went into that full plank, expanded in the air. But the whole thing is this,

Starting point is 00:13:41 don't limit yourself in life by your age or what you think you're capable of doing. You're always as old as your mind leads you to believe. And there's a lot of things you could do if you truly believe you could do it. And if you can't do it now, do little portions of it until you can do it. That's incredible. He, meaning Robert, described you as looking like Spider-Man.

Starting point is 00:14:01 What does your weekly exercise routine look like if you have a somewhat consistent routine? It's not really consistent. I'd say, though, probably three times a week. I will do what they call Navy SEAL push-ups, these things you hold onto and twist, and I'll do maybe 25 of them, two, three times a week. That's about the extent of it. Maybe once or twice a month, I'll pick up 25 pounds in each hands and do a couple of curls or something that takes me a minute and a half. And that's the extent of it. I walk a lot and I walk fast. You walk a lot, you walk fast. I think walking is definitely underrated. And what does your diet look like? My diet is probably 90% to 95% vegetarian. I still like my fish, my shrimp, my organic, free-range, no-antibiotic chicken, but I'm pulling away from that. In fact, I used to eat a little

Starting point is 00:15:02 bit of meat, but I'm pulling away from that also. So I think, and eventually, it'll be more vegetarian with just a little bit of fish in there, but much more vegetarian. I think that's where it's going to end up. And a lot of people think that, I think, because of whatever old school medical people ever said is you got to have meat in your body to be strong. But then again, I said, well, wait a minute. An elephant is the strongest animal on the planet. It eats no meat. Whales eat krill. They don't even eat fish. And they're pretty

Starting point is 00:15:32 strong too. And I believe to the best of my knowledge that apes, monkeys, gorillas, who are very, very strong are vegetarians. So that kind of changing my eating habits. I don't think man was made to eat meat. And I didn't believe that till more recently. So I'm kind of changing my eating habits. I don't think man was made to eat meat, and I didn't believe that until more recently, so I'm kind of changing in that direction. I've had a guest on the podcast, a previous world champion and Olympic, or say world record holder in Olympic weightlifting named Jerzy Gregorek, originally from Poland, who also, primarily for prostate reasons, to lower inflammatory markers, has moved more to a vegetarian diet. And he is one of the fittest humans I know. So certainly there are ways, I think, to deviate from a meat-heavy diet, without a doubt. I'd love to jump back in time. Can I go, before you do that, can I go back and die? Because it's something good to share with everybody. Yes, please. Oatmeal is one of the, I eat oatmeal almost every morning. And what I've

Starting point is 00:16:31 done here is because apples are very good for you. If you take a whole apple and you'll of course, cut out the core and chop it into little pieces, cook it with your oatmeal, cook it with the oatmeal, put a little bit of honey on it. Number one, you've got one of the most greatest foods ever, an apple in you to start your day, and oatmeal is one of the best things ever for your system in clearing you out. Another thing too, and you could get it over the internet, it's called daily restore, like R-E-S-T-O-R, restore something, daily restore. It's a probiotic that's made up of, I believe it's nine probiotics and, oh God, I want to say maybe just as many enzymes,

Starting point is 00:17:11 but they're doing research with it right now where it's found to do things that are so unbelievable to the immune system. It's even hard to believe, but if you go online, they have their medical research on that. You can look at it. But I've been taking those also, these super probiotics that they make, that Daily Restore makes, that are just phenomenal. I mean, I haven't had a cold, I don't think, in 25, 30 years. I haven't even had a cold. Is there anything else that you consume on a daily basis

Starting point is 00:17:39 or do on a daily basis besides the oatmeal? Very good. Most days, not all, but most days, I have a nice glass or two of a good red wine. Do you have a favorite wine? Well, there's quite a few. I have quite a few. There's some really good ones out there from Italy, from France,

Starting point is 00:18:00 and from the United States, there's some really good ones out there, really good ones out there. really good ones out there. So I will let everybody take their choice. For me, I would say from a United States of America wine, I like the Caymus Private Reserve. Caymus is a good red wine, but their Private Reserve Cabernet is really incredible. That's a really good one.

Starting point is 00:18:21 And there's others there, too. There's other really good wines out there. You know, the Chateau Lafite Rothschilds, the Chateau Margauxs are very good, too. But, you know, even if you go to South Africa, they've got good wines. Out of Australia, good wines are coming. And I even had a great wine out of Chile and a great wine out of Spain. So there's some really good red wines out there. Try and get them without any sulfates in them.

Starting point is 00:18:41 They're better. Let's strike a contrast with the Caymus Private Reserve and jump to a quote that I read in research for this conversation, which may or may not be accurate, but it will jump from Caymus Private Reserve to 27 cents. So the quote I have in front of me is attributed to your mother saying to your brother and yourself, quote, you know, between us, we only have 27 cents, but we have food in the refrigerator. We have our little garden out back and we're happy. So we're rich. Can you put that in context? Yeah, I sure can. We grew up with very, very little. It was my mother. We had a deadbeat dad. I never saw him after two years old until I

Starting point is 00:19:21 was a teenager, still a deadbeat dad. Anyways, so it was really my mom struggling to raise two boys. So my mom really struggled a lot to raise those kids. She worked in downtown LA designing hats. But from the time I was 11 years old, my brother was 13, we had paper routes with the LA examiner in the morning. We would give our mom just about all the money we made on the paper routes so we could have a little better way of life because it was a bit of a struggle. So one day we were home and my mom said, and there's a lot of love in my house. Mom was just the most loving mom and she did everything. She took the place of a mom and dad both. She was just great. Anyway, she said, boys, let's see how much money we have because we have food in the refrigerator. We have food on the

Starting point is 00:20:02 shelves and we have our little garden around back and it's the weekend. Let's see what we have. So we all put our money together. We came up with 27 cents between the three of us, my mother, my brother and I. And mom said, she said, we're the richest people in the world. Look at this. We have everything. We're happy. We have love and we still have some money. Isn't that wonderful? And we 100% agreed with her. And that's where you go into what is the true meaning of success in life and rich. Success is not how much money you have or how powerful you are. Success is how well do you do what you do when nobody else is looking. When I was in high school, I worked for Stewart's Cleaners, one of my jobs after school. And one day, Stewart came up to me and he said,

Starting point is 00:20:47 Johnny, you, by gosh, are the best, most successful janitor in the world. I was upstairs the other night looking around. I dropped something on the floor, looked under the bunk in my mezzanine, and there was no dust. I moved it. There was no dust. The cabinets were moved. There was no dust behind them. You did what nobody else

Starting point is 00:21:05 does. You worked as if I was watching you every single minute. I'm going to give you a 25 cent raise. Now, when you're making a dollar and a quarter an hour and you get a 25 cent raise, that is a big deal when you're in high school. At least for me, when I was in high school in the late 50s, early 60s, that was a big deal. So I knew, wow, I was the most successful person. So success is how well do you do what you're doing and continue to do it at your best when nobody else is looking. And how far have you come? If somebody came from being homeless to having a job, they're successful. If somebody went from being a janitor to all of a sudden getting raises or a supervisory job, boy, are they successful.

Starting point is 00:21:45 How well do you do what you do when no one else is looking? What is rich? Rich isn't money. You can have all the money in the world. And there's a few people like this that are unhappy and unhealthy. Rich is, let's look at the priorities. Number one is happiness. Number two is health. If you don't have happiness, you're not going to have the best of health. If you have happiness and health, you have two of the richest things on the planet. Everything else comes after that. But part of it has to be you have to have a giving heart and be able to give to others and know that you're here, not just take care of yourself on the planet, but do something

Starting point is 00:22:22 to make life better for other people. You have all those things going. Boy, you're just rich in soul and in heart and in thinking, and then whatever comes along after that's going to come along even more beautifully. You mentioned homeless. I think that we might as well segue there. I have many questions for you, and we'll probably bounce around, but you mentioned being homeless. Is it true that you've been homeless on not one occasion, but two occasions? Right, that is correct. Could you describe how those two periods of homelessness happened? Sure, it sucked,

Starting point is 00:22:56 but it happened. First time I was 22 years old and I was working as a master of ceremonies at the second annual sports vacation recreational vehicle show. I was young, 22 years old, but I got the job. Anyways, I came home from that job. And when I came home from it, it was down in Anaheim. I was living in the outwater area at that time of Los Angeles. And I was a young wife, very young wife. We were like a year apart. We shouldn't have even had kids. We had a two-year-old child. So I came home and as I came home and pulled the only car into the driveway, she came down the stairs and said, oh, I've got to run over to the store. So she took the keys and jumped in the car and took off. Well, by the time I got upstairs, she was long gone. Right there smack

Starting point is 00:23:39 in the middle of our little living room was our two-year-old son with my clothes piled there, little pile of clothes, and a note basically saying that, I can't handle being a mom anymore. He'll do better off with you. Goodbye and good luck. Unbeknownst to me, what little we had in the bank, she totally took out. This is all manipulated by her. She totally took out everything out of the bank the day before, everything. What little we had, it wasn't a lot of little. She had not paid the rent or the utility bill for three months, meaning that she pocketed all that money. I was not going to get paid for another week to 10 days from the show that I did. They give you a week, you put in your request a week before you get paid. I had almost nothing on me. And then the next day,

Starting point is 00:24:25 surprise, they were there to evict us. They had already put up notices, which she ripped up for the eviction. So there we are, down and out, flat out, and no car, no nothing. So I got a hold of this 1951 Caddy with a broken water pump. You had to put water in it every four hours. And we were on the street. And the way we got around was, when you're down and out, you can only think about, okay, the next thing is survival. We got a place to live. We got pillows, couches, towels. We got all this stuff we just piled in the car there and some clothes. We got to eat. So I went around to vacant lots and picked up soda pop bottles. In those days, grocery stores and liquor stores took them from you. You got two cents for a little one, five cents for a big one.

Starting point is 00:25:12 And we just went around collecting them off vacant lots, Coke machines, wherever we could find them, 7-Up machines, cashed them in, and that's how we got by. A short time later, ran across this friend of mine who was what you would call a really hardcore biker. And his name was Lee Meyer. He said, JP, I got an extra room in my house. Why don't you come on over? You and your son could be there. And some of our biker mamas will help take care of him while you're out there working. So by that time, I had landed another job. But of course, I wasn't paid either for another job for another two weeks until I finally got a paycheck out of that. And that's how we kind of got out of it. Second time was when I started Paul Mitchell. We needed a half a million dollars. There was no

Starting point is 00:25:49 way I could start a hair care company for under half a million dollars. So we got a half a million dollars. A fellow named Dick Holthaus, who worked for Citicorp, arranged it for a European investor to invest it. So everything I was doing at the time, I left. A, I'm starting my own business with my pal, Paul Mitchell. We're going to starting my own business with my pal, Paul Mitchell. We're going to start our own business. He's a hairdresser. I'm a businessman and a formulator. This is going to be great.

Starting point is 00:26:12 I don't do hair. He doesn't do business. What a perfect combination. We've been buddies for the last nine years, right? And the money's coming. So I left everything I did. My relationship wasn't going well at all at that time. So I left the newer car, even though it was a good-use car, the newer car, with my wife at the time, who had my child, and a daughter at that time. And I took the older car down the hill to get the money because it was coming in at Bank of America.

Starting point is 00:26:36 It never showed up. Long story short, the guy pulled out. Why did he pull out? It's 1980. In 1980, our hostages were still held in Iran. 1980 and 81, we were through some bad times. We stayed in line to get gasoline. Inflation in the United States was 12%. Unemployment in the United States was 10.5%. If you could get a loan, and I say if you could get a loan, prime rate on a loan was 17% if you could even get a loan.

Starting point is 00:27:14 Terrible times. But between Paul and I, we came up with $350 each, had a couple hundred bucks in my pocket, lived in my car once again, and that's how we started John Paul Mitchell Systems. We believe what we have was so good. And all the people we had already set up gave us 30-day billing. So it was a matter of, okay, we better do this, we better do that.

Starting point is 00:27:35 In fact, if your listening audience has a chance, pick up the documentary, Good Fortune. Like a good fortune? Good Fortune is a documentary I did about three and a half, four years ago. It talks about the whole story, how to survive through homelessness, and how to create not one, but two businesses. After that, there turned out to be billion-dollar businesses each. So you've done so many things in your life, and we won't go through the entire list,

Starting point is 00:28:00 but you mentioned janitor. Yep. And I want you to fact-check me if I get anything wrong here. Sure. I also have door to door encyclopedias. Oh, for three years sold encyclopedias, door to door colliers. It's commission only. Right.

Starting point is 00:28:14 So you have, you have this long period of many different hats that you've worn. How did you get to formulating and the, the John Paul Mitchell system. Got it. Very good question. How did you get that? Along the way, I was 26 years old, and one of my jobs was working for Time, Inc. in their circulation department of sports,

Starting point is 00:28:34 Fortune Sports Illustrated, and Life Magazine. It was basically a boiler room where people would call to get people to renew their subscriptions or get new subscriptions. Well, I went to my vice president. I said, look, what do I have to do to become a vice president? Because I don't want to do this rest of my life. I'd like to know how to go ahead. He said, you have no college. You're only a high school graduate and you're only 26 years old. Come back and ask me when you're 35. Well, I sure didn't

Starting point is 00:29:01 want to wait at a job I did not like and offer in five more years. So a friend of mine, John Capra, was an employment counselor where people would pay him to get people to go to work for them. So he sent me on several jobs, and I ended up, after trying a few of them out, to working for a company in the professional beauty industry as a salesman, period, to sell beauty supplies. Well, while I was with that company? I went all the way up to national manager of two of their divisions with the company, but I got involved in learning how they formulated some of these products, who did it, how they did it, what they did. And then I worked after that. They fired me, by the way, because I complained that they were testing on animals. It was the wrong thing to do. Well, that didn't go over good with management. So they fired me. It was wrong, wrong, wrong. They said, well, you care more about animals and people than you do about the

Starting point is 00:29:49 corporation. You're not a corporate guy. So they fired me. And that was Redken, by the way. Redken was the company. But I said, well, you're firing me, but why are you testing on animals? It's stupid. They said, because it makes us look good. We're the scientific approach. Anyway, so just as well I was gone. The next company I went to work for was a company purchased by Syntex, a big pharmaceutical company, a company called Firmadol. And Firmadol was doing about $8 million a year in business there in the United States. And they hired me to train their management, their sales management, their sales staff, and educators. Well, in one year, we increased the business by 50%. But I learned while I was

Starting point is 00:30:25 there more about formulating and where to go to get different things. And they ended up firing me because once again, I wasn't part of management. I cared more about people and getting them off the road and not leaving them out there for many, many weeks than I did about the company's expenses and what was cheaper for the company. And also, they had some things I didn't agree with that weren't very, very nice. Anyways, I worked for a third company, and I did very well. I tripled their sales. They were very little, but I tripled their sales that first year I was with them. And they came to me one day and said, we could get somebody to do your job for only half of what you're making or less. They said, so there. I said, well, wait a minute, guys,

Starting point is 00:31:05 I just tripled your sales. You're little, but your sales tripled. How about this? You pay me the $3,000 a month, which my salary was, but the 6% that you're giving me for sales increases, you cut that in half and let me buy with the other half, 10% of your company. They said, no way, absolutely not. I said, but guys, most of the money I made was off increased sales. They said, I know, but the increased sales was so much that you made more than the owner of the company. I said, well, let me get involved with them anyway. So I left, but at that company, at that company, I learned more about formulating, where to buy bottles, where to get silk screening and all this. So I was set up beautifully to be able to start my own company after that.

Starting point is 00:31:45 And then I did. I started a consulting company, but I told you everything you needed to know in three months. You didn't need me anymore. So I'd have to go through a lot of clients. So that's when I decided, let's start my own thing. So let's look at one of the themes, the through lines here is being very good at increasing sales. You became the national manager of two divisions, if I'm remembering correctly, we just said at Redken, tripled sales at this company you just mentioned. How did you become so good at sales and what made you good at increasing sales? When I was selling newspapers door to door and delivering in the morning, we would deliver in the morning.

Starting point is 00:32:27 And the way we sold it door to door was we would go by after school and knock door to door and try to convince them to take the LA examiner for the morning delivery in our area. Every one we got, we got $1 for. So I learned how to knock on a lot of doors and take a lot of rejection. But the big one was when I was in my 20s and I sold encyclopedias door to door. I got out of the Navy and I went to work for P.F. Collier Incorporated, Collier's Encyclopedia. And I learned how to sell encyclopedias door to door.

Starting point is 00:32:58 Now, in my training class, they said this to you. Look, and by the way, it was commission only. Even during training, you made no money. It was commission only with every sell. And there were no leads. You were door to door knocking. But they said something to me that I believed. They said, the people that make it or make good money are the people that don't give up. A lot of doors can be slammed in your face, but you must be just as enthusiastic on door number 101 if 100 were closed in front of you. And I believed them, and they were right.

Starting point is 00:33:28 It took me over a week to get my first order, but I did, and I lasted three and a half years while I was doing that, which was more than the average three days an encyclopedia salesman lasted in those days. So I learned how to overcome rejection, which was very healthy. And then when I got along the way and I started, say, other products, I could only sell what I believed in. So I sell to people is this. If you're going to sell something, don't really be in the selling business. You don't want to be in the selling business. It's one of the big secrets I give everybody. Whether it's a service you're selling or a product you're selling, whether you work for yourself or somebody else, don't be in the selling business. Be in the reorder business.

Starting point is 00:34:13 In other words, your service is so good or your product is so good that whoever you sold it to is going to order it and reorder it again or tell somebody if it's a one-time product how great that product or that service was. That's why things work. You don't lie to people. You don't con people. You tell them the truth about it, but in such a way where you can go back

Starting point is 00:34:37 and see them a month, a year later, and what you sold them, service or product was so good, they're already reordering. And that's how I build and how I treat people and how I train them. Be kind to people, be nice to them, but at the same time, look them in the eye and make sure that what you have is so darn good that you would convince your mother, if you love your mother, to get it. And here's why. This is excellent. So then we flash forward

Starting point is 00:35:01 to, I guess, forward and backward to a few hundred dollars along with Paul Mitchell and you guys are going to take on the world. What is the pitch and who are you pitching? Well, we had it set up where all of our vendors, the bottle maker, the silk screener, the filler, and the warehouse that filled it for us, who had some of the ingredients, were all set up for 30 days. They knew what we're doing was going to be big. They knew we had this money coming in. So what happened was this, how do you deal when you have no money now? Well, it was 100,000 bottles was our first run. So I called up the bottle maker and I said, can I just have a sample run? I didn't tell them he were broke. I just said,

Starting point is 00:35:46 can we have a sample run of only 10,000 bottles? He said, oh, of course. We understand a sample run. I told the silk screener, we have a sample run coming, only 10,000 bottles. And I told the filler, same exact thing. So we would have 4,000 bottles of the conditioner, 3,000 of shampoo one, 3,000 of shampoo two. And it took them, from the time we said go, it took them two weeks to make it. And by the way, we had $700 in our hand. The key thing was we needed the artwork for the silk screener. We went to them and told them the truth. Hey, your bill's $1,000 for this artwork. It's in black and white. Thank God we stopped putting any color on it because we couldn't afford that. We only have $700. Can we give you $300 now and give you the rest later? He said, no. He said,

Starting point is 00:36:30 because I'll never get the rest later. Give me $700. It's a $300 discount and I'll give you your artwork. Well, we did. So all I had was a few hundred bucks in my pocket. I borrowed some money from my mom. A few hundred bucks in my pocket. Paul had the same thing. He was on his last money. And that's how we started. I piled stuff in my car and drove up in Los Angeles, Ventura Boulevard, going salon to salon to salon. Now, why do we pick salons? We had no advertising money, no promotional money. The three companies I worked for, the Redken and the Fermadel and the Tri, all three of those were selling to beauty salons. So we knew the industry. And we knew also that if you have something really good, we had a darn good product,

Starting point is 00:37:15 like really good. And we knew if we had something that good and we gave it to a salon or a salon was using it, they would buy it from us and use it. They would see how good it was for their hands and the person's hair that they would want to reorder and recommend it to people to take home in between visits. And they did. So that's the market we went after. And we stayed with that market. In fact, even today, even today, if you ever see a Paul Mitchell product in any drugstore or supermarket, it is either out the back door through the black-gray market or it's counterfeit or mixed together. We only sell to salons. And the demand sometimes is so big that some stores will go to a salon, pay full price for it, take it up at $1 or $2 as a leader, and have it on their shelves. It's amazing. It's just amazing. Many times, counterfeit gets

Starting point is 00:37:57 mixed with the gray market product, and that's sold to people also. And of course, they figure, well, how can some of these big stores, my God, these big chain groups have counterfeit or black market product? But they do because they know they could get away with it legally. That's wild. You mentioned something earlier that I want to come back to, and that is working with your suppliers and manufacturers, and you said they knew it was going to be big, so they were working with you on net 30 terms, 30-day payment terms. How did you convince them that it was going to be big so they should bet on you and give you those types of terms? Very darn good question. I presented to them here, national manager of Redkins, chain salon division, school division, from it all, response for all training and education

Starting point is 00:38:53 for their management team and selling team, Institute of Trichology, vice president of sales and marketing, Paul Mitchell, one of the most avant-garde hairdressers of the day. So here's our credentials. So it was based on that. And I took them all. I showed them the letters about the 500,000 coming in that were sent to me, showed them all that, you know? So they said, wow, this is cool. I said, so guys, will you work with me on this one? I'd like 30 day billing and here's what I would like. And that's how it happened. And of course I was very presentable at the time and looked right in the eyeball. And I was very sincere and very honest. And they realized that nobody thought someone would pull out the very end.

Starting point is 00:39:31 So it's really funny because I know getting our first distributor in Los Angeles, I went to Paris Ace Beauty Supply. Jim Hendrietta was the general manager and president of that whole operation. Big beauty supply store. Huge. Salesmen going everywhere. And I went down there to show them our products. And I said, you know, God, if you'll take our product line on, we will give you an exclusive on all of L.A. and Orange County. Big area, right?

Starting point is 00:39:59 And he laughed. And he said to me, well, why should I take your products on? We're Paris Ace Speedy Supply. We have all the big lines. Why do we want to spend time to build your line when you guys have an unknown line? It doesn't make any sense. Well, what I did two weeks prior was I went up Ventura Boulevard knocking door to door on salons. After a week, I got 12 orders.

Starting point is 00:40:23 I delivered them on the spot and got 12 checks, but they left the top line blank. So when he said that to me, I said, here's why you should get us. In front of them, I put out 12 orders and 12 checks. I said, see that top line, Paris SBU supplies going in it. I've already got your first 12 customers. And if you will let me give you this line, just buy $2,000 from me. Because we were really hard up. Just buy $2,000 from us. You can have all of L.A. and Orange County, right?

Starting point is 00:40:52 He laughed his head off and said, oh, my God. He said, okay, but you better be here every single day working with all my salesmen until they sell it all. I said, it's a deal. I said, there's one more thing, too. We started out with virtually very, very little here. But can you please pay your bill when the orders arrives? He laughed and said, no, we're Paris Ace Beauty Supply. We don't pay our bill for 45 days.

Starting point is 00:41:16 So I said, well, I'll give you a 5% discount if you'll pay your bill when it arrives. I said, I could do that much for you. He laughed and said, okay, this is nothing I normally do, but I'll give you a break. But you better show up. Well, he came to our 25th anniversary 15 years ago. And he told all of our distributors, he says, so within five minutes of the time JP was in my office, my loading dock man called me and said, hey, there's some guy here who loaded a bunch of black and white products on our steps here. And he wants to check for $2,000. Chip said, I laughed my head off.

Starting point is 00:41:48 He said, it was just in my office. And I went back, and I gave JP the check. So that is what some of my friends would call chutzpah. Well, I think it was a lot of that, then. It's just a great guy. Jim turned out to be just a fact. Gave us a break. He was a good guy. And then Paul Mitchell's just a great guy. Jim turned out to be just a fact. Gave us a break. He was a good guy.

Starting point is 00:42:05 Then Paul Mitchell took a whole bunch with him back to Hawaii, where he was living, and would go around and sell it to all of his friends that had salons. Where did you get the, I mean, chutzpah is a good word for it, the courage to be another, persuasion, the art of the sell. Did you get that from anyone in your family growing up? Is it something you developed on your own? How was that forged? I would say twofold. Number one, my mother was always very positive. Boys, you could do anything. She was very positive, supportive. Second of all, in the three and a half years I sold encyclopedias door to door, no leads, I learned more about selling and about people than one could ever imagine. They're no longer, they haven't been, I don't think, for 20 years anymore, door to door encyclopedia salesmen. I don't think that exists anymore.

Starting point is 00:43:03 Maybe no more encyclopedia salesmen. I don't think that exists anymore. Maybe no more encyclopedia salesmen exist anymore. But boy, if they sure did, every one of my kids would be doing that for at least three months out of their life to learn what it's really like and really learn how to talk to people and convince them to at least listen to you and give you a chance to tell your story. And of course, since that time, you refined it. You learned more and more better things. So I look at it as I'm not really a salesman, though the word salesman describes it. But I really go out there and try and help people make the right decision on something that could be good for them and better than what they have or something they could probably need. One of the best salespeople I ever met was not technically a salesperson. He was actually a systems engineer in technology. This

Starting point is 00:43:45 was at a storage area networking company a long time ago. Jason, if you're listening, I'm talking about you. And he was also at one point a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman for some period of time and became, I want to say, a regional manager. And he said the same thing, that it taught him more about selling and persuasion and negotiating and so on than anything else he's done. What made you better, aside from just sheer persistence in the face of rejection, were there other insights or techniques that made you better than the competition? Yeah, I try to tell people the truth. Here's what you get, even though the presentation was kind of an unusually unique presentation where you're paying for everything, but you get the main encyclopedia is free. When in reality, you're actually paying for everything, but it's all, they call it a combination

Starting point is 00:44:36 offer, right? That to be honorable, like here's what you get and here's what you're paying. And here's why I think it's good for you. And here's why I think you might think it's good for you. And then we would talk about a little bit. In other words, I included the people in the conversation. In other words, what you want to do is find a need in the marketplace and fill it. If the need doesn't exist, then create a need that maybe wasn't there. For example, encyclopedia sales. I would have to go to the library to look up things for homework in an encyclopedia.

Starting point is 00:45:07 If I had one at home, it would have been great. Well, we could never afford it. So I thought, boy, it'd be great if someone could afford to have a set of encyclopedias in their house. It'd be a wonderful thing. They could look it up right there. We didn't have computers in those days. How does this translate to your experience with Patron? How did that come about? Well, Patron, I started in 1989. And that came about, I was sitting around with a friend of

Starting point is 00:45:34 mine who went bankrupt in the hospitality business, Martin. He went bankrupt. So I went ahead and I was introduced to him. And I was a joint venture partner with him. I put up the money. He did the work. In a unique architectural product company, he would go to Mexico, buy pavers and furniture, come back to the United States, and sell it to architects for their model homes or to restaurants. You'd buy it real cheap there. Very nice-made furniture, by the way, and bring it up here. Well, that did okay, but after a year, it wasn't really making a lot of money, but it was existing. And then Martin was going down there to purchase some things.

Starting point is 00:46:10 And I said, Martin, we were at my house making margaritas out of the tequila of the day. And I said, Martin, when you're down there, why don't you find out what the Mexican aristocrats drink? I bet you they drink tequila a lot better than what we're drinking now, where you got to hold your breath to drink it, or you do a shot, you know, or mix it with a margarita. Okay. So Martin came back with a couple of bottles, this long, thin bottles. And it was the smoothest tequila I ever had. He said, but JP, I met a guy down there named Francisco Alcarez. And he said he could make it smoother. So make a long story short, he found this bottle that was made out of recycled glass. And I said, Martin, here's what I'll do. It is smoother and he's making it even smoother.

Starting point is 00:46:51 I will go ahead and buy, by this time I was doing pretty good with Paul Mitchell products. I'll go ahead and I'll buy 1,000 cases. That's 12,000 bottles. And even though it was very expensive to make, if everything went wrong, I'd be able to have some of the best tequila in the world and give my friends for the next 10 years for every occasion that came up, no matter what it is there, a great bottle of tequila. So anyways, we did it. Well, when we first brought it to the United States, Eric, nobody wanted to carry it. It was $37 a bottle. And the average tequila was around $4 or $5 a bottle. The most expensive one, I think, was $14 a bottle at the time. Nobody wanted to carry it. We convinced a wine merchant who only

Starting point is 00:47:33 sold wine to carry the product and sell it. And we would promise that if they would do that, I personally would go down to a Holder sales meeting, and we would show them how to sell it. And if they took us on, I would get them one of the top accounts in Beverly Hills, and Martin would get them one of the top Mexican restaurants. And they said, well, if you guys could do that, let's give it a try. So we did. Martin went to his friends at Baja Cantina in Marina del Rey. I went to my friend Wolfgang Puck at Spago's, the hottest restaurant of the day there in West Hollywood, and he took it on. So we kept our promise.

Starting point is 00:48:06 But after a year, they were selling very, very little. And so we dropped them. We took on Jim Beam. This is a good story for your listeners. We took on Jim Beam. Very big company, by the way. They had distribution everywhere. And they had some very, very good alcohol that they sold themselves that they made.

Starting point is 00:48:22 But they decided to take us on. After about a year and a half, they were only selling, I believe it was about 12,000 cases a year. So Martin and I sat down with them and said, guys, you know, we've been going around opening up little nightclubs or restaurants for you. And, you know, and we contributed something, but you know, you guys only do 12,000. You should be doing, you know, we thought we could do like 50, 60,000 one day of this product cases a year. You know, they said, guys, let's tell you the truth. Okay. You do have the best tequila in the world. There's no doubt, but your price is too high. People don't want to pay that kind of money. I'm going to tell you guys, you will one day reach 20,000 cases a year,

Starting point is 00:49:02 but that's about it. guys. We dropped Jim Beam and took on Seagram's. Seagram's took us up to 70,000 cases a year. And we thought we could do a heck of a lot better. We went to cart with them, ended up buying them out of their agreement with us, which we did, and we took over the distribution ourselves. And it started going up, up, up, up, up, up, up. And then Martin Crowley, unfortunately, died of a heart attack back in the early 2000s. And Mr. Ed Brown, who's our president, he was vice president of sales at the time,

Starting point is 00:49:34 immediately he should have been president. I made him president of the company. And we focused on really doing this properly. And Ed Brown gets 90% of the credit for all of this. He really does. He's a sensational man. He brought on a great team and we built and we built and we focused on Patron being the star, not beautiful girls,

Starting point is 00:49:52 you know, in the ad, but Patron was the star. And then we started bringing it out to other people and other channels. And through Paul Mitchell, my hair care company, we would have a big event every year where two or 3000 of the top hairdressers throughout the United States and the world would come to it. And we would serve them free Patron. Well, they would go back home and ask for it because it was so good. I'll make a very long story short. I sold my interest in Patron a year and a half ago. When I did, we were approaching, overall with everything in the company, we were approaching close to 4 million cases a year.

Starting point is 00:50:26 That's just under 50 million bottles. And I think the Patron sales alone were, oh God, I don't know, maybe 3 million, 300,000, something like that. But with all the rest of the things, it was approaching 4 million cases. So the lesson to be learned here is if anybody tells you something where there's limitations, you don't necessarily have to believe them. When Patron sold, it sold for the highest amount ever paid a company in the alcohol business. Why? It was the finest product ever. Again, going back to the very, very best that you have, your service, your products ought to be the best year in the reorder business. And we did a lot of good things to make people happy and honorable. We would throw big events for charities. We would take care of orphanages. We're still, in fact, rebuilding

Starting point is 00:51:11 houses down at the St. Bernard Project in New Orleans. At least we were up until the time I sold the to Bacardi. I don't know if they're still doing that or not. So, you know, it was all built on some of the principles that I learned along the way, and other people learned, too. And, of course, Ed Brown really instilled a lot in the people. How was it for you in the beginning learning to navigate? And maybe there are similar regulations and legal limitations and so on with Paul Mitchell, but with Patron, I would imagine there's a lot to navigate from a regulatory and legal standpoint. Was that difficult? What was that like for you? Well, no, because the reason it wasn't difficult was because I knew certain things attorneys had

Starting point is 00:51:55 to do. And as we started growing bigger, Ed Brown knew everything else had to be done. But Martin and I, at the very beginning, knew there were certain things to do. And Martin, I financed the thing. Martin was able to go out there and get it registered the way we were. So Martin gets the credit for that. And Ed Brown, for once it took off, by God, he put all the other things into place. If someone were to, and I'm sure this has been done, but let's just say Harvard Business School does a case study on Patron. What do you think some of the best decisions would be, strategic or otherwise, that they would highlight in that case? First of all, if you want to see the raw side of it,

Starting point is 00:52:31 a lady named Ilana Edelstein wrote a book called The Patron Way, and she shows the other side, behind the doors of Patron, what went on in her life and Martin's life. That was Martin's girlfriend. What went on in their lives, which was very unusual to have a successful business, very unusual, but it worked. We went into this business not knowing anything about alcohol, but we learned along the way. But it's very interesting to read that book of hers. It's a great book to study off of. And what I would say is this, you could start a business and as long as you believe what you have, which Martin did, okay, and I did, is going to be the very, very best. There's no limit to what you can do, but there's certain things you've got to do. And once again, it would have never been as successful as it is if we did

Starting point is 00:53:14 not have the best product on the market that people wanted to reorder. And again, we told people the truth about Patron. We gave them samples of Patron so they could taste it without even buying it many times. And these are just some of the secrets. And if you also take a look at, again, Good Fortune, the documentary, it lets you know how to build a company from basically scratch. It gives you a lot of advice there, too. So let's, if you don't mind, look at the pricing for a second. Because this is fascinating to me. I've always been a proponent of ultra premium when possible, because there seems to always be a market for the best, whatever that category might be.

Starting point is 00:53:57 So you have bottles of tequila in the landscape in the U.S. when you enter the market selling for $4 to $5. And then you come out with a bottle that sells for $37, right? So let's just pretend that we're talking cups of coffee, right? So $4 to $5 cup of coffee right now, let's say Starbucks, and you want to sell the retailer, Starbucks or independent on a $37 cup of coffee that is the best in the world. What were some of the things that you taught the retailers in your sales meetings coming down to help them? Oh, that's such a great question. We told them this. When you sell it to a bar or you sell it to a liquor store, Tell them this. If somebody wants tequila, you can say, yes, we can get your favorite one, or you could treat yourself and get a bottle of Patron. Yes, we can give you your

Starting point is 00:54:52 margarita, or for a dollar more, you could treat yourself and we can make your margarita with Patron, the best in the world. Little things like that of tremendous, tremendous help. Tremendous help. Yeah. A dollar per mixed drink involving tequila, and that certainly provides a significant revenue stream for that given bar, for instance. And then that turned out, by the way, you're right. And it turned out to be later on, for $3 more, you could have Patron. Yeah. amazing. Just a quick thanks to our sponsors, and then we're right back to the show. First up, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. LinkedIn has the targeting tools that can help you reach your precise audience down to their job title, company name, location, and more.

Starting point is 00:55:39 See how LinkedIn can help you with a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign. Visit linkedin.com slash TFS as in Tim Ferriss show. Again, that's linkedin.com slash TFS. Terms and conditions apply. Second and last, Eero. E-E-R-O. Eero is the Wi-Fi your home deserves. It's a mesh network, super simple to set up that blankets your home with fast, reliable Wi-Fi. Go to Eero.com slash Tim and enter code Tim at checkout to get free next day shipping with your order. That's Eero.com slash Tim, code Tim at checkout to get your Eero delivered with free next day shipping. Now, I read the profile. This is an older profile from 2013. This is an Inc. magazine, at least at the time. And I'll just read this. And this may have changed, but I'd love to you. I don't use email or computer. I would be so inundated that I wouldn't be able to get any work done. Instead, I do everything in person or by phone. I have a phone book that's 15 years old filled with white-out rewrites. I

Starting point is 00:56:52 carry that everywhere. That may have changed, but can you speak to how you did business? I really like your questions because it's hard for people to believe. Nothing has changed. Today, the majority of what I do is philanthropic, whether it's representing Paul Mitchell or Rock Mobile, any of those companies. Philanthropic is the majority of what I do these days, even with Patron. And philanthropic is associated with some of these companies. I get good credit for that, too. But I do not have email. I do not have a computer that I turn on. All the companies I'm involved with are very computerized, state-of-the-art. But all my companies have a fax

Starting point is 00:57:30 machine that I'm involved with. And I have a fax machine, whatever house I'm in at the time, I have fax machines. And here's the reason why. If I was on the internet and I had email, I'd be so inundated, I couldn't do all the wonderful things that I do right now. I couldn't do it. I'd be fully inundated. And I also, I'm from the old school. I like personal contact. If you call me or you write me, chances are I'll either take that same letter and answer you back on that same piece of paper, or I'll pick up the phone and call you and, hey, how you doing? You know, nice to talk to you here. You here. And I'd like to communicate with people. I think that's missing a lot in life today. We don't communicate with people. And also,

Starting point is 00:58:10 by not having email, I'm able to pay attention to the vital few and ignore the trivia many. I'd love to hear you expand on that because this is something so many people strive to do and so many people fail to do consistently. How do you determine for yourself what the vital few are? And happy to look at philanthropic activities, but it's also helpful to hear a few business examples. I think it's just for me example of like what's important. For example, one of our Paul Mitchell schools is concerned about a challenge they have. And they write me and ask me about it. Well, I'm liable just to pick up the phone and call them and say, well, here's your

Starting point is 00:58:54 challenge. Here's I think you should overcome it. And we talk about a little bit together to overcome it. Or if we have our peace, love and happiness, right? For example, I do that with my friend Gary every year. Around my birthday, we have the peace, love, and happiness ride. For example, I do that with my friend Gary every year. Around my birthday, we have the peace, love, and happiness motorcycle ride. Well, we had a big challenge this time. Nobody's going to get together with more than 50 people because of this stupid virus that's going around right now, which is very bad. So Gary and I said, okay.

Starting point is 00:59:20 We talked about it over the phone, and he's one of my neighbors, so it wasn't long before he ended up coming down to the house here, but over the phone we talked about it. Gary, let's do this. Let us both have the ride. If it's only you and me riding, this ride will still continue. It's gone on now for 17 years. We're going to still have the peace, love, and happiness ride because whatever money we raise goes to first responders that are injured or killed in the line of duty, like paramedics, firemen, police officers, things like that. We're going to still do that. And a lot of it goes to the

Starting point is 00:59:50 military. We do it for the Navy SEALs also. And first, shall we say, military people that come back injured, we try and take care of them too. But so we'd have it together. Let's do it ourselves. So that's something we personally could do. Then Gary came down the next day, and we planned the whole thing out together to still have our ride. It's things of that nature. It's just nice to pick up a phone and talk to somebody. If you have a big account list here in business, either for yourself or representing somebody else, they're so used to everything being emailed. It's kind of nice every now and then to make a call to them and just say, hi, I'm just calling to see how you're doing, or there's something really good going on here, and I decided to let you know about it, that I'm 100% behind you, I'm doing something

Starting point is 01:00:31 really nice for you. Instead of asking them for something, just tell them something you're doing nice for them. People like that. That hasn't happened in a long time in our business community. I think you should come back more. People-to-people communication. I agree.

Starting point is 01:00:48 I agree. I think also with the perceived isolation that a lot of people are going to have in response to this virus, it makes it all the more important. And I also want to take a second just to thank you for supporting first responders. And these are really the front line and the safety net for us all in many respects, whether that's military or certainly at this point, healthcare workers and frontline medicine in response to the COVID and all the ramifications of that. So I really appreciate you supporting such a integral part, support system for our entire society.

Starting point is 01:01:34 I think it's easy to miss these people when you don't need them, obviously, or you don't realize that you need them. And it's in times like this when it becomes so obvious how much they have dedicated their lives to helping others. These people are heroes. We come onto this world with absolutely nothing. Every one of us came here naked. We have nothing when we come into this world. Regardless of what our parents have, we have nothing. But I think it's a little bit like paying rent for being on the planet Earth

Starting point is 01:02:00 and being alive on this planet, regardless of your financial situation, to do something for somebody else asking nothing in return. So a lot of these first responders, it's their job, but they go out there and do it. And after they save lives or save houses or people or animals, they go and say, hey, I'm the one that saved it. Thank me. They do it because it's their job. They picked out that as their job to be of service to others. Those are true heroes doing it, asking nothing in return, but either doing their job or we people that are involved in philanthropy and anyone just helping somebody out by carrying something for them is philanthropic. Whenever you do something

Starting point is 01:02:36 for somebody else and you ask absolutely nothing in return, it's the greatest high you will ever get. Higher than whatever we smoked in the 60s. That's true. I've spoken to some of these first responders in the medical systems, ER, ICU in New York City and Washington and so on. And it's just incredible how grounded many of them are in their sincerity with the oath that they took in beginning their medical careers. It's really just incredibly admirable. So I don't want to necessarily take the conversation totally in that direction, but I think it's important to at least mention. I have a note here on annual retreats, and I'd be curious to hear you expand on the importance of annual retreats.

Starting point is 01:03:37 I don't know if you do this, but if you could speak to what you do on these retreats and how you think of them. I try and take, it used to be once a year, now I do it twice a year, or maybe every six months. I try to do it every six months, where you take off by yourself, go someplace by yourself, cook your own food, do everything by yourself to take care of yourself. And in those days, I usually do it for three days. In that time, you have a piece of paper, like a tablet

Starting point is 01:04:06 with you, and you write down on there, at least I do, I write down on there all the things in my life that I like that I'm doing and the people. I can't write all the people because there's a lot of them, okay? But just ones that really stand out. And then I write all the people I'm involved with or situations that I'm involved with that don't make me happy. I really don't want to be involved with. And then my goal the next year is to get rid of those. And very seldom do people ever stop and think, who do I want in my life?

Starting point is 01:04:35 Who do I not want in my life? And why? It gives me a chance to see who I want in my life, who I don't want in my life, and why. And what I like that I'm doing and what I don't like, what I have that I don't need and what I want to get rid of. It was just kind of looking at yourself. And the first night, I'll cook dinner, have a nice glass of wine, and that next morning, I'll write pages worth. By the time I leave, I'm down to maybe 10 items because I've really condensed it to, okay, here's what's really important. Here's what I want to change. Here's who should not be in my

Starting point is 01:05:02 life anymore. I'm going to make plans to immediately get them out of my life. Here's what I don't want to eat anymore. Here's what I don't want to do anymore. Here's what business I don't want to be in anymore. Whatever it is that you want to change your life to be happier, you could do it in that period of time. At least give you a good start on it and kind of reassess yourself because life is short. I plan to live to be 125 years old, but life is short. And even that 125 years is going to go by very, very fast. So, you know, try to take each year because you never know what's going to happen. My God, I have a book full of people, probably over 40 people that I've known over the last 40 years are no longer with us.

Starting point is 01:05:40 They left their earthly bodies. They dropped them and they're elsewhere right now. So you never know when that's going to happen. So it gives you a chance to at least every six months, if you could do it, or at least once a year if you can't, to take a few days to yourself, even if it was only two days to yourself, you know, and look at your life, what you like, what you don't like, what you want to change, what you don't want to change, and not wait for something to happen to make you change it. You're in a lousy relationship. Well, I'll wait until it gets really better. She says something, then I'll leave, or he says something, then I'll leave.

Starting point is 01:06:07 Well, no, that's not going to happen. You're going to be in misery until it does happen, if it ever happens or it doesn't happen. Or I hate the job I'm in, but I'm sure one day something else will come along, and you sit in that job. Well, why not look for something and make a change? You don't want to be older in your life,

Starting point is 01:06:22 and you look back and say, God, if only I would have changed that when I was 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years old, I wish I were 70 years old. I wish I would have not done that anymore, changed or done something different. Well, it's an old saying that we had in the 1960s, probably before you and all your listeners were even born, or they were little children at that time. It was this, today is the first day of the rest of your life. And it is, each day is the first day of the rest of your life. Make it go more in your direction. This is something I'd really love to dig into a little bit, the biannual or annual retreat. And specifically, you strike me as someone who's very decisive, very strategic.

Starting point is 01:07:08 What language or approach do you use to cut ties with the people that you no longer want to have in your life? What is your approach or how would you suggest people approach that? I would say in many ways, number one, if it's a social contact, don't get involved anymore in any social things that they're doing or that they advise you to, or you don't advise anything that you have. Don't call them on the phone and just kind of let them go. I mean, it's not like there could be some good people that you love, but you know, they're just not good for you in your life. So it's a matter of, and I got this from this wonderful lady, this Greek friend of mine that said this, you could always love people, but if they're not right for you or they're negative people,

Starting point is 01:07:54 especially negative people who just gossip about everybody else, love them from afar. Like, I love you, but stay over there. Stay away from me. Love them from afar. In other words, start disconnecting physically or telephonically from them. Just stop doing it. Just stop, period. And if they're contacting you or reaching out to contact you, do you ignore?

Starting point is 01:08:15 Do you have a particular response to that? How would you react? My normal thing would be to be kind. I don't want to be mean to anybody. Especially if they've done nothing wrong to me, but I've seen them do wrong to other people. I just don't want them around me. I would just say to them, for example, one thing would be, you know, thank you very much. I'm really involved in some other things right now.

Starting point is 01:08:37 Do you mind if I get back to you in a month or two? Would that be okay? That's it. That's it. Keep it simple. I'm not saying I'm going to call you the month. You might get back to you in a month or two. You just got to keep that distance.

Starting point is 01:08:47 And little by little, it goes away. Little by little, it goes away. Or flat out, or flat out, in your own personal life, they're there with you saying,

Starting point is 01:08:55 hey, you're wonderful, and I'm wonderful. But together, things just aren't going right. We've got to make a change for your sake and my sake. This way, nobody's wrong. The worst thing you could ever do is say, you're wrong. You're bad for me. I don't want anything

Starting point is 01:09:08 to do with you. Then the person really feels invalidated. Oh my God, they feel terrible. But if you approach it where you know it's, hey, I'm not the best thing for you. It's obvious because it's turning out you're not the best thing for me because I'm not the best thing for you. And we're both good people. I think we should go our own ways. And that's tough to do. That is so tough to do. Sounds tough to do. And I would also be curious to ask you about any patterns you may have seen in these retreats when you have looked at the column of things that you want to do more of, or the things you want to do less of, or the people you want to spend more time with versus less time with,

Starting point is 01:09:50 have any patterns emerged that have helped you make better decisions moving forward? Where you're like, you know what? Consistently, this pops up in the positive column, or consistently, this pops up in the negative column. Yes, and let me throw a negative in there also. The hardest thing that I found to do, but it's easier now in the last year or two of my life, is to say no. I got

Starting point is 01:10:12 this great deal I want to show you. No, thank you. Can we do this? No. You want to go here? No. Do I really want to? No. The hardest thing was to say no or I don't want to, but you can. You have nothing to lose other than, and the only person that's hurt by you not doing that is you. Yeah. How did you, how did you, uh, become better at that? Why

Starting point is 01:10:33 did it change two years ago? I did have, by the way, uh, let's call it a divine revelation happened to me. You know, I was fired from those three companies, Redken, Firmidol, as well as Trius. I was fired from all three companies. But when I started Paul Mitchell a couple of years later, I realized something. One, they fired me. Two, I was doing a good job. But more important, this is fate. Had I not worked for all three companies and learned something different from all three, I could have never started Paul Mitchell with $700, let alone $500,000. I could have never done it. So a lot of times things are done because it's fate.

Starting point is 01:11:20 It's fate that dictates you in that direction. And that's something you've got to remember. There's fate that dictates you in that direction. And that's something you've got to remember. There's fate. Many times you can help direct fate by being able to say no or look at an opportunity and go for it. No. There's a short and powerful word that I think almost everyone needs to use more of. You know, a lot of things I've told you could also go into one sentence. And it's this. Successful or happy people do all the things unsuccessful or unhappy people don't want to do. Like say no or don't do this because there's something that'd in the last handful of years doesn't have to be anything

Starting point is 01:12:09 specific are there any new beliefs or behaviors habits that have most positively affected your life i think the one that was sure i think the one that most positively affected my life these last few years is the ability to say no. I'm not interested. No, don't even present it to me with all due respect because I'm overloaded with things to do. But I do it in a kind way. I don't do it sharp and cut anybody off. I do it in a very nice way. It's the ability to say no. I don't want this. I don't want to do this. No, I don't want to hear this. To be able to say no, but say it in a nice way. That was one of the biggest things. Next thing is to learn how to just be. And then I've learned the last few years how to just be. You could enter a room and just have your presence in that room

Starting point is 01:12:53 without having to talk to everybody if you don't want to. In other words, how to just be, by yourself, just be. Just be like you in the room or you in the middle of a crowd just be not having to talk to someone because you feel like i gotta talk so i can't just stand here talk to them because you want to be able to be on your own and like yourself and just be i was one that i go in a room i'll talk to everybody that's in that room hey how you doing you know i'll talk to everybody but sometimes it's good to you can still do that but just know the power of just being, just be you as the entity that's within your body. So let's put it this way, regardless of what your beliefs are, we all know there's some kind of a life form in us because when we go and we die, all that's left is, let's just call

Starting point is 01:13:39 it meat that's starting to rot, okay? There was something in us. Whatever your beliefs are, what happens when you die, that's up to the individual. So there's something in you. Well, if there's something in you, why can't you just be? And all of a sudden, look through your eyes and feel that maybe that entity isn't inside my brain. Maybe that entity is surrounding my body by about a foot or two around me. When you do that, all of a sudden, your space starts expanding. You say, oh, wow, I feel like my space is expanding. I was looking through my eyes and my brain, I thought,

Starting point is 01:14:11 but now I'm kind of looking at the world a little different way. Just learn how to be. And as life form in you, even though you're looking through the eyes, could be expanding around you. It's a different outlook that you have on things, a big different outlook. Do you ever practice that being or that expanded consciousness outside of your body at home? Is that something that you have as a regular practice? No, it's not a practice. As time goes on, it's just with you, whether you're inside or outside, it's just with you. In other words inside or outside, it's just with you.

Starting point is 01:14:45 In other words, if I were to stop right now and say, okay, where am I? Well, me, the entity, is surrounding my body by a few feet. I'm still seeing through the eyes, but I can feel the energy around me. I could go in a room and do the same thing. I could meet a bunch of people and it's the same thing. It's just been developed over time. And there's many, many different practices that'll get you there. Many different practices.

Starting point is 01:15:07 And it's not rites and rituals that you pick up out of no disrespect to any good books that were written. There are a lot of really good ones there. It's the acknowledgement of realizing it yourself, that you actually realize it, see it, and feel it. It's like whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind will achieve. It's like whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind will achieve. It's pretty strong. Now, you have a treasure trove of quotes and maxims. Is there a particular quote, and it could be the one you just said, but is there any particular quote or maxim that you live your life by or think of?

Starting point is 01:15:41 Yes, there is. And it's probably one of the oldest ones around. People talk about it, but very few ever practice it. And it's one quick little sentence. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. It's an oldie but a goodie, but it sure is real. Yeah, there's a goodie. Are there any books that you have gifted frequently to other people or any books you've reread? Yes, there is. The one I've given away the most and I suggest to people is 70 or 80 years old. The name of the book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This book is one of the best books ever written on how to acknowledge and make people feel good when you talk to them. It's basically, in other words, how to be respectful. It's like do it to others as you'd have others do it to you. But it's one of the best books and I recommend it to so many people. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Maybe it's $19 in paperback,

Starting point is 01:16:49 maybe it's less than that, but it is a great book, and people should read it twice, because it's that good, and it really teaches you how to talk to your fellow man, and you'll be confronted by your fellow man, they confront you, and how to communicate with people, and make them feel good. That is an excellent book. I just want to second that recommendation. I read that many, many years ago and I've read it multiple times. It's an older book, so of course there are aspects of it that have aged, but the principles really stand the test of time. That's a fantastic, fantastic book. Are there any others that come to mind? Well, I would say for people to understand that, you could be fired from jobs.

Starting point is 01:17:37 And the book hasn't been written yet, just the documentary was made, and still make it in life because you help other people out. And that was what I mentioned earlier in your show. Get the documentary, A Good Fortune. I think it's $4 to rent it if you wanted to on Amazon or YouTube or one of those. It lets people know. But the important thing is how to not only succeed and grow, but do it by helping others along the way and asking nothing in return. And I'm starting to write a book on that right now, and it's taken a long time to write this book, but I'll eventually get it done. You've spoken about, and we've spoken about, the times that you were fired.

Starting point is 01:18:18 Are there any particular failures of yours that you think were extremely important in terms of teaching you lessons or somehow setting you up for later success? Are there any that come to mind? Definitely. I'd say quite a few of them. For example, many years ago, when telephone reselling was popular, I got into that business where I invested money in it, where you invest money in a company, and then they buy so many telephone minutes real cheap, and they turn around and sell it to somebody else for a little bit more. Well, I'd lost a lot of money in that thing. It didn't go well, but I learned a little bit about that business. But the business failed, but some of the knowledge stayed with me.

Starting point is 01:18:59 And then later on, I got involved in another business about 10 years ago that was going to revolutionize cellular phones, how we communicate with the world. Well, today that business, I stuck with it. Today that business is Rocket, R-O-K-I-T, Rocket Phones year that it's a regular smartphone, but it has on it 3D without glasses. Yes, 3D movies without glasses on a cell phone, on a smartphone. It also has what the world needs right now, and that is telemedicine. Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, a doctor's on the phone with you. Looking at you, you're looking at them, diagnosing you. It also has Wi-Fi for the world where someone could buy the cheapest SIM card they could have, like just for talking text for maybe $25, whatever, for just talking text.

Starting point is 01:19:57 So you have the number, but you put it in this phone. And with the worldwide Wi-Fi we have, you call anywhere in the world, and it doesn't cost you anything. And it has a lot of other things on it. But if you go online to Rocket, R-O-K-E-I-T, someone can look it up, Rocket Phones, and what it does. But the revolutionary thing was I learned how you have a lot of expensive things, but sometimes having the very best and being too expensive doesn't work either. And I learned that with telephones, some failing. I tried before to come out with telephones years ago. It went nowhere, never even got off the ground. So I

Starting point is 01:20:29 learned if you have the very, very best and you can put it in everyone's hands realistically, wow. Well, the top phone that Rocket sells, this is the top smartphone. This is a first-class smartphone all the way, is $299. That's the most expensive one they have. And then I learned also by working with people like NASA, the space agency and others, that there's a lot of good agencies out there that are government-type agencies or related-type agencies that want to work with you. NASA just became our partner. We now can develop phones, and hopefully we'll have the first ones out in a couple of months, that when you touch the phone, the back of the phone neutralizes all the bad stuff in your hands. See, when you're in outer space, there's a lot of all that junk and all those diseases on your hand are neutralized by just picking up your cell phone. So what I learned through failure is trying to be in the technical industry that I knew nothing about was get for some people that are very honest and get with

Starting point is 01:21:38 people that are really on top of their game. Make them your partners one way or another, and all of a sudden offer a better product of better quality of better things that others don't have. And don't have to charge them the $1,500 that our research said we should charge for these phones. Now, of course we have phones for less than that, quite a bit less, $99, 50 bucks and so forth. But I learned that through failure. Today, we're doing really good. We're rolling out through stores right now over the internet, and it's doing quite well, not just in our country, but several other countries too. Now, if we could take Rocket as an example, you mentioned you're not on email because you would be inundated. How do you choose the for-profit and philanthropic projects that

Starting point is 01:22:29 you dedicate your energies to? Because you have, I would imagine, an embarrassment of riches in the sense that you have more opportunities to choose from than you could possibly ever take advantage of. That is correct. How do you choose? The first thing is, whatever I'm going to get involved in, and it's only as an investor these days, whatever I get involved in, a little bit of advice and a lot of PR, whatever I get involved in, is it going to do the greatest good for the greatest number? And does it excite me to think this could happen? Even in your technological fields, I'm not a technocrat, so I'm not technologically well-educated, but I know enough to know what the end result of that

Starting point is 01:23:11 technical advancement is. And I say, oh, this would be great for everybody. Well, I'm excited about it. Are you kidding? This is super. I know the first time I was overseas and I made phone calls to the United States on one of our phones, and it cost me absolutely nothing through rock Wi-Fi. And I'm used to having, when I'm overseas, very expensive cellular phone bills. I thought, this is great. I can't wait until everybody hears about this thing. I can't wait. My God, think of all the money they're going to save if they save that money to buy something nice for their family or invest it someplace.

Starting point is 01:23:42 You know, those little, those tens of $20 and $100 a month adds up. So I got excited. It's what excites me. It's what excites me. And right now I'm over inundated. I get more things thrown at me for it. Also, a lot of them are for no money. JP just get involved with us and you help direct us a little bit.

Starting point is 01:23:59 My answer is, guys, I don't have the time. Philantropically, I'm more involved in anything else. And what businesses I'm involved in now, my investments are really what they are. You know, I'm kind have the time. Philanthropically, I'm more involved in anything else than what businesses I'm involved in now. My investments are really what they are. I'm kind of tapped out right now. I'm over-inundated because I spend less than 20% of my time on business. The rest is doing something good to change the world. Can you describe what that looks like for you, that 80% that is non-business?

Starting point is 01:24:24 How do you currently spend your time that way? Oh, my goodness. I told you about the Peace, Love, and Happiness ride. We talked about the Sea Shepherd. Big support of the Sea Shepherd. They had a movie on about them, a TV series called Whale Wars with Paul Watson. And what we do is we go on the open seas and we stop those that are poaching illegally, like the Japanese that were killing whales illegally on the open seas. You're exposed to it all through that whale wars thing. Anyways, we were chasing them down. And they're also

Starting point is 01:24:57 poachers. They're poaching turtles, things like that. And oh my God, it's terrible. They're killing sharks needlessly. It crazy stuff so my involvement is i talk with paul i talk with sea shepherds i hold events for them i go to events for them and when a lot of the poachers were out running our ships i bought them a coast guard cutter and we refitted the whole thing painted camasplodge blue so we go right after those poachers and stop the destruction of these species going on on the planet right now. On Grow Appalachia, I went around the country trying to find out how I could help out our nation in 2009, 10, and 11, when unemployment was very high and a lot of people were on food stamps. And I decided the food industry. So I went out and I partnered up.

Starting point is 01:25:42 I looked for a good partner. I found Brea College out of the area of Kentucky. And they partnered with me on this. And I financed the entire thing. Where we went out and my goal was, let's take, there's 150,000 people in the Appalachian Mountains. That's about six or seven states that are on food stamps. I'm going to get at least half of them off food stamps. So we started for Appalachia, where we had teams that we paid for and others that were volunteers. We would go out and teach people in the Appalachian Mountains

Starting point is 01:26:09 how to garden. I would pay for their irrigation, their supplies, their tools, their seeds, and their know-how to teach them how to grow their own gardens. Number one was you grow enough food for you and your family, and here's how you can. So there's a lot of food for the winter by putting it in these jars. Here's how you can food, right? So that your first year, you're self-sufficient. Your second year, you grow more. This was the goal, and a lot of them did it.

Starting point is 01:26:41 You grow more than you would normally grow, and now you sell the excess to farmers' markets or local grocery stores as organically grown local produce and make yourself some money. Eventually you won't need the food stamps anymore, but when you send the food stamps back, please have a letter. Do not put this back into the pile for food stamps. Take this off the federal deficit. The deficit is too high because while I had nothing, I got food stamps. Now it's time for me to pay back and lower that U.S. deficit. And I asked them to do that. And hopefully they did. Well, a lot of them went now all of a sudden saying, well, let's expand it. So we bought them a dozen chickens. Now they have all the eggs they could possibly want. Some have honey. We have bees there now. And it expanded, expanded, expanded. So I would spend time going back and

Starting point is 01:27:25 forth from there, talking to people, doing interviews about it. For the homeless, we have the most incredible things here in Austin, Texas. We started, it's called The Community. Mobile Loaves and Fishes, The Community. We built, and Alan Graham was the genius behind this. I just pitched in the money and some of my time. We built 240 little houses for homeless people, chronic homeless people, people that have been without any kind of a shelter for at least a year. Those are those living under bridges, living in tents, but no place to go into. They'd be the first ones that have a priority to go into the Mobile Loaves and Fishes community here in Austin. And to go there, you've got to pay rent.

Starting point is 01:28:08 You've got to pay some rent, not a lot, but a little bit of rent, so you feel like you're part of it. If you give somebody a handout, they feel like, oh, this is charity. They don't feel good. If you give them a hand up, they feel good. So you charge a little bit of rent there. And we also have gardens, wood shop, metal shop, craft shop, and so forth. And a lot of them now have an income because they can make crafts. They can go in the garden.

Starting point is 01:28:30 They can work. They can sell all the extra stuff. And I just built recently, we're building right now, actually, an entrepreneur center, a big one. So that if they have an idea, they go to that one center, and there's little things in that center set up to help them make their entrepreneurial spirits come true. And then I'm building for them also, we're them build, an aqua center so they could grow their own fish there. So now they have vegetables, they have fish, they have a way to start making an income. And these are ways that make people that before were on the burden of the community, now a lot of them are getting jobs and they're paying taxes and they still have a beautiful

Starting point is 01:29:04 place to live in a beautiful community. I did the same in Los Angeles because that's where I was homeless. And I was a big contributor for many years. And up until this last year, I haven't got around to this last year, but I'd go down at least once a year and lecture to them on homelessness. Hey, I was homeless. Here's how I got out of it, guys. And if I could do it, you could do it. And that's just a couple of examples of some of the things that we do. They're enormous. With Bobby Kennedy, Waterkeeper Alliance, my God, saving the waterways of the world. We started with the United States, where we would go in, raise money, and we would bust the polluters, even the big guys. We would bust them

Starting point is 01:29:40 in court. One of the biggest cases took us 16 years, but we won. And what do we do? We leave all the money locally. So the local community, we leave it all locally. We raise our own money. So the local waterkeeper group can be able to have boats or hire people to make sure that they patrol the area and that it's never redone again. Worked out really well. You mentioned quite a few things, including the community. I'm here in Austin as well, and I have not yet been. I have friends who have been to the community and have said it's just incredible that it's really it boggles the mind as to how well many of the elements are working. Oh, let me tell you about a new one. Oh, I got to tell you about a new one.

Starting point is 01:30:28 Oh, God, I got to tell you about a new one. I don't want to forget to tell you this one. This I just got involved with a couple of months ago, and there was an article in our review journal here in Austin about it. A little group started, and I gave them six figures to make it a little bigger group. They have a little more there because they need it that badly. Here's what they do. And I'm 100% behind these guys. They have 170 some odd volunteers. Only one person was on payroll. Now they have a second person because I was able to handle that for them too. But here's what they do. They go around to,

Starting point is 01:31:01 they have about 50 and I want to expand it now to 300. They go to 50 different restaurants, grocery stores, catering services, and they get all the leftover food. For example, if you make a fresh sandwich to sell and it doesn't sell in eight hours, well, they get rid of it. Well, this is all picked up by the volunteers, and they take it directly to, whether it's Mobile Loaves and Fishes or food banks for those that are hungry, they take it directly to the volunteers. And they take it directly to, whether it's mobile loaves and fishes or food banks for those that are hungry, they take it directly to the source. So all this food that is wasted, the United States probably wastes 30, 40% of its food, goes directly to the people that need it. And someone's already picking it up so they don't have to destroy it and delivering to the other people. This is going to be an answer, by the way, to the United States and other parts of the world on people that need food. All the food that's thrown away, the companies, the restaurants, the caterers,

Starting point is 01:31:54 the people that have the sandwich shops or whatever, still have the same customers. But instead of throwing it away, the good food is going to people that really need it that aren't their customers anyways. Everyone benefits, and that's really exciting. This, I think, is going to be a beautiful, beautiful example on how the rest of the communities throughout the whole United States and other parts of the world could do it. It's very exciting.

Starting point is 01:32:18 It's exciting. And I will include links to everything that you've mentioned in the show notes for people, which you'll be able to find at Tim.blog.com. I just have a few more questions. You've been very generous with your time, and I don't want to chew up your entire afternoon, but just a few final questions. And I'll start with one that I always like to ask because you are clearly very high energy. You have been massively productive. You've been focused to an extraordinary degree in many chapters in your life.

Starting point is 01:32:57 Could you speak to a, and you did mention some hard times, but could you speak to what you do in moments of doubt if you have them or when you've gone through emotionally difficult times? What are the tools in the toolkit that have helped you to get through those times or out of those lower periods? The old way was I would get a piece of paper and on half of it, write all the challenges and things not so good about that. On the other half of it, I would write what I could have learned from it and not make happen again. And then I always remember that whatever happens, this is the hardest part of it all, whatever happens, no matter how bad it seems, one or two years from now, you're going to look back and say, oh, God, I wish I didn't get that upset about it. So I'm going to give you a one-liner that I remember, and hopefully you're listening to us remember also, because it proves to be true in 99% of all cases.

Starting point is 01:34:01 Here's the one-liner. In the end, everything will be okay. And if it's not okay, it's not the end. Think about all the things that were a hassle in your life. Think of all the things that were a hassle in your life. And you look back at it a year or two later, and well, I got through it. It was okay. I got through it. But the time you don't think that. But if you just put in your head, no matter what happened in the past, all the bad things that even happened to you or any person out there, in the end, everything will be okay. And if it's not okay, it's not the end. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:34:37 Because many times when things are really bad, oh, this is the end. Oh, my God, it's terrible. I hate it. It's never going to end. Good thing to remember. Really good thing to remember. Is that the type of reminder or mantra that you used early on in your career? Or, for instance, when you were homeless the first or second time?

Starting point is 01:34:58 No, no, no, it wasn't. Nope, that was only recent. My first or second time homeless, it was, okay, I got to eat. Where do I get money to get food? That was my first thought. Are you kidding? I want to eat. Where do I get money to get food? Where do I get money to get food? I got the shelter of a car. Where do I get? I got to eat, right? Now you've got food. I got clothing already, shelter. I didn't need care. It was okay. It was the first thing. Next thing was, okay, how do I get a job? You know, what do I do here? How do I create something there? Like one step at a time. It's kind of like it's a cinch by the inch and it's hard by the yard. That's a great one. One at a time. You got to win. As soon as you get a win, it gives you that energy to go on to the next one. One step at a time.

Starting point is 01:35:48 You have a really just incredibly broad spectrum of lines. So I'm going to be greedy. I want to ask this question. Feel free to say I've given you enough or you can give me another. But if you had a gigantic billboard, metaphorically speaking, I mean, let's just call it a billboard to put a quote, a question, an image, a word on which would be transmitted to billions of people. what would you consider putting, what might you consider putting on that billboard? In big letters, do unto others, dot, dot, dot, as you would have others do unto you. And in the end, everything will be okay. And if it's not okay, it's not the

Starting point is 01:36:38 end. That's what I would put out there. I love it. Well, John Paul, this has been so much fun it's a pleasure sir you're a real pleasure to spend time with hopefully we'll have a chance once we get through the storm of coronavirus to spend some time in person and

Starting point is 01:36:59 I thank you on behalf of my listeners for all the incredible stories and lessons learned. And I hope we get a chance to do it again. You bet, buddy. Thank you so much. And my love, peace and happiness to all your listeners. Hey, guys, this is Tim again.

Starting point is 01:37:18 Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance.

Starting point is 01:37:58 And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Right now, the world is changing. A lot is changing and businesses are adapting in different ways. So in these uncertain times, how do you ensure your marketing goals are met? How do you ensure your marketing gets the results that you need and want? With

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #441: John Paul DeJoria — From Homelessness to Building Paul Mitchell and Patrón Tequila

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