I'm the moment. I did this altitude. I can run fly out for a half mile from my hand's blood shake. The moment I was in the question.
No, I was in the question. I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue. I'm a medical professional.
I'm a medical professional. Me too. Paris. So.
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Check it out. Hello boys and girls, ladies and squirrels. This is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Showers, my job, every episode to interview and deconstruct world class performers. In other words, to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books and so on that you can apply to your own lives.
This episode has a lot. There are a lot of strategies, a lot of tactics, a lot of incredible stories. And my guest is John Paul Dijoria, D-E-J-O-R-I-A. John Paul Dijoria is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who has launched multiple global enterprises and is renowned as one of the 100 greatest living business minds by Forbes.
John Paul Dijoria's rag-stretch as bio is truly incredible. It exemplifies the American dream in a lot of ways. Once homeless, he has struggled against the odds to craft a unique life and many unique businesses that you know. In 1980, John Paul and hairstylist Paul Mitchell converted a partially borrowed $700 into John Paul Mitchell systems, which is today the largest privately held salon hair care line.
In 1989, doing something totally different, he co-founded Petron, the first ultra premium tequila in the world's number one ultra premium tequila, which he sold to Bacardi in 2018. John Paul went on to co-found John Paul, Pet, Rocket and many other enterprises. He's done a lot and he continues to do a lot. He's also signed the Giving Pledge along with others like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as a formal promise to continue giving back and he has established JP's Peace, Love and Happiness Foundation as a hub for his charitable investments, which span the core values of his companies, sustainability, social responsibility and animal friendliness.
This episode was recorded in March of 2020 and due to some technical issues we ran into, we moved part way through from Skype to phone. So you will notice that transition. There is a lot of actionable advice in this conversation and John Paul does not disappoint. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide range conversation with none other than John Paul Dijoria.
John Paul, welcome to the show. Why dang it, Tim? Nice to be here on your show. You've got a great show and you're helping a lot of people out along the way, but give them a good positive direction.
Thank you, sir. I have looked forward to this and been looking forward to this for at least a year, probably two years now. And we have a mutual friend, Robert Rodriguez, who's certainly a fixture here in Austin, longtime resident. And I thought we would start, this might seem like a strange place to start, but start with a text exchange that I was having with him not long ago, where I was asking him about topics or questions that we might explore off the beaten path.
And one thing that stood out and that he highlighted was that he saw a picture of you shown by your wife from last December at a Christmas party where you and Smoky Robinson were showing feats of physicality. And Robert said that his mind was blown because it looked like you were doing full planches and moves that you might only see at the top levels of gymnastics. Could you speak to fitness in your life? Sure.
You bet you bet you. In fact, Smoky, by the way, I'm 75, we're 76 here in a few more months or a few more weeks. Smoky's about 80 and he's unbelievably fit. Now what people have to know is this and I'm going to quote an old blues friend of mine, old blues singer.
He died about a decade ago. I was at his funeral and that's John Lee Hooker. I knew John Lee for maybe 40 years before he passed on. John Lee would call me for the last seven years on my birthday every year as well as my wife.
He calls on her birthday and he make up some blues riff and sing it to us. And for those last seven years, my daughter Alexis, a race car driver and I went to his house, whether he was in his Long Beach house or San Jose house, take out with him on his birthday. So he called me and said, JP, I want you to record this. I said, okay, you never asked me to record anything.
So we went out and bought when he was $29 recorders, you plug into your telephone so you can record the conversation on it because that tape and we did. So he made up a blues riff, a really cool blues riff. He kind of made it up as he went along the way, singing and then he stopped in the middle of it. Now, what I'm going to tell you is quite amazing because John Lee Hooker was illiterate until the day he died couldn't even write out his own name just as initials.
A literate today he died. In the middle of this blues riff, he stopped and said, remember, you will always be as old as your mind leads you to believe. And then went right back to the blues riff again. Smoky, my dear buddy, Smoky Robinson knew that he wants to be on stage and he's one of the best performers and best singers in the world the world's ever known.
Smoky knows he's got to be fit. So Smoky learned along the time in his life, no matter what age he is, that if he were to do not only sit-ups but raise his feet up in the air, lay flat and raise your feet up in the air, which really tightens up your entire core, if he keeps on doing that by gosh, he's going to do it for a long time. He's 80. He's doing it beautifully.
He looks like a gymnastics person. When I was in high school, 16 and 17 years old, I was in gymnastics. My thing was the pommel horse, the side horse, the rope line. But I also learned how to do things like from a handstand going to a full lever where your whole body is parallel with the ground and you're holding yourself up with actually 10 fingertips, two hands, that's it.
So what I did was I started doing that oh gosh, I'd say maybe 20 years ago, once or twice here, I would do it. And then I was with a lot of super cool people by Buddy Matthew McConaughey had his birthday. I went to his birthday and these guys were so fit, it's incredible. Matthew being a nice guy, I was in a tank top, we were in the middle of the desert and with his 50 of his best pals and he kind of rubbed me down with oil on my shoulder.
So JP here, let's put some oil on you and all those guys were lifting away. They were all above. These guys look like Mr. America.
But Matthew McConaughey is a very well-preserved, very buffed person himself. Anyways, they said, JP, lift 20, 30 pounds, lift whatever you can. I said, I bet I can do something. You guys can't do.
He goes, wait a minute. He stopped. He brought everybody over, right? He was in the picture and I was able to raise myself up with my two hands, totally parallel with the ground.
Nobody else could do it. So when Smokey and I got together over to the South, around the holidays, revisiting each other, his wife, my wife and some dear friends, we both did that. Let's get our feet up in the air together. And we did that.
And right afterwards, I went into that full plank expanded the air. But the whole thing is this, don't limit yourself in life by your age or what you think you're capable of doing. You're always as old as your mind leads you to believe. And there's a lot of things you could do if you truly believe you could do it.
And if you can't do it, now do a little portion of it until you can't do it. That's incredible. He meaning Robert described you as looking like Spider-Man. What does your weekly exercise routine look like if you have a somewhat consistent routine?
Well, it's not really consistent. I'd say though, probably three times a week, I will do what they call Navy Seal Push-Ups. These things you hold onto in twist. And I'll do maybe 25 of them, two, three times a week.
That's about the extent of it. Maybe once or twice a month, I'll pick up 25 pounds in each hands and do a couple of curls or something that takes me a minute and a half. And that's the extent of it. I walk a lot and I walk fast.
You walk a lot, you walk fast. I think walking is definitely underrated. And what does your diet look like? My diet is probably 90% to 95% vegetarian.
I still like my fish, my shrimp, my organic free range, no antibiotic chicken. But I'm pulling away from that. I used to eat a little bit of meat, but I'm pulling away from that also. So I think eventually it'll be more vegetarian with just a little bit of fish in there, but much more vegetarian.
I think that's where it's going to end up. And a lot of people think that I think because of whatever old school medical people ever said is you've got to have meat in your body to be strong. But then again, I said, well, wait a minute, an elephant is the strongest animal on the planet. It eats no meat.
Paught be with cats, whales, eat krill. They're an eating fish. And they're pretty strong, too. And I believe to the best of my knowledge that apes, monkeys, gorillas who are very, very strong are vegetarians.
So that ended up changing my eating habits. I don't think man was made to eat meat. And I didn't believe that. More recently some kind of changing direction.
I've had a guest in the podcast, a previous world champion and Olympic or a world recordef spider hoder in Olympic weightlifting named Jersey Gregurek originally from Poland, who also primarily for prostate reasons, to lower inflammatory markers, has moved more to a vegetarian diet. he is one of the fittest humans. I know, so certainly there are ways, I think, to deviate from a meat heavy diet without a doubt. I'd love to jump back in time.
Can I just do that? Can I get a diet back in Dijks? It's good to share with everybody. Yes, please.
Oatmeal is one of the, I eat oatmeal every morning. And what I've done here is, because apples are very good for you. If you take a whole apple, and you'll, of course, cut out the core and chop it in little pieces, cook it with your oatmeal, cook it with the oatmeal. Put a little bit of honey on it.
Number one, you've got one of the most greatest foods ever, an apple in you to start your day, and oatmeal is one of the best things ever for your system and clearing you out. Another thing too, and you can get it over the internet, it's called Daily Restore, like RESTOR, RESTOR, you know, Restore something, Daily Restore. It's a probiotic that's made up of, I believe it's nine probiotics, and oh God, I wanna say, maybe just as many enzymes, but they're doing research with it right now, where it's found to do things that are so unbelievable to the immune system, it's even hard to believe. But if you go online, they have their medical research on it, you can look at it.
But I've been taking those also, these super probiotics that they make, that Daily Restore makes, that are just phenomenal. I mean, I haven't had a cold, I don't think in 25, 30 years, I even had a cold. Is there anything else that you consume on a daily basis or do you want a daily basis? Besides, you know?
Very good, most days, not all, but most days I have a nice glass or two of a good red wine. Do you have a favorite wine? Or is it? Well, no.
I have, there's quite a few. I have quite a few. There's some really good ones out there from Italy, from France, and from the United States, there's some really good ones out there. Really good ones out there.
So I'll let everybody take their choice. For me, I would say, from the United States of America wine, I like the Camus Private Reserve. Camus is a good red wine, but their private reserve cabernet is really incredible. That's a really good one.
And there's other search, there's other really good wines out there. You know, they shot Tola feet, Rob Child's, I shot Tobar goes are very good too. But you know, even though you go to South Africa, they've got good wines out of Australia, good wines are coming in. I even had a great wine out of Chile, and a great wine out of Spain.
So there's some really good red wines out there. Try and get them without any sulfates in them. They're better. Let's strike a contrast with the Camus Private Reserve and jump to a quote that I read in research for this conversation, which may or may not be accurate, but it's, well, jump from Camus Private Reserve to 27 cents.
So the quote I have in front of me is attributed to your mother, saying to your brother and yourself, quote, you know, between us, we only have 27 cents, but we have a free refrigerator, we have our little garden out back, and we're happy, so we're rich. Can you put that in context? Yeah, sure, Cam. We grew up with very, very little.
It was my mother, we had a deadbeat dad. I never saw him after two years old, until I was a teenager, still a deadbeat dad. Anyways, so it was really my mom's struggling to raise two boys. So my mom really struggled a lot to raise his kids.
She worked in downtown LA designing hats. But from the time I was 11 years old, my brother was 13, we had paper routes with the LA examiner in the morning. We give our mom just by all the money we made out of paper routes, so we can have a little better way of life, because it was a bit of a struggle. So one day we were home, and my mom said, and there's a lot of love in my house.
Mom was just the most loving mom, and she did everything. She took the place with a mom and dad, and both, she was just great. Anyway, she said, boys, let's see how much money we have, because we have food in the refrigerator, we have food on the shelves, and we have our little garden around back. And so we can, let's see what we have.
So we all put our money together. We came up with 27 cents between the three of us, my mother, my brother and I, and mom said, she said, whether rich is people know, look at this. We have everything, we have love, and we still have some money. Isn't that wonderful?
And we 100% agreed with her. And that's where you go into, what is the true meaning of success in life and rich? Success is not how much money you have, or how powerful you are. Success is how well do you do what you do when nobody else is looking.
When I was in high school, I worked for Stuart's Cleaners, one of my jobs after school. And one day Stuart came up to me and he said, Johnny, you, my gosh, are the best, most successful janitor in the world. I was upstairs the other night, looking around, I dropped some on the floor, looked under the bunk, in my mezzanine, and there was no dust. I moved it, there was no dust.
The cabinets removed, there was no dust behind them. You did what nobody else does. You worked as if I was watching you every single minute. I'm gonna give you a 25 cent race.
Now, when you're making a dollar and a quarter an hour, you get a 25 cent race. That is a big deal when you're in high school. At least for me, when I was in high school, the late 50s, early 50s, that was a big deal. So I do, wow, I was the most successful person.
So success is how well do you do what you're doing and continue to do it at your best when nobody else is looking. And how far have you come? If somebody came from being homeless, to having a job, they're successful. If somebody went from being a janitor, to all of a sudden getting races or a supervisory job, boy, are they successful.
How well do you do what you do when no one else is looking? What is rich? Rich isn't money. You can have all the money in the world.
And there's few people like this that are unhappy and unhealthy. Rich is, what's clicking the priorities? Number one is happiness. Number two is health.
If you don't have happiness, you're not gonna have the best of health. If you have happiness and health, you have to the richest things on the planet. Everything else comes after that, but part of it has to be you have to have a giving heart and be able to give to others. And know that you're here, not just take care of yourself on the planet, but do something to make life better for other people.
You have all those things going, well, you're just rich and soul and heart and thinking. And whatever comes long after that, it's gonna come along even more beautifully. You mentioned homeless. I think that might as well segue there.
I was sure. If many questions for you, and we'll probably bounce around, but you mentioned being homeless. Is it true that you've been homeless? I'm not one occasion?
Right, two occasions. Right, that is correct. Can you describe how those two periods of homelessness happen? Sure, it sucked, but it happened.
First time I was 22 years old, and I was working as a master's ceremony at the Second Annual Sports Vacation Recreation Vehicle Show. I was young 22 years old, but I got to jump. Anyways, I came home from that job, and when I came home from it, it was down in Anaheim, I was living in the outwater area at that time, in Los Angeles, and I was a young wife, a very young wife, we were like a year apart. We should have given it to your own child.
So I came home and if I came home and pulled the only car into the driveway, she came down the stairs and said, oh, I've got to run over the store. So she took the keys and jumped in the car and took off. Well, by the time I got upstairs, she was long gone. Right there smack in the middle of our little living room, was our two-year-old son with my clothes piled there, little pile of clothes, and a note, basically saying that, I can't handle being a mom anymore.
I'll do better off with you, you could buy good luck. Unbeknownst to me, what little we had in the bank, she totally took out, this is all manipulated by her. She totally took out everything out of the bank today before everything, what little we had, wasn't a lot of little. She had not paid the rent or the utility bill for three months, meaning that she pocketed all that money.
I was not gonna get paid for another week to 10 days from the show that I did. You know, you put your request, a week before you paid, I had almost nothing on me. And then the next day, surprise, they were there to evict us. They had already put up notices when she ripped up for the eviction.
So there we are, down and out, flat out. And no card, no nothing. So I got a hold of this 1951 caddy with a broken water pump. You had to put water into every four hours.
And we were on the street. And the way we got around was, you know, when you're down and out, you can only think about, okay, the next thing you'll survive, we gotta place a lift, we got pillows, couches, towels, we got all this stuff, we just piled in the car, there's some clothes, got to eat. So I went around to vacant lots and picked up soda pop bottles. In those days, grocery stores and liquor stores took them from you.
You got two cents for a little one, five cents for a big one. And we just went around collecting them off, vacant lots of coat machines, wherever we could find them, cash them in and that's how we got by. Sure time later, right across the side of mind, it was like you would call a really hardcore biker. And his name was Lee Meyer.
He said, JP, I got an extra room in my house. Why don't you come on over, you and your son could be there and some of our biker mama's will help take care of them while you're out there working. So by that time, they had landed another job. But of course, it wasn't paid either for another job for another two weeks until I finally got a paycheck out of that.
And that's how we got out of that. Second time was when I started Paul Mitchell. We needed a half a million dollars. There was no way I could start a haircut company for under half a million dollars.
So we got half a million dollars. So I named Dick Holthouse, who works for City Corp. arranged it for European investors and invested. So everything I was doing at the time I left, hey, I'm starting my own business with my pal, Paul Mitchell.
We're gonna start our own business. He's a hair dresser. I'm a business man and a formulator. This is gonna be great.
I don't do hair. He doesn't do business. What a perfect combination. We've been blessed for the last nine years, right?
And the money's coming. So I left everything I did. My relationship wasn't going well at all at that time. So I left the newer car, even though it was a good use car, the newer car with my wife at the time, who had my child and a daughter at that time.
And I took the older car down the hill and tipped the money. And I became an American. It never showed up. Well, I'm sorry, short.
The guy pulled out. Why he pulled out? It's 1980. In 1980, our hostages were still held in Iran.
1980, 81. We were through some bad times. We stayed in line to get gasoline. Inflation in the United States was 12%.
Unemployment in the United States was 10 and 1 1 1 2. If you could get a loan, I'd say if you could get a loan, prime rate on a loan was 17%. If you could even get a loan. Terrible times.
But between Paul and I, we came up with 350 bucks each at a $100 in my pocket, living my car once again. And that's how we started to jump on all the mental systems. We believe what we have was so good. And all the people we'd already set up gave us 30 day billing.
So it was a matter of, OK, we better do this. We better do that. In fact, if you're lifting on it, it has a chance. Pick up the documentary, Good Fortune.
Like a good fortune. Good fortune is a documentary I did about three and a half four years ago. It talks about the whole story, how to survive to homelessness. And I create not one but two businesses after that.
There should have to be billion dollar businesses each. So you've done so many things in your life. And we won't go through the entire list. You mentioned Janitor.
And I'll let you the fact check me if I get anything wrong here. I also door to door and psycho-pedious. Oh, for three years old, in fact, what he has darted our colliers is commission only. Right.
So you have this long period of many different hats that you've worn. How do you get to formulating and the John Paul Mitchell system? I can get a question. Along the way, I was 26 years old.
And one of my jobs was working for Time Inc. In their circulation department of sports, sports, sports illustrated, and live magazine. It was basically a boiler room where people would call and get people to renew their subscriptions or get new subscriptions. Well, I went to my vice president.
I said, look, what do I have to become a vice president? Because I don't want to do this the rest of my life. I'd like to know how to go ahead. He said, you have no college.
You'll be a high school graduate. And you're only 26 years old. Come back in after a year 35. Well, I certainly went away in a job I did not like offer in nine more years.
So a friend of mine, John Capra, was an employment counselor where people had paid and began people to go to work for them. So he sent me on several jobs. And I ended up after trying a few of them out to working for a company in the professional beauty industry. Has a salesman period to sell beauty supplies.
Well, why was that with that company, I went all the way up to national manager to their divisions with the company. But I got involved in learning how they formulated some of these products who did it, how they did it, what they did. And then I worked after that. They fired me, by the way, because I complained that they were testing on animals.
It was the wrong thing to do. Well, that didn't go into management. So they fired me. I told them it was wrong, wrong, wrong.
They said, well, you care more about animals and people than you do about the corporation. You're not a corporate guy. So they fired me. Right, that was reckoned by the way.
Reckon was a company. But I said, but we were firing me. But why are you testing on animals? It's stupid.
They said, because it makes us look good where the scientific approach. Anyway, so just as well, I was gone. The next coming went to work for it was a company purchased by Syntex, a big pharmaceutical company, a company called Turbital. And Turbital was doing about $8 million a year in business there in the United States.
And they hired me to train their management, their sales management, their sales staff, and educators. When one year we increased the business by 50%. But I learned while I was there more about formulating and where to go to get different things. And they end up firing me, because once again, I wasn't part of management.
I cared more about people and getting them off the road and not leaving them out there for many, many weeks. And I did about the company's expenses and what was cheaper for the company. And also they had some things that I didn't agree with. It weren't very, very nice.
Anyways, I went for a third company. And I did very well. I tripled their sales. They were very little, but I tripled their sales at first year.
I was with them. And they came before they said, we could get somebody to do your job for only what half of what you're making or less. They said, so there. I said, well, wait a minute, guys.
I just tripled your sales. You're little, but you're sales triple. How about this? You pay me the $3,000 a month, which salary was.
But the 6% that you're giving me for sales increases, you cut that in half. And let me buy with the other half. 10% of your company said, no way. Absolutely not.
But guys, most of the money I made was off increased sales. They said, I know. But the increase sales was so much that you be more than the owner of the company. I said, well, they're getting off with everything.
So I left. But at that company, at that company, I learned more about formulating, where do I bottle when he gets so extreme and all this? So I was set up beautifully to be able to start going to come after that. And then I started on consulting company.
But I told you everything you needed to know in three months, you didn't need me anymore. So I'd have to go through a lot of clients. So that's why I decided to start my own thing. So let's look at one of the themes.
The three lines here is being very good at increasing sales. You became the national manager of two divisions. I remember correctly, we just said it again. Triple sales at this company, you just mentioned, how did you become so good at sales?
And what made you good at increasing sales? When I was selling newspapers door to door and delivering in the morning, we would deliver the morning. And the way we sold the door to door was we would go by after school and not door to door and try to convince them to take the LA examiners for the morning delivering our area. Every one we got, we got $1 for it.
So I learned how to knock on a lot of doors and take a lot of rejection. But the big one was when I was in my 20s and I sold in Sackla PDS door to door. I got out of the Navy and I went to work for Tf-call your Incorporated, Callers of Sackla PDS. And I learned how to sell in Sackla PDS door to door.
Now in my training class, I said this to you. Look, and by the way, it was commissioned only. You didn't drink training. You mean no money.
It was commissioned only with every cell. And there were no leads. You were door to door knocking. But he stepped up to me and I believed.
They said that people that make it all make good money are the people that don't give up. A lot of doors could be slamming your face. But you must be just enthusiastic on door number 101 if a hundred were close in front of you. And I believed them.
And they were right. It took me over a week to get my first order. But I did. And I lasted three and a half years.
Well, I was doing that, which was more than the average three days, in fact, with PDS cells in the last and in those days. So I learned how to overcome rejection, which is very healthy. And then when I got along the way and I started to say other products, I could only sell what I believed in. So I sell to people who says, if you're going to sell something, don't really be in the selling business.
You don't want to be in the selling business. It's one of the big secrets I give everybody. Whether it's a service you're selling or a product you're selling. Whether you work for yourself or somebody else.
Don't be in the selling business. Be in the reorder business. In other words, your service is so good. Or your product is so good that whoever you sold it to is want to order it and reorder it again.
Or tell somebody if it's a one time product, how great that product or that service was. That's why things work. You don't lie to people. You don't con people.
You tell them the truth about it. But in such a way where you can go back and see them a month a year later. And what you sold them, service your product was so good. They're already reordering.
And that's how I build and how I treat people and how I train them. Be kind to people, be nice to them. But at the same time, look them in the eye and make sure that what you have is so darn good that you would convince your mother, if you love your mother, to get it. And here's why.
This is excellent. So then we flash forward to, I guess, forward and backward to a few hundred dollars along with Paul Mitchell. And you guys are going to take on the world. What is the pitch and who are you pitching?
Well, we had it fed up where all of our vendors, the bottle maker, the folks' greener, the seller, and the warehouse that's owned for us. We had some of the ingredients. We're all set up for 30 days. They knew what we're doing was going to be big.
They knew we had this money coming in. So what happened was how do you deal with nobody now? Well, it was 100,000 bottles was our first month. So I called up the bottle maker and I said, can I just have a sample run?
I didn't tell you to broke. I just like, can we have a sample run of only 10,000 bottles? They said, of course we understand the sample run. I told the silk greener, we have a sample run coming of only 10,000 bottles.
And I told the seller the same exact thing. So we would have 4,000 bottles of a conditioner, 3,000 of shampoo went 3,000 shampoo too. And it took them, from the time we said go, it took them two weeks to make it. And by the way, we had $700 in our hand.
The key thing was we needed the artwork for the silk greener. We went to the truth, hey, you're built $1,000 for this artwork is a black and white. Thank God we stopped putting any color on it, because we could afford that. We only have $700.
Can we give you $300 now and give you the rest later? He said, no. He said, because I'll never get the rest later. Give you $700.
It's a $300 discount. I'll give you your artwork. Well, we did. So all I had was a few hundred bucks in my box.
I bought some money for my mom. A few hundred bucks in my pocket. Paul had the same thing. He was on his last money.
And that's how we started. I piled stuff in my car and drove up in Los Angeles and threw a boulevard going salon to salon salon salon. Now why do we pick salons? We had no advertising money, no promotional money.
The three companies I worked for, the recan and the firmadale and the tri. All three of those were selling to be salon. So we knew the industry. And when you also that, if you have something really good, we have a darn good product.
Like really good. And we knew we had something that good. And we gave it to us a lot. Or so long was using it.
They would buy it from us and use it. They would see how good it was for their hands and the person's hair that they would want to reorder and recommend it to people to take home in between visits. And they did. So that's the market we went after.
And we stayed with that market. In fact, even today, even today, if you ever see a Paul Mitchell product in any truck store or supermarket, it is either out the back door through the black ray market or it's counterfeit or mixed together. We only sell this a lot. And the demand sometimes is so big that some stores will go to salon pay full price for it, take it up at $1 or $2 as a leader and have it on their shelves.
It's amazing. It's just amazing. Many times counterfeit gets mixed with a gray market product. And that's all the people also.
And of course, they figure, well, how can some of these big stores, these, my god, these big chain groups, have counterfeit or black market product. But they do because they know they could get away with it legally. That's wild. I know you mentioned something earlier than I want to come back to.
And that is working with your suppliers and manufacturers. And you said they knew it was going to be big. So they were working with you on net 30 terms, a 30 day payment term. Sure.
How did they, how did you convince them that it was going to be big? So they should bet on you and give you those. Those are the terms. Very good question.
I presented to them here, National Manager Records, Chainsal on Division, School Division, Seminole, Response for All Training and Education for their management team and selling team, Institute of Psychology, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Paul Mitchell, one of the most avant-garde hairdressers of the day. So here's our credentials. So it was based on that. And I took them all.
I showed them the letters about the 500,000 coming in that were sent to me. I showed them all that. So they said, wow, this is why I said, so guys, when you work with me on this one, I'd like 30-day billing and here's what I would like. And that's how it happened.
And of course, I was very presentable at the time. And looked right in the eyeball. And I was very sincere, very honest. And they realized that nobody thought someone would pull out the very end.
So it's really funny because I don't get any of our first distributors in Los Angeles. I went to Paris A's beauty supply. Jim Hendry had a general manager and president of that whole operation, big piece of place, are huge. Salesmen going everywhere.
If you'll take our product line on, we will give you an exclusive on all of LA and Orange County. Big area, right? And he laughed. And he said to me, well, why should I take your products on?
We're Paris A's beauty supply. We have all the big lines. Why do we want to spend time to build your line when you guys have an unknown line? It doesn't make any sense.
Well, what I did two weeks prior was, I went up to the triple of our knocking door to door on salons. After a week, I got 12 orders. I delivered them on the spot and got 12 checks. But they left those top line blank.
So when he said that to me, I said, here's why you should get us. In front of them, I put out 12 orders and 12 checks. I said, see that top line? Paris A's beauty supply is going in it.
I've already got your first 12 customers. And if you will let me give you this line just by 2000 from me, if you have two, because we were really hard off, just by $2000 from us, you can have all LA and Orange County, right? He laughed his head off and said, oh my God, it's OK, but you better be here every single day, working with all my salesmen. Today's the deal.
I said, there's one more thing too. We started out with virtually very, very little here. But can you please pay your bill when the orders arise? He laughed and said, no, we're Paris A's beauty supply.
We don't pay our bill for 45 days. So I said, well, I'll give you a 5% discount if you'll pay your bill when it arrives. I said, I can do that much for you. He laughed and said, OK, this is nothing I normally do, but I'll give you a break.
But you better show up. Well, he came to our 25th anniversary 15 years ago, and he told all of our distributors, so within five minutes of the time, JP was in my office. My loading doc called me and said, hey, there's some guy here and loaded a bunch of black and white products on our steps there, and he wants a check for $2000. Jeff said, I laughed my head off.
He was just in my office. And I went back and I gave JP the check. So that is what some of my friends would call Hutzpah. Well, I think it was a lot of that.
I said, I'm a break-out. I'm just a break-out. I gave him a break. He was a good guy.
And Paul Mitchell took a whole bunch with him back to why he was living. And we'd go around and sell it to all the friends and the encelents. Did you get the, I mean, what's my good word for it? The occur to be another persuasion, the art of the cell.
Did you get that from anyone in your family growing up? Is it something you developed on your own? How was that for? I would say twofold.
Number one, my mother was always very positive. Boys, you could do anything. She was very positive supportive. Second of all, in the three and a half years, I learned more about selling and about people than one could ever imagine.
They're no longer there. I don't think for 20 years anymore, Georgia George, Franklin P.A. salesman. I don't think that exists anymore.
Maybe no more in Franklin P.A. salesman exists anymore. But boy, if they sure did, everyone of my kids would be doing that for at least three months out of their life, learn what it's really like and really learn how to talk to people and convince them to at least listen to you and give you a chance to tell your story. Yeah.
One of the no. Of course, since that time, you refined it. You learned more and more better things. So I look at it as I'm not really a salesman.
The word salesman describes it. But I really go out there trying to help people make the right decision on something that could be good for them to better than what they have or something they could probably need. One of the best sales people I have in that was not technically a salesperson. He's actually a systems engineer in technology.
This is at a surgery network company a long time ago. Jason, if you're listening and talking about you. And he was also, in my point, a door to door, it's like a PDF cell. Or some period of time, it became, I want to say, a regional manager.
And he said the same thing. It taught him more about selling and persuasion and negotiating and so on than anything else he's done. What made you better, aside from sheer persistence and the face of rejection, were there other insights or techniques that made you better than the competition? I try to tell people the truth.
Here's what you get. Even though the presentation was kind of an unusual, unique presentation where you're paying for everything, but you're going to be in a sack of opinions free. When in reality, you're actually paying for everything. They call it a competition offer, right?
That to be honorable, like here's what you get and here's what you're paying. And here's why I think it's good for you. And here's why I think you might think it's good for you. We would talk about it a little bit.
In other words, you include the people in the conversation. In other words, what you want to do is find a need in the marketplace and fill it. If the need doesn't exist and create a need, that maybe wasn't there. For example, a sack of opinions sales.
I would have to go to the library to look at things for homework in encyclopedia. If I had wondered how that would have been great, well, we could never afford it. So I thought, boy, it'd be great if someone could afford to have instead of a sack of piece in their house. It'd be a wonderful thing.
Make a look up right there. We'd have computers in those days. How did this translate to your experience with Petron? How did that come about?
Well, Petron, I started in 1989. And that came about. I was sitting around with a friend of mine who went bankrupt in the hospitality business, Martin. He went bankrupt.
So I went ahead. I was introduced to him. And I was a joint venture partner with him. I put up the money he did to work in a unique architectural product company.
He would go to Mexico by pavers and furniture and come back to the United States and sell it to architects for their model homes or to restaurants. You buy real cheap there, very nicely furniture, by the way, and bring it up here. Well, that did okay. But after a year, it wasn't really making a lot of money, but it was existing.
And then Martin was going down there to purchase some things. And I said, Martin, we were at my house making margaritas out of the tequila of the day. And I said, Martin, you're down there. Why don't you find out what the Mexican aristocrats drink?
I wish they'd drink tequila a lot better than what we're drinking now. We got to have your breath to drink it. Or you do a shot or mix it with a margarita. Okay.
So Martin came back with a couple of bottles, this long, thin bottles. And it was the smoothest tequila I ever had. He said, but, hey, I met a guy down there named Francisco Alcadas. And he said he could make it smoother.
So make a long story short. He found this bottle that was made out of recycled glass. And I said, Martin, there's an all-day, it is smoother. And he's making it even smoother.
I will go ahead and buy. But this time I was doing pretty good with Paul Mitchell products. I'll go ahead and I'll buy 1,000 cases, that's 12,000 bottles. And even though it's very expensive to make, if everything went wrong, I'd be able to have some of the best tequila in the world to give my friends for the next 10 years for every occasion that came up.
No matter what it is there, great Paul Tequila. So anyways, we did it. When we first bought it to the United States, Eric, nobody wanted to carry it. It was $37 a bottle.
And the average tequila was around $4 or $5 a bottle. The most expensive one, I think, was $14 a bottle at the time. Nobody wanted to carry it. We convinced a wine merchant who only sold wine to carry it to product and sell it.
And we would promise that if they would do that, I personally would go down and hold yourselves meeting. And we would show them how to sell it. And if they took us on, I would get them one of the top accounts in Beverly Hills, and Martin would get them one of the top Mexican restaurants. And they said, well, if you guys could do that, let's give it a try.
So we did. Martin went to his friends at Baja Cantina in Marina del Rey. I went to my friend Wolfgang Pockett's, Sbago's, the hottest restaurant on the day there in West Hollywood. And he took it on, so we kept our promise.
But after a year they were selling very, very little. And so we dropped them. We took on Jim Beam. This is a good story for your listeners.
We took on Jim Beam. Very big company, by the way, they had distribution everywhere. And they had some very, very good alcohol that they sold themselves that they made. But they decided to take us on.
After about a year and a half, they were only selling, I believe, was about 12,000 cases a year. So Martin and I sat down with them, guys, we've been going around opening up little nightclubs and restaurants for you. And we contributed something. But you guys only did 12,000.
You should be doing, we thought we should do like 50, 60,000 one day of this product cases a year. You know, they said, guys, let's tell you the truth, okay? You do have the best tequila in the world. There's no doubt.
But your price is too high. People don't want to pay that kind of money. I'm going to tell you guys, you will one day reach 20,000 cases a year. But that's about it, guys.
We dropped Jim Beam and took on the same. And took on the cigarettes. The cigarettes took us up to 70,000 cases a year. And we thought we could do a lot better.
We went to cart with them, ended up buying them out of their agreement with us, which we did. And we took over the distribution ourselves. And it started going up, up, up, up, up, up. And then Martin Crowley unfortunately died of a heart attack back in the early 2000s.
And Mr. Ed Brown, who's our president, he was vice president sales at the time. Immediately he should have been president, I made a president in the company. And we focused on really doing this property.
Ed Brown gets 90% of the credit for all of this. He really does. It's sensational man. He brought on a great team and we built and we built and we focused on the throne being the part of the part of the world.
And we started bringing it out to other people and other channels. And through Paul Mitchell, my hair care company, we would have a big event every year. Two or three thousand of the top hair dresses throughout the United States. And we would serve them free.
They would go back home and ask for it because it was so good. I sold my interest in Patron a year and a half ago. When I did, we were approaching. Overall with everything in the company.
We were approaching close to four million cases a year. That's just under 50 million bottles. And I think the Patron sells alone. Oh God, I know maybe three million, three hundred thousand something like that with all the rest of things.
There was approaching four million cases. So the lesson we learned here is if anybody tells you something when there's limitations, you don't necessarily have to believe them. When Patron sold, it sold for the highest amount ever paid a company in the alcohol business. Why?