-: If you want to do custom tile,
I don't know.
Business was great to have for sure
and I've met more than a few people in the industry,
whether they're ceramic engineers
or the owner of the people I get my clay from.
I'm pretty close with them
and I've said more than a couple times to him,
kind of joking around.
It really would have helped if I went to school for ceramics
and he said "I don't know Don,
"I don't think you'd still be around
"if you didn't have your business background."
Ceramics in general if you've never made tile before
it's great 'cause there's a lot of terms that are...
made up if you will in the ceramics world.
And so a lot of times it takes someone
that doesn't have any ceramics background
a couple weeks to adjust to that
because we'd say hey go get this or go get that
and they just kind of look at me like "is that a word?"
And so having some ceramics background is great,
but at the end of the day,
most of the employees I've had
had 0 experience with ceramics,
let alone manufacturing of any sort
and the thing I like to remind them
when they're first getting started
and starting to feel overwhelming
because every day's different and this and that.
Try to remind them that, hey a couple years ago,
I didn't know any of this either.
Hard worker,
being able to stay focused is critically important
because a lot time what we're doing
goes on for hours on end.
We're manufacturing and so a lot of times what you're doing
can go on for a while
and there's obviously different personalities
that go great with that.
Whether it be because they're driven on
trying to get things done in a timely manner
and being able to say
"Hey man last time I did that it took me three hours.
"I got that done in an hour and 45.
"This is awesome, I'm really getting there."
Or some people just like to zone out,
put their earbuds in and just look down
and do what they have to do.