Jim Kavanaugh is the co-founder and CEO of WWT, a technology company with more than 20 billion dollars in annual revenue and nearly 14,000 employees. Jim joins Adam to share his unique journey – from a bricklayer’s son and cut Olympic soccer player to building one of the largest privately held companies in the country – and his best lessons and advice. Jim and Adam discuss a wide range of topics: resilience, leadership, culture, hiring, and much more.
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Read the full transcript of Adam’s conversation with Jim Kavanaugh.
Episode Summary
Jim Kavanaugh, co-founder and CEO of World Wide Technology, is the son of a bricklayer who left school early to start laying brick and bring a paycheck home, and his father’s lessons were direct: work hard, behave well, and remember that “You’re as good as anybody else, but you’re no better than anybody else.” Jim was not the most talented soccer player but says he worked as hard as anyone. He was cut from teams more than once, kept getting better, and was invited to try out for the Olympic team after another player got injured. He concludes that you create your own luck through hard work, because opportunity only helps if you are ready.
The Olympic path then collapsed. Coach Manfred Schellscheidt promised Jim a spot on the 1984 team if he redshirted for 12 months, but four to six weeks before the Games the coach was fired and the new one brought in professional players. Jim had still played in 20 tournaments and trips around the world, and when his aunt said she felt sorry for him, he saw it as one of the most incredible experiences of his life. How a person handles setbacks, he says, shows character even more than success does.
Success carries its own danger, Jim says. People who start believing they have all the answers stop wanting constructive feedback and create an echo chamber, and the people around them tell them what they want to hear. His antidote is to be self-reflective, surround himself with people he respects who will call him out, and run decisions as a meritocracy, which he describes as neither a dictatorship nor a democracy.
Jim also talks candidly about leading others. He writes down a goal of positively impacting everyone around him each day, admits he falls short when he is dissatisfied with the pace, and recalls someone telling him that being nice is not always nice. There may be a time to flip a table, he says, but only when the group needs it and not because someone triggered you.
In its early years, WWT could have gone out of business more than once, including when financial problems tied to another owner brought the bank and bankruptcy attorneys in. Jim learned that the right business model fails without the right people and values. When an executive said a customer’s consolidation of hundreds of distribution facilities would bring the company to its knees, Jim refused to give up what he called a once-in-a-lifetime deal, and the customer is still with WWT more than 20 years later. After 35 years, he says he is not moving fast enough on AI, while trying not to exhaust his people.
What You’ll Learn
- Jim told the former soccer teammates he brought into WWT that they would be viewed more critically because they were his friends, so they had to be first in, last out, and earn respect.
- Lifestyle businesses are fine, Jim says, but anyone striving to be great should expect some imbalance and keep raising the bar instead of easing off once the money comes in.
- Judge people by who they are, not their title or money: Jim says one of the people he respects most is his brother Mike, a retired sprinkler fitter who is never jealous of Jim’s success and lives down the street to care for their mother.
- You cannot control what others say or do about you, Jim says, but you can control how you react, and he tells managers not to let someone else’s words dictate their response.
- Big opportunities rarely arrive at a convenient time, Jim says: when a once-in-a-lifetime deal shows up during a scheduled vacation, you rally the company and go do it.
- Define success for yourself first, Jim advises, then decide what work you will put in and whether to swing for the fences or take a more methodical approach and get on base.
About Jim Kavanaugh
Jim Kavanaugh is the co-founder and CEO of WWT, one of the largest private companies in the country, with more than $20 billion in annual revenue and almost 14,000 employees. He grew up in St. Louis, the son of a bricklayer, and was a star soccer player at Saint Louis University. Jim was part of the run-up to the 1984 U.S. Olympic soccer team, playing in about 20 tournaments and trips around the world, and went on to play professionally for five years before co-founding WWT. He says the company had about 30 people in its early days and he has been building it for 35 years.
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