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PODCAST

The Woodpreneur Podcast

Acres of Timber

We cover the business and marketing side of the woodworking, sawmill, tree service, furniture making, Urban Wood, and woodworking industry. If you"re a woodworker, sawmill owner, or any other entrepreneur and/or business owner in the wood industry, you need to check out this podcast. Each week, we interview business owners, large-scale companies, entrepreneurs, makers, and designers while also offering marketing and business advice that will help you grow your business and increase your profits

business careers

All Episodes

24:23

Nick Mooers, Maverick Sawmill

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/10/08

Our most listened episode on Spotify in 2025 is back. Nick Mooers rode the pandemic boom in home renovation into real growth at Maverick Sawmill, built a reputation on oversized walnut, and split the business evenly between raw and finished products.In this throwback episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, hosts Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger sit down with Nick Mooers of Maverick Sawmill, a sawmill that specializes in oversized walnut pieces. Nick walks through how demand surged as homeowners

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37:02

Steven Crowningshield, California Redwood Company

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/10/01

One figured redwood log, six feet across and solid to the core, could pay for an entire sawmill. That math is why Steven Crowningshield bought a band mill that cuts six foot eight wide, after years of slabbing with a chainsaw mill that turned half an inch of every cut into sawdust.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Steven Crowningshield of California Redwood Company, who has spent more than 30 years milling almost nothing but salvaged redwood on the

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33:59

Jason Evans, Rafter E Dirtwork and Land Clearing

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/09/24

Most land clearing jobs end with a burn pile. Jason Evans gets paid to clear the ground, mills the good timber he pulls off it, and makes money on both ends.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with her younger brother, Jason Evans, owner of Rafter E Dirtwork and Land Clearing in northeast Oklahoma. They grew up in a forestry family, running chainsaws and heavy equipment around the family sawmill long before they could drive. Jason went on to work nearly every

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34:00

Pablo Escutia, KKC Development

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/09/23

Pablo Escutia wanted to be a psychologist. He ended up running KKC Development, a design build firm in the South Bay of Los Angeles that draws houses and then builds them, and arguing that the split between those two jobs was never real to begin with. A line from one of his professors stuck with him: everything works on paper. Finding out what happens when the paper meets the site is what moved him from architecture into custom home building, and it is the case he spends the rest of the

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35:37

Robert Cannon, Trestlewood

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/09/17

The sawmills did not want it. Thirty million board feet out of a railroad trestle, loaded with salt, grit and hidden metal, and nobody in the region was set up to cut reclaimed wood in that condition. So the family sitting on the pile bought a mill and taught themselves.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Robert Cannon, vice president of sales for Trestlewood in Blackfoot, Idaho. Trestlewood started in 1993, when Robert's grandfather, a heavy construction

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29:47

Darci Shannon, National Hardwood Lumber Association

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/09/10

Darci Shannon walked into her first hardwood convention determined to spend as little as possible. She had talked her boss into joining the association, negotiated the booth cost down, and told them she would bring her own trash can rather than pay for one. Fifteen minutes onto the show floor, the small saw shop she worked for closed the biggest sale in its history.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Darci Shannon, membership services advisor for the

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31:44

Jennifer Flynn, SEEDS EcoCorps

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/09/03

There are trees sitting in woodlots right now, rotting, and others headed for the chipper, and every one of them is releasing methane and losing the carbon it spent decades collecting. Jennifer Flynn built a workforce program around that problem, and the people she trains learn to run a chainsaw, a portable sawmill, and a GIS mapping tool in the same season.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Jennifer Flynn, the EcoCorps program director at SEEDS EcoCorps

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36:48

Ian Funk, American Barnwood

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/08/27

The wood in Ian Funk's house came from the business he now owns. He did not know that when he bought either one.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Ian Funk of American Barnwood, a reclaimed wood yard on California's central coast that he acquired at the end of last year after twenty five years in medical device marketing. His job there was translating between surgeons and engineers, and he is candid that a reclaimed barnwood lumber yard was not the

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37:41

Jake Power, PowerWood

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/08/20

The duty at the border went from 15 percent to 45 percent in two months, and their sales volume went up anyway.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Jake Power, managing director of PowerWood in Agassiz, British Columbia. His father started the company out of the family basement in 1995, brokering kiln dried red cedar into a California market that needed it, and Jake was the first employee, cleaning the office once a week for a dollar at twelve years old. He

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37:37

Wes Carroll, Rice Lumber

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/08/13

The person who knows the most about this 87 year old lumber company has been there forty three years, and almost none of it is written down anywhere.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Wes Carroll of Rice Lumber in Vermont. Wes got a cell phone and a job in the yard the year he turned fourteen, then left the state for college in Colorado with no intention of coming back east. He spent a year and a half cold calling for an office supply company, two years

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39:41

Michael Friedrichsen, Roddis Lumber

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/08/06

A fourth generation CPA walked away from a large accounting firm to take over a 104 year old Texas lumber distributor, and the first thing he protected was not the balance sheet.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Michael Friedrichsen, general manager of Roddis Lumber in San Antonio. Michael grew up around the family business, spent one college summer running a forklift in the warehouse, then went off for a master's in accounting and a CPA license. When

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53:34

Dwayne Sperber, Wudeward Urban Forest Products

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/07/30

Twice in close to two decades of building an industry that barely existed, Dwayne Sperber has come near to walking away. Both times the phone rang. The second time was the morning he recorded this episode, when a project shifted against him and the call that came in was Jennifer asking him onto the show. What we're doing together is meaningful, he says, and that idea carries the whole conversation.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Dwayne Sperber of

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42:11

Chris Bingaman, Bingaman & Son Lumber

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/07/23

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Chris Bingaman, CEO of Bingaman & Son Lumber. The company traces back to Chris's grandfather, who logged with horses, hauled timber by truck to local sawmills, and eventually started finding new markets when the coal mine prop business dried up. Chris's father joined in, they incorporated in 1968, and today the operation spans five locations with three sawmills, though 80 percent of their lumber still comes from

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31:19

Cathy Cohne, Melrose Lumber Co.

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/07/16

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Cathy Cohne, fifth generation at Melrose Lumber Co. in Austin, New York. The company was founded in 1922 by Cathy's great-great-grandfather, and when he passed away early, his wife, a Russian immigrant with no English, stepped in and kept the doors open during the Depression. That grit runs through the whole story. The family later operated Manhattan Lumber Company in the city before New York's Urban Renewal program

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45:43

John Melvin, CAL FIRE

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/07/09

Every tree tells a story. The question is whether we treat it like a resource or throw it away like waste.In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger welcomes John Melvin, Assistant Deputy Director of Resource Protection and Improvement at CAL FIRE. The two have worked together in the urban wood movement for over 15 years, and this conversation traces the journey from its earliest days to a program now granting hundreds of millions of dollars. A central theme is language. John

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49:23

Nick Morrison, Brian Studebaker, Brandon Romine, ...

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/07/02

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with three team members from Edmund Allen Lumber out of Illinois: Nick Morrison, Sales Manager; Brian Studebaker, Millwork Manager; and Brandon Romine, Marketing Director. Together they reveal how a 129-year-old cedar and Douglas fir wholesaler has evolved into a full-service custom millwork operation that regularly takes on projects nobody else will touch. The company serves a dealer network of roughly 450 customers across

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43:25

Luke Gaskin, Good Old Wood

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/06/29

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Luke Gaskin of Good Old Wood in Vancouver, BC. Luke shares how his business evolved from a full-service salvage operation called Salvage Vancouver into a focused reclaimed wood company. The name change wasn't just branding. It was a turning point. Dropping the salvage identity and committing to Good Old Wood meant letting go of the junkyard mentality and zeroing in on what he actually loved: working with the wood itself

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42:32

Joshua Morvant, Revival Timberworks

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/06/23

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Joshua Morvant of Revival Timberworks in Louisiana. Joshua shares how his journey through woodworking started with taking apart pawn shop guitars as a teenager, moved into cabinet making to pay the bills, and eventually led him to an apprenticeship with a luthier just outside Quebec City. Living among some of the oldest colonial architecture in North America, buildings constructed in the 1600s that were still standing

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00:39:11

Mike McGarry, Urban Lumber

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/06/11

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger welcomes back returning guest Mike McGarry of Urban Lumber in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. What started as a one-man pilot project to prove to three levels of government that diseased urban trees could be safely salvaged has grown into what may be one of the largest urban tree recycling and hardwood production operations in the country, processing three to four thousand trees per year with a team of eleven employees.Mike walks

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00:35:41

Ben Pierce, Holt & Bugbee Company

The Woodpreneur Podcast ·

2026/06/04

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Ben Pierce, a sixth-generation family member at the Holt & Bugbee Company, one of the oldest hardwood lumber businesses in the United States. At 201 years old, Holt & Bugbee Company has survived recessions, industry shifts, and the rise of synthetic flooring by doing what it's always done: adapting. Ben shares how the company evolved from importing mahogany from Central America to becoming a premier domestic

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