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.
