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Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Self-Made Billionaire: How John Paul DeJoria Built Paul Mitchell with $700 | E162
01:09:55
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- [00:01]
John Paul DeJoria
I come home one day, my wife comes out and she says, oh, I've got to run out. So she took the only car we had and split. By the time I got upstairs into the apartment, there's my little two year old son sitting there in the middle of my clothes with a note on it saying, sorry, I can't handle being a mom anymore. She didn't pay the rent for three months. We lasted a few days. Then all of a sudden we're there being evicted from the apartment. A wonderful lady had an old Cadillac though. My son and I lived in that car for a little while.
- [00:31]
Ilana Golan
John Paul dejoria is a self made billionaire entrepreneur. He literally started with $700. He turned a single hair care idea into a multi billion dollar Legacy.
- [00:44]
John Paul DeJoria
We have $700 right now, but how the heck do you start a company with that? You gotta knock on 50 doors. If all 50 doors are closed in your face, you have to be just as enthusiastic on door number 51 as it were on the first one.
- [01:00]
Ilana Golan
When you're building these things, there is no map. So how do you roam around this uncertainty while there's still like fear of money, there's fear of rejection.
- [01:10]
John Paul DeJoria
Pay attention to the vital few. Ignore the trivia many. Here's how I did it at first.
- [01:21]
Ilana Golan
Welcome to the Leap Academy with the Ilana Golan Show. I'm so glad you're here. In the Leap Academy podcast I get to speak to you to the biggest leaders of our time about their career, how they got where they are today, the challenges, the failures and countless lessons. So lean in. This episode is going to be amazing. I'm on a mission to help millions reinvent their career and leap into their full potential. Land their dream roles, fast track to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship or build portfolio careers. This is what we do in our Leap Academy programs for individuals and teams. And with this podcast we can give this career blueprint for free to tens of millions. So please help my mission by sharing this with every single person you know. Because this show has the power to change countless of lives. Dio. Okay, so let's dive in. Our next guest shows you that the American dream is still alive. He started with $700 living in a broken down car. John Paul DeJoria is a self made billionaire entrepreneur. He turned a single hair care idea into a multi billion dollar legacy that you will recognize by the name Paul Mitchell Systems. He then continued to completely revolutionize the spirit industry with patron tequila, which I bet you all know. And he is one of the most respected business leaders of his generation. But beyond all the success, what inspires me is his upcoming book, Success Unshared is failure. Again, Success Unshared is failure. What a brilliant name. It shows you his deep commitment to. To giving and to philanthropy. Now, let's dive in. JP, welcome.
- [03:25]
John Paul DeJoria
Thank you. Nice to be on your show. Especially happy people that want to make life better for others. I love being on shows like that. So this is exciting. You have a smile. You're a happy lady. So may the osmosis lay off on everybody you touch.
- [03:38]
Ilana Golan
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, you too. And I have to take you back in time because actually, if that's okay, I'm going to take you, like, way back, because you as a kid were actually in a foster care.
- [03:51]
John Paul DeJoria
Yeah, well, my mom raised my brother and I from the time before I was two years old. We had a deadbeat dad. He wasn't a dad. I didn't even see my dad. Never supported my mom, just a deadbeat dad. But my mom was very positive. We had little to nothing. Living in Echo Park, California, this is the 1940s now, World War II still going on, and we had virtually nothing. But my mom never let us know we had virtually nothing. The way that she really took care of us then she got rather ill when I was around five years old. Very, very ill. So my brother and I had to go into foster care. But we were the lucky kids because either every weekend or every other weekend from maybe Friday night until late Sunday night, we had to go back to the foster home. We could actually be with our mom, you know, on that weekend, she had to work and she was sick at the same time. And so we were in foster care for almost five years. While in foster care, it was my brother and I together, and we had the opportunity to be able to do things. I'll give you an example of just how a parent could really care. My mom was nothing but positive. And she always told us, boys, you could do whatever you want. This is America. She came over to boat from Greece. She was an immigrant. We're first generation American. So it was little things. For example, like, I remember she brought home a very little teeny weeny piece of. Of filet mignon steak, Cut it in three pieces and said, boys, this is something called filet mignon. It's what the rich people eat. These are people that have lots and lots of money. We eat just like they do. We had one bite each. It was great. That was the kind of mom we had. But this was an era where we didn't have refrigerators. We had the Iceman for a quarter. We'll come by every week and give you a block of ice and that's your ice box. But it worked. It worked, you know, made things work. Anyways, mom encouraged us. I know my first entrepreneur job was when I was seven years old. The Variety Boys Club where my brother and I would go to. And we made this box, a planter about this big, halfway around flat on the bottom but open on top to plant tomatoes or something in. Or you could hang it up. And we did it for 25 cents worth of wood, but they gave it to us on credit. We built it. We went out and sold it. After a couple days we sold it for 50 cents. Now this is 1951, right? Sold for 50 cents. And we went back, paid our quarter and put the other quarter into another one. Then we had 50 cents. And now to give you an idea of how much 50 cents is in 1951, 50 cents is 10 soda pops. 10 of them, right? And God knows how many candy bars. You couldn't even eat them if you wanted to. So we thought that was pretty cool. But then we really started working. When we went home with mom, I was nine and a half years old, almost ten. And from ten and a half eleven years old my brother and I always worked. We started out having a full time paper route with the LA Examiner. That was a big paper at the time. And, and we would fold papers, get up in the morning at 4 in the morning, fold papers, deliver em, go home, get dressed for school and go to school Monday through Friday and then Sunday with these giant Sunday papers we could barely even put em on our bicycles and pedal away with the bags. But we did. I've been working ever since. Now here's the big thing I love to share with the audience. In my day when I worked and made any amount of money, we gave it to mom. We were just happy to have a job. If we didn't make any money, we would have been happy to have a job. We made about $30 a month each, my brother and I, that's all we made, but gave it to our mom. But hey, we had jobs. It was a different era. We'd love to say, hey, we have a job, we're making some money, you know. And my mom would have a little teeny garden and we'd always have something fresh in there because she was from Greece. They would grow their own little garden. So it was to me a cool way of waking up. You may say that. Well, wait A minute this guy woke up with no money and they had no nothing. But he was happy and he loved to work. So did his brother. It was a different error. And my mom told us all about amazing that she did. And my philanthropy started with my mom, 6 years old. Mom takes my brother and I down to downtown LA on the trolley car. We had trolley cars. You put a nickel in and the little trolley car takes you down. So at Christmas time, we went down there. It was a big treat to be on a trolley car. So we get to downtown la, and my God, we became the luckiest kids in the world. May company was down there, the Bullocks, all these big department stores with all these things in the window, like, you know, little toys that were playing puppet shows. Outside was a little train going around, and you could wait in line and ride a little train. We thought we were the happiest and luckiest kids in the world. That's all we knew. But while we were there, my mother gave my brother and I a dime each. I mean, no, just one dimensional. And said, boys, hold onto this with your fingers and go over it and put in that bucket with the man, the big jolly man with the big beard that is ringing the bell. We said, okay. So we did it. But we came back and said, mom, why did we give that man a dime in that bucket? That at that time was two soda pops, three candy bars. Why did we do that, Mom? She said, boys, that is a Salvation Army. There are people that have no place to live and no food to eat. And many of them have little children and they help them out. We could only afford a dime this year. But remember this, boys. As long as you live, there'll always be somebody that needs it more than you do. Give something, even if you don't have a little dime to give them. Boys, volunteer and do some work. We gotta help this planet out because it just makes us feel good. And I never forgot that.
- [09:12]
Ilana Golan
Oh, I'm half crying here. Oh, this is amazing. This is incredible. So tell me for a second how, living in this, did that shape you? It sounds like you're so positive. How did it shape you? Were you just driven, or did you feel like you have possibilities? Did you feel like you're not the same as the other kids? Like, how did you feel?
- [09:35]
John Paul DeJoria
My mom was just so darn loving. That's very important for parents to know these days. You got to spend some time with your kids and teach them things, teach them kindness, teach them giving, be right next to them. And my mom was always Positive. No matter what happened, she was always just very, very positive. So I grew up with a mom that was positive. My brother and I, we didn't know about wealthy people. We had no TV sets, anything like that at all. And she just created a life around us. I mean, we were so basic, but we didn't know any better. Paper towels, I don't even know if they were invented then, but we had the ragman coming by pushing his cart, and for two cents you'll get a brand new rag, right? We didn't have paper towels, so. But then if you had all your old rags, you wanted to turn them in, you got a penny back for them. So the guy at least made double his money if he cleaned them at home and just resold him again. We had the fish man, the vegetable man, all coming in the neighborhood selling stuff like that. It was pretty cool. We didn't know any better, so we were okay. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. We know any better. We just had a great mom.
- [10:35]
Ilana Golan
Incredible. And by the way, if you're not watching on YouTube, he's wearing a shirt that has hearts and it says love. It's so cute. Love your neighbor. Oh, so cool. So special. I just love your positivity here.
- [10:49]
John Paul DeJoria
When people ask, you know, jp, is there anything that you could say your whole career that is extremely helpful. And I would say, yeah, just be nice to everybody because my mom was nice, so I'm nice to everybody, but I just feel good when I'm nice to everybody. Even people that aren't so nice to you, you know, you don't need them in your life to bitch back at them or just attack them. That'll get you nowhere. It's yesterday's newspaper. Just saying, no problem. Love you anyways, have a good life and just go on.
- [11:15]
Ilana Golan
So I can't wait to dive in and to see how everything you built didn't ruin that piece of it, so you moved on. And I think you tell at some point a story about being kind of in a street gang a little bit and the teachers weren't sure that you're going to be like the best rising star. Tell me a little bit about how did you grow up? And eventually you also decide to join the Navy, which I want to understand why. So take us there.
- [11:41]
John Paul DeJoria
Yeah, well, when we were little kids, we were little kids in east la. Yeah, we had a street gang called the Pink Rats and we thought we were badasses, but we weren't. We had little push button knives like Little ones. You could actually buy them in those days at any hardware store, and we would, like, flip them out, like, hey, we're badass, right? But we were. We're just little kids pretending to be bad. But anyways, I went to high school, and when I graduated from high school, I went straight to the United States Navy. I didn't have the grades to get a scholarship, didn't have the money. I thought, well, let's go in the Navy. It'd be a good thing to do. So I did go in the United States Navy, and it was a great experience for a couple of years. I actually was on an aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet aircraft carrier. Went to Japan a couple of times. Hawaii, Hong Kong, the Philippines. I thought, God, this is really great. I mean, I was like, in heaven. You're like, well, I can travel the world. It's really, really cool. And of course, when we landed there, because you're in the Navy, for $5, you got to go on these unbelievable tours that the Navy sponsored. So you see the whole country, what it's all about. They take you to one of their dances, they feed you lunch. It was pretty cool. I love the Navy, and. And I learned something in the Navy. In fact, I was lucky enough about 10 years ago in Washington, D.C. to be the guy that received the Lone Sailor Award. It's an award giving out to somebody that was in the military that took his military experience and brought into civilian life. And it all really worked for him. So the admirals. There was all admirals, General. And I got the award that year. And they said, jp, can you please tell everybody something that happened in the Navy that really helped you be so successful, what the hell you're doing right now? He said, of course, be glad to. And it was just one statement. I won the United States Navy. I was 17 years old. I started grammar school real early, graduated 17, but I went in the Navy, and I was like a normal person, you know, nothing special. A normal person, right? But in the Navy, they show normal people like me how to work together in a team. And we commoners working together in a team achieve extraordinary results. An example, they had me operating and charting a gyro. An aircraft carrier had two big gyros. That's what tells you where you're at, how to adjust your boat. I was helping chart a gyro. One of the gyros was one of my duties. And you would be there for four hours. Where's that at? Every 10 minutes, how it's positioned, where we're going I mean, they taught me how to do that, but as a team, they taught us how to achieve extraordinary results. And I never forgot that.
- [14:01]
Ilana Golan
Ah, this is so powerful. And by the way, I was an F16 flight instructor back in the days, so we share a lot of that, but we don't have any carriers. But that's so, so, so, so cool.
- [14:12]
John Paul DeJoria
I've got to take a little sidebar on this. My daughter, Alexis Deoria, is a race car driver. Drag racing. She goes from 0 to 337 miles an hour in 3.85 seconds, right? Her dream was to fly an F15 or an F17, whatever. About four years ago, the crew that flew them for the Air Force, right, went and attended one of her events in Denver, Colorado, where she was racing. And. And they fell in love with her. She fell in love with all the flight guys there, and they would follow her around wherever they were. So she said, my dream was to do it. They passed it through the United States government because she supported them so much. To be able to be trained and fly, it was either an F15 or an F17. To fly the plane she took off was her dream come true. Two passenger plane took off. Once it was in the air, they handed it to her because they trained her because she was used to G force. Her car is a G force of six when you take off and five and a half when you stop. That's like a G force an airplane, right? And she had a plus. So she tattooed on her arm a picture of an F15 or F16.
- [15:16]
Ilana Golan
I love it, love the story. Oh, my God. So good, so good. I need to get to know her. This is so good. Okay, so now you're leaving the Navy and you're coming back home, and at some point you actually have a big life thing thrown at you.
- [15:35]
John Paul DeJoria
I get out of the Navy, and I'm wondering what the world to do. So I get every kind of a job in the world. I tried being a trotuk driver, which was fun. Going down the freeway with the lights on, that was really cool. But after a while, that was nowhere to go. So I did a variety of things. My God, selling seven business machines, stick to phone equipment, life insurance. I tried it all in just a couple of years, and it wasn't really my cup of tea. And so now, later on, in my early 20s, around 23, 24 years old. So I said, okay, I'm gonna try something different. And I did encyclopedias door to door. Now you talk about an experience. This is Collier's Encyclopedia an unknown encyclopedia of the day. No leads, no appointments, cold calling for five days. You're in training, you make no money. Then you get a briefcase. You got into the field, no leads, no nothing. Your crew member drops you off. You're knocking door to door in the afternoon, trying to find the young couples or trying to make appointments for the evening. Go back at five in the afternoon when the couples are there, and make a pitch. But they said something there that I believe they said. For starters, very few of you are going to make it successful. They said that right at the beginning. But those that make it successful are those that will understand this. You got to knock on 50 doors. If all 50 doors are closed politely or not so politely in your face. You have to be just as enthusiastic on door number 51 as it were on the first one. Well, I wasn't. It was door 100 and something that I finally got through, gave a presentation. Maybe it was four or five presentations after that. I finally made a sale. But I believed what they said so much that the average life of an encyclopedia salesman selling door to door with no appointments, no leads, and is three and a half days. That's the average life, you know, Wait a minute. No money. They close doors to your face. They don't want to talk to you. But I lasted, in fact, I lasted almost four years, three and a half years doing that. And I made good money. I'll never forget. And this was 1960, into 64, into 65, I made $12,000. And that's like what a vice president of a bank made. I'm on top of the world. But I realized after three and a half years, almost four, I didn't want to do this as a career. So I went out to find other things to do, variety of things, and none of it really made sense to me, okay to do. But I learned something at selling encyclopedias. And one of the biggest lessons I carry throughout my life. Be prepared for a lot of rejection and don't let it get you down. Be just as enthusiastic going forward. Leave the past behind you. Go forward. Which was one of the key things to going forward. Another thing I thought was, I thought Collier's Encyclopedia was the best encyclopedia in the world. It wasn't as hard as Britannica to read. It wasn't like, too young for, like, a world book to be read. It was kind of a high school one in the middle you could understand. It had plastic overlays, 24 volumes. I thought it was the best one everyone should have. So I thought I Had the best product with the best quality and I was ready to overcome rejection. And that's what I learned during books. Then I had a variety of all these other jobs. And then my friend John Capper said, JP I you have this job here that you don't like. And by the way, I was 26 years old. I was circulation manager for Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated magazine. What did that mean? I ran a boiler room with 50 people that were trying to get people to continue their subscriptions or get new. One circulation manager in Southern California. Well, I went to my manager and I said, hey, I don't want to do this my whole life, but I'm pretty good at what I do here. How do I become a vice president like you? He said, you're 26 years old, you've never been to college. Come back and ask me that when you're 35. I was looking for another job. My friend John Capper said, there's a company in the beauty industry and this whole scenario is going to be pretty interesting to know. But I'm going to stop at the very beginning there. Before I started that while I was still selling encyclopedias, towards the end of that thing of something that happened that was a real disruptive thing in my life, but how it was overcome. So I had a child very, very young. I was a father by the time I was 22 years old and my wife was 21, I come home one day for one of my many jobs as a young sports announcer at the second annual Sports Vacation Recreational Vehicle show in Anaheim, California, the Anaheim Convention Center. So I come home one day after doing it right for the whole weekend. Then during the show and I come home and as I drive into our driveway of our little upstairs apartment, I. My wife comes out and she says, oh, I've got to run out. So she took the only car we had and split. By the time I got upstairs into the apartment, there's my little two year old son sitting there in the middle of my clothes with a note on it saying, sorry, I can't handle being a mom anymore. I want to just be a free person. He'll be better off with you. Good luck. Little did I know it was planned. She, number one, took the only car. What little money we had in the bank she'd cleaned out the day before and it wasn't a lot, several hundred dollars. She didn't pay the rent for three months. I never saw a notice because she never showed with me. Didn't pay the utility bill for a couple of Months either notices to shut it off. We lasted a few days and all of a sudden we're there being evicted from the apartment and there's no power, no nothing. Was, oh my God. And I have a little kid, no car, no nothing. And that's what I found somebody, a wonderful lady. Wonderful lady. Had an old Cadillac, 1950s Cadillac that had busted water pump, had put water in it every four hours. But I had a car. So my son and I lived in that car for a little while. My dear friend Lee Myers, a biker. We used to ride sometimes with Hell's Angels. They're friends of ours, right? I never joined because I couldn't attend church with them every Thursday night. Church is the meeting, by the way, in their language, that's going to the meeting every Thursday night. I had to work, right? They loved us, so we'd rode with those guys. So Lee Meyer was his name, who rode with them and the Satan Slaves and other gangs of the time and said, johnny, at my house, I've got an extra room. He ran me down. You and your boy could be there and we'll get some of the biker mamas to watch them while you're working. I think what beautiful people they were. You know, you never knew who's going to come there and lend you a helping hand in life. And dear friends of ours, in fact, a couple years ago ran into some of the old buddies. Most of them are dead, but ran into them. And my friend Dennis said, JP, Hell's Angels in the Valley here, we're having a Christmas party where we're collecting Christmas gifts to give to children of incarcerated parents. I said, great. So I brought a little hot rod there, filled it full of gifts and gave it to them. They were just some of the nicest people wanting to help somebody else out. So sometime that sheep's clothing is just a beautiful sheep underneath.
- [22:08]
Ilana Golan
We need to pause for a super brief break. And while we do, take a moment and share this episode with every single person who may be inspired by this, because this information can truly change your life and theirs. Now, I want to check in with you. Yes, you. Are you driven, but maybe feeling stuck in your career or a fraction of who you know you could be, do you secretly feel you should have been further along in your income, influence or impact? Do you ever wonder how to create not just a paycheck, but the life you want with a paycheck? The thought leadership, the legacy, the freedom. Because that was me. And that's exactly why I created the Leap Academy program, which already changed the thousands of careers and lives. Look, getting intentional and strategic with your career is now more important than ever. The skills for success have changed. Aq, adaptability, reinventing and leaping are today the most important skills for the future of work. Building portfolio careers, multiple streams of income and ventures are no longer a nice to have. It's a must have. But no one is teaching this except for us in Leap Academy. So if you want more from your career in Life, go to leapacademy.com training check out this completely free training about ways to fast track your career and you'll even be able to book a completely free strategy call with my team. That's leapacademy.com training. Too many people finish their workday feeling frustrated, drained and unfulfilled. The good news is it doesn't have to be that way and you don't need necessarily a new job to fix it. Patrick Lenteoni, author of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team and more than a dozen other bestsellers, created the Working Genius assessment to help you pinpoint the kind of work that gives you energy and the kind that drains it. Over a million people, including myself, have taken it, and it completely changed how I lead and how I show up every day. So if you're a CEO or entrepreneur or someone who just wants to level up in business and in life, working genius will give you the clarity and the confidence to operate in your strength and really find greater joy in what you do. Because confidence isn't about pretending that you're good at everything. It's about knowing where you're truly gifted. So take the Working Genius assessment today. Get 20% off with the code LEAP@workinggenius.com that's working genius dot com. You'll be glad you did. So you went through something that could throw anybody else into a whole downhill spiral that is very hard to recover. Quick question on that first of all, did you ask for help? Because I think sometimes with ego, we don't even know how to ask for help. But also, if you don't ask, nobody will give you. How did you recover from that?
- [25:05]
John Paul DeJoria
Good question. No. My stupid pride? No how do we make any money? I'd even tell my mom, okay, that's me living in the car. Couldn't even tell my mom was too proud. So how do we make money? In those days, every grocery store and every liquor store would have to buy your bottles because they were refundable. 2 cents for a little coke or 7 up bottle or dad's root beer. 5 cents for the big one we would go to vacant lots, my son and I, and pick up old bottles. Or at night, go buy a gas station, the Coke stands outside, take the bottles, right? Cash them in. And that's how we made enough money to buy some gasoline and cruise around and buy a little bit of food for us to eat there. So, you know, just sometimes you're just kind of down and out, but you figure out how to do it. And you were right, 100% right. I was too proud, you know, and I shouldn't have been. And that happened another time in my life when I was homeless. Later on, when I started Paul Mitchell. And that'll be another story. But anyways, yeah, I was just too proud. It was so stupid, but I was proud.
- [25:57]
Ilana Golan
Amazing. Okay, so you have this now job?
- [25:59]
John Paul DeJoria
You betcha. So anyways, it was for a company in the beauty industry that was called Redken, all right? And they were real up and coming company. So my friends said, they're going to pay you very little, which they did. Very, very little. But you could go anywhere you want. They really need talent in that industry. Because his wife had a beauty salon. And you at the people calling on salons were like, so you could really fly. He was right. It took me 18 months and. And I went from a salesman to all the way up the line, district manager, whatever, all the way up the line till I became their national manager of two whole divisions of the company. Science, scientific schools and chain salons. And it was a pretty good job. But after I had that, I was working for Reckoner for about four and a half years. I got fired from the job. Now, this is really good for your listeners to know because I'm going to give you a sequence of jobs and firing right now. And why it had to be. No, really, why? It's divine intervention. It's a true story. Okay? Reagan calls me in one day. He says, JP you wanted to see me? I said, yes. And I talked to Paula Kent Meehan. She was the chairman of the board and the founder of the company Redken. It was Ken Redken. Okay. Anyways, I said, paula, you're experimenting on these little teeny marmoset monkeys. They're in a room. The window in the room sees a hall. Can I take them outside for a walk? She goes, no, no, no, no. I said, well, why are we doing animals? We're making hair care products. She says, JP we're redkin the scientific approach. I said, no, but we're not doing skin care products. Why would you put in a rabbit's Or a monkey's eyes are injected in the skin, J.P. it makes us look good. We're redkin the scientific approach. I said, but it's doing nothing for the products. The poor little animals. There's a dozen or so in there. She said, well, listen, your corporate management now, upper management, just leave it behind and be what the corporate wants you to be. I walked away. I didn't feel too good. So a couple weeks later, I went back and Paula's office said, JP We've been telling you can't do that. You've already told other people, we have to let you go. You're disrupting. You're not a corporate man. You're a free thinker. I said, I know, but the poor little J.P. we gotta let you go. So they gave me a nice severance pay, I think a month or something like that, and left me with two of my secretaries because I ran two divisions to get a new job, and I did very fast. So I went to work for a company called Syntex, big pharmaceutical company that just bought a company called Firmadell in the beauty industry. They hired me to train their salesforce and everybody else, which I did. In one year, I helped create a 50% increase in sales. And it's in the millions of dollars, right? 50% increase in one year. Just really got out there, Enthusiast. The whole team got excited. We were just, yay, let's set the world on fire. Anyways, they called me in and fired me. And I said, well, Mr. Neil Wallach, what do you mean I don't have a job anymore. Look what I'm doing. He goes, yeah. He said, but you're not one of us. Very snooty guy. You're not one of the inside group. And with all due respect, a lot of people really appreciate us. You don't. Meaning that I never kiss their ass. I just tell them like it is, okay, but nicely. I'm a nice person, okay? He says, you don't fit in here. You're gone. Period. Right? And I wasn't getting too happy there. I said, okay, I'm gone, all right? So forget that. So I went to work for a little company called Try. They were very, very little and really needed help. So I made a sweet deal with them guys. You could have me for only $3,000 a month, but knowing my own talent, 6% of all new sales. Not what you already have, just new stuff I could get for you. It's the deal. I lasted there for about a little, little over a year. Then Mr. Ken Stow called me and said, JP, me, Joel Oliveri was. We own this company here and jp, we have to let you go. Well, why? I mean, we're little, but I've increased your sales, I think 200%. It was amazing. He said, yeah, but we could get David Chapman, this guy, to do your job for one third the cost. I said, well, how about this? How about you sell me 10% of your company and allow me to pay you over five years or something, right? No, we're not selling anything, J.P. we gotta let you go. Sorry. It was like that, but I thought, well, there's some reason for this. Three jobs. So then I said, well, I'm cool enough to be able to be a consultant. Well, if I was a consultant for you and you were a big company, made a lot of money, I told you everything you needed in a couple of months. You didn't need me anymore if you were a little company. I almost had to help run your company and I wasn't paid for sometimes two and three weeks. That wasn't working out. Okay, but this is going to lead to something really big. Then I said to my dear friend Paul Mitchell, the hairdresser. That's why the products are called Paul Mitchell. That wasn't his name. And his name was Cyril T. Mitchell. His hairdressing day was Paul Mitchell. We wanted to enhance the beauty industry, so we call it Paul Mitchell. We sell the salons, right? So anyways, we needed a half a million dollars. Now this is 1980, beginning of 80. And I knew for sure I could set this up in a month. And with half a million dollars, we could actually go into business. That would be like several million dollars today because of what I knew. So the backer pulled out. The backer pulled out, pulled out that same thing.
- [30:56]
Ilana Golan
Wait, before that? Before that? Before that. So you already had confidence in your sales ability, so you knew how to sell. But now you're gonna need to do it on your own or basically be an entrepreneur and start from nothing. So take me there for a second. Was there fear? Because again, you felt what it is to be with nothing. Was there fear around money, around what if it doesn't work? Like, where did it take you?
- [31:22]
John Paul DeJoria
That is the most brilliant question. So we raised all this money. We thought, the day happens. My relationship wasn't going good. I left the house, the money, the better car. I took the older car down the hills. My second time being homeless, which you'll see in a minute, to get the money. Whoa, it's coming into bank of America. Universal City. Paul was older than me. He was flying over to Hawaii. He was running out of money, too. And we wanted to start this company. It never came in. One of my friends ran me down and found me, okay. He knew where I would be hanging out and found me and said, jp, you gotta call Dick Holdhouse up here. I'll never forget the call. Something went wrong. Call him collect. And I did. It was the middle of the night. He was in England, middle of the night. When I called this guy, he says, jp, the money never arrived. And the reason it never arrived was this. This is a lesson for everybody to learn. They say, can you still do it today? Yeah. Inflation in the United States was 12 and a half percent. Unemployment was 10 and a half percent. Interest rates, if you could get a loan and hardly anybody could, minimum interest in 1980 and 81 was 17%. And we waited in line for gasoline. How the hell do you start a company like that? We said, okay, Paul. It did not come in. How much money do you have? And Paul said, well, I got an extra 350 bucks. I said, oh, shit. I got a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. I gotta live now, right? I said, no problem. Being too proud. The second time in my life. I went to my mom's house for lunch that same day. And I said, mom, can I borrow $350 from you? Johnny, you make a lot of money. You make a lot of money. Why? Why? I said, mom, I'm starting a new business. I was too ashamed to tell her what happened. I was too proud. So she loaned it to me. I said, I'll get it back to you in a month or two. And I said, Paul, we have $700 right now, but how the heck do you start a company with that? I. I had a car to live in, so I had a place to live. I know you go to Griffith park to shower. I found a place for 99 cents at Freeway Cafe to have a breakfast after 9 in the morning, but before 11, you got one piece of bacon or one sausage, one egg, one piece of toast, and your choice of a cup, coffee or orange juice. Well, I took the sausage because it was more food. I took the one egg, the toast, ate every bit of it. And by the way, that lunch with my mom, I ate everything. Says, you. You want second son? I said, yes. Goes, wow, I'm so happy. And I ate everything on that plate. But I could not tell her what was wrong. I just couldn't. I was just too proud. Anyways, and we figured out a Way. How do you start a business? $16 at Universal City post office box. I got a P.O. box. Now I have P.O. box 10597. Okay, I have an address then. In those days, we didn't have computers. So I got typeset for four or five bucks to set my type. I went to a printer and they set my type to John Paul Mitchell Systems. Here's our address. Universal City, right? So I had an address on a piece of paper. They would sell you envelopes for 2 cents each. I printed up a dozen of them, pieces of paper for 4 cents each to make copies of the copy machines in those days, right? And then I would draw lines in it to make my invoices. So I had an address, I had stationary. And then I went out with what little money I had and bought and I'll tell you the business part in a second. And bought an answering machine, I think were 49 in those days. You hook it up to your telephone, answers that. And this lovely lady was a dear friend of mine. She was British. Caroline was her name. Caroline was super. I said, caroline, would you leave the message on my phone, please? She goes, sure. So here you call me on a phone that was in my friend's house, right? And you hear, oh, good afternoon, John Paul Mitchell Systems. This is Caroline. We're all busy and out right now, but we'll call you back later. Maybe I get JP to call you back, okay? Please forgive us. We're in business. Was so much fun, right? Positive message. Hang up. Well, of course, JP Is the one that only called back because there was no one else to call back. We had a presence, we had a phone. But now we needed business. So knowing from my business days with books, I drove up Ventura Boulevard in California, called on salon to salon to salon. Why salons? I was in the business with those three companies and we wanted somehow to always include salons. Paul was the top hairdresser. That's what we named it. Paul Mitchell after a hairdresser's name. Not after John Paul or the company was both their names put together. So I went out for a week with an unknown product and I got. Because I'm a pretty good salesman, I think I got 12 checks from $25 to $130 from 12 different salons, right? And I sold it the product had in my car. Now I'm going to tell you how I got the product also next story, but I'm telling you the distributor. I'm going to go back. So I got the 12 checks right? Now I have in my hand 12 checks. How did I get enough product to be able to do that and then get a distributor and get money right away? That's going to be the second half. Now I'm going to backtrack. I got 700 bucks. So I already had set up with my reputation of doing good businesses. Setco, my bottle man, my silk screening man and my filling man. And my friend Dr. DeSalvo helped me make the formula right. All set up for 30 day billing in 100,000 bottles. And. And everyone thought we were on top of the world's the money coming in. We didn't have it. So I think a little bit. Okay, so the first thing I did was I went and told because we had to have our artwork. It was a thousand dollars for the artwork, our black and white artwork of a couple shampoos and a conditioner. Very unique one. So. So I said that's all we had. I was honest with the guy. We have 700 bucks. Can I give you 300 now and the rest later? He goes, no, he says, I'll take the 700 because I'll never see the other 300 you owe me, but I'll take 700 now. We're out of money. So all I had was a few hundred bucks in my pocket to live off of. So I call Setco and I say, setco, instead of giving me the 100,000, I want a sample order of only 10,000 and I'll still pay you in 30 days. Oh, of course. 6,000 of this, 2,000 of this. 2,000 of this. Sure. Told the silk screener the same thing. Told the filler the same thing. So of course a sample, we understand. All 30 day billing from the time the bottles were shipped silkscreen and filled was two weeks. I had two weeks left to make some money and be able to pay the bills when they came in. Now, what did I have? So I had the product right to go out and sell. So it took me one week. So what do I have left? Eight, nine days? I need a distributor. I needed money. I had 12 checks, but they did not fill out the top line. I did not want them to. Right, do not fill out the top line. Who it's to? I went to Paris, a Speedy Supply, the biggest distributor, made my presentation. And he said, you're a wonderful, nice man, but why should I build your business? You have no sales, you have no sales staff, you have no offices, you have nothing. You want me to build your line and I'm the big guy. I have all the Big lines that we have the Revlons link. I have all the big lines. I love you're a nice man, but I can't do it unless you give me another reason. I said, I have a very good reason. I pulled out of my pocket 12 checks and put them right in front of them. I said, it's because those are your first 12 customers already sold them for you. I. Those are your checks I've already delivered for you. He goes, oh, wow. I've never seen a presentation like that. I said, look, we're new. If you'll just order $2,000 worth, just $2,000 of the product, okay, you could have all of LA and Orange County. Huge. We were really hard up. He goes, okay, but you better show up tomorrow here and help my salesman sell it. I said, one more thing. We don't have a lot of money. Could you pay me when the products are in? Liberty goes, are you kidding? We're Paris Ace Beauty Supply. We. We pay our bills in 45 days. I said, I'll tell you what. And I already thought about him saying that I added 5% onto the whole price of everything. The retail price, everything. Way more than I wanted. I said, I'll give you a 5% discount. Your salon's the same thing if you give me a check when it's delivered. He laughed his head off. He said, that is a great deal. I'll do it. We're 46 years old now. He went to my 25th anniversary. I brought Jim Henrietta there to tell the story. And he says, not only that, five minutes after this guy JP Leaves, my warehouse, man is calling me, saying, there's some guy putting stuff on our rear deck here. Say he wants to check for $2,000. Jim said, he laughed his head off, went back there, had me the check. I said, I'll see you in the morning. And that's kind of how we got going our company. Okay, but let me just go a little bit further, okay? So I would go in the field with their salesmen. They would watch me make a sale. And then after three or four, I would watch them make a sale in the field to teach them. And so anyways, we grew. Grew, grew. People say, well, when did you know you make it? And here's the big story that ends all of this. That is just. People don't ever give up on life. Here's what happened in two years. It was the first time I could say we knew we were successful. Well, how did you know? We had all of our bills for the first Time in two years. Paid on time, not paid off. Paid on time. And $2,000 each left over. Like, wow, man, it's gonna be really, really easy right now. Okay? We got 2,000 bucks in our pocket each. You know, we could do what we wanna do now. Business is growing, and it's top of the world. About two weeks after that, all of a sudden, a vision came to me. An epiphany like, oh, my God, would they talk about the universe works for you. There is a God. This is real. I can't believe this. It's real. And here's why. If I didn't work at Redken, I didn't leave. They fired me. And what I learned at Redken, what I learned at Firmndell, what I learned at the Institute of Trichology at Tri. If I didn't learn what I learned from all three of them, I could have never started John Paul Mitchell Systems with $10 million, let alone $500,000. I couldn't have. In other words, it was like destiny. That wasn't my destiny. My destiny was something different. So the universe kind of got me out and into something else. Something else. So if ever you're fired, it's because that's not what you're prepared for. What you're destined for is something else. Go with it. Don't be sad about it. Don't cry about it. Don't bitch about it. There's something else out there for you. And there was. Little did I know it was one day to start my own company. And one day. We never knew we'd be this big like we are today. The world's largest privately owned salon hair care company. And no matter what we do in distribution, some of the money goes right back to beauty salons to help them out. This is. We promised them. We do that, and that's what we did. And at that time, I could have now money, not just time. When I finally got bigger, to be able to do things for more charity and more people. And not just riding with the motorcycle groups in my 20s and volunteering at Griffith park to serve food or at Christmas time or Thanksgiving time, but actually contribute money. It was like all change and grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. So my lesson here, before we go on to your next question, is this, people, if you're ever fired, it's okay. Leave it behind you. That's not your destiny. If you didn't do something to get fired, or if you did do something, it's because you, the being that runs that body that you're in right now, your being wanted you to do it but just couldn't tell you that. Or the divine entry entered it and wanted you for something else. And that's why I wrote this book here. And it took so long to write the darn thing to pass on the where's house and why's in all the trials and tribulations along the way.
- [42:13]
Ilana Golan
Oh, I can't wait. I mean this is incredible, jp. Like I'm so excited that it's coming in the summer, right?
- [42:19]
John Paul DeJoria
No, actually, because all of a sudden Amazon realized, jp, you're having the first edition coming out that's going to be sold out fast. They have it on Amazon right now for a pre order. Again, it's success. Unshared is failure. You could preorder it on Amazon and it's hardcover, doesn't cost that much. 20, $30. That's it. But I promise you if you read it, you'll get something spiritual out of it. And several things business wise, but you'll see when you get it. There's a lot of things we just don't have the time to talk about that I'm missing. But it took me three years with two of the best writers in the world to get my autobiography. Because that would be how do you do it today? Easier than in my day. And how do you spiritual. How do you reprimand somebody without them hating you, loving you? How do you overcome the. How do you get just amazing stuff in there? So I had to make sure that when I did it, it would be for something good. Whatever I may make off this book is going right back to homeless people, battered women. That was all done. If any money was made, it'll go right back to change the world. And that's when I'm doing that. But the thing was to change millions of people's lives.
- [43:24]
Ilana Golan
I have so many questions about why it's private and why did you not freak out and all of this.
- [43:29]
John Paul DeJoria
Let me answer that please, for your audience. Because people run through problems.
- [43:32]
Ilana Golan
Yes, please.
- [43:33]
John Paul DeJoria
You think all day long, oh my God, I have no money. I have bills that are due.
- [43:37]
Ilana Golan
Why did I get fired?
- [43:38]
John Paul DeJoria
Why does she need me? Why doesn't he like me? Everything you could ever think of in the world, okay, Everything. Here's how I did it. At first, at night when I couldn't sleep, I'd write it on a piece of paper. That was my genius thought. And I put it by the sink in the bathroom so when I go to the bathroom I could read it. And at night when My mind went crazy. I could say, don't have to think about it anymore. It's already there, right? That was the helping hand. And then the biggest thing was this. Leave it behind you. Leave it at the river. It was a story that my friend James Colburn told me. It's in the book about how you leave something at the river. All of a sudden, everything in the past was left behind. You cannot change yesterday's newspaper, thinking about it and yourself. You got to forgive yourself first. Like, I wish I would have done that at that time, and I didn't. I. All that stuff we think about, right? You can't change it. You can't change. So just forget about it. And all you do is this, hey, that happened yesterday. That person punched me in the tummy yesterday. I got fired yesterday. I have no money. My wife left me, my kid bit my finger. Me, whatever it might be, okay? I went to jail. Whatever it might be, you can't do a thing about it. Just say, I forgive myself. I forgive these people. That's yesterday's newspaper. I'm a new man. Leave it behind me. This is the first day of the rest of my life. And if it pops back in again in your head, which it will just say, wait a minute, that's the old me. It's not there anymore. Go behind me and keep on doing that. To go forward. That is one of the biggest things you could do to overcome those things.
- [45:02]
Ilana Golan
And jp, like, people need to hear this so much and need to read this book because so many reasons. First of all, the corporate ladder as we know it today is kind of burning. There's just so many changes. There's going to be tens of millions of people that will need to reinvent themselves and figure out what can I do with my expertise to become my own economy and build whatever it is that I'm meant to build. But the question for you, jp, is like, when you're starting to build these things, there is no map. There is no, oh, if I gonna do X, Y, Z, it's gonna be like the most incredible hair product. Like, there is no map. So how do you roam around this uncertainty while there's still, like, fear of money? There's fear of rejection, there's fear of everywhere. How do you live in that uncomfortable, great question.
- [45:53]
John Paul DeJoria
Okay. To start out with, for everyone out there that's not doing it right now, do this. Get a piece of white paper like that and a black pen and write on there. Pay attention to the vital few. Ignore the trivia. Many. Okay? And Put that right on your mirror. So when you're building something, you're going to pay attention to the vital ones. And that's your growth and where you're going, not what happened in the past. Right? Pay attention to the vital few. Ignore the trivia. Many under that or on another piece of paper. Write this. It's the truth. In the end, everything will be okay. That means pause. And if it's not okay, it's not the end. I got that from Jonathan Kendrick. And it works every time. Because eventually things do work out. And that thing we know, you're going to have a lot of rejection. Okay? Just go forward and you will. Something will come to you. Leave yourself open to the universe and it'll come to you. It will come to you. How to overcome that rejection, how to overcome your problem. You leave yourself to universe. If you're lucky enough to get a mentor, which I never was, but if you are, other than my mom, if ever you're lucky enough to get a mentor, they can maybe help you out a bit. Someone that's been in the business before. But if not, if you leave yourself up to the universe, we are amazing creatures in these bodies. Whatever the being is in us is amazing. Leave yourself open all of a sudden. If you leave yourself open and don't think about the problem, think about what the solution may possibly be. Solutions will start coming to you. It's amazing how that works. And believe in yourself that eventually it's going to happen. Eventually it's all going to work out okay. But you just got to leave yourself open to the universe for it. And what we should all know in life is this. Sometimes we don't know what we want to do. We don't know what our purpose is, but we know what we don't want to do. And when you know what you don't want to do, don't do it anymore. Immediately start doing something else. By the way, I never gave you the aftermath about Redken or about Syntex or Tri. Never gave you that. I'm going to give it to you very quickly in less than one minute. Number one, after five years in business, Paula Kit me and came to me and said, jp, how do you run now? We're in the millions of dollars, right? How do you run a company like, with so few people? I said you were kind to me even though you weren't kind animals. Okay, but I'm going to be kind back to you. I showed her what we did. Within three months, she started buying all of her stock back and two years later, soldiers to l' Oreal for a couple hundred million dollars for company. Right. Anyways, with the people that were at Firmadell, Syntex, they were all fired within one year. Why? After I left, their sales went straight down. So I increased their sales by 50%. They went from 8 to 12 million. They went straight down. They were all fired. And the other company, the Tri company, I got a call from the owner saying, jp, if you'll come over here and help us run our company, I'll give you half the company no matter what. He's giving you half the company. And of course, I didn't do that. I was with Paul, Mitch. They're all good people, by the way. Just had different ideas in mind of how to run a company. All good people. None of them are bad people. There's not bad people out there. Just people that maybe do naughty things.
- [48:46]
Ilana Golan
I like the word naughty. But. So tell me, what made you, instead of then going to the beach all day, you decided to disrupt tequila? What made you go into the spirit industry?
- [49:01]
John Paul DeJoria
Well, I'm one that believes in just doing what makes you happy. And making me happy isn't every single day going to the beach or just going on vacation your whole life. This, I like doing that, but not all the time. I just felt something. And a lot of this was by accident with patron tequila. A fellow that was building a house for me told me about a friend of his, nice man, one of the best designers in the world. And he went bankrupt for the hospitality business. Jp, he just needs a little bit of money to get him going. Well, you talked to him and I did. So we went into the architectural business where I would give him the money, he would go to Mexico, buy pavers and furniture, come back. I was living in LA at the time. Come back to LA and sell it to restaurants or to architects for their model homes, right? And we did okay for a year, but nothing exceptional. So he was going down to buy some pavers for this house I was building. And I said, while you're down there. We were drinking tequila at the time, but we were, you know, the. Saul, take a shot, hold your breath and do the line. And I said, when you're down there, I'm sure the aristocrats must drink something really, really good. When you go down to buy the pavers, bring back a couple bottles of what the real aristocrats drink, whatever that may be. Got to be smoother than what we have here for five bucks a bottle. And he did these two long, thin Bottles. And it was the smoothest that I'd ever had. He said, but jp, I met a guy named Francisco Alcaraz. He's a chef of tequila. He could make it smoother. I said, you really? And I was doing pretty good at this time with Paul Mitchell nine years later. So I said, okay, let's do this. Why don't you go back down there and let's find a recycled bottle, like. And he had to find this bottle. It's a patron bottle today. We made it out of recycled glass, but found the bottle. So I said, okay, we're order a thousand cases. That's 12,000 bottles. And my thinking was this. I know it's expensive, but if nobody wants to buy it, it's so good that for the next 10 years, hey, if you had a baby, here's a bottle of tequila. You got married, have a bottle of tequila. I mean, I don't care what, religion, race, where you got tequila, right? It was so good. So it was pride. Anyways, nobody would take us. We couldn't get one distributor to carry us. Why? Number one, they said, guys, it's 37.95 a bottle. That's what we had to charge in 1989. It was expensive to make. The average tequila was $5 a bottle. Most expensive one that we could find at the time was about $14 a bottle, you know, period, if you can even find it. This was JP's, just too expensive. So no one said yes. Another good lesson, by the way, for people to learn in any business you're in, okay? So we found a wine guy who only sold wine and talked him into it and said, look, if we could get Spagos, which was the number one restaurant in Beverly Hills, and bought a canteen and made it, raised a customer, will you be our distributor? He goes, can you get those? Of course. Are you kidding? Yes, we will. Well, Wolfgang was a friend of mine, said, I want to take it anyways, okay? And Bob Cantina was a friend of Martin's. I want to take it anyways. We knew we had it, but after one year, they only sold about a thousand cases, so we had to drop them. We went to a big company, I mean a big one, Jim Beam. So we had to bring in another layer. So we would sell to Jim Beam, they would get a piece of it. Now they would sell it to distributors and they would sell it to the on premise and off premise. So one more layer, they got a piece of it. After being with them for about maybe a year and a half, they came to Us, and we just talked and we said, guys, we're only doing 12,000 cases a year. We believed our line was so good, we can maybe do 50,000 cases a year or more. They said, guys, we're going to be honest with you. You have the best tequila ever in the United States. There's no question. Nothing compare. But it's too expensive. You'll never do more than 20,000 cases a year, guys. That's it. Cases of 12, that's it. So we thought. We thought we could do better, so we dropped them.
- [52:38]
Ilana Golan
What gave you that conviction to keep going versus giving up?
- [52:43]
John Paul DeJoria
Because we thought we could do at least 50,000 cases a year because we could sell that ourselves. So we knew if we could do that and if enough people tried it, they would really like it. If enough people tried it. And I did it at a Paul Mitchell convention that we had for hairdressers, 3,000 of them free Patron. They went home and asked for it. That stuff is so good. But most of the distributors that they had out there didn't have it. So they would go and so they would help build it a bit. We said, man, we know if we took over, we'd market it differently. So going back to Seagrams, they took it up to 70, 50, or 70,000 a year. But we knew we could do better. They wanted to do different things we didn't want to do, right? So we went to court because we had an agreement and we bought them out of the agreement. We actually paid money and bought them out of their agreement. And we said, we're going to do this ourselves, okay? We know we could do really good. And we did. And then a short time later, my partner, Martin Crowley died. And our executive vice president, unbelievable genius, okay? Ed Brown was his name. I made him president CEO of the company immediately. He was qualified. And we changed our ads. Instead of Playboy models, which were beautiful, as our ad patron, was the ad simply perfect. Patron. It was just the bottle. And we did all the things I wanted to do. Special promotions. Let's sit with the hairdresser. Let's do all this really cool stuff. So I'm going to make a real long story short right now, okay? And Martin had died. Ed took over. Obviously, I contributed, but Ed did most of it in our team. And we took off like a rocket. When I sold Petrone about eight years ago, the company that was never supposed to do more than 20,000 cases a year, we did in Petrone alone, about three and a half million cases. And over and above that with other Rum we invented or we had and other, you know, vodka we had. And it was the biggest sale ever in the history of the industry. But we like to give back. So we took out of that cell. It's in the billions. Way in the billions. Right. It's common knowledge was printed on the Wall Street Journal everywhere. But what we did also, or what I did was I took millions of that and I shared it with my staff. So many of the staff walked away as millionaires and multimillionaires. They gave me so much money I could share with my people. They're just beautiful people. Everybody benefited because of it. Right. And it gave me the money now to go and do other things like oh my God, I want to go to the hospitality business. And they gave me a five year non compete before I sold it. I was working on the world's next generation of tequila. They said it hasn't been bottled yet, it's yours, keep it. But you can't do anything with it for five years. Let your daughters have it or something. And I did. Right. And little to nothing happened. But. But when the five years was up, which was two years ago approximately, then I got involved. It's called Bandero. It is. Won the gold medal in Mexico a little over a year ago as the smoothest tequila. The gold medal. Wow. For all of South America. Central America was the wild out of Mexico. And we're only selling it now in seven states. Okay. That's all. We're going slowly to see where our best distribution is. But it's Bandero. B A N D E R O. So came out with the Bandero. So now I'm in hospitality. I'm having fun with that. And I'm in many other businesses right now. Many other businesses. I'm a virtual entrepreneur and I love being around people that help change the world. And my purpose is to help the world with millions of people, as many ways I can. Millions and millions of people. And that's just what. I'm just going to throw one thing at you that's in the book. We don't have time to explain it. There's so much in the book. It's one thing I had to put in there. I got the okay to put it in there. But back around the year 2000, just shortly thereafter, I'm the guy. And I'm not a CIA agent, I'm not an FBI agent, never was. I just want to contribute to my country and its welfare. We had problems. We wanted to go into Libya. We needed the oil in Libya. Because oil was very, getting very expensive. Our oil companies already had concessions, but Gaddafi took them all away. Now they wanted to be friends with the United States, we wanted to be friends with them, okay? But they gave up their webs of mass destruction, which were biological. They gave up their training camps for, for terrorists, but they did not give up their two suspected terrorists of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. They did not do that. That was a requirement. So I heard about it through friends, let's put it that way, that were kind of, you know, very connected. They said, jp, we think you can make a difference and we have a guy that will get you next to Gaddafi and maybe convince him that what we want to do is going to be really good for him, right? It's going to be okay. I could not fly there, so I arranged on my own ticket to fly into Tunisia. Gaddafi sent me, his agents, to meet me in Tunisia. We drove for eight hours in a Tripoli, was there for a day, no Gaddafi. They sent me into Serde afterwards, was there for two days. Finally, a knock on the wall. But a long story short, it's in there how I convinced Gaddafi after he got really pissed off and accused me in the world of everything, right? How I convinced Gaddafi to release it to suspect terrorists of pan AM Flight 103. And they did. Within three months. I went back to the United States, told our government about everything, showed them, I even have a picture in the book of me and Gaddafi hugging like that. We're smiling, right? I changed his attitude with kindness, but you got to read the book to see what it's all about. Because he was very apprehensive when I got there. By the time I left this all within a matter of half an hour and talking to him, his mind was changed and he was happy. Just felt something in his life that was, yeah, this is the thing to do, let's do it. I never took credit for it. I didn't want to. I did not want to. It was the same when I went into North Korea in 1996 to help convince Kim Jong Il to get into the four Way talks. Never took credit for it at all, didn't want to. Low key. They offered me $50 million in Libya if I got it done. I said, I don't want your money, Gaddafi. What do you want? I said, let me and my family come in in a couple of years when things settle down and we'll have a meal with you and your family. Done. It was done, right? Very low key. I didn't talk about it very much at all. Now, I could talk about it all I want. It's perfectly okay, use pictures at all. But it's showing you that you could do so many things to even help your country and people out by just being a normal person that's happy knowing you could do something and listening to the other guy and having a sense of humor. And that was one of the things that I got Gaddafi at. After he was ready to kill me. I mean, this guy was ready to kill me after I said something to. It was like, and Omar Montass's chief of staff is going, oh, my God. Like that. The guy next to me spilt his tea in his pants. He didn't pee his pants. He spilled his tea in his pants. He's, oh, shit, we're dead. You know, in his own mind. We talked about it afterwards, right? But then all of a sudden, within a few seconds later, it was. I told him something that was extreme because I broke out laughing when we were talking about something and he was ready to kill me. And then I told him something of, you know, why it was so funny. And then he broke out laughing and then we took the picture.
- [59:28]
Ilana Golan
I love that. I love that. Jp, it sounds like you're onto some big things also about AI and everything. So tell us what's going on.
- [59:37]
John Paul DeJoria
Oh, so proud of it. This is so good. I invested in the company. It's so good. It's recent. It's called Global. Like Global SKU, like S, like Sam K, like Kentucky U, like Universe. GlobalSKU.com it's just happened a couple of months ago. It's now on the market, right? It'll cost you $15 to get into it. That's it, only 15 bucks. Here's what it is. I talked about how to sell products here. I had to go out, take orders, hand them in. How does somebody today that has any kind of a product or they have products, but they're overstocked. How do you sell that? How about you have no products, but you have old clothes in the closet or half a bicycle in your garage. How can you get money and sell these things? Globalsku.com here's what you do. You take your camera, you take a picture of anything. It could be a bicycle, an old used T shirt in your closet, anything. Instantly, it's AI. It tells you in a second what it is that you took a picture of when it was sold and when it was sold last and how much money they got for it. Then you push a button and you're on either ebay or one of the other platforms out there. And it's sold for you $15 a month. I think you get 10 or 20 sales you get out of that. If you need more, maybe it's 20 bucks, 25. But on the first sale you make, we wanted to test this. So one of the guys went in the office, went down to a thrift store, went to the strip store, took a picture of this T shirt with the name of estate across it. But it was a funky T shirt. The letters were almost falling off, but not quite. And of another T shirt, just a cool T shirt. But it's sold from a thrift store, $2 each. Took a picture of it, right? Went out and they paid for the two bucks and sold it. One got close to $100, the other one got $28 or something like that for it almost immediately. It's not a guarantee it's going to sell, but you have for so cheap an audience out there. Now, if you're a big company and you have like, big stuff you want to sell, like cars, tractors, you know, big giant generators, whatever, you're overstocked from one of the big stores and you just can't sell it back. And you don't want to go through five warehouses and discount it to finally get rid of it. Then there's something called Van did it. Van did it is a same company, but a different name. That company. Van did It. Like, Van, Van. He did it. Who did it? I didn't do it. Van did it. Ban did it. Okay. Anyways, it takes. It puts you online to hundreds of thousands, millions of people out there that'll buy your product. And you bypass all the warehouses, go directly to the bees or. Or directly who's going to buy your product now instead of losing money on your return or having overstock, you know what the hell to do with. You made some money. And the person on the other end made money because they saved a bunch of money buying something that was almost like brand new or brand new right away.
- [62:21]
Ilana Golan
I love this. My daughter actually used an app to sell like $450 in her first week. Like, I'm totally getting her on global sku. Like, let's go. That's so.
- [62:32]
John Paul DeJoria
Oh, yeah. It's amazing. Instantly, instantly. When you take the picture, the eye tells you not only it, but what it sold for last. Your daughter could take something she wants to sell that's used and all of a sudden find out the last time it was sold used and what it's
- [62:47]
Ilana Golan
sold for just one more question. Where can they find the memoir and all of this. But also, if you met JP at your 20s or you know, right when you were kind of at the bottom, like, what would you wish somebody told you?
- [63:04]
John Paul DeJoria
That is an excellent question. Or what would I have changed in my life? That is a beautiful question to ask. Okay. And my answer is this. And I really thought this one I was asked to me years ago, absolutely nothing. If it wasn't for my up and down experiences, which are a lot, by the way. Okay. If it wasn't for the up and down experiences, I wouldn't be who I am today. I wouldn't change the thing. Even though we all say, God, if only I did that differently, it'd be a lot easier, a lot better. I'd have more money, I'd have my sweetheart. No matter what, it might be nothing. I would not be who I am today if it wasn't for all those experiences. And that's what we do on the planet Earth. You're sent here in a body to learn. You're here to learn. And in order to learn, if it's all sweet and gravy and perfect, you're gonna get bored or your life's not gonna be as I know a lot of really wealthy people that were born with silver spoons in their mouth, as the saying goes, that weren't the happiest person on the planet. Okay. But you're here to learn different things, the ups and downs, to experience life and learn different things. So when you do leave these earthly bodies, whatever you're going to do next, you're a little more prepared for because you've experienced it. And whatever you believe happens after you die, that's up to you. I won't even go into that with you right now. That'll be up to you. Okay.
- [64:15]
Ilana Golan
But I know we need like another episode to go into all of this like I feel, but jp, this is so fun. Maybe when my book is out. Uh huh.
- [64:26]
John Paul DeJoria
Yes, yes, please, yes. Then I'll get your book and I can interview you on and we can talk about things together. Maybe some similarities. What is more important in life? Many people say, if only had a million dollars or even more, I'd be as happy as can be. I'm gonna tell you a story. In the 1950s, the richest man in the world. You can look this up. Was J. Paul Getty Jr. He was from Oklahoma, lived in London because he made so much money. Started Aramco, the big oil company in Saudi Arabia. Okay, richest. He was the first real billionaire we knew about anyways, big time. This guy was so cheap that in his castle in London he had a payphone installed when he found out a lot of his people were making toll calls, meaning they called across town and he had a 200 pound phone bill which is like about 500 US dollars. Richest man in the world put a phone booth in there, right? Anyways, he's getting older. One of the rarest interviews he ever had. He didn't like interviews, but he had this one interview when he was getting much older and the lady asked him this question. John Paul Getty Jr you are the richest man in the world. Is there anything you would have done differently in your life because you are the richest man? He goes, no ma', am, I'm not only the richest man in the world, I'm the most powerful man in the world. I could change governments with the money and influence that I have. He says, but yes, there is something I would have changed. He says I would give up. I would have given up the majority of all my power, of all my money, the majority of it all to have been happy in my life. I've never been happy. I've been married seven times, didn't love any of them. Even had a grandkid that cut the ear off, sent it in for the mafia to get a ransom. And by the way, they made a movie on that, I think with Leonardo DiCaprio or somebody says, I was never happy. She asked him, well, Jay Paul Getty, why don't you start now? He says, it's too late for me, I'm too old. I've already just laid everything out. There's, there's hardly any time left for me. Okay, so what's more important in life? Happiness. I say number one. And health is number two. If you're not happy, you're not going to be healthy. That happiness can help you be healthier and everything else comes after that. But be kind to people. Love your family, have good family values, take care of them. They're the closest thing to you. And just do whatever you have to be happy in life. And don't be mean to other people. Leave a good record behind you in life. Like while I was here, I made life better for other people, not just me.
- [66:45]
Ilana Golan
Oh, I love this. This is so good. JP this is such a beautiful story and it's true. Like I know a lot of multi billionaires, big investors, they're just miserable. So I love that. That's such an important reminder for everybody. Jp where can they find you or you can't find my due but your story. Yeah.
- [67:07]
John Paul DeJoria
It is called success. Unshared is failure. Very important word success. Unchared is failure. Okay, you can get it right now and I suggest you order right now on Amazon. They're taking pre orders for delivery in late May, early June. That'll be delivered the first. You want the first edition? Then they're going to be sold out of the first edition. They've already told us so pre order it right now. Success. Dustin shared his failure and it's my story. It's pre ordered on Amazon.
- [67:33]
Ilana Golan
Ah we guarantee we get to love it. There's so many stories here that it's un like unbelievable. And we're going to have the links and everything in the show notes and jp. Thank you. This was so fun.
- [67:46]
John Paul DeJoria
Thank you.
- [67:59]
Ilana Golan
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