Co-founder of 2 billion-dollar companies: Here's the most important thing successful people do—'it's not going to hurt you'
Dealing with rejection is tough, but it's a necessary skill to master if you want to be successful, according to billionaire John Paul DeJoria.
"Be ready for a lot of rejection," DeJoria tells CNBC Make It. "If you're prepared and you know you're going to get a lot of rejection, then it's not going to affect you. It's not going to hurt you. You can learn from it."
DeJoria, the co-founder of hair products brand Paul Mitchell and tequila company Patrón Spirits, says that's the best advice he can give to someone who wants to start their own business. It's also a lesson he learned the hard way.
Long before the 79-year-old entrepreneur had a reported net worth of $3 billion, he worked a series of challenging sales jobs, selling products like encyclopedias and shampoo door-to-door while living in his car.
"You knock on lots of doors. People will not let you in," DeJoria says. Those jobs taught him how to deal with rejection without letting it bother him, which became important when he teamed up with hairstylist Paul Mitchell in 1980 to launch the eponymous business.
There, DeJoria experienced more rejection. The duo's main investor got cold feet and pulled out, leaving the company with just $700. Within a decade, it topped $100 million in annual sales, setting DeJoria up to pour "several million" of his own dollars into co-founding Patrón in 1989, he says.
Rejection again followed: DeJoria knew "nothing whatsoever" about the spirits industry, and struggled to sell a premium tequila at least twice as expensive as other brands, he says. He only persisted because he believed it was "the most perfect tequila ever made," and it would eventually catch on.
In 2018, Patrón was acquired by Bacardi Limited in a deal worth $5.1 billion.
Put together, the three experiences show that rejection is inevitable, says DeJoria: "Whether you start a business or not, there's rejection. You're going get it in your personal life and in your business life."
The only question is how you'll respond do it, and reframing failure as a learning opportunity — whether it's a rejected sales pitch or a personal setback — can make you more likely to succeed in the long run, psychologists say. That's because people who live in constant fear of failure or rejection are less likely to take necessary risks or seize on opportunities when they are presented.
"The way you interpret failure determines whether or not you keep showing up and doing the work, or whether you shut down and give up," Jenny Wang, a Houston-based psychologist, told Make It in 2018.
When it comes to business, don't let rejection discourage you into quitting if you believe in your product or service, DeJoria says — even if others don't agree at first. Customers will always pay for quality, even if whatever you're selling is more expensive than existing alternatives, he adds.
"Just don't give up, in other words," says DeJoria. "Just keep on knocking on doors to get enough people to listen to you ... It's just a matter of time."
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