#15 Lyric Woodwork + Snake Road Sawmill - Joshua Bowles

Joshua Bowles grew up the son of a luthier and the grandson of a carpenter, so woodworking didn't really pick him a career — it picked him. After cutting his teeth on high-end design-build projects in Austin (think Italian travertine and Wenge floors for Texas oil money), he traded the stress and the landfill roll-offs for a pair of businesses on Oʻahu's North Shore: Lyric Woodwork, his custom furniture studio, and Snake Road Sawmill, the lumber side that keeps it fed.In this conversation, Joshua walks us through how locally-fallen trees — hauled in from arborists just miles away — get milled into slabs, dried for a year, and turned into heirloom furniture with almost zero waste. Offcuts go to raku potters, sawdust goes to mushroom and chicken farmers, and the rest becomes dining tables, headboards, and credenzas headed for homes across the islands and the mainland.Jordan and Joshua dig into the unglamorous reality of building a craft business from scratch: $40K in startup costs, demoralizing farmers market mornings, the first $12K commission that made him think "this is going to work," and the embossed business cards and pretentious magazine ads that taught him what not to do. He shares why social media (handled by Sam at Field Social) took him from 500 to 16,000 followers in 18 months, why most of his clients are women, and how shipping a 20-ft container to a Kailua-Kona project opened his eyes to the off-island opportunity.Looking ahead, Joshua talks about building a tight furniture collection — dining table, chairs, mirror, lighting — incorporating Hawaiʻi materials like Big Island abalone inlay and locally-caught fish leather from Open Seas.What you'll hear:Why woodworking on the North Shore is one of the most genuinely sustainable businesses you can runThe Austin penthouse project that pushed him out of high-end remodelsHard-won marketing lessons: keep it low-tech, knock on contractor doors, skip the fancy catalogHow to attract great employees when you can't pay top hourly ratesWhy "bigger isn't better," and the case for capping your team around five peopleListening to customers vs. building castles in the skyWhether you're a maker, a designer, or just someone thinking about starting something on the North Shore, Joshua's story is full of practical wisdom about staying small, staying honest, and letting the work speak.🎧 Find Lyric Woodwork and Snake Road Sawmill at the top of the hill on the way down to Wailua — look for the open flag.The North Shore Entrepreneurs Podcast, hosted by Jordan Russum, profiles the founders and small-business owners shaping life on the North Shore of Oʻahu — and shares the lessons every aspiring entrepreneur can use.