Jim Calaway, a renowned Carbondale business mogul, does not shy away from credit for the millions of dollars he’s poured into the Roaring Fork Valley’s nonprofits and charities.
He’s the first to tell you that he amassed incredible wealth over his lifetime. And he’s the first to say that he didn’t find purpose for it until he started giving it all away.
The son of poor tenant farmers in a small Texas town, he was the first in his family to attend college. After high school, with $1,000 that he’d saved up in his pocket, he jumped on a Greyhound bus bound for the University of Texas.
He put himself through college and finished out law school before deciding upon a career as an entrepreneur.
Fresh out of law school, he partnered with a geologist and got into the oil and gas business at 24 years old. This business venture was massively successful, and he eventually brought on his twin sons to help run the company. They sold the business in the 1990s, but it was only the start of what Calaway calls the “four home runs” of his entrepreneurial life.
Alongside his sons, Calaway would later run successful businesses in wind farming and software. Most recently they’ve seized a great business opportunity in lithium mining in the Andes Mountains of Argentina.
Calaway says some people are incurable entrepreneurs, a category he places himself. “I’m 85 years old; what the hell am I doing still building companies?”
But somewhere during this skyrocket to success and overwhelming wealth, Calaway found that he was lost.
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