John Paul DeJoria offered Christmas playing cards and newspapers to assist assist his household.
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Earlier than he was the mastermind behind shampoo big John Paul Mitchell Methods and Patron Tequila, John Paul DeJoria was only a first-generation American attempting to make it.
After his German and Italian mother and father divorced when he was 2, he started promoting Christmas playing cards and newspapers to assist assist his household — all earlier than he turned 10 years previous.
“We grew up in downtown LA, within the Echo Park space. We did not know that we had been actually going via powerful instances as a result of all people was going via the identical factor,” he instructed Forbes in 2011. “I keep in mind as soon as in junior highschool, on a Friday, my mother got here residence from work and mentioned to my brother and me, ‘, between us, we’ve solely 27 cents, however we’ve meals within the fridge, we’ve our little backyard out again, and we’re joyful, so we’re wealthy.'”
After taking a job in a Redken manufacturing unit, DeJoria turned intrigued by the shampoo business. He took a $700 mortgage from the corporate and invested it into his personal model, John Paul Mitchell Methods. Going door-to-door promoting his product, DeJoria slept in his automotive, hoping his product would seize consumers’ consideration.
John Paul DeJoria now has a web value of $2.9 billion.