Courage and Community-Building are Par for the Course with Alison
Stepping onto a golf course is a serene escape for some, but for Allison Ibarra, it was the beginning of a journey that led her from competitive golf to transforming a dilapidated bowling alley into Pinhead’s Family Fun Center—a community gem in Oak Hill, West Virginia.
Join me as I chat with Allison, a driven entrepreneur and resilient military spouse, who shares how she turned personal challenges into opportunities for community growth and family happiness. Her story is a testament to the power of determination and adaptability. Through Allison’s stories and wisdom lessons, we explore the essence of friendship, community service, and the unique resilience required in the face of life’s challenges.
In today’s conversation with this courageous, servant leader, you will discover Alison’s Main Thing and also learn:
- How a military spouse and her husband coped with long deployments and many months apart;
- How an incredibly productive entrepreneur manages it all;
- How the strongest leaders gain tremendous respect by being peace makers, rather than conflict initiators.
More About Our Guest
Alison is a native West Virginian, born and raised in Oak Hill. She’s a former golfer, who played competitively and worked as a PGA teaching professional.
As a military spouse, married to a counter intelligence agent, Alison Ibarra has lived in many places across America. After many years away from the Mountain State, Alison and her family returned to her home region.
Today, she owns and operates a bowling alley, as Chief Pinhead at Pinheads Family Fun Center of the New River Gorge. Alison also serves as the Director of Economic Development for the City of Oak Hill. This respected community leader is also the mother of two teenage daughters.
Alison and I spoke at her home in Fayetteville, West Virginia.
Resources
Pinheads Bowling Alley & Fun Center website
Connect with Alison on LinkedIn
Movie “Shallow Hal” on IMDB as referenced by Alison Ibarra in this episode
Credits
Editor + Technical Advisor Bob Hotchkiss
Brand + Strategy Advisor Andy Malinoski
PR + Partnerships Advisor Rachel Bell
Marketing, Social Media and Graphic Design Chloe Lineberg
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Episode Chapters
[0:03:25] – Golf and bowling; the vision and strategy behind Pinheads
[0:06:00] – How Skip and Alison are connected – Holly Fussell
[0:06:55] – Life as a military spouse; setting a precedent; flexible domestic roles
[0:11:15] – Time management; avoiding feeling overwhelmed; out-sourcing
[0:12:45] – Alison shares her Main Thing wisdom nugget; inspiration from “Shallow Hal”
[0:15:11] – Wisdom for the golf course
[0:17:16] – Priorities and choices
[0:18:56] – Thoughts on peacemakers; how we react under stress
[0:20:24] – Alison shares views on servant leadership and building community
Keywords
Wisdom, Women, Leadership, Military Spouse, Entrepreneurship, Service, Community, Golf, Bowling, Legacy, West Virginia, Adaptability, Resilience, Life Balance, Personal Growth, Timeless Activities, Inclusivity, Role Changes, Parenting, Family Unity, Prioritizing, Strengths, Weaknesses, Decision-making
Full Transcript of Episode
0:00:00 – Announcer
Wisdom. It’s an incredibly valuable asset, some would say more precious than gold. It’s attractive, appealing, admirable. Conversely, a lack of wisdom is the basis of immaturity, blind spots and bad decisions. Wisdom, it can be gained over time, but it can’t be rushed. But wisdom can be shared. That’s precisely what we are here to do right now. Today. We are here to hack wisdom, to distill it, to understand it and to process it. Why? To get better at life. Welcome to the Main Thing.
This is your new nine-minute podcast. I’m your host, skip Lineberg, and I’ve set out to interview the wisest people I know. We’ll see what we can learn from each one when they’re faced with an incredibly difficult, soul-piercing question.
0:00:59 – Skip Lineberg
Hello and welcome to your wisdom podcast. I’m Skip Lineberg and I’ll be your host today. Twice a month, we bring you a concise, high-impact wisdom lesson, fresh insights and unique perspectives from the wisest people around, studying their wisdom and learning together. We all get just a little better at this thing called life. In today’s episode, you’ll hear from one of the most diverse and fearless guests ever to grace our microphones. You’ll hear how an incredibly productive, high-achieving entrepreneur manages it all, how a military spouse and her husband coped with long deployments and many months apart, and how the strongest leaders gain tremendous respect by being peacemakers rather than conflict initiators. I can’t wait for you to hear from Alison Ibarra in just a few moments.
But first a special shout out of gratitude to our newest patron, Jon, from West Virginia. Thank you so much, Jon, for your generous financial support that helps underwrite the costs of producing this show.
Now here’s a bit more about our wise guest, Alison Ibarra. Alison is a native West Virginian, born and raised in Oak Hill. She’s a former golf pro, who played competitive golf and worked as a teaching professional. As a military spouse, married to a counterintelligence agent, Alison Ibarra has lived in many places across America. After many years away from the Mountain State, Alison and her family returned to her home region. Today she owns and operates a bowling alley as Chief Pinhead at Pinhead’s Family Fun Center in the New River Gorge. Alison also serves as the Director of Economic Development in the city of Oak Hill. This respected community leader is also a busy mother of two teenage daughters.
Alison and I spoke at her home in Fayetteville, West Virginia.
So lace up your golf spikes or your bowling shoes, and get ready. Over the next several minutes, you will discover why Alison Ibarra is one of the wisest people I know.
0:03:03 – Skip Lineberg
Alison Ibarra, welcome to the Main Thing Podcast.
0:03:08 – Alison Ibarra
Skip, thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.
0:03:10 – Skip
We are in such a lovely setting out on your front porch in Fayetteville. It’s a gorgeous fall day. The leaves are in full color. Just a little slice of heaven right here.
0:03:22 – Alison Ibarra
It is. We’re really thankful to be able to live here.
0:03:24 – Skip
Alison, are you a better golfer or a better bowler?
0:03:27 – Alison Ibarra
I’m a better golfer, for sure I’ve actually. I have a tendon injury on my right arm. I can’t put any weight really on my hand with a bowling ball if my palm is facing upward oh gosh, yeah. So it makes that a pretty easy question. It’s definitely golf, because it’s the only of the two sports that doesn’t hurt me. But I can still ride a mountain bike and hit a speed bag, a punching bag, so for me it’s well enough. I’ll take it.
0:03:54 – Skip
Well, speaking of bowling, you have a bowling alley called Pinheads Fun Center. I love the name. Why did you decide to open a bowling center and what do you enjoy most about all that?
0:04:09 – Alison Ibarra
The decision to open the bowling center kind of came out of nowhere. It had more to do with the lifestyle of us being able to raise our daughters here in southern West Virginia, than it did the business itself. We knew that we wanted to do something that would help build the community up at the same time that we were able to financially support our family. Now that our girls are 12 and 14, I could not imagine a better place to raise them.
0:04:32 – Skip
I understand this is a community legacy bowling center that you bought and remodeled, modernized.
0:04:42 – Alison Ibarra
It is, yeah, so it was originally White Oak Lanes, opened in 1962. I worked there when I was in high school. When I graduated high school in 2001, I never imagined coming back to live here in a million years. Went off to college in North Carolina met Jose, my husband. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. We never in a million years thought we would come back.
The bowling alley itself was almost a condemned building when we started this whole process in 2013. So what we wanted to do when we built this back, was we wanted to build something that would incorporate more members of the community, more of the visitors that are coming to this area. And then turn around and give it right back to the community. So, in our modernization process, I’m very proud of what we did and that’s exactly how it’s worked out. It’s something that kids can enjoy. It’s something that older generations can enjoy. You don’t have to be great at it to have a good time. So those are some of the things, especially with golf and bowling in particular, there are very few sports that have that kind of connection to so many generations.
0:05:50 – Skip
Timeless. Yeah, play it for the rest of your life. Pinheads Fun Center Love the name. Is there a website we can link to in the show notes?
0:05:58 – Alison Ibarra
There is, I appreciate it. It’s pinheadsnewrivergorge dot com.
0:06:01 – Skip
Oh cool. Okay, We’ll tuck that in the show notes for listeners.
Let’s talk about our mutual friend, Holly Fussell. You know Holly’s a previous guest on Episode 112. Tell us a little bit about how you met Holly and how long you’ve known her.
0:06:15 – Alison Ibarra
She is one of the most genuine people that you will ever come across, and she’s genuine, selfless. She’s a very hard worker, incredible. An incredible business acumen as well, and her ability to be able to tell when is it time to use your head, when is it time to use your heart, when’s it time to use the balance. And when’s it time to back up and realize that you just messed something up and now you need to either go apologize or correct course. She has such an incredible balance when it comes to business and family and leadership.
0:06:49 – Skip
Yeah.
0:06:50 – Alison Ibarra
And you know, for us as well, we have a similar background in being military families.
0:06:55 – Skip
Yeah, I’d love to hear your perspective on what it’s like being a military spouse and your family’s journey, how that might have affected and shaped your values, your mindset.
0:07:09 – Alison Ibarra
Being a military spouse in particular. There’s something during deployments in particular, Jose and I have been through. He was through nine deployments. All said and done.
0:07:19 – Skip
Oh my gosh wow.
0:07:20 – Alison Ibarra
Some of those as short as three months, some of those a year, and in those nine deployments we’ve been together for either six or seven of them. I guess after a while you kind of lose count. We only got to the point where we had spent as much time together as we had apart in 2019. And we’ve been together since 2004.
0:07:42 – Skip
Oh my gosh. Wow.
0:07:44 – Alison Ibarra
He spent more time at FOB Salerno in Afghanistan for quite a while, than we had together. Jose and I have this understanding that for him it was very hard to leave our life behind, so to speak, to deploy, or to to go forward, but it’s also really difficult being the one that gets left behind.
0:08:06 – Skip
I would imagine so.
0:08:08 – Alison Ibarra
One of the lessons that he really taught me during that was this concept of you should set a precedent. So in his, especially where he was in counter-terrorism intelligence, he had set the precedent that he was calling home every day from the first day he showed up. That’s not normal in the Army.
0:08:22 – Skip
Yeah, I would imagine not
0:08:24 – Alison Ibarra
At least not in what they were doing in counter-terrorism intelligence. But he set the precedent right out of the gate, and so it was just an expected thing that he was going to do every day with his team was he was going to call home.
0:08:36 – Skip
That became the normal.
0:08:38 – Alison Ibarra
That was the norm. Yes, so I’ve taken that in other times in my life where I’ve decided you know, this is something that’s important to me, so right out of the gate, no matter how uncomfortable I feel. If this is really important to me, right out of the gate, we’ll set the precedent and it’s that’s been something that’s helped in quite a few situations.
Kind of helped me keep my sanity. And you know, one thing that also I thought changed with being a military family is the time that I feel he should have been spending figuring out how to fix lawnmowers and fix the plumbing and patch the roof. That’s been kind of a fun part with being a military family is how our roles have switched, just based on where we were in life and where he was in a deployment.
0:09:23 – Skip
And, as a parent, for your daughters, to see that that these roles are dynamic, not fixed. It’s okay for the husband to cook. It’s okay for mom to go fix the breaker when it’s tripped. It’s okay for mom to mow the grass.
You know you mentioned something setting a precedent earlier, and I wanted to thank you for that concept, because Lisa, my wife and I are in a new life stage, as I mentioned to you when we were getting acquainted. But our kids are both in college now and we’re empty nesters, and so they’re close enough. They’re 45 minutes from home and in this adjustment period, I don’t know that we’ll do this forever, but right now, every Thursday night, we go over and we meet them, either in Huntington or we meet up halfway and we have dinner together as a family. We’ve set that precedent. We haven’t missed a week yet, and so that’s the new normal, and it helps us all to stay connected and adjust to this new phase.
That’s great, so set a precedent. That gives me language to describe what we’re doing. We were doing that intuitively and now intentionally, I know that we’re setting a precedent, so that’s cool.
0:10:35 – Alison Ibarra
I wonder if that has a similar feel to when you go to church every Sunday, for example. That’s your refresh, not necessarily restart, but your refocus, to make sure that what you’re doing with your family and with your life is giving honor to the Most High and serving others.
Well, you’ve got to make sure you keep your family together. No matter the lifestyles that we lead, if we don’t teach our kids what it means and what it takes to live a life that’s worthy of you being a person that can make it to heaven, then our lives have kind of been a waste of time.
0:11:11 – Skip
Nothing more important. I totally agree. Nothing more important than that.
0:11:17- Skip
How do you fit it all in and do you ever feel overwhelmed?
0:11:21 – Alison Ibarra
I do feel overwhelmed, more often sometimes than I would like to. So if this is the lifestyle that I’ve chosen, yeah, I want to serve others. I want to be the most present mother I can possibly be.
0:11:35 – Skip
Right on.
0:11:36 – Alison Ibarra
So if I want to do these things and wife and mother. I can’t forget the husband—none of this works without him. But if I want to do those kind of things then the overwhelming is just going to be part of it sometimes and I better figure out how to get myself through it. So I keep a schedule.
You know there are days when my schedule starts at 6:45 am with dropping the two kids off at high school. And then it ends at sometimes 9:30 or 10 o’clock pm, when we’re getting back from a volleyball game or I’m ending a meeting, or whatever the day may be, and every chunk is is planned out. And then, when I’m finished planning my chunks of time, my time blocks and I realized that, oh my gosh, I’ve got several things that I needed to do today that I can’t get to.
It is it’s just not mathematically possible. That’s my cue that it’s time to go pay somebody else to do some of that stuff yeah, and then just just move from there, and that’s actually something that I learned from holly. Okay was to to realize where are these things that I’m doing and occupying my time with that? I don’t need to do that. I can pay somebody else to do Cleaning the house was the best one. I really appreciate that advice.
0:12:52 – Skip
Alison Ibarra, what’s the main thing you’ve learned in your lifetime so far?
0:12:57 – Alison Ibarra
Skip, the main thing I’ve learned in my life so far is play the hand you’re dealt.
0:13:03 – Skip
Tell me about that. I love that phrase.
0:13:05 – Alison Ibarra
Where I got it from, oddly enough, this would have been I think it was my second year of college. It was 2001or 2002 timeframe. I was watching. At that time in my life I think people pleasing was probably the main focus it was. I was very concerned with how people thought about me, or how did I look from the outside, looking in. So it had nothing to do with how I looked at the world as much as it did this total concern with how do other people view me and what I’m doing.
0:13:38 – Skip
Yeah.
0:13:38 – Alison Ibarra
And it was: what should I be doing right now? Based on somebody else’s made up criteria, not my own.
And a movie of all things. Go figure right, it’s college, so a movie. It was called Shallow Hal, which is a pretty dumb movie. But there’s one point in this movie, as I was watching it, that the main character, Hal, looks at this guy named Walt who has spina bifida. And he’s walking on all fours. Somebody else comes in, some other actor from the side criticizes this guy Walt for his lifestyle. Hal’s response to this this critic was: Well, he’s just playing the hand he was dealt.
And that phrase, it’s the dumbest place for motivation I can probably think of, but that phrase stuck with me. I’m always going to have my own unique strengths and advantages, and I’m also going to have my own weaknesses. Well, look at them. I do have strengths and advantages, and I will play to those when I can. Use those to your advantage. And then, when you see the things that are your weaknesses, stop and take a look at those, too. Does it matter to you? A lot of times it doesn’t matter, but until you stop and think about it, you don’t realize that it’s really not that important. You haven’t acknowledged its lack of importance. So for me, that sparked the idea of playing the hand you’re dealt. Look at what you have going for you.
0:15:11 – Skip
Let me ask you if I could take you to the golf course and apply that main thing, wisdom nugget, that principle—play the hand you’re dealt. How might that come into play in a round of golf?
0:15:21 – Alison Ibarra
You know, it comes to play in a round of golf the same way it does in life, because there are so many times where you’ll have the best of intentions.
My intention is to hit my driver 260 yards, right down the dead center of the fairway. So I’ll set up, do everything, just like I think I need to do to make that happen. Step up to the ball totally confident, ready to go, and then I hook the ‘beejeezus’ out of the thing. And the next thing I know, I’m 40 yards off to the left, under a bunch of trees sitting close to a bee’s nest, blocked out. And I’ve got to figure out how to play from there.
Well, if I’m standing there at this next shot that I have to play to try to get my ball to the green from under the trees and I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, this is so unfair. My swing was perfect. I did not deserve to be here.”
If you think about that next shot only by considering the shot before, you’re doomed. So look at where you are now. That’s playing the hand you’re dealt.
Well, maybe I’ve got 160 yards of a punch shot that I’ve got to hit a slice under some trees to try to get to the next safe place for me to play on that hole. Yeah, so be it. This is where I am. Here’s what I have. What’s my smartest play from here? And so many times in life, I think there are parallels there. And then you stop and think what’s important?
You know so in golf it’s like well is, is a birdie important? Do I have to get a birdie? Am I going for the green, no matter what?
0:16:56 – Skip
Maybe what’s important is avoiding that double bogey.
0:16:59 – Alison Ibarra
Exactly, exactly. So, you’ll play it differently. For that reason, and I think when you’re looking at decisions in life and you apply this kind of philosophy to a decision, it’s the same concept what’s important, especially when it comes to our business, for example, with pinheads.
0:17:16 – Skip
Yeah.
0:17:16 – Alison Ibarra
So the question is: what’s important? Okay, with Pinheads, if I’m sitting on a pile of money, and my kids don’t have anything to do with me, well, that’s great. I’ve run a very profitable business. Gold star! Congratulations!
But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that we have a family, that our family’s together and we’re grateful for one another. We support one another.
And, on the community side, I want this to be a place that my girls feel like they can come back and make a life if they want to. So that’s what matters. Which means it’s not as much money, of course. But I’m okay with that because I get to spend more time playing with my kids than clocking in and out in our business.
0:17:59 – Skip
That’s a great example, great application of “play the hand, you’re dealt.”
0:18:04 – Alison Ibarra
I also think you can add more cards to your hand, so to speak.
0:18:06 – Skip
Talk about that.
0:18:07 – Alison Ibarra
You can read books sometimes and learn a new skill or a new way to think about something from that book. Well, that’s another card you’ve got in your hand.
0:18:14 – Skip
For sure, Alison. Your main thing: play the hand, you’re dealt, I love it. It’s straightforward, it’s powerful. How can a listener take this wisdom and apply it to their life tomorrow? What’s an action step someone could take to begin to put this into practice?
0:18:34 – Alison Ibarra
I think an action step would be to stop and humbly consider your strengths and what you’re good at and what you enjoy. When we compare ourselves to others sometimes we stop ourselves well short of our potential in some areas.
0:18:56 – Skip
Alison. From your Facebook profile I see that you hold dear to the prayer of St Francis.
0:19:04 – Alison Ibarra
I do.
0:19:06 – Skip
I want to talk a little bit about peacemakers. The first line in that says Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Tell me a little bit about that. Why does our world need peacemakers, and why is that so dear to you?
0:19:16 – Alison Ibarra
I think we have a choice, whether we realize we do or not, and it’s something that my husband and I have really focused to teach our girls, too, is the way we react to others and the way we react to situations is a choice. And what we’ve taught the girls is the way you feel your reactionary, emotional impulse is the way you feel your reactionary emotional impulse, so to speak. That’s not a choice, that you feel how you feel, recognize it, acknowledge it, but then how you act after that first 10 seconds, that’s a choice.
So, when it comes to us being people that can build people, being someone who can build folks up, as opposed to tear folks down … Peace, divine Master. Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love with all my soul. That’s the meat and potatoes of the prayer of St Francis of Assisi.
0:20:22 – Skip
Beautiful, beautiful.
0:20:24 – Alison Ibarra
And to me, this concept is we are servants to others. That’s what we were put on this world to do, and that, for me personally, is where I find meaning in life is in service to others, especially my family and especially my community. It’s a choice, so why choose to pick a fight? That’s stressful.
0:20:48 – Skip
It is, I agree.
0:20:50 – Alison Ibarra
Such is life, right? We’re all going to win some, and we’re going to lose some, but as long as you do the right thing and continue to pursue understanding of what the right thing, is you’re going to sleep just fine at night.
0:21:07 – Skip
I love your main thing: “Play the hand, you’re dealt,” and I just want to give you the next bit of time here as open mic time for you to leave our audience of listeners with a thought, an intention, an idea.
0:21:21 – Alison Ibarra
Don’t think that who you are right now is who you always have to be. We always get better. If we’re not getting better, then that was a choice.
For me. I love to read. Learning new skills.
Your skills that you have don’t define who you are. How you treat people that defines who you are.
But skills are things that you learn and you accumulate, and those you get to play when you need them. So just keep accumulating skills. It’s really fun and I think it gives us more options and better outcomes in many, many scenarios in our lives.
0:21:55 – Skip
Well, that’s a great place to leave it. Alison, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on the Main Thing podcast today.
0:22:01 – Alison Ibarra
Well, Skip, I appreciate your time. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you.
0:22:04 – Skip
So long for now.
0:22:08 – Announcer
That goes by incredibly fast, doesn’t it? Time flies when you’re hacking wisdom. Thank you for listening to this wisdom conversation. If you enjoyed this podcast and found the wisdom lesson valuable, then I encourage you to share it with a loved one or friend. Did you know? Podcast recommendations from one person to another remain the strongest form of podcast growth worldwide? It’s true, and we’d appreciate you helping spread the good word.
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Well, that’s a wrap for this show. I’m your host, Skip Lineberg, signing off for now and inviting you to join us again next time for another special delivery of wisdom.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
