Fire in the Hole! The Untold Story of My Traumatic Life and Explosive Success

320 pages

Alice Watts

If you don’t understand Bob Parsons’s childhood and Vietnam experience, you can’t understand him. In Fire in the Hole!Marine Corps veteran and GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons has written a candid, often gritty, memoir that highlights the roots of his optimism and resilience. The book shows how he built success from a rough start, drawing on the discipline he learned in the Marine Corps despite the scars he carried from Vietnam.

He grew up in a tough Baltimore neighbourhood, often retreating to his basement bedroom to play with plastic toy soldiers, mimicking the sounds of bombs and machine-gun fire that would later become all too real. With little money at home, Parsons learned early to hustle, sometimes in questionable ways, to make spending money doing what he enjoyed. When sceptics asked, “What if it doesn’t work?” he shot back, “But what if it does?” – a philosophy that still defines him.

Always a dreamer, he predicted in his high school yearbook that he’d be a millionaire – and meant it. He jokes that he didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth, but with a scuffed, dirty, broken plastic one that never stopped him. Convinced that worry changes nothing, he remains a generally happy guy. That mindset – a refusal to quit – would carry him through Vietnam and far beyond.

At 17, still in high school, Parsons enlisted in the Marine Corps. With the Vietnam War in full swing, his mother hesitated before reluctantly signing the papers. The Corps had a new recruit, and Parsons soon learned that once you sign up, the Marine Corps transforms you for life.

In Vietnam, Parsons’ optimism met its harshest test yet. Assigned to a Marine rifle company, he experienced the worst of war up close – and it changed him. The constant fight to stay alive amid the chaos of war left scars that would surface years later as post-traumatic stress disorder. He made a simple promise to himself: to stay alive for mail call the next morning, a promise that got him through that brutal time. That same ability to keep moving forward one step at a time later guided him as he rebuilt his life and business after setbacks few people ever face. Wounded after only one month in the field, Parsons never returned to combat – an unlikely chain of coincidences instead led to his transfer to the courier service for the rest of his tour.

Going home proved harder than expected. Expecting to die throughout his Vietnam tour left Parsons struggling to adjust, for ordinary life seemed strange and hollow at first. He used his VA benefits to attend the University of Baltimore, majoring in accounting – because numbers came easily to him. The traits he sharpened in war – focus, endurance, and an unshakable will – now propelled his success as a civilian through a series of business endeavours, including the founding of GoDaddy—a fascinating story all its own.

What does the future hold for Bob Parsons? Retirement? Not at all. “So far, that time [retirement] is after I’m cremated. I don’t see me returning after that”, he writes.

 Fire in the Hole! reflects the same plainspoken, unflinching style as the author himself – tough, funny, and surprisingly self-aware.