The Butler Project

Jim started his first pest control company 16 years ago. It’s worth many millions of dollars today. But what looks like a well oiled money machine now wasn’t always that way.

Mark: So, can you tell me a little bit about what have been some of the major setbacks that you’ve experienced?

Jim: That is a pretty broad question … Biggest setbacks are usually the ones that you don’t foresee … I had a still born son that was born the summer I started my first pest control company

Mark: Wow

Jim: That was a tough thing. All of our pregnancies with my wife and I have been very, very, very, very tough… And so in this particular instance, we were a new company. It was a new pest control company, so we were doing primarily ALL of the billing, MOST of the technician work, ALL of the selling. We hadn’t even really brought on employees yet. And so, to be able to handle the grief load that my wife and I were experiencing … and then to plan for a funeral, to be there for my kids…

The morning of the funeral, I was servicing homes; the day before the funeral, the day after … the afternoon when my son died, I was servicing homes. And I didn’t WANT to do that and my wife didn’t WANT me to do that; it wasn’t fun. And there were definitely some feelings of guilt associated with it, but that’s what had to be done.

That same summer, there was a week where my [partner's] father became deathly ill in the hospital, and my brother became deathly ill in the hospital; it looked like both of them would die. And so we had to say, “Ok, well, which one of us gets to take a week to go be with our dying loved ones?” We literally called their doctors and said, “What’s the likelihood of death?” And the one who had the highest likelihood of death from the doctor, and it was close, got to go be with their loved one. And it ended up being a good choice. My partner went to be with his father who died within the next 5 or 6 days.

That wasn’t fun. I mean, I certainly wanted to go be with family, but over time, [I've discovered] if you go ask people who’ve started businesses that failed, and you say, “What happened that made your business fail?” Well generally they’re going to always tell you things that they didn’t forsee from the beginning. Things like my my story: I had a still born son. Some terrible disease happened to my wife or, you know, my partner and I, on the same day, had family members close to death, and this was at the inception of our business, and so you know, we had to take care of our family. And people would say, That’s an honorable thing; it’s honorable that you were there to be with your family.

And that is honorable, but if you [ask people who have successfully started businesses] “What was the hardest part about making that business successful?” … Well, the answer is the fact that life continues to go on, the bad and the good and all of it happens while you’re starting a business; you don’t do it in a vacuum.

And so, generally the people whose businesses are successful found ways to overcome and found solutions and the strength of will to overcome the problems that the other people couldn’t. And really … as far as I’m concerned, that’s where the rubber meets the road when it comes to being successful in entrepreneurialism. I’m not saying that you ignore your family when there’s hardships, but you find a way to balance and to persevere. if you think you’re going to go start a business and you’re gonna go a three year stretch of your life while you’re trying to get it going without having major family catastrophes or major things happen in the world like war or a recession, then if you haven’t planned and can’t account for that in the beginning, then you’ve already planned to fail before you’ve even started.

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