How John Paul DeJoria Built Billion-Dollar Brands | Founder of Patrón and Paul Mitchell

Michael Gervais (0:00)

What if one of the unlocks for living the good life lies in a simple act of giving? Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. And today's guest is a true icon of entrepreneurship, resilience, and generosity, John Paul DeJoria, a co-founder of not one, but two billion dollar brands, Patrón Tequila and Paul Mitchell Haircare Products. Now, what you might not know is that before building billion dollar companies, JP was homeless, selling products door to door just to get by. His journey to masterclass in grit and optimism and the power of perseverance. In this conversation, JP shares how his toughest moments shaped his mindset and why giving back, no matter how little you have, can transform your life. And why he believes wealth isn't about money. It's about gratitude. It's about impact. So get ready. JP has a deep spark. He's got a heart of gold. And let's jump right into this week's conversation with the legend, John Paul DeJoria.

I am thrilled and honored to sit down with you. Your testament to what from the outside looks like a great life is something that I've wanted to talk with you for a long time. So let me not make any assumptions though. When you think of living a great life, have you lived a great life?

John Paul DeJoria (1:48)

I have lived an unbelievable great life. I've had, as most people know, a lot of adversity in my life, okay? But I went to learn, and I'm learning more as I get older and older and older, that that's a good thing. If I lived a life here in this body on this planet, okay, with no adversity, I wouldn't be growing at all. So I look at what I went through, and I look at the tough times that I learned from. It was like the greatest education. JP, what's the extent of your education in high school? But the bigger one was after high school, just learning things and reading books about what life is really, really all about.

And then, of course, along the way, I happened to be really blessed and graced with a lot of good stuff coming my way. But I lived a blessed life on both sides, even through the adversity, and obviously what I have right now. The world works, and if you're a kind person, it works quicker for you.

Michael Gervais (2:38)

Okay, there's a lot of them. So if you don't mind, let's talk about some of the adversities.

John Paul DeJoria (2:43)

Sure.

Michael Gervais (2:43)

And I would love for you to mark the ones that have been most meaningful to you.

John Paul DeJoria (2:50)

You betcha. Well, let me start out at a very young age. We had absolutely nothing. We had a deadbeat dad, and before I was two years old, he was gone. So was my mother. Now, this is the late 40s. Okay, we're into the 1940s now. There was my mother and my brother and I. That was it. No other source of income. We lived in a little dinky house, real little house, in Echo Park. We didn't have anything, not even a TV set. We thought we were really cool.

And, you know, growing up, my mom was really a special lady. She would give my brother and I, for example, once we'd come home, she'd have this little piece. Oh, maybe it was like two, three ounces max of filet mignon. And she'd say, boys, we're all gonna have a bite of filet mignon. It's a certain type of steak that all the rich people eat, right? We eat just like them. Oh, mom, that's great. And on those days, caviar was really inexpensive. She'd buy a little bit of caviar and let us taste it and say, boys, that's what the rich people eat. So we never knew we were without. So when I got into school, mainly where I grew up there in grammar school, everyone was kind of the same. And then in high school, we realized, hey, things were a bit different. So it was really adversity, but we never knew it. So it never affected us. Going along the way a little bit further, when you run across other points of adversity that really came at you was, for example, when I was in the United States Navy, I learned quite a bit. When I got out of the United States Navy, I was looking for a job to set the world on fire. And I ended up, after several, trying several jobs, to work for PF. Collier Encyclopedia, Collier's Encyclopedia. When we were interviewed, we were told very few of you are going to make it. Those that are going to make it are those that realize you don't give up. If you knock on 50 doors and they're all politely or unpolitely closed in your face, okay, you have to be just as enthusiastic on door number 51 as you were the first 50 And that's a tough thing to do because every call you made was a cold call. There were no leads. You were in the afternoon pounding on doors, finding where the young couples live or people with families, going back at night and trying to get in there to Selma and Sagalpias. Well, the adversity was, oh my God, this is what I'm up against. But I believed what they said. Out of everyone that was interviewed with me was maybe a dozen person. I was the only one left. When I went in the field, it was very difficult, but I believed what they said. Now, it wasn't, it wasn't 50 doors for me. It was more like over 100 doors that I finally got through a door and was able to give a presentation. But there was a lot of adversity there because you kept on getting rejection. However, it worked and that always stayed with me. So later on, when I started Paul Mitchell with no money, we'll get into that a little bit later, I had that same philosophy that you can overcome these things. You just got to figure out ways around it and go, go, go. I mean, in my early 20s, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old son and a wife and a mother that didn't want to be a mother or a wife anymore. Came home one day and there's a two-and-a-half-year-old kid in our apartment with my clothes scattered around him and a note. Sorry, you'll be much better off, he'll be much better off with you than he is with me. I can't handle this anymore. Good luck. And she had cleaned out what little money we had out of our bank account. She planned all this weeks before, took the rent money, didn't pay the rent, knowing that we'd be evicted within a matter of days, didn't pay the electric bill, didn't pay anything. Two days after she did, we had nothing. She even took the one car. After that, it was no money, no house. They're kicking us out. The power is now being turned off. And I didn't have a job. The job I had wasn't paying me for another week. What the hell are you going to do?