Jason:
How did you know at such a young age what sort of work you wanted to do?
When I was in high school, I just checked out completely. I had previously been straight-As, but I just couldn't care about anything other than Art, English, and History classes.
I come from a family of makers and mechanics but because I was intellectual, no one taught me anything about it and since I wanted to know the 'why' and not just the what, my father usually chased me out of the garage.
I worked the lowest paid service jobs imaginable, always worried about getting fired. I moved all over the country just painting and writing in my free time. I learned massage therapy but had no faith in my ability to run my own practice.
At 26, I panicked and chose nursing because my mother and aunts did it. It paid well and was complex.
I'm 41 now and I'm doing annual refresher training as I type this (on break between circus acts) and as I've been going through the stations, it feels like nursing school. I hate everything about it and I realize now that I've ALWAYS hated it. I hated it in school. Nursing school was easy for me, but I hated it. And I wonder just how screwed up I must have been (and continue to be) to choose a job that is so mismatched to any of my natural gifts or interests. I want to make things! Not electronics necessarily, but furniture, mechanisms that solve problem, and just more beautiful and functional objects than what the modern world passes off as adequate. I get a charge out of putting something in this world that wasn't there before and knowing that I don't know exactly what it will be when it's done. But I will know when it's done. You always know and you feel like Schiit when you've put it out and it's not done. It nags at you. You just can't let it be until you've put every bit of your ability into it and then when it is done, there's peace.
So how did you know to do this and how did you have the clarity of mind and purpose to follow it from an early age?
In short, I didn't. Through grade school and high school, I went from the generic "a scientist" to "a doctor" to "a cardiologist" to "a photographer," and "a writer." When I hit college, I figured I had to choose something, so I picked engineering, since (a) that's what my dad did, and (b) it seemed like a reasonable way to make good money.
Along the way in college, I got bit by the audio bug and started building speakers, and dabbled in electronics as a senior project. That's when I decided that audio was what I wanted to do.
Of course, the reality of the engineering downturn as I got out of school led me to an engineering position at a government contractor (barf), which I sprinted headlong from into the first real audio job I could find (at Sumo). I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Nor did I have any clue how fragile Sumo was, or that they would be simultaneously a company that forced me to really learn the technology I'd chosen...and a company that made a ton of mistakes in the way it was operated.
From there, I got an opportunity to work with Theta, which was also a dichotomy: the best money for the least work, but also a company in transition, as Mike and his business partner went in different directions, which put an end to the gravy train. It was also where I learned how to run a successful company from Mike Moffat, who was at the top of his game, and ran Theta in much the same way as Schiit...in fact, I think most of the progressive stuff we've done at Schiit has been a carbon copy of early Theta.
And then, with Theta no longer viable for me, and Sumo imploding, I took a 15-year detour into marketing. Why? Because I had a knack for it, and it was easy. At least easier than finding the capital to start an audio company. Hint: consulting companies are a LOT easier to start than manufacturing....but that also means (a) you have a lot more competition, and (b) your clients are still your bosses.
And, in the middle of all that, I wrote and published about 3 dozen stories and 3 books. The old way, through conventional publishers. But I consider that a cul-de-sac, at least for me. I don't have the intestinal fortitude to do the heavy self-promotion and marketing required to be successful in publishing.
It took the downturn of 2008/9 to bring me back to audio...and to reject almost literally everything I'd been indoctrinated with on the marketing side. I had no idea that Schiit would grow the way it did; it was supposed to be a "hobby business," to insulate the Centric marketing juggernaut from any future downturns. Now, it's the other way around...Centric is the "hobby business." Which is one reason I want to do a marketing book, and to make some major changes in the way Centric does business...to see if ht can be reinvented, in the same way Schiit reinvented (part of) the audio biz.
