Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jordan & Cassie Busse. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jordan & Cassie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

When building tangible items, such as furniture and pottery, you think a lot about where this piece will be in twenty-forty years. Thinking about our legacy pushes us to build quality pieces that will last for generations. After we’re gone, we hope people still get to enjoy sitting around a table that we built thinking about all the hours that went into creating it.

Jordan & Cassie, 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 (Jordan) began building furniture as a hobby in 2015. After 6 years of building furniture in a shop at my parent’s farm, my wife, Cassie, and I purchased a building in downtown Lawrenceburg to use as a showroom and workshop. We both quit our full-time careers. I was a nurse in the ICU at local Cincinnati hospitals, and Cassie was a 5th-grade teacher in our hometown. After seven long months of renovations on our 150-year-old building, we opened our storefront in November of 2021. Our showroom is filled with quality-made wood furniture, cutting boards, pottery, and other home décor. The thing that we are most proud of is that everything that is sold here has been created by us. We are involved in every step of the building process. I mill and dry the lumber at our family farm, then bring it down to the woodshop that is in the back of the storefront. There, I turn it into custom-ordered pieces as well as furniture that can be purchased from the storefront. Cassie also has a pottery studio at the store where she throws, glazes, and fires all of the pottery that we sell.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

When Cassie was in her last year of college, she asked me (Jordan) to build her a desk for her apartment. I had some background knowledge and tools at my disposal because my father had been a finish carpenter. I had always been interested in how things are made but I had never built something from start to finish before. Using my dad’s advice and Youtube I was able to her desk. I continued to build pieces for friends and family on my days off from nursing. I used most of the revenue to buy new tools and it slowly began to take up more of my time. In 2021, seven years later, we decided we wanted try doing it full time. We bought a building in downtown Lawrenceburg and created a 2,500 sq feet workshop and pottery studio with a showroom.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

We sell smaller pieces including cutting boards and coffee mugs on our own website. We tried Etsy before, but it is very saturated with similar products which makes it hard to stand out. You do obviously get a lot more traffic on sites like Etsy and Amazon but they also have fees that can add up. We decided to stick with our own website and keep it smaller.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://j-busse-woodworking.square.site/
• Instagram: @Jbussewoodworking
• Facebook: J Busse Woodworking