One Problem at a Time
Episode 001
Building a Better Business is a journal about the real work behind JW Designs. The ideas, decisions, mistakes, revisions, and small improvements that usually happen just outside the camera frame.
Building JW Designs isn't my first rodeo.
More than twenty years ago, I started my first business, a sign company. Like most first businesses, I learned a lot by solving one problem after another.
Twenty years is a long time.
The fundamentals of building a business haven't really changed.
You still have to build something people want.
You still have to earn trust.
You still have to deliver quality.
But almost everything around those fundamentals has.
Back then, social media wasn't really social media as we know it today. In many ways, the internet itself was still finding its place in everyday business.
There wasn't YouTube full of makers showing you exactly how they solved a problem.
There weren't smartphones in everyone's pocket.
There certainly wasn't ChatGPT sitting there at two o'clock in the morning to bounce an idea off of.
If you wanted to learn something, you read books, searched forums, talked to other people, and figured out the rest through trial and error.
Today I can sketch an idea in Fusion 360, print a prototype in the shop, talk through an idea with ChatGPT, laser cut acrylic, photograph the finished product, and have it on my website before I would have even finished researching it twenty years ago.
That's incredible.
But here's what surprised me.
The technology didn't change what it takes to build a business. It simply gave me a better toolbox.
When Theory Becomes Experience
Knowing a business involved more than building a product wasn't a surprise.
I'd spent enough years in process improvement to know there would be manufacturing, documentation, marketing, customer service, shipping, inventory, and a hundred other moving parts.
I understood those ideas.
What I didn't understand was what it felt like when they became my problems.
It's one thing to know packaging matters.
It's another thing to stand in the shop wondering if the box in your hand is going to survive a trip halfway across the country.
It's one thing to know product photography matters.
It's another thing to spend an hour trying to capture in a single picture why your product is different.
It's one thing to know marketing matters.
It's another thing to stare at a blank screen trying to explain something you've spent months building without sounding like you're trying to sell it.
That's when theory becomes experience.
Every answer uncovered another question.
Every solved problem revealed one I hadn't noticed before.
Conversations from the Shop
I don't know if these are blog posts as much as they are conversations I've finally decided to write down.
Most of them start in the shop.
Some happen while I'm mowing the yard.
Others show up halfway through a walk or while I'm in the middle of fixing something that wasn't supposed to need fixing.
The funny thing is, the best ideas rarely arrive because I sat down and tried to have one.
They usually show up because something makes me stop and think:
“There has to be a better way.”
Before we get too far, there's one thing you should know about this series.
These aren't formal business articles.
They're not research papers.
They're not step-by-step guides.
Think of them as shop thoughts that somehow found their way onto a computer screen.
Some weeks they'll be about products.
Some weeks they'll be about mistakes.
Some weeks they'll be about something that surprised me while trying to build a better business.
That's kind of the point.
The Work Behind the Work
One of the things I appreciate most about the maker community is the creators who aren't afraid to show the work behind the work.
I remember watching Busted Knuckle Woodworks hold up a Home Depot bucket overflowing with discarded 3D printed prototypes.
He wasn't apologizing for them.
He was showing what it took to get to a product he believed in.
Months later he revisited the design because he'd already found ways to make it better.
That resonated with me.
Because that's how I think about making things.
I chase perfection.
Not because I expect to reach it.
But because every revision teaches me something the previous one couldn't.
The EncloSure lids I sell today exist because of hundreds of test prints, countless CAD revisions, laser-cut acrylic samples, and small design changes that most people will never notice.
Tomorrow I'll probably find another improvement.
I hope I do.
The product deserves that.
Better, Not Finished
The business, though...
I've learned to judge differently.
The first packaging wasn't perfect.
The first product photos weren't perfect.
The first website wasn't perfect.
The first social media posts weren't perfect.
They weren't supposed to be.
They were simply the best version I knew how to build with what I understood at the time.
Then experience taught me something.
The next version got better.
Looking back, I think that's the real theme of this series.
Not perfection. Progress.
Because while I chase perfection in the products I build...
I'm simply trying to build a better business.
What This Journal Will Be
This isn't going to be a blog about how to build a business.
It's going to be a journal about how I'm building mine.
Some weeks the story will be about a product.
Some weeks it might be about packaging, a workflow, a customer conversation, a shop project, a business decision, or a tool that unexpectedly changed the way I work.
I don't want to invent topics.
I want the business to create them.
My job is simply to write them down.
From the Shop
I'm not really documenting products. I'm documenting everything that happens just outside the camera frame. From what I've learned over the years, that's usually where the most interesting stories are.
Looking Ahead
One of those stories started with what seemed like a simple question.
Could ChatGPT actually help me run part of the business?
I thought I was looking for a better tool.
Instead, I found myself thinking differently about the business itself.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I wasn't solving a technology problem.
I was solving an organizational problem.
That's where we'll start next week.