How do you become a multi-multi-multi-millionaire at age 31? Read on.
I first met Jack Simonson Jr. in 1989 at a seminar I put on in Chicago for the National Kitchen and Bath Association. I don't remember anything special about him at the time, but he remembered me. An avid reader of this magazine and my articles in particular, he contacted me a couple of years later to put on a seminar for a local PHC trade association he was involved with. He was barely of legal drinking age and working for his father in a little one-truck company known as The Irish Plumber in the Chicago suburb of Villa Park. Despite his tender age, Jack was proud of his heritage and eager to learn everything he could about the plumbing business he was primed to inherit.
Unfortunately, not many of his colleagues shared his attitude about learning and growing. Only six people registered for that program. Jack did everything he could to drum up interest among his colleagues, but over and over he heard the familiar mantra of this industry: Everyone was too "busy." They were so wrapped up in chasing their tails, they couldn't devote even a couple of hours of their precious time to learn some business pointers that would have shown them how to organize their business so they wouldn't have to incessantly chase their tails. They could make more money working way less hard. But they were too busy to learn how.