Everybody has a favorite pastime. It doesn’t necessarily have to be anything spectacular or mind blowing either. It can be something as simple as watching TV or reading a book but in order to turn your favorite pastime into a lucrative career, you have to have some kind of plan or vision for your pastime.

If your favorite pastime is reading books, the way to make it lucrative would be to write a book or maybe start an exclusive book club where people have to pay a small fee to be an exclusive member… who knows! The point is that you have to have a money-making idea behind your passion. One passion that many people have and have earned great profits from is in woodworking. You’ve seen in old westerns and certain cartoons from way back when, a man sitting in a rocking chair carving a wood stick with a knife… that’s woodworking in its purest form.

Obviously, there’s much more to woodworking than that but even having that skillset can be your ticket to entering the world of woodworking. But if you’re seriously considering starting a woodworking business, you obviously have enough talent and experience in woodworking, even if it’s just a hobby you o on the side, that you can see a lucrative business resulting from it. If you don’t have any real skills, you’ll need to take some woodworking courses before starting a business.

Making an Afterthought a Reality

Maybe you’ve done a few projects around your house and people that have visited you noticed some of your pieces and suggested you go into business for yourself… Yea, you’ve thought about it occasionally but never put any real thought into it. All you know is that you enjoy working with your hands and you love the smell of wood… that’s as far as you’ve really gotten with considering opening a woodworking business.

Well, the time has come to make that afterthought a reality… if you enjoyed working with your hands before, you’re really going to enjoy working with your hands and making money from it. Take a look at what you need to do to turn your pastime of woodworking into a reality.

Get a Plan Together: Put All Your Ducks in a Row

To achieve success in ANY business, you’ve got to have a solid foundation, which would be your business plan. Ultimately, your business plan is the blueprint to the way you want your business to grow. It should entail your expenses, your vision for the next ten years, funding, suppliers, and a projection of how much money you plan to make. According to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, there are actually seven parts to a business plan but for your woodworking business plan, you need to at least have these sectors in it:

Woodworking Strengths and Weaknesses

In woodworking, you have to have lots of skills in order to be successful at creating various pieces. Maybe you’re really good at cutting and sanding but could use a little improvement in planning, write it all down! This is going to be a good resource for you to help you narrow down the projects you can confidently work on that play to your strengths and lead you to take a few courses in the areas you need improvement in.

The Amount of Time and Money You’re Willing to Invest

As the saying goes “it takes money to make money” and it couldn’t be truer. If you plan on woodworking to make money, you’re definitely going to need to make some investments whether it be on tools, machinery, suppliers, etc. Plus, it’s going to cut into some of your free time where it’s no longer time to necessarily enjoy what you’re doing but more so the time you’re using to make money.

The Pieces You’ll be Specializing In

This is totally up to you based on your strengths. Maybe you’re really good at wooden cooking utensils or making baby cribs. Whatever your specialties are, that’s what you need to promote your business for. As you expand your skills, you can broaden your selling options.

Find a Reliable Lumber Supplier With Quality Wood

So obviously with woodworking, wood is going to be your top priority that is going to keep your business afloat… It’s also going to be your largest expense so you need to do your research to find a lumber company with the best deals so you can get the biggest bang for your buck.

Depending on the company you go with, lots of lumber companies will help you pick the best wood for you based on the types of pieces your making. When you find the right supplier for your business, it’s important that you establish a good working relationship with them because you’ll be ordering from them frequently. By establishing a good relationship with your supplier, they’ll be more willing to offer you various discounts with your purchases, most of the time.

Find the Right Tools and Equipment

In order for your business to go anywhere, you have to have the right tools and equipment! Now, depending on the wood pieces you plan on making and selling, you might not need all of these tools but here are a few common tools that every woodworker will need.

• Chisels
• Clamps (in a variety of sizes)
• Hammer
• Hand drill
• Tablesaw
• Tape measure
• Sander

An Idea of the Woodworking Projects That Will Bring in the Biggest Profits

The best way to have an idea of what projects you should work on that will bring the most money is to first find your niche. When turning a hobby into a business, you have to be very careful that you don’t lose the passion that initially made you want to start a business in the first place. So to prevent that from happening, you want to make pieces that you enjoy making and that you’re good at. That is what will help you figure out the projects you will sell.

Determine How You Want to Sell Your Products

This is the moment of truth… will people buy your products? Hopefully so, it just depends on how you plan on selling your products. You have to decide whether you want to sell them online, offline, or both. With this being your first entrepreneurial business venture, it would probably be best that you start out selling online first. You just need to get your website set up and make sure to take high-quality photos of your products with great descriptive details so people will be able to see what they’re ordering.

The whole process of it all really isn’t that difficult… As long as you have the necessary skills needed, you have the potential to go very far in your woodworking business but you’ll never know just how far you can go until you take action and turn your pastime into a business reality.