Importance Of Effective Marketing Strategies For A Wood Marketing Company
Steve Larosiliere
April 24, 2024
What We Learned in Season 1
Welcome to a special episode of building a furniture brand with Ethan Abramson. Why is it special? I thought you’d never ask!
We just finished our first season, 12 episodes jam-packed with business know-how, inspirational stories, behind-the-scenes insight into building a brand, and some laughs. When I first decided to do this show, the whole point was to pull back the curtain on the industry. I wanted to show that, yes, there are essential practices to being successful. But there was also not just one path to success.
We’ve heard from 12 different people, all business owners, all successful, all who have gone about building their business in different ways. For this episode, I want to jump back into some of those conversations.
I started this show to help people who wanted to create a furniture business, entrepreneurs who want to take that jump. I also started it for people who have a furniture business but want to do better, and even people who have a successful business and want to learn how other people run theirs. I started this for everyone. But really, I started this for you. You are my audience of one. My goal is to help you succeed in your dream. So thank you for listening for writing in with your questions and ideas for sharing the show with your friends. And for coming back week after week. It truly means a lot. And I hope it’s helping you on your journey.
Now I’ve recorded hours and hours of conversations for this show. So I can’t recap all of it. I’m not playing favorites. If it were up to me, I’d play all the episodes back to back to back. They are all so great, and if you haven’t heard them, it would be my recommendation to listen to them all.
There is so much good stuff in every single one of them. Listening back to these episodes myself, What stood out to me was a wealth of knowledge in each episode, from perfecting your pricing to learning to work with clients and designers to marketing tips to correcting your contracts, and more.
Know your Worth
Each guest said that even though all the business side is critical, knowing that your time and skills are valuable is just as important as keeping the books organized.
I pulled a few excerpts from the shows, not all of them but just a few that stood out for people. Ones that people wrote in about and told me they were energized by, ones that change people’s mindset.
“I branded myself in the beginning. With my furniture style, I wanted to impress the client, so to speak, or the potential client and show that they can get this fantastic piece of furniture from me. I wanted to be branded as an artist because I knew if you can brand yourself as an artist, you will get paid way more than if you brand yourself as a woodworker.
Some of you have probably never heard anybody say that. But think about it in terms of an artist who has paintings out there; the price point is all over the map. It’s crazy. You could see one abstract painting that somebody threw paint at, and it was there their deal, and they’ll sell that picture for $20,000, and then you’ll see another artist that does the exact same thing, and he sells it for $500.
So what helps there is the mindset that artists aren’t compared to one another. So when a customer is seeking a dining table, that’s a little bit different. If they see you as just a woodworker, and you give them a price on a dining table or a bookcase, they’re going to hop online, and they’re going to check out all these similar type comparable products, they’re going to be like, “Oh my gosh, this person is so expensive. Look, I can get this from over here or from this woodworker.” so they do this comparative shopping.
But if you brand yourself as an artisan, this artist/woodworker, and they’ve seen it repetitively from you that you’re doing something that nobody else seems to be doing, you’ll be viewed as an artist.
Then when you submit your price to them, there’ll be very little room for haggling or negotiations because they know they’re coming to an artist, and they’re not going to be out there doing that comparative shopping.
Woodworking is awesome. I consider myself a woodworker. But when I talk about pricing, I consider myself an artist. So I priced my stuff based on what I need and what I think the pieces actually worth.”
“You have to know your worth, and it’s hard, and it’s scary. I have moments where I’ve worked up a bid, and I’m looking at it, and I’m saying to myself, this is so expensive, I just I need to shave a couple hundred off.
But for the last two years, I refer back to this book, and it’s a book by an author named Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference. He was a world-renowned hostage negotiator, and he reads this book like you’re inside a Jason Bourne movie. So it makes learning to negotiate business deals actually rather exciting.
Then through that, I learned, set your price and then figure out how to negotiate from there. When it comes down to it, there is no negotiating, this is your price, you need to hit that send button on the email, you need to speak firmly to that client that this is my price. With that, you will build confidence, and that confidence will just seep from you.
People will start to take notice of that, and it draws them to you. I have a thing that I always say to myself, that is “what you express is what you manifest” if you express in your head, “Oh, I’m just not sure if I’m worth it” then that is what’s going to happen.
But if you say “I’m going to get this job.” that becomes a confidence booster.
The more you build that in your business, the more you will attract that kind of clientele. Keep in mind it’s not a sense of arrogance. We live in such a strange world that people think that if you’re confident, you’re arrogant. I’m sure some people are. But that’s not what you’re doing. You’re confident, and you’re helping instill that in those around you and looking up to you. To be confident, you don’t have to be rude, but you can walk into a room, and you can command it.
At the same time, you can also be scared as hell on the inside and shaking like a leaf. The more you work through that in your business, and now tying into your personal life, you will see that you start to attract that vibe.”
“I mentioned this earlier, but there are a lot of people out there building furniture, and people do have a lot of options. But I really do believe that comparison is the thief of joy. So I think it’s not healthy to compare yourself constantly to other furniture makers either in terms of their talent, their life stage, their success rate, all the all of that stuff on their Instagram page, it doesn’t matter.
Ultimately you have to be doing it for yourself because if you’re doing it for other people, you’re going to run out of joy for it. And you’re not going to have the energy or the grit it takes to keep going to doing what you need to do, especially when times are tough.”
“Think through who you are as a creator, as a maker, a designer, a builder, or whatever descriptor you feel defines you, but think about who you are. Think about what your aesthetic is, what your values are, what drives you, what makes you feel on point.
Then hold to that, because as soon as you start something like this, everybody in your life is going to come to you and be like, “Oh, you know what you should do?” And you’re going to be like, “How would you know what I should do?”
But you’re going to have to endure all that all those suggestions, all that push and pull from the outside world, like
“Hey, I saw this thing on Pinterest, or I saw this thing on Etsy…” and nobody understands your brand, whether you’ve brought it to fruition yet or not, nobody understands it the way that you run your business.
The thing that will set you apart and make you successful is bringing forth what is true to you and true to your brand.
Be authentic about who you are and what your brand is, then you can confidently and genuinely sell that to people because you believe in it, and you know that you’re honest in it.
If you get caught up and trying to do the same thing that everyone else does, you may enjoy a season of growth from mass production of something trendy. Still, ultimately, unless your goal was just to make a quick buck, you’re going to feel some dissatisfaction personally.”
“I think we’re all also starting from different points in our path. So some of us are still kind of where I’m at, and some of us might even be beginners, and maybe they don’t know what to do. So I think it’s important to tell the stories of every person along the way because perhaps someone will listen to this and reach out to me and say, hey, I’ve got a great tip for you.
Or maybe someone will reach out to me and say, Hey, I’m kind of where you are, and that’s always really uplifting to me too, is to meet people and say, “Hey, it’s cool. I see where you’re at, and I support you, and you know, you’re going to make it.”
Thank You so much for listening to building a furniture brand with Ethan Abramson. If you liked what you heard, you can subscribe to this podcast anywhere you’d like to listen.
This episode is brought to you by Jobber – getjobber.com/ethan
