Sometimes, good things can come from bad beginnings. By his own admission, Michael Moreno was a “horrible helper” when he started out in 1987 in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he was employed for a husband/wife tile setting team. Eventually this couple went out on their own, hired Moreno, and over a period of 14 years, taught him everything he knows today. “I was still a bad helper,” he said. “I’m unsure if they felt sorry for me or if they saw something in me. I would like to think the latter. They were and still are an incred- ibly artistic team that started me from scratch.” Moreno was 18 when he started working with them, and was their first employee, so he watched their outfit grow into a premier high-end company. In 2002, he left their employ, and started working for a one-man show out of Lompoc, Calif. But after two years, he was dissatisfied by the lack of learning anything. “I was spinning my wheels, with no path forward,” he said. Though he never felt “good enough” to go out on his own, his two years with the Lompoc com- pany made him feel that he was “going backwards. “That’s when getting my license ‘clicked’,” he explained. “It was like, 1+1=2. It was that simple and that jarring. It was like I woke up.This was unequivocally my path! Once that had entered my head there was no going back.” Moreno got his license in 2005. “With no business sense, and a little skill, I put my head down and charged forward,” he said. “I’ve made all the common mistakes you can make when transitioning from being an employee to NTCA MEMBER SPOTLIGHT ————————— sponsored by Creativity and attention to detail characterizes Artisan Tile in Lompoc, Calif. By Lesley Goddin, Editor Michael Moreno, Artisan Tile owner (left), with his son, Michael Jr., who recently moved and works for a tile com- pany in Flagstaff, Ariz. 56 TileLetter | March 2019