Jim Bartimus, Founding Partner, Bartimus, Frickleton & Gorny

Think about the rigors of medical education, then consider this: Jim Bartimus spent three years in med school. While he was building his law practice. That’s the kind of determination you invariably find in a Rainmaker.

For Bartimus, that classroom experience has paid huge dividends with his concentration in cases of medical negligence or malpractice. “I did medical school as an audit student and I really, really liked it,” he recalls. “I was broke, but I loved it. And I love being able to combine it with law.” That perspective contributes to his own rainmaking skills because, he says, it helps him “sort the chaff from the wheat” with prospective clients. “We look at 1,600 potential malpractice cases a year,” he says. “We take less than 50.” That chaff-sorting has taught him, he says, that “Kansas City has excellent medical care.”

Other Rainmaker qualities, Bartimus said, are competency, integrity, and an innate ability to network. That last one was particularly important for the firm when his wife was talking with another woman from the church altar guild, and the topic of cell-phone fees came up. That led to a conversation with the woman’s husband, and, eventually to a class-action lawsuit against those companies for hidden fees. Though Bart-imus had a limited role after the initial contact, the firm served as lead counsel on the case, which ended with a $450 million settlement. Cue the rain.

“As with all things in life, you can’t say luck didn’t play a part of it,” Bartimus says. “But business begets business. When you show competency in something, the word gets around, and with a little luck, somebody who knows somebody, all of the sudden you’re playing on a national field.”

Bartimus honed his own values, and legal skills, working in partnership with Lantz Welch, architect of the Hyatt disaster settlement agreement in the 1980s. He would later go on to be co-lead counsel on the state of Missouri’s lawsuit against U.S. tobacco companies, where a successful outcome dramatically changed the fortunes of the firm—the case yielded combined fees of $111.25 million for outside counsel. Bartimus, the former med-school student, handled the medical aspects of that case.

The law firm has evolved from strictly medical work to a range of consumer and class-action cases, but all are accepted, he said, with one goal in mind: “I try to change the lives of people who have been carelessly harmed,” he said. “When we’re able to discover the truth, we use that to help provide some measure of change for the good in the lives of people who come to us. People don’t walk in here unless they’ve had a tragedy—they don’t come in to say they gave birth to a healthy baby. When we’re able to do something that makes their life a little easier, and provide some measure of justice, that’s the most satisfying aspect of what I do, without exception.”

Jeff Eden, Chief Sales Officer, Digital Evolution Group

In the meteorology of Rainmaking, this would be considered a big storm front: Digital Evolution Group’s five partners, says Jeff Eden, include “two of us who had at least one parent who was an immigrant, one of us who came to this country to realize the American dream, and two who are sons of entrepreneurs. There is a common thread of values that runs through all of us.” And those values have created a platform for Eden, the company’s chief sales officer, to succeed, and in turn to help the organization grow.

Since breaking into Ingram’s Corporate Report 100 with 2004 revenues of $1.4 million, Digital Evolution has made six more appearances, including last year’s showing with $10.8 million in sales—a compounded annual growth rate approaching 30 percent. Shared values, Eden says, un-derpin all of it. “We believe in a strong work ethic and innovation to drive business,” he said. “That can be taught and nurtured, but it really does require the support of some organization.”

Eden credits his father with instilling in him the desire to build something. A mechanical engineer born in England, his dad saw two houses bombed out of his life during World War II, and lost his own father during the war. He offered profound lessons to Jeff and his two siblings. “It was an innate drive to serve others,” Eden says. “He taught us to never stop exploring, to work hard, and to help others do the right thing. Without realizing it, he taught me to be an entrepreneur, a problem-solver and a connector.”

Those traits, he said, helped him to succeed not just individually, but on behalf of the organization. And that helps the company succeed, in turn: “As an organization, we really focus on delivering smarter digital strategies and solutions to nationally recognized, even global companies,” he said, “and the key to that growth is putting the success of our associates and clients above everything else. And never stop innovating.”

A laser focus on executing priorities, and on relationship-building, he said, will well serve anyone who seeks to drive top-line growth. The latter quality, it turns out, hasn’t fared too badly for him on the home front, either: In late August, his wife, Janet, gave birth to their third child.

At a time when the role of the entrepreneur has become a factor in the political calculus of a presidential campaign, Eden notes that irrespective of the rhetoric, the concept of American entrepreneurship needs to remain front and center.

“This country is very different from the one my dad stepped into when he came here from England,” Eden notes. “It’s more difficult for folks to realize the American dream, so we have to make sure it’s made easier”—regardless of November’s outcome.