Our Story
Mike Martin, Coolin Curve Inventor
I was only looking for a job when I looked through a window that changed my life.
That window was a mop bucket.
Like most people, I believed a mop cleaned a floor. Then one day I asked a simple question:
If you put paint in a mop bucket and mopped a floor, would you be cleaning it or painting it?
The answer was obvious.
Whatever is in the bucket gets put down on the floor.
That question led to the invention of the Heavyweight® Scrub Brush.
What I did not know at the time was that it would also lead me to a much bigger discovery.
Over the next thirty years I would spend my life asking a question that seemed simple:
Why do we continue doing things that do not work?
At first I thought the answer was ignorance.
I was wrong.
Then I thought it was economics.
I was wrong again.
What I eventually discovered is that we often continue doing things that do not work because it is all we have ever known or seen.
We inherit systems.
We inherit habits.
We inherit assumptions.
We inherit explanations.
And over time they become invisible.
The floor taught me that.
But so did life.
The Heavyweight.
The Coolin Curve®.
Emma's cancer journey.
Addiction and recovery.
Sailing with families facing the unimaginable.
Success.
Failure.
Loss.
Gratitude.
Every experience seemed to point toward the same truth:
We often mistake familiarity for truth.
The inventions, writings, photographs, videos, and stories you will find throughout this site are not separate projects.
They are evidence.
Evidence of a lifelong search to understand why we do what we do and how we can leave things better than we found them.
Capitalism To Cause was created from that search.
Not because I believe I have all the answers.
Quite the opposite.
It exists because I believe better questions create better outcomes.
Questions create awareness.
Awareness creates change.
And change creates possibility.
Everything we do today becomes part of the world the next generation inherits.
My hope is that the work you find here encourages you to look a little closer at the systems around you, the assumptions beneath you, and perhaps even the stories you tell yourself.
Just look down.
Grout is not black.
And yet it is everywhere.
Learn more about our mission at capitalismtocause.com