John Paul DeJoria shares how a high school teacher's humiliation of him and Michelle Phillips shaped his approach to rejection. He argues against letting others' opinions dictate your path, whether in beauty or tequila, and says the antidote is helping others regain confidence in themselves.
Chapters
If you have rejection in your life or insecurity about yourself, someone didn't, like your boyfriend or girlfriend, you know, broke up with you or you lost your job or something, didn't work. If you're prepared for rejection, that helps. But what also helps is if you're feeling lonely or rejected, insecure, do something to help somebody else out. You'll get love and you'll feel so powerful when you do that. When I said that, I saw some little orphans, younger ones, looking at the older ones. They looked back and they were almost crying because you knew they helped that person out. And you could tell them this little story. When I was in high school, in the 11th grade, in Mr. Wax's business class, my buddy Michelle Gillian sat behind me, cute, thin little girl. I was pretty thin. So I would write her little notes, pass them back like that. She'd read them. Mr. Wax intercepted the note, read it to the class. Something silly like, see, at Winchell's after school, Darlene and Ronnie just went study something really stupid. Read it to the whole class and made Michelle and I stand up and say, Johnny DiGioria and Michelle Gillian. See these two, don't hang around them. They'll never make it in business. They're not going to amount to anything. Look what they're doing during my business hour. Class. Sit down. Well, Michelle and I said, matt, what does he know, right? What does he know? I go in the United States Navy. I get out of the Navy. Mutual friend said, hey, J.P. what do you think about Michelle? I said, michelle who? Michelle Gillian. Oh, how's she doing? Haven't seen her in years. You don't know why? Been in the Navy, J.P. she's now Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas. Then what? That's Michelle, okay? We're still the best of buddies. She found Mr. Wax on my 50th birthday. She found him. She ran him down and found him and brought him. We said, Mr. Wax, we remind him of the story. So, you know, it's a matter of if you to get confident yourself, do something nice for somebody else. That's a big helper right there. And, you know, don't let people get you down. What do they know? My God, what the heck do they know? No, you can never enter beauty industry. Too much competition, no money. Tequila? Are you kidding? A $37 bottle? You can buy tequila for four bucks. Go with your own gut feeling and do something good for someone else, and it raises it. And I'm sure you found that in your life. You got it. Awesome. Thank you. Thank. Sam.
