Here’s two quotes your dad has likely said to you. “Measure twice and cut once,” or “a job worth doing is worth doing right.” And for the most part these have never applied to me or is it I have never applied them to me? Here’s one that I liked though, especially in college. “I mean sure, hard work pays off over time, but laziness, well laziness pays off right now!” I can picture my college roommate being interviewed or I guess it would be more like interrogated, maybe even cross-examined, “how would you describe Derek, Mr. Ivancevic?” “Derek is a right-now” kind of guy.
Hey, I’m 40 and I’m not going to argue with him. I think eventually as you get older you stop trying to change all of your defects and just start to embrace them. For example, I can get a ton done. Like, significantly more than the average person playing in the same arena as me. Probably because I transformed my laziness into my motto which is simply this: You need to “get comfortable being uncomfortable” and for me that means not letting a perfect plan get in the way of a good one.
We live in a busy world. In between baseball tournaments, school pickup lines, what pair of sweatpants to put on, writing a column and smoking a brisket. We have to go to work right? And I work constantly. I’m actually not that lazy but at least you know I’m making an attempt to show you I come from humble beginnings. The point is that we are all busy, all the time. When it comes to those things that add to our busyness we want to get them done, get them out of the way, cross them off the list. I come from a lineage of people who think exactly like that. What I mean is, I’m a get it done right away kind of guy and good is better than perfect unless of course I’m paying for it. In that case it's always better to be perfect otherwise I would have done it myself.
I think it was 10 years ago and I was building an elevated dog bed for my Great Dane, Lola (God rest her soul). So, I went to the hardware store and bought a bunch of wood. I came home with no plan and just a few tools and thought, “I’ll knock this out and get back to living my life in no time.” But then my neighbor Randy got wind of what I was doing and Randy’s an engineer, and Randy always measures twice. He couldn’t believe I was winging it. When I measured this one particular piece I needed to cut he offered that same wisdom our fathers once said to us back in the day, “you better look at that measurement again.” I eye-balled it and made it work. Sure, it was a little crooked but you know what? It was for my dog, it was in the garage, and again it was for my FRICKIN dog (please picture Will Ferrel from SNL right now talking to his dog, thanks!). I looked at Randy and replied, oh don’t worry I’m only cutting this thing once.
So, why is the Roofing company talking like this? Great question. First of all, I’m not the one who is installing your roof. If I was you should NOT hire us. We have very experienced roofing experts in charge of that department. Second, I am the customer, or at least that’s how I think. I’m the one like you who is too busy and doesn’t have any time to figure out how to replace my roof. Even if I did I still wouldn’t want to go through with the process. It takes too long. It’s probably why I am in charge of the customer experience. You know the perfect one you are paying for. At the end of the day, when all the busyness ends, I love the idea of looking up my home’s address on a website, eyeballing the slope of my house, and choosing my roof in the matter of seconds. In my mind I categorize that as perfect.
I guess that’s why I love Roofle so much because I only need to cut this thing once and I’m done.
