My friend, the famous Lew Smith, said during a phone conversation some years ago, “Warren, you are unconscious, aren’t you?” I took a second to absorb this and realized Lew hit the nail squarely on the head. This was at the time that I was at the apex of my career. Things couldn’t be going better and it made me realize I’ve never planned anything in my life. I just went along with the flow.
Lew was the only one who knew the real Warren Tyler. It started 45 years ago when, just married, I took a job as a carpet cleaner’s helper. The boss’s son Harry also taught me to install. A few months later, a friend who was a partner in a retail flooring store asked me to go to work with him as an installer. When I finished early, I would hang around the store (with patches on my knees) and wait on customers, and I wound up selling more than anyone in the store.