#441: John Paul DeJoria — From Homelessness to Building Paul Mitchell and Patrón Tequila

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Check it out. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and squirrels, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it's my job every episode to interview and deconstruct world class performers. In other words, to tease out The habits routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply to your own lives. This episode has a lot. There are a lot of strategies, a lot of tactics, a lot of incredible stories, and my guest is John Paul DeJoria. D E

J O R I A John Paul DeJouria is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who has launched multiple global enterprises and is renowned as one of the 100 greatest living business minds by Forbes. John Paul DeJouria's Ragster Rich's bio is truly incredible. It exemplifies the American dream in a lot of ways. Once homeless, He has struggled against the odds to craft a unique life and many unique businesses that you know. In nineteen eighty, John Paul and hairstylist Paul Mitchell converted a partially borrowed seven hundred dollars into John Paul Mitchell Systems, which is today the largest privately held salon hair care line. In nineteen eighty nine, Doing something totally different. He co founded Patrone. the first ultra premium tequila and now the world's number one ultra premium tequila, which he sold to Bacardi in 2018.

John Paul went on to co-found John Paul Pett, Rocket, and many other enterprises. He's done a lot, and he continues to do a lot. He's also signed the Giving Pledge, along with others like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, as a formal promise to continue giving back, and he has established JP's Peace, Love, and Happiness Foundation as a hub for his charitable investments, which span the core values of his companies, sustainability, social responsibility, and animal friendliness. This episode was recorded in March of twenty twenty, and due to some technical issues we ran into, we moved partway through from Skype to phone. So you will notice that transition. There is a lot of actionable advice in this conversation. And uh John Paul does not disappoint. So without further ado

Please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with None other than John Paul DeJoria. Yeah. John Paul, welcome to the show. Well I think.

Nice to be here on your show. You've got a great show and uh you're helping a lot of people out along the way by giving them good positive direction. Thank you, sir. I have looked forward to this and been looking forward to this for at least a year, probably two years now. And uh We have A mutual friend, Robert Rodriguez, who's certainly

a a fixture here in Austin, longtime resident. And I thought we would start this might seem like a strange place to start, but start with a text exchange that I was having with him not long ago, where I was asking him about topics or questions that we might explore. off the beaten path. And One thing that stood out and that he highlighted was that he saw a picture

uh from last December at a Christmas party where you and Smokey Robinson were showing feats of physicality. And Robert said that his mind was blown because it looked like you were doing full planches and moves that you might only see at the top levels of Gymnastics. Uh could you

Speak to fitness in your life. Sure. You bet you bet you. In fact, uh Smokey, by the way, I'm seventy five. I'll be seventy six here in a few more months or a few more weeks. Smokey's uh about eighty and uh He's unbelievably fit. Now, what people have to know is this, and I'm gonna quote an old blues friend of mine, old blues singer. Uh he died about a decade ago. I was at his funeral, and that's John Lee Hooker. I knew John Lee for maybe forty years before he passed on.

And John Lee would call me for the last seven years on my birthday every year, as well as my wife. He calls on her birthday and he make up some blues riff and sing it to us. And for those last seven years, my daughter Alexis, a race car driver, and I went to his house, whether he was in his Long Beach house or a San Jose house, to hang out with him on his birthday. So he called he said, JP, I want you to record this. I said, Okay. You never asked me to record anything. So we went out and bought one of these twenty nine dollar recorders you plug into your telephone so you can record the conversation on a cassette tape, and we did. So he made up a bluesrift, a really cool bluesrift. He kind of made it up as he went along the way singing, and then he stopped in the middle of it. Now what I'm gonna tell you is quite amazing because John Lee Hooker was illiterate until the day he died.

Could even write out his own name, just his initials. Literary to the day he died, in the middle of this blues rift, He stopped and said Remember You will always be as old as your mind leads you to believe.

And then went right back to the blues rift again. Smokey, my dear buddy, Smokey Robinson, knew that he wants to be on stage. And he's one of the best performers and best singers in the world, the world's ever known. Smokey knows he's got to be fit. So Smokey learned along the time in his life, no matter what age he is, that if he were to do uh not only sit ups, but raises feet up in the air. Lay flat, raise your feet up in the air, which really tightens up your entire core. If he keeps on doing that, by gosh, he's gonna do it for a long time. He's 80, he's doing it beautifully. He looks like a gymnastics person. When I was in high school, 16 and 17 years old, I was in gymnastics. Uh my thing was the pommel horse, a side horse, a rope climb. But I also learned how to do things like from a handstand going to a full lever.

Where your whole body is uh parallel with the ground and you're holding yourself up with actually ten fingertips, two hands. That's it. So What I did was I started doing that, oh gosh, I'd say maybe 20 years ago, once or twice year, I would do it. And then I was with a lot of super cool people. My buddy Matthew McConahe had his birthday, and I went to his birthday. And these guys were so fit. It's incredible. Matthew being a nice guy, I was in a tank top. We were in the middle of the desert, and uh with his fifty of his best pals, and he kinda run me down with oil on my shoulder, saying, JP, here, let's put some oil on you. And all those guys were lifting away. They were all buffed. These little guys look like Mr America. But you know, Matthew McConaughey is a very, you know, well preserved, very buff person himself. Anyways, they said, JP, you know, lift twenty, thirty pound, lift whatever you can. I said, I'll bet I can do something you guys can't do. He goes, Wait a minute. He stopped me brought everybody over, right?

And I did exactly what you saw in that picture. In other words, I was able to raise myself up with my two fing with my two hands totally parallel with the ground. Nobody else could do it. So when Smokey and I got together over to this house around the holidays, we're visiting each other, or his wife, my wife, and some dear friends, we both did that. Let's get our feet up in the air together. And we did that. And right afterwards, I went into that full plank expand in the air. But the whole thing is this, don't limit yourself in life. by your age or what you think you're capable of doing. You're always as old as your mind leads you to believe. And there's a lot of things you could do if you truly believe you could do it. And if you can't do it now, do little portions of it until you can do it. That's incredible. He uh he meaning Robert described you as looking like Spider Man. What does your weekly exercise routine look like if if you have a somewhat consistent routine? It's not really consistent. I'd say though, probably three times a week.

I will do what they call navy seal pushups, these things you hold on to and twist, and I'll do maybe twenty five of them. Two, three times a week. That's about the extent of it. Maybe once or twice a month I'll pick up twenty five pounds. in each hands and you know do a couple of curls that takes me a minute and a half. And that's the extent of it.

Hm. I walk a lot and I walk fast. You walk a lot, you walk fast. Yep. I think walking is definitely underrated. And what does your diet look like? My diet is probably 90%.

to ninety-five percent vegetarian. I still, you know, like my fish, uh, my shrimp, uh, my Uh organic free range no antibiotic chicken. But I'm pulling away from that. In fact, I used to eat a little bit of meat, but I'm pulling away from that also. So I think that eventually it'll be more vegetarian with just a little bit of fish in there, but much more vegetarian. I think that's where it's gonna end up. Uh and a lot of people think that I think because of whatever old school medical people ever said is you gotta have meat in your body to be strong.

But then again I said, Well wait a minute. An elephant is the strongest animal on the planet. It eats no meat. Whales eat krill. They don't even eat fish.

And they're pretty strong too. And I believe to the best of my knowledge that apes, monkeys, gorillas, who are very, very strong are vegetarians. So that I'm kind of changing my eating habits. I don't I don't think man was made to eat meat. And uh I didn't believe that to more recently. So I'm kind of changing in that direction. Th I've had a a guest on the podcast, a previous world champion in Olympic uh or say world record holder in Olympic weightlifting named Jersey Gregoric, uh originally from Poland, who also uh primarily for prostate uh reasons, uh to lower inflammatory markers has moved more to a vegetarian diet, and he is One of the fittest humans.

I know. So certainly there are ways I think Uh to deviate from a meet. heavy diet, without a doubt. I'd love to jump back in time. Can I go before you do that, can I go to dive back a die because it's something good to share with everybody. Yes, please.

Oatmeal is one of the I eat oatmeal air almost every morning. And what I've done here is because apples are very good for you. If you take a whole apple and you'll of course cut out the core and chop it in little pieces, cook it with your oatmeal. Cook it with the oatmeal. Put a little bit of honey on it. Number one, you've got one of the most greatest foods ever, an apple in you to start your day. And oatmeal is one of the best things ever for your system in clearing you out. Another thing, too, and you could get it over the internet, it's called

Daily restore, like R-E-S-T-O-R, restore restore something, daily restore it. It's a probiotic that's made up of, I believe it's nine probiotics and uh oh god, I want to say uh maybe just as many enzymes, but they're doing research with it right now. Where it's found to do things that are so unbelievable to the immune system, it's even hard to believe. But if you go online, they have their medical research on that, you can look at it. But I've been taking those also, these super probiotics that they make that Daily Restore makes, that are just phenomenal. I mean there's I I haven't had a cold, I don't think in uh in twenty five, thirty years that I've even had a cold. Is there anything else that you consume On a daily basis or do on a daily basis, uh besides the oatmeal?

Very good. Most days, not all, but most days, I have a nice glass or two of a good red wine. Do you have a favorite one? Or is it isn't it? I have there's quite a few. I have quite a few. Yeah, there's there's some really good ones out there from uh Italy, from France, and from the United States. There's some really good ones out there. Uh really good ones out there. So I I'll let everybody take their choice. Uh for me, I would say from a from a United States of America wine, I like a Kamas private reserve. Camus is a good red wine.

But their private reserve cabernet is really incredible. That's a really good one. And there's others there too. There's other really good wines out there. Uh, you know, the Chateau Lafite, Rothschild's Chateau Margot are very good, too. But you know, even though you go to South Africa, they've got good wines out of uh Uh Australia good wines are coming in. I even had a great wine out of Chile and a great wine out of out of Spain. So there's some really good red wines out there. Try and get them without any sulfates in them, they're better. Let's uh strike a contrast with the Kamas private reserve and jump to a quote. that I read in research for this conversation, which may or may not be accurate, but it it's will jump from Camas private reserve to twenty seven cents. So the quote I have in front of me Is

Attributed to your mother saying to Your brother. And yourself. Quote, You know, between us we only have twenty seven cents, but we have food in the refrigerator, we have our little garden out back, and we're happy, so we're rich. Can you put that in context? Yeah, I sure can. We grew up with very, very little. It was my mother, we had a deadbeat dad. I never saw him after two years old until I was a teenager. Still a deadbeat dad. Anyways. So it was really my mom struggling to raise two boys. So my mom really struggled a lot to raise those kids. She worked in downtown LA designing hats.

But from the time I was eleven years old, my brother was thirteen, we had paper routes with the LA examiner in the morning. We would give our mom just about all the money we made out of the paper route so we could have a little better way of life.'Cause it was a bit of a struggle. So one day we were home and my mom said And when there's a lot of love in my house. Mom was just the most loving mom and she did everything. She took the place of a mom and dad both. She was just great. Anyway, she said, Boys, let's see how much money we have because we have food in the refrigerator. We have food on the shelves and we have our little garden around back. And uh it's the weekend. Let's see what we have. So we all put our money together. We came up with twenty seven cents between the three of us. My mother, my brother, and I and mom said

She said We're the richest people in the world. Look at this. We have everything. We're happy we have love and we still have some money. Isn't that wonderful? And we a hundred percent agreed with her. And that's where you go into what is the true meaning of success in life and rich. Success is not how much money you have or how powerful you are. Success is How well do you do what you do? When nobody else is looking. When I was in high school I worked for Stewart's cleaners, one of my jobs after school. And one day Stewart came up to me and he said

Johnny? You by gosh are the best most successful janitor in the world. I was upstairs the other night Looking around, I dropped something on the floor, looked under the bunk. in my mezzanine and there was no dust. I moved it. There was no dust. The cabinets were moved, there was no dust behind them. You did what nobody else does. You worked as if I was watching you every single minute. I'm gonna give you a twenty five cent race. Now when you're making a dollar and a quarter an hour

And you get a twenty five cent raise. That is a big deal when you're uh you know in in high school. At least for me when I was in high school in the late fifties, early sixties, that was a big deal. So I do wow, I was the most successful person. So success is how well do you do what you're doing and continue to do it at your best. when nobody else is looking. And how far have you come? If somebody came from being homeless to having a job, they're successful. If somebody went from being a janitor to all of a sudden getting races or a supervisory job, boy, are they successful. How well do you do what you do when no one else is looking? What is rich? Rich isn't money. You could have all the money in the world. And there's few people like this that are unhappy and unhealthy. Rich is

What are the priorities? Number one. is happiness. Number two. It's health.

If you don't have happiness, you're not going to have the best of health. If you have happiness and health, you have two of the richest things on the planet. Everything else comes after that. But part of it has to be You have to have a giving heart and be able to give to others and know that you're here not just take care of yourself on the planet, but do something to make life better for other people. You have all those things going, boy, you're just rich in soul and in heart and in thinking. And then whatever comes along after that's going to come along even more beautifully. Mm.

You mentioned you mentioned homework. I I think that we might as well segue there. I was sure I I have many questions for you and we'll probably bounce around, but You mentioned being homeless. Is it true that you've been homeless on not Not one occasion, but two occasions? Right, that is correct. Could you could you describe how Those

Those two periods of homelessness happened? Sure, it sucked when it happened. First time I was uh twenty two years old and I was working as a master of ceremonies at the second annual sports vacation recreational vehicle show. I was young, twenty two years old, but I got the job. Anyways, I came home from that job. And uh when I came home from it, it was down in Anaheim, I was living in uh the uh uh outwater area at that time of Los Angeles, and I was a young wife, very young wife, we were like a year apart, we shouldn't have even had kids. We had a two year old child. So I came home and as I came home and pulled the only car into the driveway, she came down the stairs and said, Oh, I've got to run over to the store So she took the keys and jumped in the car and took off. Well by the time I got upstairs she was long gone.

Right there smack in the middle of our little living room was our two year old son. with my clothed there, little pile of clothes and a note. Basically saying that I can't handle being a mob anymore. He'll do better off with you. Goodbye and good luck. Unbeknownst to me, what little we had in the bank. She totally took out this is all manipulated by her. She totally took out everything out of the bank the day before. Everything. But little we had, it wasn't a lot of little. She had not paid the rent or the utility bill for three months, meaning that she pocketed all that money. I was not gonna get paid for another

week to ten days from the uh the show that I did. Yeah, they give you a week you put in your request a week before you get paid. I had almost nothing on me. And then the next day, surprise. They were there to evict us. They had already put up notices which she ripped up for the eviction. So there we are, you know, down and out, flat out. and no car, no nothing. So I got a hold of this nineteen fifty one caddy with a broken

Water pump. You had to put water in it every four hours. And we were on the street. And the way we got a w around was When you're down and out you can only think about okay, the next thing is survival, got a place to live. We got pillows, couches, towels. We got all this stuff we just piled in the car there's some clothes. Gotta eat. So I went around to vacant lots.

And picked up soda pop bottles. In those days. Grocery stores and liquor stores. Took'em from you. You got two cents for a little one.

five cents for a big one. And we just went around collecting them off bacon lots, Coke machines, wherever we could find them, seven up machines. Cashing him in and that's how we got by. Short time later Right across this friend of mine who was what you would call really hardcore biker. And his name was Lee Meyer. You said JP, I got an ex room in my house.

Why don't you come on over, you and your son could be there and some of our biker mama's will help take care of him while you're out there working. So by that time I had landed another job. Uh but of course I wasn't paid either for another job for another two weeks until I finally got a paycheck out of that and and that's how we kinda got out of it. Second time was when I started Paul Mitchell. We needed a half a million dollars. There was no way I could start a hair care company for under half a million dollars. So we got a half a million dollars. A fellow named Dick Holthouse. Works for Citicorp arranged it for a European investor to invest it.

So Everything I was doing at the time I left. Hey, I'm starting my own business with my pal Paul Mitchell. We're gonna start our own business. He's a hairdresser, I'm a businessman and a formulator. This is gonna be great. I don't do hair. He doesn't do business. What a perfect combination. And we've been buddies for the last nine years, right? And the money's coming. So I left everything I did. My relationship wasn't going well at all at that time. So I left the newer car, even though it was a good use car, the newer car with my wife at the time, who had my child and uh and a daughter at that time. And uh I took the older car down the hill and to get the money. It was coming in at Bank of America.

It never showed up. Long story short. The guy pulled out. Why did he pull out? It's nineteen eighty.

In nineteen eighty our hostages were still held in Iran. Nineteen eighty and eighty one, we were through some bad times. We stayed in line to get gasoline. inflation in the United States Was twelve. Percent. Wow unemployment in the United States was ten and a half percent.

If you could get alone, I say if you could get alone. Prime rate on a loan. was seventeen percent if you could even get a loan. Terrible times.

But Between Paul and I we came up with three hundred and fifty bucks each. I had a couple hundred bucks in my pocket, live in my car once again, and uh that's how we started Sean Paul Mitchell Systems. We believe what we have was so good and all the people we had already set up gave us thirty day billing. So it was a matter of okay

We better do this, we better do that. In fact, if uh your listening audience has a chance Pick up the documentary. Good fortune. Like a good fortune. Good fortune's a documentary I did about three and a half, four years ago. It talks about the whole story how to survive to homelessness and how to create not one, but two businesses after that that turned out to be billion dollar businesses each. So you you've done so many things in your life and we won't go through the entire list, but you mentioned janitor.

Yep. Uh and I want you I want you to fact check me if I get anything wrong here. Sure, but I also Door to door encyclopedia cells. Oh, for three years sold encyclopedias door to door. Call yours. It's commission only. Right. So you have you have this long period uh of many different hats that you've worn. How did you get Two

Formulating. And The the John Paul Mitchell systems. Uh along the way I was twenty six years old and one of my jobs was working for Time Inc. in their circulation department of sports, Fortune Sports Illustrated and uh Life magazine. It was basically a boiler room where people would call to get people to renew their subscriptions or get new subscriptions. Well I went to my uh Vice President. I said, look, you know, I uh wha what do I have to do to become a vice president'cause I don't want to do this rest of my life. You know, I'd like to know how to go ahead.

You have no college, you're only a high school graduate, and you're only twenty six years old. Come back and ask me when you're thirty five. Well, I sure didn't want to wait at a job I did not like and all for nine more years. So a friend of mine, John Capra, was an employment counselor where people would pay him to get people to go to work for him. So you sent me on several jobs and I ended up after trying a few of them out to working for a company in the professional beauty industry as a salesman period to sell beauty supplies. Well, while I was that with that company, I went all the way up to national manager of two of their divisions with the company, but I got involved in learning how they formulated some of these products, who did it, how they did it, what they did, and then I worked after that, uh

They fired me, by the way, because I complained that they were testing on animals it was the wrong thing to do. Well, that didn't go over good with management, so they they fired me and told us wrong, wrong, wrong. They said, Well, you care more about animals and people than you do about the corporation. You're not a corporate guy. So they fired me. Right. That was Retkin, by the way, Retkin was the company. But I said, But well you're firing me, but why are you testing on animals? It's stupid. They said, because it makes us look good, we're the scientific approach. Anyway, so it's just as well I was gone. The next company I went to work for uh was a company purchased by Syntex, a big pharmaceutical company, a company called Fibidal. And Firmadoll is doing about eight million a year in business there in the United States, and they hired me to train their management, their sales management, their sales staff and educators. Well, in one year we increased the business by fifty percent.

But I learned while I was there more about formulating and where to go to get different things. And they end up firing me because once again I wasn't part of management. I cared more about people and getting them off the road and not leaving them out there for many, many weeks than I did about the company's expenses and what was cheaper for the company. So and also they had they had some things I didn't agree with that weren't very, very nice. Anyways. I went for work for a third company and I did very well. I I tripled their sales. There were very little, but I tripled their sales that first year I was with them. And uh they came to me one day and said, We can get somebody to do your job for only uh what half of what you're making or less. They said so there. I said, Well wait a minute, guys, I just tripled your sales. You're little, but your sales triple. How about this? You pay me the three thousand dollars a month, which my salary was. But

The six percent. that you're giving me for sales increases, you cut that in half and let me buy with the other half. Ten percent of your company said, No way, absolutely not. I said, but guys, you know most of the money I made was off Increase sales. They said I know, but the increase sales was so much that you mean more than the owner of the company. I said, Well let me get involved with everything we so I left. But at that company, at that company I learned more about formulating where to buy bottles, where to get silk screening and all this. So I was set up beautifully to be able to start my own company after that. And then I s I did. I started a consulting company, but I told you everything you needed to know in three months, you didn't need me anymore. So I'd have to go through a lot of clients. So that's when I decided let's start my own thing.

Let's let's Let's look at one of the themes. the the through lines here is being very good at increasing sales. You became the national manager of two divisions, I from g remembering

Correctly we just said it red can. Tripled sales at this company you just mentioned. How did you become so good at sales and what made you good at increasing sales? When I was selling newspapers door to door and delivering in the morning Uh we would deliver in the morning and the way we sold it door to door was we would go by after school and knock door to door and try to convince them to take the LA examiner for the morning delivery in our area. Every one we got we got one dollar for. So I learned how to knock on a lot of doors and take a lot of rejection.

But the big one was when I was in my twenties and I sold encyclopedias door to door. I got out of the Navy and I went to work for PF Collier Incorporated, Collier's Encyclopedia. And um I learned how to sell encyclopedias door to door. Now in my training class they said this to you. Look, and by the way, it was commission only. You and it even during training, you made no money. It was commissioned only with every cell. And there were no leads. You were door to door knocking. But they said something to me that I believed. They said

The people that make it'll make good money are the people That's Don't give up. A lot of doors can be slammed in your face, but you must be just as enthusiastic on door number one oh one if a hundred were closed in front of you. And I believed them and they were right. It took me over a week to get my first order, but I did. And uh I lasted uh three and a half years while I was doing that, which was uh more than the average three days on encyclopedia cellsman lasting in those days. So I learned how to overcome rejection, which is very healthy. And then when I got along the way and I started say other products I could only sell what I believed in.

So what I sell to people is this. If you're gonna sell something Don't really be in the selling business. You don't want to be in the selling business. It's one of the big secrets I give everybody. Whether it's a service you're selling or a product you're selling. Whether you work for yourself or somebody else. Don't be in the selling business.

Mm. In the reorder. Business. In other words, your service is so good. Or your product is so good that whoever you sold it to is wanna order it and reorder it again or tell somebody if it's a one-time product how great that product or that service was. That's why things work. You don't lie to people, you don't con people, you tell them the truth about it.

But in such a way where you could go back and see'em a month, a year later, and what you sold'em Service or product was so good, they're already reordering. And that's how I build and how I treat people and how I train them. Be kind to people, be nice to them, but at the same time look them in the eye and make sure that what you have is so darn good that you would convince your mother, if you love your mother, to get it, and here's why. Excellent. So then we flash Forward to I guess. Forward and backward to a few hundred dollars.

Along with Paul Mitchell. And you guys are are gonna take on the world. Yeah. What is what is the what is the pitch and who are you pitching? Well, We had it set up where all of our vendors, the bottom maker, the silk screener, the filler, and the warehouse that filled it for us, uh who had some of the uh ingredients, were all set up for thirty days. They knew what we're doing was gonna be big, they knew we had this money coming in. So what happened was this how do you deal when you have no money now? Well

I t it was a hundred thousand bottles was our first run. So I called up The uh Bottle maker. And I said, Can I just have A sample run. I didn't tell people broke. I just said, Can we have a sample run of only ten thousand bottles? They said, Oh, of course, we understand a sample run. I told the silk screener we have a sample run coming only ten thousand bottles. And I told uh the fillers same exact thing. So we would have

four thousand bottles of a conditioner Three thousand of shampoo one, three thousand of shampoo two. And It took'em from the time we said go. It took'em two weeks to make it and by the way, we had seven hundred dollars in our hand.

But the key thing was we needed the artwork for the silk screener. We went to him and told him the truth. Hey, your bill's a thousand dollars for this artwork. It's in black and white. Thank God we stop putting any color on it because we couldn't afford that. We only have$700. Can we give you$300 now and give you the rest later? He said no. He said, because I'll never get the rest later. Give me seven hundred dollars, it's a three hundred dollar discount and I'll give you your artwork. Well, we did. So all I had was a few hundred bucks in my pocket. I borrowed some money from my mom. A few hundred bucks in my pocket, Paul had the same thing. He was on his last money. And uh that's how we started. I piled stuff in my car. and drove up in Los Angeles then to a boulevard going salon to salon to salon. Now why do we pick salons? We had no advertising money, no promotional money. The three companies I worked for, the Redkin and the Firmadale and the Try, all three of those were selling to be salons. So we knew the industry. And we knew also that If you have something really good, we have a darn good product. Like really good.

And we knew if we had something that good and we gave it to a salon or a salon was using it, they would buy it from us and use it, they would see how good it was for their hands and the person's hair that they would want to reorder and recommend it to people to take home in between visits. And they did. So that's that's the market we went after and we stayed with that market. In fact, even today. Even today. If you ever see a Paul Mitchell product in any drugstore or supermarket, it is either out the backdoor to the black gray market or it's counterfeit or mixed together. We only sell the salons and the demand sometimes is so big that some stores will go to a salon, pay full price for it. take it up at one or two dollars as a lot as a leader and have it on their shelves. It's amazing.

You know, it's just amazing. Many times counterfeit gets mixed with the grey market product and that's sold to people also. And of course they figure, well, how can some of these big stores, these my God, these big chain groups have counterfeit or black market product. But they do. because they know they could get away with it legally. That's wild. I know. So you mentioned something earlier that I want to come back to, and that is

working with your suppliers and manufacturers and you said they knew it was gonna be big. So they What uh working with you on uh net thirty terms at thirty day payment terms. Sure. Uh how did they

How did you convince them that it was going to be big, so they should bet on you and give you those Darn good question. I presented to them Here, National Manager Reckons, Chain Salon Division, School Division, Firm It All, Response for all training and education for their management team and selling team.

Institute of psychology. Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Paul Mitchell, one of the most avant garde hairdressers of the day. So here's our credentials. So it was based on that and I took'em all I showed the letters about the five hundred thousand coming in that were sent to me, showed them all that, you know. So they said, Wow, this is cool. I said, So guys, will you work with me on this one, I'd like thirty day billing and here's what I would like. And uh that's that's how it happened.

And of course I was I was very presentable at the time and looked right in the eyeball and I was very sincere and very honest. And they realized that nobody thought someone would pull out the very end. So it's it's really funny because I know getting our first distributor in Los Angeles, I went to Paris Ace Beauty Supply. Jim Henrietta was a general Manager and president of that whole operation. Big piece of play store, huge salesmen going everywhere. And I went down there to show my products and uh I said, you know, God, if you uh if you'll take our product line on We will uh you know give you an exclusive on all of LA and Orange County, big area, right? And uh he laughed.

And he said to me, Well Why should I take your products on? We're Paris Beauty Supply. We have all the big lines. W why do we want to spend time to build your line when you guys have an unknown line? It doesn't make any sense. Well, what I did two weeks prior was I went up Venture Boulevard knocking door to door on salons. After a week, I got twelve orders. I delivered him on the spot and got twelve checks.

But they left the top line blank. So when he said that to me, I said Here's why you should get us. In front of'em I put out twelve orders and twelve checks. I said, see that top line, Paris A speech supplies going in it. I've already got your first twelve customers. And if you will let me to give you this line, just buy two thousand from me. If you have two because we were really hard up. Just buy two thousand dollars from us. You can have all of LA and Orange County, right? He laughed his head off and said, Oh my God, it's okay, but you better be here every single day.

working with all my salesmen till they sell it all, I said, it's a deal. I said there's one more thing too. We started out with virtually very, very little here. Uh but Can you please pay your your bill when I d when the orders arrive? He laughed and said, No, we're Paris AD supply. We don't pay our bill for forty five days. So I said, Well I'll give you a five percent discount if you'll pay your bill when it arrives. I said, I could do that much for you. He laughed and said, Okay, this is nothing I normally do, but I'll give you a break, but you better show up. Well he came to our twenty-fifth anniversary fifteen years ago, and he told all of our district says, So within five minutes of the time JP was in my office, My loading dock man called me and said, Hey, there's some guy here and loaded a bunch of black and white products on our on our steps here and he wants a check for two thousand dollars. She said he I laughed my head off. He said he was just in my office. And I went back and I gave JP the check.

Yeah. Ha. Oh. Because that is

What some of my friends would call Well, I think it was more out of that then. He was a great guy. Jim turned out to be just a fact. Give us a break. He was a good guy. Then Paul Mitchell took a whole bunch with him back to Hawaii where he was living and would go around to sell it to all of his friends and echelons. Yeah, you get

The uh I mean is a good word for it. The Yeah, I've been another P uh persuasion. The yeah sort of art of the cell. Did you get that from anyone?

In your family growing up? Is it something you developed on your own? Where did that How was that forced? I I would say twofold. Number one, my mother was always very positive. Boys you could do anything. She was very positive supportive. Second of all, in the three and a half years I'd sold in pet encyclopedias Door. To door. No leads.

I learned more about selling and about people than one could ever imagine. They're no longer they haven't been out there for twenty years anymore, door to door encyclopedia salesmen. I don't think that exists anymore. Maybe no more encyclopedia salesmen exist anymore. But boy, if they sure did, every one of my kids would be Doing that for at least three months out of their life to learn what it's really like and really learn how to talk to people and convince them to at least listen to you and give you a chance to tell your story. Yeah. Of course, since that time you refined it, you learn more and more better things. So I look at it as I'm not really a salesman. Uh though the word salesman describes it. But I really go out there and try and help people make the right decision on something that's could be good for them and better than what they have or something they could probably need.

One of the one of the best salespeople I haven't met with that was not technically a salesperson. He was he's actually a systems engineer. in technology. This is at a storage area networking company a long time ago. Jason, if you're listening, I'm talking about you. And He was also at one point a door to door encyclopedia seller. for uh some period of time and became, I want to say, a regional manager.

And he said the same thing, and it taught him more about selling and persuasion. and negotiating and so on than anything else he's done. What made you better aside from just sheer persistence in the face of rejection. Wait, were there other insights or techniques

But made you better than the competition. That's Yeah, I I tr I try to tell people the truth. Here's what you get, even though the presentation was kind of a an unusual unique presentation where you you're paying for everything but you get the main encyclopedias free. When in reality you're actually paying for everything, but it's all they call it a combination offer, right? That to be honorable. Like here's what you get and here's what you're paying. And here's why I think it's good for you. And here's why I think you might think it's good for you. And then we would talk about a little bit. In other words, you included I included the people in the conversation.

In other words, what you want to do is find a need in the marketplace and fill it. If the need doesn't exist then create a need that maybe wasn't there. For example, in Sacope of Sales. I would have to go to the library To work up things for homework. In an encyclopedia. If I had one at home it would have been great. Well we could never afford it. So I thought boy it'd be great. If someone could afford to have it set up and sacked piece in their house it'd be a wonderful thing. They can look it up right there. We didn't have computers in those days.

Mm-hmm. How does this translate to your experience with Patron? How did that come about? Well Patroni started in nineteen eighty nine.

And that came about I was sitting around with a friend of mine who had went bankrupt in the hospitality business, Martin. I went ahead and I was introduced to him and I was a joint venture partner with him where I put up the money, he did the work in a a unique architectural product company. He would go to Mexico, buy pavers and furniture. come back to the United States and sell it to architects for their model homes or to restaurants. You'd buy it real cheap there, very nice made furniture, by the way, and bring it up here. Well that did okay, but after a year wasn't really making a lot of money, but it was existing.

And then Martin was going down there to uh uh purchase some things. And I said, Martin, we were at my house making margaritas out of the tequila of the day. And I said, Martin, when you're down there Why don't you find out what the Mexican aristocrats drink? I bet you they drink tequila a lot better than what we're drinking now, where you gotta hold your breath to drink it. Or you do a shot, you know, or mix it with a margarita. Okay, so Martin came back with a couple of bottles, just long thin bottles. Uh and it was the smoothest the kill I ever had. He said, But JP, I met a guy down there named Francisco Alcaraz. And he said he could make it smoother. So

Make a long story short. He found this bottle that was made out of recycled glass. And I said, Martin Here's what I'll do. It is smoother and he's making it even smoother. I will go ahead and buy. By this time I'll still pretty good with Paul Mitchell products. I'll go ahead and I'll buy

one thousand cases. That's twelve thousand bottles. And even though it's very expensive to make, if everything went wrong. I'd be able to have a some of the best tequila in the world to give my friends for the next ten years for every occasion that came up, no matter what it is there, great ball of tequila. So anyways we did it. Well when we first brought it to the United States, Eric, nobody wanted to carry it. It was thirty seven dollars a bottle. And the average tequila was around four or five dollars a bottle. most expensive one I think was fourteen dollars a bottle at the time. Nobody wanted to carry it. We convinced a wine merchant who only sold wine

To carry the product. And sell it. And we would promise that if they would do that, I personally would go down to hold their sales meeting and uh you know, we would show them how to sell it. And if they took us on, I would get them one of the top accounts in Beverly Hills and Martin would get them one of the top Mexican restaurants. And they said, Well, if you guys could do that, let's give it a try. So we did. Martin went to his friends at Baja Cantina in Marina Del Rey I went to my friend Wolfgang Puck at Spago's the hottest restaurant of the day there in West Hollywood. And he took it on. So we kept our promise. But after a year they were selling very, very little. And so we dropped them.

We took on Jim Beam. This is a good story for your listeners. We took on Jim Beam. Very big company, by the way, they had distribution everywhere. And they had some very, very good uh alcohol that they sold themselves that they made. But they decided to take us on. After about a year and a half, they were only selling I believe it was about twelve thousand cases a year. So Martin and I sat down with them Guys, you know, we've been going around opening up little nightclubs or restaurants for you and you know, and and we contributed something, but you know, you guys only do twelve thousand. You should be doing you know, we thought we could do like fifty, sixty thousand one day of this product cases a year, you know? They said, guys, let's tell you the truth, okay? You do have.

the best tequila in the world. There's no doubt. But your price is too high. People don't want to pay that kind of money. I'm going to tell you guys, you will one day reach twenty thousand cases a year, but that's about it, guys. We dropped Jim Beam and took on Seagrams. Crims took us up to seventy thousand cases a year. And

We thought we could do a heck of a lot better. We went to court with them, ended up buying them out of their agreement with us, which we did, and we took over the distribution ourselves. And then it started going up, up, up, up, up, up, up. And then uh Martin Crowley, unfortunately, died of a heart attack back in uh the early two thousands and Mr Ed Brown, who's our president, he was vice president of sales at the time, immediately he should have been president, I made him president of the company and we focused on really doing this property. Ed Brown gets ninety percent of the credit for all of this. He really does. Sensational man. He brought on a great team and we built and we built and we focused on Patrone being the star, not uh beautiful girls you know the ad, but the patron was the star. And then we started bringing it out to other people and other channels. And through Paul Mitchell, my hair care company, we would have a big event every year where two or three thousand of the top hairedressers throughout the United States and the world would come to it. And we would serve them free patron. Well they would go back home and ask for it because it was so good.

I'll make a very long story short. I sold my interest in Patron a year and a half ago. When I did, we were approaching overall with everything in the company, we were approaching close to four million cases a year. That's just under fifty million bottles. You know, I think the Patrone cells alone were, oh God I don't know, maybe three million, three hundred thousand, something like that. But with all the rest of the things, it was approaching four million cases. So the lesson to be learned here is if anybody tells you something where there's limitations You don't necessarily have to believe them.

It sold. for the highest amount ever paid a company in the alcohol business. Why? It was the finest product ever again, going back to the very, very best.

That you have. Your service, your price ought to be the best here in the reorder business. And we did a lot of good things to make people happy and honorable. We would throw Big events for charities. We would take care of orphanages. We're still in fact rebuilding houses down at the Saint Bernard project in New Orleans. At least we were up until the time we sold it to McCarthy. I don't know if they're still doing that or not. So, you know, it it was all built on some of the principles that I learned along the way and other people learned too. And of course Ed Brown really instilled a lot of it into people. How

Was it for you in the beginning? Uh learning to navigate and maybe there are similar regulations and legal limitations and so on with Uh with the Paul Mitchell, but with Patrone, I would imagine there's there's a lot to navigate from a regulatory and legal standpoint. Uh that difficult? What was that like for you? Well no, because the reason it wasn't difficult was because I knew certain things attorneys had to do. And as we started growing bigger at Brown knew everything else had to be done.

But Martin and I at the very beginning knew there were certain things to do and Martin, I financed the thing. Martin was able to go out there and get it registered the way we were. So Martin gets the credit for that and Ed Brown for once it took off, uh by God he'd put all the other things into place. If someone were to and I'm sure this has been done, but let's just say Harbour Business School. There's a case study on Patron. What do you think? Some of the the best decisions would be strategic or otherwise that they would highlight in that case that's First of all, if you want to see the raw side of it, uh a lady named Ilana Edelstein.

wrote a book called The Patrone Way. And she shows the other side behind the doors of Patron what went on in her life and Martin's life. That was Martin's girlfriend. What went on in their lives, which was very unusual to have a successful business. Very unusual. But it worked. You know, we went into this business not knowing anything about alcohol, but we learned along the way. But it's very interesting to read that book of hers. It's a great book to study off of. And what I would say is this, you could start a business, and as long as you believe what you have, which Martin did, okay, and I did, is going to be the very, very best. There's no limit to what you can do. But there's certain things you've got to do. And once again, it would have never been as successful as it is if we did not have the best product on the market that people wanted to reorder. And again, we told people the truth about Patron. We gave them samples of Patron so they could taste without even buying it many times. And uh you know th these are just some of the secrets. And if you also take a look at again Good Fortune, the documentary, it lets you know how to build a company from uh from

Basically scratch. Gives you a lot of advice there, too. So let's If you don't mind, look at the pricing for a second. Fascinating to me.

I've always been a proponent of of ultra premium when possible because there seems to always be a market for the best, whatever that category might be. So you have Yeah, probably. Hela.

In the landscape in the US when you enter the market selling for four to five dollars. And then you come. out with a bottom sells for thirty seven dollars. Right. So let's just pretend But we're talking cups of coffee, right? So four to five dollar cup of coffee right now, say Starbucks. And you want to sell

The retailers, Starbucks are independent on a thirty seven dollar Yeah. that is the best of the world. What were some of the things that you taught the retailers? In your

Field meetings. Coming down to help them. Oh, that's such a great question. We told them this. When you sell it to a bar.

Or you sell it to a uh a liquor store. Tell them this. If somebody wants tequila, you could say yes, we can get your favorite one, or you could treat yourself and get a bottle of Patron. Yes, we can give you your margarita or for a dollar more you could treat yourself and we could make your margarita with patron. The best of the world. Little things like that.

Of tremendous, tremendous help. Tremendous help. Yeah. No, a dollar. A dollar per mixed drink involving tequila and that certainly provides a significant revenue stream for

That given bar, for instance. Oh, and then that turned out absolutely. You're right. And it turned out to be later on for three dollars more you could have Patron. Yeah. Amazing.

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to get your Eero delivered with free next day shipping. Yeah, I've read the profile. This is this is a an older profile. Two thousand thirteen. This is an Inc. magazine.

At least at the time. that and I'll just I'll just read this. This may have changed, but I'd love to hear Certainly in two thousand thirteen email was ubiquitous. The headquarters proposal Mitchell and Patron each have a fax machine for one purpose, communicating with me. That's referring to you. I don't use email or a computer. I would be so inundated that I wouldn't be able to get any work done. Instead, I do everything in person or by phone.

I have a phone book that's fifteen years old filled with white I rewrite I carry that everywhere. That may have changed, but can you speak to How you did business. I really like your questions'cause it's hard for people to believe. Nothing has changed. Today the majority of what I do is philanthropic, whether it's representing, you know, Paul Mitchell or uh or or Rock Mobile, any of those companies. Philanthropic the majority of what I do these days. Even with Patron. you know, and philanthropic uh uh associated with some of these companies. They give good credit for that too. But I do not have email

I do not have a computer that I turn on. All my all the companies I've involved with are very computerized, state of the art. But all my companies have a fax machine that I'm involved with. And I have a fax machine, whatever house I'm in at the time I have I have fax machines. And here's the reason why. If I was on the internet and I had email, I'd be so inundated I couldn't do all the wonderful things that I do right now. I couldn't do it. I'd be fully inundated. And I also I'm from the old school. I like personal contact. If you call me or you'll write me. Chances are I'll either take that same letter and answer you back on that same piece of paper, or I'll pick up the phone and call you. And hey, how you doing? You know, nice to talk to you here. You know, and I I'd like to communicate with people. I think that's missing a lot in life today, where you don't communicate with people. And also

By not having email. I'm able to pay attention. To the vital few. And ignore the trivium any. Mm-hmm.

I'd love to hear you expand on that because this is something so many people strive to do and so many people fail to do consistently. How do you determine for yourself what the vital Few are uh and uh happy to look at philanthropic activities, uh, but it's sure it'd be also helpful to to hear a few business examples.

I think it's just for me example of like what's important. For example, one of our Paul Mitchell schools uh is concerned about a challenge they have. and they write me and ask me about it, well I'm liable just to pick up the phone and call'em and say, Well Here's your challenge. Here's how I think you should overcome it. And we talk about a little bit together to overcome it. Or if we have our peace, love and happiness ride, for example, I do that with my friend Gary every year. Around my birthday, we have the peace, love and happiness motorcycle ride. Well, we had a big challenge this time. Uh

No nobody's gonna get together with more than fifty people because of this uh stupid virus that's going around right now, which is very bad. So Gary and I said, Okay, we talked about it over the phone and he's one of my neighbors, so it wasn't long before he ended up coming down to the house here, but over the phone we talked about it. Gary, let's do this. Let us both have the right. If it's only you and me riding, this ride will still continue. It's gone on now for seventeen years. We're going to still have a peace, love, and happiness ride because whatever money we raise goes to first responders that are injured or killed in the line of duty, like paramedics, firemen, police officers, things like that. We're gonna h we're gonna still do that. And a lot of it goes to to the military. We do for the Navy SEALs also and uh first uh shall we say military people that come back injured. We try and take care of them too. But so we said we'd have it together. Then Gary came down the next day and we planned the whole thing out together to still have our ride. Uh it's it's things of that nature. You know that you're just nice to pick up a phone and talk to somebody.

Uh if you have a if you have a big account less here in business, uh either for yourself or representing somebody else, they're so used to everything being emailed, it's kinda nice every now and then to make a call to them and just say, hi. I'm just calling and see how you're doing. Or there's something really good going on here and I thought I let you know about it that uh you know, I'm a hundred percent behind you I'm doing something really nice for you. Instead of asking them for something, just tell them something you're doing nice for them. People like that event that that hasn't happened a long time in our uh our business community. I think it should come back more. People to people communication. I agree. I agree. I think uh also with the perceived isolation that a lot of people are gonna have

uh in response to this virus that It makes it all the more important. And I I also want to take a second just to thank you for supporting first responders. And these are really Uh the the front line And the safety net for

us all in many respects, whether that's military or certainly at this point healthcare workers. And uh frontline. Method. I W in response to the Covid and all the ramifications of that. So I I really appreciate you supporting

such a integral Heart. Uh support system for our entire society. I just think it's I think it's it's easy. these people when you don't need them, obviously, or you don't realize that you need them. And it's in times like this.

When it becomes So obvious. How much they have dedicated their lives to Helping.

Others. These people are heroes. You know, we come onto this world with absolutely nothing. Every one of us came here naked. Then we have nothing when we come into this world. Regardless of what our parents have, we have nothing. But I think it's a little bit like paying rent for being on the planet Earth and being alive on this planet. regardless of your financial situation, to do something for somebody else asking nothing in return. So a lot of these first responders, it's their job, but they go out there and do it. And after they save lives or save houses or people or animals, they go and say, Hey, I'm the one that's saved to thank me. They do because it's their job. They picked out that as their job to be of service to others. Those are true heroes doing it asking nothing in return, but either doing their job or we people that are involved in philanthropy and anyone just helping somebody out by caring something for them is philanthropic. When ever you do something for somebody else and you ask absolutely nothing in return.

It's the greatest high you will ever get. Higher than whatever we smoked in the sixties. Yeah. That's true. That's true. I've spoken to some of these. first responders in the medical systems, your ERICU in New York City and Washington, so on. And uh it's it's just incredible how

Uh Grounded. Many of their them are in their sincerity With the oath that they took. Uh in in beginning their medical careers. It's uh it's really

Just incredibly Admirable. Uh So I don't I don't want to necessarily take the conversation totally in that direction, but I I think it's important to at least mention uh I have a note here on

Annual retreats. And Ha I'd be true. to hear you expand on the importance of annual retreat that you certainly take do this.

But yeah, if you could speak to what you do on these retreats and how you think of them. I try and take us to be once a year, now I do it twice a year. Or uh maybe every six months. I try and do it every six months. Where you take off by yourself, go someplace by yourself. Cook your own food. Do everything by yourself to take care of yourself. And in those days. I usually do it for three days. In that time you

Yep, piece of paper, uh like a tablet with you. And you write down on there, at least I do. I write down on there. All the things in my life. the light that I'm doing. And the people. I can't write all the people'cause a lot of them, okay, but you know, just ones that really stand out. And then I write all the people I'm involved with or situations.

That I'm involved with. that don't make me happy, I really don't want to be involved with. And then my goal the next year is to get rid of those. And it's Very seldom do people ever stop and think of what who do I want in my life, who do I not want in my life, and why. It gives me a chance to see who I want in my life, who I don't want in my life, and why. And what I like that I'm doing and what I don't like, what I have that I don't need and what I want to get rid of.

It was just kind of looking at yourself and the first night I'll cook dinner, have a nice glass of wine, and that next day morning I'll write pages worth. By the time I leave, I'm down to maybe ten items. because I've really condensed it to okay, here's what's really important, here's what I want to change, here's who should not be in my life anymore. I'm gonna make plans to immediately get them out of my life. Here's what I don't want to eat anymore, here's what I don't want to do anymore, here's a business I don't want to be in anymore. You know, w whatever it is that you want to change your life to be happier, you could do it in that period of time. at least give you a good start on it. And kind of reassess yourself. Because life is short. I don't I plan to live to be a hundred and twenty five years old, but life is short.

And even that hundred and twenty five years is gonna go by very, very fast. So you know try and take each year'cause you never know what's gonna happen. Uh by God, I have a book full of people, probably over forty people that I've known over the last uh forty years, they're no longer with us. They they left their earthly bodies. They dropped them and they're elsewhere right now. So you never know when that's gonna happen. So it gives you a chance to at least every six months if you could do it or at least once a year if you can't, to take a few days to yourself, even with only two days to yourself. You know, and and look at your life. What you like, what you don't like, what you want to change, what you don't want to change, and not wait For something to happen. To make you change it.

You're in a lousy relationship. Or I'll wait till it gets really better, she says something and I'll leave, or he says something and I'll leave. Well no, that's not gonna happen. You're gonna be a misery until it does happen, if it ever happens or it doesn't happen. Or I hate the job I'm in, but I'm sure one day something else will come along and you sit in that job. Well, why not look for something and make a change? You don't want to be, you know, older in your life. You look back and say, God, if only I would have changed that when I was ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years old. I wish or seventy years old. I wish I would have not done that anymore. Changed or done something different. Well It's an old saying that we had in the nineteen sixties, probably before you and all your listeners were even born, or they were little children at that time. It was this, today is the first day of the rest of your life. Mm-hmm.

And it is. Each day is the first day of the rest of your life. They could go more in your direction. Th this is this is something I'd really love to love to dig into a little bit the biannual or annual retreat. And

Uh specifically, you you you strike me as someone as very decisive. Uh very strategic. Mm. What language or approach do you use

Two Cut ties. With the people that you no longer want to have in your life. What is your approach or how would you suggest People approach that.

I would say in many ways. Number one, if it's a social contact. Don't get involved any more in any social things that they're doing. With you they advise you to, or you don't advise anything that you have. Don't call them on the phone. And uh just kind of, you know, let'em go. I mean it's not like they there could be some good people.

that you love but you know they're just not good for you in your life. So it's a matter of and I got this from this wonderful lady, this Greek friend of mine that said this. You can always love people, but if they're not right for you or they're negative people, especially negative people that just gossip about everybody else. Love them from afar. Like I love you, but stay over there, stay away from me. Love him from afar. In other words, start disconnecting physically. Or telephonically from them. Just stop doing it. Just stop period.

And if they're contacting you or reaching out to contact you, do you ignore? Do you have a a particular response to that? How how would you How would you I would say well but my normal thing would be to be kind. I don't want to be mean to anybody. Nothing wrong to me, but I've seen'em do wrong to other people and I just don't want'em around me. I would just t say to them, for example, one thing would be, you know, thank you very much, but I'm really involved with some other things right now. Do you mind if I get back to you in a month or two, would that be okay?

That's it. Mm-hmm. That's it. Keep it simple. Yeah, I'm not saying I'm gonna call you the month, you might get back to you the month, but you just gotta keep that distance and little by little it goes away. Little by little it goes away. When you're flat out or flat out in your own personal life they're there when you say, Hey, you're wonderful.

And I'm wonderful. But together Things just aren't going right. We've got to make a change for your sake and my sake. This way nobody's wrong. The worst thing you could ever do is say, you're wrong, you're bad for me, I don't want anything to do with you. Then the person really feels uh uh uh invalidated. Oh my God, they feel terrible. But if you approach it where you know it's hey, I'm not the best thing for you, it's obvious because it's turning out you're not the best thing for me because I'm not the best thing for you. And we're both good people. I think we should go our our own ways.

And that's tough to do. That is so tough to do. Stuff to do. Um Uh I I would also be curious to

to ask you about Any patterns you may have seen. in these retreats when uh When you have

Looked at the column of things that you want to do more of. or the things you want to do less of, or the people you want to spend more time with versus less time with. Have any patterns emerged that you that have helped you make better decisions moving forward? We're like, you know what, consistently This pops up in the positive column or consistently this pops up in the negative column. Yeah, Yeah, and let me put negative in there also. The hardest thing that I found to do, but it's easier now the last year or two of my life. is to say no.

I got this great, I wanna show you. No Thank you. Can we do this? No. You want to go here? No. I really want to no. Hardest thing was to say no or I don't want to.

But you can. You have nothing to lose. Other than and the only person that's hurt by you not doing that is you. Yeah. How did you how did you uh become better at that? Why did it change? Two years ago.

I did I I I did have, by the way, uh l let's call it a a divine revelation happen to me. You know, it's fired from those three companies. Redkin uh Firmadol as well as Trio. Sorry from all three companies. But when I started Paul Mitchell a couple of years later, I realized something. One. They fired me.

Two, I was doing a good job. The more important This is fate. And I not. Work for all three companies.

And learn something different from all three. I could have never started Paul Mitchell. was seven hundred dollars, let alone five hundred thousand dollars. I could have never done it. So a lot of times things are done Because it's fake. It's fate that dictates you in that direction.

And that's something you gotta remember. There's fate. Many times you can help direct fate. By being able to say no or look at an opportunity And go for it. No. It is a short and powerful word that

I think almost everyone Needs to use More of the You know a lot of things that I've told you could also go into one sentence. And it's this. Successful

Or happy people. Do all the things unsuccessful or unhappy people don't want to do. Mm. Like say no. But don't do this because there's something that'd be better for you if you didn't.

Yeah. Well on that uh on that theme Yeah, in the laugh. handful of years doesn't have to be anything specific.

Are there any new beliefs or behaviors, habits that have most Positively affected your life? I think the one that most paus sure. I think the one that most pausily affected my life this last few years is the ability to say No. I'm not interested. No, don't even present it to me with all due respect because I'm over I'm overloaded with things to do. But I do it in a kind way. I don't I don't I don't do it sharp and cut anybody off. I do it in a very nice way. Is the ability to say No, I don't want this. I don't want to do this. No, I don't want to hear this. To be able to say no, but say it in a nice way. That was one of the biggest things. Next thing is to learn how to just be. And then I've learned the last few years how to just be. You can enter a room and just have your presence in that room without having to talk to everybody if you don't want to.

In other words, how to just be or by yourself, just be. Just be like you in the room. or you in the middle of a crowd just be not having to Talk to someone because you feel, Well, I gotta talk to someone I can't just stand here. Talk to them because you want to. But be able to be on your own.

And like yourself and just B. I was one th I go in a room, I'll talk to everybody that's in that room, but how you doing? You know, I'll talk to everybody. But sometimes it's good to s you can still do that, but just know the power of just being. just be you as the entity that's within your body. So let's put it this way, regardless of what your beliefs are. We all know there's some kind of a life form in us because when we go and we die All that's left is let's just call it meat that's starting to rot, okay? There's there was something in us. Whatever your beliefs are, what happens when you die, that's that's up to the individual. But so there's something in you. Well, there's something in you, why can't you just be and all of a sudden

Look through your eyes. and feel that maybe that entity isn't inside my brain. Maybe an entity is surrounding my body by about a foot or two around me. When you do that, all of a sudden your space starts expanding, you say, Oh wow. I feel like my space is expanding. I was looking through my eyes and my brain, I thought, but now I'm kind of Looking at the world a little different way. Just learn how to be.

And as at Life Form Inu. Even though you're looking through the eyes could be expanding around you. It's it's a different outlook that you have on things. Big different outlook. Do you uh ever practice that being or that expanded consciousness? Uh outside uh

Of your body. At home? Is that something that you have as a regular practice? Uh no it's not a practice. It's just with you, whether you're inside or outside, it's just with you. In the words, if I were to stop right now and say, Okay, where am I? Well, me the entity is surrounding my body by a few feet. I'm still seeing through the eyes, but I can feel the energy around me.

I could go in a room and do the same thing. I could be in a crowd a bunch of people and it's the same thing. It's just been developed over time. And there's many, many different practices that'll get you there. many different practices and it's not rites and rituals that you pick up out of uh no disrespect to any good books that are written. There are a lot of really good ones there. It's uh it's the acknowledgement of realizing it yourself that you actually realize and see it and feel it. Uh is like whatever the mind can conceive and believe the mind will achieve. It's pretty strong. Yeah, you you have a treasure trove of

Of quotes and maxims. Uh Is there a particular quote and it could be the one you just said, but is is there any particular quote or maxim that you Live your life by or think of.

Yes, there is, and it's probably one of the oldest one around. People talk about it, but very few ever practice it. And it's one quick little sentence. Do unto others. as you would have others do unto you. Mm.

It's an oldie but a goodie, but it sure is real. Yeah, Are there any uh Any books that you have gift frequently to other people.

Or any books you've re read. Yes, there is. The one I've given away the most and I suggest to people is 70 or 80 years old. The name of the book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

This book. is one of the best books ever written on how to acknowledge and peep make people feel good when you talk to them. It's basically in words how to how to be respectful. It's like do it to others as you have others doing to you. But it's one of the best books and I recommend it to so many people. How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. Maybe it's nineteen dollars and paperback, maybe it's less than that, but it is a great book and people should read it twice. Because it's That good.

And it really teaches you how to talk to your fellow man and and you know be be confronted by your fellow man, they confront you and how to communicate with people and make them feel good. That is an excellent book. I just want to want to second that recommendation. I read that. many many years ago and have I've read it multiple times. It's an older book. So of course there are aspects of it that have have aged, but the principles uh really stand the test of time. That's that's uh fantastic.

Fantastic book. Uh are there any other that come to mind? Uh well I I would say for people to understand that You could be fired from jobs. And the book hasn't been written yet, just the documentary was made and still make it in life because you help other people out. And that was what I mentioned earlier in your show. Get the documentary, uh Good Fortune. I I think it's four dollars to rent it if you wanted to on Amazon or YouTube or one of those. But uh it it lets people know. But the important thing is

How to do it. Succeed and grow. But do it by helping others along the way and asking nothing in return. And I'm sorry to write a book on that right now. And it's taken a long time to write this book, but I'll eventually get it done. You've spoken about we've spoken about

the times that you were fired. Uh Are there any particular failures of yours that you think were extremely important in terms of teaching you lessons or somehow

setting you up for later success. Are there any that come to mind? Definitely. I'd say quite a few of'em. For example Uh oh many years ago. When telephone reselling was popular, I got into that business where I invested money in it. Where you invest money in a company and then they buy so many telephone minutes real cheap and they turn around and sell it to somebody else for a little bit more. Well, you know, I I lost a lot of money in that thing and didn't go well, but I learned a little bit about that business. But the business failed, but some of the knowledge stayed with me. And then later on

I got involved in another business about 10 years ago that was going to revolutionize cellular phones, how we communicate with the world. Well, today that business I stuck with it, today that business is rocket R-O-K-I-T, rocket phones and wi-fi systems, rocket R-O-K-I-T. We now have a telephone that's out that we just started selling here in the last year that it's a regular smartphone. But it has on it. Three D Without glasses.

Yes. three D movies without glasses on a cellphone on a smartphone. It also has what the world needs right now, and that is telemedicine. Seven days a week, twenty four hours a day a doctor's on the phone with you, looking at you, you're looking at them, diagnosing you. Uh it also has Wi Fi for the world where someone can buy the cheapest SIM card they could have like just for talking text for maybe twenty five dollars, whatever for just talking text. So you have the number, but you put it in this phone and with the worldwide wifi we have, you call it anywhere in the world and it doesn't cost you anything. And it has a lot of other things on it. But if you go online to Rocket or O K I T, you could someone can look it up. Rocket phones and what it does. But the revolutionary thing was I learned how you have a lot of expensive things, but sometimes having the very best and being too expensive doesn't work either. And I learned that with telephones, some failing.

I tried before to come out with telephones years ago. It went nowhere. Never even got off the ground. So I learned. If you have the very, very best and you could put it in everyone's hands realistically, wow. Well the top phone That rocket sells. This is a top smartphone. This is a first class smartphone all the way. is two hundred and ninety nine dollars. That's the most expensive one they have. And then I learned also by working with people like Nassau, the space agency and others, that there's a lot of good agencies out there that are government type agencies or related type agencies that want to work with you. Nassau just became our partner. We now can develop phones and hopeful we'll have the first ones out in a couple of months. But when you touch the phone

The back of the phone. Neutralizes. All the bath stuff in your hands. See, when you're in outer space, there's a lot of bad stuff up there and you can't have bacteria floating around or viruses or anything. So they have a coating that goes on the back of a phone, that is going back on the back of our phone to our our partner. That when you touch it, all of a sudden all that junk and all those diseases on your hand are neutralized by just picking up your cell phone. So what I learned through failures trying to be in the technical industry that I knew nothing about was get for some people that are very honest and get with people that are really on top of on top of their game. Make them your partners one way or another, and all of a sudden offer a better product

of better quality, of better things that others don't have, and don't have to charge them the fifteen hundred dollars that our research said we should charge for these phones. Now of course we have phones that you know for less than that, quite a bit less,$99,$50 and so forth, but I learned that through failure. Today, uh we're doing really good. We're rolling out through stores right now, over the internet, and it's doing quite well, not just in our country, but several other countries too. Yeah, if if we take We could take Rocket as an example.

Yeah. You mentioned you're not you're not on email because you would be inundated. How do you ch how do you choose the for profit and philanthropic Project that you dedicate your energies to because you have, I would imagine A an embarrassment of riches in the sense that you have

more opportunities to choose from than you could possibly ever take advantage of. That is correct. How do how do you choose? The first thing is whatever I'm gonna get involved in, it's only as an investor these days, whatever I get involved in a little bit of advice and a lot of PR, whatever I get involved in. Is it gonna do the greatest good for the greatest number and does it excite me? to think this could happen.

Even in your technological fields, I'm not a technocrat, so I'm not technologically well educated, but I know enough to know what the end result of that technical advancement is. And I say, oh, this would be great for everybody. Well, I'm excited about it. Are you kidding? This is super. I know the first time I was uh overseas And I made phone calls to the United States on one of our phones and it cost me absolutely nothing through rock wi fi. And I'm used to having when I'm overseas very expensive cellular phone bills. I thought, This is great. I can't wait till everybody hears about this thing. I can't wait. My God, think of all the money they're gonna save if they save that money to buy something nice for their family or invest it someplace. You know, those little those tens of twenties dollars and the hundred dollars a month adds up. So I got excited. It's what excites me. It's what excites me. And right now I'm over in a date. I get more things thrown at me for it also a lot of them are for no money. JP just get involved with us and you help direct us a little bit. And my answer is guys I don't have the time. Uh Philanthropically I'm more involved than anything else and what businesses I'm involved in now, my investments are only what they are. You know, I'm I'm I'm kind of tapped out right now. I'm I'm over inundated because I I I spend less than twenty percent of my time on business. The rest is doing something good to change the world.

Could you describe what that looks like for you? That that eighty percent that is non business? How do you uh How do you how do you currently Spend your time that way. Oh my goodness. So well I told you about the Peace, Love and Happiness Ride. We talked about the Sea Shepherd.

big support of the Sea Shepherd. Uh they had a movie on about them, a T V series called Well Wars with uh Paul Watson. Uh and what we do is we go to the open seas and we stop those that are poaching illegally, like the Japanese that were killing ille whales illegally on the open seas, they you expose it all to that whale wars thing. Anyways We were chasing them down. And uh there are also poachers that are poaching turtles, things like that. And oh my God, it's terrible. Killing sharks needlessly. It's it's crazy stuff. So my involvement is I talk with Paul, I talk with Sea Shepherds, I hold events for them, I go to events for them, and when a lot of the poachers were out running our ships, I bought them a Coast Guard cutter.

and we refitted the whole thing, painted camouflage blue, so we go right after those poachers and stop the destruction of these species going on on the planet right now. On uh Grow Appalachia, I went around the country trying to find out how I could help out our nation in 2009, 10, and 1. when unemployment was very high and a lot of people were on food stamps and I decided the food industry. So I went out and I partnered up. I looked for a good partner and I found Brea College out of uh the area of Kentucky. And they partnered with me on this and I financed the entire thing. Well, we went out and my goal was let's take there's 150,000 people in the Appalachian Mountains. That's about six or seven states that are on food stamps. I'm going to get at least half of them off food stamps. So we started growing Appalachian where we had teams that we paid for and others that were volunteers where we would go out and teach people in the Appalachian Mountains how to garden. I would pay for their irrigation.

There Uh supplies. their tools, their seeds, and their know how to teach them how to grow their own gardens. Number one was you grow enough food for you and your family and here's how you can, so there's a lot of food for the winter by putting in these jars. Here's how you can food, right? So that your first year you're self sufficient. Your second year You grow more this was the goal and a lot of them did it. You grow more than you would normally grow and now you sell the access to farmers markets or local grocery stores has organically grown local produce and make yourself some money. Eventually you won't need the food stamps anymore, but when you send the food stamps back, please have a letter. Do not

Put this back into the pile for food stamps. Take this off the federal deficit. The deficit is too high because while I had nothing. I got food stamps. Now it's time for me to pay back and lower that US deficit. And I asked them to do that, and hopefully they did. Well a lot of them went now all of a sudden saying, Well let's expand it. So we bought them a dozen chickens. Now they have all the eggs they could possibly want. Some have Honey. We have bees there now and uh it w expanded, expanded, expanded. So I would spend time going back and forth from there.

Talking to people doing interviews about it. Uh for the homeless. We have the most incredible things here in Austin, Texas. We started it's called the community. Mobile loaves and fish is the community. We built and Alan Graham was the genius behind this. I just picture the money and some of my time. We built Two hundred and forty little houses.

for homeless people, chronic homeless people, people that have been without any kind of a shelter for at least a year. Those are those living under bridges, leaving in tents, but no no place to go into. They'd be the first ones with another priority to go into the mobile loads and fishes but community here in Austin. And to go there, you gotta pay rent. You gotta pay some rent, not a lot, but a little bit of rent, so you feel like you're part of it. If you give somebody a hand out, they feel like uh this is charity. They don't feel good. If you give them a hand up, they feel good. So you charge a little bit of rent there and we also have gardens, wood shop, metal shop, craft shop, and so forth. And a lot of them now have an income because they can make craft, they can go in the garden, they can work, they can sell all the extra stuff. And I just built recently we're building right now actually an entrepreneur center, a big one. So that if they have an idea, they go to that one center and there's little things in that center set up to help them make their entrepreneurial spirits come true. And then building for them also or helping them build an aqua center so they could grow their own fish there. So now they have vegetables, they have fish, they have a way to start making an income. And uh these are ways that make people

that before were on the burden of the community, now a lot of them are getting jobs and they're paying taxes and they still have a beautiful place to live in a beautiful community. I did the same in Los Angeles, um because that's where I was homeless. And I'm a was a big contributor for many years and up until this last year, I haven't got around to this last year, but I'd go down at least once a year and lecture to them on homelessness. Hey, I was homeless. Here's how I got out of it, guys. You know, and if I could do it, you could do it. And that's just that's just a couple of examples of some of the things that we do. They're enormous. With Bobby Kennedy, uh Waterkeeper Alliance, my God, saving the waterways of the world. We started with the United States, where we would go in, raise money, and we would Bust the polluters. Even the big guys. We would bust them in court. One of the biggest cases took us sixteen years, but we won. And what do we do? We leave all the money locally so the local community we leave it all locally. We raise our own money. So the local waterkeeper group can be able to have boats or hire people to make sure that they patrol the area And that it's never redone again.

Work out really well. You mentioned uh Quite a few things, including the community. I'm here. You know often.

As well, and I have not yet been. I have friends who have been to the community and have said it's just Incredible. That it's it's it's It's really Uh. It boggles the mind as to how well line of the

Elements are working. Uh oh, let me tell you about a new one. Oh, I gotta tell you about a new one. Oh God, I don't want to forget to say this one. This I just got involved with a couple of months ago and uh there was an article in our uh review journal here in Austin about it. Is a little group started and I gave them uh, you know, six figures to make it a little bigger group, uh, you know, they have a little more there'cause they need it that badly. Here's what they do. And I'm a hundred percent behind these guys. They have a hundred and seventy some odd volunteers. Only one person was on payroll. Now they have a second person'cause I was able to handle that for them too. But here's what they do. They go around to they have about fifty and I want to expand it now to three hundred. They go to fifty different Restaurants?

Grocery stores. teatering services and they get all the leftover food. For example, if you make a fresh sandwich to sell and it doesn't sell in eight hours, well they get rid of it. Well this is all picked up by the volunteers and they take it directly to whether it's mobile loads of fishes or food bags for those that are s are are hungry, they take it directly to the source. So all this food that is wasted the United States probably wastes thirty forty percent of its food goes directly to the people that Need it. And someone's already picking it up so they don't have to destroy it and delivering to the other people. This is gonna be an answer, by the way, to the United States and other parts of the world on people that need food. All the food that's thrown away, the companies

The restaurants. The caterers. The uh the people that have the sandwich shops, the whatever. Still have the same customers, but instead of throwing it away. the good food is going to people that really need it that aren't their customers anyways.

Everyone benefits and that's really exciting. And this I think is gonna be a beautiful, beautiful uh example and how the rest of the communities throughout the whole United States and other parts of the world could do it. It's very exciting. Exciting. And I will include links to everything that you mentioned in the show notes for people, which they'll be able to find at pin.blog forward slash podcast. And I just have a few More questions, you've been very generous with your time. And uh I don't want to Show up your entire afternoon, but just just a few final questions.

And uh I'll start with one. Yeah. Uh That I always like to ask because

You are clearly very high energy. You've been massively productive. then uh Focused. To an extraordinary degree.

In many chapters in your life. Could you speak to a And you did mention some hard times, but could you could you speak to what you do of doubt if you have them or when you've gone through emotionally difficult times.

Uh what are the The the tools in the toolkit that have helped you to get through those times or out of those Those lower periods. The old way was I would get a piece of paper

And on Alphabet. Right. All the challenges and things not so good about that. On the other half of it would write what I could have learned from it and not make happen again. And then I always remember that whatever happens, this is the hardest part of it all, whatever happens, no matter how bad it seems.

one or two years from now, you're gonna look back and say, Oh God, I wish I didn't get that upset about it. So I'm gonna give you a one liner that I remember and hopefully you're listening on us remember also,'cause it proves to be true in ninety nine percent of all cases. Here's the one liner. In the end. Everything will be okay.

And If it's not okay. It's not the end. Think about all the things that were happened in your life. Think about all the things that were hassle in your life. And you look back at it a year or two later and well it f we we got well, I got through it. It was okay, I got through it. But the time you don't think that. But if you just put your head no matter what happened the past, all the bad things even happen to you or any person out there.

In the end, everything will be okay. And If it's not okay. It's not the end. Yeah.'Cause many times the things are really bad. Oh, this is the end, Oh my God, it's terrible. I I hate it, it's never gonna end.

Good thing to Is that Is that the type of Reminder or mantra that you use. early on in your career or for instance when you were homeless the first or second time?

No. Nope. That was only recent. My first or second time homeless it was Okay, I gotta eat. Where do I get money to get food? That was that was my first that was my only thought. Are you kidding? I wanna eat, you know. Where do I get money to get food? Where do I get money to get food? I got the shelter of my car, where do I get money to get my my thought was first of all was the next party food. Where do I gotta eat?

Gotta eat, right? Gotta eat now you got food, I got clothing already, shelter, I didn't eat care, it was okay. It was the first thing. Next thing was, okay, how do I get a job? You know, what do I do here? How do I how do I create something there? Like one step at a time. It's a it's kind of like it's a cinch by the inch and it's hard by the yard. Yeah. Great one. One is a time you gotta win. Soon as you get a win, it gives you that energy to go on to the next one.

One step at a time. Yeah. You are you have a We really uh Yeah. Just incredibly

The broad spectrum of Of uh of of lines. So I'm gonna I'm gonna be greedy. I wanna ask this question. Feel free to say I've given you enough or You you can give me another, but

If you had a a gigantic billboard. Um, metaphorically speaking, I mean let's just call it a billboard to put A a quote, a question, an image, a word. on which would be transmitted to billions of people. What would you consider putting

What might you consider putting on that billboard? In big letters. Do unto others. Dot, dot, dot, as you would have others do unto you. And in the end, everything will be okay. And if it's not okay, it's not the end.

That's what I would put out there. I love it. Uh well I So, Paul, this has been so much fun. Uh pleasure, sir. Uh You're a real pleasure to uh to spend time with. Hopefully we'll have a chance.

Uh once we get through the storm of uh coronavirus to to spend some time in person. And uh I uh I thank you on behalf of my listeners for all of the incredible stories and lessons learned. And uh I I I hope we get a chance to do it again. Yeah, bet, buddy. Thank you so much and and my love, peace, and happiness to all your listeners.

Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite. of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Solutions. Right now, the world is changing, a lot is changing, and businesses are adapting in different ways. So in these uncertain times, how do you ensure your marketing goals are met? How do you ensure your marketing gets the results that you need and want?

With more than 62 million decision makers on LinkedIn, you're able to connect with the right business leaders, as well as people who are looking to find products, services, and education to help their companies. It's no surprise that 78% of B2B marketers rate LinkedIn as the most effective social media platform at helping their organization achieve specific objectives. LinkedIn can help you build campaigns using objective based advertising, allowing you to customize the campaign experience based on the action you want your customer to take. In other words, that's true whether you're trying to drive clicks to a website, generate leads, or even generate video views. My team that is Tim Farish show team, is using the platform right now on LinkedIn to invite people to sign up for my Five Bullet Friday newsletter. LinkedIn has targeting tools that can help you focus on reaching your precise audience down to their job title, company name, location, and more. In fact, you can reach people you already know based on who has visited your site or who you've contacted in the past. LinkedIn ads can help all types of businesses get the marketing results that they need today. See how LinkedIn can help you with a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign. Just visit linkedin.com slash TFS.

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