Adapt or die, and other lessons from our 150-year old family business.

It's not about starting up. It's about staying up.

Sometimes you have to remind yourself of who you are, where you came from and where you are going.

Entrepreneurship is in my blood. Hard work was instilled in us at a young age. My brothers and I worked at our family sawmill, which had been in our family since 1872. We bagged firewood, cleaned up the sawdust at the end of the shift with push brooms, and got a real education about life.

Let’s just say it toughened me up real quick.

I have vivid memories of piling bags of firewood in hot shipping containers in the summer months. The bags had often been sitting in the back of the mill yard for a while to dry out, so it wasn’t unusual for mice (and their, erm, excretions) to fall out of the bags as you moved them.

I wasn’t the strongest worker at the mill. I was the only girl, so I always felt like I had to prove I could handle the physical demands of the work. I’d balance the bags on my thigh to help hoist them up to the highest stack, which meant my legs were always covered in bruises.

Every day would end with me picking sawdust out of my ears and nose.

It wasn't always pretty, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Looking back, I learned so many lessons that prepared me for my own entrepreneurial journey ahead (thanks Mom and Dad). Here they are.

We all have to start somewhere.

My great-great-great grandfather started J. H. Keeso & Sons Ltd. in 1872 when he was just a teenager. He purchased a steam locomotive, went around to different farms in the area, and did custom threshing at harvest. Then he used that same steam locomotive to power a saw, usually right on the farm.

Not only did this story teach me that we all have to start somewhere, but also that humble beginnings are normal. You must be innovative and use your limited resources wisely.

Have faith that the vision will build over time.

Win by catering to your customers’ needs and creating a superior product.

Our sawmill was able to produce up to 18,000 feet of lumber per day. An average sawmill can produce about 45,000 feet per day. So in comparison, J. H. Keeso & Sons was small.

Because we couldn’t compete on volume, we instead competed on product. My dad worked closely with customers to cater to their needs. The mill took pride in producing a product that was top quality, and customers knew that was what they could always count on from us. Whatever they made, they made it the best and as a result, were known in the industry as the best sawmill in North America.

I’d like to think this is something we have internalized at That Clean Life. We listen to our customers’ needs, we create a product that they love and we’re proud of that.

Being small is not a disadvantage.

Sure, the mill was small by standards. But being small meant the business could be nimble and make changes on the fly. Bigger sawmills, on the other hand, were handcuffed by their size.

My dad recognized that being small gave them an advantage over their competitors, and now I understand why. Being small meant they could stay in touch every day with what mattered most to the people they served instead of getting lost in the noise.

Being small means you can move quickly, try new things without asking for permission or getting buy-in, and adopt a more iterative approach.

Use being small to your advantage.

Sell your by-products.

As the log moved through the sawmill, waste was inevitably created. Logs were debarked, edges were trimmed, and sawdust was created.

But then, the sawdust was sold to farmers to use in the barn, woodchips and bark mulch were sold to landscapers, and scrap wood was bagged and sold to campgrounds.

Every by-product was repackaged and sold, which ultimately improved the sawmill’s bottom line.

That Clean Life all started with a by-product of our own lives - a meal plan.

The most epic software companies turn their learnings into blog posts, and then into books, workshops and conferences.

The trick is to spot those by-products and see opportunities.

Adapt or die.

In the 1980s, natural gas lines started to become more mainstream, which meant more people had access to natural gas and didn’t need to rely on a wood-burning fireplace to heat their homes. Meanwhile, at the sawmill, firewood sales started to plummet.

During this time, my dad read a book called Boom, Bust & Echo which said baby boomers were moving over to an easier way of life and pursuing hobbies like camping. This sparked the idea to package the firewood into compact bags to sell to campgrounds.

Adapt or die. (Oh, and read a lot.)

You don’t need to do something new. You just need to do it better.

When my dad did some market research, he learned there were indeed others selling bagged firewood to campgrounds. But when he took a look at other products – he knew J. H. Keeso & Sons could do it better.

The bagged firewood on the market at the time would only be half full or have poor-quality wood in it. We created a better product with high-quality wood that burned longer and included a firestarter, which made starting the fire super easy.

Just like my dad wasn’t the first to create bagged firewood, That Clean Life wasn’t the first meal-planning software. But we did create something better.

Many people think, “This has already been done,” and move on.

Stop to consider, how can you do it better?

Working with your spouse is a superpower.

My dad ran a successful sawmill, and one of the biggest reasons it was successful was because he had the support of my mom, who worked in the office. They were in it together, which created a mutual understanding of what they were working towards, where they were going and a true sense of empathy during the hard times.

People often ask me what it’s like to work with my spouse, to which I always say, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Building something together from the ground up has been an experience of a lifetime, and one day I hope our kids will write a post just like this, bragging about all the cool things they learned from their entrepreneurial parents.

Nothing lasts forever.

It was about 11 PM on a Sunday night when I got a call from my mom, which was unusual. When I answered, she said, “It’s gone.”

The sawmill burned to the ground in September 2018. It took over 50 firefighters, 1.3 million litres of water and over 12 hours to put the fire out.

Heartbreaking is an understatement.

“For not only the family business and their employees but for the entire family that have a century worth of work in that business and to have it totally gone in a short period of time is just devastating,”

Everything generations of my family had built was gone in an instant.

But no one was hurt, and at the end of the day - we all still had each other.

So, the final lesson here, and undoubtedly the most important - nothing lasts forever. Life is short. We never know when the journey will end. So enjoy every minute of this extraordinary ride we are on.