How We Started Our Woodworking Business by Woodbrew!
For today’s blog, we will be sharing with you guys how we started our woodworking business and YouTube Channel
Background
Originally Molly was not into woodworking because she grew up in the restaurant business. Her father and their family owned a restaurant in Birmingham and her primary focus as a kid growing up was sports.
Dylan grew up building stuff because of his dad. He was exposed to basic tools and woodworking early on and is always curious about observing how things work. His dad led him by example and it was something he hoped to do one day in the future too.
I hated school, I was always the outcast, I was a skateboarder. I spent every waking hour trying not to go to school and making electronic projects and skateboarding. I wasn’t interested in the things that most kids were and that made me an outcast at that age.
We both ended up in Graphic Design and eventually we got to a point where we were going have to start taking classes. After a while, we started our businesses and we ended out actually fading out of college after the second year.
Part-Time and the Business
Molly is still into restaurants and I work at a custom rustic furniture business. One day while we were going home, we saw a coffee table and there was nothing wrong with it, so I wondered why someone would throw this kind of stuff away? Why not try to sell it on Facebook for a hundred bucks or something like that, so we turned around and picked the coffee table up.
We painted it white which was super popular at that time, and after 24hrs, we sold it for around $200. We were like, “Oh, okay.” So we tried to start this furniture restoration thing that we called Bay Furniture.
So we rented out a storage unit at a flea market because we quickly ran out of space at home. We basically reinvested every dollar we ever made. We were building up either tools or furniture to resell. I don’t know if we really made much money at all, but we were building up equipment. Which is what led us to be able to start our own custom woodworking business.
We’ve gotten to a point where we already have a decent amount of tools at my house and that was kind of our first little shop area. I was able to build furniture and things for my mom and just experiment with ideas.
I remember buying a pocket hole jig and it was a hundred dollars and it was so much money back then. I still have the first piece of furniture that I made the first day I got the pocket hole jig which we are still using now. It was a big investment, but it was worth it in the long run.
This time we had a little bit of a shop set up and I actually started taking some of the commission work that my employer was giving. I do a bunch of cutting boards, and some display racks. It was a really simple project but it like showed him that I could actually do stuff on my own which also gave me experience in building stuff.
Then I was thinking about getting a shop. We decided we should stop the restoration thing and get our own shop. Thinking that I could just work remotely for this guy and that will be able to pay for the shop. Then we could just start our own little business out of that.
Renting out the First Warehouse
So we started renting out a shop that comes with an office which was $650 a month. We’ve just convinced the landlord to not pay for the security deposit and we gave him every dollar we have that day in order to get the space.
After we got the warehouse, the job from my previous employer faded. I only have a handful of local clients to do work for. Stuff like a simple desk, one of them was an industrial wood desk and the other clients were just from friends of friends that we got through word of mouth. That enables us to be in the warehouse for a month or two, and that’s how we ended up with our first major shop.
1st Major Client
Our first major project was a giant bunk bed that had custom fabricated ladders. We got this client into a cold call, asking them if they might be interested in having something done. And after closing this deal it felt like we made it. That project established us.
If there’s one piece of advice that I can give to any of you wanting to start a business is that you have to say yes to everything then just figure out how to make it happen. If you wait around till you know how to do things doing it yourself, you’re going to wait for too long.
After that, we already decided to pursue YouTube seriously and we started making videos every single week.
At this point in time we are planning to see what happens if we do this full time. We are not saying we will leave college but we will take at least a semester off of school and see what happens.
IG: woodbrew_