We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sheldon Zook. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sheldon below.

Sheldon, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.

We don’t donate a percentage exactly. But our goal is to serve those around us and Honor God by doing that. All of our shop employs are involved in some type of emergency response service. EMS, Search and Rescue, Fire, and etc. So when the pager goes off they drop whatever they are doing and go help. As a business we support that by paying them for their time serving as well as working. So it doesn’t effect their pay check if they respond to a medical emergency or spend 4 days on a SAR mission.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We started in 2006 with the idea of building rustic log furniture. The market was not very strong for that, but we soon began getting requests for other types of woodworking, and that changed into requests for kitchen cabinets. We now are about 90% kitchens, bathrooms, or closets. We do high quality work, and use high quality materials. We actually do a lot of things I’ve never seen in another cabinet shop. But we feel our customers should get the best product we can produce. There are very few components that we buy in at this point. We buy sheet goods and rough lumber and build everything from there.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We started small and grew slowly. I think I had 2000.00 in my pocket and some construction tools when I decided to start. With one exception I believe we always paid cash for expansions, equipment, and growth. One time when I was just starting we had a huge finishing job to do. I used a credit card to purchase a AAA pump. Other than that we upgrade, grow, or add as we have cash to do so.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Wow. Where to start.

Dave Ramsey’s Entree leadership program was huge for us.

For books, the list goes on and on.

Excellence Wins
Extreme Ownership
The Dichotomy of Leadership
Eat That Frog
Unreasonable Service
It’s Your Ship
Thou Shalt Prosper
Everything written by Patrick Lencioni
Entreleadership
Good to Great.

And many many more.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://woodinteriors.biz
• Instagram: @cabinet_pro
• Facebook: Sheldon’s Wood Interiors
• Linkedin: Sheldon Zook
• Youtube: @cabinetshopchronicles4198