Self-Taught Furniture Maker: From High School Dropout to $10K CNC Machine Investment

Nick Rabeck [00:00:00] I never know what's gonna happen. And I think it goes back to that uncertainty thing that I love, is that I can start a piece. I usually don't make the entire plan before I work on the piece. I usually let the wood speak to me in in what you know. It's almost that like, I don't know if I'd call it an organic or inorganic way. I look at it and I try to finish the piece and it kind of starts to tell me what it wants to be turned into. I'm Steven Fairbanks, a writer and teacher from St. Louis, Missouri, and you're listening to the Vance Crowe podcast. Welcome

Vance Crowe [00:00:36] Back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we sit down with Nick Rebeck, a furniture artist. I don't even know how to describe it. I met Nick when he was changing out the windows on my house and very quickly realized this was a special man that was not just installing windows, but he had a lot going on behind the scenes. As we've become friends, I realized this is actually a semi-famous artist that lives in Jefferson County, Missouri, building some of the most beautiful furniture I have ever seen. So I invited Nick to sit down with me and talk about how he became this furniture artist and his love of details and how to build things with his hand. Nick gives a great insight into how people that maybe were not so good at high school can turn their lives into something really amazing if they get off of the beaten path. We're gonna get to this interview with Nick, where we talk about everything from furniture to cars to even open AI's chatbot. But before we do, I wanted to talk about this disc right here. This is an M disc and it is what we create when a person comes in to do a legacy interview. In this case, I had a couple sit down with me and talk all about their lives, what they thought was important, what they hope their children knew and understood, and really what values they wanted to have passed down. Now, the beautiful thing about this disc right here is it's no ordinary DVD. It's an M disc, which means that it is made out of an inorganic material that won't just degrade after 20, 30 years.

Vance Crowe [00:02:07] Instead, the Department of Defense have rated it to be able to survive up to a thousand years. Imagine the family that will be looking at this interview knowing what the voices of their ancestors sounded like, what they talked like, how they looked, how they felt. This is something that you can give to future generations that will allow them to understand what life was like in 2023. If you're interested in having me sit down with you or your loved ones to record a legacy interview, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more. Alright, without further ado, let's go to the man, Nick Rayback. Nick Rayback, welcome to the podcast. Thank you.

Nick Rabeck [00:02:48] Thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:02:49] So how do you know that that is a piece of Maple wood?

Nick Rabeck [00:02:53] I know that's maple because Maple has a couple of really cool characteristics, lighter in tone, which is the first sign. And then also it has sping has quilting, and you can tell with this one just tons of character anywhere you look around it.

Vance Crowe [00:03:12] I think most people look at a sliced up piece of wood, and the ability to be able to look, to say what it is without looking at the leaves, or at a minimum the bark is nearly impossible. How did you develop this?

Nick Rabeck [00:03:25] It's just a matter of developing that eye for it. So, you know, whenever you see something like this sitting at a saw mill or something like that, you can't see that. But the more you do it, the more you can kind of spot, you know, the characteristics that, you know, if you see one spot, chances are the rest of it looks the same way. So yeah, so that's pretty much, that's pretty much it. Just experience really, you know, you do so many of them and eventually you get all the inside tricks.

Vance Crowe [00:03:56] So a few months ago I was getting the windows replaced in our house, and you show up and you're there just like doing your work, putting 'em together. And I stopped by to be like, Hey, what's going on? And you had your trailer. And I noticed immediately, as soon as I went to the trailer, I was like, whoa, this guy is not like other people. You were like hyper organized. Everything was set up to be exactly right. How did you get into this world of like construction and furniture and making things the right way?

Nick Rabeck [00:04:25] That's funny. The way I got into it was, it started out with being a terrible student. So, you know, after graduating high school, I didn't really have much aspirations for going to college. There wasn't anything that I really wanted to pursue. Luckily I wasn't forced into anything either. But what I did though, were you

Vance Crowe [00:04:43] A bad student or a good student or

Nick Rabeck [00:04:45] Bad student? Yeah, just didn't, you know, I, I, the way I look at it now was just, I just wasn't in my element. I was probably more of a hyperactive kid. So I did great in sports and I mean, when you put me into that, you know, I could disappear into that and excel, but as far as sitting in a classroom being taught proper English or things along those lines, for whatever reason, I mean, who could blame me being a kid? You know, I didn't know at that point that it was just completely uninteresting to me. But as time went on, you find things that you enjoy and that's basically all I did was find the things that I enjoy. Because obviously if you're going to enjoy it, you're probably, you're gonna pursue it a little bit more than something you don't like. So, and then you just kind of follow that. And after years of kind of trusting that course, you end up in a pretty cool place where your, your whole world is things that you picked and, you know, whether it's art or, or whatever that is. You know, that's a, that's kind of cool thing about it is you just, it's like anything, if you're, if you're ever gonna be good at anything, just do it a lot. And then

Vance Crowe [00:05:56] Eventually were you good naturally with your hands, like the first construct, what'd you do? Construction outta school?

Nick Rabeck [00:06:01] Yeah, I did. I did like basic construction and then I did windows and, and stuff like that. Installs like that, which yeah, I was always a hands-on type of person. Always did good work in that realm, but what was lacking there was the interest again, you know, I mean, it was being a subcontractor, doing things like that. There were a lot of things that I loved about it, which was like being a new place every day, meeting new people all the time, making new friendships, which was usually a byproduct of me just putting windows in people's houses like us. Same thing, you know? So that was, that's what was really cool about that. The only issue was I knew that I needed to have a creative outlet. I didn't have that then. So yeah, I was working, I was doing a good job. I was getting, you know, accolades from people, things like that, but that didn't do it for me. So once I started, I, I've always loved woodworking. I always did it, you know, spare time, things like that. I was always making things, whether it was tables for my house or the, the bed frame or, or whatever, you know, I did all that stuff. And then eventually I got bored with it. And then I started to get into the more artistic realm of woodworking, which for me was kind of a door, you know, it just kind of blew open at that point because being, you know, hyper organized or detail oriented, that only shows through so much when you're put in windows or doors or construction, basic construction work.

Nick Rabeck [00:07:32] But where it can really shine through is a piece like this where now all of my attention to detail and things like that pay off with a piece that is presented right in front of you, which is super cool for me. So, but that, that was pretty much it. That's how I got to this point. And I just love it.

Vance Crowe [00:07:53] You know, it's interesting, like, 'cause I think most of the time when people think of like detail oriented creative, you can't be the level of detail oriented that you were without having like, a lot of intelligence, right? Because you figured out how to, how to, that that shop you had in the back of your trailer. It was really impressive to me. But I think most of the time, like to your point earlier about being in high school and going on to college, like most of the time there'd have been some pressure there that if you were gonna amount to something, if you were gonna be something important, you would have to go to school. And you could be, you could be right now sitting here saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and then doing a job that you hate

Nick Rabeck [00:08:27] E exactly. Like some people that I know, everybody knows those people. You know, what's funny about it is it wasn't enjoyable, you know, in the moment. But what it, what was good about it is that, and I tell people this, is that, so I was kind of the, the loser of the family, if you will. So what that did for me was it, it left the playing field pretty wide open for me. It meant that I could try things and nobody's gonna really care because

Vance Crowe [00:08:57] It's like, because you're already the, the black sea,

Nick Rabeck [00:08:58] Just let him, yeah. Let him do his thing, you know, let him try whatever he is doing. So that's what, 'cause I have this thing now where if I'm interested in something, I'm gonna try it. And there's nothing that's gonna, there's no blockades or there's nothing. 'cause I found that years ago that that's one beautiful part about life is like, try new things, things that you're interested in. Like, you know, a lot of people are just beaten down. They've had their dreams taken from 'em, and they don't really have that, that drive to find something that just lights 'em up. So a byproduct of me not much being expected of me was actually what I think was kind of a superpower, because I was able to try a bunch of different things all the time. People are saying, Hey, just let him do his thing, let him do his thing, you know, he might find something and then I did. So, but, you know, and it, it goes, it goes pretty far because it's not just this, I mean, it could be whether it's a sport you wanna get into, you've always wanted to race cars, what, whatever. But the, the first step is just to do it. Just jump in, see what, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:10:05] And you can't, like, I think one of the biggest challenges with modern life is you see everybody doing such amazing work, and like that first step towards making your first table, you're like, this is gonna really suck. I wonder, it won't even like sit flat. It won't, it won't, it won't be precise. And some people are like, ah, I don't really wanna do that. But unless you start doing something you can't possibly improve. Like you have to have the first screw up or the first 10, or the first a hundred screw ups

Nick Rabeck [00:10:30] Exactly. To

Vance Crowe [00:10:31] Be able to move forward.

Nick Rabeck [00:10:32] And I have always been totally okay with that. I know when I start something the first 3, 5, 10, maybe a hundred times, it's not gonna be anything that I wanted. But that's the be you don't have to be really smart to know that repetition is gonna be the master of whatever it is you're trying to accomplish.

Vance Crowe [00:10:49] So I remember like right after I had seen your, the back of your trailer, I was like, oh dude, let's go down. I wanna show you my podcast. Because to me, my art was doing this stuff and trying to get better. And there's some kind of comradery that happens when you meet somebody else that like clearly loves and is just, just continuing to improve every, every day that they possibly can.

Nick Rabeck [00:11:11] Totally. Yeah. And you know, I think that's a another thing too, is like our society has been trained to think that we're supposed to have it in the first couple shots. And if we can't get it, if we can't accomplish it, don't try it. Because then the shame, the feeling of the shame of not attempting it, you know, they don't have to feel that. So that's why I see so many people, they're like, wow, you know, you're doing what you love and you know, I wish I could do that. It's like, it, it's there. It's just been beaten outta you over the years. You know, like schools teach you, you know, the tests that you take, you're not gonna get a second chance at the test. You gotta pass it now. So there's a lot of pressure with that as to where, again, I wasn't very good. I wasn't trained that way because I wasn't a very good student. I didn't care what kind of grades I got, so I didn't adhere to that, which taught me later on, if it takes 10 times, do it. Like, there's no shame in any of it because, you know, and I, I just don't worry about what people think about my process. Because most people, especially pretty early on, you know, when I first started getting into doing things, you know, outta my basement and just doing my own kind of following my own passion, people didn't really understand what was going on. You know? And, and that was okay to me. I, I'm okay if people are talking about things. Typically, if people are talking, you're doing, you might not be doing the right thing, but you're doing something that's better than nothing. You know, the default to the brain is do nothing when you're confused or you don't know. So if you know that, try to push through that.

Nick Rabeck [00:12:43] Just try to make a move. Anything, it doesn't matter what you do.

Vance Crowe [00:12:47] I'd never really thought about the psychological implications of your whole life being structured around one time tests like that. It really is. Like, and when you're in construction or you're doing paving or you're building walls for landscaping, yeah, that every day is a test, but like, there's another person coming behind you being like, here, let's straighten this out and let's fix this and let me show you how that works. And as you move, either you fix the problem, they fix the problem, and you sit there and watch 'em, or you move on to the next one. And you don't want to have to have those problems. But it doesn't work anything at all. Like tests do on paper. Not, not most of real life.

Nick Rabeck [00:13:23] I, I don't ever feel like I was, I adhered to, you know, that social standard, the what, what we, what we're all taught, which is, you know, you get it done, do it the first time, do it right? Because if you fail, that's bad, you know? And then if you go to a job, you have a boss that's over the top, you, like you said, say you're, you're doing curbs, concrete curbs, the last thing you want is your boss to come up and yell at you for doing it wrong. So a lot of pressure there to get it the right time. And for me, I don't look at it that way. I look at it every single thing that I get into. I've never welded anything in my life. Today after we leave here, I'm going to learn how to weld. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:14:01] And this has been my goal. I said, as soon as I can, as soon as the girls are able to feed themselves, yeah,

Nick Rabeck [00:14:06] I'm

Vance Crowe [00:14:06] Gonna take a welding class

Nick Rabeck [00:14:07] For

Vance Crowe [00:14:08] Sure. Yeah.

Nick Rabeck [00:14:08] S so it's, it's a perfect example. Never done it. Never touched a welder in my life, but I bought one and now I'm hell bent on learning it and learning the craft, because I can take that. I'm a car guy too. So knowing how to weld is pretty invaluable when it comes to that. You know, if you're gonna restore cars ground up type stuff, you don't want to have to call somebody or run it to a shop every single time. You need a little bit of welding done. So that, but the, you know, the things that you can do in life. So if I can get the way, this is how I view this. If I could get metal working down, I have woodwork down, I can pretty much make anything. You know, if I have a scrap of wood, a scrap pile of wood and metal, I can pretty much make anything. And that for me is like heaven in my brain. Because what that is for me is endless possibilities. A blank canvas, take a pile of this and turn it into something beautiful. This is a very cool thing, you know, because you let your imagination just run wild. Your creativity run wild. For me, I learned that that's where I need to be, to be completely fulfilled as a person.

Vance Crowe [00:15:17] Well man, when when I showed you the podcast studio, then you were like, oh, let me show you my furniture. And I couldn't believe that. Like, I was like, holy crap. The guy that's replacing my windows is like an actual artist. So let's talk about, like, you brought in a piece today. What, what is this? It's maple, but what's going on with this table?

Nick Rabeck [00:15:36] Okay, so this one here, this is, this is maple. Yeah. It's just a lot of times maple is pretty boring. It's a lighter shade wood. It, it has the ability to have a bunch of different characteristics, which is really neat. This particular piece has pretty much every characteristic you could find in a piece of wood, even with it being maple. So this one is particularly amazing because like I was saying earlier, this is the second table that I ever made in this style. And it came from buying. I went to a guy to buy walnut wood from a sawmill. He had a big, giant tree sliced up in his backyard. He was moving out, he needed it gone. He gave it to me for a great price. He said, I don't know anything about working three inch thick pieces of wood, but yeah, what the hell? Let's give it a go. And again, goes back to just try things. Just try anything, whatever. If you're confused in life, just try stuff. 'cause it'll lead to amazing places. Not only that, you learn pretty quickly whether you like it or you don't. So you can move it, move to the side, or keep pursuing it. And then typically those pathways will just divide as you go down them this way, this way, this way. So woodworking was where it all started. And then where that led me was to this, which is the a black epoxy that is in between the two pieces of wood. So now what epoxy allows me to do is take a piece of wood that would normally would've been burnt because it would have no use, it would be soft, there'd be imperfections. Big time furniture makers don't like that stuff.

Nick Rabeck [00:17:08] They don't like knots, they don't like, you know, different variations of things like that in it. They want a nice straight piece straight as you can get it, which to me is extremely boring because not only is everything you see made that way, where is the chance for the, for the artist to come through? You're, there's not a big window for that. So with things like this, you know, the epoxy allows me to take wood. That was gonna be burnt. It was rotten, it was, you know, just completely unusable. And to take that, you know. And so to know that I just took something that would've been burnt and destroyed and then turn it into a piece of art, that's huge for me. Especially with it being wood and just a, just a natural substrate.

Vance Crowe [00:17:54] Yeah, there's like this weird tension that, that you've created beauty out of, which is you have this natural wood and people are drawn to it, particularly if it's like this one where you touch it and it's like smoother than glass, right? Glass is like, you know, a little bit like er, but this wood is like perfectly smooth. And then you put that right next to the epoxy, which is like literally smooth. But there are different substances. And so the two working together gives you something visually to look at. And it, it, it's, it's beautiful. It

Nick Rabeck [00:18:24] Is, you know, and I think that's probably a good indication if you love what you do, is that I still look at this. Like, you look at this, so somebody that first sees this piece, I still view it the exact same way. I, I see all the character, I see everything. It's striking to me. This table is probably two years old at this point. And you would never know it. You can't tell, it doesn't show age. But that's the beautiful thing about it is, you know, every time I walk up to this and I see it, I stop. Even though I've seen it a thousand times already. So that's the cool thing about it. And then with the epoxy, it just, it, like I said, it opened up a whole new, a whole new door, a whole new window into art, woodworking, you know? And I'm just following that path basically, you know, and there's still a lot of things I haven't done that I want to do with it. A lot of different creations, whether it's wall art or you know, solid block end tables, which would be a tree trunk surrounded in a, in clear epoxy. Just different things like that. So it's really endless. And that's the beauty is that if I'm handed a pile of wood, it is kind of limited. But if you add epoxy in the mix, it really becomes unlimited. You can literally do whatever you want, whatever your imagination can come up with. So you can test your imagination, your creativity to its highest levels, which is what I try to do with every project I do. I try to always constantly push past that last version of me that made that last piece. Which is just, I mean, it's a good thing for anybody to follow.

Nick Rabeck [00:19:58] You know, you

Vance Crowe [00:19:58] Said something so striking to me and I just bought the furniture for this studio and like, and then I hear these words echoing in my head all the time. You're like a really good piece of furniture you wanna touch and like, it's a hundred percent right, you brought this thing in, you had just gotten done lugging it upstairs. And as soon as I saw it, I'm like, Hey Nick, but I want to touch this thing right here,

Nick Rabeck [00:20:17] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:20:18] And then like, you said it here and I'm looking at it and I'm thinking about it and you just, you, you just want to touch it. Isn't

Nick Rabeck [00:20:24] That funny?

Vance Crowe [00:20:24] Why is it that we want to touch something like that? What, what is it?

Nick Rabeck [00:20:27] I don't know, it's still kind of mystifies me, but like in a great way because I mean, it really just goes with, you know, almost like a a, a fresh paint car or a, a fresh paint job on a new car. Something about it. People are just drawn and they like to touch. That's kind of like a whole nother, it sounds probably funny to people outside of it. But for me that's a beautiful thing because my whole thing is I wanna create functional art. That's where everything intersects for me. For whatever reason. I don't know, I don't care. I just know that that's what I love. I love a piece of art that you can use. I've kind of always been that way. I want something that's gonna be strikingly beautiful, but it still serves a purpose.

Vance Crowe [00:21:10] Yeah. 'cause as soon as you walked in here, you set your coffee down on the table and I almost corrected you. I was almost like, excuse me, we need to get a coaster there. But I was like, actually it's his art. If he can do what he wants with it, that

Nick Rabeck [00:21:21] Is, it really is. That is, that's exactly what I love. I love to be able to take metal and wood, combine them with the epoxy, make a piece of art that you can use for years and years to come. These things are meant to be. I have them in restaurants, I have them all over the place. I have 'em in bars, so they take a toll and you can beat the hell out of 'em and they're still gonna be beautiful. And also it's wood in epoxy, so it can be refinished later on down the road if need be. Yeah. And I mean

Vance Crowe [00:21:51] Like for how thick that thing is, you could refinish that thing like I know 40 or 50 times

Nick Rabeck [00:21:56] Many times it should be around well past your life, well past your kids' lives. And I mean, if somebody takes care of it, yeah, there's plenty of, you could refinish that table hundreds of times.

Vance Crowe [00:22:07] So you came home with this block of, of wood, it's raw. So there must have been like the saw cuts inside of it. I'm like,

Nick Rabeck [00:22:14] Yeah, all rough cut. So you can't see any of the grain. It's nothing but rigid. You know, the whole, every piece is just cut and slabbed as they call it, and stacked. And then he was letting it dry. So that's the point where I came in and thought, well, I always wanted to do something cool like this. It's just funny. I have a lot less barriers to get into something totally brand new when most people are structured too. You know, you get good grades, you go to college, you get a good job and you know, then small variations from there on. But for me, I don't look at life that way. I, I don't want one label, you know, when I'm 80 years old, I don't want someone to be able to go, he was a good carpenter. I wanna be like, man, he could weld like crazy. He could build furniture like crazy, you know? And just keep adding it on. Like I want, I don't wanna be limited to one label and that's, you know, and I don't care so much about what the outside people think of that or you know, what somebody would judge me as. It's more for me in my own personal legacy, which is just do things that you enjoy and follow them as long as you enjoy them. When it stops being enjoyable, rethink it.

Vance Crowe [00:23:24] But you have this slab of wood that was just raw. What did you think you were going to do with it? Were you gonna get a hand planer out? Like how were you gonna smooth it out? A bunch of sandpaper? What were you thinking?

Nick Rabeck [00:23:34] Hmm. See and that's another beautiful insight into my mind. Sometimes I don't think these things out at all, which can offer some pretty interesting stories along the way, way. So, yeah. So I had no idea what I was getting into. I had a 12 inch planer, which most people would know that that's for, well, 12 inch boards are smaller. Typically nobody will, has any need for a 12 inch board. So very simple little tiny planer. This obviously

Vance Crowe [00:24:01] And a planner just shaves things down. So they are level on one side,

Nick Rabeck [00:24:05] Correct. Yeah. So you can straighten out your piece, which is great for anything under 12 inches, like I said. But nothing that I mess with anymore is that, so yeah, so it was a, just the journey of getting the piece flat is hilarious because it took me forever and the amount of effort it took, I have pictures of me laying up on top of these pieces. I made a homemade router sled is what they call it. And that is basically for the DIY guy in his garage to be able to flatten a big, rough piece of wood, excuse me. But it takes forever and it's a lot of effort. And I knew immediately if I was gonna build a profession around this, that's the number one thing that has to be solved. So after that, I went out for the search of a, which was kind of crazy 'cause it was completely overkill, but it had endless opportunities with it. A five by eight, or no, I'm sorry, it's a five by 10 size bed and it's a CNC machine. So what this machine can do for me, anybody that knows CNC machines knows, you know, I can engrave logos into a piece of wood. I can really do anything as far as a CNC goes. But the big reason I bought it was because it flattens wood for me. So, I mean, it was a big investment. But, and that's one of those funny things. Had I known, I would've had to spend $10,000 on a machine to flatten the wood that I just bought for $300, I probably wouldn't have went that direction. But like I said, one part of my character that I've always loved about myself is that I, I will just pull the trigger and then in that moment I will accept any repercussions.

Nick Rabeck [00:25:41] So that was kind of one of, one of those repercussions, which was if you did a little more research, you probably wouldn't have had that happen. But at the same time, if I didn't, I wised up to it, I probably wouldn't have even gotten into it. So you would've been talking to a different person right now or Probably nobody at all. 'cause I would've been busy putting windows in still. So that's what was really cool about it. That's just one of, you know, a handful of,

Vance Crowe [00:26:02] Well, once it's flat, what do you, what? Like, now you've got it flat, now you gotta do something with it. Did it have the hole? Like what, what prompted the epoxy?

Nick Rabeck [00:26:10] So yeah, so some of the pieces I had actually had big knot holes and imperfections in 'em. And then I went down the rabbit hole of, well how am I gonna fix this with it looking proper? And I don't want wood filler, I don't wanna make it disappear. That's the other thing most woodworkers wanna make that imperfection disappear. They wanna blend it in so the whole piece looks uniform, which I understand. But at the same time, if, you know, like I got into this because of a big part of the artistic part of it all. So I needed that. You know, I can't just, I burnt out on making wood tables with one by fours, you know, like I did in shop class in high school, you know, it was just a very simple oak coffee table, the most simplistic version you can make. For me, I got bored of that very quickly. And I know I got a DD, so I need to kind of stay on it and I need to know when these shifts can happen. So like I said, I, I realized that I was getting very bored with traditional woodworking. So what's my next pivot? Is there a pivot? Do I get out of it completely? Do I follow my other passions? So, you know, in that, in that moment is kind of those decisions, you know, to where you gotta, you gotta just, like I said earlier, just accept I, I I, I say f it in my head and then I snap my fingers and I say that this is it, this is, I say yes to this. And some people are gonna come up and go, well, did you think this out? You're gonna have this, you're gonna have that. I don't care. I accepted it. Let's go, let's start the journey. Because, you know, and, and everybody wants to avoid pitfalls of things too.

Nick Rabeck [00:27:42] But I think that's probably, you know, like failures, it's pitfalls and failures are gold. It's like a scientist, you know, they're, they're, what do they call it? Their, you know, trial and error is the most data rich stream of information you could ever get. So if you take that principle and use it on your life, I mean, you're gonna find, for me, that's what I found is that you pivot quickly. You know, you test something, did it work? Did it not work? Then you, you react to that. So it's just, you take one step at a time and eventually after you ask yourself this question a hundred times, you find yourself, at least for me, find myself in a place of, like I said earlier, ultimate fulfillness. You know, I'm just fulfilled as a person, my soul, everything. It's just, I'm a very happy person now just because I think I, I didn't let society tell me, no, you need to go to school, you need to go to college, you need to get an office job. You know, I, I didn't have that pressure on me. So I was able to go out into the world and try different things and do this and do that, and then start to really discover again, it was all through processing or, you know, all through trial and error to figure out what path I want now. So just use the wood as an example. I got bored with traditional woodworking. Okay, what's the path now? And I knew traditional woodworking was no longer what I wanted because it didn't excite me anymore. I'm, I follow that excitement. So that's pretty much it. Follow the excitement through the trial and error.

Vance Crowe [00:29:06] Yeah, I'm the podcast that, that I do now got started because there was a guy that I really respect and I like, he's actually been on the podcast, his name's Tim Hausler. And he and I were sitting and I was like, Tim, this would be such a good podcast. Why don't you interview people? And he's like, oh, I would, but I gotta, I gotta figure this and this and this out. And I was like, no dude, I bet I could do a podcast like in an afternoon. And he's like, oh, I don't, you know, maybe. And I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go try. And I was like, I'm gonna do five podcasts and prove to you I can do this. And what you discover after you buy the equipment and you start doing it is you're like, oh, I gotta fix that problem and I gotta fix that problem. And before you know it, you're like 50 feet down the path and you realize like, the only reason that this is working is because I didn't care that like, I had no idea what I was doing.

Nick Rabeck [00:29:53] It's a beautiful thing. But

Vance Crowe [00:29:54] In your work, you are doing stuff that ultimately gets sold, but like some really innovative stuff, like the epoxy stuff is cool. It's really like engaging, but you also do like live edges and like explain, explain what live edges are on furniture.

Nick Rabeck [00:30:11] Yeah, so live edge is a beautiful thing. If you could imagine this table being made out of one piece, both sides or one has the live edge with the bark on it, I usually recommend taking the bark off. A lot of times it's gonna peel over the years anyways. But yeah, so that's basically just the live edge. You remove the bark and you get the end grain of the side of the tree, you know, which makes the piece a little more rustic in design if that's what the customer's going for. Some people like more rustic, some people like more modern. I kind of fall in that realm of, I call it modern rusticy. I know that's not a word, but that's the way I usually describe it because I, that's my thing is I like to bring the two together with, so with the metal, metal legs, which I like to use, gives it kind of an industrial feel. And then the top gives it, this in particular one is kind of more of a modern style with the edge around it. No live edge, more traditional cut.

Vance Crowe [00:31:15] So live edge is like, you're actually just, it's whatever is right underneath what would've been the bark.

Nick Rabeck [00:31:20] Correct.

Vance Crowe [00:31:21] And then do you like seal it and urethane it and like how does that all work?

Nick Rabeck [00:31:26] Yeah, so you can do a lot of different things. You can do urethane, varnishes, those are all things I try to leave in the past just because that's more traditional woodworking. So I try to leave that stuff, you know, alone. And I try to do the things that are newer, like you said, innovative. That's a big part of, you know, my art as well is that, like I said earlier, I'm always constantly, it doesn't matter what piece I'm working on next, I'm constantly trying to push the abilities that I had and try to test new things that I've never done before into the new piece. Because again, it might take 10 pieces to get that skill down, but once you get it, you have it. And now you're kind of at the top, you know, everybody's looking at you for like, well what is he doing now? Because that's, you know, he's really innovating, he's doing some pretty wild stuff, some cool stuff. So that's kind of, you know, and again, that taps into me wanting to always want to be in my imagination and my creativity. So, so yeah. So it fulfills all that for me. But

Vance Crowe [00:32:27] We should include a photo of the, the waterfall edge or whatever. Is that what that was called? Where you take a piece and you cut it and then you make it like bend over the front of it?

Nick Rabeck [00:32:36] Yeah, that's a really cool one too. Yeah. So if you take, if you take the, say you have a, a 12 foot long slab of wood and then you cut, say, let's say this is gonna be an office desk, you know, and you just have one side is gonna be your waterfall edge. So you cut, say it's three and a half feet tall, you cut your seam right there, folded over. And it's tough to do a lot of times to make it look perfect, but when you do it, it's seamless and it just looks unbelievable. And then you can do that on both sides. But you can also do, one of my favorite styles is to have one side waterfall and then one side with the industrial style legs under it, which again, just meets my whole rustic modern type category that I try to stay in.

Vance Crowe [00:33:20] How did you like first start getting your, your art furniture out into the world? Did somebody come by and be like, oh, I'd like to buy that.

Nick Rabeck [00:33:27] You know, that's funny. So it was just some, it was a byproduct of just wanting to get into something new. So all it was was trying a few different pieces. Like I said, I have a lot of these sitting around my house, not a ton of them, but enough I just got into it and, and I, I followed that path, the same path that I always follow, get into it and go at it. No, I spent years, like you mentioned a couple minutes ago about the guy that you were talking about. Most people spend their whole life in the getting ready phase. You know, I'm getting ready, I'm studying, I'm, you know, one more book, I'm almost there. Yeah. And eight years goes by and you realize you didn't do anything. And then you've just watched people that what you might consider uneducated fly past you. And it's simple. It, it effort always trumps, you know, sitting around and thinking and contemplating always. But yeah, after I got stuck in that, what is it, paralysis by analysis, you know, that's what I was stuck in. That's what most people get stuck in. And that also reflects back to you don't wanna fail. So there's a few things that go into that decision to just not try at all. Which I, I was lucky I didn't have a lot of them imprint on me. So that's why, yeah, I think that's, that's the big thing is avoiding the paralysis by analysis is,

Vance Crowe [00:34:49] But did somebody come by and offer you money to buy the furniture outta your house or how did that work?

Nick Rabeck [00:34:53] So I just made a few, you know? And then as people, I'm not a big, I'm gonna make something. I wanna show the world kind of person. I'm more like very content if I make it in my own home and nobody ever sees it. Because again, this isn't about the outside world. This is for me following my path. You know, what really excites me, keeps me happy. So I just had multiple pieces and yeah, some people would come in when I made the first coffee table, people would come in, kind of how I explained it to you. When they come in, they could, you could be a mid-conversation. When you lock eyes with that, you're just gonna stop and go, whoa, and do that. Walk up to it and you wanna touch it. And then you wanna feel that transition between the wood and the epoxy. 'cause it just doesn't look natural. At the same time. It does look natural. So that's all it was, was I made a few pieces. I had really good, you, you know, I, I knew that they would be popular. I knew that people would like them. But until other people started coming around and saying that is mind blowing is when I started to think I'm onto something here.

Vance Crowe [00:35:56] Yeah, man, as soon as I saw it on your photographs, I realized like I could go to 50 stores and not see anything like this. Like you can't, I, I mean maybe there's some stores out there, but they'd be like super fancy stores that I don't even know anything about. You just, you, you can't, you have to find an artist that's putting 'em out into the world like this. 'cause you can't mass produce this, right?

Nick Rabeck [00:36:19] This

Vance Crowe [00:36:19] Is one at a time,

Nick Rabeck [00:36:20] Right? Yeah. So, and that's the beau that's the other part that I'm trying to hitting as well. When I started this, I didn't think of myself as an artist. I thought of myself as a, a table maker, pretty simplistic. But when I, once I started to kind of look around to get inspiration from other projects, I noticed there's really nothing out there that is like this. Any furniture, I start furniture store, I call to ask them if, you know, if you have something like this, everybody has told me no. So that is another indication for me that I'm in a, in a, in a niche section of the market, which tells me I'm not doing the same thing as everybody else. I'm doing my own thing. Innovative, creative, like I said. And that's kind of the big thing is I don't want you to, every piece that I make, I wanna make sure you never see another one like it. So this piece you won't see, I can promise you you'll never see another one just like this. You'll see variations, different colored epoxy, different, you know, things like that. But this is a one off piece that you will never see again. And that is another angle that I just love about what I'm doing now. 'cause I could make a coffee table outta oak and bring it up here and you're gonna see another one tomorrow and the day after that. And then at your grandma's house and everybody, everybody's house. So if you, this is kind of my blend of being an artist, but also providing somebody with a functional piece of furniture, which I don't know why that's so interesting to me, but it is, so I follow it.

Vance Crowe [00:37:45] So you know a lot about trees too. Like what, when you're going out and looking at something, you have maple oak Elm. What all, like, what, what do you know about wood that most people don't know

Nick Rabeck [00:37:58] You? I would actually consider myself fairly uneducated when it comes to spotting, whether it's by bark or by leaf. I'm still not good at that. I have a friend that gives me a, a school lesson every time I call him and I ask him a question about that, which is a wonderful resource. He is a really, really cool guy. A lot of information. But I don't know a ton about going out and finding a tree. Luckily I do know about the patterns. If you tell me walnut oak, you know, red oak, things like that. I know the characteristics and I could tell that by looking at the piece after it's already been cut. But I can't tell a whole lot from the tree. I can tell you whether it's a walnut or an oak, but I can't give you a breakdown of white oak, red oak, nothing like that.

Vance Crowe [00:38:45] And then when you look at a tree, can you tell, ah, that's gonna slab really well, that that one's gonna have some interest in it? Or is it just a guess until you cut it open?

Nick Rabeck [00:38:53] Yeah, it's a total gas. It's like Christmas. So you just don't know. Had the guy known what he had with this maple, when I bought the tree from him, he would've never sold it to me for the price he did. That's the beautiful part about it is even a guy who runs a sawmill can't see what's in that grain. So

Vance Crowe [00:39:12] Until it's smooth,

Nick Rabeck [00:39:14] Until it's this or very close to it. So that's the kind of another cool thing I that I love is that when somebody brings me a piece of wood, you know, we have our conversation, they ask me, well, do you think it's got a lot of character or not? And I can usually spot some, and if there's some, there's probably gonna be a little more. But I can't tell exactly until I, until I start to sand through the grits. You know, the rougher grit after I run the CNC machine is typically when I got a really good idea. 'cause it, it, it gives it just a super smooth finish, which gives you a great idea of what you're working towards. And then every grit working down to the final grit, it rele it, re it, it basically comes alive every time. One you do 80 grit, wipe it off, you go down to like one 20, grit, wipe it off two 20. Now you're at this stage where it shows everything.

Vance Crowe [00:40:02] And are you doing that by hand or do you have a machine that's allowed to that, that has these different grits of sandpaper?

Nick Rabeck [00:40:07] Well, I got a machine, but yeah, I do it by hand. And honestly, that's the only way I could do this through machinery. But then I remove the human touch the human element. And that's the reason I make these is because I want to be the one finishing it, sanding it. I, I have control over every single edge, the radius of every single, I could go on for hours, the detail that I could get into, but that allows me to control all of those elements so I don't hand you a piece. And then you go, well man, that looks really cool, but the edges are kind of messed up. And I had a machine do the edges. I don't want that. I want you to be able to look at that. No matter what you touch, where you put your hand, you're gonna feel that the edges are symmetrical all the way around it. It's, it's, it's down to that level of detail that we mentioned earlier. That that's what I love. I love the detail on things. I don't wanna do that 80% then call it a hundred percent even though most people will never see that final 20% I put into that piece. I know it's there.

Vance Crowe [00:41:04] Yeah, there's something like really gratifying about having a piece, whether it's furniture or art that you can look at over and over and over again and still see beautiful things. Like my wife got me really interested in granite and like looking at a piece of granite and, and like trying to imagine how, what, where, where did this fit inside of a mountain? How, what are all these grains? Where's the spot that nobody else notices? That's totally true of, of your work. I find like I have the pic, the Alex Dodge over there that like, I can look at that elephant painting for 20 minutes a day and I would find interesting things in it. But the first time I ever saw it, I don't think I noticed how beautiful it was. So there's something about it being like art being displayed that is really important for the experience of it to like keep coming back and being like, oh, look at that edge. Or, oh, look at that grain. It's just different than I expected or that, than I remembered. If I tried to draw that, I'd miss all of the details that make it beautiful, but I don't observe the details while I'm sitting there looking at it.

Nick Rabeck [00:42:14] Yeah. Isn't that a, that's a beautiful perspective on art too, isn't it? Like last time I was in here we talked about, you had asked me about the painting behind the camera over there. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:42:22] The woman on the wall. Yeah.

Nick Rabeck [00:42:23] Yeah. And I had told you that I was never really somebody that would walk into a museum and look at a painting and really study it until I came here and you said, what do you see in that picture? It was the first time anybody's ever asked me that. And being artistic, I loved it because you just opened a door. You just asked me a question that I had never asked myself. So when you sit and you stare at that picture, you really could come up with so many different versions of, and like you said with the last one, it can also vary by your mood. You see things by your mood as well. So it's so subtle that it's just beautiful.

Vance Crowe [00:42:54] Yeah, what we were talking about is when people come in to do the Legacy Interviews, there's a painting of an old woman that I have hanging on the wall. And like when you first look at it, I even had some people gimme some feedback like, don't put that in there. She's depressed, she looks sad, right? She like, looks like she's aching. And I was like, no, I, I need this piece. Because people come into the room and they're nervous, right? And they're like, I don't know, there's all these cameras and there's lights and I'm gonna talk with this stranger about my life stories. So I figured out really quickly as you get people's jackets off, as you're setting bags down, you're turning cell phones off. If instead of me just sitting down and being like, all right, let's turn these lights on. Instead I say, what do you see in that picture? This transforms our relationship because one of the fascinating things I've found about art is I think that what I see is what you see, but what you discover when I ask you and every other person that walks through here, what do you see when you look at that? You find out like, no, we're looking at the same thing, but we see completely different things. Like some people say, oh, she looks sad, or she looks like she's in pain. Other people look like she's determined or she's, you know, confident. And the craziest thing about that picture, and you and I talked about this before, is that people on their way in can say one thing about her and then as we're leaving they'll be like, you know what? I'm looking at her now and she doesn't look sad. She looks like she's determined or, or you know, marching forward. And so you realize like art has the ability to reveal the inner workings of your mind in a way that you is very difficult to access otherwise.

Nick Rabeck [00:44:27] Yeah. And that's, you know, I think that may be why I just love all of art in, in all forms. Because that's the beautiful part about it, you know, we talked about this before too, is that perspective is like one of the, the greatest things that you could ever get other people's perspective of the same, like, just all angles of perspective is golden. I've always thought that. So, you know, that's why I love asking the questions. You, you said a a minute ago that we all see things different than you, you think we all see it the same way. But then what you also know that that's not true. And then when you start to ask a few different people and you get the different answers, you start to, it gives you just more insight into your own mind that, you know, what else in this world am I looking at it in one way, which, you know, might be positive now or it might be negative and then you could either switch it or, you know, like taking a negative perspective of something and being able to just switch it to a positive. But that's the beautiful thing about it, is that it's completely up to how you negotiate your thoughts in your head. And that's why, you know, and after, you know, not being good at, at high school and all that, you know, I was a loser. I was all that. But, and one thing I noticed is that, you know, perspective was golden to me and I didn't care. I went out looking for it everywhere, you know? So I wanted to know how millionaires thought. I wanted to know how these different people acted, thought what they, what they would say about my life if I asked them. I said, Hey, you have a very good outlook on my life and what I've done.

Nick Rabeck [00:45:58] I would love to have an outsider's perspective. Most people never ask that question 'cause it's a really scary, excuse me,

Vance Crowe [00:46:04] But everybody loves to have conversations about themselves. So you like, it is, it's like the scariest conversation, but also to hear like, what oth what does the other monkey think of what this monkey is doing? Right.

Nick Rabeck [00:46:17] You know? And what's funny is that we're always trying to support like our, the ego that we have. So it's, it's, it's just a beautiful thing. I love going from the subconscious to the conscious and then the, and then the separation between the two. I love trying to figure out that link. Like we were just talking, people love to talk about themselves, but at the same time they don't wanna hear the bad stuff about themselves. That would be really bad. But what if we did? What if we did, what if we were open enough to ask somebody a question and tell them like, listen, I just want 100% honesty. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. Don't worry about, you know, making me feel bad. I I want to know 100% unfiltered what your opinion is. And, you know, and, and something that I realized too, I did this years ago. I remember hearing a speaker say, one of the scariest but most beneficial things you could ever do is to sit down and start writing on a piece of paper. All of your faults, all the things you don't like about yourself. And it just goes, and some people, you know, they're like, no way I can't do that. 'cause it's gonna go and it's gonna go and it's gonna go. And then after, even after that exercise, like, when am I gonna stop thinking about that? But the big part about it is now, you know, you've acknowledged it. I'm fat, I'm ugly, I'm broke, whatever it is, your mom and your dad are gonna tell you, you're not fat, you're not ugly, you're not broke. So where do we get first?

Vance Crowe [00:47:34] But by naming it, you start getting power over it. Right? Exactly.

Nick Rabeck [00:47:37] Not,

Vance Crowe [00:47:37] It's not, it's not the thought that pops up into your head at four in the morning when you're not feeling well and you're tired and you're like, Hey, loser, broke fat person. It's like, okay, I'm looking at this in the cold light of day and allows you to grab some element of control over it.

Nick Rabeck [00:47:53] Hugely. I think that's when you own it. When you own it, you can change it. But if you never own it and you, you don't, you know, and we're great at just not acknowledging the things that we don't like, it's natural for us. And which, you know, for the brain, it goes towards positive. The brain doesn't wanna experience negative. So it makes sense. You don't wanna sit here and write these, this long page of all your, your everything that you feel, whether you know, you feel is a fault or a negative or whatever, excuse me. But it's only going. It's only by going through this list and acknowledging everything to when you can, you can put together a plan. What am I gonna do?

Vance Crowe [00:48:30] My father, back in the late sixties, early seventies, was part of a project called Sensitivity Training, which was where they brought together a group of people. They were gonna be working on some, some project all summer long. So for like three months, the rule was you are not allowed to hide what you're thinking. And my dad was like, they used to have like psychologists on call all the time because this like group of whatever, 10 or 15 people, like, if you're not allowed to hold back your ideas, you know, somebody would come in and they'd be like, oh, well do you like my new haircut? And you'd be like, no, I don't. I think it makes your cheekbones look fat and I'm not, you know, I'm not attracted to you. Or like anything like, oh, every time you open your mouth, the the, the sound of your voice just rattles in my brain. And the, the thing that I noticed about my dad was by doing this, maybe there were many other things. He had a psychological understanding of the inner monologue of people that I think was really rare because they were having the internal monologue outside and then watching how that impacted people. And I think like you, it takes a rare person to be able to take that kind of feedback, but it's also the rare person that can give that kind of feedback. 'cause if I give you raw, unfiltered feedback, chances are you're not gonna like me. Right? Like, you're, you're gonna have some things about that that, like, what'd you

Nick Rabeck [00:49:55] Say that? Yeah. And

Vance Crowe [00:49:56] It's funny 'cause I think about like, my business partner and I have what I think most people would consider, like zero bullshit. Like we tell each other exactly what we think about each other's performance and what we're getting done. But if I were to have that conversation with my wife, I would be like huddled up in a corner crying and I'd be like, stop. Stop.

Nick Rabeck [00:50:15] That's so funny. Yeah, you're right. And, you know, and, and going back to, you know, it's just, it's, I think it's just, you know, I don't know. There's a lot of things that go into it, but I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:50:31] Do you take feedback from your work, your, your art? Like, are you able to take it?

Nick Rabeck [00:50:36] I, I am. Yeah. And I think that that's another part of, like, my character that I really like about myself is that, so I was raised, our family was very honest, very, if you did something wrong or whatever, very vocal. So you heard it all the time. There was no sugarcoating anything, which, you know, some people could say might be too rough or whatever, but I actually love that we were raised the exact way that we were because we're, we were raised to speak. Say something, if you don't like something, you know, say it. Don't just hold it in. That's gonna hurt you more than anything is to hold it in. So if you're mad, you're, you're you're happy, whatever, just let it out. Let's hear it before, you know, and I talk with my wife about this a lot too. Most people are trained to address an issue after it's already an issue. Where, for me, I try to take the approach of, recognize it before it becomes an issue. Rectify it before it becomes an issue. So me and my wife, we've been together three and a half years now. We've never had, we've never raised each other voices at each other because we know how to diffuse it before it gets to that point, before it ever gets to that point. So, and that's just, I think that's, you know, could be beneficial to a lot of people is, you know, we're all emotional creatures. We can all let it out in the wrong way if we, if we weren't raised to do it properly or if we just weren't educated on how to do it properly. But I mean, yelling at people when it gets to that point, all bets are off, you know, so, and now our relationship's gonna deteriorate for sure. But if I can come to you as I'm starting to notice the issue and say, Hey man, I wanna talk to you real quick.

Nick Rabeck [00:52:07] This is gonna be a little uncomfortable, but this is much better than if we don't acknowledge this now. So it's stepping into that uncomfortable moment, which I feel like I'm pretty good with in my life, which has allowed me to kind of go the way that I've went. So yeah, just try to rectify it before it becomes an issue. And then you could say the same thing about if you're overeating, if you're starting to gain too much weight, rectify the issue. Stop, stop bearing it and looking away, because it's only gonna end horribly for you. And you could say the same about, like I said, your, your physical condition, your finances. I mean, this is something that can transfer to every area of your life.

Vance Crowe [00:52:46] Yeah. Being candid with yourself is both the most difficult and most helpful thing that you can do. I know you mentioned that you journal, how often do you sit down and do that?

Nick Rabeck [00:52:56] I don't do it as much as I used to because I'm much happier now. But when I went through my period of who am I, what do I do, what do I like, I'm so confused. You know, life sucks because I don't have a college degree. Went through that little stretch of time, that's when I started to discover all these little tools. And I'm not smart by any means, and I'll never, you know, show to people that I am or, you know, sit here and tell, tell people that I am. But what I did notice is that you don't have to be smart to pick up smart habits, you know? So like I said earlier, before it becomes an issue, address it. So small things like that, can they just multiply as your life goes on? Not only that, but fake people don't like people that tell them the truth. They don't like that. You know? So another thing that I've noticed is fake people have moved out. Real people have moved in, which are just the people that are more like-minded. So if you by default are more honest, you know, more, more blunt with especially business owners or artists, we have to have that feedback. If nobody, if, if you never search for that feedback, you're probably never gonna do anything that you really truly ever wanted to do. You're gonna end up in a, in a sector where everybody else is, because that's where the default is. That's where the people who don't wanna take chances end up. They don't wanna push the envelope. They all end up in one spot. They're all together making mediocre furniture. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:54:19] I, I've, I've been very fortunate because I've had, I have a chance to meet so many people that I can, like, very quickly, you're gonna find out if I'm calling you on the phone, if you're doing something that I think you are not aware of, that you're doing just this morning, good friend of mine that I talked to her almost every day, she sigh and, and I was like, Hey, do you know that you sigh when you're talking and like, you either really are displeased with something I'm saying because it's like, you know, so taxing you or you're doing this and you don't know you're doing it and you're sending a signal to other people that you don't mean to send. And she was like, no, I don't even know I did it. Right? Like, and I think most of us want to have that sort of feedback, but we don't get it because the, the potential price that the person giving that feedback could pay, right? Like, who does he think he is telling me that or no, I, or or maybe I, she's gonna say, you're right, I am saying 'cause you're boring or you're like saying insane things or whatever that is. But like that sort of relationship building, when you have it with all of your friends, when everyone you're connected with is giving you high throughput, valuable feedback and they understand that you do have some limits on how much you can take, then you are able to progress much, much faster. If you're filled with people that are just telling you like, you are the greatest person ever, everything you do is great. The people that are telling you what you're not doing is not great. In fact, I would say there's been a friendship in my life over the last year that have moved on. And like at first it was a little painful 'cause this person told me how great I was all the time.

Vance Crowe [00:55:53] Then you start realizing like, well they weren't actually telling me what they thought, they were telling me what they, what made it easy for us to like smile and be happy with each other all the time.

Nick Rabeck [00:56:03] Yep. Yeah. And that is something, that's something to look for I think because I always told my friends growing up, yeah, you're probably, there's gonna be times when you don't like what I say to you. I am opinionated, but like you had said, if you don't hear that feedback, you could end up in a world that's completely fake because everybody's been telling you what you wanted to hear. It's extremely tough to hear things you don't want to hear. But typically that's the most beneficial stuff to hear. And I'll give an example real quick. You, so when we first started that table, that table build, I sent you an invoice, you corrected the invoice and sent it back to me, said, Hey, you know, I don't wanna, I'm not trying to be that guy, but I, I'm just trying to help you on something because you had went through the same thing you said, which any entrepreneur, I mean, you're gonna go through those same steps. How do you bill people? How do you collect, pay, small, detailed things, right? So I would've never reached out to you and said, Hey, can you grade me on this invoice that I sent you? You did it anyways. And like you said, some people, if you're sensitive, I think you'll take that the wrong way and you'll go, I don't like him doing that To me, I didn't feel good when he said that to me. So I'm gonna like not talk with him so much. Well, yeah, okay, well it, you protected your feelings. You still get a shitty invoice you had to deal with.

Vance Crowe [00:57:19] So you didn't fix

Nick Rabeck [00:57:20] The issue. The guy was giving you golden information, but because you're too sensitive, you couldn't take it. That is a huge, that's, that's something that, again, going back to like characteristics that I love about myself, one that I've always loved is that that doesn't bother me when somebody, somebody can sit here and tell me and you could be like, why did you wear that shirt with those jeans? Like that just, that's very strange to me. I'll walk outta here and never think about what you just said to me. 'cause I don't, I don't, I don't hold things like that to my heart. And I think it's really, for me it's simple because if you ask me, you know, what, what matters in life, I've ran through the whole gaunt like, like everybody, like you wanna be rich, you wanna have the money, you wanna have all that, all that fake crap. And really it's not that at all. Like all my life is very simplistic now, now that I'm happy doing, loving. I love what I do. I'm passionate about what I do. The people in my love, I are the people in my life I love and I'm passionate about those relationships. But it would've never ended up that way. Had I been too sensitive, especially with my dad, if, if, if you ever met my dad, you would know within five minutes like this, this dude doesn't, if you don't like you, he's probably gonna say it out loud. But it's, it's good. It's, it's really good stuff. 'cause he treated us that way our whole lives, which was, you know, just be criticized. It's okay to be criticized. It doesn't even mean that the person criticizing you is even that smart or has a good opinion. Some people will criticize you and they're completely uneducated. So what do you do then? Are you still offended or do you realize that it should hold no weight and then move past it?

Nick Rabeck [00:58:52] So that's kind of my thing man, is I, I want all the criticism in the world and then I'll take that home and I'll decide what to do with it. You know, what to follow, what to get rid of,

Vance Crowe [00:59:03] You know, something you said that you're interested in. You mentioned it the last time we were talking. I have no interest in cars. I, I couldn't care less. I, in fact, I like my car right now. The thing I resent about it is that I don't wanna scratch it. Whereas what I really want is a truck that I can just throw all my garbage and stuff into. But you're sitting there being like, Hey man, as soon as I leave here, I'm going to see this car. I, I want to see how they did the engine block. What is it about cars that you are drawn to that, that maybe somebody like me is missing?

Nick Rabeck [00:59:33] You know what? So that is, that's a beautiful question. It's like I mentioned earlier, I follow my passions, I follow my loves, I follow my happiness. So whatever that, that comes in many different forms. Cars, it's so funny 'cause I've been saying this the last couple years, I've been trying to figure out if I have a car addiction or not. So, excuse me, at a 1970 Mercury marquee that I bought a couple years ago and I didn't wanna get rid of it. It's a huge car. It, it's, it gets like eight miles to the gallon. It's super cool if you like long stretched out Cadillac style cars, which I always have been. But for me, I follow the passion. So I, and, and then I test it as well because a lot of times you could, you could do something you think you're into and be talking to yourself the whole time saying, yeah, I love this. This is my passion, this is really what it is. But if you're not willing to get up at 2:00 AM to do it, it might not be a passion. Not to say, I mean I probably ain't gonna get up at 2:00 AM to do any of these things, but I'm just saying every morning I wake up, I'm so excited to get to work on doing the things that I do. So with the car thing, I sold the mercury and I told everybody, well this is gonna, this is going to let me know if I am truly a car guy or not. 'cause I'm gonna either get rid of the car and never think about it again, or I'm gonna get rid of the car and, and wonder I have to fill that hole in my life again. Which I, I did quickly. So that was my indication that I'm just in it and I'm in it for whatever reason. I can't tell you why. I have no idea why. My dad was never really a car guy.

Nick Rabeck [01:01:06] Well

Vance Crowe [01:01:06] What do you notice about cars?

Nick Rabeck [01:01:09] You know, I think it goes down to the detail again. So, although I love, like the truck that I just got, it's all in pieces. It's rough. I'm not gonna build this thing back to where it's beautiful. It's an old C 10 truck. A lot of people just put 'em back together and get 'em on the road. So kind of what you were saying, I already went through the phase where I had nice cars and then I had to park in the back of the parking lot because I was so deathly scared someone was gonna hit it or wreck it or scratch it. And what I didn't know at the time was how much that weighed on my, my mind. So I got rid of that car and right after that is when I realized I don't think I want super nice cars anymore because of the worry that I have of scratching them or denting them. So I'm trying to now focus on just having an older car that I don't have to perfect. Because old cars, unless you have an unlimited budget, you can't perfect them. It will take a hundred, $200,000 to get that thing perfect. And if you're a detail guy like me, that's hard to accept. But that's kind of for me to work through. That's kind of one of the areas I'm working through now is don't be so hung up on the details. This truck is about getting the truck on the road and driving the truck and enjoying it. It's kind of like a time capsule back to 65. So yeah, so I couldn't give you exactly one reason why, which I don't think most people could tell you one reason why they're, they're passionate about something. I just know how to test it. So I tested it, it turned out I am 110% a car guy just in my blood. I can't, I don't stop thinking about 'em. I'm just in love with them.

Nick Rabeck [01:02:39] All the different styles, years, you can go on and on and on. But that's, that's kind of how I knew to follow this, see where it goes because I love it. Whereas even if it's, it puttered out, it doesn't matter because I had that time in my life where I was, I was loving what I chased.

Vance Crowe [01:02:57] You know, as you and I were talking last time about cars, I, the, there was like an idea that sparked in my brain and we were like part in ways so I couldn't bring it up. But you know, they say that 60% of women are oriented more towards people than things. And 60% of men are more oriented towards things than people. And so it's like they're kind of different, right? And I've always been a little bit embarrassed, like I don't care about things, right? Like what, what I do, what I'm passionate about is a podcast. But I sat there listening to you talk about the car that you were going to see and like some detail, I think it was with the handles that they were placing it. And I was like, this is really true. Like I just need to accept that I am more like a woman in this case or more like most women in this case that like I'm happy to hit, listen to him talk about this, but the only thing I care about is that you are interested in it. I couldn't care less about the details of the car. And that's been like a hard thing to accept, right? Because I want to be like the, the, you know, manly dude that's talking about the V eight engine. I just, I just don't care.

Nick Rabeck [01:04:02] Yeah. You know, life can lead you in such funny directions and you know, and I don't think a lot of people probably think of life as like at the end you were meant to follow this one path. And I don't think of it that way at all. I think of life as like this endless playground of cool, exciting things. You can find an experience if you go get 'em, you gotta go find 'em. You gotta try 'em. I used to say Pa your passion will not come along and punch you in the face. It won't do it. You have to go out and you gotta go look for it. And then eventually it's, and it's not because people want it to be like a cut, cut and drive thing. Like I just realized this is my passion and that's it and I'm gonna, next 20 years is what I'm doing. It doesn't happen that way. I, for me, I've noticed just the small buildup to these things. So I'm a car guy. Well how did that start? Well, I had a El Camino in high school, got rid of, it went years for not, not even getting into cars. I didn't care about 'em at all. I went to car shows here and there.

Vance Crowe [01:04:57] You said you were a loser in high school, but you had an El Camino. No one driving in El Camino was the loser in high school. It

Nick Rabeck [01:05:03] Wasn't that nice. It was barely on the road, you know, and I don't know, maybe that was 'cause I wasn't cool for driving in El Camino in high school, but I didn't care 'cause I loved the car, you know? And that was just something, yeah, I, I loved the car and I followed it and I ended up getting rid of it. I seen somebody else rebuild it. It was cool. But I, and I don't know if it's a nostalgia thing. I do love the fact that I can work on one of these cars in my garage and from start to finish, get it running on the road. There's no computer systems, there's no, you know, things like that. So it's, it's, I'm still in the simplistic version of all of it. But it's, it's that path thing again. I don't, and I don't know where it'll be in a year. I could end up starting a hot rod shop in a year. I have no idea. I don't have the tools. The means I have nothing right now that could support that. Well,

Vance Crowe [01:05:57] For the world's sake, you should keep doing furniture. 'cause you're doing furniture. I think I will. That like needs to be in the world. The, the thing you said about finding your passion, there's a concept in evolutionary biology called fractal radiation, right? Where, you know, let's say you find like a little island pops up out of the ocean, right? And there's a set of finches, right? And those finches are there and they, there's insects everywhere so they can go grab the insects. Well then the type of finch that is like that, that has the regular beak proliferates, and now you have heavy competition for all the insects that are above ground. But then one has a mutation where their beak gets a little bit longer. And so that finch doesn't focus on the insects on the top of the ground. They're now poking into the little holes. And then there's another fich that pops up and they have a different wing structure because that's going to allow them to grab flying insects out of the wind, out of, out of the sky instead of just like right on the surface of the ground. So what happens is all of these different finches are finding their niches and specializing and specializing so that they can propagate their species and going. And I find that this is actually a beautiful metaphor for life in and of itself, right? Like evolutionary biology can be applied to a lot of what goes on in the world, which is you find something that you kind of like the domain and then you just keep specializing until eventually you're doing something that yes, it vaguely resembles your passion that you started with. Kinda like a 2-year-old, vaguely looks like their 25-year-old self.

Vance Crowe [01:07:29] You can see where it was. But like there was a lot more refining that had to come through.

Nick Rabeck [01:07:33] Definitely. And that is really cool to me because I don't think of life as, I have one purpose. I have one meaning I have one path and that's just it. I don't look at it that way at all. It's completely open. If I was to decide to move to the Philippines tomorrow, everything that I was going to plan to do in the, in the United States would be completely gone. So, and then I would start my new, my new journey of adaptation. So you adapt to the surroundings, you're around. And then from there I would go into most likely have a workshop. I've thought about this before actually for my, my wife's from the Philippines. So we've thought about doing this. How would I conduct a life that I'm still happy with, that I know I love right now the aspects of my life and why I'm happy. Could I do that in a different place? And I, I've, people have heard me say for years, like humans are so highly adaptable that I, we don't give, I don't think we give ourselves enough credit because I truly believe whether, you know, if say a close friend dies tomorrow, yeah, it's gonna suck, but I'll adapt. I've had to do it before. That's what we're good at. Humans are really good at it. Which is funny because we're so good at adapting to change, yet most people are completely resistant to change, which is, so I think most people that are, they're missing out on that opportunity to see how you can evolve and in an, in a realm that, you know, you, you weren't familiar with before.

Vance Crowe [01:08:58] And the surprising thing about getting older is like when I was young, change was so easy for me. I'd work a job for two years and then go do something else and go do something else. But as you get older, you realize like one is not anywhere near as easy for me to learn or adapt to a new thing as it was in the past. And two, I've already figured out how to make these things work. So if I leave these things and go to that thing, now all of a sudden I gotta go back and be a novice, a white belt again. And it's really uncomfortable and it's easy for me to be like, people should wanna change. But I find like my business partner will be like, Hey, we got a new business system we're gonna use, we're gonna use this system for managing tasks or something. And like you mentioned, raising your voice. The only time I think I've ever raised my voice at, at Ben was when I was like, I don't know how to use this ces. Done.

Nick Rabeck [01:09:47] Yeah. And, you know, and the innovation part of it, I guess. Well, so I learned years ago that, you know, there's, and I don't remember these exactly, but, and I learned it from, I think Tony Robbins is, there's, there's six fundamental emotions or, or reasons that we tick. And we all, we all have these six and it might be seven or eight or something, I can't remember, it's been a couple years. But basically we, we are driven depending on which one you ca. So you categorize these one through six, everybody will list them differently. Change and uncertainty is usually one that people don't wanna mess with for whatever reason. And I think going back to my childhood and going through all the things that I did change for me was always my number one. So when you would look at, I would go to a seminar and you know, like 98% of the people would have change at, at the bottom of their list. Like most people are just like, I don't want to deal with it. Like at all, change is number one on my list. So I love uncertainty. I love knowing that when I walk through this door to do this podcast, I've never done this before. Most people would probably be extremely nervous and freaking out. I get excited about it man, because I know that with change, the opportunity of greatness is there. But if you don't, if, if you're not okay with change, how are you ever gonna reach that next level? You're too scared to make the jump. So things like this is, I love, I put these things in my schedule, you know, do things that scare crap outta you because you learn so much. Go going through processes like that, this one.

Nick Rabeck [01:11:18] So, so I'm pretty used to doing those things. So there's not a lot of things that make me really nervous anymore. When I do 'em for the first time, I usually go into them kind of like full head of steam, let's go, let's do it. Kind of. I talked about with this podcast, never done one before, never sat in front of a camera, ever. And I also have never learned how to weld. Like we mentioned earlier, which I'm gonna do. I'm extremely excited. Most people would probably spend three years doing research, talking to different welders and doing this and doing that. I know for myself, I can teach myself through, through the crash course. So just get a welder, get some metal, start laying beads.

Vance Crowe [01:11:52] So how are you gonna learn?

Nick Rabeck [01:11:54] So I have a tiny little welder. I bought, I bought this thing probably a year ago. And then, so I have right now a customer that I'm building a big entry desk for a body shop and he wants it kind of modern industrial rustic. So we're doing wood, but I'm building the entire structure out of metal. So it's angle iron. So I mean what, and that's, that's the thing that I love is most people would say, wouldn't you would, why would you not wanna practice on something else before going to a paying customer's project? And the number one reason is, 'cause I have enough confidence in myself to know that whatever I throw myself into, I learn very quickly and it's through throwing myself in, jump into the deep end, jump into the fire, just go in, don't worry about it. Stop letting all these thoughts of like, whoa, I can't, I don't know, I'm not good enough. What if I can't do this? What if I can't do that? Screw, stop all that crap. Just put your hands in it, just get going. Because you'll notice that as soon as you get past those thoughts, you're, and you get your hands on it, your, your imagination, your creativity, the little kid inside you is gonna come out. And that's kinda like jumping on a bike. I still ride bikes,

Vance Crowe [01:12:57] Man. All the, all the things that you're talking about are, they've fit my life. Like I can think of the way that, that interacted with the podcast, with Legacy Interviews. Just the other day I had a friend call me up and was like, Hey, I want my mom to do a legacy interview, but she cannot come to you and I don't think it'll be good enough over Zoom. So can you come out here and do it? And I'm like, ah, we've talked about doing this. I don't really know. It's gonna be hard. And he is like, send me a bill. Like, just send me an invoice and I'll tell you whether we can do it or not. And like as soon as you start doing it, then all of a sudden you're like, oh, all those things that I was thinking were gonna be a problem. I solved them within like 30 minutes and now I've got new problems I didn't think of, but like I can resolve those. And so most of the time when you're sitting there in that like getting ready, that neutral phase, the, the challenge of doing whatever it is that you think you're gonna do is so much harder than you think. And then also easier at the same time. 'cause then you get into it and you're like, oh, I didn't even think about these 35 other things, but I, I see it apply directly to my life.

Nick Rabeck [01:13:59] Yep. And that's the, that's the paradox is that we, you know, our thoughts are so powerful. We have like, I think the average last amount was like 10,000 thoughts a day. Individual thoughts. That's crazy. So if you take that information and then you kind of start to go over all the moments like, okay, well before I'm going into this job interview, you know, I'm really, really, really nervous, really scared. Why? Let's address that right now. Let's ask why, why are you scared? And you know, the, that's when you start to tackle 'em because it's like the unknown and then the thought process. Our brains, our thoughts are, I always, I always said that we're like a super highly evolved crete, an animal. We're just a highly evolved animal. And our brains reflect that most animals don't have to have 10,000 thoughts a day. It's like their lives are pretty simple. Eat, don't get eaten, reproduce. That's it. That's it. That's all animals, you know, think about for humans, we get caught up in this thought process, this cycle. And in my opinion, that's how all these different things can come to fruition. Whether you become a millionaire or you become, you know, deep and darkness into, into depression. I think it's all a cycle of your thoughts. It's just constantly going. It never stops. It. When does your brain ever, you know, when your, there's never a moment in the day where your brain is just black and you've seen nothing for five minutes.

Vance Crowe [01:15:19] Listeners of the podcast will, will have known this here. You say this many times. Is that like by having a 2-year-old now I understand that most of what I think are just impulses. I want granola, I want a glass of milk, I want to sit down, I want someone to be, you know, tell me I'm great, right? And like, and the 2-year-old has no governor has no like, you know, like we're trying to teach her to say please, but like she thinks like, I want a glass of water, dad. You know, like she's just telling you exactly what you think. Now we as, as like older adults, we learn how to cover over these impulses. We learn how to keep the impulse in your brain. But when I actually look at like, when am I doing things that are impulsive, they are the exact same thoughts as that 2-year-old. Only there's no parent standing between me and the refrigerator that says like, ah, ah, you can't go get that thing you want.

Nick Rabeck [01:16:15] Isn't that funny too? I think, you know, having those tiny little insights are, are the make or break of what if, you know, whether you get the life you want or you don't to, to be able to. So Tim Ferriss used to always say this thing. I think I mentioned this last time I was here, and this is where I learned that you don't have to be that smart to get the life that you want. So basically, 'cause he'll, he'll claim the same thing. He's not that smart. He's just, well he, he is probably very humble, but he's, he's, he's extremely smart in the way that he thinks about processes. So he listed it out as basically humans are fundamentally flawed to the end. So we know what we're supposed to do, we just don't do it. Why the hell is that? We know that if we save our money, we'll be rich at the end of our lives. Excuse me. But we just don't do it. So why is that? Well, he, he kind of addresses not so much. Why is that more, how do we fix that? How do we counteract that? So his whole thing is about processes. Every, there's a process to everything. Again, going back to are you looking for your dream life? Are you trying to get rich? Do you want the wife of your, your dreams? It's all a process. So if you can figure out the process, you'll most likely get what you want while you avoid the instant gratification part of our brains, which is really hard to ignore. It's really powerful. And pretty much everybody, we want it. We want what we want, we want it now. And especially in today's age, we're trained. And that's why, another reason why I think more, more kids and there's more depression and things like that than ever is 'cause they think they're supposed to, if 13, they're gonna know, they're supposed to know already what they're gonna do with the rest of their life.

Nick Rabeck [01:17:46] And then, you know, a couple years later you're supposed to decide on that. And then financial, you know, put yourself in the line financially as well, a hundred thousand dollars in debt, whatever. And now you figure out you don't want to, you didn't wanna do that in the first place.

Vance Crowe [01:17:59] You know, you're in the rare position for most people in American society and that you get to focus for long blocks of time on your work. So when you're in your shop and you're, let's just say doing woodworking, are you listening to things? Are you having a conversation in your head? How are you occupying yourself as you're creating? It's

Nick Rabeck [01:18:21] A really good question. So I embrace it. I embrace that environment. So if I'm in there, I am, I'm in the flow state, you know, the phone's off. Sometimes I play the radio. I really like to, it depends on the project that I'm working on. Sometimes I go out there, I want dead silence all day long. I don't want noise, I don't want peep, I don't want nothing. I wanna be hands on with this piece and I'm gonna fine tune, I'm gonna hand sand this entire thing until it's my level of perfection. And there's, you know, I think a lot of people could probably go into that process and still come out with the same results. You know, even if they just came from like getting in an argument with their wife or whatever. For me, I really treat it as a very special, intimate thing. And that, I think that's important for me to show that through the end product. Because what I want people to see at the end product is like, oh my God, like he didn't spare anything. It's incredible. It's to a level that I couldn't even believe. I've never seen that done before. So, and the way that I can get that through is by monitoring my, my disposition throughout the whole build. So sometimes I'll play, I love playing like Asian style music, very like zen type stuff. Something that you would play like during meditation or a massage or something like that, which really helps when you run into issues. You don't, you're not so prone to overact or get emotional about it, you know, it's just, it's feng shui. It is what it is. You get what you get and then you work through it.

Nick Rabeck [01:19:53] You're, and that's kind of, you know, the other analogy of life, which was, you know, worry about the things that you can control. Don't worry about the things that you can't. So I get very into that mode. And I think that's probably another reason why I've found the happiness that I've found through my life is because I take that to heart. So if I can't change it, most people know me. They know that I'm not even gonna put the effort into trying to figure it out because I am, I, I make sure I control all the elements of my life, which I think is important. You have to do, you have to have that kind of level of detail. If you want your dream life again, most people that dream life has been ripped from them. They were taught to don't even shoot for that. That's not gone out of me. It's still the forefront. It's the number one thing.

Vance Crowe [01:20:33] And as you're working in the shop and you like, do you have, did you have a vision for what that would look like? Or are you just like, I'm just gonna move it forward and then I'm going to resolve the problems as they come up?

Nick Rabeck [01:20:45] Great question. I never know what's gonna happen. And I think it goes back to that uncertainty thing that I love is that I can start a piece, I usually don't make the entire plan before I work on the piece. I usually let the wood speak to me. And, and what, you know, it's almost that like, I don't know if I'd call it an organic or inorganic way. I look at it and I try to finish the piece and it kind of starts to tell me what it wants to be turned into. So

Vance Crowe [01:21:18] It tells me What do you mean

Nick Rabeck [01:21:20] It just, it it gives you feedback. That's the, the thing that most people would probably never, ever realize is that when I, when they look at this, they might think that this was the plan from the very start. It never is. I, I, a lot of times if you tell me you want black epoxy and you want maple wood, yeah, I know visually the colors that it's gonna end up looking like. And then I could kind of refer 'em around that. But sometimes we'll come up with a plan, I'll finish the piece and then I call 'em and say, Hey, we could do that. We could still do that, but let me run some other things by you that I think are gonna just make it, take it to the, you know, stratosphere out of this world. And usually they'll let me kind of go with whatever my vision is and then you end up with something like this to where this piece told me what it wanted. I mean, it was really simple. Like I just kind of, and that's why a lot of times I don't, I won't refer to myself as an artist when it comes to this because Mother Nature created that. All I'm doing is trying to emphasize that I'm bring it out and show it to people. That's one of my main fascinations with this stuff is that's a, that's a beautiful piece of wood. And I had nothing to do with growing it or, or getting it to that point. All I did was highlight it and Mother Nature did all the rest. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:22:31] And that's years of time. That's years of time frozen,

Nick Rabeck [01:22:35] You know. Yeah. Permanently.

Vance Crowe [01:22:35] Exactly. Exactly. Like they, you, you, I don't know how many years it takes for that much wood to grow, but it is not an insignificant amount of time and then it's captured and frozen. Right. It, it's a, it's a fascinating thing. So when you say it tells you, or you're doing this, are you sitting in your shop and sitting down and looking at the wood and like listening to your thoughts consciously? Or are you constantly moving and touching and you know, bending things? Like how does that work?

Nick Rabeck [01:23:04] Yeah, it's a, there's a lot of times where I'll sit down at those moments of realization that maybe this isn't the piece for this project or maybe this piece should be more this style. Yeah. I just take it one step at a time. I'll, I'll work on the piece, I'll cut the edges, some of them. And this process is never the same. It's always by feel and by what I see in front of me. So somebody might bring me a piece of wood that's 10 foot long and the table's gonna be eight. And then, you know, you would think in your head, well, we'll just, you either cut two feet off that one end or one off each end. And actually when I look at it, I will actually take that eight foot and I will position it and I will move it to where I get exactly what is gonna showcase that piece of wood the best. Because that's really the name of the game is how do I get the amount of, I want as much character in the pieces I can, but then I also have to envision like the side profile. So none of the sides were cut previous to making this. So I had to figure out, all right, well right on, like this edge here has a big split at the end. I want that split to wrap around that back edge. So now that anybody that's sitting right here can actually look around that you don't just see the top now it's three dimensional. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:24:14] I, I like, I, I was thinking while we were sitting here like, how can I possibly describe the edge of this thing without somebody seeing it? Maybe we'll take a photograph and include it. Definitely. Because there's like this weird tiny detail where instead of it being a flat edge, you know, 90 degrees from the, from the surface of the table, it's like slightly bowed out and then it comes back in and it's like the, the in here with the lights on it, it looks beautiful because there's like just a little hint of a shadow and you see the wood from two different angles. It's the same, you know, wood right next to each other. But because the light hits it differently, it's, it's, it's a really interesting detail.

Nick Rabeck [01:24:51] Big time. And you can also walk around this and like I was saying earlier, if you catch the, the light properly, you'll actually see a completely different table. This one specifically has tons of quilting in it. So it looks like basically quilting is just ripples and at some points you won't see those ripples. And then if you turn your head one way, the light hits it and it reflects every one of 'em. So that's the other cool thing is that I realized not only can is the top gonna be stunning, but I wanna make these things to where that profile, nobody would ever think how, if I asked them, how do you make a a a table better? Nobody would ever say, well make it thicker on the side. So, you know, 'cause nobody ever makes tables to where you see a side profile very well. But if you high made that a highlight of the table, that's just another, like I said, it's like a a three dimensional piece now. It's not just the top you're looking at. You can kind of get a different angle and see how that crack wraps around the whole outside of the edge and then underneath it. And then also the same thing with the grain. The grain comes to the edge and wraps over the side. So those are all those tiny little details that I hope with the end piece that people, I know not everybody will notice that, but people that really love artistic work will see that kind of like a car builder.

Vance Crowe [01:26:03] Well it was hilarious right before we got started, you drove our, our producer over here nuts because you were like, you know what the saddest thing about this table is? There's a beautiful underside. So you're like flipping the table over and like, and that's like the mark of a great artist, right? Somebody that cares about this underside that the only person that's gonna see it is the three-year-old that's grabbing toys from underneath it or somebody that's moving it. Right? But like most people will never see it. But it really was beautiful. It does have great grain. You, you know, it's beautiful down there too.

Nick Rabeck [01:26:32] And it's funny you say that because this is another differentiator for me and other builders. Most people would not put that time on the underneath of the table. It would not finish the underneath the same as the top. Like you said, you'll never see it unless you flip the thing over or you're moving it or whatever. And that's the only time you'll ever see it. But I want to make sure that even if that's the case, even if you see the underneath of the table, you still go, oh my gosh, like he didn't spare any, there was nothing. So, so, and that's a big D difference for me. 'cause if I was to make this piece to 80%, I'm no longer within the zone of my passion. My passion is to make that piece the best that I can possibly make it with my ability and with all the knowledge that I have right now. And, and the, the long distance for me is to know that this table is still gonna be here 50 years from now and it's gonna be the same quality that it was. And that even after I'm dead, somebody can get up underneath this thing and go, who made this? Who would ever take this much time to make the underneath of a table this beautiful to fix every tiny imperfection? I mean, because I could easily leave things unfinished and nobody would ever know and nobody would ever say anything. But I would know. And this whole thing is about me and my happiness.

Vance Crowe [01:27:44] You know, when we first met you were working for Wilkie Window and Door, which like we had just hired a company that gave us a good bid on Windows. And my experience with you changed my whole view on this company, on like how often we're gonna use them. We ended up hiring them for more. And then when you and I were talking, you were like, yeah, this is my philosophy on customer service. And I think it was really powerful. So for listeners that are in the customer service world, like how do you take care of customers when you get on, on site at their, to do a job?

Nick Rabeck [01:28:18] You know, it's really simple for me, treat people the way I wanna be treated. Pretty simple. I mean, because, you know, I guess the, the, one of the big issues with almost any company these days is customer service. You know, most bigger companies, they're not even located in America. I mentioned earlier I bought a CNC machine, it's called a ShopBot machine. Their customer support is located in North Carolina. They make their machines in America and North Carolina, I could call them right now, somebody will pick up the phone or send me an email immediately afterwards that I am, most people are unfamiliar with service like that. That's what I tried to bring. Even though I wasn't an employee of Wilkes, I was still the middleman. So if you had an issue on your job, I was gonna see to it that it was rectified wasn't my spot, it wasn't my responsibility to do any of that. I just wanted to make sure that everybody that I came in contact with had the, the exact opinion you just said, top notch experience. Whether it was the install, the installer himself, the experience after the issues that we experienced after with the customer service. If you could nail all those things, you got a customer for life. You know?

Vance Crowe [01:29:26] Yeah. Because anything else, anybody else I could have gone with, we could have had a problem and it could have hung out there. And now instead of just like paying for a, a job to be completed, now you're on the phone, now you're contacting people, now you're waiting. I, I mean like truly and like the other people we've worked with at that company, like whatever they're doing, it's the, it's the right way because your level of customer service was like jarring to us. We're like, how can we find all businesses that we work with to be like that?

Nick Rabeck [01:29:55] Yeah. And, and you know, I always knew while I was doing that with the windows and the doors, I always had all these other ideas, these businesses I was gonna get into. So another thing for me, it was great practice for me to, you know, so whenever I go out on my own and I'm doing my own thing, I want these people to feel as if when they talk to me, I'm a hundred percent transparent with them. I'm honest with them. I'm not gonna screw them around. I want them to feel that when I talk to them, which is usually the reception that I got. And most people, if I had went to their house, I did some work, they always called and referred, they only wanted me back and that was it. So that was great for me, a great indicator that I'm on the right track as far as having all that to, and that doesn't explain like, well what product am I gonna pick to sell or what service am I gonna get into? But if you have that level of customer service, which I would just mark up to being a nice person and doing what you would want me to do, you know, if a window was broken, you probably want me to get that rectified. So I call the, you know, and do, I don't wait till the end of the day. I don't wait a week and then tell people it's do it now. And I guess, you know, and it's, that thing is the way you do one thing is how you do everything. So if you can get into the repetition of things just like that, you know, make sure the customer always feels like they're being heard and their issues, they that you do care about their issues. They're just not a number. You know, they're, you're trying to make a relationship here. So, and I knew even if I did windows and doors at your house and you found out I did other things, you were probably gonna pick me to do those other things because you already know what to expect as far as a communication standpoint.

Nick Rabeck [01:31:33] So if I can follow through with that and then give you a product that just blows your mind, I think again, I think I just made a customer for life. And my goal too is also I wouldn't, I mean obviously a customer for life is a great thing, but I wouldn't say that's a main goal of mine. But what I do want is that if you say you're at a restaurant, you're with your family or your friends and you guys are all just having a good time, and then somebody next to you says something about, well we're going dining room table shopping tomorrow. I, I want the people to whoa to look at them and go, whoa, do not do that. I have the guy, you won't want anybody else to do it. This is the guy I'm telling you, you have to call him. I want that to be the conversation. You know, so, and to get that from people, your product better be damn good. Your product, whether it's your customer service, every aspect of it should be damn good. But I think if you do that, you could build a company that'll last for a hundred plus forever because you're just capitalizing on things that most bigger companies can't afford to fix. You know? And I think a lot of bigger companies, and I'm sure everything is a little bit different, but typically what I've always seen is they run off of like the 80% rule is you get it up to 80%, as long as your customer satisfaction is 80%, as long as profits are 80%, that's usually where they call it good. And for me, I always thought, well if you could, it's obviously easier for a smaller company, a smaller guy, a single individual to rectify those things, make sure they're all right, which again will most likely result in a lifelong customer. So that was pretty much my philosophy behind that was don't go 80% go a hundred percent.

Nick Rabeck [01:33:07] Make sure and even you'll never please everybody down to a T. But as long as you're showing that person, that you're trying your best, that accounts for a ton already. Because most picky people already know that they're picky. And when they call companies, they're probably gonna have an issue because they're so damn picky. So if you can work with someone who's picky and make them feel respected and that they're still being heard and you're still doing all the things that you can, that person will guarantee you they will, they will call you back.

Vance Crowe [01:33:34] Oh yeah. I mean that's a hundred percent. Yeah. The other challenge that you run into, and I've been excited this whole podcast to ask you this, is how do you describe your stuff? Like we get to have a conversation, people are listening to this, but in the world of marketing, you gotta write stuff up on your website. So you had sent me a little marketing thing and I sent you something back the other day. Do you know how I created that?

Nick Rabeck [01:33:55] I have no idea, but it was beautiful.

Vance Crowe [01:33:57] Did you like it?

Nick Rabeck [01:33:57] Oh my god, it was amazing.

Vance Crowe [01:33:59] So tell me about what your experience was and I'll tell you how I made that.

Nick Rabeck [01:34:02] Okay. That was beautiful. So after I left here last time, you know, we had, we had exchanged a couple texts back and forth and we both said you like, awesome. Like the, the conversation we had was just super cool for both of us on both ends, which is the most rewarding conversation you could ever have, right? We both walk away with so much information. But that was, that changed a lot because before that, if you had asked me to explain this to you, I would've said, I'm a table builder. I built tables in my garage and I made that one last week. And of course that's gonna be a little hard to wrap your heart around, your emotions to be engaged with. So, and going back to high school, terrible student. So when I sent you that original, I sent it to a customer, which I sold Great.

Vance Crowe [01:34:45] Which was a write up of the, of the furniture. It was good. I had no problem with it. But you were like, Hey, this is what I sent. And I was like, would you mind if I took a shot at it? Right.

Nick Rabeck [01:34:54] Yeah. You took it to a completely different level. And I've never been a good person. I've never been good or wanted to talk about myself. I'm, I'm the more, I'm more of a person. Like I'd like to sit in the back of the room and just watch and listen. I don't need attention. I don't need any of that. So that was kind of

Vance Crowe [01:35:12] What, what was the question again? Well, so I took what you sent me and I took our conversation and I went to chat bot, like the chat.open ai.com. So this is this new artificial intelligence thing that's You did that. Wow. And I was like, my friend Nick does this and I start typing in things you and I talked about and I took your little writeup and then I was like, help me write marketing copy. So then it writes this beautiful like 10 paragraph thing and I was like, it should highlight the fact that he understands this wood and this thing. And so it like, I don't know, I did like three or four iterations and then was like, so it probably no more than 15 minutes on this. Right. And then I copy and pasted it and sent it to you to be like, can you tell? 'cause I did not write that. I mean, I wrote some of the starting prompts. Wow. But that was generated by ai.

Nick Rabeck [01:36:04] Wow. I think I just heard of this, this technology just, did it just come out not too long ago? Yeah, just

Vance Crowe [01:36:09] A few months ago. Okay.

Nick Rabeck [01:36:10] I was hearing about it. I think Joe Rogan might have been talking about it or something. But yeah, I, I had not known what it was for or what it did. And yeah, when you sent that back to me, it completely changed my outlook on how I am supposed to be telling people about this. So, like I said, I'm like, the more, you know, stick me in the back of the room. I don't, I don't really need to explain in detail what I do or whatever. But obviously when you come to sell, you're trying to sell high-end art. You're gonna, you're gonna need that aspect of things. You're gonna need to be able to get it across to people very clearly, very methodically. And let them know the passion that this isn't just a coffee table. This is something that a man put his heart and soul into. This is a piece of art. This is something that hopefully when you see it, you can see the differences in that.

Vance Crowe [01:36:53] And it represents a period of your life. Not only is it the tree is frozen time, this is frozen time of what was going on in your mind, the conversation that you were having with this frozen time. That is a tree. Yeah.

Nick Rabeck [01:37:06] Which is a beautiful thing.

Vance Crowe [01:37:08] And the thing that GPT chat like does, the thing I'm so excited about is I had all these ideas that were like fragments. They were like, Nick does this, Nick does that. And it was all stuff that like, I totally picked up just through our conversation and, and observing your stuff. But to be able to put it into like sequential sentences that like have a beginning, a middle, and an end would've taken me hours. So there are people right now that sit in giant buildings just filled with people that all they're doing all day is writing, beginning, middle, and ending paragraphs. All that's going away because a guy like me can be like, this is what I'm impressed with. Now give me this marketing copy. And like, certainly you could find somebody that could do a better job, but not very many people could do a better job than that.

Nick Rabeck [01:37:55] I have a friend actually that really, really smart guy. Anytime I've ever had a resume to type up or anything along those lines, if you looked at my version versus what he would print out, it's the difference between saying, I I don't want that guy, that guy. I want's the same guy. It was the sa like, so that was what always blew my mind. So when you sent that back to me, I thought it, it, it opened a door so quickly in my head that this is the exact way that this has to be explained from now on. It has to

Vance Crowe [01:38:25] Wow. 'cause

Nick Rabeck [01:38:26] I'm not trying to sell, you know, the, these things I'm trying to sell, they're not cheap. So if you're looking for a coffee table and you go out and you're looking, chances are you're not buying mine because you're just looking for a coffee table. You know, I'm, I'm, my niche market is the guy who says, you know, I have this living room and it's beautiful and it's functional and it's like, you know, my, my sanctuary and I want the pieces within it to represent something. I want it to visually when I walk in, have a certain feel to it, a certain emotion to it. Those are the people that I'm looking for because that's exactly what I make. So I don't just make these things for just the random consumer. It's a very, like I said earlier, one off piece, this is the only one you're ever gonna see like this. And if you see another one, let me know 'cause I'll make you a new one. 'cause there's just no way in hell that someone else is gonna replicate that. But that's, that's the cool part about it all is, you know, and that that, that paragraph that you sent me back was just it, it's beautiful and it's gonna take my business to a new level to be able to explain it that way on my website, social media, things like that. 'cause it really gets the point across.

Vance Crowe [01:39:31] So as we wrap up here, man, if people wanted to see your stuff, where would they go to be able to see more than just this coffee table? All the stuff you're working on?

Nick Rabeck [01:39:41] So my stuff is a little scattered right now. I'm kind of going through the process again. Everything's a process of kind of fine tuning all that stuff. And 'cause you know, up to this point I'm, I would still consider myself newer to the realm and you know, it's almost that imposter syndrome thing that we all get the first year or two. You're doing something

Vance Crowe [01:40:00] You should get over your imposter syndrome. I know, right? So, but I'm

Nick Rabeck [01:40:03] Almost there. I think I,

Vance Crowe [01:40:04] If people are looking you up, like you have a Facebook page and it's deep forest designs.

Nick Rabeck [01:40:08] Deep forest design. Yes. On, yeah, on Facebook, Instagram, I have a couple of things on Instagram as well. Same thing. Deep Forest Designs my website, which is just about to go up that will have everything that I've ever done. Plus, you know, updates on things. I'm gonna start posting through the build because after talking with you, what I realized was it's not about this end product so much. You know, you see the coffee table at the end, but I'm trying to sell people the story of it as well, where it started. So I'm gonna start doing everything that I make, I'm gonna start from the raw version of it, just being a piece of wood, sitting on the ground that I pick up out of the woods, start from there and then show the, the process. I've, I've seen people here lately have really been more excited to see the process than really the end result, which is cool to me. I, I would wanna show people these different things and how I tackle different problems that others probably handle much differently through a project like this where it's you, you plan it, you don't know what it's gonna look like. You kind of have an idea, but it will let you know as time goes on. But yeah, so

Vance Crowe [01:41:14] Well I wanna just say like, so you gave me a big offer which was, hey, let me like put a coffee table in here. Let me put a little bit of my furniture in here and hopefully people can see it and know more about you. 'cause you're all the way out in Jefferson County, Missouri. You're kind of tucked away. And so I'm happy to have this in here. I'm, I'm really proud that you were willing to come in and talk. I know how much you value your time, so Thanks man. And if people see your stuff in here, they should all know it is, it is all for sale. They, they can, they can get their own Nick Rayback deep forest designs.

Nick Rabeck [01:41:43] Yep. Or we can start, start a design, you know, from scratch, from something else. But yeah, I wanna take the time to appreciate you. Thank you very much Vance for having me. This has been a great platform, great conversation like we always have. So hopefully other people can take something from it and who knows, maybe we'll do another one in the future.

Vance Crowe [01:41:59] Oh, we will. Thanks man.

Nick Rabeck [01:42:01] Definitely appreciate it Vance.