Ep 1: Welcome Episode – Who is Ron Bockstahler and Why This Book?

Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Doug Sandler from Turnkey Productions, host of the Nice Guys on Business podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about balance. Not the kind that you finally master standing one foot on yoga. I still don't know how to do that.

This is more about balancing life and business without falling flat on your face. My guest today is Ron Boxdaller. He's a man who not only built a successful business but also managed to have a life outside of it, an actual fulfilling life. He's here to tell us how to do the same and I, for one, am taking notes. Ron, welcome to the podcast.

Great to be back. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to have you here. Now, you wrote this book and I want to share a little bit about it. We'll make sure we put a link in the show notes so those that are in our listening audience will have a chance to grab the book.

What inspired you to write Don't Lose Your Balance? As I looked, when I was thinking about it, I didn't think I was going to write a book. I was trying to figure out what I had done successful in the last 23 years of owning my company besides staying in business and it kept coming back to it's that life I've led an amazing balanced life and, in fact, I could actually take it to Josh, a client of mine, saying, "Ron, I wish I had your life" and I thought, "Okay, I'm going to put that down" and then it became a book. Isn't that great? I mean, isn't that so nice when somebody recognizes it before you even maybe have a chance now you're living it so you're in it, you can't see the forest for the trees sometimes.

Share a little bit about your background and how it helped you shape the writing of this book. Absolutely. So, I started my company 23 years ago with two major goals in mind and one was to go to every home, cubs game and then the second was to have children. I wanted to settle because I was a workaholic and I wanted to settle myself down and figure out a way that I could spend – have kids and spend time with them so that's why I started my company. So, kind of going back to traveling, you know, a gazillion miles a year, always busy, didn't have any – anyone to stay at home, I wasn't married back then and it was a great life but that wasn't the life I was going to be able to, you know, do what I always wanted to do which was to have a family and raise my children.

So, let's talk about this for just a moment because I think it's important and I know we discussed it before I hit record today and a little bit when we had a preliminary call, everybody faces these struggles, you know, to find that balance. I'm curious, the guy that wrote the book, you, what struggles did you face in balancing business and life yourself? I don't think I had a life. I think I was all about work and that was like the enjoyable thing in my life. It's funny, Doug, so we've had, I believe, six – we cater to the legal industry, so attorneys are our primary clients and we've had six of them actually pass away either in their office or while, you know, while they were still in that working phase which is – you kind of look at that and you think, "Wow, that's a lot." But two of them had told me, "I'm going to die right here in my seat, I'm never going to retire" and I thought, "Wow, that's an interesting perspective" and, you know, and they live the life they want to live, you know, make choices in life.

But for me, I knew that wasn't, you know, if I'm going to never retire, I want to make sure I'm enjoying that journey. So I know that attorneys will probably be on that reading list of yours that I hope is to have some in that market because you've experienced that firsthand. Who else do you hope would read this book and maybe share a little bit of why? I think anyone that's going to go out and start their business, I want them to read the book and understand why you're starting your business. Don't do it because you just want to get rid of your job or you want to make a change.

Because you're going to have a great life by starting a business. It don't mean that it has to be your entire life. It's interesting, if you go to Europe and spend time maybe going to a restaurant and they'll seat you with maybe another couple at the same table, that's pretty common and you could sit and talk to that couple for two hours and what you do for a living never comes up. You know, take that same scenario in the United States, first of all, they're probably never going to set you with someone else at that table. But if you just go out and talk to someone, one of the first questions is always what do you do for a living?

So we identify ourselves with our work and we forget about all those other things in life. Well, when it comes to work-life balance and the people that are trying to engage fully that concept, what are some misconceptions that people might have about work-life balance? I think the biggest misconception is I'll just make it happen. You know, creating a work-life balance is a very intentional action. I mean, you're going to spend as much time – if you're spending hours with your executive team creating or you are the executive team creating that business plan for your business and what you're going to do this year, you actually need to do the exact same thing on your personal life.

If you have a spouse or if it's just you, if you've got friends or whatever you want to do, you actually need to spend just as much time planning that out and then merging the two together to make sure they're going to work. I can remember just as a side note, just as an example of exactly what you're saying, I moved to California about eight years ago and I was running hard and I had been running hard for probably 35 years of my career and I discovered that hopefully there's got to be some balance that's going to be happening. My daughter looked at my schedule because we were doing some screen sharing online and talking about things and she said, "Dad, I don't even see a slot on your schedule for you time, you don't even have a gym slot or a hiking slot and you love doing outside stuff and you love working on your cars, you don't even have any personal time R&R on your schedule at all." It's just kind of like when you're paying your bills, oftentimes people get whatever is leftover and I was allowing and providing for the leftovers for my own personal time and she said, "Why don't you just start with just putting some me time on your schedule?" I did it and I had a conversation with my girlfriend about it at the time and we decided Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays were going to be this type of activity, Tuesdays and Thursdays and I actually put it in my schedule and over the last eight years since it's been in my schedule, I pretty much haven't missed an opportunity to spend me time. There is no correlation between harder working and more success and it took me a little while to realize that. I'm just curious, did you find the same thing when you started to schedule it for real?

That's a great story and that's exactly what I used to experience was I would have work time but there was nothing else in my life and it wasn't until I decided to start training for an Ironman race, I think it was really kind of clicked on me, I actually have to schedule that time. You know, when you're doing a training for an Ironman, you might be doing two a day workouts which means you got one in the morning and you got one in the evening, so you can't skip that one in the morning and push it to the evening all too often because you already got something there. So actually, like you said, put that on my calendar as religiously as I put a meeting with a client or a prospect. Right. I find that in the beginning phases of doing it, it was uncomfortable.

It was uncomfortable to say no to a prospective client especially because that's money potentially coming in the door when they wanted to schedule at a time that was me time and I always would think in my brain in the beginning, "Well, I'll just find another time to put the gym on my schedule or hiking on my schedule or an R&R activity on my schedule." And when I was doing that, I discovered that I was then, I was upset with not only myself but I kind of was a little bit antagonistic with the person that set the appointment which was, you know, it was not helping the whole reason why I rescheduled it. So a lot of people in the beginning, they're going to be overwhelmed, they feel overwhelmed. What should they do so that they don't get that feeling? What's the first thing? So I think – and I kind of had that exact same experience because I couldn't imagine not being in my office at 7.30 in the morning because I kind of grew up living that life where you were just always first one in, that's what you did.

So first thing I had to do was just come to realization that I have got to be dedicated to doing other things or I'm never going to achieve the other things that I want to do. So you've got to just realize that set your time – if you're going to be coming into work, schedule when you're going to come into work and then follow that. If you're going to go for a run in the morning, schedule that time you're going to go for a run and stick to it. I think that's the biggest thing is you write it down and you do it. That's my biggest advice that worked for me and it really helped me stay focused and give myself some grace because I think we're our own biggest critics, right?

We look at ourselves and go, no, I can't do that. It's not someone looking over our shoulder going, oh, you know, don't do that, it's ourselves. I agree with you and I think there's a 101 which is just starting to schedule your time and then there's the 201, realizing that your feelings of kind of like a little bit upset with yourself that you've scheduled it. If you were so in the habit for 35 years of doing the same thing, it's not going to come as easily as you wanted to. So the 201 part is understanding you have those feelings.

I am not big on travel, however, my girlfriend is and whenever there's a conversation about travel, my first instinct is to say, no, I don't want to do it or no, because I love my home. I love my bed. I love my routine. And so just realizing it, you know, the first part of resolving the problem is admitting you have the problem to begin with. So again, I'd love to hear your comments about that.

I think that's very true. That's realizing we all have that issue that first of all, it's the nature of who we are because we're entrepreneurs. We're going to start our own business for a reason, generally, because we're, you know, go getters. We're going to make something happen. So it's not unusual that we'll find people in our positions that are, I'd say, workaholics.

We put in a lot of time to be successful and we generally love what we do, so we're very passionate about it. You know, for me, it was finding something else that I could be passionate about and realizing there's other pieces, you know, of life that I need to pay attention to that became – and then I had to give them as much attention as I gave my business. I want to talk about the book for a moment. I'd love to go on and share a little bit about, you know, while I would love to say competition, there's really no competition when somebody's relating to the stories that somebody's going to tell. Your stories are very unique, but you're dealing with a comparison between you and the 10,000 other self-help books and business books that come out.

How do you feel like you differ in this book than many of the other authors that have written their pages? Well, I think I'm a pretty good expert on this subject because I've consumed a lot of those self-help books, how to start a business. You know, I remember coming out of the Marine Corps and having it down to a T is I'm going to get an accounting degree, I'm going to learn sales because those are the top two things that you need to know to become a CEO. So, just look back on all those things I read, but no one really ever told me or talked to me about having a full life. It was always about business, start your business, here's things you're going to do.

And so, when I looked at, when this became a book, I guess, you know, writing down my thoughts and everything became a book, I started thinking like, what have I done that was unique? I guess, you know, that first thing would have been, you know, in eight years going to all 50 states in an RV with my kids, I remember that first trip, it was six weeks and I literally lost my phone for 10 days and didn't realize I lost my phone. So, talk about your baptism by fire is walking away from your business and trusting the people you've left in charge and let's see how it goes. The greatest thing when I came back, it realized I made more money while I was gone. So, I don't know what that says about me as a business guy, maybe I'm the one spending the money, but it was, that's one of those aha moments in life going, I don't have to be here.

You know, it's almost we're too important for ourselves. I think we talked about delegation later on because that's a great, we'll get into that. But the more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is. I think about, oh, sorry, go ahead, Ron. No, no, I said that's a hard lesson for us big ego people to really swallow.

I completely agree. You know, one of the expressions out there, never compare your beginning to someone else's middle. And if you're listening to this and you're saying, well, yeah, Ron had built a successful business then he walked away to take that 10 year, you know, that 10 day or 10 month or whatever, one month. How long were you on the road? Did you say?

That first one was six weeks. Six weeks on the road, he had built a business that he had a team behind him. So if you're someone that's brand new to business or growing your business and you're not at the phase where you could walk away because you're the only one running your business, I remember that the very early stages, don't say this will only work for someone that is experienced in business and built a big business. You can do even the simplest things like putting some me time on your, on your schedule, but it's a great story and a lesson learned as you, as advanced through your, through your work-life balance, I guess bell curve, because at some point you're absolutely, it is a bell curve. It's totally.

So talk to your early career self. Let's go back to you getting out of college or starting that first job. Talk to that for that early year person in your career. What key lesson do you want to share or had you wished you learned a little bit earlier in your life that you know now? I think in most early years, I seen early success as a salesperson coming out of college.

And if I look back and if I were to give myself advice, I would have been saying, think forward to what you want the future to look like instead of just living for the day. You know, as you're a young salesperson, at least this hour you used to be with, you know, debt management. So you, as you're building up and you're becoming successful, your manager, be going, oh, buy that new house, buy that new car, finance that. So the more debt you had, the harder you had to work to get those commissions to pay all those bills. And looking back, I thought, boy, that's a really bad way to start off on life.

Great success, but some really big mistakes financially there. That's the tail wagging the dog. And I think any manager or C-level person that's encouraging you to go into more debt or take on more responsibility before you're actually ready for it is somebody that really wants to lock you into the position so that you can't leave and you're not in a really good negotiating spot when you're at a disadvantage that way. Very true. All right.

Let's talk about success and balance coexisting. Now I know the book is all about that, but talk about the process. Is it a constant struggle or is there a point where you get to a little bit more of an easy street? Boy, is it easy? Yes, I think he's a perspective, right?

You got to put in everyone's has their own perspective. I think it's a process and it's always a continuous process. If you're in business, this is our 23rd year, if you're going to make it to 30 years, you're gonna have to change your business and keep evolving your model. Technology's changing so quick that so many things are thinking. So you always got to be working on your business.

So for me, it was always about putting that process in place that I can grow and expand, but still have my life. So it's kind of – and by the way, life changes too. If you look at life in like sets of 20 years or blocks of 20 years, you got those 20 years where you're going through all your schooling, you may have that next 20 where you're raising your kids and then you get into that next 20 where your kids are going off to college and it's you and your wife or your spouse, whoever it is and you're like, wow, we're up the nesters and now it's a whole different life. So there's different phases of your life, so you're always making adjustments. So it's never easy street, it's always a process.

As we start to wind down this particular episode and we have several more that we'll be following. So if you are in our listening community, make sure you tune in to the other episodes that are coming out just on the tail end of this one. What do you want the listeners to this podcast to take away from our conversation today? I want people to walk away going they can have a happy successful life and achieve their career goals of what they want to do either if it's starting a business and growing that business and just living a really happy life or if it's an even if you're staying in a job or a position if you're a lawyer for a big firm, you could still have a happy enjoyable life. Just plan for both, put equal emphasis on both and you're going to see some great successes and you're going to realize you can be very happy.

That is a wrap to this conversation, Ron. I really do appreciate you sharing your wisdom again for those in our community. Stay tuned for more episodes coming out. Thanks for being here today, Ron. Much appreciated, Doug.

Big thanks to Ron Buxdaller for sharing his insights on how to build a balanced life and business all at the same time without losing your sanity. If you want to dive deeper, grab a copy of his book, Don't Lose Your Balance, Live Life, or Build a Business. Do both. It's packed with real world advice, practical steps, and a few hard-earned lessons that you won't want to miss. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and follow.

Leave a review and share it with a friend who really needs some work-life balance in their life. Thanks for listening. And I'll see you next time.