Brain Vomit #8: Taking the safe route

This past weekend I spent time with family, my wifes side of the family. Went to a barbecue at my brother in law’s house. It was nice to catch up and have a normal evening with family after a year of social distancing. They told me how pleased they were with the success of my business but ultimately I had made a mistake by not working at SpaceX when I had the chance.

I rejected a safe, well paying job position working as a composites fabricator. A job that would give me health benefits and stock options that would eventually appreciate in value at a ridiculous rate. All for what? A small bike company? I think that till this day they are waiting for the moment they get to tell me “I told you so”.

If I stayed, my stock options would be worth who knows how much. With that money I could open up my business or retire or do whatever I wanted. And they are right. What they don’t keep in mind is that If i stayed I would have done exactly what they did. I would buy a big house, buy a nice car and slowly get used to a lifestyle with a very high overhead. Do brain numbing, soul crushing work till the day I retire, if I don't get replaced by a robot in the process. Live a life of regret. Maybe I’m being too harsh on them.

There’s a set of skills and discipline you only develop in the process of building a business with extremely limited resources. Money is a resource. A lot of times it’s a boost. Think of it like a drug, medicine. You can take a painkiller after your back surgery and you will feel comfortable for a while, it didn’t solve the problem, just your perception of pain. Without discipline you would start taking the painkiller for every sign of discomfort, eventually getting addicted to the painkiller. Now you need it in order to function. A big amount of money at the beginning without proper discipline and problem solving skills is a business that soon will be out of business. The bigger the amount and the simpler the business is the longer it would take. You can only hope they learn how to turn it around before they run out of funds. I think that’s the main reason why most businesses don’t make it past their first 5 years.

When you start with nothing you are at the verge of going out of business at any moment. You are an animal of prey in constant alert and pursuit. You either adapt/ evolve or get eaten. You deal with the paint without the drug. You are forced to learn the skills and discipline necessary to survive till they become second nature.

Besides money, watching my business grow and thrive brings me immense joy and fulfillment. I am stoked to come to work everyday. I feel like I’m doing exactly what I always wanted to do. You can’t put a dollar sign to that.

And what about the stock options? I’m sure if i did a valuation of my business it would be worth a lot more than my SpaceX stock options would be. And I’m not done yet, to the contrary.

I am barely getting started.

brain Vomit #7 trial and error.

Trial and error and error and error.

The only way to not make yourself crazy and get super frustrated is to approach the challenge you want to solve knowing that it will most likely fail. You’ll probably fail many times till you get it right. But with every failure you learn something new. I don’t take advice from strangers well, because most likely they’ll tell me a hypothetical solution that I had thought of and tried 5 iterations ago. I can confidently tell them it’s not going to work, they get upset. There’s about 10 years of me failing over and over again while coming up with something new on my bikes. But with every iteration my work gets a little bit better.

With all the repairs I do I also study how other bikes fail. What worked and what didn’t. If it is an idea worth pursuing. Failures are not the end, failures are works in progress.

I could go the easy route and buy stock tubes and drop outs. Cut and glue. But I like it my way. Not because I enjoy frustration, I really don’t, but I find immense joy in seeing my idea work the way I planned it.

Brain Vomit #6: Maff Hoffman

I remember a clear before and after I knew bikes were going to play a big role in my life. I watched a special on Matt Hoffman. This was around 1994 or so when “EXTREME SPORTS!” where the coolest thing, the world pre X Games. I was like 6 years old then.

Matt Hoffman was the cutting edge of the sport. Not only was he going bigger than anyone else invented most of the tricks, but he also owned his own bike company and designed his own bikes organized contest and had a traveling Demo Team. In the 80’s everyone rode BMX but in the 90’s anything 80’s was considered lame as hell. He pretty much single handedly made BMX cool again. The main person responsible for making BMX the sport that it is today.

In 1995, Matt would compete in the first X games with a broken foot. (though i might have the year wrong or the event wrong because I can’t find the video on youtube.) A very young Rick Thorne did a brief introduction of him and highlighted that Matt Hoffman has a broken foot and in order to compete he made a metal insole to give his foot more support. The Showed him standing on the deck icing his foot. To 7 year old me that was the closest thing to a real life superhero. Matt drops in, does his run and wins the gold medal. What a badass. Dave Mirra, another one of my childhood Heros, got 2nd place after he wasn’t able to pull a backflip fakie at the end of his run. Since that day I wanted to be like Matt Hoffman, and I still am. Though those are massive shoes to fill and I haven’t seen anyone come close to the influence this guy had in the bike industry.

Having your name on the downtube as your brand is nothing new, but Hoffman Bikes planted the seed in my head. Back then I didn’t know I was going to be a framebuilder, but I knew I wanted to have my own bike company one day.

Brain Vomit #5: Weight loss

I am 163 pounds, this is the heaviest i’ve ever been. Terrible. When I used to race I was 130 pounds. I also used to be fast. I was broke then but I was fast, very fast. My strategy in racing was just outworking the rest. If i was tired that meant they were tired too, so i would hit harder until one of us cracked. It was unsustainable but for a little while I was unbeatable. Now I’m not broke anymore. I am Middle Class. The goal of every immigrant that comes to this country with less than nothing. I am LA Middle Class, which to Midwest standards I’m rich! I am also 33 pounds heavier than I’d like to be and if you attack me on the climb I will let you go. Have fun! I have work to do later, I need to be a functional human being after the ride. I know exactly what I have to do to get back into my race weight. It’s just so much work, that energy is better allocated to work that needs to get done. At least for now.

Brain Vomit #4: Resilience

Resilience:

Money solves all problems right? What about when you don’t have money? Can you not solve the problem then? Of course you can! It will be a lot harder but if you are committed to making it work you will figure it out. You kinda have to. I was born in Argentina. Pinamar to be exact. A beach town off the coast of the Buenos Aires Province. My family immigrated to the US in March of 2001, I was 14 then. It was only supposed to be for a year but after the Argentine economy collapsed in October of 2001 we stayed. As time went on our visas expired and things would get more and more complicated for us. No we were Illegal immigrants, and during the Bush years being an Illegal stripped you off many rights that people take for granted. Back in Argentina my dad’s business went bankrupt as well as the company my mom worked for. It was a hard time, but we were convinced that starting from scratch in the US would be a lot easier than starting from scratch in Argentina. At least that’s what my parents believed, after all they lived through dictatorships and many recessions before giving the United States a chance. Los Angeles looks very promising in the movies. This recession was the worst they’ve seen yet. Growing up as an illegal immigrant in the United States forced me to become resilient, to build a very thick layer of skin. Avoid excuses and get things done. Because I couldn’t complain, no one cared for what I had to say. Or if i complained they would get defensive. “If you don’t like it here why don’t you go back to where you came from?”. I really wanted to, but we couldn’t. Maybe it was because we wouldn’t know what would wait for us back home. Maybe because the opportunities that awaited us in the future were worth the struggle now. Maybe because I am a coward. All I really wanted then was to be normal, to be exposed to the same opportunities as everyone else.
Twenty years later I made it, I am a successful small business owner. I make good money in an industry that is famous for not making money. I am going to marry the girl of my dreams. I drive a nice car (my Prius Prime is nice to me, ok?). I live comfortably in Los Angeles, the best city in the world. The future is bright for me. I worked very hard to get to this point and I’m going to keep going. I started with a huge disadvantage. Being fed the scraps. Resilience is all I got. I have too much momentum built up to be stopped. Someone or something with more money and more resources doesn’t scare me. I’ll try and reiterate until I figure it out. I’m comfortable in the struggle. I’ll outwork you to death.

Brain Vomit #3: Help Wanted

How do you find good workers? Let me rephrase that, How do you find good workers that want to learn at a price I can afford? The ones with experience are taken or have a terrible track record that I would be doing myself a disservice by hiring them. Pay people more? How much more? We all know that If I ask too much for my services I will lose clients. I am all in favor of a $15 minimum wage. Any self aware human being will tell you that most people are hypocrites and as much as they say they’ll support the little guy, buy local, help their community, etc. They cast their vote with their wallets. They will support the little guy, buy local and help their community as long as it is not inconvenient. This is the main reason why Amazon is closing retailers all over this country. We let them.

Maybe if we focused a little less on the well being of our own personal benefit over the well being of the whole, things would be better for everyone. But then, isn’t that the solution to every problem? Some might find it a bit Anti-American and then they wonder how everything got so screwed up.

I’m getting all over the place. 


 I need help, and I never thought it would be so to find entry level people to do simple entry level work. A lot of people expect my work to be this super exciting craft where engineering, craftsmanship and art interconnect to make a machine that is useful and beautiful at the same time. And even though it can be like that, a lot of it is very boring and repetitive and without mastering the boring and repetitive part of the craft. Anyone should be able to do that right? Unfortunately no. People get bored and the expectations they had quickly banish and then they stop caring about the work and quality suffers (creating more work for to do in the process) or they quit.

Brain Vomit #2: Broken Pipe

Today is Monday April 12th, I forgot to take a mask with me so I couldn’t go into the hardware store to buy a couple things I need for the shop. Then I got to the shop to find the back of my shop flooded because a pipe broke upstairs. It’s not too bad, but still I’m not happy about it. Luckily nothing important got wet. My machines are fine, clients' bikes are fine. Getting upset about it is not going to solve anything. I just have been hoping these blog posts would be a bit more intellectual and write down whatever is on my mind. Right now all I have in my mind is that broken pipe. The Plummer is on the way. I got my mask. As soon as he gets here I’m going to the hardware store to get the things I need for today. The show must go on.

Brain Vomit #1: Welcome to Hern's journal

Welcome to my journal/blog/whatever. This page is meant to be raw, unedited, open and honest. With misspellings and all, fuck it. I’ve been wanting to write a book for a while but I find it hard to get my thoughts straight so I’m taking the same approach from cycling and racing. If i don’t train I’m not going to be in shape and If I am not in shape then why sign up for the race? I’m only going to embarrass myself. So if I want to write a book I better start typing, put down all my good and bad ideas for everyone to see. Why not? If anything I’m making content and in this day and age content is everything. A half baked blog post has a lot less repercussions and takes a lot less effort than a Vlog on youtube. My following would have to be people who like to read I guess. I will try to keep these short. Quick 20 minutes behind my keyboard just putting down my miles in words. I have to warn you a lot of these will be garbage, some might be good but i can’t guarantee it. Right now I don’t know how often I will post, I'm hoping to write something every day, we’ll see tomorrow and the day after that. I’m not a writer but these are my attempts at being one and maybe when i become a decent writer i’ll start on my book. For now this is just my brain vomit in the shape of a blog post.