The Next 10,000 Hours: Building People, Not Just Products
PAVERART just completed its 23rd summer.
I just completed my ninth.
At the end of every summer, I find myself thinking roughly the same thing:
Thank God that’s behind us. The heat. The humidity. The machine-breakdown hell. The six-day production weeks. If that continued much longer, it might have killed us.
Not the mildest of thoughts. And, honestly, not always that far from reality.
For our business, summer has long been our arch nemesis.
When it finally leaves, I exhale. Then I turn my attention toward the road ahead—to getting better, building something stronger and pursuing every form of growth.
I think constantly about what it takes to grow.
Grow what?
Young people.
Careers.
Productive, fulfilling lives.
Businesses.
One concept keeps resurfacing. I’ve come to consider it a bedrock principle: the 10,000-hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers.
Mike and I come back to it continually.
That raises a larger question: What does the 10,000-hour rule in business actually look like?
Hours Aren't Enough
There is something inherently built into the 10,000-hour rule: time.
But time must be paired with intentional practice.
The key word is intentional.
Hours alone do not guarantee greatness. Someone can repeat the same mediocre process for 20 years and never achieve mastery. Time must be combined with talent, determination, feedback and a willingness to change.
The same is true for a business.
Plenty of companies survive the startup phase. Many of them then get stuck. They figure out how to survive and carve out a nice little niche, but reaching an entirely new level requires a series of intentional changes.
Let me give you an example from PAVERART.
How Customers Experience Our Craft
For a residential customer, the buying process often looks something like this: A homeowner begins planning an outdoor living space, patio or driveway. They consider barbecue areas, materials and contractors. They ask for recommendations and conduct countless Google searches. Eventually, they begin thinking: I would love to do something unique, something different and special.
That is often when PAVERART enters the conversation.
For our first 15 years, our website did most of the heavy lifting. We showed lots of photographs proving that we had completed real projects. When available, we included installation pictures.
Eventually, we began producing computer-simulated designs, but those simulations used computer-generated colors rather than the colors of actual concrete pavers. They helped, but we knew the experience could be better.
So we began making intentional investments:
Showing real paver colors, both wet and dry.
Building a much deeper installation catalog so customers could see our designs in the real world, not just inside our shop.
Producing installation videos using our simulated outdoor set.
Getting better at storytelling.
Helping customers envision not just the product, but how it could transform their space.
Our Fiore Farfalla design is one example:
Advancing the physical craft of PAVERART comes fairly naturally to us. We do it all day, every day.
If I were grading us, I would give us a B+, or even an A-minus in this area.
We’ve made real, positive changes.
But where have we fallen short?
The harder stuff.
The People Side of Mastery
At the risk of being too hard on ourselves, we have done some good things.
Compared with 2018:
Wages have increased significantly.
We have a real retirement plan.
We recognize effort, accomplishments and hard work better than ever.
But we still have too much variability in everything involving people.
Some people have nearly perfect attendance. Others struggle with consistency. Too many people invent their own ways of doing things.
If ten different people develop ten different ways to complete the same job, that is not simply a people problem. It is a systems, training and leadership problem.
To grow a business, people must grow. New talent must also be added. In a small business, one or two people entering or leaving can have an enormous effect on the culture.
A specialized manufacturing business like ours cannot simply hire from a large pool of people who already know how to do what we do. Almost everything about PAVERART is unique. We must train, teach, motivate, then rinse and repeat.
Most of our projects are custom. Many have never been done before.
That makes the development of people both more difficult and more important.
Bringing 10,000 Hours to Humans
I wish I could say that I have already mastered the playbook for developing people inside a small, specialized manufacturing business.
Wouldn’t it be great if businesses like ours had:
Excellent training systems incorporating videos, manuals, shadowing, mentoring, testing and certifications.
Clear measurements, goals and incentives.
Cultures that retain great people and attract more of them.
Financial strength that supports excellent, growing compensation and benefit plans, both short-term and long-term.
A spirit of innovation, experimentation and intelligent risk-taking.
Procedures that make success repeatable and failure less likely.
A reputation that attracts customers, employees, partners and friends.
In short: a great place to work, a great company with which to do business and a rock-solid reputation. Like most things in business, it is easy to say and hard to do.
When we hit a wall or struggle repeatedly, I often come back to one uncomfortable conclusion:
The owner is the problem.
The owner can be:
Too involved.
Not involved enough.
Failing to provide the right resources.
Over-resourcing the wrong things.
Putting too much energy into one part of the company at the expense of another.
This summer, I managed to touch on every one of those!
Evidence That People Can Achieve Mastery
The summer of 2026 was not all struggle.
One part of our business continues to shine and increasingly differentiates PAVERART: Custom Engraving.
We still produce plenty of fundraising bricks, but the bigger opportunity is the integration of custom, durable engraving (using our Eco-Fill process) to enhance PAVERART installations and bring them to life. Each week, we see the PAVERART and engraving operations working together in new ways. That has been exciting to watch.
I used to think of the two businesses as frenemies.
They competed for space. People problems collided. The needs of one operation often disrupted the other. Then something changed.
The engraving team stabilized and moved into its own facility. The people began to gel. Their commitment to themselves, their work and one another increased.
They began to gain mastery.
As that happened, the amount of mental energy we spent solving engraving problems declined dramatically. That was not an accident.
The people working in engraving accumulated experience, but they did more than accumulate hours. They learned, adjusted, developed trust and became better together.
They moved toward mastery.
The University of the Future
I have often wondered whether great, growing small businesses could become a kind of university of the future. Not universities that award degrees, but places that build capable people and create solid futures for those driven to make a difference.
Places where titles, prestige, family background and “legacy” mean very little.
Places where who you are matters.
Where your commitment to growth matters.
Where integrity, reputation, determination and skill matter above everything else.
Overly ambitious?
Maybe.
But ambition is one of the necessary ingredients.
Our next level at PAVERART will not come solely from better machines, more space, stronger marketing or more orders.
It will come from helping people move toward mastery and building a company worthy of their 10,000 hours.
That is the work ahead.
Wishing everyone a happy and successful start to fall.
