When Your Business Is THAT Guy

It's always fun when long time friends pay us a visit at PAVERART.

Recently, Bob paid us a visit, and of course his t-shirt struck up a conversation.

I Gotta Guy

A Friend of PAVERART!

I Gotta Guy. It's a cliche. Yes, it's roots have an under-tone of the NJ Italian American, a group I can relate too just a tad.

We all have someone that comes to mind when you need something solved or need to figure out how do I do X? Who is that phone call? Who can I call that knows somebody that can help me solve the problem? Even stereotypes like I Gotta Guy......there has to be some kernel of truth that makes the generalization mean something.

At crazy hours of the day my mind tends to be a non-stop stream of thoughts all converging at once. I refer to it as the mental freight train. After Bob came in the other day, the freight train topic on my 3:30am walk was I Gotta Guy.

I talked to 2 people on random phone calls in the days following Bob's visit. They were not unusual, but because I Gotta Guy was on my mind, they stood. out.

1. Landscape Architect: They stumbled across PAVERART's site with some odd combination of searches, from custom pavers, custom stone art and art pavers. They were trying to design a large Labyrinh type structure with various themes surrounding its structure.

2. A contractor that came across a set of landscape plans that called for 5,000 square foot of "molded pavers" weaved into a complicated pattern, and no indication of who could get it done, so he puts his problem solving hat on. In other words, a creative plan was put out into the world for contractors to collectively bid on, but FEW have the ability to EXECUTE said plan.

So 3:30am, pitch black, the silence of a town sleeping and some random dude walking to his 24 hour convenience store for coffee in the middle of a 5 mile walk. Mental freight train collides with I Gotta Guy and the space PAVERART occupies in the world of outdoor living.

I ask myself:

• Does PAVERART occupy that small corner of the outdoor living world that exists to solve the nearly impossible task like the 2 above?

• Should we NOT be something broader where all ART tends to play?

• Should I not just be grateful, that there are at least some real cases where I Gotta Guy and PAVERART seem to be in the same sentence?

The answer to the above if I'm being truthful is an emphatic YES.

We are just about 75% through with 2024. Nobody ever said it went too slow.

This time of year my mental freight train and early morning walks, no matter how random, tend to collide around common themes.

• What's working?

• What is NOT?

• What are all the forces out of my control that make things harder than they need to be?

• How's the family doing? What does the next chapter look like?

• What does the next chapter look like for those around me?

• What needs to change for those chapters to shine a bit brighter?

I think I Gotta Guy is worth understanding, laughing at, and dare I say, WORTHY of becoming. Because if you happen to be THAT GUY, there's a place in the world for you. There's also a place in the world for people that KNOW that guy. They connect the need, with the solution.

Some rare people and businesses happen to be both.

Too many individuals are neither.

They are not THAT GUY, and they do not know or CONNECT people to THAT GUY.

That's not a good place to be in this world. Great owners instinctively know you wake up everyday trying to build something worthy of being either a connector, or THAT GUY.

And with all that being said, let me introduce you to Tony Gaga. He's THAT GUY.