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

Hi Logan , thanks for joining us today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

I never thought there was the “perfect” or “right” time to start my business. I knew from a young age that I was a very creative person, I just didn’t realize I could make a career out of it. Around the time of my wedding is when I started thinking that I could actually make a career out of my passion. My husband and I made all of our wedding decorations to help save money and ultimately bring our vision to life. We were really good at it; he would cut, sand, stain the wood and I would dream up the pieces and paint on the designs. I received so many compliments and it boosted my confidence and confirmed that this is what I would love to do for work. We both worked full time so in our free time we would make wood signs and I would attempt to sell them on Facebook or at a few craft shows. The “where to start” aspect of owning a business is what ultimately held me back. I really knew nothing about running a business so I lacked confidence in that area. A few years later we moved closer to family and were expecting our first baby! I knew I would not be returning to my job at this point. I’ve always wanted to be a Mom and I couldn’t stand the thought of not being at home with my children. Becoming a mom really gave me the push to start my business. I started Hardwood and Home two months before my son was born and let me tell you if there is a “perfect” or “right” time it’s not when you’re about to have a baby. Shortly after he was born, COVID hit and the world shut down. I wish I would have started my business officially in 2018, right after our wedding. That would have given me two solid years to get the business established and running smoothly before my other full time job as a mom started. Looking back I didn’t understand how much free time I actually had as a newly married twenty something year old and how much time I really could have dedicated to my business. If I had started my business a couple years prior it probably would be much stronger than it is today but you don’t know what you don’t know!

Logan , 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?

Well hello! My name is Logan Boaz, I am a 28 year old wife and mother to two beautiful babies. I love thrifting, birkenstocks and have recently fallen in love with nature (thanks to my son) who lives and breathes outside. I get to juggle my two favorite jobs, motherhood and business. Which means I mostly work when the kids are asleep or with a Grandparent. It gets pretty stressful at times but we are making it work. My business started in late 2019 right before the Pandemic. My husband and I made blanket ladders and sold them to our neighbors. Then we branched out and made corn-hole sets, which he would build and I would paint designs on them. To be honest we hated making these but it was bringing in money and we needed it to grow. After two years of making pretty much anything people asked us to and figuring out that’s not what we wanted to do, we made the decision to switch gears and push our focus on the wedding industry.
The product I am most proud of would be my mountain table numbers. They are currently listed as a “Bestseller” on ETSY, which is very exciting. The mountain table numbers are the most time consuming product we have. We cut, sand, stain, paint, letter all in house. They are a labor of love! What started as a mountain with a number on it has grown into custom mountain range names, elevations and so much more all with the help of my customers and their requests.
When it comes to my business as a whole, I am most proud of how I’ve scaled my business with little capital and a lot of hard work. I do not have a background in business and didn’t have the slightest clue on how to start let alone grow a business. I have educated myself through blog posts, podcasts and my own research. My husband has taught me how to use our power tools. This allows me to operate every aspect of my business by myself (if I wanted to), which I don’t! This year my goal was to hire an assistant to my team and I was actually able to hire two, which will really help with the growth of my business.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Some of my favorite business related podcasts include; Online Marketing Made Easy,The Detailed Diary and The Goal Digger podcast. I took a few business classes in college like Marketing and Business Law but nothing to the degree in which I needed to actually run my own business. These Podcasts dig into the ins and outs of entrepreneurship and what it takes to run your own business.

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

After I had my son I knew I didn’t want to go back to my retail job. The hours were not great and it wasn’t the career I saw myself doing long term. Taking my business full time and having it generate the income I needed to stay home has had its challenges. I began to see growth when I niched down into the wedding industry and stopped taking whatever random custom order came my way. There was a point in my business where I said “yes” to everything because I knew I needed the funds to grow my business. While I am glad that stage has passed for my business, it was completely necessary at the time to scale my business. This year my goal was to hire an assistant to help with the things that take the most time away from me and my family. My husband helps when he can with wood prep but he also has a full time job and I didn’t want him to be responsible for that part of the business all the time. Having an assistant has been instrumental in helping my business grow. I recently hired a second assistant to allow for quicker lead times on my products, more time for me to focus on my children, time for me to add new products/designs, alleviate the workload my husband was responsible for, and overall provide a more organized system. I am extremely proud of myself for all the work I have put in to get to this point and I cannot wait to see how I can continue to scale my business with the help of my two assistants, which happen to be my sister and my best friend. It can’t get any better than that!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hardwoodandhome.com
• Instagram: hardwoodandhomellc
• Facebook: hardwoodandhomellc
• Other: www.etsy.com/shop/HardwoodandHomeLLC

Image Credits
MLE Pictures Sydnee Rayl Johnson