How did he go from broke to Twitter king?

I have been following @ev, Evan Williams since I signed up for Twitter earlier this year. I figured that it would be interesting to know what the guy managing this new and intriguing company was doing. I enjoyed the article he wrote for the New York Times talking about his life but I am missing something that I think will make a difference to others...

He talks on his article about how he started in business and how he failed, lost money, had to search pennies to buy coffee so broke he was... I admire he turned his life around and had a number of really interesting projects and work experiences... What became O'Reilly Media!!! Blogger... Twitter... Oh WOW! (and no, this last one is not a company name :-) He went from broke to twitter king...

What I am missing on his interview and when and how he turned his life around... I bet it did not come without some faith, action and a couple of realizations along the way... and I will "tweet" him to ask him to share his secret sauce.