This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome as well to Throwback Thursday. My name is Chris Guillebeau, I am your host. And in this particular segment, we do it every Thursday, hence the name.
We take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Now this is really cool because we've been making Side Hustle School since January 1, 2017, every single day. So as you can imagine, we've got all sorts of stories in the archives. And often we go back and hear how someone has grown their business. Often we hear how they have expanded, maybe started a new business, how they have dealt with various challenges, what kind of advice they might have to someone else who is considering a similar business.
So we've heard from people in all sorts of industries. And in today's episode, we're gonna hear from an Idaho woodworker. He's actually an HVAC craftsman or a repairman. But we're working in his spare time. And as more people have moved to the area, his business has really taken off.
His business is actually called Mahogany House Woodworks. But the website is BoiseCustomFurniture.com. Now there's a whole lesson right there. You've got one name for the business, but then how do you get to it? You go to BoiseCustomFurniture.com because that's what people search for.
I might say something about that at the end. But without further ado, let's hear directly from James Barrett. [Music]
My name's James Barrett. We're located out in Manpa, Idaho, just outside of the capital Boise. And yeah, we were on back in 2019.
So yeah, I have this, so it's 787. We have two things that we're operating. We do wood cutting boards and we also do furniture, custom furniture bills. We got picked up by a local maker magazine that's up here in the Northwest. They, a few years ago, decided to come out and do an article on our shop.
And at that point in time, they wanted to publish an article with a website for customers to land to, to learn more about us. And at the time, we didn't have a website. So that's kind of where it made sense to ask the question, should we jump in with two feet and start a website and all that goes in with that? Or should we wind this down? And obviously we decided to ramp it up.
My current day job, I do heating and air conditioning. So I work for a local company, contractor, service contractor. And this is our, this is our side. For me, this is my side hustle at the moment. We were working out of our garage, saving all of our pennies.
And then we, this last year, we put up a 1300 square foot shop so we can start getting more projects done. And also, obviously COVID has happened since then. So that's really driven people to, most of our customers are deciding to buy things that, you know, have quality that are built better. You know, there's this whole message right now about don't buy from China, buy local. And so that's really, I think, helped to drive up the visibility on the business like us.
But also there's been, here in Boise, Idaho, it's one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. And there's been a huge influx of people moving into the area. And so there's a lot more people that are looking to get their home set up. The biggest challenge would be the production side. So getting projects out within a timely fashion.
There's obviously the sales part, bringing jobs in, collecting money for that. But then once we have a customer committed to the project, then it's really up to us to push that out in a fashion that's gonna, you know, in a timely manner. So that's probably our biggest challenge at the moment. Woodworking can tend to be a hobby turned into some sort of income. What I would say, number one, is really know your numbers.
So when you're launching a business, you want to really consider all the things that go into operating a business. If you're gonna do maintenance on a machine, or you need to clean the bathroom, or you have to buy supplies for your sanders, or whatever the case is to really consider that all needs to get built into the job. 'Cause it can be very easy when you're just working on your own out of a garage or something. You think you're making money because somebody's paying you, but then if you were to actually file taxes on that, or have a CPA or bookkeeper look through that, that's when you start realizing you're actually not making any money, you're actually losing money. And at that point, that's definitely a decision to make.
Is that how you want to operate? Which to me is just a hobby, and you're just somehow making sense of the money. Or do you want to turn it into a business and scale it out? So for someone to jump into something like this, I would, aside from that, definitely drive with people. You're not gonna be able to get all the work done on your own.
Adding other people into the mix really, in my opinion, really helps to turn the activity into a different level, a different scale when you get other people's ideas, and input, and work involved into the business. That's when things can get a lot. You can really start scaling out at a different rate than just on your own. [Music]
Awesome, thanks to James for sharing those updates with us. Check out the website.
Once again, BoiseCustomFurniture.com. Great visuals there, overall presentation, something like this. The visuals are really important, and they've done a fantastic job with that website. And as mentioned, the name of the business is actually, what is it, Mahogany House Woodworks. That's interesting because mahogany is kind of a difficult word to spell, like I first started trying to type it in, and I had to think about it for a minute.
But then I saw, oh, the domain, BoiseCustomFurniture.com. Great domain, obviously tells you exactly what it is. So good decision there. Maybe think about that if you're trying to decide on your next domain or your next business name. All right, that's it for today.
If you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Let me know what's going on, and I hope you'll subscribe, follow, and come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
