How I lost my hair.
A story about the glamorous life of building early stage companies, and tips on how to keep your hair.
I’ve had long hair, about shoulder length, since 5th grade. There were a few resets here and there, but it was a pretty solid piece of my identity. I grew up in a small surf town called Manasquan, NJ where this was the norm. It’s about 1 square mile, population 5,457 in 1995. It’s known for a few things:
Jack Nicholson went to high school there.
The Osprey - IYKYK
The Inlet - arguably the best right on the East Coast and the only one of these 3 that mattered to me growing up there.
I was a bad surfer and still am, but it was a pretty core part of my childhood along with skateboarding and snowboarding. I ended up moving to Vermont for high school and snowboarding every day. Long hair was even more so the norm in the Vermont snowboard scene c.2004. All this is to say that I had long hair for a very long time, and it was very much a part of my surface level identity. I kept those locks through college, through grad school, through my first startup, through getting married…all the way up until the day we launched Offsite.
I’d like to say that shaving it off was an expression of a new start - a new me to take on this new endeavor. Like Emile Hirsch playing Jay Adams in Lords of Dogtown. Staring at myself in the mirror as I transform into a new version of myself, but minus the addiction and hate crimes. It’s fortunately a much better story…
The Loss
It was December 1st (my birthday) and we were beginning to run tests of our prototype cabin. We’d just finishing putting up the deck and finishing touches. If you haven’t been, the cabin sits atop a mountain, and it’s a bit of a trek to get up there. After it was delivered to the site, we’d tested all of the utilities down the hill, where access to electrical and water was more convenient - all systems go. After towing it up the mountain and setting it to it’s permanent location, we hooked everything back up and fired her up. Electrical - Check. Toilet - Check. Faucets….nope. No water.
I went outside to take a look - everything seemed alright. I poked my head under the deck and saw a few drops dripping out. You’ve got to be kidding me….clearly a leak in the floor, which happens to be sealed off by sheet metal. You’ve either got to go in from above, which means ripping up brand new tile, or from below, which means cutting into metal. Both options suck.
We’ve got our first guests coming in less than 48 hours, so no time to get a contractor up there - I decide to go in from below. There’s about 12 inches between the ground and the bottom of the trailer, so I’m laying down under the trailer in a pile of dirt, cutting metal about 3 inches from my nose with an angle grinder. I’ve got a faceguard on, but sparks are spraying down my shirt and feel like a swarm of fire ants.
After about an hour of this, I get through and sure enough the PEX pipe has cracked during the tow up the mountain. Luckily we’ve got spares, so another 30 minutes and we’ve got running water! By this point, the sun is setting and the temperature is hovering around freezing. I close up bottom of the trailer, and there’s just one last thing to do…
I need to use spray-foam insulation around the pipe and to fill the gaps in the undercarriage from cutting it open. I climb back under and seal it up - easy. As I’m scooting back out on my back, I knock my hat off, and before putting it back on I push my hair back out of my face. Big mistake. I’m wearing a glove, and that glove happened to be covered in spray foam insulation.
Instantly, I go full Something about Mary - hair straight out to the side, instantly hardened and covered in dirt, leaves and debris. Cool.
I can’t quite tell how bad it is. It’s been a really, really long day and I was at my limit a few hours prior. I walk back into the cabin and look at my wife, hair sticking straight out to the side, covered in dirt and leaves and more than one tick. She stares, slackjawed and afraid to say anything, waiting for my reaction.
I burst out laughing. What else can you do? It’s my birthday, I’ve spent a good 4 hours spraying my face with molten metal. I’m covered in ticks and dirt, scrambling to fix something hours before our first guests arrive. I’ve got a wedding to go to the next day. I fully lost it, I couldn’t even be mad, it was just comical.
We tried to get it out. I took many showers, we treated it with nail polish remover (thanks google), I used a comb for the first time in a decade. Nothing worked, that stuff is NASTY. In the end, I just decided to give up and shave my head. Fresh start, just like Emile.
The Gains
Starting businesses is not fun. It’s not glamorous. Not for me at least, and not for most of my friends who I’ve watched go through the process as well. I’m sure there’s a few startups that raise a ton of capital on a loose idea, ride some trend wave and go straight to private jets, but those are not the norm, nor should they be celebrated. I have a hard time believing those companies are every more than pump and dumps. I’m not sure everyone ends up literally covered in dirt and chemicals, but at least metaphorically you will at some point. That said, I think you need to love the chaos, or at least learning form it. Here’s a few takeaways I had from this mishap:
Thinking through maintenance is crucial. This is true for buildings and products, but also the company in general. Building anything is only half the battle. I put myself in a bad situation because I didn’t think through this scenario, and we didn’t have an easy way to fix it. Now we design access panels into the undercarriage and at every major plumbing connection. Easy to build, saves massive headaches and hairloss.
You’ve got to be willing to get your hands dirty. You’re going to have lots of small problems, and a few big ones that only you can solve. The difference between make or break for an early business usually lies in those moments. Will you throw in the towel, or shave your head, call it a new start and move on?
Ask for more help. Lots more. I shouldn’t have been up there alone at the end of the start. (I wasn’t alone, Kate was there for emotional support, but she doesn’t love using angle grinders). I should have had professionals, or at the very least a crew of friends there to help. We were being scrappy and resourceful, but that was probably avoidable had I asked for more help to ensure things were ready sooner so there was time to let the pro’s do their job. Everything will take 3x as long as you think when you’re building something new, so double the time you think it will take, then double it again.
Don’t ever use spray foam. It’s bad for the environment and bad for you. I got got.
Offsite is still in its early stages. I’m still making daily mistakes, still learning from them. I’ve kept my hair short, so maybe it was the new start I needed to embrace. Luckily, I think(?) we’re past the point of me needing to climb under cabins… But to be honest, I probably still will, and I certainly would if I had to.
"More the knowledge, lesser the ego; Lesser the knowledge, greater the ego." - Albert Einstein.
A special announcement today!
Our good friends Brian Kelley and the fellas over at Standards Manual are releasing Parks 2 today. The original is one of our all-time favorite coffee table books, and we stock it in our cabins for guests. I’m sure this one’s even better, and they brought in some heavy hitters for the essays, including Alex Honnold and Chris Burkard.
You can grab a copy here and support good people doing good work!
