I recently interviewed WWT co-founder and CEO Jim Kavanaugh on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:
Adam: Our guest today founded and leads one of the largest private companies in the country, with more than $20 billion in annual revenue and more than 12,000 employees. Jim Cavanaugh is the co-founder and CEO of WWT. Jim, thank you for joining us.
Jim: Well, Adam, thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.
Adam: You were born and raised in St. Louis, and you went to college at St. Louis University, where you were a star soccer player. You played on the 1984 Olympic soccer team, and you played professionally for five years before co-founding WWT. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?
Jim: Yeah, I really just netted it down to a few things. I would put a lot of my success in the hands of my parents. My dad was a bricklayer. He graduated from high school, or I think it was eighth grade or freshman year in high school. He dropped out and started laying brick and bringing home a paycheck to his mother at that time. So he was a man of very few words, a very strong man, a very direct person just in regards to what he expected, work ethic, just how you act, how you behave. And then also my mom, who was and is. My mom is still with us. She was very strong, but also brought a level of compassion and love. So the balance of those two literally instilled into me work ethic and passion and a commitment and loyalty to your family and to your friends.
And it was also a position my dad always said, “You’re as good as anybody else, but you’re no better than anybody else.” Also, so it was a bit of this humbling perspective, but also don’t take any shit off anybody. You stand up for yourself, but also understand you’re not any better than anybody else. And so there were these core values, I guess, and this work ethic, how you behave, how you act, who you are, were just ingrained in me as a young kid. And part of it was, you got to go out and work, and working hard and putting the time in is something that is really important.
I think that was really important to my development as a soccer player. I was not the most talented player, but I would say I was one that worked as hard or harder than anybody. I had the good fortune of making different teams growing up through grade school and high school. I was cut multiple times from teams, but then continuing to get better and work at it, never give up, and then fortunately got looked at. Some kid, a player, got injured, and basically when I went to St. Louis U, the coach said, “Hey, well, this player is injured. I want you to go try out for the Olympic team.”
When it was coming in, it was like an invite piece. Well, I went to try out here in St. Louis with some players, and then all of a sudden that Olympic team coach recognized me, and then continued. I made the next cuts and cuts and cuts, and he asked me to go on a trip to Korea, and so it just went on from that. And my overall point is, you never know when those opportunities to be seen are going to happen, but you create your own luck, and you create your own luck through hard work. And if you didn’t put the time and effort in when those windows of opportunity present themselves, you probably won’t benefit from that.
So playing soccer and sports and in business, I would credit so much to my parents, just the values and the behaviors and what I’ve learned from them, and then making sure that all the way to where I am today with the growth of Worldwide, of where we are, the values that we have within the company, how we treat people, how we care about people, the loyalty we have, but also the understanding that there is an accountability and a requirement, even at my level where I’m at. I got to continue to learn. I can’t just coast at this point. We’ve got one of the biggest opportunities and one of the most disruptive things that are happening today in the world around AI and this digital transformation that’s taking place, and if you want to be a part of it, you’re going to have to lean in.
Adam: Jim, I love it, and you shared so much there that I would love to dive into. You spoke about the power of work ethic. You spoke a little bit about luck and how you need to create your own luck, and you shared how a player got injured, and that opened up the door for you to make the Olympic team, and someone could look at that and say, “Man, this guy was lucky. If not for that player getting injured, he never plays in the Olympics.” But the real story is, if not for the fact that you grinded every single day, year after year after year after year, when that opportunity came up, you were ready and you showed up. We never know when our moment is going to show up. We never know when it’s going to be our time to step up to the plate, but what we do know is that we have to step up to the plate when it is our moment.
Jim: Absolutely. And those opportunities, again, I just think in business, I could walk you through situations at Worldwide where opportunities strike, and you have to be prepared to take advantage of those opportunities because they may not come back. I would also say you have setbacks that happen that you have to learn how to deal with. Setbacks in even playing sports and growing up, which I wasn’t good at it, and even I didn’t realize it until my dad told me when I was in my late 20s or so that literally he was like, “You were a difficult kid.” And I’m like, “What? A difficult kid?” And he goes, “Yeah, you challenged everything.” And I’m like, “My God, I was intimidated by you.” And he’s like, “Oh, you challenged.” And I’m like, “I don’t remember that.”
But when I look at that, and I also say that you have these opportunities that present themselves, but you also, growing as an athlete, I was like, okay, you would get constructive feedback from a coach or different things, and you take it so negatively at times where you took it as like an assault or something. But if you can take that and channel it properly and understand you need that constructive feedback, it’s really important to understand how do you deal with setbacks?
I had the good fortune, like you said, of being seen at this time, but it was a local tryout. But there were like five other tryouts before they even selected the team to go to this tournament in Seoul, Korea. And through that process, I would just say, just quickly going through, I had the good fortune of playing in a couple other tournaments, and finally the coach, who was Manfred Schellscheidt at the time, basically said, “Look, if you redshirt,” this is when we were at the Pan Am Games in Caracas, Venezuela, “if you redshirt, I’ll guarantee you a spot on the 1984 Olympic team.” And that meant I had to redshirt for 12 months, and then I would play in all the tournaments up to it, which I did well.
The challenge happened that the coach of the U.S. national team, Alkis Panagoulias, at that time, they dismantled the U.S. national team because they didn’t make the World Cup. He came in. He was the highest-ranking coach in the federation, and they fired Manfred Schellscheidt, who was the coach of the U.S. amateur Olympic team, and this was four to six weeks before the Olympics. Well, then he took over the Olympic team, and the coach, Manfred Schellscheidt, at that point, this was his commitment to me. Well, now the new coach comes in, and back then, if you remember, they could use professional players at that time. We were all amateur players.
And what happened is the coach of the U.S. national team came in and then brought in slowly. We went to a tournament in China right before the Olympics, and when we came back a couple of weeks before the Olympics, he decided to bring in all professional players, with the exception of a few. So unfortunately, I played in 20 different tournaments and trips around the world. That was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life.
To be able to go see, as the son of a bricklayer, to be able to experience the world and to see how people live, to go to China, be at the Great Wall of China, be in South Korea playing, Caracas, Venezuela, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, playing their national team. But all these areas that you see where there were the very high-end wealthy folks, and then there were very, very poor people living in shacks. So the experience I received, just seeing the world and seeing how people lived, coming back to the U.S. was such an eye-opening experience for me. And when I would always come back, I would always, again, say I am so fortunate. I grew up as very much a middle-class kid, but looked at some of the challenges that some of these kids and families had around the world. I was so fortunate to have that perspective.
And then to move all the way up, and to be able to go see the world and play, but then run into the unfortunate situation where a new coach comes in and decides to change out the entire team and cut. I remember my aunt even saying at one point, “Wow, I feel so sorry for you.” And I’m like, this was one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had, and you know what? I’ll go back to college and I’ll work my butt off and do what I can. And I did. And coming out of college, then get drafted as a second draft pick, and what was it, the ’86 draft pick at that time, which went out to Los Angeles, was the Los Angeles Lazers at that point.
So again, part of life is there are always setbacks that happen, and it’s how do you handle those setbacks? Are you going to like them? The answer is no. How you deal with them is really going to determine. That’s almost more important. It’s how do you deal with those setbacks and learn from those and not give up, and to continue to move forward is even more so than the success that you have, because it really shows the character of the individual. Because I don’t care who it is, anybody that has had good or great success in business or sport, or whatever you’re doing, you’re going to have setbacks. And how you deal with those setbacks, I’m not saying like them, but I’m saying how you deal with them and then move forward and learn from them is probably going to determine more so than the individual that was so good at what they were doing, they just continued to have success, success, success. But it’s like, wow, be careful when they don’t have that, and they have to figure out how to regroup.
So the game of soccer, it’s been so good to me, and where I’m now going back to Saint Louis University, the president of Worldwide Technology, one of my best friends, and somebody that is such a good friend of mine, Joe Koenig, who has been with Worldwide for 30-plus years. You look at our CFO, Chief Financial Officer Tom Strunk, he’s a St. Louis University soccer player grad. Joe, his roommate, soccer player. So to sit there and to be able to work with him early on at Worldwide, a lot of people accused us of, if you didn’t play soccer, you didn’t work at Worldwide. Now, that was not the truth. And I even told the players that I brought on, and I brought on the ones that literally I felt had the work ethic and the mindset and the team orientation to go out and set the standard.
And I’ve told everybody that I brought on, I said, you are going to be viewed more critically than anybody else because you’re being viewed as a friend of mine. So you’ve got to set a higher standard. You got to be the first in. You got to be the last out. You need to earn their respect. And this was when we were 30 people in the company. Now, with all our employees, we’re almost 14,000 people. So it’s been a lot of fun looking back, but I’m also excited about where we’re going and what we need to do to take advantage of this massive opportunity in front of us.
Adam: Jim, when you talk about setbacks, setbacks are inevitable. Setbacks happen every day. There are micro setbacks, and then there are macro setbacks, like the setback that you described. And to your point, we have a choice. We can react to the way that your aunt, not to throw her under the bus, but with the best of intentions, with the greatest of empathy, reacted, which is, “Oh man, I feel so sorry.” Or we can react the way that we need to react to get to where we want to be, which is setbacks happen. How am I going to respond? Another thing that you shared, which is so important, when you talked about the people who you surround yourself with, and bringing in former teammates, and challenging them to hold themselves to a higher standard. What standard are you going to set for yourself? Something that you shared as you were talking about the lessons that you learned from your early days playing soccer, the importance of accountability, not only holding others accountable as a leader, but holding yourself accountable.
Jim: One hundred percent. I mean, that is so important if you want to be a leader. If that is one of your goals, you need to look at yourself first, and I truly believe you need to set the standard. And as you look at today, things change in how you do things and the impact you have. You need to continuously reflect on those things that are important to you. And as leaders, we can have great success as a leader, but if you stop doing the things that made you good or great, you will see a falloff very quickly.
And there’s a lot of people that have started up businesses, smaller businesses, and Worldwide was a very, very small business. Very fortunate to be in business the first five years. We could have gone out of business so many different times for so many different reasons, but we grinded through it. But my point is, there’s a lot of businesses, nothing wrong with it, but I would consider them more of lifestyle businesses. So there are businesses that individuals start up, they’re having a level of success, got to a point where they’re making some decent money, and there’s nothing wrong with this. But now I can afford to buy myself a nice house, get a boat, I can go on vacation. You just don’t want to work as hard as maybe you worked originally, and you don’t have that grind, that commitment to continue to push yourself, and to a certain degree, never be satisfied.
There’s a way you need to talk about how you balance yourself, how you create some balance, but if you strive to be great, there’s going to be some imbalance. And you need to have this mindset that you’re going to continue to raise the bar, and you’ve got to constantly figure out how are you learning, and how are you watching and learning from others and pushing yourself to be the best you can be. And that is one that I see a lot of organizations and people, that they’re just not willing to do that. And there’s nothing wrong with that because there’s a lot of lifestyle companies out there. But if you want to continue to raise the bar to do unique things, you got to be willing to put the time and effort in. And that’s something that I would challenge everybody to think about as you’re coming out. Just be prepared. If you want to do something great, it doesn’t happen without a relentless focus on putting the effort in, grinding through tough situations, being willing and embracing those setbacks, and then continuing to push yourself forward.
One other thing I would add, just as a perspective on it, a lot of times people will talk about success, great success. Challenging times will expose someone’s character, and you’ll see when things get really, really difficult, who steps up and who steps away. We’ve had a number of those situations within the company as we’ve continued to grow the company. But I also had the observation of watching people that when they have great success, and I’ve seen this in athletes or in people with business that have created success, whether in positions or they’ve earned a certain amount of income, all of a sudden that starts going to their head. And when it starts going to their head, they start believing that they have all the answers, and they’re no longer looking for constructive feedback.
And if you really elevate yourself to a position, if you’re in a position of CEO or something of sorts, and you believe, and you’re going to push everybody around you, that you have all the answers, you create a bit of an echo chamber. And that echo chamber is not good, when you’re believing everything that you think and say is right and has all the insights. That does not endear people around you to be transparent, to be honest, and to be constructive, and to work with you collaboratively. So I have definitely seen that people that can deal with very challenging situations and can grind through those tough times expose their character, but also people that have had success, there’s a lot of people that allow it to go to their head. They get arrogant. They get cocky, and that ends up being their demise also. So it’s that balance of really what makes you happy and understanding, keeping yourself in perspective.
Adam: How do you avoid that echo chamber? How do you stay grounded? How do you stay humble?
Jim: Yeah, personally, you do it by trying to be realistic with yourself, being self-reflective and truly understanding, because if you are self-reflective and you’re honest with yourself, you know you don’t have all the answers. You may have a number of answers, but you don’t have all of them. And just because you may have the title or you’ve earned a certain amount doesn’t mean you have all the answers. So being self-reflective is one. Two, it’s surrounding yourself with people that you respect and people that respect you, and you create an environment that enables feedback and constructive feedback to you on your own personal actions and how you’re behaving, and also maybe your inputs or your decisions around things.
So when I believe you have a strong team and team of teams around you, that you have a level of trust, collaboration, where you get honest feedback, and you’re the one who has to enable that, then you can do amazing things, because I truly believe to make really good decisions, it’s not a dictatorship, and it’s not a democracy. It’s more of a meritocracy. And that meritocracy is who are the right people around you that have the right insight and have the right perspective to make decisions, and make decisions as quickly and timely as you can, because you don’t have time to go out to everyone. And if you’re making those decisions all by yourself, you’re probably not making the most insightful decision.
So I believe as a leader, you need to create that environment, and you need to self-check yourself as you continue to grow to make sure that you may think you have that, but your people aren’t telling you what you need to know. They’re telling you what they think you want to hear, and not what you need to know.
Adam: You get to choose who you surround yourself with. In our work life, maybe we don’t have 100% control over who we spend our time with, but the more senior you get, the more control over that you have. And then, in your personal life, you have a lot of control over who you spend your time with. Who are you going to select to spend time with? Who are you going to select to be around you? Are you going to spend your time with people who make you feel better by telling you how great you are, by telling you exactly what they think you want to hear, or are you going to spend your time with people who you know are going to be real with you, going to be honest with you, people who you can trust? And how do you know you can trust them? Because they’re being honest with you, because they don’t have a hidden agenda, because they have a history of being real with you.
Jim: Couldn’t agree more. And when I look at it, I feel like I have the good fortune to know a lot of people, whether it’s in sports, different athletes that have had amazing careers, are good people and fun to be around, and very successful business people that have been around. And I just had the good fortune to know a lot of people, and I don’t take any of that for granted. I truly don’t. I try to look back and I’m like, I’m very fortunate to be where I am. At the same time, there are individuals, business people that I know or leaders that I know, that to be perfectly honest, I’m not all that impressed with the way that they act or behave.
So there are some people that I’m incredibly impressed with, and I look at them and I learn from them, but there are others that things may have gone to their head, and how they act and how they behave, that’s not the type of individual that I want to be. And the way I look at it, I feel so, so fortunate for the people that I have worked with. And I know people that look at Worldwide, the tenure and amount of time that executives and leaders have been here, 25, 30 years, and we have pushed each other and we’ve grinded through different things. And these are individuals that are great executives and people and just know their trade and what they do, but they’re also just really, really good people. And they’re people I consider friends, and I would do anything for. But at the same time, when I look at it, it’s not somebody that has the highest title or has made the most money that I’m most impressed with. It’s different people for different reasons, for who they are and what they do.
I even look at my brother Mike. Mike was a sprinkler fitter, put sprinkler systems into ceilings of buildings, and was in construction, and just retired about a year ago. Mike and I are similar in certain ways, and we’re very different in many ways, but he is somebody that I have incredible respect for. The things that he has, the traits that he has and loyalty. He literally is somebody that is never jealous of my success. He’s a year older than I am, always there promoting me and supporting me, whether it’s in soccer or business. And when I look at what he’s about, he’s not looking. He could go to a lot of events with me or go to different things, or I ask him to travel, and he doesn’t want to travel. What does he do? He lives down the street from my mom, and he takes care of my mom.
So when I look at that and I see what’s most important to him and what he does, and just calling him. And when I look at individuals or conversations that I’ll have that we kind of go back to getting honest feedback from individuals, which it’s almost comical, because if I talk to him and if I have done something that he doesn’t agree with, I’m not going to use the language that he would use, but it would be so blatantly clear about, “Jimmy, you dumbass. What are you doing? What are you even thinking?” So to think about, I’ve got so much respect and admiration for my brother, and there’s other friends that I have. So it’s not about your title. It’s not about how much money you make. It’s truly, when I look at it, it’s surrounding myself with people that are just good people, and success and happiness comes in different ways, shapes, and forms. And so it’s not just the title and the money that you’ve made and different things. So in my case, I love what I do. I love working with the people I work with. I have always been very ambitious, and I would be really bored if I wasn’t doing something like this. But my point is, not everybody’s like me, and they shouldn’t be.
And I’ll just say, from my perspective, it’s like, who do you surround yourself with? Looking for people that have the values and the character that you respect, and that’s not just about dollars and money and title. There are just a lot of people that, like my brother Mike, that I have great respect for. So those are the people that you want to surround yourself with, and I do think it’s very important to surround yourself with people that have respect and are different than you are, and people that you can learn from, and people that will call you out. And I fortunately or unfortunately have a lot of people around me that will call me out.
Adam: As you describe your brother, as you describe the people who you surround yourself with, you’re describing a lot of the same characteristics that make up the very best leaders: humility, caring, loyalty. What do you believe are the key characteristics of the very best leaders, and what can anyone do to become a better leader?
Jim: You have to be honest with yourself, and you have to sit back and adjust your goals and understand the things that it’s going to take to be a good and great leader. And some of those things will change over time, depending on if you’re leading a group of five people or you’re leading an organization of 50,000 people. That’s going to change how you lead, but there are certain things that I look at now where I am, and I don’t mean this in an arrogant way at all, but I have been more conscious about words do matter and how you say things to certain people. I’ll be much more direct and candid and transparent with my direct team and with people around me that I understand and I know can deal with that directness. And so how you communicate and what you say to other individuals, because people need constructive input, but where you are, at what time, and how to provide that is very important.
And I look at it, I step back, and I have this balance that it’s a challenge in my mind a little bit, as I have one of my goals is I want to positively impact all the people around me every day, and it’s one of the things I have written out. But I know I don’t feel like I do that every day because I will get in situations where I am pushing and I’m not satisfied with the speed we’re moving or the things that we’re doing. And so it’s that balance of how do you push people the right way? And again, I’ve had conversations with different individuals that I feel like I’m pushing probably the people that I care about and respect the most, I’m the hardest on and pushing them, but also making sure that they know I care for them and I want them to succeed and to be the best they can be.
So somebody said to me once, being nice is not always nice. And so meaning that it may not be the time to be nice. You need to be more direct, more constructive about things. And if you’re nice and you’re telling people what they want to hear, it’s probably not what they need to hear. You just have to figure out those right times. So as a leader, if you’re thinking through those things and you do understand that you’re being authentic, you’re honest, your intent is sincere. And again, my intent is truly to see people grow and develop and be successful, and that’s what I want them to be. But I also know that you’re not going to be the best you can be unless you’re challenging each other and pushing each other and you’re wanting constructive input and creating environments where people can share that.
So those are things, and to be a good and a great leader, it’s an art and a science. There is not a specific playbook that’s going to tell you exactly how hard to push or maybe how to step back a little bit. I’ve said to people in situations, you need to control yourself. The perspective is you can’t control what others say and do, or you can’t control what others say and do and say about you, but you can control how you react, and you can control whether you’re going to allow what someone else says to negatively impact you or to upset you, especially if it’s somebody that’s on the superficial side of things that’s providing input.
So understanding that you have the option to control who you are, you have the option to control how you receive information and how you react to things that are coming in. And I’ve said to managers and leaders, but do understand, I’m not saying to be complacent on things. There’s a time. Just do it when you know you should do it. You’re doing it because you want to do it. There may be a time that you need to flip a table over. Maybe I’m being a little extreme in that, but there’s a time that you need to get the group’s attention. Don’t do it because somebody triggered you. Do it because this is something that you feel is needed at that time. And that’s where I think, as growing as a manager and leader, trying to really understand all the dynamics that go into developing individuals or managing and leading and motivating individuals or groups and making sure that you have the ability to control yourself and understanding that you don’t allow other people, what they say or do, to dictate how you react to certain situations.
Adam: Jim, you mentioned that there were quite a few times when WWT could have not made it. It did make it, and it’s a $20 billion company today. How did WWT come together, and how did you turn it into a $20 billion business?
Jim: It is a culmination of so many different things and so many different situations. And I guess the way I would look at it, there are really just numerous situations that, if we didn’t get this one thing right, we absolutely could have gone out of business. I mean, we had issues with another owner early on, very early stage of the company, financial issues where the bank was on us and their bankruptcy attorneys, people, and we had to navigate this very, very challenging situation. And we were given a sliver of opportunity to get this right, to put ourselves in a position to potentially pay the bank back and get the bank some of the money that they loaned. And they didn’t do it because they cared about us. They did it because they were leveraged. And because of that, we got this opportunity to work our way out of it and remove this other owner at the time that needed to, because it was not only a financial mismanagement issue that bordered on a couple other things that I won’t go into, but it was also we would have never survived based on the values and behaviors also of this.
So it was very eye-opening, learning that you can have the right business model, but if you don’t have the right people with the right values, it’ll never work. So if you’re going into business and you’re doing it with someone else, make sure you’re doing it with somebody that has the values, the integrity that you believe in, and that you believe are really important to the business. So by making some of those moves and then getting the right people on the bus and getting the right people in the right place gave us a fighting chance, and just that fighting chance, we worked our way out of it.
And every little opportunity that came in. There were opportunities throughout the growth of the business, some very, very sizable ones, that at times I’ve even had some people that were really hard workers, but we had one program with a large customer that literally gave us this opportunity to consolidate hundreds of distribution facilities, their technology that they had in them. It became just overwhelming with the consolidation. I remember an executive coming in and saying to me, “We can’t do this. This is killing us. It’s going to kill us and bring us to our knees.” And my answer is like, there is no way I’m giving up on this deal. I said, this is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. This will not show itself again. Don’t care what we need to do, and we’re going to work 24 by seven, and we will pull every individual throughout the company to rally around us. And to this day, that customer is a very, very large, successful customer that we’ve had for over 20-plus years.
Those opportunities are the things, whether it’s in sports or business, they don’t show themselves. They come, and they come at times that you may not like them to. You know, I got this vacation scheduled, and I’ve got to go do this. Like, too bad. I don’t say that in a cavalier way for employees, and I don’t mean to destroy people’s lives by this, but you don’t get to great things without sacrificing certain things. And I’m not saying to sacrifice your entire life. That is not the intent. The intent is to grow and develop. Our mission is to create a profitable growth company that’s a great place to work for all. That is truly the intent, that you really positively impact the families of people. But if we didn’t grind it out, and when those opportunities really presented themselves, you got to be willing to sacrifice things. You got to be willing to sacrifice vacations. You got to be willing to put the time in. And if you don’t, that opportunity is going to go by and somebody else is going to grab it.
And I see that same opportunity where I am today. Been doing this for 35 years, and I’m like, I could potentially be more maniacal and focused and energized about this opportunity around AI than I’ve been around anything else in the business. And the size of the business that we are today, we have more momentum, we have the partnerships, we have the customer relationships, the incredibly talented people, that I just feel every day I’m not moving fast enough, and I’m not moving us fast enough to take advantage of this opportunity we have in front of us. And that’s the feeling I’m waking up with every morning, and I have this balance of how do I do that and not push people to the brink of exhaustion.
Adam: Jim, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?
Jim: To understand, at least from my perspective, that, and it’s probably easier for me to say it, money is not the end-all. It certainly doesn’t hurt. I’ll put it that way. You take care of the things that you need to take care of, but don’t think that money alone is what creates ultimate happiness. But to be successful, and success is defined in business success, personal success, your family success, think about all those different things. But in business, it’s really thinking about some of the things that I mentioned before. What’s the opportunity look like? Whether it’s your own personal success or you’re starting a business, be thoughtful about the things. Don’t be unrealistic about it. You can strive. You can have these aspirational goals, but also you need to be grounded and realistic, and just understand when you’re reaching for the stars a bit, that you know that there’s a chance that you’re not going to get there, and that’s okay.
But just be realistic. Understand when you’re really stretching, and decide how much do you really want to swing for the fences, or do you want to do it in a more methodical kind of way? I want to get on base here, and I want to get second, I want to get third, and I want to do it in a more thoughtful way. So to be successful, one, you need to step back and think about what does success look like for you? What are you willing to do? What kind of work are you willing to put in to get to where you want to go? And then what are those specific tactical things that you need to do? And then you need to start putting it into action. And there can be times also that, depending on what you want to do, you may have to go get some experience personally to put yourself in a position to go do some of that, whether it’s internally within an organization or if it’s something that you’re looking at doing differently. And then there’s just certain habits around work ethic and being responsible and accountable that are just core tenets to being successful.
Adam: Jim, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.
Jim: Well, thank you, Adam. It’s been great. I’ve enjoyed talking to you and getting to know you earlier throughout the conversation. Also, congratulations to all your success.
Adam: Really appreciate it, and really enjoyed it as well. Thank you again.
