We were lucky to catch up with Kurt Ballash recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kurt, thanks for joining 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 started woodworking in my garage to help with pain associated with injuries from being in the military. It helped so much, and I found that other veterans were often in my garage with me which led me to a new purpose. Realizing that it wasn’t just helping other veterans find a hobby that released a natural happy but helping them decide something out of the box in their transition out of the military. We all now had a safe place to share our stories and a place to stop the pain. I then decided to take off to the next level and leased a building for our grand opening in February of 2020. The hardships that follow are not for the weak as that was not only the month that COVID began shutting things down, but a month later, I lost my wife to a massive heart attack. We continued to push through and now three years later are not only a full thriving woodworking company that specializes in furniture that accommodates to anyone’s home just the way they want it custom made but we also hold woodworking workshops free for veterans and active duty soldiers to come and continue to learn a new skill and we also rent out shop space free or at low cost to those military individuals who don’t have the space to have the proper machinery to do what they love.
We had to gather slowly all the necessary shop equipment to build and start aside from what I started with in my garage and have grown incredibly these last three years.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Kurt Ballash and I started woodworking at a young age as my father and grandfather were both woodworkers for a living. While my grandfather and dad would be in the shop creating beautiful projects, I would be learning how to drive nails into boards. I had no idea that that passion they both held dearly, would lead me into something that I am so passionate about after my military career was over. We provide any custom furniture build you can think of. Our motto is, “If it’s made out of wood, we don’t say no”. What sets us apart is we do not use nails or screws. Everything we build is built with incredible joinery, mortis and tenon, dove tails and is built to last generations. What I am most proud of is my ability to have this place to help others figure out who they are, but to provide a life and purpose to the handful of employees I have currently. We also offer internships and transitioning into job opportunities for other veterans.
We also offer retail items such as cutting boards, coasters, whiskey decanter boxes, whiskey and cigar trays, cigar trays, chess boards, beer/tool caddy, charcuterie boards made from both domestic and exotics and we also have a wide select option of lumber for other woodworkers in both domestics and exotics. We have a boss laser machine that allows us to customize any project as well!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The journey that illustrates my resiliency is making it through COVID following the loss of my wife. There were so many times that I wanted to quit with the heart ache of loss and the absence of who helped me create and execute this vision. We still all keep her in the things that we create to keep her memory alive and have a goal of being the “light in the community” which was her vision.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

There was a point after my late wife passed that I didn’t have an office manager. Someone to keep up with the books and help make sure I could focus on building while the calls and emails and everything else within the office was cared for. Once I hired an office manager, we began realizing how far we were behind on many things that weren’t being managed. There were several months where we barely made payroll, but somehow, we always made it with a saving job that would get us through. For the last year, we have been so consistent and caught up that we haven’t had to worry about it really at all. We continue to show growth by learning a routine and schedule that works for the shop

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ballashwoodworks.com
• Instagram: ballash_woodworks
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BallashWoodworks
• Linkedin: Ballash Woodworks LLC

Image Credits
Alexander Scott Felice