Introducing John Paul DeJoria In today's episode of Join Up Dots we are going to focus on the story of one of the richest men on earth. One that probably you have never heard of before. What makes this story so amazing, and will lead several episodes of Join Up Dots, is it’s not often that a homeless person living out of his car can dramatically alter his circumstances and become a billionaire. But John Paul DeJoria — co-founder of hair-care company John Paul Mitchell Systems and high-end Patrón Spirits — did just that. The 73-year-old now has a net worth of $3.1 billion, according to Forbes. His climb out of poverty reads like a tale from a Charles Dickens’ novel. He was poor as a child. Born as John Paul Jones DeJoria on April 13, 1944, in Echo Park, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, he was the second son of an Italian father and a Greek mother. He was two years old when his parents divorced. Hence, to support his mother, he started selling Christmas cards and newspapers at the age of nine, along with his older brother. Entrepreneurial even at a young age, John Paul DeJoria sold Christmas cards door to door and got a paper route because he knew that effort led to reward. He graduated from LA’s John Marshall High School but didn’t have the grades to get a college scholarship, so instead, he joined the Navy for two years.   When Things Got Tough For John Paul DeJoria When he returned from the Navy In 1966, John Paul DeJoria’s first wife left him and their two-year-old son. She took all the money they had, as well as the only car they owned. As a result,John Paul DeJoria couldn’t pay rent of his apartment, and was forced to evict it and live on the street with his infant son. he and his young son were evicted from their apartment and lived briefly out of his car, picking up soda bottles to recycle for a few cents each. But John Paul DeJoria, 73, recently told me that he decided to take challenges head-on early in his career. "The only way I could go was up," he said. John Paul DeJoria saw his economic obstacles as an opportunity to work hard. When there wasn’t money to eat, he sold Christmas cards. When he couldn’t go to college because he couldn’t pay for it, he started selling encyclopedias. He didn't rely on anyone else. As he says “If you expect free lunch to come your way, you’re not going to go far and you’ll be very bored. Go out there and do something. Get involved," he said. Now fortunately for John, his situation started to change sightly when a friend in a biker gang invited him to live in one of his rooms, which lead to him developing his lifelong love of motorcycles. (His personal motorcycle fleet includes a 2004 Harley-Davidson chopper, a 2010 BMW Sidecar model and a 2008-2009 Arlen Ness & Victory, re-calibrated to run off either Patrón tequila or gasoline.) Over the next few years, he held nearly a dozen jobs, including encyclopedia salesman, tow-truck driver and janitor. He would do anything to make a buck, and hustled hard.   The Early Stages Of Success For John Paul DeJoria But it was when he entered the hair car business that things started to take a turn for the better He got his entrée to the haircare industry when he joined Redken Laboratories in 1971 as a sales rep — a job he was fired from in a disagreement over business strategy. The onetime door-to-door shampoo and encyclopedia salesman partnered with Paul Mitchell in 1980, and the two turned $700 into one of the most profitable hair-care companies in the world. Not too long after their company took off, Mitchell died of cancer and John Paul DeJoria took over. Today the company generates $1 billion in annual revenues. His tequila company is also a megahit. Patrón tequila is made in Mexico in a sustainable distilling facility that uses recycled bottles and leftover distilled water to fertilize the land. Now more than 2 million cases are sold each year. But John Paul DeJoria doesn’t measure his success in terms of dollars and cents.   For