Mule

When @trekbikes asked me to speak at their Innovation Summit - kind of a TEDtalk/fun product development day- I was as excited as I was terrified. I’ve learned this feeling is the cue to commit. So I said yes having no idea what I could possibly share of value with one of the best companies in the world.

And that word “best” got me thinking. I’ve spent my years as a guitar maker actively opposed to ranking the sounds of music tools. When innovative and creative people try new things that are eventually combined with blurry lines of marketing we guitar makers can do a pretty good job of making playing music feel like it’s a competition. Telling people that we can make better sounds is like trying to tell people what their favorite flavor of ice cream should be and then taking money for it.

We have this left-over adolescent urge to connect with people through our proficiencies but we don’t connect that way. We connect through our shared inadequacies and through stories. So at the summit I told this room filled with passionate problem solvers a story. I told them the story of how I started my career obsessed with the technical part of luthiery and struggled hard in many ways. It wasn’t until I learned that leading with the ‘why’ I made things instead of the ‘how’ opened the door to connect humans in a deep and meaningful way. It also led me to find myself on the beach in the northernmost United Kingdom, dressed as a redcoat firing black powder rifles off a castle wall at 3 AM for a Netflix show while making a new friend. It led me to unknowingly make an instrument for a kid who lives 3,000 miles away who ended up being the great grandson of the man who gave me my first musical instrument when I was six years old. Things I never would have experienced without a perspective change.

A Trek bike was the first bike I spent my own money on as a kid. I got it home and decided I was going to do 100 laps around the church parking lot across the street. It wasn’t the best thing to do on a bike but I did it has hard as I could, felt satisfied and had some fun. Instead of trying to be impressive what if we keep reminding ourselves that being impressive isn’t the point?

Matt