Meet Nathan Lippert

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathan Lippert. 

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Woodworking has always been a hobby of mine. It started out as a way for me to help with my mental health. Before Covid, I spent 10 years traveling the country for work weekly. So, on the weekends, it was nice to head out to my barn and spend the days in there. The Pandemic allowed me to be home more, so I had free time on my hands. I have always made my own household furniture, but with my new extra time, I started making custom wood projects for our family and friends. People really started to notice my work and taking a liking to it. That is when Emily, my significant other, mentioned the idea of starting a woodworking business. I always thought it would be cool to start my own business, but the business aspect of it never interested me, so once Emily came along and started to push me toward the idea, it really was like bringing my dream to life. In late 2020 Silver Nash Workshop started turning into a reality once we started designing it, and by March of 2021, we launched it on social media. Especially once we welcomed our Silver Lab, Nash, into our family in the fall of 2020. We wanted to make sure Silver Nash met both of our needs and incorporated both of us equally as well as Nash, which is where our name comes from. So, Emily runs the business and does a lot of the behind-the-scenes work while I do all the designing of the projects and the woodworking. I’d say we’re a perfect fit for running our business together. We are total opposites, but it helps to bring out the best of each other. 

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It hasn’t been a smooth road by any means. We struggled for the first year on charging projects properly. It was hard for me to understand that people would pay for my projects, so I always wanted to charge them as little as I could. That only sold my work short and wasn’t allowing the business to make profit. Now, we’ve got a much better system for pricing our projects. We also had a hard time with letting the business consume our time. I work full time as a Dairy Inspector for the State of Michigan, and Emily works full time as a paralegal, plus she is in law school. We were letting the business take up all of what little free time we had which is not what neither of us wanted. It was taking the fun out of my hobby. So, Emily used google docs to create a schedule for us that we now stick to. Using a schedule has made a huge difference. We still struggle with pricing and time, but we’ve come a long way since we started last year. 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am an amateur woodworker by night and a dairy inspector by day, as I mentioned above. I grew up in the agriculture industry, where you make anything you need rather than buy it. This mentality has stuck with me all these years and has been the motivation behind many of my projects. I enjoy relying on my creative skills and knowledge to build whatever I need. This has also allowed me to make many custom projects for our customers that fit their needs, but they couldn’t find exactly what they needed from a store or online. I spend a lot of hours in the shop during the week, but I love being able to make handmade projects for our customers. It has also been nice to pick up on some of the aspects of running the business from Emily. At first, she would say, I was a pain to work with because I didn’t really grasp the importance of the business techniques Emily would discuss with me. In the last few months, a lot of the business side of things started to click with me, so it’s made my perspective change. We specialize in custom projects. Majority of our orders are all specially requested by the customer. I’ve really started to focus on corn hole boards this summer as well as epoxy resin projects. Silver Nash Workship is very customer service and detail-oriented. Making each project with love is something I am most proud of. 

What are your plans for the future?
The biggest plan I have for the future is to continue to learn each day and grow from what I learn. That has been the most important part of this journey; learning what works and what doesn’t, then adjusting. I would like a bigger workshop sooner than later. I use my wood shop, the garage, and our basement right now for all our projects, so I want to have a shop big enough to do everything in it. We also have discussed setting the goal of opening a storefront one day, so that is being tossed around right now. I would also like to hire a person or two to help run the shop. I want someone who shares the same mindset as Emily and I and who shares the same passion as I do to embrace creativity and learn to do things with your hands. I’ve always believed that you must work to create something you are proud of. Recently, I’ve started to do more epoxy resin projects and could see the business sticking to primarily epoxy projects in the future. I love the creativity that epoxy brings to a project. It turns any project into a one-of-a-kind piece. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.silvernashworkshop.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/silvernashworkshop/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/silvernashworkshop
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc4EHw3W9mJJ6r1TiR55QeA
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@silvernashworkshop?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc