My cousins Ted and Joan have been building wooden boats for over 30 years. www.bearmountainboats.com you can see their work for yourself.
Recently we bumped into each other in the parking lot of a local store in Ottawa, I drive a little sports car that my cousin Ted admired and said so: “Gee, I like THAT. I don’t covet too many things, but I covet that.”
This summer I scraped and painted my own wooden boat behind the cabin, and of course Ted has been on my mind. I am still surprised that he would feel that way about anything pressed out by machines on a line in a factory.
Maybe if I were driving a classic car, an Italian number made by hand like his boats are it would make sense to me, my car was made on a line by a group guys who were no doubt thinking about soccer. When their shift was over, the world had one more German sports car and somewhere a soccer game was no doubt still tied 0-0.
If money were not an obstacle we would all drive Porsches, or Ferraris or the Tesla electric car or float our summers away in wooden boats – Humans will always pick “art” over “function” if we had a choice because this is what people naturally do. People want to be surrounded by beauty, people love detail and the attention paid to making something truly amazing. That ‘something’ may be not always be tangible, it’s often intent to attempt to achieve perfection.
A few years ago at a wedding I stood in Ted’s shop, where he had recently ‘finished’ a racing skull he made for the Canadian national rowing team. I told him how beautiful the boat was. He smiled, sort of reluctantly, and then with a little regret he ran his hand over it … “I would like to sand it and varnish it about 1000 more times.” I will never forget that, and I can’t stress enough that this boat was perfect. “You are never finished them” he said “but eventually they come and take them away.” I had the feeling that if all things were equal and money was not an object that Ted would like to own every boat he ever built. His secret is that he builds the boat for himself, he just lets other people use it.
His success, and probably his trade secret is that he doesn’t really want to sell the boat, he just wants to make it.
When I am asked to speak at a conference, I put everything I have into it. When I am finished, I am finished - there is nothing left – by design, I give away everything I have. I make an emotional investment in the event – I am not just talking, I am living every word. Getting paid or uncovering a potential client is the furthest thing from my mind – but crafting a better performance never gets old. Even now, as I write this, I have two other pieces started that have sprung from this (watch for them soon).
For Ted the art, the work, and the joy comes in creating the boat, not selling it. His goal is to build a beautiful boat, not send a beautiful invoice. I suppose if we all did this – if we all leaned into what we were doing, if the focus were the work or art the invoices would probably follow whether or not we asked for the sale or not – it’s hard to keep off the radar when your work, your art, is superior. So go lean into it. Don’t just sit there – go cut your ear off.
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