Meet The Homeless Man Who Sold Patrón for $5.1 Billion

John Paul DeJoria started John Paul Mitchell Systems with $700 while living in his car with his two-year-old son. Thirty-eight years later he sold Patrón to Bacardi in a deal valued at $5.1 billion.

He tells Matt what actually happened in between: foster care at nine, on his own at eleven, homeless twice, selling encyclopedias door to door for $150 a week, and the string of jobs he says made the whole thing possible — "I couldn't have started John Paul Mitchell Systems in 1980 with $10 million, let alone $700, if I hadn't learned what I learned first."

Also: why the first check he wrote after the Patrón sale was for $50 million and went straight to charity, why he locked Paul Mitchell into a 360-year trust so that nobody — including his own family — can ever sell it, the number he threw out that made the buyers laugh at him, and how a guy who rode with the Hells Angels ended up building a $5 billion tequila brand.

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