John Paul DeJoria: The Business Mindset That Turns Setbacks Into Billion-Dollar Success | Entrepreneurship | Lost Files

**Hala Taha** (0:00)
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What's up, Young and Profiters? Today's episode is a special audio exclusive bonus just for you guys. So here's the backstory. I had the absolute honor of sitting down with John Paul DeJoria. He's the incredible self-made billionaire behind Paul Mitchell and Patrón Tequila. Unfortunately, the video files got corrupted. I was so bummed. We had to re-record the interview, but the first conversation was just so magical, and we're finally going to release it to you because I feel like it's something I want you guys to hear. You're going to hear him open up about his journey from sleeping in his car to becoming a billion-dollar brand and why he believes success means nothing, unless you share it with others. So stick around because there's a lot of wisdom packed in this conversation. Now, here's my original sit-down with John Paul DeJoria. Enjoy.
John Paul, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast.

**John Paul DeJoria** (2:44)
Well, thank you, Hala. It's really a pleasure being here. I like the focus of your podcast, helping others out.

**Hala Taha** (2:48)
Thank you. Well, we are so honored to have such a successful entrepreneur on the show like yourself, and you have an epic rags-to-riches story.
So when I was learning about you, I found out that you grew up in Echo Park, Los Angeles, which is now like gentrified. But back then, it wasn't such a nice town to live in. You grew up in poverty with a single mom. So let's start there. Take us back to your times in Echo Park. If we walked into your home, what would we see? What would we feel?

**John Paul DeJoria** (3:16)
Well, the first thing you would feel if you walked in the house is, wow, this is a little box. The house I grew up in is just a little bigger than your studio room here. It was a little one-bedroom house. My father was a deadbeat dad, so by two years old, we really didn't have a dad, my brother and I. But my mom did a good job raising us. So you would find a very small place with a very humble means. For example, we did not have a refrigerator. We had an icebox. Iceboxes were real, where the ice man would come around for 25 cents a week, remember, and put a big giant block of ice in there. It would last the entire week. We had the vegetable man blowing a horn as his truck went up and down Scott Avenue or Furbanks Avenue there. It was just really unusual times. We never had a television. Though this is 1949, 1950, 51, 52 We didn't have a TV, so we didn't know what it was like in, shall we say, the outside world. But our community was made up in those days of a lot of Europeans and Hispanic people, mostly Europeans, and everyone just got along with everybody. It's just an interesting thing. Everyone from every race, color, creed, whatever, kind of lived in the neighborhood. And my mother gave us love, nothing but love. So we grew up with a lot of love. That's one thing my mother gave us, and we thought we had everything in the world. We didn't know any better. Then along the way, we had many great experiences.