How A Circus Clown Became a Successful Entrepreneur With Bob Kramer

 

In this episode of the Entrepreneurial Mindset Project, we dive into the extraordinary journey of Bob Kramer, a master bladesmith and founder of Kramer Knives, known for crafting some of the world’s finest cutlery. Bob’s path is anything but conventional—ranging from clown college to oceanography and the culinary arts.

Through undiagnosed dyslexia and a relentless spirit of adventure, Bob’s story is a testament to the unpredictable yet rewarding nature of discovering opportunities and oneself. Join us as we explore how Bob turned his diverse experiences and passion into a remarkable business that redefined an industry.

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How A Circus Clown Became a Successful Entrepreneur With Bob Kramer

Welcome to another episode of the show, where I tease out the hidden logic that enables ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things. In this episode, I’m speaking with Bob Kramer, a renowned bladesmith and the founder of Kramer Knives, which is widely considered to be among the best knife makers in the world. This is an amazing story of adventure. 

Like many entrepreneurial journeys, it’s fraught with so many twists and turns, from clown college to oceanography and the culinary arts. Bob’s journey to becoming among the most celebrated knife makers in the world is a master class in the unpredictable, yet ultimately rewarding nature of the opportunity discovery process.

Like many entrepreneurs, Bob struggled in school due to undiagnosed dyslexia. Yet he didn’t let that dampen his sense of adventure, nor did it stop him from learning on his own. Inspired by the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who sailed around the world, Bob set out on an adventure of his own. By following his interests and developing his abilities in ways that create value for others, he ultimately managed to build a remarkable business. Like many entrepreneurs, through the opportunity discovery process, self-discovery occurred. Without any further ado, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Bob Kramer.

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Bob, welcome to the show. 

Thanks for having me.

 

Bob’s Origin Story

I don’t know anything about your story. It sounds like it’s going to be an interesting story. The first question I like to ask all of our guests here is, how did you get on an entrepreneurial path? What’s the origin story? 

I almost don’t know where the beginning of that is. It does go back to the beginning. I’m the youngest of six and my oldest sister was sixteen years older than I was when I was born. My father was a dental technician and my mother took care of the kids. My parents were both very bright. My father could have easily been a doctor, but he came from a big family and he was helping his family. He was taking care of his mother and his father and helping put his younger brother through medical school. He had to buckle down. 

He came from Pennsylvania. As soon as he got to Detroit when he was nineteen, he became a dental technician because his brother had a laboratory and then married my mother. He was 21, she was 19. He wasn’t even fully formed yet, working full-time, had a family and a bunch of people to already take care of, as well as doing his work. I was born into this family with my oldest sister in a small house. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we weren’t poor. She’s looking to get out of the house. We have a 1,700-square-foot house with eight people living in it, four girls, and one bathroom. 

You begin to get the sense of the dynamic that’s going on here. We weren’t a super tight-knit family, but we’re German-Irish. There’s this cooked-in work ethic, tough it out, and real direct attitude. I’m the youngest born into this small tribe. As a little kid, you’re always trying to get seen, validated, and loved. You want this tribe to accept you, to incorporate you, to see your value but you’re just a kid. Everyone has a job to do and we all have to manage our lives in this house.

I’m paying attention, trying to see the ins and outs and how do I get absorbed into this little tribe? You’re a kid, so you’re cute. Everyone goes, “Isn’t this cute? This is a new baby or here’s my little brother.” My older sister is looking out. She’s 16 or 17 going, “I’m going to get out of high school, then I’m going to start my life. I have to get out of here.” There’s a lot of pressure in the house to navigate the bathroom.

As a young person, you’re the entertainer, you’re the performer. This story I’ve heard over and over and over again. Many of the comedians and actors were the youngest in the family because performing is an easy way to get witnessed or loved or recognized to be the one that makes people laugh or tell good stories. That’s how you get seen because you don’t have any experience. You have no life experience and they’re all much more experienced and much more knowledgeable because they’ve been on the planet longer. 

 

Performing is an easy way to be noticed, loved, or recognized. Being the one who makes people laugh or tells good stories is how you get seen. Share on X

 

That’s super fascinating. It’s like a survival mechanism. I look at my dog and cuteness has got to be an evolutionary feature. That’s what you’re talking about. I have to find a way to create value to get noticed, to be relevant in this family that seems to be distracted and engaged in the world. I don’t matter or maybe I don’t matter or I got to find a way to matter. 

In a way, you are somewhat of a drag on the tribe because we have to feed you, we have to carry you, we have to change you, and we have to take care of you because you’re vulnerable. We know that intrinsically. I believe we know that. I’m sure that there are some situations where that’s a different vibe, but this was a big-ish dynamic family and had goals. Every dollar that my father made, he made with his two hands by making teeth.

I went to school and so then now I have a bigger tribe. Here are all these kids and so I’ve learned some of these skills to like be funny, tell good stories, and act out. What no one knew was that I’m mildly dyslexic. It’s not horrific, but it’s also not super light. I’m right in the middle of the spectrum for dyslexia. What are the first things you learn in school? Reading, writing, and regurgitation. I was not a good reader.

One of the most terrifying things for me in school was when we had to read aloud because the first few times I did it, everyone was laughing, but they weren’t laughing with me. I was no longer the entertainer. I was the butt of the joke because I couldn’t read well. Once you experience that feeling, you want to avoid it. You begin to devise a method. I began to devise methodologies. I would count the number of people in front of me because each one of us would get a paragraph. If there were six people in front of me as we were reading around the room, I would go to the seventh paragraph and read it and try to sound out the words so that I could get through it. 

Where I got screwed up is if there was a young lady who was a very good reader, they’d go, “That was great. Why don’t you take the next paragraph as well as an example for the class.” That blew up my plan. Now I’m stuck into a paragraph that I cannot read. This stuff is all super formative to where I am and who I am maybe more importantly today.

I’ve had some discussions with scholars about this. There is some research that shows a correlation between ADHD, dyslexia, learning disorders, and entrepreneurial behavior. What’s not clear to me is that dyslexia causing entrepreneurial behavior or is it the recognition that the traditional system is not going to work for me and I’m going to have to find another way, I’m going to have to make my own way?

It’s both. This is the way that we learn as dyslexics. I’m going to put us in this box. We learn in what I would call the more historical or traditional way. If you think about how long human beings have been crawling around on the planet and figuring out how to survive, it was much more of an observational kinesthetic learning. How did you make that fire? How did you nap that arrow point? How did you take down that animal? How did you cook that food? How do you carry that load? This wasn’t written. We didn’t read about it and then go, “I’m going to put this pack on.” 

We looked at who carried the best and who napped the best. If you were so inclined and you had a particular skillset or maybe that was your father, you would go and nap with him. You became the arrow point maker, the spear maker, the hunter, or the strong person. We learned for most of our history as human beings in that way. Learning through reading literature or text and then giving an answer on paper is relatively new. That’s from the industrial revolution. 

I would argue that it’s not only is it relatively new and I wrote almost exactly what you’re saying in my new book. I did a bunch of research on the way hunter-gatherers have learned looking at evolutionary psychology and so on and so forth. It’s exactly what you’re saying. We’ve been hunter-gatherers arguably 98% to, 99% of the time we’ve roamed this earth. I would argue that the method of learning you’re describing, the memorization and regurgitation, is inhumane. It’s antithetical to natural learning. At some point in history, maybe in the future, we’re going to look back at modern education as you and I understand it. We look back on surgery like pre-anesthesia. I’m going to strap you down and give you a shot of whiskey.

I completely agree. When dyslexics are stuffed into the system, it’s common knowledge. I’ve had twelve years of this. This is an indentured servitude. I have to get through this. We’re not dumb. I wouldn’t say that we’re above average. I think we’re average intelligence. Certainly, it’s along the spectrum, but it’s very clear to us. I have twelve years to deal with this system. Our first creative spark is how I get through the system. 

You just said it. It’s like I figured out I’m number seven in line here. I got to look at the seventh paragraph. You’re figuring out how to game the system already to accommodate. That’s spot on.

That was my first sense of creativity and it became a solution for me. I had to apply that in a number of different places. When we had to do arithmetic or when we were adding, I could not look at 5 and 7 and automatically know that it was 12. My brain couldn’t handle those two numbers. Five became one of these indicator numbers where whatever number was below it, I would count across the top line, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. For that little symbol, I would have to count with my pencil point and add that to the 7 to come up with 12. 

It’s these little tiny things. I’m bumping along through school and book reports would fry me. That was the worst thing. I loved to learn. I love science, technology, and that kind of stuff. I want to know how the world works. As far as reading a book, Catcher in the Rye, and doing a book report, I would read and I’d get to the end of the 2 or 3 pages and not know what I had read. It was gone, vaporized. 

I don’t know if I’m dyslexic, but certainly, I would have been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. I don’t like the word disorder because I don’t think it’s a disorder but point I said. I remember having the exact same experience, reading the same paragraph, reading some Greek mythology in ninth grade, reading the same page 4 and 5 times, and crying because I didn’t know what it meant, but I could read books. 

Now you have to read the whole book and then digest it and give a review of it. This was petrifying for me. I went to a middle school that had a wood shop. I got to that wood shop an hour a day every day. That was my sanctuary. This place makes sense to me. 

You’re telling my story. 

There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of us with the same story. The thing is they knew this. Hundreds of years ago or even 150 years ago, which is why there were trade schools and academic schools. At some point when you’re fourteen, the teachers and your mentors would say, “This kid is not going to be an academic. He’s not going to be a doctor. He needs to be a tradesman. He needs to learn kinesthetically.” 

That disappeared and we thought at one point that everybody should go through the school system. This is the right thing. Also, this was the ‘60s, like technology was going to save all of us. We’re all going to pop our dinner into the microwave and wash and wear clothing and the Jetsons. That’s what society was going to become. We’re not going to need craftsmen anymore. We’re going to be able to do this with robots. 

Even still, we could go down a deep rabbit hole here because the wood shop saved me. I probably would have become a career criminal if it wasn’t for the wood shop. The only reason I graduated high school was they created a wood shop free for me to keep me in 12th grade. What you’re saying is bringing back these memories. 

I had a sense that I was in a sorting mechanism. I was in this institutional sorting mechanism. We’re walking down the hallway and it’s like trying to figure out which of these cows are going down the management college path, which of them are going down, which of them are going off to slaughter. I didn’t have the language that this was a sense. Unlike you, it killed my curiosity almost. I interpreted it as I’m stupid. There must be something wrong with me. 

 

Saved By The Woodshop

That was the message that was given to me. The message wasn’t that I was stupid. The message for me was I’m lazy. You’re lazy. You’re not trying hard enough. You read the book. You’re smart. You learn all this other stuff. If it was a movie, I could take it in. If it was a lecture, I can take it in and I can give you the information back. I can understand the concept like, “I get how that works. Now heat transfer. That makes sense to me.”

The message of being lazy, I started to feel not worthy. I’m letting everybody down. I’m letting my family down. I’m letting my teachers down. I’m not going to make it. I grew up outside of Detroit. It wasn’t a bad childhood by any means, but there were a fair amount of drugs. There was lots of stuff to get into trouble with and I moved inside and out of that bubble. I’m incredibly fortunate that it didn’t go sideways for me because my life could have been on a completely different path but the danger was palpable. I’ve had a gun leveled at my head and other incidents such as that. Intrinsically you start to go, “This is dangerous. This is a dangerous area.” 

In high school, as I’m about to get out my senior year, they’re like, “What do you want to do? Where are you going to go? What’s your career path?” I said, “I want to be a woodworker.” Both of my parents and God bless them, they wanted the best for me. Woodworking is not a career. You become a doctor, lawyer, or an engineer. That is the path to freedom on lots of levels. It’s financial freedom first and foremost, and having a degree like that to fall back on.

By this time, there are only my sister and I in the house. The other four have graduated and are in pursuit of whatever their career path is. They were hardworking and mostly academic. My brother is an engineer. My sister is an English teacher, and my other sister is a housewife, the oldest. I had to make this choice. My father said, “If you stay at home, I’ll pay your tuition to Wayne State University,” in downtown Detroit. This is 1976. He said, “If you want to go anywhere else, you’re on your own.” There was a net there, but it wasn’t tremendously big. 

Wayne State is an excellent school but registering for college gave me such anxiety because I couldn’t make sense of the catalog. I’m trying to find out where the rooms are. They seem to be all the way across campus. How do I get from a 9:00 class to a 10:00 class and I had three-quarters of a mile to cover? Not only that, the entire campus of Wayne State University was covered in blue security lights with a call box because people were getting robbed and raped. 

It wasn’t unusual in Detroit at that time. Every half mile, there was a blue call box pole on the freeway. What would happen is people would come up behind you, hit your car, you would pull over and then they’d steal your car and rob you. The call light was if you get hit, keep driving until you get to a call light or don’t stop at all. Go in till you get home. This was the environment that I was stewing in while I was resisting. 

I’m thinking, “I’d like to be a craftsman. I’m on this college path. Why do people talk about college as being such a liberating interesting time?” I hate it. I hate downtown Detroit. I’m a messenger for a law firm, and I’m walking from place to place delivering packages. I saw a gun leveled over the top of a car over a parking space. Two people trying to take up the same space. This is the environment I’m stewing in. In the meantime, there are still pretty strong drugs influencing my bubble. 

To and from college I’m reading a book called Dove. It’s about a sixteen-year-old boy who sails around the world and circumnavigates in five years. The kid’s name is Robin Graham. As a dyslexic and having trouble reading, you can strengthen that muscle over time. If the topic is engaging, it’s much easier to read. It is for me anyway. 

This book provided a sense of adventure, a sense of self-reliance, and a knowledge of the physical world and the challenge of the physical world, whereas the university felt like an artificial environment. I couldn’t see the application of some of these things in the history of Western civilization. How is this information going to impact my life? Whereas the class in woodworking, I see a direct correlation.

The more I learn how the table saw works and all the tricks and tools that I can use to employ and make a stronger joint, I get that. That seems like that’s going to be useful information for me down the road. What the Etruscans did a few thousand years ago, maybe that’s applicable. I don’t know but the fact that I have to track all of these dates and regurgitate them on a piece of paper, “Sorry, I don’t see the application.”

 

The A-Ha Moment

You did a beautiful job of setting that up. It’s the situation. That’s a powerful story in my mind. It resonates with me but is very similar. You’re saying that the college is an artificial environment. It’s not resonating with you. It doesn’t feel like it’s your path. It’s almost like a perfect storm, then you’re reading this book Dove. It was the a-ha moment. 

The more I read the book, the further I got into it. I went, “I want what that kid is having. I want the experience that that kid is having.” I don’t think I have what it takes to sail around. I’m not a sailor. I didn’t know how to sail, but I wanted that thing. I decided one day that I was leaving here. I have to go. I made up a story. 

That itself is interesting to me. If I could interrupt you for a second, part of my entrepreneurial mindset theory is that an entrepreneurial person is a human being trying to self-actualize. “I cannot thrive in this environment. I have to figure something else out.” 

Being the youngest of this family and once I got past whatever six years old, I didn’t feel catered to. My older siblings didn’t surround me and didn’t coddle me. There wasn’t a whole lot of mentoring going on because they had their own life to build and track and take care of. It wasn’t that I was neglected. I’m not suggesting that at all. It’s just they had their job to do and their plates were full and so were my parents. They’re booked. It’s your job in school to do your own thing. In a way, I had a big family, but I also felt on my own to some extent.

It is also an important part of the situation that needs to be acknowledged. No one is coming to the rescue. I have to figure it out. 

During school, there were a couple of factions. We called them the freaks and the jocks. They were the varsity team guys. Then the freaks were the people who were into heavy metal and smoked a lot of pods and maybe some other drugs. I didn’t fit in either one of those categories. Somewhere around 9th or 10th grade, I remember my brother brought home some magic tricks. He had learned some magic tricks in college or something like that. I thought that was fascinating. 

I had gone to the library and found some magic books and I could read a little bit of the book and then practice, and then read a little bit of the book and practice. I learned to do magic tricks. It was another way to be seen. It’s my initial role. I’m a performer now, but now I can go to school and show you a magic trick. I can make something disappear. Now I’ve empowered myself with seemingly supernatural power. That was thrilling. Now I’m taking control of my own situation. 

I was a good kinesthetic learner. I taught myself to juggle. I taught myself to ride a unicycle. That feedback loop, the same one that was in the woodshop was thrilling, was very satisfying, and it was all about the self-reliance part. I decide to leave and I tell my parents. In my head, my plan is I’m going to California, I’m going to San Diego, and I’m going to walk the docks and find a boat that’s going to Hawaii and have that experience. I’m petrified because I have no idea what I’m doing.

How old were you at this time when you dropped out of Wayne State? 

Eighteen. I dropped out of Wayne State and I lied to my parents and I told them I was going to go visit my brother in Buffalo. He’s working for General Motors. I was going to go to Washington DC to see it and then drive to Houston, Texas. My oldest sister and her family of three were living in Houston. I said, “I’ll be back.” My father graciously lent me one of our older cars and then I took off. My intention in my head the whole time was I’m going to California and I’ll figure out how I’m going to explain that later but I got to go. As soon as I hit the road, I felt free. I missed it. 

In my first quarter in college at Wayne State, I had to take a remedial English class. That was embarrassing but I thought, “I got to have this English to get out. I got to have a couple quarters of English.” My first one was remedial English and a creative writing class. I turned in my first paper and the papers come back and mine doesn’t even have a grade on it. It has a note across the top, “Come see me in the office.” I think, “I’m in trouble in my very first paper. I wrote this with my best intentions.” When I had to write a paper, there was no computer, there was no spell check.

I would write and there’d be a word that I want to use like antithesis, and I’d begin to write it and I couldn’t spell it. I had no idea. At home, we had a Merriam-Webster’s massive 20-pound dictionary. My mother would say, “Look it up, it’s in there.” I couldn’t find it. The other part of the creativity was substituting another word that meant the same thing that I was trying to convey in my paper. I’d pick a smaller and shorter word with fewer letters that I could spell. Anyway, I turn to my paper. She says, “Come see me in the office.” I go to see her in the office. The first thing she says is, “Have you been tested for learning disabilities?” “What? No.” 

That’s completely off your radar up until then? That’s not even a thought in your head. 

No. It’s completely not a thought in my head. I believe the lazy part. I’m lazy. I won’t read. Maybe everybody has this experience of falling asleep or I’m falling asleep because I’m lazy not because it’s not sticking in my head.

It’s boring.

There’s no stimulus there. She says, “Have you ever been tested for learning disabilities?” “No.” She said, “Do you have trouble with spelling? I can see that.” I go, “I have trouble with spelling.” She goes, “Do you have trouble with grammar?” “Yeah.” “Do you have trouble with comprehension?” “Yeah.” She said, “You’re dyslexic.” She said, “We could test you, but I don’t need to. I’m sure of it.” I’ve never heard this word before. I don’t know what that means. I said, “What does dyslexic mean?” 

She says, “You have trouble with reading, writing, comprehension, and grammar.” She said, “Don’t worry about it. You don’t worry about spelling. This is a creative writing class. I just want your ideas.” I left there transformed. I was a different person, but she had ripped the top off of the popcorn and I began to start to make sense of the last seventeen years. It’s a slow evolution. That thought takes some time to percolate and for those neurons to connect. “That’s why you couldn’t do the book reviews. That’s why you cannot spell. I’m not alone. Lots of people do. This is a thing.”

That added to the pushback from the college and follow the Dove book. This is a thing that’s been going on. Hold on. I have to reframe everything. I made up the story. My dad gave me the car. I hit the road. Now I’m free. Now I can breathe. The elephant has gotten off my chest. Not that I don’t have a lot of work left to do to sort this out, but now I’m on my own. It’s all me. There’s nobody else to turn to. If the car breaks down, I run out of money, I find myself in a bad situation, and that lights me up. There’s something that’s awakening inside of me. There’s an adult that is saying, “I got you. We’re going to be okay. You can do this.” Not the authorities that said, “You’re lazy. You’re not trying hard enough.”

I’ve done a lot of research also in social psychology and the idea that our behavior is heavily influenced by situational factors, our own beliefs, and situational factors that we’re not aware of. One of the fundamental principles of social psychology is that we live in a tension system. We are all growth-oriented, opportunity-seeking organisms. It’s in every living thing to self-actualizing tendency, but we’re also stability-seeking, uncertainty-avoiding organisms. 

That creates a tension system of compelling and constraining forces. You did a good job of saying the constraining forces were removed. You don’t have it mapped out, but like I can now go forward. That organismic tendency was freed. I guess what I’m saying is that a lot of my understanding of the entrepreneurial mindset is rooted in the humanist psychology of Maslow and Rogers and some of these. The self-actualization thing, that’s what it’s all about. 

At this point, I am now employing my observational skills to make my way to sort out what comes next. 

 

Navigating The System

The observational skills, I want to double-click on that. Wouldn’t you say those happened as a result of having to figure out how to navigate the system that’s not working for you? The observational skills are like, “I got to look at the seventh paragraph and figure that paragraph out.” 

I do want to say that I don’t want to take credit for that. I’m fortunate that I was built the way that I was built which allowed me to have the moxie or the will to look at. I could have stayed in Detroit if my DNA was slightly different. If I was made a little bit different, I could have been content and gone, “I’m not going to go to college, I’m going to work at the airport or whatever at the beer store, at the end of the street, the hardware store, this is enough.” Somehow I was built differently to need more. 

 

If I had been made a little differently, I might have been content going to college or working at the airport, the beer store, the hardware store, or wherever. But somehow, I was built to need more. Share on X

 

Let me double-click on that. I would argue that it has much less to do with your DNA than it does with your sense of self-efficacy and problem-solving that you developed from birth, from being in that family, having to figure out how to make yourself relevant, and how to read the seventh paragraph in anticipation. That is a sense of an underlying unconscious sense of self-efficacy that you developed over time. 

I was also given those tools. 

What do you mean by that? 

Those tools were baked in. My ability to think in that way was baked in from the beginning. That’s good fortune for me anyway. It’s we are what we are. I’m on the road and I’m having fun and driving down the Smoky Mountain Highway. I waited tables for a weekend on Bourbon Street and I’m camping. I’m drinking coffee for the first time. I’m experiencing things I wanted to experience on my own without being told by an adult what was right and wrong.

I get to my sister’s house and they’re very generous. They put me up and said I can stay there for a while. One night over cocktails with my brother-in-law, he goes, “What’s the plan?” I go, “I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m going to California, I want to get on a boat, blah, blah, blah.” He says, “How much money do you have?” “I get about $1,200.” He said, “It’s not a lot of money. San Diego is expensive.” Houston is booming. This is now 1979. He goes, “Why don’t you get a job, live simply, save up some money, and then when you get to San Diego, you’ll have $5,000 in your pocket and a nice cushion.” I’m thinking, “That’s great advice. That makes a lot of sense.” 

I get a job at the Houston Country Club and a completely new adventure, a tremendous amount of money at this. It’s the oldest country club in Houston. The bushes belong there. Dr. Jarvik who came up with the first artificial heart is there, and a lot of incredibly wealthy and statured people are there. I get to see the whole theater that is restaurant work. 

The people in the kitchen are, this is the ‘70s, professional adults. They’re in their 40s and they’re old for me. I’m not even twenty yet. They’re professionals. The chef has been a chef his whole life. It’s unlike today, the restaurant situation is very different. It’s a young people’s game but these guys were older adults and the restaurant scene wasn’t quite what it is today or whatever it was in the last twenty years. I love the theater. 

I love the setting up of it. I love the setting of the tablecloths and the people would come in. We would do huge banquets for 600. One guy would pay for the party. Open bar, sit-down dinner, 600 people. Mind-blowing. It’s like a new world, so exciting. I’m absorbing all of that. I went on from there to have a number of different adventures between that and making knives but that is the foundation. That’s how I continued on that path. 

 

Becoming A Clown

You talked about like learning how to do magic. You taught yourself how to ride a unicycle and juggle. Did that lead to anything? 

It did. While I was at the Houston Country Club, I got an apartment and I began to live on my own as a young adult. I had to get a couple of cardboard boxes and a piece of wood for my coffee table and acquire an old couch. How do you set up an apartment? How do you fill the refrigerator? In Houston, there are these big apartment complexes with multiple pools. Each little courtyard has a swimming pool and then there’s a main pool. 

All the young people that I would meet, either from the country club or who lived in the apartment complex, on our days off, would hang out at the pool, drink beer, have a barbecue, shoot the breeze, and burn the day up. On one of my days off, it’s pouring. When it rains in Texas, it’s monsoon-like. It comes down in sheets. My pool day is shot. There’s no hanging out by the pool and how am I going to spend the day? 

I get up and make some coffee and I’m thinking, “What am I going to do today?” I turn on the rock and roll station and the DJ comes on at some point and says, “If you’re not doing anything today, they’re holding auditions for Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Clowns down at the Coliseum.” I think, “That is kooky. Who shows up for one of those things? The people-watching has got to be amazing.” I decided I was going because I had nothing else to do. 

You got a few magic tricks up your sleeve but you’re more intrigued with seeing who the hell is showing up for this. You’re not thinking, “I’m going to become a clown.” 

Not at all. I drive to the Coliseum. It’s a great big sports arena essentially and the huge roll-up door is up. I park my car and I go walking in and it’s there’s no one else in there. Suddenly, I’m in a venue on the main floor that I would never have access to otherwise. The circus rings are laid out and the wires overhead, the trapeze is set, and there are barrels of sawdust. You can smell the elephants that have been in there. It’s exciting to walk on the floor like, “This is cool.” 

A few people are sitting on the center ring curb, and there are a couple of lights that are shining on, but the rest of the lights in the Coliseum are dark. I was thinking, “I wanted to sit in the spectator seat and watch,” but it’s too far from the center ring to hear what people are saying. There are only ten people who have shown up for this audition. I go and sit in the ring curb with them, and the clowns come walking out. 

There are 3 or 4 professional clowns from Ringling. Their costumes are beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a real professional circus clown up close, but these guys are pros. It’s buffed out. It’s not cheap. It’s not cheesy. It’s not a dime store. Real leather shoes, big clown shoes, and real wigs. I’m loving the whole thing. It’s super intriguing.

They go down the line, “Why are you here? Why are you here?” “I’ve wanted to be a clown my whole life. I used to do clowning at birthday parties.” They get to me and like, “Why are you here?” I go, “Honestly, I just wanted to see what this was all about. I’m curious.” They’re like, “You’re here, so you have to play with us as well.” “Okay, all right.” We improvised these little scenes. These are the scenarios they would set up and they would take two people, “You come here. You’re outside of a restaurant, there’s a piece of glass here, this person sitting inside and they’re eating a big steak, go.” You improvise this little scene. 

After about an hour or so, it’s done. They go, “Thanks for coming on.” I’m turning to go and leave and one of these guys comes up to me, one of the professional clowns, the guy that’s running the audition comes up to me and says, “You should apply for this. You have a natural ability.” I laugh and he goes, “Here’s an application. Take this with you. Think about it.” I go, “Okay.” I have no intention. My thought in my head is, “I’m not doing this. Why would I do this?” 

I take the application, I go out to my car, I throw it on the seat and I’m driving home and I start to take inventory. I’m going to this Baptist community college. I hate it. I’m working as a waiter, so what? It’s an interesting experience. I’ve been there for a year and a half. Clown school at Ringling Brothers, Barnum, and Bailey’s circus for three months in Venice, Florida sounds like, “What would that even be like?” I’m 20twenty years old. I feel like I have a little bit of time. 

The longer I roll this over in my head, the more I think, “I’m going to do that. This feels like an adventure.” I’m relating this back to the kid who sailed around the world. It’s just a different costume. I fill the application out. It’s four pages long. It’s long. There are a couple of essays you have to answer. They want photographs of you in a bathing suit. They want to see your physicality. Are you grossly obese or whatever? 

I think, “I want this. I want to get into this school.” If I owned the circus, how would I want an aspiring clown to answer these questions? I was strategizing my way into this position. I fill it out and send it in, and I forget about it. Three weeks go by, I come home from work, I have two roommates, they’re from New York, they’re like, “Sit down, you’re going to get a phone call, and it’s from Ringling Brothers.” I’m like, “You guys are lying.” Sure enough, the phone rings. The guy from Ringling Brothers said, “You got into Clown College.” One of 60 out of 4,000 applications. 

I don’t know if he’s telling the truth or not, but I’m impressed at that point. “I got into this school. How cool is that?” I go, “I got to think about it. Give me 24 hours because honestly, I wasn’t fully committed and never thought I would get in. Give me 24 hours.” He goes, “Okay, but you have to call me tomorrow because I got other people who want to do this.” 

I hang up, I talk to my friends and they’re like, “You have to go. You got to go do this.” I’m off to Venice, Florida for three months and I study clowning. We have professional clowns coming in to train us and we’re doing unicycle magic, costuming, clowning, how to make a skit and we’re working hard, 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. At the end, we’re doing 7 days a week, 16-hour days to put together a two-hour show to present to Irving and Kenneth Feld. They own Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, as well as a bunch of Las Vegas acts. 

That was your final exam, so to speak. 

It is. You have a number on your costume. Every costume you wear has a number so they can identify. There’s number 16. They’ll sit back and watch this two-hour show that we’ve compiled. We’re all kids. We’re twenty years old. We have the advice of these other people, but it’s back to kinesthetic learning and it’s back to creativity. Create a funny scene, find a partner, and tell a story in an arena that’ll hold 10,000 people. 

How do you convey a message from this ring where they’re not going to be able to hear what you say and tell a story to somebody sitting at the back of the Coliseum stimulating stuff? We’re talking about communication, humor, and timing. At the end of it, the next day, they come around and maybe knock on your door or maybe not knock on your door to offer you a contract. I’m the second car. They come and knock on my door. “Come on.”

 

At any time during that clown college experience, did that dyslexia rears its ugly head?

No, because it’s not reading, writing, and regurgitation. It’s kinesthetic learning. 

I assume that’s what you were going to say. I just wanted to ask. Now you’re waiting for the knock on your door. Are you essentially done? 

Yeah, we’re finished. It’s done. You’re either going to get offered a contract or not. I got an offer for three years.

The college was three years? What was it? 

It was three months of complete submergence. They offer me a contract for the new show. I’m going to live on a circus train for a year. It’s the new show because they have two shows. They have two full-size circuses. One goes on the second-year tour and goes to all the small cities in the United States. The new show, meaning new costuming and new choreography, goes to all the big cities. We’re talking about Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and Denver.

They offer me a contract. I say, “Yes, of course.” I cannot even imagine what this is going to be like to live on a circus train. I do that. It’s an amazing, best of times, worst of times. Both things occurred. It was tremendous. We played at Madison Square Garden. We lived in New York City for two and a half months, 72nd and the West Side Highway. It was an extraordinary experience for a 21-year-old to have. 

It’s like your Dove experience. It’s a cool story. How did that lead to Kramer Knives? 

All of those things led to a stronger and stronger sense of self-reliance and trusting my ability to make what I would say were good choices and reinforce trusting myself to make a new choice. After the circus, I thought, “I got to get serious about my future. I’m pushing 22, I’m running out of time.” That’s how I was feeling. I get it. There’s no net. They’re not coming to save me. Who am I going to be in this world? 

That was fun and now I’ve recognized the dyslexia long enough and I have enough self-confidence that I go, “I know how to learn and I have to work harder than those people that don’t have dyslexia. I can do that. I can work hard.” I go, “I love adventure. I’ve never been out on the water the way that I wanted to, and I’m good at science. I like to understand how things work.” I said, “I’m going to be an oceanographer.” 

That seems like the best choice for me, studying nature, studying out on the ocean. Who knows what exotic places I could go to? Whales and dolphins seem to be my real drive and desire. I looked at all the colleges, most of which I could never afford on my own. It’s not possible. I have no skills. I’ve been a circus clown and a waiter. How am I going to pay for scripts? The University of Washington has a well-respected oceanography program, and it’s a public school. 

All I have to do is get to Washington, establish residency, get into the University of Washington, and then get my oceanography degree, and then I’ll be out on the water. That’s my plan. I make my way to Washington. I decided to go to community college for my base classes because it’s cheaper. I’ll get my electives out of the way. I’ll reinforce and strengthen that study muscle, which is so flabby and weak at this point. I’ll get a job in a restaurant because I know a little bit about that. 

I look at the paper. I get to Washington. I’m looking to pay, and I’m sleeping in a sleeping bag in a rented room in a house. I have no car. I hitchhiked my way essentially from Atlanta, the city I was in when the circus ended. I make my way to Washington and Seattle and I look through the paper and there’s a classified ad, “We need cooks.” This new hotel opened in Seattle by the name of the Four Seasons. No clue. I don’t know what the Four Seasons means. 

That is no reference in my realm. I go and apply. It’s brand new. They did a hundred-million-dollar remodel of this old established hotel in Seattle. I meet the executive chef, a Swiss, 65-year-old guy, and the hotel is not open yet, so we’re sitting in his office and he goes, “I see you’ve been at the circus.” He grew up with the circus. He grew up with the famous clown Grock in Switzerland and was a hero. Grock was as famous as Charlie Chaplin was in Europe. He was wealthier than Chaplin was, and he was a single-ring circus clown.

I had this discussion with Alfred Goldinger about the circus, not about cooking at the Four Seasons because I have no experience. I have experience with the circus. At the end of the interview, he says, “You were in the circus and you want to be on part of my kitchen?” I said, “Sure.” Now I’m working at the Four Seasons. I go to community college and I’m studying oceanography and that’s my path. Now I have to use knives every day.

I work full-time at the hotel while going to school full-time. I’m taking all my basic electives or not the electives, but the core curriculum stuff, chemistry, physics, calculus, English, philosophy, that kind of stuff. I am maxed out. Every bit of energy I have is going into sustaining these choices that I’ve made. After two years, I’m on the honor roll because I’ve figured it out. I got to read things three times and I’m incentivized.

I have to learn this. I have to pick a book I can read for the book report. I’m figuring out how to make this brain work for me. I’m figuring it out because I know what my end goal is and I have to survive. There’s no net. My parents are not coming to scoop me. There’s no trust fund. None of my brothers and sisters are going to scoop me if this goes sideways. That is crystal clear and I don’t mean that they are mean or negative. It’s just we’re all on our own now. 

It’s an important part of the story. That underlying awareness is an important factor. I think that drives the behavior. No one is coming to the rescue. A traditional thing isn’t going to work for me. I got to figure it out for myself. I don’t have anything to fall back on. 

It’s fear. That’s what the fuel was. 

Sometimes it’s like an indoor cat that becomes an outdoor cat. There are all kinds of exciting opportunities out there. There are lots of stuff that will kill you. There are a lot of ways you can be harmed or killed. If you took two clones of each other, and you put one of them in an entrepreneurial situation where you say, “Here’s a sharp stick and some duct tape, go out in the world and find your way.” You put the other one in a situation where let’s say it’s a corporate job where they’re, “Here’s what you’re going to do. We want you to do these tasks.” 

Over a decade or whatever, your brain’s going to evolve differently. It’s going to adapt. We tend to look at entrepreneurs and we assign their behavior to who they are without recognizing that the entrepreneurial mindset is in effect. It’s not the cause of the behavior. The effect is like the survival mechanism. The self-actualizing tendency is the cause. We tend to get that backward and we think that the Bob Kramer’s of this world accidentally come down to shoot every once in a while. 

That’s why I felt the need to start at the beginning because those things formed that kid who was at the community college that had to make those choices. 

 

Juggling School And Work

That’s why I asked that question in the beginning. You cannot start at the end. You cannot start with Kramer Knives or you’re going to miss it. Take us back to this moment. You got this Swish Chef who has an appreciation for your circus background, brings you into the kitchen at the Four Seasons at a high-end restaurant, and you’re maxed out. You’re going to college, you’re still focused on oceanography. You’re a full-time student, struggling hard to keep up. You got a full-time job. What happens next? 

Two years in, I’m feeling good about school. I’m a low man on the totem pole in this kitchen of very talented people. I’m pursuing two things. My knives have gotten dull and I’m trying to understand how to sharpen them myself. We have a Tristone in the kitchen, but nobody seems to be able to show me exactly how to use it, like step up and do it in ten minutes and walk me through exactly why and when to switch from one stone to the next so that at the end of that ten-minute lesson, at least intellectually, I’ll understand how to apply this tool to those tools to make them better. 

That’s my work experience and I’m trying to figure that out and solve that problem. I then met somebody at school. We’re talking about, “What are you going to do? How are you going to use this? I’ve applied to the University of Washington. I got in. I’m going to get an oceanography degree.” They’re like, “You’re going for your PhD.” I’m like, “No. I have two more years to go and then I’ll be done.” They’re like, “You cannot get a good job in oceanography with a bachelor’s degree.” I was like, “What do you mean?” They’re like, “If you want to do research, you’re going to at least need a master’s, and you’ll need a PhD to do the cool stuff, like drive your own program. Otherwise, you’re going to be a minion behind some microscope categorizing single cells.”

I was like, “Oh no, this is not.” I don’t have the juice. I am not going to be able to write a dissertation. I cannot write a book. I realized I don’t have that. Maybe I could get a master’s degree. In the meantime, I started to solve this sharpening problem. I took it on as a scavenger hunt. I took calculus. I got through two-quarters of calculus. I can learn to sharpen a knife. I taught myself to juggle., I can learn to sharpen a knife. It cannot be that hard. 

By the way, as an aside, I’m stuck there as a woodworker. I have Japanese planes. I have good hand planes. I bought all these stones. I don’t know how to use them. I’m stuck at a certain level as a woodworker because until you can sharpen those things. 

I can help you out. There are a couple of key things to look for. Once you see them and know them and can, and feel them, which you can do all of, there’s no doubt in my mind that you will be there. It takes a little bit of practice.

I’m afraid of it. I got to take a Sunday afternoon and go back in the garage and start over. 

Also, get a couple of tools that you can screw up. You probably have some beautiful tools and you don’t want to ruin them. You’re afraid and you don’t want to do damage to these beautiful tools that you bought. It’s out of respect for the tools, but you need a couple of hammer tools that you can hammer on. 

A chisel and an old block plane. 

In Japan, if you’re an apprentice, let’s say you’re a soju screen maker, you only get to carry the tools and clean up and do very menial stuff. Eventually, when he trusts you enough to sharpen a chisel, he’ll take a not-a-good chisel. He’ll look at it and smash the tip on a rock, and then hand you the sharpening stones that are not the best stones. You go and sharpen it and then bring it back. You’re going to do that over and over until you get it right. We think, “I saw a YouTube thing or I read a chapter in fine woodworking or Mac, an article in fine woodworking and I should have this.” It takes practice.

Did you ever see that Netflix series or documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi?

Yeah. I’ve eaten it at Jiro’s place. 

Do you remember the guy trying to learn how to make the egg? 

No. 

It was the same thing.

It is the same. I learned to sharpen and I make a decision I’m going to quit school. My sharpening has progressed. I’ve already spent six months and now people are coming to me to sharpen their knives because I understand it and I can execute it in short order. I accept the fact that I’m never going to be an oceanographer. I’ll probably never be a corporate executive because I don’t have anything to offer. I have two years of undergrad at a community college.

I’m not going to be the executive chef at the Four Seasons because of lots of reasons. One, there are so many more people at this restaurant who are far more experienced, even at 23 or 24 years old. They’re already ten years ahead of me. I’m never going to catch them. I cannot see a way to catch up with them. Also, the politics of the corporate world of the Four Seasons, they’re not going to hire me. They’re going to hire someone else. This was at a time when affirmative action was quite strong at the hotel. It didn’t bother me that they were hiring or advancing other people. 

It wasn’t a meritocracy in the kitchen. I saw people who weren’t me that were on the Georgian Room line. One guy in particular was Asian, and somebody needed to be promoted to the chef on that line. It was clear to me that this guy head and shoulders should have been the chef of that. He got overlooked as someone else got hired for political reasons. As soon as I saw that, I was like, “I’m never going to get promoted.” I didn’t have the merit. This guy had the merit. 

 

Starting The Sharpening Business

I thought I had to go back and take care of myself. I’m going to start this little sharpening business. There was an acceptance that if I could make $100 a day, $500 a week, and $2,000 a month, I’d live in a small place. You can buy beer and pizza. I’ll buy an old car. This is an honorable thing to do as a living. There’s a sense of humility about it. It’s never going away. I’m never going to be out of work. 

 

I can control my own destiny. I’m not going to keep running into academic roadblocks, bureaucratic roadblocks, or political things. You’re in control of your life. 

I’ll have this simple little business of sharpening a knife. Maybe I’ll open a shop or sell some knives. 

How old were you at that time? 

I started my business when I was 27, and I essentially stayed working. I worked two jobs because I wanted to make sure that the business could thrive. I would either wait tables at night or cook and sharpen knives during the daytime. I was trying to buy a little bit better truck. I was trying to buy a little bit more equipment. I was growing the business and reinvesting into the business at that point. It wasn’t enough to get by because I knew I needed to weave my own net. 

What’s interesting in that story is we’re often portrayed as risk-takers. Entrepreneurs are big bold risk-takers. Screw it, let’s do it. I’ve not seen evidence for that. 

It’s risky to quit school and start a sharpening business. 

We can argue about that in a minute. What the typical entrepreneurs do is what you said. They don’t quit their day job. They de-risk their business by doing it as a side hustle or secondary thing before they go all in. That’s an important point that needs to be brought out because people who teach entrepreneurship tend to tell the 25-year-old Bob Kramer of this world, “You want to start a knife sharpening business, write a business plan, and let’s go find $50,000 or a bank loan or something and go all in.” I don’t think that’s prudent for a typical entrepreneur. 

I completely agree. I tried to do that route because that’s what people told me to do. When I picked their brain about how to write a business plan, and then they broke it down. It’s interesting, it was the same way that people told me to use the sharpening stone. You start on the coarse one, and then you go to the medium one, and then you end up with the fine one, and then your knife will be sharp. You didn’t tell me anything. It’s like, “Here’s how to cook a turkey. Take a turkey, take it out of the fridge, put it on a rack, and put it in the oven.” That’s not information. That’s not how you cook a turkey. 

They said the same thing, “Write a business plan.” I’m like, “I have no idea how to estimate how much money is going to come in.” What it came down to is you take a wild-ass guess. I’m going to make $1,200 a week because X number of people are going to come through the door. I’m like, “How do you know?” Have you picked out your location yet? That’s going to make a difference. Are you right in downtown Seattle or are you on the outskirts? Everything matters. 

You could be in a different part of the block and get different foot traffic that will or will not feed your business. What does your signage look like? Are you in a complex where somebody has it too? They didn’t care about any of that stuff. I could make the business plan up. Anyway, I made the business plan up and I went to the SBA for a small loan. What I had penciled out was that I only needed $7,000. That could get me started at the time whatever I needed, a bigger truck or something like that. The guy laughed at me, “$7,000? We used to keep that in petty cash where I worked.” That’s insulting.

These are the same feelings I had at that moment when I had to read aloud. He’s shaming me for asking for $7,000. When I put all this time and energy into it and that was as good as as close as I could get to what I needed and he also denied me on the loan. That was like back to college and trying to ask for any grant I could get to get through college. “You make too much money at work.” “I know, but I have nothing left over and I need to pay for a few more books.” “Sorry, you’re not there yet.” 

That pisses me off that the guy said, “We used to have that in petty cash where I worked.” You’re a corporate guy, probably got pushed out of your job early. Now you’re trying to teach people about entrepreneurship. I say this over and over again. A lot of the people who are in charge of teaching entrepreneurship do so with an unacknowledged managerial mindset. They treat your little aspiring startup as if you’re simply a smaller version of a large corporation. 

That’s how I felt. 

It’s it’s so wrong on so many levels. Anyway, I don’t want to interrupt the story. 

I got no help from him whatsoever. I left there angry and insulted that I’m never going back there again. I am on my own. This is my boat. I got to build this boat and figure out how to sail it myself. I kept clunking along. I had this truck and I had restaurants all over Seattle, fishmongers, butchers, and I’d go and sharpen their knives.

How did you find the customers? Did you go knock on doors or was it word of mouth?

It was a little bit both. They had some business cards made up, and having been in the restaurant business for a long time, I knew the right time to go into the restaurant. In other words, I wasn’t going to pop the bubble in the middle of service when the chef was completely swamped. That is the wrong time to talk to him. I had to pick the right time of day to go in there where he had a little space and could see me and hear what I had to say.

I also realized I had about three minutes. I had to have my elevator speech down because they were busy. They are under the gun. There’s a tremendous amount of pressure. There is a budget constraint. How can I be of service to this guy? I’d walk in and find the kitchen manager or the chef. I had my business card. I’d hand it to him. “Bob Kramer, Edgewise. I sharpen knives. I’d like to work with you. If you find the worst knife you have in the kitchen, I’ll sharpen it for you free. I’ll leave it with you. I’ll come back in two weeks. If you like my work, maybe we can work together. If not, I completely understand, but it costs you nothing. Give me the worst knife you have.”

I love it. The other thing in your story is that you don’t need money to start a business. You’ve come up with the money to print the business card, but you figured out something useful to other people and you go out and start talking to people and see if they’ll pay you for it.

I had an old right-hand drive mail truck that I think I bought for $900. It did cost me a little bit of money. I got a cash advance on my credit card. I pushed in the chips that I had.

That’s my point. It’s not like you have no money. You don’t need large sums of money which is almost detrimental to this early stage process where you’re still figuring it out. God forbid, somebody would have given you a $50,000 loan. Let’s walk down that path for a moment. Now you’ve got a big fancy truck and all these fancy things and a $500 a month loan payment. 

I think it would have crushed me. I wouldn’t have slept well. It would have changed the experience for sure.

That started to work. I take it you have a very simple value proposition. “Give me your worst knife. I’ll sharpen it for free. Let me know if you like it. We can work together. If not, no problem.” It’s a beautiful simple value proposition. Was it hard for you to go out and knock on doors, or was that relative? For a lot of people, that’s a huge barrier to go talk to a stranger.

It’s uncomfortable, but all these other things backed up my decision. I felt very comfortable in that environment. 

I’m speculating here or conjecturing, but you working in a very high-end kitchen under a very highly-trained Swiss chef. They’ve acknowledged your knife-sharpening skills. They’re saying you’re good at this. You have some confidence. You’re not just coming in cold. 

I built that up and I did that for about five years. During that time, I also met a woman and we had a relationship for a while and we started an import business. I’m juggling three jobs now. We had taken a trip to Guatemala and we had gone up to this craft village, and everything was beautiful. These beautiful wooden statues that you could buy for $2 were hand-carved by an intrinsic artist. Not only was it indicative of the area but they were good carvers as well. That’s how they were making a living.

I saw another possibility like, “If I take my other credit card and cash in $2,500 and pencil out a $2 statue that I can bring back to the United States and sell for $8, that seems like a good margin. Let’s try that.” We get to fold and travel again. Here’s more adventure. I was switching between sharpening knives, traveling with this gal, collecting stuff, and bringing it back.

We used to live in an old mom-and-pop grocery store where the front 600 square feet used to be the grocery store, then there was a two-bedroom apartment behind that. It was in a neighborhood in Seattle. We used to use the front for creative activities like making artsy fartsy stuff, paper mache, or whatever, and having dance parties. We said, “Let’s turn this into a store.” We’re getting this world travel experience and I’d come back and sharpen knives.

Are you still waiting tables at that point?

I’m still waiting tables and I’ve joined an improv group in Seattle to incorporate my circus skills because the element of play is incredibly important and I missed performing and being on stage. Once I found this improv thing, I didn’t even have to learn lines. I just have to show up, be in the moment, and we get to be on stage and perform this comedy improv stuff. 

That continued to stimulate the creative aspect of my mind, to be in the moment and spontaneous and respond to what is here. That seemed to apply. All this stuff is mixed up. This is all spiraling around at the same time. What was clear to me is that creativity gets educated out of you. As kids, we’re incredibly creative and can play with sticks and stones and create an entire city with people with personalities and history and whatever. Over time, coming up with the right answer in school, it squeezes the creativity out of you instead of being spontaneous, or there’s a class in school where you get to say whatever you want. You get to exercise this creative mind and let that go.

 

Creativity gets educated out of us. As kids, we're incredibly creative, but over time, the focus on finding the right answer in school squeezes that creativity out, stifling spontaneity. Share on X

 

I saw business people come to my improv classes who had to do some presentations or public speaking. They were using the improv class to free themselves so that they could feel more comfortable, like an alternative to Toastmasters. I watched these corporate people who were so frozen and felt as if they weren’t creative. I thought, I have to help them unlock the door and go into the space, which they have been told to close off because they thought the ideas were bad, wrong, sideways, immoral, or whatever. 

You cannot be that in the corporate world. It’s punished. I’ve looked at all kinds of research that validates what you said. A three-year-old will ask why, why-not, and what-if questions 40 or 50 times an hour. By third grade, it’s almost completely done. There are all kinds of studies that show that. I don’t know if you’ve heard of George Land’s creativity study. Have you heard of that one? 

No. 

The systems guy, George Land, died a couple of years ago. He was asked by NASA to create a survey that would enable NASA to identify the most creative scientists. Have you heard about the study? 

Yeah. 

That’s what I’m talking about. He applied it to children and found out that non-creative behavior is learned essentially. I took Land’s theory and I applied it to entrepreneurship. We’re all born naturally entrepreneurial. I define that as not only creative but also with a desire to use our intrinsic virtues to create value autonomously and create value for the people around us. Non-entrepreneurial behavior is learned. That’s my point. 

The more I could reflect back on what happened to me, the more I wriggled free of that grasp of education or social implication and then found myself accidentally feeling my way along the way to this creative side. When I told people I was going to clown school, especially my parents, it was a reinforced eye roll. It looked like what I saw in middle school like, “This kid is so on the wrong track but somehow my gut said it’s going to be okay. This is all right.” Even if it’s a side rail for a little while, cut now to my 30s, it’s serving me in such a strong way. 

It’s also allowing me to feel authentic. I’m feeling liberated, excited, full of life, and creative on the stage and in my work. I’m enjoying life and doing this sharpening thing. Eventually, I found a class. I’m the guy walking in the back door with the card saying to the chef, “I’m the sharpener.” Now I’m an expert in this field. If they hand me something like a meat grinding plate and say, “Can you sharpen this?” My answer should be “Yes.” If it’s not yes, I need to be able to justify that. 

I’d go, “I’ve never done that before, but let me check into it.” I wanted to be able to sharpen everything that they could possibly hand me. My curiosity would lead me down the path and buying the equipment and figuring out how to do it right. If they said, “This knife holds an edge well. This one doesn’t. Why?” “I don’t know. Let me see if I can understand why.” I’m taking my information from college, from physics, from chemistry. I’m taking my experience from trying to do some research and the scavenger hunt of learning how to sharpen. I’ll go find that answer. 

One day, I’m going through the grocery store to get a sandwich as I’m taking a break between sharpening at restaurants. I found a magazine called Blade Magazine. It’s all about custom knives. I’m reading this magazine flipping through and I’m seeing pictures of guys making a knife from scratch. This is blowing my mind. It reminds me of a wood shop, but it’s not. They’re working with metal. I understand how to cut a piece of wood. That’s not hard but how do you machine a piece of metal, none of the tools that I know will do this. I’ve tried file and metal before, this looks hard. 

They’re making a thing from start to finish spectacularly beautiful and I was like “These guys are talented. That’s interesting.” In the back, there’s a little advertisement for a two-week-long class to learn to hand forge a knife. I pretty much decided at the moment that I’m going to that class. I have to have that experience. This reminds me of I’m going to clown school. What did that feel like? That paid off.

Here’s one thing that’s so interesting about your story that I want people to hear. From a biological perspective, like seventh-grade biology, how does an organism orient itself in unfamiliar terrain? It does so by trying lots of little things and looking for a connection. That’s what your story is. 

I’m like a slime mold and I send out tendrils in 360 until I find the dead piece of wood. 

It’s such a great story. It’s like Dove. I wrote that down, but you did get in your own little boat and have your own adventure sailing around the world. I don’t want to interrupt you, but I love this story. I want to point out that it’s not about finding or coming up with an idea and then barreling down this path. There’s an exploratory. 

I had a long drive yesterday, a four-hour drive. My wife belongs to this small women’s group that gets together once a month and they support each other. It’s a little village thing that comes together. They encourage one another and hold each other accountable. They’re all very successful. One of the gal’s sons, a young man, 16 or 17, something like that, wanted to talk to me about knife making. He’s at that point where he’s trying to make a career choice thing. He called me while I was driving. He said, “I want to take you out for coffee.” I said, “That’s fine. We can get together.” I said, “We can talk now if you like. We’re going to talk one way or another. We don’t have to be in the same room.” He goes, “Okay.”

He was thoughtful and he had written his questions down. One of them was, “If you could do it over again, what would you do differently?” I was stumped for a second because am I the 65-year-old experienced person back in a sixteen-year-old’s body? I didn’t know how to answer that question. I thought he wanted to know not only the path that I took. He wants to know how I would improve on my path based on the results that I have now. I’m like, “We cannot overlay my story onto your life.” 

There’s no getting around the false starts and the dead ends. There’s no getting around that. It’s not linear. 

Those failures along the way are crucial. They’re part of the story.

 

Those failures along the way are crucial. They're part of the story. Share on X

 

They’re vital to the story. Going back to my anti-education rant, education punishes failure and innovation demands it. What I’m advocating in my work is micro experimentation and micro failure. You can survive an infinite number of micro failures. You can only mortgage your house and lose everything a couple of times in your life. That’s it. You’re done. You’re screwed. 

Iteration is necessary. 

I interrupted you. You saw this thing in a magazine. They had a course about how to make a knife. 

I had to wait. I called and they said, “We’re not taking applications. This is maybe October, November.” They say, “We are not accepting applications until the 1st of January.” I’m like, “I’m ready to sign up for the class.” “No, you have to wait till January 1st.” January 1st, I’m ready. I’m waiting until the phones are open in Arkansas and then I call them immediately. I’m not going to get elbowed out of this class. I already have to wait three months. 

I get in and pay my money. I fly to Arkansas. I rent a hotel room and I rent a car. It’s out in the middle of nowhere. We’re hand-forging leaf springs of a car with coal. I’m not a hammering guy. I’m a theater knife-sharpening guy, but it’s thrilling. The smell of coal burning in the air, hammering on a leaf spring. This is a primitive work. I mean that in the most respectful way. This is the physical labor of transforming a piece of steel. I love it. There is a resonance that this is cool. Within two weeks, we make a knife that is far more durable or has qualities that none of the kitchen knives that I’ve been sharpening for the last five years have. 

 

The Perfect Storm

This is now the perfect storm. You see this little niche. You’ve developed some entrepreneurial efficacy and you see this intersection.

It fills a hole for me because the sharpening has lost its charm. I’d solved all the problems. I was good at it. I made whatever money I could make, but there was a real limit. It was scalable, but the scalability was not attractive. That path was not attractive. The amount of money to invest, the managing of other people, none of that’s floating my boat. Now I can make a tool. 

My experience in the kitchen was when we’re doing a banquet for 200 people, it takes a week to put all of that food and all the prep and to roast the bones and make the stock and the stock turns into the sauce, etc, and then it’s showtime. We plate the food, finish the steaks, put the sauce on, fluff up the salad, and put it on the plate. Everything goes out. People eat it. Done. We clean up and begin again. 

With this, I would take three days and make a knife, and now I get to use it today, tomorrow, a year from now, four years from now, as long as I take care of that tool. This tool is now like a storage battery of where I was in terms of technology, understanding of the material, control of the hammer, as well as maybe what was state of the art for the material that day, but it’s all stored right in that piece. I get to use it over and over again. That meal, maybe the people who came have a memory of it, but as a worker bee, as a blue-collar guy making that meal, it’s just another day at work. I become Sisyphus again tomorrow and make another meal for someone else that makes a memory for them. 

Karl Marx wrote interesting things about entrepreneurship. What he is essentially saying is that the desire to fulfill human needs through our own efforts is an essential part of what makes us human. He wrote this little ditty where he said, “Imagine if we could exchange as humans.” Let’s use the knife as an example. What he was saying is that you are manifesting your insides outwardly in that knife. You are expressing yourself in that knife that you make. You benefit from that. Number one, you produce this beautiful thing and then you benefit a second time when you see that that useful thing is useful to me and vice versa. I create something that’s manifesting who I am and you see it. That’s the story you’re telling. 

Now the knife goes on to be in your hands to make food for friends and family. Waves of energy are coming out of that blade based on you putting your energy into it to serve others down the road. That whole thing appealed to me and because of all my experience in the restaurant and sharpening, I know what that knife should look like.

We might have to do a second episode here. We’re coming up to two hours. How did that evolve into Kramer Knives? 

I came home and I started to forge in my garage. I borrowed an anvil and I built a little forge and I began to forge in the garage. One of my friends from the theater group was riding his bike by and he stopped as I’m forging a hot piece of steel. He was like, “What are you doing now?’ I go, “I took this class on knife making and I think it’s cool. Somehow I’m going to do this.” This harkens back to my parents saying, “You cannot be a woodworker.” I’m thinking, “Maybe I cannot be a knife maker full time, but I can do this on the weekends. I can do this in the evenings and I like it. I don’t know how this is going to supplement.”

We start improvising within the conversation. I said, “I’m tired of driving my truck around from restaurant to restaurant. I’m tired of being stuck in traffic.” It’s Seattle in the early ‘90s. Seattle is booming because of dot-com money. It’s Microsoft and everything is here. There’s a tremendous amount of that money coming into Seattle. I’m driving this big 30-foot truck through traffic. I was like, “I don’t like this aspect of it. I’m bored because I’ve solved all the problems and it’s a grind.” 

It became a repetitive thing. 

I think spontaneously in the moment. I said, “I’d like to have a store downtown Pioneer Square. Something that looks like it’s been there for a hundred years. I’ll sell commercially made knives. I’ll have the sharpening. People will have to drive to me. I bet I’ll get more respect. I can probably charge more for the sharpening because it’s too easy for them now.” I drive up to the back door and they take it for granted. They get to pack them up and bring them to me. They’re going to be more respectful of the whole situation. I’ll make a little smith and I’ll start hand-forging knives.

The American Bladesmith Society has a system where you can sign up as an apprentice. Three years later, you can take a test to become a journeyman. Five years later, you can test to become a master smith. As a kid, I used to watch the Olympics and go, “Maybe I’ll be an Olympian athlete someday,” or you’d hear stories about a master watchmaker or a master swordsmith, legendary stuff. 

As a kid, you hope to aspire to become maybe the doctor, maybe the Nobel Prize winner. Here’s an opportunity in front of me and I’m old enough and I know how my brain works and I know that I can work hard. I’m like, “To become a master bladesmith, I want that. I’m going to earn that title. I don’t care how long it takes me. It might take me 7 or 8 years. I’ll keep working on it. In the meantime, I have my sharpening business. I’m traveling internationally, collecting stuff. I could do this too. This’ll be my little Boy Scout badge that I get.” I just begin. 

Here’s the weird thing, and I know that it will resonate with you. As soon as I say out loud, “I want an old space. I want something that looks like it’s been there forever, and I’m going to build some old cabinetry that looks like they’re 100 years old,” I had imagined it and I said it, the next week I was driving my truck downtown Pioneer Square and I saw a 100-foot retail on First Avenue for leases. Retail space, single-story building. I call the phone number and the guy goes, “Come on over, I’m in the back, I’ll show you around.” This was around 1992. It was 4,000 square feet which used to be an old warehouse for furniture.

Fur flooring that’s worn because a forklift is driven around in there, 16 by 16 cedar beams that hold the ceiling up. The building even tilts a little bit because it’s been there forever, but it’s got storefront retail access. I said, “How much do you want for the space?” He said, “$900 a month,” 4000 square feet, 25 cents a square foot. “Would you sign a five-year lease?” “Sure.” I said, “I’m going to punch a hole in the ceiling. I need to build a smithy. I’m pouring cement on the floor. Put a hood in here.” “Whatever you want to do. It’s up to you. It’s fine. Leave me the $900 a month. It’s yours.”

A week later, this place magically appears. It was what I had imagined. I put my money down and started to build this store out. The exact thing that I mentioned to this guy over the anvil who we’d improvised this conversation about what comes next. I only took a class like three weeks ago. Now I’m moving forward into the next iteration of this dream. 

Even the dream thing is fascinating to me. Bob, I’m convinced that the only significant thing that distinguishes an entrepreneurial from a non-entrepreneurial is a vision, which is something in the mind. Most of us use our memory to draw from the past and navigate the future. What the entrepreneur is doing is tapping into a vision. I’ve looked at the psychological literature. There is strong evidence to show that forward-thinking imaginative thing enables us to access our default brain. 

When you don’t think you’re thinking, your default systems are trying to solve the problem. We’re able to access problem-solving abilities that are otherwise not available to us. The entrepreneur stumbles into this trifecta. They’re self-directed. They’re trying to do something meaningful. They’re trying to use their skills and they become very optimally engaged. They’re using imagination that activates problem-solving abilities cognitively, and ordinary people do extraordinary things. 

That’s how it feels. It almost feels magical.

It does feel magical. People say that to me a lot. Bob, I’m embarrassed to tell you I have a call in like 15 minutes. Can we wind down? Where is Kramer Knives today? That store on Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle, what did that become? 

I began to make kitchen knives at the right time, right place, in the ’90s. The Food Network was just starting to get traffic. People had a lot of money. People were paying close attention. Where was the wine from? What did you feed the pigs because the pork tastes so great? They wanted to know more. 

Here’s a guy hand-forging kitchen knives. I got a lot of publicity because in all this publicity about the food world, here’s this guy doing an old-world craft and bringing a hand-forged knife to the table. My knives took off. People are in the publishing world or the TV world that stuff often overlaps. You get in one magazine article, then somebody wants to have you on the evening news, etc. 

I got lots of publicity, the right time, the right place. I made a good quality knife. The story is good. People love to hear the story. All of my storytelling performing part aided me in transferring my story to these different publications, which led to more publicity, and the tool was well-made. That stood on its own. When people tried to go, “Let’s get his tool. He’s a good storyteller, but let’s get his tool because I bet it’s not that good.” It performed incredibly well. It began to feed itself.

I don’t want to lose sight of something you said. You slipped it in there. You’re a good storyteller. There are a lot of entrepreneurs that are good storytellers, but they’re BS artists. The first rule of entrepreneurship is if you want to make a sandwich, make a good sandwich. Put effort into that. Do some research. You cannot go make your Aunt Susan’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich and expect people to flock to you. It’s not that complicated. 

You can skimp on the signage. Don’t skip on the product. 

 

I love that. A guy was talking to me the other day about this very fact about people like, “I can only spend $500 a month on marketing or $1000 a month on marketing and small business owners.” I think like walk the cat back here for a minute. Build something remarkable. 

I got some publicity that that blew me away. I don’t know if you remember the old ad when there were four young people and they’re like, “Are you ready? We’re going to launch our business.” They’re looking at the computer screen and go, “Ready, go.” The orders start to go in there like, “Look at all the orders we got.” Suddenly, it ratchets up and they’re like, “Uh-oh. No. What are we doing?”

I got some publicity in a nice national magazine called Savoir, which at the time was as good as it gets any publication. It was as good as GEO or NatGEO when they were in their prime. They said, “We want to do a little article on you.” I remember having breakfast with my wife and she said, “How many orders do you think you’ll get?” I go, “I might get twenty.” I got so many orders off of that, and I didn’t know what to do. I got swamped. There’s no computer. It was on a loose-leaf notebook, handwriting.

At the time, a chef’s knife was $200. The most expensive retail chef’s knife was $100. I’m a cook. I get paid $7 an hour. A $200 chef’s knife is crazy to me. I have some guy calling in from Chicago who says, “How many pieces are in the line?” “Seventeen.” “I’ll take one of each.” It’s nothing for him. He’s making half a million dollars a year. That’s where it took off. I got four years’ worth of work on one article. I had to dig myself out of that and figure out how to make those knives and manage those orders, and not let it get away from me or not let people pressure me. It’s like, “How long before I get that order?” “It’ll be a year and a half.” “What? No. What if I pay you double?” “No. I cannot do that. It’s going to take a year and a half.”

Which is another important part of the story. It’s worth mentioning. There’s integrity. There’s trust. That’s not to be overlooked either because a lot of people would have tried to exploit that. 

I knew that was going to come back and bite me if I did that. If I tried to fudge that, that was going to burn the house down at some point, so I stuck to my guns. 

This is such a great story. There’s so much to unpack here. Where can people learn more about what you’re doing? 

You can go to my website, KramerKnives.com if you’re interested. There’s more nuanced stuff in the story. There was a New Yorker profile. It’s a long fourteen-page, incredibly well-researched article that goes into a bunch of other stuff. I’ve done a corporate deal with Zwilling and I had a corporate deal before with a licensing deal with Shun. That’s covered in the article. The New Yorker article is quite informative. 

That’s fantastic, Bob. Thanks so much for taking time out of your day. I love the story. I feel like you’re telling my story in a lot of ways and I want to summarize your story. I think it was Emerson who said, “I never wrote a poem whose end I knew when I began.” That’s the entrepreneur story. That’s your story. You cannot know before you jump into the arena. You have to start trying things. I love it because it’s a story of authenticity, adventure, and life on your own terms. 

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share that. 

Thank you, Bob. 

You’re welcome. Thanks.

 

Important Links:

• Kramer Knives
• Dove
• Sharper – The New Yorker article