Sales and Cigars | Unlocking Success with Steven Pivnik | Episode 184

[00:00:02] Hey everyone, Walter Crosby with Healing Sales Development, your host of Sales and Cigars. Today's guest is Iron Man, a guy that's looking to climb Mount Everest. He's written a book. He's exited his company. He grew his company from nothing to 40 million and actually did four little mini exits.

[00:00:23] So the idea of an entrepreneurial journey is much like an endurance sport, is one of the things that he talks about and is sort of this steam. So go grab a cigar, grab a cocktail, strap in for another impactful episode of Sales and Cigars. Thanks.

[00:00:42] So Steve, welcome to the podcast. I appreciate taking some time out of your busy schedule to have a conversation. Yeah, thank you very much for having me. I wish I had a cigar. Because our spouses don't appreciate the aroma as much as we do. Exactly.

[00:01:15] And a happy wife usually leads to a happier life. Agreed. So let's kind of jump in. I always like to ask this question at the beginning. Is there a book beside your own that you gift or like to share with entrepreneurs?

[00:01:35] There is one that's at the top of my list is called The One Thing. I forget the author's name, but the premise of the book is what is the one thing? So apply this to any specific topic or challenge area that you have.

[00:01:49] What is the one thing that if done properly will make everything else easier or unnecessary? So it's a great book on productivity and problem solving. And I always like to use the sales example.

[00:02:02] If a company is growing fast and all of a sudden the company's experience stagnation in sales growth, and there's a bunch of marketing reasons. There's a bunch of sales execution reasons, sales lifecycle reasons, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:02:16] And the CEO is often spreading his time like peanut butter, trying to address the marketing challenges, the sales lifecycle, all of the above. So my recommendation is you're probably running with a head of sales that was with you

[00:02:30] from day one, and he or she is learning as we go. So why not bring in a seasoned sales executive that's run an organization at a higher level? So let's say you're $10 million right now, and you want to get to $20 million, bring

[00:02:44] in somebody who's ever run a company at $20 million, and he or she will fix all of these issues without you having to get involved. So that's my one thing example. So I have the book, I can't read it, it's across the room, but I'm pretty sure Keller

[00:03:02] is the guy who wrote it. And the guy from Keller Williams Real Estate, I think. And that was my takeaway. What's the one thing that's going to help you go faster or make everything else on your list easier to do? Exactly.

[00:03:18] To me, that's a great book to give away. If somebody in the audience hasn't read that, that's a great read or reread. It surprisingly is not redundant because he helps you understand the ins and out of it and how you apply it to different aspects of your business.

[00:03:39] So that's a great book. Yeah, one of my favorites. So let's talk a little bit about how you got to where you are. We're going to get to the book, but a little bit about your journey to get from point A.

[00:03:56] Let's not go to 10th grade, but let's go forward from there. How did you get to where you are? Yeah, so I really didn't have a true passion for anything I want to enter college because I just picked Business Administration as a major.

[00:04:15] About three weeks into my college experience, my mother found out about this computer programming course which was offered in downtown Manhattan. At the time there was no PCs, there was only mainframes. I was a little bit of a computer geek growing up. My Commodore 64 was my best friend.

[00:04:33] So she said, hey, you don't know why you're going to college or what you're going to do after college. Why don't you go take this programming course and they're guaranteeing job placement after nine months of training? I said, sure.

[00:04:45] My parents are giving me permission to drop out of college and go do something that I love. Game on. So I took that course. Is it COBOL? What was it? Yeah, no exactly. It was COBOL, JCL, VSAM, and CICS. Those were the programming languages of the day.

[00:05:05] So I learned those. It didn't take nine months. It took me six months. I landed a job at a publishing company called Readers Digest which was incredibly popular back in the 80s. And I got a whopping salary of $19,000 a year at the age of 19.

[00:05:21] And that was the beginning of my computer career. So I stayed at Readers Digest for a while. I switched a couple of jobs working for somebody else. And then I finally got the guts to, I believe, corporate America and branch out and start my own consulting company.

[00:05:37] And that was basically the genesis of my company. We were providing application development services. There was no such thing as SaaS back then. Right now, if a company wants a specific type of computer solution, you just subscribe to it online like Salesforce, Workday, 101 other solutions.

[00:05:56] Back in the day, if a company wanted to automate a business process, they needed to write these programs by themselves. So we started a company to write custom programs for companies. So that was the beginning of my company. And I can go through the other course as well.

[00:06:14] So but what's cool is that, I mean, the way you phrased it was your parents gave you permission to drop out of college to go do something to follow your passion and what you enjoyed. That's pretty cool.

[00:06:26] And it allowed you to take an entrepreneurial track because that was the very beginning. Like the first, probably a little older, Fortran was sort of that. Those cards and stuff that I took a class like when I was in high school.

[00:06:45] Didn't interest me as much as it did you. It was too precise for my brain and I was destined to be a sales guy just to be a little bit less dot nyes and cross and cheese, but I love that story.

[00:07:01] Yeah, I got in right after Punch Cards. So I was actually able to type on the computer and submit the program to be compiled and then to be run bypassing that Punch Cards step. But I heard a lot of stories about that.

[00:07:15] And yeah, the detailed oriented nature of programming really fed well into my OCD. Yeah, I mean, but it's I mean, whatever we choose to do, it's got to be something that we enjoy. I don't passion is important, I think, but it's something that we got

[00:07:33] to look forward to learning and get better at. And if we don't have that component, we're working. And I don't think anybody that's in an entrepreneurial role wants to be working. We want to follow something, build something, create a legacy. Exactly.

[00:07:49] And the last thing I'll say about program is when you drop those cards and it becomes a big, you know, hodgepodge of cards and they're not in the right order. That was a real little pain in the ass. Yeah, yeah. But do you still have that comedy? Commodore 64.

[00:08:07] I do, I actually have it in. We just moved recently and I found it in the back of a closet. So it's in a storage facility in New Jersey somewhere. But I still have it. I love that little container.

[00:08:19] But if you think about it, the little cell phone that we have is what? Thousand times more powerful than that. Commodore 64. At least it's mind boggling. I think my watch on my hand is a thousand times more popular, more powerful than the Commodore 64 was.

[00:08:36] Well, the HP 55 that we had in college to use for amortization and stuff like that, that that was more powerful than the Commodore 64. But but it was kind of cool to be playing on that one before it became what it is today. It's awesome. Yeah, it was fun.

[00:08:53] So I want to I want to get into the book and talk about, you know, go a little bit deeper because I think the book and your journey have have some overlapping as to why you're doing that. So can you share a little bit about

[00:09:07] your share a little bit about the book and why why you felt you needed to get it out of your system? Sure. There's there's a piece of that, right? Like if you write a book, you're trying to get something out

[00:09:17] to help other people. Am I wrong in that? No, you're you're you're spot on. I mean, I wrote it for several reasons. I wanted to memorialize my own journey and two different areas in my entrepreneurial journey and my endurance sports journey.

[00:09:31] But more importantly, I wanted to encourage others to set big goals and to go after them. So I set out to prove that a college dropout and a couch potato can grow scale and exit a big company

[00:09:46] while at the same time trying to get into and qualify for the Iron Maran World Championship in Kona, Hawaii and accomplishing both of those. About 13 months apart. So how long did you train? I'm going to interrupt. How long did you train for the Iron Man?

[00:10:02] Because that's like I know what that is. I have a friend who did it and I've just got a bless. It's crazy, but it's it's it's a lot of work. So it is a lot of work. So for any specific race, it takes about six to 12 months

[00:10:18] to get ready for an Iron Man. Probably, you know, eight eight months is kind of the average to get ready for an Iron Man. There's two ways to get to the world championship. You're either the best in your age group and you qualify to get into the world

[00:10:31] championship at one of their other races. Iron Man is so big these days, they have about four races every weekend someplace on the planet. So if you're the best that you're fastest in your age group, you get a qualifying slot to Kona.

[00:10:43] If that wasn't me, my motto is not fast, not last. That's actually a chapter in the book. So they have something called the Legacy Lottery Program, which I called their Freak from Flyer Program. If you do 12 full distance Iron Man races,

[00:10:58] you get a lottery ticket to potentially compete with the best in the world. So that's the path I took. I knew that I was never going to qualify by being fast. So I did 12 of them. Did 12? With 12. Holy crap. I did 12 over what time frame?

[00:11:17] The first one was in 2011 and I did Kona in 2022. So over an 11 year time frame. Yeah, I mean, that's. That's amazing. I mean, so we covered part of the the distance piece of it and you went from being not much of an athlete

[00:11:38] and being more of a programmer guy that was comfortable sitting in a chair than getting in a piece of water to go swim a couple, couple more. About two and a half miles. And my wife hates it when I say this, but I was a couch potato.

[00:11:51] I mean, other than skiing, I really didn't participate in any physical activity. I mean, I grew up in the water. We know my family had been right in beach, you know, the Russian speaking capital of the world.

[00:12:00] So I did a lot of swimming, but I didn't have any form nor endurance. I rode my bicycle around town a lot, but I didn't have the capability to ride at 112 miles before getting off of it and running a 26 mile marathon. So for all intents and purposes,

[00:12:16] I had no athletic background whatsoever. So again, I wanted to memorialize my and then the Ironman got me into ultra marathons, ultra marathons got me into mountaineering. I'm going to Everest next year, but it's a whole separate story back to the book.

[00:12:31] So I wanted to memorialize my entrepreneurial and endurance sports journey. And along the along my way, I found that there's a lot of similarities, right? Both require a lot of planning, perseverance, execution, you know, pivot, setbacks, stamina, coaching. There's so many similarities that I firmly believe, you know,

[00:12:50] entrepreneurship is an endurance sport. So because I built and sold a company and because I got into the iron and competed in the Ironman World Championship, I just wanted to, you know, share my journey. A lot of the lessons that I've learned, a lot of tips and tricks,

[00:13:06] a lot of, you know, water cutters shoulders along the way in the hopes of again, just inspiring others that, you know, dreamy big is a good thing and execution against these plans are possible. And Ironman's motto is anything is possible.

[00:13:22] And I live that anything is possible kind of lifestyle. And I want to encourage others to do the same. They want to tell you about a project that I started called Sales Velocity.

[00:13:34] It's a weekly email that comes out early on a Monday before the shit hits the fan. And what is it? It's just sales tips. It's for that business owner, that CEO, that sales leader who's looking for a little tip to kind of inspire them for the week

[00:13:49] an idea that they might be able to try to implement. It's very simple. It tells a bunch of stories about me, things I've screwed up along the way, some successes. All you have to do is go down into the show notes and click on the sales velocity link

[00:14:03] and you can sign up and you'll pop into your email on Monday morning just once a week. Thanks. Let's talk a little bit about the company and in your exit because I mean, what what what I heard you say is that if you if you have a plan

[00:14:20] and you're and you allow yourself to pivot a little bit as as that plan moves forward and be able to to make adjustments, you've got good coaching around you. You put the right people in place around you to help you and support you.

[00:14:34] It's still going to take endurance. It's going to take disciplines and take good habits. It's going to take a right mindset to get through and build something. Whether you sell it or you hold on to it or whatever you do with it,

[00:14:47] it's the parallels are endless when it comes to the to the business piece. No, exactly. So when you're when you're the book gets into how much detail of that the strategy is there's a there a piece of that you want to highlight for?

[00:15:04] Yeah, there's a lot of things. So yeah, the book definitely covers the entire journey from the company's inception until it was sold to a four billion dollar competitor. It was a very long journey. It was a 26 year journey, partially because I didn't have a game plan.

[00:15:21] Like with Iron Man, I had a game plan, right? Well, I did my first triathlon at the age of 40. It was a sprint distance triathlon. It's called the mini triathlon. I had no idea that Iron Man even existed

[00:15:33] until that evening of that finish when I learned that there's this thing called Iron Man and I said I set a goal right there and then that some way, somehow I'm going to get to the world championship. The corporate journey was a little bit less

[00:15:48] mission filled from in the beginning, right? In the beginning, I was just the entrepreneurial dream, right? Living the American dream, trying to create a better life for myself and my family and working for myself versus working for somebody else. And then as the company started growing,

[00:16:02] later on in the corporate journey, the planning and execution and exit process became much more structured. So, yeah, so the book definitely covers the multiple phases of the company. We struck multiple deals along our corporate journey with at first it was with IBM, later it was with Microsoft.

[00:16:24] Then there was an asset sale in the middle. Each one of those enlarge, I call them mini exits because they were A was a large sum of money. B for all intents and purposes, the rest of the company should not have existed afterwards, but it did.

[00:16:39] It talks about some of the drama, some of the do's and don'ts, some of the things I did right and more importantly, the things I did wrong during those phases. But with the pivots, with the setbacks, with the stamina that was required,

[00:16:54] it was we were near bankruptcy one or two times because of some of these events that occurred. And because of the stamina, because of the perseverance that we all exhibited, we were able to get back on track and then continue to grow

[00:17:10] to over $40 million in sales by the time that we were done. So I mean, that's a real entrepreneurial story. You start off with this idea. And I'd like to talk a little bit about if you had a corporate gig

[00:17:26] and you're working for somebody else and you decide to go, you know, take the American dream, as you said. And that, you know, we didn't get really into your family background, but you live in first generation, American second generation.

[00:17:43] I'm second. I was born in what is now Ukraine. OK. So I mean, it's the true American dream from that. In the classical sense, like you you found opportunity and you put the work in to get there and you're here.

[00:17:57] But what was the what was the moment or what was the thinking like when I've had enough of this, it's safe, it's secure. I'll always probably have a gig if I stay in this world. But I want to go do my own thing. Like what was that driver?

[00:18:13] Like what's that that thing? Because I think there's a every entrepreneur has one and it's not always the same. Yeah, on my moment came when I was on. I was so like I said, I was working for working

[00:18:24] for large companies and then my at the time I had a job as a consultant working for a consulting organization and the customer was American Express. Right. So they placed me at American Express and I was in a project for American Express

[00:18:38] and they were making a margin on my building rates just for round numbers. They were building me at one hundred dollars an hour and they were paying me sixty dollars an hour. Let's say they didn't provide any added value. They rarely met with a customer.

[00:18:49] There was no project management. They were literally collecting forty dollars for every hour that I worked while I was grateful that they found me this job. And obviously they had the client, they had the account. It was really bothering me that they were making forty dollars

[00:19:03] an hour for doing nothing from month after month after month after month. And I said to myself, you know what? I can do this. I can easily start a company and cut out the middle man and provide these same exact services plus a whole bunch of additional services

[00:19:18] in terms of project management, account management, account quality assurance. You name it to the end customer and pocket the entire hundred dollars. And that's exactly what we did. And then you got to realize at the time this was the early nineties. Computers were relatively new.

[00:19:36] You know, the PC had just come around. There was just a ton. I'm not saying we weren't good. I think we were really good. But there was just a ton of opportunity to launch something like this back then.

[00:19:48] So that I'm going to say a word that most people think is bad. And I think it's a positive connotation to it. But there was this element of greed. We want to take that and run. But you wanted to add more value for what you were offering.

[00:20:12] You're going to give them more. You're going to add more value. But you wanted to control that and have a better better delivery method and provide more value to the customer. Yeah, it was definitely a combination of both. I mean, it wasn't just the financial motivation.

[00:20:26] It was there's just so much more that can be done here to make the cut because I was all about customer satisfaction. And that was incredibly evidenced through my entire company's journey. We were maniacal about customer satisfaction and to to to the last day of the company's existence.

[00:20:43] And that's that was just because the mindset I had from the very very early on and it just bothered me that this company was making money and not doing anything for it the month after month after month.

[00:20:55] So it was a combination of a little bit financial, but more customer oriented. But that helped you create a perspective on what you wanted your company to deliver. You know, maybe a core value, maybe something something another way to describe that.

[00:21:11] But you wanted that to be an aspect of your company to really deliver a value and make sure that everybody was happy with the outcomes. And exactly. But doing that, did that. Oh, your ability to grow faster? Or did it just allow you to to build on it?

[00:21:34] Did you get more referrals? What was what was in that that allowed you to to grow the to grow the company? Yes, so before we before we became a software company. So again, we started as a services organization and we were doing custom application development.

[00:21:48] The majority of services businesses are built based on reputation and relationships. Right. So we we because we did such good work and we had such great customer satisfaction, we built a great reputation for ourselves in early days in Manhattan and then we expanded broader.

[00:22:04] And then we had we had great relationships. So we continue to to get new opportunities because of those relationships and because of the reputation that we built for ourselves. And then later, once we we morphed into more of a software company,

[00:22:18] you know, the quality that I spoke about the customer satisfaction the needs that we that that we met it helped our software business grow because the product worked every single time when we went and when it didn't, we bent over backwards to make sure that it did.

[00:22:35] So that that philosophy of customer satisfaction permeated its way through, you know, every flavor of our company. So the two questions around that and you feel them the way you want. But as you grow into a software organization,

[00:22:51] we're used sitting in the sales seat and have to transfer that that mentality to a sales team. Was that was that part of it? And then I try and think of the other way to ask this this question, but did was that uncomfortable?

[00:23:07] Like when you started bringing more people in to make sure that that like how did you ensure that they thought about business the way you thought about business? Yeah, it wasn't uncomfortable at all. At first because we weren't an overnight success

[00:23:22] when we launched our software, there was a lot of demand for it. So we bought in a sales. We started with one, obviously. I was known back then as sales support. So the salesperson was was responsible for setting up the meetings.

[00:23:36] And then when it came time to the technical conversation about what the solution does, he would bring me in and that we would be tied at the hip. He would perform the sales function. I would perform the solution architect function or the technical sales support function.

[00:23:51] And we grew from there from from from a two person team that eventually became a 40 person team of account executives plus solution architects. And because it was because I was in the mix from the get go, you know, whatever values I put into place and whatever work ethic

[00:24:08] I put at the place and policies, approaches, etc., etc. that just permeated throughout the sales organization over time. See, you just touched on where I was headed. And I think it has to do with your background in programming.

[00:24:24] But there's a mistake I see a lot when I look at a team a company's sales team and then how they do handoffs to operations or or whatever their platform is that they don't have strong processes and systems in place.

[00:24:42] And you did so that transition to hire more people to grow a team. You did it systematically and you did it as the need required. But you your mind was always build the system because of this programming idea, right? You're building step by step by step.

[00:25:00] I think a lot of entrepreneurs miss that they don't have that background and they don't think about the standard operating procedures. They don't think about the system that allows the consistency. And was that more that was more natural for you? Yeah, it was a little bit.

[00:25:16] I mean, you touched upon it. That definitely makes a lot of sense. It was a lot. It was much more natural for me because of my programming background and systematizing your processes is a key to scaling, right? So because a lot of entrepreneurs sit back and they're frustrated

[00:25:33] as to like why things aren't operating as smoothly as they could be. And then they don't realize that they really haven't put the effort into systematizing it at various processes as much as they should have because that would have made the scaling just go so much easier.

[00:25:48] If you've got a playbook for something, write it down and then educate people on it so that they're not just shooting from the hip and making it up as they go along because everybody will make it up differently.

[00:25:59] Yeah, if you have a sales team of five people and you're trying to scale from there, you know, you're taking what five people are thinking and doing and then trying to get them to all come to one to one playbook. It's really challenging.

[00:26:16] If you if you had it in place and you just keep bringing the right people on to execute and I think that allows you to iterate faster because if you have a set of SOPs to deliver and you bring somebody

[00:26:29] on who's really competent in their role, they will come to you and say, hey, what if we did this at step three, right? Instead of step five and, you know, it's talked through and everybody's open to having that conversation. The iteration process and the scaling process goes quicker.

[00:26:47] Oh, 100 percent. That's a basic function. Yeah, the process needs to be really flexible, right? So there needs to be a process and a playbook in place. But I think the organization, you know, from the top down needs

[00:26:57] to be super flexible so that if and when a better way is discovered that the system can't reject a better way. There's got to be, you know, there's always room for improvement and everything continuously evolves and, you know, pivots are necessary. So it's got to be flexible.

[00:27:15] The rigidity sometimes will kill the process. I like the way you said that, the flexibility from that at the top and being able to be open to it. And it's like my way of the highway thinking that dictatorial kind of is going to kill the scale.

[00:27:34] It's going to kill the culture. But it really starts with having those standard operating procedures and then building and reiterating and building and iterating. And I mean, I've never written code, right? I know that's... Wait, you said you wrote Fortran. Yeah, but that was like 50 years ago.

[00:27:59] I mean, it's just... I don't even remember the little punch things that I did. And those are pretty simple, right? You weren't getting a computer to, I mean, what was it? I mean, we're getting it to execute on basic formulas. What you were doing was much more advanced

[00:28:20] and what you can do now is way more advanced. So I didn't... And it wasn't something that I was good at, right? I took a class to get exposed to it. It looked good on a college application that I was playing around with computers.

[00:28:35] But it wasn't something that I was really good at. And to this day, I struggle with forcing myself to write down the steps that I do, that I take to get things done so I can teach somebody else. And that's... I know that's a weakness of mine.

[00:28:55] So I force myself to like, hey, I'm doing something different here. I got how is that different than what I have done? You know, and I just go back and it's not pretty. And I think that's an important piece. We don't need to make it pretty.

[00:29:09] We just need to document the steps. And it can... And we can just let the team help us. We'll find somebody along the way that'll make them pretty and put him in a book exactly for ourselves. Is there anything else in the book that you think

[00:29:26] is like the highlight at this point to kind of share with the audience when it's available? Like, where do they get it? Sure. So yeah, there's one thing. One of my favorite parts of the book, I'll get into it in a second,

[00:29:37] but it's available today. It was launched in January. It hit the Amazon bestseller list immediately. I was number one for a week or so, which I mean, I thought it was good, but the fact that it's number one for a while just blew my mind.

[00:29:52] So I'm getting some really great feedback on it. So it's available today. The audiobook will be available in, let's say July of this year. And the audiobook is read by an Ironman celebrity named Mike Riley. If anybody listening knows what Ironman is, they know who Mike Riley is.

[00:30:12] So I was honored that he'd agreed to read the book, which is going to be great. That's pretty cool to get somebody to that understands what you are what you're really talking about and has that that experience. They bring that to the to the to the book, right?

[00:30:30] I mean, and that that shows up when you listen. I listen to a lot of book and when when somebody doesn't have that juice, it's it's it's obvious. Yeah, he definitely has a juice. So he's known as the voice of Ironman worldwide.

[00:30:42] So he coined the phrase you are an Ironman. In the early days, when somebody was crossed the finish line, you know, the announcer would do a traditional, hey, Stephen Pym, congratulations, you just finished a race. Hey, Mary Smith, congratulations, you just finished a race.

[00:30:56] And one day somebody was coming across the finish line. He was the announcer and he's like, Joe Smith, you are an Ironman and the crowd went crazy. It was so much better received than, hey, you know, just just a regular

[00:31:09] congratulations and he's been he's been using that term for the last 30. I mean, he retired actually my my Kona race in Hawaii was his last race before he retired. But he used that term for tens of thousands of competitors crossing finish lines across the world for 33 years.

[00:31:30] But that that little thing, like when you're exhausted and all of the energy, that's got to give you a little a little lift. Totally, especially when it's it's somebody that's done it in the past. Yeah, I mean, you can be like just praying to, you know, lay down

[00:31:49] and and curl up into a fetal position just like five minutes prior. But once you come down that finishing shoot and to the cheering crowded to the lights and to the music and to Mike Riley about to yell your name

[00:32:01] announcing you an Ironman, all of a sudden it's like it's it's like a second win, third one, fourth win. And it's a phenomenal feeling. But so I'm going to answer your original question. One of my favorite chapters in the book is called envisioning the finish.

[00:32:19] I'm a huge believer in manifestation and envisioning things be rewind five years prior to my company, sale and the Ironman World Championship. I had a check made out to myself for a specific amount of money that I taped in front of my computer right here

[00:32:36] and also a picture of the Kona banner for the Kona Ironman World Championship. And I had that. So I saw that in my peripheral vision and I also meditated and saw myself selling my company and I saw myself crossing that finish line hundreds of times.

[00:32:55] The human brain, this is scientifically proven, doesn't understand the difference between an event actually happening or an event expertly envisioned. Right. And you don't need to become a meditation guru. You can just watch two YouTube videos and it'll show you exactly how to do what I just described.

[00:33:12] And if you do that over and over and over again, your body subconsciously, your mind subconsciously programs the body into making certain decisions along the path. And so in addition to proactively executing on those strategies, you're subconsciously executing on those strategies.

[00:33:29] And I'm just a huge fan of it. It's worked for me and that's one of my favorite chapters in my book. Well, I'm going to get the book just for that chapter because I actually believe I mean, it goes back to Andrew Carnegie and Napoleon Hill talking about,

[00:33:47] you know, visualizing this stating and at the beginning and end of your day really, you know, walking it through because our and they didn't know they didn't have the science back then. But our subconscious mind is providing us more motivation and more direction and control than we realize.

[00:34:06] So if we start putting that information in, it's like, oh, be serious. We're going to do this. We got up and it will figure out if we ask ourselves and this is how it was positioned to me years ago. If we ask ourselves shitty questions,

[00:34:22] we'll get shitty answers. Underprevent that. If we ask ourselves some really powerful questions about getting what how do I do this or what do I need to learn to get this? Your your your brain will go figure the answers out without you really having to do the lift.

[00:34:39] It will help you guide you there. So that's a that's a great that's a great chapter. I love that. Thank you. And right now I have Everest over there and I have the TEDx stage over there. So my physical feet is going to be Everest.

[00:34:53] My well, not so much business, but I want to take the book on the road. And I've already done a couple of keynotes on the book, which I really, really enjoyed delivering. But I like to get on on a TEDx stage as well

[00:35:05] and share a little bit of the story. Can you combine the two do a TEDx from the top of the mount? That makes. That is also I there's a guy that I follow who just submitted yesterday, literally yesterday.

[00:35:17] And he did the first ever backflip at the top of Everest. So I'm thinking. Yes. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it was I mean, he had crampons on. He was attached. He was he was all roped in attached to the mountain.

[00:35:30] And he just did a backflip and he and he stuck it, which was a super. He took a whiff of oxygen, put the oxygen mask down and then backfliped and got back on the oxygen.

[00:35:41] So it was but after I saw that, I'm like, hmm, like, what can I do upstairs? That's going to be really unique. But if I bring the TEDx flag and I deliver like a. Yeah, you do look a short little video in between sports of oxygen.

[00:35:54] That would be kind of a full little like here's my pitch. Your pitch to do a TEDx talk. You could do 60 second video from top to bottom. 100 percent. And if I can actually land a TEDx talk between now and then because I'm going exactly a year from now,

[00:36:08] if I can land a TEDx or between now and then I can actually have that TEDx banner behind me because then I would have done it. There you go. Awesome. That's a that's that's a cool goal. And I love the manifestation piece of that.

[00:36:22] So, you know, the last question I always ask Agus is past or present a relationship with cigars. And I don't think you you're not smoking a cigar while you're doing it an Iron Man, you're not doing it while you're training.

[00:36:36] You're definitely not going to do it at the top of the summit. But I'm curious any any relationship. No, I definitely love cigars. I don't smoke them anywhere in the air as often as I used to. But when we first moved to New Jersey,

[00:36:49] I became best friends with my next door neighbor and him and I used to call it, you know, Friday afternoon cigar therapy, almost religiously. Every Friday afternoon after work, we would get together in either my backyard or his backyard and we would light one up,

[00:37:04] you know, with a adult beverage. And just give each other therapy. We all he was having business challenges. I was having business challenges. We both have both have two daughters, so there was a lot in common.

[00:37:15] So we would always, you know, have a therapy session with each other over Ashden's and Cohiba's. Nice. I mean, that's a great story that it's a cool thing that it brings commonality, right? So somebody is, you know, having the cigar, but it also helps

[00:37:32] you connect and find those other threads that are common. And, you know, I used to say or the friend of mine, we would sit and have a cigar and an adult beverage and we were going to try to solve the world's problems, right?

[00:37:44] And we never did, but it was it was entertaining, but it was also like you got to know somebody at a much deeper level. Exactly. You remain focused. So that's a great story. I thank you for sharing.

[00:38:00] So to your earlier point of one day we made the mistake. I just got a pool table and to celebrate the pool table, of course, we went down to the basement to play it. And I thought the ventilation was pretty good, but that was a horrible,

[00:38:13] horrible mistake because not only did the basement smell like a cigar for a week, but the rest of the house did too. It permeates. It's not a it tends to linger if we don't it, but it took a couple of weeks for that to get cleared out.

[00:38:31] And then you got clearance to go back and we could go out. You just had to stay outside with this. Yeah, we just we just needed to stay outside, which we did. Great story. So give us again like the book title, the places we can get it.

[00:38:47] I mean, pretty much anywhere books are sold, but Amazon is pretty much. So the book is called Built to Finish, How to Go the Distance in Business and Life. It's available on Amazon. You can also find more information about it and me at my website, StevenPivnic.com.

[00:39:01] And if anybody has any opportunity for me to share the story on stage, I love to share the story. It's entertaining. It's motivational. It's funny. And I would love to motivate individuals in the audience and anywhere. Half laptop will travel anywhere in the world to deliver this.

[00:39:20] Awesome. All right. The audience will have all those details in the show notes and people can reach out, go to your website. You got plenty of ways to reach out on that. I wish you wish you well on your adventure to get to the top of the summit

[00:39:38] and and to get to the stage at a TED talk. Those are both summit chaser type ideas. So congratulations. I know you'll get it done. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on the show. Thank you.