John Paul Jones DEJORIA

The story of the American Dream is often told through fictional stories, a romanticized ideal that anyone can make it in the land of the free. There are multiple books written about this ideal, movies squarely based around characters gunning for that dream, yet one person that has fully experienced the ups and downs of living the American Dream is John Paul DeJoria. A man who was twice homeless and went on to become a multi-billionaire, a man who suffered loss and utilized that pain and turned it into success. Much like the storybooks and movies based on the American Dream, it’s the journey that is the most fascinating and the story of a once-homeless single father becoming a world-renowned entrepreneur and philanthropist is what makes John Paul DeJoria a true trailblazer.

A Dime A Dozen

John Paul Jones DeJoria was born the second son of an Italian immigrant father and a Greek immigrant mother on April 13, 1944 in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. By the time he was 2 years old, his parents got divorced and the financial and emotional pressure of raising fell squarely on his mother. Yet it was at that early age where his mother instilled the now-famous ethos of “Success Unshared is Failure” when John Paul and his brother learned a valuable lesson. In a recent CNBC interview John Paul tells the story “When I was a little boy around six years old, we didn’t have any money. It was my mother, my brother and I and we would go to downtown Los Angeles – they had streetcars at the time – on a streetcar. And one time at Christmas, my mom gave us a dime and told my brother to hold half the dime each and walk over to that person with the bucket ringing the bell and put the dime in. So we held it half each, walked over and popped the dime in. And then, uh, we said to mom, “Mom, that’s a lot of money.” And it was in those days. Ten cents. That could buy, you know, three donuts in those days. It could buy so much stuff. She says, and I said, “Mom, don’t we need that money?” She says, “Yes, we do. But that person needs it more than we do because they represent a lot of people that are worse off than we are. And just remember this, boys. That in life, there will always be people that are worse off than you. So no matter what you have, try and share a little bit with people.” Well, that’s always stuck with me. Success unshared is failure.”