The Best $15,000 We Ever Lost...

I think this is more lumber than I've ever bought at one time before got a ton of cherry we got a ton of hard maple that's going to be made into cutting boards Guys these are like 12T long pieces so much Lumber look at the Walnut over here for some Sherie boards I've definitely had more lumber on the rack but this is the most I've ever bought at one time I think I remember back when we were still in the garage in North Dakota I dreamed of needing this much Lumber I almost did I almost ordered this much lumber for a huge project that we had a bid accepted on I had just landed this huge project for a restaurant buildout that we actually lost we actually lost the job it was going to be a huge restaurant buil out with two bars a bunch of tables and I was going to build all this from a onecar garage shop and then we lost the job somebody ended up going to jail anyway I'm getting ahead of myself I want to tell you the story about it but none of it's going to make sense unless I tell you how we got the job let me grab Jenny cuz I think she remembers it better do you remember that huge rest restaurant buildout that we were going to do in North Dakota yes oh my gosh I do I want to tell that story today oh that that was a debacle that was something else so before we made half a million dollars selling our stuff we were stationed in North Dakota with the Air Force and we were just starting our little baby business out of our garage the first time yes and uh we were selling furniture to our friends and making a couple hundred here a couple1 there uh we really had no idea what we were doing but our business was growing and we heard that a local coffeee shop owner was going to open up a restaurant and a bar and I don't know we just we got really excited and we started doing what we tell you guys to do and that's to go talk to people about the stuff that you make so we heard this restaurant was opening up I thought you know what I can do a restaurant buildout and I sent you to go talk to uh the lady that was going to open the restaurant to close the deal down yes so this was right after we had watched a video from benua where he had done that um big commercial buildout with the shoes on the wall the Sho store yes and we just thought that was the coolest thing we were like that is amazing we should go talk to local businesses and see what they need so then we found out that this coffee shop was going to open a restaurant so I went to go talk to the ladies I went and I got my little coffee and I was like all nervous and I went to talk to him I was like hey um I heard that you're going to open a restaurant in the back of the coffee shop and they're like oh yeah we're excited we love it obviously it's in the early stages of planning but it's going to be amazing and I was like hey um I am a custom furniture business and I would love to help with the buildout to do the buildout to give you tables basically give you everything you need to make this place look like the restaurant of your dreams and they were actually super thrilled about that because we were in kind of a smaller town and you could tell that they had a very specific style that they wanted to nail in this um restaurant coffee shop remember what it was do you remember the style yeah it was very industrial it was like an industrial modern because the building was in an old brick building I think downtown oh that's right it was in our old church building it was on that first floor yeah yes so that was kind of the vibe they wanted and I was like well if they want to stick with that they're going to need somebody who's really good at custom and can you know take their design you know into account so I went to talk to them they were super excited we scheduled another meeting where her and I sat down and we kind of just talked design um and after I got all of the info everything she was looking for it was like two bars I think like six large tables like 12 benches all sorts of random stuff and then I brought that all back to Davis and you put it in SketchUp yeah so you drew it all up and so we were ready to make this like an official bid so we drew it all up I was so scared she's making me sound really good I was terrified I was I had never done like that scale of thing before I just thought well figure out a way to get it done and so I thought I need to show her as close to reality as it's going to look or she's not going to be able to use her imagination and figure it out so I sat in sketch up for what felt like hours well it was hours it was hours I think I stayed up like most of the night one night trying to get it done before I had to go to work the next day anyway put a ton of time out of this proposal I didn't know how to build a proposal so I just like slapped a bunch of stuff do we still have it yeah we still have it can we go find it yeah I want to I want to see if we can find it yeah we can show it to them oh man this brings back memories I I dumped so much time into this I remember you took pictures of this place so I could recreate it and sketch up and I did so we could get all the dimensions of the rooms right and like the width of the walls and oh my gosh yes okay so they wanted two bar two 15t bars Six Tables 12 benches a set of shelves for behind one bar and a pallet bench yes that's when the pallet furniture was so big H my gosh yep so the tables and benches I was just going to build all the lower stuff out of steel and the gray and then going to build all the top out of just like palletwood P they wanted it very like rustic industrial type and then these bars look at these bars I was I put a lot of time into this design there's metal and wood on these bars and then I think they wanted like counter tops right and then the other half was going to be a dance bar at night and so she wanted a separate bar for that and they all had like LED lights in them oh my gosh look at this okay look at this pricing oh my God I can't believe I was going to sell a 6ft table for3 $5 that blows my mind cuz for us we were I think we were scared because they were going to have to buy so many we're like they're going to freak out at the price if we tell them like what's the lowest we can get this down to I mean these are still profitable prices but when you're doing restaurant build outs like it's the bank's money so people there's a higher perceived value on the objects so yeah the bar we were only going to charge like 4 grand for and that should have been th each of those bar should have probably been yeah 10 grand at least because they're going to make money on this furniture that's the it's not just this is not just a customer going to buy a kit table for their house this is a bus that's going to make money using these objects so you can really charge up to how much money they're going to make with the bar for the bar so it's just it's a different Market but jeez we had these nice price break downs which we do not do this anymore the more information you put in your bid the more you're letting your customer argue with you over every last little charge so we do not do this anymore we just give a total price price just like this at the top we we only give pricing and deliverables for each thing oh yeah and then we wrote him up a whole schedule right cuz we wanted to be done with all this before all the snow and the cold set and so did they but yeah and right at the top agreement signed amount paid work begins oh wait yeah agreement signed work begins that was the thing that saved us that one right there yes man so this schedule right here if you if you're doing contracts if you want to do a buildout like this this schedule is what's going to save you that way you don't do work without getting paid for it so man and then we've got all of the terms and conditions down there but man this really brings back a lot of you know I like I still like this design yeah I do too it's not my style anymore but like I I would go to a beer garden that had that style I and I would think it was cool but I'm biased but I'm biased but all I had was SketchUp and the little pricing formula that's in our little calculator on our website so you can use it if you want Jenny davis.com pricy work um but we used that little formula to try and come up with a ballpark price to give her on this whole buildout you know we didn't price it perfectly but the important part was we came up with a price we had a price we were confident in it we wrote it up in this proposal of sorts that wasn't like super formal by any means but at least it was on paper they accepted our bid on the buildup which was really exciting but after the bid got accepted that's when things got really weird we we were super excited I knew that this was such a big order such a big job that I shouldn't do any work on it until we had a down payment yep that was probably the thing that saved our butts on this job was that we refused to buy any of the lumber until they had paid their down payment which was good I'm so glad we stuck to our guns on that one and you know what makes me so happy is that something that like the guys and girls in the stud stack like were all on board on that like oh my gosh I can't tell you like the number of times the stud stack has come in when somebody's like celebrated like nailing a big job we just like hey don't buy anything get a down payment and everybody's so encouraging and supportive like and now looking back at this experience this story is exactly why we get a down payment on any job we do and that's why we preach it to other people get a down payment they accepted our bid on the buildout which was really exciting but after that I tried reaching back out I was like great it was accepted so hey um we'd love to start buying some of the lumber to start building your tables in your bar just waiting on the down payment to come through silent I would send them multiple textt messages I would send emails I would try to call them I would leave them voicemails I would even go into the coffee shop to try to meet them in person but I would always just catch their employees there so we had this giant bid that was accepted we were we were so excited I was I was pricing out lumber I wasn't buying anything but I was pricing out lumber I was practicing my welding skills I was really excited but Jenny couldn't get a hold of the customer and the deadline was approaching winter was coming in North Dakota and we wanted to get all this done before the heavy cold set in so uh we mustered up the courage to go to the coffee shop one day and to our disappointment the coffee shop was closed the doors were locked the lights were off nobody was there the coffee shop was closed down the next week when I went into work I had some friends who were very entrepreneurial and they started talking about this coffee shop that they wanted to buy and they were talking about how that that coffee shop wanted to use the money and the profits from the coffee shop and funnel it into a brand new restaurant and so of course my ears perked up cuz I was like that's a pretty rare scenario I highly doubt there's a second set of people wanting to do the exact same thing that this coffee shop did that I was just talking to so we were just quiet we just listened you know like good friends do we asked questions and all the while we're just trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together our friends told us that the bank told them they weren't going to give them a loan to buy the coffee shop because the owners were embezzling money they weren't paying taxes they weren't paying their employees that our friends were trying to buy this coffee shop from these scumbags the business was basically upside down and bleeding cash and our friends were actually taking the owners to court to get their earnest money back when they said they wanted to buy the business you don't have to be a detective to connect the dots here this was the same owner of the coffee shop that we had a a bid accepted on to do the restaurant buildout and I am so glad that we never bought any lumber for this project we never spent a dime on this project because we never got a down payment and that saved us and even though we lost this $115,000 job we learned so many things throughout the process like how to write a proposal how underpriced we were and how we could think big we could take jobs like this realistically writing this proposal fundamentally changed the way that we did business it expected exped our goals it expanded what we thought we could do with this little side hustle business in our garage and from that day forward I dreamed of the day where I could buy as much Lumber as I did this week without having to worry about how much it costs and look at us now all that Lumber I showed you at the beginning of the video is going to turn into $45,000 worth of cutting and shuie boards and the best part is based on what we learned from this story all of our inventory has already been sold I don't build things until after we've gotten the money and we learned that lesson from this story so we have to try things and fail and and do it before we feel like we're ready to do it otherwise we're not going to learn what we need to learn losing this $115,000 job taught us how to make a hundred times more money than that anyway to finish the story for you guys I don't think our friends ever ended up getting their earnest money back which really sucks yeah that was disappointing the owners of the coffee shop I believe fled the country and were going to like go to jail if they ever came back to the US it was a sticky situation for them but you know what I'm so glad we were a part of this dumpster fire of a situation because we were able to capitalize on it and learn how to make so much money from the things that we learned doing this job we didn't overthink it we just set clear boundaries and we pushed it as far as it would go and it just didn't pan out but we were able to learn things along the way that are way more valuable than $15,000 would have been and if you enjoy watching our videos and you sell what you make we want to encourage you to join the stud stack we can pull resources and lessons together so that we can all save money and grow our businesses a lot faster sign up today it's literally cheaper than dog food to join the stud stack but up next watch this video about how we made our first $10,000 on accident to theck to the ask me how I do it to the to the it ain't to it just who I am ask me how I do it sck to the sck to the