Meet Sean Woolsey

We were lucky to catch up with Sean Woolsey recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sean, thank you for being such a positive, uplifting person. We’ve noticed that so many of the successful folks we’ve had the good fortune of connecting with have high levels of optimism and so we’d love to hear about your optimism and where you think it comes from.

I am an eternally optimistic person, I think I always see the glass always full, it is just half full of air and half full of water. I think it comes from reading the news listening to podcasts, and really knowing and appreciating how blessed of a person I am to live in the US, do what I want everyday, have so many freedoms and make a living doing what I want. I pinch myself a lot and am eternally grateful to God for this life I get to live.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I started making furniture 15 years ago after leaving the apparel business. I did apparel for 6 years before, my own brand Status Foe for 4 years followed by Hurley for 2 years. These were very pivotal years for cutting my teeth professionally, seeing how a brand is built + building a creative daily flow and learning the balance of art + commerce.

In 2009 I started making simple furniture and then deeply dived in 2010. I started by taking some classes and doing a short apprenticeship and watching TONS of videos and devouring lots of woodworking magazines. I would reverse engineer many things, buying them to take them apart, see how they are made, and thing of unique designs and improvements for the items. I still do that to this day.

It took several years to gain footing and find our niche, first was with our Woolsey Ping Pong table. We have a PR company that got us loads of press and that piece really took off, all of us blown away by the great response. Shortly thereafter we made shuffleboard tables, then pool tables. Each year we add to our product range 6-10 new items a year typically.

We sell to hundreds of interior designers and architects and have our work collected all over the world.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1.Keeping overhead low and growing slow
This can’t be overstated as cliche as it may be. I have seen so many people grow too fast, get burnt out, bite off on a bigger space and more overhead than they can chew and not make it. I am pretty frugal so am always looking at expenses and ways to be more efficient and effective with how we spend money.
2. Work with people you love/people you enjoy being around.
This took years for me to understand. Fire fast-hire slow, we are really like a small family, sharing lunches, surfing, and there is a lot of overlap of life and work for us. We all really like each other and having a communal positive atmosphere for 40 hours of the week is crucial.
3. Narrow your focus, up the quality, increase the speed.
I have this mounted above my desk as a daily reminder that we are a small super niche business making high end items for very few people, and not getting confused thinking we have a wide audience, we dont nor do we want to. Once we found our niche I quickly began deleting other items we were making and doubling down on the items that worked. I always see business as little fires, and you want to add fuel to the fires that are burning best, and throw water on the dwindling ones. Upping the quality is something we are always working on whether it be through product improvements or customer service. Increasing the speed comes last, king of naturally.

To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?

This is a great question, and something that I now think about a lot with a young daughter. My parents made me do chores and did not just give me things, I worked for it all and out of that comes a great appreciation for things. When I got out of high school they had saved some money for my college account, although much of it was wiped out by the dot com stock market bust. They said use it how you will, and I ended up going to junior college, not using most of the money and invested the money in stocks. It has multiplied since that 22 years ago.

I am currently reading “The 38 Letters from J.D. Rockefeller to His Son” and a huge theme that you see in this book is him telling his son how he still needs to work hard and fight for things. So often you see great generational wealth by the 3rd generation disappear because they were handed their whole life on a silver platter and by the 3rd generation they are completely broke.

My parents did an excellent job of imparting the sage wisdom that you have to work for things you want. The juice tastes better too when your the one who picked the fruit.

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Image Credits

Johnny Talay

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