From Beginner to Business Owner: A Conversation with Oak Hill Millworks Founder Christy Miller
Steve Stack:
Brought to you direct from Studio 3B at Baird Brothers Fine Hardwoods, American Hardwood Advisor is your source for trends, tips, and insights into how the building industry has evolved.
Join me, Steve Stack, along with guest builders and industry leaders, as we talk shop and go in-depth on what it takes to be the best of the best.
Dive into topics like architecture, industry trends, project plans, historical tools, tricks of the trade, and life lessons from more than six decades of experience in the hardwood lumber business.
Founding Oak Hill Millworks
Steve Stack:
Welcome back, everyone. We’re once again coming to you from Studio 3B at Baird Brothers Fine Hardwoods. Today, we have a very special guest with us. I want to introduce Christy from Oak Hill Millworks. Christy, thanks so much for joining us today.
Steve Stack:
Hey, Steve. Thanks for having me.
Steve Stack:
Very good. Hey, we’re a little bit familiar with you now here at Baird Brothers Fine Hardwoods. Tell us a little bit about Oak Hill Millworks, your company.
Christy Miller:
Okay. Oak Hill Millworks is my company that I started back in 2019. It has been a ride ever since then. I started out with the purchasing of a laser, which most people think, “What? You can buy a laser?” Yeah, and ever since then, I’ve just been creating things to sell on the website, and well, we’ve taken a couple turns along the way.
Steve Stack:
Well, you say “with a laser,” but you’ve taken a step or two further.
Christy Miller:
Yeah.
Steve Stack:
I know you’ve shared with me that you have a little bit of woodworking experience, also.
Christy Miller:
I do, I do.
Steve Stack:
Where’d that come from?
Christy Miller:
Well, truthfully, I think probably some of it is genetic. My dad was a carpenter for a long time in his working days and so I pretty much grew up watching him remodel and add on to our entire house. In fact, it’s actually chock-full of Baird Brothers products, so I grew up seeing my dad do chair rail, and mouldings, and build custom fireplace mantles in our home, bookcases. So my dad is actually a big inspiration, probably, for where I picked up the interest, at least. Then when I got into high school a little bit later in life, I was on stage crew for musicals. I didn’t want to be in the show, so I learned how to build things for sets there.
Steve Stack:
Sure, sure.
Christy Miller:
That kind of wet the appetite even more. It really, though, took shape in 2018 out of necessity. A lot of people get their start in woodworking out of necessity, you need something for your house. We needed a new TV stand. It was my first time designing, making a cut list and just doing it, even though I didn’t actually know what I was doing, but that’s what spurred me on.
Steve Stack:
In the transition and learning, you have a couple well-established social platforms. So did the content lead to the woodworking or the woodworking led to the content?
Christy Miller:
That’s a great question because when I started the business, I never anticipated this whole content creation thing, doing podcasts, but I found that I didn’t like just sharing the end picture of what I was working on. I liked taking people along with me for the journey, and then just organically through that, I began sharing how I did things. So the content creation came secondary because I wanted to help other people on their journeys.
Steve Stack:
Okay, so in the laser technology and manufacturing and your woodworking background, what kind of products do you offer through Oak Hill Millwork?
Christy Miller:
Quite a variety. A lot. We’re in our third year of business now and most of what we have done has been custom stuff, but the range of the laser is pretty great. We’ve done wood-based projects, like just home decor-type of signs, or family name signs, but we’ve also done promotional-type goods like stainless steel coffee tumblers. People can send their logo to me and I’ll engrave it on the cup, and if it’s a realtor that wants an order of 60 or 100 of them, we can pump those out, and then they have their promotional goods. So, it’s quite a range. We’ve worked with leather, acrylic, and plastics. The laser’s pretty neat.
Steve Stack:
So, a little bit of everything. A little bit of everything.
Christy Miller:
Yeah.
Steve Stack:
While speaking of equipment, and I know you’re super excited about a new piece of equipment that you’re just installing in your shop, tell us a little bit about the CNC that you’ve come across.
Christy Miller:
Okay, so when you become a content creator, sometimes companies want to work hand-in-hand with you to collaborate. I recently had the opportunity to work with a company called Onefinity CNC. They offered to send me a router. The cutting area is about 32 inches by 32 inches. For those of you at home that don’t know what a CNC router is, it’s basically a handheld router that moves on a conveyor belt, essentially, and you control it with your computer. I just got it set up. It’s a lot to learn, but you can use your computer to design files and carve signs, and it’s going to become a great addition to the Oak Hill Millworks family.
Steve Stack:
It’s really going to expand your manufacturing capabilities, right?
Christy Miller:
Yeah, for sure.
Steve Stack:
I mean, your laser’s fantastic, but it sometimes will have limitations as far as thickness of stock you can work with and things along those lines, right?
Christy Miller:
Exactly, yeah.
Steve Stack:
It might open up a whole new window of products that you’ll be able to manufacture in-house now.
Christy Miller:
Yeah, I’m really excited about it.
A Content Creating Craftsman
Steve Stack:
As a content creator, does the content influence your choice of projects, or do you come up with a project, and then work back to the content?
Christy Miller:
I would say right now, as I’m still learning as I go and I’m a one-woman shop, it’s a little bit of both, to be honest. Sometimes I will be working on something and the idea will just hit me, like, “Oh, this would be a really educational piece,” or sometimes it’s just an entertaining piece of content for people to view. Other times, when I do have the good fortune to work with companies, I’m working on their schedule, so if they need me to do some content for a certain month or a certain quarter in the year, I’ll work around that because I absolutely want to establish good working relationships.
Steve Stack:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. We’ll share with the people, I don’t want to jump ahead of myself, but how long ago? I remember it was a Saturday morning and I received an email from you that you were passing through and wanted to stop by. Tell folks how we came about meeting and starting to establish a little bit of a real nice business relationship, and it’s grown into some fun projects, but how did it start?
Christy Miller:
Okay, so it really started, it was July of 2020. We were still kind of in the middle of a pandemic here, but luckily, I was still able to come out and visit. I wanted to visit because, like I said, my dad had always, always had a Baird T-shirt on or a Baird hat, even a Baird mousepad around our home growing up, and he just raved about this place. Now that I was beginning to love woodworking myself, I just wanted to see what it was all about. So I came by, let you know I was coming by.
You were so gracious to offer my family and I a tour of the facility and I just saw everything that my dad had seen in it all these years. You and I, we just got to talking. I told you that I was beginning to work with companies to help do marketing for them. I told you what one of my main goals was, which was that I really want to empower people to feel like they’re capable of doing these really great woodworking projects and not shy from coming to a grand place like Baird Brothers. That they’re able to do it.
Steve Stack:
I think, and I was going to ask you, what was the goal of Oak Hill Millwork, in your mind? You kind of answered it in the sense of your first visit here. I’ll reference it as “a journey.” It was part of a journey and an experience. Was that part of the goal? I love the fact that you want to share that with people, your experiences. Fortunately, we’ve been able to do that together, and we have more cool stuff coming up…
Christy Miller:
Yeah, for sure.
Steve Stack:
… that we’ll share with the folks in time. You’re a juggler. Couple little kiddos, a husband, and a multifaceted business.
Christy Miller:
Yeah.
Steve Stack:
How do you manage it?
Christy Miller:
Grace of God, for one. No, I think there were just so many years in my life, especially when you’re raising a family, you forget what your own personal goals were. One of the initial goals for the business was just for more self-discovery for myself. Then as I began to share online, I discovered a whole community of people that had also gotten stuck in this, in their maybe 30s and 40s, realizing that they weren’t quite happy, and so my goals, I’ve just allowed them to shift as I go. I thought, “It would be great if I can run a great business, have a great family. That’ll help me, but I want to have a greater impact,” and so I’ve found ways to educate others and empower them so that they can do the same. Partnering with you guys was a goal of mine because I knew that the Baird Brothers platform is even greater, so you guys empower me to help empower others, so it’s just a great domino effect.
Steve Stack:
Your neighborhood of makers on your platform, what I have seen and you have shared with us here at Baird, you’ve got quite the cast of characters. You don’t have to name them, or if you want to, you can, but you have everything from the maker just getting into it to some very established woodworkers.
Christy Miller:
Yeah, I think the community online (largely on Instagram) that I’m a part of does range from moms and dads who are at home with kids just trying to do something creative during nap time, all the way up to contractors and television hosts that help with woodworking specials on television. So it’s a range of expertise and it’s a very unique community because it seems like everyone just wants to help everyone. One of my best buddies that I’ve made on there, his name’s Nick. He’s hosting a maker meetup in a couple weeks at his house down in North Carolina. A couple of us with quite a range of skills are meeting up to do a couple charity builds for some families who lost their homes to fires, so it’s just this community that just seeks to give back. I know Baird Brothers is just like that in your community here in Canfield, and I love working with you for that reason.
Steve Stack:
I’ve had the opportunity over the past few years to travel a woodworking show circuit. The thing that amazes me, and your followers reflect it, somebody approaches us at our display at these woodworking shows and you don’t know whether you’re talking to a mother, you don’t know whether you’re talking to a doctor, or whether you’re talking to a hardcore woodworker. That community that you refer to, I can’t help but say, they’re all down-to-earth people. People that enjoy working with their hands, working with a great natural resource that we’re afforded. And it’s easy to have a conversation with them. Do you find that with your followers?
Christy Miller:
There’s something about it. I don’t know if it’s the creative-brain people or what, but there’s just something about people who are okay with… I mean, woodworking is a lot of troubleshooting.
Steve Stack:
I’ve never thought of it like that, but yes, and we’ve shared projects. We hit some stumbling blocks and we didn’t stop. We readjusted.
Christy Miller:
Yeah.
Steve Stack:
That’s the beauty of woodworking, I think. But you’re right, you do have to have that sense of creativity, and a little bit of a vision, maybe a little bit of an artistic side.
Christy Miller:
Yeah.
Making Home Improvement a DIY Project
Steve Stack:
I know through some of your projects that you have shared with me and some of the products that you manufacture, it’s obvious you have that. But what else would you like to share with us today?
Christy Miller:
Whew. I just want to say how fortunate I am to be given this opportunity to speak with you today. I know that I’m not a self-proclaimed expert, by any means, in the field of woodworking, but I think that’s what’s so great about it. Anyone from any background can come and just give it a go and create something better than what they started with.
For instance, just thinking about a couple memorable projects I’ve done recently, I had the opportunity to make a sign for someone local to me who wanted it to say “It Is Well With My Soul.” So I cut these letters out of some eighth-inch stock on the laser, made the frame and the sign backer myself, and just glued it up. It’s really pretty and it’s a testament to one of my favorite hymns, “It Is Well With My Soul”, which is just a nice reminder, especially when a project is going south, you got to be like, “Everything’s going to be fine. We’re going to pull through and this is going to be a great little project.” But that was a memorable one I’ve done recently.
I guess I would encourage anyone listening, if you have any interest in woodworking, to just start. That’s the hardest part. It was hard for me. But once I realized that I had all these goals written down on paper and nothing was ever happening, that was enough for me to feel like, “You know what? Not starting is actually more failure than starting and screwing something up.”
Steve Stack:
Very true, very true. We want folks to know that you don’t have to have the most elaborate, equipment-filled shop to accomplish projects. You start out with some simple hand tools and as you get better at it and you’re drawn to it more, then you start to pick up some of that equipment. You and I both know, in fact, we’re in the process of it right now, acquiring some new tools and toys to do some upcoming projects.
Christy Miller:
Yep.
Steve Stack:
Folks, I want you to keep paying attention and follow us because we’ve completed a couple projects and we have more downstream that we’re going to be sharing with you. We’re going to have fun.
Christy Miller:
It’s going to be a good time.
Steve Stack:
We’re going to have fun. Christy, I want to say thank you. Thank you for coming over and joining us this morning. Folks, find out more about Christy at oakhillmillworks.com. By all means, keep a sight of bairdbrothers.com. There’s going to be some exciting information forthcoming. For now, everybody, have a great day.
For all you folks listening, thanks for talking shop with Baird Brothers Fine Hardwoods. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and wanted to stay up-to-date with the American Hardwood Advisor series, give us a like and subscribe. For more tips, projects, and inspiration, check us out on Facebook, Instagram, or bairdbrothers.com. Until next time.
