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Transitioning from corporate to entrepreneur sounds like a dream come true for many. But what’s the best way to do it? What do you need to look out for?
Doc Wright, founder of The Wright Edge shares the lessons learned from his successful journey.
What You’ll Discover About Transitioning from Corporate to Entrepreneur:
- How a side hustle assisted Doc in transitioning from corporate to entrepreneur
- The network connection that put The Wright Edge on the path to profitability
- The business mentoring needed to fill the gaps when transitioning from corporate to entrepreneur
- The benefits of financial bootstrapping
- Why identifying your market niche is essential when transitioning from corporate to entrepreneur
- PLUS so much more!
Guest: Doc Wright
Doc is the Founder and Master Craftsman at The Wright Edge, a custom furniture maker that creates massive, 100% handmade live edge tables and artwork for hotels, businesses, and anyone looking for a distinctive statement piece for their home.
Their creative work has recently attracted a lot of interest from the woodworking industry, and Fortune 500 companies, including The Ritz Carlton, Marriott Hotels, Tesla, Toyota, and AIG, are among their list of clientele.
They have also designed specific pieces for world-famous rock stars and major sports athletes such as Mat Fraser (5-time Crossfit Games Champ) and Cole Hamels (2008 World Series MVP).
Like many entrepreneurs, Doc had a career in corporate America but left his 9-to-5 when he found custom woodworking as a way to escape the monotony and stress of his daily grind as an oil geologist.
His decision to take the risk of leaving a secure and well-paying job to follow his passion for woodworking paid off. In less than four years, Doc was able to grow his company from his backyard and garage into a market leader in the high-end custom live edge craftsmanship industry, bringing in over seven figures in revenue annually.
Related Resources:
If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Entrepreneurship and Start-up Life episodes.
Contact Doc and connect with him on Instagram.
Also be sure to check out the beautiful wood creations on his business website.
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THE KEYS TO TRANSITIONING FROM CORPORATE TO ENTREPRENEUR WITH DOC WRIGHT
Transitioning from corporate to entrepreneur sounds like a dream come true. But what’s the best way to do it? What do you need to look out for? Today’s guest shares the lessons learned from his successful journey. Stay tuned.
This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner. Helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the weekly podcast for smart executives, managers and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line.
I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I have a very interesting guest for you today. He’s Doc Wright, the founder and master craftsman at the Right Edge, a custom furniture maker that creates massive, 100% handmade live edge tables and artwork for hotels, businesses and anyone looking for a distinctive statement piece for their home.
Like many entrepreneurs, Doc had a career in corporate America, but he left his 9 to 5 job when he found custom woodworking as a way to escape the monotony and stress of the daily grind as an oil geologist. His decision to take the risk of leaving a secure, well-paying job and follow his passion has paid off.
In less than four years. Doc has been able to grow his company from his backyard and garage into a market leader in high end, custom live edge craftsmanship industry, bringing in over seven figures in revenue annually.
His creations have attracted a lot of interest from the woodworking industry and Fortune 500 companies, including the Ritz-Carlton, Marriott Hotels, Tesla, Toyota and AIG. He’s also designed custom pieces for world famous rock stars and major sports athletes.
So it’s always exciting to speak with someone who’s carved out a niche for themselves. Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Doc.
Thank you for having me on. It’s a pleasure.
Pleasure’s mine. Woodworking is such a broad field. How did you happen to gravitate to live edge pieces? And for listeners who may not be familiar with the term, would you please explain that?
So live edge just means it’s the actual shape of the tree where you’re taking the tree, you’re getting it on a sawmill, and the curvature of the wood is natural to the tree. You’re not trying to fake it and put a false edge on it or anything. And it’s for us, it’s on the back of all of our business t-shirts. It just says hashtag, we play with big wood. And that’s kind of what we’re known for, is playing with obnoxiously big stuff.
Obnoxiously big stuff. So in terms of size, how many feet are we talking about? How heavy is this? Does this live edge still have the bark on it?
19 ft x 5 ft Monkey Pod Epoxy River Dining Table
Sometimes, but usually the bark falls off during the drying process. Okay, So most of the time it just comes a little bit rough, dirty times. A big the biggest table to date was 39 feet. And then just a day and a half ago, I just received my next big slab for a project that’s going to be headed up to Manhattan, New York. And the slab is 20 feet long by 69 inches wide.
That is a big ass table.
Yes, ma’am.
Now, I’m curious, was this business idea a side hustle while you were still working your corporate job?
It started off as honestly just stress relief. I wanted a hobby that wasn’t working out. And it just so happened I rebuilt my neighbor’s patio. And then I had a friend of mine who just bought a new table from Crate and Barrel, and he wanted a live edge bench to go with it.
And I was like, Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can make anything. And that was early December of 2016. And two and a half months later, after like three or four more pieces, an interior designer found me and asked me to bid on five conference room tables. So I did and got the job.
And it was big enough to where I felt confident that this was such an abnormal situation that I would be stupid not to take the chance because I was in my early thirties, not married, no kids, was making a bunch of money and was like I’m just young enough and just dumb enough to take a chance.
It sounds like you’re glad you did. That’s a great connection to have that network connection with the interior designer that could help feed you business, right?
Custom vanity
We couldn’t find a website or anything like that, but we really liked that one table you made, and we got a couple of bids from some other companies that we thought were pretty obnoxiously high. We’d like you to bid on it. So that’s how it all started.
So that’s how it all started. And if I understand you correctly, because of your personal situation in terms of not having the family obligations that some other folks might have, it was easier for you to make the jump, especially with a good order in place so that financially, you were bootstrapping your business, is that right?
Yes, ma’am. And still bootstrapping it to this day.
All right. Well, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. This way, you don’t owe anybody anything,. How did you finally take it from hobby to business? Because it’s you need to do a little bit more than just have a hobby and play in your woodshop.
Being a scientist, I know nothing about business. I knew enough of from having dinner with a couple of buddies who have side hustles and stuff. I knew a little bit.
But the biggest thing was this very first job ended up being for five tables and it was over six figures. And I knew at that moment this was not a normal situation because I didn’t need to go build a bankroll with investors. I didn’t have to pull out a line of credit. I didn’t have to pull out a business loan. I could just get started.
And like I said, it was for enough money that in my heart of hearts, when I made the decision to quit my job and cash out my stock and just go with it. The honest to God question I asked myself or kind of realization was, what’s the worst that can happen? I do it for a year and it goes under. Okay, well, I have a pretty ridiculous resume as it is. I can always go back into industry.
So I kind of felt like there was no lose-lose. It was just do I have enough mustard to take a chance and bet on myself?
So you took a smart risk. So good for you. There may be other people listening right now that said, no, I could do that. I have a nest egg. I’ve got my expenses covered for a while. I have some financial cushion. Or maybe they have a rich uncle that ‘swilling to bankroll. Either way, they’ve got the money part pretty much covered. They’re comfortable with that.
But I’m curious about, as you said, you didn’t have a business background. What challenges did you face transitioning from corporate to entrepreneur in terms of putting some accounting in place, just even basics? I mean, you don’t have to have a big infrastructure, but you need to have some business system in place.
No. Oh, absolutely. I was fortunate enough I knew a guy who was a serial entrepreneur that just own one of the biggest CrossFit gyms in Dallas. And so when I made the transition, I just hit him up. We went to have lunch and he was like, he was kind of the basics.
Number one, you need to get a website. Like, I didn’t do the rough build out on Squarespace, but pretty soon you’re going to want to have like a professional website done. So that was step one. And then he also introduced me to his accountant who showed me how to do QuickBooks, and then buying the LLC, finding a business attorney.
That could be my RA for the business, which is just a buffer between you and the IRS. And that’s kind of the first initial advice that I ever got. And after that, it was just slowly but surely over the years just putting more and more pieces in place.
Well, that’s really great. So you started with really a mentor to help you identify these big building blocks that you kind of needed to have in place. What other things have you put in place over the years?
So now I have a full-time website developer company. They’ve been with me for five years now. I have a digital marketing company that does all of my SEO and Google search stuff.
The last coming up on I guess about nine months, I’ve been working with the PR company, just with some of our clientele. And when we do massive installs and for high profile stuff like with Toyota, we could do press releases and get those sent out and just get try to get more eyes on our work.
Parota Waterfall edge executive desk
First off, and I’m a big proponent of this, there’s a niche market for everything on the planet, and I’m never not surprised by how some people have created their wealth. It’s actually kind of inspiring.
But there is a constant theme of especially if we’re going to go with like more of the handcrafted stuff where you actually have a tangible product that you are producing and it’s not all digital. That’s two separate worlds. But if you’re going to go with more of a handcrafted kind of like what we did or arts and crafts or succulents or whatever it is, what are you doing in making that is going to separate you from the rest of the pack?
Because if you’re just going to make the same thing that you see on Instagram that everybody makes, then you’re just going to put yourself into a more competitive market. Whereas if you truly are being a trailblazer and your work does stand out, it just makes everything a lot easier because now you’re different, and being different is good.
Identifying your niche certainly a very good step. What else would you recommend they do?
Definitely go find other entrepreneurs who have done this before or are still currently doing it. They will be able to give you the best advice. That is free advice most of the time.
Some of the advice that I’ve heard or I’ve read is you got to go find a CEO group or you’ve got to pay a couple thousand dollars to be in these groups. And it’s basically just a measuring contest.
You really don’t get much out of it from my opinion, but find somebody who’s actually done this and either ask them to be your mentor or just, Hey, man, this is what I’m thinking about doing. What is your advice on the smartest and most financially sound way to go forward with this?
Because the first three years of starting a new business, it’s pure survival. And once you hit your three, the percent chance that you make it to year five goes dramatically up from year one, year three. So if you can just survive the first three years, you’re doing better than 85% of the rest of the market.
And then after a year or three, you start becoming a little bit more established. Your products become a little bit more established. Same with your name, everything. And that’s when you can really start making some fun moves. Just got to survive the first three years.
First three years. What would you have done differently during your first three years?
Everything.
If you had to do it over again, right? What? Tell me more.
If I had to do it over again, I probably would have sold my house and bought a large piece of property somewhere around the city and actually built my own shop with like a house on the property.
And that way the company could be paying my mortgage rather than now I’m paying an asinine amount of money just to be in a very specific location in Dallas. And we needed the shop space. So it just is what it is. But the amount of land I could have bought and the size of the shop I could have personally built versus what I’m paying in rent.
I definitely would have done that because at the end of the day I would have equity in it rather than just throwing money away.
Paying rent. Makes a lot of sense. That’s, I think, what some entrepreneurs do not necessarily building and buying massive pieces of land, probably with lots of trees, I would imagine.
But to own their own building, if they have an office and again, same kind of idea where the office is paying them rent, the business is paying them rent and maybe even paying the mortgage depending on how it’s set up. What else would you do differently?
I would have made some different moves, like bringing on the digital marketing company. I would have brought them on sooner if I would have known that was a thing. Would have purchased some different machines and equipment sooner. Just production time.
Time is money and whatever we can do to maintain the quality status, but anything to do to lower the production time saves money and just being smarter about that stuff in the beginning. I mean, over the years it’s evolved to get to that place. But there’s been a couple like when the pandemic hit and we had four corporate jobs all canceled and had nothing on the books second and third quarter of 2020.
So just being able to make some of those moves earlier would have helped ease that pain.
Yeah, well, I don’t think anybody really anticipated the pandemic. But you survived. That’s a good thing. You survived. Now, it’s interesting you mentioned digital marketing, doing that sooner because marketing is just such an important piece of any business.
What you do. I mean, certainly you’re going to have beautiful pictures. And with these high-profile clients, you definitely have some meat to put into press releases, which is fabulous. But I think everybody at some stage of their business growth can benefit from digital marketing. How did you go about finding your digital marketer? What types of things were you looking for?
Actually, when the pandemic hit and those jobs got canceled, I sat around for two weeks like everybody did, and I was like, This is stupid. So I grabbed my dog, just wanted to hit the road. So I drove to Chicago, over to Ohio, down to Tennessee.
And on that road trip, just doing some windshield therapy, thinking I really wanted to put more time and money into a portfolio and have a professional actually make the portfolio.
And right around that time, God just kind of poked his head up and was like, Hey, I got you. So a girl that I went to college with and I haven’t spoken with in forever, she randomly reached out to me on Facebook and we hopped on a call and we were just talking about that. And so she was the one who redid the portfolio.
And at the time she was working with Ray Cornell, who does all my digital marketing. So she introduced me to Ray, and Ray has been instrumental in helping my business prosper ever since 2020.
So it’s really helpful to have good referrals from people you trust so that you can trust who they refer you to.
I think that’s a very valuable, the importance of a network and also what you said about, as you were driving from one state to another to having the time to think about your business instead of just working in it, which especially in that startup phase and those first three years is it’s all consuming, as you mentioned, and it’s so easy for people to get lost in the details and not step back and get the pandemic made…
You step back. So that was a good thing for you.
Absolutely. Because leading up to that time, it was literally a horse with blinders on. It was just this direction and we’re going as fast and hard as we can. And it really made me switch the business model, actually, because at the time, I would say 90% of our work was coming from interior design firms for hotels and resorts, and they all got shut down, not even furloughed, just, hey, this is all canceled.
That’s working with Ray. We really focused residential and direct to business, and that saved my business.
So do you have more of a business plan now? I mean, you said before you were just like a horse running with blinders as fast as you could go with all of these jobs that the interior designers were bringing your way, which is great and some nice cash flow. But when that all dried up, you pivoted. So do you have a more comprehensive plan now?
I’d love to say yes, but the real answer is no, not really. I’ve come to find out because things change so fast and we have to pivot so fast, whether it’s who we source from. I rarely use domestic species. I import massive slabs from Costa Rica, Thailand, Vietnam, Bali, Indonesia. Even that change, like getting it through customs, has been a pain.
So every time I think that, okay, we got this figured out, okay, now let’s do this. Some sort of wrench always gets thrown in. So I kind of prefer just to stay on my toes. And when something crazy amazing happens, I’m allowed to do it because I’m not die-hard dead set on this one plan.
Understood. You can have some flexibility. You don’t have to say, Oh, my God, it says on Tuesday, I do this. Sorry, can’t go to Thailand. I’ve got to do this. As you experience yourself, it’s helpful to have that peripheral vision to be able to make those pivots when necessary.
I’m curious, Doc, in your journey, you’ve had a very good mentor that helped you get your start, introduce you to a good accountant that you can trust and rely on. What’s been the best piece of business advice that you’ve received over the years in your journey from corporate to entrepreneurship?
The first one is the importance of networking. You can have the best advertising, the best marketing, but that will only take you so far. The real big business deals are still done shaking hands. And just expanding your network. Like one of our pro athlete clients that I became friends with…
He was the one who introduced me to one of the owners of Black Rifle Coffee, and that’s how I got in with them. And there’s no way I could have ever gotten that job unless it was a direct referral from a client and a friend. So that was the biggest key is just networking is everything.
The second piece is a quote that I got sent from a good friend of mine, and it changed my perspective on social media and just what I call the noise, the naysayers, the people who want to see you fail and everything. And the quote simply says, You will never be criticized by somebody doing more than you.
And the moment I read that is just weight was taken off my shoulders. And you realized, look, if somebody’s not directly putting food on your table, their opinion is kind of irrelevant. You’re the only one who knows the ins and out of your business, who knows yourself and knows the direction you want to take your business.
Nobody knows that better than you. So why allow outside influence to come in and rock the boat when they don’t even have a dog in the fight? It’s irrelevant.
Well, I can’t top that, Doc, that’s for sure. And, I think maybe that’s the best way to wrap it rather than try and ask another question, because I think that’s a really powerful quote. And your response to it is certainly heartfelt and makes a lot of sense. Exactly right.
So thanks so much. I really appreciate your time and sharing your journey. Transitioning from corporate to entrepreneur. Your live edge pieces are beautiful, so please keep up the good work.
And if you’re listening, you’d like to know more about Doc Wright and his gorgeous custom woodwork. Those links, as well as the transcript to this interview, can be found at the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.
Thanks so much for listening. Please be sure to tell your friends about the show and leave a positive review. We’ll be back next Thursday with another episode of Business Confidential Now. Until then, have a great day, and an even better tomorrow.
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