With 110 Paul Mitchell Schools nationwide, including a new one in Greenville, CEO John Paul DeJoria has come a long way from East L.A.
Paul Mitchell The School-Greenville held its official grand opening Monday at 1215-A Woodruff Road, joining locations in Columbia and Charleston and 110 Paul Mitchell Schools nationwide. With 16,000 students, the schools offer classes in cosmetology, hairdressing, and skin and nail care.
While in Greenville for the celebration, John Paul DeJoria, billionaire CEO and co-founder of Paul Mitchell and co-founder of Patron Spirits Company, and Winn Claybaugh, dean of the Paul Mitchell Schools, sat down to talk with UBJ.
When did your entrepreneurial journey start?
JPD: My journey started when I was seven years old at the Variety Boys Club in East Los Angeles. In wood shop they would sell us wood on a credit to make a large wood planter about 2 feet long and a foot around. My brother and I made it, shellacked it, and went out and sold it for $0.50 on the streets, paid the quarter we owed for the wood, made another one, sold it and made $0.50 profit. This was 1951, and that was a lot of money.
You were homeless twice. What landed you there and how did you come out of it?
JPD: When we started Paul Mitchell Systems, $500,000 was supposed to come in from my investor. I left all the money with my ex and had only a couple hundred dollars in my pocket since I knew all this money was coming in. My partner [Paul Mitchell] flew in and I planned to use the money to get a little apartment and everything would be great. The money never came, and we didn’t find out until later that day that the backer changed his mind because in 1980 inflation was 12.5 percent and unemployment was 10.5 percent. Those were tough times, and I believed what we had was good. I slept in my car until we sold some of our first products. By all business standards, we should have gone bankrupt in two years, but we knew we made it after two years because we were able to pay our bills on time.
What has been the hardest obstacle to overcome in your professional life?
JPD: Along the way we run across challenges that we worry about and they seem worse than they actually are. There’s a saying that sums it up: “In the end, everything will be okay. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end yet.”
How did you start Paul Mitchell?
JPD: I was consulting for companies that wanted to enter the beauty industry, and I had a friend of mine [Paul Mitchell] who was a hairdresser, who was trying to kick off a product line but was having a challenge with selling it. I consulted him free of charge and helped him reformulate his product. He realized he wasn’t a businessman and he didn’t have the money to hire people to run the business, so we decided to be partners.
What makes the Paul Mitchell School different from other beauty schools?
WC: We are proud of the culture that exists in our schools. It’s not about clocking in and clocking out to get your license to become a hairdresser. For us, it’s about a lifestyle change. It includes things like giving back.
How has the response been in Greenville?
WC: The response has been incredible. There are a lot of people who have wanted for years to enter the beauty industry that maybe the caliber of school they wanted to attend didn’t exist, and that happens a lot when we open a brand-new school. We also have a lot of second- and third-career people, who may have wanted to be hairdressers 30 years ago, but someone talked them out of it.
