Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - John Paul DeJoria: Business Lessons That Turned a $700 Startup Into Billion-Dollar Brands | Entrepreneurship | E407

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

John Paul DeJoria is proof that entrepreneurs can build extraordinary businesses without extraordinary resources. After experiencing poverty, homelessness, rejection, and the collapse of the funding he needed to launch John Paul Mitchell Systems, he kept going with just $700, selling door to door and creating products so good people wanted to reorder them. Those hard-earned lessons helped him build two billion-dollar brands and inspired his new book, Success Unshared Is Failure. In this episode, John Paul shares how entrepreneurs can turn limited resources, rejection, and early setbacks into companies built on exceptional products, customer loyalty, and lasting success.  In this episode, Hala and John Paul will discuss:  (00:00) Introduction (00:00) John Paul’s Rags-to-Riches Story (04:17) Homelessness and the Power of Words (13:02) Business Lessons From Door-to-Door Sales (20:57) Starting Paul Mitchell With $700 (29:45) Why Loyalty Beats Bigger Profits (35:26) Paul Mitchell’s Product Marketing Secret (39:22) The Origin Story of Patrón Tequila (45:24) Positioning Patrón as a Luxury Brand (54:58) Business Decisions John Paul Wouldn’t Make (58:07) The Power of Sharing Your Success  John Paul DeJoria is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and co-founder and chairman of John Paul Mitchell Systems, one of the world’s largest privately held professional haircare companies. He later co-founded Patrón Spirits Company, which Bacardi acquired in a deal valuing Patrón at $5.1 billion in 2018. As the author of Success Unshared Is Failure, John Paul explores his life, business philosophy, philanthropy, and the belief that true success means helping others rise too.  Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing.  Mindstone - Master practical AI skills without the complexity with Mindstone’s AI Competency Programme. Head to experience.mindstone.com/yap and get 10% off.  AT&T - Stay connected with reliable, secure internet built for entrepreneurs. Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com.  Quince - Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to Quince.com/profiting for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Resources Mentioned: John Paul’s Book, Success Unshared Is Failure: bit.ly/JP-SuccessUnshared  The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason: bit.ly/GSC-RichestMan  Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals  Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter  LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new  Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Networking Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode is sponsored in part by Shopify, Indeed, AT&T business, Northwest Registered Agent, Mindstone, and Quince. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash profiting. Indeed helps you attract interview and hire all in one place. Get a $75-sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at indeed.com slash podcast. AT&T Business delivers reliable business-grade connectivity that gives your team a competitive edge. Switch to AT&T Business at business.ATT.com. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance you need to build a complete business identity.

Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash Yap Free and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone helps ambitious professionals master practical AI skills without the complexity. Get 10% off their four-week AI competency program at experience.mindstone.com slash yap. Quince makes your summer wardrobe feel easier with elevated essentials at radically low prices. Go to quince.com slash profiting for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at young and profiting.com slash deals. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows.

Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Don't go into the selling business, go into the reorder business. When people put a product together, many times they'll do it to sell.

Do it so it's so darn good, or your service is so darn good, that they'll tell other people about it. I'm sitting down in person with billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist John Paul Gioria. You might know him as co-founder of Paul Mitchell Hair Care Products and Patron Tequila. But what you may not know is that JP was homeless and living out of his car before building not one but two billion-dollar brands. When I started Paul Mitchell, we started with seven. $100. How do you start a company like that with no money and get money? And I'll gladly share that with you. Number one is, you had lots of sales jobs before you actually started your own company. Talk to us about what you learned with door-to-door sales. You're going to get rejections in life. As long as you know you can get

rejections, don't let it affect you. Like if the first 50 doors were closed on you, whether it's politely or not so politely, you got to be just enthusiastic. The big difference is successful, people do all the things unsuccessful people that want to do. Influencer marketing is so popular now. What is the danger behind a product where you've got to put so much marketing dollars behind it in order to get sales? Well, there is danger because... J.P., welcome to Young and Profiting Podcasts. Well, Hala, thank you. It's a pleasure being with you. I've heard a lot about you and how you help people out in such a great way and disseminate this great positive words and make the planet a better place to live. Good for you. I'm happy to be here with you.

You're so sweet. You're known to be such a kind, generous man. But something that people may not know is that you actually grew up very poor. And you've got this incredible rags to rich a story. Now you're a billionaire. You've sold two billion dollar companies. But you actually grew up really poor in Echo Park. And your mother taught you a lot about money and what it really means to be wealthy. And I wouldn't say we grew up poor because we had so many riches from my mother. And we didn't know. we didn't ever, I would say we grew up without any money in a very poor part of town there. But no, you're right. My mother was wonderful. We had a deadbeat dad. So at two years old, he kind of left the family, you know, and no money, no nothing. And my mom had it really, really difficult. In fact, even for about four years, which she had some medical problems, my brother and I were in foster care. But we were the lucky kids because every weekend or every other weekend, we'd be able to come home with mom. And a lot of the kids we were with, no one ever visited them, you know, other than maybe a Christmas time. So we grew up with Riches,

so my mom was really a kind person. We never, she never told us that, you know, we were doing without, and we didn't have a TV. So we didn't know, but remember, this is a 40s and really 50, so. You didn't know what you're missing. Exactly. We know what we were missing. So we didn't know. So it was okay. Yeah, and you've got this great story about 27 cents and how your mom really taught you about abundance. Yeah, it was amazing. At that time, I was nine and a half, 10 years, old, actually, and we were finally home together with my mom or brother and I, a little area called Atwater in Los Angeles. We live in a little dinky house there. But one day, my mom said, okay, boys, come here. Let's see how much money we have. So we went into everything we had,

piggy banks, whatever. Anyways, we ended up with 27 cents, period. We had a little garden around back. And my mom said, you know, kids, we have 27 cents, but we have food in the refrigerator. Our bills are paid on time. We have a little garden around back, and we have love with one another. We're rich. Isn't this wonderful? And that's where I learned the meaning of rich. Are you happy? Are you healthy?

You're definitely rich. And you also learned a lot about generosity from your mother. Sure did. Yeah, there was a time. In fact, I was six years old. This would be 1950 that year, 4950. And she took my brother and I to downtown L.A. Christmas time.

We had trolley cars at that time. They took them away, I think, you know, in the late 50s, whatever, they took them all away. But they were there. So we would take it downtown L.A. and all these big beautiful department stores. The Bougas, the Bullocks, May Company, just Saxon Avenue.

Big stores were down there, and they'd have all kinds of entertainment in the big windows. Puppet shows for Christmas, outside maybe a little train going around to take kids on with little toy trains. And we thought we were the luckiest kids in the world. And then my mom gave my brother and I

a dime and said, boys, hold half of it each. Walk over and put in that red bucket with a man ringing the bell. And we did. Then we went back and said to mom, Mom, you know, it's one of my favorite stories. Mom, why do we give them a dime?

Because in those days, that's two big soda pops or three big candy bars. She said, boys, that's the Salvation Army. There are people that have no food and no place to live. They help them out. And that's, we could donate something. We could only donate because we only have an extra dime. That's it. But we're donating something.

And always remember, boys, that as long as you live, there's always some bend, eat it more than you do, no matter where you're at. and try lend a helping hand. If we didn't have a dime, we would also be contributing our help to them. How do you think that gave you more power later on as an entrepreneur? Oh, I never forgot it. Never forgot. In fact, even during the days when I had no money to contribute financially,

it's just some really good causes out there, I would volunteer. Like in my late teens, early 20s, after I got out of the Navy in my 20s, I would go at Thanksgiving and Christmas time and help serve food in Griffith Park for homeless people. It would be the one to have a free meal. they were there. I was a server there. That's how I could contribute. It was a big deal. In your early 20s, you had another really big hardship. Your first wife left you with a two and a half

year old. Yep. And you were evicted from your house. You're broke. I think living in your car. Yeah. Talk to us about what you learned about community and resourcefulness at this time. It is amazing that when you have experiences, and we're all here on this planet Earth for experiences, We enter this body. We learn. We either learn and hold the bad things with us by remembering them all or learn and make sure it doesn't happen again, but learn a lesson so we don't carry it with us anymore. And that's very, very important for someone to do. So here we were the money was supposed to come through, for example, one company in the other case, whatever little money we had, for example, the first time I was homeless, was we had a little bit of money in the bank,

not a lot. I was at that time, 23 years old at that time, was two and a half years old. And we had a little money in the bank. We had a nice little apartment we lived in at the time with my wife, but a little one. So I came home and I drove up in the car, and she came down the steps and said, oh, I've got to run to the store. Okay. So she took the one car we had to the store. When I got upstairs, there's my little two and a half-year-old kid, sit in the middle of the living room on a pile of clothes with a note. And it says, I cannot handle being a mom anymore. It's going to be better off with you. I wish you good luck.

And I know you're not in the best standings. That's when I found out the next day, because she never told me, she did not pay the rent for three months. She kept all the money. The little money we had in the bank was just like, come on her box, she took that. And the utilities were being shut off the next day. She just kept it going and going and going until she could no further and then split.

So there we were. And it was the time, when you're down and out, or people say, well, when you're down and out, what happens? Well, when you're down and out, you think about, at least most people do, oh, my God, it's terrible, so-and-so's fault. I mean, all this other stuff on your shoulders. My only thought it was a good lesson to learn, but the only thought I had was, uh-oh, I got to get a whole of a car,

I've got to eat, I have nothing. And I'm too proud to tell my mother who live in the same town, Mom, I'm down and out, look what happened. I didn't want her to know. So I became resourceful. One, I found someone that was a wonderful lady that had a car with a busted water pump. You put water in the car every four hours, but it was a car. It ran, okay?

And then we wanted money. And again, I was too proud to even tell my mom about it. So in those days, if you had a soda pop bottle, a little one, the normal size one, it's two cents you would get. A big one, five cents, okay? But every grocery store and every liquor store in the 1950s and in the 1950s and in going into the 1960s, had to give you the money for those. So we would go around to vacant lots by little boy and I and collect them all, or at night go to gas stations when they close and just take them right off the Coke machine.

Cash them in, and that's how we kind of survived. So a good lesson was that when you are down and out, your next thought should be, okay, I'm down here. I'm not going any further down. You can't get any further down to there, right? Okay, what do I have to do to get to the next step? That should be your only thought, because you cannot change yesterday's newspapers. And how often do people go through life thinking about only if I did that differently?

Yeah, they're always like looking at the past. It wouldn't be the same way. Okay, I wish it would do them that differently or look how mean somebody was to me. You know, all this, what if? They care on their shoulders. They think about it. I still hate Mary because she broke up with me. I don't like Phil because he punched me in the tummy in junior high school.

You can't change yesterday's newspapers. You get it off your shoulders. What you must look at is the future. Now you're a whole change human being. because now you're looking at where I'm at now and where I get to go. Just too many people, too many people, Hala, don't realize the power of words and the power of thought. May I give you an example of that place? Yes, of course, of course.

Too often in life, and we hear this all the time. Let's say a lady or gentleman says in December, my New Year's resolution is going to be, I'm going to try and lose 10 pounds, okay? And they never do. Okay. Okay, or my new resolution is going to be, I'm going to try and learn. a language, okay? It just never happens, okay? Well, why does it happen? We are in a universe where the universe listens to you and wants to please you. But the universe sees in black and white all that,

not without any emotion. So if people are saying, I want to try and lose 10 pounds this next year, the universe is basically saying to them, fine, that's what you wish. You will try, and you'll keep on trying and trying and trying, okay? Big difference, unless you were to say, I am going to lose 10 pounds this next year, and I could visually see one year from now the scales with me stepping on them, and I'm 10 pounds less than my weigh right now. Now, that's conviction. Now, your mind is set that way. That's all you're to think about, and that's all you're going to do.

So if you think about it and you see the end result, it's amazing how this will happen. I'm going to give you an example how powerful this is. Sure. I told a friend of mine last November, which is, you know, a little over six months ago, last November that, hey, you have a lot of bad luck because you've been telling me for three years you have the worst luck. He goes, yep, JP and I do. I think about it all the time. How could this happen to me? And I tell you, I have the worst luck. We're doing good. We do a hell of a lot better, right? I just have bad luck. It just happens to me in life. And I said, I found out why you have all the bad luck.

He says, really? I said, yeah. I said, I know who's responsible. J.P., who? I said, you because you're putting out to the universe to me and to yourself. You think about, I just have the worst luck. The universe is giving you that. You caused it. Yeah. And he says, really? I said, yes, I want you to try something. Just try this for a month. Whenever that even comes into your mind, just say, I'm having the best luck now. Now I'm having the best luck. Don't you dare say you've had bad luck, okay? I'm now having the best luck there is. I am going to have one the luckiest years ever. That's all I want you to say, this is no kidding, okay? So that's November, December, January, February, March, April, May, right, joined June, whatever. Anyways, everything changed. Three of the main

product lines that he worked on, all of a sudden, on one of them, you can't even fill the orders. That's how many orders are coming. And the other two are doing great now, all because of his change in value. God, JP, that works. I said, it sure does. Those that think that, oh, my God, I'm too short, too fat, too ugly, I don't have any money. I don't have an education. Oh, my God, Jack broke up with me or Mary broke up with me or, you know, I sprained my ankle or I have half of a foot, whatever. Every reason in the world other than, no, I am going to do it. And here's how I'm going to do. And I can see myself at the end of this having it done.

Huge change in life. If people change this, we could change the whole world, the power of words. Power of words and your thought is so important. I'm a believer of this. And I always try to stop myself if I'm ever having any sort of negative thinking. I love to think positively. And a really great example that I have in my own life of how your words can like just come into existence. Sure.

When I started my podcast eight years ago and all my friends kind of were like against or like just thought it was weird that I was starting a podcast. And they'd always be like, well, what do you want in five years? Like what do you expect to happen in five years? And I was like, I want to have the biggest podcast network in the world. And I had no idea what that meant. I didn't know the mechanics behind it. And I remember five years later, I literally had a top self-improvement network. We're now like number 17 in the world of podcasters.

Wow, congratulations. Shows that I grow and monetize. And it all happened so organically where it was just like one step after the other. And before I knew it, I was knew how to do a network under, like, you know, was able to just have it happen. And it happened so like seamlessly. And I really think it's because I believed it. I said it. I'd always say it.

And one day it just came true. Very. So you know, or you see it working. Yeah, yeah. It's like if one God of every morning said, I add, the words I am are very powerful. I am healthy. Yeah. You are going to be healthier.

I am healthy. Today, my day's going to be happy. Today I'm going to start being the observer without judgment. But you still got to work hard. Oh, you have to work hard. You got to work hard. Oh, I catch myself all of still doing that. But then I'll catch myself and stop immediately and go back to, you know, making it a normal thing not to do that.

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We had no leads, no people saying, please come and see me, no level, well, this guy could be a young couple, want you to see it? It was door-to-door cold sales. And it was four days of training. You're not paid for it. You're just trained in a pitch to sell your books and give it a little briefcase to go out there. You make no money to you make a sale. Now they told us something that I believed. First of all, the average lifespan, and they didn't tell me this, I found out later,

of an encyclopedia salesman, door-to-door commission only, is three and a half days. I mean, after three and a half days, and nobody could just close the door on you. But they said something to me, and I believed them. So I lasted like, you know, my God, three and a half years. I did very well with them. They said, some of you are going to make it. A lot of you won't. Those that make it will be just as enthusiastic on door number 51.

If the first 50 doors were closed on you, whether it's politely or not so politely. You've got to be just enthusiastic. I believed them. It wasn't door number 51 for me. It was door 100-something before I even got to go through. But it was true. The big difference is success. people do all the things unsuccessful people don't want to do, especially on door number 100,

be just as enthusiastic as you were on the first door. But these things do work. And there are a lot of things that contributed to what I was doing. Another thing was that if it's 8 o'clock at night and you haven't made a sale yet, there's still a light on. By gosh, at least knock on a few more doors. It happened to be here. The light was on. I'm doing a market research on education. Could I ask you a few questions? Because when the going's tough, the tough get going. That's another. thing I learned there. It's amazing. You pick up these little tip bits along the way. Best education in the world in selling. Another thing, if you don't mind, like to share with all of your people, and I learned this over time, too, starting with Encyclopedia sales, okay? Don't, don't go into selling

business, go into reorder business. I thought that, for example, it's a one-time sale with Collier's Encyclopedia, but it was so good, I never had an encyclopedia that if I had one of those at home, I'd actually probably do all my homework, right? That I believed everybody needed one. And I thought Colliers was a great one. It was written on a high school level, high school language. I thought everybody really needed one. It was the best program in the world.

If you got it, you would remember for years to come that you bought it, that it would be long term. You're in the reorder business. Or when I started Paul Mitchell, if I had the best shampoo they've ever used the best conditioner, they'll want to reorder. That's so when people put a product together, many times, they'll do it to sell.

do it so it's so darn good or your service is so darn good that they'll tell other people about it or they'll appreciate it. Reorder businesses is so important and a lot of people really focus on marketing, influencer marketing is so popular now. Paid ads are so popular. What is the danger behind a product where you've got to put so much marketing dollars behind it in order to get sales? Well, there is danger because many times, I could give you an example, somebody entered the professional beauty, industry and spent, oh, this is my God, 25, 30 years ago, and spent immediately three or four million dollars on ads and hardly had the distribution at all. Within six months, they went out of business. So it's not just the ads in marketing. It's a lot has to go behind it. But today, you have

things I don't have. Like for me, when I started Paul Mitchell, and our money never came through, so we started with $700. And it's in the book that I wrote Success and Shared as Failure. But we had no money, but how the world do you get a product out? Well, we had to go door to door like I sold in saclopedias to try and get salons to get the product from us, door to door to door to door. We picked salons because I was in the industry previously, and I had been fired from three different companies, but I learned something different from each company that allowed me to go forward. And I did good with every company, but unusual reasons why. One was, hey, you're complaining about us testing on animals, and that's what the corporation's doing.

But even though it doesn't make sense, it makes us look good with a scientific approach. But you're telling other executive managers like you. JP, you've got to stop doing that. I said, but I can't because what you're doing is wrong. Well, they fired me, and my divisions were up. Second company, I increased your sales by 50%. Firmadol had bought, I mean, Syntex had bought a company called Firmidil, and I was hired to train their sales force and their educational force, which I did. And 50% the first year they went up in sales. They fired me because I wasn't one of them,

the inner click with them, did play with whatever. I got fired. And then with the Institute of Trichology, I tripled their sales, but I was mainly on a commission basis made more than the owner of the company. They said, ah, this will never stop. We'll get somebody else to your job for one third, the amount of money. If it wasn't for all three of those companies and the experience I had, I could have never started John Paul Mitchell's systems with $10 million. let alone $700. Yeah, the experience was so important. Oh, yeah.

So we're learning. Whenever something happens that isn't good, maybe it's destiny or the planet saying, you don't belong here, you're going to get fired because your destiny, your purpose in life, is yet to come. You're not leaving. We're making you move because I did good with every company, but I wasn't right for that company.

It wasn't right for me. I moved on. John Paul Mitchell's Systems was a great start. And today, obviously, it's the world's largest privately owned salon hair care company that puts everything back into the salon and make sure they always benefit no matter how you distribute. So I recently was having a conversation with Neveen Jane, and he was actually talking about how it's such an advantage to be an outsider of an industry before you join it. But you had the advantage of being an insider of an industry.

So what was it that you wanted to change when you started Paul Mitchell? Well, I wanted the products to be so incredible that people, when they use, use it, want to reuse it, again, right? Not that there's not other products like there, there are, but I want to make sure the hairdresser knew, what we have was so good, and if they used it, we know they would recommend it, but we also thought that what is missing? I know what's missing. The salons aren't really in the take-home business, in the retail business. And I said, well, wait a minute, if I could show them how this shampoo, you only use one time, this condition, you're leaving your hair, this sculpting lotion adds all this body, and teach the hairdresser how to

explain it to their customer while they're using it. Like I'm using this much conditioner. I'm putting in your hair. I'm going to leave it in your hair because it'll eliminate a lot of the damage. The blow dryer is doing, okay? Or I just neutralize the chemicals in my hands when I did. Then it's a leaving condition. It's like a pomade.

You can use it too. Or, you know, I mean, all the reasons why they're, like, show it to the customer while you're doing it. And when they go home, you can say, here's the same products I used on you. They are available, by the way, you know, at the front desk. But I would recommend out of these five, for sure you should get these two, okay, because you're going to need these particular two. But if you get all five, get all five or come back, get the rest. We started salon retailing. And all of a sudden,

it helped salons take off and became more successful. Well, that's so smart because your hairdresser actually became your salesperson. So you were selling to the hairdresser, and then the hairdresser was selling to their customers. And that was before we could ever afford ads. We had no ads. All we had was the products quality that they would like it so much they'd want to reorder. Yeah, fam, you know what makes me feel extra profiting, getting luxury quality without the luxury pricing. I'm trying to be smarter with my money these days, but I still love things that look expensive, are high quality, and actually last. And Quince has totally nailed this. Quince has become my new obsession.

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Cyril T. Mitchell. But for a hairdressing name, he called himself Paul Mitchell. To the day he died, his passport was Cheryl Thomas Mitchell, a hairdresser, right? And we would switch off your chairman of the board one day, I'm president. You know, next day I'm president of your chairman of the board. We just had a black, because we had no employee. So we wanted to start. So Paul was very, very well known as about 5% of the hairdresser's as being very, very avant-garde. But because we had a product line and we went around doing a lot

of shows, quite a few more were. He was just one of the greatest guys. But we had a great relationship. We were pals for nine years before we started. I didn't do hair. He didn't do business. We never argued about anything. It was just a wonderful. And we wanted to have the very, very best. And it turned out that way. Today, we are 46 years old. in this industry, you change your products about every three years, right? My first original four products are still good sellers. That's the quality of the products that Paul Mitchell made. And that's the quality of the products that hairdressers use

and recommended their customers, and they wanted to reuse again because of the quality of the product. It worked and it worked well. So when you guys started, you originally had an investor, and I think he was supposed to give you like $500,000. but he pulled out last minute and you guys were left with $700. So my question to you is, why did you decide, all right, well, we only have $700, but we're just going to move forward.

Great question. Okay. He didn't give it to us, by the way. The way it worked out was the money was coming in down the hill, okay? And my relationship was going good. So I was out of my relationship. I took the use car, the more used car down the hill, left the better one with my wife and daughter, left them all the money, went down the hill there.

The money never came in. I mean, that's what the story is. And an interesting story, it never came in. So when I finally found out about it, I found out why he didn't come in, that night, someone got a hold of me, they found me and said, J.P., we know where to find you, okay? It wasn't in my house. And they said, J.P., Dick Holt House from Citigorp is trying to get a hold of you. Please call him, collect, okay?

For him, it will be the middle of the morning. He's going to pick up, and he said, JP, the guy changed his mind the last minute. It was $500,000. He changed his mind at the last minute. He says, the reason he changed his mind. This is 1980. In 1980 and 81, inflation in the United States was 12.5%. Bad time to start a business.

Unemployment in the United States was 10.5%. You had to wait in line for gasoline. And if you wanted a loan, if you could get one, we never could. Interest rates, prime rate, was 17% interest. Worst time for us to start any kind of. See, pulled out. I found this thought. I said, and Paul had flown over.

He was in Hawaii at the time. And I said, well, Paul, listen, I've already got the products set up. We've already made the products. I have the – I have everybody set up, right? Paul, how much money do you have that you can spare? He says, JP, I'm on my last dollars. I can spare maybe $350. That's it.

I said, I have a couple hundred bucks, but I'm going to go borrow that $350 from my mom. And with the $700, we are going to start a company, and it's going to happen. He's, God, JP, I hope. hope so. Now my mom, once again, I was too proud to tell her, mom, for the second time, I'm down and out. I don't even have a place to live, can have my room back. I was too proud to tell her that. So I didn't. So I lived in my car once again. Okay, for a few weeks. Anyways, and we

started the company. So now how the world do you start a company like that? It's in the book also. How do you start a company like that with no money and get money? And I'll gladly share that with you. Number one is, from the time I said, go, we were ordering initially 100,000 bottles. And they knew who I was from my experience with all these other companies, had a great experience in the industry. So I said, guys, we're going to do it. I set up 30-day billing. Well, when the money different come through, I had to be creative.

So I called up the bottle man and said, look, can I get a sample order of only 100,000, I'm only 10,000 bottles, not 100,000? 3,000 shampoo one, 3,000 shampoo, 2, whatever. $4,000 the condition. He goes, of course, I was wondering why you never got a sample order before. I said, great. I said, ship it as quick as you can, the empty bottles to the Soak Screener. I call the Sok Screener of.

Hey, we're having a run of only 10,000 bottles. Can you do this, right? All we needed now was the artwork. And I did the same thing with the filler who filled our products for us. So I had everything ready to go. Only 10,000, right? So I had 30-day credit with each one that was arranged. If they knew what we were out of that time, we went at an inkbed, right?

So I called the silk screener, and I called the filler. He sent it over immediately from the time and went from the bottled company, which was sent code, to the silk screener, to the actual filler along the way, right? That was two weeks. I had two weeks to pay the first bill. Now, let me back up. What did I do with the $700, right? And how did I start a darn company with that?

We went to the person that did the artwork. You cannot get a silk screen unless you have the artwork, right? It was $1,000. We didn't have it. So I borrowed from my mother a few dollars, obviously to get at the $700, have a few dollars in my pocket, a few hundred bucks left in my pocket, which I came down the hill with. That was it.

So I told the guy the truth. He goes, well, if you only have $700, I'll never get my other $300. You want the artwork, it's $700. He took it all. What little money I had left, I got as an address. a P.O. Box in Universal City, $16 for a little P.O. Boxing you and a little teeny one, because this is 1980, right? So I had an address. And then in those days, we didn't have computers, we didn't have cell phones. We had tap setters. So I went to a printing store and had them type up

for me for, I think it was about $5. John Paul Mitchell says, and P.O. Box 105, 97, whatever, Universal City, California, you set the type for me and made me one copy of a photocopy. Then I drew long, on it, like for an invoice, and I had to make me for four cents a copy, Xerox copies of it. That was my invoice, stationary, and at the top of those pieces of paper, we had our John Paul Mitchell Systems Universal Box. At a friend's house, I used their telephone with a $49 answering machine on it. And the girl that answered the machine was their friend of mine, and my friend of my, Kathleen, was a lady that was from England and very strong English accent, right? So, sound very luxurious. So when you call, they would say, oh, hello, John Paul Mitchell

Systems. This is Caroline. It was her name. Oh, how can we help you? I'm out right now. We're all out. And we're having such an exciting time. I'll call you back later. In fact, I'll try and get John Paul the first they call you back. Hey, have a nice day. We are so happy. And that was it. Well, she did it one time as a favor. I would be always the one they called back. But what happened? We had an office. We had stationary. We had a way to build them. And we had an answering machine. That's how we started. And there's other things we did for no money to create a business. Once you create and you have no money, how do you get your money immediately?

Yeah. The professional beauty industry and their distributors and their warehouses paid their bills in 45 days. I needed the money immediately. So I came up with a way with the orders, the few orders that I'd gotten to get the money from him immediately. And he gave it to us. And that's how we started. And that's how we started a trend of what we were. within 10 days getting your money from distributors,

you used to paying for 45 days, and not to take up all of your time here. It's in the book, how we did it. So in other words, you become resourceful, and you find ways to do things. Even when, and we kept our promise, we'll stay in the beauty industry. So let's say distribution change,

and it did during COVID especially, right? Everyone said, oh, you can't get outside, and a lot of people close their shops and everything, right? They were out of business for months at a time. They had nothing left, nothing left. A lot of them couldn't go back to business again, If they did, they had no products. So what happened was at the end of COVID, towards the end, which salons opened up, we took

several million dollars of our own money from Paul Mitchell and bought all these products. And those salons are really into Paul Mitchell. We gave it to them to start their business again. Free, no charge. That's so nice. Talk to our distributors and giving them some timing for reorders and things that nature. So if you use what you have to help your customers out, it helps you even grow. And after that, we just continue to grow and grow and grow.

I have so many questions on this. I think the first question I have to ask is about the salons and the hairdressers and your loyalty to them. Because you never went commercial. You always stayed in the salons and you didn't want your product to be sold elsewhere. Why was it so important for you to be loyal to the salons? Right. And then let me tell you what we did, especially during COVID, okay, when we started, we told the salons, no matter what happens in distribution, if it changes, we will always be in the professional salon business.

and include you. So COVID comes along, right? Salons are closed. What are you going to do? So we worked with Amazon to go on Amazon with our products. One, to get rid of all the black market products that were on Amazon, there were a lot of ones on.

There are a lot of them counterfeit, right? And they did remove them. But also, we knew what our sales were in different parts of the country because you're on Amazon, they tell you, we took a percentage of our money that we got back from this and gave it right back to salons.

Salons that were using Paul Mitchell, we gave it right back to them. Many of them were in what you would call credit slips where, hey, you could buy all these products at wholesale right from Paul Mitchell, and maybe you could use your whole back bar just off of what we are sending you from what we're getting from Amazon, your portion,

so matter what happens. Another one was a big store throughout the United States that was black marketing Paul Mitchell. A lot of people black marketed in old products, salons will buy extra sellatum under the table. And they had a lot of it, so we said, look, how about this? how about we cut a deal with you, okay, that we will help provide you, not with all of our products,

but just some that support take-home use at home for your products, right, period. But you will put a big sign up in your stores that says that, you know, these are for take-home to assist, but to go see your professional beauty salon to see, how do you use them? And they're the ones that'll do the professional products for you, or say they had to promote with a big sign that. So what happened? We took it out of the black market, so they didn't have to be black market anymore. They could have the real stuff, but there was a big sign in there, and we gave part.

part of all those profits, back to the salons again. So we kept our promise. Why do we do this? Because when you had companies like Vidal-Sissouin, Jaramac, and I could go on and on, okay, they said, oh, we'll always stay in the beauty industry, we'll include you. They got big enough, they went full-blown retail,

and kind of forgot about the science a little bit, okay? And I forgot what we said and no. And then they sold their company to someone else and made a lot of money. But we said we had no money when we started. Nothing. You believed we would do something. and somehow get money back to you forever. And that's what we're going to do. And I'm not going to

get away from that. Was your objective with Paul Mitchell to make the most money possible? Or did you have another goal? Our goal with Paul Mitchell originally was if we could only do $5 million a year in business, Paul, you can make $250,000, I can make $250,000. We'd be set for life and give hairdressers the best products ever. We had no idea. We'd get as much. We'd get as big as we are and going to 100 million, 200, we had no idea that we could be able to achieve this unbelievable sales, but learned as we went along how we did it. And we just learned as we went along. I had no idea. But then missional motivation was to give them the best products ever so we could be proud. We used to make a quarter of a million dollars. You know, that was our potential.

I had no idea of all the rest. I guess I want to dig deeper on like why you decided to stay loyal to the salons where your business could have made more money. Oh, exactly. It's very easy to tell you. We were also offered more money for Paul Mitchell than any company has ever been offered to receive in the professional beauty industry. It's all no, no, no. Why is this? Why did we turn down our word for money? Because we had absolutely nothing. And because we had absolutely nothing and they believed us, we got a whole bunch of something.

We owe you. Yeah. And my feeling is be respectful. You owe them. We owe you. And I told them no matter how distribution changes, I will always keep it. in the professional beauty industry with money somehow. And that's what we did through

these other examples I gave you. Because in our heart, success, unshare is failure. Part of it is your word. If you tell somebody you to do something and you became really famous or really, really good, right? And it's growing great. And then all of a sudden you jumped to get greedy and more money. Well, wait a moment, I had nothing.

They helped me get some money because I didn't have any money. I owe them. And I think ethics and business is extremely important. Yeah. And we just gave them for money. We had enough. We were growing in, you know, obviously when I finally started a patrol nine years later, the money was really flowing in.

But it was mainly because of our word. And I think a lot of hairdressers used our product before, during, and even these days, because they see we kept our word. And you even put it in a trust for like 360 years. That's right. It's an trust. And no one can change it because many times someone will die and say, okay, well, that was what he said, we want the money, less cash it.

No. I put it into a trust. where nobody runs it, other than my children and their grandchildren, can observe it and help direct it as an executive in it. But all the money goes into one pile, no one controls it, and then it goes out to all my siblings and all my children and great, great, great, great, grandchildren. So let's see in one or 200 years from now,

they'll always get something, there'll always be something left there. And my kids cannot, no one could rate it, and they must keep it somehow in the professional beauty industry where even if distribution changes like it does today, some money goes back to those hairdressers. I love that. Let's talk about Paul Mitchell product and marketing. So one of your constraints actually turned out to be something

that was really great for the company, which was you could only afford black and white. Black and white. Yes, you know, that story. That is. It was two cents. Two cents take a white bottle and put black writing on it. We didn't know we would have created unisec packaging.

It appealed to both. We didn't know that. Today we add some color to them. In those days, the difference was seven cents for color, two cents. Way to go for two cents. And it was so iconic. It stood out. Like, to this day, I remember Paul Mitchell packaging because it stands out because it's black and white.

And the letters went sideways at that time. Reordering, I think, is one of the best principles of your book. As an entrepreneur, there's so many entrepreneurs tuning in. And we really want to be in the reorder business. We don't want to be in the selling business. That is correct. And part of that is having a problem. so good that doesn't require marketing or as much marketing.

Exactly, yeah, but you want to have some marketing, but if you could get a requirement, let me give an example of that. In fact, this is good for your audience to know. There is a site you go to, okay, called Global, like G-O-B-A-L-S like in Sam, K like in Kentucky, like Universe, GlobalSkU.com. Now, why is this great? We didn't have that in my day. I wish we did.

I'll give you an example how this works. You could take your camera, take a picture, let's say, of an old t-shirt in your closet, half a bicycle in your garage, whatever, and then you take it with your camera in a matter of seconds. It's like AI, right? Matter of seconds, the picture comes up of what you had and what it looked like, you know, new, and underneath it, what it's sold for used last. Okay, all pops up like that, right, in seconds. then you could push the button.

Do I want it on this place to be sold? Do I want it over here to be sold? For example, if you wanted to go online and sell something, in your mind, what's the first place you would go to to sell it if you were going to go online? eBay or? Okay, so what happens is now you have this all in seconds. Now you have a choice you push a button.

Do you want that to be sold? Because now you know what the price was. What price do you want or do you want it auctioned off, okay? Do you want to go on eBay or do you want to go on three or four of these? other sources you could go on or on both of them to sell what you have all instantly what is something like this cost 15 dollars a month up to i think a maximum of 400 dollars a month i believe for 15 dollars you get about 2025 sales now i wanted to see this work so they sent two guys into a thrift store to buy t-shirts one had illinois believe across it but all embossed so it must have been

a special t-shirt for two dollars the other one some artwork on it for two dollars the other one's some artwork on it for $2. They paid it. By the time they left the store, the guy that got the one with the Illinois state on it, sold it for almost $100. There was something special about that t-shirt. Somebody realized because it went out to millions of people, right? The other guy took him several months. He sold his also for $20 some odd dollars. That is really cool. Yeah. So it gives somebody a way to sell something now without having a bunch of money to be able to get all these distributors. Now you have millions of people or multi. Why is this so part? It goes to all these different sites.

Or you want to go just to one eBay. You just push eBay. You want these other sites. You push it. You're on. Right. And no money. You get from your home, have a business.

Now you have distribution and cost you anything. It's easier than ever to be an entrepreneur. You used to have to go door to door to the distributors. Exactly. Vanging door to door. And we get to use sites like Global Skew. And even our social media sites are free marketing distribution. And so we've got a lot of distribution online that you didn't have when you were

starting your company. Let's talk about Patron and how you ended up going into the beverage industry. So give us the origin story of Patron. How did you come up with the idea and tell us the importance of storytelling when it came to the marketing of Patron? Storytelling is so good because then you can tell somebody what your feature is and how it benefits you. So Patron, we're in business now at Paul Mitchell and this is 1980, going to 1980. and I'm building a house on the West Coast for my whole family, like a vacation house. And we're getting stones and a lot of our stone work and pavers from Mexico.

And a friend of mine introduced me to this fellow named Martin who just went bankrupt in the hospitality business. He said, JP, give me a helping hand if you could. I said, okay. So I was the bank. He would go to Mexico by pavers, furniture, come back and sell it to architects for model homes or restaurants. buy it in Mexico really cheap back in the United States here. And one time he was going down there on building this place to get me some stone. I said, Martin, and we were drinking tequila.

But it was the type, though, where you would lick the salt, shoot the tequila, and squeeze the lime and so you don't get that burning tasty your throat or making it a margarita. So I said, Martin, when you go down there to buy this stuff, what do you find out what the aristocrats drank and bring a bottler back so we could drink something good? We do nothing about the business. He came back with these two long bottles, like just normal bottles of tequila. But it was really smooth. He says, but JP, I met a guy named Francisco Alcarez, who knows how to get this stuff made in this plant.

And more important, can make it even smoother. I said, really? I said, Martin, go back down. Here's a money. Get a ticket, right. Bring back a few bottles of the new stuff. And he did. He made the new stuff for us, brought it back.

We found these incredible recycled bottles to put it in. I said, okay, we're going to the business. I'll order 1,000 cases, which is 12,000 bottles, 12 to a case. Let's say we could do with that. My mind was working. Well, let's say, I know it's expensive. We'd have to sell it for $37.95 when the average tequila was $5 a bottle in those days, okay? I knew that, but if nobody bought it, I was doing good with Paul Mitchell.

For 10 years, every holiday you had, you had a new baby, here's a bottle of Patron. You got married me. There'll be gifts, Christmas time, anything. It would be gifts to everybody, okay? That'd be the worst scenario because it was so good. It'd be so proud. So we came back. We wanted distribution, right?

Nobody would take us. Nobody. They said, it's great. I've never tasted tequila like this, but it's too expensive. Yeah. Now, just to get into bars, Martin and I would go around and we'd go, and you could do this in 1989. It was in L.A. where we started it, we would go in there and say, to the bartender,

I'd like to buy you a shot of tequila. Here's $3. That's what it was. So, oh, thank you. He takes a shot. And then we'd pull out of our briefcase of Patron. Can I have an empty glass? Say, would you taste that?

Whoa, that is smooth. What is it? That's the new world of tequila. It's called Patron, and it is the smoothest tequila. It's the hairdresser model, but for bars. Exactly, exactly. And then we went door to door. I knew someone at Spago's.

I knew Wolfgang Puck. He took it. Martin did also, but we went door to door with that little taste. to do it, to get it going. No one would take us. We finally convinced a wine company that only sold wine to be our distributor. If we get them Spagoes and Ba'a Cantina, we knew we would. So, he said, yes. After one year, they were only selling about a thousand cases. That was it. So we dropped them and took on a big company, Jim Beam. That's a big one. We had it one more layer in. We had to give them money, and of course they would make money. Then their distributors,

or all the big distributors, they would make money. Then it goes to the wholesalers and the retailers. There's too many cuts. We'd make less money, but at least they would take it on. After about a year and a half approximately, they called us on in, and we sat down with them. We said, we were really thinking that by now we'd do 20, 30,000 cases, and one day, we could do 50,000 cases. They were so nice to us. They said, guys, you have the best to kill in the world, but it's too expensive.

You know, you're competing at somebody at seven, eight times the cost of the cost of or tequila, 3795, guys, the most you'll ever do. You'll do good because it's the best. There's nothing like it, but you'll never do more than 20,000 cases a year. And they were nice about it. We dropped them. We won Cigrams. They took it up to about 50, okay?

We dropped them and took it on ourselves and changed everything. We changed the market, and we changed instead of having beautiful girls promoting stuff, right, we'd have the bottle eventually as the star of the ad. Did everything. I'm going to make a real long story short. Okay? We continue what I learned selling in saclopoebas, bar to bar, door to door, liquor store to liquor store, until we got the salesmen to do the same. All right.

That's what we did. It was exactly the same thing over and over and over and over again. So from all these past experiences we learned, but what was the end result? I sold Patron about eight years ago. When I sold Patron, maybe nine years ago, when I sold Patron, we were doing about $3,500. hundred thousand cases a year. We sold the company for more than 200% more than any company in the liquor industries they ever sold for. Now, another thing that for your people to really know, if somebody that's the smartest people in the world tell you only do so good, but you know you could do

better, don't believe them. Don't let somebody that's an expert saying you'll only do 20 when we thought we could do more. You'll only do 50. Now we got you to 50 with another company. We knew we could do better. We believed it. So when we sold it, three and a half million cases, okay, because we believed it that we could do better. And that's something people have to realize. We believe we could do it. Well, I want to unpack also the branding and storytelling around Patron, because it was really marketed as this premium luxurious product from the price point to like the way that it was crafted in the storytelling that you told around that. It was really like the Chanel of tequila, right? You want to know the magic. I'll tell you, the magic very easy. So we get this thing rolling.

And what was the magic behind it, especially for a high price? The magic was when we start promoting it, not just as the best tequila ever here, you taste it. And we told bars to promote it the same way. And it would be this, how would you like to treat yourself today? Someone goes to a restaurant, for example, Can I have a margarita? Yeah, sure, we make a good margarita. But how would you like to treat yourself today? For $2 more, you could have the finest tequila in the world patron for only $2 more to treat yourself. Oh, everyone wants to treat themselves.

Those are the words we use. We would tell people in liquor stores, tell them they come up with something. Hey, you want to treat yourself? We have that new patron tequila in here. That's the best ever made. You could treat yourself. We have it here. We started converting it to.

It's simply perfect and treat yourself. treat yourself, treat yourself. Now, when we start a patron, we do nothing about the alcohol business. So I tell people, if you start a business you're going into, you know nothing about it, learn the vocabulary first. Now, I use the same techniques I did to Paul Mitchell, the same things I did selling encyclopedias to get it out there and new marketing ideas, new everything ideas, right? And it worked really, really well.

But I used what I learned along the way to be able to do it. and new vocabulary using their vocabulary in the industry and what it meant. And that's the learn industry really quick. Yeah, that's really interesting. And then where did you come up with the name Patron? By accident. Martin and I were sitting around saying, what are we going to name this new tequila, the best, right?

Or super cool, super mellow, whatever. And we said, yeah, you know, and we'll be just really good Patrones. Patron's. Patron means like the good boss, right? Yeah. Can we get that name, Martin? I don't know. So Martin went after it, right?

Nobody ever applied for it. We applied for Patron, and we got it. We were almost in shock. And then when we started making a little bit of money off Petron, we found some other company in Mexico called Reserva Del L. Patron. We bought that name from them immediately, so we can never come up in the future. And I know Petron really took off in the hip-hop world, right?

That was by accident. Yeah. Like, I got a call one day. This said, JP. You know, this is while we're in business for a while in hip-hop. start at rep. There's some guy named 50 cents. Yeah, 50 cents, yeah. It's 50 cents, but it's like 50 cents, right?

He's walking around the bottle of Petron, an empty bottle with diamonds all over it. I said, God, that's nice. I said, set him a case of it and tell him thank you, my God. All of a sudden, organically, it took off. Over 200 songs were written with Patron in it. I think there were three or maybe four country and western songs. them was the biggest song of the time. It was called something about tequila makes my wife's pants fall down or something like that, right? But it was all about Patron. I gave her Patron, right? So all of a sudden, and that cost us nothing, people just loved it and wanted to show off that, hey, Patron is cool, we drink it. It's kind of like many years ago, well, we drink

Kovacé, okay, as a coniac, right? Yeah. We drink Patron. That was it. That was the mountain, because they loved it, and they could afford to give themselves the best, and it just took off like the world never knew. Did you end up leaning into that demographic and marketing to that demographic or you just let it take off organically? It took off organically. And that area, all of a lot of areas, just took over organically. And in the hip-hop area, it just took off organically. You just exploded because they wanted to treat themselves and they did, even before we told them to treat themselves. They realized they were treating themselves. Go deeper on how you made Petron a luxury brand. Certainly. First thing is, you have to, let's take

a tequila. It's got to be different than other tequila. Ours was the mellowest, gourmet, and we did not have that in the United States at all. So that was number one. Second thing was when they tasted it, they saw the difference, or when they put your shirt on and they saw the quality of whatever you had, it was different. So one, it's got to be different and better where it supports treat yourself. That's number one. And then number two is you've got to teach that to the salesmen that sell it. So we'll in the field with the salesman, hold sales meetings for them, and keep on reminding them so they could use that same thing when they called on an on-premise or off-premise, which means in a bar, a restaurant, or in a liquor store. Same philosophy, but you have it all the way down, so they knew

something to say that was simple. It had to be one or two simple things they could say. One or two simple things, right, or they're not going to remember it. You went on to sell Patron for how many billions of dollars, five billion dollars? Well, since I normally don't talk about it was public information, made the Wall Street Journal everything. I didn't want to sell it. And that was in their role. I did not want to sell it. So they came me and said,

JP, we want to be your partner. We want to buy the whole company. Well, how much do you want for us? I said, I don't want to sell it. And I said, well, but this can be able. I said, nope, I don't want to sell it. I'm having a blast, but they were making lots of money. So they asked me the question.

Very good question. They asked. They said, JP, if you did sell it, only if, how much would you want for it? Now I had no idea what these things sold for. So I thought, I'll just throw a crazy figure out. And I did. I said, it'd have to be more than $5 billion. They laughed us at JP. The biggest brand in the industry sold for $2.2.1.

That was Grey Goose. You want more than twice that. Never going to happen. I said, I don't want to sell it. You're like, duh, that's fine. That's it. Anyways, time went by, okay. This approach, they're not interested.

Then they came back to me, McCarty, and said, would you take $5,100 million as the valuation? And I said, yes, immediately. Yes, yes, I'll do it. I'll do it immediately. I would never do that with Paul Mitchell, with Patron. Yes, I did it immediately. And I had the majority, obviously, of the company

and got the majority of all the money there. And I also shared it to my staff. I made people that worked with me, helped me get their millionaires, and a few of them multi-millionaires. So everybody walked away really happy. That's incredible. And that is why your book is titled Success on Charred is Failure.

It's on Amazon now. By the way, they start delivering this next week. They've been taking pre-orders on it. Hundreds of people have been pre-ordering. And so I would suggest guys get it as quick as you can because the first edition is what they're selling. And they think they're going to sell out of it within the first month. Get it while you can. I can just guarantee you that if you read it, it's not only an autobiography, but it's how to do all these things, how we did it, how we got money earlier,

how America still works and other things you could do. Other things you could do in your life that you'll find in that book that I'm allowed to talk. about now. And I'll give you one quick example, okay? I am not and never have been an agent of the CIA. I am not and never have been an agent of the FBI. But I trained and have trained more than once, both of them. I trained them how to be a more loving, caring manager, because they have turned over like everybody else. You know, like, in fact, it made the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Have a good hair day at the CIA, okay? Jayfee, here, care, Mom, go teach them about how to be more of a loving manager. But anyways, but that's the pre-setter for this. And I was in the book,

I'm the guy who in 2000, 2001, I'm the guy that went into Libya and convinced Colonel Gaddafi to relisted to suspected terrorist Japan in Flight 103, released him to go on trial in the Hague. I'm the one that helped do that. I'm the guy that went in and out. It was able to talk to. He wanted to kill me. Okay. After I started talking about that, the guy that was with me was, I mean, I would think peeing in his pants. He said he spilled tea on his pants. The whole story's in there. But with him almost wanting to kill me, I had him within two minutes laughing with me. And that's when I said, I took my $8 throwaway camera. That's what he had 35 pictures. You took it down. They developed it. To his chief of staff, Omer Montasar, I said, could you take a picture with us? He said, sure.

So I ran over, I had Gaddafi. He smiled and I smiled and we got the picture. It's in the book of Gaddafi. And I like that. Oh, my gosh. So in other words, once you're into it and you have confidence within yourself, you know you can do amazing things. And I have a saying that's this. Being nice, even works, and being real, even works on jerks. Being good to everybody works. It really works even on jerks. Yeah. Even on jerks. So I was nice to Gaddafi, and I made him laugh, even though he was ready to kill me for something I'd said just menaced me for. Yeah. So these are some lessons we learn along the way and we apply them to people. We apply them. I've read the book twice now, And there's so many incredible war stories, there's so much inspiration in it.

There's, especially for young entrepreneurs who are bootstrapping their companies and having to be scrappy and resourceful. So I absolutely loved it. I highly recommend that people go. So, J.P., I want to play a game called Would You Rather? I'm going to ask you a question. Tell me which one you'd rather do and why. Okay, number one, would you rather have a great product with no marketing or great marketing with an average product? I would rather have the best product there is with little marketing because I know me get reorders.

If I have a so-so product, I can spend all the money doing it, but I'll get a one-time sale. I want to be in the reorder business. Would you rather start a new business with $700 and full control or start a business with $7 million from investors but lose control? I would rather have $700 than have full control if I can build a business and have it myself and control the way I'd like to do it the way I envisioned it, if that's possible. Would you rather be first to market or be the first to truly get the product right? I would like to be the first that gets their product really, really right and the very, very best. Then once again, you're in the reorder business. Would you rather have a thousand loyal customers or one million followers on social media?

I'd rather have a thousand loyal customers than one million on social media because they're loyal customers and they'll help me get the other customers. They're not listening to it. They are actually using their product and they're loyal. and they can talk about its use, not just advertising that's thrown out at somebody. Would you rather build another Paul Mitchell where customers reorder for decades or another patron where you create a premium category and cultural status? Both.

No, pick one. Both. Oh, no. Holy cow. Boy, that's a tough one. Because you're trying about two unbelievably successful products. They're really, really good. If you had to just choose one, that would have been your...

your legacy, which one would it be? God, that's, boy, well, I would say Paul Mitch because it was the first. Yeah. You couldn't have done Petron without Paul Mitchell. No, that's correct. Would you rather grow up rich or grow up poor? In my case, and knowing what I know, I'd rather grow up poor than rich. Now, why would I do this?

You say, are you out of your mind? You're putting us on. Nobody wants to do that. If I grew up rich with all the money in the world, I would have never learned the lessons I have learned in this life, in this body this time around. I would have never learned them and also the humility on what people go through in life and how to give them a helping hand to raise them up, which makes me even happier. To close out this interview, I want to talk about the main motto of your book, Success Unshared, is Failure. True. Why do you take it so far? Why is it not just like

incomplete or bad? Why is it failure to not share your success? In the 1950s, Jay Paul Getty Jr., was the richest man in the world. He was a multi-billionaire. He was an oil man from Oklahoma that ended up starting a Ramco, the big oil company in Saudi Arabia is one of the guys who's held it going. And he lived in a huge, huge place in London, England.

And he noticed once, this back in the 50s, we had what's called toll calls. We had them in the United States, if you call across town, it's an extra two cents a minute. You call across states, maybe it's an extra nickel a minute, whatever. Anyways, he looked at his bill in London,

and it was like 250 pounds, which was equivalent of about 500 U.S. dollars in the 1950s. And he said, my God, they're taking advantage of me. My guess, this is the richest man in the world. They're taking advantage of me. So he put a pay phone in his house. If somebody wanted to make a telephone call, they make it off a pay phone.

I mean, that guy was really cheap. Anyways, but here's the lesson to learn and to answer the question really, really well from the richest man in the world. In one of the very few interviews he ever did, the lady interviewing said, Jay Paul Getty, you are the richest man in the world. Is there anything in your life that you would do differently?

And he looked at her and said, ma'am, in one of these rare interviews that he had, you're wrong. Are you only half right? I'm not only the richest man in the world. I'm the most powerful man in the world. I could change governments. I could change governments with my money and my wealth

that I have, by the way. He said, but would I change something? Yes, I would. He says, I would change the majority of my wealth and my power to have been happy in life. I've been married seven times, didn't love any of them. One of my grandkids cut off his ear and sent it in for ransom. I have not been happy in my whole life. I've just been unhappy, but wealthy and strong and powerful.

And a lot of people didn't like me. So she said to him, well, why don't you start doing it now, Jay Paul Gett Jr.? And his answer was, Kant, it's too late for me. I've only got a couple of years late. It's just too late for me. I wish I would learn that lesson early. And if I could go back and change and now I would, it's too late for me.

So what is really important? What is happiness? If you have all the money in the world, you're not happy, is that worth it? Would you rather have a hell of a lot less or just getting by but you're happy in life? Yeah. Big lesson to learn.

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

Unless they helped a bunch of kids who were interested in children that can order a whole lot. That's so sweet. Talk to us about the way that you've shared your wealth over the years and how you're, like, willing to be hands-on and why even being hands-on is important for you. Of course. Well, let's go to the sharing the wealth part here, the first part of your question. It says, if you're like Jay Paul Getty Jr., you became the richest of all rich, and you haven't shared it at any at all, and you're unhappy, well, that's not very good.

But if you're blessed enough and God gave you the ability in these bodies and helped you out a little bit, okay, getting what you have, well, isn't it only proper to share it? I know in the past there was one fellow named Huey Long in New Orleans back the 1930s that was running, and he was really a weird guy, right? He wasn't the most honest guy, but he was running for, I think it was Senator of the Great State, Louisiana, and said something one time that made all the sense in the world, even though he did not practice it. And what he said then was this, on the radio,

he said, Mr. and Mrs. Rockefeller up there in New York City, okay, that have all the money. I want you to have a big banquet and have so much food that your kids, your grandkids, your great-grandkids, have all big, possibly eat and lease them for them, okay? But there's going to be a lot left on the table. Would you send those extra down to the poor people in Louisiana so they could eat too? In other words, when you have something and you don't,

give, you're not happy. In life, when you give something to somebody else and you ask nothing in return, you are high as a kite. I mean, there's no weed you're going to smoke that's going to get you that high. You are so high and you're feeling just so great. It changes your life. Are you a true success? Have you made millions or billions? No. If you made millions or billions and did something to help change their world with some of it or your time or energy, now you're sharing. I was asked many times, JP, what would you have on your epitaph? Let's say you were buried and not cremated, let's see you were buried. You had a stone that was your epitaph.

What would you have on there? And I said, oh, this is so easy. He came to this world with absolutely nothing, John Paul DiGioria, but made a change to make millions of lives better because he was here, period. That's it. I love it. That says it all. And it makes you feel better.

That's why you should share your failure if you don't. And I know quite a few people that are extremely wealthy, but they don't share. They don't share, which is wrong. You got to make you unhappy inside. Do you feel like because you share your wealth, the universe continues to reward you? Definitely. When you're good and you share, you are rewarded. Whether it's immediately or whether it's 10 years later, or it could be your next life around,

somehow it's going to come back to you. It does. That's why success and shared is failure. Because if you don't share it, you're awarded, something not so good is going to happen to you eventually because that's what you told the world you want to do. I want to have money, money, money, money. I don't want to share it. don't want to share. Okay, fine. You'll have this money you're not going to share, but at the same

time, you're not getting the benefits of sharing. What's one of the benefits? You're happy. Yeah. You did something for somebody else didn't want anything. That makes you happy. Success unshared is failure. And if you don't have any money, you don't have to have money to be successful and share. Share of your time, very valuable. Volunteer to do some, give somebody a helping hand. Smile at people every morning. If you get on an elevator, get on an elevator and say, Good morning, everybody. Just little things like that is sharing goodness with the world. And you've got so many stories in the book of how you've, like, supported different communities

and really went and helped. And you have not only your money, but your status, your connections to help people. That is correct. And it works and it makes me very, very happy. I'm a happy. I'm a happy. I'm very, very wealthy. I'm happy.

Yeah. So I end my show with two questions. I ask all of my guests. Okay. The first one is, what is? what is one actionable thing our young improfitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow. Okay. Part of what you earn is yours to keep. And I read this in a book when I was selling encyclopedias. I think it was called The Richest Man in Babylon, where he was a poor guy,

but he would get a little rug, enough to buy a rugs. He was selling rugs for somebody else and sell it. But he says, they've got to keep some of this for me. So people get a check, especially if you're starting to have very little money, immediately with every dollar you see, start out taking 5% of, if you found $10 on the street, take 50 cents of it, okay? Put it in the bank. Take something, because whenever we get checks or money, first thing we do is pay all our bills, whatever's left is discretionary. Do the reverse.

Eventually, take 10%, but take 5% of whatever you earn or whatever you find, and put it in a savings account, even though you make nothing off a bank in a savings account, right? But you're not going to touch it's a savings account. you'll be blown away how that attracts other money. Pretty soon you'll be making enough for 10% you'll put in there. It's starting building your wealth when you have none by getting to that little habit. The next thing is believe in yourself more than anybody else. And learn the lesson, as some of these lessons in the book, but the big lesson is knock on door

number 51 or door number 101, as enthusiastic as you will be. Then you're not going to be in business for three days. you're going to be in business, hopefully for the rest of your life or in a good business or you switch businesses. Those are the biggest things. And the two things I will say always remember is, number one, don't go into the selling business, go into the reorder business we talked about. And the second thing is that you're going to get rejections in life.

As long as you know you can get rejections, don't let it affect you, like the 50 doors, whether they're closed professionally, nicely or rudely, number door 51, number 110, whatever, be as just as enthusiastic and happy, you're finally going to break through. Because you'll learn on all the other ones how to do it a little bit better. Yeah, you got fired from three jobs and then started Paul Mitchell.

Exactly. Yeah. So your experiences are really what leads you to be able to create something amazing later on. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? Is being a happy person. Because that's going to be one of your biggest profits in life

is being a happy person in life and not cheating anybody, you know, give them something. a dollar's value and don't cheat them along the way. And you're a very, very happy person in business. And where can everybody go to learn more about you and your new book? Well, they would go on Amazon. That's one example. Amazon, you can buy it right now. They ship it out next week. But I would say this to all your listing audience. If you're an adult, when you read the book, read it with your children or let your children read it next. And if you have grandchildren,

let them read it also. It shows America Works. And how you could start in a variety of businesses with No money become successful with the same exact principles and many things we haven't talked about now. I love it. J.P., thank you so much for you with him today. It's a pleasure. You're a superstar getting these good messages out. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, Yap, gang, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. What an extraordinary conversation with John Paul DeGioria. From being homeless and living out of his car to building Paul Mitchell and Patron to billion-dollar businesses, his story is proof that resilience, integrity and generosity are not just soft values. They are competitive advantages as an entrepreneur.

JP made one thing clear. Rejection is not a stop sign. It's training. He got turned down over and over again, and instead of shrinking, he sharpened his pitch and kept on knocking. He didn't obsess over closing one big deal. He focused on building a product so good that customers reordered.

That's the shift. Stop chasing one-time wins. Build something that people come back for, and you'll build a legacy. Second, he bootstrapped with creativity, not capital. When supplier said the minimum order was too high, he negotiated smaller runs with the same terms. He offered incentives for early payment to manage cash flow.

He proved demand before scaling. That's scrappy entrepreneurship. Strength the risk, secure the terms, deliver excellence, and then expand. And finally, his philosophy says it all. Success unshared his failure. He stood by his partners. He guaranteed quality.

he built community around his brands. For JP, wealth without contribution is empty. Real success multiplies when it improves other people's lives. So take this with you, YAPFam. Outlast rejection, engineer reorders, negotiate boldly, protect your reputation like it's your greatest asset. And when you win, share it. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast.

If you listen, learned, and profited from this conversation with the incredible John Paul DeGioria, share this episode with a friend or fellow entrepreneur. Even better, write us a few words about what hit home for you. I genuinely read every single review and they remind me why I record these podcasts each and every week. YAP fam, I love reading your review. So take a couple minutes right now and write us a five-star review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever

you listen to your podcast. You can also watch the full conversation of me and JPM on video on YouTube and Spotify video. You can find me on Instagram at Yapp with Hollow or connect with me on LinkedIn. Just search for my name. It's Halataha. I love hearing from you guys, so don't be shy and shoot me a DM. And finally, the biggest shout out to my amazing guest outreach and production team.

Shout out to Fricon, Joshua, Hasham, Jareen, Nina, Michael, Godundra, Caleb, Paul, Maxi. There's so many people on the team that work on this show. I couldn't do it without you guys. Thank you guys so much for all your hard work. And of course, the social team. I appreciate you guys as well. This is your host, Halataha, aka the podcast Princess, signing off. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair.

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