Growing sales today to increase your business value tomorrow

This week we talked with Ira Bowman. Ira is the founder and owner of Bowman Digital Media and is a part of our Exit Your Way team as the Director of Sales and Marketing. Ira is a digital sales specialist. 

This Business Round Table by Exit Your Way® topic this week was Growing Sales. This week we talked with Ira Bowman. Ira is the founder and owner of Bowman Digital Media and is a part of our Exit Your Way team as the Director of Sales and Marketing. Ira is a digital sales specialist.  He worked in print industry sales and sales management for many years helping print companies growing sales.  He helped people understand who printed products could help them be more successful to help growing sales for his print company employers.  He supports job seekers with philanthropic efforts in his company Project Help You Grow which has free resources and job listings for job seekrs.  This and Ira’s work growing sales allowed him to develop a very large LinkedIn network.

The round table begins by talking about vanity posts and if they are good or bad. Ira asked the question: I got 20 thousand views on my last video post, but does that mean its a good post? Ira didn’t make any profit from it, but he did gain momentum from it. You have to have some video’s that get a fair amount of views and you also have to mix in videos that are effective so that your message is clear to the viewer and you gain more publicity.  Vanity posts have value but they need to be used to help you in the right way.

Ira also brings up how 80% of business owners fail to sell their business because they start thinking about selling in the last months before they want to sell. Companies need to think about selling their business from the beginning and bring in a team to figure out how your going to make a business the buyer will want to buy and that will continue to make profit after you leave it.

Download our free business valuation guide here to understand more about business valuations and view our business valuation FAQs to answer the most common valuation questions.

The round table then talks about the concept of group thinking and how its so powerful and useful when it comes to growing sales with your company. Damon mentions how great it is that when they have call with a client they have a lot of people on the call because one person may hear something different than another person. If you are able to have a group thinking team then your blinders will never be on.  Several people listening and contributing to key conversations will ensure the best results.

Thanks to Ira for sharing his time and knowledge about growing sales.

Do you want to know if your business is ready for your exit or what you should do to prepare? Learn this and more with our business exit assessment here.

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ABOUT EXIT YOUR WAY®

Exit Your Way® provides a structured process and skilled resources to grow business value and allow business owners to leave with 2X+ more money when they are ready.

You can find more information about the Exit Your Way® process and our team on our website.

You can contact us by phone:  822-BIZ-EXIT (249-3948)   Or by Email:  info@exityourway.us

Find us on LinkedIn:  Damon PistulkaAndrew Cross

Find our Companies on LinkedIn: Exit Your Way®,  Cross Northwest Mergers & Acquisitions, Bowman digital Media 

Follow Us on Twitter: @dpistulka  @exityourway

Visit our YouTube Channel: Exit Your Way®

Service Professionals Network:  Damon PistulkaAndrew Cross

Facebook:  Exit Your Way® Cross Northwest Mergers & Acquisitions

Other websites to check out:  Cross Northwest Mergers & AcquisitionsDamon PistulkaIra BowmanService Professionals Network (SPN)Fangled TechnologiesB2B TailDenver Consulting FirmWarren ResearchStellar Insight, Now CFO, Excel Management Systems  & Project Help You Grow

1:07:36

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, business, sales, bowman, ira, digital media, coaching, clients, sell, website, ron, talk, book, exit, sourcing, call, wife, years, buy, good, Business broker, Business value builder, M&A consultant.

SPEAKERS

Damon Pistulka, Ira Bowman

 

Ira Bowman  00:00

I should have turned on my music.

 

Damon Pistulka  00:02

Oh, we missed the music  but I

 

Ira Bowman  00:05

don’t have it. I don’t have the file queued up. That’s fine. That’s fine. All right. Welcome, everyone today, we got Damon Pistulka. Ira Bowman, here, exit your way Business Roundtable. We had a Jeff Graham is going to talk with us today. And, you know, an unfortunate dental incident. He is he is trying to navigate the dental waters during COVID, which he says not any fun. And I just take his word for that. So I know I don’t want to go to the dentist, even when everything’s good, man. I know. I know. And then you don’t want to get that in your mouth specifically. And I was like, hey, that’s that’s enough for me, man. I don’t Yeah, I’m good. Sorry. Yeah. Get well. Yep. Yep. So we’re gonna take care of it just fine here. And we’re rolling. Now we’re going to talk a little bit about some sales we’re going to get maybe get some people commenting in here. I’m sure we’re going to have a few people that are that are weighing in. Oh, we got Paula Goodman weighing in already. Oh, Paula. Hey, Paula. Yep. So thanks a lot for being here with us today. But for those of you who didn’t know, our boat has been working with us now for a while. Yeah, our golf really, we were. We were using Bowman, coaching at that time. started, I think, early this year, late last year, something like

 

Damon Pistulka  01:30

that one right there.

 

Ira Bowman  01:33

Because, as we have identified a long time ago, that social media, and not necessarily just any random social media, but LinkedIn was really one of our areas where we wanted to get stronger. And and being who I am and who Andrew are, we fumbled through it a long time and play with it and did what we learned what we could, but then we knew we needed to really step up our game. And get going and Ira sure helped us to do that. And as we were going along the way the whole COVID thing kicked in. And and this happened that happened. And we just saw, and we saw that Iris skills, man, his sales skills, because he does know what I’m going to start talking about, because I was thinking about this. And when you look at people that that I believe, have a lot of sales skills, they’ve had to sell in tough industries. And you know, you are in the print industry IRA. And that’s, that’s not like selling, you know, I and this is maybe a bad example. But in a medical device field, when you’ve got a product that’s got a technical advantage, and you know, there’s, you know, real features and benefits that are clear to a specific purpose. It’s much different sale and selling a commodity item that many people can can offer. And that’s really what we saw you and it’s and I think people that don’t understand that yours really can appreciate that. Yeah, you know, it’s funny, in the printer sales that I did, it’s very technical. And a lot of times people will go in with preconceived notions of what they needed, or what they didn’t need. Yeah, I would have to educate them. And sometimes, almost, you know, to my own detriment, because it’s like, well, you think you know, your business, our business more than I do? You know, and I’m had been in this an engineer for an architect or whatever for, you know, decades. And it’s like, I don’t think I’m smarter than you. I just think that I know, the technology that’s available. And I’ve been doing this for 20 years, myself. So if you listen to me, I’ll show you that this will actually work for you. I had so many testimonies of people who are thankful that they would go through the process, it’s it really is similar to the exit your way process, because a lot of people are like, Hey, you know, I just need a broker, and I’m gonna get my 1.9 million or I’m gonna get my 7.6 million and it’s like, No, you think you’re going to get it? And I know people are telling you, you’re going to get it so you believe them? Because they’re Yes, folks. But the fact is, there’s more to it than just a number. There’s a process that you’ve got to go to and printer sales. And as it turns out, selling business, the exit your way. style, or the the strategy that we employ are very similar. So yeah, I’m excited to be on the team. We got along very well in our coaching sessions. And you know, you guys, you guys are sharp. And I think the biggest thing for me through all that was just realizing that we all we could have a conversation, not everybody’s on the same page, but we could talk about it strategize, figure out a plan, you guys implement it, and then there was results, you know, and that happened over time. So it wasn’t just like, you know, oh, he’s it sounds good. It’s like, Well, no, it’s got it does have sound good, I guess. But it has to work. Most importantly, if it doesn’t work, then you know, we’re not To entertain ourselves. It’s called work great. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it’s in the end as as, as you know, now being being around more, and we really have to focus on results. And we were talking about before we got on here, you know, results with marketing results with sales, consulting, or whatever you’re doing, you got to see results. Otherwise, why are you doing it? There are KPIs, right. And for those of you who don’t know that key performance indicators, if you don’t know, your own KPI, then you probably haven’t been in business that long. But most people do, you need to pay attention to that data. Right? So don’t get lost. And I think this is what happens, I call them on my mind is when like vanity metrics, sorry, these vanity metrics that are out there, people get lost in views or lost in shares or lost in, you know, website visits, you know, but there’s this thing called bounce rate and click throughs. And all this stuff you’ve got to pay attention to, you need to really know your own business, for example, you could have a post with three people who viewed it, but you get one great lead out of it. That turns into a deal six months down the road. Was that post? Good post or bad post? I’d say it was good. Excellent. anymore, right? Yeah. So just because you get 20,000 views on a post in an hour, just like I had earlier today. I didn’t get any business out of it. So is that a good post or not? Yeah, it’s it. That’s a that’s a real it’s a real stumbling point for me with, with people that talk about vanity metrics, because they are exactly right. They don’t do any good. You know. And over time, I mean, look, I’m going to tell you guys something that maybe most people don’t know, because they don’t play this out, like just the way I do. Okay? vanity metrics can help you in the long game, because there’s something called momentum. So if you’re making posts, every single time to always bomb. I’m talking very few, you know, interactions, engagements and views, your message is never going to carry. So you do need some of these posts that go large. But it needs to be mixed in with posts that are effective. So you have a strategy that’s more than just checkers move, you know, one spot in front of you, you got to be thinking like when I wrestled in high school, I was thinking about five or six moves down the road, I was trying to set you up to do this. So I could do that. So you would do this. So I could do that. So you would do this. So I could pin you. That’s what I was trying to do. Six moves ahead. And the people that were just reacting to what I was doing, they were lost, they lost before we even started, because they were just playing, you know, reactionary? Yeah. So if your social media, if your marketing if your sales strategies are just reactionary, to what is in front of you at the moment, and a lot of people frankly, with the pandemic, that’s where they’re at. Yeah, you have to be this is where exit your way. You You bring us in? And what do we do we bring our team of experts 30, so 30 or so different people on the team that are expert at different things? I’m not the answer for everything in your way does you’re not the answer for everything zero days. And frankly, none of us are, it’s the team of experts that make it so good. So then you’re on the experts to do what they’re best at so that you can do what you’re best at that was my post this morning. Like instead of wasting your time as a business owner, trying to manage seven different social media pages for your company, which you’re not good at, frankly.

 

Damon Pistulka  08:29

Yeah,

 

Ira Bowman  08:29

um, you should hire somebody like Bowman digital media, through exit your way to do for you Why? Because you’ll get more results out of those efforts. And you’ll free yourself up to do what you’re really good at, your profits will go up. So you’re, you’ll make greater gains in both the social media space and in your workspace. At the same time. Yes, it will cost you a little bit of money, but the opportunity cost is so much greater to keep pounding your head against the door, you’re never going to understand because this isn’t your deal, dude. We can’t all be experts of everything, right? Yeah, well trades master of none. Well, that’s silly in business, you should, you should really dig into what you’re the best at and let the experts outsource, frankly, outsource the things that you’re not as good at. I don’t do my own books. You know why? And I went to college, I went to I went to San Jose State in business. I’m actually good at math, and I’m good at accounting, but I don’t do my own books. It’s not my expertise. And frankly, I’m not passionate about it either. So hopefully that doesn’t offend anybody. But it does make them a little uncomfortable. Because I want you to grow. I want you to get better. Yeah, you know, and Ron said something that was funny. I had to put it on there for the pandemic added 100 million coaches overnight or that guy on LinkedIn, they got coaching skills overnight. It’s like that’s, that’s one of the things that you do tell me. Show me Show me your good Don’t tell me your good. I don’t care about the piece of paper that you paid for that says your certified coach. That is irrelevant to me. Show me that you can get a post to hit 100,000 views are showing me that you have 100,000 followers or show me you can build a business page that gets a significant following like project help you grow. That one right there. That is a philanthropy website with no employees, just myself, it’s been around for two years, and I have 19,000 followers on it. So if you’re a business that does millions of dollars a year and has 50 to 100 employees has 500 or less followers, you probably should hire somebody like me who did something like that. Right? to your page for you. That’s what I’m talking about. Even broman Digital Media, which is sorry, that one, my newest business page has over 1100 followers in the first 60 days. Yes. Don’t tell me you’re good. I don’t care what the coach says, Let’s see some actual evidence. Yeah, invest in you, I want you to show me your credibility, I want you to prove it. Don’t tell me Show me. Well, and that’s, that’s why I think one of the things that that we like to do, and we do with our clients and people that we get to know and they’re, they’re not used to what we what we’re going to do if they’re interested in working with us, I mean, we take a long time, before we even talk about, okay, let’s do something or it’s going to be so much money to do something or anything like that. Because we our business is set up that if we waste our time, we don’t make money, just like you don’t make money if you waste your time, right as a business owner, because we have to be we, we we are at we’re at an in game state with a lot of our clients. And they, they’re, they’re, you know, in the last five years of owning the business and some of them and they need to know that whatever’s going to whatever is going to transcribe or transfer between those those years is going to make a difference. So we said our business upset if we’re not making progress and making results, we’re not going to make the money that we want to make as as long side they want. And it just makes makes it that much more important for us to really get to know that our team can make a difference. And if we can’t we get the hell out. There’s no doubt, you know, I, Andrew and I were on the radio on Monday in zone on a financial show. And one of the hosts was kind of surprised by something that we said, and there was a few things I think they were surprised by. But But the first one right out of the gate was 80% of the people trying to sell their businesses are unsuccessful. So that means two out of 10 business owners trying to sell their business fail. I’m sorry, not two out of 10, either. Two out of 10 are successful. Why? Because they don’t think about selling the business. In the beginning, when they’re setting up the business and running the business throughout the business. They only think about it, they’re at the very end. And most people get a little bit lazy and complacent at the end as they’re getting ready to walk away. They know they’re getting close to letting go. But but they’re not quite there yet, but things received. And so those trends at the end are going the wrong way. Yeah, a buyer is not interested in buying your emotional baggage, right, they’re not buying your labor. They’re buying your profit generating apparatus, they want to see that when they invest in this sucker the vehicle that you’re selling, that when you leave, it’s still going to be profitable. In fact, the more profitable it is, at the end, you actually get a little bit of a bonus when we do the certified valuations, right, which is one of the number one things people can get from us. Whether you’re selling or not, there’s a whole host of reasons why somebody would want to get a certified valuation. But in that certified valuation, if you can show the the potential buyer that your sales numbers at the end are trending upwards, you get a bonus multiplier. Yep. So the thing that he asked was like, Well, how soon should you be thinking about selling? before you actually sell? In other words, when are you gonna stop doing something? And the answer was, the minute you start the business, which is a little bit facetious, but it’s true. But in reality, you must be thinking about it much more than the last month or two, like a lot of people do. It’s like, Oh, I need to sell it. Now. I’m just gonna put it out of the paper. And I’m gonna, you know, list my price. It’s like, No, you need to bring in a team. We talk about all the time. This book traction, which I don’t have right next to me, but the book traction, you talk about releasing divine, there you go. Yeah. So you need to have an integrator in the system, who’s going to allow you, the company to run without you, the owner in it. And that’s one of the things that we’d like to implement in the US system. You know, I don’t wanna give away all the secret sauce, but that’s one of the things that we’re bringing in. Yeah, implement So that that there’s a management team, there’s, there’s an evaluation, obviously, of the business processes as a whole, we do the evaluation, we help accelerate the sales if we need to whatever is not working, but the the one of the biggest things is making sure that process is complete with the owner removed, the owner has to step out so that the company can thrive beyond once they’ve left, because if the company can’t exist without own, then you can’t sell it. It’s not know. Yep, exactly right. You know, because and Ron asked a question around here, and I’ll put it up here, because it’s really relevant in this and he’s, he’s with personal branding. Many make themselves a business, you know, and doesn’t hamper the scale and exit. And I think it can, it can or doesn’t have to depend upon how you take the approach, you know, with with you, Iran, having Bowman digital media, as long as you can scale and you’re going to be involved in the business. It can work either way. As long as when you get to the end, that you are not the reason the business is successful. And when you get to the end, if you’re still the brains and that in the heart of the business, it’s worth very little when you’re gone. Well, you can you can build the business here, here would be a perfect example for you run like let’s say this, you’re Ron Craig, calm. Okay? If you’re on Craig calm, and everybody’s only connecting you because you’re on Craig, in the beginning, that’s actually okay. But the main thing that you didn’t think about when you set up a name, if it’s wrong, Craig calm is what happens when you do want to get out because not many people are going to want to buy Ron craig.com. You understand what I’m saying? Even though Bill Gates comm he’d have trouble. So you want to set up the name, you want to try to set stuff up so that when somebody else sells You know, when somebody else goes to buy it, they don’t have to change it. Because if you have to change the name when you buy it, what are you then buying really is just you buying customer base and the customer may or may not follow when you leave? Yeah. So for scalability sake, let’s talk about Bowman digital media for a second, okay, so I make a cut, I do a couple different things. And both in digital media, I make videos and I make graphics, people know that I help with social media management of sites, people know that. And I make websites, right, I create websites. Now any of those things I can actually source. Okay, I can start as I get more and more orders, I can bring in assistance. Now I can still be the face of the company and do sales. But guess what, eventually I can bring in a sales manager to sales team. So it can be scalable. The thing that I’ve hamstrung myself with with Bowman digital media is again, somebody might not want to run Bowman digital media. But here’s the thing, you might notice in my logo, it’s BDM already, right? So I’ve already positioned myself where I can make a shift. And I can go from Bowman digital media, to BDM, or anything else I need to do that long before I go to sell. So if you’re going to change names, and you’re thinking about this now, before you launch, then just start with the better name. But if you’ve already launched and I have a friend, everybody knows I could name drop, but I won’t. Everybody on the show knows her. Right? She has a website, that’s her name, then I’ve actually already had a conversation with her about changing it. Because, you know, when she goes to sell it, which people will want to buy her business because she’s got that many followers and that much business coming in the door already. You know, it’s gonna be hard to sell it for that name. So anyway, she didn’t think about that before she set it up. What most people don’t, you know, because because they’re sitting there going, Hey, I want to make it and back back to train up, you know, to every entrepreneur starts with this. I think I can make money doing this, right? And then it’s like, and hopefully I can make enough money to make the salary that I was before or whatever you’re trying to replace. They don’t think about 20 years down the road to make ends meet. Yeah, yeah. It’s like, hey, I want to make a living and I don’t want to do that. And that’s, that’s, that’s just like, you know, so. So it’s easy sometimes for us to say that. But it’s it’s very common. So people definitely overcome it. And you can like use it by being able to scale by by doing it. If he can I be blunt.

 

Damon Pistulka  19:27

Yes.

 

Ira Bowman  19:28

I think that’s why, you know, most entrepreneurs fail the first couple times. They’re out the gate. Yep, there’s so many there are so many lessons that need to be learned. As you’re coming out, and you’re you’re probably insecure. Hey, I just hope I can make ends meet. I get that I talk to people like that that bootstrap. My clients are doing that stuff all the time. I actually am super impressed every single person who reaches out to me whether they end up using my services or not. Most of the people I deal with are bootstrapped entrepreneurs. solopreneurs, right. They’re there. They have no money, they really don’t have much they have an idea or a talent. That’s, that’s come Audible, you know, they can make a living with it. But they’re really kind of just figuring this stuff out. So when they reach out to me, the reason why I’m impressed is because they have already realized the number one thing that you have to realize to be successful is you can’t do it all yourself. I don’t care if you’re solopreneur or not, you need help, right? Because if you say you can’t say really, so you can, you can generate your own power. And you can run your own phone line and internet and all that stuff. No, you you need somebody to make your car and build your house, all that stuff. You buy those things you don’t think about? That’s you’re sourcing that part out, but you are I don’t, look, I’m connected to you via the internet. I’ve got a video camera. I didn’t make that video camera. I think the power or the you know, I mean, I’m buying those things. So once you get past that thick skull of yours, that you think, Okay, I’m gonna do this on my own. Right, stop that. And you open up to the fact that you need help, I’m impressed. Because now it’s now you’re in a place where you really can succeed. And a lot of people, unfortunately, they have to fail a couple times first to figure out these things. But if you bring in exit your way, what you’re going to get is a host of folks who have already learned these lessons in a variety of ways. I don’t know, I think all of us have been seasoned for at least a decade or more. I mean, I think I’m well yeah, I’ve been I’ve been I’ve been working for well over 20 years myself, right? Yes, oh, you’re gonna get a host of industry experts, but also just life experience. And we talk to each other. You know what I mean? Behind the scenes, we have the Microsoft Teams, and we’re doing our we’re doing our things behind the scenes collaborating, so you can plug in to our collective mind. And I, I hate the expression groupthink, because that’s actually the opposite of what it should mean. But in reality, when you have a brain trust that has your back, you’re our client, we want nothing but the best for you we succeed when you succeed, you’ve already said it, if we’re not successful in helping you to fruition, sell your business, if we’re going out, then we don’t, you know, we don’t win either. Now, you’re going to use using us for any of the all CART services, like you want management training, or you want sales acceleration, or you want us to help with, with accounting or legal advice, or whatever it is, we do offer that I want people to understand, like if you’re 27, and you need a certified valuation, or you’re, you know, 46, and your sales are slumping, and you just want to fix that up or you have a website, but your e commerce site isn’t you know, it’s not working. And you want us to fix that? Well, we have a guy who does, you know what I mean? So we can tell you right away. But anyways, any of our clients, whether it’s a all a cart service, or an actual sale customer that we’re going to sell the business for, we’re going to put our heads together for you and do the best we can for you. Whether you’re paying us for that particular service or not, if that makes sense, because we really do become friends with our clients. And their vested interest becomes our vested interest. So

 

Damon Pistulka  23:05

Well, yeah, you have to I mean, because because realistically, what we’re trying to do is in a client that we’re working on a, you know, an ala carte thing, we’re helping them grow their sales or something like that, or we’re trying to create increase the business value. It’s all about getting to the goals. And you don’t get to the goals by putting your blinders on. And that’s one of the things that Yo, yeah, yeah, you got it. You got a eyes wide open and multiple. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, because we have

 

Ira Bowman  23:37

here no evil, See No Evil.

 

Damon Pistulka  23:39

People will think it’s funny sometimes, because we have multiple people on the call every single call, there will be very, very few calls other than a networking call, if you are an hour just talking about now we’re here something that we’re only have one person on. And what we found is that if IRA and I are on the call together, Ira will hear different things that will gloss and go right through my mind, and I won’t even think a millisecond about them. But they’re key to what we’re talking about, or you find little nuances in, hey, if we did this, we would be able to do that. And it would improve what we do. That whole group thinking or team thinking, like you’re you’re mentioning is so powerful. And we actually teach that to our clients too, because it is that powerful when we’re working together with clients. And, you know, and again, everything rolls back to KPIs too. But this the group working together is really the way that makes makes a difference. And quite honestly, you get it’s just better solutions.

 

Ira Bowman  24:41

Yeah, there’s no doubt there’s no doubt look, two heads are better than one almost every single time. I mean, you could have certainly, you know, an Einstein type brain out there. But for the most part, you know, that I would take the collective group experience and brain trust over Individual if for nothing else than the diversity, so like, you know, somebody gets sick, or, you know, you’re just overwhelmed. You’re overtaxed because like right now, I mean, I’ve got, I’ve got another six or seven hours worth of work I need to do today. I mean, it’s, it’s 330. That’ll make. That’ll put me at 10 1030. tonight. I work till midnight last night. You know what I mean? It’s like, I’m one guy right now at Bowman digital media. And I do need to start sourcing and so I need to take some more of my own advice.

 

Damon Pistulka  25:30

Yeah. But yeah,

 

Ira Bowman  25:32

if you have, if you have a multiplicity of folks that you can lean on, not only will you probably get better advice, you probably get it faster, more efficiently. And your customers won’t be waiting for you who are dragging behind to get that stuff, too. I mean, there’s so many benefits to sourcing or using a team to help you accomplish your, your tasks and your goals, especially if it’s not your primary expertise area of expertise, right. Yeah. Like, if we were shooting basketballs, you know, and I’m standing next to Michael Jordan, I’d be a fool to, you know, take any of those shots. I’m gonna let him take those shots. Not LeBron James Andrew Cross, Michael Jordan, just yeah, clear. But, uh, if LeBron was standing next to me, I’d let him take the shots.

 

Damon Pistulka  26:25

Yeah.

 

Ira Bowman  26:26

But But anyways, um, but the fact is, if I needed to do some business accounting, and it’s me and Michael Jordan, and LeBron James, I’m probably going to feel that you know what I mean, certainly, if I need to build a website, I’m going to do that, you know what I mean? You’re going to use the player that makes the most sense on your team, if you’re smart.

 

Damon Pistulka  26:45

Well, and that’s, that’s what people sometimes get a question or have questions about how can you allocate do all this stuff? elecard. Right. It is because a, first of all, get to know us and get to know the amount of networking that I, Damon and Andrew and everyone else that we work with do on a on a daily, weekly, monthly basis? Because it’s probably take your normal business owner, and then, you know, multiply times 100. I don’t know we do a lot visit, we can get out. I

 

Ira Bowman  27:15

mean, you can see our team, right, we advertise our website.

 

Damon Pistulka  27:18

Yeah, yeah. And that’s part of our team, really, when you look at it, and we’ve got a lot more than normal people we can draw upon when we need to in specialist because we, as we said, that prevetting, working with those people enough to really understand their skills, so that if you have a business that I’m making, you know, shoes for dinosaurs, I don’t care what it is, I know somebody that probably has made shoes for dinosaurs before and solve that problem. So what do I do? And it comes back again, to having a big network, I go out and find my network people I know that I’ve done that before. And and we bring them this specific skilled resources to the to the situation. And that’s how we do these things like not many do.

 

Ira Bowman  28:11

I tell people that that’s one of the similarities between exit your way in the print business that most people don’t even understand happens. And it happens every single day. When you order your business cards and your postcards, and your banners, and your vehicle wraps and your wallpaper and you fill in the blank form your printer, whoever that is, God love them. It should be coming to me by the way, I’ll help you get a better price. Um, I can give you an anecdotal example of that actually, in a second because it was it was a lot of fun. But anyways, um, most of them are sourcing. So yes, there they have some of the equipment. And they’re doing some of the printing almost for sure. Although there are some that just completely outsource everything. Right. So there are those two, but most of them like a broker, but most of them have some print equipment. And so they’ll do some, but they do they have trusted source partners that they’ve developed over the years to have different equipment and everybody runs their equipment the most efficiently. Everything again, if you have all those different devices, it’s really hard unless you have like 200 or 300 employees and I did work in Texas. I work for a company, Thomas Printworks. We had a couple different plants in Texas that had hundred thousand square feet, facilities, and we had hundreds of employees. So we were able to actually do most of the work ourselves. But even still, we sourced some of it. But you know, you’re printing on direct metal or plastic, you’re printing on cloth, you’re sewing stuff, you know, there’s all these different die cuts and laser cuts and heat welds, and I mean, trust me, I could do, Phil, this whole show is what I know about printing and we wouldn’t have enough time. The fact is, you work with outsource partners who you know can get the job done and exit your way we do the same thing. You know, somebody Yeah, you know, without, that’s how I came. That’s how I came onto the team. And in full disclosure, that’s how I’m on the team. I’m a consultant. I don’t fully have exit your way, right? I mean, I work I work with you as an IT consultant. But

 

Damon Pistulka  30:13

yeah, when you look at it to you know, the print industry is very similar to even when I was in the aerospace industry years ago, you know, it’s the same thing, you might have a skill that’s machining or powder coating or whatever the heck it is for the industry. But then this this component gets done in your your place of business and it goes to another one, another one, another one, another one comes back around to you and do something else. And then it’s ready to go to where it needs to be.

 

Ira Bowman  30:40

I had worked, I worked with the print equipment for Toyota motors, North America and several plants. And Toyota. Gosh, I can’t remember now what is called anyways, it was the sedan, one of the one of their sedans was one of the most worked on cars produced cars put together in United States, because most of their factories are here, except for the Lexus IS the Lexus IS we’re all still made in Japan. But act is most people if you ask them, where’s that car built? They’re gonna say, Oh, that’s made in Japan’s like, No, dude, you know where that was made that was made in Kentucky, or that was made in West Virginia, or that was made in California, depending on on where, right and Honda I think the Honda Civic was the only car. It might still be. But it was the only car that was 100% made in the United States. And if you ask people, where’s the Honda made? Oh, it’s made Japan? No, dude. No, it’s not. And this is what really happens. Now, what you’re just saying in the engineering space, is that people have their components that they build. And then it’s put together. And it’s, you know, it’s assembled basically in a different spot, usually, because that’s, that’s their specialty is the assembly. I have a new client, actually, it’s called California grown hemp. And they have 12 Farms all throughout California. They grow them in the different regions, they ship it all to one central hub in Santa Cruz, and that its mass distributed throughout the United States, the distribution center in Santa Cruz doesn’t grow any of the hemp. But every label will say Santa Cruz, you know what I mean? So it’s just interesting, people’s mindsets. But like I said, if you can take it back down to the basic elements, if you’re if you’re a business owner, you go, Okay, well, I use a phone. I’m not Verizon, Sprint, at&t, or whoever it is that you use cricket, whatever, right? You’re using somebody for some of the stuff already, because you have utilities, and you have you know, your mortgage, or your rent or whatever for your for your office, even if you’re working out of your house. And you know, so just already just get past that. I’m too good to outsource or, you know, I’m too independent, because you already are sourcing something. Because again, you’re watching this from an internet feed. And unless you’re an internet service provider, which I don’t think I know any more, you’re paying somebody to do something already, you know what it means we just kind of got to get over that that mental. I think that’s a huge mental gap for people.

 

Damon Pistulka  33:14

Ron brought up something here, he says, and he runs, runs at the earlier stages. His his own own business is getting a little overwhelmed now and

 

Ira Bowman  33:25

he’s got to get all those Bitcoin.

 

Damon Pistulka  33:27

Yeah, well, yeah.

 

Ira Bowman  33:30

I hear that. It’s it’s cold in Canada, but he has trouble putting on his pants from what I understand that

 

Damon Pistulka  33:35

there’s there’s difficulties there. I think when

 

Ira Bowman  33:38

I hear that,

 

Damon Pistulka  33:40

getting overwhelmed, it’s totally normal. I mean, it’s totally normal in business, and you’re going to just run into those situations, I think, and, and if there’s anything about that in it, that can help is prioritization of what you’re doing. It is really key in business because you get into business, because you’re good at something. Yeah. And what happens over time in business is doing that something that you’re really good at may not be the highest and best use of your time. Well,

 

Ira Bowman  34:13

I think I think, I think it’s, I think it’s this, right? People need to look in the mirror and go, Okay, what is it that I’m going to do today, like, but not just today, because you don’t want to be reactionary. Like I said, think about the wrestling move where I’m trying to set you up five or six moves later. So I’m going to shoot a single hoping that you sprawl anyways, we could get interesting analogies, I guess. But But the point is, if you know what you’re trying to do, or what the most important things that you need to get done are and then you can start building a block schedule, that makes sense. And then even think about, you really should have a workflow chart. I don’t know that a lot of people do that. But if you have a workflow chart for processes, best, best practices for each thing and go Okay, this is something that I’m going to do. For example, I’m giving my invoicing responsibilities over to my wife. So Bowman digital media, the invoices will be made by my wife, why? Because my wife has the ability to do it and the time is open, that will free me up to do more of the web design graphic and sales consultations that I’m doing. And then I can stop working till 10 1112. At night, every night, you know,

 

Damon Pistulka  35:21

it’s a great example of it, it’s a great example, you always need to be looking at what you can, what you can delegate what other people could do. And even before it’s time, because if you know, a lot of people that are on on here now are listening, probably have heard of fiber and using people on fiber to do things, it is gonna take you time to find or get somebody up to speed doing what you want, right, so you got to start before you need it.

 

Ira Bowman  35:47

And that goes to Ron’s point earlier, right? If come back full circle in the conversation, you know about scalability, about being able to sell it later. Like you’re eventually going to need to let somebody else do everything if you’re going to be able to walk away. Yep, so identify what you need them to do the most up front. So as you know, maybe in the very beginning, you’re going to do everything because you can’t really afford tired out. And you have access time. Okay, so there’s no time crunch, you have an excess available time because you don’t have a lot of clients, Okay, I get it, now you’re gonna do everything. The as the time becomes a crunch, and you only get, you know, so many, so much time in the day to work. And everybody has a different pain threshold for all these different things, how much they can afford to spend, how much time they can invest personally, what their work level is, like, I personally can work 20 hours a day, seven days a week for years and not be burnt out. I’ve done it before. So I have broad shoulders in that in that respect. But not everybody can do that. You have to know your you have to know your limitations. But if you take stock, a true stock of your resources, and of your capabilities, and then you think about, okay, these are the things like I could do my books for a while, and I get but now you know, I have somebody else doing the books. Okay, great. So the books are being handled by somebody else. Now, what’s next? Well, for me, what’s next is going to be some of these graphic designs. And in website designs, because I can go to Fiverr, I can go to some Look, I get 50 or more emails every day from graphic people say, do your work out cheaper than you’re charging, you can market you know, I mean, and make money. And that’s great. And so then when that starts to happen, I was still oversight, right? Yeah, I’ll still keep oversight. But you know, some of that work is not going to be done by me. That’s the plan. I’m not telling you that might happen. I’m telling you, that will happen. And eventually I’m going to bring in like we’re talking about I’m gonna bring in sales. I’ve been doing sales forever, I’m really good at sales, some would say that’s my best skill set. But the fact is, again, I’m not going to work forever. And so I need to let that go. And so if you guys do that, or if you think about that, even if you’re starting your business now, maybe that’ll take some of the pressure off to where you can go. Okay, I’m not in this alone. Yeah, that’s where most of us if we’re truly honest, most of us self sabotage ourselves. Because we were insecure, and we’re overwhelmed. And if you will just give yourself that mental freedom. Like, okay, I cannot possibly do I was by myself, it’s okay, I’m going to do the best I can. You’re going to manage, you’re going to steer the ship. And you might even want to consider bringing somebody in who’s really good at business, their skill is administration. Find somebody like that. They call them office managers in a lot of places. Yeah, well, integrators. But you can have that to you anything that you’re not good at. You can you can find somebody to help you with.

 

Damon Pistulka  38:48

Definitely, definitely. And and Ron brings it up. Well, here is delegation is a hard skill to acquire a master. You know, and another thing that that he talks about here, I put it on the screen quick, it’s it’s Yeah, it’s never going to get done like you do it. It never will. And you know, what was that?

 

Ira Bowman  39:09

Italia? Sometimes? That’s actually a good thing.

 

Damon Pistulka  39:12

It is. Because, because it all inherently, you know, there’s always people that are getting better at what they do. And it may not be you when you’re really busy and other things like that. I think it’s it is. Yeah, it is it may not get like done exactly like the one in the beginning. But if it’s the right people and the right resources, it will get done really well as you go along.

 

Ira Bowman  39:35

But sometimes simplification too. Yeah, maybe I may give you a real world example. Okay, cuz I’m kind of a nerd. I think most people know that. So I love to study things out and have all my facts and figures and that’s me. I hired a person in San Antonio to work for me. And the person was not really detail oriented and not a steadier and I was a little bit more So, I don’t know how that’s gonna go because we work in a technical world. I was nervous, but he interviewed well had he had, you know, experience and stuff. So I hired him. And anyways, he came on, and I’m gonna tell you why. He didn’t focus on what he wasn’t good at. He focused on what he was good at. And that was rapport. He could walk into a room and talk to anybody about anything. And it wasn’t just that he could talk to them like they would he would capture their attention. Well, he was successful. And you know what he did? super smart. He’s like, they got technical issues, Ira, because I was manager. Come on with me. You can answer those technical questions. You can look smart. Perfect. So he was puffing me up in sales, and he didn’t have to do all that technical stuff. And I learned Wow, I can hire more people now. Because now I know, it works. It was it was it was something that I didn’t know would work. I you know, I wanted it to work so hard the guy and it didn’t work. So anyways. Yeah, they don’t do it your way. And it’s okay. You can learn?  So

 

Damon Pistulka  41:02

Yeah, yeah.

 

Ira Bowman  41:04

Well, one of the things one of the things back again to the book, traction, Ron, there’s it’s step book man book.

 

Damon Pistulka  41:12

It’s like a it’s like a framework to do it. And if you go through it, it makes it easy. You know, it’s not perfect. It’s maybe get the perfect but it does does really talk about delegation and thinking about these things ahead of time. Because I’ll tell you what, when you go through that, and there you go, resume writing simplified. Gotta get done for Curtis. Okay, Curtis is in there. But you know, when you think about it ahead of time you go, Okay, this is the next step I’m going to make up for this happens. When you do that ahead of time, it only gets rough. It’s not like you’re going to get to this step of I’m really, really busy. And I know what’s gonna be the next step. And then I know what the step is, after that, at least I got an idea.  Yeah,

 

Ira Bowman  41:55

ahead. bookie tea breaks it down like this, he says 10 years, three years, one year, and then it’s three months, and then one month in one week. So you’ve always got this progression, but you never get to the three years. Because every year then you go in and you have a meeting and you adjust it for three years more, you know what I mean? So, but what’s cool about that, it’s like navigating one of those huge cruise ships with one of those little tiny rudders, you know, where you’re going way in advance, and you make the adjustments, you know. And so, that book traction, really, I think everybody should read it. It’s just phenomenal. In every way. I was, I was like, yep, yep, yep. Yep. Yep. It just, it’s super smart. Yeah, and the The other thing about it, too, is Ron, you can buy it on Audible. You don’t need to read paper. I know. I know. That’s what I really likes. But you can What? paper is the? You need the paper?

 

Damon Pistulka  42:54

Yeah. Actually, this is, this is a book you want to have in paper.

 

Ira Bowman  43:00

Every color highlighter you can think of this

 

Damon Pistulka  43:05

that’s good for a book like this, you know, I, I’ve got it on Audible and and in paper form. Here’s because I when I listened to listen to it on Audible, I realized that I needed to have the paper to be able to go through and highlight and it’s more of a workbook to

 

Ira Bowman  43:21

one of you want to market because yeah, you’re gonna reference it, there is no doubt about it. You could buy it on ebook, just to hear it. And it’s probably not a bad idea. But you’re going to want to get the hardcopy, so you can Yeah, it’s going to be it’s going to become if you’re smart, it’ll become a reference guide that you’ll go back to. Yeah, when I reading it again, I just finished it. I don’t know, two weeks ago, and I haven’t put it away yet. Usually what I do is when I’m done done with the books, they actually go up in my bedroom on my bookshelves, which are like my car, I have all my college books and everything. I literally don’t get rid of any of my books. My wife hates it every time we move to like, thousands of dollars moves is crap.

 

Damon Pistulka  44:01

Yeah, yeah.

 

Ira Bowman  44:02

So it’s my security blankie. But anyways, this one I haven’t put away because I’m going to read it again. So if you guys want to do a book club with me, you know, get the book let me know when you get it, we’ll we’ll start reading it when we do a chapter a day or you know, whatever pace you guys feel comfortable with. And then we can talk about it. I mean, I think that would be a lot of fun. And yeah, it really is a good book so

 

Damon Pistulka  44:26

well and especially when you start to talk about the some of the things we’ve talked about, but when you even get into the deeper things when they talked about core values and other things that that really, you know where you want to be and yeah, yeah, it’s just there’s a lot of good things in there. But it is at it’s so so so common for people in business, to be overwhelmed because they’re doing too much of the wrong thing. And I just can’t overemphasize that enough and quite honestly, even in the larger businesses that we help you know 1520 $30 million, the owners are still involved too much, and a lot of respects and we have to help them replace the the resources and do what they need to do. I see.

 

Ira Bowman  45:10

People need to think about opportunity cost, like that expression, that mentality has, for whatever reason seems to evaporated from the conscious in social media, like I never seen anybody talk about opportunity costs, but it’s like, if you’re doing this at this time, what could you be doing instead? That’s of opportunity cost. And so yeah, what you’re doing now you might be scraping by, you know, I’ll give you a perfect example. I was making those gifts, while those gifts were taking me about an hour, you know, to make them. And so I was charging people 100 bucks. And I was like, Well, okay, if I make, you know, a certain amount of those, you know, basically 100 a month bills. And, you know, it’s short sighted, because yeah, you could do it, but you can’t ever get sick. You can’t ever, you know, I mean, you got to continually find more people, because once you made them, like I made one for exit your way, you only need the one selling you need me to make three for your logo, you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, opportunity cost of making the gifts long term, was not finding these monthly contracts, to manage social media to do websites to do sales consultant, and these things. So if I kept on that GIF track, I would have never been able to grow the way I’m growing now. Right. But the shifted gears like it skipped second gear and went from first gear to third gear, just by getting off of the gifts and focusing on the core, which we were talking about just a second ago, right, my core talents and go Okay, these are my core talents. I’m going to focus on that even at short term losses, because I made a little less money the second month, and I made the first month because I didn’t have the gift revenue. But then the third month I started out in the first week, I made more than I made in the second month, because I switched the gears. So think about the opportunity cost of whatever it is it is eating your day that you’re not good at that’s wasting time that you’re banging your head on and going, Okay, why can’t I do this better? Why can’t I do this faster? You know why? Because you’re being stubborn, and you’re still doing it. So take some friendly advice from IRA. Trust me, I don’t mean to be condescending. I’m not trying to offend you in any way. I’m trying to give you some advice that will free your life, and most likely help you make more money, which is let somebody else do that stuff that you don’t I don’t care if it’s the housework. I don’t care if it’s, you know, washing your car. I don’t care if it you know, whatever it is, you know what I mean? It give it to somebody else to do pay them their fee. If you can’t afford their feet and find somebody who’s cheaper go to fiber go you know what I mean? Like there’s all kinds of ways. Yeah.

 

Damon Pistulka  47:51

The, and there is one caveat in that. And I always tell people this too. Don’t pay someone else to do it. If that means that you’re going to go park your butt in front of the television, or you’re going to go

 

Ira Bowman  48:07

look the opportunity cost. Yeah. So important there. What would you be doing instead of doing that, right? So instead of doing the housework, I am going to be making a video or I’m going to be building a website where I’m gonna be doing sales consultation activities for my clients. Okay, now do it. But if you go to Netflix, then don’t do that stupid. Yeah, I mean, people ask me all the time about TV shows. And I’m like, seriously? Do you not pay attention? I have eight kids. Look, can you count the logos? Something to do? I promise you something to do? So, you know, no, yeah. To you. You’re 100% thousand percent, right? If you’re just gonna if you’re gonna goof around on the computer, or you’re gonna, you know, not get dressed. I mean.

 

Damon Pistulka  48:59

Yeah, yeah. One of those things I always like to see because some people, you know, you can you can follow some of these jokers that are on Instagram and stuff that they’re like, Oh, yeah, man, it just makes you want to throw up. You know, it’s like, it’s like, okay, they found somebody’s fancy car sitting in a parking lot or taking some pictures or other whatever the hell they do. Yeah. Because, you know, that’s, it’s not going to be easy because everyone gets into gets into entrepreneurship and thinks that, okay, I can, I can set my own hours, I’m gonna be able to run, you know, I’m gonna be on this big boat somewhere. Hey, listen. You may be but it’s gonna you’re gonna earn your right to do that.

 

Ira Bowman  49:39

Yeah. It’s gonna come harder than you think. For sure. Yeah. Because entrepreneurship, business ownership is gonna humble you, I promise you is going to humble you. It’s humbled me. I can’t even tell you how many different ways but I want to go back to what I said at the very beginning, if you remember how we started this, this whole conversation When you go to hire somebody, I want you to get them to show you that they’re good at what they say they do before you hire them. Right? So make sure that you check their credentials. I don’t care how many followers they have, and stuff, to a certain extent depends. I mean, if that’s what you, if that’s what you’re trying to do is just build your followers then yeah, then pay attention their followers, but you know, look at look at the people that have referred their work, go to their website, talk to some people that they’ve worked with, right, you know, dig into it a little bit, because, especially with coaches, oh, my goodness, I just don’t even get me started. I didn’t want myself a coach. I didn’t get into coaching because I thought, Oh, this is the cool thing. I started doing Bowman coaching. My wife wants to speak to prayed about the bitcoins in the pants, I don’t know. But I got into Bowman coaching because so many people were asking me all the time, like, how did you? How did you grow? I went from 1500 people in May of 2018 to 25,000 in December of 18. So and just that, you know, seven month time period, I added 25,000 people and they were impressed by that. And then in 2019, I added 100,000 followers, and so I was getting so many, you know, private conversations about how I was doing it, what they could do that I didn’t have time to our point earlier, you know, evaluate your time sucks. Yeah, time sex. So it’s like, Okay, how can I? How can I still do some, but you know, make it work for me. So I started charging. And that’s how bombing coaching was, was born. But anyways, the whole the whole point of that people were coming to me, because they saw what I did. They wanted to do the same thing. So you know, if you’re looking for sales acceleration, make sure you’re talking to somebody who actually knows how to sell something, not just sell you in their service, but I got to sell something that is come is one of the that’s one of the things that makes me so honored, is that you guys were using me as a coach. We weren’t, I wasn’t auditioning that I knew of for a sales role. It wasn’t in my mind, I was happily working for Ark. And you guys, were just using me for some sales coaching. And then when I got furloughed, and then laid off, it was like, Hey, why don’t you join us instead? Yeah, it was like, Well, okay, let’s talk about that. So we came together with an agreement, that was a win win for both of us. And so that made me feel really good, because you guys saw my sales skills in action, you know, for a couple months before? Yeah, the offer was there. And I think that’s a it’s a great way to do it. If you can not everybody can vet somebody for two months. But you can certainly, look, if you’re looking for somebody who designs websites, let’s say e commerce websites. Well, we have a guy named Jeffrey, who is going to be on today we’ve got Donald troubles, right. But, uh, but anyways, he can help you. And if he, if it’s not the type of site that he can build, I might be able to build it. And if I can’t build it, guess what we know some other people that we can build to? Yep, there’s an arsenal of experience. Yeah, exit your way, which is awesome. But

 

Damon Pistulka  53:02

that’s when it gets fun. I mean, I

 

Ira Bowman  53:05

met them for you. So if you trust God, then you’re good. But don’t just take somebody’s sales pitch at face value. Like do some do some homework. That’s one of the things I love about our Thursday remote calls is week in and week out. Now. I’m getting to meet people not just on the stage during the presentation, but before and after. It’s amazing. Just getting to know people like some people, Alon, for example, I just I just want to show yesterday, I met him I think it was three or four weeks ago. It was never what Mike and I were on as guests. So I’m gonna go that was Yeah, you know what I mean? Maybe it was five weeks. Now we think about it. But anyway, something like that. Yeah, we met there. We got to talk a few other times. Then we talked offline. And now we’re doing some some business together. Right? We have a show and we’re doing a business deal actually, which is really cool. wouldn’t ever have. But I got to know him. And enough about him beyond what his website said. Yeah, it was comfortable getting into business with him. You know what I mean?

 

Damon Pistulka  54:09

Yeah. And it’s it’s likewise and when we you know, Kurt Anderson’s another one and there’s just so many people that stand out that we have we’ve been able to meet and then that Thursday thing I’ll be honest, this is much for us to be able to network with a great group of people as it is anything because and I know everybody gets to talk to the other people that come they get back from her too but it’s it’s really is nice to be able, as you said, find other people that got the experience have done it before and know what the heck they’re doing. Because you know, we can all get talked into something by people that are that have speak really good at fancy presentation or whatever. But at the end of the day, when you get people that can produce results, that’s what you’re really looking for. And, and I you know, and with us too, we back up to exit your way. And what we do, we don’t do any long term contracts. I have zero long term contracts for consulting right now. Everything I do is month to month. Word of mouth.

 

Ira Bowman  55:10

Yeah, we’re happy we’re not gonna lock you in.

 

Damon Pistulka  55:14

Yeah, yeah. You were good

 

Ira Bowman  55:19

at that. Same way Bowman digital media people get back to you about that. Can you send me the contract? I’m sending the invoice though. You know, it is and next month if you don’t want it, just tell me we’ll turn it off. But

 

Damon Pistulka  55:30

yeah, exactly.

 

Ira Bowman  55:31

I’m not interested in trapping anybody and I love that about our you know, we have that in common.

 

Damon Pistulka  55:38

Yeah, it’s,

 

Ira Bowman  55:38

it’s, it is customer service. And so it’s, you kill what you eat in this world. Yeah. Good. Right. Wait, kill. That’s what is.

 

Damon Pistulka  55:48

I have this. There you go. You know. I knew what you meant. That’s Yeah. Yeah. And it’s it’s good, though. Because it’s

 

Ira Bowman  55:57

my brother calls those IRA isms. By the way. If you messed him up, he’s like, I know. You’re smarter than that. But you just said you just said, you. You kill what you eat. They eat, would you? Yeah, I’m like, okay, sorry. Yeah. Jill Valdez. She said February 28. Today, and I caught it. So weird that I’m like, and I made her blush. Um, so I didn’t mean exactly what she was saying. I didn’t mean to make Kelly Robinson blush. I absolutely did.

 

Damon Pistulka  56:25

That was good. That was good. I have never seen Kelly blush. And she couldn’t really get. Yeah, that was a moment. That was a moment right there. And it was it was good. The Yeah, it’s it’s just, it’s, it’s really, really great to be able to talk with entrepreneurs, you know, on a daily basis. You know, they people see us doing this live once in a while, maybe on a Thursday shows. But what they don’t realize is and Kelly said it today, it was kind of funny, I’ll talk for business all about business all day long. I’ll talk. And then when I’m not talking about I’m working on it. You know, and this is this is what’s fun is we’ve got a group of passionate people that are just crazy ass about what we do and love it and love and love it so much. And that we are truly working our passion. And as you said, working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah, we don’t want to be doing that for the rest of our lives. But we do certainly are passionate enough to do it. And your clients success. It just drives us to go that much harder.

 

Ira Bowman  57:29

The only thing for me about the time is not the time. I don’t regret it. And I enjoy it. I love what I do. Trust me. This is like I’m all in. The only thing that I regret is you know, I’m missing time with my kids. Yep. Hello. That’s where I’m trying to kind of make sure that I did I am visible now. I do work from home now, which is super cool. So we’re not recording. My office door is open. My kids can walk in, give me a hug. And we’ll you know, and there’s little moments, a few moments like that, which is super cool. And I don’t have a commute anymore, which is Yeah, as well. But for the long term, like I don’t want to look back when I’m 65 and go You know what? I might didn’t see my kids grow up. I don’t want I don’t want to be there. And I’ve already got my second my second child is leaving in a couple of weeks to go to Florida for college. My oldest 30 in Texas. I never see that little punk. And now I got another punk. They’re punks when they leave me. That’s Yeah.  So you’re on you’re out of the will I got enough that love me and I got a couple that say they’ll never leave me but they’ll get older and then they will. That’s just how it works. But that is that’s it for me. Like I want to make sure that when I’m evaluating my time that I’m taking the time to eat dinner with my kids and you know, and do the family. We bought this it’s a safe This is a greatest invention. It’s it’s a little plastic almost looks like Tupperware but it’s taller. It’s like a canister. Mm hmm. It’s got a time lock on it. So you do is you take your cell phones, drop that sucker in there and you set the timer and then guess what? Unless you sledgehammer that sucker, you ain’t getting your phone until it pops. And so we have we have family dates.

 

Damon Pistulka  59:14

Yep. That’s a good idea. It’s a good idea. And you know, it’s it’s funny you say that because the reason I stopped doing corporate work, work in wt work is because I spent the four years before that not seeing my kids grow up. And I just said they’re, you know, they’re 1012 years old that are eight and 12, or whatever the heck it was every young and, and I was done with done with a job and I and I think from that time I walked my son to school almost every day, which was for me, a need to stay in shape. It was like a two mile walk. And I did it for almost two, two or three years. So you get into the work before he went to school. Get him ready for school, get home, do it do the dirt work during the day. he’d walk home from school by himself. And you know, that’s just the way you do it. It was great is great. So I appreciate what you’re saying there and it’s it’s very important. The phone safe is something that would be very nice, or else.

 

Ira Bowman  1:00:19

The other thing is everybody’s on Wi Fi in my house. the only the only thing that’s hardwired in I think is my computer and now my my wife’s computer, so I just turned the Wi Fi off. I’m the keeper, the keeper of the internet. I have not I have not gotten hard hardcore and change. I don’t change the Wi Fi password every day. I know some people do that. I don’t like the the wherewithal to do that we talked about already. Oh, that’s another funny thing we were talking about earlier today. I wear Okay, full disclosure, everybody. I wear white tube socks every day. And I wear the old school ankle knot ankle high excuse me calf high. So like it’s almost to my knee. And I wear boots. Most of you know I’m five, eight, so I’m not very tall. So we’re boots makes me a little taller. It’s not why I wear them. But anyways, I wear boots. So I don’t like the boots to sweat on my legs. I know that sounds weird, but it just that’s actually why I started doing it. But even when I wear shorts, I wear those socks and my wife and kids they would tease me relentlessly about those socks so there’s something that you have some fodder on IRA now all three of you that are watching on

 

Damon Pistulka  1:01:31

this dude and then

 

Ira Bowman  1:01:32

yeah, where did he actually put that picture on Instagram? Just to give you all the laugh of your life? Because I really look ridiculous there was that there was a dad song dad life or something like that. If you remember Yeah, it was popular. Like a couple years ago.

 

Damon Pistulka  1:01:48

There were some funny they had some funny stuff in it. Well yeah,

 

Ira Bowman  1:01:51

so then my kids my kids say I’m one of the characters he was like it was me it was totally me khaki. Yeah. Anyways, the dad like

 

Damon Pistulka  1:02:00

you know, and I won’t go off on this much but it’s so funny as as you see people switch from being this whatever year old that are young man. to dad

 

Ira Bowman  1:02:12

Yeah. I became a dad at 23 so I’ve been a dad most of my life now. Ya know I’ve been married most of my life I my wife asked me sometimes you remember it was like before me and like really don’t

 

Damon Pistulka  1:02:28

Yeah,

 

Ira Bowman  1:02:29

and I don’t want to go back Yeah, I wouldn’t know how to feed myself. Full disclosure when I cook we go out that’s how I so everybody loves it when I cook because there’s no kitchen to clean up or anything either. You know there’s there’s nine of us that eat at our house right now because my oldest like I said he’s in Texas so you know he’s not here anymore. But you know that it takes a lot of effort to cook but also to clean. Yeah, we go out to eat it’s cool because then you know, it’s like well, there’s two hours of our day back. Yeah. So you know then we sit TV usually afterward there Yeah, yeah.

 

Damon Pistulka  1:03:08

Well, it’s been a it’s been great talking today IRA we’re a little over an hour here. So I think we’re gonna wrap it up for today. You know, as good talking about some of this stuff with with people and in answering some of the questions of ron ron got himself a new book out of it. Paul, his wife

 

Ira Bowman  1:03:25

is looking for me to do our you know, um, don’t hold your breath because I do live in ca but it’s the CA the sunny one the California not the CA the snow. snowpack one the happy there to do your dishes or vacuum your floors. My wife wishes I would do that stuff here. But I tell her that’s what we have all those kids for. Ah, yeah. Oh,

 

Damon Pistulka  1:03:50

yeah. I do have to say though, I just I was just catching before we got on here. I was looking at the the lie that Nick and Paula did. Oh, I got the the parka was awesome.

 

Ira Bowman  1:04:05

I got any of that stuff. You know, if it snowed here, I’d be in huge trouble. I have a jacket. I have like, you guys probably they probably wear that in the summer. But I have a I have a jacket that’s like a windbreaker. That’s all I got. So

 

Damon Pistulka  1:04:21

yeah, well, I brought back little memories because here’s me as a kid, man, we the parka wherever it come up like this the big for around that just because it was so cold. You

 

Ira Bowman  1:04:31

want to people don’t know this, but my mom lives in the heart of Utah. And so as a kid I oscillated between my dad in Vegas, and my mom in Utah. So I grew up, you know, for half my life in the snow. So I definitely know what it is. And when I was a kid, I had the same thing. I mean, you had you had the stuff. I can’t remember what they’re called, but they’re like pajamas that your thermals get the thermals on underneath and then you got dressed and then you had your over clothes and then you had your coat and your scarf and your gloves and all that stuff. And then there was the kind of Moon boots and all this stuff. Oh, yeah, any of that crap. And when I was old enough to drive that was it I was out of there, man. Yeah. This stuff is for the penguins. That’s it give me 110 degree weather over 30 and 30 in some sometimes that’s that’s the high of the day if it even gets to that, like your higher the days zero or minus whatever, like forget.

 

Damon Pistulka  1:05:26

Yeah, that’s not so good. It’s not so good.

 

Ira Bowman  1:05:30

And never  shovel my driveway as an adult. So that’s good.

 

Damon Pistulka  1:05:34

No change no tires. That’s a big that’s a big good. That’s a good thing right there.

 

Ira Bowman  1:05:40

But my tire was $700 because the air conditioner. It’s true.

 

Damon Pistulka  1:05:47

Yeah. So,

 

Ira Bowman  1:05:48

no, there’s really not doing that in Canada. I

 

Damon Pistulka  1:05:50

know that quite quite.

 

Ira Bowman  1:05:53

Well, we better go. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  1:05:54

yeah, we’re gonna roll the next week. We’ve got a couple good ones coming up. We’ve got on Tuesday. Got Alison DeFord and Ray Ziganto going to talk about to manufacturing on Tuesday. And some of their work. They’re dealing with manufacturing and marketing, which is pretty cool. And then Thursday, I believe I’ve got Thane Isaacs on back a little bit about leadership.

 

Ira Bowman  1:06:23

Do we have the Do we have the 730 10

 

Damon Pistulka  1:06:26

Thursday roundtable gone? 730 Thursday morning I haven’t quite put their put the I’m talking to coach v tomorrow. I think she’s just in my mind anyway scheduled.

 

Ira Bowman  1:06:38

Gosh, she’s so much fun. And she actually will she was gonna give me a lot of props because I’m drinking water this whole show. So

 

Damon Pistulka  1:06:44

good. Good, good. Good. And so yeah, we’ve got a full week again next week and it’s going to be fun for us and and we’re trying to get Nick Dorsey with his travel schedule get him on here one of these weeks and then again, George will be scheduling Jeff again down the road and talking a little bit more about some e commerce so we got pretty pretty full schedule and before you know it we’re at the Labor Day holiday which is on on the seventh can’t believe it already. talking to somebody today about that but wonderful being on with you today IRA. Great, as usual, awesome for people to stick with us in our nonsensical ways that we have. Why on this but we’re out for now and have a great evening everyone.

 

Ira Bowman  1:07:31

co

 

Damon Pistulka  1:07:34

Go the music!

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