Mule

I was blown away, and started following. I liked all the posts of the guitars, and I was super inspired by the business stuff Matt would write. Matt posted something on Instagram about looking to hire a new guy for the Mule Team. I talked to my girlfriend about it, and she said, 'Why don't you go for it?'. I was like, 'It's in Michigan. I'd have to move to Michigan.' And she said, 'Well I graduate in May, so let's do it.' So I wrote Matt an e-mail, and he invited me here to come and see the shop and meet him. We went to Famous Dave's for lunch, which is just a campy and corny Texas BBQ roadhouse type thing." What do you dig about making instruments? "I've been obsessed with guitars since I was twelve. My friend had a guitar he got at the dump - it was a Les Paul but it didn't have any finish on it and something like 15 knobs. He taught me "Smoke on the Water" on that and I was hooked." What does it take to do your job well? "An intense amount of focus. I think that's the most difficult thing about it. You have to pay attention and focus for a long time on several different things at the same. There's always something to look for or watch out for. Everything you're doing matters for the next step you do, so if you mess up it's going to show up in the next step, so you just have to always do everything perfectly."