Growing up in a middle-class family in Pittsburgh, Mike Walsh had two burning desires: to be well-educated and successful.
With unflappable determination, he charted a path that enabled him to retire in his 30s, earning degrees from two prestigious research universities and making his first million at a company he founded in his late 20s.
Only the hands-on businessman wasn’t ready for a life of leisure.
Returning to work in less than a year, Walsh came back even stronger, building a behemoth business, one that generates more than $100 million in revenue a year.
Credit: Phil Skinner
Credit: Phil Skinner
“I will say I have always been an ambitious person,” he said. “And wanting to achieve – that was just in my fabric.”
Yet amidst his success, a question lingered: Was there more to life than personal success? “In the back of my mind, I kept asking myself, ‘What am I doing here?’” Walsh said. His conclusion was that what’s important “at the end of your days is what you’ve done for other people.”
Achieving his goals
Walsh earned his Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University in 1990 and his Master of Business Administration from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1994.
Credit: Phil Skinner
Credit: Phil Skinner
Two years after graduating from Case Western, Walsh became an entrepreneur. He founded Lifegas, an industrial medical gas supply company in Atlanta. He sold the company around 2001, achieving the financial independence he desired.
His current company, EspriGas, was a spinoff of Lifegas and has grown to employ about 200 people with a national network of about 600 distributors.
As he grew his companies and fortune, Walsh also grew in his commitment to helping others, taking to heart, he said, the advice of a priest friend: “Go find something you enjoy, make sure you do that and use it for other people.”
Credit: Phil Skinner
Credit: Phil Skinner
He also wanted to emulate the quiet altruism he’d seen in his devout Catholic parents growing up: simple acts, such as his father running out after work to take block cheese to a hungry family as a volunteer for the St. Vincent de Paul Society, a long-established Catholic charity.
Walsh tried volunteering with St. Vincent de Paul and dishing out soup to the homeless.
“I wasn’t very good at it,” he said. “I didn’t have the natural empathy.”
Walsh decided instead to channel his love for children and science into empowering underprivileged youngsters attending Title I schools.
For the better part of two decades, the married father of three has been a coach, mentor and guest speaker at Title 1 schools. He tries to fire up young minds with lively talks about the three states of matter—solid, liquid and gas. He puts on a scientist’s lab coat and has second-graders captivated and squealing over experiments he does with nitrogen, ice cubes and balloons.
“My mission was to spark their love for learning,” he said.
Walsh grew even more committed to promoting reading in 2002 after then-first lady Laura Bush presented some startling statistics while promoting the new No Child Left Behind law, which set standards to measure a school’s success.
“The stats were scary,” he said. “If you aren’t reading at a third-grade level, there’s only a 40% chance you will graduate high school.”
Walsh typically visits a second-grade classroom seven or eight times a year. About 25 of his employees have been doing the same since 2018 through the literacy ambassador program he established. Their approach, like his, focuses on matter and making reading fun and exciting for the students
Walsh will often also try to leave the children with a life lesson. For instance, when he speaks before a class, he tells students to send him a thank-you note. Students who send one receive a free book.
Walsh is realistic about what he’s accomplishing.
“I don’t think we are going to move the needle for a mass of kids in Atlanta,” he said. “Honestly, I am just hoping we get a handful of kids in a class in which this sparks something.”
Earlier this year, Walsh collaborated with two former employees to write the first of three books about a girl traveling the world to experience the three states of matter—solid, liquid and gas. All proceeds from the book, “A Girl Named Matter,” will go to two literacy centers he and his wife have established in Atlanta and College Station, Texas.
Walsh says his passion for improving child literacy “makes my mother happy. It gets my mother charged up.”
It’s also given him something money can’t buy.
“At the end of the day, I’m trying to be a good person. I’m trying to take the skills that I have and give back in a meaningful way, and that’s important to me,” Walsh said.
MORE DETAILS
“A Girl Named Matter” is available on Amazon. Proceeds will go to two literacy centers in Atlanta and Texas.
To see Walsh engaging students, click the following: bit.ly/EspriGasAmbassadorProgram
About the Author
