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