TCM is Total Craft Mastery. I think about a visit I had to a relatively small community in South Africa, one of my favorite places on the planet. I heard about this iconic artist named Lionel Smit, and I just fell in love with his work. And Total Craft Mastery is really about not seeing your work as work, seeing it as your craft. When I watch him in action, and when I look at his sculptures, when I look at his painting, I see a man pursuing mastery and working at mastery of his craft. I really think that is the purpose of being in business.
It’s not just to have a job. It’s not just to have an income for your loved ones and yourself. It’s to use every single day as a platform for mastery, to use every single opportunity in front of a customer, or maybe in silent anonymity pursuing a craft, getting better at your game, calibrating the way you work, building insight. You see, we live in a world where there’s this mass de-professionalization in business.
Very few people are going, “I’m going to go to work today at this clothing store or on this airplane, or in this restaurant or in this school or in this factory or at this tech startup and be the master of my craft.