Meet Sunira Xiong

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sunira Xiong a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sunira, thank you so much for joining us. You are such a positive person and it’s something we really admire and so we wanted to start by asking you where you think your optimism comes from?

Jonathan and I (Sunira) are pretty laid back people; we prefer to stay home and watch a movie. We try to avoid any unnecessary stress. But ultimately, our optimism comes from our faith in God and trusting Him. This stems into our everyday lives – how we raise our kids, how we react to situations, and even trying to spread joy in our small business to clients. We definitely have ups and downs (we’re not perfect people) but when we have God lead our lives, everything just falls into place. Do we worry about the future? Absolutely – that’s why we have faith and trust in God where we believe He will do what is right in the season of our lives.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

We’re Jonathan and Sunira and we own a small business Maker of Sawdust Co. Maker of Sawdust Co is a family owned small business – we currently make eco-friendly wooden kitchen items as well as home decor and furniture upon request. Maker of Sawdust Co started out as a hobby making things for our kids and house. We instantly fell in love with the woodworking process and saw the opportunity to also spread the joy to others. Our social media may have finished products to view but we also post our behind the scenes to show the woodworking process, wins, fails, and a bit of our family life.

Something little that we want to share: we won’t give a product away if it’s not to our standards or liking. So if clients receive a product, know that we handcrafted the product with our hearts and our sweat (from Florida). We also make sure that the product is perfect as much as possible and add any little details that we could think of (ready to use, board butter, rubber feet, etc.). And to top it off, we gift wrap products so when clients receive their order, we hope they open it with joy like opening gifts on Christmas morning.

Currently, our future goal is to make furniture. We’ve made a couple of furniture sporadically but if the opportunity comes where we could make furniture full-time, we would love to tackle the possibility.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

There are so many skills and knowledge that were impactful in our journey – we’re still learning! Narrowing it down to three would be the motivation to start, don’t be afraid of mistakes/failures, and be humble to keep learning. These may sound generic but it is essential to start a small business. In terms of woodworking, we would have not come to learn to love woodworking if we didn’t start on our own personal projects. We’ve messed up many times, especially measuring and cutting so there were definitely a lot of trials and errors. We may have had a woodworking small business for some time but we are not nearly seasoned like others who have been in this line of work for 10 plus years – so we still have a lot to learn.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

Since Maker of Sawdust Co is a family-owned small business, we feel the most overwhelmed when we prepare for events. Making products involve so much of our time that we don’t want to forget about our family time. Our kids are still small so we’d have to take turns and swap in caring for the kids and making the products. We try to strategize the steps when making our products – Jonathan cuts and assembles, we both do sanding, and Sunira does finishing details. Sometimes we wake up earlier than the kids or sleep later than the kids to get caught up with work.

There’s nothing perfect but we’re still figuring out what is the most effective way to balance work and family life as a family-owned small business and just to enjoy each other.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

MC Photography

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