Josh Hightower
Josh Hightower has had a knack for entrepreneurship from a young age. “I was the kid that would mow the yards in the neighborhood, and at Boy Scout camp, I was making my own whistles and selling them until they shut me down,” he said. “Both of my grandparents were business owners in Dublin, and my parents too, so I grew up around entrepreneurship and always knew I wanted to be a business owner.”
While at Dublin High School, Hightower, like many Dublin students before him and many after, took a job as a tour guide at the Dr. Pepper Museum to make some money. After he graduated high school in 1996, he went to Baylor University to study business. In Waco he continued working as a tour guide, switching over to the Dr. Pepper museum there. Two years passed, and a job became available working as a delivery driver for Dr. Pepper Texas, the state-wide bottling company.
Hightower graduated from Baylor in 2000 and continued working for corporate Dr. Pepper, moving up to the IT department and then to another department within the company.
While working for corporate Dr. Pepper, Hightower began to invest in small businesses on the side, buying a gym in Cleburne in 2003. “I just saw an ad in the Dallas News for a gym, and I thought ‘Well, I played sports in high school and I like to work out, so I’m gonna buy a gym.’” He was able to balance running the gym with his corporate job. In 2005, he decided to try a new career path, and found a position working remotely as a project manager for Arvato, a German company with an outpost in Los Angeles.
The company worked with different corporate clients such as Porsche and Microsoft on logistics and fulfillment. “We had different clients — Microsoft was the biggest — but I have a bunch of projects and businesses I worked with and did fulfillment for them,” he said.
During his time at Arvato, Hightower continued to build his small business portfolio. He bought another gym in Hewitt, south of Waco, then two more. He moved one of the gyms (a Titan Fitness) to Dublin, and eventually sold all but one of them.
Hightower loves being involved in the fitness industry. “We have the coolest job because we help people. Everybody needs what we do. I mean, gyms help people move better, feel better, look a little better.”
Hightower left Arvato in 2014 to go full time with his entrepreneurship efforts. He bought a tanning salon and incorporated it into his gym, he bought a digital marketing agency, and in 2016, started a consulting business coaching and consulting and mentoring other small business owners. “One of my core values is empowerment,” he said. “When businesses come work with me, my goal is that the people are better off when they leave, and they’re gonna either become a great business owner or a great employee somewhere else.”
Just last year, Hightower partnered with an e-commerce brand that sells shampoo and body lotion, and created his own business and marketing software.”The software is what I’m most excited about,” he said.
The software, called Watson Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) helps centralize all the disparate parts of running a business. “Businesses have a lot of trouble getting people to answer emails, texts, phone calls, etc., but [with Watson CRM], all of this is under one software platform,”he said. “It makes communicating with teammates and customers easier.”
Hightower enjoys working with a variety of different industries. ““It keeps things interesting, because they all have unique situations,” he said.
In the future, he hopes to continue working with his various businesses and helping others succeed.
When he’s not working, Hightower is usually spending time with his wife Maryann and their four children, Steven, 24, Jake, 22, Jenna, 16, and Jaxun, 12.
Hightower and his wife live in Lorena, Texas, a small town outside of Waco. He and his family attend church at First Baptist Woodway. His parents, Steve and Donna Hightower, still live in Dublin.
Hightower’s advice to Dublin graduates is to trust in themselves. “Don’t be afraid to take risks now while you’re still young, before you have mouths to feed,” he said. Even later in life, he emphasized the importance of taking risks to achieve goals. “For me, in 2014, I got to the point where I was like, ‘I could continue making good money, I had a good life working remotely, but I decided I want to go ahead and jump in [with my business career]. Don’t be afraid to try.” Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen. com.