Interview: Seth Haber of Trek Light Gear (part 3 of 3)

[Note: This is the second of the Solid Startups interviews. Today's interview with Seth Haber is the third of three parts. Part one is here. Part Two is here.]

JL: Despite being from Rhode Island, you seem very much like a Boulder guy. What makes Boulder special to you as a place to run a business and make a life?

SH: I’m actually more inclined to say that I connected with Boulder not despite being from Rhode Island but because of it. One of the great things that comes from growing up in the tiny state of Rhode Island is that the concept of community is there from the very start.  I didn’t realize it until I started getting older and leaving the state, but there is such a unique thing going on in such a small area that it creates a real common bond.  If I meet someone from Rhode Island outside of the state it quickly leads to playing the name game to see who we both know and there’s no shortage of inside jokes, references and things that we both miss that you can’t get anywhere else.  It’s not unique to Rhode Island by any means, but its size definitely concentrates that connectedness and just like Boulder there’s a shared feeling that it exists in a bit of a bubble with its own culture and ‘Only in Rhode Island’ type things.

All it took was one visit to Boulder and I knew I had to take a stab at living here.  I was 22 at the time so I wasn’t necessarily thinking long term, but I definitely knew it was the right fit for me to spend some time.  The scenery, the weather, the music scene and the people I met in Boulder had me hooked instantly.  I could tell that something special was happening here and there was an immediate sense that anyone who lived in Boulder was sharing in the same fun ride.  Nine years later, I’m still here, I started a business, I’ve got an amazing group of friends and all my initial fears that the Boulder was a college town that I would quickly outgrow have long since been put away.  I miss the ocean, the seafood and the beach life much more than I let on, but that makes my trips home even more special to me.

Happiness is something I think about a lot and it was really good to see that USA Today just named Boulder the ‘happiest city’ in the country.  Being happy in life is all about finding balance. You need to like your job and what you do for a living.  You need good family, friends and community.  You need to be happy with where you live and always feel like the future is wide open, not written in stone.  But in reality, no matter where you live, things won’t always go your way.  You won’t always love your job or you may have health issues or unfortunate events that keep you down.  But, where you are and who and what you’re surrounded with is going to have a huge impact on how those ups and downs affect your overall happiness.  When I first moved to Boulder I realized that I felt like I was on vacation on a regular basis.  Not the ‘I’ve got nothing to do and no responsibilities!’ vacation feeling, but the overall buzz that life is good, there’s lots to explore and the feeling that you see something every day that makes you want to take a photograph.  I started thinking about what it is about vacation that gives us that feeling and realized it’s almost always a combination of the following: beautiful scenery, beautiful weather, laid back, relaxed people and the opportunity to do an endless number of outdoor activities right out your back door.  So I believe that Boulder, and places like Boulder, attract happy people but they also create happy people.  When you add enough of those ‘life is good’ surroundings in your life, it makes it incredibly difficult to be unhappy.

Obviously everyone won’t be able to feel that vacation feeling about where they live, so as it turns out my desire for people to be able to bring that feeling into their everyday life is exactly what the Trek Light Hammock represents.  A hammock embodies all of those things: a sense of vacation, relaxation and those times when life is calm, perfect and stress-free.  When you lie down in the hammock and close your eyes, you get the opportunity to surround yourself with those feelings and create that bubble regardless of where you are or what’s going on in your life.  I never really planned on starting a business, but I instantly realized that I had found a way to take some of my philosophy on what makes us happy and deliver it in a form that people can use to achieve that feeling wherever they are.  Now if only it was just as easy to package up Boulder and move it by the ocean….