We recently connected with Mike Reese and have shared our conversation below.

Mike, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career.

I would love to see more arts and tech/shop classes at all levels. These classes are where I found my interest niche and truly started exploring that side of my abilities. I believe, most kids would feel less pressure if they had more outlets to be creative and express their understanding of the world. Great teachers saw my passion from a distance and helped to guide me to where I was meant to be, a tech school not far away. I vividly remember the top two considerations I had prior to a life-changing conversation with a teacher. I wanted to go to culinary school but knew that wasn’t the life for me in the end. I also was interested in the war and joining the Army. Baffled by this, my tech teacher suggested a specific place and major for me to go check out and it was a perfect fit. What I would learn there is directly related to what I do now and love which is manufacturing engineering. Young minds need more creative outlets, and more chances to find what makes their gears turn inside. Without teachers allowing me to love the shop classes and excel in them, I wouldn’t be doing this today, and that is a fact!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Mike Reese, Age 33. I grew up local to Dauphin and Lebanon County enjoying building and crafting all sorts of things from gardens to small structures in the woods I was always tinkering in one way or another or exploring nature. I always wanted to be some sort of manufacturer, and after finding CAD and CNC machining to be one of my valuable passions I was always hoping to find a way to make a business out of that skill set. Creating things from scratch was certainly a common denominator I was finding, from cooking to making crafty items, I loved it all and was always finding new interests. After the passing of my grandpa, my father moved onto his property where there was a shop we wanted to maximize the use of. We decided on using my CNC and CAD skills and outfitting the shop with a laser as well as using my dad’s passion for woodworking to dynamically make products and a start a business together. Fast forward and we now are a laser engraving shop with a heavy focus on engravable and wooden products, mostly in the kitchen and barware category, as well as engraving tumblers and some custom signage. We can provide single gift items as well as orders of thousands of pieces to larger volume clients. We work closely with local businesses small and large to provide gift and promotional solutions. We work with local clubs and teams to provide awards and gifts for annual meetings and events as well as fundraisers to help create new exciting options that can be personalized. We truly enjoy meeting so many new people and getting to create genuine relationships through our service. We are proud to have done work for so many awesome local companies and continue growing the network of great clients.

Around the same time that we got into our shop, we also acquired honey bees and soon the enjoyment grew to an addiction, and that grew into a side business. As Quittie Hollow Apiary, We now have our honey in a handful of locations like grocery stores, coffee shops, and bakeries as well as gift shops. I truly enjoy the unique agricultural process that beekeeping is, from tending to them in the fields to extracting and getting the honey into bottles and on shelves it all requires special knowledge and tools that for some reason I just can’t get enough of. We have around 100 bee colonies each year at the peak of the season and have become friends with lots of local beekeepers and business owners through the growing process.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Every batch of things we make or gift that goes out into the world is out there somewhere, and that’s just cool. Lots of the items we produce create happiness one way or another and is exciting to know it is a stream of positive energy that gets put into the world through physical exchanges of the items and the process it takes to help the client get exactly what they wanted. Seeing people light up when they see the finished product/s… That’s the good stuff!

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Who not how
10x is easier than 2x
The Gap and the Gain

Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy

These 3 books simply changed the way I look at life as a business owner, a father, a husband, and a friend and it just fires me up to share them!

Gap and Gain = happiness overall a MUST for all humans
Who not how = permission to delegate and the value
10x over 2x = rocket fuel for bettering my life and business

Contact Info:

• Website: https://QuittieHollow.com
• Instagram: @quittiehollow
• Facebook: Quittie Hollow Custom Products