Homeless to Billionaire: 2 Rules for Success | John Paul DeJoria

Key Takeaway

Treat rejection as an expected part of the process, then put your energy into making your work so valuable that people want to return and recommend it. Today, choose one product, service, or relationship habit and ask: “What would make someone willingly come back?” Improve that experience by one concrete step. When setbacks surface, stop rehearsing the past and redirect to the next action you can take now.

Episode Overview

John Paul DeJoria shares lessons from building John Paul Mitchell Systems while living in his car and later turning Patrón into a category-defining premium tequila brand. He argues that resilience, exceptional quality, positive language, generosity, and a clear definition of happiness matter more than money or status alone.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Homeless to Billionaire: 2 Rules for Success | John Paul DeJoria from The Ed Mylett Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing, they just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6 p.m. and my third day, 6 p.m. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise.

And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time, too. And you definitely can't afford to waste it waiting weeks on a big bank for capital. Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender and for good reason. Over 20 years in business, over $12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum.

Head to Cardiff.co slash ed. That's Cardiff.co slash ed, Cardiff.co. Real growth. Fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better. So good. So good. So good. Nordstrom Rack is celebrating 125 years of Nordstrom with 125 of the best deals up to 65% off in stores and online. They're only here while supplies last. So shop today. Great brands. Great prices. That's why you rack. This is The Admirable Shop. Welcome back to the show. So I've wanted to talk to this man for so long because obviously his story is crazy. Imagine going from living in your car and being homeless to becoming a billionaire.

It doesn't even sound real when you say it out loud, but it's actually his story. And he's founded a couple of different brands, whether it's John Paul Mitchell Systems or Padron Tequila. You're talking about two multi-billion dollar brands and companies that he's co-founded or founded. And it's an incredible story, but that's actually not what I've admired the most about him. What I've admired the most about him is how he handles the success. He's always appeared to me to have such great humility and to be such a generous soul for the success that he's had.

And so I've just wanted to meet him. And so I'm using the show today to get to know somebody I've admired from a distance and you're going to get to share this time up close and learn from him. So John Paul DiGiorio, welcome to the show finally. Great to have you. Yeah, Ed, thank you very, very much and you've got a great show here and I'm really happy to be on it. Thank you. Well, I'm so thrilled you're here. Like I said everybody, two different gigantic pieces of success and that's just the beginning of the resume and the list.

Can we do something first because I think a lot of people listen or watch my show and they probably find themselves at a stage of their life where they may not be homeless or living in their car, but they thought they'd be further ahead than they are. You know what I mean? They had a dream. I know what you mean. Exactly what you mean. What would you say to them based on your experience and what was it like for you and what would you say to somebody who feels behind?

Okay, well, you got to look at it a little different way. Let's say for example, my own experience, this is a good way to say instead of what I think will happen, okay, my own experience, is when I started John Paul Mitchell Systems and our backer pulled out, we never got a dime from it and we started it on a shoestring of $700, even lived in my car for the first several weeks just to be able to make it. So what had happened? All of a sudden, I was in a beautiful situation where I thought I'd be doing really good.

We had a backer to start a company with. The guy pulled out. I left the relationship I was in at the time because it wasn't working out. I took the older of the two cars down the hill, the couple hundred bucks in my pocket turned out to have nothing. So all of a sudden, I thought I'd be doing really good, but what happened? All of a sudden, something happened in my life where everything I thought would happen isn't happening, not as good as I thought, period.

But I knew that what I had was really, really great. So there's two things I love to share with everybody, entrepreneurs either in your personal life or in your business life, an entrepreneur, and there's two things to success. One of them is this, be prepared in life, and all of you get to that point, for rejection. If things aren't going as well as they're going, then something was rejected. That success was rejected, or somebody told you you can't do it. There's rejection somehow along the way.

If you know along the way you're going to rejection and you're going to get it, it's not going to affect you as much, opposed to, oh my God, I got rejected, I never expected that. Okay, that's one thing. Number two, make sure the quality of your product or your own personality in your personal life or your business life is not in the selling business. You want to go into the reorder business. What does that mean? It means that, for example, in business, your product or service is so good, people will want to reorder it again.

Don't work on a product or a service and how to sell the darn thing, it's how good can I make this? So if somebody actually has it, they could buy it again and again or tell other people about it. Those are the two things. In your own personal life, it's the same thing. What you present to your partner in life or your friends should be something that wants them to be around you for a long time. For example, if you in front of your friends always talk about what you have and how great life is going for you, and maybe it's not going that good for them, they're going to listen to you as a courtesy, but if you keep on bragging on what you're all about, you're going to start losing friends along the way.

Keep some of it to yourself, okay? That's one thing. Also, today is the first day of the rest of your life. We would say that in the 60s. In fact, a fellow named Bobby Ramdas wrote a book about it called Be Here Now. In other words, you're here now. You cannot change yesterday's newspapers. It already happened, and that's the other big thing. You got to get it off your shoulders. If only I would have done that differently. If only I would have said that differently. If only you could change it.

When people ask me, JP, what would you change in your life? I mean, my God, you were homeless, you and your mom and brother struggled, you created business out of nothing, and all of a sudden you got money, you know, oh my God, JP, what is the secret? What would you change if you wanted to, especially the hard times you had in your life, which were a lot of them being fired, having no money, more than one occasion, right? I can't change it, and if it wasn't for all those steps, I wouldn't be who I am today.

So my answer is quite clear. I wouldn't change a thing. I forgive myself for anything I did in the past. I wish I didn't do it the same way, but I can't change it. But I can forgive myself, meaning that I will never think again, oh, if only I did something different with Susie, if only I would have done this differently in my life, if only I had invested in this, things would have been different. You cannot change yesterday's newspapers, just know that. So when it comes on your shoulder, or you start thinking about it, you should switch a little bit to maybe moving more towards, well, that happened, but I can't do anything about it, I forgive it.

And then when it comes in your mind, say, well, wait a minute, that's yesterday. Why is that still in my mind? I can't change that. Why am I even thinking about that, okay? That's the past, it cannot be changed. Why are we on the planet Earth? One of the reasons we're here is to learn. If everything was peachy keen, and you were cool, and you had all the money you wanted and everything else, and I'll tell you a little story about J. Paul Getty Jr. before we get off this podcast, what's really important in life, okay?

You can't change that. So what you do is you leave the garbage behind you, nothing you can do about it, right? That's the past, you cannot change the past. Oh my God, I'm still in love with her, look what she did to me, or I'm still in love with him, look what he did to me. You can't change that. It lets you move on to what you're destined to have. A lot of things in life happen because of fate. Why? Your purpose here was something else.

So some maybe things happen to you that aren't that bad, but it's to get you to the next step. When you look at the book I brought out, that's why I brought out this book, okay, Success Ensured as Failure. People ask me all the time, JP, can you do what you did with no money and all of a sudden build two billion dollar corporations? Can you do that still today? Yes, you can. JP, how did you get money out of a distributor? How did you even sell them when you had no money?

How did you make an office up? How did you do all that when you had dollars to work with? How the hell can you do it today? You can. That's the reason I wrote the book. It took me two and a half years, Ed, have you ever written a book? I have, and I'm a terrible writer, it took me a long time too. It took me two and a half years to write this book. I'd read I Want to Change, but the whole concept was, how can I tell others in the world how they could still do it today for little or nothing, but with kindness involved?

How you could grow companies with kindness. Too often you get someone that's unruly, okay, and they're not kind. Well, let me give you a little phrase. Kindness works even for jerks. When I went into Libya to convince Omar Gaddafi, and by the way, it's in the book, okay, yep, I'm the guy that went in to convince Omar Gaddafi to release the two suspected terrorists of Pan Am Flight 103 to go on trial, right? There's a lot of things I do because of me. I'm not an agent of the CIA, I'm not an agent of the FBI, I'm nobody, right?

I did it because I wanted to be an American and to help out, but all the things you could do and expend on no matter where your life is, where did I start? Living in my car with a few hundred bucks in my pocket, needing a few more to borrow from my mom, too proud to tell my mom I'm down and out, too proud. So I could have stayed in my old room, she could have fed me, too proud, but how do you go about these things?

How do you get the worst things in the world being fired? Sometimes the best thing for you, especially when you don't deserve to be fired, but maybe it's because you're not moving on, fate is gonna move you on to what you're set for. And I didn't know this till after I started Paul Mitchell. Two years later, it was, my God, if it wasn't for all those lessons learned in being fired, but being through these three different companies, each one taught me something different. I could have never started my first company, Paul Mitchell, with $10 million, let alone with $700 between me and my partner.

So a lot of things in life are meant to be, but you treat them with kindness. There's been situations, well, with Gaddafi, he wanted to kill me, and I came up with something out of kindness and made him laugh his head off, right? And then he took a picture with me, and they went into the talks, I helped out with that in a big way. So there's various things you can do. I was just thinking, listening to you, by the way, I didn't mean to jump in, I just wanna say this, I'm looking at you.

Oh, please do, it's your show. No, no, no, no, this show's about you, and I'm getting out of the way today, that's obvious, this is gonna be a banger, everybody, you can tell, obviously, in the first 10 minutes, but I'm looking at you, and then I'm thinking about your life story, you're kinda like the Dos Equis guy, you're like the most interesting man in the world. You've had this very diverse experience, and by the way, guys, on books, I have a lot of people on here who write books.

Let me tell you what's rare in this day and age, I'd like to think this of myself as well. Someone teaching you lessons who's actually done it. In other words, this book, and JP, this isn't theory, this is stuff that he's practiced in his life, and the book is called Success Unshared is Failure. That's unique in the world, guys, that someone who's done it shares exactly what they did, and if we could, just before we keep moving on, I wanna unpack something, because I forget the name of the book, but we had a guy come in to speak to my group, I think it's called Unreasonable Hospitality, maybe I've got the book name wrong, but his philosophy is very similar to what you started to, and I wanna unpack it, because you are a genius in so many different things as an entrepreneur, but this one area about referral business that you said, return business, that makes me believe that you believed the experience has to be so pleasing, so pleasant, so wonderful, so incredible, that they wanna come back.

Tactically, strategically, how did you do that? What were your thoughts? Was there something specific you would do in a client encounter, or when you'd go into a salon to get the account, how did you, what were you thinking and doing? That's a very good question, by the way, an excellent question, indeed. What we were thinking about doing is this, we have no money, we have no anything, why did I even go into this industry after working for others, okay? I knew the industry, and I knew that you can make things a little bit better, like my dear partner at the time, Paul, wonderful human being, he died, unfortunately, quite a few years ago, through pancreatic cancer, but Paul was a great guy, tried to come out of the product line, but it just didn't work.

But I had the knowledge from working for all these three companies, who I would go to to make it better. How do you make a shampoo better, or maybe use it one time instead of twice? How do you make a conditioner that you could leave in your hair, and is good for your hair, and your skin, and a pomade, and it gets wrinkled, I mean, snags out of your hair easily, you can blow dry it with less damage, let's create products like that, not knowing I wouldn't have any money to promote it.

So when we had no money, we had to promote it on its merit, knowing darn well that when a hairdresser used it, they could go ahead and run a recommender to use it again. Also, salon retailing was not a big deal at all when I started Paul Mitchell. Some salons would sell a few products, some didn't. We introduced success to salons through recommendation. People aren't a salon's chair, and the salon knows your hair better than anybody else, better than any drugstore ad will ever know it.

But they could use some of our Paul Mitchell products that worked exceptionally well, still do today, by the way. They could use those products and say, by the way, I use shampoo one on your hair. You only need one shampoo, you don't need two with this one. Your hair isn't that thick and dirty, right? And by the way, here's how much of the conditioner we use, here's how much of this, and by the way, with this new freeze and shine spray, I'm holding your hair up with a brush, I'm spraying it, I'm just counting to three, and then I let it go, so it holds up, yet the back part falls.

Show them how to use it and what you use in salon and saying, these are the products that I use on you. You may want to pick up a few before you leave. And then they would, all of a sudden, retailing started in the salon. Salons could actually do that. At the same time, I made a promise to all salons that I will somehow always stay in the professional beauty industry with you and not do what all the other companies do. It's only going to be in salons, but when I go retail, you're not going to benefit by it, but thank you for helping me build.

I would never do that. And even when distribution changed, an example, during COVID, a lot of salons were closed for weeks and months, they were closed. Their customers could not get it. Instead of having to switch them, we made a really good deal with Amazon where they would order straight through Amazon, it would be delivered, we would get, obviously, our share of the money back, but we would take a portion of it. This is being true to your word, a portion of it, and give it back to salons that were really into Paul Mitchell.

It's kind of like when salons started opening up, a lot of salons were out of business for several weeks and months, had no product. left no money to buy it with. We gave the salons that supported us a whole bunch like several million dollars worth of product free. Here's back bar, here's color, here's shampoos let's put you back in business again. You care about your customer and what their needs are and by the way I don't want to forget to say this for a lot of people today well my god I have very little money I started a business I got a hell of a good product but I don't have a distribution network set up and how do I get money right away okay it's in the book okay.

How do you go into Patron JP what did you know about alcohol or tequila other than drinking it before you started Patron absolutely nothing nothing nada well how did you learn the industry that quick and build it to one of the biggest companies ever in the liquor business part of it is learning their vocabulary first so people have to go and find these things that still work so now let me go with Patron another example to answer your question when I entered Patron in the marketplace the average tequila was about five dollars a bottle nothing was anywhere near the thirty seven dollars and ninety five cents we had to charge for a bottle it was too expensive when we launched Patron nobody would take us nobody Ed would take us on not one distributor said guys you have a great tequila it's the best of the world but man it's just no one's gonna pay that kind of money for it right so we had to go with someone that only sold wine and nothing else that's all they sold we talked him into it saying hey if we could get Spago's which was the number one restaurant in 1989 when we launched it in anywhere and Baja Cantina Marina del Rey well Wolfgang Puck was a friend of mine already Drake has said this is the best stuff I want to carry it Baja Cantina did the same for my friend Martin okay we'll carry it they said you can get those accounts we said sure we'll take it after one year they were only selling about a thousand cases for the year that's nothing in the industry right that's nothing so we dropped him we took on a big giant this is a real good lesson to learn a giant Jim Beam great guys by the way okay after about a year and a half or so they were only selling 12,000 cases a year that's 12,000 of 12 you know 12 in a case 12,000 we wouldn't met with them said you know guys we think we could do a lot better than this and they were really smart and you their business that guys let me show you the tequila business you're going at $37.95 up against five and six dollar bottles okay the most expensive thing I think at that time that they could find was maybe fourteen fifteen dollars somewhere that was it JP guys we love you you have the best service but you'll tell you the truth you'll never do more than 20,000 cases a year which is a lot you'll still make some money we didn't believe it okay we dropped them and took on Seagram's this is a giant company okay Seagram's got it up to about 50,000 right and that we knew we could do so much better we were learning now we were learning we dropped them and took it over ourselves now here's a lesson to be learned here very important lesson okay what was our deal we had the best there was that we're gonna stick it out until enough people know about it whether it's having a seminar at Paul Mitchell where people are given Patron free to treat themselves or whether it's changing one word in marketing I did it with Paul Mitchell and it worked and the word was this you want to treat yourself today treat yourself to the best there is Patron simply perfect okay we took on the promotion advertising herself we took all the pretty girls out of it and the bottle the ad was all about the bottle simply perfect we concentrated something different on the bottle and then we told people in restaurants please when you serve somebody you want to make a couple extra dollars tell them this you want a margarita we make a good margarita but for two dollars more you can treat yourself today to Patron the best tequila in the world what does this all amount to when I sold Patron which was about eight years ago that brand that was never supposed to do more than 20,000 case a year we were doing and that alone about three million five hundred thousand cases a year broke all records for a selling price for everything in other words there's always something in there you could do differently and you can learn an industry immediately and find a little so I know I'm not the only one who hates long holds when needing to call customer service it drives me nuts I'm sure it does you as well but here's something nobody talks about though the person on the other end they hate it just as much this is the most universally despised system in business and it's long overdue for a rethink and that's where 11 agents comes in if I knew 11 agents existed by 11 labs it's what I would use whatever needs to happen the voice sounds like a human the response time feels immediate if you run a business of any kind with customer operations support sales or onboarding you can start with a demo 11 labs dot io slash my let see what 11 agents can do for your specific workflows guided rollout capacity is limited each quarter so if you want to be one of the first companies with a customer experience that people actually walk away feeling good about now's the time 11 labs dot io slash my let el e V e n l a b s dot io slash my let we just had a group of people over the house for dinner the other night with these amazing steaks they all 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know we sent you thanks I'm listening to you let's just be real for a minute by the way this is a master class like that's why I just want you to keep going but I want to I'm listening to you and I've been fortunate that I've interviewed some of the top entrepreneurs on the planet I've done okay myself but I've been around Phil Knight I've been around Tim Cook I've watched videos of Steve Jobs I'm listening to you you're a promoter and I don't know that enough entrepreneurs become the I remember thinking back in the day remember Don King the boxing promoter I know you do oh yeah I remember thinking even in his case if you if you had a big fight back in those days and you had you'd want the best promoter to promote it and I often look at I look at entrepreneurs and I think so many of them they don't utilize their social media that way they're not over-the-top dramatic deep believers in their mission their cause or their product like I see in you it like it's in your pores it's coming out of you and I think a lot of people are what's my strategy what's my social media picture gonna look like you know what's our tagline going to be and all of that stuff matters but at the end of the day you got to be a true believer in what you do and constantly feed that belief because you can't transfer to somebody that which you're not really feeling and experiencing it's that accurate read of you and it's beyond accurate beyond accurate an example I sold encyclopedias door-to-door for three and a half years for colliers no appointments no salary commission sales only and it wasn't a real known encyclopedia set but I believed that every house need encyclopedia I never had an encyclopedia be so much help I might even do my homework at home I might even do my homework period I believed in it it which you said is one of the greatest things that Ed you know that and hopefully all your listeners know it also you must believe what you have is the best that's what keeps you going like one of the things I talked about in the book that I learned selling encyclopedias is if you knock on 50 doors and they're all either politely or maybe not so politely closing your base right you must be just as enthusiastic on door number 51 for me it was door number hundred and something right but I believe what they said the average life of an encyclopedia salesman for colliers door-to-door commission only three and a half days several years well but I've made pretty good money but you're right you've got to believe what you have or make sure what you have is so believable that a 50 people don't know it 51 is going to know it and this is the same thing we did with Paul Mitchell we had no money no advertising but we knew the product was so good if they used it all of a sudden we'd be getting some reorders out of it without any advertising no promotion I just I just think like I think one thing you said it's so profound I want to dig on that a little bit and I want to ask you about being worth it what happens in life in business especially if you're in some type of sales is you start getting this rejection and then you shift to where you almost expect it and so now it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy and to your point of maybe over 50 you got to go to 51 like it's the first one and you know you're gonna get it and you believe it what happens is the failure and the rejection begins to morph into someone's mind where they almost start to say things that create it because they've expecting the rejection to happen.

What are the power words whatever you think whatever you say is more than likely going to happen people have to understand that I'm gonna give you an example of that example would be this how often does somebody say this next year my New Year's resolution is gonna be I'm gonna try and lose 10 pounds and they never do next year the same thing or I'm gonna try and learn Spanish this next year okay what people have to know is the universe listens to you but the universe only thinks in black and white so if you're saying there every year that I'm gonna try and learn it the universe says I'm gonna give you exactly what you want you're gonna keep on trying and trying and trying and you never do it just keep on trying to do it because you said you were going and you thought I'm gonna try and do this right here's the difference if you were to say I am gonna lose 10 pounds in this next year and I'm gonna look at the scale right now I'm gonna visualize the scale and me weighing 10 pounds less or I'm gonna step on the scale and see me weighing 10 pounds less and I am going to do it I am right oh you're gonna lose those 10 pounds now I'm giving an example of how that works dear friend of mine was telling me for years I have the worst bad luck oh my god I get something going really good it goes but then something goes wrong I have the worst bad luck on this this and this I said after years of doing this this was last November six months ago I said to him or seven months ago ever in eight months ago I said to him look I know why you're having all the bad luck Oh JP really yeah I do and I know who's causing it really tell me what is it I said it's you because you keep on saying it and putting out to the universe and thinking of the worst bad luck you think about it and everything goes wrong this I think about it and I probably before I go to bed I want you to change something immediately when you ever think I have bad luck even thinking it immediately change that thinking to I my life has changed I'm gonna have a best like this next year okay whenever you say it no you're telling the universe you want bad luck it's in black and white stop saying that just wake up every morning went to have say two things one I am a healthy human being I'm healthy number two I'm having the best of luck I am gonna have the best of luck I am right now gonna do that and whenever something else enters your mind say that was yesterday okay it's a new me this is an honest God truth okay November to December January February March April May June going to July whatever okay three of the project he was working I bad luck with along the way all of a sudden out of nowhere got more orders than he could handle things exploded and problems resolved themselves only thing he did difference is in what he said because speech on what you say and what you think is that powerful it goes out to the universe and it goes out to your destiny so if you speak more positive things if you gossip about other people you're gonna be in a gossiping world if you talk about bad about other people you're putting bad vibes out if you're tough you're get so polarized with some of these no disrespect to politics but you get so polarized with one end or another then nobody could tell you the other side you're too polarized whatever you think whatever you say is going out to the universe be very careful with your words going out to the universe or your thinking and this works yeah do you is it been work like in real talk to we're talking off camera about you know you made a move for your family to Austin many years ago etc take us into you know I'm sure there were moments where you're like maybe I'm gonna throw my hands up and quit I don't know if there were moments like that tell us that first but secondly what's the other side look like I mean not everyone's gonna be a billionaire but what's it like to have a vision and a dream for something go through just the crazy early mornings late nights rejections probably betrayals all these things that came with being you truly is it what you thought it would be getting here is it worth it is it better than you thought it is beyond what I I never even dreamed about stuff like this are you kidding never our first goal with Paul and I started the company was God we may be able to do five million dollars a year in business which means we could each get a quarter of a million dollars we would be set for life had no idea in the world but you know what this is a great time for the story I wanted to say sometime during your presentation here it's about Jay Paul getting junior what is important what is success success I'll give you two quick little stories success isn't how much money you have successes how far have you come in life with the lessons you've learned to do something really really good successful let me give you an example I'm gonna go personal examples are better you say well how the hell does he know he's never done it before let me give you high school I've always worked in my life okay and had some kind of a full-time thing going even though it's a part-time full-time thing since I was 11 years old and had my paper routes every morning I'd show up so I always had a job in high school I worked at Stewart's cleaners and he paid me a dollar and a quarter an hour Stewart was so cheap he would have paid me 75 cents if you get away with it you gotta pay so at least a dollar and a quarter an hour especially a kid so I made a buck in a quarter an hour one day I come home from high school and Stewart says Johnny I want to talk to you that was my name in those days Johnny John Paul for short now oh I think what the hell did I do right so we sit down he says yesterday I was is working late and I have a mezzanine upstairs, which of course you clean.

He says, I set my watch down the little table to lay on my cot and the watch fell on the floor. In those days, the cots were made out of metal, little thing on top, the bottom was open. He said, I reached down and got my watch off the floor and I noticed there wasn't any dust under my cot. He says, I pulled it away. There was no dust behind it and none behind the file cabinets around each side of it. He says, you're cleaning this place as if I'm watching you all the time.

And then he stopped talking, just looked at me. I said, Stuart, I want my job. I'm not only the janitor, I put the little drapes on the hangers, the little sleeves, I brush the blankets. I said, it's my job. My mom taught me how to clean when I was a kid because my brother and I would help clean the darn house, right? That, he says, I've never seen someone work like that. He says, when no one is watching, what is your character? What do you do when nobody's watching?

I did the best. Stuart gave me a 25 cent an hour raise. May not sound like a lot to you right now, but to go from $1.25 to $1.50 an hour for where I went to high school, I was probably the richest guy in high school, the highest paid other than the teachers, right? But what did I do? I did, I was the best janitor in the world. I was happy. Now the story that goes with the multi-billionaire, okay? Multi-billionaire, J. Paul Getty Jr. was the richest man in the world in the 50s and 60s.

Nobody even knew what a billionaire was. He was. He started in Oklahoma with an oil and gas company. All of a sudden went to England, had a giant estate in England, and started Aramco, the Saudi Arabian oil company. This guy was the first multi-billionaire, but he was cheap. He was so cheap, like many people are sometimes when they make a lot of money, they just want more, more, more, none for you, more, more, more, more, more, okay? That he found once in his mail, a bill from the phone company that he looked at, this bill, and it was for 250 British pounds.

That was the equivalent of about 500 US dollars in the time, okay, at that particular time. And said, people are using my phone. We had toll calls in those days before you were born. If you call to another city or another state, they charge a couple extra pennies. And he said, you know, and people are using it. So what did he do? He disconnected in his living quarters that people were around, every telephone, and put in a phone booth. I know that's cheap, right? But now I'm getting to the climax of it all.

In one of the rarest interviews the man ever had, very rare interview, the lady asked him, J. Paul Getty Jr., you are the richest man in the world. What would you change if you could? You are the richest, there's none richer than you. He said, young lady, you're wrong. I'm not only the richest man in the world, I am the most powerful man in the world. I can change governments, and I have with the money that I have. He said, but would I change something different in all that time?

He said, yes. I would give up the majority of my wealth and the majority of all my power to have been happy in my life. I've been married seven times, didn't love any of them. A lot of people I know didn't like me, but they were afraid of me because of my power. I've never been happy in my life. So the lady said to him, my God, with your wealth and everything you do now, why don't you just start now being happy? His answer was, it's too late for me.

I'm too old, I'm gonna be dead in a few years anyways. He said, but I wish I would have been happy in my life. That would have been success. Even one of his grandsons, and they made a movie on this 10 years ago with DiCaprio, cut off his ear to send it in for ransom. I mean, I would have been happy. So what is really truly in life? What do we want? And if we had millions and millions, like people who say, well, if I had a couple million bucks, I'd be the happiest guy in the world and solve all my problems.

No, it won't solve all your problems. No, you won't be the happiest person, okay? It's what do you want in life to be happy? If my dream when I was a kid was if one day I could own a house, it was American dream, just a little house that I could own anywhere and make $150 a week. Now this is back guys in the 1950s and 60s. I'd be the happiest guy in the world. I'd have a house I could live in. I'd go out there, mow my lawn, I'd be okay.

And when I retire, I got my social security. Maybe I've had a little savings to the side. I'd be the happiest guy and I could do things in life. Maybe take a trip in my car to Yosemite or someplace every year. You know, I'd be just really happy. So guys, what is happiness? Happiness is not how much you have. It could help maybe, make you feel better in some areas, but happiness is how do you feel? What makes you happy? And it's only money, money, money.

No, I can't see the family this weekend. Money, money, money, money. That's the whole case. You're not happy. Take a look at it. What's important in your life? And that's happiness when you wanna go over. If you're working at a job and you're not happy and you say, I've gotta do something else. Maybe it's the universe telling you, you're not right for this. Quit or get fired, okay? That's not what your destiny is. You want to do, work for somebody or yourself on what you wanna do, who you wanna do it with and the kind of people you wanna do it for.

That is just so important in life. And then somebody could be happy in life. They could be happy like, hey, I'm happy. Things are really good. And then when you are happy, share it with others. You don't have to have money. It talks in the book about a dime that my brother and I gave to Salvation Army because my mother made the brother and I do it so we could learn about giving in our life. And we had no money in those days, but she could afford a dime that year and taught us what to do with it.

In other words, you give and you're happy. And why do some of these monks in Tibet you hear about, okay, go away and meditate in a cave or just on their own, they're just in full meditation. They don't have money. They don't have big houses for a stage. They have a cave, a little house to live in. But their happiness was to be one with the universe and just feel that incredible happiness. Like think about when in your life, you could think back when I was really happy, elated.

That's the kind of thing we're talking about. When you're really happy and elated, right? That's what you wanna be. And sometimes money just doesn't buy that. You know, hydration affects energy. It affects your focus, workouts, everything you feel. Instant hydration is a premium electrolyte drink mix designed to support hydration, energy, recovery, focus, and your overall performance without sugar or any additives. I love the watermelon and the icy flavors. I have them in my water almost every single day. Actually, every day. One of the biggest differentiators is actually instant hydration uses authentic French gray sea salt imported from France, naturally harvested.

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That's code ED10 at im8health.com slash ED10. Code ED10 at im8health.com slash ED10. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Yeah, I'm listening to you, brother. I don't think I've ever met a better communicator in my life. I'm listening to, and a lot of you that wanna be high-level entrepreneurs, one of the things you have to be good at, you gotta be a great storyteller. This man is remarkable. I mean, I'm listening to you today and I'm like, it's beautiful to listen to you when you speak, the way you paint pictures with words, your depth of wisdom.

It's just, it's really a pleasure. And I, we're gonna run out of time, but I have a, I wanna let you kinda go on this topic because it's at the root of the book, which is, you know, the book's about, hey, success unshared is failure. And when I was reading, prepping for this, I was thinking about a conversation I wanna share with you and then I'd like you to just take this and run with it to the end. I had a chance to get to know Steve Wozniak.

And first I interviewed him and I got to know him, one of the founders of Apple. And kind of one of my heroes from a distance all these years was Jobs, was Steve, because he's made, him or Musk, maybe one of the most influential entrepreneurs of the last century, right? I thought, this guy Jobs, wow, that's the guy to be. Then I meet Woz, and what a beautiful man. And, you know, he frankly might be one of the two or three wealthiest men in the world, except, except, and I know you know this, when they were gonna let Apple go public, Jobs didn't really wanna do it and Steve wanted to share the wealth and share the success.

And so Steve gave, as you know, shares to assistants and janitors and secretaries, middle level people. And, you know, they're both successful men. But when I think in my life about which one would I rather be? Would I rather be the guy that kind of maybe, I'm not, I don't know Jobs, but seemed to be relatively angry guy and didn't take care of his health and, you know, made a big dent in the world. But then there's this other beautiful man over here who helped a whole lot of other people along the way.

And he shared that success. I'm just guessing, having not known Steve, that I think Wozniak's the happier guy. I think he's the happier guy. And he is, because he was kind, he's low keyed and he was very giving. I wanna give one more example since we have some time here, okay, about never knock your competitor. I sold Patron for a whole lot of money, okay, about eight years ago, and I had a non-compete for five years. I would have non-competed anyway, so they gave me so much money, okay.

But I had another idea in that time for a new tequila to come out that was the next generation called Bandero, okay. Now, I did not touch it. My daughters had it for five years. When I finally got into it, a whole different company, right, different formulation, everything else, people would ask me all the time, we're only in seven states now, okay. JP, what was your favorite, okay? Between the two, you started Patron, still a hell of a big one, right? And now you have your new Bandero.

What is your favorite? You know, and I tell them very honestly is this, I like them both. Which would you pick? I like them both, they're both different. I never knocked Patron. One, I started the darn thing, but two, if they were to ask me the same question about another tequila, I'd say, I don't know. And if for you, it's a great tequila, by gosh, stay with it, whatever it might be. Or another one example is this for your people, is how do you launch a new tequila?

When launch Patron, there was nothing like it, right? And we just skyrocketed. Today, there's over 200 brands out there that say they're like the next Patron. I will never knock any one of them. They'll say, well, when you go into a bar, won't you tell a bartender that's 20 tequilas or 10 tequilas, why should they take yours? It's very simple because this one, the gold medal has no additives. And you taste it, you just taste it. You make up your own mind. But I know the quality is there so much that they would.

We're only in seven states right now and we're growing it state for state for state, but we are in seven states right now and growing. But it was the reason to buy without knocking anybody. And that's important to know. Don't knock your competitor, there's no need. Just say, I can appreciate that. However, here's the feature and benefit to you with my product. So good. I loved today. And I wanna ask you this one last question. We got a couple minutes here. Were you ever gonna quit?

Was there ever a point where you were gonna throw your hands up? You never came to that moment ever in your career. I get that asked all the time, Ed, absolutely not. And they say, well, JP, you could retire. Well, you could retire many years ago, okay? Why, like right now I'm working on 10 different projects. Three of them will be potentially billion dollar projects. But with money I'll make out of it just means this. Once my family's taken care of, I could change things. Like for example, whether it's in Africa, 17,000 orphans we feed today.

Well, how about we just expand that out to 100,000? How about the United States for the foster care and all the homeless that I'm building homes for right now? And hundreds of homes we're building through Mobile Loaves and Fishes. I'm one of the main contributors to it. I could do that many more. I could overcome homelessness for people by giving them like things that I do, like build entrepreneur centers where you could learn new trades, skill centers for the mentally challenged that they could see what they could actually do and get a job.

I could do more of that. Everyone could do more of that. But so I just keep going. I will never stop. My daughter, Michalene, who is brilliant, and she's a chief executive officer, just a little, I think she's 41 now, okay? Chief executive of Paul Mitchell. Became that at 37 years old. She is a genius. When she was a little girl, she'd say, dad, I'm gonna be CEO of Paul Mitchell. I said, well, honey, I'll always remain chairman of the board and help you along the way.

And she says, and I said, I'll never retire. She says, I know that, dad, because you love what you do and who you do it for and who you do it with. She says, but I'm younger than you are. I will outlast you and maybe become chairman one day. But my thing is, why? If you're happy, why not keep doing it? Just like at Paul Mitchell, we do not have mandatory retirement when you're 65. You know, we like a lot of people that are qualified to go on.

But Pepe, Bill Peplow, I think it was 86 years old still with us, you know? In other words, you keep on going in life what makes you happy. Your people, after they retire, die. You know, you don't die. You wanna do something in life that you love what you're doing and who you're doing it with. So I'll never retire. There's no need to. I love it. Such a great lesson for me. You know, everybody, I want you to take one thing away from today, above everything.

And that is all these lessons this wonderful man's taught you. But you know what's unseen? Success has an energy. It has a frequency. It has a rhythm. And when you tap into that, there's something special about you. You become magnetic. Things begin to become drawn to you into your life that don't otherwise. What you just witnessed for the last 50 minutes or so is what that frequency and energy should feel like. You might wanna go back and listen to it again and just, even at this advanced age, this man's energy, his frequency, is the success frequency.

There's a rhythm to it. And you can say all the exact same words as somebody else without the appropriate energy and it falls on deaf ears. And so just a little thing you may. Pick up in the podcast today is what this man has he's got the special sauce and by the way John Paul Thank you for being here. I mean, I mean that sincerely I could sit kind of at your feet and listen all day long I know you've got a bunch of other things you want to do today But I want to make sure everybody leaves knowing how grateful I am for you and that success Unshared is failure is the book and you guys should go grab it.

Okay, everybody All right. God bless you John Paul. Thank you so much. God bless you all max out your life This is the end