The Butler Project

Today’s post is an excerpt from an interview Mark did with Jim, successful owner of a pest control company. Jim is fanatical about commitment and discipline. This week you’ll read stories about how far he was willing to go to make his ventures succeed.

Mark: Was it a specific intention to become financially very successful, or did it just kind of happen?

Jim: That’s a good question. I personally did not foresee myself being an entrepreneur. So, I had a lot of my work associates when I began college who knew they were studying business, and they knew they wanted to be entrepreneurs. I, like probably most young people certainly thought, “Hey, one day I’m going to be financially independent.”I grew up very poor, and I always felt like I was running on the heels of bankruptcy and having the carpet pulled out . . . from the family I grew up in.

Mark: Really?

Jim: So I felt like I needed to establish a sense of security. I felt very motivated to establish some financial security, but I tended to think that would come from either getting a law degree or getting an MBA and being an executive and doing it through someone else’s business.

And I have many friends who’ve done that, and I think that would have been a great way to go because the principles are the same.

I moved to Texas to start my first pest control company, and we quickly met a group of seven or eight friends; there were three attorneys, there was me (the entrepreneur), and there were a couple of other CPAs.

One of the attorneys said to me, “Look, I didn’t go to as good of a law school as these other guys, but since I’ve gotten my first job as an attorney, I’ve really applied myself. I became the best attorney at the firm where I was, which was a mediocre firm, and I have advanced to now a really good firm, a firm that you almost, to get hired out of law school, you have to be from a first tier type of a law school.”

And he said, “Look at our friends in this group - see these other attorneys that complain that they don’t want to work more than 40 hours a week with their young families? See the accountants . . . all of them complaining, ‘I’m not going to work more than 40 hours a week, because I want to be there for my kids. I want to be there for my family; I want to be there to fulfill civic or church responsibilities.’”

He said, “Pay attention and you’ll see that really that’s the great lie that they’ve used to convince themselves to be indolent. For me, I work over 60 hours a week. In three years I’ll be a partner at the firm where I am, and In 5 years I’ll be making $800,000 a year at the firm where I am, and I will be there for my children and for my church and for my other responsibilities more than my friends.”

Well, what’s happened since then is all the other attorneys still make between, (they’ve now been out of law school 10 years), they make between 100 and 200 thousand dollars a year; the CPAs, the same. . . decent career jobs. I haven’t seen any of them coaching any of their children’s softball teams, basketball teams, or T-ball. I haven’t seen them get actively involved in their church, they’re just there. They’re going through the motions like zombies.

They’re living okay lives . . . they’re involved in all the fantasy sports leagues, they will play the x-box until 1 or 2 in the morning, regularly, and that’s all well and good. My friend, last year he made over a million dollars, he is a partner at the firm where he said he would become a partner. He has two children . . . he’s been the softball, soccer, and basketball coach for both of his kids’ teams every year. And he’s been very, very involved civicly, meaning he’s just become competent, he’s just become efficient. Instead of starting off with an excuse of “Why I’m going to be indolent,” he’s saying, “I reject that. It’s okay to say I’m going to work very, very hard; I’m going to have a fantastic career and It’s not going to be a substitute for the other roles that I want to do; it’s not going to be a substitute for my civic or church or work responsibilities. I’m going to make up the ground by being efficient, by being hard working, by being industrious, by developing better habits . ”

So, I think your original question that you asked me was did I see myself becoming financially independent. I saw myself more heading toward where my friend was as a corporate attorney or an MBA. I think that that would have been a good career path, I’m not here to tout that you should be an entrepreneur, I’m here to say that . . . the skill set is your behavior and your discipline, regardless of whether you’re an entrepreneur. I would say it’s easier for me to be successful as an entrepreneur than it is climbing the corporate ladder, but it’s the same skill set that gets you to where you want to be. It’s having the same vision and discipline of working hard, not just for a week, but always.