How an Electrician Built a Legacy That Outlives Him

And if you know, that's the worst thing that can ever happen in the skies of the limit, boundaries are unlimited. Jason and Caleb Parks are a vision-driven, skilled, and purpose-led father-in-son leadership team at M&J Electric, a trusted electrical contracting company founded by Jason Parks in Wichita, Kansas.

Through their work, they are caring forward a legacy of excellence by combining Jason's decades of expertise with Caleb's next-generation leadership, delivering reliable solutions with integrity and craftsmanship. Most of the time, the easiest way to learn is just get the one in the fire and make it out.

You just got to be willing to solve a problem.

There's always something else you can do that's out there.

So never give up. What has it been like to be able to not only create a system for success,

“but to be able to inundate your son-in-to-ass system?”

I'd say. It's not over, I'll tell how we're- The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. She'll come up with the way you say, Paul. In the box is not on the planet.

You can live your dream. Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Living Your Legacy Podcast. I am your host, Jason Tyler, and today I am joined by another Jason, Jason Parks, and Caleb Parks in the building.

How are you guys feeling?

Good, how are you? Doing pretty good, doing pretty good. Another sunny day in South Florida, so I didn't really complain too much. Now, you guys are coming in to film your episode of Legacy Makers. What would you say is the number one lesson that you want people to be able to take away from

your story? When you ask for something, whether you're asking the get a job or do the next level, the worst answer you can ever get is no.

“And if you know, that's the worst thing that can ever happen”

in the sky's element, boundaries are unlimited. To piggyback off that, one of my favorite quotes or sayings or phrases is, you're only a finite number of nodes away from your yes. Correct. If I knew for a fact that I was only 150 nodes away from the yes that was going to change everything.

I'd want to blaze through that those hundred and fifty. So anyway, I'd be blown to phones up. I'll just say, "Hey, giving me as many nodes as you can give me," right? But you guys are a unique pairing for Legacy Makers, because we don't get a lot of father-son duos, and I think that's a great opportunity to talk about just the concept of legacy

in and of itself, because from what I've been able to read through your notes, you are getting ready to hand over the reins of this company to your son, Caleb. That's correct. First of all, how do you feel about that? And what does that mean to you to be able to build a company and be able to hand it off?

I'd say first, there was always that nervousness, you know, because like,

this is what I built, right? This is, this was my, my dream, my passion, everything, and when you start a business, your hands on, like you touch every aspect of the learning all that. All the hats. And then as you, I like grown wiser, I guess, but the different mentors and stuff that I have

that I work with, they start to teach you when you start letting people own sections of the business, like in that, that they, they're empowered, they have their own ownership and hell in that task. I learned to be okay with, you know, if somebody is 85% there from what I was doing, it's a success. I don't have to handle.

So, it started out in nervousness. We've been really working our tails off on a U.S. system entrepreneur operating system. Yeah, I'd say in the last two years, it's just taught him and I, how to handle things more efficiently. So now it's not as scary as you think it would be and then you're, you're kind of seeing that there's some small changes here there that there's, there's things that cab has to do that fits his personality

for dealing with and everybody's that's okay. I'm starting to become easier at that thing, but I don't know, but he gets a little easier with time to kind of like, it does. All right, I guess I can let go of the reins a little bit. Caleb, what's your sort of take on being able to not only, you know, take over for what your

dad has built, but be it to be able to watch him build it throughout, you know, over this period period of time? For me, I mean, I've been interested since I was four years old ever since he started the company. I knew that's what I wanted to do. So it's super exciting for me to be able to be at the point to start to take over some stuff

and kind of be a part of the handoff. For me, it was about two years ago, that's when I really got to be involved a lot more. I started learning new things, so the past two years has been a lot of growth, a fast growth, but overall it's been really good and I'm ready for it.

“Hmm, and with that growth, does it come with any growing pains?”

Oh yeah, I know it does. Lots of growing pains. Most of the time, the easiest way to learn is just get, get the one in the fire and make it out.

Yeah, that's what I mean. All right, I got to learn things. Unfortunately, that's just the way that our Heavenly Father has designed me is that I won't learn my lesson until some sort of negative consequences attached to said lesson. But I think a super interesting thing about you guys is that Jason, you've been able to create all of these systems, these operating procedures, SLPs as we like to call them.

But you're getting to sort of hand over those systems and then get to watch Caleb put his own spin on things. For our business owner out there, you know, our audience, they're all entrepreneurial, they're business minded. For some of them out there, they're probably thinking they're early on and they're entrepreneurial career. They're like, I don't know if I can hand that off. But you've reached a place where you're starting to have that comfort level with it.

What has it been like to be able to not only create a system for success, but to be able to in and date your son into that system? It's because of Caleb, it's actually easier image in two years ago, right? And as we were going through this changing our operating system and figuring new things out, we actually had to let our division managers go from both the witch-tall division and Kansas and the Charlotte division out here. But we already had a good replacement

for witch-tall at the time and I was kind of like, oh, am I going to take this back over this roll like here? What am I going to do? And he kind of kind of sheepously in my office one evening, he sits there and when Caleb comes in, he's not quite saying anything like, you know, something going on up in his head, right? And he's like, hey, daddy goes, uh, before you go higher, something for this spot, give me a chance at it, right? And so like in the back of my head, you know,

starting this business, one to be family business, right? One of my son to take over,

“and that was my dream back in the day. But I think that's when I release struck as a reality, right?”

Like he asked for it. And then, you know, and then the course of thoughts are to me is, is he ready for it, right? And so is anybody ever ready for it though? Right? Anybody ready for it? And my wife, she worked with us also in the business and we kind of jumped color mama bear, right? Because whenever the kid to go up to her, you know, she's, she's a wonderful lady, right?

She's a she's a compassionate, you know, and maybe we would always have conversations because I'm more

the role of, you know, I got my tail kicked in business, right? That learned, learned by doing it wrong, right? And so you want to throw him in the fire, right? I don't, I don't want to make it easy for him. I don't want to take off all the hard things for him away in the handle. Like I basically, like he mentioned, like this is your pathway. And by the way, he's all landmines. And you're, you're going to get a foot blown off somewhere. Yeah, there are basically, it was easier than I thought. I can't tell you

I had expectations though. Like any of like how it should feel or how it should go. Right. We've just kind of lived it, I guess. Yeah, just kind of learning through the process and like,

“you know, you learn by osmosis almost like as you go through it, you're like, oh, okay, that's how that works.”

All right, cool, cool, move on. But I do want to touch on just like the starting,

like give me the story of how MJ Electric started. So is back 2004? I basically had only worked

for two contractors since I started at a high school. And one contractor I worked for, about 13 of those years and one contractor I worked for for one year. The contractor I worked for for one year was the largest, one of the largest contractors in the city of Wichita, Kansas at the time. They did so much. Right. And so I learned all the things you could do. No. And then the contractor that I worked for twice in that period that it for 13 years, it was a smaller contractor that did

everything. Hands on concrete bases. What digging? I mean, anything you would take in our realm instead of southern it out. We did it ourselves. And so I learned all the how to use like nothing's impossible to touch, right? You can you can do everything. I was working for them. The company I worked for at that time, like I said, they didn't do any residential work, right? So they were strictly commercial and industrial. And in Wichita, it's just a good mix.

The city itself with what type of work is out there. And they get calls all the time to do residential work. And they like, hey, if somebody wants to do this work, we'll pull the electrical

“license for you if you want to go do it and make the customer happy. So I was working on the side”

at night, right? And I did this for about two years. And it was in 2004. It was a month of July. And I remember having so much work lined up on the residential side in the evenings and weekends. I was hiring six and seven people that I work with through the daytime to come work from me on the side for cash. And I remember the month of July, I worked my tail off. And after pain, everybody paid me two, I would think I put about $21,000 in my pocket on the side the month of July.

And it kind of hit me. I was like, man, if I can do this residential stuff, all these people know me in the commercial world that I work for every day, I think I'm going to make a run at this.

At that time, I was like, you know, my parents and stuff. I'm always the three kids. I'm the

definitely the outgoing kid of the youngest of the baby. And of course, my parents being conservative, like, oh, that's a good idea, Jason. You know, one of these days, you know, you can do that. And and then boom, I just said, hey, let's go. Let's start this thing. You know, and in August,

that's $21,000 a month. As soon as you can make a five-figure month on the side, I feel like that's a good indicator of my kid. You know what? Maybe it's time to fly so huge. I mean, I even respect it. Like, I'd actually already got a vehicle, you know, and put a lot of rack. And I wouldn't even use in the work band that I had from the company. I was using my own stuff, right? And everything, I was like, man, I'm pretty much legit, right, except for an official

stamp and a tax ID number. And yeah, we ran with it, you know, and it just started immediately. And I was 28 years old, right? So at the time, it's one of those deals that your brain didn't know enough about what got into it. And so as we kept going, it's one of the things that by the time you

“learned, it was going to cost you this much money, or this was going to happen, or you have to do”

that, you're already too far in. You couldn't back up, right? So it was already, go. But you head down and run fast. Yeah, at that point, you're just like, all right, how can I creatively solve my way through this, this, this, this, this, this, and then the problems are going to come no matter what. Correct. You're going to get hit with something along the, along the road. I started about three production companies since I got started. I've been doing this for about 10 years now.

And during that time, I started, you know, I started social media company, and then I started my podcast business last year, and I've started interim freelance production companies in between one thing that I've learned in business is that there's no way to prepare yourself for the problems that are going to come through. No, you just got to be willing to solve a problem and solve an a problem. And I think Kebs probably heard me say a thousand times I asked guys,

I was like, man, I just, I just need something to make a decision, right? If you make a decision, you know almost instantly it's, it's going to be right or wrong. If you make a wrong one, quickly make another one. If it's wrong again, quickly make another one, right? And then eventually, like you said, if it's the 10th decision that gets you there, as long as I made them all

the same day, I'm moving forward that day. I never wanted to wait and be like, oh, I made

the wrong one. I was shame on me. What did I do? Like, I never wanted to be that aspect. Like, I'm definitely don't let the grass grow on your feet, right? Just just fly through it and promise all that actually comes pretty easy when you live it. Yep. And when you, when you make that wrong decision, a lot of people have a tendency to just kind of sit and roll about in it. But if you're like, all right, that was wrong, moving on. Your ability to move on from something

quickly, I think is like one of the number one skills that you can have as an entrepreneur, as a business owner. Like, if you're able to say, all right, that was wrong. I'm going to correct for that. But let's move on. Let's go do, just go to the next thing, right? Caleb, I'd love to get your perspective on just what it was like watching your dad build this business,

like from early on or some of the first memories that come to your mind about just kind of watching

this process unfold. On the memories, I remember when we moved into our second building, it was just a shell. We built all the offices within it. I was with them. Oh, it was a five or six. Five, five, six years old. I was helping him frame up the walls. We stood the walls together. Getting the work in. Yep. Going to job sites on the on the weekends with them when

“you have to work weekends and, you know, putting my little heart hat on and walking around with”

my boots and don't forget your car hard jacket. We have the logo on that guy. I had all the apparel when I was younger. So all those little memories starting out from, like I said, when I was about four, and then when I first got into it, he mentioned that with his company that he used to work for, they did a little bit of everything. Well, through Im and J, I've been able to do a little bit of everything. He taught me that because he already knew it. That's what we did here. So I was one of the

guys. I wanted to learn everything that I possibly could because I felt value in it. And so for for you guys that are out there watching, I want to make sure that at this point, if you're still tuned in, make sure that Jason's episode of Legacy Maker is going to be coming out shortly after this podcast episode drops. So make sure you guys tune into his episode so that you can get the full story, the full breakdown on the story of Im and J, the story of Jason's success and soon to be Caleb

success as he's sort of taking those reins over for the viewers out there. If you could give them

“one key tip for success, what would that tip be? I'd say never give up. Never give up. That's what's”

pushing me through even on the worst of times. There's always something else you can do. That's out

there. And different have a new different pathway. Something to never give up. Persistence is the first systems. Just be persistent. I think it's Seth Rogan and he talks about the only people that I've seen, you know, he's in acting and comedy and the only thing, the only people that I've seen be successful are the ones that just refuse to quit. Yeah. And I think that's that's the key. That's the key to everything. If you just don't quit at something, eventually, at the very least, you'll

stabilize your feet. At the very least, you'll be able to get put your feet on the ground and really take a stab at it. And then if at that point, you realize, hey, this isn't for me, then you can kind

not giving up, right? Yeah. Certainly. So guys, if you're still tuned in, I want to make sure, again,

“I'm just going to reiterate, make sure you check out Jason's episode of Legacy Makers coming”

out shortly. Where can people find you guys on social media if they want to learn more about you,

find you on the internet? Our website, uh, www.hamjelectricusa.com. Perfect. And then we have, uh, we do have

“Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. TikTok. Yeah, we're on LinkedIn. My daughter has gotten really creative”

with the TikToks and all of our previous doing stuff. So it's, it's been quite entertaining.

Those have been the hit so far, obviously. I love the TikToks. Hey, I can't, I can't knock it.

“I can't knock it. I live, I deal in that world. TikTok is like the ultimate amplifier, I think nowadays,”

like for all businesses out there, if you're not on TikTok, please go beyond TikTok. It's been a pleasure having you guys on the show. So I really appreciate you guys are being here. And now we're about to go into actually filming the episode you guys ready for it. I'm ready, man. Let's do it. Let's do it. This has been another episode of the Living Your Legacy Podcast. Again, I'm your host Jason Tyler joined by Jason Parks and Caleb Parks. We will see you guys in the next one.