Hardwood Floors April/May 2019

Photos courtesy of Kyle Crocco.

What did you do wrong? You didn’t use a story to sell your ideas. If you want to sell your ideas, tell your ideas as a story. at’s the power of storytelling. And this year’s NWFAWood Flooring Expo’s keynote speaker, Ma hew Luhn, has built his career on this very concept. Luhn’s life story Matthew Luhn, a former Pixar story artist and animator for 20 years who grew up in San Francisco, wasn’t born a storyteller. Instead, he came from a long line of toy shop operators. His great-grandparents sold toys, his grandparents sold toys, and his father decided toys were cool to sell, but being an animator at Disney would be cooler. Ma hew’s father drew and drew and drew – even while serving in Vietnam– but when he returned from duty, like a good soldier, he went back to

work in the family toy store to carry on the tradition. And there, his father’s dream of animation died. en, one day, he became sick, and Ma hew, a 4-year-old, made a drawing of his father with a stomach ache. Everything changed. Ma hew’s budding talent inspired his father. His father made it his new goal to mentor Ma hew to be the Disney artist he never had a chance to become. He showed Ma hew how to draw, took him out of classes to see lms, and even let him deface the Ei el Tower with his drawings. Ma hew became good enough to be accepted to the prestigious school of Cal Arts, which had been developed by Walt Disney to train future animators.

the magazine of the national wood flooring association

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