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Entrepreneurs don’t get work-life balance
One quality separates the most successful business owners from all others, according to billionaire Jimmy John Liautaud: They work really, really hard.
In that vein, the 61-year-old founder and former chairman of the Jimmy John’s sandwich chain doesn’t believe in work-life balance, he said in a TikTok video posted by The School of Hardknocks on Oct. 9.
“Work-life balance [for entrepreneurs] is the biggest line of bulls— that’s ever been created,” he said. “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. When you’re going to squeeze lemonade out of horses—, you’ve got to squeeze really, really hard … To create something from nothing, there is no such thing.”
Liautaud speaks from experience: Despite graduating second-to-last in his high school class, he created a billion-dollar brand, he said. He launched his first sandwich shop in Charleston, Illinois in 1983, as a 19-year-old with a $25,000 loan from his father — and spent the next 36 years carefully and persistently growing his business, he told the “American Optimist” podcast during an October 2024 episode.
In his first 10 years of business, for example, Liautaud only opened stores that he operated himself — 10 of them, all in Illinois, he said. From that foundation, he eventually franchised out additional locations across the country. Jimmy John’s now has over 2,600 locations across 45 states.
In September 2016, Liautaud sold his majority stake in the company, 65% of the business, to Atlanta-based private equity firm Roark Capital Group at a valuation of “about $3.5 billion,” he said in the TikTok video. He stepped down as chairman in October 2019, after Roark-owned Inspire Brands acquired the rest of Jimmy John’s for an undisclosed sum.
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As with any business, the sandwich chain’s growth path was hardly linear or straightforward, Liautaud noted. In 2002, for example, 70 of the then-200 Jimmy John’s locations were struggling to become profitable, he said.
His response: Teach the franchise owners a lesson in work ethic, he said. “I said, ‘If you’re going to go into the sandwich business, this is 24/7 365. If you’re in the cattle business, cattle need to get fed on Sunday. They need to get fed on Christmas day,’” said Liautaud.
“I started telling people the truth about the business,” he continued. “If you’re going to do this, you better be ready to be a grinder.”
Liautaud currently has an estimated net worth of $2.4 billion, according to Forbes.
Other highly successful entrepreneurs built their businesses using a similar mindset. Bill Gates didn’t believe in vacations or weekends during Microsoft’s early days, and Elon Musk has been known to occasionally sleep at the office and work throughout the night. Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang works “from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep,” he said during a May 2024 interview with Stripe CEO Patrick Collision.
Now, some of them opt for more sleep and better time-management. Gates regrets his previous workaholic lifestyle, he told students at Northern Arizona University’s commencement ceremony in May 2023.
“Don’t wait as long as I did to learn this lesson,” Gates said. “Take time to nurture your relationships. To celebrate your successes. And to recover from your losses. Take a break when you need to. Take it easy on the people around you when they need it, too.”
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