We recently connected with Joe Aul and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Joe thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

My parents provided, and continue to provide a model for how to live. As Catholics, we know that ultimate goal in life, and what truly makes us happy is to become saints. By making that the focus of our life as a family, doing things like starting my business becomes secondary. Contrary to popular belief, that places life in the proper perspective and frees us from the pressure of the outcome, which allows us to make better decisions and have more peace and joy in what we do. And ironically results in a better outcomes for the things we do anyhow. Its a win win!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I started the Aul Bat Company immediately after I graduated from college in 2012. Since I was young, I have been working with my dad, building anything you can imagine. We both loved baseball and I added a love for people and the desire to change the culture through a wholistic approach. By being a witness to my faith and recognizing the parallels that run deep in everything we do, my hope is to bridge the gap between what should be and what is. Everyone should be swinging a wood baseball bat (everyone who plays baseball at least!), not because it performs better than metal bats, (because it doesn’t) but rather because they should. Everyman, knows deep down, he wants to do great things and he also knows, great things are only achieved by doing hard things. By swinging a wood bat (which is harder to do than swinging a metal bat) he taps into that primordial calling to strive for greatness through sacrifice. This is especially hard in our current culture where everyone is swinging a metal bat and its definitely mush easier to not make a big deal out of it, and just say “oh well, everyone is doing it, so I might as well do it.” And to add to the persecution, its a serious limitation swinging a wood bat when everyone else isn’t. BUT in the long run, it does pay off and it is better! So essentially our business is built on a philosophy of life. In a small sort of way, I feel like Steve Jobs who sold you an iPhone before you knew you “needed” one. I want to sell you a wood bat before you know you “needed” one. But its a calling that’s deeper inside and just needs someone to point you in the right direction. That’s our goal as a company, that’s what “Swing Aul or Nothing” is all about.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Basically the whole focus on this interview, for me, is to tell you a story that is counter to the narrative you hear from the rest of the so called self help culture. One of the lessons I had to “unlearn” is that your self worth and business success is not not contingent on how hard you work. Hard work is certainly a valuable and necessary component of life and a valuable virtue/ habit to develop. But too often we place it as the center piece and back bone of success when the reality is that it is much more peripheral to our goals. Hard work is more like a constant and stream that colors the work that we do towards our end goal. If we place it at the center or our attributes, however, we end up with a disordered life, where we are never enough and then we are never truly at peace and happy. And a person not at peace and happy, cannot have the maximum amount of success they could be having. Its like a catch 22. Sure, hard work helps, but its not every thing and it might not even be anything. Its just a tool, an important one, like a hammer, but a hammer cannot do what a screw driver can; so sometimes its not the only thing you need and you may not need it at all even.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I think like most people, covid provided endless opportunities for resilience to be manifest (or unfortunately the lack there of). We are still watching the fallout of this disaster to be played out. And I think a big collapse is already beginning because most folks do in fact lack true resilience. What I learned through covid about my own resilience, is that I need to be detached from any idea of worldly success. If my business fails, so what. Or at least that’s what I want to be able to say. My new plan for resilience is to focus on what I’ve always done, which is to shift focus to skill development, rather than the object itself. In other words, focus on the skills that make my business a success, rather than the success itself. Then if the business does fail because of outside factors (economy etc.) I will still be left with valuable skills I can redirect elsewhere and thus maintain resilience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://aulbatcompany.com/
• Instagram: @aulbatco
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Aulbatcompany/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-aul-81b07b60/
• Twitter: @aulbatco
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh4OWJzhvls
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/aul-bat-company-pittsburgh

Image Credits
All photos are copy right Aul Bat Co. all rights reserved.