We recently connected with John Enger and have shared our conversation below.

John, appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so one thing we think people don’t talk about nearly enough is investments – either time or money. What’s one of the best or worst investments you’ve made and what did you learned from the experience?

The best investment I ever made was buying my Amish built sawmill. As I first started scaling up my woodworking business, I began to realize just how expensive materials were. Most people know how much they might spend on a few dozen 2x4s from the local Home Depot. Buying massive beams for timber framing, or high end hardwoods for furniture is so much worse. The cost of materials alone would often eat up most of my profit.

I knew if I wanted to make a living as a woodworker, I needed to find a way to get the wood for a whole lot less. I figured I should take back control of the means of production and buy myself a sawmill. But sawmills are expensive too. The kind I wanted, from a conventional manufacturer was, at the time, about $25,000. Worth every penny, but I didn’t have it. It seemed a bit hopeless, but then I remembered something.

A decade before I’d been hanging out with my father-in-law at a farm equipment auction in the middle of rural Minnesota. There’d been a young Amish guy demonstrating a little sawmill he’d built himself. I’d never seen anything like it at the time, and the memory stuck with me — so much so that I still remembered his name and the settlement where he lived.

I found him, and he he built me a fantastic mill for a quarter of the price of the factory made mills. It hasn’t gone wrong once in three years. It’s sawn everything I’ve thrown at it, and it has completely changed my business model. Before I had a sawmill, the cost of my timber frames broke down to about half labor and half materials. I only got to keep about 50% of each commission. Now I can cut a few trees from my overgrown forest land, mill them in an afternoon, and keep the whole commission. Plus, I’ve been able to build up my infrastructure here at Enger Grove with insanely low financial investment, because I can generate most of the materials myself.

It’s always worth owning the means of production. And if you can get the required machinery from someone who also owns the means of his production, it will cost a whole lot less.

John, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m the head, and only craftsman at Enger Grove, my woodworking business. I specialize in high end custom furniture, as well as custom timber frame structures.

I got my start in woodworking as a kid. Something about the permanence of the craft always worked for me. I knew that if I built a thing very well, I could reasonably expect it to outlive me. This ethic is still at the heart of what I do. There’s a Japanese saying: “A table is not complete until it has been used for 100 years.” I design and build things to last at least that long, and to be as beautiful then as when they leave my shop. More beautiful, if they’ve been cared for.

I take a lot of pride in the things I build — in the way I build them. Most modern woodworkers aren’t willing to take the time to custom fit joinery, or to cut a tusked through tenon. Driving a few big screw is faster, and probably makes better sense financially. But this is my vocation. It’s worth doing right.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I’ve gotten a few clients through social media, but most of my client base, by far, came to me through word of mouth. For the first few years running Enger Grove, I didn’t turn down a single commission. If the client couldn’t pay much, I’d under charge, massively. I’d take trades. I built furniture in exchange for paintings, maple syrup, and old tools. This, on paper, was a terrible business move. I lost money and time. But it’s the best thing I did for Enger Grove.

Those first clients were extremely happy with my work. They told their friends. Their friends commissioned much larger, more profitable things from me. I’ve built five figure dining tables for the friends of people who once bought one of my inexpensive rolling pins. To be a woodworker, you actually have to work with wood. To do that you have to build anything people ask you to build, at just about any price. At least for awhile.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Early in the process of scaling up Enger Grove, I was trying to get some timber frame commissions. If you don’t know what a timber frame is, think about those big pavilion structures you often see in city parks. A roof supported by huge wooden beams that all fit and lock together like a big jigsaw puzzle. I wanted to build those, but I didn’t have a lot of great examples of my work. It’s hard to get people to trust that you can do a thing, if you can’t show them great pictures of the last one you did.

I decided to just build a big timber frame on spec, erect it in my yard and try and sell it. I cut joinery all winter and raised the thing in the spring. It was gorgeous. The joinery was impeccable. Every surface was block planed by hand to a perfectly smooth finish. And nobody bought it. A lot of people saw my great photos of it, and hired me to build other things, but nobody bought the huge timber frame sitting in my yard.

Building things on spec is always a risk, but this one almost didn’t pay off. After two years I was starting to worry the frame was going to just rot into the ground. As a last ditch effort, we took out a Facebook ad. Within a few days we’d sold it. I’ve never been more relieved.

Contact Info:

• Website: engergrove.com
• Instagram: @enger_grove
• Facebook: engergrove