Tom Bilyeu: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. You are here, my friends, because you believe
that human potential is nearly limitless, but you know that having potential is not
the same as actually doing something with it. Our goal with this show and company is to
introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams. All right. Today's guest is the quintessential rags-to-riches
story. He was born to immigrant parents, grew up
hard on the streets of East L.A., and drifted in and out of biker gangs, but ultimately
took himself from homeless to self-made multibillionaire. His life literally sounds like it's been ripped
from the pages of a Hollywood screenplay. His father left when he was just two years
old. He had to sell newspapers and Christmas cards
at the age of nine to help support his family. At one point, he and his young son were forced
to live out of a car. He ended up having to sell encyclopedias door-to-door
to make ends meet, and even that success proved fleeting, leaving him homeless again at age
36. As with any great Hollywood tale, things were
darkest just before the dawn, and he ended up turning a fortuitous encounter with a hair
stylist named Paul into an idea for a company, and despite the backers pulling out at the
11th hour, the pair went on to launch and grow through sheer force of will what is now
the global powerhouse, Paul Mitchell, a company that made him a household name and fantastically
wealthy in the process. That was just the beginning. Less than 10 years later, he cofounded an
even more successful company called Patron Tequila, placing him in the very rare pantheon
of entrepreneurs who have had multiple home runs. What makes his success so beautiful is that
he's done it the right way. Putting his employees first, John Paul Mitchell
Systems has had turnover of less than 70 people in 35 years. He has baked philanthropy into the core culture
of all of his companies. Please help me in welcoming the recipient
of the Horatio Alger Award for Distinguished Americans, the philanthropist and founder
of the Peace, Love & Happiness Foundation, John Paul DeJoria. John Paul D.: Thank you so much. Tom, that’s a great introduction. Thank you very much. [Inaudible 00:02:29]. America still works. Tom Bilyeu: That’s a perfect place to start. Reading your story, it really feels like the
American dream that I grew up with as a kid, that I'm not sure people think of as the same
American dream. If you had to define the American dream, what
would you say it is? John Paul D.: That when you think that there's
all the opportunity you want and you don’t know any better, you go after it. In my generation, it was a pleasure to work,
whether it was at the Variety Boys Club at seven years old making flower pots, going
out and selling them, or Christmas cards at nine or going on the streets at 11 years old
delivering morning newspapers. For us it was fun to work. Now what did we do with the money? We gave it to my mom so we'd have a better
way of life where you’ve gotten to high school. My brother and I saved a little bit of it
for our car, which happened to be a junker, but we rebuilt at an auto shop, but because
for us, it was a pleasure to work. Just because, wow, we got a job. It was so cool. It was a little different in those days than
today. We also knew that if we produced something,
we produced it. If we want to go somewhere, you got to do
it. If there's problems along the way ... I love
to say this, especially to entrepreneurs, one of the great secrets in life to becoming
successful, whether it's in a business, whether it's working with someone or for someone or
in your personal life ... I learned this selling encyclopedias door-to-door in my early 20s
... is be prepared in life for a lot of rejection, because if you're prepared for a lot of rejection
and it comes, you don’t get turned off, you don’t get disappointed like, "Well,
I'm not going to do this anymore. No one thinks it's a good idea." It's like I say selling encyclopedias, knock
on a hundred doors, they slam them in your face, you must be just as enthusiastic on
door number 101 as door number one. That’s one of the real secrets. Growing up as kids in downtown L.A., we all
knew that. We didn’t have a lot. There's a lot of things that are going to
turn you down. At seven, trying to sell a flower pot on the
street, most people said, "No." "But it's only 50 cents." "No, no, no." Soon, a waitress in a little restaurant said,
"Only 50 cents. That’s really great." She bought it from us, and we went and built
another one. You don’t give up. Tom Bilyeu: That really is one of the secrets
of the universe, in my opinion, that ability to stay as enthusiastic on door 101 as you
were on door one when you’ve had it slammed in your face over and over and over. Is that something you can teach? In fact, have you imparted that onto your
kids? Is that something that they’ve adopted,
and if so, how did you pull that off? John Paul D.: Definitely. It's just like your viewers of your fabulous
show here. They just certainly say that. Now if they write that on a piece of paper,
"Be prepared for a lot of rejection," whether it's in their personal life that someone says,
"You're too old, you're too fat, you're too young. You're not going to get anything other than,
yes, you’ve got holes in your nose, you got things coming out your ears." Whatever is other than, "Yes, this is wonderful,"
realize that it's going to happen in life. As soon as people know that, when something
goes wrong, they look at a piece of paper, "Oh, yeah, that reminds me." The other quote that I give people a lot,
especially entrepreneurs, is any business you're in, whether it's a service or whether
it's a product, or anybody you work with that has a product or a service, always make sure
that your product or your service is of the highest quality you could ever make it, because
you do not want to be, you do not want to be in the selling business. You want to be in the reorder business. Granted, you’ve got to tell somebody what
your idea is and how it's going to cure, something they may need, but the quality has to be so
good that after that, they want to reorder it, or if it's a one-time item, tell friends
about it. If people think in whatever they're doing
in life, be in the reorder business, whether it's with a personal relationship, whatever
you see right now, you're to see again and again and again it's going to have ... There'll
be ups and downs. "Here's my product. It's so darn good, you're going to use it." We started Paul Mitchell. We had no money, but we knew our product was
so darn good that if we got it in the hands of enough people, they're going to be reordering
it because it was that quality. Service is the same way. Tom Bilyeu: I love that stance. You can see that across all of your companies,
that you're really going for the best of the best, to make the experience better. Getting to understand your technique in selling
is easy once you get to Paul Mitchell, and I do want you to walk us through that in a
second, but how did you get through tactically to a sale in the encyclopedia world? People don’t want to hear from you. How do you overcome that? John Paul D.: What a question to ask me. The average encyclopedia salesman lasted three
days. I was at it for three and a half years. The way it worked in those days, it was commission-only. The way it worked is you went for an interview. They told you all you could possibly make
off commission-only, and we were in training for three days. It was a presentation that was scripted. We'd have to memorize the whole thing. When you go out in the field, you remember
parts of it. You knock on doors, you're not quite sure
of yourself. A lot of doors are closed in your face, but
what happens, after a while you start getting used to it and you see what you can say or
do that'll make it better. When you go back the next day with your other
salespeople, what did you see, what did you do, what did I say? Let's say I knock on a hundred doors to get
into one, give 10 presentations to sell one book. Then, when you get better and better at it
through your experiences and losses along the way, it sharpens you up, where all of
a sudden I got to a point where if I gave three presentations, I have no less than one
order commission-only. I believed that I could do that. I believed that Collier's was the best set
of books because a high school student could read it. It wasn’t like a college manual you had
to read. I was doing something good for somebody. You have to believe that what you're doing
is good, it's going to benefit somebody, and you learn as you go. Okay, do I look someone in the eye? See, a lot of people don’t know these things. Look someone in the eye. All too often, people say, "It's hard to look
someone in the eye, because you feel uncomfortable." Of course you do. They're not on the same wavelength you're
on or the same frequency. What do you do? How do you overcome that? You learn these things along the way. You look them right between the eyes or at
their eyebrow. Looks like you're looking them in the eye. I've been working on a book for a couple of
years with some of these tips. It's not ready yet. Maybe next year it'll be ready. Tom Bilyeu: Oh, man. John Paul D.: There's all these things, and,
of course, smile. Smile is the most wonderful thing God gave
us. You don’t smile when you first talk to somebody. You smile before you knock on their door. If your day sucks, you fake it, "Hi, how you
doing?" Because when you smile, everything changes. Things will change. Tom Bilyeu: That’s interesting. I've heard you talk about that before, how
even on a phone call, if you smile on the other end. If somebody's having a bad day, you were like,
oh ... If you walk into an elevator and people are totally turned in on their own world,
that just a smile can literally change their brain chemistry. I think that’s really, really a powerful
reminder. How much do you think that doing the door-to-door
sales sharpened you, trained you to be successful in business? John Paul D.: Tremendously. If they still sold encyclopedias door-to-door,
all my children would be inclined and made to do that for at least three months. What an experience. You're on your own. You make no money unless you do something,
and they're not even expecting you. You go there door-to-door and try and get
in and try and tell, "Some of these books are going to be good for you. Here's how you use them." Tom Bilyeu: Yeah, I really hope that people
listening heard that, that if that was a thing, you would still make your kids do it because
it's such a profound proving ground. It's a way to sharpen your skills. It's a chance to handle rejection. I did door-to-door sales for a while. I was not the man you were, I assure you. I did it probably for about three or four
months. It is the loneliest, it is so awkward. They don’t want you there, and you have
to literally, each and every time talk yourself up, get in that space where you can come-
John Paul D.: Every one. Tom Bilyeu: ... put the smile on. The people that are able to do that and develop
the internal gain in order to get to that point, I think is just super critical. John Paul D.: Sure. Tom Bilyeu: A lot of people want the easy
answer, not realizing that going through the hard thing is the thing that’s ultimately
going to toughen you up. Right? You're struggling, hard times befall you,
you’ve got to go do something. How do you know what to do? John Paul D.: Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you don’t know what the hell to
do. You're just out there doing it, and you just
kind of learn from your own experience or go with whatever your heart tells you to do. If something goes wrong, you ask somebody,
"God, here's what I said. Was that right?" You just kind of improve yourself. Many times if you're there, you don’t have
an answer, go with your heart. Give an answer. Just say, "I really don’t know, but I'm
going to find out and I'm going to get back to you." Tom Bilyeu: Yeah, I love that attitude. Were you actively saying in your head as you
approached, going up to knock on these doors, that each one of these is an opportunity to
learn something? John Paul D.: Mine kind of was ... This is
in the beginning, okay, was, "Successful people do the things unsuccessful people don't want
to do. I'm going to knock on their door." Ta, ta, ta, ta. Tom Bilyeu: You just literally repeat that? John Paul D.: Oh, yeah. That’s where I learned that one phrase. It's a great phrase, my gosh. Then if you're going out there for three or
four hours, and then you still haven't gotten in the door, given a presentation, the second
phrase ... God knows where it came from, it just came to me ... was, "When the going's
tough, the tough get going." One more door, one more smile. It was tough. It was, I think, a week before I even sold
my first set of books, but I just kept going. Tom Bilyeu: I love that there's no secret
formula to your success, that it's really been these basic building blocks, convincing
yourself to do it. In fact, walk people through how do you go
from ... You show up one day and your wife is walking out the door, and she hands you
the keys and basically she leaves. You're in your darkest hour. You’ve explained pretty well how you don’t
get stuck at level one. John Paul D.: Right. That was level minus one or two, okay, at
that time. I'd been the master of ceremonies for the
Sports, Vacation, and Recreational Vehicle Show that weekend. I had something new to do the following week. Whatever little money we had in the bank,
she took. That check coming from them wasn’t coming
in for one week, and needless to say, she didn’t pay the rent. I didn’t know it. Didn’t pay the electric bill. Within three days, we were out of there. I was kind of down. I think at that time, coming from an environment
where you run across a lot of things that are very disappointing, I just looked at,
"Okay, I have no money. I have a kid." Got ahold of an old car that was loaned to
me. We got a house now. We could put some of our stuff, our blankets
are going there. I close the door and they're right ... We'll
store the rest at my mom's house. I was too proud to tell my mother, "Mom, I'm
down and out. I got a kid. Bella split. Mom, can I have my room back?" My son next to me. I was stupid. This happened twice in my life. I was ashamed to even tell her. I knew that there were Coke bottles everywhere
in those days or soda pop bottles. Two cents for a little one, five cents for
a big one. I went around collecting them, which helped
with ecology, cashed them in. In those days, every grocery store, every
liquor store had to give you the money. Tom Bilyeu: How did you keep going, though? How did you not, "Okay, I'm out of survival
mode now, so now I'm there." Most people stay there forever. How did you get to the next level and the
next and the next? John Paul D.: For me, it was I knew I had
to work, plus I had this little kid. I would drop him off at two and a half years
old to a little nursery school. At that time, the one I went to was free. The city actually had one. I'd go out and have to have a job. Me and the other guys we were around didn’t
have jobs. I knew I needed a job to take care of myself,
my son, and be able to one day have enough money to get an apartment and move on. I knew I [crosstalk 00:13:53]. Tom Bilyeu: Did you plan things like that
out? Did you say, okay, list item number one, apartment
or job or ... How did you put the plan together? John Paul D.: Number one was just survival
period and not having to tell my mom what I'm going through. Again, it was pride, stupid pride. Then after that, it was one thing led to the
other. I had one thing, the survival part was taken
care of. Then it was, "Okay, what do I want to be doing
and how do I do that?" The first thing is you got to have an income. You got to have a job. Then you started getting it together and things
fell in place. Now along the way, there were jobs I had where
I was fired at those jobs for the dumbest reasons in the world, but each one I was fired
from taught me something. There were three companies in the beauty industry
I worked with. I was the vice president of two of them, and
the national manager of one of them. Each one of my divisions did very well while
I was there. In one case, I was the trainer for the whole
company, and they grew 50%, millions of dollars while I was there. Shortly after I started with 700 bucks John
Paul Mitchell Systems, two years later, something flashed in my mind, "Wow, there is something
called fate. There is something called your destiny. If you don’t do it, be open, it could do
it for you." Had I not worked for all three companies,
it would have been impossible to start John Paul Mitchell Systems with $700.00, any amount
of money. Each company, I reflected, taught me different
things. One about the beauty industry and distribution,
the other one about making products or bringing top artists in, the other one about how to
make these bottles, these products, where to get it. All three were stepping stones for me, and
I never knew it. Goes back, Tom, to what we were talking about,
rejection, be prepared for a lot of rejection. If every time something goes bad where you're
rejected or turned down for something, if one could remember that, be prepared for it. This was a surprise. It was a surprise to me. I didn’t expect it, but when it happened,
it was, well, it's meant to be to do something else. I was just meant to do something else. Look at the backer. Our backer pulled out. I needed half a million dollars-
Tom Bilyeu: For Paul Mitchell? John Paul D.: ... to start John Paul Mitchell
Systems. Tom Bilyeu: Yeah, yeah, this story's incredible. John Paul D.: I had to have half a million
dollars. I knew that. Our backer pulled out the last minute. Never got a dime. I stopped doing everything I was doing. Tom Bilyeu: How last minute are we talking
here? John Paul D.: Like that day. We just had to pay for the artwork, $1000.00. Then we had the silk screener set up, the
bottle company set up, the filler set up. It was all set up with 30-day credit, because
they knew me in the industry, I did well. It was going to go good. Now what was the blessing on that one? We struggled, but we believed what we had
was the best. The blessing was we each had 30%, the investments,
if you have 40%, we end up with owning the company. Tom Bilyeu: Have you ever talked to the investor
that pulled out? John Paul D.: Nope. Tom Bilyeu: He's got to be kicking himself. What an incredible opportunity. That’s like a master's class in business
right there. John Paul D.: Necessity, it was the necessity. Tom Bilyeu: Yeah, but so many people shut
down with necessity. Look, it's not a surprise that with that attitude
that you’ve gone on to have the kind of success you do. The thing that I try to really get the next
generation of entrepreneurs to understand is there's just tactical business principles
that you have to understand. Some of it's pure psychology, and some of
it is just knowing that there's always another solution really if people break down the things
that you do. Ending with the final thing that I think you
have a real gift for, which is the things that you're telling yourself to stay motivated,
to keep pushing forward, to understand that when you're at that dark moment that there
is a path out of this and that you have to look for that and keep pushing and smile. All these really basic things that you’ve
stacked on top of them. How, then, do we go from that to the Paul
Mitchell that we know today? John Paul D.: Obviously, it was hand-to-mouth
for the first two years, but we knew we had the best there was. We just kept on working it and working with
it, telling hairdressers, "We'll be the first one to never cut you out." Most people have gone in the beauty industry
and said, "Hey, we're only going to be in salons." A lot of companies, all of a sudden they're
in department stores or in drugstores and supermarkets. We kept on telling people, "If you ever ..." we
still do today " ... see Paul Mitchell in any drugstore or supermarket, it's either
counterfeit or from the black market. We don’t put it there. We only put it in salons." The demand for Paul Mitchell exceeds where
you could get it. It's only in salons, and maybe only in 10%
of all salons. People want the best there is and people could
actually pay full retail in the salon for Paul Mitchell, put it on their drugstore shelf,
up it $2.00, and they sell every bottle they have because people don’t know what it cost. They just know it's really, really good stuff. We kind of kept with what we had and always
made sure any new product we came out with was the best it could possibly be. What's interesting about the beauty industry
and quality, my first three products are still some of the best sellers. We've had them now for almost 37 years. It's that quality. Make sure your service or your product is
the very best it is. Plus, we gave back along the way. We gave back along the way. We were the first never to test on animals
and say, "You can't." We were ridiculed. Our competitors put us down because they were
doing it; 10, 15 years later they had somebody else do it so they could say, "We weren't
doing it." We helped change things and we were very proud
that we did that. We kept our values and kept it only in the
business and realized there's no free lunch. We kept on working. Tom Bilyeu: You seem to have a really strong
internal set of values. When did that begin to take shape in terms
of policies that you could implement in the company? Was it right away? Did that take time? John Paul D.: When I worked for other companies,
some of them, not to mention any names, were so bad. They would treat people the old way, "I'm
the boss. Here's what you're going to do because I'm
the boss." There were times, for example, when maybe
you had a dollar for lunch. You can't get a lot for a dollar. I just knew that that’s how I was, and if
I had a company that I had control of, by gosh, everyone's going to be treated the way
I wanted to be treated. The minute we could afford it, everyone had
free lunch. Whether you had money or not, you have free
lunch. We pay for it for you. Carpool, we'll pay for that. We started doing things for people that I
wish happened to me. Maybe that’s part of fate. Maybe because a lot of things along the way
weren't so good, that as things started getting good, it was so easy for me to share with
our people, so easy to do that. People sometimes don’t save money. As soon as we possibly could afford it, we
started profit-sharing where at the end of every year, we'll take that profit-sharing
and put it in a retirement fund for you. It's yours. It's yours. If you're here so many years, it goes with
you no matter where you go. It's yours. That’s your money. Tom Bilyeu: It's really incredible. How much do you think that that sort of golden
rule approach has fed into your ridiculously low turnover rate, which is literally almost
unprecedented? That’s crazy. John Paul D.: I try and treat people exactly
the way they'd want to be treated, exactly the way I would have wanted to be treated. I'm happy with my people. I realize my people are the company. If my people go, my God, the company goes. People are your company, and they take care
of the customer. The customer is always right no matter what,
so what do we do so the customer is happier? If somebody's unhappy, we try and discover
why, and because you treat people this way ... We love them. You walk in our company, it's love. If you go to the front desk here in Century
City, this girl just has the biggest blessing, "Hi, welcome to John Paul Mitchell Systems." She loves what she does. Our big problem is we don’t have turnover. We have so many people who want to work for
us, and the thing is you got to wait for somebody to die. Tom Bilyeu: Good thing to have. John Paul D.: Now as we grow, we'll add one
or two on, obviously, at a time. Tom Bilyeu: Sure. John Paul D.: We're pretty big now because
we're in 96 countries. Patron's the same way. We're in about 130 countries in the world,
and even when I went to visit our people in Mexico at our facility where we make Patron,
it's made with love. We have about 16, 1800 people down there,
and I asked several of them, "Does it upset you about what's going on in the United States
where they may close more of the border? Do you guys want to go to America?" Everyone I asked said, "Are you kidding? We get free lunch here. We work at night, we get free dinner here. You're so nice to us. You pay us good money. No, we're fine here. We don’t want to go." It's how you take care of people anywhere
in the world. You don’t boss them around. You include them in what you're doing. Tom Bilyeu: How do you systematize that? Because I get it if you're there every day. Everybody I've ever heard talk about you,
and some of them are people that I know, everyone says you just exude ... What you put on for
the camera is you. That’s really how you are. There's a warmth to it, there's a sense of
love and appreciation. How do you systematize that? How do you make sure that it pervades your
company when you're not there? John Paul D.: We let all the companies know
what we do and why we do it. We have a culture. I'll give you an example. We have, oh, God, almost 120 Paul Mitchell
Schools throughout the United States, cosmetology schools. Every one of them has to be involved in our
culture. We do learn to be a great hairdresser, a stylist,
great colorist, but you have to be part of the culture. They raise money. Every school we have has to raise money every
year. Part of that money goes to the local community,
part to the nation, and part to the world. They learn in school while it's good to give
and help others out. They also learn what our principles are. Now we started at John Paul Mitchell Systems
a very unique position. The lady that’s running it, her name is
Mara Gourdine. She is our ambassador of corporate culture. What she does is goes around to our whole
company, makes sure everybody is reminded of our culture, what we do. All new people must go through indoctrination
on what our culture is all about. Then recently ... because we do so much stuff
that people don’t know about ... we started a magazine over the Internet that goes to
our whole universe and their universes that shows what we do as a company to share and
change the entire world. Everyone connected with us is part of that,
whether it's buying a new Coast Guard Cutter for the Sea Shepherd to protect whales in
the open seas, whether it's taking care of 7000 orphans in Africa whose parents have
died of AIDS, whether it's redoing Appalachia, whether its here in Los Angeles, Chrysalis,
getting homeless back to work. They're all part of it, all the things we're
doing in this country, so they all feel like they're part of it. When you're part of something really big and
people take care of you and love you and you know something went wrong, you can immediately
get ahold of the founder, cofounder of the company, me, and talk to me directly. I live mainly in Austin, Texas, but if I'm
traveling the world, which I do a lot, get ahold of my executive assistant and say, "We
want to talk to JP privately." Whether it's Paul Mitchell, John Paul Pet,
ROK, Patron, all companies do exactly the same thing. We try to take care of people. If someone screws up, we remind them, "Hey,
how would you like that if that was you? You wouldn’t like that." Something I want to share with your guests
also, if I may. Tom Bilyeu: [inaudible 00:24:49]. John Paul D.: If any time someone screws up,
don’t ever, ever reprimand them in public. Always reprimand them behind closed doors,
one-on-one so nobody hears. If they hear it, they're going to be covert
hostile to you. They’ll stab you in the back every chance. It's the opposite for praise. If someone does something good, praise them
loudly and in front of as many people as you can, even if it's one person. It makes them feel good and they were acknowledged
in front of others. Little things like this helps keep that culture
going. Tom Bilyeu: Oh, I think those little things
are super crucial. The obvious question is to say, okay, how
do we look for the right person to hire into that environment? I'm going to ask the flip. How can a potential employee evaluate a company? What should they look for in a company? How should they be in an interview to get
the job? John Paul D.: In life, we don’t always know
what we want to do. I didn’t always know. But in life, we find out quickly what we don’t
want to do. Tom Bilyeu: Very fair. John Paul D.: When you look for a company,
try and look at what it is you want to do. You don’t have to be boss. What is it that you enjoy being around? What makes you get up and say, "I can't wait
to go to the office"? We have people at Paul Mitchell working at
seven, eight o'clock at night. They don’t have to. One day I walked in, there was 10 of them,
"What are you doing here?" "We want to finish our project." "You don’t have to." We all went out to dinner. It was like, God ... Because they love what
they're doing. One is find out what you want to do, and then
try and find whatever you can about the company. Now if you go online, there's going to be
nothing but nice stuff or in the newspapers, but if you get a chance to talk to them. When you go down to be interviewed, just ask
them, "If you wouldn't mind ... " Talk to a couple of the people. The receptionist is a great person. When you walk in, "How's it going? How do you like working here? Is it a happy place or just very business-like?" No one's going to reprimand you for that. Be sure when you go on your interview ... A
lot of people aren't confident enough to do this. It's a small thing. Look the person in the eye or look them between
the eyes, on their eyebrows if you can't look them in the eye, okay? Just relax. The more uptight you are, the more you try
and be exactly perfect, the more you're going to turn somebody off. You see that all day long. Just go in and be yourself. If you're hired for being yourself, you're
going to like it. If you're hired for being somebody else that
walks in to interview, you're not going to be happy. They're not hiring you. Be yourself. If it flows, they ask you questions, you have
the right answers, it's the right thing for you, you're set. If it doesn’t work while you're being interviewed,
for you or the other person, it's not the right thing for you. Maybe there's something else waiting for you. Your destiny could be elsewhere. Tom Bilyeu: Yeah, very true. When did you first start thinking about philanthropy,
because in the beginning I'm sure it's just trying to get the business off the ground? But it really does seem foundational to your
companies. When did that really solidify into a "These
are the causes that we care about. This is what we're going to give them." John Paul D.: Another beautiful question. It started when I had nothing. At six years old, my mother would take my
brother and I to downtown L.A., department stores, Christmas, little trains going around,
puppets. We thought we were the coolest kids to see
that. I was six years old at the time. My mom gave my brother and I a dime, and it's
just something you never forget. She says, "Boys, I want you each to have this
dime. Walk over and put it in the red bucket of
that man ringing the bell," and we did. We said, "Mom, why did we give that guy a
dime?" Now I'm older than you are. In those days a dime would buy two big Coca
Colas or three candy bars. Tom Bilyeu: Wow. John Paul D.: That’s a while ago. She said, "Boys, it's because that’s a group
called The Salvation Army, and they help people that have no home and no food," she says,
"and we want to do something." She says, "In life, there'll always be someone
that has less than you. Don’t forget it, boys. This year, we can only afford a dime," because
we didn’t have much. "We could afford it one night, but we did
something, and if we couldn’t afford this dime, I'd be volunteering, ringing the bell
with him. Always do something in life if you can, either
with your time or money to help somebody else out." I never forgot that. It just came as part of the culture. It started with my mom. Tom Bilyeu: What are some of the most emotionally
impactful moments for you as a part of your philanthropy? John Paul D.: I think going to Africa the
first time and meeting some of the 7000 children ages one day to 12 years old, all parents
have died of AIDS, so the kids that are thrown away. All the kids are brought to these various
orphanages where we feed them, we protect them, we educate them. One of the most touching moments on that was
while I was there, we had a photo shoot. We brought the orphans in. It was a photo shoot we did, a campaign one
year. We had all these African children on our hands. One little boy, we'll guess his age to be
a year and a half, two years old, was the only one not smiling. The story behind him was that he was pulled
out of a trash can the day before. Tom Bilyeu: Whoa. John Paul D.: Dropped off as they were leaving. They said, "Well, no," and they brought him
with them there, and the boy was just bewildered, trash can, he was skinny as can be. The other kids were eating little candy bars
that were given to them and drinking soda pops. Before we left the photo shoot, he picked
up a soda pop and drank it, and we were just hugging him and the kid smiled. It was like tears come out of the eyes. Just beautiful. If I can share this also with your people. Tom Bilyeu: Yes. John Paul D.: It's a very nice lesson to learn
about giving, is in life, whenever you can do something for somebody else and ask nothing
in return, not even a thank you, nothing, just do it because it has to be done, you'll
get the greatest high you'll ever have in your life, greatest high. There's no drug, no nothing, that'll surpass
that, and I know what high is all about. I'm a child of the '60s. Anyways, but it's the greatest high in the
world, the greatest high in the world. Nothing that'll surpass that. Tom Bilyeu: Tell me a little bit more about
Grow Appalachia. Your system there is pretty interesting. It's sort of the, "Don’t give a man a fish. Teach him to fish." John Paul D.: Oh, yeah. Starting in about 2010, when people were hungry,
on food stamps, I found out through one of my staff members there was about 150,000 families
on food stamps. I said, "Let me try and take on half of them
if I could, at least." I paired up with Berea College to give me
assistance. I paid for it all. The deal was to go into the country where
these people are, try and get with churches, community centers, and I would pay for the
irrigation, the seeds, everything. Berea would help me with some volunteers,
and I paid a couple of people full-time to work for us. We would teach people how to grow their own
vegetables. First year was this, grow your own vegetables,
so feed you and your family, and here's how you can things in jars for the winter so you
have food all year long. Oh, that was pretty good. Phase two would be this. Phase two is now you know how to do it, you
grow more. What do you do with the excess you have? Either find people around you that need some
or help them grow stuff because you don't know how to now, but start selling it in local
grocery stores, or farmers markets has organically grown produce. Now, you have an income. Pretty soon, going into the third year, we
had chickens going in there. Here's a dozen chickens. Now, you have eggs. Then we had a couple of them get into bees. Now, you have honey. All of a sudden, they were totally self-sufficient
and many of them out there now with little businesses because of it. I believe today, we're about 35,000 that we
feed off their own garden. Tom Bilyeu: Whoa. John Paul D.: Don’t expect the government
to make the changes, the major ones. If they help out, God bless them. We want them to help out. The people have to do it. It's we the people of the United States of
America. You want to change? How do you do it? Where do you volunteer to do it? How do you volunteer to do it? You want a change? Good. What group's doing it? I'm going to be part of them. I'm going to be part of we the people that
change it, not wait for everybody to give something to me because it's the thing to
do. I'm going to make things change. Today, more people are involved in changing
the world for the better, for the people on the planet, than ever, ever before. In June, a movie's going to come out called
Good Fortune. I worked on it with Josh Tickell, won many
awards, and it's all about how to go from nothing to something but change the world
while you're doing it. It's called Good Fortune. I'm going on TV. I'm on TV all the time. Your major stations occasionally have me come
on and say, "JP, you represent the 1% of all people. What do you think of this? You're the 1% and the 99%, they think you
should pay more taxes. What do you think?" I look them right in the eye, and I say, "Can
we talk truthfully here?" "Of course, JP. That’s why you're on." "I am the 99%. I am the 1%. It's we the people. Isn't it the American dream to have a chance
to do so good you can buy nice things for you and your family? If along the way you give back, isn't that
wonderful? It's we the people. By the way, did you know," at that time, "there's
about 150 of us, and we're all billionaires? Most of us came from nothing. Made it the American way, but do you know
that we're all billionaires? We've all pledged 50% of our wealth while
we're alive or after we die to change the planet for the people on the planet for the
better." Why don’t people [inaudible 00:33:44] ever
talk about it? Bill Gates, Warren Buffett. I can go on and on. These people give so much back already and
so much dedicated after they die to change the planet, so 1% versus 99%? How about we embrace one another, because
that so-called 1% is doing so much, and in many cases, more than our government is doing
to help the rest out. Tom Bilyeu: If you had an ultra successful
friend come to you and say, "Okay, look, it's time now that I really do something meaningful
with my money," what would you encourage them to do? John Paul D.: First of all, what either upsets
you most about the planet, whether it's your country, your city, or the world, what upsets
you most when you hear something? What do you see wrong that you would love
to change even in a small way if you could? Or do you see something big? What touches your heart? Not what looks good, "If I do this, I'll look
like a hero." What touches your heart? Tom Bilyeu: Yeah, I love that. Do you think that there are entrepreneurial
principles that need to be applied to some of the more cause-oriented things? I think when people think about an entrepreneur,
they usually think purely about profit, so when it gets into NGOs and non-profits, it's
like, "Well, does it really make sense?" To me, it's like what we really need to make
change is the money, no question, but it's also people that know how to think like what
you're doing with Grow Appalachia, where it's turning it into something that becomes self-sustaining. John Paul D.: It's totally self ... Exactly,
and the way they do that is take someone like yourself, anyone out there, is there a charity
you really like? There's a strong possibility it may not be
managed the way you would manage a for-profit business. Tom Bilyeu: Sure. John Paul D.: What do you do? You go in there and help them. Here's how you merchandise, because your product
is your charity. That’s your product, your cause. How do I get this disseminated to more people? How do I do that? How do I do it within the budget we have? How do I expand within the budget we have? If we need more money, how do I creatively
help raise more money so that it comes to a good cause at the other end? All too often, business people get involved
and don’t think about, "Well, let me help the organization do better." That’s a good way they can help out. Tom Bilyeu: A super random question for you. What are three things that you taught your
kids that you think have helped them be successful? John Paul D.: One is be prepared for a lot
of rejection. The other is whatever service or business
you're involved in, the thing you do, make sure it's the highest quality there is, and
always remember, kids, and they do, success unshared is failure. Tom Bilyeu: Mm, I love that quote. John Paul D.: We don’t spoil our kids. When my kids grew up ... Even my last one
who is now 19 and a half years old, when he was 12 and we were doing good in business,
his allowance every week was $12.00. When he was 13, it was $13.00, but between
13 and 14, he had a sit-down with dad. He says, "Dad, you were born a long time ago." He says, "You give me $13.00. Dad, I go to the movie theater one time. That and a Coca Cola or any soda pop, not
from local, anything, the money's gone. I have no more money left, Dad." He says, "It costs more." I said, "Son, you know, you're right, you
are," so I upped it to $20.00. None of my kids ... Thank God, my kids aren't
spoiled. They work. They know the value of a dollar. Tom Bilyeu: Did you make them have a job? Was there anything-
John Paul D.: His job was full-time student, and if they could study, great. If they couldn’t during that, I would take
them to work with me or something like that. Some of my kids just did something on their
own. Then once, of course, they're able to actually
have a regular job, they started looking for jobs on their own. One son, my oldest, is starting his own little
business with no money, trying to get an artist to go to a salon and train them, and he would
get the little money in between. It's amazing what they do. Michaeline, my 32-year-old, brilliant, and
she's vice chairman of John Paul Mitchell Systems. That’s another thing, too. If you have any kids, good example, this one. I said, "Mikey, go start as a receptionist." She says, "No. I'm going to go to work in the warehouse. I'm going to have every job in the company." Tom Bilyeu: Spectacular. John Paul D.: Really. Cool. She stayed there till she learned it and went
through all of it. You better believe our people love her. Tom Bilyeu: Oh, sure. John Paul D.: Said, "My gosh, she knows us." Then several years ago, she became our director
of future development. Right? Tom Bilyeu: Mm. John Paul D.: What she did so well, everyone
loved her. My own president said, "You should promote
her to vice chairman." That’s what she is. Tom Bilyeu: It's really, really interesting,
because I'm imagining them all following your the four Ps and them making sure they have
the best product. Yeah, it's the four Ps-
John Paul D.: It's the four Ps, you got it, profit, people, be positive, and help the
planet. Tom Bilyeu: I love the be positive. How did that make the list? Of all the things in the world that you could
say are like the secrets, that being positive is one of the main things that people need
to do. How did you happen on that? John Paul D.: In life, whether it's personal
or people around me, when you see people that are positive, they're looking at something
good and something bad that took place. They move along in life faster. They're better, and people want to be around
these people. Too often, people gossip. The one gossip person wants to be around the
other person that gossips, but they don’t realize when you gossip, you're saying something
you heard about somebody else. You're telling everybody. What if part of it was wrong? You're going to go out and tell every person
you told this, "Ope, I'm sorry. It was wrong." Tell everybody you told, it's not going t
happen. It's things you learn about. Don’t gossip, don’t belittle people if
you don’t have to. God, please don’t. Try and look at the positive angle, what good
could come out of something, and that positiveness is going to make you live longer, happier,
and wake up in the morning happy, not, "Oh, my God, I got to go to work. I can't wait till I get home. I want to retire," because people who are
not positive are not happy. What happens when they retire? They hate their job, they retire, three or
four years later they're dead because they had nothing to do. That positive attitude, be around positive
people, encourage positiveness. If you find yourself walking around just complaining
all the time, around people that complain a lot, man, move or just try and do something
different. Change your life being positive and a positive
attitude. Find something positive and something bad
makes you look for solutions. When I was down and out, "Okay, hmm. Oh, pop bottles. Let's get the pop bottles, cash them in." Tom Bilyeu: I love that, because until you
said that, I knew that people listening were thinking, "Well, it's easy for you to be positive. You're a billionaire," but the fact that you
were positive even when you had to be looking for the bottles-
John Paul D.: Oh. yeah. Tom Bilyeu: ... to recycle, to make those-
John Paul D.: Sure. Tom Bilyeu: ... 99-cent meals. That’s incredible. All right, I have a question. In today's environment, where the business
landscape is so crowded and it seems like all the good ideas have already been taken,
how can you go in and create space and build a company in today's environment? John Paul D.: The best way to explain it is
by actually doing something. Let's take a huge business throughout the
world, one of the biggest, telecommunications. You have giant phone companies, you have servers
on your cellular phone. It's almost like a lifestyle now, right? How does someone get in that industry and
all of a sudden, you got all the giants you're going up against that have multi millions
and billions of dollars. How do you do it? You look at what the industry is lacking and
pull the industry into it. Give you an example. It's one of my latest companies, ROK, R-O-K
Mobile, ROK Mobile. Believe it or not, we found the openings,
and I'll tell you how we did it. For $49.00 a month on your cell phone, any
cell phone, any smart phone, we found a way to give people all their telephone calls to
United States and Mexico, 500 international minutes free, their texting, their data, all
their music, over 20 million songs, $100,000.00 worth of accidental life insurance, Telemedicine
seven days a week, 24 hours a day. A doctor is on the other end of the phone
with you, talking to you to see what's going on. Your carrier, who works best for you here? Now how did we pull this off-
Tom Bilyeu: Yeah, exactly. John Paul D.: ... with these giants? We did a little research. We know people want their lifestyle, if possible,
to be on that cell phone, if possible, but a lot of people can't afford a cell phone
or they pay so much money. Average person that I talked to pays 100,
200, sometimes 300 bucks a month. Go international, it goes crazy on you. We did this. We went to, for example, the music companies,
the big music companies. You have Warner Brothers, you have Universal,
you have Sony. Said, "Guys, we'd like to be another avenue
for you and your artist, one you don’t have right now." "Ah, sounds pretty good." "We give you a piece of it all." "Good." Went to 500 other labels, got them to come
on board. Went to the big carrier and said, "Look, we
know that you have something called the churn," a new word I learned, "where every year, 20,
25% of your business you lose to another carrier who has a better deal. Here's what we have." At that time, we had just the music. We had the texting, the data, and that. They said, "Yeah, we could probably get some
people back with that." Then we were able to go to insurance companies
and say, "We're predicting we're going to have all these millions, and, by the way,
we took out a patent. We have the patent on an app that would have,
whether it's medical insurance, any kind of insurance, on there. Little by little, they all got involved. All of a sudden, now we're in telecommunications
in a very, very big way. The better part of it is this. How do I go back to my startup to help those
people out, Variety Boys and Girls Club in East L.A., where I would pay 25 cents for
wood and sell it for 50 cents as a big wooden flower pot? We thought, "Let's help them out. Let's help the inner city in New York. Let's help Harlem. Let's help people out." What we're doing right now is, with our profit,
is we're saying, "Kids, we want to help you have a good allowance, so if you'd like to,
you have the service for yourself or your family or anybody you know. We're going to give you $5.00 every single
month for a year. That’s your allowance. If 10 people have it, that’s $50.00 a month. If 100 people have it, and people can cancel
whenever they want, but they're still on there, that’s $500.00 a month for one year. It's how to have something so low everybody
wants it and needs it. It changes the landscape. For us, it probably won't make money, but
it shares it along the way, when you share. Success unshared is failure. That’s how ROK is just exploding right now,
just taking off, all underground word of mouth. It's fun. I'll give you another one real quick. We found out that 3.7 billion people have
the cold sore virus. Two out of every three people have it. Somebody came to me once a few years ago,
said, "JP, we've been working with Native Americans universities on a gel that comes
out of plants. It's plant-based gel. Someone has a cold sore, you put it on and
in most cases they feel the tingle, the cold sore doesn’t come out. If it comes out, you put it on every hour,
and almost everyone we gave it to, it's gone in less than two days." I said, "Really?" We started giving it to people. All of a sudden, people are saying, "Oh, my
God, this gets rid of that cold sore, and it's invisible in less than two days." I spent millions of dollars doing the double
blind studies and everything else. Tom Bilyeu: Wow. John Paul D.: Now, for less than 30 bucks,
someone could buy a tube of Aubio. A-U-B-I-O is what it's called. A-U for gold, B-I-O for nature. A-Ur-B-I-O. They go online and buy it. They go to Target. They could go to Rite Aid. They could go to all these-
Tom Bilyeu: These are already in distribution? John Paul D.: Yeah, it's already in distribution. Tom Bilyeu: Wow. John Paul D.: No advertising. He just, whoosh, got it out there, because
the people used it and said, "Wow, this is something. This stuff is unbelievable." [Inaudible 00:45:18] the large chains that
have it, but for sure, Rite Aid has it, Target, and CVS has it also. We could go in that industry and say, "We
have something, we have something different. It's realistically priced. We're not ripping everybody off." As people think about it, look at even these
big businesses. What niche would you like to see happen? Cell phones, God, we'd love to see it less
expensive, no limitations, all these other goodies. Look for that niche. What does it need? How can you put it together and help the environment
along the way if you could do it? Tom Bilyeu: Yeah, looking for ways to disrupt
people and really fundamentally take a different approach. Yeah, take an old industry, look at it, what's
something that we can bring from today that maybe companies of old aren't thinking about? Sometimes it's even just new technology to
modernize the systems, to make it simpler. John Paul D.: Oh, yeah. Tom Bilyeu: All right. I have one final question for you, but first,
where can these guys find you online? John Paul D.: I don’t have a website. I don’t even do Internet. The best way to find me is go to John Paul
Mitchell Systems, that’s one way, and there's our philanthropy part. The other is go to patronspirits.com, see
what we're doing there. Or you can go straight to my foundation. It's called JP's Peace, Love & Happiness Family
Foundation. Tom Bilyeu: I love that. John Paul D.: You can see some things we do,
some of the things we're involved with. Tom Bilyeu: Very cool. John Paul D.: I think if you just go online,
type my name, and all kinds of stuff comes up. Tom Bilyeu: All kinds of stuff comes up. John Paul D.: Amazing what people say, but
most of it's good, so that’s cool. Tom Bilyeu: I'll bet. John Paul D.: You get a chance when it comes
out, go see Good Fortune. I did it to try and spread the word of overcoming
obstacles and how you can do it. Tom Bilyeu: No question. I'll check that out in a heartbeat. I read a synopsis of it. It sounds amazing, and it's your life story,
so I cannot wait. All right, my final question. What is the impact that you want to have on
the world? John Paul D.: While he was here on this planet
in his human form, he did something to make the planet better off because he was here. He paid really good rent and was happy because
of it. Tom Bilyeu: I love that. John Paul, thank you so much-
John Paul D.: Always a pleasure, Tom. Tom Bilyeu: ... for coming on with us today. I can't thank you enough. Guys, this is somebody, like he said, all
you need to do is drop his name into Google, and I promise you an avalanche of amazing
things are going to befall you. The amount of philanthropy that he's doing
is incredible, and when you look at his for-profit companies and see that they have as a part
of their very DNA a philanthropic spirit, it's incredible. It is not surprising to me, even though mathematically
I can't make it make sense. It isn't surprising to me that he's had such
small turnover. When you put people first, when you actually
care, not pretend to care, but you actually care about them and you care about what happens
to them and you're the kind of person that is able to see the positive, even in your
darkest moments, even in your darkest moments you are looking for the path through, you're
looking for the next level up. When you get there, you're looking for the
level above that and never from a predatory standpoint. Here's something that I didn’t understand
10 years ago, so let me tell you. When he says that they made a promise to the
beauty industry that they would always sell to the salons, he left hundreds of millions
of dollars on the table. Every day that he refuses to do that, he's
literally leaving money on the table, but he's doing it because he knows that if he
migrates away from those people who are working in the salons and moves it out to broader
and broader distribution that it will hurt the people that helped him build it. Why does he do it? To be honorable. That’s it. It isn't a smart business move. He's literally doing it to be honorable. I respect that more than you know. Guys, this is somebody that you're going to
want to research and see the way that he thinks about the world and the way that he thinks
about business, because to me, it is the future. The generations coming up are going to make
the demand that every company is like this, and you're going to need to be this way whether
you want to be or not. He's been doing it since the '80s. It is astonishing. He is leading the way for an entire generation. Follow that lead. All right, guys, this is a weekly show. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe,
and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. John Paul D.: Peace and love, everybody. Tom Bilyeu: Everybody, thanks so much for
joining us for another episode of Impact Theory. If this content is adding value to your life,
our one ask is that you go to iTunes and Stitcher and rate review. Not only does that help us build this community,
which at the end of the day is all we care about, but it also helps us get even more
amazing guests on here to share their knowledge with all of us. Thank you, guys, so much for being a part
of this community, and until next time, be legendary, my friends.
