Around the time Dan Sullivan \u201996 turned thirty, he realized he didn\u2019t have to stop playing music, but he wasn\u2019t going to make a living doing it, he says. At Macalester, the East Asian studies major and music minor had spent much of his time doing \u201cextracurricular\u201d music things, including singing in the Festival Chorale and playing in a campus heavy metal band. After graduation, he moved to Chicago, drawn to its active music scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taking a job at the School of the Art Institute, he met his wife, the conceptual artist Edra Soto. He left that job to tour the US and Europe in a band. When he returned, he found work as a preparator for art galleries and other work in the trades. \u201cI found I really enjoyed it,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople are judged on their reliability, on their skills and attitude.\u201d Plus, he had \u201cdecent\u201d wood-shop skills learned in high school shop class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2005, he started his own general contracting business and was helping his wife build her installations and sculptures. Eventually, Sullivan steered his business out of remodeling and into custom fabrication. Today, Navillus Woodworks specializes in fine furniture, high-end millwork, and museum and artist fabrication. Sullivan\u2019s original designed furniture is featured on the hit series The Bear<\/em> (he\u2019s pictured above on the set) and in restaurants around the country. He still plays in two bands, Arriver and Nad Navillus. Here, he shares career lessons learned from woodworking\u2014and music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I was transitioning from remodeling into custom fabrication, I met five other guys about my age doing similar work and founded the Dock 6 Collective. We rented a large space and compiled the necessary machinery to make a full-service wood shop and metal shop. It takes years of practice to get good in this field, being in a supportive community of like-minded people interested in design and fabrication was transformative. Later, we bought an old building on Chicago\u2019s west side and retrofit it for our needs. We\u2019ve been there since 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About three years ago, I realized I needed to learn how to run a small business beyond just covering my overhead, so I started working with a business coach. We meet weekly and drill down on performance metrics. This relationship and the work we do together has been critical in ensuring the business is sustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After graduation, I felt adrift. My dad told me, \u201cLife\u2019s long. Don\u2019t feel like you need to be in such a rush to accomplish everything.\u201d What I found was that I was very productive that year. I stayed busy, engaged in things that interested me. Perseverance is really important in learning your craft, getting good at what you\u2019re doing, convincing other people that you know what you\u2019re doing, and being able to back it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I built a beautiful bookshelf for a client in a Chicago high-rise. The designer convinced me it needed to be as big as possible, so I measured the size of the doorway openings and elevator to make sure I could get it up to the unit. It just barely fit into the elevator. When the doors opened on the right floor, we couldn\u2019t get it out because they had installed new tile in the hallway, adding about a half-inch. There was the designer, there was the client, and they\u2019re looking at me. \u201cI\u2019m taking it back to the shop,\u201d I said. We had to start over. What I learned is to always advocate for what you need, and despite best efforts sometimes it\u2019s impossible to foresee everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Collaboration is intrinsic in both running my business and making music. Micromanaging people\u2019s decisions is often counterproductive. Trust your team to apply their talents to the greater vision and set them up to succeed. I remind myself of this every day.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sullivan shares career lessons from woodworking and music.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":875,"featured_media":24403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[679,13],"class_list":["post-24337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-asian-studies","tag-music","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24337"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29703,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24337\/revisions\/29703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Build Your Hive<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Find a Coach<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Persevere<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Check Again and Again<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Trust Folks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n