Mike and Cindy: MikCin Creations

 

“Woodworking is very emotional; it just calms me down. We’ve been through a lot in life, and it’s the one thing where I feel focused and free. So it’s just something that I always want to be doing.”

 

• Mike Leas

 

Welcome to a brand new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast. Today, your host Steve Larosiliere sits down with Mike and Cindy from MikCin Creations. Recently, when Steve gets asked how to get started in the business by aspiring Woodpreneurs, he refers them to listen to the Woodpreneur Podcast, and Mike and Cindy took that advice and ran with it.

 

While Steve was working on his woodworking projects in Michigan, Mike reached out to mention that he had been listening to the Woodpreneur Podcast and had been applying the lessons to make money. Steve immediately pulled Mike and his family into an Instagram Live conversation to talk about the process they went through to get where they are now.

 

 

 

 

A Long Hard Road

 

“It’s a long story, but the short part of it is we started doing this, just like a lot of other makers and woodworkers, out of necessity. We didn’t have a lot of money, and we moved around a lot, and we were having a hard time financially at the beginning of our marriage.

 

So we’ve had like three cars stolen within our first four years of marriage, our house flooded, we literally had to swim out of our home, and things like that. We were always struggling financially, but we finally got ourselves to a point where we were starting to pick back up.”

 

• Mike Leas

 

“We were living in a rental, but the lady we were renting from let us paint, so I started painting the walls. Then I started painting our furniture, and I started painting artwork. And that led to like, ‘Can you make me this? Can you make me that?’

 

We needed some stuff around the house like shelves built and stuff like that. I was tired of the same stuff that I had from college that I got from dumpsters or hand-me-downs, and I was just tired of the same boring gold, copper, and burgundy colors. I need something fresh, so we just painted everything that we had.”

 

• Cindy Leas

 

Although they didn’t have a garage or a proper space to work in, Mike and Cindy used their carport to great effect with a cheap sander and a circular saw. Mike would pick up pallets from work, look on Pinterest to see how to do the projects, and start working on them.

 

 

 

 

Enjoying What You’re Doing

 

“We ended up moving into an apartment here in Victoria that had a garage, and that’s where I think we started to pick up. We started buying a lot more tools, and Cindy got her Cricut, and I started getting into table saws and stuff like that.

 

It was just out of necessity; we just needed to do more. We both realized throughout the years that we enjoyed doing the work. Cindy was doing a lot of painting, a lot of crafting, and then I started enjoying the woodworking part of it, the cutting and the power tools. I love power tools.”

 

• Mike Leas

 

Things continued to blow up from there for Mike and Cindy. They started selling products at flea markets, day shows, and the like. Mike notes that while working his regular job, he would be stocking aisles thinking about what he would be doing in the shop the next day, and he grew kind of addicted to the process.

 

Some of their earlier work essentially transferred pictures onto wood, things like sports teams, family pictures, and similar ideas. While working on some woodworking projects at the flea market one day, the manager of the space came up to Mike and offered him access to a woodshop at the back of the market. He told Mike he could use it as long as he didn’t cut his fingers off. This allowed Mike to see the real potential of a woodshop and all the capabilities he would have working in one.

 

 

 

 

Steve’s Advice Corner

 

“Pricing our product is something we need some help with. Our last project was a built-in, and we did an hourly rate. Then we did materials plus 10%. But what we didn’t consider were things like gas and installation overhead. The other thing would be just getting people locally to know that we exist.”

 

• Mike Leas

 

Pricing is one of the most challenging parts of building a business, but it is also one of the most integral ones as it is a big part of managing profitability. There are many online pricing formulas and guides, but the best method for getting a sound pricing methodology is simple.

 

“So the next time you do a built-in, raise the price and then continue to raise the price until people start saying no. You could go to our Facebook group and say, ‘Hey, what are your pricing formulas?’ You can play around, and there are spreadsheets that you can plug stuff into to see what it would look like.

 

But whatever it is at the end, tack on an extra 10-20%. Just because there’s always something that you’re not thinking about. Sometimes with pricing, it’s a new project that you’re working on, so you want to give a reasonable price so that they say yes. Then document the crap out of it, take some good pictures, and then raise the price afterward, especially if it’s like a quick thing.

 

That’s my mindset on pricing; just raise the price. Look at the value you’re providing people, see how other people are doing it, and like what they would charge. Then you can play around with pricing formulas, and then just literally continue to raise the price every single day.”

 

• Steve Larosiliere

 

Website: https://www.mikcincreations.com

 

Instagram: @mikcincreations