#17 RBM Building Services

   Destined for entrepreneurship, 8-year-old Jon Moss was running a landscaping business when most kids his age were watching Saturday morning cartoons. But destiny hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s been extreme. The highs have been pie-in-the-sky high, and the lows have been unjustly low. You see, Moss wasn’t supposed to lose everything. He wasn’t supposed to work as a janitor for 1,000 bucks a month at RBM Building Services, his dad’s commercial janitorial company. And yet those “weren’t supposed tos” are the very reason he’s sitting in our glossy pages with his wife, Janae, by his side. “The hard times make or break you,” Moss says. “And I wasn’t about to let them break me.” Did we say destiny? Make that downright determination. 

As a kid, my parents told me I could have anything I wanted — I just had to work for it. So if I wanted a candy bar, I’d sell eggs. If I wanted a four-wheeler, I’d cut grass. I had so much determination. Quitting was not an option. 

I am dyslexic. Growing up in school, my teachers didn’t know how to teach me. They told me I was stupid. Entrepreneurship was my way of proving to myself I wasn’t stupid. 

I started my first business when I was 8 because I wanted to buy a four-wheeler. I mowed lawns and raised and sold rabbits, chickens and eggs. After four years I made enough to buy my four-wheeler, and my dad and I built a little trailer for it so I could haul mowers and tools around town. 

When I was 12, I bought a five-acre piece of land in Fairview. It was my dream to build a cabin on it. At one point I was short $105 on the payment, and my dad let it foreclose because he wanted me to learn a lesson. Man, did I learn that lesson. 

By the time I was 15, my landscaping business expanded so much I bought two trucks and a tractor and hired 16-year-olds to drive me around. I had four permanent employees and as many as 25 temps at a time for larger jobs — most of them older than me. A few years later, I met my wife, Janae. She was 17, I was 18, and we dated for over two years before we got married. 

Then we lost everything. A pharmacy misfilled my prescription, and my life turned upside down. I didn’t know who I was and would disappear for days with no memory of what had happened. I was a total zombie, and by the time we discovered the mistake we had lost all our contracts and were completely bankrupt. We called poison control and found out I had been taking five times the correct dose and should be dead. We were ruined. 

We were in court for four years. We had bill collectors at our door. We survived on deer meat from friends and food stamps. We ended up making enough back in the lawsuit to pay our creditors, but at the age of 22, we had four kids in a one-bedroom house we couldn’t afford to heat or cool. 

When we lost everything, my dad told me I could come work for him at RBM for $1,000 a month. That wasn’t my dream. I had worked my butt off my whole life, and now I was going to have to work for my dad after losing all I had built. 

But I came to work at RBM as a janitor, and I worked around the clock. I started bringing on new contracts for commission, and things grew from there. Janae and I bought the business from my dad in 2004 with 100 employees. My goal was to double it every year, and we have. 

Our clientele list is long — XanGo, Nu Skin, Novell, Tahitian Noni, Franklin Covey and many more. It’s relationships that set our company apart. We know our customers. Plus, there isn’t one person here that won’t help clean a building all night if we need them to. You can’t ask for a better team. I didn’t build this business. My team did. 

My dad comes to work just for fun now. He likes to be around the growth. When he bought it, it was a small Utah County business. And now we’ve expanded into Utah, Wyoming and Idaho and have more than 500 employees. It’s a big thrill for him. 

I couldn’t have done any of this without my beautiful wife. She has stuck with me. I’ve spent countless nights taking care of buildings while she’s home with our six daughters. She is my business partner and best friend. I’d be nowhere without her. 

The great thing about where I’ve been is now I’m not afraid of failure. I’ve risked it all and lost everything, and I’d do it again. I have no idea what’s next, but I’m excited. The risk of entrepreneurship is always worth it, and I’ll be on every ride I can — just holding on.