What skateboarding taught me about life, love, art, and business.

As an awkward 12 year old,  I was too nearsighted to play baseball or hockey well, to prideful and vain to wear the glasses that my parents weren't too cheap to buy (this did not include the cool ones), and I had no neighborhood kids to play with.  What I did have was a lot of energy and long concrete driveway. So I started skateboarding.  A lot.

When I started to commit myself to learning tricks, I unknowingly enrolled in an amazing school.  I deeply learned 3 great lessons.  I will explain those here, and later I will share how this understanding lead back to a life of meaning and excitement after confronting the fact that it is all a game, and much of it might not matter.

First off, 80% of landing anything is your mental image of making it, and the state you put yourself in.  Most skaters are surprisingly affected by the video parts they watch before they go skate, the shoes and clothes they are wearing, and all of them visualize tricks often and intensely.  Big handrails, drops, and anything worth filming requires that you banish all images of failure from your mind and really use rituals to put yourself into state.  Watch someone filming for a deadline, and you may witness some real craziness, as we all come to realize the gravity of the mental and the paradoxes of trying to maintain a mindset on your own steam.

The second great lesson of the skate spot is that you can only learn one thing at a time.  I have learned, forgotten, and re-learned dozens, maybe hundreds of tricks, and I have never learned two simultaneously.  Moreover, the best riders are always doggedly persistent in there learning of new things.  Some are clever enough to do this subtly while others struggle so hard it becomes a bit of a spectacle.  All athletes learn the value of persistence, but what is cool about skateboarding is there is usually no coach to push you and most skate almost solely to learn new tricks or apply them to new things.  You have to learn how to keep yourself to a difficult task for no good reason other than to get it.  I think artists, surfers, and musicians probably get this similarly, and the derivative sports get it too.

Lastly, there is the realization at some point that many fun things are a bit of a gamble, and often we need to block out the reality of the loss to enjoy it.  When skating a handrail for instance, sacking ones testicles on the railing is much more bad than landing the trick is good.  But if we were perfectly rational and never took risks, it would be no fun.  Life is similar.  Loving someone truly is a great risk.  Going into business is a great risk.  Building wealth in a litigious and envious culture is a great risk, and I didn't know what real fear was until I had a beautiful son and daughter to protect and provide for.  All of this holds the potential for a hard fall, yet I still feel like the luckiest guy on the planet to be out there in it.

So get your head straight, get stoked, focus, persist, and try something big.  Thank you for reading. Next time I will share how I found a endless spring of reasons to use these lessons learned.  
     

Abundant everything.

In my junior year of high school my economics teacher introduced me to the "first law of economics": scarcity.  Supposedly, there are unlimited desires and limited resources, so we all need to fight over the size of the slice of our pie.  Three years later I learned that it was complete BS.  In fact, I think scarcity may be one of the most pernicious lines of crap I've been fed.  In fact, when I ponder some of the biggest, fastest growing, most dynamic, companies in the US, they all dominate industries that didn't really exist 20 years ago.  It's a bit boggling when you step back, but

• social media
• smartphones
• tablets computing
• online retailing
• search engines 

are all phrases that were not in the public's consciousness in 1992.  As always, innovation and creativity expand markets indefinitely and add value to all.  There is no fixed edge to the pie.

What does this have to do with concrete, craftwork, or small business?  Well, I found out recently that this also applies a little to the personal wattage we have to do our daily things.  I was honored recently to speak at the Concrete Decor Show, and I really wanted to bring some substance to the talk.  I had attended so many classes where it seemed like the presenter was just filling time with rhetoric and didn't have many real points to make.  I so did not want to be that guy.  So instead, I made the densest 80-some slide presentation I could, and ran through it in a little over an hour (rather than the 2 expected).  I was excited, not well paced, and I'm pretty sure I totally overwhelmed at least a third of the room.  I really hope I'm just being hard on myself and that at least a handful of people got real value out of it, but what I re-learned is that all we ever have is this moment.  Therefore, there is no limit to how many things we can do really well if we stay there.

When I was delivering my ideas, I thought that it would be a process over time, and I was gearing it to what their next step would be with the worksheets and programs I had written for estimating jobs and doing inventory within a decorative concrete company.  I felt like there wasn't enough time to get it all in.  I re-learned that this moment right now, we can either be fully engaged and performing, or out of phase; that whenever we are in future time or the past we burn much more energy than when we are in flow.  Lastly, I discovered that there is an endless supply of creative energy to tap into, and that excellence in one area (fitness, understanding Scripture, business performance, loving truly, creating great art, what-have-you) often pours over into all other areas.  Conversely, "not sweating the small stuff" is only a good transitional strategy out of neurosis.  There is no small stuff.  There is no big stuff.  There is just stuff.  And we can make a lot of it great or we can make it lame.  It's all in this moment.

 

The paradox of work for work's sake.

Aldous Huxley once wrote "They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't' see how they really are."  That stung me when I first read it years ago, but tonight burying myself in work sounds pretty good.

Life can get overwhelming, and stay overwhelming long enough to need a rest; time to step back and recover so one can look at what's vexing them with fresh eyes.  Some of the problems we create for ourselves are just too big to solve in one sitting.  What better to bury yourself in that work?  The side effects include respect, money, opportunity for others, a good-night's sleep...There are definitely worse things to intoxicate oneself with!

I guess the difference between the healthy imbibing of over-working and "workaholism" (not a fan of the term but it fits here) is knowing what you are about and why you are doing it.  Blindly driving yourself into oblivion is what it is regardless of the vehicle you choose (nightlife, work, alcohol, thrill-seeking, obsessive parenting, cause-following, etc.).  It is categorically bad.  However, there is a proper time to over-do.  I decided that my life was about growth, contribution, and fun (in that order) years ago, and after emotionally exhausting myself today,  ceasing the dialogue in my mind and getting busy making cool stuff sounds fantastic.

It may have been Churchill who first said "There are two kinds of drinking problems: those that drink too much, and those who do not drink enough".  While that is more of a dubious affirmation for imbibers than a real revelation of truth, it would be hard to argue against that statement if one replaced "drinking" with "over-working".  Stay balanced, my friends.

Over-build it.

An old carpenter in Llano, Texas once told me "You'll never know if you build it too strong."  I couldn't agree more.  

We all know that not everything has to wear out or go out of style in 5 years.  I mean, is there anyone who hasn't see a cool old car?  Better yet, ever seen a 200 year old building that looks great?  Having seen that, why do we settle for cheap, temporary or trendy?  

Yesterday, an architect in Georgetown, TX referred a friend to me who called because he had just bought a house that had some real funky carpeting that had to come out.  He figured staining the concrete would be cheaper than anything else and was trying to find someone to do cheaply.  I could totally relate.  In fact as I write this, I am wearing a shirt I found at a thrift store for $1 and shoes I found online for $11.  I consider coming up with efficient ways to deliver things to market on the border of spiritual work.  However, I just couldn't roll with his idea of cleaning it up a bit and throwing some translucent paint product over the slab.

The difference is the end-game.  If I engineer a way to stain, chemically harden, seal and diamond polish a floor for $4/sf (We used to have to charge twice this amount, as polishing can be slow and diamond tooling can be expensive), everyone wins.  If someone sells or installs a "concrete stain" that is actually a semi-transparent paint that eventually will flake off at any price, everybody loses.  The difference is that decades later the element7concrete floor is either still looking good or easy to snap back into shape while the painted floor will likely need to be re-done after a couple of years.  Unless the owner waxes their floor regularly, lives in their socks, and is very lucky, a painted floor will chip and scratch in some spots and be very hard to make new again.  Conversely, an element7concrete floor will not wear out nor go out of style. 

Now I'm a little concerned that this sounds like a sales pitch.  I am clearly partial, but it's more an effect of the principles that drive us in business rather than an attempt to use this as a platform to sell more floors.  I assume that you are more interested in ideas than building a home or having your floors re-done.  This mindset has driven my consumption just as it has driven our work.  Our family car is a VW because the old ones still look cool to me.  I have worn the same Levi's (505's bought raw) for 15 years.  I like Apple computers because though the styles have changed, I could see myself happily cranking away on my MacBook 10 years from now.  

So, for goodness sake, when you make something, make it as long lasting as you can.  When you buy something, buy something as long lasting as you can.  Thank you for reading.        

Why it's worth doing.

There are two things that really drive us at element7concrete.  What drives my work for my team is the ethos of rebuilding the artisan class of America.  What drives our artisans' work for our customers (and what we will discuss here now) is making floors that will still be in use and looking good when we all have grandchildren.

This was punctuated for me recently when I read that last year alone, over 4.6 billion pounds of carpeting wound up in landfills.  That is not sustainable.  And by that I don't mean "That doesn't jibe with our idea of sustainable construction".  I mean that is clearly not a pattern we can afford to sustain.

This past week, we tore out carpet and polished and stained a floor in our local fire department's training room.  The waste of the tear out was substantial, but as I reflect on the job now, I thank goodness the cycle was broken.

 Concrete flooring is still a bit of a niche product.  This project was won because the fire chief had stained concrete floors in his last two homes and knew first hand how clean it is, how easy it is to take care of, and how the imperfections and nuances become the best parts over time.  Because of him being savvy, our town will not have to replace that floor again:  not when my kids are paying taxes, maybe not when my grandkids are paying taxes.  I think that is pretty cool.

Why unicorn ranching is hard.

I once heard (and have often repeated) that most folks ask kids what they want to do when they grow up because they are still trying to figure it out themselves.  Some days I feel the same way, but generally I am stoked to be on this silly mission of mine.  I want to share a little about what is confounding about installing concrete flooring here.  Hopefully you can relate, as I am sure my road is pretty similar to anyone else's, and we all need to figure out why to get up and fight most days.  

Concrete flooring is the cleanest, "greenest", most durable and aesthetically timeless floor I can think of.  The floors from 80 years ago still look great to me.  I don't know how one would ever wear out a concrete slab in a home or store.  Flooding is no problem.  One may even be able to burn the structure to the ground and salvage the floor.  When our customers dust mop or "Swiffer" their floors, they are done: no periodic steam cleaning required, no "schmutz" underneath.  Best of all, I think my stuff is gorgeous.  I just love that I can feed my family making stuff I think looks rad.   

Since we started keeping track, we found that on average 19 times out of 20 our customers are extremely happy with their floors.  Why do you suppose it is that Home Depot, Lowes, or any other big player in the construction industry doesn't offer stained concrete flooring, much less market it? This all stems from the fact the perfect concrete floor is like a unicorn:  Although I can imagine it, I have never seen one and have about given up hope.  

So what are we to do?  First off, we have made ourselves world class in dancing with the curve balls concrete slabs throw us.  There is a guy in my town that has been scoring and staining floors longer than I have been alive, and even he once admitted to me that about 1 in 10 will do something in the process he really didn't see coming.  My response is to geek up:  I read as much from the PCA and ACI as I can, do experiments on my warehouse floor, find the engineers at trade shows and pick their brains, and lurk on message boards aimed at decorative concrete contractors.  People are smart.  If you are not the real deal, and you try to explain away the issue on their floor, they will see your B.S. for what it is.  However, if you truly make yourself into an expert, and you are confounded to chalking something up to "well, it gives it character", then it is what it is.  Most importantly, all that we have learned has allowed us to make first class floors (imperfections and all) out of really sub-par slabs.   

The other part of what makes it work for our company is understanding the customer experience.  When we spend money, we usually do it to satisfy our paradoxical desires for certainty/security and uncertainty/variety.  We want to change our world up a little bit, but we want control over the change.  We want 10 restaurants in our mall's food court, but we want the same style of pizza at Sbarro every time we decide on it.  If Sbarro gave us a triple order of Panda Express food for half price, we would still feel ripped off.  We want sort-of-stale-pizza, dammit.  So, managing stained flooring customers is really tricky.  If some of the time we don't totally know what is going to happen, we really have to set the game up differently. We love the builders we work with, and we want the owners they serve to have a lot of fun with the process.  So, we design the deal to be fun.  I still haven't figured out how to produce that result through more than 6 team members to serve more than 5 customers a week, though. 

Until then, the carpet factories will continue churning out rolls that will work their way into a landfill every 5-10 years.  Wood floors will get wet and buckle, and the coolest tile on Earth will 20 years from now...look like 20 year old tile.  Someday, I hope to devise an experience like Mike Miller (The Concretist in Bencia, CA) creates for the masses.  Uphill?  Very much.  But if the going get's easy you may be going downhill.  For goodness' sake, find something very hard to do that would make the world a cooler place and throw yourself into it.  Even if it is as pointless as polishing concrete.  Go. 

i-n-t-e-r-v-a-l-s

I was reminded again today of the value of working in rhythm.  We human beings are truly designed to create at full throttle, then rest.  Technology and marketing collude to short circuit this, as there is money to be made in grabbing attention, and the coolest tools are best fitted to this task.  However,  we are happiest and most effective when we are not at the effect of that.

Ironically, I am a bit of a fan of both technology and marketing.  I guess I dig it because I value cleverness in general, and those are two arenas where cleverness is attracted and celebrated.  Be on guard, though: we all celebrate Creation or ersatz creation.

A wise protestant once said something to the effect of "all sin is idolatry".  If anyone can make a counterpoint, I will take you out to any extravagant-consumption-based date you can describe.  (Idolators, as a group, like to consume the finer things of this world).  I can't imagine what you have to say.

This is all true but frankly off topic.  My point here is we are to crush it, then sleep.   We are to give it all, then rest.  When we do not do enough or do not rest enough or do not follow the rhythm of do/rest as dictated by Nature, we suffer.  The world suffers.  The ones we love feel the lack of our gifts.  We owe it to ourselves, our best friends and families,  and the world to "bring it".  This cannot happen authentically unless we hide out when it is appropriate.  Nor can it happen when we just reflect without boldness.  It is time to step up or step away.    Thank you.