We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chase and Tarna Dancik a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Chase and Tarna, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
We’re not huge, by any means, but we’re substantially larger than when we started….and our entire way of life had to change for us to get here. We started by simply helping our parents in our free time, but orders started coming in so we worked after hours and on weekends in our garage – while maintaining “real jobs” as well as raising two small children. We moved the business from the garage to a workshop as we grew. Then we sold our home. The truth is, we were working those “real jobs” and making those hard financial decisions to fund most of the woodworking that we were doing – we weren’t turning any kind of profit. Woodworking was fun and a hobby and provided an outlet for us to build things with our kids for ourselves and our friends, but it kept growing because we cared about quality and we cared about our customers. Because we were working our tails off in regular full time jobs, we were able to use any extra money earned to, piece by piece, start buying tools and equipment to do the things that we wanted to do. Nothing came easy and absolutely nothing came free. It wasn’t until just a year ago that one of us had to choose to finally leave that real job for the woodshop. That final leap was the hardest so far – it was definitely a risk, but a risk that has paid off.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Like I mentioned, we started by helping our parents. It blossomed as Chase started selling some of the live edge wood that he and his dad had purchased to cut into dimensional lumbar. Then we started getting our own custom orders for live edge furniture. We now offer live edge and farm-style tables, mantels, bars, shelves, benches, signs and other custom work. We’re EcoPoxy Epoxy dealers and do a good bit of epoxy work including signs, river tables and accent pieces. The reason we’ve grown the way we have is because, although it isn’t always easy, we make every effort to include the customer in the process, keep them informed and communicate expectations and timelines clearly. There are always unforeseen issues that can arise, but when we make an effort to keep those lines of communication open and the customer is kept in the loop, then we can work through those issues together. I’m very proud to say that we stand by our products. We take the time to really understand what our clients are looking for then do our very best to produce the most superior products that are durable as well as beautiful.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
The best way to gain more clients is to be good to the ones that you already have. Our greatest number of clients come from word of mouth. We post on social media and try to keep online information current – but it’s existing customers coming back or sending friends and family in that really keeps us going. That all comes from providing an outstanding product from the beginning, communication, excellent customer service, and the willingness to “make it right” if (and when) something goes wrong. It doesn’t make us any money and it doesn’t teach anyone any lessons to be rude, over priced or provide “cheap” work. Do it right the first time, treat your customers right all the time, learn from your mistakes every time and be willing to do it all again
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Funding the business didn’t come easy. We never took out a business loan or anything like that. Those options are absolutely available and we strongly suggest any upcoming entrepreneur speak to their bank about what may be available to them. But, for us, with student loans, a mortgage, car payments and life in general, another loan didn’t seem like the most responsible option. So, we hunkered down and worked harder. We both worked a standard day shift job, picked the kids up from daycare, then did wood working in the evenings between dinner and baths and on weekends. It took us about 8 years of that to build the business up to where it needed one of us full time. We certainly still have debts to pay, and it may not be the ideal path for everyone, but it worked well for us – made our family relationship stronger and taught us a better understanding of budgeting.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.scslabhouse.com
- Instagram: @theslabhouse
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scslabhouse