How to Be a Billionaire, Learn From One Jess Jackson bolted from a successful career as a lawyer because he was bored.That's when Kendall-Jackson, his billion-dollar wine empire, took root.

Jess Jackson--patriarch of Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates and 14th-generation American whose family tree includes the swashbuckling pioneer Daniel Boone--tends to leave a pretty big footprint, no matter what frontier.

He was a successful San Francisco lawyer and rural grape grower who got into the wine business by accident and ended up creating one of the largest family-owned wine empires in the country. He began dabbling in horses and ended up owning two of the most acclaimed thoroughbreds in a generation. Now he's a guy trying to get the U.S. government to rename a mountain after one of his wineries.