The Modern CEO

By: Editor | November 04, 2008 | Profile

John Paul Dejoria
The Billionaire Philanthropist
Cofounder of John Paul Mitchell Systems and Patron Tequila

John Paul DeJoria, it must be said, doesn’t match the typical image of a beauty product magnate. With his slicked-back Harley hair and thick beard, he’s the type of guy you’d expect to see hanging at the Rock Shop on a Sunday afternoon: chopped hog parked on Mulholland, black-clad with a beanie pulled down low. You’d likely avoid eye contact. And if you did, you’d miss out on the chance to buy a round for one of the world’s great social and environmental philanthropists.
Raised by immigrant parents from Italy and Greece, DeJoria parlayed natural charisma into wild success as an entrepreneur — in addition to John Paul Mitchell Systems, he’s the cofounder of Patron Tequila and the House of Blues, to name just a few of his business ventures. But his American Dream didn’t come easy. As a kid, he ran with an East L.A. street gang; in his 20s, a single father too proud to ask for help, he found himself amongst the city’s homeless, sleeping in the back of a car, scrapping for bottles and cans, which explains in part why he doesn’t shy away from strong-arm tactics.
Take for example his support of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, modern-day eco-pirates best known for ramming Japanese whaling ships. A controversial approach, perhaps — disabling the ships’ harpoons and sending them limping home — but it’s a hell of a lot more effective than a “Save the Whales” bumper sticker.
To be sure, DeJoria doesn’t graze casually from the trough of environmentalism; he puts his considerable wealth (Forbes magazine estimated Dejoria’s net worth at more than $3.5 billion in 2008) and influence to work on a large scale, taking altruistic gallops through the fields of green (and blue). He tells Malibu Magazine that he joined Waterkeeper Alliance’s board of directors so he could “participate and strategize” rather than simply donate financially. In the case of Sea Shepherd, he went to the next level, packing a heavy parka and his daughter Alexis and hitting the high seas. Seven days aboard ship, DeJoria was dodging icebergs with the notorious Captain Paul Watson and helping his crew protect thousands of baby harp seals.
As a businessman, DeJoria builds companies around a belief system, creating a corporate culture of “making the world a better place.” His approach to philanthropy goes beyond the typical exchange of donations for back pats and tax deductions. He’s all about tangible impact, which raises a question: What would you do with 410 acres of prime Malibu real estate? DeJoria donated it — every last acre, from PCH all the way up Tuna Canyon — to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservatory. Why? So you and me and the native wildlife could “walk on it.” Simple as that.
This is a guy who shatters the stereotype of the self-absorbed wealthy. You’re more likely to read about DeJoria traveling to Mozambique to help people whose legs were blown off by landmines than jetting to the Greek Isles to drink Cristal with some heiress or uptown shoe fetishist with a Shaq-sized carbon footprint.
Nowadays, he can afford it, but top-shelf spirits weren’t always on tap for DeJoria. When he and his friend Paul Mitchell started their namesake company, they had to borrow the first $700. In fact, money was so tight they couldn’t afford color ink, which led to their now-famous black and white packaging.
John Paul Mitchell Systems currently produces more than 90 products, all within the United States, and is the largest privately held beauty company in the world. DeJoria’s other business interests range from solar power and natural gas to a Harley Davidson dealership and a diamond company — a non-conflict diamond company in Sierra Leone that kicks profits back to the local people.
On the 20th anniversary of his homeless days, DeJoria bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Clearly, he is a man whose roots keep him grounded. “Success unshared is failure,” he says. And with that philosophy as his guide, he rides the American Dream straight through the air-conditioned desert, past the golf courses and country clubs, measuring success in far more progressive terms.
His drink of choice, by the way, is Patron Silver chilled with a squeezed lime — in case you ever make eye contact and want to buy him a well-deserved round.

Malibu Magazine: How did it all begin for you?
John Paul Dejoria: I grew up in Los Angeles between Echo Park, Central L.A., East L.A. and Echo Park, and then I finished high school in a little area called Atwater. I got my first job selling Christmas cards when I was 9 years old. See, when I was a kid, it was cool to have a job, because nobody had them. So, I was selling Christmas cards from the back of a comic book store, and then at age 11, I had a paper route for a few years. I always had a part-time job after school. I’ve always had something going on.

How did you get involved with the environmental organization Waterkeeper Alliance?
For many years, I attended some of their charitable events. Paul Mitchell and Patron, which sponsored these events, would underwrite them and put in a few thousand dollars. All the money raised went to various organizations. For example, organizations that dealt with children with cancer, Make-A-Wish Foundation, just a variety of things. And then about seven or eight years ago, I got actively involved with Waterkeeper Alliance, so I got onto their board of directors and helped strategize with them. We participate financially, but more importantly, we participate physically. We like to do that. We do the same thing with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I went with my daughter, Alexis, on the Sea Shepherd boat at the Bay of Saint Louis where they were clubbing the baby harp seals for their furs. We got on the ice there, and for the seven days we were on the ice, living off of the Sea Shepherd boat in the middle of all of these floating icebergs and not one baby seal was slaughtered. They estimated that we saved at least 100,000 baby harp seals from being clubbed to death. That’s all part of the Sea Shepherds. So, we have been active in things as well as passive.
In accordance with the theme of this issue of Malibu Magazine, I wanted to talk with you about your environmental protection initiatives, especially those connected to the oceans, rivers and waterways of the world.
For years, we’ve actively supported the American Oceans Campaign and organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council, but I am on the board of directors of the Waterkeepers Alliance and I have become very, very active with them. As far as cleaning up all the waterways first — our country and then other parts of the world — we are very heavy duty. One of our groups, which is associated with Waterkeeper, called Riverkeeper, cleaned up the Hudson River. At one time, nothing could live in the Hudson River. Now, every single indigenous plant or fish that once lived there is back and thriving. In fact, the Hudson is now one of the cleanest waterways in North America.

Wow!
I guess about 20 years ago it was totally uninhabitable. So, what we do with Waterkeeper is we go in, we identify the polluters, we stop them or we take them to court. And we have, I think, a 99 percent, if not 100 percent win factor. We win the cases. And then we get boats and people to patrol various locations to make sure they’re not messed with again. On the open seas, we are very active with the Sea Shepard. It’s a little controversial because they go out and they literally ram illegal fishing boats. The Sea Shepard rams mainly Japanese fishing boats that have killed whales illegally in the open oceans. Our goal is to destroy the equipment the fishing boats use to kill dolphins and whales — usually the harpoons. Then the fishermen have to chug-chug all the way back to Japan.

So, you are part of an organization whose primary objective is to stop illegal whaling using a battering ram?
It’s great, isn’t it? And Paul Watson, the captain of the Sea Shepard, is a real maverick — a good guy, a little controversial, but he is saving a lot of whales, which are mammals just like you and I. In fact, they did a whole Star Trek movie about whales. In the [fourth] Star Trek movie to come out, this space probe was coming and trying to contact a whale, and nobody answered. The only two whales left were in captivity, so they had to travel back in time to find a humpback whale to bring back to the 23rd century (Laughs). The movie is actually really good.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh or not, so I’ll just go into my next question if that’s
all right.
Sure.

You recently donated a large portion of land in Malibu to be converted into a wildlife preserve. What made you donate the land rather than sell it?
Well, I bought the land, in the early 1990s, which consisted of 410 acres from Pacific Coast Highway all the way up Tuna Canyon. If you go to Tuna Canyon, it’s that whole preserve back there. Three years ago, I donated all of the land to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservatory so that wildlife could have a place to thrive. People can still walk on it, but no one can ever build on it.

Terrific! Environmentalism seems to occupy a large portion of your time.
Environmental preservation has worked into what we do businesswise. For example, Paul Mitchell has a very, very successful line called Tea Tree; we make tea tree shampoos, conditioners, gels, etc. The entire line and everything around it is carbon neutral. In other words, using computers, they estimate what it takes to drive the car to pick the tea tree leaves in Australia, to boil them to get the oil, everything it takes from the bottle to delivery to the hair salons, etc. We figure out how much carbon is used, and we plant more trees than are necessary to offset the carbon we’ve used for production. So, let’s put it this way, John Paul Mitchell Systems is a company that is very involved in all walks of environmentalism. I also know that every bottle of Patron is made from recycled glass, all of which we find on the streets of Mexico. This year we will [make] more than 20 million bottles using recycled glass, and all of our paper is recycled. We do a lot of work, but instead of it being a full-time job, it’s just part of our cultures. We try and give back wherever and whenever possible. We also remove landmines and feed a lot of hungry orphans.

You remove landmines?
Yes! In Africa. Nelson Mandela, Brad Pitt, Queen Noor of Jordan, Richard Branson and I are the patriots of Mineseeker Foundation and our job is to remove landmines.

I read about that. Mineseeker was doing work in Mozambique recently right?
Yes, exactly. I went to Mozambique a year ago and even though we did not remove landmines during that trip, we began replacing legs on people who had them blown off by landmines. We made an incredible little DVD about this.
(Available now at http://www.malibuag.com)

Tell me about your involvement in the energy industry?
I have a company that is involved in exploration and development, and we are now drilling for natural gas. We will not explore for anybody or license technology unless contractors agree to develop the fields with ecology in mind. Many times, when you go for gas you hit a little bit of oil and it can get pretty messy. In Nigeria for instance, drillers ruined a lot of land because they dumped oil all over it when they were drilling for natural gas. That said, I believe natural gas is the way of the future. We have a tremendous amount of natural gas in our country and it is far less polluting than other energy sources.

When you say that natural gas is the way of the future, do you mean it should be the way of the future or are you saying it will be?
Will it be the dominant way of the future? No. Unfortunately the infrastructure has to be built and it’s very, very expensive to do so. That being said, it’s absolutely possible that people will use more natural gas in their homes and in their power plants over the next few years. It’s already being done in some places. A few of the big power plants, which use a lot of coal and diesel fuel, are cogeneration [plants], meaning they use a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat. They also run off natural gas. So, things are starting to move in the right direction. I think that in the next 10 years we will have new technology that will substitute the fuel we use now, and I believe we can and should be using natural gas as much as possible because it produces cleaner emissions, it’s cheaper and people get more efficiency out of their motors. To convert a car to natural gas it costs under $1,000, a bus is under $2,000. Right now, many Los Angeles city buses here are run on natural gas, but these are mostly conversion vehicles. The big deal is where do you get the natural gas? In order to make natural gas readily available, gas stations and oil companies are going to have to compress that natural gas and make it available through their pipelines to distribute to the gas stations, but that costs a lot of money and right now it’s far cheaper to do oil.

The adverse effects of the power plants and coal plants seem to be limitless.
It is terrible. The spillage has seeped into the ground, and people all the way to New York City are getting very sick. Virtually all of the cases relate back to the Ohio Valley power plants. They were supposed to conduct a massive clean up, but unfortunately, when Clinton left and the Bush administration came in, they reversed a lot of laws that were supposed to clean up those power plants. In fact, many of the rulings were reversed by executive decision once Bush took over, which is not proper. Now, whether he is a bad president or not, I do not want to say. Presidents are presidents and they are still our chiefs, but something that was headed in the right direction got pushed off course. Hopefully things will head back in the right direction again no matter if we have a Republican or Democrat in office.

Being a grandfather several times over, it makes sense that you would be spending a lot of time and money on environmental issues. You have a lot of personal investments in our planet.
I sure do. My daughter just gave birth to a healthy little boy. Oh, is he beautiful! He came out 6 pounds 12 ounces. You know, environmentalism is our culture at John Paul Mitchell Systems. We work to make the world a better place to live, and our goal is to leave the planet better off than when we arrived. We do this for humanity, the environment and, of course, we like to fight a little bit of injustice. If you look at the ads we run in the magazines the last couple of years, we’re not selling our products through four-page product spreads, we’re selling our culture; just a few hundred thousand hairstylists doing our part to save the planet.

How do you balance your time?
It just becomes a lifestyle. We flew in from Texas this morning, and we are here for a few days. During that time, I will do some John Paul Mitchell Systems work and then I will be on the phone doing some work with Patron. I will be leaving in a week to go to England for five days for Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday. In honor of Nelson, we’ve planned a big concert at Hyde Park that we are going to hold on the 27th of this month to raise some money for his 46664 charity, which is dedicated to raising awareness for HIV/AIDS in Africa. So, I will say hello to Nelson, and then I’m off to Moscow and Saint Petersburg because I have a several Paul Mitchell distributors there, and I will be giving a few presentations. When I travel and give press conferences, I usually bring my family with me because I am gone for a little while and they can tour the area while I do my work. I will generally spend half the day touring with them. Together, we get to see the world a little bit, take care of business and have a good time.

That sounds amazing.
It’s a good life. I like my job. (Laughs.)

Weren’t you also one of the founders of the House of Blues?
Well, Isaac Tigrett was the actual founder of the House of Blues. Isaac Tigret along with Dan Akroyd, Jim Belushi, myself and few others started the company, and then everybody else got involved and it became really big and we sold it. Music has always been a big part of my life.

What motivates you to keep working so hard?
I don’t work hard. My whole lifestyle revolves around doing what I love. I could never retire because I would be bored. You’ve got to have something to do in life, and if you do the things you like to do, then it is not working hard; it is working enjoyably. In your life, there is so much time that you are going to dedicate to “your job” or whatever it is you are going to do for income. I suggest you choose something that makes you happy because if you do, then when you go to work, you are not really going to work; you are going to another great part of your life.
You may want to check with the people at John Paul Mitchell Systems for exact figures, but I think we have less than a turnover of 20 people in 28 years, and we are in 75 different countries. People do not want to leave because we treat them fairly and with respect. If you like what you do, and you treat people with respect, then the people around you will be happy. And together you can accomplish great things. You are still young, go after what you like and then you’ll never say, “I have to go to work.” Well, you still might say it that way, but you will not look at it that way.

That’s great advice. When did John Paul Mitchell Systems decide to make it a conscious effort to be …
Different?

Yeah.
The day we started. We only had $700 when we began, but even then we refused to test on animals, though at the time [companies] were testing new products on animals left and right. Companies that I worked for prior to starting John Paul Mitchell Systems had animals that they were testing on unfortunately, and I thought, “Boy, this is crazy! Why do you have to keep on pouring stuff into their eyes to see what happens? It’s just not right! And putting them into dinky little cages? It’s sick! It sucks!” So, we are the first company in the beauty industry to ever make that statement. We said, even though we are little, we will not conduct testing on animals. Never will. Why? Because you don’t have to! In the 1980s and early ’90s, we were the source of a lot of controversy. A lot of our competitors came down our throats, but we stuck by our guns, and then starting in the 1990s some of our competitors starting saying, well, maybe we shouldn’t test our products on animals either. That was a big win for us. My partner at the time and I were very ecologically conscious. I’m very proud of that.

How did Patron come into the mix?
I am the cofounder of Patron. In 1988, I was with a partner of mine that I had financed in the architectural business, and by 1989, we were sampling tequilas out of Mexico, bottling them and sending them home. At the end of 1989, we started putting the plans together for this house, and we finally brought back a tequila we all liked — this one called Patron. Martin, who is a genius at design, designed this incredible bottle, which is the Patron bottle you see today. He designed that bottle and we agreed to manufacture it out of recycled glass. It is not cheap, but I thought that in 1989, America was ready to treat itself to a great tequila and I launched Patron Tequila. My initial order was 1,000 cases, which is 12,000 bottles. I figured that if it failed, then everyone I knew would have great tequila for the next 10 years or so (laughs). It took off slowly, but then all of a sudden people underground said, “Wow! This stuff is different and it makes you feel different, and you don’t get a hangover the next day.” Then in the mid 1990s, Patron took off, and over the last five years, it just exploded. Now, there are a lot of premium tequilas being sold, but Patron is still the favorite.

It really is a great bottle. Do you drink often?
When I drink it is Patron. What I like is Patron Silver chilled with a whole squeezed lime in it or a whole squeezed lemon, just chilled.

And you sip it?
Yeah… When you drink alcohol, it’s a little bit like food. When you eat food many times you are full, but you do not know it. You know, you eat and then all of a sudden, 20 minutes later it’s like, oh my God! What did I do? What happens is it takes approximately 20 minuets for your stomach to tell your mind that it is full. Benjamin Franklin had a saying, “Always leave the table a little bit hungry, because you will be full in 20 minutes.” With alcohol, you drink it, but you do not feel the full effect until 20 to 25 minutes later.
We have another product that will be hitting the market by the time that this comes out. It’s a very high-end vodka called Ultimat Vodka. It’s made of wheat, rye, and potato. In other words, you would put all of three ingredients together to make this vodka. It’s from Poland. Very expensive, but it’s what the aristocrats drank. We are launching in the United States not at $10 or $20 a bottle, but at $40 a bottle. And for a bottle that should be sold for around $80, we think that that is pretty reasonable. It’s a beautiful package.

You have also started a diamond company. What is that all about?
Yes, I’ve recently started a diamond company called Dejoria. A little while back, some friends came to me and said you know, JPD, you have some big interests in Sierra Leone, why don’t you help stop these stupid wars that are going on over blood diamonds. So, we started a diamond company where all the diamonds are extracted by what’s called the Kimberly method, which means they are non-conflict diamonds. I told my partners that I would do it only if they would immediately start putting money off the profits into the communities where the diamonds are harvested, [and where] the people [are] most affected by these terrible wars. The money will be given directly to the people, not through the governments or anybody else.

So, where specifically is the money going?
Well, right now the revenue is merely paying the bills, but we are in the process of buying a diamond mine in Sierra Leone, and we are giving the local people 20 percent ownership, which is going to pay out more money they could possibly make otherwise. That is one initiative we’ve put in place. In some areas where the diamonds are being taken out, people need some legs. So, in places like South Africa, we’ve gone and given people new legs.

So, when are you running for president?
I would be shot the first week. (Laughs.) That would be too much change for this world.

Too progressive?
Yeah, too progressive.

In all seriousness, are you excited about politics right now?
Am I excited about anyone in particular? Let’s see, right now I am standing back, [but] watching very closely. I’ve found that when it gets closer to election time, people that you think that are cool aren’t that cool because they owe political favors all over the place, which is very unfortunate because it hurts our country immensely. I am all for getting rid of lobbyists in government. McCain talks about it, Barack talks about it and Hillary was talking about it. Let’s make it illegal to have any lobbying money, because when politicians accept corporate money, it is never in the best interest of the people. It’s always for the best interest of the big companies. It’s a shame because if companies did right by people they would be supported. We are supported at John Paul Systems and Patron because people respond to a culture that gives back to the world. It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat. If you are trying to change the world in a positive way, you will have the support of the people. 

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