Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tim Gauntt. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Tim, appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
I love this question, because my story of “Risk” isn’t a single instance. Risk is an every day, week and month experience. Risk can be a very subjective word depending on the kind of person you are. To me, risk can show up as making split second decisions about 10 things. Or, it could be one massive decision that if done incorrectly could ruin the life you’ve spent so much time building. The difference is what you believe the future holds for YOU. For me, “Risk” has become a word that I’ve grown to respect.
In my young experience, Risk has everything to do with confidence. If I didn’t learn how to control my level of confidence there’d be no chance I could learn from mistakes. It’s unfortunate because this is a double edged sword. I had to learn how to become comfortable with failing. This led me to figure out how to “fail confidently”. No one is perfect, and to hold myself to that kind of standard would set me up for true failure. Once I figured out that the size of risks were scaling with the size of my business, I was able to gain more and more confidence with making the right “risky” decisions. The best way to learn is from creating your own experience, but if you don’t have the confidence to fail then there’s no chance of creating that experience.
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?
Hello! My name is Tim Gauntt, Owner and Head Carpenter of Gauntt Board Company located in Mission, Kansas.
Currently, I’m still a full time associate at Cerner Corporation here in Kansas City. That means I’m fully running a business and working a 40 (or more) hour week. However, come October, the plan is to step away from Cerner and begin my next phase of business. Gauntt Board company began with a little inspiration from my wife, Emily. She was looking to buy a charcuterie board for the housewarming party we never ended up having (thanks COVID). We shopped around and I began to realize how few options there were for unique, high quality boards in our area. I wondered what went into making something that wasn’t just another piece of clutter sitting on our countertop. From that moment on, I designed and built my wife a board and I haven’t stopped since.
Currently, GBC is focusing on developing a few different staple items. This still Includes charcuterie boards and butcher blocks but now I’m starting to introduce coasters, bottle openers and eventually tumblers. I’ve even gotten into the Conditioner game with my very own food safe and trademarked wood conditioner. The naming of my product came when I was on my way home from my hometown of Manhattan, Kansas. I was thinking of catchy names for anything to do with Charcuterie and came up with the idea for Coochie Conditioner! Coochie Conditioner is the fix to those pesky dry wood issues at home. It’s been incredible to watch it take on a life and develop to have its own product line and website.
As for childhood, I was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas. I went to school in Manhattan all the way from preschool to graduating College at Kansas State University. I grew up with a “dad of all trades” and a mom who knew how to stay organized and teach me the importance of being professional. My parents and family helped me learn the importance of morals and how to eventually think for myself. I’d like to credit my dad with the ability to teach me the vast amount of knowledge that I’ve used as a foundation when it comes to carpentry and creativity. To this day, my dad is still in maintenance and teaches me new things almost every time I ask. Which brings me to that label of a “maintenance man”, it’s crazy to me how much this man knows when it comes to heating & air, plumbing, electrical, mechanical, structural and carpentry. The only thing missing behind his name is Engineer. As for my mom, I’d like to credit her with helping me build a foundation of direction and purpose. She always loves to remind me of a childhood story from Stonehouse, and for those of you not from Manhattan, Stonehouse was K-State’s “in-demand” Pre-K school. This is where she learned that I was a “negotiator”, and would attempt to make trades with the teachers to get out of having to do something. As a parent, there’s two ways of looking at this, first, a kid that didn’t want to try new things and looked for any opportunity to not do something. Or second, I was smart enough to try and find a way out of situations I didn’t want anything to do with and temp people with ultimatums. She quickly helped me realize that this was a large part of my foundation in life. If I didn’t want to do something or put up with it, I’d either give an ultimatum or know my worth and walk away. Which can be a hard lesson to learn in life.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
It amazes me at just how perfect the timing is for this question. It’s currently halfway through September and I’m right on the verge of making the final jump here in October. I started my Company on October 5th of 2020 and now almost exactly 2 years later, me and my wife are in the final phases of our plan to make this my full time job.
Setting this up was no simple task, and even though I’ve spent the past half year getting prepared for these upcoming days, I can’t believe it’s already here. It’s truly one of the scariest things I’ve done but everything I’ve planned and seen in the upcoming months has given me an incredible amount of confidence in my business. I’ve tried to think of anything and everything that could go wrong, but knew from the beginning that there would be so many things that I couldn’t/can’t imagine happening.
Some of my biggest milestones are still to come, but the few that I’ve hit are huge in my eyes. I’ve been able to convert my entire garage into a shop that includes a CNC machine, 80w laser engraver, vacuum and air filtration system. These machines along with creating a large client base and on the verge of establishing my biggest contract to date. The biggest milestone is that I’ve done all of this while still being full time at Cerner. In my opinion, I’ve been doing all of this over a two year span with both hands tied behind my back. However, I’d never trade the time I’ve spent developing and learning everything before taking my final jump. If I didn’t feel like I was about to leave opportunities on the table then I’m not sure I’d be this willing or confident to step away from the safest job I’ve ever had.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
As I’ve said before, I started this business in October, 2020. My first real opportunity to show who I was and what I could do came about a month after opening. I started to put together a spreadsheet of different Cheese Shops around the Kansas City area, I set my eyes on one in particular called Geo’s Cheese. I walked in about a week after finding this place on Google Maps and immediately talked to the owner, Spencer. I remember walking into his office and sitting opposite him with a very large wood desk in-between us. He slightly chucked, almost in disbelief, and asked if there was any way I’d be willing and able to make an order of roughly 70-120 small, paddle shaped boards. He seemed in disbelief because there was already a small company in town he’d been talking to about fulfilling this order. Spencer told me that he hadn’t heard back from them for weeks and stated that he felt on the brink of desperation because these boards were a part of an opportunity he got to fulfill a large order of corporate Christmas boxes for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City.
Basically this opportunity turned into a massive learning experience on how to “mass produce” items in my small shop with the bare minimum of tools and space. In the end, I was able to fulfill all 80 boards and solidify a long lasting friendship with Spencer, who now owns an extremely fast growing cigar company, Compadre’s Fine Cigars. By Spencer being in the Cigar business he asked me to try my hand at Ashtrays. The ashtrays I’ve designed have ended up being one of my best sellers and always performs well around Christmas time.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.GBCKC.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gaunttboardco/
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/GaunttBoardCompany/
- Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gaunttboardco
Image Credits
Tim Gauntt