PHOENIX — If there was a Mount Rushmore of Arizona business, Go Daddy founder Bob Parsons would no doubt be on it.
He pulled himself out of a rough Baltimore neighborhood, fought in the jungles of Vietnam, and then worked his way to founding one of the most iconic companies in the state's history.
He tells his story in a new book called Fire In The Hole. 12News journalist Troy Hayden sat down with Parsons to discuss his journey as a businessman, his life and his new book.
Parsons told Hayden he grew up in a poor family in East Baltimore with a chronically absent father and a mother who, he says, likely suffered from a kind of nervous breakdown.
"She would take her head and start pounding it into the wall and then she would then reach up and grab her hair, start pouring it out of her head in clumps, Parsons said. "Then she looked at me and she must start making these noises like an animal... she was in such pain."
That pain was made worse by his family's financial struggles.
"I said, dear God, when I grow up if I have a family, I promise you, they will always have what they need," Parsons said.
Parsons enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps when he was 17 and was sent to fight in the rice paddies of Vietnam.
Hours before his first ambush patrol, he had an epiphany.
"When you start to worry about how you're gonna survive, it's a pretty dark moment," Parsons said. "I had I think an anxiety attack, a little one, you know, kind of hard to breathe, you know, that clammy. And then it occurred to me, you know, gradually that I was gonna die there. And so I gave myself up for dead."
And he almost did die while on patrol: Parsons was severely injured by a mine and earned a Purple Heart.
He now keeps his Marine medals on his wall and says the Marine Corps is where he learned the discipline he held onto when he first started in tech.
Another thing Parsons has held onto? The old IBM computer he used when he worked 60-hour shifts to create Parsons Technology, an early software company. He dubbed the computer "Cinderella."
"This is a woman I spent probably 20 hours a day with for a long time. My sweetheart, Cinderella," Parsons told Hayden with a smile.
Parson sold that company and used the profits to start Go Daddy, which registered internet domain names. But the start-up struggled and Parsons' seed money was quickly drying up.
While taking a trip to Hawaii to think about and decide the fate of his company, Parsons had another epiphany.
"This guy who'd come by to park cars for me, and the guy's my age and he's really happy," Parsons said. "I just thought, you know, this guy is something. I mean, this guy probably has nothing, He's parking cars, right, and look how happy he is. Me, I've... got $6 million and I'm miserable. So it was right then I decided that I'd go back home and I wouldn't shut the company down. And if I went broke, the company went broke, I'd go broke with it."
Just like Vietnam, Parsons decided to accept whatever fate awaited him. But as luck would have it, his fate wasn't an ending — it was just the beginning.
Go Daddy began turning a profit and then got a huge lift when they created the now infamous edgy Super Bowl commercial. Parsons shrewdly let everybody know what happened — that the network had basically banned the commercial — and the resulting publicity made Go Daddy a household name.
"I did interviews for a week... from sun up to sundown. The Go Daddy girl was on every possible show," Parsons said.
Go Daddy's profile continued to rise after Parsons hired race car driver, Danica Patrick, for a series of commercials.
Parsons then sold just a portion of Go Daddy for over $2 billion. He didn't have to ever work again.
But soon he took an interest in the golf business.
When he asked, then-PING golf club designer Mike Nicolette, why golf clubs didn't seem to improve much year to year, Nicolette answered that he was hampered by cost restrictions and time.
"I said, do you think if you had as much time as you possibly had to design clubs and... you had money to spend where you need it, you didn't have no limitations there, that you could make a better club?" Parsons said. "He goes, 'I'd sure like to try.'"
Parsons hired Nicolete from PING and created PXG a high-end golf and apparel company that's seen as a disruptor in the golf business and it's growing in market share.
The clubs are designed right here in the Valley and Bob's wife Renee Parsons is the company's chief marketing officer.
When Hayden asked him what he thinks the key is to running a successful business, he said you have to love what you do.
"No good deed goes unthanked, you have a few of those moments, but you get past those in a little bit," Parsons said. "I'm a happy guy."
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