I have come to realize that after over 4 years in business for myself I am just now learning what it is to be a business person.
How it works.
Why it works.
When we (my brother Joe and I) started out, it was exciting and new and very challenging. I knew almost nothing about the industry we had entered, but relished the challenge of learning something completely different.
I had. No. Idea. how hard it would be.
I think that is a sentence that every entrepreneur (successful or not) can say without lying.
Something has happened to me over the last few months. I finally have settled on why I am doing what I am doing. I am not doing it for the money. If I was, I could easily get an easier, less stressful, higher-paying job (with benefits). I am doing what I am doing because I believe that I (we) can do what we do, better than anyone else, given the opportunity.
I started to realize this after we had built fence for a year with no complaints on our workmanship. None. People loved their fences. We built only cedar stockade fences and people responded well to that. I had been fairly worried when we stopped using lesser wood products and focused only on higher quality cedar fences. Our process was also different. When everyone else was concerned about getting the job done as quickly and cheaply as possible we used screws instead of nails. It takes longer and is more expensive to use screws than nails, but its better, and people responded to that.
For us, building a fence is art.
We tripled our business.
My dad once told me “Son, there are two kinds of men in this world. There is a guy who knows how, and then there is a guy who knows why. Be the why guy”.
I needed to know why we should do fence this way.
Seth Godin talks about how to survive in this new economy. He talks about choosing yourself. If you want to succeed, choose yourself. Do it yourself. He also talks about how anyone can paint by number but that doesn’t make you an artist. Doing something differently than its ever been done makes you an artist.
Art is not just music, painting, or sculpture. Art is new processes, new solutions to old problems, jumping off the cliff…first.
So I have learned to look at something as mundane as a fence and look at what holds it together as either paint by number or art.
For us it’s art.
But its just the beginning and…That is why we do what we do, the way we do it.
We would love to talk to you about your fence project and even provide you with a FREE ESTIMATE. Please reach out to us at 405-778-1545 or email us at info@fenceokc.com if we can serve you.
