1:01:21
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
book, writing, people, awesome, called, business, pandemic, happy birthday, publish, andrew, year, khan, happiest moment, memory, day, coach, moment, navigating, helping, good, Business broker, Business value builder, M&A consultant.
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Jennifer Wegman, Andrew Deutsch, Andrew Cross, Brad Smith, Ira Bowman, Dr. Elia, Melissa Worrel, Michael Gidlewski, Pete Alexander, Kon Apostolopolous, Mary White
Ira Bowman 00:00
Well, that beard is coming in, man.
00:03
I go,
Damon Pistulka 00:04
I let it go in the winter on coming up. See all that hair?
Ira Bowman 00:11
Like that tell my kids that too. I’m like, you know, I have hair on my face. It’s just lower. Yeah. Yeah. All right,
Damon Pistulka 00:19
everyone, we’re going to go live here on LinkedIn. Give me like 10 seconds. And there we go. Got the music gone on LinkedIn. So welcome, everyone, to the exit to a roundtable today. Really excited for our speakers. Dr. Ilya goris Khan, apostle opolis. Man, friends, awesome people, they’re going to be teaching us how writing your book with his or her writing your first book or writing your second book or your 100th book. But these guys did it in record time last year, it’s going to be fun to to learn from them a little bit later here. So as we normally do, we’re going to go around the room. Andrew or IRA is going to be pulling people up on stage. What do you got IRA?
Ira Bowman 01:15
It’s Dr. Elliot. It’s your birthday today, brother.
01:18
Thank you.
Ira Bowman 01:22
And credit goes to Milan or alone.
Damon Pistulka 01:25
Nice.
Dr. Elia 01:27
Milan. Thank you my friend. Love it.
Damon Pistulka 01:32
Happy birthday. Thank you. So
Ira Bowman 01:36
are you pulling people up? Or you want me to do it? I’m doing it. All right.
01:39
So why don’t
01:42
ya?
Damon Pistulka 01:44
How are you today? My friend? Oh, sorry.
01:47
That one.
01:52
I was just typing
01:52
Happy Birthday to master aelia.
Ira Bowman 01:59
We’re giving you credit for for letting us know.
Damon Pistulka 02:01
Yeah. And and what we do Oh, where to go. So as we normally do, we’re bringing everyone up, do a short introduction of yourself. And then you get to answer the question of the day. The question of the day today is what was your most pleasant memory from 2020?
02:24
So many crazy things come to mind when he got to go
Ira Bowman 02:30
for a week in Israel and eat ice cream out of his mom’s freezer. I think that should be
02:37
well,
02:39
no, I
02:39
will tell you what, what it was picking up my daughter at the Atlanta airport, after she finished two years of service in the military in Israel during the pandemic. And she just, I’m gonna start crying. She had a surgery in her ankle towards the end of the service, and she called me and she felt so lonely at the hospital because we were in there. You know? Yeah, her grandma was there and cousins. But you know, she’s my best friend. So when she came finally after she finished at the airport that hug that just you know, you’re here. I that’s what comes to mind is definitely one of the top if not the most pleasant memories from 2020. Yeah.
03:31
Good one.
03:32
Thank you for making me relive that.
Damon Pistulka 03:37
That’s great. I can hardly talk. So that’s fine. Quiet, but awesome. Awesome. Thank you very much. Of course, anytime. Leave it to the emotional relevance guy didn’t get me crying right away today. We got next to Andrew Andrew Deutsch, our friend and video wizard.
Andrew Deutsch 04:08
Do I have to I’m gonna hold a press conference to give you my answer. There we go.
04:11
Okay.
04:15
See what I mean.
Andrew Deutsch 04:18
And the happiest memory of this year and a friend I haven’t spoken to a guy I haven’t spoken to in 30 years, came out of nowhere and reached out to me and and it was like a day hadn’t passed between us. It was fantastic. And we’ve we’ve rekindled an old friendship that I thought was long gone. That was that was the best of 2020. He was worried when we heard that people in Ohio. Were getting sick from this from this. And we had we had a great conversation.
Damon Pistulka 04:52
Awesome. Awesome. So tell people a little bit about what you do, Andrew?
Andrew Deutsch 04:57
Well, we’re a Strategic, global marketing and sales consultancy. We help our clients grow their business strategy first so they can turn everyone they touch into voracious advocates for their brand.
Damon Pistulka 05:11
Awesome. Awesome. Thanks a lot, Andrew. They do. Brad Smith. My morning. How are you today?
Brad Smith 05:20
I am still breathing. We’re quite happy with that. Not my happiest moment for the year. But, um, so first, what I do I help I realized this morning, the core of what I do is I help my clients get effective for achieving adding a zero to a
05:39
right. Oh,
Damon Pistulka 05:40
yeah. The that’s the thing that people don’t notice about Brad, you’ve been a coach for quite a while, right?
Brad Smith 05:48
25 years. The thing
Damon Pistulka 05:50
I love about you is you you are continually refining your craft. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. But man, hats off to you. That’s all I’m saying. Sorry,
Brad Smith 06:01
sir. Okay, in my happiest moment happened about four days ago, I realized I’ve had I’ve been without dairy since a concussion in August of 2017. My doctor took me off about she said, no dairy period. And so I went cold turkey and couldn’t put it back in because of my reaction my body was having. And I started adding a little bit in about a month ago, and realized that I was not having a reaction to it anymore. and realized four days ago that I can actually add ice cream back into my life.
Damon Pistulka 06:41
Oh, that’s a big move. big move. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks, Brad.
06:48
Yep.
06:51
AJ? Great, David,
Damon Pistulka 06:59
what you? Awesome, awesome. So tell us a little bit about what you do. And your your best memory from 2020.
Kon Apostolopolous 07:07
Plus, while they worked, want to wish Dr. aliah? Happy birthday.
Dr. Elia 07:10
Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. You know what the first thing was that wish me happy birthday. More overseas? Because you started yesterday from India and then Greece. And we’re like, yeah, I can see where the international clock going. So it was kind of cool.
Kon Apostolopolous 07:30
So basically, I’ve been to the I’m a business development manager working in an IT staffing firm. So we we help clients to recruit the people according to the skills they require. So the happiest moment in 2020s, to getting this opportunity as a business development manager in that pandemic. So where the most of the jobs has been fired, but still, I’m able to get into the better position as a business development manager.
Damon Pistulka 07:56
Nice. Awesome, AJ, glad you glad you show up. Man. You’re coming to see us in the middle of the night. I know. Thanks for being here.
Kon Apostolopolous 08:04
Thanks a lot, David.
08:07
All right, Jacob Warren. Yes, sir. So yeah, I DO IT services for businesses, essentially helping make it simple for you guys. And really the happiest moment of 2020 for me happened in Christmas.
08:26
So I’m a stepdad. And so I actually got for the first time the best dad ever cup.
08:33
So for me, that was the first time in my entire life to get and so for me that was that made all of 20 amazing. Awesome.
08:46
Can’t say more. Yep.
Damon Pistulka 08:49
Just amazing. So awesome, Jacob. Awesome. Thanks for being here. Jennifer, nice to see you this morning. or later. almost noon for you. Sorry.
Jennifer Wegman 09:00
Yeah, it’s 1111 here. So almost lunchtime. How are you? How is everybody? My name is Jennifer wagman. And I am a done for you. Content writer and social media strategist. So I help overwhelmed. Busy and frustrated business owners and entrepreneurs take the hassle out of being visible on social. And I say my happiest moment is last September we last September in 2019. We bought a condo in Ocean City, Maryland. And we went there over Fourth of July with the kids. And there was this evening, not Fourth of July but right near there. And I was flying a kite with my kids on the beach. And it was like the best moment ever. Awesome. relaxing and
09:50
in such as a woman. So cool. So cool.
Damon Pistulka 09:54
It’s That’s awesome. Thanks for being here today. Jennifer.
09:57
Awesome.
Jennifer Wegman 09:58
Thanks for the invitation.
Damon Pistulka 10:01
Mary, how are you today?
Mary White 10:02
I am wonderful. I’m doing great. It’s been a couple of weeks.
Damon Pistulka 10:08
Yeah. Great to see you again,
Mary White 10:11
doing very well. I have graduated to writing a blog post is called your next dimension. And having a blast doing it. I got I got a piece that needed to go out this week that has, it’ll be out probably by tomorrow. I’m going well, but I’m saying see my breasts, I have two things I was thinking of. I think the best part was getting my son home at Christmas time. Um, I hadn’t seen him other than on the computer for nine months. And it’s not the same thing. But so I’m in 3d is, as I call it is is really fun. So that’s my,
Ira Bowman 10:52
I guess my favorite. Call it for the married because you can smell those suckers to
Mary White 10:57
church. It’s so nice to have them home. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 11:05
Awesome. Mary. That’s that’s a great memory. Thank you. Melissa, how are you today?
Melissa Worrel 11:11
Hey, good morning. Thanks for being thanks for being here having us here. I’m glad to be here for the new year. So Happy New Year I wasn’t able to make last week, I’m going to start with my happy memory because I think that’s the most fun. So I would say happiest memory was getting married this year with a super small ceremony with just immediate family. So in the midst of COVID, being all of us taking that moment to social distance, but also celebrate something fun and very challenging year.
So that would be your best memory. And for me, Brad, I love that you can have ice cream as a fellow coach, I think that’s amazing. I don’t know what life would be without ice cream. So love that. As a coach, leadership coach, really working with my clients on clarity, competence and focus of where they’re going, whether it’s in the role they’re currently in, or where they’re headed right on their trajectory of leadership and elevating where they’re at. So thanks for doing this and glad to be here.
12:06
Happy New Year, everybody.
Damon Pistulka 12:07
Awesome. Thanks, Melissa.
12:09
Great memory.
Damon Pistulka 12:10
Great memory. Michael, how are you doing today?
Michael Gidlewski 12:13
I’m doing great. Great. Good to see you. Damon. Good
Damon Pistulka 12:16
to see you. Glad you’re here.
Michael Gidlewski 12:18
Yeah, good to be here. So my company is achievement unlimited. And we work with small to midsize companies who want to become more productive want to get the right people on the bus want to build their leadership team to achieve their strategic plans. So helping them get all the tools to get the right people on the bus and moving in the right direction. My, my, my best memory of last year was last New Year’s of 2020 at the spending with my son and daughter lawn and the four grandkids.
That it’s a great memory this year, because we haven’t seen him all year since COVID. So we haven’t seen any of the other children or the grandkids live since COVID. So you know, that was a normal occurrence, visiting the kids and grandkids and and this year, it was not a normal occurrence. So that’s my best memory of kicking off the year with the with the kids or grandkids. Awesome. Awesome stuff, Michael.
Damon Pistulka 13:21
Thanks. Thanks. Pete, how are you today? Good, Damon,
Pete Alexander 13:27
good morning, everybody. And Happy Birthday again. aelia, I’ll save you from my horrible singing. So I help leaders better protect their health and handle challenging situations with grace. And, you know, I had a lot but as I was thinking about this, the one that stands out the most, it was so unexpected. I was going to the Costco, which you know, a lot of us do. And I’m walking through the parking lot to the Costco and all of a sudden I hear somebody calling my name. And, you know, I’m thinking I turn around and this is somebody I have no idea about, and I and she comes up to me and she says, Your professor Pete Alexander, and I said yes.
And she goes, I just want to thank you for all of your stress relief videos. I love them. And I’m thinking to myself, wow, I you know, I’m sure that, you know, celebrities and stuff, get this stuff all the time, but it was really sweet of this person to take the time to just thank me for that. And, you know, that’s just one of those things like Randy, you know, knows very well, you know, these random acts of kindness and that was one for me. And it just, it was really great. And I felt you know, it just made me the rest of my week.
Damon Pistulka 14:52
That’s awesome feet. It’s awesome.
Dr. Elia 14:55
You’re a celebrity though everybody knows Professor beat Circle
15:04
celebrity among us. So hey,
Damon Pistulka 15:06
yeah, well, thanks, Pete. Randy, how are you today?
15:09
I am doing fantastic. And I’m the chief kindness officer at the peacock Institute, I provide cultural transformation solutions, particularly for smaller to medium size businesses. And of course, I’m a major kindness advocate, as everybody knows, you know, I have so many happy memories from 2020. It’s hard to narrow them down. But one of my happiest memories for 2020 was when I had the chance to go and instead of broadcasting from a long distance, our podcast, I had a chance to be in Colorado in the office with my good friend and partner, Dr. Eli gorgosaurus.
And he was kind enough to host me in his home, we had a wonderful experience. I can’t remember who we interviewed for that podcast. But then he was kind enough to take me up into this beautiful Canyon. And we had a nice walk and got to hike around and see these amazing cliffs and other things. And, and it was just a wonderful evening, it was a very gracious host, and I just, it was a it was a great experience for me. And so that’s what I wanted to share today and happy, by the way, aelia Happy birthday.
Dr. Elia 16:22
Thank you, man. Well, this is what they happen is Dr. Desmond, you come to my house, you’ll walk away happy, guaranteed.
16:28
I’ll tell you what he will. It’s true. We’re
Dr. Elia 16:32
gonna feed you some great Greek food on top of that. That’s extra. So there you go.
Damon Pistulka 16:36
All right. All right. Awesome. Randy, thank you so much for being here. Rob. awesome to have you today.
16:44
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. Good Dave to everyone. Oh, say Good day, because it’s morning, some places nights, some places that afternoon and others. It’s really exciting to be with so many people from around the world. I’m a business advisor, I help businesses find an additional $10,000 or more in their business. Because business owners are usually so tight and focused on what they’re doing. They don’t see all the other opportunities that are around them. So I help people grow their business by by taking a little bit more of a systematic approach to finding the little things that they didn’t know, were sitting right there for them. Awesome,
Damon Pistulka 17:17
awesome. Rob.
17:19
The best thing I learned about 2020 is we’re not in it alone. I know a lot of times people you know, own their business. And I’ve grown my network so much. And it’s so funny, because I’ve had so many conversations with people that are in businesses by themselves, but or for themselves, but you can be in business for yourself, but not by yourself. So it doesn’t feel like you’re screaming at the wall with no one around you. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 17:40
yeah, I definitely got that feeling from 2020 as well. And it’s it’s group like these people that come together every week and listen to my whimsical sayings or whatever. I don’t even know what you’d call me. But thank you so much. Hey, I see rod
17:58
Higgs there.
Damon Pistulka 18:00
Ron Higgs is right. Next. Yeah. Next. So thanks, Rob. Ron, how
18:06
you doing today?
18:09
Hey, good. Good morning, everyone. Great to be here, you know, I gotta say, I come to really look forward to depend on this forum for, you know, to get aligned every week and to see all your faces and appreciate all your support is really great. So I bought eggs, as most of you know, I’m looking for an opportunity and operation. Right now, you know, I’m looking for something where I get to touch all, you know, operating functions of the business to help the company move forward. My background is mostly in aerospace and defense.
I’m comfortable there. But since aerospace and defense is pretty technical, I’d be comfortable with it, you know, somewhere in the tech sector. So that’s what I’m looking for. As far as my favorite memory for 2020. There are a few but one stands out. So I am very, you know, I’m an extrovert on a scale from one to 10. I’m probably an eight and a half. My wife is probably a 31 as far as being an extrovert, so her birthday is April 18th.
And if you remember, and that was a Saturday. So if you remember last year, we got sort of locked down to the beginning of March. And people didn’t know really what to do, you know, just like what are we going to do? How long are we going to be here? Everything else? You know, so the weekend comes around and you’re like you’d normally go go out and do your things for me, I’d go to a brewery. But now that that option wasn’t there, so we’re all kind of stuck in a house and a couple of her friends texted me and go, Hey, we’re gonna show up at the house and we’re gonna pull into the driveway or we’re gonna say happy birthday to Gina.
And so then Gina tells me a little bit later that she goes hey, I have some friends that are going to come over and they want to say happy birthday to me and this is a completely different group of friends. So long story short, we had about 15 people in the front yard. singing happy birthday. To my wife, and then we have a big backyard who invited everybody to the backyard, and we kind of stayed socially distant, and had a good time. And she was, you know, she was overwhelmed with happiness that all of her friends would come and do that. And so it was I thought that was that was a great memory for me.
Damon Pistulka 20:18
That’s an awesome one, Ron. That’s really cool, man. And just that’s, that’s awesome. There’s so many great memories going out today. And that’s just another one around topic. Thanks for being here. Yeah,
20:30
it was great.
Damon Pistulka 20:31
So, Sarah, awesome to have you. yourself, and then you can answer your question.
20:39
All right. Well, my name is Sarah Phillips, and I work with us health advisors. I help individuals, families and small businesses to access, better quality and better pricing, health care. And my best moments of last year, I was getting my core and all my credit cards paid off. I have all my bills paid except for my mortgage.
Damon Pistulka 21:07
There’s a lot of satisfaction in that, that’s for sure. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So great to have you here, Sarah. Thanks
21:16
for having me.
Damon Pistulka 21:17
Susan, awesome to see you this morning.
21:21
fantastic to see you. Thank you for having me. I’m Susan gowns. And I work with business executives and the C suite on their strategic initiatives are navigating them like a tour guide from where they are to where they want to be often working with time starved, harried executives, or those who are in growth mode and, and can’t get control of their growth. And I have happy memory both on the personal side and professional side.
Personally, I had a wonderful vacation this summer with my immediate family to Lake George somewhere we’ve never been and it was good to be out of our house, explorer them some new territory spends a lot of time on going to places outside. And then professionally, I launched a web show during the pandemic called rust and for resiliency and empowerment seminar today. And that led me to meet Damon, so there you go.
Damon Pistulka 22:30
Awesome. Susan. Thanks so much for being here. And it’s awesome seeing you today. Thank you. All right, James, how are you today, man? Good. How you doing? Brother? I’m good. I’m good. I’m glad to see. Now if you guys don’t know James, he was on with the cyber security guys. A couple of weeks before Christmas sometime. That’s what it was. I remember. I’m going to be interviewing him to this guy knows that scary stuff about the Dark Arts. The cyber hackers. But anyway, James, tell us a little bit about what you do. And and what was your last year? Yeah, sure. So
23:06
like you said, my name is James grant off, I co founded zero security. We’re primarily a vulnerability research and vulnerability brokering company, as well as kind of, you know, elite cyber mercenary team where you know, we gather people from all over the world to to work together on really amazing contracts. I think my favorite part of last year I I joined a drifting team, actually for car racing.
So that was probably my favorite thing. I mean, you know, I got really into it upgraded my car did crazy stuff to learn stuff. I never even knew about cars. I think that was probably the best get away from being on a computer was being able to work with my hands and actually sweating, you know, so that was actually my outlet for most of the year or whenever I got frustrated. I’ll just work on my car.
Damon Pistulka 23:52
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. It’s a great thing. And I got to do that parking lot. SCCA racing, and that was always a lot of fun, but I gotta imagine drifting is a blast.
24:05
Yeah, it’s gone crazy. Actually in in Tampa, they started taking over the highways, like a block off the highways and they’ll start you know, drifting in circles and stuff. Yeah.
24:14
Good stuff.
Damon Pistulka 24:15
James. Thanks for being here today, man. All right. So Andrew, how we got more people?
Andrew Cross 24:25
No, I think that’s everybody.
Damon Pistulka 24:27
If you haven’t been up, make sure to message Andrew or hit the chat so we can get you up. We got everyone so awesome. So without without further ado, what we’re gonna start to talk about a little bit here is and I’m going to introduce the the two gentlemen on this.
Dr. Elia 24:45
You guys need to do the same thing. You got to answer the questions. Oh,
24:49
I forgot that last week. Yeah, you did that.
Dr. Elia 24:53
Answer the question? Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 24:54
We all have to answer the questions. Right. So let’s start with you, Dr. Healy, and we’re gonna start with you.
Dr. Elia 25:05
I spread happiness around the world. I’m internationally keynote speaker, best selling author and leadership training and development, just corporate wellness. That’s my sweet spot. The happiest moment. There’s so many last year, there are a lot of downtimes last year, but there were as many lows, there were as many highs, I decided to take a coach cons challenge to become location agnostic, and went to Greece in the middle of the pandemic and stayed in my home in Greece for six weeks. And there’s an entire six weeks where like, six weeks of bliss, swimming every day, getting tan like when I was a little kid, eating healthy food, walking through the bakery every day.
And really more than anything else, connecting with lifelong friends and family go back 50 years. And it’s really those rich connections within the relationships and that filled my soul. And I’m, you know, I’ve been false since then. I don’t know full of wet but I’ve been full of something. It’s I’m good to go for this year, I guess is what my point because my batteries, I came back to the US and my battery’s completely full. So and I’m going to continue doing that and hope to spend even more time over there. So yeah. Nice.
Damon Pistulka 26:18
All right, so con. Let’s hear about you and your best memories. Well,
Kon Apostolopolous 26:25
let me let me start off again by officially saying to my good friend, brother and partner, Dr. Julia, Happy birthday.
Dr. Elia 26:31
Thank you, Mike. Thank you, my brother.
Kon Apostolopolous 26:33
Happy birthday. I am a change management, change leadership and performance improvement expert. I am the founder and CEO of fresh biz solutions, which is an HR consulting company that helps organizations really tap into the talent that they have in their organizations, and helping their people become better become more willing to be engaged in the process and the purpose of the company in the organization and achieve their goals within the organization.
So I help companies move the needle. I’m an author, a co author, along with Dr. Yulia, and we’ll be talking about that today. I am an international speaker and facilitator of programs. And at the same time, I am a soccer coach, which is part of my passion. And that’s part of the reason why I have the name coach Khan.
Damon Pistulka 27:20
Awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much Khan.
Kon Apostolopolous 27:23
I will have to admit though, Damon, I can’t I’ve got two good ones that I have to share, if I may, if I may impose on my on on that. One is I am a father of one of the kiddos that was part of this graduating 2020 class, and having the opportunity to see my daughter finally walk. Even in the midst of the pandemic, finding a way to make that happen was a very proud moment for me as a father as a close level of satisfaction.
My kids sister, who’s back in Greece, actually gave birth to three beautiful babies triplets in the middle of this pandemic. So to me, it’s hard to it’s very hard to beat those kind of emotional responses and things like that. So I’ve had a lot of joyful moments during this past year.
Damon Pistulka 28:11
Yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. good ones. All right, Ira. You’re up, man.
Ira Bowman 28:20
Okay, well, my name is IRA. I got fired in 2020. That was
28:28
not my favorite.
Ira Bowman 28:29
Not my favorite moment. But you know what it led to my favorite moment, and I’m gonna tell you, I had a lot of personal stuff that I could pick, but I’m not going to share that. But as far as business goes, it was kind of a weird and unexpected moment. So that’s why I’m going to share it. I started Bowman digital media, I didn’t know how it was gonna go. I’d never been really a business owner. before.
I had just built up my social media and had all these clients in my experience, but you know, it was kind of a it was kind of a test. So I started out a little bit timid. But when I ordered my first round of yours, and I put on my logo, and it put on my hat for the first time, it was mine. I had like an emotional response to wasn’t expecting, like, you could do this. And you know what I mean? So anyways, so if you’ve never owned a business, and you’ve never had that pleasure of putting your logo on, and you representing yourself. I can’t really describe better than that.
Damon Pistulka 29:29
But that was my best professional moments. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks. That’s cool. And many of us will get to experience that in life. And it’s it is a special special thing, though, Andrew. Yeah. Yeah.
29:51
It’s a
Andrew Cross 29:53
it’s interesting. You’re one of them. Surprisingly. What’s great about this question is, maybe not That’s not what I would have expected in many great moments in 2020, despite everything else, but, you know, I think, you know, meeting everybody here was one of the great moments. And, and, and a level of appreciation for the connection, even though we know some great friends here, and we’ve never met face to face. But still, you know, and I think, you know, sometimes these bad things happen and make you cherish these connections and moments, you know, more and more, but it was just great to watch how this grew.
And it wasn’t just a business, you know, kind of, you know, motivated to do it. It was just, you know, to keep talking to people and stuff, but, but you know, that and my kids were older, they’re adults now. And I got both of them for a couple weeks at Christmas. I thought about that as the greatest moment. And I didn’t have them a couple weeks and years, but I really had to think about it. My daughter, that really, that was one that happened in the middle of summer, she’s in medical school, it was doing a rotation, and she found her her calling there now she’s applying for residency, but she saved somebody’s life, and and came home or called me.
Right after that, you just, you know, I don’t know, you know, it’s just like to see all that hard work and everything that she did, but she’s doing interventional radiology. But she discovered a technology that she basically took a patient who was comatose, and she got the chance to go in with one of her mentors and snake up a tube of vigorous vein through his leg and clear that clot and he was up and eating. No brain damage. 10 minutes later, a miracle. Ah. I don’t know. Yeah, I mean, it’s pride to be a father, but it’s just incredible to hear her find herself there in that machine. That’s what she’s doing.
Damon Pistulka 32:08
Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, I guess that leaves me. And now people know me so they know what I do. But mine are two things really, I look back and I go, I never would have ever in my life dreamt that I would be on video or even talking to people like we are today. And I really appreciate that. That’s one of the best things and there’s multiple moments in the people I’ve met the conversation we had in 2020. I just can’t even I don’t know how we’re gonna top it in 2021. But I know we are getting because just because the relationships are building and I just feel that my heart. The second thing is when my favorite.
32:50
But anyway, it’s my family.
32:53
Because we
Damon Pistulka 32:56
we had time with our kids that we will never have again. Yes.
33:02
That’s what matters.
33:03
Yeah. That’s all sorry.
Ira Bowman 33:05
Yeah, I agree with that to 2020. A lot of the personal stuff. Yeah, we’re not spectacular grandiose moments. It’s like, for example, I’ll share one of them. And probably a lot of you have this in common. You know, for 20 plus years, I’ve been working. I’ve been out of the house most business days. All day. I haven’t eaten lunch with my family. Probably more well, Saturday and Sundays, however many days that is 365 days.
But I lunch with my family every day in 2020. I mean, every day. Yeah, he was a blessing. I got to eat dinner with my family, I think every day in 2020, if not most days. But I mean, the amount of family time that I got with my family is so much more probably then even a decade before it all combined. No, there’s a lot of good stuff. But it wasn’t like, you know, momentous
Damon Pistulka 34:00
stuff. No, it’s not. It’s it’s I had three months with my kids and they’re in their 20s when the hell are you ever going to get that again? Never. Never. I’m interrupted. It’s like it was nuts. But anyway, so now we’re on to the good stuff he got here. We got our great friends. Dr. Alien con. You guys now wrote book seven keys navigating crisis last year. To start us off with a what was the timeline again? So we just got an idea when you guys came up. We’re going to write this book pandemic start, you’re going to write this book and then you’re going to go going to do it and then tell you how to publish. What was the timeline there.
Dr. Elia 34:45
So first of all, nothing that we will share with you guys. We’ll talk what Andrew’s daughter did in saving someone’s life. So let’s put everything in perspective. Right. And you know, as we look at 2020 and even this year, I love the saying that we may not have Be on in the same boat, but we’re all in the same storm of life. So the collaborative nature and the love that I feel in this group, I haven’t felt that anywhere else. So thank you all, Damon and Andrea and Ira for creating such a safe place for us to, to share both our success stories and also, you know, our weaknesses and our human frailties. And so back to march 15.
Beware the Ides of March like Julius Caesar, Shakespeare said, I had a very strong prompting that I needed to write a book about the pandemic, because I could just feel that 2020 was going to be the toughest year for humanity. I just felt that I saw it in my mind’s eye. And the message was very loud and clear was that you got to get this book out in 45 days, not in November 19 2021. You got to get it out fast. To put it into perspective, the first book that I wrote seven paths to lasting happiness that did become a number one bestseller took me three years to write. So to go from three years to 45 days, you guys is like it’s insanity.
And I picked up the phone and I called my brother and best friend, Coach God, and I’m like, I’m going to start writing a book tomorrow morning about the the pandemic Are you in? Or are you out in in milliseconds, he goes, I’m in it. This was the beginning of the process of how, and we did get it out in 45 days, the book anyway, the hardcover took maybe 60 days old, but close enough, we got it out in May. And the rest is history. So I’m gonna say a couple more things, and then I’ll turn it over to coach Khan.
The Why is important. Why do you want to write a book? I mean, for us, it was crystal clear the why was to help as many people as possible, because I could tell that millions and millions of people suffering. It was billions of people, not millions, billions of people across the world. So why is important? The other thing is, when you decide to collaborate with somebody else, it’s a whole different process than writing it by yourself. I’ve done both now. And I can tell you was much harder than writing it by myself. It was much, much easier writing with Coach gone, but I feel like we’re unique in that way.
Because we complement each other. my weaknesses are his strengths. his weaknesses are my strengths. And there was no ego involved, who came up with the ideas whatsoever. And that’s how we got out so quickly. Otherwise, you can get into like, well, that’s my idea. Well, now I want to do this, I want to write that. So the fact he was a perfect collaboration in high hyperspeed, like 45 days, I like literally, we did nothing else for 45 days, nothing. And I give all the credit to him for grounding me because I tend to fly high. And I’m big picture guy. And I love him. And I couldn’t have done it without him not Not a chance. So go ahead, coach.
Kon Apostolopolous 37:44
I’ll be a I was the taskmaster, I guess in that sense cracking the whip, making sure it happens. But yeah, so it was it was it was a very, very much a labor of love. And we joke about it, we say, you know, normally when two Greeks get together, they start that restaurant. But in our case, we decided to kind of help and feed the world in a different way and kind of nourish their souls in a different way.
But the key thing, I mean, if we’re gonna share a little bit of our journey and our insights and our learnings, if you will, hopefully to help and inspire others, as we’re talking about this. if people have questions, they could just add them into the, into the chat or the q&a piece there. And we can try to find some time to address those. But as a general rule, there, there are two or three questions you really have to answer upfront.
The first one is what Leah said, understand why you’re writing the book, The Why is essential to any sort of project but especially to a book project. If if you have a message to get out, if you have something that you need to share with the world, if you feel that you know what, I want to be able to kind of establish and grow my credibility my audience and start sharing some ideas that will establish me as somebody who knows what I’m talking about. Even in the in before the meeting, we were sitting at tables and people were people have wonderful ideas and experience that they have out there.
They second guess themselves because they go through that process saying well, who am I to put it out there? Well, it starts with putting it out there. Nobody’s going to know you if you’re the best kept secret as our friend Kurt says most the time, you know, that’s not going to do you any good. And for both of us, it became one of those important points. We wanted to help people we had a message to share. We felt that have value. If you’re going out there to make money. For most of us, that’s probably the wrong reason to do it. You’ll be sorely disappointed. So that’s
Dr. Elia 39:45
specifically about the money aspect just for one second is that for publishing firms, they publish 100 books. Only 10 of them make money the other 90 lose money, but they they figure they bet that that 10% We’ll make enough money to be able to pay for the other 90%. That doesn’t make mention those are the actual numbers from publishing firms. So money is not the reason to go write a book.
Kon Apostolopolous 40:12
So the second key question that people need to answer is who you’re writing it for? Who’s your audience? Once you determine who you’re talking to, through your book, that will go a long way in helping you determine the tone, the kind of writing that you want to write, is it going to be more technical? Is it going to be more conversational? Is it going to be one of those things where it’s going to be in crayons?
As our friend Andrew says, you know, a lot of times, how am I going to write it? Who’s my audience? That is something that you always have to keep in mind? Very much like the avatars that we talked about human we’re talking about? Who my ideal client is, you need to create essentially an avatar for your book as well. Yeah. Really, if you have something to add to that? Well, I would say in
Dr. Elia 40:58
our IRA, is there a question you want to ask?
Ira Bowman 41:01
No, I was gonna say it actually helps when you’re writing your social media posts to if you think about the audience, probably in all types of writing, it’s gonna help.
Kon Apostolopolous 41:09
Right? I mean, as, as people that do presentations for a living, a lot of times we speak, we do keynotes, we do facilitate sessions. Anytime somebody comes to us, a client that says you indicate we want you to come and join our present to our to our group. My first question isn’t, what do you want me to speak about? My first question is, who’s the audience? Because that will drive so much of what you want to do. So that’s important. And the third big question that you need to answer right up front is, how are you going to publish?
Dr. Lee mentioned it and says, you know, what are you going to go with a publishing house with it with with a group that’s going to help you publish that, that has a name that has the ability to promote a lot of your work? Well, that’s a big endeavor, and you need to to attack that and kind of fine tune your pitch and how you’re going to go about that. In order to get approved before you’re going to do that,
Dr. Elia 42:02
with 18 months. Number one, right? From the time you come, I want to write a book that would take 18 months. So if you want to go publishing, that’s different. The message for us is we need to get this book out in 45 days. So self publishing was the only way we didn’t even think about publishing with anybody else, because of the urgency of the crisis that we were facing.
Kon Apostolopolous 42:20
Yeah, right. Right. So again, in that case, if you’re going to go self publishing, there’s a process that now the tools and the systems are there, to allow for that. There are tutorials, there’s a lot of good information out there, we’ll share some of our tips and ideas of what we did. But self publishing is very feasible. Now for most people to get out there. The key to remember, again, if you’re looking at the why understand that, on average, most of published books will not exceed 100 copies. So so if you’re doing it for the money, that’s not gonna work for you very well.
Dr. Elia 42:59
However, you know, what it does for you, and I can only speak for my first book that I wrote the seven best because I was fortunate enough, I had, you know, 15,000 downloads, when I did my marketing, which was, and that’s how I became a number one bestseller on Amazon. How you leverage that best selling or being an author just even if it’s not best selling. That became a I wrote it five years ago, that truly became my business card, I don’t have business cards, the book is the business card that has opened up more doors than I can possibly tell you to get this, get invited to conferences around the world and to speak, as an expert in happiness, and so on.
So there’s something to be said about writing a book. And especially if your motivation is I want to help people I want it may perhaps educate, inspire, depending on what kind of book you have, teach, mentor, bring value. That’s the bottom line, like, what value is your book bringing, and what the first one and the second book, you know, we decided, we don’t want just to write something, it’s very important that these books are really workbooks. And this is what people are like, for the most part, it’s an easy read.
You can really read it in two hours, a book that goes down a road. But more importantly, at the end of every chapter, we have a couple of points for the reader to ponder, just to meditate on to think about a couple of questions to answer. And then the third part, which is the most important thing that take action. So if self care is the first key to navigating a crisis, how you take care of yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. People know that intellectually, but learners, they don’t know how to do it. So we’re like, this is how you do it. If well, practicing being resilient or being flexible and adaptable, yeah, that sounds great.
I don’t exactly know what that looks like, well, this is how you do it. So it’s the take action that I think the greatest value of our book is sharing people in very practical terms. You know, people’s attention spans. have dropped dramatically, as you know, exactly I raise right. So you got to simplify your message. This is not an academic book, both of these books, you know, I’ve personally written from the heart, not as a PhD, you know, from the heart. Simple applicable. If you’re 18 years old and graduate from high school, you’re, if you’re 65, you’re going to get something out of it, if you turn any page.
Kon Apostolopolous 45:23
Andrew, you have a question out there that I’d like to kind of answer. If I may, I may jump on that. You asked about the avatar piece. Let’s take what Ilya just said for a second. He said, we wrote it this way. We wrote it from my heart in simple terms, and with practical advice at the end about how to do that. We did that on purpose, because who we were trying to reach the audience that we were trying to reach.
We’re people, everyday people. That that needed some insight that we’re tired of statistics of high inflammation, high level of information of all this other stuff, and needed say, okay, help me figure out my day, help me figure out if what I’m feeling normal or not, and find ways to cope with this. So when we wrote the book, the avatar that we created, was essentially, the person, the average person out there that’s struggling for answers, that’s already under a lot of pressure, that really doesn’t have a lot of time, or ability to focus right now.
So we wrote a book that’s easy to consume. Written in very plain language, we avoided a lot of the jargon and the technical terms, we provided practical information. Why? Because we knew who the audience who the reader was. So we put ourselves in that reader shooting circuit, if I’m reading this, can I get it done? in a simple way. The other thing is that when people are looking for how to books, or self help books, or nonfiction books in general, they’re looking for a methodology that says, Okay, give me the tools, give me the practical tips that I need, and make it like a cookbook, so I can read it from cover to cover.
But if I want to open up a chapter on a particular recipe, How the hell do I do that? Yeah, and can I get to it quickly, in a way that makes sense. So that’s essentially why we built it. Now, if we were writing for an academic audience, or a scientific audience, or for professionals, or for a business, that’s a very different thing, if you’re writing your book in mind with the C suite, and saying, I’m going to publish a book about how to be a better C suite member, a CEO, or a CEO, whatever the case, I’m gonna write it very differently. If I’m writing a book for HR professionals, that’s a different audience. Does that help answer the question? I hope it does.
Damon Pistulka 47:36
Yeah, yeah. So read someone else? No,
Dr. Elia 47:41
I was just gonna say that. And then structurally, you know, once we came up with the title, like seven keys to it, obviously, the word crisis would be in the title. Khan came up with the word navigating, which I think is beautiful, because we couldn’t fit because I think that word actually has been used a lot. Now how to navigate this, how to navigate that. And then we come up, okay, if it’s seven, what are the 17?
So you start off with, you know, we started like with 20 keys, and then we narrowed it down. And so we got the seven keys, then there was a flow to it. So there’s a purpose, why self care comes first. And then kindness is number seven, there’s, that’s when you just say, let’s write seven chapters and throw them in there. There’s a reason why there’s the sequence. Once you have that down, then you begin to fill in, you know, each one of those seven keys. And so that’s kind of like structurally how we begin to narrow down. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 48:36
Because if you start from the the topic, your main topic, and then your, that your topic, and then your main points you want to do, and then get it to flow through right, just from the summary level, not not anything else, but make sure that okay, like you guys did, we’ve got our title, and then the steps that we want to include, and then make sure they’re in the right sequence and then started writing in detail in each sequence. Is that kind of what
Dr. Elia 49:04
kind of outline it’s one of the sequence and then once you outline, then you start plugging in the the meat basically, we’re done or, you know, anyway, that’s how it’s done. Yeah.
Kon Apostolopolous 49:14
It’s overwhelming. Demand can be very overwhelming when you when you start looking at writing a book and you say, Okay, I’ve got all this information in my head. And I want to put it down on paper, if the way that you approach it is I start writing. That’s one way, but that’s the hardest way in my mind of being able to do it. If we if we think about the concept of you know, that proverbial question of how do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time, you got to break the work down to those pieces.
Writing a chapter or a section of a chapter is a lot easier than thinking about writing a book. Once you break it down into those pieces, and you can get notes even on simple index card or post it notes and you start writing those key pieces down. Then all you have to do is reorder them, put them in the place that you need, and it becomes a lot easier to be able to manage.
Dr. Elia 50:07
And by the way, they were also, you know, there were some of the seven keys that were clearly my strengths. Like, I know, self care, inside and out, I wrote the book on happiness before. So that was easy for me, or the awareness part. Con was great when it comes to preparation and initiative. You know, I’m not very good at that. I mean, those are his strengths. So we divide, divide and conquer, basically.
And we both went with our strengths, and trusted one another enough. So if I would write the majority of one chapter, then I would say, give me feedback. What do you see there? What did I miss? What do you like, what to take out in that one that went back and forth like a tennis match back and forth every day, at the end of every day, literally, you know, at 10 o’clock at night? It’s like, Okay, what did you do today? Here it is, really give me feedback. And the feedback was, by
50:51
the way,
Dr. Elia 50:52
again, no ego. Don’t deny, don’t get defensive about what you wrote it because I know when you write, it’s kind of personal. It’s like, ask for more feedback. Tell me more. Explain why you feel like that we shouldn’t have that in the book. Or we should or should share more about this particular subject, because you like it a lot. And that’s what made it a successful collaboration.
Damon Pistulka 51:15
That’s cool. Because you know, that I think that’s one of the things that a lot of people will get hung up on is, is I’m going to write this book then. And it is so much pouring your heart out, right? No matter I don’t even care if you’re writing about, you know, thermodynamics or something, if that’s your deal. Yeah, I would imagine that they the editorial part of it, you have to be open to that just because and let someone else you trust read it.
Dr. Elia 51:40
So and by the way, when we were done, then we have four people that we totally trust, you know, like my wife, Randy, obviously, who’s going to talk about that dude, there are people that we trust that said, Now give us feedback. I think we this is as good as we can do it on our own. Tell us, tell us give us some feedback. Fortunately, the feedback was we’d love your book, minor adjustments here and there, which made it easier, obviously. So we can get it out in 45 days. But you always want to vet it out before you know it goes into formatting and before you publish this on obviously. Okay, well, Can
52:13
I throw out a couple of thoughts about that, following up on what they said? Yeah, having having self published a couple of books myself now and having how I helped Elian and Khan format, the seven keys for navigating a crisis. There are a few key things in going along with having a framework like Khan and Ed were saying, you know, an outline of what you’re going to say, before you even start writing the book Amazon provides if you’re going to self publish, Amazon provides a ton of tools to help you to be able to do it well.
And one thing I would suggest that will absolutely make your life so much easier, is right off the bat, you decide what size book you’re going to have. For example, Elian Khan decided to make it six by nine. But we decided they decided that after they’d already written it, I determined my latest book, I just came out with a book called baby dose a positive 90 days of timeless Nuggets to enhance your life. I decided ahead of time that was going to be six by nine.
And so I knew that and Amazon provides a template, a six by nine template and it’s already formatted. Okay, yeah, it’s tough. And so you can you can use that. And then understanding two there’s two different if you’re going to do a Kindle version and a paperback version, there’s two different formats. Amazon provides what’s called Kindle create, once you get your you know, you get the template, you fill it, get the book written and stuff and you can go into Kindle create, it’ll, it’ll pull the file in there and format it.
For the Kindle, there’s a few tricks. Once you get in there, changes that you have to make, but that’ll you know, you can use that tool, it’ll make the process go a lot faster. And then for the paperback version, it’s a PDF. pdf file. And anyway, there’s other tricks to that but knowing and understanding those formatting tricks, and preparing the document actually ahead of time before you even start to write is a is a huge it’ll be a huge time difference maker. I wish I had known that before
Damon Pistulka 54:20
on your train. So you’re saying that you should get into the Amazon tools and is it like a Word document that you can download or get is
54:30
they have a whole slew they have a a thing that says okay, what are your What is your size going to be? Okay, here’s the template for that. Here’s the word document you can download it and and i mean then
54:43
that’s then you just
54:44
tweak it a bit to make it you know, to make it work for you. But
Damon Pistulka 54:48
yeah, yeah, that’s cool.
Kon Apostolopolous 54:50
So I know we’re running low on time, David. So a couple of things that I just want to add in if I may, for to help out with that are are looking for, to write this as part of their business plan as part of what they want to do professionally. Yeah. The same way. We said, Why are you writing it upfront? It’s important to understand as you’re building this, this asset, if you will, because it is an asset for your company, or your brand, it’s important to think about what’s next, how am I going to use this doctor Yuliya says I’ve built a lot of my business as using this as a calling card, Randy’s become the kindness giver, and become well known because of how he’s used that asset for himself. Or us.
It’s been this piece as change management experts, as people who understand crisis leadership, we’ve been able to kind of establish ourselves as a brand from that piece. But then what’s next? I mean, already, we’re looking at that right now. And we’ve taken a lot of the content of the book. And now it becomes a big part of what we’re offering to our audience. People that got to know us through the book, are saying, Okay, what else you got. So now, for example, we’re coming out, like we talked about, on Monday, we’re launching a 30 day challenge to our followers to the people that are interested in finding out how to navigate any crisis.
So we’re going to take all of those principles from the book, and we’re going to enhance that, there’s going to be opportunities for us to share a lot of our more in depth secrets, through videos through communication, through real time coaching, and opportunities to step away even away from that group into one on one, or I should say, in this case, one with two of us opportunities to kind of have real time coaching sessions and masterminds as an opportunity to this piece.
So I’m gonna add the link into the, into the, to the chat notes for anybody that’s interested. But keep in mind of how are you going to use that asset, don’t just write a book and just let it die there on the line, maximize that asset, understand how that can benefit you and others and understand why you’re doing it.
Dr. Elia 56:48
Yeah. And, you know, the other thing is, that was an unexpected surprise. Initially, you know, we wrote it for individuals to help you know, housewives, you know, fathers, you know, brothers and sisters, help them through the crisis is when the economy first opened up, the first time, I want to say about middle of June, organizations, and companies started coming to us and saying, Hey, we need help with our employees. We don’t know what to do. Like, there’s, they’re scared, they’re depressed, they’re anxious, they’re stressed out, help us to navigate that.
And that happened from like fortune 100 company like Bank of America that came to me in which I did a presentation in July, all the way to nonprofit companies, and everything in between. So an unexpected benefit. So you go for the book. Now we have our 30 Day Challenge, starting on Monday, the 18th. After that, we’re going to have like a two month mastermind that’s going to follow up that. So you’re building a pipeline, not just for income, but of influence. And you’re expanding your brand as a result of that so that the book can go as far or as little as you want to take it honestly.
Kon Apostolopolous 57:53
Yeah. For some people. It’s it’s simply, yeah, for some people, daymond it’s simply a lead magnet. It’s one of those things that they put out there and said, hey, I’ve got this quick, even if it’s a, if it’s a 10 page ebook, can you write something that has your name on it that presents you in a way, that’s a little bit more than just sending a business card to somebody saying, Hey, here’s some information about me. Here’s some of the ways that I helped my clients.
Damon Pistulka 58:18
Yeah, cool. Boy, Ira had to leave. We had a couple of people that had to leave at meetings, but this is awesome stuff. Because I think what you’ve done is a thing. The tactical stuff, Randy, that’s helpful, because I think a lot of people wouldn’t have thought about that they would have just started writing. And I know it’s huge, the format of book and Rob, you said something about, hey, you can find people to help you format and I know you guys probably have people that help with graphics and other stuff like that. But that’s a that technical aspects and knowing you can get them on Amazon and start that’s really big.
And then what you guys said about the the outline, you know, starting with a topic and working through your main points and doing that, I think is very helpful. And because I’ve tried myself a couple times, and I’ve got some some thoughts about it. And but this, this really gave us some good information. So thanks a lot, guys. And we’re gonna let Andrew wind it up. So we’re gonna drop off a LinkedIn here in just a second. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. And by the way, if you see me looking over like this, I’m trying to check the LinkedIn and make sure I’m not texting my text in or something. But
59:29
Dave, over there watching the news, man,
59:31
yeah. But
Dr. Elia 59:37
Damon and Andrew and we’re open to answer any questions other than the next half an hour or in the future. You know, we have you have our contact information, any way we can help anybody to prepare to write a book or two. You know, we’re up and we’re here to help. It’s a process that worked for us. And it worked really well. Yeah, I’m gonna wait by the opportunities that we have as a result of this book, because that Wasn’t that initial intent, but, you know, God is good. So I’m grateful, you know, to the spirits above that had the inspiration to write this book.
Damon Pistulka 1:00:08
Yeah, that’s awesome. And thanks, guys for stopping by and sharing with us today. Now we’re going to drop off LinkedIn live. We’re going to go back to the tables. We’re going to have some people ask some additional conversations there. Thank you once again, Andrew, take us away.
Andrew Cross 1:00:22
Oh, yeah, well, cake. Thanks, guys. Great tactical advice on how to get a Book Award and the emotional behind it. What I didn’t expect from this was, you know, gain some insight to the partnership. Something you guys maybe want to consider is another topic, or how well you work together. What are the hardest things to get through from the server, the hardest thing to get done is to get a book written. The second hardest thing is to do a partnership when you guys are doing it. It’s really good to be committed. Anyways, great, everybody. Now we’ll go back to the tables. Don’t hang out if you want. And
Damon Pistulka 1:01:03
again next week. All right. And next week. Next week, we’ve got our networking. So if you got somebody who you think would join the group, well bring them in. I forgot to say that earlier. But hey, it’ll be fun. We added a few errors. Awesome. We’re going back to the tables.
