We were lucky to catch up with Derek Schaefer recently and have shared our conversation below.

Derek, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

Many entrepreneurs struggle with friends or family not supporting their business or buying their products. I have also had this issue, not one family member has ever bought a single piece of furniture from me, not even a cutting board. I have occasionally talked a couple good spirited friends to take a chance on me in the beginning and at a very low price.

Many people are offended by this and it used to bother me a lot, but the truth is that your friends and family will never see you as the person you are becoming on your journey. To your family, you are always going to be 17 years old and they psychologically can’t see past that. Most people live the same 6 months over and over again for their entire lives, they don’t handle or process change well. Many entrepreneurs hear, “You’ve changed” from people close to them and it’s usually not meant in a positive manner. To most people change is scary and avoided but to the entrepreneur we don’t even call it change, we call it growth.

But guess what, it doesn’t matter. You can’t build a business by only selling to your friends and family and when they do buy, you wont get honest feedback. I hear all the time that I could never charge the prices we do or make the things we make, that’s a good sign. Go sell to the people who value your product and believe in you and if you don’t have haters, you’re doing something wrong.

Derek, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I got my start in custom furniture the same way most people do, I was broke. When you’re broke you don’t have the luxury of going out and buying the quality that you want, you often have to make it yourself. I didn’t have money but I had time and an obsessive personality. I started making furniture for my own home to save money, that ended up being a very expensive endeavor. They say the best way to make a small fortune in woodworking is to start with a large fortune.

I had no idea how good of a fit woodworking would be for me, I loved to work with my hands, I hated sitting at a desk and my background in music gave me the creative drive to make something beautiful. Because of that combination we have been able to thrive while others don’t survive. We don’t just make a well crafted piece, we make a well designed piece. Who wants a well built table in their home that they don’t think represents them or their values?

Many of our clients have been waiting years to find the right table for their home. Sometimes we slightly modify a design the client found but it wasn’t exactly how they wanted it or other times we design a table from the ground up that is one of a kind and completely original. It is extremely hard to go furniture shopping and find a piece that is made from a solid hardwood and to the quality their family deserves. Unfortunately, most people end up settling on something they don’t want and paid too much for. Turns out that you can spend a fortune on cheap furniture.

Here at the Maker’s shop we believe the furniture in your home is important and worth investing in. You will literally spend your life around it. I would rather have few things of high quality, than many things of low quality. We are proud to help our clients achieve those goals with every purchase from us. We help design a table for their space, their style and their values.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

Starting a business is tough, you have to know how to do everything from setting up the llc, bank accounts, payroll, hiring, insurance, that’s not even including providing the product or service! When we first started, I know how to do only a couple of those things… But the hardest one to conquer was marketing. Acquiring clients in the custom furniture industry is extremely difficult and then they don’t have a long lifetime value which means they typically only make one purchase.

We took a major risk opening up our storefront in Canyon Lake and it almost didn’t pay off. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, how good you are at selling or how passionate you are about your vision, the knowledge of marketing supersedes all of it. Most businesses go under after months of sitting around doing a drug called hopium. They hope someone will call to place and order, they hope customers will continue to walk in their store, they hope that their last client will tell all their friends and then they will all buy and when that doesn’t work anymore they switch to a new drug called blamium. They blame the government, taxes, inflation, their website, heck they even start to blame their customer! How do I know this? Because I’ve been there and done that.

There was only one thing missing on my list of reasons for not succeeding and the was me. I knew I had to take responsibility for my problems if I ever wanted to succeed. In order for things to change, I had to change. We took a small risk by hiring a marketer that specializes in woodworking businesses to help us get clients. We really hoped we could just pay someone else and it would save our business. But that marketer failed so badly we even got a refund, but you can’t refund all the money that was spent on ads. Money we desperately needed was gone with nothing to show.

Turns out sometimes taking a little risk will hurt your business, I have had more luck taking BIG risk. I found a mentorship program for marketing that specialized in brick and mortar businesses but it was four times as expensive. I would not go out without knowing that I tried everything I could so I pulled the trigger on it. I learned how to do the marketing myself and have had great success ever since. I now even coach and mentor other woodworkers to learn how to market their business and not have to pay the “dumb tax” that I have had to over the years. The truth is no one knows your business like you do and no one is coming to save you. I don’t do this because its easy, I do this because I thought it was going to be easy.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

Our business does not have any extra sources of income and I highly guard against having multiple businesses in your business. Some of the best advice I have ever received was “niches get the riches”, this means the more specific problem your product solves, the higher perceived value it has in the market, Dan Kennedy once said that we wants to sell the perfect set of golf clubs to a one eyed left handed golfer, I bet those would be expensive! Broadening your services tends to leave customers viewing you as a commodity and seeing nothing special in what you provide. Now in the beginning you should probably say yes to everything, saying yes when others say no will get you a long way but you will be taking all the jobs that no one else wanted. The more success you have the more you have the ability to say no. When I see a business that has no clear direction and offers too many services I see a business that won’t be around much longer they might already be doing that drug called blamium again.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.makersshopllc.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makersshopllc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/makersshopllc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-makers-shop