John Paul DeJoria On The Secrets For Being Happier And Doing What You Love - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #171

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish, and.

This is the I love marketing podcast.

Hello, this is Joe Polish, and I've got Dean Jackson on the line. How are you doing, Dean?

Hey, doing great.

Very exciting today.

You ready for our very special guest? Let me let everyone know who this is. His name is John Paul DeGioia. He's a great rags to riches story who exemplifies the American dream. He was once homeless. He struggled against the odds to achieve success, launching six global enterprises and paying it forward, living by his motto, success unshared is failure. With just $700, he started Paul Mitchell Systems, converted it into the largest privately.

Held salon hair care line, and then.

Later turned a passion into success by founding the world's ultra premium tequila patron, a new venture, Rock Mobile. John Paul selects John Paul Pett and Marquis Yachts. He's a longtime activist for sustainable business.

Practices and corporate responsibility.

John Paul makes these practices paramount as he continues to evolve and grow his businesses and inspire others. And I was introduced to him by my dear friend Dave Kecket. So, jp, great to have you on the line with us, boy.

Thank you. A pleasure being on such a great show.

Thank you. Thank you. So whereabouts are you located? What are you doing right now?

Austin, Texas, Sitting here looking outside. Blue skies, white puffy clouds. And our pool man is taking his time cleaning the pool because it's so beautiful, looking at the lake.

So it sounds like you've actually done extraordinarily well. But along the way, I know I've watched quite a few videos of you, and you got a lot of different things on your philosophy. You're certainly an entrepreneur, a salesperson, and a guy who's really focused on creating value for the world, business and with your philanthropy stuff. So for people that don't know who you are, who is the real John Paul DeJoria?

Oh, the guy sitting here watching his pool man. I would say that I'm a human being, obviously. I have a spirit in a human body here, and one that happens to know that the American dream is still true. And the fact that America still works, I think that's very important. We see more and more on television of people talking about, does America work anymore? Do we have the same opportunities we had many years ago? And I'd like to remind people, if you don't mind starting out on your show, that when I did start John Paul Mitchell Systems Back in 1980, in 1881, inflation in the United States was 12 and a half percent unemployment, 10.5% interest rates if you could get a loan were 17% and up. We had to wait in line to get gasoline. And they were not the best of times. And our hostages were still held in Iran. That is one of the main reasons that our backer pulled out and we had to start. It was just very few dollars, however, because we believed that we had an opportunity. Even though that situation was, shall we say, in the businessman's eyes, far worse than the last six years since 2008. We just believed in ourselves and that it would work and went out there and did whatever was necessary to make a dream come true. It was difficult, very difficult. Lived in my car for the first couple of weeks, but eventually things started happening. And sometimes folks say, jp, when do you know you made it? I thought, well, when we get pay our bills on time, I think we're doing pretty good. That took two whole years. But America works.

I like what you said.

America works.

Is it capitalism works? Is it America? Where do you see where you cannot have opportunities versus Because I believe America is an amazing country and very similar.

I think all of us have had our rags to riches sort of stories.

I started out as a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards and I learned marketing because I needed to eat, I needed to survive. I was deeply in debt as a former drug addict. I have my stories, but I'm like, here I am in this amazing country with plenty of opportunities. I just didn't know what the hell I was doing. So I figured out how to do some things and voila. With a lot of effort and work and strategy, I turned my life around. And you have very much done the same thing. So going back to my question, what do you think is the opportunity here?

That is a great question, by the way. What is it? Is it capitalism? Is it America? What is it? Where can't you have that opportunity? Well, needless to say, if you were in North Korea, if you were in Cuba, if you were in one of these, I could send the news today. So why not say it, you know, one of these Islamic extremist countries or, you know, or places that you're at, you don't have very much opportunity there whatsoever because you're halted down by either the ideology of the country, the state, what they think works, or a religious something, who knows what. But you don't have that opportunity. Now how does America and other places differ? One, we have a free enterprise. Capitalism definitely works. In fact, capitalism helps create more jobs than anything you could possibly imagine. But also the climate of America is a lot easier to do something in, in my opinion than many, many other countries. We have more of an opportunity to be more mobile. People are used to doing something properly and we haven't gone to too far socialistic. So people need to know that you have to get on your own to get something done and we're getting used to that right now. I know in the last several years for various political reasons, there's been a lot of undertone as well. Now we're going to go more socialistic because they want to tax the rich and give more to those that aren't the rich. And there's the 99% versus the 1%. Well, if I could speak on your show, which you're letting me do, that is a bunch of baloney. I was recently here on CNN and they said, JP, you represent the 1%. What do you think of what's going on? And I said, well first of all, I represent the 99% and the 1%. I work every single day. I started working when I was 7 years old. A regular job at 11 years old and full time job after I got out of the United States Navy. Well actually the Navy too was a full time job. So I could say that it's not, well, the halfs and half nots. There's not one person out there, if there is, well, maybe there's a couple that doesn't want the American dream to come true for them that wouldn't want that. Hey, I would love to have more than I have today. And the American dream is not necessarily being a millionaire or a billionaire. It's to have a lot more than I have today and be able to do something on my own and actually get some great rewards, opposed to having the opportunity taken away from me to be able to go out there and do something that if I worked harder, smarter, if I worked seven days a week, if I lived in my car, but believe what we did and what I did was proper. I have a chance to get ahead. And if you don't mind, I'd like to give you my definition of success as well as an example. Is that okay?

I would love it.

That'd be great success in my opinion and it should be. Everyone's opinion is not how much money you have today or how much stuff you have today or how much power you have today. Success is how well do you do what it is that you do. Let me give you an example. 15 years old, I'm working at Stuart's Cleaners in the little town of Atwater, going to John Marshall High school and I was very lucky to have an after school job at Stuart's cleaners. Stuart was extremely cheap. He was tight as can be. I was the janitor. I was the guy that put the little sleeve on the hanger or the little blanket on the hanger for your jacket and brushed the blankets so they looked nice. Basically the all over guy and needless to say, the janitor. Well, I loved my job. I was paid a dollar and a quarter an hour because it was required. Stuart would have probably paid me less if he could. Anyways, one day Stuart calls me and says, john Paul, I want to speak to you. I thought, oh no, here we go. What did I do wrong? I don't want to lose this job. He says, I went to the mezzanine level last night. I worked late and as you know, I have a cot up there. I laid down for a minute and I put my watch on the little table and it fell on the floor. So I reached down to get it and underneath the cot I noticed there was no dust. I moved the cot, there was zero dust. I moved the filing cabinet next to it. There was no dust. You go out of your way to really clean this place. I said yes, because I like my job. And that's my job, is to do things when you know, you don't have to be watching me. Stuart, I'm going to do a darn good job. He says, I'm going to give you a 25 cent raise. He gave me a raise to $1.50 an hour. Where I went to high school, I was probably the highest paid kid in high school because we didn't have a lot of jobs or a lot of money anyways. But what happened was this. It's because I did what I did as best as I could when nobody else was watching things happen for me. I didn't ask for that raise. And many times people must remember that it's not how little that you do, it's how well do you do what you do. If you do what you do to the best of your ability, when nobody is watching you, you are a successful person.

That is such a good line. I'll repeat it for everyone. Success is how well you do what you do when nobody else is looking, when nobody else is watching. That is key. One thing I've noticed about you and what I've learned is that you anticipate things. And I think a lot of people that do extraordinarily well, that are industry transformers, they not only started out that way, but they actually Go into a new market by they have some sort of insight, they understand the missing thing for the clients where things are not being paid attention to. And they basically go in and they add that, they fulfill that, they create that sort of value. And I think that's a theme that's pretty much what I've been able to pick up following you and learning about you in your process. And it started out very young. I even remember seeing on an interview you did where talking about Paul Mitchell Systems that you weren't in the selling business, you went into the reorder business, not the selling business. And I'd love to have you speak to that because that's really about you not being in the transaction business, but.

In the relationship business.

And you've learned how to develop and nurture those relationships simply because you actually care, not because it's like some manipulative technique. It's just that's who you are as a person.

You bet. I look at it this way. It's a suggestion I give to people out there that want to know what are some of the secrets to having a product or service out there. Well, there's no real secret. What it is is you must care about the end consumer. Care about them so much that whatever service or product you sell, it's so good they want to reorder it, not just buy it from you. And sometimes it takes, well, I've got to make a little less margin or I've got to do something a little extra and give them something that's well worth what it is. And in many cases I may have to go overboard and like Patron tequila, when tequilas were very, very cheap and didn't taste that good. To spend the money, take the gamble to create the best tequila ever. That's also one that's not very bad for your body at all. It's pret. Anyways, do it, spend the money and then come out with it. In 1989, Patron At $37 a bottle, people says no one will ever pay that. They're used to the $5 tequilas, they're just not going to pay that. But we believe that people deserve to treat themselves to the very best. Eventually it would catch on. Well, son of a gun, it did catch on. And people realize that now they had a sipping tequila, they didn't have to spend the same amount of money for lots of drinks and feel terrible the same day. They could spend a little more best there is from themselves and not have that hangover the next day. It's caring about that consumer first. So whatever they have, eventually they're going to want to reorder it or tell their friends about it. When we launched our latest endeavor here, which is a huge thing, and that's Rock Rok Rock Mobile, that's what we had to bear in mind, especially in the telecommunications market. And that's a big thing to do when you kind of gamble that you're doing something a bit different. We took a look at, well, cell phones. Friends of mine, even my own company spends a lot of money on cell phones. A lot of money. I talked to friends who said that they spent so much with their company's cell phones. They said, that's it. We're going to give everybody a hundred dollar a month allowance. Whatever you spend over that is on you. You want music, you want extra data, you spend that.

And they said they had a lot.

Of complaints because it just wasn't enough. So whenever I travel around, I know what the phone bill runs. And I have a teenage son and by gosh, when I see his phone bill for music, it's outrageous. I thought, well, a couple years ago, what can we do to give somebody everything they have? Do it a little differently, but include the big phone companies, include the big music companies. So everyone benefits, but the consumer is the one that benefits the most. And this might be a good example for your program. So I started with Mr. Kendrick, Rock Rok Mobile. It took us two years and a lot of technology. They came from England, Wales, Ireland and the great state of Washington in the United States. Where we have a lot of great techies, is we want to put together a company where for $49 a month, and this is serious, for $49.99 a month, you can have on any of your smartphone device all your phone calls, all your texting, all your data with no limitations, and all your music streamed onto your phone, captured on your phone as if it's downloaded. Not only keep it on your phone, if it'll take 2,000 songs, you own 2,000 songs, or they're on your phone, 2,000 songs, and then put it on your devices for only $49.99 and then have over 20 million places out there. There are Wi Fi places, over 20 million. There'll be 30 million by early next year that your phone turns on automatically. And on that same map, you have all kinds of things. Now how do we pull off something like this, especially with big phone companies, and not be a reseller? In other words, we don't buy time from the phone companies. They're our partners. So we went around to the big music companies, you know, the Sony's, Warner bros. Universals and 300 others and said, hey, what if we had your music here on this thing we're trying to put together on cellular phones that can be downloaded on any device. But for sure you're going to get paid, for sure. So everyone that comes on a certain amount of dollars will go to you and then it's broken down to what artist they played and of course everybody gets paid and it's with me. So you're not going to get screwed over. And then we went to a couple of. There's four major phone companies. We went to some of the major phone companies. One of them said immediately, are you kidding? The second one said, oh God, yes, we'd like to be. Now why would a major phone company want to be part of this? Because there's something called the churn. Every year approximately 25% of all cell phone users switch cell phone companies. So if they could have part of that churn and for everyone, let's say that picks, for example, Sprint, they get so much of that $49. If you pick T Mobile, they get so much of that $49. And we have another third of the last two big carriers that we're about to bring on in the next six weeks to go live with. They get a p but on top of that and you're on their service. In other words, it's their service, their phone calls, their everything. But they're in touch with and they cross with our app that gives them music and everything else. So this is quite a thing. So many families today have cell phones but tell their kids, don't put any music on it. No, we're not going to spend an extra $10 so that you could hear music streamed to you. And for sure we're not going to give you 99 cents for every song you download and put on. Well, for them it's a game changer. Their kids can now have all the music they want. Additional cost. A lot of people that have families now can do things. Corporations could save money. But there is a catch. What's the downfall to this? It's changing people's culture. You can't go into a phone store and do this. You have to go online to rockrokmobile.com when you go online. It tells you everything once you go online. But then you have to yourself get a hold of your phone company and within this week we'll give you all the numbers to do that on our Mobile device. I mean, on our web device, you have to go and you order it. They either send you a chip for your phone, no matter what kind of phone you have, or if you're on Sprint, of course, they do it through the air. You order it, but it doesn't go live until the first day you use it. And then you have to call your phone company and cancel it. If there's a $100 fee, you got to pay for that. But it's all figured into your savings anyway. So it's changing people, including the phone companies, including the music companies, including all the tech groups which run all the big hardware for us, including everybody in it. So everybody win. But the end winner is that consumer, whether it's a corporate or whether it's a private consumer for $49.99. Now, we started this about a month and a half ago and found out all kinds of things we could do to make it easier. So by next week or the middle of the end of next week, it's going to be so easy to use. But still, it's done over the web. So we look at new ways to introduce new things. But the savings are so great. Why would any corporation or any individual want to do it?

Dean, I could ask him a million questions. I want to give you an opportunity, so go ahead.

Well, right now, what I hear, everything.

That you're using as an example is very similar to what Procter and Gamble uses as their guiding principle for.

Number.

One, plan to dominate. But number two, create the very best product from the customer's perspective, from the user's perspective.

Just like when you were saying about.

Patrons, it's, you know, it doesn't matter that it cost more. You're using the very best stuff, and that's what, that's what people ultimately appreciate. And just what you're describing for Rock Mobile, I mean, it's all the things that the end user would want. You really can't go wrong figuring out what people want and figuring out a way to give it to them. No, it seems like that's what. It seems like what your. Your pattern hasn't been, especially with.

That is correct.

Yeah.

You also want to look at how to make things a little better. Example, Paul Mitchell is known as having the finest hair care products sold only in salons. Well, occasionally you'll see it in a drugstore or supermarket. When you see it there, it's either black, gray market or it's counterfeit. We don't put it there because we feel that the hairdresser can give the salon the best service. Now how does the hairdresser become better? We not only look at our product, but things around our product. Let's take the hairdresser. Whether they're buying our product or not, they have a certain form of education. So we started Paul Mitchell schools. We have 110 of them now in.

The United States, which takes someone that.

Wants to go in the hairdressing industry and teaches them how to be the best of the best. In other words, not how to be a janitor, but how to be a great janitor. Not how to be a hairstylist or colorist, but how to be a good one. But at the same time, a culture of loving somebody. Now they should be teaching this in more schools. How you love yourself, how you get along with your family, how you get along with others. It's a huge culture. So that once people know how to do something really good, they're not only happy doing it in whatever they're doing, they're contributing to people around them being happier at the same time. I think that's a new way of doing things, introducing things, or teaching people how to be happy at what they do.

Awesome.

Let's kind of go back to how you actually started it. I mean, certainly you've told this story probably a million times, but I think it's very instructive to remind people that you became a billionaire and built these big brands. But it, it didn't start that way. I mean, you really had to apply yourself and you went through some enormous adversity and some enormous struggles. So can you take us back to how you started with $700 to building all of this?

Well, when we started the program out because of conditions in 1881 in the United States, our backer pulled out and I had left everything I was doing at the time to start this new company. So I had no cash income whatsoever, as many people do. I was going through some personal changes. So I made sure that my family had all the money they could have that they needed for many months to come. Had a few hundred dollars in my pocket, went down expecting the money to come in. I'd already prearranged where I get the bottles, where I have the silk screening, where it's filled already prearranged with 30 day credit. Well, the money didn't come in from our backer for the reasons I explained earlier. So there I am in the second best car, not the first best car, that was left with the family and a few hundred bu in my pocket and My partner was. He was a little older than I was. He was the hairdresser. I was a businessman. He was on his last dollars. He came to LA to visit his girlfriend and was all excited to get some money from the bank out of this new money we're getting at Nava. So nothing came in. So I said to him, I said, how much money do you have? And he said, I don't have much at all. I've got to get back to Hawaii where I'm living right now. And jp, I have a few hundred bucks I could spare. That's it. So I said, okay, I've only got a few hundred bucks in my pocket, but I'll get it. What do you have? $350. I went and borrowed the $350 from my mother. And I did not tell her how bad things were because she knew I was doing pretty good in life at that time. Had no idea what was going on in my life. But I said, mom, I'll give it back to you in a month or so. Yeah, here, what's it for? I said, mom, I'll tell you later. Goodbye. I'm gone. I had too much pride to tell my mother, mom, can I have my old room back? Which is empty because I don't have a place to stay tonight. I had too much. So we went to our artist, he's the one that does the artwork to get to the silk screener. And we told him the truth. Look, we can't pay for any color but the black and white you've designed that you want $1,000 for. We only have $700. Can we give you a few hundred now and when we sell some product, we'll give you the rest. He said, nope. He says, I will probably never see that money. But what I'll do is this.

You can have your artwork, the black.

And white part for $700 you can have that. I'll take all your money. They'll take the 700 because they'll probably never see anything again. So we said, okay, we're stuck. Well, anyways, I set up this 30 day billing immediately went to the silk screener and handed them the artwork. And of course it was cheaper to go in black and white opposed to color. It was 2 cents instead of 7 cents, which was helpful. Immediately called up the fellow, the company Setco that was selling us our bottles and said, hey, instead of 100. I didn't tell them what the situation was, obviously, or they would have hung up on me. I said, instead of 100,000 bottles I was going to order. May I have a sample of only 10,000 bottles? He goes, oh, sure, of course. And I knew in 30 days that billet was due. It immediately went to the silk screener. I told the silk screener same thing. He silk screened them, got them to the filler, told the filler the same thing. It took two weeks from the time we ordered the bottles to the time it actually was done at the filling facility. I had two weeks left before the first bill was due. I put product in my car and I went right up Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles, beauty salon to beauty salon, door to door, showing people my three products that we came out with. My partner went back to Hawaii and called on his friends that were salon owners because he was the hairdresser, and he was basically doing it door to door. And if he'd do a little show, he would do it at the show. And that's how we did it. And then after I got 12 customers in my pocket with 12 checks, I went down to a beauty distributor, Paris Ace in Los Angeles, and said, hi, John Paul D. New product called Paul Mitchell. Great shampoo, great conditioner. You only need it one time instead of twice. And our conditioner, you leave in your hair and it does all this incredible stuff. And would you be my distributor? He laughed. His name was Jim Hendrietta. He laughed and said, are you kidding? We have all the big lines. Why would we want you? I pulled out 12 checks and 12 orders, stuck them right in front of them and said, because I just sold 12 salons and these orders are yours, and never cashed the check. And he was rather impressed. So I talked to him. I said, look, you could have all of LA county if you order only $2,000 worth. Give me $2,000 order, it's all yours, and I'll even come here and help you sell it. He laughed his head off and says, okay, I'll give you a shot. I said, but you got to be here to help us sell it door to door. I said, sure, I'll work with your salespeople in the field.

Then.

I said, but I have one request. We're brand new. Can I have the money when the order's delivered? He laughed his head off again and said, hey, we don't pay our bills for 30 or 45 days. He laughed and said, I'll tell you what. I'll give you this one break. I'll write you a check when it's ordered, but you better be here the next day to go in the field. With my salesman. So I drove around back to his warehouse and I unloaded the back of my car. And as Jim Henrietta said it a few years back when they brought him to one of our reunions, he says, this guy named John Paul DeGioia walks out of my office. Within two minutes, my warehouse man is calling me and saying, hey, there's some guy back here that wants a check for $2,000 that has a bunch of product on our dock. He said he was just in my office. He came around back, handed me the check, laughed his head off, and I went the next day. And I went in the field with the salespeople, not just selling it, but showing them how I did my sales presentation so they could sell it through, so they could hear, not only is it a good product, but here's why it's good, here's the features. But more important, the benefits to the customer. Why is this different than a regular shampoo? Why is the conditioner different? Why should the hairdresser use it and recommend it to their customer? He understood that, or she understood it when I went in the field with him. And that's how we started John Paul Mitchell Systems. It was difficult. Did we pay our bills on time the first month? Absolutely not. It'll be there in two days. When two days came along, I promise we'll be there tomorrow. We're a startup and every excuse you can imagine. I was delivering checks. Oh, God knows what we did. And thank God some people believed in us because even though we were late all the time, we did pay them. And eventually, after two years paying our bill on time. That's amazing. Yeah.

What an awesome story. I want to point out something too that ties into this because you learned how to sell. You used to sell encyclopedias door to door. And I've read some stuff like you did a Forbes interview and you talked about how successful businessmen must be able to handle rejection. And you said, be prepared for rejection no matter how bad it is. Don't let it overcome you and influence you. Keep on going towards what you want to do, no matter what. This one line where you said you need to be as enthusiastic about door number 100 as door number one. And so I love to have you speak to perseverance in spite of getting doors slammed in your face. Adversity, that sort of stuff.

Gladly. Starting out, how do you even live when you're going through these times? There was a place I found called the Freeway Cafe that if you go there after 9 o', clock, which was breakfast time, but before 10. They wanted some extra business. You got for 99 cents a mini breakfast. That was breakfast in the afternoon. After calling on places, knocking on doors, you get pretty hungry. There was a lot of money for lunch or dinner. So you go out and you find these places that have Happy hour for 99 cents. You get, for example, like a margarita. It won't be patron, but you get a margarita. But you also get all this salsa, chicken wings and all this stuff free. That was dinner, believe me. 20 chicken wings later, or in some cases, salsa with chips and you keep on dipping. You're now a vegetarian dinner. You find a way to exist. Now. It is tough. It's like when I was selling Collier's encyclopedia door to door with no appointments. You knock on that door, whether it's selling beauty products or encyclopedias. You knock on the door, you give your best presentation to go in or you go through the door to give your best presentation, they reject you. Well, after three or four, you get pretty down. That's why I say that when you want to do something in life in advance, in advance you got to know you're going to have a lot of rejection. But successful people do what unsuccessful people don't want to do, whether it's a janitor or starting your own company or working for somebody.

And that's.

Don't let it get you where you must know that eventually I'm going to talk to somebody. And I learned that selling encyclopedias, you knock on 100 doors before someone lets you in. But you must know that if you know that in advance, it means that every single person you call on, you know, this could be the one, this could be the one. But the way to find the one is to be enthusiastic, be self motivated to believe in yourself so much that if you think and know that the product you're selling or the service you're selling is the best there is, the best you could do, or you're as a janitor, you can do the best cleanup you could ever do or make the best bench. Someone's going to either let you in or someone's going to realize that as you go along, someone's going to see that and someone's going to eventually know that and it's going to get you someplace in life. You have to believe that. And if I go back to the janitor, you could be sweeping floors for five and maybe you do everything right and no one notice it. But one day someone's going to notice it and all of a sudden you're going to go someplace because you gave it the best. There's a frequency on this planet that works that way. If you do something all the time and think in a positive way, whatever the mind can conceive and believe it's going to achieve. I didn't say that. Someone said that 100 years ago, but it's true. But you have to keep up the attitude of I'm going to keep doing what I do the best I can. I'm not going to slack off. I'm going to be just as enthus with every project, every door, everything I do. Now a lot of people can't do that. They give up with rejection.

Do you remember when you first discovered the magic words that worked compared to your first door? Because Joe and I both have sold things door to door starting out in our careers. I started out selling coupon books as part of the newspaper that I was delivering. And I remember knocking on doors and presenting the idea of this coupon book. It was three doll or you could get two for five dollars. And I remember when I stumbled on the magic words that when people were saying no, no thank you, they were kind. Nobody was rejecting or mean to a kid. But when I discovered that on page five of the coupon book there was.

A coupon for a free Whopper with.

No purchase for anything else. And I was just remember pointing out to people, you know, this coupon right here on page 5, 5 for the free Whopper pays for the whole thing and you get all these other savings for free. And those were the magic words. And I remember now it was just like everybody was. Even when they rejected me, I'd let them reject me and then I'd tell them about coupon on page five and that was like the magic formula.

I just remember how giddy I was.

When I discovered those words.

I think the magic words that I came up with and I started I learned them selling encyclopedias was the word when someone says no on any anything, no matter what service you sell. The key words for me anyways were I can appreciate that, however, acknowledging hey, I can't talk to you right now. I can appreciate that however, or I really don't want it. I have too much of these other products. I can appreciate however, and I would come back with something and door to door sales was oh, I can appreciate you don't have time. I can appreciate you can't see me. However, I could only take a few minutes to explain it to you. Would that be okay? No, I don't think so. Well, I can appreciate that. Is it okay, if I come back maybe a little bit later, I got another shot at them knowing I'm going to have a lot of rejection. But those reminds me, I can appreciate that, however, came in handy when I started selling Paul Mitchell. Even though my product was the best there was and once someone used it, they would reorder it because it was that good and still that good today, but they would reorder it because it was of that quality. It worked, but you still have to get them to buy it first and use it. I could appreciate that, however, because I knew, I believed that if I could just get it in their hands, whether it was the Paul Mitchell, the Patron, the John Paul Pet, the Marquis yachts, whatever I have, or now the new Rock Mobile, if I could just get them in their hands, they're going to love it so much, they're going to tell everybody about it and reorder. It's absolutely the brilliance too.

The difference between selling encyclopedias, which is a one time purchase, and selling shampoo and Patron, which people are going to order again and again as again for a lifetime. There's a lot of wisdom in that too, in just choosing the right vehicle.

Sure.

I want to ask you a couple of things related to. I mean, how many different companies do you currently have, own or are an advisor to have equity in? I mean, you obviously are very diverse.

About 10.

And your management structure of all of this, how many employees do you.

Oh, it's in the thousands. My God, if you look at pricefieldio, it's in the thousands. God, I know I counted everybody a couple years ago it was 5,000 or a little over 5,000, but there's more than that. It's in the thousands. But my structure is every single company has a president or a general manager. Now I may be the CEO of a company or two, but I am the chairman of the board for most companies. There are some companies that I have that for various reasons that I want to kind of stay out of the limelight with them because I really don't want to go up on the Forbes list. I want to get off the Forbes list so they won't let me off. So there's some companies that I take no title to whatsoever. There's nothing registered. They're all private, by the way. But shall we say behind the scenes, I'm the advisor to the company and give them a helping hand behind the scenes, just so my name's not out front.

Well, let me ask you about that. Why do you want to be off the Forbes list? Just the notoriety, the fame.

What's the dark side of that, at least for me, is this. I'd rather be very, very low keyed. I get letters. Oh God, I don't know if people find me, but they do. I'll give you an example of letters. You're a billionaire, and I have a $2 million million dollars mortgage on my home. Could you please save the money so I can pay it off? Because I'm having hard times now paying my $2 million mortgage. Another letter. Hey, you're a billionaire. I want to be a millionaire. And this lady sent me her picture. Would you please send me a million dollars? I mean, we get requests like unreal and boy, this is crazy. I spend so much money helping the plan in philanthropy, but you get things like this. And then also people say, well, you're a billionaire, why not? Or they classify you. I think, well, who has the most, like, who's got the biggest boat, you know, who has the biggest house? So they classify you. So I'm in interested trying to get off that list. I stayed off it until someone found out the value of Petrone and got it on me a few years ago. And whenever they called me, they're nice people at Forbes, by the way, really nice people there. But I refuse to give them information other than information. That's public information. And I talked to Steve Forbes in his office and I said, steve, get me off your list. I don't want to be on your list. And he laughed and they were telling me, jp, you're the opposite of Donald Trump. He complains because he didn't go up a little bit. And you don't tell us anything because you, you want to go down or you want to get off the Darden list? I said, yes, sir, can I get off? He goes, nope, that is, I've interviewed. It's better to be what, I don't know, 3, 4 billion, where they have me now than to be at 6 or 7 or 10. Much, much better. I like to play the game of not being out there, where it's what you have. See, that's what's weird too. A lot of people misconstrue America. It's what you have, how much power you have, how much money you have. That's not what it is. That's bullshit. What it is is what you do with what you have. When people ask, jp, what's the difference between being a millionaire or billionaire? And I say, it's very simple. I could give more to the world and change the planet more. Now Do I give people money? Everyone that asks, absolutely not. I have my favorite charities out there that I think do the greatest good for the greatest number all over our country, whether it's homeless, whether it's feeding people, whether it's the environment, whether it's clean water and in foreign countries that I choose to. And that's a big difference for me that I have more to be able to do to help change a planet. My son in grammar school, he's 17 now, said, dad, the kids in school said, we're rich. Dad, are we rich? Is that important? And I said, son, let me give you the definition of rich. Rich is you're happy and healthy, son. If you're not healthy and happy, you're not rich. Next time someone asks my son John Anthony the question, he said, yes, we're very happy and we're very healthy, and that's what rich is. They said, well, how about money? I don't know how much money we have, but I know we're happy and healthy, and that's what rich is. So my son grew up that way. You know, it's great. When he was 10 years old, I'd give him $10 a week allowance. 11 years old, $11 a week allowance. By the time he was 13, he says, Dad, $13 a week barely gets me in a movie. And popcorn. In fact, if I go to a movie, it's $7.50. Popcorn's five bucks. Dad, I can't make it. You gotta give me more money. I need a raise. Yeah. He's one of the best educated and, I think, just thoughtful kids in the world. But he knows the value of money. He knows that riches, not you have money, you could spend it and you're powerful and all this other baloney, which is not correct. I don't think people even appreciate that. What they appreciate is what you do with what you have. Do you do something to change success? Unsure. It is failure. And what can you do to be happy and healthy? But more important, what can you do to create jobs? What can you do to help people that have no jobs get jobs? And that's why we're very philanthropic in those areas.

There's a thing about how successful entrepreneurs, business owners, millionaires, billionaires, are perceived by the public as these large, greedy, ruthless sort of individuals. Now, there certainly are people that are like that.

However, most of the people that I work with, most of my clients, most.

Of my friends, are very successful financially. And the vast majority of people that.

I know that are business owners and.

Entrepreneurs actually really Care about other people. They do enormous amount of good in the world. They create a tremendous amount of value, and they have an incentive to actually.

Get paid for it, because by doing.

That, they're able to do a lot more. But there's this perception, mostly by the parasitical side of society that actually believes these people are somehow fleecing people, take advantage of people, things like that. And do you have any perspective on not only why that is, but how.

To actually shift it? Because I think you're very articulate in.

The way that you explain success and things.

You betcha. In fact, for starters, if people only knew this, and some know, but very few go online or look it up somewhere. It's called the Giving Pledge. Warren Buffett started it. Bill Gates jumped on board. There's. I think we have about 107 of us right now. All of us pledge that while we're alive or Sometime after die, 50% of our wealth goes to changing the world to make it a better place to live for everybody. Now, the majority of all these people, in fact, maybe everyone are billionaires. But they made that pledge. They're doing it. Most of us are doing it right now. And of course, we'll do a lot after we leave. But I think the reason people don't know that or think the other way is because they go in the past, they go back to people they see. That just throws weight. No disrespect to Donald Trump. Donald, I'm sure, is a good man. I don't know him personally. I've met him a few times. But when they say, well, hey, I'm Donald Trump, I have this, I have this. Put my name in big letters. And it's not just Donald. Again, he could be a good guy, but there's a lot of people that will do that, that want their name out there. And, well, look how much I have out there. So it's the wrong perception. Now, I don't know if Donald gives a lot of money away. He might. He may be one of the biggest philanthropists. I have no idea. But sometimes people see that on TV or they see that in books or they see it in movies. Movies. When you look at movies, all these big wealthy people that were kind of pushing the little guy aside or buying people out and ruining their business so they could be more powerful. That's what was instilled in their mind as they were growing up. Well, I'm sure there's still some people like that. But today it has changed. It has changed today, where more and more people are Giving people, they make money, the frequency is changing and they realize that hey, success in shared is failure. We're doing so good. Whether it's the arts we want to give it to, whether it's the homeless, whether it's getting people into farming, whether it's getting people good medicine, they want to do something good to change them.

Yeah, I totally agree. That is one of the biggest enemies to success also is this perception that by getting more you're somehow taking something away from people that don't have it. And as long as there's a value creation, creation proposition, that never happens.

So it's like living in this world.

Of abundance versus scarcity. And in the mindset of scarcity, you just don't really have the success that you could. Now going back to the Giving Pledge because I do want to focus on this success. Unshared is failure is a great line. And I do have notes here that you committed to the Giving Pledge with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Ted Turner and many others. And you also say in your giving Pledge letter letter that living is giving. And that's a shared feeling between you and our friend Tony Robbins who says the secret to living is giving. So can you talk about the impact your mom had on your life as it relates to giving? Because I think it's very. I mean, I believe life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. And it's just a great way to live. And you live that way.

You did do your homework on non research. When I was. I was 6 years old growing up in downtown LA, Echo Park, East LA area. Growing up there as a young kid, we didn't have anything. We had very, very little. But we never knew we didn't have anything because we didn't know any better. We didn't have a tv. We didn't know any better. Anyways, at Christmas time I was six years old. Now this is 1950-51. I'm six years old. My mother takes my brother and I. It was just my mother, my brother and I. After we were two years old, my parents were divorced. We went to downtown LA on the little trolley car. They had trolley cars in those days. And my mom would take us at Christmas time each Christmas to see these big department stores with all kinds of things happening in the window. Puppets, trains going around in circles. We thought it was the coolest thing. We were the luckiest kids in the world. We'd spend an hour or two down there going from one department store to another looking in these big windows anyways, My mom said, see that person right there ringing the bell with the bucket? Boys, I want each one of you to take half of this dime. So she gave us a dime, and we. She says, walk over and put it in the bucket. So we walked over and we put it in the bucket, went back to mom and said, well, mom, why did we give them a dime? In those days, a dime was three Coca Colas and a couple of candy bars. I'm sorry, two big Cokes. Cokes for 5 cents. It was two Cokes or three candy bars, right, Mom?

That's a lot of money.

Why did we do that? And the mom said, this, boys, that's called the Salvation Army. And even though we don't have a lot, there are people out there that have a lot less than we do. And remember, your whole life, no matter how much you have or don't have, there's somebody that is worse off than you are. Try and always give a little bit if you could, son. This is our way of giving. And what I do during the year, mom said, was I try and take a week and help them march a dimes, going around collecting money for them and giving it to them. That's our way of just helping those that are a little less fortunate. And I thought, wow, was that an impact on me? So one of the charities, as you probably know, I'm involved with, is Chrysalis, where we take the homeless. We give them clothes to wear, we find a place for them to live, where they go to get food to eat, and we work with them every day till they get a job. We show them how to do a resume, how to do an interview, how to present yourself, whether you have no background, no matter what it is, we teach them how to believe in themselves. And amazing thing was, in 2000, we had 3,000 people come to Chrysalis, all homeless men, women, some with children, some without children, within a little over a year. And we give them bus tokens, for example, to go on little interviews with. And when you finally get a job, you ring the bell out of the worst conditions in getting a job. Out of 3,000 homeless people, 1,600 got a job. Now, when I go down and talk to them, I tell them the same thing. No matter how much you have or you don't have, try and do something for somebody else. You may need that extra dime to save up to buy a sandwich, but take some time. Last time I was down at Chrysalis, a fellow walked up to me that was still there, had already gotten a job but said, you know, John Paul, I come back and help somebody out. That's my way of giving until I have enough money to be able to maybe make a financial contribution. But I'm giving back and it makes me feel really good and it keeps me off alcohol. It just keeps my mind really straight. And I'm a happy man now, happier than I've ever been before because I know not only is my life has it changed in the last few months, but I could help others out too. So that pass it along kind of where giving someone, helping him, whether it's financially or with your own personal time, is something that definitely works.

That's awesome. I was just at the Google Zeitgeist meeting and one of the speakers was talking about happiness and how with dopamine that when you actually give, it actually triggers feel good chemicals in your brain. And it's one of the best ways to actually instill just a better feeling, a better life. It's a great thing. I do want to speak to this too, because I think it's really important and it's completely misconstrued as, you know, when we talked last week. I'm Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. I'm meeting with the heads of the Make a Wish foundation here in Arizona tomorrow. I mean, I do a lot of stuff and at the same time I'm a big capitalist. I mean, I know one of the best ways to help the poor is to not be poor and to do the things that you can do. And there's this guilt line that is used in the world of charity and nonprofit profit, which is giving back. And I understand the terminology of it. I mean, a lot of people will say, I've used the term giving back to mean, hey, I've had some success, I've had some great advantages. Let me help other people. The challenge I have with that terminology though is a lot of people use it to guilt successful people into believing that somehow they need to be doing stuff for other people. Meaning, I don't like the term giving back because if I take your shoes, I should give them back. If I take something from you, I should give them back. But you voluntarily decide to do this. It's not that you have to do.

This for the world.

You run IT company, you provide jobs. That is giving back, if you want.

To use that terminology.

The problem with it though is once someone is successful, then all of a sudden there's a group of people that think, oh, they're entitled to it. You put in all the hard work and I want to make that distinction because just because you're successful doesn't mean you owe anyone anything. It's the people that have gotten to that point and say, you know what? I really want to contribute because I to, not because I'm forced to.

And I think that is the spirit.

Of giving that is really sincere. Not if you have to be guilted into it or politically laws imposed because someone.

Because there's a lot of success tax that is imposed on people. I'm so glad you said that. I'm so glad you said that. Because politicians make people feel guilty and make the public make them feel guilty so they could vote for them.

Boy, what you said is so cool.

The world should hear what you just said. That is so true.

I'd like to. Yeah, I wanted to share that with you. I was interviewing Blake Mykowski, who founded Tom Shoes, and we had a whole discussion about that. And he's like, yeah.

He goes, I don't like the term.

Giving back because it implies just because you have had success somehow.

Yeah.

So I think it's really important for people.

Maybe it's better to have, hey, let's pass some nice things along and be happy. When it comes to our charities, for example, we don't accept any money from anybody. We have our Family Peace, Love and Happiness Foundation. We don't do any fundraisers. We spend all of our own money. No one else's. We have never asked anybody to pitch in and give. We spend our own money. And when we do charity runs, we underwrite the whole darn thing. And anybody that wants to do a charity run, it goes to somebody else. It sure doesn't go to us because we feel that from our heart. And that's why we have maybe 30 things we give to from our heart. We're going to pick what we want to do. Not with any guilt trip or any. Well, we have to, because we have this. We just pick from our heart where we think we could do the greatest good for the greatest number. But I love your line of. And you're right, it's not giving back. It's, hey, now that we have this opportunity, we can help change the world to be a better place to live for more people. And we're going to be happier because of it. And we are.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Now, I'm going to ask you, when we wrap up, I got a couple more questions for you and maybe Dean, if you've got another question for JP about how people can actually get involved with some because you're really working on some amazing stuff. I do want to ask you, though, about your success habits or success rituals because you don't use email. I think that's fascinating and I'd love to, love to have you speak to that and any other rituals or things that you do that are instructive for people to learn how to build a greater company, have a better life. Because I know you certainly do some very interesting things.

If I had email, I would be inundated with all the things that I do in the businesses I'm in. I'd be totally inundated. So I don't do email. I also am of the school that if something's important enough and I try and pay attention to the vital few, ignore the trivia, many. Pay attention to the vital few, ignore the trivia, many. On those vital few, I'd rather pick up the phone and call them on the phone and say, hey, how's it going? Or have them write me a letter and fax it. I do have a fax machine and fax it to me if I know who you are. But I'll call them and say, hey, how's it going? You know? And needless to say, I do have assistance great assistants that, you know, kind of knock out everyone in the world that's trying to get to me because I can't talk to everybody. But I feel that personal touch is very important. When I get up in the morning, instead of just getting up and flying out of bed, I stay in bed for a few minutes. When I wake up, I do not turn on the news. I don't do anything. I sit there with my eyes open and I look around me at whatever room I'm in, sleeping in. And I think about being in the here now. I'm in a room. These are walls. In other words, I get into present time before I jump out of bed and get into the minutia of whatever we manifest on our planet Here. I get into present time and then I go about my day. It gives you a certain amount of peace and confidence in your life because you're in the here now. Everything else is something extra in the movie. And when it comes to handling papers, I try and handle only one piece of paper once and that's it. I either make a phone call on it, I'll write something and mail it back to them, or I'll put it in a little stack where I tell my assistant I give her a little letter to write back and she emails. I don't. But I try and handle a piece of Paper once, if possible. I know when I did a training session for the CIA a few years ago, the executive director said, JP, if we could handle a piece of paper 100 times at the CIA, we'd be doing really good. Forget the one time, but if possible, handle a piece of paper once, act upon it immediately so you don't have to keep on having stacks of papers all over your desk.

That's great.

That's great.

So how do you decide?

How do you say no? What do you say yes to? What do you say? I know you said the essential few versus the trivial many. What is your process for? Because you obviously have a lot of different companies. You certainly are never at a loss for opportunities. And how do you sift it all?

Allocation. If things start to come my way that are what I would consider more trivia or things that I shouldn't be handling, I immediately go to. For example, if it's a company, I immediately go to whatever entity at that company is the one that should handle it. Now, my executive assistant does that really well. If people call her, she normally will direct somebody knowing my business enough to someone that should be handling it, opposed to me. Executive assistant is very, very important in life. When you have a lot of stuff very important, if it has something to do that's extremely personal and someone that I know well, I consider that to be important. Especially if some dealing with a family, I definitely will jump on that. It's something that I feel is really important, something that deserves my attention or something that somebody else could have handled. For example, a president could have handled. But these people went to me because they needed that personal touch, and they work with one of my companies, by gosh, I'll pick up the phone and I consider that to be very important. I'll call them personally. So everyone that works for me knows if there's a problem and it can't be solved, they could still go directly to me and they don't want to get a hold of me. And I will take care of that for them for my own staff.

Yeah, that's great. I've had the same assistant for 19 years, and my life would be much more complex without how amazing she is. So I'm a huge believer in having someone assist you. I gotta ask you about the Tequila company because I constantly do a lot of interviews with people in the area of addiction. I'm a former drug addict myself, and as far as I know, you either own or fund a rehab center also.

Which I think a lot of people.

May or may not know. And at the same time, you have.

A tequila company I'd like to have you speak to.

You betcha.

Great question. I sure will. Number one, and a lot of people are not aware of this Patron tequila is a high end tequila. It is not addictive. You cannot get addicted to high end tequila. You can't. It's one of the very few things you can't get addicted to. Now, if you're an alcoholic and have the disease of alcohol, then it's a different story. If you have the disease of alcohol, by all means, that's what happens. Now when it comes to the center, this is incredible. It's called the Arbor. The Arbor, it's in Georgetown, Texas. My wife and her son were very much into helping people out. So I funded and bought this huge ranch, 80 acres, made it first class all the way. Because I funded it, they were able to reduce the cost of so little that more people could afford to get in. It's like one fourth what you would pay at one of these shishi places. And their program lasts for three months. You've got to be there for three months and then they follow you for the following year. Now they have some short programs for a month, but it's mainly three months. End result was this. It was helping people out. The amount of people that relapse after they go to rehab is amazing. The amount of people that finish at the arbor and go to rehab is the best statistics on the planet. They have fewer people that relapse than any organization that we even know of because they care about it and they feel about it. So here was something where, yes, I have a tequila company, and I know tequila is not addictive, but alcoholism is that we could do something for other people with profits that I make. And that's why I funded the entire thing. I don't own it at all. That's owned by my wife, her son, and another gentleman that's involved with him named Jim that knows the industry inside and out. But what they're doing for people is one of the most amazing things one could ever imagine. So we're very, very proud of that. That's awesome. That's awesome.

And I got to speak to something. And then Dean, obviously, if you have any questions, and then we'll wrap up. One of the things I want to make a statement about here is certainly from a financial standpoint, I already kind of know the answer to this, or at least what I think you would probably speak to. But I'm not sure a lot of people listening might say well, why does.

This guy keep working?

I mean, he's obviously worth a lot of money. A lot of people have it made in their mind that once you make X number of dollars, you somehow have arrived. What I know about producers and what I know about entrepreneurs, that's not the deal, that's not the end goal.

The goal is to do things.

It's to make meaning, it's to add value.

It's to play the game.

It's to stay engaged. Here you are. How old are you right now?

70.

70. And you're building more companies. You talked about your new mobile company. It doesn't seem like you have any desire to ret. Retire, which I can't even fathom.

That's not even close. My daughter, Michael Lane, brilliant daughter, is in business with us. She has three of her own businesses and is the director of future development of John Paul Mitchell Systems. Listen to our future. What we need. She says, you know, dad, one day I want to be the CEO of John Paul Mitchell Systems. I said, you know, Mike Alien, you know, I'm not going to retire until after I'm 100 years old because I know what's going on in life. Having to be on a board with David I of age reversal with our buddy David Kepich. I said, honey, I'm going to be in the best of health. I have good genes. I'm going to probably go to 120, 150 years old, but for sure, we're till over 100. Mikey's answer was brilliant. She says, dad, I've always known that. However, I'm still younger than you are, but I'm not young enough to do what my other daughter, Alexis does. She's like one. She's the fastest woman in the world in top fuel. Funny car. It's Alexa. She broke all the world records. I could not drive her car. Oh, she goes 318 miles an hour in less than four seconds. She has a world record right now. I mean, that's G force taking off. So maybe I can't do that, but I could do everything else. I think I have just as much energy now as I had when I was 18 years old, and I'm enthusiastic about life. Here's another thing I'd love to share with the audience. If you love what you do and who you do it with, and it's for a good cause and your customer benefits the most, by God, why would you want to do anything else? And I look at other opportunities coming along and my company's run smoothly. I have Great staff, great people with me. And I look at that future and boy, there's just so much to do out there. And I have the energy and the enthusiasm. And I think primarily because I am a happy person, I'd say 99.99% of the time, I am one unhappy person. And I'm just happy. I love what I do, I love who I do it with, and there's no reason to stop. In fact, if I go on vacation, I get bored. But I also incorporate my personal life and my fun life into my business life. It's all kind of incorporated together. So it's a big thing of fun.

No, you know, it's so awesome because you truly are. From the first time I talked with you, you're just such an enthusiastic guy and you have such good advice. And there are so many nuggets of valuable wisdom to inspire people from this. I've hung out with quite a few very wealthy people. I had dinner with Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, two nights ago. And I have a lot of very successful clients. And I know some people that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars that are just miserable. And there's other people that have had great success. And so you're just really a great model of what you're doing and how you're doing it. Dean, I want to ask jp, you know, what else is he working on, involved in, and how can everyone listening get involved in that? But I want to give you an opportunity for any other questions, statements, anything.

I was just going to ask him what he's excited about now. What's next?

Well, the two things. One, ROK Mobile, Rock Mobile is very exciting because it puts billions of dollars eventually into the economy. The more customers we have, of course, on our mobile phone service, the more money goes into the economy. Think about it. If people only saved $50 a month, which they saved a heck of a lot more than that, obviously, but it was only $50 a month on their phone bills and we end up with 100 million users. That's $5 billion a month, $60 billion a year going back into our economy. That's pretty exciting in medicine. It's another thing that's very exciting. Half our population, approximately in 80% of the rest of the world, has some form of herpes. A cold sore is a herpes, as well as the other things we know as herpes. Also in that families like shingles, very, very painful. I've worked with some genius people and we worked with Native Americans to find a plant, a plant that knocks it out a plant. In other words, if you had a cold sore coming on, you immediately put it on there and it never comes out. If it comes out, you put this little plant on there and it goes away in 24 hours. If you have shingles, which there's TV ads on, this galore. This happened at the Mayo Clinic. One of the top doctors, they're at shingles. It's painful. He put this plant on there and the shingles were gone in 24 hours. These things excite me. It's like how to take something that affects a lot of the planet. Now, I guaranteed everybody I would fund them over the last two years only if they would sell it over the counter for $39.99, that's it. So everyone could afford to use it and have a tube of it that lasted a long time. So here we're helping help something in the world that affects so many people for so little. It's doing the greatest good for the greatest number and being happy knowing what you're doing. And that's just something I stumbled across where a pal of mine was working on this and said, it really works. And we spent a few years proving it up, and about another month and a half, we're going to release it. In fact, you can't even find it on the web. One more week, it'll be on the web. It'll be called Aubio A U B I O Abio awe, meaning gold in chemistry, terminologies, bio, of course, nature and the earth. So it's like the gold of the earth. But that's so much out there. That's why I spend so much money on water, cleaning water and saving forest. Because there's things out there in the forest. There's plants that are curing things. We have. They're curing things today better than pharmaceuticals. And we can't destroy them. We got to keep that ecosystem going. And this is just one great example of something that is going to change people as we know them today. And what people do. That is awesome.

So how do people, if anyone listening wants to get involved in any of your philanthropic work and any of the things that you're doing that are available for people to support, what's the best way for them to do that or.

Anything else you want to talk, and.

You'Re welcome to pitch or plug anything you want.

Oh, that is wonderful. I can say that there's some great charities out there that we support. We don't ask you to give us any money, but if you want to support Some great charities, Waterkeeper alliance is phenomenal. They work all over the world and the United States cleaning up the waterways and any money that they make out of lawsuits, the bad guys, whatever, they leave it in that community to buy boats or to pay for people to keep on watching the waterways so no one repollutes it. Grow Appalachia, I started a program there that I'm funding, but they're also looking for expansion that takes all of Appalachia and shows people how to garden themselves and feed themselves so that they could be self sufficient. And I think that's called Chrysalis. For example. What can you do to help people? They're in Southern California, but they'll spread. How can you help people help themselves? But if you look around the world and even in your own community, people look at first responders, that's firemen, paramedics as well as law enforcement. Take a look at them. And if they get killed or hurt in the line of duty, the families get very little money. Why don't you give them a helping hand with your time? Look at our vets. I'm a vet, I happen to be a military vet. And people come back, they put their asses on the line for our way of life. They come back injured or they come back looking for a job. Do whatever you can to help them out. They deserve it. You didn't put your life on the line, they did. So when they come back, whether they're injured, it or not, they all deserve our help because they went over thinking they're going to do something for us. Whether you believe in conflict or whether you don't, it makes no difference. They went over thinking they're going to protect our way of life and by gosh, we deserve them, that they deserve that respect when they get back and we should give it to them a heck of a lot more. And don't believe everything you hear in the news. America does work. We are getting better. And there's a lot of garbage going on on this planet, but the end result is something good will come out of it. I would like to leave you with this one line. I think just a good life for everybody to know in the end everything will be okay. And if it's not okay, it's not the end. I love that.

So good.

So fantastic.

Well, first off, and I want you to hang on before we officially end the call because we'll wrap up. I just want to first off, on behalf of myself and Dean, thank you so much. I know our listeners are going to absolutely Love this. Let me ask you one last thing.

Since we're going to put this on.

I love marketing and Genius Network. You certainly are great at telling stories. Me and Dean, we created our podcast because we wanted to rebrand, for lack of a better word, how people perceive marketing done in the right way. It's one of the most important ways to change the world.

We think of selling as influence.

We think of marketing as storytelling. And if you tell a better story, you're going to get more buy in. You certainly have done a great job of marketing your companies. What are your thoughts on marketing and messaging and telling the story? Because you certainly have built some incredible companies.

Tell the people why your service or.

Product is that good. Whether you work for somebody or whether it's your own business, let them know. Because if you help the whole company out, everybody benefits. Let them know what that is. Make sure it's something that's really truthful and always show the feature of the product and how it benefits you. And to give you an example of probably the best storyteller in the world, this guy went around in a small area of the world telling stories. 2000 years he just went around telling people stories, right? The guy died, died a horrible death. Had like I think maybe 50 people that followed this guy, right? This guy dies and now 2000 years later, he has 1,100,100 people loving his stories, attached to his stories. And that's the biggest, you know, the Christian Jesus, he went around telling stories and by God they were pretty good stories because after he died, those that passed his stories on all of a sudden made him and whatever he was telling stories about a good way of life. Very popular.

There you go.

I'm not singling out any religion. I'm just giving that as an example. All religions have something good stories in there. It's just when you get fanatic about it and you change the stories and say God wants you to kill everybody, that it gets stupid. And unfortunately that happens with a lot of religions. They twist it around a little bit. Absolutely, absolutely.

And so again, thank you. And to all of our listeners, there's probably this is one of those interviews you can listen to a couple of times and it will totally inspire you. Share it with anyone out there that you know that needs to hear this message and what he's doing. And on our site we're going to list the links to all of the different things that John Paul dejorie is involved in if you want to get get involved. And just thank you.

It was awesome.

And you're just such a great example of an awesome entrepreneur and still kicking ass and taking names.

So thank you. You betcha. Check out Rock Mobile. Rock Mobile.

We'll put the links on our site and everyone give us your comments and we'll go from there. Have a great day everyone and we will talk with you on next episode.

It.