Modernizing Craftsmanship with Weston Peters

In this episode, host Jacob Edmond sits down with Weston Peters, second generation steward of Peters Cabinetry, a custom cabinet shop based in Ohio. Weston shares his journey from growing up in his father’s shop to stepping into leadership and helping modernize the business through systems, automation, and strategic thinking.

With nearly two decades in the trade, Weston reflects on the pivotal moments that shaped both his career and the direction of the company. From investing in CNC technology to outsourcing installs and redefining their product offerings, this conversation dives deep into what it takes to evolve a family business while honoring craftsmanship. Together, they explore topics such as automation versus tradition, empowering teams, process driven growth, and building a company that is sustainable without losing its identity.

Join us as we explore the mindset behind scaling a small shop with intention and clarity.

About Our Guest

Weston Peters is the second generation leader of Peters Cabinetry, a custom cabinet and millwork shop serving residential clients in Ohio. After gaining experience in construction and other trades, Weston returned to the family business in his early twenties with a vision to build systems, adopt technology, and grow strategically.

Over the past 18 years, he has helped expand the company’s capabilities through CNC integration, process development, outsourcing partnerships, and team empowerment. Weston is passionate about improving shop systems, developing skilled craftsmen, and helping the next generation see opportunity in the trades. His leadership blends respect for craftsmanship with a forward thinking approach to business.
Where to Learn More

Peters Cabinetry
 https://peterscabinetry.com

Connect with Weston Peters on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weston-peters-29023b52/ 

Weston´s Blog: https://www.peterscabinetry.com/blog/before-you-buy-a-cnc

https://www.peterscabinetry.com/custom-select

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Transcript

Weston Peters 0:00

I think one thing we need to do better, all probably in shops, or at least as I look back, one thing I want to continue to grow in is to give old responsibility to people before you feel like you're ready to.

Jacob Edmond 0:16

Welcome back to Verify and Field everybody. Today I am excited to share with you we've got a special guest, Weston Peters. He is a second generation steward of Peters Cabinetry, which is a custom cabinet shop in Ohio, and he's particularly interested in improving shop systems, integrating technology, and developing skilled craftsmen in the trade. Thank you for joining me today, Weston.

Weston Peters 0:38

Hey Jacob, thank you for having me on. Appreciate what you're doing for the industry. It's great to have a conversation here

Jacob Edmond 0:43

Maybe to get started, if you wouldn't mind just giving a little bit of your background and how you got into this business. Obviously, you're second generation, so you grew up, around in the shop and the woodworking. But can you tell a little bit about that history and how you came to where you're at today?

Weston Peters 0:57

Yeah. So real quick my dad started the business about back in, I think it was boy, 1988 87. He grew up on a hog farm farmer out there in rural Indiana. And he married my mom who's from Ohio here. And they ended up starting out in Indiana. And as it is sometimes on family farms there just wasn't enough farm for all the boys that were there. And so they moved to Ohio and. About 83 I think it was, to date the Dayton area, which that's in southwestern Ohio. And we're about an hour from Cincinnati and Columbus. And that's where we are now. And there there was a man there at the church, they were going to Ron Filburn. He said, Hey, do you need a job? And he owned a millwork company. And so my dad, Gary went right from, taking care of hogs to running moldings through the shapers and molders. And so quite a culture adjustment, and a skill adjustment as well. But Ron took him under his wing and taught him the trade. They did a lot of the Wendy's back in the, when they were building the Wendy's back in the eighties, really growing the United States

Jacob Edmond 1:55

Back when they used to have real wood in those restaurants.

Weston Peters 1:58

Yep. And so they did a lot of wood. He learned the commercial trade, then he decided to, he had an opportunity to work for a residential contractor. he started out doing that. And the guy was like, Hey, could you build these buildings? So at the farm they lived here in Ohio, there was an old barn and he got a, I think it was like a, like one of those deltas, the old, like some old stuff, old tools, started building buildings and decided that, this is a lifestyle choice and he could have his family at home and build some cabinetry and millwork and so. that's some of my earliest memories is just going out. One thing my dad did really well is the shop was accessible. I don't remember it being unsafe, but I do remember that we could come out there anytime and, hang out and there was some damage to some things I think that he had to repair as we scooted around here and there. But it was a good, I still to this day when I smell Baltic birch. I think of my boyhood'cause we just cut a ton of Baldy Birch on the um, like the scroll saw and building little projects. as I grew up, he was always an option. I worked after school there, it was a very small shop, about two him and maybe one other person, and then I would help after school, He encouraged me to go somewhere else to work for some other people, get some other experience, and then come back if I was interested later, which was actually really a good thing. So I moved to Washington State I worked for a residential contractor out there. We did framing and set tile, did some different things, came back to Ohio and worked in concrete, Ford Concrete. And then I worked for another residential contractor just remember, I was probably like 22 or something like that. And we were, it was a hot August day. It gets very humid here in Ohio. We was ripping out a old rotten deck and like scabbing on some pieces, and it just hit me. I was like, you know what? This is not for me. I wanna do the finer work. And so I called dad up and he's like, yeah, come on back. So that's how I got started. I was about 23 or four and I've been in it about, yeah, 15 years or 18. And yeah, it's been good. I've enjoyed it.

Jacob Edmond 3:57

So that the, was that inflection point, the moment that it switched and you know what, I am gonna go work in the family business, or at least back in millwork versus construction.

Weston Peters 4:07

Yeah that I would say it just, I just had some clarity at that time that who I was as a person. I just enjoyed working with my hands a little more than say, doing the framing and that type of work. And so one thing that I always knew it was an option, but he remember him saying that, I mean we can do this together. It doesn't have to, there'd be an opportunity to be a partner. I was excited about some of the things we could do, maybe build a new shop, automation, that type of thing. And so that the combination of wanting to get into that and then, my dad being like, approaching more like this could be a partnership was what drew me back in.

Jacob Edmond 4:43

so that was the question I have is was there ever a consideration of okay, I want to go. Do this type of work, but maybe not for my dad? Or was it just automatic, like there was, Hey, I'd rather go work with my dad. This is a partnership. Was there ever any discussion about that or even a thought.

Weston Peters 4:58

No, that's a good question. Would say that, we had a pretty frank conversation. We had several of them I was excited about some of the automation and all of that, and he was very open to that. I've never heard him, to his credit be like that's just the way we've always done. And he was open to that. And so because of that I felt like this was the best opportunity. He had worked a lot of years, creating just a good reputation and so there was a lot of foundation laid for us to grow and to scale. the things we were lacking that we talked about was just systems and processes and some of the business side. And so I felt like that I could come on as a second generation. And not just be helping my dad, but rather bring my own ideas to the table and together we could, grow something. And so that was, we're two individual people. We have there, there's been tension, there's been different ideas, but we've always respected one another and had a good working relationship. And I felt like that was the best opportunity versus starting something of my own. It's Hey. Let's, I can still have some input and say in this, we can do this together. And yeah, he actually sold out younger than many people would because that's his vision is to pass it on before he is 80,

Jacob Edmond 6:07

yeah. Yeah, so you've mentioned, a couple times that you had these ideas and you wanted to come in and help bring,automation to your dad's business. And I think that's a pretty common, second generation especially over the last 20 years. Career arc or kind of company arc, but where would you say the seeds of that started? Because obviously you grew up watching your dad building things the way he did, which, most wood shops probably at that point were doing things very similarly. And then as CNC equipment and automation is come into our industry, like where were you? Where would you say you were exposed to that? Was it your time working in construction? Was it just being in the internet age and being able to see what else is out there? where would you say those seeds started for you to say, oh, this is something I feel like I can bring to the business and I'm interested in it.

Weston Peters 6:51

Yeah. Yeah. No good. I would, thinking back I remember pretty clearly when I first read a couple books which your audience is probably familiar with. One of'em was a two second lien by Paul Aker. The other one was the goal by Eli Goldrat, I believe. But those two kind of are more processes, one's on lean one's on, theory constraints and, but that's where it hit me that, it's fun to build cabinets, but I think what I enjoy the most or more as much, or at least as much or more as building the cabinets and the millwork and was working on the processes surrounding that. That you can actually find a lot of fulfillment and joy in that. And so was one of the seeds. The other seed was, we took the industry magazines, we took the, the ones, the FDMC and the woodworking or what Wood shop news. And so you would read articles, you would see things like in there. And then probably the biggest thing was going to IWF. I remember, I think it was 2008, we were sitting in a class on CNC technology. I actually just wrote a little blog post about this on our website, CNC automation and the path to that for small shops. But the speaker there, he's you're not really a real, a serious cabinet shop unless you have a CNC. And at the time I was like, oh, man, that kind of hurts a little. Those were the kind of things that we were exposed to. We seen it, and I, now understand what he means. I don't know that's a definitive statement. But it is, it just transformed our business. It opened up new opportunities. so those probably three things. My own love of learning. I just love to read different things. The wood the woodworking magazines, and then just the woodworking trade shows is what propelled that.

Jacob Edmond 8:29

Yeah. I mean I think, definitely early on at those stages, probably 2008, I imagine you probably also heard a lot of, there's a lot of dialogue in the woodworking community about craftsmanship versus, automation and modernization using technology. And so I think it's one thing I imagine for you to come in and, being, partnering with your dad and having him being open to change, but I imagine you have other craftsmen in your business. That you also had to get them on board with these change, I imagine, right? Was there any friction there or was there any struggle or how did you approach that? Or was everybody on board from day one with the changes and, Hey, we're gonna adopt new technology and automation, we're gonna improve processes because I, in any woodworking business, if you've been doing things for, at that point, 20 some years,

Weston Peters 9:13

Yeah.

Jacob Edmond 9:13

Change is hard for everybody, right?

Weston Peters 9:15

Yeah, no, that's true. and I've heard it from other shops in our area too. We have good relationships with lots of shops, and just even a sense of pride we do everything the old way. And that's certainly a choice. it is a choice. I guess I'll leave it at that. But the way, the we viewed it, and it helped that we had a very small team and so there wasn't a lot of people we had to convince, but. I view the technology and the automation as or I say automation. I'm really talking about CNC, and now it's robotics and other things coming, but as taking care of the repetitive task Whereas, the craftsmen, the tradesmen. There's always a place for him, whether it's building that custom hood or really just the judgment call and being responsible for the fit and finish.

Jacob Edmond 9:55

Yep.

Weston Peters 9:55

the men that worked on, the gamble and the blacker house and, the green and green stuff way back in the day, if they had this technology available to'em they would probably use it. They still would

Jacob Edmond 10:04

Yep.

Weston Peters 10:05

and do all that, but use it for the things that, cutting out boxes in. Doing arches and that kind of thing. And then the craftsmen can really, focus on our team can focus on kind of the more fun stuff really. The, I mentioned the curved hood or other millwork projects we've done and leverage the CNC and that type of thing. So I think they work really well together. We have a display in our shop old planes up on the wall, and it's sitting right beneath a brand new table saw. And I think that juxtaposition the old and the new actually can work well together. So I don't know if that makes sense, but that, that it really wasn't a hard sell.

Jacob Edmond 10:37

Yeah no, absolutely. And I think that's a good point is, and this is, it's a whole discussion on its own, but is how much of craftsmanship is. Intellectual versus physical. I think it's the marriage of the two, right? You have to be able to execute based on your knowledge and experience and stuff. It's, you're adding new tools to, to the toolbox, right?

Weston Peters 10:57

Yeah.

Jacob Edmond 10:57

And so with that was, and I think you've expressed this very well, which is, a respect for what was already built and established in the ways. That your father and the team, built the business, that was what you came into while also not resting on your laurels. And like, how do we continue to push the company forward? How do we continue to push to be growing and learning and improving and taking advantage of what we can to push forward? And obviously over the years since you came into the business and you mentioned it's, I think 18 years now, what are some of the meaningful changes you've made since joining or any decisions that you've made that maybe felt risky or uncomfortable I imagine there's other key decisions or inflection points along the way.

Weston Peters 11:38

Yeah. No that's. Yeah, that's a good question.'cause every company has those points that they come to and then you can look back to and be like, oh wow, so we chose this path and this is the result. This was good. Sometimes it's not always good, and you back up and learn and that's part of business. But to answer your question, I would say probably six or eight can think of just here, as I think back over the last 10 years, I'll try to, I guess be, give'em a overview. The one was, it's very simple. This is nothing that that groundbreaking or whatever, but just like knowing who you are and where you want to go as a company, I think being comfortable with that. We have intentionally chosen to keep a small business where, we have, there's 10 of us here, and it's a lifestyle choice and we're comfortable with that. And, not, intimidated or spend too much time thinking we need to be adding more employees or we gotta get, more floor space or this or that. That will probably be some in the future, but just establishing that and vision, mission, values, those things, I think that's where they can be a real benefit. It's kinda like a guide to you. And so when we settled on that, it's this is who we want to be. This is where we want to go. We want to have a place where we can. Grow our team, that we can really refine processes and frankly just having a good time together provide a good product for people almost free freed us up to just enjoy the journey. The other one was, just learning to love learning. we can learn so much from people and whether it's the restaurant or just the gas station attendant or other shops. think that can bring a lot of clarity and help a business. to be able to grow and expand a little bit your processes without your floor space and your people and all. And that's maybe a personal one for me. I just really enjoy to read and to learn from other people. so embracing that even from our team, I tell the guys it's I want a little pushback here. We have the kind of relationship there that let's get all the ideas on the table. Embracing the technology. Looking back and got a CNC, we really didn't, we literally didn't have the space. We were like 3000 square feet. so soon after I came on, we we built a shop and now we're about at 15,000 square feet I think it is. So we had a space constraint, but that really opened it up. We actually paid for that machine and, I think it was two years. Just almost just by cutting for other shops. And so that was an opportunity. And then there was some commercial millwork. We did a job down for the Atlanta Hawks locker room, that it was specialty stuff that we wouldn't have been able to do, if we wouldn't have had A CNC sitting in our shop. So we worked with another shop to do that. But anyhow, embracing the technology. Now we have, and this is changing by the day. there's some real, we just had our second quarter meeting with our whole team and I wanted to go over some safety things and, here's just an example of how this can help a business. But have these examples. I think in 10 minutes I had a like a half, like a nice slideshow on safety for joiners feeders, wide belt sanders and maybe thickness earth planers. And before it had taken me hours to put together that had videos in there. So you can leverage that. That's another thing. And just embracing the technology. Another inflection point was just to embrace outsourcing. This has been a really big one for us, that you can punch above your weight as it were, by, leveraging other shops. And one thing I hear about that a little bit, I hear shops say we do everything in house, and that's okay. That's a choice. But for us, we felt like we could serve more people and actually have better products frankly, by outsourcing like drawers and our doors. We outsource our drawings. Some for complex projects, things like bookkeeping even. But being able to do that allows you to scale without changing your floor space a lot. You can have a lot more throughput of course. And probably the biggest choice we made recently was to go ahead and outsource our installs. We do a lot of high-end residential work and that was risky. We've spent a lot of time thinking about that, but it came down to we had a good opportunity with a couple good installers that we trusted, and we also just looked at the math that, I would walk out in the shop when the team was out on installs and everything would be quiet. was like, you have all this overhead sitting here and I'm really only gonna get paid for our labor, maybe 6 to 8 thousand dollars I'm just throwing out number, but for like three days, my team out there, that's what you're gonna get paid to do a cabinet install about we can produce a lot more revenue in our shop, and there's in that amount of time and absorb that revenue better and that overhead better. We decided to do it carefully. There's still some installs that we take care of ourself, but that has opened up we haven't slowed down a bit. We've, we were able to just bring the, so now we could hire an install team to do it. But I would rather hire those people to build cabinets and still do the model we're doing. So that's an example of a couple things. Systems and SOPs, team's have been good at this. We went to paperless shop last year. All everything's on now tablets and up, so everything can be kept up to date. Helped us a lot to be more accurate and we can bring on a new employee he can be up to speed on, how to put in a custom lazy Susan, because we have an SOP for that. And so even our machine startups, we have little SOPs for that and something we're still growing in Jacob. But that's been another one of those inflection points is just to be intentional about that. One thing I hear is we're acus, everything's custom. How can you have an SOP? Think about it, everything can be broken down to a process, I think. And that's just what we try to do. We're still a custom shop, but there's still a lot of processes that go into that. And I've been influenced by others in the industry. I know Jeff Finney, we've talked some and he has good resources over there, alt cabinet on this. And I, we use some of that stuff. And probably the last one I was just thinking about was just being willing to let go and empower your people. I had a good example of this with my dad even, he's just been. Not been the type to just hang on to stuff. And so I think one thing we need to do better, all probably in shops, or at least as I look back, one thing I want to continue to grow in is to give old responsibility to people before you feel like you're ready to. Because I just have seen the fruit of that and it's really, for me, really rewarding and fun just to see. A young person come into our environment and be given responsibility before he even thinks he's ready for it, really grow into that and just grow as a man and as a person and as a team builder. for the owner, or the steward or whatever, the person responsible, it can feel like they might not do it right and it's probably right, they're gonna mess up and things. But if you grow through that. You can actually free up time to do other more, as it were, high leverage work or things that you can grow on and have freedom, like I, I planned that we have planned a family vacation here. We're gonna leave tomorrow, be gone for a week and I'm gonna try to unplug, but I have confidence that the estimates are gonna happen. CNC is gonna run, the cabinets are gonna get delivered. So there'll be things to deal with when I come back, but it's not all dependent on me. And so that to me is rewarding to be a part of something that is, bigger than just myself or whatever. So I don't know if that makes sense. And then probably the last thing is I think back, a little risk or inflection points that I had as I thought about this is be innovative and in your industry, wherever you're at be willing to look at or be aware for opportunities to connect other people together. we've had some really good opportunities to be an outsource partner for another larger shop. They'll come to us for this or that and we, with our relationships can maybe provide that as a third party. And so don't just have your head down doing the work all the time, be looking for opportunities, few years ago. So we're a dealer for some box cabinets, and like our entry level, cabinets. And when COVID hit, they just went way up in quality and the brands we were with and and, or I'm sorry, they went way up in price and down in quality. And just'cause it affected us all in different ways. I know. And those large companies were affected that way. And so we had that. We didn't have a good solution for our, in more, I'll say like entry level customers. were already doing our high end work, which we call our custom premier. so we started thinking it's like, what if we would do like a paired down custom cabinet line. I know some other shops have done this. This isn't. for us, like I didn't realize at the time we were doing it for a price point,'cause we felt like that we could actually almost replace our box cabinet offering with a paired I'll call a paired down or a we call it custom select. So it's just select options, door styles, finishes, colors. And we were able to do that because the companies we were outsourcing with would sell them to us at a cheaper price.'cause they were more simple for them to make. But I guess I'm telling the story because what I didn't realize was, when we rolled that out and we shared it with our contractors, that really fit well here in the Midwest, because I don't know how it is in other, probably people everywhere this way. They like to find that good sweet spot between price and value. And so by offering a certain percentage of our customers this, it took away the argument that we can't afford custom cabinets.'cause here we can get a custom cabinet at. Fair, affordable price. There's some limitations. Yes. And we can add some things in a la carte, but by making that little tweak, is in our, our marketing really along with our offering. It really opened up we worked with builders now that we wouldn't have done before with new homes because they can send their customers into over to us. Get a custom cabinet. And they are, they're getting a good price and it feels good to them'cause they're buying middle of the road, so don't know that was a way that we innovated and way we messaged our, our offering. And it's been a good move. So there's a few things. I talked a lot there. I don't know if any of that made sense or if you have any questions on that, but there, there's a few inflection points.

Jacob Edmond 21:12

No, that was great and I think you shared a lot of really great nuggets there. I think if I were to summarize, in this I've interviewed quite a few second generation, woodworkers and. You know what I've found is a lot of founders, first generation are craftsmen first, and they the, they're craftsmen who then fall into building a business around what they do. And I find second generation are more systems thinkers. Coming in and not necessarily, it's not that you're not a craftsman, but you're not craftsman first. You're thinking about we've already established the craftsmanship, but you're thinking about, Hey, how can we take this to the next level? And that's done by outgrowing what you know, a single person can do by themselves. And there's still so many businesses that never get past that point of. The business falls apart if I don't exist or if I take a week off.

Weston Peters 22:03

Yeah.

Jacob Edmond 22:04

that's a very fragile place to be in long term. And so you've already expressed like you're about to go on vacation and how empowering it is. I think we operate out of fear as leaders or as managers too often and I think this goes into your point about outsourcing as well.'cause all of those decisions in my experience, come down to. How hard it is to control what we can control. And people hold onto install because it's I want to control the results, but they're limiting their capacity. They're limiting what they can do as a result of I want to control everything. And similarly, as an owner, founder, if you don't implement systems and delegate responsibility and give your team a chance to make a mistake, like that's how every one of us learned was somebody at some point gave us that chance. And we made mistakes and we grow from it and we respond to it. And even us, we still make mistakes, but we feel like I'm the one who has to fix it so I can make the mistake. But when you get past that and you say, Hey, look, I know I want to delegate this one. It frees you up to be where it feels like you are now as a leader of your business, as that visionary role of okay, I can think strategically. And instead of constantly being in the weeds blocking and tackling, I can look at this and say, oh, we need a system here, or we need a process here, or we need a tool here and that's now possible. We can try this new custom select thing. And maybe it doesn't work out, but I have some signs that I think it will. And now that we get some data from that, Hey, this is actually a great decision, let's roll with it. You can't be in a position to, to take a risk or make a decision like that if you're in the weeds. Doing everything yourself. Much less taking time off with your family, which, eventually you'll burn out and you'll feel like, Hey, what am I doing with my life? And so I think you've, a lot of those points you just shared, I think very well encapsulate that that comes with getting to that next level of business development, of systems thinking as opposed to, just constantly being the operator yourself. you shared with me ahead of this a presentation you put together for a school presentation you did. And in it you described, and I love the way that you explained the difference between cabinetry versus millwork. And I think this is something all of us would work or struggle with the people in our lives that we try to explain what is it that we do? And if you're not in this business, those terms can feel. Both interchangeable or just confusing. Can you talk a little bit about how you framed that and how you explained the difference between those two?

Weston Peters 24:32

Yeah. It is so true. It is like we hear casework, we hear case goods, we hear millwork, we hear cabinetry. I'll even hear cupboards, which I still trade. I from the older generation, I was like, oh no, that's not what we call'em anymore. But anyhow it is a lot of terminology, so there's a lot of overlap. And so yeah, we had a school reach out to us and wanted to come in and learn a little bit about the trade and I also put it together for our own team too. But the way I look at it, and there's again, maybe some different definitions people would have, but the cabinets are what, more box based in a sense. And so in the residential world or even the commercial world those are the things that are built around a box and they help organize your space. They help organize the kitchen. And the millwork is basically everything else is how I, is, how I defined it. It's things like the interior doors and the trim. It's also in, our industry. I would think of millwork as we recently did as part of a project. We did a really nice custom bar. That would be cabinetry off to the other side. There's an entire wall that is slats. It's all slats and built into that is two secret doors, that's not really cabinetry, I would call that. That's millwork, that's

Jacob Edmond 25:39

Yep.

Weston Peters 25:40

that kind of define the space. So that's how I separate it, box based, organize the space, everything else help define the space.

Jacob Edmond 25:49

I think that's how you put it that I thought was so well put was, casework and cabinetry helps you organize the space and millwork defines the space. And I really love that differentiation the way you phrased that. And so obviously, even in, residential, it just seems is a lot of your focus. You have both. And a lot of times they may interact with each other, overlap but you talked early on about deciding who you wanted to be as a company, and with that comes so much freedom. And for you guys it was to stay small and really focus on the type of work that you do. And even within that, you've mentioned examples of where you've been able to differentiate and introduce custom select. Can you talk about I think there seems like you've expressed there's a sense of kind of freedom with. Being comfortable with knowing who we want to be, as opposed to just keeping up with the Joneses or feeling Hey, we gotta be growing to grow, or we gotta compete with the shop down the street. But if you know what your goal is it's a lot easier. It seems like, gives you freedom of, Hey, we know who we're trying to be, we're not influenced by outside forces,

Weston Peters 26:49

Yeah.

Jacob Edmond 26:50

and that makes it very clear what our path is.

Weston Peters 26:52

Yeah. Again, it's if we have our heads down doing the work all the time, we're not able to like work on the business as it were. Or to think about, like you said, the things that earlier about if we're all in the weeds, blocking and tackling it's, it's hard to think about these things. That doesn't happen overnight, I think, and it's still, it can still change. I think that it's good to set goals and where you want to go, and yet also recognize that, those, that's what they are. It's a general direction, and we need to be able to pivot go another direction if we need to. One thing that's helped me with this a little bit was, is to just spend a little time every year and, at end of the year make some goals for the year for our company. And personally I like to do this too. I've grown into this a little better that I find that You can go back and reference that. Like I just, mentioned earlier our second quarter meeting, we just had all the goals up on the screen. We could have little check marks and measure your progress. so I think that can help us stay on, on course One of the guys that work here, Reed he likes to say, we need to grow with no. But what he's saying is there is, there's certain things that just don't fit us. That who we are not. And if we say yes to those may, maybe it's a dollar amount, like we're not a good fit for if it's under a certain or maybe it's the type of work, whatever we're saying no to something else if we say yes to that. And so having some clarity around that, really opens you up to just lean into it be more effective with where you at. I do think we want to stay small and it's true, but that doesn't mean you don't stop growing. Growth isn't always in estate and people there's, we have a lot. We, I still feel like we have a lot of room to grow here and processes and other things that we can talk about, but, I wanna be clear about that, that need to have goals and I think it's healthy to always be pushing us or like growing.

Jacob Edmond 28:34

And so on that note, you have in your time with the business expanded facilities and your capabilities expanded your shop space, invested equipment, and that is, I imagine, has empowered you to take on different types of work, or at least to be able to redefine some of these things, and can you talk a little bit about how you approach those decisions? You obviously, you mentioned on an annual basis setting some goals, and I imagine at some 0.1 of those goals was, Hey, like we need to build an addition, or we need some space to put this CNC that we bought, right? But are there other, are there. Any advice you would share or ways you've gone about making those decisions while staying true to, like you said, hey, we know who we want to be, we know where we want to go, and here's a junction point where we need to make some physical investments.

Weston Peters 29:20

Yeah, it hasn't always been calculated and planned out ahead of time. Sometimes you're just like, oh, here we go. But I think, You need to know where you're gonna go and how you wanna get there, but be willing to take some risk For us as far as the, we were just, we had to have more floor space if we were gonna grow at all. And so I like to think of it as an opportunity to work for more people, serve more people, we need to, make growth decisions that are not gonna be negative cash problems or negative bad business decisions, We need to be deliberate and give some thought to it. I trust my gut a lot more than I should maybe, but when you have your goals and you know where you, that's kinda like the umbrella over top. And then it's just like, all right, this is what we need to do. We're thinking about right now, a couple things. One of'em would be upgrading our CNC router. And I lean on the team too. I was like, Hey what do you guys think? How is this gonna make us more money if we do this? Is this really what we need to do should we wait? So I don't know if I really shared, but a combination maybe of leaning on our team, being willing to take a risk and go from there,

Jacob Edmond 30:22

awesome. Looking ahead just if you project out in the future for Peter's cabinetry. What do you see that you're excited about or maybe concerned about in the next five to 10 years?

Weston Peters 30:33

Something I've been thinking about really, and I don't have a desire really to, grow to, let's just say 30 employees or that type of thing. I just can't get passionate about it. For some reason, I've really enjoyed the last 10 years, and so maybe I would enjoy the next, if I would go that way, but I'm not there yet. And so one thing we're looking at right now is upgrading our finishing process. That's an area where, it will probably require a little more floor space. We might need to add an addition, but looking at automating our finishing, like with at least part of it being a flat line. And so that's the one area we're leaning in to improve our finishes. Along with, I feel we're in the Midwest and so we're not getting a lot of. The pressure, maybe the CoStar with the type of finish versus like water based lacquer based. We're all lacquer based. I feel like that the industry's gonna go to water base, and I'm interested in being an early adopter of that here, even in the Midwest. So that's one of our projects we have is to do some trial and error. I haven't found something I'm happy with yet, but we are trying things and we're working on that. Probably the thing that I'm the most, as I think about our company is like I've really, like I mentioned before, I've enjoyed the last 10 years we've made some mistakes. We've done some things that looking back, have been good decisions and I really enjoy, or I could get excited about, being a cheerleader come alongside other companies that might be in the range and hey, Let's work together in some way to scale this up to 3 million plus or something like that. I, if there's a way that, our team or our shop could be involved in that's maybe a little innovative thinking. But I would be excited about that. Very excited. I've enjoyed the young people coming in, from the schools and giving some tours and things. That's been a lot of fun and so I can see some kinda leaning into more of those type of things if it works out.

Jacob Edmond 32:21

So getting to a stage of giving back and mentoring and sharing some of your learnings with others that could benefit from it.

Weston Peters 32:28

In, when you do that, you learn a lot yourself too. And so that's fun to do. We recently had a situ, you talk about like the trades a little bit, we had our last person we hired, he reached out we had an add out, and not the most qualified at all and as far as experience, he was working at a gas station as an attendant. Nothing wrong with that type of job. That's just not where you'd normally think to find a cabinet craftsman putting in a few hours a week, but. he had good referral and so went ahead and hired him. I was like, I don't know how this is gonna go. We're gonna start out just maybe part-time. And, within three days he just came in and just blossomed in our environment. And so that brings a lot of, enjoyment. It's a way to bless others. And also it gives our team here. I would say it stretches them, is good for us all a little bit. And so that type of thing, I would like to be involved in somehow if possible, to help other shops so that maybe create systems where you can hire somebody like that. And now I know it don't always work out, but in this particular case, we took a risk and the young man is just doing great. And so that's fine to me. When you see that happen.

Jacob Edmond 33:33

Awesome. Weston, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story with us and sharing your wisdom and the story of Peter's cabinetry. And if there's anybody out there that is just interested in connecting or finding out more from you, from Peter's cabinetry, what's the best way for them to do that?

Weston Peters 33:49

Yeah you can jump on our website peters cabinetry.com. Contact information there. I'm on LinkedIn. And on social media, we have a social media account. Peter's cabinetry does just at Peter's cabinetry. We're not super active on there. But yeah those places are they can reach out. I'm excited about the millwork and cabinetry industry. I think there's a lot of. Opportunity as the older, generation ages out. I think, the shops that are able to use technology and then train the new ones coming in are gonna be around a while. I think that's the key.'cause there's a lot of opportunity for youth or for young people in a career. So yeah, be happy to talk to anybody if we can help and, we'll learn from anyone we can.

Jacob Edmond 34:26

Awesome. Thank you so much Weston and look forward to continue to see what you're doing in the industry.

Weston Peters 34:32

Sounds good. Thanks Jacob. Appreciate