Steve Larosiliere: Season Recap

Steve Larosiliere: Season Recap

Today we have a recap episode of the podcast, we’re going to talk about some of the awesome guests we’ve had, and dive into some current trends happening in the wood business.

First off I want to give a shout-out to my partner Ethan at the Building a Furniture Brand Podcast, he has been absolutely crushing it. It’s been amazing watching him grow that podcast. You can check it out on Woodpreneurlife.com or any other podcast platform. 

Looking back at the podcast, it has been about four months since we’ve taken a break, so this is a good time to check-in and recap. I feel grateful that the podcast continues to grow and I love the community that's been building around it, it is absolutely amazing. 

I wanted to talk about a couple of things today. First off, I'd love some feedback. What do you all think about the advice that I give? I'm getting good feedback, but I'd love to hear more about that. The other thing that I want to talk about is: who else do you want to see on the podcast moving forward? I feel like that's an even more important question. 

Who do you want to see? Who are the Woodpreneurs out there that inspire you and motivate you when you look at them on social media and you see what they're doing?

Looking Back at Everything we’ve Accomplished

I ended up moving back to Chicago. My house is semi-finished but we got the flooring and I'll post that to Instagram when the house is completely done. We also ended up making some butcher block countertops for our island. My time in Michigan was amazing. I feel like I further connected to the wood and sawmill industry and got an even better sense of what you all need. 

When I look back at the past couple of months, there have been a few people that I want to highlight.

Ryan Cochrane: We talked about building community. 

Mat Makin Things: He approaches it from pure organic content, a sort of generalist’s perspective. 

If you listen to Pete Parisi’s episode, I walk everybody through what it takes to start a business from scratch. 

Matt Ruben:  He quit his job. He was also a client, I worked with him, built his website, coached him, and now he’s full-time in his business. 

Kyle Kidwell: An amazing furniture maker. If you want to talk about what it takes to build a furniture line, that's a good one to listen to. 

Matt Morgan: Another incredible episode worth giving a listen to.

Christian and Lauren: They started a business with just an iDRY and then expanded into the urban lumber and slub industry.

Danny Torres: Another incredible woodworker with an amazing business.

There are so many amazing people on the podcast, and the downloads just keep going up. 

I also want to talk about some trends that I'm seeing. One is, I'm seeing more and more stories out there, I'm seeing more people talk to the camera. This is great, because what it does is it allows you to connect more with your audience.

I'm also seeing a lot more videos. Video is great because that's what the social media platforms want, they want more video, no more stills. You kind of need to see the behind-the-scenes of how things are being done. 

The day and age of just having finished product shots are done. You just need to show more videos. The brands that are winning more are the ones that connect more to their audience. So they're telling more of the story of the product and highlighting the customer. I've talked before about making your customer the hero. This is what I mean. 

Another underutilized resource is tapping into urban lumber. In many ways, if you're buying lumber that isn't mass-produced, you have a story to tell. 

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