5 Projects That You Can Sell | Woodworking Business

Pick it up, right? No. You're ruining this intro, just saying. Today we're gonna talk about five projects that we've learned sell really well for us. So we got a question the other day on Instagram. Go follow us on Instagram if you haven't already. But we got a question of somebody asking, what do you make that sells the best? Because there's a ton of different projects. What, as a beginning woodworker trying to make some money, what should I go towards to make money? And so we were just replied with the five things that we made the most of. We thought that would be a pretty good topic for a video. So we're just gonna roll through the five projects that are just kind of our go-to, explain what's good and bad about each project, what we've learned by building several of them, and hopefully that'll spark an idea for you. Maybe you can use these as your go-to or it gives you the confidence to get off the ground with your business. Five projects are so versatile and so ubiquitous that you can incorporate. Ooh. I know, it's a big word. Ooh. I heard AVE use it, so. Wow, okay. Ubiquitous means it's everywhere. You might have a project. So these are five projects that you can make so different and so unique that if a customer just says, hey, can you show me something XYZ that you've built, you can point to one of these projects and say, well, I can do it just like this, but in a door or in a shelf or in a cabinet, something like that. And honestly, in your portfolio, people like to see pictures of things that they could see themselves buying. So if somebody wants a coffee table or they want some bar stools, but all your Instagram or whatever portfolio has in it is like super tiny, detailed keepsake boxes, they're gonna be like, I don't know if they're quite up my alley. Let's just get into it. We'll talk it into it. Whoosh. That's our transition. That's the transition? That's our transition. Okay. Okay, so number one on our list of super common projects is a desk. We have made multiple videos on YouTube of us building desks. That is just what people want. Lots of people want and need desks, whether it's to fill space in a room or they genuinely just need a work area. We'll get a lot of requests to customize desks, whether that's cable management, wireless charging, certain types of legs that they want. But when it comes down to it, they're super simple to make and customize. So if you have a picture of one in your portfolio that somebody thinks is cool, they can look at it and say, hey, that's awesome. And then can we do two extra holes for cable management? And you're like, yeah, sure, no problem, super easy. So very versatile. There's a lot of directions you can go with this one. You can change the style of them, the look of them, the feel of them. And when it comes down to it, it's still just a really usable desk. And then a little bit more on the sales side of building desks and why we absolutely love building them. It's because it is great practice for you as a salesperson to upcharge, to add little extras, to add accessories and customize it for them. And really as you customize and it takes more time and more materials and more skill, it's gonna naturally cost more, whether it's labor, whether it's your hourly rate, it's the materials you buy, all in all, it will cost more. So for example, somebody comes to you and they say, hey, I need a desk. That's great. That could be 8 million different desks. You can sit down and say, hey, what are you gonna use the desk for? Are you a computer gamer? Are you a college student? Do you want it for decoration? And from there, they say, you know, yeah, I'm a computer gamer. I like gaming. You can say, well, from there, we can do multiple shelves for you. You can make different cubbies to hold the tower for your desktop computer. Cable management is a big one that people who do a lot of online gaming like to do. You can include wireless charging so they can charge all of their little, I don't know, pieces, accessories, at the same time while they're playing. I just wanna butt in here for just a second. You remember Sam, the guy that we built the liquor cabinet for, a good friend of ours? We just built him a desk and we just did all of those things to his little desk. We have a batched furniture desk, just a pine top, chamfered edges, hairpin legs. Built him that exact same desk. We normally sell it for 200 bucks whenever we batch out five or more. And we turned his, almost the same exact style, we turned his into like an $800 desk because we used an oak top. We used two by six oak for the top. Solid oak, big, thick metal hairpin legs. Then I made a long tray that did all of his cable management. We had a power strip in there and then I routed out a big hole in the bottom so he could put a wireless phone charger through the top of the wood. And with all those upcharges, we changed it from a $200 desk that we would make out of pine into an $800 desk. And it really only cost me, and it cost me an extra like two or three hours worth of labor to get those other things finished. Will this hold me? I hope so. Okay, I think we're good. Okay, number two piece of furniture that we do constantly is coffee tables. Everybody loves coffee tables. Most of what we see is somebody is trying to achieve a certain style or they're trying to tie together a certain look in their living room. And a coffee table is a really easy way to do that. So that's what we see most of the time. Or somebody will come to us and say, hey, I need to match another piece that I have in my living room. So I need the coffee table to look like that. And honestly, that's where we get a lot of repeat customers. All right, so on the sales side of things, coffee tables are really good because it teaches you and it trains you how to follow up with your customers and get repeat sales. Because if you think about it, where do people put coffee tables? In their living rooms. And then if you look at a living room, think of your living room, it's probably where you have the most furniture in one small area. That reason being because that's the room everybody sees. You have guests and company come over and you sit on the couch in your living room around your coffee table. You serve drinks. Maybe you have some end tables, a shelf in the corner, a TV stand. There's a ton of stuff in your living room. So if there's any area of your house where you want a really nice looking piece that you can talk to people about for people to compliment and point out the cool design features, it's your living room. So, starting with a coffee table. You build somebody a coffee table. They really like it. You follow up with them in a couple of months and you say, hey, how do you like that coffee table? They say, hey, yeah, I like it. It looks really cool. You could even say something like, hey, when I was in your living room, I noticed in that corner on the left side of your wall, there's a little space open and I think it'd be super cool if we put a bookshelf in there. We can make it match your coffee table by using the same kind of wood. Oh, that's an awesome idea. I never thought about that. That would be super cool to have a bookshelf in my living room that matched the coffee table. And from there, you can start another sale with a repeat customer. So, you put a really nice piece of furniture in somebody's living room and what do people automatically start doing? They start comparing everything they have to that one piece of furniture. And when you're comparing MDF and particle board furniture to that beautiful oak coffee table that you just built them, they're gonna think, wow, I need to replace some of the stuff I have now with nicer stuff or I simply want to replace some of my old stuff with newer, nicer stuff. So, that's another awesome way that coffee tables are gonna bring you multiple sales. So, coffee tables are a really good catalyst to train you to find repeat customers and talk to people who have already bought from you. All right, next up on the list are cutting boards. You've seen us make a bunch of cutting boards on this channel and that's just because they sell really well. It's one of those things that everybody uses. They're something that you can batch out and make a lot of in a short amount of time. They don't take up a whole lot of space so you can kind of have them in the corner of your garage or in your basement or something and just have them ready to go. And the next time that you need to make a sale or get a few extra dollars of cash, you can just start texting a ton of people that you haven't talked to in a while and just said, hey, I'm running this business now, was just batching out a ton of cutting boards, wanted a few, wanted one. And that's a really easy way to make a couple hundred bucks very quickly. It's also another thing that you can approach businesses with. One thing, my buddy Bruce Ulrich, that he does, he makes cutting boards for closing gifts. So he's got a really good connection with a bunch of realtors in town and he just asked him, he's like, hey, can I make cutting boards? And you give those to your clients as closing gifts when they buy a home or sell a home with you. He stays really busy making a lot of cutting boards and you can get super fancy with cutting boards. You can do the face grain cutting boards, which we do a lot of. You can also do edge and end grain cutting boards, which are also, they take a little more time, but they're really, really nice. And if you've got a realtor that's got the money to spend on really nice closing gifts, typically $50 to $100, you can really start to make a lot of money, especially once you start batching them out. That's also a really good opportunity for you as a business owner to learn how to scale. If all you need is an extra two or three clamps and you can make another two or three cutting boards per batch, that really raises your profit margin. So this kind of teaches you how to scale with a small product. That way, when you get ready to do something like a restaurant or a department store and build all the display tables, you kind of already know how to think through a lot of products running through your shop at once. Yeah, that's why we recommend cutting boards are a great place to start if you're a business that's just trying to get off the ground and learn how to do this production thing. They're like, what's a blanket ladder? It's time for a field trip. Taking a trip. Hi, Percy. Hi, Perry. Is it gonna be lit? Next up is blanket ladders. Jenny made this one with just a jigsaw and a drill. It was gonna be so mean if you just stopped and said, they're stupid easy to make. Jenny made this one. All right, next on the list are blanket ladders. They're very simple to make. Jenny made this one with just a jigsaw and a drill. They do really well in a living room. They're really versatile. You can get kind of intricate with them if you want to. All it takes is just a couple of two by fours. You can screw them together, plug the holes. This, again, is another good project. It's a little bit larger, but you can batch them out really quickly. So it's another really good learning opportunity for you as a business owner to batch five to 10 of these out and kind of move through the process of doing multiple pieces at once in your shop. These do really well at craft fairs. Also do the measuring sticks, you know, where you measure your kid's height on this stick and you can take the stick with you if you move or something like that. And blanket ladders are really easy to sell because you can also sell decorating packages with them. This is something Jenny's done. She'll like bundles. She'll take like a burlap sack that you get at Walmart or something like that. And she'll put like four seasons worth of decorations in each one from like Hobby Lobby or somewhere. And she'll sell that bag of decorations for 20 bucks along with the blanket ladder for about 50 or 60. So for a hundred bucks, you've got a piece and decorations already put together ready for a year round decorating in your living room. A lot of people, at least in the South, where my family's from, we have a whole bunch of blankets and quilts that are family heirlooms and they're just collecting dust in the closet, but you can put them on a blanket ladder, display them. That's another sales angle that you can go for. Really, these things are just so versatile for decorations. Just try to find out what's popular in your area and try to throw together a decorating package to go with the blanket ladder. Cause that's going to go way further than just having a ladder made out of wood that you're trying to sell. So this is a good way to learn how to market and take good pictures too. Oh my gosh. So the last thing we're going to talk about is kitchen tables. This is where you can really flex your muscles as a maker. If somebody's buying a kitchen table from you, it's probably not the first thing they've ever bought from you. Maybe it is, but this is a pretty high dollar item. Once you're starting to talk about like custom kitchen tables, you're looking in the two, $3,000 range, just kind of depending on the size of the table. This is where you can learn how to make bigger items. You really have to think about your clamping strategy, your sanding and finishing strategies. It's just, everything's different with a larger product. Everything changes when the project gets really big. It's one thing to do a bunch of cutting boards and a few other tables, but when you get one or two kitchen tables in the workshop, you start to run out of space really quickly. So it's a good exercise in learning how to, you know, just manage your space, I guess. This is where you can really find out how well your shop is laid out because if you can't make a large item like a kitchen table in your shop, you may need to consider getting rid of some things or moving some stuff around, especially if you want to do any sort of like production. You like my Crocs? These are my nice Crocs, but yeah, kitchen tables. If you're at the point where you're selling kitchen tables to your clients, I'm pretty sure you've made it because that's something that their family touches, eats on, like people will trust you if it's like a small cutting board or something, but if they're going to spend two or $3,000 with you to build a kitchen table, I feel like you've arrived. That person is definitely on your Ferris wheel. I hope these tips have been helpful. These are just the five things that we make the most of that we feel have the best learning opportunity for a small business or a side hustle, trying to learn how to build things. And there's all different types of construction. Like we've covered small things like cutting boards to really big items like kitchen tables. If you can master those five prod-ducks. Prod-ducks. If you can master those five products, everything is going to go your way. And it sounds like you're off to a great start as a business, so. Anything else, Bruce? He says no. All right, well, if you liked this video, please hit the thumbs up button. It helps out the channel a ton. It really does make a difference. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. And then if you want to know even more detail about how we actually close sales, what we sound like on the phone, some scripts, our pricing structure, that sort of thing, we have programs available for purchase. We slow it way down. We don't put as much fluff in B-roll. It's literally just the information. Really in-depth, really solid. We spend way more time on those programs than we spend on these silly weekly videos. But yeah, check out links in the description. All right, we're gonna have a couple more videos on the screen here for you to watch. Thank you very much. Bye.