John Paul DeJoria Quotes

In philanthropy, many of us give a little bit and each year we give more and more to see what actually works and not just throw money out there and see if it's going to work. If the government did the same thing, fabulous.

We're the only major company in the U.S. that is solely in the professional beauty industry. We promised hairdressers when we started that we would stay with them. If I went retail tomorrow then we would be four times our size overnight, but I'm going to be the one guy who kept his word.

At least once a year, I meet with a group called the Giving Pledge. It's a group of billionaires - including me, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Ted Turner - who have pledged to give away most of their money to charity. We meet for three days to talk about what we're doing to help make the planet a better place to live.

At six years old we didn't have any money;
there was my mother, my brother and I.
We had a deadbeat dad; left us before we were
two, but she took us at Christmas-time to
downtown Los Angeles.
We had little cars going around in circles,
it was pretty cool, and decorations in the
window.
She gave my brother and I a dime and told
us, "Boys whole half of it each, give it to
the man ringing the bell in the bucket."
We put it in this bucket, we said, "Mom, why
did we give that man a dime?
That's like two soda pops."
This is 1951, two soda pops, three candy bars.
And mom said, "Boys, that's the Salvation
Army.
They take care of people that have no place
to live and no food.
And we don't have a lot of money, but we can
afford a dime this year.
Boys, always remember in life: give a little
something to those in need, they'll always
be somebody that's not as well-off as you
are.

No matter where you are or how far down you
are, try and help someone along the way."
It stuck with me.

We are the first to ever publicly advertise we don't test on animals.

Good hairstylists never die. Vidal Sassoon and Paul Mitchell will always live on.

Management philosophy: Pay attention to the vital fiew and ignore the trivial many. I could go insane if I obsessed over every little details of all my companies.

I make the majority of my money from Patron, but my passion is with Paul Mitchell: I spend 85 per cent of my time on it.

I wanted to do my part to help preserve that golden age of travel ... I step aboard The Patron Tequila Express railcar, and I go back in time to the days when a long journey was something fun and very special.

A success unshared is a failure.

I'm not a detail guy. I depend on accountants and administrators to do my detail stuff for me, but I do know the overall picture and I know that if you put business people together in a room, not just politicians, they could shrink the deficit tremendously by good business tactics.

Stay enthusiastic after getting rejected.

I don't use e-mail or a computer. I would be so inundated that I wouldn't be able to get any work done. Instead, I do everything in person or on the phone.

The biggest hurdle is rejection. Any business you start, be ready for it. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is the successful people do all the things the unsuccessful people don't want to do. When 10 doors are slammed in your face, go to door number 11 enthusiastically, with a smile on your face.

I'm an independent, straight in the middle. I've donated to candidates that I thought would be good that are Republican and Democrats alike.

I remember once in junior high school, on a Friday, my mom came home from work and said to my brother and I, 'You know, between us, we have only 27 cents, but we have food in the refrigerator, we have our little garden out back, and we're happy, so we are rich.'

Change, create, inspire. Dreams really do work.

By loving yourself, you're going to be a happy person. A lot of people don't like themselves for whatever reason.

You'd be safe to hold 5% of your assets and savings in gold and silver. Insurance for the future.

Yes, everyone deserves to have national health care in a great nation such as ours. We just need to find ways to do it and not be overtaxed.

I could go insane if I obsessed over every little detail of all of my companies. My management philosophy is to pay attention to the vital few and ignore the trivial many.