From Farm Life to Million-Dollar CNC Business: Navigating Family & Business | Ryan Drapela

Unlock the secrets to entrepreneurial success with Ryan Drapela, the mastermind behind Drapela Works, Frio Coolers, and the popular YouTube channel Cutting it Close. In this episode, Ryan shares his compelling journey from humble beginnings on a watermelon farm in southern Texas to becoming a thriving business owner by age 16. Learn how his early experiences in welding and woodworking paved the way for a career that champions hard work, financial independence, and the practical application of skills.

Discover the critical strategies Ryan used to build a million-dollar CNC business. We'll discuss the importance of product focus, staying lean, and mastering sales without ever spending a dime on marketing. Ryan's success with the ManStand docking station on Etsy serves as a powerful lesson in efficiency and customer satisfaction. Whether you're just starting or looking to refine your business approach, Ryan's insights offer practical and actionable advice that can lead to significant growth.

Navigating family dynamics in business can be tricky, and Ryan doesn't shy away from sharing the ups and downs of hiring—and sometimes firing—family members. Learn how clear goals, robust systems, and documented processes are not just buzzwords but essential components for business resilience and success. With personal anecdotes and hands-on tips, Ryan's story is both a blueprint and an inspiration for entrepreneurs seeking to balance family, quality, and growth in their ventures.

Ryan Drapela: CIC Workshop | Drapela Works

Website: https://cicworkshop.com/
Website: https://drapelaworks.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cutting-it-close
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drapelaworks

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drapelaworks/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cicworkshop
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drapelaworks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CICWorkshop/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drapelawoodworks


#Entrepreneurship #SmallBusinessSuccess #RyanDrapela #DrapelaWorks #FrioCoolers #CuttingItClose #StartupJourney #BusinessGrowth #WeldingSkills #WoodworkingBusiness #FamilyOwnedBusiness #FinancialFreedom #MillionDollarCNC #ProductDevelopment #LeanStartup #SalesWithoutMarketing #EtsyBusiness #FamilyBusinessDynamics #BusinessSystems #EntrepreneurAdvice #BusinessStrategies #StartupTips #BusinessInspiration #PracticalBusinessAdvice #SuccessBlueprint #WorkLifeBalance #EntrepreneurStories #BusinessPodcast #SmallBusinessPivots #SmallBusinessSuccess #Success #Podcast #SmallBusiness #BOSS #MichaelDMorrison #Oklahoma City

Chapters

• 0:00 Childhood Farm to Business Growth
• 12:24 Focus on Sales and Product Mastery
• 19:09 Family Dynamics in Business Growth
• 26:47 Business Resilience Through Systems and Goals
• 29:48 Developing Systems for Business Success
• 37:51 Mastering Focus for Business Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, welcome to another Small Business, pivots. We have a very special guest from around the world today and no one can say their name or business like the owner, so I'm going to let you introduce your name and your business.

Speaker 2: 0:12

All right, so I'm Ryan Drapella. I own a woodworking business called Drapella Works, a cooler company called Frio Coolers and a YouTube channel called Cutting it Close.

Speaker 1: 0:25

YouTube channel called Cutting it Close, fantastic, and so we have a lot of small business owner as listeners, and so we're going to help them today. That's why they're listening. What do you think we're going to help them with the most today?

Speaker 2: 0:34

Knowing what's the one thing they should focus on more than anything else.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Let's make an introduction for the show and we'll be right back. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast designed for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, a small business coach and founder of BOSS, where we make business ownership simplified for success, so that you can own a business that runs without you. To learn more, go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom. All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots. I am so anxious to hear your story. Give us a little bit about your journey growing up. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:11

So whenever I was born and raised in southern Texas outside of a town called El Campo, and we were raised on a watermelon farm so from the time I can push the clutch in on a tractor I was doing that and my little cousin would steer it. And then we're in a watermelon field picking water, picking the family watermelons, and we'd sit out front and sell watermelons and my mom had animals. So whether we're, you know, raising miniature, miniature horses or goats or chickens or raising stuff for the fair, that was a lot of my childhood. So every day after I got home from school I would pick up horse poop, clean water buckets, you know, feed the chickens.

Speaker 2: 1:48

During middle school I milked a cow every day before school, you know, it's just a real farm boy kind of childhood and growing up like that I was, we were always trying to sell something. We didn't have a lot of money and so whether it's watermelons in the summertime, whether it's jerky that I made from some animals, you know that we butchered whether it was, you know, chicken eggs, we were always just trying to sell something to buy the next bag of corn. I mean, that was a lot of my childhood and mom always said it was going to grow character right when I'm out there scooping up horse poop. She's like it's good for your character and I was like man, I don't, I don't understand it, this sucks. And looking back now, yes, because it doesn't matter if it was 10 o'clock at night, my mom would make would wake us up and make sure that we picked up every single piece of poop in that horse stall. We had 13 stalls.

Speaker 1: 2:39

And so so you? You weren't raised in a good work, ethic home, were you? It doesn't sound like you did.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Yeah, that was the only thing we did was work. You know it was work first and school wasn't even. We better make good grades in school and work when we're at home and do school when we're at school and we didn't really mix it too much. And so it was just a good old, you know, good old fashioned. Our family was all close knit, you know I could walk across the pasture and go to my grandma's house, walk across the pasture that direction and go to my aunt's house. Just a good old farm boy growing up, I wouldn't say I changed much.

Speaker 1: 3:16

I know your story a little better than others. Maybe listeners do. Let's jump to the meat of this. You started a business? At what age?

Speaker 2: 3:26

So I started. I went full time at 16, never had another job since then, growing up, you know, worked in the watermelon field. You know it was my summer job. I started buying all my own school clothes, all my own stuff, when I was 13 years old and I needed more money because I started welding whenever I was in seventh grade, so I was 13, 14 years old, was a welder, welded gates and balconies. I started doing quick math and I learned I can make cutting boards during the summer and make twice as much as I did welding for $7.25 an hour. And so that summer of my sophomore year, or summer before my sophomore year, I started woodworking full-time with a $75 miter saw and I would work in the high school wood shop and I'd come back home and we, you know, I'd work inside of a horse stall with a saw and that's kind of when my business started and I was treating it as a business from day one. I still have all the ledgers of, you know $3 worth of screws, you know $5 of wood and if it was free wood, I still always made sure you know what would? I would have paid for this wood and you know, during lunch or during during wood shop. I would buy people's lunch and it was lunch was $5, but they worked for me for an hour and so I would get cheap labor by buying their school lunches. And I started making stuff for teachers and just continue that on and help me buy my first truck, buy all my school lunches, buy my school clothes, and I continue that from high school all the way through college.

Speaker 2: 4:51

I went to Texas A&M and went through junior college first and then I I originally went to Texas A&M because I was wanting to get out of Dodge, out of country land and tell a funny story. I was in a grocery store when I was 20 years old. I realized that they sold ground meat at the store. When I was 20 years old I went there and I never knew what was in the tubes and my girlfriend at the time was like there's ground meat in there. I was like what do you mean? She's like people buy ground meat at the store.

Speaker 2: 5:22

I was like nobody like I thought everybody butchered their own cows and shot their own deer and ground their. People buy ground meat at the store. I was like nobody like you. I thought everybody butchered their own cows and shot their own deer and ground their own meat my whole entire life. So I was 20 years old and already had the business, already had a couple of employees by then. But I had no idea about that part of life. So that was the original reason I went to college and just I knew I didn't know a lot and so I just want to get out and about. So I moved two hours away and did that you know and ran the business so I could go back and forth every weekend up to college and back home and work.

Speaker 1: 5:58

At what point do you feel like you had a real business? I know it kind of started as a hobby and you treated it like a business, but at what point did you feel real?

Speaker 2: 6:04

Probably when I got my first employee I was 19, hired my first employee. He's still with me to today, so he's been with us almost 10 years now. That's when I knew I had a, I had a real business. Before then I'd still have friends come over, I pay him in beer and food Right. It wasn't until then that I was like okay, I'm onto something. And I didn't. You know, I didn't even know what an LLC was really back then. You know, I had a DBA, but you know I didn't know what a lot of stuff was. I just knew if I can make something for a dollar and sell it for two, um, I couldn't go wrong. And so that was that was how I did it.

Speaker 2: 6:35

If he could make it even cheaper than me, then we're even better. So yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:39

So what would you say in those early stages, cause I know we have a lot of new business owners. What would you say is one of the life lessons you learned that is an essential to scaling a big business, or something that you wish you would have done?

Speaker 2: 6:54

You know, one of the things that I'm glad I did, that I wish others would do, because I was so young when I did it. I just just did it and like, and it sounds so simple, but it's, it's terrifying, and I think the longer you wait, the more terrifying it is, and the more you think about it, the more ways you're going to talk yourself out of it. Then you're going to talk yourself into it and I will tell you, and Michael will tell you, that there is no, there is no business handbook. There is nothing out there that's going to prepare you for what you're going to come across Right. And so, as you're going through this, you know, you just understand, like you, you won't give you an example. Here's, here's a perfect example.

Speaker 2: 7:35

I write a letter to myself every year and I write it for the next year. So on my, when I turned, let's say, you know, 25, I write it to my 26 yearyear-old self, and so on. And then I write it five years in advance. So my 25-year-old self writes a 26-year-old letter and a 30-year-old letter On my next birthday. I open up that letter and read what I thought, and it was like what I'm going through mentally how the business is how I predict what the future will be. All this stuff. I predict it's going to win the Super Bowl, all kinds of stuff. And the most relaxing thing to me that has happened through doing this for a number of years now is that I am 100% wrong every single time. My numbers are always almost close. Right, it's like you're gonna be doing a million dollars of revenue, but you're gonna be doing it with this, right, you're gonna be. You know you're gonna have this situation and it going to grow to here and I am wrong a hundred percent of the time. The only thing that's close to being accurate is like the numbers. But the way of getting there is so wrong. And it's really relaxed me because now I know I'm, I'm more obliged to just jump in head first because I know I'm going to be wrong and that's okay, because I know as long as I'm going in that direction, as long as I'm in that same ballpark, whether I'm on first, third or second, as long as I'm playing in that ballpark, I'm okay, as long as you're in that direction.

Speaker 2: 8:53

So to any business owner that's just starting out, you will make mistakes, there is not a doubt. You will probably be wrong a lot. You will probably be wrong a lot, 10 times more than you're right. But that's okay. That's my best advice. Like it's okay, you will suck, you will not be the best. Like you will fail, and it's okay, because the other end of the spectrum is that you don't try and you don't fail and you never go after it. And so what would you rather have Failures and trying and trying to go after your dreams, or not doing it Like you decide? I would much rather go to sleep at night when I'm 80 years old and look back to myself and talk to myself and go at least. You tried and you jumped in and you got in the water and you started swimming. Versus I'm 80 years old. It's like man. You never even jumped off the diving board. You never did.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Yeah, that's great advice for any business owner to remember, because sometimes we can get stuck in the weeds. As far as you know, maybe we're looking at implementing a new CRM and we'll spend hours and hours learning it and this it's like no dude. Just start with the CRM, the basics, because whatever you're learning you're not going to use in the future or you're going to do it differently as your business evolves. So that can go with life. It goes with kids. You know kids are the same way as a business. It's like all these magazines on the racks. It's like nobody's got that secret formula of how to get them to quit crying or do this or make them do something. You know formula of how to get them to quit crying or do this or make them do something.

Speaker 2: 10:25

I have a newborn. He's six weeks old. I'm learning that firsthand. I'm learning that. How are you going to deal with the lack of sleep? You just deal with it. There's nothing to compare. You just deal with it, you figure it out. If I had twins it'd probably be twice as worse, but you know what I would figure it out. Business is just like that. You figure it out, you don't know. You don't know until you know.

Speaker 1: 10:45

And when you know it changes.

Speaker 1: 10:47

Well, and then along those lines, as business owners, I always say we don't know what we don't know. So you know it's oh yeah, so what do you? So you moved, you got into this business. What would you say, let's, let's go through stages. So you were kind of a startup there and you got your first employee and then most business owners. After that, you know, the honeymoon kind of is over. You know, now we have a real business and we have mouths to feed like an employee. And what do we do next? What did you do next? How did you take your business? Because, if the listeners don't know already, you have a multi-million dollar business. You have almost 30 employees or thereabouts, with family. So we got a lot of talk about that too. But what did you do after that?

Speaker 2: 11:33

A lot of things that I have learned throughout the years. You don't want to put racing tires on a moped or another analogy. You don't want to enter a cow in the Kentucky Derby because no matter how much you train that cow, it's never going to win. And so the best thing you can do when you're starting off, you're making sure you're not entering a cow in the Kentucky Derby because no matter how hard you push that cow, it's not going to win. And so my advice to my younger self would be like make sure you're getting in the correct boat and making sure you're not going to, you know, or making sure you're not entering a cow in the Kentucky Derby because it's not going to win. Make sure your foundation is good and you don't grow too fast. Where you pick the cow, make sure you raise up the full right. You raise it up until it's grown up big enough. And then you're like, okay, it's ready.

Speaker 2: 12:18

And so what I did? I bootstrapped my way up and I tell a lot of people this I'm in the woodworking world, the CNC machines. People love them. I help people out with CNC businesses and everybody wants to buy the biggest and best machine and they think you know that's going to solve their problems. And I always tell them it's just another machine. It doesn't print money, you know. You know, one of my biggest things is called Gitmo. Good enough to move on so you get stuff. Good enough to move on so you can focus on the sales and marketing because you can have and I tell everybody in the wood shop this you can have the most efficient shop in the world. If you don't have sales coming in, then it doesn't matter. And so, by focusing on what matters most, staying as small as long as possible, because you're building that foundation, you don't know everything and I say staying small as in the least amount of overhead as possible, not necessarily staying small, but having the least amount of overhead. Being as nimble as possible, because you may change directions three or four times in your first couple of years to help yourself navigate and wade through those initial waters, that initial startup waters.

Speaker 2: 13:17

And then, when you have your first employee, you kind of sit back and you go like, okay, I have my first employee now and I'm selling this product or service, and if I can sell one, can I sell two. If I can sell two, can I sell four? If I can sell four, can I sell eight, and so on. And dumbing it down that simple is what you have to do. It's like what am I selling? And you don't have to go crazy. I'm selling this. I either have to charge more for it or sell more of this thing.

Speaker 2: 13:45

And for me, I was making a docking station. I made a item and I sold it for $37.71. That was it. But I sold 25,000 of them and we did a million dollars in sales while I was in college with it.

Speaker 2: 13:59

And so what did I do? I didn't complicate it, I just made that one product for five years straight. And that's the only thing I did, because if I can sell one, I can sell two. And I just keep doing that. And, like I didn't worry about anything else, I became the very best at that one product, and then the business kind of took care of itself, because I was more worried about getting sales and having all that come in. Now, granted, I made sure the efficiency was around 80 to 90%, so good enough to move on. But then I moved on and focused on how can I make this product better? How can I make my customers happier? How can I turn a one star review into a five star review and I guess more or less it revolves solely around how do I make my product or my service so good my customers will talk about it and refer business to me. Because I spent $0 on marketing, $ $0 on ads those first five years and I did a million dollars in sales.

Speaker 1: 14:49

What product is it that you're referring to? So everybody knows.

Speaker 2: 14:53

Yeah, so it's a docking station. It's called a manstand or I coined the name manstand and it holds your phone, watch, wallet, keys. You put your phone on your night stand. It charges at night. I sold it on Etsy and that's the only place I sold it at and I mastered Etsy and I mastered that product. That's how I made, or did my first you know one and a half million dollars in revenue with Before that product.

Speaker 2: 15:16

I tried a hundred different products and you know none of them. It didn't really work too well, you know, and I was. It was it wasn't scalable't scalable. It was all it required me, everything I made before that. And then, I guess to back up a little bit, before I hired my first employee, I was trying to do everything for everybody. I was a yes man. You know, hey, ryan, and in woodworking there's your in woodworking. In woodworking it's one of the only businesses you can start with like five hundred dollars and go into home depot and you become a. You know, you buy one saw and everybody's now your competition. So, like, the barriers to entry become a woodworker are very low. So it is very competitive. You don't even need a good skill set, because if you don't have a good skill set. You call it rustic. You know you call it rustic.

Speaker 2: 16:01

And so you know when, when I was doing that, I was just I was refinishing tables. I was. And so you know, when I was doing that, I was just I was refinishing tables. I was, you know, making cutting boards. I was trying to do cabinets. I was doing, I was saying yes to everything and one night I came home. This is when I was 19.

Speaker 2: 16:14

Before I came out the docking station, I came home and I was sitting at my computer Three in the morning I was bawling my eyes out because I didn't know I was going to pay for college. I was still at junior college but I moved away and I was just bawling my eyes out and I was like this can't, this can't work. I want to be a millionaire. I have to make $3,000 an hour. Because I didn't even know how employees worked at the time, I got to make $3,000 an hour. There's no possible way I can do this and bawl my eyes. I had no money. You know, broke college kids eating tapas ramen. I watched this one product and did a quarter million dollars with it and I was like what if that can be me? What if I just focused on one thing? And that's all I did and I became the best at it and grew my business from that. And from that moment, at three 30 in the morning, that docking station design popped into my head. I went down there, made it and by four 30 in the morning I had the design ready and that was the design that took off. And six weeks later we did $40,000 in sales. And then after that it took off and it wasn't like I did a million dollars, I mean it was a million dollars over five years. And so our first year we did like 50,000. The next year we did 150,000. The next year we did 450. Then we did 680. Then we did 1.6 million, and so that was kind of how the business grew. So we doubled or tripled every single year after that.

Speaker 2: 17:29

But the amount of no's I had to say, I mean, like you know, I said no to everything else for five years and I think that's an important lesson that I wish I could tell my younger self, even younger than my 19 year old self, because I was saying yes to everything and that that killed me. I mean, you know, when you, when family asks you for for the family discount because they want to help your business, you know it's like and it still makes me angry today, cause they'll still call me like hey, brian, you're a woodworker, you know I got this. I'm like I have a million dollar business, like I'm no. And they're like well, you're not going to help family, you're too big for us. It's like, no, I'm not too big for you. I just I just that's not my business, that's and that's okay. Um and so that's another lesson, I guess.

Speaker 1: 18:11

It's. It's a powerful lesson. I share that with our business owners that we work with often and that is establish your non-negotiables and stick to them. In other words, you know things like what you're talking about family and friends. If they're true family and friends, they'll pay full price because they want you to succeed. That's how I believe.

Speaker 2: 18:31

Oh, 100%, 100%. I'm sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but 100%.

Speaker 1: 18:36

You're good. So, speaking of family, so we work with family-owned businesses and that can be a real challenge. And you told me earlier you've got your wife and your parents and employees. How do you manage that?

Speaker 2: 18:51

Mom dad for watching. So whenever I was 21,. So when I hired my first employee at 19, I was 20, 21, just turned 21. And I hired both of my parents. My dad was a welder. He just had a whole bunch of surgeries because he's working on top of grain silos. He was 60 years old. Didn't want him doing that anymore.

Speaker 2: 19:09

My mom's always been a stay-at-home mom but since I was two hours away, you know they would. They would help ship stuff during the week and I would drive home and, you know, help them out on the weekends. I'd make the products on the weekends. They shipped during the week when I was at college and so I hired them full when I was 21. So they're my employees number two and three, which is a big risk. And it wasn't like they didn't have any retirement. So I knew I was going to be their retirement and they were $80,000 in debt and I wanted to get them out of debt. And so most people you know the parents hire the kids. But mine was kind of reversed. I hired my brother two years later and then my wife when I started dating her at the time. She's my girlfriend. She worked for me and now turned my wife. She's working with me as well.

Speaker 2: 19:49

So I got I guess now I have two brothers mom and dad, wife and a cousin, and I've had about five or six other cousins and we've had it where it didn't work out and so I kind of get I can give you both perspectives. I will say that the best thing about family I'm gonna give you the best and the worst and then I'll go through how dealing with it. The best thing about family is that if you best thing about my family could not be true about you know somebody else's, but I know they're not gonna my immediate family brothers, mom and them like that. I know they're not going to steal from me and I know if I need them to work 80 to a hundred hour weeks for weeks on end, they're going to do it and that's very hard to find elsewhere. So what they lack in skill deficiency they make up in just pure work ethic and that was the way we were raised. So that's what I know I am getting from my family. We are not by far not the brightest apple in the tree, but we will work hard when work needs to be hard, and so it's my job to teach them how to work smarter because we were raised such hardworking.

Speaker 2: 20:48

The bad things about family is, if you do not set the ground rules, stuff goes really hairy very quickly with family. Do never hire somebody you cannot fire. If you cannot fire your mom and dad and you want to hire them, then don't. And dad and you want to hire them, then don't. I fired my mom for a year this was two years ago. She she was. She wanted to help so much.

Speaker 2: 21:11

I'm her baby. I have three older brothers, so I'm her baby and she was protecting me and it's like oh, the business is getting too big. You know, let me come in and try to run it for you. And she doesn't know what she's doing at all. But as far as running the business right, she's very good at shipping and so she's kept. She kept bulldozing over my other employees and you know trying to, you know she was driving herself crazy. And so, um, we've had a long talk and I've had multiple family talks, tell her to step away. And she not, not good, not good for six, seven months. And then time heals everything and she's like you know what that helped me more than I even knew, because now I can be a mother and not you know, your your boss. I'm like, well, you never were my boss, I was painting. Now she's learning to be a mom and a grandma and also work in the business. So that six months or that year away helps her understand that, like, the business will not crumble without her. Her son can do it, he is okay. I've also had aunts that worked for me, you know, thought there were the best things in sliced bread and they thought most family thinks the business will crumble without you, and so sometimes you got to kind of show them hey, you know, like, with or without you, the business will still succeed. And once they learn that and say, if you want this thing to succeed, you will help me grow it. But like, whether you're here or not, because you are still an employee, it will continue to grow. Right, I'm driving the ship, not you. And so that that was. You know I have to do those talks about.

Speaker 2: 22:34

Once a year I get all my family together and say this is what we're doing and I have it script, I have it written out. I have it written out on a piece of paper. Here's what we're doing. Here's why you're involved, here's why I love having you family. Here's why I love you, mom and dad. Here's why I love you, brother and sister. This is why you're here. This is why I want nobody else but you to be in my business. But here's why this is my business and not yours. Here's why I'm running the show. Here's why and it's okay I have 10 times more stress than you. You don't want that stress. You want to go home and barbecue on Saturdays. I'm working like it's OK, and so I have it written down. I give them all pieces of paper, because when I didn't do that before, mom would say, oh, you said this, and my aunt would say, no, he said this, he harped on me this way, and then now it's here's all. This is exactly what I said. So now y'all get it twisted, and so it sounds like it's hard, but I promise you like that's really helpful. So just being very upfront with them on like this is what we're doing, why we're doing it, why I love you, why I want you on the team. But this is also why I don't have to have you on the team as well, because you know this is what I'm looking for.

Speaker 2: 23:40

This is your KPIs. You're no different. When you have family. You know you're going to have employees that aren't family and they're going to look and be like, oh my gosh, you know their family. They're always going to get treated better than me. You make sure that the other people know that the family is working the weekends, when they're at home. Whenever you know there's a family barbecue, you know half days on Fridays, let's say, and all the family takes off on a Friday. You know like. You know what that's the family perk right there and that's okay, because the family also worked Saturday and Sunday last week and we are at home and that's why they get to go to this family barbecue.

Speaker 2: 24:13

It's a family business. It is what it is and that's really helped my employees over time because they understand like it is family, it is okay. But the family they're going to work harder than me. They're going to just nosh the grindstone, and that's okay. Every family member that is within the business.

Speaker 2: 24:31

Now we have one common goal, and this is something that I learned to do over time. I have learned this, so I did leave that out. We have one common goal we're going to buy a ranch one day with the business, so the business is going to grow, so we can buy a ranch one day so all the family can move there. My mom's going to have a clubhouse in the middle and we're going to have, and my parents are gonna have a clubhouse in the middle where all of us go and party, and then each brother is going to have a house with a golf cart trail leading up to that clubhouse, and that is the goal of the business. And so everything we do now, everything we talk about, is about the ranch that we want to get one day because of this business that we're growing. And so that has really helped center our focus on why all of us are working together.

Speaker 2: 25:14

And so I asked my 80-year-old self it's like would you rather, you know, ryan, move somewhere else and not have any family working for you and get the business by the ranch and invite them on there or grow it with the family? And because of the family, we get to buy this ranch together and and have it because we all work together. Even though it may take a year or two longer, it is still a such a more, it's a more beautiful way of life and, you know, it's a way cooler story doing it that way than doing it the other way, and so you know I I don't regret having family. I love having family working for me and yeah, we're on one big team now, but you have to make sure you set that direction. We are on a team, but I am team captain and it is okay.

Speaker 1: 25:57

I love that story because there's one word that you said that I preach all the time, and that is you're listening to Small Business Pivots.

Speaker 1: 26:05

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Speaker 1: 26:47

I love that story because there's one word that you said that I preach all the time, and that is goals, so in other words, your North Star. I call them guiding principles, and so you just kind of shared the importance of if you have a goal that everybody can strive towards, it works a lot better. You know your notes to the family. I mean, you have purpose, you're intentional about the things you're doing, and so that really helps a lot of these challenges that a lot of business owners have because they don't have any goals. They're just there day to day putting out fires and things like that. And I want to, speaking of fires, you didn't have a fire, but I want our listeners to know.

Speaker 1: 27:27

If you're watching on YouTube, it's a little glitchy. We're not too bad. It's not too bad on your area, but you, at the time of this recording, you just had a hurricane and you just got power back. So the hurricane the name of it was Barrel Barrel, barrel Barrel, okay and it blew through. You've been without power for days and you just got the power back. That's tragedy, I guess, in business. How do you do that as a business owner?

Speaker 2: 27:53

I look at things I can control and that's the only thing I can focus on. What can I control? I mean, think about this the year I graduated college, in 2019, my first full year in business was the COVID year, right? And then after that, interest rates went up 10% and, like man, I think like if I was just born 10 years earlier, I'd have great interest rates and then I'd have COVID. But what can I control? I can't control that. I can't control the interest rates. I can do my best part, you know, make sure I'm getting smart financing Right, but you know, what can I control?

Speaker 2: 28:25

I control my work ethic and I can control how prepared I am, and so when this hurricane was happening and I'm without power and all that, you know, I'm planning. I'm either A a enjoying, you know, resting up, because I worked multiple ADR weeks in a row, whatever cool or I am planning on okay, whenever the lights turn on, we are ready. We have this person in this position, this person in this position, this person in this position. So it was more or less just a waiting game Because, yeah, it, that was not fun, you know, and we still don't't have the.

Speaker 2: 28:55

We didn't have. Our internet tower got blew down, and so when I was you know we're in the dark I was planning okay, if we did not have internet, what are we going to do? And so we had multiple people bring different wi-fi routers from their house and you know, we have little hot spots set up all around, all around the shop. We're running 12 computers right now for hot spotsots, and so just control what you can control. I mean, I couldn't control the hurricane. If I did, I'd turn it a little bit more that way.

Speaker 1: 29:21

Yeah, I understand. Well, let's talk about systems and processes. People call them different. Do you have those in your business, and how important are things like that to the success of your business?

Speaker 2: 29:36

Oh, they're everything. They are the business. I mean, the business is a system of systems, right, it's a system of processes, a process of multiple systems, whatever way you want to word it. That is the most important thing that I've learned over time, and writing down those systems is very important because if you don't write them down, one, you have to train them every single time, and it has to be you training them to.

Speaker 2: 30:03

You don't know why you do the things you do in a year from now, because you're you. You think like, you know, I made this system in process um at the time for this reason. And then, a year later, you don't remember that reason anymore. And so you end up trying to learn. You learn the same mistake again. You're like, oh, that's why I did it. And it's like don't, don't do that. Like, never try to learn the same mistake twice. Make it once, make as many as you can, first mistakes. When it's a second mistake, that's because you didn't write it down and you didn't learn it.

Speaker 2: 30:30

And so whenever I'm doing systems and processes, I'm in manufacturing. So we have a system for every single product. We have a process for every product. I mean, I'm one of the, my business is one of the few that manufacture, market, sell and fulfill the product, and so I have a full out manufacturing facility, you know, connected right, and we have shipping and logistics and we have sales and marketing. So most businesses are sales and marketing and some services you know ours is all encompassing. So we have, we have to have systems in place, um, for every part of the business, and it took me a long time to learn what a good system looked like. But, um, now, now we're getting it down and we're it's not a, it's not a finish line.

Speaker 2: 31:12

It's continual progression of developing more and more systems.

Speaker 1: 31:17

So I thank you for sharing that, because we work with so many business owners and we always start with kind of your guiding principles, like what is your North star? Where do you want to go? Let's talk about that. What do you? What does your life look like in five years? Let's let's talk about that. So we have a direction and then, but once we get to systems and processes, some of them bail on us. They're like Michael, we work 10, 12, 14 hours a day. I don't have time to sit down and do that. So how did you get past either that mindset or how did you find time to do the systems and processes?

Speaker 2: 31:51

I think you have to have that North Star like you talked about. You have to have that goal in mind. I think you have to have that North Star like you talked about. You have to have that goal in mind. And you know one thing that, referring back to the letters that I wrote to myself, you know, like your goals may change, but they don't make them any less important in today's time. And so, like you know, people tell you like, oh, it's not about the, not about the destination, it's the journey to get there. I say, cool, right, but I still want that ranch. Like, and maybe when I get the ranch, that isn't all it's cracked up to be and I'll be miserable there. Cool, but that is my North star, and I don't worry about other North stars because it's okay. Like, that is my North star. Do I know that the grass is greener on every side of the pasture? Yes, but that side of the pasture is my pasture and that's where I'm going.

Speaker 2: 32:38

And so setting that goal and having that guiding light makes making the systems worth it. Because you just do reverse math, you know like, if you want I don't know what it is Like for me I want a $10 million ranch. And so what do I have to do to get to a $10 million ranch? You know well, I either A have to sell my business for about $20 million or have $2, $3 million coming in every single year for multiple years in order to get this ranch. And so I just reverse engineered and go okay, well, what kind of systems, what does that look like? And how do I grow something to be that big so I can afford this goal that I have in life? And I don't question why I have the goal.

Speaker 2: 33:15

You know, I used to a lot of people used to harp on me on, or I used to harp on myself and get really down on myself on, like you know. Let's say, you're a car guy and you want a Lamborghini. Like, don't make other people's opinions of you. I'm like, oh, you know, lamborghini, you're just a materialistic guy. Or you know, oh, I want a Ferrari, it doesn't matter, that's your goal, it's your shining star, it doesn't have to be anybody else's, it's yours. I mean, I don't care if you want an ice cream machine made of gold, it doesn't matter, that's your dream. And so having my dream of being solely focused on it and then going, okay, what kind of system can I make so I can achieve my dream and my purpose in life? And my purpose in life right now is to buy my family a ranch, and that's the only thing. Maybe when I have the ranch you can talk to me. Then I may have a different purpose. I may want to do underwater basket weaving, I don't know. But right now is to get the ranch.

Speaker 1: 34:07

So the systems you said you're kind of perfecting them or getting them better, and I always say that they're always a work in progress. They're living, breathing documents that will always change. As you buy new equipment, as you reduce an employee size, whatever it is, logistics, your systems will change. So what's a good starting point for those that are? I just can't find the time type of business owners to say just start here.

Speaker 2: 34:32

To know that whenever you start the system, it's an infinite thing, right? But we do three iterations of a system. Typically, the first iteration makes so we design the system. Let's say it's um, you know how to quote somebody, whatever right, or how to put in a sales order, whatever it is. Um, you do it once. Just just dive in and do it jump in the water. Right, just just dive in headfirst. Okay, um, dive in and do it. Jump in the water. Right, just just dive in head first. Okay, um, dive in head first. You do it once.

Speaker 2: 34:58

Then you sit back and you iterate it and it's going to get 50 better and it's not going to take you much time to figure out how to make it 50 better. And then the next time you tweak that system it's going to get about 10 better and then it's going to get five percent better and after that it's going to get tiny little incremental increments better. And so what we do? We do three revisions and then we move on. That's what we've allowed ourselves to do, and we don't get in that perfection trap of trying to create the perfect system. It's like let's get this system and you know some systems 95% of systems don't have to be perfect, they just have to be. You just have to have something there in place. You can always go back and revisit it and make it better because things will change. But us doing the three iterations, going in three iterations over a three-day period right, not long. You spend 30 minutes on iteration because you're not trying to make it perfect, you're just trying to make it a little bit better, and then you move on and you go to the next system. That has allowed me to jump in a lot more head first and not have to worry about that perfection trap, because a lot of people they sit back and like, oh my gosh, like it's so daunting.

Speaker 2: 36:03

I have a thousand kind of systems Like I have. You know how the customer walks in the door and how do we greet them, how do we put in the order, how do we do all this? It's like one system at a time and just tweak it once or twice, three times max, and then we want the next one and have your list and it doesn't. It doesn't have to be that complicated. I mean just yeah, imagine me I'm making. I have 30, 40 different products that I'm making and I make it from raw wood to finished product, and there is, you know, 20 different stages on each different product, and so there's 20 different systems on each. So we have, you know, 300, 400 different systems that we have inside of our shop just to make the product. That's not to fulfill it, not to market it, not to sell it, that's just to make it. And so, you know, are some of those systems maybe a little bit inefficient, yeah, but at least we got one.

Speaker 1: 36:50

At least we have it, at least you have something on paper, you have something documented. That's what I say. If you can just have anything documented, that's better than nothing. So I kind of want to wrap up in this one little area of business and that is your marketing. So you have, I believe, 100,000 followers, maybe on YouTube, 20,000 on TikTok followers, maybe on YouTube, 20,000 on TikTok. I know a lot of people struggle with that as business owners On the digital side. What is your best advice that you found? To kind of get to those numbers, because I know a lot of marketers and influencers will say it's not about the numbers. And I say as a marketer myself. I beg to differ, because if you're not in front of people, no one knows about you. So yes, we're not all about the vanity metrics. You know we want to make sure we have the right people, but how do you get in front of that many right people?

Speaker 2: 37:48

So about the? So I have 100. Yeah, we're coming up. I think we're like a couple hundred away from 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, like I said, like 20,000 on TikTok, but that's with my cutting it close, and so that is where I teach CNC in business. It has zero to do with the sales and marketing of my woodworking business and my cooler company. Now, that's probably a mistake that I did over time, but it has nothing to do with it, because I don't want to teach woodworkers how to beat me all the time, so I'm not going to teach them here. Here's the products I make, here's how you should beat me. But, uh, I do teach a lot of like woodworking and stuff like that and I do teach them. You know all of the things that I've learned along the way, but I don't necessarily show them the exact products. Uh, I think we have 3000 on TikTok that we just recently got and, like for my woodworking business, we have done less than $10,000 in sales because of social media and Facebook ads. Okay, I'll say that with the caveat of we have done over a million dollars in sales because we are on social media but not directly influenced because of a post.

Speaker 2: 38:58

Social media for my business right now is validation. So it validates that we are real, that we are alive, that we have a heartbeat, that we're not Chinese, because a lot of people try to impersonate our products. And so what social media is for my business is we post semi-regularly to validate that we exist. Ok, and that's our marketing strategy and our, our, our, that's our social media strategy. Our marketing strategy is to make products so good that they talk about us in a word of mouth, travels, and so we brand all of our wooden products right With our brand and logo, and so 80% of our traffic, 80, 90% of our traffic is organic, that it came to us over time because we bootstrapped it and we have a ton of products out there, and so that's my marketing strategy. For the wood side of things, it's the social media is just to validate that we exist. Now for cutting it close, where I'm teaching and I'm coaching, and you know I do sell like some wooden panels on there and some bits and stuff like that, bits and blades. You know that's a different story where, like, it's very hard to grow organically that way, and so you have to do a lot of sales or you have to market and and what you look for, you know, on there, and why I've been able to grow is because I only talk about what I can talk about and I only show what I can show. And so whatever makes your product or your company uniquely, yours, show that off.

Speaker 2: 40:21

And the more, the more volume, the better. I have learned over time because unless you're at a million subs or something you know, a million followers, you need to post a lot. That's that's just you know. Like, was it Gary Vee, I believe, said it Gary Vaynerchuk? He's like if you do a post a lot, that's that's just you know. Like um, was it Gary Vee, I believe, said it Gary Vaynerchuk? He's like if you do a post a day, if you do 365 posts, you know one a day, you'll never have money problems again.

Speaker 2: 40:46

And I've, I've, I've heard that and I've I mean it is a volume scale. I mean the more eyeballs you get in front of the better. And like the letters that I write to myself, you're not going to be right. And so, like, your first post is probably going to suck, your first 100 posts are probably going to suck, but that 101 may hit. I mean our drapella works tiktok.

Speaker 2: 41:06

You know we did 40 posts in a row and we had less than like a thousand followers. I mean, every single day 40 posts. And that post, number 41, got a big 600,000 views and we got 2000 followers from it. And so now it was like, oh, we have 3000 followers. It's like, no, we had one good post. We had one good post, don't think, you know, and we've. We did make a lot of sales from that, that post, but it, you know, it wasn't until post number 41, you know, and and so for anybody that's out there that you know is looking at social media, like for woodworkers, and let me my last lesson I'll bring it home for woodworkers a lot of times they, they don't know who their audience is they're speaking to.

Speaker 2: 41:48

So for woodworkers, they'll show themselves making the product right, like, oh, look at me, make this table. What does that attract? That attracts other people that want to know how to make tables. It doesn't attract the interior designer that's going to buy that table and stage it in a house. And so for my woodworking business, for Trapella Works, instead of showing how we make all of our stuff, we show us how we package it and how we send it to customers and we tell a story about, like we do, these wooden piggy banks.

Speaker 2: 42:17

Now is one of our biggest products a wooden piggy bank, and so we'll grab a wooden piggy bank and engrave it with the kid's name. Let's call it a Riley, right, we engrave with the R Riley and then we'll tell a story about this famous Riley that was on. You know, say National Treasure, you know, and talk about that. You know, let's say national treasure, you know, and talk about that. And that gets to our customer demographic, because it's a Midwest housewife that has two kids, right, that it wants to buy something for their kids that are three under three years old, and so, like, we're targeting that audience. And so it took us a long time it took me 10 years to figure that out. That was one lesson is like make sure what you're doing is actually targeting the people that you want to target. I mean, if you're like I said, all most woodworkers get it wrong. They want to target, they want to oh my gosh, look how I do this and it's like nobody cares.

Speaker 1: 43:06

Your audience doesn't care.

Speaker 2: 43:07

Like you know, other woodworkers care.

Speaker 1: 43:09

Um but nobody else so well, and I will just lump in all business owners are that way. Most business owners don't know who their target audience is, and so that could be why they're they're struggling as well. Well, you've been a blessing to many today with a lot of golden nuggets. If someone wanted to get ahold of you, follow you. What's the best way to do that?

Speaker 2: 43:31

going to be a cutting it close the YouTube channel? Um, that's probably the best way, um, or yeah, ryan, ryan, at cutting it closecom. That's my, that's my email. Or yeah, ryan, sorry Ryan at CSE workshopcom. Uh, follow me on cutting it close, and that's the easiest way to find me, because that's the biggest channel and, um, I'll reach out.

Speaker 1: 43:53

I'm still on it day to day, fantastic. So if you were last question for you, if you were in front of an audience of various small business owners, what is one piece of advice that you would tell that would be applicable to all of them?

Speaker 2: 44:06

It would be. Focus Become a magnifying glass. The best analogy I can give is you can hold a piece of glass in the sun a regular piece of glass over a piece of wood in the sun for a thousand years and it will never burn it. And you take a magnifying glass and you hold it over there and it's going to burn it within five seconds. That's what you have to become. You have to take all that energy and focus on just one thing, right? Whether it's one product in your business, whether it's just your business, right. So you want to focus it just on your business. But the more you hone that focus down, the more you will not believe what you can come up with, and that's something that is.

Speaker 2: 44:43

It takes a very long time to develop. That means saying no to most everything. That means when you, when you wake up, you're focused on the one thing. That means like, for what I do, I sit back and I think for probably an hour every day on what's the most, what's the one thing I can do today, that if I do it, all other things in my business become easier, and I ask myself that question every single day and it takes me a long time most days to go ah, that's the one thing that'll move the needle forward. I will do that until it is complete, and that's the only thing I do until that needle is moved, and so focus.

Speaker 1: 45:21

Excellent advice that we all need to be reminded of often. So I appreciate you again, ryan. I'm glad you all are safe, glad you got your power back, appreciate you taking time out to share with our audience today while you're sitting there going through all the debris and things that the hurricane caused. But we thank you so much. Yes, sir, thank you, michael. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. Please don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast. If your business is stuck, you need help creating a business that can run without you, or you need a fast business loan or line of credit. Go to our website without you. Or you need a fast business loan or line of credit, go to our website businessownershipsimplifiedcom and schedule a free consultation to learn why small business success starts with boss. If you want to talk anything small business related, email me at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.