Businesses fail every single day. I’m sure every person reading this has known someone who had a business fail, witnessed a business they grew up with go under or had business failures of their own. More often than not, the reason for that failure goes hand in hand with blaming an outside influence. It’s easy to push the blame on to a corporation and say you can’t compete. But is that really what’s going on? In this article, let’s dive a little deeper into why some businesses fail, and some succeed.
Let’s first reframe the way we look at the word “business”. Remove the skyscrapers, the corporate board meetings, the company credit cards, and the suits that cost more than my entire shop put together. Business is nothing more than the selling of goods and/or services. That’s it. I have a product. You need my product. I give you my product and you give me something in return. Typically that is money, in today’s society. Seems pretty cut and dry, right? Everybody can therefor just create something, sell it, and become successful, correct? Not so much. Although the act of creating something may be simple enough, there is far more needed to succeed. You need to have a reason as to why you’re starting a business.
And that reason needs to be a very good one.
Let’s rewind to June of 2018. Your friendly woodworking bear was not in a good place at that time. Coming off the heels of a decision to admit defeat and stop trying for children after 4 years and no luck, I was crushed inside. Hope was entirely lost. My marriage with my lovely wife, who I had been with since I was 17 years old, was hanging on by the skin of its teeth. We were both full of pain, watching the years tick by and not being able to hear our baby’s laugh, or rock her to sleep. In such a scenario, it is not hard to believe that I replayed every poor choice I had made in my life, hyper analyzed every hurtful word I’d ever said (especially to my wife), and wondered if this was God’s punishment. The breaking point was finally reached and I, a 6’3″ full bearded giant, collapsed in the shower weeping. I prayed, and begged, for God to not take this from my wife. Punish me as you wish, but don’t take this from her. 2 weeks later she was pregnant.
Fast forward to March 4th, 2019. After 40 hrs of labor with no sleep and no food, my wife was rushed into an emergency c-section. Barely coherent, pumped full of morphine, terrified, and blood pressure so high that the nurses were becoming concerned for her heart. 20 minutes later, I heard my baby girl cry for the first time, and laid eyes on the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in this world. She was perfect in every conceivable way. She was everything I had dreamed of for years, and so much more.
A few months, and an unfathomable amount of sleep deprivation later, I began thinking about our financial situation. 9 bulging discs, a neck injury that will never heal, a crushed spinal cord in 3 locations, a crushed vagus nerve, sciatica in my left leg, and chronic migraines all from a horrific car accident 9 years prior left me incapable of holding down a full time job. It was time to stop working odd jobs to make ends meet, and take control. God blessed me with a daughter, and I was going to answer that call and do everything within my power to ensure that she had a good upbringing. So I went into my horribly neglected garage, so packed with the accumulation of a million things that found there way in there that I couldn’t walk a straight line from one end to the other, and began cleaning. Cleaning turned into reorganizing. Reorganizing turned into building cabinets on the wall and work stations. I had no idea what I was doing yet, but I knew I needed a clean area before I could even begin the process of figuring out what the right path was.
Eventually I landed on woodworking. I had entertained the idea of building overlanding trailers, but I didn’t have nearly enough space. Next idea was custom knife making. I quickly shelved that when I began researching the startup costs. So, woodworking it was. I grew up watching my father build stuff, and had done a fair bit of crude building on my own since. I didn’t even know what I was going to build yet, but I knew it was going to involve wood.
Now, that was a long story. You may be thinking “Woodshop Bear, we don’t need your life story, we need business advice”. To that, I’ll ask you to go to the top of this article and re-read the first 3 paragraphs.
The name of my business is Little Bear Woodshop. When our first born daughter was still in the womb, our nickname for her was Little Bear. Upon creation of this business, I thought of many great potential names, but this business was founded with the intention of passing it on to our children when we are too old to continue on with it. But more important than the passing along of a business, I want to pass along the lessons of hard work, of never giving up, and of taking care of your family. That picture above this article contains our logo. At first glance, one could easily get the impression that this was a gimmicky way to capitalize on the bear community. But there is a much deeper meaning to why I chose it as the final logo design for our company. The day after we came home from the hospital, I did what every new father does and put my daughter’s hand in mine. I marveled at how small it was. I wept, holding her hand in mine. I still felt unsure about what my path in life was, and was still harboring a considerable amount of insecurity about myself. Staring at her hand in mine, with tears rolling down my cheeks into my beard, I realized that none of that mattered anymore. The life I lived prior to her arrival, full of copious amounts of overthinking, self doubt, self pity more times than I’d care to admit to, and constantly being hypercritical of myself was over. Looking at that tiny hand, seeing how she had no control or dexterity yet, reshaped my entire view of the world and my own life.
That little paw is hers, inside of mine. I am her protector, her provider, and she is entirely dependent on her mother and I. I designed that logo myself, knowing that in the future when times became hard and I felt like giving up, I would need a constant reminder of why I was doing this. And you’d better believe that after carving 60 wooden spoons by hand with a hook knife over the course of 2 weeks, with blisters so big I couldn’t fully bend my fingers and hands wrapped in cloth and bandages so as to not get blood on the products I was making, I looked at that logo. And it gave me a strength like nothing else could have, and I continued on through the pain. When I wanted so desperately to take a day off after working 8 to 12 hours a day in that shop, every single day, for over 6 months straight, I looked at that sign and said “I can do more today”. This feeling grew exponentially with the recent birth of our second baby girl. As our family grows, so does my desire to provide. That well has not run dry once since I became a father.
Want to start a business? You’d better think long and hard about why you want it. These times that I’m describing are not exclusive to woodworking. In any business endeavor, there will come a point where you feel utterly defeated and you’re ready to give up. If you’re starting a new business you will work so hard, for so long, with so little reward, that exhaustion will not even begin to express what you feel. It is crucial that you have something to push you through that, as that’s often when things are about to start turning around. Businesses fail because people running them either didn’t have something to hold onto when they started, or they somehow lost it along the way. When faced with a challenge, that motivation will be what drives you to adapt in whatever way you need to in order to keep it going. Without that motivation, you will succumb to the stress, the challenges, and the fear.
He who starts a business for riches or fame will eventually fail when presented with a storm. He who starts a business for his family will teach himself how to waterproof his boots, which he also taught himself how to make, before marching into the storm.
I worked for 6 months straight to prepare for the local Farmers Market here in Portland, OR. I lost my spot overnight due to new covid regulations that shrunk the usable space by over 1/3 of its total. I had over $10,000 in finished products sitting on shelves in my shop ready to go. I took a breath, and began taking pictures of all of it to put into our online store. I started researching what tools were needed to make new products. I brainstormed new designs for cutting boards, started researching where to source new hardware, and continued on. My baby will not go hungry because I faced a challenge. That small paw holds food in its hand because this big paw is blistered, cut, bruised, and aching.
I encourage all of you who are thinking or dreaming about starting a business to find that reason why before you even take the first step. To those who have a business already, take a moment to remind yourselves. Listen to your children laugh, look at their smiling faces, or imagine what they will look like if you have yet to experience the wonder that is parenthood. Anybody can sell a cutting board. Very few can carve 60 spoons when every hand movement causes wincing pain.
Onward, my friends!
-Woodshop Bear
