Meet Beau
My story is one of great successes and challenges just like many of you reading this. I come from a middle class family with typical aspirations like go to college, get a good job with benefits, and go on to live a stable boring life… well… momma I tried!
I have never been happy with being average and I have always had big aspirations of success and putting my mark on the world forever. Working in corporate America was a struggle for me, my desire and drive to advance was always greater than the opportunities presented to me so I never found much success or security while participating in the rat race. My entrepreneurial spirit and risk aversion would shape my life and my future.
I had several failed business ideas that were usually started in a rush due to being fired, quitting, or being laid off. I knew I wasn’t happy. I knew I wanted more. I just didn’t have the right idea. Yet. In 2008 I was laid off, for the third time in a year. My stepdad was building a large workshop on his personal property and suggested that I take a couple of weeks sabbatical to reassess my future, get some exercise, and clear my head.
After the first day my stepdad asked me, “What do you think? Do you want to get into building houses?”. I quickly replied, “No, I don’t want to sweat and bleed building things for other people.” Oddly enough, after three days I could see the physical result of my work building his workshop and I had a sense of pride I had not felt before! I used some of my education from my Associates in Mechanical Engineering to build this! Then my next thought is that I can easily turn this into a business! My goal was now to learn everything about building houses from the ground up so that I could become a General Contractor.
The reality I found myself in wasn’t what I expected. Hiring people to work for me proved to be the hardest part. I tried everything to build a team of like minded people, but no matter how much money, autonomy, respect, or anything else I offered people I was met with disappointment. I fired most of the people I hired and some quit on their own freewill. It is A LOT harder to finish a large construction project alone! This will never get me where I want to go.
If you can’t hire great people, invest in yourself.
This is when a major shift occurred and I began to focus and develop my fine woodworking skills and knowledge. I have always had a mind for precision, accuracy, planning, and design so I went “all in” and began marketing myself and my business with an interior trim and interior finish carpentry focus. This was a higher level of skill that I could achieve with tools I already owned, but as you may imagine, I wasn’t satisfied and my personal education of fine woodworking began.
Trial and error, lots of YouTube videos, and lots of teaching myself all about building furniture. That’s how I developed to the level I am at now. And LOTS of new tools. I invested all of the income in buying higher quality tools, tools that allowed me to build better and faster. Tools that gave me capabilities that I didn’t have. These tools opened many doors for my future. Sure, I can build anything with hand tools, but in order to build things quickly and efficiently enough to sell them for a PROFIT it requires power tools. Specialized power tools.
As my knowledge grew, my skill set grew, and my tool collection grew. Track saw, check. Router table, check. High end random orbital sanders, check. Guide rails and jigs for quickly and accurately building cabinetry, check. You get the idea. As my skills and my tool collection grew, so did my capabilities.
Today, I own many thousands of dollars worth of Festool brand power tools because standard brand big box store tools don’t have the precision I require. Some tools like the Festool Domino mortising machine are patented by Festool so there are no options, $1,200 is the price. Sanding is a major time investment so my sanders are a big financial investment, now a $675 random orbital sander makes sense! And the $575 random orbital sander. And the $400 random orbital sander. Oh, and don’t forget about the accessories! To build at the level I am at now, and be profitable, requires the speed and results these machines provide me and the price is suddenly understandable and justified.
My future is set. My business is successful. My reputation is solid. The theme of growth and advancement continues as I now develop my attention to detail to take my work to the NEXT level. This is where the line between furniture and art begins to blur. My education is not complete. Now I study the art of furniture design where proportions, the color and grain of the wood, and the choice of joinery. These things are what blurs the line between furniture and a work of art.
I will never stop learning and developing my craft, the next piece I finish will hopefully be the best thing I ever build.