Nick Hunsaker: Hunski Hardwoods

 

“It’s tough finding the time to balance working, making furniture, wrapping products up, surfacing, milling, just trying to balance all of that because it’s just my dad and I that do it.”

 

• Nick Hunsaker

 

Welcome to a brand new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast. Today your host Steve Larosiliere sits down with Nick Hunsaker of Hunski Hardwoods. Steve has been following Nick’s work since about 2015 when The Woodmizer Way did an article on Hunski Hardwoods.

 

Nick started Hunski Hardwoods with his father, who has been in the wood business in one form or another for almost fifty years. Due to his father’s early involvement in the wood industry, Nick has been surrounded by and involved in it for his whole life.

 

 

 

 

A Wood-Centric Life

 

“In 1995, My dad started working for a company that harvested walnut burrows for veneer. That’s when I started in this industry, working with him in the summer and on the weekends. I’m 35 now, so I’ve pretty much been around it my whole life. This is what I know; this is what I do; this is what I love.

 

It’s a deep-rooted passion my dad and I have for this industry. In 2010 I was going to school to be a nurse or get into the nursing program. A little bit after the recession in the market, veneer took a dive, and I just didn’t really have a passion for nursing. It was just going to be a job, a career.

 

My dad was still taking trees out, salvaging the logs, and he was selling to people that milled them into slabs. There were only a few companies at the time that did that. There was an opportunity there; I was like, ‘Dad, why don’t we start cutting up ourselves. We’re the actual ones that go out and salvage the trees and have relationships with the farmers and all that stuff.’”

 

• Nick Hunsaker

 

Nick and his father did a job and earned enough money to buy a sawmill. They picked up a Lucas mill in 2012 and started cutting logs into slabs. They still sold logs to supplement their income because of the inherent difficulty in selling green slabs.

 

Eventually, they found their way over to a forestry shop that had just got the Woodmizer 1000, and they decided they needed one to improve their business. Soon, Nick and his father saved up and invested in their dream mill and installed it in November of 2013.

 

 

 

 

The Early Years

 

“Going to school to get a career, a daytime job and then not doing that anymore and starting a business just out of the air. It was a little intimidating. Only a few companies were milling slabs back then when we started, and it was them and us, and they were already established.

 

I’m really glad we started our website back then because of SEO and all that stuff. We were hitting that hard back then. So people all over the country and all over the world found us, which is awesome, which I’m really thankful for. We did that back then, and now it’s paying off. Once that started, people called in orders, and it’s been pretty steady.”

 

• Nick Hunsaker

 

Since its inception, Nick’s father had been working full-time on their business, primarily because of his relationships with the farmers who own orchards. Every year their trees die and need to be taken out, and Nick and his father are always the first ones that those farmers reach out to when they are in need.

 

This element is such an important part of Hunski Hardwoods’ success. Nick notes that all the people his father built relationships with two decades or more ago still reach out and have lasting friendships. Over the years, some of them have passed away, but often their sons or grandsons have taken over the ranches and continue the relationship with Nick and his father.

 

 

 

 

Steve’s Advice Corner

 

“With social media, you’re pretty fluent at all that stuff, and you’re a great content creator. So I’m trying to focus on that. There’s been a challenge of what to post. Everyone uses social media to help grow their business, and it’s just being consistent with it.”

 

• Nick Hunsaker

 

Nick and his father have built Hunski Hardwoods together based on strong relationships with people and an early and effective online presence through SEO and their website. However, in the modern online landscape, having effective social media is arguably the most important aspect of your online presence. Steve is an expert in using social media to its fullest potential, and he helps provide Nick with some much-needed direction.

 

“So there’s a couple of things. One is I kind of call it People, Product, and Process. Those are your three main pillars; for people, that means you, your dad, your subcontractors, anybody that’s part of the process. It’s about showing them and telling stories about them. That’s people.

 

Process means showing pictures of you milling, felling trees, and using the caption to tell the stories from there. Instagram used to be about photos, but it’s more about video right now. The more you can get people to look at your videos; the longer Instagram rewards your page with the algorithm so that you can get more views.

 

The last is the product. This is showing you walking through your yard of the 1000 logs and just saying, ‘Oh, my God, we’ve got so much work to do.’ Please buy these logs off of us, and then you can put a call to action. The product part is also showing, again, just don’t take a picture of the table, take a video of the table, and of you walking around it with the finish on top.”

 

• Steve Larosiliere

 

Website: https://hunskihardwoods.com

 

Instagram: @hunskihardwoods