We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Timothy Kephart. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Timothy below.
Timothy, appreciate you joining us today. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business
I’d say probably the craziest thing was the unexpected growth. My wife and I started this business as just something to do on the side. Maybe pay for a vacation once a year. We only started the business in early 2020 but when COVID hit we were wildly caught off guard with the volume of orders that were coming in for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. We managed to weather that storm but 5 months later it was a much higher level of insanity. Like I mentioned before, this was something that was supposed to be casual. Make a few items in my garage every couple of weeks or so. I remember the exact moment that all changed. My wife and I were on a staycation at The Cosmopolitan and all of the sudden my phone started blowing up with orders. So much so that we immediately left and went home. That was November 8th. From that day, for the next 6 weeks, was the hardest amount of work I’ve ever done in my life. There was about a 2 week stretch where we worked 24 hours. Slept for 3 hours. Then went to work again for another 24 hours. Mind you, this was all being done in my garage. The “shop” was running 24/7. I had semi trucks of lumber coming every week along with a fork lift being dropped off to move it around. In my neighborhood. I had at one point over a thousand packages stacked up in my living room waiting for USPS to arrive. When they finally arrived there was a line of a dozen trucks waiting while we one by one formed a line to pass each package down. It was the quintessential lesson of “Figure it out.” Obviously that wasn’t sustainable for the long term but until we got through Christmas there was no other option. Eventually, in late December I acquired industrial space and invested in more appropriate mass production manufacturing machinery which made everything much easier to handle. Since then we’ve been able to scale up production and handle the increased work volume but we’ll never forget Christmas of 2020.
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?
Both my wife and I were small business owners before we met. We still had our respective business. Her’s is a Cheer and Tumbling business. Mine works with local Law Enforcement. I started woodworking as a hobby interest and at my wife’s suggestion we started an online store for selling personalized cutting boards. One of the things I love the most are the messages we get from customers, either to us, or to the recipient. They’re always messages of love and kindness. It’s a wonderful reminder on a daily basis that there is so much joy and happiness in our country. Loved ones expressing their gratitude or pride in another through a personalized message. It’s very heartwarming. During Christmas especially, our most popular items are the recipe boards. People send us a picture of a family favorite recipe, usually from a loved one you passed away, and we digitally trace the recipe so it’s an exact replica and then engrave that onto a cutting board for them. The backstories we hear to these recipes are good for the soul.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
Once we realized that we couldn’t sustain ourselves running 24/7 out of a garage we acquired industrial space and the manufacturing equipment that goes with it. I had know idea about these kinds of machines, especially at this kind of power. As with anything though, you just have to figure it out. Each part of the processes is its own learning experience and piece by piece you start putting things in place and suddenly you step back a realize “Wow, I have a full on manufacturing facility.” This might be my style and may not work for others but I really don’t like to plan things. I’d much rather figure it out on the fly. I find planning can sometimes make me too rigid and having a bit of ignorance can be a good thing because you can find opportunities that you never knew existed.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
My management style is very hands off. I prefer to hire someone, train them, be available if they have questions but let them do the job they were hired to do without interference from me. If I wanted to do it myself then I wouldn’t pay someone. I much prefer to let them be free to work in the area they’re responsible for and figure out for themselves what’s the best approach to be successful. Obviously I have standards of what success is but those are very clearly defined in the beginning. I find that by giving people latitude it creates a place where they feel like that they have ownership in the process and treat it like it’s their own as opposed to feeling like they were a steward babysitting something for me. If it was the latter, they might not come up with solutions and there have been many of times where my employees came up with solutions that were better than I could have imagined.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.battlebornwoodshop.com
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