Crafting Purpose Through Furniture: The Journey of Jeremy French

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I'm Bill Gilliland, your host. I am the principal of Action Coach Business Growth Partners and one of the founders of the Asheville Business Summit. Speaking of the summit, it's coming up in a week and a half or so from when we're recording this podcast. So it is time to get your tickets. All you need to do is go out to wncsummit.com. You can follow the prompts from there. We want to see you there. It's going to be an amazing event. And today, I've got one of our participants in the summit. He's helping us out. It's Jeremy from Making It Whole.

1:16So welcome to the podcast, Jeremy. Tell us a little bit about you and your business. All right. Thanks, Bill. I'm looking forward to the summit. I'm going to be speaking there. The title of the talk is Business of Flourishing. And it's a reflection of the work that I'm trying to do. What Making Whole is, is it's an apprenticeship program for recovering drug addicts. And we teach them how to build furniture and basically use that as a platform to teach not just the hard skills, but the soft skills of existing in the world as a recovering drug addict. and we're using furniture as a way to create the problems and opportunities to learn and grow.

2:00And this journey that we've been doing this since 2018, my personal journey with this started in the 90s. And so the talk's going to be a reflection of what I've learned here. That is awesome. And it's awesome what you're doing and making a real difference in the world and saving lives. So, yeah, but there's a lot to be learned from, you know, from this. So tell us, how'd you get into this in the first place? You said you've been doing it since the 90s. I got sober because I've got this allergic reaction to both drugs and alcohol that anytime I use either one of them, I break out in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs.

2:46And so you do that enough times and it's time to do something different. And so that started for me in 1995. And I just carried on about my life from that point until 2015 when I just kept having friends of mine dying. And I started to ask the question, is there anything that can be done that's reliable to keep people out of the grave when it comes to addiction? And while there are a lot of places and modalities to treat addiction, at the time that I had a lot of people who were really close to me, and I was asking the question, where could they go where they could receive the kind of help that I knew would be beneficial to them, I couldn't find a good option.

3:37and so I started asking the question in 2015 what do people need and how do people get better and so as I started to ask that question and just started to consider my own personal journey and the people that I had known the people that I had known that had gotten better there were some common denominators in those people one of them was that there's always a story of somebody at the beginning, a mentor, a coach, somebody that was important to them. The other part of that story is that these are all people, the people that I know that I really value the lives that they have, are all people who had either a profession or a hobby that presented them with complicated problems every day.

4:22And it was something they were passionate about. And in kind of engaging that work or that play that they were doing, they learned how to negotiate with complicated problems. And that's what life is. It's what life is for people that are faced with addiction. It's just always a new set of problems. And so when you're talking about how do you equip somebody to go be successful in the world, this is also the case of being a parent. You know, you can write a script on what you believe the best possible outcome is and what you hope for. And then life deals you a different hand. You know, the same is true with addiction.

5:00As you're going to get dealt the hand you're dealt, there's no certainty of what that's going to look like. And so the question as a provider is what do I want to equip somebody with? What tools do I want to equip them with? So that whatever it is that's delivered to them, they're going to be able to negotiate that and navigate through those processes. And so this place was built on basically how can I create an environment where people want to be there, where there's a lot of ancillary benefits from being there, but it's also something that continually engages people in complicated problems and provides them the tools to learn how to solve those problems.

5:38And that's what building custom furniture and architectural fittings like we do provides. Everything we do is different. It's custom work. And with custom work means there's new problems all the time. It provides us an opportunity to show people how to solve problems.

5:58So I love that. And I want to understand. And I think that makes sense. I mean, if you have something that if you understand how to solve problems, then you can understand how to solve problems in your own life. And, yeah, you can't do this world by yourself. That's why there are mentors and coaches. Yeah, that's why I tell everybody in our business that you can't do this stuff by yourself. That's why I have coaches, and that's why I am a coach. That's why I have a job, because you can't do it by yourself. So, um, so the business of flourishing, so that's, that's the next, that's, so there's a first step of sort of getting into, you know, into survival and becoming okay.

6:46And then we're talking about, you know, I think flourishing sounds like climbing a mountain. So, uh, yeah. So, I mean, I've got a model called be epic that kind of goes through that where you, you know, somebody is going to fall into a hole. Then they're, they're in survival mode. You survive, you get out. you're only back to okay. Some people think they've done something, but then you've got to go to flourishing. So talk about that. I mean, obviously you're taking the lessons of what you've learned, because what we want is people to actually flourish. Yeah, I guess for me, what the creative process is, is a methodology to answer a question.

7:29It's a lot like science and the process, the scientific process, and the difference is that creativity doesn't require proof in the same way that science does. And so this begins with asking a set of questions and then arriving and answers, um, and answer those questions. And so I think one of the big misconceptions for addiction is that, um, is that, that you get sober and you just survive. the reason why it feels that way and I think that that's probably common for a lot of people is that what's happened when you get sober is you basically give up the only tool that you know works and so for me what I experienced when I was drinking or getting high is that all my problems got solved every time I did it and so whatever those problems my brain does what brains do which you know if if your brain solves a problem a couple times the same way it just goes into a part of our brain that operates without our consent because it works, right?

8:31You know, if you touch something hot, you pull away. Your brain doesn't need to tell you. You don't even have to go to a cognitive process to pull your hand away. Our brain does that for us. And so for me, that was a solution to a lot of the different problems that I interfaced with in life. And the reason why it was really difficult to get sober is that I gave up that solution. What I've experienced with people who get sober is that if they arrive in a new solution to a problem, there's not a lot of time between suffering and flourishing. The challenge is how do you help them find that solution and how do you help them believe there's a solution?

9:07So, you know, if you don't believe that it's possible, then you're not looking for it. You're not asking the questions about where it exists. And even if you are asking the questions, do you have a process for asking questions that that reliably produces results, right? And so what making something here provides us is the steps to ask a question and find solutions. And most of those questions and solutions are objective because we're creating an object. It's not subjective. It's not complicated. You know, we want to build something that looks in a certain way. And so we have this opportunity to, you know, almost metaphorically learn how to ask a question and get an answer.

9:55And so when it comes to life, it's a lot easier to do that. It's a lot easier to believe through the journey. So you talk about climbing a mountain or digging out of a hole. A huge part of that is the belief that there's something on the other side. You know, any story you hear about somebody coming out of the darkness, it's a big story about you know the faith is a word that would be used in that belief you know do i believe that there's something worth fighting for do i believe that there's something worth you know digging through this swamp to get to the other side because if i don't believe it i'm i'm gonna give up right yeah no i love that you know flourishing is right at our fingertips and and the hurdles that exist to flourish exist within us and i've witnessed people who seemed like they had an insurmountable tasks very rapidly um become people that that exist in the world and flourish they've become themselves um they they exist exist successfully and wholly um and the difference is they they have a way to navigate life um a toolkit and they believe in it yeah i like that I like that.

11:08So, so it seems to me that what, I mean, what you said is that what worked for you was, um, you know, drinking and, um, that was, that was trained the brain one way. So part of this is what comes first is the belief come first or retraining the brain. I don't know, chicken or an egg, right? It could be either. It could be either. Okay. I'll tell you that in the terms of language, you know, we start talking about belief and everybody's ideas about religion pop in really quick. So there's a hurdle to believe just to get through the language of like, what does that even mean? You know? Um, so I think a lot of people suffer to believe, struggle to get to the point where they, where belief doesn't immediately turn them off, whether we're talking about, um, the spiritual realm or not, you know, just believing that things can be okay.

11:58If you've got no experience of things being okay, it's tough to believe now. things are going to be okay. Particularly when the journey between suffering and flourishing is not enjoyable. It's not a fun journey for anybody. I don't care if you're, what the hurdle is you're overcoming. I'm sure you come across this with entrepreneurs. There's a lot of difficulty to create a successful business. A lot of it's not fun, you know? And the people that succeed in that are often people that have a deep seated belief, but if you're not sure it's going to work, there's a lot of suffering. And so how do you opt to suffer if you're not sure there's something worth it on the other side?

12:36Right. That makes a ton of sense because, I mean, I've always said that, you know, no growth happens in a comfort zone. True story. So, yeah. So you've got to be uncomfortable. You've got to make yourself uncomfortable to grow, whether it's a business, a person, you know, businesses are people. So, you know, essentially now to make yourself uncomfortable, you got to want it pretty bad and you got to believe and you got to believe. So either you've, you know, even you got to be, so you've got to have both. You got to have enough dissatisfaction and enough vision. Plus you got to believe it's possible.

13:18And what I'm hearing you is, then you got to have the first steps, which basically is the tools to be able to have a plan to get what you now believe is possible. Right, right. And where do those tools come from? And that's ultimately, I set out to create a business where those tools would exist, regardless of who walks in the doors. And from a business standpoint, that's the business I'm in, is trying to figure out what tools does any given person that walk in here need so that at the point that they're ready to quit suffering and they believe that there's a possibility um so a coming in here hopefully that generates a sense of belief and b once you have that belief there's a toolkit that's available to you if you're willing to do some simple work yeah we found that that in growing businesses that the easiest way to grow a business is to grow the business owner.

14:13So, so the, yeah, cause if the business, you know, if there's a level of business, they're running up against the owner. So as the business owner grows, then the business grows. It's the same thing. It's the same thing with what you're doing. Um, they, they've got to grow into it and that's, and you know, like you said, that's not comfortable. Right. So that's, yeah, that's pretty interesting. So, um, so what, I mean, you've now you've done this for a while, what what have you learned like and and maybe what would what would you do what would you do differently give us a couple of learnings and what you might might do differently yeah as a business as a business um this is a tough business to be in because of the language you know i uh the work that i did prior to doing this work i had a a bit the business owner that i worked for i have a tremendous amount of respect for and one of the things he taught me is that you know he came to me i was running a division of his company and he said look jeremy i don't want you to go actively sell anything to anybody what i want you to do is i want you to go solve our customers problems and trust the process and so in what that job afforded me the opportunity to do was travel around the world and work with companies and those companies were you know little mom and pop startups in a garage all the way up to kohler and you know fortune 500 companies and And so in hearing that from him early on, I was always kind of tuned into, does this business that I'm helping, do they do that?

15:46And one of the things I discovered is that everybody that understood their customers and the problems their customers had, their needs, and then provided a solution to those needs. All those companies, the people that were focused on that were successful. right and so one of the things i knew about this place when i started it is that i had a studio for years here in ashville and and people would come work for me a lot of people who were new to recover we would come work for me and every year somebody comes back to me and says man working in your shop is what changed my life and they would explain what happened to them and so i knew that the work that i was coming to do here would work i knew that i knew that it would solve these guys problems because i had people telling me that consistently that was a consistent consistent message i got so when i came here i thought well that's you know my biggest hurdle is solved and i know who my customers are and i know what their needs are and i can solve their problems um and what i found and what i still suffer with a lot is that somewhere in that equation i got the customer or their needs um wrong and so when we think about the the who is your customer you would think that the apprentices here are the customer but those aren't necessarily the people that decide to come here and decide to pay for this work so that's a different decision maker and to an extent that decision maker is actually the customer in this scenario um and so that's one aspect that i got wrong is who my customer was in in that particular equation the other thing that i didn't um that i miscalculated is a belief about what the problem is right and so i thought the problem is that these people aren't getting better but the the problem goes is way different than that and the people who ultimately make the decisions about an apprentice coming here is a pretty wide group of people.

17:46And so I got those things wrong. And as a result, the business struggled to grow and continues to struggle in ways around that is identifying who's the actual customer, who's the decision maker that purchases this service and what are their needs. And that is very different than from the work that I'm doing here. It's two totally separate things. And I had never seen that in a business. And I still don't know that I fully appreciate how to navigate that. And one of the reasons why it's complicated is that this is people's health. It's wildly subjective. There are a lot of cultural stories and mythologies about what addiction is and what growth is and what sobriety is.

18:32And everybody's ideas of that are really different. And so right out of the gate, we're not talking about a hammer. that drives nails that you can put a lot of statistics to. We're talking about something that's very different, difficult to develop metrics for. Very difficult to communicate what the value proposition is when everybody internally interprets that information differently. So it's a lot more complicated than I realized. It also, one of the things I discovered about my business when I was doing the preliminary research to start the business and doing a business plan, is that, you know, Google, every word that exists in Google has a dollar amount attached to it.

19:16Yep. And so there's most words are worth 25 cents a click, something in that range, you know, and expensive words are two or three bucks a click. The top 10 most expensive words in Google when I started this business were related to addiction treatment. And one of the things that And we're talking about$50 a click. We're talking about huge money. And so what that unveils for you is a snapshot into the industry. And so what you have is a bunch of first-time consumers, people that show up looking for help with addiction, have never done it before. This is not a cultural conversation that we have.

20:00Most people are very secretive, whether it's because of shame or uncertainty or whatever. They don't discuss it with their friends. So it is by some metrics, the least informed consumers on the planet and the most competitive market space to get their attention. And what everybody that arrives at the marketplace with is a lot of hurt. And so from a marketing standpoint, that's really simple, right? People are hurting. Well, what you can do to solve their problem is make them feel better. right and so the language in the value proposition that exists in the marketplace for this particular service has a lot to do with feeling better the problem is the actual service that's going to help somebody get better you mentioned is that you're going to suffer first and so if you're honest about your value proposition you lose that consumer on the front end if you have enough money to even get access to them to begin with.

21:01So the kind of budgets that exist in marketing for people that are after the eyes that I'm after is more monthly than my operating budget, in some cases, is annually. And so it's a very curious problem about how to market the truth and about how to market suffering. And I've not cracked the code. So I've tried a lot of things, And I'm going to continue to try different things in hopes that something registers. But I will say that it's a far more complicated equation than I think. Yeah, it's super complicated because who buys the services in the first place? Right. And, I mean, there's a lot of constituents there.

21:47And then, like you said, it's a big industry that, from a business standpoint of view, it's a big problem. So it's a big industry trying to solve the problem. And there are a lot of people throwing spaghetti at the wall and, you know, figuring out what actually works, which I do think, I do think what you, what you're doing from what I know is, is crack is cracking the code. So maybe part of the, maybe part of the solution is, you know, this podcast and speaking and just letting, yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, we got to get the word out, right. You know, what, what, you know, what works. So, yeah, I think it's – I do think that – because you never know, right?

22:32I mean, I don't know how people show up at your door, you know, and, you know, it's probably a lot – you know, it's probably 20, 30 ways. Right. That people would – you know, that people could – you know, there's probably six big ones, but there's – that's usually what I find. but there's probably 20 ways where people show up and are serious about getting help somehow. Somebody is. I mean, the person, my guess is it's even more complicated because the person sometimes paying the bill is not the person who's being helped. More often than not. And their set of problems are different than the people that I'm helping, and they're my customers at the same time.

23:16Yeah, I mean, the people paying the bills, it's another customer. It's a little bit like speaking. There's usually like you think you're speaking to the audience. They're one of your customers, but the other one is whoever's putting the event on. The event manager is really your customer in the speaking world. So, yeah, no, I like what you're doing. Tell us why you believe someone should come and attend the business summit. you know so this is what you're talking about i i uh i'm a big fan of malcolm gladwell and the work he's done and what you just talked about i believe in that i believe that there's a tipping point and i believe that the only way you can arrive at that tipping point is by getting your hands dirty and engaging the conversation engaging community engaging the questions that you have.

24:09And so the value of any gathering is that you don't know who's there, and you don't know what's to be learned. But what I do know as an entrepreneur is that if you don't put yourself there, you miss what could be the tipping point. And so part of the reason, you know, even before speaking, the value proposition of the summit is just connecting with community. Also, you know, I have all the high level problems that I interface with as a business owner. And prior to this as a business employee, but I've also got a hundred other little problems that I don't, some I don't even know I have, right? And so part of growing as an individual, both as a business owner and as a person, and that's part of what I'm talking about is just the integration between business owner and human being, um, is that you learn things that you didn't even know you needed to learn.

25:06And I think the other thing right now is that the way information and hot topics are discussed is in little 30 second sound bites and, you know, social media reels and, and it's becoming cheap and it's becoming less, less, uh, it reaches the depth far less so people talk about real big ideas and sum it up in 30 seconds and it feels great but it doesn't actually get to the core of what it is growth actually means and so what i value about a summit like this is that it's it's uh it's more longhand real talk. And it's, it's about real life and it's among humans and that's becoming increasingly rare.

26:00So I think just the opportunity to come and engage with the community, see who's out there, see who has different problems to me, see who has the same problems to me, see, see who's doing stuff that I'd never heard of, hear the speakers and get a sense of these, very successful people and how, what it is they want to share in front of their community. I think that there's value in that. So I'm, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm just mostly looking forward to being with the people that are part of this community, seeing what a year away from Helene looks like on people's faces. You know, I think everybody's starting to feel a sense of that.

26:40And I'm just curious what that looks like. I think it's going to look like a lot of different things. And just as a member of this community, I'm always curious to engage with the community in serious matters. And I consider business a serious matter where people are serious about being there. You know, it's not just fun and games. And I think you get insight into life in a different way when you're around people in that context. 100%. Yeah, I love that. And I love what you said about it. You know, part of the goal of the summit is to expand and you can't expand your, you can't grow yourself in 30 seconds, sound bites.

27:23You just can't do it. You know, they're cool and it's fun to watch. And I'm just like everybody else. I mean, I can watch the, you know, those reels and videos and, you know, get a kick out, get that dopamine hit. But if you really, you know, part of what we're about is giving people like real things, real results, It's real actionable steps that they can take when they leave. And like you said, I mean, I've been looking at the ticket sales. And I mean, we have a wide variety of people that I know and a bunch that I don't know. So I'm really looking forward to getting to know those people that are part of our community.

28:02So I'm excited as well. So I'm very interested in how you're going to, you know, this idea of flourishing, I mean, it is the same principles for business. I mean, if you're, you know, it's how do you go from good to flourishing, you know? Right. It's the same principles for business and for being a parent and being for somebody who's in recovery from addiction and just being human. And that's really, I started this work as a professional. I, one of the things I had learned about myself is that if I don't have complicated problems to solve, my brain eats itself. Like my, I got, I got a wolf in my brain that's hungry and it's going to eat problems or it's going to eat my brain, one or the other.

28:50And I had gotten to a point professionally where the problems that I was interfacing with weren't feeding that wolf. And so what this journey in my professional life looks like is this integration from what was the most personal thing for me, which is my own personal recovery from addiction and all the things that come with that in my professional life. And the question of how do I integrate these two things and where are the opportunities in that integration and where are the liabilities in that integration? And is it possible to have life and work integrate? And that's what we're going to talk about.

29:26No, I love that. I love that because it's, I mean, that's the reason we're working anyway. It's all personal. So, yeah, I mean, the businesses, your business should support your personal ambitions, goals, calling, whatever you want to call it. So, yeah, I love that. Love that. Hey, look, thanks for being on here. I mean, this is really enlightening and impressive, and I can't wait to hear this talk. Well, I look forward to seeing you there, Bill. and everybody else who's watching this. I look forward to meeting you all. And I look forward to a good old fashioned connection that used to be really common in Asheville has become increasingly less common.

30:08And I think that's probably the thing I'm most excited about is just having a place where the density of the community, the Asheville community, which I've known for 20 something years, is all in the same place. That sounds really, it's a really interesting community, really widespread. I'm excited to see that. Yeah, it's going to be fun. It's going to be great. Hey, remember, if you haven't already gotten your tickets, go to WNCSummit.com. Get out there, get your tickets. You're going to want to hear what Jeremy has to say and the rest of the speakers. So I can't wait to see you there. Hey, and until next time, all the best.

30:49Hey, thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast. Here's three things that you can do. Number one, remember to subscribe to the podcast. It takes very little effort on your part. It's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs. Plus, you guys know how it works. The more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly.

31:36Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.