Success Unshared Is Failure with John Paul DeJoria - Genius Network Episode #4

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Welcome to the Genius Network show. In this episode, you'll hear from John Paul DeJoria and Joe Polish in a fascinating conversation about how John raised himself from homeless to billionaire. The character trait that determines your success, why today is the great time in history to start a business. And much more. Recorded live from the Genius Network annual event. If you would like access to the full interview, the full feature video presentation and and a one page PDF guide with the insights and wisdom covered, please visit geniusnetwork.com 4. That's geniusnetwork.com 4.

You've all heard the expression it's not where you start, it's where you finish. That's sure true for your first speaker this morning, person I'm going to be interviewing. He's born in Los Angeles, the son of immigrants. Raised by a single mother. Having to sell Christmas cards and newspapers at age 9 to help support his family. And joined a street gang as a teenager and was headed in the wrong direction. Then he joined the U.S. navy. After serving his country, he got a job as a janitor, then pumping gas, then selling encyclopedias. Then he became homeless. Okay, let me stop here. If these facts were given to you and you were told to fast forward his life and write an ending, would you ever think you would write this? And Now John Paul DeJoria is listed in Forbes 400 worth $3.1 billion. How can that happen? Well, we'll find out as I interview a very special man. Please welcome to the stage my friend, John Paul DeJoria.

Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Well, here we are. Look at all these.

All these geniuses.

Yeah. Shiny, happy people. Well, first off, thank you so much for coming down. You flew down there. Really, really honored. I did an interview with John Paul last year and I've interviewed over 400 really smart people, from Richard Branson to, you name it, all kinds of people. And Forbes did an article on the 10 most inspirational interviews that I've ever done, and I listed him as one of them because what you had to say when we had that conversation was amazing. So I'm really, really excited you're able to share here. So fill in the gaps. How did you raise yourself from homeless to billionaire? I mean, how the hell does that.

I think if I put it in one sentence, which is difficult to do when you're really down and out and you're at the very bottom, all you could do is look up. You know, I think it's kind of in life a lot of times when people are down, they look at how to survive. While they're down, but stay at that survival mode long term opposed to. I'm going to learn how to survive right now and make it, but I'm immediately going to work towards the next step. The next step and the next step. Yeah. Great, great.

So what was the most difficult time in your life? I mean, was it. Has it been when you've just been under maybe immense pressure from everything you created, or was it when you were really just at.

No, I think when you're down and out, can't pay the bills the next day, that's the most difficult time. When I was homeless the first time, it was in my early 20s. My wife just couldn't handle being a mother anymore so left a two and a half year old in my arms and wiped out all the money we had and never paid the rent for three months. So we were actually evicted within three days of the time that happened. And I was in between jobs, but I had money. But she took it all. Son and I were on the streets with this old car that we were in and we realized that, hey, we're going to make this together, this two and a half year old kid. But where do we get money? We don't have any money. So what we did was even though we weren't really thinking ecology, we were thinking survival is. I went around to vacant lots and picked up, you know, Coke bottles, seven UP bottles. And in those days you got two cents for a little one, five cents for a big one. So I'd go there and they'd have to give you the money. And that's kind of how we survived. Then a couple several days later, a dear friend of mine who was what you would call a heavy duty biker with a gang found me. He just found me, old buddy of mine from high school and said, johnny, come on in, your son could come live with me here. And we've got a couple really cool biker mamas here that'll help watch him while you get yourself reorganized. So that was a nice break too.

I mean, so how did you learn, how did you learn how to be a successful entrepreneur?

Well, I don't think it's learning how to be a successful entrepreneur. I think it's just being able to do something and know that you have that ability to do it. You see, the human race has the ability, all of you do, to do 10, 50 times what you're doing right now. Well, if you realize you have that ability, as you go along you find obstacles, but you overcome them or you go right around them like Water might go around them a little bit. And that's really it. You look at what assets you have. It's a little bit like selling. Whether it's a tangible product or a service, it's got to be the very best. And you put forth its features and then how it benefits the customer. Well, with yourself personally, you put forth the features you have how these features might benefit. And if you have a product, and I'd love to share this with everybody, don't ever go into the selling business. Whether you have the greatest service in the world or the greatest product, never go in there to sell your product. Go in there to be in the reorder business. That's gotta be your mentality.

That's true.

Yeah. Because if you're gonna sell it, that's where your focus is. If you wanna be in the reorder business, even if it's a one time product, whatever you do is so good that they'll wanna tell somebody else reorder themselves. So that kind of helps along the way if you have that mentality. And I think selling. Oh God. Whether it was flower pots when I was a little kid or newspapers or in my early 20s, encyclopedias, Collier's Encyclopedia, door to door, you knock on, they could be closed in your face. You had to learn how to be just as enthusiastic on door number 51 or 105 as you were in the first door. Now that's difficult to do, but you learn how to do that. I believe the average encyclopedia salesman commission only door to door was three days. That's how long they lasted. I lasted about three and a half years. But I learned to kind of overcome rejection and be prepared for it if you're prepared. And we'll cover that a little later too. I saw your questions. If you're prepared for rejection before you start anything, whether it's your personal life, whether it's a business life, when you're prepared for it, it doesn't shock you when you come along and all of a sudden see rejection in your face? You see, well, I was prepared for that, but I'm gonna continue on just as enthusiastic and as confident as I was when I started. And that's not easy.

Absolutely. Do you experience rejection today in the same way you kind of did then and you just keep yourself in an enthusiastic state or is it just much.

Bigger levels of rejection or it's a little different today.

You've been listening to a conversation with John Paul DeJoria and Joe Polish. We will return to the conversation shortly. If you would like access to the full interview, the full feature video presentation, and a one page PDF guide with the insights and wisdom covered. Please visit geniusnetwork.com 4 that's geniusnetwork.com 4. Let's get back to the conversation.

Or is it just much bigger levels of rejection?

It's a little different today. In those days, let's say you'd knock on 100 doors to get somebody that's reactive to what you're saying and will listen to you. Today it's a little bit easier, I think in life as you build a history that's conducive to a good life. Where in business you realize success unsurit is failure and you try and be honorable with what you say you're going to do no matter what it costs you. Well, it gives you that clout to be able to talk to people and they know here's a sincere guy. You know, this guy's a track record of doing things right and not ripping off anybody. And you know, by gosh, there are ups and downs. There definitely are, but much more easier to overcome today. Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you. So, yeah, I did prepare some questions that I thought would be the most valuable to have you share.

Thank you. Thank you.

So what are your core values, personally and professionally?

Core values are, I would say it's the golden rule, do unto others as you would have others do unto you. That's the basis for most religions, but they get sometimes carried away in rites and rituals. But that's the core value. Do unto others as you'd have others do unto you. And then it's the feeling of knowing that success unshared is definitely failure. In other words, when you make it, it's not really just about yourself making it. Hey, if you make it, you know you made it. But along the way, one of the great lessons to learn is it's not all about you. It's about your ability to be of service to this planet while you're here. And by saying, me, me, me, me, look what I did, this is me. Hey, here's my building, my name's on it. You know, I did this, you didn't. By doing something like that, it kind of takes away from how genuine you are. Because people don't like to just listen to people talk about themselves, how great they are. They want to know how to incorporate it to make them successful also or do something. And I think that's very, very important.

You know what, I hang out with a lot of successful people. Most success in this culture is viewed financially Although I know a lot of extraordinarily wealthy people that are miserable bastards. So there's a difference there. The thing that always annoys me is if there's someone that knows the answer to something, then there's a person who is asking them about how to build a business or how to do something and they know what to tell the person but they kind of withhold it, they don't say anything. And I love what your whole notion of success unshared is failure. Because I think that's why. Because so many people that know you have said so many great things about such a nice guy, so caring, so generous. And my experience with you has been absolutely that you just want to be.

Helpful, you know, Joe, it's also very self rewarding. We look around and I'm a child of the 60s so I know what we were looking at in the 60s for self rewards. But anyways, the highest high you're going to ever get in your life, the highest high, if you want to be satisfied, the highest high you'll ever get is to do something for somebody else and ask absolutely nothing in return. Boy, do you feel high and are you energized and that lasts a while. It's very contagious.

Yeah, totally.

Thank you.

So what is your decision making process or thinking when it comes to investing your time, your money, your energy?

Sure. It's very important because time is the most valuable thing you have is one. Make sure where you're putting your time and energy is something you want to do. Not just because you're exploring with people you don't like or a business you don't like, or a situation you don't like. Time is so valuable. Try and speak. If you're speaking to people or a situation to people you feel there's hope for that you could do something with to do something great, not just make money. Whenever you go into business or in a relationship with someone just to make money, then it means you've already decided to take a portion of your time to make these papers that are backed up by nothing but will buy stuff. Call it a possession. We have all these great possessions. Well, if you have these great possessions, could you give them away? If you had any possession, you could give it away, hey great, it was a possession and you moved on. If you can't give that possession away to somebody, just give it away. Then it possesses you.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. When I look out at a lot of my friends, they don't own their houses, their boats, planes, their stuff it owns them. So that's very important.

They're very, very important in life. I think you develop a way of having what you have. Have our wonderful things, but understand that you have them. And if something happens to them, don't get upset. Something happens. Don't get upset. If you lose some money, don't get upset. Just be so gracious for what you have already and know that you're going to come back and do something else.

Yeah.

You know, I don't know how you would describe this, but my sense of when I think about you without really knowing kind of your MO on how you do it, is that you are very skilled at where and who and what gets your attention. Like your attention is such a valuable asset. And when I first met you, I was introduced to you by our friend Dave Kekich, and then you called me because you don't have an email. And I would love to have you share how you manage people reaching out to you, how you manage communications. Because I don't know if you have an email now, but you didn't have an email. And I was like, wow, you know, think about that.

I still don't. And I'll roll over to the last question also that you asked about. How do you get into situations? When I started John Paul Mitchell Systems, I had been in the beauty industry. And I knew there was an opening for products that were unique and different, that weren't in salons. Even though I had no money, that's what I went after. When I started patron tequila in 1989, we were doing shots. You'd hold, you'd breathe. I knew there had to be a way to get something so smooth and the world was ready, no matter what the cost was of a sipping tequila. Hence, Patron came out. Harley distributor says you'll never make it. It costs too much to make it. You have to sell it for $37. And who cares if you sit around and sip and enjoy that tequila? And even though you don't get a headache the next day with Patron, unless you drink the whole bottle, we don't advise that. Okay. That, you know, they said people don't care. See, but they do care. And I believe that there was a better way to do it. When I got involved with John Paul Pett, I knew there was a business I would start where my profits would help out pets throughout the world. With the profits, not with me. I knew it had just a good thing. When I got involved with Irwin Jacobs and Marquis yachts. That was something that I did, that realizing that during the bad situation of 2008-2011, 12 that the boat industry was down. But if you had the highest quality boats, by gosh, this is the time to get in. And that's when he and I got in it together. And I'll tell you a little bit later about Rock Mobile and about Abio, but you know, just you look for the situation, the quality of the product, what the end result's going to be and the people you're with are these cool people. Right. Do you all have the same energy together to kind of move forward?

Yeah, I think that's so critical because trying to do business, there's no such thing as a great business with a bad partner.

No. Yeah. For any amount of money whatsoever. Yeah.

So, so you, you obviously like how big is between your companies? How big is your team, your staff, your employees?

We're in the thousands. We don't tell Forbes everything because I like to be low key. In fact, I wouldn't even be on that list if it wasn't for Bacardi getting involved to get a little piece of patronal minority interest many years ago. I try and stay off that list, off that list, okay? But I have darn good people, darn good partners that work with me and they're just the very, very best. And the end result is we have thousands. But I'd like to share with everybody here, if I could, how we treat our people and why we, these thousands, love us. Let's take John Paul Mitchell Systems. I started the company 35 years ago. We are in 90 countries. Our turnover in 35 years is less than 70 people. But I teach people to do unto others as you've done to you. There were so many times, Joe, when I worked for people at a dollar for lunch. You don't get much for a dollar. So as soon as we could afford some money, first thing I did was give everybody free lunch. Today, even in Mexico, with my staff and my partners down there, 1500 of them that make the patron. If you work during the day, a chef makes you lunch. If you work at night, a chef makes you dinner. You want to pray, I build you a chapel. At John Paul Mitchell Systems, no matter where you are, you've got free lunch. If you carpool, we take care of that gasoline for you so you do things for people. If we have a good profitable year, and every year we have, we share through profit sharing with all of our people, but we treat them the way we'd want to be treated ourselves. It's not like we're bosses, it's you're my partner. Anybody could pick up the phone and call me. I don't have email. And the reason I don't is I'd be inundated with all the stuff I do, business wise, philanthropically, not to mention family. I'd be so inundated, I couldn't do all the things that I do and expand upon it. I couldn't have had email. So I'll take a phone call, obviously go through my executive assistant. I'm inundated. And this is important, I think, for you guys to know. If someone writes you a letter, people just email back and forth. Try some time if someone writes you a letter, to take their letter and write the answer on it and sign it and mail it back to them or pick up the phone and call it. It means a lot to people to have that personal touch. A whole lot.

Infinitely greater than electronic communication. I mean, one of the things, like every day trying to send 10 personal postcards, even if it's coming from my team, it makes such a huge impact. I mean, it's the simplest thing. I mean, if someone just hand wrote a note to 10 people a day or figured out how to have with your team, your assistant do it, and you did that for a year straight, your life would transform in terms of the depth of the relationships. And it's such a simple thing to do. So did you come across this method of communication or you just knew intuitively that I'm not going into this world of email? Have you ever had an email and you're like, this is crazy. There's no way this shit works?

Well, when I started looking at it, I looked at people around me just being on the computer all the time. Even though all my companies, believe me, are state of the art computerization, they're technocrats anyways. So I get my reports the way I want them, but I saw that it takes so much time and I wouldn't be able to call people as much or write, handwrite people, special people letters, or, you know, being able to do or time to think, at least in my case. Not for everybody. But in my case I thought, let me try and stay away from this. And it worked. Yeah.

Awesome, awesome. So what does success and happiness look like and mean to you? I mean, how do you think about that?

Success is not how much money you have, which a lot of people equate to success. Success is how well you do what you do. How well do you do what you do? And do you continue doing it that well? Do you master mastering something is doing it extremely well, but doing it that way every time, and then having the ability to grow from there and realizing success and shared as failure. Now, how can a janitor be extremely successful? I'll take a quick minute with a quick story. Worked all my life, from 7 years old and then paper routes at 11 years old. Throughout high school, I worked for a while at Stuart's Cleaners. I'm the guy that swept the floors, put the little drape on the hanger and just did all the work after school and on Saturdays. And Stuart was so tight, this guy squeaked. They paid me a dollar and a quarter an hour because he had to or he'd give me 75 cents an hour. Anyways, one day after school, he calls me and says, johnny, come over here. He says, last night I was working late. I went up to my mezzanine to lay on my cot for a few minutes. And I took my watch off, put it on the table, dropped on the floor. So I went down there to pick up my watch and looked under the cot, and there was no dust. Well, the cot's light. I moved it. No dust. Look behind the cabinet. No dust. Pick up a rug. No dust. You clean this as if I'm watching you every single minute. But, Stuart, that's my job. You hired me to it. And my mom, growing up, taught the boys how to clean. I know how to clean. So my job, which I like, my job is do the best job I can. Whether you tell me or not, that's my job. He was so touched. He said, johnny, I'm giving you a 25 cent an hour raise to $1.50 an hour. Oh, my God. For Stewart to do that, it's like, wow, I won the Academy Award. But the lesson learned is this. Successful people, whether you're working for somebody else or working for yourself, do whatever you do as if whoever's really involved is watching you every single minute do it. And that's difficult for people to do. If you can do that, you do your job so well. I had a housekeeper once, 66 years old. Everything was great. I said, deanie, go home. No, mister, I'm going to stay here. Okay, for the next two and a half hours, watch Mexican television. I know you like to watch it. No, mister, I'm not going to do it. Why? She Sundays, because I'm 66 years old. You think I'm going to waste my life watching television? I'd be more productive and happier if I found something I missed dusting. I'm going to go through the whole house again. And she was genuine in what she said. She loved what she did and who she did it for.

Thanks for listening to the highlights from a recent conversation with John Paul DeJoria and Joel Polish. If you would like access to the full interview, the full feature video presentation, and a one page PDF guide with the insights and wisdom covered, please visit geniusnetwork.com 4. That's geniusnetwork.com don't miss out on more insights, strategies and wisdom like this on geniusnetwork.com subscribe to geniusnetwork.com today by going to geniusnetwork.com subscribe that's geniusnetwork.com subscribe.