Tom Shane's World

One of the best parts of my job, hands down, is the variety of cultural experiences that I’m honored to become familiar with.

This stems from our industry being a global one, and affording me the opportunity to work with people from all over the world on a daily basis, as well as constantly traveling to all four corners of the earth.

Usually my travel is strictly for work purposes, where I have to sneak in cultural experiences late in the evenings, or on an early morning run. Recently however, I got to travel along with my father to experience something that was purely for pleasure, with the business relationship simply being the common tie between the friendships that allowed us this opportunity.

It was the wedding of our friends, who are of Indian descent, and who decided to have a destination wedding in Turkey.

My dad and me in Turkey

We have been doing business with their family for well over 30 years, and were fully welcomed and immersed in all the cultural aspects of the event.

The food we ate, the music we danced to, the customs we followed, and the clothing we were adorned in all had deep Indian roots.

Aside from how overjoyed we were for the bride and groom, which was clearly the highlight of the weekend, the magic that really blossomed from the event was realizing how small our world actually is.  Although we come from different backgrounds, have different languages and different traditions, we are all spun from the same cloth.

Being in the diamond business means that your business relationships extend all over the world.

Being the fourth generation in the business means that those relationships’ roots run deep.

It is both a pleasure and an honor to so often call our business partnerships friendships, and it’s times like these when I find myself appreciating the business to its fullest capacity.

Before my wedding took place a year ago, I spent some time blogging about the events and planning that led up to the big day. Everything went off without a hitch. Well, it’s been exactly a year now since my wife and I tied the knot, so I thought I’d give a bit of an update on the first year of marriage.

Amanda and I standing on the exact spot where we exchanged vows one year earlier.

We made a very nice weekend out of our anniversary. We went to the exact same resort where we got married 12 months prior, and even visited the spot where we exchanged our vows. It was a bit weird knowing that the last time we stood there was not only a year ago to the day, but was also filled with our closest friends and family members. The only time that will ever happen in our lives. For our anniversary, the hotel made us a mini version of our wedding cake, and it really allowed us to appreciate our first year of marriage and recreate many feelings from the wedding day.

A mini replica of our wedding cake

The first year of marriage was a learning experience, that’s for sure. Even though my wife and I spent a tremendous amount of time together in the years of dating and the time in which we were engaged, there is something different about the permanence of the designation of husband and wife. Prior to our getting married, I had known for some time that I was going to propose to her, I knew she would say yes, and once engaged, I obviously knew that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. However, it wasn’t until this year that, I suppose you could say, it ‘sunk in’. For example, if one of us upsets the other, I get more of a feeling of, ‘I have no choice but to figure this out with her’.  It’s a bit hard to explain this as a positive feeling, but to me it has been a wonderful growth opportunity. The Wall Street Journal recently had an interesting op-ed piece on ‘Advice on Marriage from a Divorcée’. I thought it was actually quite a clever take on a topic – advice from someone for whom it didn’t work out. If anyone has any thoughts or experiences they’d like to share about their first year of marriage, words of wisdom on longevity in a marriage, or anything else fun to share, it’d be great to hear some stories.

Everyone’s idea of having a fun life is different.  Most of my friends live a very different type of lifestyle than I do.  Most have different value systems.  I learned a long time ago that when everyone else seems to be wrong, you should check out the mirror and see the real problem.  But, anyhow, I try and have fun.

I am a very consistent person, and I seldom change my preferences.  I finish what I start, and keep promises that I make.  I love my work, and take pride in it.  Most people work to make a living, and hope to save enough money to retire so they won’t have to continue working.  I have no intention of retiring, as I love what I do, and I have fun doing it.  I travel the world, meeting interesting people everywhere I go.  I don’t travel as a tourist.  Most of the people I meet in my work are much like me.  We love what we do, and we are multi-lingual, and worldly.  We can discuss politics or economics on any level, and not show favoritism toward any of our home countries.

I confess that I have no personal love for jewelry.  But I love the things that I do with the jewelry.  Finding unique stones that no one else has, in interesting places, is very fun.  Negotiating very hard to get them at the right prices is a challenge, and a lot of fun as well.  Cutting those stones into shapes that maximize their beauty is a source of pride.  Designing jewelry for those stones, and indeed just designing jewelry, is fun.  Owning and running our six story factory in Bangkok where we produce unique styles of jewelry is fun, and challenging.

Owning stores throughout America where we sell jewelry is fun, and a source of pride.  We were the first retailer to offer loose diamonds.  We were the first retailer to have large, freestanding stores.  The fact that others have copied us (or tried to, I should say) is frustrating, but mimicry is the highest form of flattery.  I still think our execution is superior, and the customers vote every day on that.  Being the largest jeweler in each market we are in is how the customers have continuously voted, which makes it fun, (what I call pride of ownership).

Sure I take some time off.  I love the beaches all over the world, as well as skiing in Colorado.  And I will never forget, one day while skiing a few years ago, I had to stop and join a pre-arranged conference call.  So I laid down in the snow, just off of one of the groomed runs, and pulled out my cell phone.  I paid no attention to the fact that there was a ski lift not too far away from me, until someone with a thick New York accent yelled down at me, “Hey, you’re on vacation…let them wait a week!”  I guess he and I would not have a lot in common.  By now he’s probably retired, while I just spent the whole day working hard in Bangkok, buying sapphires. For him, relaxation was a necessary end to a life spent toiling in a job that he probably didn’t enjoy, whereas I have fun at my job and while I’m not working, I have an entire globe to traverse to find pockets of relaxation and entertainment. When you love what you do for a living, you never actually work a day in your life. The world gets smaller each year, but it is still large enough for both of us!