I graduated from Arroyo Grande High School in 1985. That summer I started in tile as a helper for my older brother John Campbell. My first job was the Blacklake Golf Course Clubhouse, and from there I proceeded as a helper for the next eight years.

I know it sounds like a really long time to be a helper, and believe you me, it was. Every time I asked my boss Ron Miltimore if I could start setting tile, he would say, "You have to learn how to be a helper first." So I spent a lot of time trying to become the best helper I could be. It was a great experience for me to be my brother John's helper for so long, since he was such a great tiles man. I mean, to this day, I still don't know anyone who works as hard as he does.

For example, we were doing a big housing tract in San Luis Obispo, known as The Arbors, and my brother and I were averaging one house per day. We would start out the morning floating (producing the mortar base) an entire house consisting of a master bath shower/tub combo, a guest bath tub/shower surround, and a 60 square-foot kitchen. Then I would clean up the mud mess and proceed to set up the tile saw mix thin set (mortar) and distribute tile throughout the house in the areas to be tiled.

After my brother was all set up I would proceed to the house he tiled the day before and grout the entire house. Sometime in the day we would actually take a half-hour for lunch. Those were between 10- and 12-hour days. That's pretty much my life for about eight years.

I learned a lot from my older brother. Mainly I learned how to be a hard worker. Any tile skills I learned I had to sneak off to do. Remember, I had to learn how to be a helper first, so I would sneak off when my helper work was caught up and go rub down some mud work or something. My brother would then catch me and get real mad. I would tell him that I wanted to set tile.

Eventually I was allowed to set small vanities and floors. But, man, did we work hard tiling hotels, housing tracts, grocery stores, custom homes, from the Central Coast to the Valley, even all the way to Las Vegas. After that, my brother got his license. I continued to help him for a while longer. That is until I went through a crazy time in my life.

I played music and followed that dream for a while. I moved all over the L.A. area, Orange County, and ended up in Long Beach. The whole time I was following this dream, I did tile most of the time to make money to fund the crazy music life. The best experience I had was in Long Beach. I worked for a tile company by the name of Hiatt Custom Tile. That was the time I started to learn a lot about hands-on tilesetting, doing high-end custom homes.

My daughter Kelcie had somehow reached the age 8, and I started to become worried about my financial situation, not to mention my long-time dream of becoming a rock star was stating to diminish greatly. So I decided I did not like the music business and I especially did not like who I was becoming as a wannabe rock star guy.

I decided that I would like the Tile business way better, so I drafted a plan to make more money at it. My plan was to move back to my hometown of Nipomo, California, and start working for someone else for a couple of years to get my name out there.

During this time, I worked alongside someone I'd worked with before, my cousin Steve Predko. I think he's, hands down, one of the best craftsman I have ever had the pleasure to learn from. For two years we worked together, and I learned a lot of great things from him. Steve and my brother John are mostly responsible for everything I know about tile. After two years, my brother John and I started the partnership company known as Pacifica Tile. We were partners for about five years.

Now I own my own company - Artista Creations. I really enjoy my work these days, especially with the help of my three amigos: Vicente Jimenez, Arturo Jimenez and Hilario Ortiz. I’ve finally found three guys who like to work as hard as I do, and then some. For the last five years, I've been hand training these wonderful workers, and they are becoming some of the finest craftsmen in the business. I'm very happy to have them on the Arista team, and we are all looking forward to serving you and your families for all of your tile beautification needs.