Story
Who is Joe Bowers and How Did He Discover The Distil Factor?
 In 1996 I was one of the youngest ever partners of Coopers & Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers). I worked with the likes of Channel 7, Boral, GIO, QBE, and Transfield and had been responsible for the Sydney Indirect Tax Division which doubled its size to 40 people with $10M revenue in two years.
That was the good news. The not-so-good-news was I was working long hours and those long hours came at a cost. I rarely saw my 4 children, (Tom, Sam, Jack and Em), I missed many of their school and sports performances, and my wife of 10 years (Margie) and I were like the proverbial ships passing in the night.
One night I came home, after yet another 12 hour day and my wife expressed her deep dissatisfaction with our relationship. It was then that I started thinking about life. I realised that what I was doing wasn’t as fulfilling as it could be and as soon as I realised that, I knew that I couldn’t keep doing it.
By mid 1996, although I had 6 mouths to feed and wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do, I left.
It wasn’t long before I recognised that despite some success as a leader and manager, my knowledge of those subjects was somewhat limited. So I went on a search to discover everything I could and in particular, the best on the planet.
What my search revealed was:
 It is very difficult, if not impossible, for leaders to keep up to speed with all the emerging leadership and management issues.
- The best of the best in any area - be it marketing, change management, community development or leadership itself - involves a practical and systematic approach that integrates literally all concepts relevant to that area.
- The most successful leaders are those that have a high degree of integrity.
It was then that I realised the overlap between what the market place needed and a mission that I could get behind.
I was also mindful of the fact that as important as the best theories and practices are, at the end of the day, what really matters is how we use them to enhance the quality of life of our fellow human beings.
So I settled on our mission:
“To enhance the quality of life of humanity through distilling and delivering the best of the best to busy leaders.”
That’s my story!
Joe Bowers
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