Monday Motivation

Industry: Haircare and spirits Net worth $2.6 billion (£2 billion) Born in Los Angeles in 1944, John Paul Jones DeJoria was bounced around foster homes after his parents’ divorce and his mother’s inability to provide for him and his brother. Following two years in the US Navy, he moved around a series of low-income jobs and was even forced to sleep in his car for a while. In 1980, he took out a loan for $700 (about £540) and along with hairdresser Paul Mitchell founded John Paul Mitchell Systems, and the rest is history, making him a fortune and household name in haircare. In 1989, he also cofounded the Patrón Spirits Company, one of the highest quality ultra-premium tequila brands in the world.

Industry: Clothing – Fast fashion Net worth: $3 billion (£2.3 billion) No idea who these people are? Well, if you are a woman, you probably have an item from their brand in your closet, and if you are a guy, you’ve surely spent a few hours waiting outside the changing rooms of their international retail chain, Forever 21. When Do Won Chang and his wife fled South Korea in 1981, he had to work three jobs to make ends meet, including washing dishes, pumping gas and cleaning offices. Jin Sook Chang worked as a hairdresser. With all their amassed savings of $11,000 (£8,500), the couple opened a small clothing store in downtown Los Angeles in 1984. The venture was such a success that a new Forever 21 store opened every 6 months, resulting in the business growing to the fast fashion giant it is today, with around $4.4 billion (£3.4 billion) in sales, 790 stores in 48 countries and employing over 40,000 people.

Industry: Tech – App development Net worth: $10.4 billion (£8 billion) When 16-year-old Jan Koum immigrated with his mother and grandmother to California in 1992, they lived on welfare, collecting food stamps and working odd jobs to make ends meet. He worked at various tech and computer security jobs that lead him to Yahoo! in 1997, where he met his soon-to-be business partner Brian Acton. After taking time off and travelling to South America, they both applied to jobs at Facebook, and both were rejected. An iPhone purchase a few months later lead to the conception of an app that would revolutionise communication, and WhatsApp Inc was incorporated on Koum’s 33rd birthday. Koum hired a coder from a freelancing site, and WhatsApp was born. He reached out to Acton, who brought in $250,000 (£193,000) seed funding through investors and the two became cofounders. Fast forward to 2014 and the abandoned social services building Koun used to collect food stamps from, the two cofounders and a venture capitalist signed the agreement that would be their ultimate payday: the $19 billion (£14.6 billion) sale of WhatsApp to Facebook! Talk about poetic justice!

Reference: Nadina Andreou, From Rags to Riches, Career Addict

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