It wasn't the fanciest website. It was without debate out of date. But it functioned well, had a ton of content, and in a way, really represented us in a true fashion. Not too fancy, not perfect, not entirely convinced of our own authenticity, not over-branded, not too slick. Violated some basis website rules like too much narrative, undersized script. It got 10,000 visitors a month, month after month, year after year. Hundreds of thousands of page views. It was a tank. It never went down.
It had a pic of my son when he was 6 months old; he is now nearly 12 (I love the semi-colon use when possible). The brand, logo, color, fonts haven't really changed since 2001 when I first created it. Of all the things that have changed in my life, it's fascinating that the look and the feel of the company that I created when the company was more an idea than a reality had been right on. The concept, the original idea remains unchanged.
The website was familiar. A millennial client a few weeks ago gave me the compliment, "I love how out of date your website it!. Its retro". Now, in a testament to my growth as a person, I did still sell them a house. And it was 'out of date', but it functioned fine, and was a tool that hundreds of thousands of people and families have used to not only get a flavor of what we do, but a flavor of the Catskills.
And not some perfect filtered instagramed version of makers, and farmers and chair makers and morning dew off the grass - that's for other people's make believe version of the New Catskills. Us, we remained linked to the soil, the Catskills unbranded, a getaway, familiar, approachable. Affordable.
So I mourn, though the efforts of recovery that were undertaken over the last 40 hours has been remarkable and bring me to my point of this post.
In the building industry especially, as I'm sure is true in most creative/service/production industries, most clients are awesome, thankful, respectful. But there's always that one a year that is just awful, unthankful, unrepentant. And those suck. My favorite example was two guys we built a house for, found land for, designed a house for, then built it quickly, even though the whole area was hit by a windstorm that knocked out power for 5 weeks - meaning people working on their home had no electric when they went home, couldn't shower, couldn't refrigerate their food, couldn't turn on a light, get water, etc... These guys were so awful, so mean, so publically intent on soiling us as they floated in their swimming pool and broadcast cooking shows and entertained wildly from the house that 'was so bad', that I had to come up with a coping mechanism. Spending 8 months bringing someone's dream to life, only to be rejected in the end, is not a small issue for a professional who takes pride in what they do - that end of the job relief in a 'job well-done' is replaced with tired anxiety.
Anyone who achieves has been there. At the moment you think you get respite, you don't, and you have find the reserves you thought you would get from a job well-done, you have to get it from somewhere else, typically from within.
I mean, I was hurt by it, but I felt awful for my team, my designers, my cleaners, painters, carpenters and others. Out of a need for a mental health tool, it occurred to me what might be a surprisingly more effective tool of response was to try and keep it at arm's length. So, a failproof tool I know use in these situations is to pivot and find someone who has done something great for me, and show them the gratitude that was missing from the other experience.
And truth be told, while I suffer great ups and downs as I keep my company small while it grows large, there are heroics performed on my behalf every day, every hour actually. We have teams of people, father and son teams, subcontractors, employees, families, homeowners - to find the glory and the gratitude in this mix of activity is not hard. It may be hard to get out of the weeds and stick your head up while you are solving these problems, but if you do, you get to see glory in the effort, glory in the creative problem solving, glory in the 'they got my back' mantra of those I surround myself with.
As I get better at solving problems - and I don't mean the actual remedy or solution since I've been successfully solving hard problems from day one in this line of work I selected - I more mean the process and attitude I employ as I solve them, the ability to succeed as a team, to motivate effectively, to lead constructively, to accept 'business is problem-solving at its core', to relish the opportunity to work daily with a talented team of individuals who come from incredibly diverse backgrounds - from PHDs to garbage men - to respect their contribution equally, honestly, to show them gratitude with friendship and respect, when you get right down to it, I'm a lucky guy indeed.
Even if website is gone forever. And it doesn't change the fact I sold my Tesla stock last year at what is now a 52 week low of $235 per share (I think the last marker was $1600).
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