73: Pushing Beyond the Business Plateau- with Damon Pistulka

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[00:00:58] Erin Courtenay: And you would go back to the, where they, the time they were in.

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[00:01:03] Erin Courtenay: All right. Leonardo da Vinci. Oh, hell yes. Ken Burns just did just released his, I mean, I don't know how many years they worked on it. You know, he does those documentaries and I was, I didn't even know all the amazing things that he did, but I'll tell you what really won my heart.

They were like, you know, for as much of a genius as he was, he was also really nice person. He was happy. Aww. I was like, oh! So, yeah.

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[00:01:37] Erin Courtenay: I wanna be a happy genius. I can't think of anything better.

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[00:01:43] Erin Courtenay: What about you guys.

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can't think of anybody from the past that's not here anymore.

So I can't answer that one right now, like, full heartedly. So I'm going to answer somebody that's still here. Billie Jean King. I just would love to live through the battle of the sexes, come up in tennis the way that she did. All of the influence that she's had on women's sports, you guys all know how much I love women's sports.

She has been a huge advocate. Title IX, she's been a big part of the reformation of Title IX and then all of the activities since. So Billie Jean King would be a really awesome life.

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Yeah.

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[00:02:47] Kris Harrington: Everything. She's everywhere. Yeah.

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[00:02:50] Kris Harrington: That's awesome. I see her everywhere and I'm like, I wanna be there.

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[00:03:28] Erin Courtenay: Oh, yay. She is also amazing.

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[00:03:52] Erin Courtenay: She was very brave. Yeah.

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[00:04:06] Lori Highby: So yeah, the good test. Oh yeah, well we can maybe play with that a little bit further in the second half of the show today.

Damon's journey started on a: 3000

Damon's expertise lies in business strategy, leadership development, transforming business operations, and the lives of those who run them. When he's not guiding business leaders, Damon enjoys spending time with his family and exploring the great outdoors. Damon, welcome to the show.

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[00:05:08] Lori Highby: Absolutely.

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[00:05:11] Lori Highby: Yeah. And you've got your own LinkedIn live show too, right?

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[00:05:23] Kris Harrington: I imagine you've met a lot of people in that time frame and heard a lot of stories.

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[00:05:47] Lori Highby: Totally. Love it. Love that about this, like the show we're doing right now, it just, we meet so many interesting people. It's incredible. Yeah.

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Having such a positive and encouraging message and then using the new technology in a way that, you know, prior to that, we hadn't been done. I, I mean, you don't be too modest there, buddy. You did good things.

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You've been around him enough. He is, he is a great, great influence there. And yeah, on manufacturing e commerce success, we're edging up on 300 episodes with that as well too. So it's, it's a lot of fun. Like, like you guys know, just again, just incredible people and just feel blessed to be able to do them.

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[00:07:17] Damon Pistulka: Yeah, I've actually got some pictures from when I was a kid that I'm going to, I'm going to post on LinkedIn one of these days and say, this is why I don't fear doing anything that's considered hard work. There's a couple of them where we're outside, you know, and, and, you know, when you grow up on a family farm, you're out there, if you're 15, 16 years old in the summertime, you're out helping harvest, you're doing all these kind of things, and it's me, and I have three brothers and a sister, we're setting out alongside the pickup in the field that are obviously is being harvested just dirty as heck, you know, eating lunch in the field.

That's what you do.

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[00:07:58] Lori Highby: Tag us in that post for sure. That sounds like a fun one. So let's talk about your early years a little bit since we're kind of down that path right now. Can you share one, one lesson that you've learned that's really shaped how you approach business today?

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But once you get to a certain point, everyone has some sort of talent that's taken them this far. But the only way people get past that is by putting in that extra effort to continue to get better and put the work into what they're doing. And it's gotta be on the right things obviously, but that's really one of the things that's always stuck with me.

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[00:08:54] Erin Courtenay: Oh my God, I thought you were going to go there and I had my breath. I was holding my breath.

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[00:09:00] Kris Harrington: You said it. It's true.

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We still love you. And we know we're, you know, we're not talking about you. The other ones. We're talking about the other ones. The other ones. Yeah.

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[00:09:20] Lori Highby: It's different. It's a different mindset and mentality. Yeah.

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A lot of what we build, develop, produce services we provide are kind of like built around making things easier. So I think we can all shoulder a little bit of the responsibility of that, not just those. Yeah. Yeah.

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It's the choose your hard statement, like being obese is hard. Being fit is hard. Choose your hard. Right. Being married is hard. Being divorced is hard. Choose your hard. Right. So it's like at the end of the day, it's going to be hard no matter what you just, and you have the decision to make which hard path you want to pursue.

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[00:10:52] Damon Pistulka: Yeah.

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I come back foundationally. That is my method for anything that I want to do well is that I practice it and I'm okay failing. That's part of practice, but that was, that's also part of my method that I was trained because I played sports. So this, this concept of practice. And it does seem in the world where we have devices in our hands and we have these alternatives that consume us today. Maybe some of the concepts of practice aren't as evident.

And then that's the lost art of the effort. Right. And I think it, you know, it goes back to your choose your hard too, but they're kind of all tied together there.

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It's, it's, it takes effort to do anything well, and it's not just doing the task. Focusing yourself in all the other things around it to be able to really do what you do when you talk about like a practice. You don't go to practice with the wrong clothes on. You don't go to practice without the right amount of sleep.

You don't go to practice without eating properly. There's all these things that have to come together, and you, you know, you hit one of the best ones, and that's distraction. Now, I think we'd live with so much distraction and especially for younger people too that they grew up digital natives, right?

That that is such a big deal. And not be able to lay that down because rather than doing what I should be doing or preparing for what I do, it's real easy to get on something and scroll and look and watch videos. Whatever you're gonna do. But yeah, that effort is all around what we want to get better at.

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[00:13:04] Erin Courtenay: I love it. You know that I, yeah. And our listeners love it too.

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[00:13:11] Erin Courtenay: I know they want to hear the wisdom, the business wisdom, but they also like to hear a little bit of a rant here and there.

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[00:13:45] Lori Highby: That's a great question.

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[00:13:59] Damon Pistulka: I don't think it's really a surprise. It's just a reality is most people know what to do, but they just won't do it.

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[00:14:08] Damon Pistulka: Okay. So you can, the businesses that I'm typically dealing with are going to be sub 20 million in revenue, right? So they're going to be founder led, started, they built, they've been around for a long time.

Well, what happens to every business naturally is they plateau out. And they plateau out to the owner's ability to build a team of people around them to do what they need to do and get the right people on the bus. It's the Jim Collins, EOS, whatever you're looking to, all that kind of stuff. Written about many, many times, business owners by and large know what they need to do.

But when it comes down to the actual fact of going, okay, these are the roles I need in my organization today, and then your organization gets to a certain size, and these roles change, or the people that are in them need to be adjusted around in the bus, that is where they stop. They just the comfort level and, and everything else and the fact that, Oh, geez, that's just so much.

We couldn't do that if Dave wasn't doing that today, even though Dave could be the very anchor that's, that's driving a third of your customers away. You know, these kinds of things are the gut wrenching changes that most people need to do if they really want to stay in business for the longterm. And what they'll do is they'll, they'll sit there at this bit, they'll start to rationalize things in their head because I'm making enough money.

I'm okay. And that is, that is, that comfort level is just fine until something happens in the market that makes it so it's not anymore. And you're scrambling and it's again, choose your hard. And that's what I really think that I can help people do because I'm an outside third party perspective, and I've gone through some of this tough crap, honestly, that you have to do when you say, do we need to do an ERP system in our business because we're using spreadsheets and, you know, on the word processor?

Yes, you probably do. Well, that's going to be hard and it's going to be expensive. Yes, it is. We're going to have to organize and do it, but you don't have a choice. It's just like moving into digital. And then getting the right people in your team. I mean, we're, we're on the backside of one of these things and these, these are long term things.

I mean, this is not something you just go in, bing, bing, bing, and it happens. I mean, if you want to do it right, you could spend a couple years getting your team from one level to the next. But once you do that transition, you're able to go double or triple quadruple your business when you do that.

But you're gonna hit that point again sometime. These are the kind of changes that I see so many business owners not doing because they, they realize it's gonna be hard and they rationalize that we're making pretty good money now. So do you want to do it? Yeah.

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And here's where we see this. And I'll be speaking to our manufacturing audience here. Many manufacturers have a distribution network. So those dealers, dealers come in all shapes and sizes, right? But the dealers are the ones who really support the customers. And often they are the sales channel for the manufacturer.

And that sales channel, some dealers, they want to do the hard work. They have multiple locations. They keep growing as their business grows. That is a great partner organization for a manufacturer because you see them capture the ideas, take the new innovative products, and they want to take them to market.

And then there are other dealers in the network who are satisfied with where they are. They're not ready to, or necessarily willing to put in the work to take it to the next level. And that also leads the manufacturer to plateau in that region if they don't have an avenue to help that dealer grow.

And therefore everybody expands as part of the pie. So we see that a lot with channel partners within a manufacturing organization. So that's where I was, I was tying it in closely there. Great.

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Over 80 percent of the people don't even want to talk to a salesperson if they can and just get a sale that buy what they need, figure it out and buy it on their own. So if you're a dealer, in that situation that doesn't want to move forward. It wants to hold back and not want to do that. And you got, you've got a similar product. Say we're selling lawnmowers or something, you know, commercial lawnmowers, and I've got one company that is embracing digital, and they're, you know, the distributors have to do that, and we're going online, and we're allowing them to buy anything they want.

If they don't want to stop in, they can come pick it up and get it delivered and We don't care. Buy it however you want. You got another one that's holding back, and they're, because their dealer network is, or their distributors are, holding back, you're going to lose. You're going to lose in these situations.

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It is such a poorly designed e commerce interface. And I know why, I know why. They wanted to save money. They didn't want to go all the way with that quality there. And I mean, I tell you what, that sales guy that I talked to, I loved him when I was on the floor, I wanted to give him all my business. Kind of a lot, because we're having to buy a lot of stuff for our house.

How am I supposed to do that? Now I'm getting, how many phone calls am I going to have to make with this gentleman in order to find what I want? Anyway, it really brought it home to me that that investment not only helps your customer, it shows your customer how committed you are actually to their having a good experience with your store.

Cause they took me to their website. They wanted me there. And then they gave me garbage. So maybe that was another rant. I don't know. Sorry, Damon.

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[00:20:53] Damon Pistulka: There's a lot to go there. Yeah. There's a lot to go there.

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What would you say is like, just bring right home the one overlooked step that would make a difference or does make a difference between a good business sale, like, yep, sold it, got my money and an extraordinary business sale where you walk away feeling like your business is in good hands, you did get your money, what's that special something?

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So now that, you know, just say it was a million bucks that that company was making every year. I got half that that goes to somebody else right off the top. So my cushion isn't quite as fat as the person that just left it after 20 years, right? That growth, if something happens in that first year, if I'm not growing, and something drops 10, 15, 20 percent, now my cushion just went down to really thin. You know, one customer, one good customer could make that difference. But if I'm grown at 25 or 30 percent, I can lose a customer and I'm all right. As long as my customer concentration is not bad. But that growth really helps so many things. And it doesn't matter what the heck the seller thinks.

That, oh, it's a, it's been just like a cash cow for me for 25 years. Buyers love the fact that it's been consistent, but it scares the hell out of them because they're going to know that they've just been riding the wave. And when they're, they're always looking for what's the next thing that's going to trip that wave up.

And growth covers a lot of that.

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[00:23:20] Damon Pistulka: Yeah. But look at the math. I mean, seriously, if you look at it and you go, it's great for you, you've got a million dollars coming out of this.

You could leave some of the business, you can take a ton home and do whatever you want, but just drop half that off and then tell me how sweet it looks. That's what they're doing. The next person's coming in might even be more than that sometimes.

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[00:23:48] Damon Pistulka: Yeah, they won't make their return. I mean, this is when I used to run companies for investors, we always knew that we could buy the company for X amount of dollars, but to get the return for the investors, we had to grow the value by a certain amount too to get the rate of return we wanted overall through the life of the investment.

Mm-hmm . It's no different in a company that's owned by you or I or anyone else. You have to grow that as well to really get your return on investment. And buyers are keenly aware of it 'cause they're at the beginning of that process.

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So Kris, why don't you finish that sentence? What did you just learn?

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[00:25:02] Lori Highby: Yeah. I don't need to because I worship at his altar. I know everything he has to say. Yes. I've been following him for so long.

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And the gentleman who spoke to us, he was a fantastic speaker. He had a lot of great advice to us as we go into an AI world. And he believes, you know, essentially, if I were to sum it up in Kris's words of what I heard is that AI is here. It's going to be with us, all of us, so it's important we understand it we use it because it's a part of our life and it's a part of the future.

But he also talked about building physical communities that people want to be a part of. And I think, you know, knowing the four of us here, that's something that really resonates with us. So outside of our AI world and our technology world, how are we coming together as a community as we are right now, the four of us we're doing this over a zoom call.

Our listeners are listening to us and all the different ways that they can listen to us. But how can we come together as communities in a way where we want to be there to enjoy life? That's how we get out of the technology. That what is what also will help our mental health, which is a big part of this book.

So, long answer to the question. But that's something I recently learned.

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[00:27:32] Kris Harrington: Go ahead, Erin. What did you just learn?

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Anyway, he left thousands of pages of journals with more and more and more ideas and some of those, this is a great trivia, were written in reverse. And the speculation is like, oh, is it code, you know, is he like kind of like trying to say something and you have to hold it up to a mirror to decode it?

Well they think no, actually he was left handed and he was like, I am sick of the smudge. And so he just wrote backwards.

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[00:28:19] Erin Courtenay: Yeah, because like my husband's left handed and he's got the, the weird like thing and I'm talking to, oh, you're a, you're a lefty too.

Yeah. So I'm like, I love it. It's just like, you're a genius. Just come up with your own practical solution to this smudging. Huh.

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[00:28:41] Erin Courtenay: Except for the lefties. They're like you know what, I know what that is.

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You know, I love diving into the data type stuff, but roughly a little over 20 percent of adults actually get their news from individual content creators now. So, I mean, that's kind of all, that's who we are, right? We're creating content. Under the age of 30, it is over 40 percent of adults are getting their news from content creators.

So this recent election, which we're not going to get any more topical about that. We'll just say that. Both, both candidates actually part of their campaigns were to get involved with influencers and get on podcasts and other social media channels leveraging the power of influencers as part of their campaign.

So, one thing that I think is interesting though is there's a major gender gap that's happening right now and it's roughly Uh, 65 percent are men influencers. So we need more female influencers that are sharing newsworthy type content, not just shopping type content or crafty type content. So, yeah. Yeah.

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[00:29:59] Kris Harrington: I'm trying to define what news is today. Because, yes, I'm a content creator, but am I creating news?

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It's identifying who has the attention of the audience that you're getting, you want to get in front of. Right. Or that you want to have an impact in some way, influence a decision or a change of behavior or something along those lines. So, you know, there's a level of trust that has to be created and captured first before people start buying into the message that's being communicated.

And then once they've established that trust, that buy in, then getting, you know, products or people or whatever change that you want to have happen, that's where it's identifying the influencers that have the attention of the audience you're trying to get in front of, and that's an interesting space, and there's so many different levels of influencership, you know, there's the mega mega millions, which is our celebrities, and then there's super micro influencers, which is what I would say we are, right? To some extent, we have a very defined audience, we're speaking to manufacturers. And we heavily lean on the female side of things. So we have, we are micro influencers because we're encouraging and advocating for, you know, diversity in the manufacturing space.

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[00:31:29] Lori Highby: So. I thought it was interesting.

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[00:31:46] Lori Highby: No, it was a great question. The legacy news outlets are definitely losing viewership, which we are aware of that, right? Print media and even your traditional news outlets. However, they're not leaning into the influencer space and the majority of influencers that are out there right now do not have any affiliation with any sort of more traditional news channel. And I think that's actually a miss from the news channels outlets, the your traditional news channel channels. I imagine this is going to continue to evolve. And you all, you already see that to some extent right now, right?

I mean, the Joe Rogan Experience podcast has been the number one podcast for as long as I can remember really. He's an influencer. He's got a huge audience, but he's not necessarily affiliated with any specific program and people listen to what he's got to say.

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You're like, well, maybe you're going to like, not bullshit me until I'm like, I can't even think straight, you know, I, it's so, it's, it's such an important, important subject.

And that's why I'm cool with us spending more time on it and not letting our guests talk, which really bad podcast etiquette.

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I'm a universal nonbeliever in any of it anymore because when we got on here and you're talking about, Oh, how bad was it in Seattle? Well, they catastrophize this called bomb cyclone we have, and I can tell you that we get this same thing at least two or three times in the fall when you're in the time when the temperature can change a lot and the storms come in from the Gulf of Alaska.

That's just what happens. But no, now it's a bomb cyclone. And what was the other thing that's come up with this? There's something else. They've got another thing now. So when the heavy rains come in, we see this stuff. Everything is catastrophized or whatever. And I can't even say it right because that gets impact on media, right?

Yeah. And let's just, let's just call it as it is. We're going to have a storm. Get prepared. Let's get ready for it. We'll be just fine. And, and that's, that's the kind of stuff that we drive. You talked about anxiety earlier, this catastrophizing of everything that happens to us, you know, even, even down to the point that, god love my family. I just, I am a family man by knowing, but they, the word that kills me more. Oh, to die for. Well, I, that's a dinner to die for. There's not a dinner to die for in my world. There's not an experience to die for in my world. It's a great experience. Don't get me wrong. It's great. But we always were trying to, think about things like this.

And really I don't believe any news anymore and you really have to think of all, I think anyway, you really got to look at underlying who it's coming from and back to Lori says the data. And then I even go to the data and I go, I went to school for engineering and statistical analysis was about two thirds of my graduate work. Right. I can make data say whatever the hell you want. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So that's another scary thing behind it. But being able to trust the people. I mean, if you really get somebody that, as you said, Erin authentic about what they're doing and they're walking the walk and they're talking the talk that they're doing, that's the only thing we've got to, to help us anymore.

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And I think it is very hard to know who and what to trust when integrity has become just another. You know, sort of meaningless term we all it's it's it's flexible, you know, we don't have a shared idea of what it means to have integrity and that makes it very difficult to establish trust between an expert or so called expert and the person that need that information that hasn't changed.

We do need that information. We can't all live in our own little boxes. These boxes, these ones right here.

The digital phone box. Damon, what did, what have you just learned?

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Been looking at AI agents and some of the other things and just thinking to myself that the advancement in the last six to 12 months is nuts. And yeah, it's, and as Kris said earlier, it's going to be there with us.

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[00:37:10] Damon Pistulka: Yes, not going away. So what I've learned is I don't know nearly enough and I need to accelerate my learning in it because I think I'm very surprised.

First of all, when I talk to people and they go, I don't usually I don't touch it. I don't, you know, I don't do anything. I'm like, Oh my goodness, what are you doing? I mean, it's like you're in the stone ages almost. If you're working, if you're doing any sort of work that requires computer interface, that requires creativity or even stuff like accountants, if they're not using it to help them with Excel formulas and stuff.

But when you look at the ability of this thing to help us improve our efficiency. and get better at what we do. Just like a, like an augmentation tool for us to be smarter and faster. I'm, I'm constantly learning new things that really excite me. As much as scare me on the backside that if somebody figures out how to hack all of our passwords in the world, they'll do that.

I mean, but those are going to be some downers that we're gonna have to go through.

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[00:38:14] Kris Harrington: Well, it's so interesting. I think anything that I'm stumped about for more than a few seconds, I immediately go to AI now, and, you know, it's just to explore the different answers to ideas or thoughts or whatever challenges.

But it did have me thinking, Erin, when you were talking about authenticity and integrity, you know, we all have had lives that were outside of technology. And I don't know if I can put my finger on this, but I believe in my guts, right? Like when I have an authentic person who I've find with great integrity, I know that from something within me.

That makes sense. As we look to AI for different things, and we keep having those different sources of things, how will our understanding or that gut instinct change is, is where my mind went.

I feel like I know and I have to trust that side of me when I'm listening to others, right? But how will that muscle of how we know those things, how will that change over time as we use these solutions?

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It was like, once a week thing, you know, I had computer class once a week in elementary school, you know, like, so we, we had these, like, these instincts are different now for the generation that grew up with iPads, you know, at two years old and playing with them and know how to use them better than we do. So that is. So.

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Any kind of little heuristics that we have that we're taught as kids to kind of decide how a situation really is, we can do that for younger people and AI and, and so forth, but nobody's doing it yet. So that I know of.

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It's like, well, that's not, you're putting your entire student population behind the trend then like, and not, you know, and everyone's using AI for everything. Like there has to be a balance and like, here's the right way. So they're doing a lot to educate on what is the right way to educate your students on what, how to use AI, but also at the same time, it's a moving target.

I mean, you said it Damon, like where it was six months ago is completely different. I follow a lot of influencers on LinkedIn who talk a lot about AI. I've joined a lot of Facebook groups related to AI where I get ideas for prompts and software and tools to, to test. So I think that's been a good way for me to kind of stay up to date.

And, you know, like, like Kris said, anytime. It's like, oh, my head hurts from thinking about this. Oh, I wonder how AI can help me out. And I'm like, wow, that's amazing. It helped.

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[00:42:30] Lori Highby: Sure. Yeah. But I think it's a balance of being creative with the prompts you're entering in. I saw one of the guys I follow about AI post something. He's like, how many posts are going to see about the 2025 digital marketing trends that are going to be the exact same thing because everyone typed it in the AI? You know and it's like we get a little creative here.

Yeah. Yeah, and that's like my opening question today. I thought that was a fun, creative question as opposed to like just random basic boring shit.

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You can post that stuff, you can put it on blog posts, you can do whatever the heck you want. But it doesn't sound human, right? And that's the thing, is, is you at least need to take the time to make it sound like you. And that you go through with your words and your thoughts and add to it and build upon it because it's, it's so much and I think no matter what we're doing, even, you know, I, I think about, I was reading about coding and AI today and I'm like, Oh my goodness, how the heck, I mean, how much more efficient is that?

So now the actual writing of the code got really fast and error checking always got much better. So how much more creative and how much more valuable is a coder now, if they understand how to really enhance the customer experience, they don't have to figure out how to make it work like that. They can just work on what does the customer experience really need to be and focus in on that as the coder and then learn, as you said, Lori, how to prompt AI to do what they want and check the output and make sure it's good because it's if they got that creative part, they can go farther fast.

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Wow, I feel like we could have gone in 20 different directions today.

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[00:45:05] Lori Highby: We covered a lot. I think we did. We could have gone deeper and deeper and deeper. Um, Damon, thank you so much for being on this show. If you want to share how folks can get in touch with you, if they're interested in connecting, that'd be great.

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But yeah, they can find me there at exityourway. com.

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[00:45:50] Damon Pistulka: Thank you for having me. It was wonderful.

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