Notice that I didn’t say I live to work. As hard as it is to believe, I have a regular full time job, 9 to 5 (most days) a desk and water color. That is the about the only elements that would make this job “regular.” I know that it may be hard to believe that I am NOT one of those incredibly wealthy Bloggers and tech wiz that has been living off the residuals of the first site I ever launched 20 years ago with Al Gore. It is also hard to believe that being an infamous club-music button pusher( DJ Darth Fader) , Radio Jock (Ocean 98’s – Party Zone) and Podcaster personality (Todcast network – Happy Hour) does NOT put me in the circle of friends of Jay Mohr and Kevin Smith swapping celebrity stories on Vicodin.
However my current position (prone) affords me the flexibility to pursue those ego-maniacal, opportunistic, socialite distractions, in a balanced healthy way. At family gatherings or professional functions and on linked-in I tell people I work for a whole sale distributor as back-end support for their web site. Sounds fancy right? What I really do is work at Coastal Surf Supplies – as resident skater/nerd.
Yes we are a wholesale distributor of surf hard goods to the entire east coast with 400 clients and 2000 (and counting) product offerings, that we can ship same day with the speed and efficiency. Really we are a merry band of idiots whose sum of all our smarts is DEF greater than its parts. We are the utility guys that get surf/skate and outdoor retailers their shit when they need it. We do it well all year round, but the one time a year we get to really show our stuff is Surf Expo every January. This 3 day event at the convention center in Orlando is the surf industry’s biggest gathering, to buy sell, network, and oh yeah party.
For our part we, only four dudes, drive a 24 foot truck full of samplings of our products for 14 hours to Florida, set up our entire booth in about 8 hours, and don’t stop working and having fun for 4 days straight only to break down everything and drive home that same 14 hours. It was grueling, exhausting and fun as you can imagine and there are lots of stories I will be sharing while it is still fresh, but for right now I gotta go unload that F’ing truck. But it is all worth it cause it was great show with lots of great people.
Here is a slide show from the September show to wet your whistle for more first hand accounts coming this week