Can A Nobody Become Industry Leader In 3 Years?

This is the first of spotlighting particular people where they started with nothing and they moved away. They made a name for themselves inside their industry. And the first one is Oie Sylvester and his creation in the pipe industry, and he calls them the Monstrosities. Now, let's look at Ole. Here's where Ole is today. He started with a dream. He started with an interest in something. He was an artist. It turned into something else. And so let's meet Olie. Hello, Olie. Thanks for being with us today.

Oh, it's a pleasure. My pleasure. Absolutely.

Now, to start this off, as I understand it, you're sitting in your basement. You're an artist by training, am I right?

Yeah, that's correct.

And so you've got your studio, your workshop, your area. You're used to working by yourself. And as all artists, you work in anonymity. Nobody really knows who you are. It's hard to connect with the bigger world out there, isn't it?

Oh, absolutely, yeah, for sure.

And so you have this interest in pipes. And in 2008, as I understand it, your wife Vanessa said, why don't you start a podcast? Is that right?

Yeah, 2008, she kind of pushed me into doing a podcast about pipes.

And at this point, did you have any great ambitions or did you just have a love of pipes and were fascinated by them?

You know, I had a love of pipes, and the idea of a podcast was pretty, pretty interesting, but I didn't think that was something I could really do. But the more I thought about it and the more she pushed me, I decided to go ahead and give it a whirlwind.

And once you decided you got luck, you got a lucky break on who your first guest was. Is that right? Yeah. There was a fellow by the name.

Of Bjorn Nielsen, coming from Denmark, who was a star in the pipe world, and I was able to interview him as my very first interview.

Now, from that, you were able to piggyback basically off of his name recognition and his fame. So when you put your podcast out there, it was no longer Oli that nobody's heard of, especially not heard of in this industry. It's only interviewing the big star in the industry. You were able to piggyback off that name recognition and get that credibility to splash over onto you, right?

Yeah, absolutely. People are going to be, at least at that time, much more interested in hearing about the guy that's already successful. So I wanted to hear what he had to say rather than hear me talk about pipes, since I was just a new guy to the scene.

And then how did you get the word out that you had this podcast? How'd you let people know?

I started posting on pipe boards and that was the main way that I tried to get that out. And of course through just having the website out there as well.

And so you got a good, you had a bad break for him, good break for you. The fellow passed away a couple months later. And then all of a sudden you had probably one of the last in depth interviews with you, is that right?

I did, yeah. He passed away just weeks after the podcast went live. And that really cemented how important some of these pieces of history are to me.

And then the podcast. It's funny, once you get in and you start the ball rolling, the main thing that people we're talking about this is how do you go from being non existent in an industry and get to the point where you rise up and all of a sudden everybody knows you, you've got friends around the globe, you have influence, you have a product that a step by step thing. But you started with the first step, it was the podcast. And at this point you were not even making pipes, is that right?

Yeah, that's correct. I started making pipes that were basically engineered, put together by someone else, another carver who was a professional. Because I didn't know how to make pipes, I just wanted to offer them up to people in exchange for their support of the podcast.

And what happened from that? So then, then you got into learning, you got someone to help you with the technical side, then you're learning how to do it yourself. And then how did it expand from that? You're interviewing more and more people, I guess, because now you're known a little bit and you've interviewed the big star, they want to let you interview them. And how fast did momentum build? Did it surprise you? You know, once I started taking a.

Look at the numbers after a couple of podcasts, I used to to see that there were people in countries all over the world actually tuning into the podcast. So that part of it was pretty surprising.

And now you've got contacts around the world. How did you get to where you evolved into making specialty pipes yourself?

I decided to start making them myself. And so I studied under Master Carver out of Tennessee. Felt like he was the best in the US and so I sought him out and learned from him.

And what did that. That gave you knowledge, but it also gave you more credibility there too, right?

Absolutely.

And then what happened then?

After studying under him in a kind of apprenticeship kind of way, I could make my own pipe from beginning to end. And I knew that the engineering was solid and so I was able to go ahead and bring my pipes to the, to the pipe making or the pipe smoking community as my own instead of as someone else's that I art directed.

And so let's look at this thing. The end result of that thing is a few years later you've gone from nobody inside this industry to where you got a cover story on the pipe and tobacco world, which is like most of these niches, people have been experts all of their life. They're pretty much closed minded. It's like going into a community and trying to break in there and sell them stuff or something. When you've got a very closed community, they really keep outsiders out. And I would imagine it would a pretty big deal. Is there a pretty big deal to break into this community?

Absolutely. There are folks who have been in this for years and years and there's a way you do things and a way you don't do things. And if you're not in that group of folks who know what they're doing, then you're not going to get anywhere.

What people can learn is if you want to get in an industry, you find a way to get close to the people at the top. You can find out all kind of stuff you don't know because that's the key for all of us to move up. You got to learn what you don't know. And you can't plug any gaps if you don't know. These gaps exist in your knowledge. And when you're around people at the top, you're not picking up just general knowledge, you're picking up the best way. Like Oli was saying, really how you do it. And as a result you learn how to, you learn how to do it at the top level. Until you got in this world, you probably didn't even know maybe as well the guy in Tennessee that you wound up studying under that you have you always known about him?

I had known about who he was and what his pipes were like, but I didn't know him on a personal.

Level and I guess it was easier to get him to bring. You kind of worked with what you had. You didn't go out for massive funding. You used the resources you had. You picked up the phone, you self financed yourself mainly with bootstrapped it with your own work and effort and got as far as you could go. And then if you're going to go further, you had to get with him. But you use that credibility, you Built up. Now you go over to the master craftsman, learn how he does it. Now you get a whole other world opened up to you where you could combine your art training and the things you liked about pipe making to really come up with something you never even knew you were going to have the opportunity to do. Is that safe to say?

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

And you know, it's one step at a time and that's what we're looking at here. It's just like, how do these things evolve? And I wanted to find the first one. This is kind of an example, let's say this is example of some of the ones you're doing now. You're really taking pipe making to a whole new dimension in terms of introducing the concept of creating works of art. Is that right?

Yes, absolutely.

And that's one of yours. We're going to show you several of these. Here's another of yours. Now, these actually work, am I right?

Oh, yeah, yeah. The engineering in these is absolutely solid.

Now, is this the way that people always make pipes or are you introducing something new into the industry?

The way I make them is actually a very traditional way to make pipes. It's all of the outside and the artistry kind of on the, on the exterior is what is incredibly different in.

The pipe world and well received when you first started coming up with that?

No, I think that there has always been a small group of folks who really, really enjoyed it. But no, at first it was not well received.

And so your first pipe. That's the first one. That's one side you want to prove you can do the normal ones first, right? The basic. This is the other side. And most of the pipe makers would never do that. Right. They would never allow those imperfections in the wood to show.

That's. That's correct. That's called a rustication technique. And so basically this is kind of a Jekyll and Hyde pipe. On one side you've got this pretty normal looking, traditional. That shape is called a pot. And so you have a pretty normal traditional shape. And then on the other side you have this bizarre kind of rustication technique that is going all the way up the side.

And right from the beginning, this is the first one, you sort of notice that you were interested in doing something different, right?

Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

And let's just look at some of the others that you've got up there real, real quick. Yeah, obviously this would have sent shock waves through the standard pipe making world when this comes out. And the interesting thing, when you had a new idea you didn't have to go to a board of governors to get permission. You just had to make it and put it out there and let it see how the world responded to it. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, after I learned how to make a pipe the traditional way, the biggest question in my mind was, should I stick with traditional shapes and go that route, or should I allow myself to go ahead and do all the artistic things that are in my mind that I really want to do? And that was really a tough decision, but I decided to go with my gut and do something totally different.

And usually you find if you do the thing that really turns you on and you can do it well, there's going to be. And you're excited about it. You get a product that you're excited about it, that you're going to be able to find a market out there at whatever field you're in. They're going to be excited about it, too. Here's another one. What's the idea here?

This one actually allows the briar there. The very top of that is a plateau, which is the outside of the root ball of the heath tree. And so I wanted to kind of allow that to just be there almost in its natural state, along with, you know, some scrapes and some kind of unique color thrown in there.

And here's another one right here. Is that a stone or is that wood or whatever? What is that?

That's actually meerschaum, which is a clay from Turkey, really.

So beginning is to bring. Bringing these different aerials to it, which kind of continues to make them unique and interesting, I guess. Right? Yeah.

This is part of a series called the Zombie Series, where I take pipes that were not functioning and they were.

Meant for the market.

They were already carved or whatever, but they weren't functioning. So I've taken them and added my own art spin to them and then made them functioning again.

Yeah, because all of these pipes. We're showing our functioning pipe, and here's that one we showed in the front again. Now, what happened from you here in your basement, not only have you been able to do things, meet people, spend time on something that fascinated you, take your art and use it in a way that was more. Even more exciting than standard art. But talk about the contacts and people you've met. You're generating an income. You have. All this has happened in a short period of time. You have people you've met, you've got income coming in, you've got a certain celebrity status inside the industry, which, in essence is a brand that you can use and develop on the rest of your life because people now know who you are, know your product, talk about some of the context. Here you are outside of Atlanta, Georgia, north side of Atlanta, Georgia, and people know you around the world. Talk about some of those contexts. That's expansion from the podcast as we wrap this thing up.

You know, I'm able to go to a number of different type shows around the country and through that I'm also able to meet some folks. So at any time it's great. I can, I can pick up the phone and I can call one of my pipe making buddies halfway across the world and pick their brain about something I'm working on and actually exchange information with some of the greatest pipe makers around the globe. It's wonderful.

And what are just like what are some of these countries? Where are these, are they in Europe? Are they in Japan? Are they limited?

You know, just about any country that's that there's a pipe smoker. And I mean it's just about anywhere you can imagine. Now there is a concentration of pipe smokers in different regions in Europe and whatnot. But I've got some really good friends in Italy, some really good friends just everywhere really, that I can lean on. And it's really quite amazing to be able to do that.

And so not only have you been able to and you've been able to travel outside the US for these shows and visit some of these people too. Not only you're traveling, you're getting out, but your product, I mean, you got people around the world buying these things and starting to build collections off of them, is that right?

Yeah, that's correct. Just a few days ago, a piece went to a fellow in Denmark. It's definitely all over the world and.

People seek you out. I hear you had somebody surprise dinner guests the other day.

I sure did. There was a collector who just happened to be passing through Atlanta and he asked if, if there was any way he could come over just to hang out for a little bit. So I said absolutely. And we made some room for him and I took him out to dinner and we had a great time. We love to see the workshop and.

Only just to wrap things up for people. You know, the things we do on the website whitelawnwinning.com website, the thing we do with White L Academy and in my premium group, the Winners club is we talk about winning, we talk about success in life. And people don't need to feel like they're limited just because nobody they're interested in an industry involved in something, they don't have resources, they don't need to feel like they have no chance because like what you've done, people all over are going from nowhere to somewhere, climbing the ladder of recognition and accomplishment by following similar type steps. And how has this impacted your life? It just let people know, is this worth it? I mean, has this been something that's just been a money maker for you, made your job a little funny? Or is this the success and the things you're learning about winning and success and meeting people and what you're learning from them, are you seeing that overflow in other areas of your life as well?

You know, it's just made everything better. And I think the biggest thing for me is that it's opened up my eyes to realize that all those tiny little steps were actually huge and without them I couldn't have gotten to where I am. And so looking back, it just reminds.

Me that even those little stupid little.

Things that I had to do, those were incredibly important. So it reinforces the idea that, you know, no matter how small of the step that I'm taking today, it's going to build into something much, much bigger that I can't even comprehend tomorrow.

Yeah, and you see that in sports too. You know, like last night there was one play with the Denver and against the Ravens there was one play where Welker, he trapped the ball, he really didn't catch it, it bounced off the ground. But they were doing a hurry up offense and they got off the Knicks and pass before the coach could throw the flag and get a review of the play. Two plays later, Denver had a score and they wound up just killing the Raven. That one play that they had been able to get, one small thing. Did you see that?

I did, yeah.

It's just incredible. And that's why you say, you know, like football's a game of inches. Life is a game of seconds and minutes. And what you do all day long has an impact on your life. You never know when those key points are. And so it's a matter of keeping on climbing, do all the little steps because they open up the door to bigger steps. Thanks so much. We're going to continue this over at the Winners club but I hope everybody's got a lot out of this and we're going to be flashing up information about how you can follow up with only and get more information if you're interested in pipes and the pipe world. Thanks so much Ole for being with us.

Thank you. It's been my pleasure.