Good Life Project - Greatness is Not Just About Skill, It’s About Essence.

Episode Date: June 10, 2015

You want to be a better writer, write and study the craft of writing. Want to be a better maker, make more stuff and study the art of making. Want to be a better entrepreneur, build more businesses and study the process of birthing businesses.But, don't stop there. The really big leap, the thing that launches you from really good to world-shaking, is not skill. Transcendent output happens when you go beyond craft and do the work to become a better person.Because WHO you are flows into and through your work as much as HOW SKILLED you've become.This is what we're talking about in today's Good Life Project Riff. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, it's Jonathan here with this week's Good Life Project riff. The name of this riff, Want to Make Better Stuff? Be a Better Person. So, this went down a couple of years ago. We were traveling out to a wedding in the mountains, sort of at the corner of Virginia and Tennessee and North Carolina. And our flight was canceled halfway through, so four of us are sitting stranded in the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. And our flight was canceled halfway through, so four of us are sitting stranded in the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our connecting flight to Tri-Cities Airport in Tennessee is totally grounded,

so we have two choices. Wait seven hours to take the one-hour flight or grab the only remaining car, a big, macho, cream-colored minivan, and hump through the mountains to Abington, Virginia, a small hamlet at the crossroads of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. So it's a place where the choice between bourbon or whiskey is a matter of what side of each state's border you happen to be standing on, and you don't want to choose wrong. We decide to drive. Two days later, I find myself at the Hartwood Artisan Gateway, this beautifully built

facility where I stumble upon a video of a luthier or a guitar builder named Wayne Henderson. Now, Wayne lives about an hour and a half away in Rugby, Virginia, and I've been researching building guitars for the last few years and become obsessed with the craft, but I'd never actually heard of Wayne before. So watching a video of him in his workshop, I'm mesmerized. I have to know more. And it turns out that Wayne is also a National Heritage Award recipient and a bit of a legend in the guitar building world for two reasons, actually. One, he's a true master.

He's been honing his craft as a player and a builder for more than four decades. And he plays like a savant and builds some of the most sought-after guitars in the world, which leads to number two. He once made Eric Clapton wait 10 years for a guitar, not out of spite or ego, just because, well, he's one guy. He still does most things by hand, and the list of people who want guitars from him is about 10 years long. Though as soon as I discover,

that wait time is potentially hackable with persistence and a pretty regular flow of fresh pies. Still, it'll take years. I had to know more. So I did some digging and discovered a book about Wayne, his life and deep devotion to guitars and music and craft, and the Clapton story. The book is called Clapton's Guitar by Alan St. John, and for anyone with a deep appreciation for humility-driven mastery, it is an absolute must-read. Something at the end of the book really grabbed me, though. Something I've believed for a long time, but it was written in a way that hit home. The author St. John was talking with legendary guitar builder and repairman T.J. Thompson, and he asked T.J. a question.

What is it that separates a magical guitar from a merely great one? To which T.J. responded, It's a combination of about 600 things. Number one is the state of mind of the person building the guitar. So Alan comments in response, In a single sentence, he had articulated the hypothesis I'd been gradually creeping toward. An instrument is the sum total, not only of the builder's experience, but his experiences.

You need to be a good man to build a good guitar. Thompson adds in, Be a better person. You can't keep your personality out of the work. It's impossible. If you're rigid or you're distorting reality, it goes into the guitar. And when you play it, it comes back out. It's disturbing. I used to believe that, but I never had any proof of it. But I played enough handmade guitars and then later met the maker and sure enough, it's inseparable. So for a long time, I felt that same way about business, the craft side of entrepreneurship, that art and the process of making anything for anyone and really about life.

Craft isn't just about craft. It's about essence, who you are, how you live your life, the way you engage with the world. It all flows through you and into what you create. So when you're working to figure out how to get to that next level, how to transcend your current cap on what you put into the world and the impact that it has, look at skill. But maybe more importantly, look at you. I hope you've enjoyed this week's Good Life Project riff. As always, if you have, love it if you'd share it around, and if it feels right, go ahead and leave a review on iTunes. Wishing you a fantastic rest of the week. I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.