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Table of Contents
To say there was a whole lot they didn’t tell me when I signed on with this outfit would be an understatement. And by this outfit, I mean deciding to make a career out of building houses for people. In many ways, I’m suited to what I’m doing. (Plus I’ve been doing it for 19 years and don’t like sucking, so I’ve learned to do it well.) In other ways, I’m more suited to something else, what that is I have no idea. I’m suited to this because I’m creative, dedicated, work hard, believe in and see details, need a mix of physical and cerebral work, and have a correct instinct for how buildings work. I also love architecture, believe in peoples need for good spaces, care more about clients than money, and will trade good work for driving an old pickup. Having bragged all of that, I’m better suited to an industry where innovation matters, precision is rewarded, and the competition tends to drive everyone to continually raise the bar. (I have no idea what that industry is, maybe luxury cars or electronics. Doesn’t sound fun for me.)
There’s another challenge here; I’m an introspector, (fake word). As in, I think about most things in relation to myself and/or always assume that if something isn’t working, I’m the problem. Or, in the positive light, if something isn’t working, I’m the solution. At my worst, I take things personally, at my best I’m relentlessly searching for improvement. As a company, we make very few mistakes more than once as a result of this search for improvement.
So months like this one when we don’t have enough work to do are, well, interesting, and “they” never told me how to navigate them. I’ve had multiple epiphanies this month, though, and despite their painful expression I accept the bargain of pain for learning. Always have. Epiphany #1 is that I’ve been focused for years on improving this company with the assumption that those improvements would equal more success. (Measuring success by more clients.) What I forgot to consider in all those years of introspection and effort was the other half of the equation, clients. What if I operated a perfect company and there just weren’t enough clients out there? Gulp. Wish I’d have thought of that earlier. Alright, we’ve sort of been dealing with this for a while and have increased the services we’re able to provide, (Architectural Design and General Contracting), to cast a wider net, better serve the clients we do have, and mean we need less clients in any given year since we do more for each client. Still, what if there still aren’t enough clients?
Less from the “epiphanies” list and more from the “Stuff I need to really think about some day before it eats me up inside” list, is this question, “Does anyone need what I do?” No. (Insert downtrodden tone of voice.) Keep in mind I’m trained in self-denial as a virtue so my definition of need is pretty narrow. I thought about it at lunch today and got all the way down to vegetable farmers before I found a business that could prove an undeniable need. And then I took a deep breath and decided to give us all some credit, assume that humans had a higher potential than survival to age 30, and tried to weigh us in a balance that included prosperity. So, to live, eat, breathe, survive, no one needs a timber frame home, or any home at all, or a home built with exceptional quality. But to prosper, to commune, to advance, what we do is essential. Here’s why.
- Our business is important to our community. Forgetting for a moment the direct contribution of subsidized buildings we’ve made to a local non-profit, this community needs us because of the kind of people that work here. They’re good people who cycle, recycle, garden, volunteer, support non profits, vote in elections, care about their neighbors, support other local businesses, practice health, care about the environment, and in general are part of the solution and not part of the problem.
- We build amazing buildings. I don’t usually, (read ever), say this. But we do. They’re inspirational to design, to build, and to be in. They are positive contributors to the quality of life of the people who live in them.
- Saying that people don’t need shelter is just too austere and approaches anarchy. Even I, ten years removed from consistent study of the Bible remember the first Bible verse I memorized, “Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath no where to lay his head.” If you know this verse, you know it’s Jesus’ description of a life of sacrifice, where even returning home to bury your father was not part of the plan. Having nowhere to lay your head is not part of the good life, and is by nearly any authority a sacrifice. It’s not always correct to extrapolate, but I will here with confidence and suggest that not only are houses a need but beautiful, well crafted houses built by people who really care about what they do and why they do it are exceptional contributors to the lives of people who live in them.
- Supporting local businesses who support local businesses is sustainable. In other words, it takes out of the world less than or equal to what it puts back in the world. And so, can be repeated indefinitely.
If there’s a scale that slides from wallflower on the left to shameless self promoter on the right, I’m pretty far left. I’ve learned to promote Frameworks Timber as a necessity to survival, (didn’t I mean to say prosperity?), but I’d still prefer to be discovered than announced. Despite my personal trepidations, I’m asking for help from any and all of you. We need help finding projects to do. We’re really good carpenters, (not just timber framers), and can build pretty much anything out of wood. I believe we’re part of a community, part of the circle of life, and like so many other people right now, need the support of our community. We’re always happiest on the giving end, and do expect to return there, but also know that it’s not really a circle unless we let ourselves be on the receiving end.
So if you need us to build something or know someone who might, great. If you have ideas about where we could effectively market and find the people who might need us, great. We’d love to hear from you. Phone is 970.568.4900, email is adrian@frameworkstimber.com
Adrian
It’s odd, I admit, my penchant for thanatopsis. I should blush at the age I currently am at such musing, but this is old hat for me. I suppose a raising in a fundamentalist Christian sect is at least partly responsible for a predisposition to consider what happens after this; the additional contributors to my condition I can really only guess at.
My conscious mind at least has for the last decade been resolved to spend a greater amount of time examining this current existence, not an unknown future one. But the emotional legacy of the concept of afterlife is inescapable, and the occasional points when it blossoms are now bright, poignant, and generally as close as I ever come to real tears. Reading the obituary so gracefully written for David Crocco (Scantlings 144) is my latest point for poignancy, and recognizing what he may have taken with him as he passed this life reminds me of the profundity of this life’s endeavors. It also makes it conceivable that one day I can actually consider both this life and the possibility of the next one without summoning up the demons of my early twenties that insisted it was one or the other, buddy.
To know that a man so devoutly Catholic (in a world where most of the Catholics I know preface their religion with the word recovering) was buried with a mallet and a chisel does in fact make my heart leap. Was he buried as a Catholic, or as a carpenter? At the end of it all, will there be a difference? Noble as David’s devoutness was, I cannot help but believe that his reverence, and mine, are tied to work. I would dare to observe that Catholicism’s ritual may be its reverence, hardly different from the rhythm and ritual of work for me or many of you. I, as a worker, can understand daily Mass. What begs now to be understood is how much reverence we are ever brought in to, and how much of reverence is us.
For the last few years, in fact since the 2006 Guild conference in Parksville, B.C., when a friend and I took a day trip to see the old growth Doug fir forest nearby, I’ve only understood one sacred place for myself, and it’s the woods. As surely as lack of faith is unfathomable to the faithful, I honestly have no concept of how anyone could enter those moss-grown wonderlands of mammoth trees and not understand both reverence and sanctity. I thank (insert deity here) that I cannot unfeel the reverence there and that in a life where the struggle between the felt and the known has never abated and the known has generally been fed, I cannot resist trees and wood and work at this deepest of levels.
There’s been significant reason in the last two years of my working life to ask the question, “What the hell are you doing?” Among other harsh realities about what work is for me, I now face the frank truth that I am, in fact, poor. And always, really, have been as a working man. Thank goodness I don’t really care, and that even my cognitive measurements for success are very lightly weighted toward the material. But why is it acceptable, when it would seem likely that I’m smart enough and talented enough to do a whole lot of other things where poverty would be less of a cousin to life? Because my reverence is work, and my sacred is wood. Because building is so unbelievably profound I cannot describe it, but once in awhile I chance to read an obituary of a man I really barely knew who took to his grave a mallet and a chisel, and I am completely floored. I can only assume there was a rosary and a bible in there, but the reporter I must thank noticed what I would have noticed, and I think felt what I feel. The honor and desperate responsibility of living as a carpenter, as a builder. Takes my breath away.
I feel a good part of the time like John the Baptist, described first in Isaiah and then in the gospels as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” Our building industry generally disgusts me, for a list of reasons so long I wouldn’t dare to include it here, but most of all because it seems to miss the profound in the mundane, the sacred in the daily, the honor in building. It wallows in mediocrity, waste, ignorance, inefficiency, and dishonor. Do we, as this curious mix of artisan, craftsman, and worker, have any opportunity to stem the tide? Will we ever be able to look a commercial project manager in the eye, and convince ourselves he really gives a shit?
Rather than dwell on that any more, I’m ready to give thanks for brethren in work. We’ve all got our own style, probably would fight like dogs if we were trapped on the same jobsite long enough, and often must resign ourselves to agreeing to disagree. But brotherhood there is, and I tip my hat to all of you who work, who build, and thank you for the opportunity to meet, to congregate, to digress, to commiserate, and then to leave again, each to our separate corners of this godless world of building to try to make a difference. Where worship may fit in this grand analogy I can’t yet say, at least in part because I cannot fully deny the voice in my head that warns against idolatry with reminder of the severest of consequences for the disobedient.
We’re all smart enough to get better paying jobs, but apparently too religious to do so. We lend our bodies in a great way, our minds, our divinity––to buildings. And I daresay they are sacred for it, and as close to something timeless as we humans appear to be able to prove we’ve ever been part of.
––Adrian Jones
One of the real pleasures of my job is the quality of people that now work for Frameworks Timber. I have a sharp memory, and I haven’t forgotten the days when fogging a mirror was a job qualification. Actually, I’m exaggerating; having a valid driver’s license was what I was really looking for. I think I spent my first five years as a boss hiring people with no experience so they wouldn’t have any bad ideas. (Which turned out to be a bad idea.) Then the next five years trying to hire experienced framers and wading through the minefield that that sometimes is. (Just because you’ve been around a long time doesn’t mean you’re any good at what you’re doing.) Somewhere I had heard that good managers hired people that were smarter than they were. It made sense to me, and I think I tried to do it, but it didn’t work very well until 2001 when we started trying to timberframe full time.
Some of the progress in staff quality is the timberframing industry’s culture compared to general carpentry/construction culture, at least in this area of the U.S. There’s a ying to this yang, but in general timberframing seems to attract better educated, more motivated, emotionally healthier, and in general life terms, more successful people than does stick framing. As some reference to what I’m saying, consider that of the five carpenters that currently work at Frameworks Timber, all five have more college education than I do. Four have at least one degree. I have managed to hire people smarter than me.
Education isn’t everything, although I do believe it makes people more patient, more reasonable, less violent, less biased, and more progressive. It seems to be true with my generation that the having of a degree is as important as what’s in the degree in terms of self perception, social perception, and job placement. At least in part as a result of that perception, it’s been tough to get smart, motivated, thoughtful, artistic people to stick with building buildings as a career. I’ve seen more than a few start, realize how short the ceiling felt, and move on.
In the last 18 months, our industry has made a potentially huge leap forward. The Federal Department of Labor now recognizes timberframing as a trade, and the Timber Framers Guild has an officially registered apprenticeship program. Until now, all this motivation, intelligence, drive, and passion in the labor pool had no means for official recognition or certification. In about 3 years, though, the Timber Framers Guild will produce the first ever federally registered journeyman timberframer. Approximately 30 people, (I was one of them), in the industry were established as journeyman timberframers to seed the population, but our certificates will never have the official Federal Department of Labor seal of approval. The official FDOL stuff is only for people who’ve completed the apprenticeship program. Our journeyworker status is a result of reputation, peer review, and self assessment.
I’m pretty excited about a future where people like me, (trust me I was not college material even though I was smart), have an opportunity to start a real career doing something they care about, and when they’ve put in their time, get recognized for their skill sets. At a level that has nothing to do with business or money, it seems important. For all the buildings we’re going to build and for all the people doing the building and for all the people who want to live in a home built by craftsmen. Thanks to all of you who do want that. You’re making a difference.
A sales coach once told me that if you asked them, every client would let you know how to sell to them. She was right.
If you’ve ever owned a business, you’ve had some point in your marketing research where you’ve imagined your perfect client. My original imagination included things like what they’d want to build, where they’d want to build, how they’d want to build, and the big kicker, why they’d want to build? You may, as that imaginative business owner, have to one day decide that it’s a whole lot less about what your imagined ideal clients are like than it is about “Who really buys what I’m selling?” And what are they actually like, instead of what do I wish they were like? Dependent on your obsession, you may consider what they drive, what radio stations they listen to, what books they read, and whether or not they’re on Facebook. You may even pay a marketing company to research all of the above and more and then wonder what in the world you’re going to do with the information that they all watch CSI:Miami. (I still don’t know.) All of this external research and imagination has value, but the best tool I know of by far is listening directly to your clients.
I started really listening about four years ago. I wasn’t naturally good at it, I at one point concluded that I never would be good at sales. I’m a steak guy, not a sizzle guy. Most of my pauses in conversation are me deciding just how honest I should be with you at this moment. I like that about myself, didn’t want to learn to be a back patter or double hand shaker. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I’ve forged a peaceful compromise though, and have learned to actually love the challenge/opportunity of connecting with people. Am I a salesman for Frameworks Timber? I suppose so, yes, but more than that I believe I’m an advocate for people who want to build a house that really means something to them. And to find out what really means something to someone, you have to listen.
2010 was a really great year for Frameworks Timber. We got to actually build for several clients who are my current ideal clients. Now here’s the interesting part: The ideal client, more than anything else, is one we end up really forging a connection with. First we listen to what they’re really after, then we deliver it. It turns out to be a real kick in the pants watching clients get what they wanted and more. The first business day of 2011, I got an email from a lead who described what they need, and if I’m listening correctly, what they want is us! It’s going to be another good year.
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