'I'd Have Never Done It Without the Marine Corps': Life and Business Lessons from GoDaddy Founder Bob Parsons

Most people wouldn't need to fight a war before starting a business, let alone one of the most iconic dot-com brands ever created. But Bob Parsons is not most people.

Perhaps best known as the billionaire founder of GoDaddy, Parsons credits the Marine Corps and his service in Vietnam with changing the course of his life and making everything that came after the war possible -- and he has a lot of lessons to share.

Parsons describes his life, service and entrepreneurial acumen with interesting and sometimes hilarious detail in his new memoir, "Fire in the Hole! The Untold Story of My Traumatic Life and Explosive Success."

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In a voice that is everything you might expect from a former junior enlisted Marine, Parsons pulls no punches in explaining his personal life and business lessons, his views on entrepreneurship and the unrecognized post-traumatic stress disorder that took a toll over every other area of his life.

"Some guys were born with a silver spoon in their mouth. I was born with a plastic one," Parsons told Military.com. "Everything I ever accomplished I owe to the United States Marine Corps. When I came out, I was a different guy. I went to college at the University of Baltimore after working in a steel mill, and I graduated magna cum laude."

Graduating at the top of his college class was a massive achievement for Parsons, who says he "had no brains" before he joined the military. He was 17 years old when he enlisted in 1968, uncertain whether he would graduate from high school. But once his teachers learned he was joining the Corps, they all passed him.

"My grades were terrible," he recalled. "My mother had to sign [enlistment papers] for me, and she said, 'Maybe this will be a change that you need. This will do you some good.' And it did."

Parsons became a rifleman and was sent to South Vietnam's Quang Nam province with the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines. Based out of Hill 190, he and his fellow Marines were tasked with setting ambushes against regular North Vietnamese Army units. These kinds of attacks helped protect the property and food stores of the local villagers while preventing the movement of weapons and troops into the South. But Pfc. Parsons, the poor teenager from Maryland, only saw rice paddies as far as his eyes could see.

One day early in his tour, Parsons began to realize just how much danger he was in among those rice fields. Darkness and fear began to loom over him, crowding his mind with deeper worries about his potential death. That's when it hit him: He was going to die there. He would not be coming home from Vietnam. With that realization, his world immediately began to brighten back up.

"When I first got there, there were only four or five guys in my squad and the rest were killed or wounded. The guy that had been there the longest was there for six weeks," Parsons said. "I went and sat on a wall waiting to go out on an ambush, looking out over this valley and I just accepted the fact that I would die there. I mean, it was quick. And after I did that, nothing bothered me. I fully expected to just die. I was at peace with it."

Parsons didn't spend a long time in Vietnam. He saw a lot of action, but after about a month spent in-country, he hit a trip wire during a night ambush. The blast peppered his legs and left arm with fragmentation, some of which he still carries today. The most important thing he still carries from Vietnam, however, is his freedom from worry.

"That's one of the things I teach early on in the book, that you can teach yourself not to worry," Parsons said. "And that is one of the things that I do. Not only was I not worried in Vietnam, I wasn't worried when I started my first business, because in my mind's eye, I already saw it working. People say to me, 'Well, what if this doesn't work?' I always would reply, 'Yeah, but what if it does?'"

After leaving the military, Parsons earned an accounting degree from the University of Baltimore in 1975. By 1984, he was starting his first business at just 34 years old. Ten years later, he would sell Parsons Technology, which specialized in home accounting software, to Intuit for $64 million.

"I have a lot of lessons to teach, and there are a lot of life lessons and early business lessons in the book," he said. "Like how to determine what business you want to start. The answer to that is very simple: What do you like doing? My father, for all his shortcomings, was a wise man in many ways. He told me if you do something you like, it tells you all its secrets. You're willing to work harder and take the time to learn the nuances that make the difference between you and somebody who's just doing it to make money."

Parsons would found GoDaddy in 1997 and eventually sell his stake in the company for enough money to land him on the Fortune 400 billionaires list. Today, he's still a serial entrepreneur and happy to talk about starting three companies from scratch.

But what Parsons is most proud of is giving back to the Marine Corps for the difference it made in his life. He has donated more than $112 million to the Semper Fi & America's Fund and has pledged to give away at least half of his fortune through the Giving Pledge.

"With what I grew up with, the fact that I'm able to do this spins me like a top," Parsons said. "You know what? Every time I write that check, I think, 'I wouldn't have any of this if it wasn't for those guys. I made it three times starting businesses from scratch, and the thing I'll tell you, I'd have never done that without the Marine Corps. So Semper Fi and Happy 250th Birthday."

"Fire in the Hole! The Untold Story of My Traumatic Life and Explosive Success" is in bookstores now, but is also available from Parsons' website.

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