The Art of Manliness - A Carpenter's Notes on the Art of Good Work

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.520 After 40 years working as a carpenter, and not just any carpenter, but one who's often

00:00:15.840 considered the best in New York and who executes some of the country's most elaborate, expensive,

00:00:19.880 and challenging projects, Mark Ellison has filled hundreds of notebooks with drawings

00:00:24.160 of his plans. He's also made plenty of observations about the nature of work, craft, and doing

00:00:29.760 a good job at whatever you pursue. Mark is the author of Building, A Carpenter's Notes

00:00:34.540 on Life and the Art of Good Work. And today on the show, he shares some of the lessons

00:00:39.040 he's learned over his career in high-end construction, including those that center on the less romantic

00:00:43.620 aspects of being a carpenter. We discuss the comparative importance of will, talent, and

00:00:48.840 interest in learning a craft, the challenges not only of construction, but managing personalities,

00:00:53.760 mistakes, and expectations, why speed is essential for a successful craftsman, and how the principles

00:00:59.180 that make for a master builder carry over into other pursuits. After the show's over,

00:01:03.780 check out our show notes at awim.is slash building.

00:01:17.220 All right, Mark Ellison, welcome to the show.

00:01:19.540 Pleasure to be here.

00:01:20.720 So you are a carpenter who specializes in building and remodeling lavish homes for wealthy clients

00:01:27.720 in New York City. Did you start off your young life with a goal of doing what you're doing

00:01:32.620 now? Or did you kind of fall into this?

00:01:35.560 I mean, I much more fell into it than did it intentionally. The only thing I knew as a young

00:01:40.560 man was that I didn't want to do most of the jobs that I saw people around me doing. I wasn't

00:01:47.180 very interested in it. I mean, I spent a lot of time in the woods as a kid, and I considered

00:01:51.380 becoming like a forest ranger or a guide. But I mean, I'm not a solitary person, and those

00:01:59.660 are solitary pursuits. And I just happened to me, I talk about it in the book, I happened

00:02:04.480 to meet an itinerant Armenian-American carpenter who wound up on the couch of our apartment in

00:02:11.080 New York City way back in 1980. And he asked me to work on a project with him, and I just

00:02:17.320 liked it. I really, really enjoy working with my hands. And I come from, I mean, my mother

00:02:21.840 has always, she sews, she's a tailor, she's woven, she knits all the time. My father always

00:02:27.980 had a workshop. And so working with my hands was something more or less second nature to

00:02:34.060 me. It's just that I didn't know you could make a living at it until somebody paid me to

00:02:37.660 do it.

00:02:39.060 And then how did you end up, you know, working with the clients you're working with now?

00:02:43.240 It just was a progression. I mean, I moved from one company to another, and I always liked

00:02:51.360 the most, to me, the most interesting things on every job were the most challenging projects in

00:02:56.500 every job. I really enjoyed seeing if I could make things that I didn't know how to make,

00:03:02.480 and if I could move up a step and move up another step and another step. And incrementally,

00:03:06.740 over the first, say, 10 years of my career, I went from working to, you know, the early projects

00:03:13.220 I worked on were just people up on the Upper West Side who, bankers and lawyers, and they

00:03:17.820 were regular people. And then as I got better and better at what I did, I started to move

00:03:22.420 into a higher echelon of building until by about 1992, I was working for one of the top companies

00:03:30.460 in the city that did the kind of work that I do now, which is fancy renovations for super

00:03:35.800 rich people.

00:03:37.040 So you're a carpenter. And I think when most people think of carpenter, they think of a guy

00:03:40.380 who, you know, builds a bookcase or some cabinets, but your work goes well beyond that. You not only

00:03:46.720 build things, but you serve as a bridge, you know, someone who can take a theoretical architectural

00:03:53.080 design and then make them concrete in the real world. So when someone hires you, a builder does

00:03:58.700 a general, a contractor, you take the architect's plans and like, you spend a lot of time just like

00:04:03.320 going through with a red pencil saying, okay, this is possible. This is not possible. This is how we're

00:04:08.060 able to modify it to make this work. And that's a challenge. And that takes your expertise that you've

00:04:13.660 developed over the past 40 years to know what's possible and what's not possible, you know, taking

00:04:19.920 theory into practice. What other challenges does your line of work present? Besides that, that's a big

00:04:26.300 challenge in and of itself. But kind of, I mean, that's the thing that really impressed me about your

00:04:30.640 book is that your job just seems really hard. There's like just so many moving parts. It's complex,

00:04:36.480 complicated. Give us an idea of what it's like working on a project.

00:04:42.540 Well, I mean, one of the reasons I still to this day enjoy what I do is that it's such a massive

00:04:48.980 challenge, even just one house. Right now I'm building two side-by-side townhouses in Brooklyn.

00:04:54.560 And I mean, it's essentially one building, but you know, you start with the personality of the

00:04:59.740 architect. So I have an architect, the architect went to Yale and people that go to Yale are accustomed

00:05:05.740 to thinking of themselves as knowledgeable, successful people who have achieved something.

00:05:10.380 So the very first thing I have to watch out for is not to, you don't want to, I don't want to take

00:05:16.040 a set of blueprints and mark them up so badly and treat them so poorly and say, this is such a pile of

00:05:21.560 crap that, you know, I've bruised their ego and they never want to talk to me again and they never 0.95

00:05:26.000 want to work with me again. And, and these days, aside from the building challenges, the biggest 0.97

00:05:32.080 challenges I usually face are challenges of personality. I mean, how do you take somebody

00:05:37.500 who has 10,000 times more money than I do and manage their expectations so they wind up happy

00:05:45.540 with their home? And how do you take an architect who's very, very well, you know, educated at the top

00:05:50.540 of the educational ladder and tell them that 75% of what they drew is wrong and then correct it,

00:05:59.720 but get them to work with you to do that rather than work against you. And that goes all the way

00:06:04.580 down, you know, that goes all the way through the entire project. I mean, I, I work with, you know,

00:06:10.600 75% of the people I work with on my job site, their, their first language isn't even English.

00:06:16.100 So how do you tell somebody, how do you tell a tile guy who, I mean, my, my current Tyler is barely

00:06:23.720 conversant in English. He's Chinese. And how do I communicate with him a really exacting tile 1.00

00:06:30.240 pattern where every tile has a place and, and the specifications, there's no room for movement one way

00:06:37.160 or the other. It's not a, he really has to pull it off exactly correctly. And the challenges of that

00:06:42.380 are some of the most interesting and, and to me, fun part of the projects these days. Cause I mean,

00:06:48.480 I've had to learn so much patience and so much, and I'm not a great diplomat. I mean, I, I'm sort of

00:06:54.860 angry by nature and, uh, I have to curb some of my more brutish impulses a lot in order to pull these

00:07:07.100 things off. And so, yeah, so you're dealing with the architect, you're dealing with the client,

00:07:11.680 you're dealing with the, the, the different workers who are working with you, but then you're

00:07:15.680 also having to deal with like regulations, right? In New York city, there's a lot of regulations and

00:07:22.100 you have to deal with that's part of the environment. So it's like, well, I want to do

00:07:25.580 this thing to make this work, but then the historical regulations says now you can't do that. So you have

00:07:31.540 to work around that. I mean, every, every single pursuit has its set of rules and very few of us get

00:07:38.680 to make the rules by which at least we work. I mean, I try as much as I can to make the rules by which I

00:07:43.480 live, but I don't make the rules by which I work and all the paperwork has to be done. And the

00:07:50.100 landmarks preservation commission is going to come around and inspect to make sure that the molding

00:07:55.640 that's on the front of the house was, you know, matches the molding from the historical photograph

00:07:59.920 they have in their archive. And there's certain things like that, that there's nothing I can do

00:08:05.240 about. I can't, I can't do it. I mean, and I don't try. So there's a lot of constraints. And I think

00:08:11.500 this, this is why I love this book because you show how in a very subtle way, how this carries

00:08:16.220 over to other parts of our lives. Everyone else has the same problems that you experience, maybe

00:08:21.040 at different scale. You have to deal with people who are frustrated and you got to deal with

00:08:24.500 personalities. You have to deal with regulations. There are these rules you have to conform yourself

00:08:30.020 to in order to do your work. And so in your book, building a carpenter's notes on life and the art of

00:08:35.280 good work, you share lessons on how you've managed to learn how to do this from your 40 plus years of

00:08:40.720 work. And you start off the book talking about the importance of will and you, you capitalize will

00:08:46.860 w I L L very philosophical. I think, uh, how do you define will in your line of work?

00:08:52.720 I mean, will generally to me, even outside of my line of work, I define will as the ability to do

00:08:59.280 that would be my broadest definition of it. And that's, you know, it's a big discussion, but

00:09:04.620 how do you complete anything? I mean, you know, you could talk to a chef about how do you

00:09:09.780 make a beautiful meal and what are the psychological and physical and temperamental

00:09:16.160 elements that go into making a beautiful meal for somebody or making a beautiful house or,

00:09:21.980 or realizing any vision of any kind. It doesn't matter what the milieu is. It can be anything.

00:09:28.140 And I think if you spoke to people who've become accomplished at doing in their respective field,

00:09:35.640 they would pretty much all tell you the same sort of things that they went through the same sort of

00:09:40.460 struggles. And it's only by really mucking things up and, and making huge mistakes in my life that

00:09:48.120 I've learned, Oh, the problem isn't everything around me. The problem is I don't know how to do

00:09:54.960 this. This is the problem here is me. I don't know how to talk to people so that they will work with me.

00:09:59.420 I don't know how to be kind enough to somebody who I kind of don't like so that they'll take me

00:10:05.620 upstairs in the elevator every day without complaint. Those are the sorts of things it

00:10:09.880 takes to get something done. Doing something in this world is not just a matter of having the skills.

00:10:14.780 I mean, that's a whole, that's a whole matter of practice and, but also being able to engage people

00:10:20.600 and make friendships and find your allies and find people you can rely on and to work on something

00:10:27.460 with you. And all of those are components of developing the world to realize a vision of

00:10:34.080 any kind. It doesn't matter what the vision is or what, what area you're working in. The struggles

00:10:39.780 are always the same to be able to really realize a vision takes an enormous amount of learning and

00:10:46.180 practice and skill and effort and swallowing one's own failure so that I realized, see, the primary

00:10:53.160 problem here is me. And that's what needs fixing. All right. So Will, this is something that can be

00:10:58.140 developed. It's not something you're just born with. You can develop this. Yeah. I mean, I think

00:11:02.560 it's, I think it's, I mean, it can certainly be stunted early on in life by poor parenting and,

00:11:08.060 and, and rough circumstances, but it's definitely something that can be developed because it's a

00:11:13.360 learning process. It's like a rewiring of your brain, essentially, or of my brain. My brain's been

00:11:19.300 pretty much rewired by this business over the years. So you mentioned that Will isn't the same

00:11:24.660 as skill. Will requires skill, but it's, they're not the same thing. And you had this chapter on

00:11:31.160 talent. What have you learned about talent during your 40 years of doing what you do?

00:11:37.980 I just think that talent is one of the most useless concepts that the world has to offer.

00:11:43.160 And the reason I say that is because, I mean, people certainly are born with certain proclivities.

00:11:49.540 I mean, there are people that are born seven feet tall, that are much more likely to be a

00:11:53.840 basketball player than I am. There are people that are born with live athletic bodies that are going

00:11:58.700 to be a better ballet dancer. There are people born with very active minds or an acuity from you. I

00:12:05.820 mean, people are born with acuities and you might call that talent, but it's not really a useful

00:12:11.920 concept because talent doesn't matter at all without practice and development and like regular

00:12:19.060 daily practice. I mean, it's funny because people say I'm a talented carpenter. Okay. I haven't been

00:12:25.640 carpenter for 40 years. So I've put in 80,000 hours of carpentry now in my lifetime. So I've had a lot

00:12:32.980 of practice. I mean, I'm well beyond Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000. I've done that eight times over.

00:12:37.580 One would hope that I got pretty good at it by now. Otherwise something's wrong. And also I, to me,

00:12:43.240 talent is less important than like genuine interest and being attracted to doing something.

00:12:49.480 I mean, when I started doing carpentry for living, I was attracted to it and I was interested in it and

00:12:54.320 I studied it and I would read books and I would go to the lot. I mean, back then you had to go to the

00:12:58.640 library and check out a book on how to do framing. And to me, my interest in my practice was far,

00:13:05.580 far more important than some. I don't know if I have any native talented carpentry. I mean,

00:13:11.920 I also have been practicing music for 50 years. I don't, nobody early on would have identified me as

00:13:17.460 a prodigy in anything, but I have keen interests in things and I pursue them and I practice them.

00:13:25.900 I do have a strong habit of, if I want to learn how to do something, I will practice and I will

00:13:30.860 practice six days a week for an extended period of time with all sorts of pursuits.

00:13:36.100 How long did it take for you in your career before you felt like you had some skill at carpentry?

00:13:42.700 It took about 15 years before I could say, okay, I got a handle on this.

00:13:49.140 And I specifically the trade of carpentry at that point, like woodworking and building,

00:13:54.620 like home building style building. Cause that's what I do. I build basically single family homes.

00:14:00.100 I just happened to build them within apartment buildings a lot in about 15 years when I felt

00:14:04.820 like I could kind of handle anything, anybody threw at me. And that was before I got into sort

00:14:09.020 of the crazy stuff. And then how long did it take for you to like, feel you got to handle on the crazy

00:14:13.200 stuff? Another 15 years. It's a slow road. I hate to tell people, but it's a slow road. I mean,

00:14:22.480 I wrote my first book when I was 59. So, uh, uh, I'm not exactly a prodigy.

00:14:30.800 So one thing that stuck out to me from the book, from all these stories you tell about projects

00:14:35.460 you've worked on over the years is the importance of resilience in your line of work. When you're

00:14:42.380 working on a big complex project where there's millions of dollars being spent, there's potentially

00:14:48.480 hundreds of different people working on this project. Something is guaranteed to go wrong.

00:14:54.180 What's been the biggest, costliest mistake you've ever made. And then how did you learn to become

00:15:00.240 inured to those setbacks? I mean, I don't, I could, I would be lying if I said I was inured to setbacks.

00:15:07.020 I mean, to this, I hate mistakes. I hate my own mistakes. I fret over mistakes. I, whenever I make

00:15:14.960 a mistake and I still make mistakes on jobs, I don't make nearly as many as I used to.

00:15:19.460 And my entire focus on a project is to make sure that as few mistakes as possible. To me,

00:15:24.100 one of the most costly things on jobs is mistakes and they can be made in all kinds of different

00:15:30.600 ways. I mean, from ordering the wrong materials to making a poor decision about the order things

00:15:35.940 should be built in. And I am in no way inured to mistakes to this day, even small mistakes on any

00:15:41.480 project upset me. And I try to figure out why they happened and if there's a way I can make them not

00:15:46.600 happen in the future. I mean, I, it's funny because the most consistent costly mistake I've made over

00:15:53.600 the years is to underestimate the difficulty of what it is I do and to not prepare well enough for the

00:16:03.080 things that will go wrong. And I'm still shocked to this day at the things that go wrong on projects.

00:16:07.840 I mean, sometimes you just don't know with, you know, I've got six or seven different design

00:16:13.180 professionals on this job. I have four different clients and I have 30 different trades that I work

00:16:19.300 with. And you just don't know where the thing is going to go wrong. It's going to go wrong.

00:16:24.220 Even things that are beautifully planned can go horribly wrong just because somebody didn't read

00:16:28.520 the plan, right. Or didn't read the drawings. I sent them correctly as carefully as I tried to,

00:16:32.760 or they just assumed something, you know, they assumed that they want, I wanted it done the way

00:16:38.140 they always do it. Even though I tried to explain 50 times that we're doing this one a little

00:16:42.020 differently. It's a, the thing that has cost me the most money over the years and the most pain

00:16:46.600 is that I didn't see, I got blindsided by something and I didn't see just how difficult

00:16:52.740 it was going to be. I was overly optimistic. It's weird because my optimism is actually the thing

00:16:57.300 that allows me to do the crazy stuff that I do and go like, Oh sure, I can do that. And then I

00:17:02.860 have been beat up so badly so many times for underestimating the time, underestimating the

00:17:07.840 cost, not realizing, you know, that the person I was working with wasn't up to it. It's a tough

00:17:13.740 row to hoe. I mean, these days things, I mean, I'm knocking wood these days, my projects tend to go 1.00

00:17:20.060 pretty smoothly and things go well and very, very few mistakes are made, but that came at great cost.

00:17:25.800 I mean, I made, I did projects where I calculated at the end and find out I made like $8 an hour

00:17:30.440 for a year, you know? Yeah. And there was stories. I think one story that stuck out to me is like

00:17:34.820 little small things you didn't see being a problem ended up being a big problem. It was when guys were

00:17:40.520 trying to, it was something with the windows where they had to like reshape a frame. They had to use

00:17:45.660 a grinder and it would shoot out these sparks and the sparks would get in the glass and it would

00:17:51.720 kind of cause these divots in the glass and you'd have to replace the whole pane of glass. And it

00:17:57.480 was, uh, you know, tens of thousands of dollars. We were on, that was on Central Park West. We were

00:18:02.120 on the 18th floor in the penthouse and a metal worker was really just cutting over there. We were

00:18:08.300 doing demolition at the time. He was cutting away a sort of, a sort of straggling piece of steel that

00:18:13.940 was hanging out of the ceiling and he sprayed the sparks with the grinder he was using. He sprayed

00:18:20.260 the sparks towards a picture window that was, I don't know, probably 12 feet wide and seven feet

00:18:26.320 tall. And he pitted the glass, the little hot sparks that came off of the, off of the steel pitted the

00:18:33.880 glass in a way that we could not repair. We tried like hell to repair it. We had glass companies come

00:18:37.860 and try and grind it and polish it and it would, would not repair. And so here's this enormous piece of

00:18:43.560 glass. And the only way to get it up there was with a crane. I mean, these days, just one pick

00:18:49.320 with a crane costs over $15,000 in New York city, just to get the permits, get the crane, get the

00:18:55.020 people in. So just the crane alone costs $15,000. And then there's the cost of the window. And that

00:19:01.540 was the only fix for something that happened in 10 seconds. So when you start a project today,

00:19:08.280 do you feel pretty optimistic about how things will go? Or have you accepted that

00:19:13.320 something will always go wrong? No matter what you do, I'm, I'm wise enough now to know something

00:19:19.800 will always go wrong. I don't. And I, I try to figure out what it's going to be. And, and one

00:19:25.080 of the reasons I work so much with the architect's drawings and try, I mean, like the last project I

00:19:30.660 did, I did about, I mean, I did about 300 drawings on this last project I did. And the reason I do

00:19:37.080 drawings is I draw drawings of actual assemblies. I don't, I don't, I'm not so concerned the architect

00:19:42.320 draws what it's going to look like. I draw the actual assembly, how it's put together,

00:19:46.500 every single component that goes into putting it together. And that is in an effort to get people

00:19:51.500 to build things correctly. And it mostly works. I mean, mostly, mostly works, but I mean, we're still

00:19:57.660 waiting on that project. We're still waiting for countertops that were ordered in February of this

00:20:03.760 year because they're terrazzo countertops and they got shipped from England and they all broke

00:20:09.260 on the boat. Something happened where the crate got hit and all of the countertops were destroyed.

00:20:15.380 And then, so that opened a whole problem with who replaces them, what insurance pays for them?

00:20:21.580 How do I get the guy to remake them? Do we have to send them more money? Then I got to talk to the

00:20:26.020 client. I mean, things like, I mean, a ship coming across the ocean got hit by too big a wave.

00:20:32.200 My creative countertops went over and here it is 10 months later. And I still don't have counters

00:20:38.080 for my kitchen in Brooklyn. Yeah. And there's no way you could have foreseen that. That was just

00:20:44.900 not even on your radar. I mean, this is actually the second time it's happened to me. The same thing.

00:20:51.820 And actually, I mean, truth be told, at the beginning of the project, I had a stern talk with

00:20:58.340 the architect that said, you know, whatever you do, order as little as possible from Europe because

00:21:02.720 there's just huge problems with things coming from Europe. It's expensive. There's all these

00:21:07.700 duties and taxes and it takes a huge amount of time. And it actually takes a lot of my time

00:21:13.700 just having to deal with getting this stuff here. And if something goes wrong, you have no recourse.

00:21:20.540 You can't sue. You can't. And the architect in this case overrode me and said, no, we're getting

00:21:26.320 this terrazzo from Europe. And here we are 10 months later and we have no terrazzo. I mean,

00:21:31.600 despite my warnings. So that was something I actually did anticipate there being a problem

00:21:35.260 with, but it didn't matter. It didn't do any good. It's his decision exactly what material gets used.

00:21:41.280 And so he ordered this very special terrazzo from England that we still haven't seen.

00:21:48.520 So what can your line of work teach people about planning and carrying out complicated and complex

00:21:54.240 projects? Like what are some lessons that you've gotten there that you think carry over to the rest

00:21:58.840 of life?

00:21:59.520 I mean, it's the same in anything. If you're trying to do something complicated,

00:22:03.660 I try very hard at the beginning of the project to look at where are the likely failures

00:22:08.500 so that they don't happen. And, you know, I mean, people have all these different matrices for doing

00:22:13.860 it. You try and identify all the different little points where if something goes wrong there,

00:22:18.680 the project is going to fail. And I mean, I know from experience where failures generally occur.

00:22:24.900 You know, it's where a lot of different things come together in the same place.

00:22:28.220 But, you know, I was watching a special, some TV show, a documentary on the making of a James Webb

00:22:34.200 space telescope. And they went through a testing phase where they set up the entire

00:22:39.960 telescope. They did the whole thing. They set up the whole thing and then they shook it

00:22:44.460 to simulate the shaking that would happen as it launched, you know, off the launch pad and got

00:22:49.260 sent off to space. And hundreds of bolts fell out because somebody had not bothered to use

00:22:54.800 thread lock to permanently fix the bolts. And you just go like something with a million parts,

00:23:01.560 something's going to go wrong. I mean, at least they had the sense to test it and the damn thing 0.99

00:23:05.360 works now. But the first time they tested it, all the bolts fell out, which would have been a shame 0.98

00:23:09.960 if it got to space and they set it up and all the bolts had fallen out. It's good to know things go

00:23:14.020 terribly wrong. I try to bring all my experience to bear mostly on the things that won't go right.

00:23:21.900 The things that go right, go right. The things that people know how to do and are more common

00:23:27.320 things, they pretty much know how to do it and they usually get it right. So it always pays to look

00:23:31.900 between the cracks at the things that won't go right. I think you can apply that to almost anything,

00:23:37.340 almost any endeavor. Yeah. I've noticed that when I've taken on big, complicated projects,

00:23:42.180 I go in thinking, Oh, nothing, nothing should go wrong. Everything should be seamless.

00:23:46.500 And then I'm always disappointed. And I get, it's just, it's managing my own,

00:23:50.360 my own expectations. That's been the big learning curve for me. I think when you're young,

00:23:54.480 you have this expectation that things will just go right and smoothly for you, but that's not the

00:23:59.340 case. And you just have to plan for Murphy's law to rear its head because it's going to happen.

00:24:04.120 Yeah. I think, I think that the, what separates people is that some people go ahead and do it

00:24:09.620 anyway, except for maybe two projects in my life. I've pulled off every single one of them sooner or

00:24:15.980 later and to different degrees of, of, you know, customer satisfaction. And, but, but I pulled off

00:24:25.980 almost everything sooner or later. And that, that stick-to-itiveness I think is what's probably

00:24:32.580 served me better than almost anything else in my life. And it's allowed me to go, you know,

00:24:38.320 branch into other things. Yeah. So it requires will, it all goes back to will.

00:24:43.160 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:24:47.720 And now back to the show. So speaking of, you know, not meeting clients' expectations a few times,

00:24:53.420 let's talk about that. Cause like, how do you deal with the expectations of your clients?

00:24:56.500 Cause they want things done primo. Like they're paying tons of money and they want it done as

00:25:02.440 quickly as possible. Cause they want to get back into the house and live there. What have you learned

00:25:05.960 about managing people's expectations when you've had to go to someone and say, Hey, it's going to be

00:25:11.480 months, maybe a year behind schedule, or it's going to cost more. What have you learned about that?

00:25:17.500 Cause I think it's a big problem that a lot of other people face as well as managing other

00:25:20.380 people's expectations. I try very hard from the outset, right? Really from the very first time I

00:25:25.860 meet a client, I try very hard to as gently as possible, but also firmly deliver as close to

00:25:34.300 the brutal truth of, of building as I can. And that usually starts with, I mean, it's funny,

00:25:41.620 the project I'm doing right now, I was asked to bid on the project. Uh, and the architect sent me

00:25:47.460 drawings and I said right from the outset, and I said this to the, I, and this came up in our very

00:25:54.600 first meeting with the client, I refused to bid on the project. And the reason I refused to bid on

00:25:58.860 the project was because in my estimation, the drawings and specifications were only about 25%

00:26:05.100 complete. So there were a couple of different people, contractors in the city who they had bids

00:26:10.700 from two or three other contractors that were actual bids, you know, all written down, like,

00:26:14.040 we're going to do this, we're going to do this. And I'd seen the drawings and I was like, okay,

00:26:19.020 we don't know what the hardware is. We don't know what the plumbing fixtures are. We don't

00:26:21.760 want the light fixtures are. I don't know what the appliances are. I don't know what the various

00:26:25.600 finishes are throughout the rooms. I know maybe 25% of what this project is. And I said to the client

00:26:32.800 right on the very first meeting, I said, so any bids you have are nonsense. You're looking at a pile

00:26:36.660 of bullshit. This is just things that you asked for bids. These people sent you bids. Here's a bid. 1.00

00:26:41.400 But I said, if you look through the bids, you're going to see that every single line on the entire

00:26:45.220 bid is written as an allowance because they don't know what the hell they're doing in that particular

00:26:51.040 instance. So I, with the client right from the outset, I try to say, I promise you the first

00:26:57.400 struggle on this project is going to take at least a year, which is to get the drawings and

00:27:03.660 specifications up to the point where we actually know what the hell we're supposed to build. I know you

00:27:09.180 want to be in two years. Well, the first year is going to be spent just figuring out what the hell

00:27:12.740 we're supposed to build because it's not there. It's not in the drawings. And, you know, that can

00:27:18.700 be an embarrassment to the architect who's trying to say like, oh, no, no, no, we're ready to go.

00:27:23.620 And I kind of give it to him tough right from the start. I don't try to be insulting, but I try to at

00:27:31.960 least say we have to operate in reality here. And the first reality is you don't have a plan.

00:27:38.400 So the first thing we need to do is get to a plan. And I said, you don't have to hire me. I don't care

00:27:43.280 if you hire me or not, but I have a very long track record. I have a whole list of people you

00:27:48.400 can call that say that I dealt squarely with them. And I will move this along as quickly as I can. I

00:27:55.000 mean, the project we're doing right now is a year over the original schedule. It's probably

00:28:00.220 40% over budget, over the original budget. But also the project has completely changed in scope

00:28:06.980 while we've been doing it. I mean, they added a whole backyard. They added this incredible green

00:28:11.720 roof. They've added, I mean, we're doing a handmade glass mosaic covering the entire primary bathroom

00:28:19.040 that shows scenes from the sinking of the Titanic. I mean, that wasn't in the original scope.

00:28:24.820 So things like that bump up the price and they extend the amount of time it takes to do the

00:28:29.780 project. But I just tell them that I'm like, you don't have to do this. I mean, you're telling me you

00:28:34.360 want scenes of the Titanic in your bathroom. That's going to take some time and it's going to cost,

00:28:39.600 you know, a lot, like a lot. And, and, but you don't have to do it. I'm, you're controlling your

00:28:46.680 budget and you're controlling your schedule. I'm just sending you the costs. I don't mark up costs.

00:28:52.420 I'm like, here's the cost. Here's the person who's going to do it. Here's how much money they want to

00:28:56.700 do it. Here's how long they say it's going to take. I don't believe them. I think it's probably

00:29:00.380 going to take 50% longer. If you want to do it. Great. If you don't want to do it, no problem.

00:29:05.260 We'll just put in conventional tile. So I try to make them understand that I don't really have that

00:29:10.500 much control over the schedule and budget. It really depends on what we're doing and what you want

00:29:16.020 and how crazy you want to get with the place. And they tend to believe me. I mean, people,

00:29:22.620 people still blow their stack now and again, because I mean, it's a tense process for everybody

00:29:27.020 and nobody likes to move and nobody likes to, it's just, I mean, it's dirty and messy and gross. And,

00:29:33.520 and, uh, but I, but I do try to make them understand that it's their decisions that affect

00:29:39.640 the budget, not mine. I mean, I know how to do the things I can actually, for the most part,

00:29:44.000 pull things off in a pretty smooth fashion now. But if you throw a handmade glass mosaic at me,

00:29:50.120 that covers 300 square feet of space, that's going to take a little doing, which is fine,

00:29:55.280 but just do it with open eyes. I'm not going to promise you that I'm going to get that done in

00:29:59.120 the same timeline that the conventional tile was going to go in. All right. So proactively

00:30:02.360 manage people's expectations, be honest with them. But what do you do when someone does blow their stack

00:30:07.260 at you? Let's say you're in the middle of a project and something, just some unforeseen thing

00:30:11.860 happened, right? The, the, the countertops fell into the Atlantic ocean. Um, how do you tell a

00:30:17.220 client the bad news? Like, well, this, uh, active God happened and it's going to put us back another

00:30:23.040 year. One of the things that's hard to learn is the worst news you have to deliver the quickest

00:30:28.780 with the worst. The news is the faster you have to deliver it. And the more upfront you have to be

00:30:34.840 with a client about it. I mean, there's just, I worked, I've worked for a bunch of bosses who would

00:30:39.820 try and hide things and cover it up and, you know, something like that would happen. I mean,

00:30:45.520 I had a client, I had a boss, the mill worker died and stopped making the cabinets. And he tried to

00:30:51.860 hide the fact from the client that his mill worker had died. It didn't go well. It's better just to

00:30:58.560 say, I mean, it's with this, with this thing, we just went to the client and say we, the day it showed

00:31:04.200 up, we sent the client, the picture saying, here are the slabs. They're destroyed. They're useless. 1.00

00:31:08.460 You know, I'm sorry this happened. I didn't, I mean, most, I mean, I always give people the right 0.94

00:31:16.300 to scream and yell. I mean, if something bad happens, people react badly a lot. Not everybody's

00:31:22.160 a monk. And I don't even know any monks. And something bad happens on their project and they

00:31:33.380 get upset. So you let them get upset. I mean, if they attack me personally, I usually will tell them

00:31:40.340 I'll come back and we can talk about this later. You know, you can yell your head off, but if you,

00:31:46.800 you know, I, there's a, there's a certain level of, of personal vilification that I won't take.

00:31:52.600 I, everybody makes mistakes. I, I really try mightily to limit them. And I, there, it, it,

00:32:00.300 it depends on the situation. I mean, powerful people are used to mistreating people and I won't,

00:32:07.280 I won't suffer mistreatment, but I will give somebody the right to blow their stack if something

00:32:12.160 terrible just happened to them. I see. I don't take it too personally when they do, unless they're

00:32:16.740 attacking you personally. I think one thing that stood out from this book is you pointed out that,

00:32:22.040 I think a lot of people have this romantic idea of a carpenter who, you know, takes his sweet time

00:32:26.180 to artfully create something that will last a lifetime, right? Mortis. And, you know,

00:32:31.080 they're just making the dovetail joint, but you argue that speed is an important element of being

00:32:37.380 a good craftsman. Why is that? There, there is a romantic notion of that. And there's a lot,

00:32:43.880 there's a lot of, I mean, if you have to make your living at this, I mean, I do this,

00:32:48.840 you know, carpentry sent my kids to college and college wasn't cheap. And if you have to make

00:32:55.340 your living at it, there's just no getting around that the more you produce and the faster you produce

00:33:01.440 it, the more money you're able to make. I mean, that's just the formula of productivity. So learning

00:33:07.100 how to work fast is something that will set one apart from everybody around you. If I can put in

00:33:13.240 six doors in a day, I'm more valuable to the contractor than the guy that can put in two.

00:33:18.160 That's just math. And it also helps me to think like, how can I economize my processes? How can I

00:33:24.960 do things in a way that I'm not wasting movement, that I'm not wasting material? I talked about it

00:33:30.620 to some extent in the book about different ways that I've made myself a more efficient carpenter.

00:33:36.480 You know, there's a great, there's actually a really wonderful book by Larry Hahn called The

00:33:40.220 Very Efficient Carpenter. And that man can build a crazy pitched roof faster than any human being on

00:33:47.580 the face of the earth, just because he's got it down to a perfect little science. And every movement

00:33:53.100 he does, every movement of material and every movement of his body is geared towards efficiency.

00:33:59.840 And so that's the first reason to develop speed is to make better money and get paid better.

00:34:05.240 Because physical work doesn't always pay that well. The other reason is, is that that romantic notion

00:34:12.280 of somebody sitting in their candle lit shop, hand cutting dovetails. One thing I've found in my work

00:34:19.880 and also with work with a lot of my colleagues is that people's brains, like thinking brains, mind brains,

00:34:28.460 actually spend a lot of time interfering with the movements of their body. And after you've practiced

00:34:35.340 skills, if one has practiced chop, hand chopping dovetails for years and years and years, you get

00:34:41.240 to a point where your thinking brain is the wrong tool to chop hand cut dovetails. The right tool is

00:34:47.620 your body. And if you watch somebody who's very practiced at it and who doesn't think about it all

00:34:52.400 the time, they will chop out those dovetails so fast, you can't believe it. You're like, how can that

00:34:56.940 chisel move so fast? How can that person just, they're just like, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck,

00:35:01.020 cluck, cluck. And, and the work emerges underneath their chisel. That's because their brains aren't

00:35:07.820 interfering with their body. And one of the ways you learn to train the skills of your body so that

00:35:13.940 the brain doesn't interfere with them is to work very, very quickly, like two times or three times

00:35:18.440 faster than a normal person would. Because what it does is it allows the intelligence of the body to

00:35:24.040 usurp the intelligence of the brain. And at the beginning of a job, when I'm planning it,

00:35:29.400 I need my brain all the time. But once I've done the math and once I've done all the planning and I

00:35:34.280 know what I'm doing, then it's time to just work. And I have learned that the faster I work,

00:35:40.680 actually the better my body works. It's actually more skilled and it's more efficient and it's more

00:35:46.380 accurate. I mean, there, there's some caveats that like, it's easy to make a stupid mistake when you're 0.99

00:35:50.860 working really quickly, but most people I know who are really good at a physical trade, a physical 0.92

00:35:58.300 task, they do it so fast. You'd be astounded at how quickly they do it. They don't think about it.

00:36:03.760 It's not happening in their head. It's happening with the skills they've developed in their body.

00:36:07.980 You know, I mean, people talk about the intelligence of practice motion. I can't, I mean,

00:36:12.480 there's all these funny terms for it, but embodied cognition. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a different way of

00:36:17.920 thinking and I can touch things with my hand and know with one touch, like, is that thin enough?

00:36:24.280 Is that strong enough? Is that there? And it's a really wonderful thing to develop and a very joyful

00:36:29.920 thing to develop the point where when I'm working at my fastest and things are really going well,

00:36:35.440 it's a joyful process. Another thing that stood out to me in this book is you point out that

00:36:39.800 people pay millions of dollars and you spend months or even years renovating or building a home.

00:36:46.800 And you think with that much investment in resources and in time, what you do, your work

00:36:52.820 would last decades or even generations, but you point out that most of what you build will be

00:36:58.760 destroyed in 10 years. Why is that? And how do you stay motivated to build something knowing there's

00:37:05.080 a good chance it's going to be destroyed here in about a decade? Well, I mean, I work for people that

00:37:09.500 are enormously concerned with fashionability and trends come and trends go in interior design.

00:37:16.380 And they come and go every decade. People talk about the interior design of the seventies,

00:37:20.640 twenties, thirties, forties, fifties. You can, you can sort of market every decade and sort of

00:37:24.760 imagine what the interior design trends were of those eras. I mean, the social set I'm working for

00:37:31.460 is intensely concerned with self-image and fashion caters to people's self-image and they want to be

00:37:41.500 perceived as fashionable. Not the clients I'm working for right now. I'm working for

00:37:44.840 kind of regular people right now. They just happen to have some money. And I've had clients that aren't

00:37:49.600 so concerned with that, but, but as a social set, the people I work for are intensely concerned with

00:37:55.520 being perceived as fashionable. So no matter what we build for them, for the most part, 10, 15 years

00:38:01.940 later, it's out of style. They'll sell the place or they'll renovate it all over again. I mean,

00:38:06.820 completely cut the place and completely renovate it all over again. And they have the means to do it.

00:38:11.740 And it's not, I mean, they're, these aren't people that are building for resale value. These are people

00:38:16.120 that are building to impress. That's the whole point. And they say as much, they're not, they don't

00:38:22.180 hide it. They're, they're building places to impress their friends and impress whoever it is they are

00:38:27.760 trying to impress. And so how do you stay motivated knowing that, okay, this person's probably going to

00:38:32.740 renovate it here in 10 years? Well, I mean, for one, if I don't work, I don't eat. So

00:38:37.460 like that's a pretty powerful motivation. I mean, when my, when my kids, you know, when my kids were

00:38:45.720 going to college, I mean, people know this, there's a lot of people in my shoes, the bills never stopped

00:38:51.360 coming. And I just had to keep making money and keep making money. A lot of times, I mean, there are

00:38:56.180 times I don't really get too concerned about, I'll build anything anybody wants, as long as it's not

00:39:01.760 dangerous or unlawful. I mean, I don't care if it's ugly. I don't care if it's, I mean, I don't

00:39:06.580 have to like it. I don't have to like the thing I'm building. I have to build it well. And I have

00:39:11.660 to build it well enough so that they'll like it and pay me. I do this for a living. It's not really

00:39:16.480 to me. It's an artisan form. To me, it's not, it's not my art. I mean, I do other things for artistic

00:39:23.560 endeavors and building is not really an artistic endeavor for me. It's a craft and it's my living

00:39:29.680 and I build for money because without money, I wouldn't have been able to send my kids to

00:39:34.900 college and I wouldn't be able to pursue the things that I'm trying to pursue now that are

00:39:38.940 outside of my craft. So I'm more than happy to build whatever people want. And I can, and I always

00:39:44.300 find, I mean, every project has its challenges and its interests and there's always even, you know,

00:39:49.840 I mean, like we've already spoken about, there's the personal side of things. There's the

00:39:53.700 logistical side of things. There are all so many challenges in what I do. It's, it's endlessly

00:39:58.340 interesting. I mean, I'm never bored with my work and if they want to tear it out in 10 years,

00:40:03.560 well, they bought it. God bless them. It seems silly, but I think, I think the last couple of

00:40:09.460 jobs I've done will stand for decades, the last, the last few, but most of the other ones I build

00:40:15.020 are in the, are, you know, in the dump. So yeah, you have to have a certain amount of detachment.

00:40:19.940 I mean, you have your creative outlets where you feel like you're doing art and we're going to talk

00:40:22.880 about that here in a minute. I mean, you do music now, you do writing, but what you do with

00:40:27.920 carpentry, like that's a craft and all that matters with that is, you know, whether the client

00:40:32.500 likes it or not. Well, I mean, I'm a hired gun and it's work for money. So I can't let,

00:40:39.700 I can't let my ego get in the way of, you know, what I'm, I mean, what I'm, once I'm out the door,

00:40:47.560 I mean, also, I mean, quite frankly, once I'm out the door on one project, I'm right onto the next

00:40:51.500 project and there's a whole new, I'm completely consumed by that project at work. And I actually,

00:40:56.420 it's hard for me to even remember some of the places I build, except that every once in a while

00:41:00.000 they appear in magazines and stuff like that. To me, it's a job. This is actually a job. I put a lot

00:41:06.060 of energy into it and I put a lot of attention into it and I really do enjoy it. I really do love doing

00:41:10.520 it, but it is ultimately my job and people are paying me to do something. And I'm more than happy

00:41:17.480 to build them what they would like built as long as they pay me for it. That's the deal. I make this

00:41:22.080 crazy house for you. You give me money. And that's what work for money is. And, and I, and I,

00:41:30.500 you know, I've had a real thirst to explore what I consider my own creative visions and my own

00:41:36.980 creative outlets that I would call more my artistic pursuit. So, you know, especially with music,

00:41:41.860 music recently, and, you know, I've made two record albums now, and that's a completely different

00:41:47.340 thing. Those to me are, that's creating something forever. And it's deeply, deeply important to me,

00:41:53.300 the quality that goes into that and the emotion that goes into that and the feeling that goes into

00:41:58.180 it. I do get attached to those things. Let's talk about your music. So what have you learned

00:42:03.080 about doing good work, you know, from what you've done as a carpenter? How's that carried over to your

00:42:08.760 passion in music? Well, it's interesting because I've made two records now with a man named Mark

00:42:14.140 Ambrosino. He runs a studio out in Queens called the Madhouse. And he, you know, I mean, this isn't

00:42:22.320 an exact amount, but he's kind of me in the music world. And I mean, I've, I've played music my entire

00:42:29.420 life. I've played piano since I was four years old. I've played guitar since I was 12 and I play almost

00:42:33.500 every day and I work at it because I love it. I totally love it. Music just captures my emotions and

00:42:40.020 my, and to me, there's almost nothing like a wonderful song. And I particularly like song. I

00:42:46.460 like songs with words and Mark is a craftsman with songs. I mean, Mark's worked with most of the

00:42:53.100 greats in the music world. He was a road drummer with Ray Charles. I mean, he doesn't get, you know,

00:42:58.760 better than that. And we made, we made a record two years ago that I'm not releasing. It's that's a

00:43:06.120 whole art project. That's too long. I describe it in the book. So I talk, if you want to know about

00:43:10.220 that, read the book. But then I, I also wanted to make a record for him for general release.

00:43:15.680 And he's such a musical craftsman. He's such a brilliant drummer. And I met him because I used

00:43:21.740 to go to his studio sometimes to just do little session work, playing mostly steel guitars for him.

00:43:27.800 And I sent him songs and he agreed that we should make a record together, which kind of shocked

00:43:34.960 me. And then we went and did it and now we've released it. And I just released it in September

00:43:40.200 and the record is called hard to tame. And it's my first real public effort at music and, you know,

00:43:49.980 nothing in a way it's, I mean, it's closer to my heart than carpentry will ever be because it's so

00:43:55.080 personal. Music is so personal. I mean, nobody's ever written a song that wasn't autobiographical

00:43:59.620 somehow. And here are 11 songs that are deeply autobiographical, although not necessarily

00:44:07.100 explicitly so. And they're very similar pursuits. Every note matters. Every sound on that record

00:44:14.020 matters. Nothing can be out of place. The level of craft are very similar, the way he works and the

00:44:18.600 way I work. And we work together beautifully. We love working together. And, and, and then you bring

00:44:24.280 in subcontractors. So, you know, there's a professional piano player on it. Dave Morgan comes in and then

00:44:29.360 and then we had professional horn players, David Mann and Tony Cadillac, who, I mean, those guys

00:44:35.160 played with Sinatra and they're the horn players on my record. These are subcontractors and it's

00:44:40.540 not that different. And you have to treat, you know, how do you talk to them? I mean, how do you

00:44:44.760 talk to a trumpet player who's played with Frank Sinatra and tell him you didn't like what he just

00:44:49.280 played, which happened? You know, like, what do I say to Tony Cadillac? I mean, he's one of the

00:44:59.080 living greats on his instrument. And that was interesting. It was really interesting. And,

00:45:04.180 and, but I did find, especially musicians, musicians are so generous with their time and

00:45:09.080 their care. A musician like that really wants you to, he wants you to like him in the same way that

00:45:16.020 I want the clients to like the place I build for them. He wants me to be happy with what he played

00:45:21.060 on my record. I think the only reason I was able to pull off the making records was because I'd had so

00:45:25.500 much practice doing things. I've had so much practice completing artistic visions that I was

00:45:31.080 able to transfer that same attitude into music. I think a lot of people these days, both their work

00:45:39.060 and their hobbies tend to take place online or in the digital realm. Do you think it's important for

00:45:44.440 people to have at least one area in life in which they do something that's creative and concrete,

00:45:49.300 whether that's carpentry or guitar playing, et cetera? I find, I don't really like my computer

00:45:55.680 or my telephone. I mean, I use my computer to write on and then I usually actually, well, I mean,

00:46:02.040 to me, the computer stands that both the computer and the telephone stand between me and the world.

00:46:09.980 And I like direct experience of the world. I like the feel of stone under my hands. I like the feel of

00:46:17.300 wood in my hands. I like to see what happens when I hit it. You know, one of my favorite guitars is

00:46:23.860 one of my least expensive guitars. And the reason I adore it is because when I hit it, it sounds like

00:46:31.240 wires and by making wood vibrate, you can like hear the wire and you can hear the wood. And there's no way

00:46:40.540 to replicate that kind of learning and that kind of understanding digitally. It just, I mean,

00:46:47.660 the best you can do with the computer is look at it, listen to it and click your fingers on it.

00:46:52.900 But that's not, I mean, pick up a vintage Martin guitar and strum one chord and it's a completely

00:46:59.920 different musical experience than, you know, sitting on a computer creating music all day. There's no,

00:47:04.300 it's a visceral multi-sensory experience that has, you know, decades of understanding of guitar

00:47:11.240 building going into it, decades of, of the, you know, you can sense the vibrations coming off the

00:47:16.580 instrument. It's, I, I just, I mean, honestly, I think the digital world is a poor, a very poor

00:47:23.500 facsimile of the real world. And I mean, I would encourage people to do as much mucking about in the mud 0.97

00:47:31.500 and the dirt and the, and as they can, I mean, you know, pictures of nature online, you know,

00:47:39.020 a picture of the Grand Canyon and the Grand Canyon are so vastly different that they have nothing to

00:47:45.220 do with each other almost. You know what I mean? I mean, if, I don't know if you've ever been to the

00:47:49.060 Grand Canyon, but the first time I went to the rim of the Grand Canyon, I was like, oh, like the word

00:47:54.200 grand is they pick the right one. It's mind blowing. It's earth shattering. It's, it's, uh,

00:48:02.400 it's humbling. It's awe inspiring. And as lovely as a picture online of the Grand Canyon might be,

00:48:09.260 it is none of those things. It's not those things. It's like, oh, that's a great picture of the Grand

00:48:13.680 Canyon. Yeah. Walk to the edge of the thing at sunset some night, you know, at the point,

00:48:18.120 at that point I was dating this Ukrainian woman who it was her birthday and we had to rush there at 85

00:48:23.440 miles an hour to get there by sunset. And we came up over the crest just as the sun was setting

00:48:29.140 and we ran down there with two bottles of wine. And that was my first viewing of the Grand Canyon.

00:48:35.120 And we were, and our minds were destroyed. I mean, you can't do that online. There is no online

00:48:41.980 equivalent to that. Well, Mark, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn

00:48:46.100 more about the book and your work? Well, the book is available on Amazon and it's in almost every

00:48:51.440 local bookstore in the country, both in America and England and Canada. It's really out there

00:48:56.880 everywhere. The book's been, I mean, shockingly popular. So, so it's, it's building a carpenter's

00:49:03.260 notes on the art. I don't know. What's it called again? Building a carpenter's notes on life and the

00:49:09.480 art of good work. And the art of good work. Yeah. And in England, it's actually called how to build

00:49:14.880 impossible things. Don't buy both. They are the same book. Some people have done that and been sad

00:49:19.820 about it. And you know, wherever books are sold, somebody can get that. And my record is called

00:49:25.920 hard to tame by Mark Ellison. And it's, if you Google it, it's on every platform, every streaming

00:49:31.540 platform now, and I'll probably release it on vinyl at the beginning of next year. For those that like

00:49:36.840 vinyl, I appreciate anybody in who takes an interest. Fantastic. Well, Mark Ellison, thanks for

00:49:43.220 your time. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure talking to you. My guest today was Mark Ellison.

00:49:48.520 He's the author of the book, Building a Carpenter's Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work. It's

00:49:52.640 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at

00:49:56.520 his website, markellison.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash building, where

00:50:01.420 you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:50:11.120 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:50:15.220 at artofmanliest.com, where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that

00:50:19.400 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven't done

00:50:22.900 so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on the podcast or Spotify.

00:50:26.300 It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the

00:50:29.960 show with a friend or family member who you think we get something out of it. As always, thank you for

00:50:33.920 the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind me to not listen to the AOM podcast,

00:50:37.800 but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - December 11, 2023

A Carpenter's Notes on the Art of Good Work

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