We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jacky Luetschwager . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jacky below.

Jacky, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

I consider myself a third generation “picker.” My childhood was spent rummaging, digging in the dump – for real- alongside my mom and grandpa. We would often pick up interesting little pieces of furniture, and my grandpa would refinish them and sell them. I started by making Barbie furniture for the neighbor girls using leftover pieces of 2×4 from our family house remodel. My dad would help me by nailing a few nails on the top of the board to make rabbit ears for the TV set and I would take my crayons and markers and draw seen on the wood to make it look a picture on the screen. I often would pick up reasonably priced small items while rummaging with my mom and resell them. Some children had lemonade stands. I had a junk stand in the front yard on the sidewalk. I always wanted to own my own business. I just didn’t know how I would do it. I started working as a receptionist for a law office and the probate assistant’s husband was an auctioneer. When she found out a new a thing or two about antiques, she offered me a job to work for the auction company on the weekends. This lead to my knowledge on how to box out an estate, how to set up a sale and how to deal with customers. I even went to auctioneering school and have sold items in an auction setting. One of our clients at the law office, who owned rental properties, made me an offer that changed my life. He said if I would go and clean out this house I could have everything in it for free. So off my husband and I went and came back with a couple truckloads of items. I set up a sale at our home and was thrilled to make $300. Once the word got around that I would do this, I was offered opportunities to come in and either conduct an estate sale for the family or just buy it all out. This was 1988 and I continue to do this on a part-time basis until 1995 when we moved into our farm and I chose to do this and quit my law office job. I wanted to stay at home with our children. I added my art, started a flea market at our farm, which now takes over our whole little town in Ringle, Wisconsin. My husband build me a shop/studio where I periodically host sales. Enter 2019 just before Covid instead of doing an estate sale for a family. I offered to put all of their items online on a Facebook group I created as part of my business. Fast forward to 2023. I know rent a little office space where people drop off items to sell and pick up items they bought it’s called Town Hall Trinkets Online Estate Sales.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Jacky Luetschwager, and I own a business called Town Hall Trinkets , LLC. Over the years, I’ve had to reinvent the things that I chose to do and offered to my clients based on stages of life I was in. I am most proud of the fact that I was able to find a way of always incorporating the gifts God gave me into a way to generate money for my family.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I’ve had families refer me to other people, and I’ve been told it’s because of my honesty and work ethic. All I can really say about that is every time I am hired to do a job for someone I always think of how I would want that to be done for myself or my mom and dad if that were them. I don’t sugarcoat things if somethings not gonna sell I’m very forward and telling them right away. I don’t need them to believe that their estate is worth more than what it is. I am very good at estimating what I feel their personal property is worth due to my years of experience. I have many examples, but I will share one. We are working on a house that we were selling online for a client who is mother was recently put into a nursing home. While finding items to put in lots for pictures, we found an envelope filled with a substantial amount of cash. Now we did find that, we could’ve ran it through as a sale item, and received our commission, but I couldn’t that didn’t seem right, even though I was advised to do so, I chose not to. I called the daughter and told her to come to the home that I had a present for her. That’s how you build a good reputation.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

It wasn’t really a lesson I had to unlearn, rather I had to switch my view on competition. Every business has competitive aspects and it’s hard not to compare and compete. I’ve always just placed my trust and my faith that whatever sale or family comes my way it’s because it’s the Lord’s will for me to do it. We recently had a sale and a lady messaged me and said “ you might want to change your day because to other companies we’re having sales the same day” because ours was in the country and theirs in town. I said “that’s OK there’s enough customers to go around” and that’s true and when you have an attitude that is charitable and sharing it’s noticeable to your buyers and customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: Dicky Birds Nest (blog)
• Facebook: Town Hall Trinkets