PRESIDENT’S LETTER Martin Howard It’s April and spring is upon us. With spring comes the Easter cel- ebration and all of nature reminding us that there are opportunities for new beginnings, personally and pro- fessionally. Regardless of where you have been or how you have been running your life or business, today can be a new beginning. The ideas of professionalism, craftsmanship, integrity, and cus- tomer service are values that we esteem and hold in high regard. Yet they don’t just happen – we must choose to invest our time, energy and resources to develop these val- ues and see them integrated into the fiber of how we are personally and professionally. Once a month our company gath- ers during the lunch hour to discuss and learn from each other. We call these gatherings “Forums” and they have been a transformational event in the success of our team. We spent all of 2016 discussing the aforemen- tioned ideas as the core values of our company. Professionalism – This means being knowledgeable, informed and competent, and well trained to com- plete one’s job or trade. There are some who say it takes 5,000 hours of practice to be considered a pro- fessional. That’s about 2.5 years of full-time work required at a specific task to master it. How are we pur- suing the knowledge and training to be professional in our jobs? Did you learn your job from a mentor or were you hired and “thrown into the deep end of the pool” and forced to learn it on your own? Regardless of how you started out, you have the opportunity to gain the knowledge needed to be a professional tile set- ter, finisher or business owner – and you owe it to your customers. Craftsmanship – While the tradi- tional meaning is directed towards the product of skilled hands, we took a broader view of the term to include the skilled performance of any task by any of our team mem- bers – whether the skilled estimator, warehouse delivery person, accounts receivable or payable person, admin assistant, project manager or super- intendent. Ultimately though, the skilled craftspeople installing tile and stone on projects are what keeps the rest of us employed. Therefore, we must make training and educa- tion of our craftspeople a very high priority. If we don’t, we won’t be in business very much longer. NTCA enjoys great success at TISE West 16 TileLetter | April 2017