Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brett Johnson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Brett, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you as a business owner?
For pretty much my entire life the thought of doing the same tasks the same way every day has been something I’ve gone out of my way to avoid. From sweeping the shop, to mowing grass, to changing diapers. I’ve always approached tasks with the mindset of trying a different technique to see if I can do something better, faster, etc.
Prior to Wane + Flitch I was a home performance contractor. In an effort to give employees opportunity additional pay I setup a program where my field techs could make simple upsells between $100 & $500 in value at job sites where these scopes of work may not have been included in the sales person generated scope of work. All of the upsell scopes generally took between 30min and 1hr to complete. If they made an upsell I would give them 50% of the gross revenue of the upsell(s).
After a couple months of implementing the upsell program I noticed that only 1 of my 9 field techs had made an upsell. This spurred me to hold a meeting with my field techs to get feedback on how the upsell program was going. It was very clear, very quickly that the mere thought of asking customers to make additional purchases actually stressed most of them out. They didn’t want to be sales reps, they just wanted to perform scopes of work on a work order and it left them feeling like the potential money was just an unacheivable thing I put in front of them to sound like I supported my employees and wanted to provide as much upward wage potential as I could.
Until that point I always implemented programs and opportunities based on what would be attractive to me if I were in someone’s shoes on a job site. My takeaway was that some people actually thrive in an environment where they do the same tasks the same way every day. In fact, most become more efficient and improve their quality of work through repetition which in turn makes them feel good about what they’ve done for the day. It also shocked me that it had never occurred to me that what I viewed as opportunity someone else could view as a barrier or create stress in the work environment. I had always heard “everyone is different” but it never registered that I could become a better manager/business owner by understanding differences and putting people in positions to succeed.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
The story that lead me to Wane + Flitch is a story of coincidence that’s become a smile of reflection. 9 years ago I was a home performance contractor financially reeling from the lessons of growing my business too fast. The guy guy that did my print and marketing lived near my shop and every once in a while he’d stop by friday after noon and we’d sit out back and talk business over a beer. One friday we were having beers and a random car pulled up. A guy got out of the car and I instantly recognized him as a person who had called me to their house to estimate some work. I never gave this person their estimate because he lived near the shop (Tacoma’s East side), was my age (roughly 30), and my only remedies for his project were pretty expensive. As soon as I recognized him I yelled out “You must be looking for your bid!?” He laughed and said “well, I’ll still take it, but I actually wanted to talk to you about renting some space.”
I had recently sublet a portion of my warehouse to a fabricator as I was digging out of the hole from growing my business too fast which he noticed and spurred him to ask about space. I asked what he was doing and he replied “live edge slabs.” I had never heard of that, so he had to show me a picture. I was renting the building I was operating in from my grandfather who was an architect/designer, and helped me find space as I was starting my home performance company. We walked around, and found a corner of the shop that would be suitable for his needs and away he went.
I was super burned out on home performance and after a couple months of watching him work on his slabs I could see that he had inventory and he knew what he was doing, but it looked like I might be able to help him with sales & some equipment I had. I didn’t really have any money to come to the table with and I knew IF he was interested in a parntership we would need money for print & marketing amongst other things. I called my print and marketing buddy and told him what I was thinking. After he and I talked a little we decided to approach “the wood guy” about a parntership.
We got together and ultimately expressed unanimous interest in partnering. Jon Sayre, Jeff Wolff, and myself decided we would become Tacoma Timber. However, we soon found out that long time Tacoma lumber mill, Manke Lumber, owned the name Tacoma Timber. This sent us deep into the “lumber thesarus” where we arrived at Wane “the live edge of a board/slab” and Flitch “A slab of timber”. The rest, as they say, is history.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
When we formed we came up with a pretty unique way to put together initial capital.
Jon came to the table with sellable inventory
Jeff came to the table with a website, print, & marketing goods
I came to the table with rent free space for the business to initially operate from.
Initially we had no employees, and essentially no expenses so all of our sales became the captial from which we began to grow.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
Early on at Wane + Flitch we were 100% focused on having the biggest slabs on the market and being known for having the same. With this in mind every time we got an opportunity we were buying logs that were 5-6″ diameter. One day a logger called us and had an 11′ diameter spruce log from somewhere out on the penninsula. Our sawmill maxes out at 6’3″ wide and even though we really wanted an 11′ diameter log we had to settle for the 3rd log up on the tree which was 6’1 at the big end, 5’10 at the small end, and 31″ long. The log weighed over 22,000 lbs, so we couldn’t even move it once it was off the truck because our two forklifts combined lift capacity was 21,000lbs. Our mill’s max lenght cut was 24′, so there was an ongoing debate on what length to cut it as well which would drastically impact how the potential slabs it yeilded could be used.
There it sat for about 2 years while we worked on finding a use for it, and nothing. As we approached year 3 of sitting there we started to get concerned about bugs getting into it and destroying it. We HAVE GOT to find a use for this thing before it’s too late, we thought! Then one day our sales rep called and said “A designer from New York called with a project that needs a log 6′ in diameter and 30′ long. Can we find one?” We replied open the back door and you’ll see one as close to that spec as you’re going to get!
That log was cut into sections used as booth separators and now lives at the Oakland Colliseum in “the Tree House Bar”.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.waneandflitch.com
- Instagram: @waneandflitch
- Twitter: facebook.com/waneandflitch
- Youtube: youtube.com/WaneFlitchTacoma
Image Credits
IMG_8554 – Brett Johnson, Jon Sayre, Jeff Wolff IMG_8165 – Jeff Wolff _DSC1306 – Jon Sayre