The Woodpreneur Podcast

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100

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Aug 2026

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We cover the business and marketing side of the woodworking, sawmill, tree service, furniture making, Urban Wood, and woodworking industry. If you're a woodworker, sawmill owner, or any other entrepreneur and/or business owner in the wood industry, you need to check out this podcast. Each week, we interview business owners, large-scale companies, entrepreneurs, makers, and designers while also offering marketing and business advice that will help you grow your business and increase your profits. Tune in every week! www.builldergrowth.io www.woodpreneurlife.com Join our free and private Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurlife

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60 recent

September 10, 2026Episode 50329 min

Darci Shannon, National Hardwood Lumber Association

Darci Shannon walked into her first hardwood convention determined to spend as little as possible. She had talked her boss into joining the association, negotiated the booth cost down, and told them she would bring her own trash can rather than pay for one. Fifteen minutes onto the show floor, the small saw shop she worked for closed the biggest sale in its history. In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Darci Shannon, membership services advisor for the National Hardwood Lumber Association, to talk about what an association actually does for a hardwood lumber business and why the smallest members get most of her attention. Darci trained as a teacher, walked away from teaching and coaching during COVID, and took a job running the office and the sales desk at a small saw shop in rural Missouri, handling band and circle blades for mills. She pushed her employer to join the NHLA before she fully understood what it was. A few years later the association wanted her, had no open role, and made one. You'll hear how membership actually breaks down, from the mills and cabinet makers through to the sustaining members who serve the industry rather than produce hardwood lumber. Saw blades, lubricants, even the trash bags every sawmill goes through. Without those services, as Darci puts it, nobody produces anything. She describes the part of the job she cares about most, which is being the person someone calls when they do not know who to call. One member, a small distributor hunting for walnut who had never been to a convention, got pointed toward a source in Missouri and is still buying from them. She also covers the saw filing classes she set up, the scholarships attached to them, and the thermally modified wood session drawing the most interest at this year's show in Cleveland. The conversation gets honest about the mood in hardwood lumber right now. Darci names the doomsday mentality as her biggest obstacle and lays out what the association is doing about it: new publications aimed at architects and designers, a push to get wood specified before the job goes to an alternative product that costs less and gets replaced sooner, and the federal advocacy work she has joined in Washington the last few years. Jennifer, who was born into a forestry family and works in urban salvaged and reclaimed wood, makes the case for wood as a future antique, the one material you can keep reusing while the carbon stays locked inside it. Darci can be reached at d.shannon@nhla.com , and the association is at nhla.com. Chapters 00:00 What the NHLA Does for the Hardwood Lumber Industry 01:13 From Teaching to a Saw Shop to a Job They Created 03:55 Membership Levels and the Services Behind Hardwood Lumber 05:38 The Job Is Connecting People 10:45 The Walnut Buyer Who Found a Source at Convention 12:31 Saw Filing Classes and Thermally Modified Wood 22:14 Fighting the Doomsday Mentality in Hardwood Lumber The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io Connect with us at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/ Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork You can connect with Darci at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darci-shannon-9054222a5/

September 3, 2026Episode 50231 min

Jennifer Flynn, SEEDS EcoCorps

There are trees sitting in woodlots right now, rotting, and others headed for the chipper, and every one of them is releasing methane and losing the carbon it spent decades collecting. Jennifer Flynn built a workforce program around that problem, and the people she trains learn to run a chainsaw, a portable sawmill, and a GIS mapping tool in the same season. In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Jennifer Flynn, the EcoCorps program director at SEEDS EcoCorps in northwestern lower Michigan and a fellow board member at the Urban Wood Network. Jennifer is an eco psychologist by training, and she runs what she calls a green collar career exploration program for anyone 16 and older, with no upper age cap. Her staff have included high schoolers, career changers coming out of desk jobs, and people referred through the state workforce development agency. The program is modeled on the Civilian Conservation Corps of the New Deal era, which both of her grandfathers served in, back when only young men were allowed. The urban wood work started in 2019, before the Urban Wood Network was even a formal organization, when a city planner brought in speakers and the team was asked to rescue community trees felled for a trail project. That one job turned into a systems change model. Jennifer's organization now convenes agencies across a ten county region to divert organic waste from landfills, while the hands on urban wood recovery stays local to the Traverse City area. You'll hear how the value chain actually works: arborists fell the trees, a portable sawmill operator trains the crew on the mill, and the material goes out to contractors, sign makers, furniture makers, and the National Park Service. In one case her team sold rescued wood to the park service, then came back two or three years later to build the public structures out of the same material they had milled. The full circle piece is what makes this one worth your time. Crews plant and maintain trees, mill the ones that come down to disease or development, then sweep the sawdust into a composting system that produces soil for food pantry gardens. Jennifer is candid about what her region is missing: the nearest kiln operation is an hour and a half away, the major industry operators will not take a log or two at a time, and she would love to see a former staff member open a sawmill and kiln closer to home. She calls that a five year goal. Her most rewarding urban wood memory is a newly hired naturalist who learned to run a portable sawmill on her first day on the job, milling logs that had come down that same week. Chapters: 00:00 What a Green Collar Career Actually Means 05:01 The Wood Rescue That Started It All 11:06 Modeled on a Depression Era Conservation Corps 16:29 Rebuilding the Urban Wood Value Chain 19:48 Who Buys Rescued Wood, and Where It Goes 23:29 A First Day on a Portable Sawmill 27:36 The Missing Links, a Local Sawmill and Kiln The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io Connect with us at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/ Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork You can connect to Jennifer at: https://urbanwoodnetwork.org/ https://ecoseeds.org/

August 27, 2026Episode 50136 min

Ian Funk, American Barnwood

The wood in Ian Funk's house came from the business he now owns. He did not know that when he bought either one. In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Ian Funk of American Barnwood, a reclaimed wood yard on California's central coast that he acquired at the end of last year after twenty five years in medical device marketing. His job there was translating between surgeons and engineers, and he is candid that a reclaimed barnwood lumber yard was not the obvious next step. What made it click was a coincidence. The house he had bought in Paso Robles came with barnwood beams, doors and shelving, and a sheet of paper explaining that the wood had come from barns in Indiana. When he went looking for a small business in recycling and repurposing, he found the reclaimed wood shop that had supplied it. He says it sounds like a Hallmark movie, and it does. You will hear what actually transferred with the business and what did not. It came with twelve years of local reputation, a single reliable supplier in the Midwest, and a physical system for handling the wood that the previous owner, an engineer, had worked out and passed on. It did not come with systems or customer records, and the previous owners were straightforward that they had run it to the level they needed on the way to retirement. Ian talks about the discipline of provenance, which is the part that separates a reclaimed wood yard from a lumber pile: because the material is effectively single sourced, they can trace a board to a named barn in Indiana, and an academic historian reads construction methods to date the building and reconstruct who built it, what crops they raised, and what the structure meant to its community. That research gets condensed onto a sheet that travels with every piece of wood. For anyone weighing a late career pivot or buying rather than building, this is an unusually honest account of being a novice on purpose in the reclaimed wood trade. Ian's answer to not knowing the trade is simply to say so and then go find out, and his read on the market is equally plain: he is not right for every project, but there is nothing between the Bay Area and Los Angeles offering what he offers, so the job is making sure local contractors, designers and architects know the resource exists. You will also hear why Craigslist still works for his customers, why shipping is the real constraint on growth, and the line that sums up his change of career better than anything else, which is that there are no barnwood emergencies. Chapters: 00:00 From 25 Years in Medical Device to a Barnwood Yard 05:58 The House That Led Him to the Business 12:34 There Are No Barnwood Emergencies 13:57 What Came With the Business, and What Did Not 18:18 Becoming the Reclaimed Wood Resource on the Central Coast 24:04 Tracing the Provenance of Every Board 31:29 The Pergola That Became a Community Space The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io Connect with us at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/ Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork You can connect with Ian at: https://americanbarnwood.co/ https://www.instagram.com/americanbarnwood.co/

August 20, 2026Episode 50037 min

Jake Power, PowerWood

The duty at the border went from 15 percent to 45 percent in two months, and their sales volume went up anyway. In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Jake Power, managing director of PowerWood in Agassiz, British Columbia. His father started the company out of the family basement in 1995, brokering kiln dried red cedar into a California market that needed it, and Jake was the first employee, cleaning the office once a week for a dollar at twelve years old. He came into the business full time around 2005 with a wood products processing degree, came back from his honeymoon into the 2008 collapse, and in 2011 he and a colleague loaded up on personal debt and bought the lumber business from his parents. What happened next is the part most owners will recognize. Cheap equipment after the crash got them their first molder and dust collection system, fully installed, for under $20,000, and taking the single piece orders nobody else would run turned a distributor into a manufacturer. Then in 2017 the softwood lumber agreement expired and a 20 percent duty landed on a lumber business that sends 50 to 75 percent of its product into the United States. The duty is charged on value, so every hour of labor they added made the bill bigger, and the equipment they had spent a decade buying became a liability instead of an asset. Jake is blunt about the three years after that. The market was telling them how to run the company, and they had never written down who they were trying to be. The turn came from a seven year plan they wrote themselves, no consultants, and finished just as the pandemic hit. They thought they had wasted the effort. Instead it told them exactly what to buy when money got cheap: twelve acres, a hundred thousand square feet of warehouse, four kilns. They took ownership of the new site on April 1, moved the entire company on July 1, were running three molder lines by September, lost three people out of twenty something in a move an hour east, and hit every goal in the plan by November 2025. You'll also hear how they buy from British Columbia sawmills, including taking 80 percent of a custom cut and giving small portable mill operators a way to turn a mixed truckload into cash, how the same lumber business serves wholesale distributors in California and architects directly at home, why Hawaii works differently, the tariff math as it stands today, the one number he wishes he could get out of his customers and into a spreadsheet, why they rebranded their core values as rules, and what shed the bark means to a lumber business crowd that would rather not talk about feelings. Chapters: 00:00 Thirty years from a family basement to a twelve acre yard 03:07 Buying the business in the middle of the 2008 collapse 06:03 A $20,000 molder, one piece orders, and learning what not to chase 11:55 When duties turned a value added business into a liability 14:44 The seven year plan, and moving the whole company in one summer 19:51 How PowerWood buys, sorts and specs cedar for architects 25:40 A 45 percent duty, the K shaped market, and rules instead of values 27:52 The K shaped market, and the next growth ring 29:46 The number he cannot get, and rules instead of core values The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io Connect with us at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/ Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork You can connect with Jake at: https://www.powerwood.com/ https://www.instagram.com/customcedar/

August 13, 2026Episode 49937 min

Wes Carroll, Rice Lumber

The person who knows the most about this 87 year old lumber company has been there forty three years, and almost none of it is written down anywhere. In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Wes Carroll of Rice Lumber in Vermont. Wes got a cell phone and a job in the yard the year he turned fourteen, then left the state for college in Colorado with no intention of coming back east. He spent a year and a half cold calling for an office supply company, two years selling software into contractors, and came home in June 2020 after a layoff. He started behind the counter learning products and applications, and now leads the sales teams at a lumber business his family has owned for roughly half of its history. The heart of the conversation is what happens when a lumber business runs on people instead of paper. Wes names the three things he is most worried about losing: the load builders who stack a delivery in the order the framer will need it, so the pressure treated sill comes off the truck first, the buyer who has read the lumber and plywood markets for thirty five years and knows when to accumulate and when to liquidate, and the product knowledge that lets a salesperson talk about how a structure actually goes together. His approach so far is listening, documenting and repetition, and he is honest that it is still an experiment. You'll also hear how the boom years turned the lumber business purely transactional and why he thinks the slowdown was healthy, what selling strictly on price taught him not to do, why a small mill loses the account over follow through rather than price, and how Rice Lumber grew from a structural and engineered wood yard into a building center with a hardware store, a showroom and a kitchen design department. Wes closes on the belief that sent him to college in the first place, that the trades are where you land when you have run out of options, and why the replacement rate in construction makes that idea an expensive one for the whole industry to hold. Chapters: 00:00 Growing up in an 87 year old family lumber business 03:21 Coming back to Vermont in 2020 and learning it from behind the counter 04:37 The boom years, and what they cost in relationships 11:49 Forty three years of knowledge, and how to capture it 18:27 Three things Rice Lumber cannot afford to lose 25:19 Writing the playbook a company of veterans never needed 29:35 Live inventory online, and the misconception about the trades The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io Connect with us at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/ Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork You can connect with Wes at: https://ricelumber.com/ https://www.instagram.com/ricelumber/

August 6, 2026Episode 49839 min

Michael Friedrichsen, Roddis Lumber

A fourth generation CPA walked away from a large accounting firm to take over a 104 year old Texas lumber distributor, and the first thing he protected was not the balance sheet. In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Michael Friedrichsen, general manager of Roddis Lumber in San Antonio. Michael grew up around the family business, spent one college summer running a forklift in the warehouse, then went off for a master's in accounting and a CPA license. When his dad retired in December 2023, he stepped in alongside his cousin, the company president, right as the post COVID lumber market started cooling off. You'll hear how a single branch, thirty person company keeps a family atmosphere while running a fleet, a hardwood distribution operation, and a separate door shop that pre-hangs doors and trim packages for custom home builders. Michael talks about why so many employees are still there thirteen years after he worked beside them, and what his finance background actually gave him when bids slowed and lead times got unpredictable. Jennifer and Michael also get into the sourcing side: why his hardwood comes from out of state mills chosen for color and consistency, how paint grade, white oak, and walnut are moving in the Texas market, why import plywood dominates cabinet carcasses, and the rule that drives his inventory decisions, which is that if you don't have it, you hand the customer a reason to walk down the street. The conversation closes on urban and reclaimed lumber, LEED specification, and whether a distributor his size could add an urban wood line before the rest of the industry catches up. Chapters: 00:00 From CPA track to fourth generation lumber operator 04:39 Why employees stay: a family atmosphere at a single branch company 06:53 Thirty employees, a fleet, and a door shop 09:44 Stepping in as the lumber market cooled 14:03 Hardwoods, plywood, and sourcing from the right mills 27:03 Technology, lead times, and economic uncertainty The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io Connect with us at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/ Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork Connect with Michael at: https://www.roddislumber.com/ https://www.instagram.com/roddislumberveneerco/

July 30, 2026Episode 49753 min

Dwayne Sperber, Wudeward Urban Forest Products

Twice in close to two decades of building an industry that barely existed, Dwayne Sperber has come near to walking away. Both times the phone rang. The second time was the morning he recorded this episode, when a project shifted against him and the call that came in was Jennifer asking him onto the show. What we're doing together is meaningful, he says, and that idea carries the whole conversation. In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Dwayne Sperber of Wudeward Urban Forest Products, a founding member of the Urban Wood Network and one of the earliest advocates for urban wood in the Midwest. Dwayne grew up on a farm in central Missouri and was working a corporate job at Ford Motor Company when a Chicago Tribune article about an arborist salvaging removed trees stopped him cold. Three days later he was standing in front of the man from the article. He went from commissioned furniture maker to partnership with a sawmill that agreed to take the entire production of a tree removal, and he did it without ever writing a business plan. Then a general contractor chewed him out on an otherwise done deal, refusing to put his name on a project using a material he had never heard of. That rejection convinced Dwayne the wood needed standards behind it, which led to Wisconsin Urban Wood, a multi-state US Forest Service project, the Urban Wood Network, and the USRW certification work he does today. You'll also hear the business model he calls suits to boots, why a first order can take three to five years, and how more than 40,000 board feet of his lumber ended up in the highest visibility areas of the Fiserv Forum. Dwayne closes with the one idea he most wants specifiers to understand: urban wood is not a product category to shop for, it is a material that can become almost any specified product, from ceiling systems to wall cladding to library tabletops. At the end of the day it is wood. The source is what is different. Chapters 00:00 From Ford Motor Company to Urban Wood 04:47 Rising from Ashes and Building Without a Business Plan 11:47 Getting Chewed Out, Then Building an Industry 16:26 Standards, Certification, and Nature's Inventory 21:23 Suits to Boots and the Five Year Sales Cycle 28:10 Fiserv Forum and 40,000 Board Feet 41:19 Almost Quitting, and What Urban Wood Can Become The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io Connect with us at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/ Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork You can connect with Dwayne at: https://www.wudeward.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwayne-sperber-64a58819/

July 23, 2026Episode 49642 min

Chris Bingaman, Bingaman & Son Lumber

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Chris Bingaman, CEO of Bingaman & Son Lumber. The company traces back to Chris's grandfather, who logged with horses, hauled timber by truck to local sawmills, and eventually started finding new markets when the coal mine prop business dried up. Chris's father joined in, they incorporated in 1968, and today the operation spans five locations with three sawmills, though 80 percent of their lumber still comes from outside mills. It is a processing and distribution business at its core, built on relationships. Chris has been part of it since he was five years old, riding along in the truck while his dad spent six or seven hours hand-grading and hand-loading lumber at sawmills that did not even own a forklift. Every summer growing up, he worked in the company. He wanted to go to the swimming pool. His dad had other plans. That early training in work ethic and lumber grading set the foundation for everything that followed. The conversation digs into how the hardwood lumber industry has contracted and what Bingaman & Son Lumber has done to stay relevant. Chris talks about the 2008 recession as a turning point that forced the company to diversify its product offering, become nimble, and develop deep strategic partnerships with customers. More recently, they invested in a computerized grading system that processes 60 to 70 boards per minute, work that previously required three people. The system has been running about five months, and the results have been significant, though it came with more debt than they are comfortable carrying. Chris also opens up about succession planning. His father went through the painful experience of buying the company back from an estate after Chris's grandfather died suddenly, and that lesson drove decades of intentional estate planning. Chris has four daughters, and when none pursued the business full time, he transitioned the presidency to a long-tenured CFO who had been groomed for the role with the help of an advisory board. Meanwhile, an ESOP launched around 2006 now gives employees 35 percent ownership, with flexibility to go either direction in the future. The broader industry discussion covers tariffs, export markets (25 to 30 percent of volume), the growing threat of synthetic substitutes for wood, and a proposed tax incentive through the National Hardwood Lumber Association that would give homebuyers a deduction for using hardwoods. Chris also touches on mass timber research for low-grade species, biofuels as an outlet for junk wood, and the connection between healthy markets and healthy forests. His message is clear: without demand for wood, there is no economic reason to manage the resource, and unmanaged forests suffer. Chapters 00:00 From Horse Logging to Hardwood Processing 08:36 Family Business, Succession, and the ESOP 16:25 Navigating the Hardwood Market Contraction 21:03 Computerized Grading: 60 Boards a Minute 24:01 Tariffs, Exports, and Staying Nimble 28:05 Forest Health, Substitutes, and the Case for Real Wood 32:06 Thermally Modified Wood and the Architect Community The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io Connect with us at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/ Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork You can connect with Chris at: https://bingamanlumber.com/ https://www.instagram.com/bingaman.lumber/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-bingaman-391630b/

July 16, 2026Episode 49531 min

Cathy Cohne, Melrose Lumber Co.

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Cathy Cohne, fifth generation at Melrose Lumber Co. in Austin, New York. The company was founded in 1922 by Cathy's great-great-grandfather, and when he passed away early, his wife, a Russian immigrant with no English, stepped in and kept the doors open during the Depression. That grit runs through the whole story. The family later operated Manhattan Lumber Company in the city before New York's Urban Renewal program purchased the location, and a fire in the 1960s forced a move from the Melrose section of the Bronx to where they are today. Cathy grew up in the business. If she wasn't in school, she was stocking shelves, helping customers, and making sure everything looked right. She went on to earn a business degree with a minor in marketing and later an MBA, always with the family business in the back of her mind. After COVID, she stepped fully into a leadership role alongside her dad, and the two manage the operation together with her mom handling the books. Melrose Lumber Co. is about 70 percent lumber and the rest hardware, essentially a miniature home center. They carry plywood, dimensional lumber, Douglas fir, pressure treated, cedar, PSLs, LVLs, and a full hardware selection. Cathy walks through the realities of sourcing from major suppliers, fielding quotes by phone and email, and competing with the big box stores on price while offering something they never will: real customer service and a personal touch. A big chunk of the conversation centers on marketing and staying current. Cathy launched an e-commerce website in October and has been working with a media company on SEO for about a decade. The data from those efforts is already shaping how she runs the physical store. When analytics showed that walking sticks were the number one search keyword, she stuffed the rack full and let foot traffic do the rest. She also talks about the early days of AI-generated quoting, her hesitation to give up control, and how ChatGPT started sending brand new customers through her door during an ice dam season. The conversation touches on COVID-era challenges, the shift from cedar everything to more economical Douglas fir as budgets tightened, fuel surcharges driving up order minimums, and the balancing act of inventory management when you refuse to run out but also refuse to overstock. Cathy's philosophy is simple: stay organized, stay efficient, and listen to what customers are actually asking for. Tune in, be inspired, and don't forget to follow the Woodpreneur Podcast. New episodes drop every Thursday morning wherever you consume your podcasts. Chapters 00:00 A Russian Immigrant Runs a Lumber Company in the 1930s 05:10 What Melrose Lumber Co. Carries and How They Source It 09:36 Launching the E-Commerce Store and Navigating AI 18:23 Lumber Trends, Cedar to Douglas Fir, and Economic Shifts 22:06 Education, Family, and Choosing the Business 27:55 Tariffs, Fuel Surcharges, and Adapting to Rising Costs The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io Connect with us at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/ Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork You can connect with Cathy at: www.melroselumber.com https://www.instagram.com/melroselumberco/

July 9, 2026Episode 49445 min

John Melvin, CAL FIRE

Every tree tells a story. The question is whether we treat it like a resource or throw it away like waste. In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger welcomes John Melvin, Assistant Deputy Director of Resource Protection and Improvement at CAL FIRE. The two have worked together in the urban wood movement for over 15 years, and this conversation traces the journey from its earliest days to a program now granting hundreds of millions of dollars. A central theme is language. John makes the case that calling removed urban trees "waste" teaches the public to see them as garbage. Reframing the conversation around resource and value opens doors for municipalities to build wood utilization into their arborist service contracts, saving disposal costs while keeping material out of landfills. He walks through CAL FIRE's role in building the urban wood industry from the ground up, starting in the late nineties with five mobile sawmills and four dehumidification kilns made from converted shipping containers. Those early investments seeded real businesses and put a sawmill at Palomar College that still runs today. As the program grew, CAL FIRE funded urban wood utilization grants and backed the creation of the USRW Certified Urban Wood Standards. Today the scope is enormous. John highlights the green schoolyards initiative transforming over 170 paved campuses into outdoor learning spaces with tree canopy and urban wood features. He also discusses AB 2251, the legislative mandate to increase California's urban tree canopy by ten percent by 2035, and a forthcoming strategic plan to get there. Chapters 00:00 Growing Up in the Woods and Choosing Forestry 03:17 Losing a Childhood Home in the Caldor Fire 10:00 Municipalities, Cost Avoidance, and Policy Solutions 16:28 Why Standards Matter for Urban Wood 22:25 How CAL FIRE Built the Urban Wood Industry from Five Sawmills 31:09 Green Schoolyards and AB 2251 38:15 Legacy: Helping People See the Bigger Picture 40:24 One Small Change Everyone Can Make The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io Connect with us at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/ Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork You can connect with John at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-melvin-7a5118275/