Who are you and what business did you start?
I am Aaron Rerucha and I’m from Bellwood, Nebraska. I’m married to Brianna Rerucha, and we have three kids – Georgia (6), Oliver (5), and Liam (1.5). My sister, who has special needs, lives with us as well.
We live on an acreage we bought from my grandmother a few years back. We ended up building a house here, we currently use our house as our showroom.
Our business is Oxbows Furniture, a custom furniture business.
We make basically anything that anybody could want and we have our own custom line of wood furniture. All of our lumber is typically harvested within 60 miles of our business location.
Furniture could range from small end tables and cutting boards, all the way to designing custom cabinets for an entire home or even a whole furniture line for one particular home in itself.
What was your background? How did you come up with the idea?
So that’s a, that’s a story in itself. Its really cool how it all happened.
When I grew up my father worked for a company for many years. Later in life, he ventured out, starting his own business. That was about the time I was in middle school. When I noticed he was starting his own business, I thought, “I like that idea and that’s something for me someday.”
From that point on, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I didn’t know what the word really meant at the time, but I knew I wanted to own my own business. I was unsure what it was going to look like, but I wanted something.
In high school, I started working for the local landscaping company and fell in love with it. Fantastic business, fantastic people to be around, and a wonderful boss.
I pursued a degree in horticulture and landscape design from the University of Nebraska. I actually started my first business as a sophomore in college as a landscaper. I would design the landscapes and then go install them.
That was going really well, to be honest. Things were moving really well at the beginning.
And then the first winter hit.
I was newly married, it was my wife and I at the time. In the winter there’s no landscaping work, and I thought, “How in the world am I going to support a family and have a business doing landscaping when it’s winter time, there’s, you know, no work?”
“You’re not gonna be out there landscaping in the dead winter.”
So I just, like all good entrepreneurs do, just start thinking. “Okay, I gotta find a way to generate some sort of a cash flow.”
I went into my grandpa’s old shop at the farm (the actual farm we currently live at).
He was a woodworker. I just picked up some of his old, old tools. There was some old lumber on the shelf, I took it out, and I just started hammering stuff together.
I fell in love with it.
It was rough. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it was the idea that I was doing something with my hands. I was creating something, using my mind, and I just fell in love with the whole process. That burst into a love for woodworking.
Next semester, I started taking the university’s entrepreneurial classes with Dave Lambe, my professor. That was when we started to generate this business concept of landscaping during the summer season and woodworking during the winter.
Woodworking was always kind of the exit strategy. If landscaping didn’t work, then it was gonna be woodworking. And as things progressed and interest grew, it seemed like I was getting support.
My wife asked me at one point, “Why don’t you just focus on the woodworking part?”
In fact, I remember being in a business competition, and I shared my business pitch with the judges. They just said, “Hey, have you ever thought about just doing woodworking full-time?”
It never really crossed my mind, and I was about a year or so into the business. But basically, from that point on, I just started focusing more on woodworking and less on landscaping. It was about a three-year transition period into full-time woodworking.
And, I do want to thank the people that helped me in college. I remember Tom Field and Michelle Bassford, staff in the entrepreneurship program, were some of my first landscaping clients. My teacher Dave was one of my first furniture clients. The fact that they gave opportunities to their students at the age of 18 or 20 years old, to actually take that risk and invest in those kids, to actually buy something from them of monetary value, I know for me, was the confidence booster of a lifetime.
What were your first steps to starting the business?
It was slow. It was 2015 or 2014, I was still in college and spent those winter months building furniture. Most of it was small simple items.
I was trying to think about how I would sell these, and I was driving through Columbus, Nebraska. I saw a sign for the Columbus Home Show. Columbus is about 15 miles from where we live.
And so I just called in and I said, “Hey, is there still room to get in?”
And they said, yes. So we snuck in there in the nick of time.
The response we got from people at that first show was incredible. It was inspiring. They loved what we were doing.
Also at that show was where I learned about the networking piece of entrepreneurship. When you’re at these shows, you’re talking to hundreds of people, and you’re making connections.
I remember one of the other vendors said, you should try Riverboat Days up in Yankton, South Dakota, an arts festival. Thousands and thousands of people come through every year, and it’s right on the Missouri River.
So I Googled it, we applied and got in. It just became this process of marketing to more and more volume of people.
I started looking at Lincoln and Omaha home shows. And we started to get into that market a little bit.
Just a lot of boots on the ground. Hard work, and long days entering these shows, just get our name out there.
We did social media posts here and there, but mostly we would go to trade and art shows throughout the whole state of Nebraska and just show our stuff and hand out business cards. From there we would take custom orders, fulfill those orders and just kept on moving forward.
We did that process of going to anywhere from 4-8 home or art shows a year, which is a lot of work. We did that for four or five years.
In the last four or five years, we haven’t gone to any because of just how busy we are without having to do that.
How did you validate the idea? How did you know there was a need?
I remember thinking that this was going to be a journey.
It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
I mean, I look back from where we started to where we are today. We’re entering our best year, by far – I just think about how far it’s come. We focus so much on creating a good product so that we can have good word of mouth.
And that speaks volumes.
I think that is our best marketing strategy out there: putting out a good product.
Because when you do a good job, when you have good customer service, when you’re respectful to your clients, it goes a long, long way.
Learning the Craft
I would also say there’s a process of learning truth to everything you do.
So I was an entrepreneur who started woodworking from scratch. I was self-taught.
My first furniture design was very, very rustic. Basically, you wouldn’t want it anywhere, except in maybe a very, very rustic cabin on a lake.
But it’s totally morphed into what it is today. Today’s much more refined furniture.
But it took work to do that.
To really know what I was doing and expand my horizon on woodworking, I went to the Western Design Conference in Jackson, Wyoming. It’s a famous art exhibit in the Midwest, if not the country.
I was about 4-5 years into the business, and I don’t even know how I came across it, but I was looking at the names of the artists and woodworkers who were going to this conference – I found that these guys are famous worldwide, renowned woodworkers.
And so I was just thinking, “Man, how cool would it be to be able to just go to that show, be a vendor there, possibly, or, just talk to some of these guys?”
So, anyway, long story short, I applied for the show, and we got accepted.
The whole time I was there, I brought my father-in-law and my dad, and they basically were in the booth. I just went and visited with famous woodworkers. I studied their furniture, studied what they would say, read articles about them, and learned the process of real woodworking from individuals who’ve been doing it for 45-50 years.
When I left that show, it changed my perspective. It went from doing woodworking at a level that is dissatisfactory, to a level of woodworking this is high-end, craft, air loom style furniture.
Furniture built for generations.
I had that paradigm shift in my mind, and everything changed. I was like, “okay, I wanna go to this next level.” But to do so, I had to put in the time and effort to get there.
I think that many young people today who get into entrepreneurship – they often think that they’re entitled to ‘start at the top.’ That’s totally backward. There should be a certain amount of respect for the people that have been doing it before us, we should learn from them.
We should learn that it will take time – the same amount of time it took them – to get to the top. It means so much more in the end.
Did you ever have any, Oh Crap, moments?
Absolutely. And in fact, I love those kind of questions because I think that’s where you learn the most. I don’t think anybody learns nearly as much from their successes as they do from their failures.
Failure
There’s a mindset out there that just drives me crazy – it’s so untrue, and it’s, it’s just a coddling mindset that people have.
The mindset is something along the lines of people saying, “oh, you didn’t fail. Don’t worry about it like you didn’t fail.”
Well, the truth is, if you set goals and you don’t achieve the goals, it is a fail. That’s a form of failure.
Now, the important thing is that the failure doesn’t identify who you are or what your business is. You learn from that failure and that experience, and you start analyzing things like, okay, what can I do differently to succeed?
Lord, what are you trying to teach me through this moment of failure, so that I can be more like you?
So that I can understand what you’re trying to teach me eternally through this experience I’m going through?
That’s a huge thing people need to understand and that I had to come to grips with.
The phone wasn’t ringing.
I’ve couple of instances like that – those situations are very humbling.
There was a point in time, about four or five years in – and this is just how I think – the Lord puts things in your path to see where you’re going to turn. Are you going to turn to him? Or are you going turn to things of the world? Give up and start finding satisfaction in everything else that isn’t of God?
About four years in things were really going well – and then all of a sudden the entire market for me dried up.
I mean, literally, we didn’t get a call for six months, no form of communication from anybody.
We had no work whatsoever.
And so you begin to question, like, what, what did I do wrong? Where did I go wrong?
Is it a bad product? Is it that people don’t like the product?
And then you start to question, like, can I even do this? I went to this mindset of like I can’t even call myself a woodworker. “I’m gonna, be this failure of an entrepreneur.”
So you start playing these mind games, and it’s a dangerous place if you don’t realize the game you’re playing inside your mind. Your mind is a very powerful tool that the Lord has given us. Scripture says: “take every thought captive.”
That was one of the things the Lord wanted me to learn: I need to take every thought captive that enters my mind. I knew that he had called me to do this business. So if he’s called me to do this business, then everything that happens happens for a reason.
And he has a plan. And so that was where Jeremiah 29:11 comes into play.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares The Lord. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you, but to give you a hope and a future.”
That verse is etched on every single piece of furniture that we make.
It was this process for me – finding what my identity was. And it wasn’t in what I do as an occupation. It wasn’t in me being a father. It wasn’t in me being a husband. It was where is my identity in Christ.
When I came to the realization of what that really meant, my perspective on everything changed. And therefore it was all about doing everything in this business for his glory, and not my own.
I ended up taking a part-time job at the local tree service (the owner is one of my best friends today). I worked there for about four months to get through it, and it’s the only time I’ve taken a part-time job in the ten years of this venture.
Family Foundation
It was during the hard times that I’ve come to be so thankful to my family. A big thank you to my family – my wife and my kids and mom and dad.
Financially to start the business, we didn’t have really anything – my dad bought some of my first equipment. When there have been some times of financial hardships, my folks have helped, when no one else was believing.
To be able to keep a dream alive, you know, it kind of chokes the guy up. When you think about how much people really believe in what you’re doing.
And my father-in-law would be out here standing furniture with me in zero-degree weather when we had no heat.
I mean, it’s just like, the love of family – and even my grandmother, who we bought the property from in the beginning to start the whole business – it’s the love of family to come alongside us and be like, “hey, like, we’re gonna do this together.”
It’s something that I don’t think a lot of people probably don’t have, but I’ve been blessed enough to be able to have that.
What business lessons have you learned along the journey? Anything you would tell new business owners?
Find your Niche
Bigger is not always better. A bigger number of employees isn’t always better. The bigger the business isn’t always better. The most gross sales aren’t always better.
The size of my business has always ranged a little bit. When we first started out, it was me. It would slowly progress into myself and whoever I could get free labor out of – typically my father-in-law, my mom, my wife, and anybody that was able to sit in the shop with me and hang out for a while; basically they were the sander.
From that, it grew into an actual part-time employee who came in a couple of days a week. And then that morphed into two part-timers a couple of times a week, which morphed into, at one point, we had three part-timers, a full-time employee, and myself.
And then, as of the last six months, we have backed all the way out to myself, and one part-timer, which I find for our business is absolutely ideal. It’s the perfect fit for where we are today, and I think where the Lord wants this business to go forward.
I think there’s a misconception out there that bigger is always better. And I don’t think that’s necessarily true for all businesses.
I think when you’re trying to focus on custom craft – controlling the process from start to finish – starting with logs, all the way to designing and installation in the home – I don’t think it can necessarily be a big operation if you want the quality to be there.
Each entrepreneur has to find what their niche is. And that can change, you know, as the years progress. But once they find that, and it works, that’s huge.
Stand up
And more than anything, don’t give up.
I mean, I think people hear that a lot, but it is important. When everything is failing and you might lose your business, you feel like you’re going to lose your friend. Things get bad sometimes, and you just want to lay around. You want to give up.
But I live by this saying, “When you can’t stand anymore, stand up anyway.”
It’s really powerful when you think about it. Before standing up that last time, you were doing it on your own strength.
When you’re going through the grind and everything around you is crumbling and falling down – and you can’t stand up that last time – you find something within yourself to do it anyway and stand.
It’s about standing. It’s about standing on the Lord and not on your own strength – because it’s this breaking of your own flesh, trying to do it on your own – and it becomes totally God doing it for you.
When you reflect on building your enterprise, how has it changed your life? Positive or negative?
So, the positive.
Obviously, you can tell from my answers, faith is number one. The way that entrepreneurship can grow faith, that’s number one.
Number two positive would be, the amount of flexibility a person can have within their schedule.
I take my kids to school every single morning. I pick my son up at noon. That is something that I would not get to experience if I wasn’t self-employed.
I get to have lunch with my family – at least a couple of my kids and my wife – at least several a week at our house where the business is. So time with family and the flexibility to allow that, is wonderful.
Now I had to learn to manage that flexibility. There was a time when I was doing everything wrong. You could work 20 hours a day and never see your family. So that can also be very, very negative. And you could have a great business but be failing as a husband. You could be failing as a dad, have all kinds of money, and have nothing for family values to show for it.
You know? So that flexibility is a catch-22. It can be both positive and negative.
Rooted in Business
Entrepreneurship is for me positive. It doesn’t just stop with woodworking. I love business in general. So, you know, my goal someday isn’t to just start a furniture business but to have other businesses as well.
And I think entrepreneurship, through all the networking opportunities you have, opens a lot of those doors. I see that already in my life. I’m on the local school board, and I know those connections were made through business. Being an elected official, you’re around community members, and your reputation is important.
What are some of your favorite books, classes, or resources that have helped you?
I read a variety of books, any sort of book that gets a person’s mind thinking about more than just surface-type thinking.
- The Bible
- Sometimes We Need Trials by Bob Sorge
- Hunger by Caleb Wampler
- Weighty Words by Caleb Wampler
- Worshipper Warrior by Steve Holt
- Live Before You Die by Daniel Kolenda
- Do Not Leave Quietly by Mario Murillo
Other woodworking resources that helped me:
- Fine Woodworking Magazine
- Western Design Show (Woodworking Show)
And there was a good amount that I learned on Youtube, but you have to be careful because any joe shmo can post things.
Where can we learn more about your business?
Lesson Breakdown
In this section, Humble Starts provides a summary of the main lessons from Aaron’s story. Hopefully, you can apply them on your own journey towards enterprise building.
Learnings from Aaron:
1. Action is the Path to Learning.
Aaron didn’t start out already being an accomplished or professional woodworker. He went to his first show after just starting – and even though the furniture was far different and far less refined as it is today, he still made sales. He only found
2. Find people to lean on.
Building an enterprise is not an easy endeavor. But it’s especially hard if you go alone. Find a support group that you can lean on during the trying times. Share what you are going through, and never be afraid to ask for help.
3. Own your Niche.
Aaron found that a custom craft business – where he could own the process from beginning to end – was the right niche and size for his business and family. He tried the bigger business path – but found it wasn’t a fit. Bigger isn’t always the answer – that’s one of the values about starting your own business – you get to choose what the business looks like. Aaron found his niche, keep taking action until you find your product-market fit.
