Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, we have a very special podcast with John Paul DeJoria.
You may recognize John Paul's name as the founder of the Paul Mitchell haircare brand and as a billionaire philanthropist. He's a super nice guy, and Joe Polish and I had a chance to speak with him on our I love marketing podcast.
We've got to know him a little over the years. He came to speak at a genius network event, and this podcast was a wonderful conversation talking more about some of the things that are important to him in life and business.
He's a very smart guy, very thoughtful, and it was great to hear about his daily routines and a lot of really cool stuff. There is great information here that I think you will find valuable.
Show Links:
IloveMarketing.com John Paul DeJoria Episode
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
EmailMastery.com
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 198
Joe: Hello, this is Joe, and I've Dean on the line. How you doing, Dean?
Dean: Hey, doing great, Joe, very excited today.
Joe: You ready for our very special guest?
Dean: Yeah.
Joe: Let me let everyone know who this is. His name's John Paul DeJoria. 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 John Paul Mitchell Systems, converted it into the largest privately-held salon haircare line, and then later turned a passion into success by founding the world's ultra-premium tequila, Patrón; a new venture, ROK Mobile; John Paul Selects; John Paul Pet; 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 business and inspire others. I was introduced to him by my dear friend, Dave -. JP, great to have you on the line with us.
John: Well, thank you, a pleasure being on such a great show.
Joe: Thank you, thank you. So whereabouts are you located? What are you doing right now?
John: 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. There's a pretty good spot.
Joe: So it sounds like you've actually done extraordinarily well, but along the way, I've watched quite a few videos of you, and you've 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. For people who don't know who you are, who is the real John Paul DeJoria?
John: Oh, the guy sitting here watching his pool man take his time. But I would say that I'm a human being, obviously. I'm 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? 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 '80 and '81, inflation in the United States was 12.5%, 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 time. 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 with just very, very few dollars.
However, because we believed that we had an opportunity, even though that situation was, shall we say, in a businessman's eyes, far worse than the 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 care for the first couple of weeks, but eventually things started happening. Sometimes folks say, "JP, when did you know you made it?" I thought, "Well, when we can pay our bills on time, I think we're doing pretty good." That took two whole years, but America works.
Joe: 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's an amazing country, and I... a very similar... I think all of us have had sort of our rags-to-riches 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. I was a former drug addict. So 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 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?
John: That is a great question, by the way. What it is? 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... Well, it's in the news today, so why not say? One of these Islamic extremist countries 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 free enterprise. Capitalism definitely works. In fact, capitalism helps create more jobs that anything you could possibly imagine. But also, the climate of America is a lot easier to do something in, in my opinion, than many other countries. We have more of an opportunity to be more mobile. People are used to do something properly, and we haven't gone 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 several political reasons, there's been a lot of undertone of, "Well, no, 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 seven 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 the haves and have-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, "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 believed what we did and what I did was proper, I have a chance to get ahead. If you don't mind, I'd like to give you my definition of success, as well as an example. Is that okay?
Joe: I would love it. That'd be great.
Dean: Yeah, -.
John: 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. 13 years old, I'm working at [Stewart's 00:09:09] 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 Stewart's Cleaners. Stewart 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. Stewart would've probably paid me less if he could.
Anyways, one day Stewart calls me in 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 don't have to be watching me, Stewart. 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. Well, 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 happened for me. I didn't ask for that raise. 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's watching you, you are a successful person?
Joe: 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. 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. They have some sort of insight. They understand the missing things 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 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. It started out very young. I even remember seeing on an interview you did, talking about Paul Mitchell Systems, that you weren't in the selling business. You went into the reorder business, not the selling business. 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 some manipulative technique. That's who you are as a person.
John: 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 a 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. Sometimes it takes, "Well, I've got to make a little less margin, or I've got to do something a little extra and given them something that's well worth what it is. And in many cases, I may have to go overboard like Patrón Tequila."
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 very good. But, anyways, to do it and spend the money and then come out with it in 1989, Patrón, at $37 a bottle. People said, "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 realized 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 just spend a little more, have the very best there is for 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 launch our latest endeavor here, which is a huge thing, and that's ROK, R-O-K, ROK 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 big different. We took a look at, well, cell phones. Friends of mine, even my own company, spent 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 $100-a-month allowance. Whatever you spend over that is on you. You want music, you want extra data, you spend that." And 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, 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, ROK, R-O-K, 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 you have a lot of great techies, is we wanted 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 onto your phone, plus if it's downloaded, that'll keep it on your phone. If it'll take 2,000 songs, you own 2,000 songs. They're on your phone, 2,000 songs, and then put it on all your devices for only $49.99, and then have over 20 million places out there that are Wi-Fi places, over 20 million. It'll be 30 million by early next year, that your phone turns on automatically. And on that same app, 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, the Sonys, 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 could be downloaded to 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 artists they played, and of course everybody gets paid. And it's with me. So you're not going to get screwed over." 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 part of this." 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 can 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 piece of that. 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 the 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 can 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 all the music they want at no additional cost. A lot of people that have families now can do things. Corporations can 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 ROK, R-O-K, Mobile.com. When you go online, it tells you everything once you go online. But then you have to, yourself, get ahold 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 a 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 $100 fee, you got to pay for that, but it's all figured into your savings, anyway.
So it's changing people's... 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 wins. 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 or 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 wouldn't any corporation or any individual want to do it?
Joe: Dean, I could ask him a million questions.
Dean: I know.
Joe: I want to give you an opportunity. So go ahead.
Dean: Well, right now, what I hear... Everything that you're using as an example is very similar to what Procter & 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. It's just like when you were saying about Patrón. It doesn't matter that it costs more. You're using the very best stuff, and that's what people ultimately appreciated. Just what you're describing for ROK Mobile, 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. It seems like what your pattern has been, especially - the end products. Yeah.
John: That is correct. You also want to look at how to make things a little better. Example: Paul Mitchell is known as having the finest haircare 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 a 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 hair-styler 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 the people around them being happier at the same time. And I think that's a new way of doing things, introducing things, or teaching people how to be happy in what they do.
Joe: Awesome. Let's kind of go back to how you actually started it. 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 didn't start that way.
John: Oh, no.
Joe: 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 build all of this?
John: Well, when we started the program out, because of conditions in '80 and '81 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. I 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 fulfilled 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 bucks 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 L.A. to visit his girlfriend and was all excited to get some money from the bank out of this new money we're getting, and nada. 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. 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 this 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 pride.
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 I this. You can have your artwork, the black and white part for $700. You can have that. I'll take all your money. I'll take the $700, and I'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 two cents instead of seven cents, which was helpful. Immediately called up the fellow, the company - that was selling us our bottles and said, "Hey, instead of 100... I didn't tell the what the situation was, obviously, or they would've hung up on me. I said, "Look, instead of 100,000 bottles I was going to order, may I have a sample run of only 10,000 bottles?" He goes, "Oh, sure. Of course." And I knew in 30 days, that bill was due. And immediately went to the silk-screener. I told the silk-screener the 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 basically doing it door to door. And if he did a little show, he would do it at the show, and that's how we did it. 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 DeJoria, 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. Would you be my distributor?" He laughed. His name was Jim Henrietta. 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 him, and said, "Because I just sold 12 salons. These orders are yours," and never cashed the checks. He was rather impressed.
So I talked to him. I said, "Look, you can have all of L.A. County if you order only $2,000 worth. Give me a $2,000 order, it's all yours, and I'll even come here and help you sell it." He laughed his head off and said, "Okay, I'll give you a shot, 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 I said, "Hey, we haven't paid 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 on the sale with my salesman."
So I drove around back to his warehouse, and I had loaded 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 Jean Paul DeJoria 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 his salespeople not just selling it but showing them how I did my sales presentation so they could sell it through, so they could hear it: 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 sales with them.
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 was, "It'll be there in two days." When two days came along, "I promise it'll be there tomorrow. We're a startup," and every excuse you could 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, paid our bill on time.
Joe: That's amazing. What an awesome story. I want to point out something, too, that ties into this because you learned how to sell. You used to encyclopedias door to door. And I've read some stuff. 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." And then this one line, where you said, "You need to be as enthusiastic about door number 100 as door number one." So I'd love to have you speak to perseverance in spite of getting doors slammed in your face, adversity, that sort of stuff.
John: Gladly. Gladly. Starting out, how do you even live when you're going through these times? There's a place I found called the - hey wanted some extra business. You got, for 99 cents, a mini breakfast. That was breakfast. In the afternoon, after you're calling on places, knocking on doors, you get pretty hungry. There wasn't a lot of money for lunch or dinner. So you'd go out, and you'd find these places that have happy hour. For 99 cents, you get, for example, a margarita. It won't be Patrón, 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 that you keep on dipping... You're now a vegetarian for 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 product 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, 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, you know that every single person you call on, you know that, "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 years. Maybe you do everything right, and no one notices. But one day, someone's going to notice that, and all of the 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 enthusiastic with every project, every door, everything I do." Now, a lot of people can't do that. They give up with rejection.
Dean: 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 $3 or you could get two for $5. And I remember when I stumbled on the magic words that, when people were saying, "No, thank you... They were kind. Nobody was rejecting or mean to a kid. But when I discovered that on page 5 of the coupon book, there was a coupon for a free Whopper with no purchase for anything else, I just remember pointing out to people, "This coupon right here on page 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. 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 the coupon on page 5. That was the magic formula. I just remember how giddy I was when I discovered those words.
John: I think the magic words that I came up with, and I learned them selling encyclopedias, was the word... When someone says no on 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... you know?
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. In door-to-door sales, was, "Oh, I can appreciate you don't have time. I can appreciate you can't see me. However, I can 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?" So I got another shot at them, knowing I'm going to have a lot of rejection. But those were my key words. "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 because it was that good, and still that good today. But they would reorder it. So 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 Patrón, the John Paul Pet, the Marquis Yachts, whatever I have, or now the new ROK 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. It's -.
Dean: The brilliance too, and the difference between selling encyclopedias, which is a one-time purchase and selling shampoo and Patrón, which people are going to order again and again and again for a lifetime. There's a lot of wisdom in that, too, and just choosing the right vehicle.
John: Sure. Well, I want to-
Joe: Let me ask you a couple of things related to... How many different companies do you currently have, own, or are an advisor to, have equity in? You obviously are very diverse.
John: Well, yeah. Oh, gosh, yeah.
Joe: And your management structure of all of this, how many employees do you have?
John: Oh, it's in the thousands. My god. 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 - companies. 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, I want to kind of stay out of the limelight with them because I will either, one, go up on the Forbes list... I want to get off the Forbes list, and they won't let me off. So there's some companies that I take not 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.
Joe: 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?
John: The dark... at least for me, is this. I'd rather be very, very low-keyed. I get letters. Oh, god, I don't know how people find me, but they do. I'll give you an example of letters. "You're a billionaire, and I have a $2 million mortgage on my home. Could you please send the money so I could 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 $1 million?" I mean, we get requests. Boy, this is crazy. I spend so much money helping the planet and philanthropy, but you get things like this. 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? Who has the biggest house?" So they classify you.
So I've been trying to get off that list. I stayed off it until someone found out the value of Patrón and got it on me a few years ago. And whenever they call 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." He laughed. 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 go want to go down, and you want to get off the darn list." I said, "Yes, sir. Can I get off?" He goes, "Nope."
Joe: That is... Yeah, I've interviewed -.
John: So, yeah, it's better to be... I don't know, $3, $4 billion, wherever billion they want to 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 what you do with what you have. When people ask, "JP, what's the difference between being a millionaire and billionaire?" I say, "It's very simple. I can 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 the 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.
That's the 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?" 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 asked 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. 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 a movie and popcorn." He said, "If I go to a movie, it's $7.50. Popcorn's $5. Dad, I can't make it. You got to give me more money."
Joe: "I need a raise."
John: 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 know that rich is not you have money, you can 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 unshared 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 who have no jobs get jobs? That's why we're very philanthropic in those areas.
Joe: You know, there's a thing about how successful entrepreneurs, 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. 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.
John: 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 Buffet started it. Bill Gates jumped on board. I think we have about 107 of us right now. All of us pledged that while we're alive or sometime after we 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 every one, 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 wealth out there.
No disrespect to Donald Trump. Donald, I'm sure, is a good man. I don't know him personally. I met him a few times, but when they see, "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.
When you look at movies, all these big, wealthy people that were 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's changing, and they realize that, "Hey, success unshared 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 the farming, whether it's getting people good medicine, they want to do something good to change things.
Joe: Yeah. I totally agree, and 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 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. Your, "Success unshared is failure," is a great line, and I do have notes here that you committed to the Giving Pledge with Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and many others. You also say in your Giving Pledge 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 that's just a great way to live. And you live that way.
John: You did do your homework on research. Yeah. Well, when I was six years old, growing up in downtown L.A., Echo Park, East L.A. 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 Christmastime, I was six years old. Now, this is 1950, '51. I'm six years old, and 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 L.A. on the little trolley car. They had trolley cars in those days. And my mom would take us at Christmastime, 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, go 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 each held half of it. 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 him a dime?" In those days, a dime was three Coca-Colas and a couple candy bars. I'm sorry, two Cokes. Cokes were five cents. It was two Cokes or three candy bars. "Mom, that's a lot of money. Why'd we do that?" And 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. So, 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 the March of Dimes, going around, collecting money for them and giving it to them. That's our way, son, of helping those that are a little less fortunate." 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 until 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. Amazing thing was, in 2010, 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 of getting a job, out of 3,000 people, 1,600 people got a job.
Joe: Wow.
John: Now, when I go down and talk to them, I tell the 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 here to help somebody out. That's my way of giving until I have enough money to be able to make a financial contribution. But I'm giving back, and it makes me really good, and it keeps me off alcohol and 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 can help others out, too." So that pass it along or giving someone a helping hand just financially or just with your own personal time is something that definitely works.
Joe: 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 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 do a lot of stuff, and at the same time, I'm a big capitalist. 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.
There's this guilt line that is used in the world of charity and nonprofit, which is giving back. And I understand the terminology of it. 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 a successful company. You provide jobs. That is giving back, if you want to use that terminology.
The problem with it, though, is once someone's 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. 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 want 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.
John: I just 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 can vote for them. Boy, what you said is so cool. The world should hear what you just said. That is so true.
Joe: Yeah. No. Yeah, I'd like to... I wanted to share that with you. I was interviewing Blake Mycoskie who founded Toms 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, you somehow...
Yeah, so I think it's really important for people-
John: You are right. 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 & Happiness Foundation. We don't do any fundraiser. 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 hearts. 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 anyone 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 on that. You're right. It's not giving back. It's, "Hey, now that we have this opportunity, we can help change the world and be a better place to live for more people. And we're going to be happier because of it." And we are.
Joe: 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... 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 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.
John: If I had email, I would be inundated with all the things that I do with the businesses I'm in. I'd be totally inundated. So I don't do email. I'm also am of the school that if something's important enough, and I try and pay attention to the vital few, ignore the trivial many... Pay attention to the vital few. Ignore the trivial many. And 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. Fax it to me if I know who you are. But I'll call them and say, "Hey, how's it going?" Needless to say, I do have assistants, great assistants that 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 and 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 minutiae 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 and now. Everything else is something extra in the movie.
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 to 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 I will handle a piece of paper once, act upon it immediately so you don't keep having to have stacks of papers all over your desk.
Joe: That's great. So how do you decide? How do you say no? What do you say yes to? What do you say no to? 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. How do you sift it all?
John: 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, Myra, does that really well. If people call her, she normally will direct somebody, knowing my businesses 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 it's something dealing with the family. I definitely will jump on that.
If it's something that I feel is really something that deserves my attention or something that somebody else could've handled... for example, a president could've 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 can still go directly to me. They know how to get ahold of me, and I will take care of that for them. Of course, this is for my own staff.
Joe: Yeah, and that's good. I've had the same assistant for 19 years, and my life would be much more complex without how amazing she is. I'm a huge believer in having someone to assist you. I got to 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. 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-
John: You betcha. Great question. I sure will. Number one, and a lot of people are not aware of this, Patrón 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. 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 if first-class all the way. Because I funded it, they were able to reduce the cost so little that more people could afford to get in. It's one-fourth what you would pay at one of these shi-shi places. 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. And the 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 non-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 them 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.
Joe: That's awesome. That's awesome. I got to speak to something, and then, Dean, I'll see 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... And I already kind of know the answer to this, or at least what I think you would probably speak to, but I'm sure. A lot of people listening might say, "Why does this guy keep working? He's obviously worth a lot of money financially." And 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 is 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. So here you are. How old are you right now?
John: 70.
Joe: 70, and you're building more companies. You talked about your new mobile company. It doesn't seem like you have any desire to "retire," which I can't even fathom that concept.
John: Not even close. My daughter Michaeline, 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, listens to our future, what we need. She says, "Dad, one day I want to be the CEO of John Paul Mitchell Systems." I said, "Michaeline, you know I'm not going to retire until after I'm 100 years old because I know what's going on in life. I happen to be on a board with David of age reversal, with our buddy, David Kekich. I said, "Honey, I'm in the best of health. I have good genes. I'm going to probably go to 120, 150 years old, but for sure work until over 100." Mikey's answer was brilliant. She says, "Dad, I've always known that. However, I'm still younger than you are." Now, but I'm not young enough to do what my other daughter, Alexis, does. She's the fastest woman in the world in top-fuel funny cars. She broke all the world records. I can not drive her car. Oh, she goes 318 miles an hour in less than four seconds.
Joe: Wow.
John: Yeah, she owns the world record right now. That's g-force taking off. So maybe I can't do that, but I can 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 your 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 companies run smoothly. I have great staff, great people with me. 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 happy person. I'm just happy. I love what I do. I love who I do it with. 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.
Joe: 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's 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. 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. There's other people that have had great success. 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 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.
Dean: I was just going to ask him, yeah, what he's excited about now. What's next?
John: Well, the two things... One, R-O-K Mobile, ROK 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 in the economy. Think about it. If people only saved $50 a month, which they save 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.
And medicine, it's another thing that's very exciting. Half our population, approximately, and 80% of the rest of the world has some form of herpes. A cold sore is a herpe as well as the other things we know as herpes. Also in that family is 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, 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 there had shingles. It's painful. He put this plant on there, and the shingles were gone in 24 hours.
These things excite me. It's how to take something that affects a lot of the planet... Now I guaranteed everybody I would fund this 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 lasts them 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. 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, Aubio, Au 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 on water, cleaning water and saving forests because there's things out there in the forests. There's plants that are curing things we have today. They're curing things today better than pharmaceuticals, and we can't destroy them. We've got to keep that ecosystem going. This is just one great example of something that is going to change people as we know them today and what people do.
Joe: That is awesome. How do people... If anyone listening wants to get involved in any of your philanthropic work, in 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?
John: Well, I -.
Joe: Is there anything else you want to talk... And you're welcome to pitch or plug anything you want.
John: Oh, that is wonderful. I could say that there's some great charities out there that we support. We don't actually give ours any money, but if you want to support some great charities, Water Keeper 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 re-pollutes it. Grow Appalachia.... started a program there that I'm funding, but they're also working 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...
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. 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 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, they deserve that respect when they get back. And we should give it to them a heck of a lot more.
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 it's just a good line for everybody to know. In the end, everything will be okay, and if it's not okay, it's not the end.
Joe: I love that. So good, so fantastic. And I want you to hang on before we officially end the call because we'll wrap up.
John: Sure.
Joe: 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. And 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.
John: 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. 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 2,000 years. He went around telling people stories, right? The guy died. He died a horrible death, had maybe 50 people that followed this guy, right? This guy dies, and now, 2,000 years later, he has 1,000,000,100 people loving his stories, attached to his stories. And that's the man Jesus, the Christian Jesus. He went around telling stories, and by gosh, they're 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.
Joe: There you go. No, that's-
John: I'm not saying - 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.
Joe: Absolutely, absolutely. Again, thank you. And to all of our listeners, 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. On our site, we're going to list the links to all of the different things that John Paul DeJoria's involved in if you want to get involved. And, yeah, just thank you. It was awesome.
Dean: Yeah, it really was.
Joe: You're just such a great example of an awesome entrepreneur and still kicking ass and taking names. So thank you.
Dean: Thank you.
John: You betcha. Check out ROK Mobile.
Joe: ROK Mobile. Well, we'll put the links on our site, and everyone, give us our comments.
John: Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Joe: And we'll go from there. Have a great day, everyone, and we will talk with you on the next episode.
Dean: There we have it, another great episode. Thanks for listening, and if you want to continue the conversation, want to go deeper in the Profit Activators can apply to your business, two things you can do. Right now, you can go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com, and you can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book, and you can listen to the back episodes, of course, if you're just listening here on iTunes. Secondly, the thing that we talk about in applying all of the 8 Profit Activators are part of the Breakthrough DNA process. You can download a book and a scorecard and watch a video all about the 8 Profit Activators at breakthroughdna.com. That's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business. That's really the way we think about Breakthrough DNA, as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there. So that's it for this week. Have a great week, and we'll be back next time with another episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers.