David Stine: Creating Something that Lasts Forever (Season 2 Episode 1)

One of the things that really led to this business idea is the fact that I had several thousand board feet of lumber just sitting around that I had harvested when I was a kid. I just used some stuff the other day and I told a guy, yeah, when I was 14, I remember we cut this tree down and drug it up the hill with a tractor that they don't even make anymore and, you know, took it to the local sawmill. When I shared that with prospective clients, they just loved that story.

Welcome to Season 2 of Take the Long View with Matt Hall. This is a podcast to help reframe the way you think about your money, emotion, and time. The goal: helping you take a longer view. I'm excited to kick off Season 2 of the podcast with a man who may exemplify long-view thinking more than any other guest I've had on the show. So how is he so long view? Well, Dave Stein makes products that last forever using material that may have been born before he was. Who do you know who can make that same claim? Dave's also done the thing most people don't have the guts to do. He quit. He quit the thing that most stick with their whole lives. He left the office life and made the outdoors his new workplace. And he's thriving, so much so that people are working to make a TV show about his life, and commercial and residential customers are getting in line to buy his one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture. Furniture. Dave has clients around the world, awards from industry experts, and more than two decades in business. But the thing I love most about him is he's not just an artist, not just a craftsman. He's deeply philosophical. Consider this quote from Dave: It all starts in the woods. I draw strength and inspiration from the trees, by how and where they grow. As I mill the logs, every cut is a revelation as I see the inner life and extraordinary beauty of the wood. Often, as I mill a board, I see what the wood will become. I don't try to bend the wood to my will. Rather, I let it be what it wants to be, and my designs maximize its raw, singular, natural beauty— knots, live edges, and all. Every piece I craft is the articulation of the natural beauty of that tree, which lives on in a beautiful and useful way. Mine is a different sort of craftsmanship, one that's infused with stewardship and a deep appreciation and respect for the wood. It's about taking my spirit and passion and putting it into something beautiful and lasting. It's not just craftsmanship, it's a way of life. Yeah, Dave Stein, that was you. You said that stuff.

Well, you know, that may have been edited, but that, that sounds like something I would say. Sure. Yeah. Thank you for that intro. That was very complimentary.

Oh, good. Well, I'm glad to have you here. And as I said, you may exemplify Longview more than anyone else. We'll go back to figure out how this started, but you're a lawyer turned woodworker.

Yeah, yeah. Going even further back, you know, farmer turned lawyer turned woodworker. And, you know, it's so funny you talk about the Longview and the first couple of times we chatted, I didn't even know the name of the podcast was The Longview or that that was the focus, but that's just kind of the way I've always been taught to live my life. And that's the way that we run our business. We take the long view towards our products, towards our sustainability focus, towards our client relationships, all that kind of stuff.

So I would guess when you grow up on a farm, you grew up on a dairy farm somewhere in Southern Illinois?

That's correct. Yeah, yeah. Just outside of St. Louis, we're about 45 minutes from downtown St. Louis. In Jersey County, Illinois. Grew up on a dairy farm there. It's been in the family for 4 generations. My son and my daughter, they'll be the 5th generation. But yeah, dairy farming. That's how I grew up.

What do you think most city folk could learn from spending more time on a farm or, or being raised in the way you were?

Well, I don't know that I really teach anybody anything. I think some of the great lessons that I've been able to draw upon having grown up that way are just the value of hard work. Knowing that your food comes from, you know, someone's hard work or animals or the land and not just from the grocery store. I think that's a good lesson. Also just self-reliance. I think a lot of us nowadays, it's tough for us to understand that, you know, we could change our own tire or build our own house or maybe even just, you know, mow the lawn or repair the fence in the back lawn. And we're all pretty capable. We're human beings. We can do all this kind of stuff. And I think I grew up with that sense of self-reliance and just, sort of get things done attitude on the farm.

So if you lived on a dairy farm as a kid, was your milk unbelievable?

It's the number one thing I miss about— my uncle sold the dairy herd, oh, 10 years ago or so. And I absolutely miss the milk. It was crazy good. And my favorite story, I don't know if this is applicable or not, but there were 8 of us in my generation growing up on the farm. My grandmother always had unbelievable baked goods sitting around all the time. You just come in and sort of graze in between every meal. We'd always have 6 or 8 gallons of milk in the fridge. I would always sort of push one to the back all the time and let the cream rise to the top. And so it'd be 3 or 4 days old and you get like this crème fraîche on the top. And my grandmother, a couple of times a week, would make raisin oatmeal cookies and they're kind of soft and fresh for the oven. You just wipe that through that crème fraîche. And I mean, That's a calorie bomb right there. It's gonna keep you going all day. And I miss that so much. Just drinking milk right out of the tank. It's so good.

So you were farm to table before that was a thing.

Yeah, we didn't know we were, but yeah, yeah, that's true. We did everything on the farm, you know, as far as growing our own food and milking cows and butchering animals and all that kind of stuff.

How do you go from that upbringing to I wanna grow up to be a trust and estates attorney.

Well, it probably doesn't sound like a normal transition, but when I was growing up in the '80s, my grandfather sort of beat it into my head that taxes, estates, wills, planning for the future is a big deal. And you need to take that seriously. And you're the oldest in your generation. I was pretty good at school. And I think my family realized that early on. I was just lucky that way. And so he said, you need to go to law school. You need to figure out how to kind of get this done so that we plan for the future and keep the family farm going. And so having grown up on the farm and milking cows twice a day, I was like, absolutely, I'm going to school. I'm getting out of Dodge and going there. So I ended up going to Penn State for undergraduate school. And then I went to law school at George Washington in DC and I specialized in trust and estates during law school. That's the jump. So it, you know, sometimes when you're interested in a subject and you have some sort of out-of-school interest in it or drive to learn that subject, it really makes it more personal and makes it easier to do. And so some people think taxes and estate planning and stuff is very boring and it can be, but I think if you've got a sort of a dog in the fight, it's a little bit more interesting. And I just really enjoyed it.

Yeah. Okay. Walk us through, you're sitting somewhere in some sterile office or cubicle and you have 7 years of education under your belt, all aimed at applying this trade in the world for a successful future. And you say, "Eh, I'm gonna reboot and do something totally different." Yeah, that's probably the sort of 10,000-foot view of it.

I had been working with my hands my whole life, all the way through college. In law school, put myself through college basically working as a diesel mechanic and a wrecker driver, really hands-on. And then after college going to law school, I started a little side business building humidors and things of that nature for people. It was during the whole cigar craze, if you remember, Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were on the COVID of Cigar Aficionado and everybody thought it was cool to smoke cigars. So I had a little wood shop because I, I always like to stay busy with my hands, not just with my mind. And I just started building humidors and things of that nature. And it just kind of took off. So I did get a job, passed the bar, all that kind of stuff after law school, but I was never really happy in an office environment. I know people that know me now, I'm just kind of a big outdoorsy looking guy. And you wad—

You are, you are a big outdoorsy looking guy.

You wad me into a suit and it's not a good look. It just looks like, like somebody has taken somebody out of the woods and put them in a suit behind a desk. And I mean, I can operate in that environment, but it's just not my, yeah, I wasn't super happy there. And living that life wasn't the greatest for me. And I'm sure my boss at the time would agree that it wasn't the greatest for her either. So what I was doing aside from the law work at that time is just building up a small business on the side, building furniture, taking orders, still sawmilling and doing things around the farm when I could get back. And then about a year in, my wife and I just sort of looked at each other one day and said, you know, you're not happy doing this. I'm not happy doing this. Why don't you just make the leap and do woodworking full-time? And so I did. I gave my job 6-week notice and just sort of got to work full-time.

Yeah, I— when we were talking, one of the things you said that you and your wife Stephanie are known for is you guys do it. Most people think about things or dream about making changes, but you're sort of known, I guess, in your friend group and in your family as like, "You'll do it." I really take that as a compliment.

I've got a really good friend from law school. He was actually— stood up for me in the wedding and everything. And he said, "Dave, you know, one of the things that we all love about you and Stephanie is like, a lot of people talk about doing stuff, you know, 'Hey, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that.' You guys actually do things, make things, build things." And he just— He was really impressed by that. And I sort of wear that as a badge of honor. I like to do things and I like to accomplish tasks and complete the mission and all that kind of stuff. And to me, that's really what gets me out of bed in the morning, actually, having a list of things to do and checking things off the list. It makes me really happy.

Yeah. Well, I met someone who was in the furniture business and she told me, you know that stuff that you look at, Matt, in the fancy catalogs It's the exact same things you see at the discount stores, furniture stores. And I couldn't believe that. I said, "No, this is totally different. It's much higher quality. It's special." He said, "No, no, it comes from the same kind of place. This is like very little difference. It's all marketing." And I think in this world, people are really looking for craftsmen who are doing something that's truly unique. And my perception of what you're doing is you are building one-of-a-kind pieces in a unique way. Do you wanna talk about what your business is today and who the typical customer is. And then you have a niche or a reputation within the restaurant world too. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that?

I think your friend was right about commercially available furniture and things that are just, you know, produced in factories and then shipped out worldwide. And I mean, there's definitely a need for that kind of stuff. And if that's your thing, I totally don't put it down or anything, but what I try to do with my furniture, what we try to do in our company is build products for individual people or individual businesses. So if you came to me to me and you said, you know, our business is expanding and we're looking for a conference table and we really want, you know, something interesting, useful, it's gonna last forever and we know the guy who made it. I'll work with you and we'll just come up with a design, everything from the wood that you choose right down to the base and the delivery and maybe you want interesting electrics in it or something that your office needs for its functionality, we can do all that kind of stuff. But the way the business really sort of developed was when I made the leap from working in the law to doing straight woodworking, I was kind of a carpenter for hire. Like, you pay the money, I'll swing the hammer, that kind of a thing. And I would build whatever designs that you or my design friends came up with. And so we got a little bit of a foothold in the design community in Washington, DC, where I was still living at the time. But then I ended up coming back to the St. Louis area, the farm where I grew up, once a month, once every 2 months, spending 4 or 5 days logging, cutting timber, drying, and then dragging stuff back to DC, which was a great kind of the seed of the story that we're telling today, where you do everything, you know, from husbanding your resources in the forest and doing a sustainability piece on that as well, to right through the finished product and delivery. And so I guess moving forward, As I started to do less hammer for hire and more of my own designs, my style kind of morphed into what it is today. A lot of live edge stuff, really celebrating natural wood, celebrating the wood that we have here in the Midwest and not worried about tropical or other sort of imported type stuff. And then the restaurant piece of it is, you know, you've met me, Stephanie and I, we'd love going out to eat. We love the whole hospitality industry. My wife was in that industry before. So we've always loved that aspect of it. And it just seemed a natural fit when we started building furniture back here in the St. Louis area. One of the first people that we ran into was Gerard Craft, and we started building furniture for him. And from then it just took off from there.

What's it like to work with your spouse?

Well, I think it's great. First of all, Stephanie is super smart and she's super hardworking. I mean, we've got that in common. That's what attracted us to each other in the beginning. And also she's beautiful, which is not a bad thing. Yeah.

So I was imagining you two looking at each other and saying, hey, you look like a hard worker.

Yeah.

That's really attractive.

Well, Stephanie used to tell her friends like, what do you do with this Dave Stein guy? You don't seem like you would date a lawyer. And she goes, you know, Dave Stein likes to get things done. And I like that about him. Yeah. She's the same way.

You felt understood.

Yeah, exactly. And you know, we haven't always worked together. We've been working together in the business for about 10 years. Obviously she's always been supporting of the business. And it was with her support that I made the jump from being an attorney to the business. We've been working full-time together, it's been great. It's taken our business to a whole different level where there's someone who can— which Stephanie, she does all the stuff that's not actually working the wood and doing the physical labor. So initial client intake, all the tax stuff that you have to deal with, you know, any paperwork stuff, signing up for shows, heading up the marketing, all that kind of stuff, all the, you know, web-based stuff, things of that nature, which is So important. You could be the best carpenter, the best woodworker in the world, and if nobody finds out about you, who cares? You're not making a living. So it's been great. Now, I will say also, much like marriage, working together is work, and you have to work at it. And, you know, sometimes when you're not having a great day, you just need to be quiet and go in the other room and, you know, not take it out on your partner or whatever. So it's, it's been challenging, but I can't imagine doing it any other way, first of all. And then the rewards are amazing because you get to be with the spouse, the person that you love more than anyone in the world all the time. So it's— I recommend it. I recommend it. I got lucky in my partner, though.

You know, it's funny, 'cause I was thinking about this episode from last season with Sid and Ann Mashburn, who have killer clothing stores in 5 cities. And they're in business together, and their desks, I think, are like 46 inches apart or something. And Sid said, "Some days that's too close, and some days that's too far away." Yeah. He also said their pillow talk is pretty good. Very powerful.

Yeah, absolutely.

Can you relate to those two comments?

Well, Stephanie and I share a desk, so it is even worse. And yeah, sometimes you get up and move to the other side of the room. And then pillow talk, Stephanie has a very hard and fast rule. It's like basically 8 o'clock, no more business talk. If you need to sort of download from your day, send me an email and I'll read it first thing in the morning because I just want to download at the end of the day. And maybe everybody's like this, I don't know. But then Stephanie takes that on board and then it keeps her up at night. So we've decided years ago, okay, no more of that. If you need to download, write me an email, send me a text message, whatever, and then I'll read it first thing in the morning. In the meantime, we can all get some good sleep. But we do, you know, family trips, waiting for the kids to play soccer, whatever. A lot of business decisions being made at that time. It's maybe it leads to sort of a workaholism or something, but you get a lot of things done. You can, you know, you can get on the same page.

You were green or thinking about sustainability before that was a thing too.

Well, I, I, I'll wear that with pride. I grew up that way. My grandfather, one of the driving spirits in my life, was always really interested in conservation farming practices and how we keep our land productive for the next generation. And, you know, we don't go out and harvest all the trees that are great today. And take the $20,000 and then, hey, sorry for you, next generation, you're on your own. And, you know, he grew up seeing what had happened during the Depression and the Dust Bowl and stuff like that. And so conservation was number one in their mind from the time I can remember. And so they just drove that home at every opportunity. You know, all the things that are very popular today, like, you know, doing things for yourself, being self-reliant, not wasting, like not wasting food, not throwing stuff out. Repairing things instead of just getting a new one. All that stuff was driven into my head from the time I was a kid. And then also preservation of the forest, not only for future generations, but for wildlife. And, you know, a lot of my cousins hunt and do things like that. And so you don't get to do that if you don't take care of the resource. So it was the basic mantra in my— was drilled into my head is, you know, take what you need and leave the rest for the next guy so that there's always something out there.

Yeah, there's a Warren Buffett quote that we have on some stationery in our office that we use that goes, "Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." And I was thinking if that were modified for you, it'd be someone's sitting at a table today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Yeah, I think that's very apt. And the one caveat would be because the squirrels or the birds planted the tree.

Yeah.

Because it's a naturally, Where we harvest our timber, naturally occurring Midwestern hardwood forest. So our sustainability piece is we just take trees that are dead or dying or invasive, hanging over the fields where my cousins still farm, anything like that. So all the best rootstock, all the best, most beautiful trees, they are free to grow and do whatever they want and propagate new trees for as long as they wanna grow out there. And then we'll, once they die, once at the end of their lifespan, then we'll harvest the lumber and take it back to the shop and try to make something of lasting beauty out of it, but in the meantime, natural hardwood forest, which all the local wildlife prefers rather than some sort of tree farm where I just plant black walnut because I think maybe in 25 years black walnut's going to be valuable. So that's trying to live more harmoniously with the resources that we've been lucky enough to have access to.

So you're not just a woodworker, you're a tree farmer too, in some ways.

Well, a little bit, but I would say more of just like, a steward of the forest rather than a tree farmer, because I think of a tree farm as a place where you plant trees and harvest trees and plant trees and harvest trees. And we're more just kind of trying to be in touch with the land and let it kind of do what it wants to do and being able to make our living off that with kind of a light touch if we can.

Yeah. You know, you have some Dave Steinisms, you told me, and one of them that I think I saw in a video, you said something like, All good things come from the Midwest. Everybody knows that.

Well, yeah, Matt, you're from the Midwest, so you know that.

Yeah, I did know that.

What's amazing is I've been saying that my whole life and I don't know where I picked that up, but yeah, all good things come from the Midwest. Everybody knows that. And also, you say that in New York City or in LA and people are like, oh yeah, yeah, that's kind of true. Because most of the people that you meet in New York or LA are from the Midwest. They just moved to New York or LA. So it's kind of funny that way.

What's an underrated tree? What's a wood? I don't know anything about trees, but all I know is like pine is soft and oak is hard, right? What else is there?

So I think maybe the frame of the question is a little bit skewed. It's not that there's an underrated tree. It's when people use certain woods for the wrong thing or for a thing they're not well suited for. I mean, back in the day, people would harvest, for example, sycamore trees. People nowadays are like, sycamore, you know, they're beautiful, you know, they've got that ghostly look, whatever. But they would harvest them for very specific purposes. They would always make all the fittings for horse barns out of sycamore. And the reasons are because horses won't chew on sycamore 'cause it's got a fibrous texture when they chew on it that makes them crazy. They don't enjoy it. Now oak, sassafras, cherry, walnut, they'll just chew it all day long. But sycamore they won't. And then another thing they used sycamore trees for was treen or turned ware to store like food in because it doesn't give any any taste to whatever you store in it. So there's a lot of that old knowledge that kind of, I try to glean from my grandparents and from books and stuff about what wood is the best for different things. There's different woods that grow here in the Midwest that are better for things that might see some weathering, like Osage orange is really good outside. Still gonna be something you have to work with and oil from time to time if you want it to last forever. But I would never build something out of like hickory and put it outside 'cause it'll last one season and be gone. So I think more so like what's underrated, it's just have we commodified wood in such a way where we don't pay attention to what it's really good for? It's like highest best use for that species and then use it for that.

So do you help when someone's coming to you for a custom thing? Do you help coach them about what the right wood is or do they just get to choose what they think is the prettiest?

It's a little bit of both. If somebody's building a workbench, I would never advise them to build it out of pine. It's just gonna get beat up and it's gonna be a softer wood. Now if they want a headboard and they find a piece of pine find in our stock that they love, I think that's a great use. It's not going to get, you know, dinged up and have glasses sitting on it its whole life. So yeah, both of those things I think come into view. It's what they find the prettiest or what— more often people don't know a lot about wood species because we've grown up now in the last couple decades, maybe 50 years, thinking of wood species as more of like finishes. What finish are you looking for? We try to re-educate people. You're not looking for the finish because the finish is the last step. It's the oil or the polyurethane or whatever you put on the top just to protect the wood. What we like people to do is, if you want dark wood, we're happy to put you at a walnut table because it's beautiful, it's dark, it's naturally occurring that way. It's not some color that we've added to it. One of my biggest sort of complaints or the thing— well, we just don't do it. A lot of design type people or people who are looking for something— well, we want you to take maple, which is the whitest, clearest wood, and we want you to ebonize it. And I'm like, well, that seems like a terrible idea. But how about if we took a wood that's already dark and we just celebrate the darkness of that wood and we make it look like real wood? Because if you really just want a black table, maybe it should be Formica, or maybe it should be a painted table, something like that. So we can keep this amazing wood that we have for its highest, best use. You know, let, let's let the wood be what it wants to be rather than trying to constantly impose our will on everything. And that's one of the reasons I think where my style has gravitated mostly towards the live edge furniture. Like, let's find the piece of wood that already exists in kind of the shape and the, and the look that you're wanting. And then everybody's happy because it's being what it wants to be. You're happy with its how it wants to be. And I know that kind of like personalizing a piece of lumber sounds crazy, but I don't know, maybe it's because I have a million pieces of lumber sitting around my shop all the time that I think that way.

You really seem to celebrate the warts and the imperfections.

Oh, I—

In wood. As I sort of studied and prepared to meet you, that was one of the coolest things I found was like, you're not trying to sort of hide anything.

Yeah. It's like in a lot of aspects of your life. You go to a cocktail party and there's a guy with an eyepatch, I'm headed right to that guy. I'm like, what happened to you? That's, let's hear the story. I don't care if it's embarrassing, fireworks, whatever. The same way with wood. The wood that's at IKEA, it all looks exactly the same. You don't see anybody whipping out their iPhones and taking pictures of the amazing wood grain at IKEA because it's not amazing. People, when they come to our showroom or they see a piece that we've done, "Oh, I love this little aspect of it. And look at this knot where a branch was sheared off in a storm and then the tree had to grow and survive and sort of heal around that." And you can see all that story told in the grain of the wood. I find that just amazing and fascinating and sort of like uplifting. You know, this thing overcame all this. And I feel the same way, you know, about people, about animals, about all kinds of stuff. It's like the most interesting ones— "Yeah, that three-legged dog has a story to tell." You know, it's that kind of a thing.

—I love that. Do your kids think your work is cool? You got two kids, Oscar and Willa. —Oscar and Willa, yeah.

So first of all, Oscar's my oldest. He's a sophomore in college and he is a cool kid. He's into design, he's into fashion, all this kind of stuff. I think he does like what I do. He's not embarrassed to be seen out and about with me. He does give me a hard time sometimes for constantly wearing my own branded merchandise, but he also gets it that marketing's a big part of the game. And I think he's proud of me. I think he thinks it's interesting that his dad does something a little bit different. And then I was actually just having this conversation with my daughter, Willa, last night. And she's like, "I think I'm a lot more proud of you than you think I am," which to me, that's great. I kind of love that answer 'cause I do think she's proud of me, but I didn't sort of understand the depth of the feeling. And so I do think they're both proud. One of the great things about the kids when they were younger too is since I work for myself and Stephanie works for us too, it's like anything that came up at school, it's like, "Oh, my dad will do that 'cause he doesn't work." And then I'd go to the school and they'd be like, "I hear you're out of a job." Mr. Stein? Yeah, it's my daughter maybe not telling the whole truth there.

Oh man, man. I asked my daughter this morning. Yeah. I said, hey, are you, you still have shop? She's a 6th grader and at her school they have shop. She goes, dad, it's my favorite class. I go, why is it your favorite class? She goes, it's a de-stressor, man. I'm making a, it's not a fork, a spork.

I'm making a spork. Do you like carving a spork in class? And something else.

And I was like, oh really, you enjoy that? She goes, without question, my favorite class.

I mean, it's a completely different side of your brain, set of skills, everything that you're, all day long, you know, it's STEM, which is super important. But then you can apply some of that stuff. Oh, I'm gonna use this geometry and this math to design my spork. Amazing.

Okay, so are you gonna offer a woodworking camp for kids this summer? Definitely not. Should I get a group together?

Definitely not, no. If I am, you're running it. Okay.

You know what's funny is I view it as As we talked, I view it as like, you may have actually figured out how to really have a real job. You know, I think the transition you made from the thing that maybe at some level you thought you were supposed to do to the thing you were meant to do is really beautiful. Well, I appreciate that.

And I mean, does anybody really know what they're doing? I didn't start out with like some sort of Soviet-era 7-year plan that I'm gonna take over the world with furniture, but I knew that being an attorney wasn't the right thing for me. And being on this sort of track to partnership and stuff, it just, it wasn't, I wasn't feeling it to use, you know, sort of the parlance of the day. I just, I had to move on. Yeah.

Anything we should have covered that we didn't?

Well, I think one of the things that you brought up in one of our earlier conversations was the basic idea of the long view and how we go about our business. So the way that we've built our business is always with a view towards the future, not just in the way I was raised where you sort of take care of the land so that it's there for the next guy, but also, We might cut down some trees that have been wind damaged this year, and it's a 3-year drying process. And then it might be 5 or 6 years before the right client comes into the shop to see, you know, that that's the perfect board for them. And so it's not a sort of a cash and carry type of situation where we're just, just-in-time delivery type service. It's more We have this big inventory, we have all the tools and equipment, we have this level of knowledge, and now it's just kind of waiting for the right customer to come through. And another thing that I learned growing up on the farm is you don't pick the plums when you're hungry, you have to pick the plums when the plums are ripe, and then you make them into jelly or put them in the freezer. So when you are hungry, you're good to go. It's the same way with the lumber. You harvest the trees when the tree dies or falls in the forest, and then you get it made into lumber, and then it's just sitting there waiting for you. Dry lumber doesn't eat anything. As long as you got dry storage for it, you're in good shape. So it's not like cattle or hogs or something where you gotta feed 'em until the market goes up. It's just, you're just kind of waiting for the right person to come along.

It reminds me a little bit of one time I heard someone speak from a winery, one of the like storied champagne brands of the world. And they said, imagine starting a company where you had to wait 20+ years to sell your first product. Yeah. Because the original idea for this blend they were gonna create was gonna take a long time. Yeah. And I think this idea of making furniture out of wood that was planted by maybe a generation ago or more, that's pretty unique.

I think it is unique. And you know what I find cool about it is, you know, I didn't have this plan when I was growing up or anything. I assumed I'd probably be a farmer or, you know, maybe a mechanic or something like that. Like that, but we were doing logging and we were cutting trees and timber when I was a kid, just for projects around the farm, like building a barn, building a house, putting up a fence, whatever it was. You know, a lot of that lumber didn't get used. It was just stored there, sort of waiting for what it needed to be. And one of the things that really led to this business idea and germinated into what it is today is the fact that I had, you know, several thousand board feet of lumber just sitting around that I had harvested when I was a kid. Really great stuff. Too good to use for a barn, too good to use for a fence. And then when I shared that with prospective clients, they just loved that story and that whole idea of why you cut this. I just used some stuff the other day and I told a guy, yeah, when I was 14, I remember we cut this tree down and drug it up the hill with a tractor that they don't even make anymore and, you know, took it to the local sawmill. So I think that, So, that was a cool aspect of how we kind of got started and got moving in the direction that we're in now. Yeah.

I was gonna ask you this earlier. Why do you think people want to make a TV show about you?

Oh, well, I don't know. We've been actually dealing with some— a local production company here for about 10 years. We've done 4 pilots, and none of those 4 have been picked up. And the last little bit of advice I got from one of the producers who's ultimately passed on the thing was, "You know, Dave, you're great. You do cool stuff. You're really interesting, but you run a real 'And we're looking for somebody like a WWE personality.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, that's not me. I'm not looking to blow things up and, you know, act crazy. I'm just— we're running a business and we do cool stuff for cool people, but maybe that's not TV ready.' But they keep coming back, so—

Yeah, there's something there.

Yeah, I'm actually headed out to LA next week to talk to producers about the next iteration of this whole idea. And you know what? It's kind of fun. It's like somebody wants to make a show about you. What are you gonna do? Say no? No, I'm not interested in that.

Well, as I told you, I think if they saw this video, of you, the way you handle a chainsaw. It's like you treat it like a wiffle ball bat. You are made for TV. I want people to see you. We'll have good photographs with this episode. Okay, well, where can people follow you until the TV show comes out one day? Where should people follow you?

SteinWoodworking.com, and it's SteinWoodworking.com, is our website. And then we have a great Instagram presence. I think that's where most people find us nowadays. And so it's @DavidSteinFurniture. @DavidSteinfurniture. You know, if you're not gonna buy an ad in the New Yorker or whatever, how do you kinda get the word out? And just sort of being ready, willing, and able to tell your story when you get the opportunity, I think is a big deal. And one of the things I always go back to, another mantra of mine is, you know, you could be the best woodworker in the world, and if nobody knows about it, who cares?

I think one of the interesting things too is there's some momentum factor or something in marketing where it's like once people you were talking to realize that other people in other parts of the country respected and valued what you were doing. Sure. Yeah, like cooler. It's true. The same people who were just talking to you.

Yeah, to your local— yeah, to your local friends.

Saw you in LA, they were like, that's the guy we saw in St. Louis, he must be better than we initially thought. Okay, well, I told you this when I met you. Every person I know who knows you said, when you meet Dave Stein, you're gonna like him. And they were right. Oh, well, good. You are— you make one-of-a-kind furniture, but You're a one-of-a-kind guy.

Well, I appreciate that. All we do is go out and just try to tell our story and, you know, make friends.

Yeah, and make furniture that lasts forever. That's pretty long view. It is.

You and I, we have the same sort of outlook.

All right, Dave, thanks, man. Thank you. What's your view of taxes? Please note, the information shared in this podcast is not intended as advice. The intent is to share meaningful experiences. I am likely not your advisor, nor wealth manager, nor financial planner, and my opinions are my own and not necessarily shared by Hill Investment Group. Investing involves risk. Consult a professional before implementing an investment strategy. Thank you.