John Paul Mitchell Systems

Automotive legend Lee Iacocca offered advice that transformed Scott's approach to management.

And actor William Shatner and hair products billionaire John Paul Mitchell became personal friends.

But what makes Scott's story especially valuable isn't his celebrity connections or even his financial success.

It's his willingness to admit what he doesn't know.

That's pretty amazing.

You could name drop some other people you have interacted with.

Dan Marino, William Shatner, John Paul Mitchell.

Yeah, they're all good friends.

I'm attorney and host Jeff Kaufman.

Today on the show, we have comedian James Jean, attorney Craig Lynn, and co-founder of Paul Mitchell and the Patron Spirits Company, John Paul DeGioia.

Court is now in session.

I'm Jeff Coffin.

I've run my own businesses.

I've had my own partners.

The hard thing for me was this, is that your partner, Paul Mitchell, dies early in the business.

And I've had a partner for 30 years.

Now, what were you doing before getting into the funeral business?

I was a corporate trainer for John Paul Mitchell Systems.

So still, I would travel around and train teams, including sales teams, on all things related to beauty and education.

Another huge education company, if you can believe it.

With your time in death care, how has the position changed? How has your role changed and evolved?

Ever since I began working, I have always been in a position that involved sales, operations, service, education, training in some format.

And so, you know, very young in my career when I started with John Paul Mitchell Systems as a corporate trainer, one thing led to another.

I started working in death care as a as a family service counselor.

I love nails, but it didn't excite me for a long period of time.

And then I met the sales consultant that was selling Paul Mitchell products, and I'm like, "She is cool." She had fiery red hair and at the time, like, bi-level, you know, the female version [laughs] of the mullet.

She was gorgeous.

And I asked her how she got into sales, and she said she was behind the chair for 15 years, had kids, didn't wanna go back full time, and became a sales rep for a, a family-owned distributor of Redken and Saba- uh, that one was Paul Mitchell that she sold, and I was in.

I found private distributors that had stores, so today's CosmoProf and SalonCentric, but they were family-owned back then.

Then I became a sales rep, started seeing salons on a regular basis on the road.

Um, I came down here and took over a cosmetology school, became the director, then there was a second school and a third.

Which, uh, which school?

He's an icon.

He co-founded two iconic American brands, the John Paul Mitchell Hair Systems and Patron Tequila.

And he was recently named one of the greatest self-made living Americans by Forbes alongside Oprah Winfrey.

Winfrey and so many other people, because he really, truly is self-made, born in L.A. Well, actually, he was raised by an immigrant mother in Los Angeles.

But that's amazing that you are alive and thriving from that experience.

You're more than thriving, my goodness, more than thriving.

How do you go from these beginnings, these incredible stories, to creating these huge brands? I mean, John Mitchell and Patron, those are massive brands.

Very massive brands.