The Choice Is Yours with Tyler Shaheen of The Southern Craftsmen

 

“I’ve always been someone who, when I’m backed into a corner, I’m more likely to be able to perform better.”

 

• Syler Shaheen

 

Welcome to Building a Furniture Brand with Ethan Abramson, the show that talks about the business behind the furniture business. In this episode, Ethan sits down with Tyler Shaheen, owner of the southern Indiana-based furniture company, The Southern Craftsmen.

 

From borrowed tools and DIY plans off the internet to a full production shop, a collection of his own furniture, and employees. It is safe to say that Tyler has fully committed to his dream of owning his own furniture business. But it wasn’t easy.

 

Tyler’s struggles weren’t only about building furniture or getting clients; he also struggled with deciding to go full time; if it was right for him and his family. But once he made that jump, he never looked back. Follow along as they talk about building a business from the ground up, balancing outsourcing work, ballpark pricing versus final pricing, and much more.

 

 

Starting from Nothing

 

“I was living in Las Vegas with a host family, and I was working in a church out there for residency, which is kind of what I’ve gone to college for was to work in the church to outreach, different things along those lines. In the house of the host family I was living in, they didn’t have any nightstands in the bedroom house thing, and I was given some extra free lumber from a project I’d done a part of in the church and thought I would build some crates so I can kind of use them as nightstands, it seemed pretty easy.

 

So I threw some stuff together with some tools that I’d borrowed in somebody else’s garage. And just use those for my first few pieces of furniture. Six or eight months after I’d built those first few pieces, my wife and I were getting ready to get married and move into an apartment, and we needed some furniture, and we were super broke at the time. So I borrowed these tools again to try to build some furniture with plans that I’d found online.”

 

• Tyler Shaheen

 

Like many other self-taught woodworkers, Tyler searched the internet for building ideas and found farmhouse plans for many essential items. Initially, he built a dining room table, a coffee table, and a bed frame, but most importantly, he fell in love with the process.

 

At Christmas, he asked for tools, and he used them to build more furniture and started showing it to friends and family and taking building requests. After that point, Tyler began to notice that he was building a bit of a business for himself, and it became a pursuit to make money to buy the tools to build and sell more exciting projects.

 

 

What’s in a Name?

 

“It didn’t start as The Southern Craftsmen. When I’d pretty much sold that first piece of furniture, and I thought I wanted to make a little bit extra money doing this, I needed to come up with a name. So I named the business Creative Interiors LV, which I had always hated from the very beginning. I knew from that point that I just needed to have a name, brand things just so it seems legit, and then I’d change it later.

 

Later I was just kind of sitting there one day, and suddenly, I thought, The Southern Craftsmen. I’m from Kentucky; I’m from the south, I live in Southern Nevada. So maybe this can work. I thought about it for a little bit and threw a little logo together, and it has not changed since then. So I just kind of stuck with it.”

 

• Tyler Shaheen

 

Tyler always enjoyed the name from the moment he came up with it, but it was not entirely a spur-of-the-moment decision. He explains that he intentionally made the name plural in ‘craftsmen’ because he always dreamed of the company being bigger than just himself one day. Now, having his own staff, he has made that dream a reality.

 

 

Knowing you Have what it Takes

 

“For those of you who are trying to decide if you want to go into this full time and build furniture full time, just know that it is really important for you to have what it takes just to handle the business side of it. That is going to take up a decent amount of your time. You can’t only build furniture; you have to do some marketing.

 

Don’t spend thousands of dollars on a marketing agency. Still, you have to market yourself to people; you have to talk about your business, show pictures of your furniture, do some small things that can help business coming in. Get a little creative, and then over time, the business will start happening more organically if you’re creating good products, and if you’re treating your clients well.”

 

• Tyler Shaheen

 

As Tyler and Ethan discuss in this episode, building a furniture business is not all fun in games, there is a lot of work involved. But if you put in the time and effort, it provides a level of freedom that other careers just do not match up to. For Tyler, having external goals was one of the most important things to ensure he was safe enough to quit his job with his steady paycheck.

 

Above all, he appreciates that if his daughter is sick or if something needs to be done at home, he doesn’t need to worry about asking his boss for time off. Tyler wanted to be a better dad, a better husband, and to be able to spend more time with friends and family and although there is a price in terms of the responsibility of his company, he found that he could make both things work, which made his choice worth it.

 

Website: https://www.thesoutherncraftsmen.com

 

Instagram: @thesoutherncraftsmen