w/ Mike Yarbrough, Rustic & Main
When Mike Yarbrough swapped his software development hat for a craftsman's apron to manage carpal tunnel syndrome, he didn't just mend his physical ailments—he forged a new path as an entrepreneur. Rustic & Main sprouted from his love for woodworking, evolving from a garage project into a bustling hub where historic materials are transformed into rings with stories. This episode peels back the curtain on Mike's favorite creations, like the Muir ring and the USS North Carolina battleship teak ring, offering a peek into the soulful process of preserving history through jewelry.
As Mike and his wife navigated the choppy waters of business expansion, they discovered that their personal journey mirrored the growth of their brand. From grappling with parking headaches to embracing Lean principles, their small venture expanded its roots, outgrowing the confines of their home and stretching into a full-fledged team. Learn how they dealt with the pandemic's financial whirlwinds, navigated the challenges of working remotely, and kept their marriage strong while steering the Rustic & Main ship through uncharted waters.
Stepping into the world of e-commerce and custom development, Mike's tale continues with innovative twists that have shaped the customer experience at Rustic & Main. Discover the woodworking ambiance of their ring-making studio and how non-traditional approaches to jewelry making have disrupted the market. Mike's journey is a testament to the power of ingenuity in craftsmanship and the relentless pursuit of a vision that marries rustic charm with entrepreneurial finesse. Join us for this inspiring conversation, chock-full of insights for both aspiring artisans and seasoned business owners alike.
Kurt (00:01.826)
Today on the Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we are discussing one man's entrepreneurial success story. Well, I suppose that's a lot of episodes, but in this case, we have found a gentleman, Mike Yarbrough from Rustic in Maine, which is a Shopify store that sells lovely handcrafted and custom rings. They're really good looking. Nice looking site, but just extraordinary photography. And I want to hear that story. I have not.
I've not heard it, you're gonna be hearing it for the first time along with me. And we're gonna walk through that story together, my friends. I'm your host Kurt Elster. Check nasty. And this is the unofficial Shopify podcast. Mike, how you doing?
Mike Yarbrough (00:45.761)
Pretty good, Kurt. How about yourself?
Kurt (00:47.646)
Yeah, go feeling good going strong the You know the weathers the weathers changing here warming up and then immediately like I get seasonal affective disorder Which not great when you live in the Midwest And so as soon as like daylight savings time changes my energy levels go up And I'm excited by just the potential energy of spring and summer
Mike Yarbrough (00:57.868)
Yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (01:10.069)
Yeah, here in North Carolina, so I'm in the Charlotte area. It's like, we get, it's beautiful outside, but then we get like super cold mornings and then hot afternoons, but then we'll just have a string of hot days and we're like, okay, cool, we're going towards summertime. And then North Carolina is like, no, we're not doing that. And then it just goes back. And I wouldn't be surprised if we have some kind of freeze this April, because it's never, you can't predict it, you know, but that's part of the fun of it though.
Kurt (01:13.799)
lovely there.
Kurt (01:35.894)
the heavy... Alright, so your store is rusticandmain.com, correct? And you sell rings?
Mike Yarbrough (01:42.933)
Yep, that's right.
We sell rings, yeah, we sell mostly wedding bands. We're venturing into engagement rings and stuff in about a month or so. But we've started with really focusing on wedding bands for men. And we use a lot of historic materials, a lot of really unique materials, meteorite, dinosaur bone, World War II era stuff. And so things that just kind of tell a story, that's what we're all about.
Kurt (02:08.79)
Hmm. The... what's your... you sell many rings, and like they're gold rings with inlays and just all kinds of interesting materials. What's your favorite?
Mike Yarbrough (02:17.709)
Oh, that's a good question. Oh man, you know, there's actually, there's a ring on our website called The Muir named after John Muir. I think it's one of our most beautiful rings. It's not our best seller, but when I look at it, I'm just like, why is this thing not exploding? You know, as a person behind it, you're like, oh wow, this is gonna take off. And sometimes you have products like that. That's one of my favorites actually. It's made with like Imperial diopside. So it's got this green sort of look to it. And then I forget what the center wood is on that.
but it's just a fantastic looking ring. I'm like, every guy should own this, what's going on? But then we have some rings that are just like our classics that feature like the USS North Carolina battleship Teak. So actually like world, yeah, actually a World War II era Teak. So this is the Teak that the sailors walked on, you know, during all those wars and stuff like that. So just pretty awesome. Just, you know, having a piece of history on your hand.
Kurt (02:58.89)
I saw that on here. Yeah, that's cool
Kurt (03:11.266)
The hammered finish stuff speaks to me. It's cool. I just like that rough look. So these, are you making these in North Carolina? Oh.
Mike Yarbrough (03:12.812)
Yeah.
Yep. Yep, those do really well. Yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (03:21.673)
Yeah, everything's handmade. We have a little shop in Huntersville, North Carolina, which is not too far from where we live. And so everything began in my garage, but then now we've got a team that makes the rings. Yeah.
Kurt (03:35.406)
So how long ago was that? When do you... Well, how long have you been making rings?
Mike Yarbrough (03:40.501)
Yeah, so here's the story kind of goes a little bit like this. So 2015 or so, I was a software developer. That's my former job. And I was also doing a lot of blogging. So I started to get like carpel tunnel feelings in my hands. And apparently one of the symptoms of that is that your jewelry, like a regular gold ring, just starts to feel cold and heavy. So I stopped wearing it for about maybe six months. And then my wife was like, you need to get a ring on your finger. And I was like, yeah, I know. I just don't know what to do. So.
Kurt (04:02.327)
Hmph.
Mike Yarbrough (04:08.073)
I was also a woodworker, did a lot of tinkering and just basically drilled a hole in a piece of wood, shaped it out into a ring and then made my first one. That day somebody was asking me about it and asked me to make one for them, wanted to pay for it. And so the entrepreneurial wheels started to turn. So that was 2015. About a year from then we actually launched, April 2016. And so at that point I'm still, I'm getting up at like 4.30 in the morning, making a few rings here and there, listing them on Etsy, trying to get my Shopify store up.
And, but then by that November 2016, we had more orders coming in than I could make myself. And so we had to begin bringing people in to help do the work.
Kurt (04:48.542)
Okay, so we've been at this not quite ten years.
Mike Yarbrough (04:52.893)
Not quite 10 years, a little over seven years now. Yeah.
Kurt (04:56.322)
And the initial idea, it always starts with a personal painter problem. It's just fascinating that these stories always follow that path. But you need a ring. You need a different ring, a lighter, different, more comfortable ring. Because of, well, a professional hazard, as funny as it is, for developers, carpal tunnel syndrome. And so you switch to this wood ring because you have the skill of your woodworker. You're like, why not me? I could do this.
Mike Yarbrough (05:02.497)
Yep.
Mike Yarbrough (05:08.813)
Yeah.
Kurt (05:25.802)
I'm a craftsperson. I like to fiddle. And immediately you got people going, well, that's cool. I want one. And a year later, you're running an Etsy store, spinning up a Shopify store and trying to get this thing off the ground.
Mike Yarbrough (05:39.413)
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's kind of one of the other clues that this might be something was I did one of the blogs that I had was I just wrote a little article about how to make a wooden wedding band. And that wasn't really the focus of the overall blog, but that particular article just became the number one thing, the number one article on the website. And it quickly became Google's, like if you search for how to make a wood wedding band, that was like the top listed article. And so it was getting a lot of traffic and I just thought, okay, everything is pointing to.
this is a thing, this could be a thing. And so I thought, well, what if we made it out of like really cool stuff, like not just wood, but like wood that had a story or history to it, that would make it a lot more sense and it would be something guys would actually wanna wear. And so with that sort of concept in mind, yeah, my wife and I just decided, hey, let's just kick it off and see what happens. Not, you know, yes with the idea that it could become a big business, but really just sort of an exploratory thing at first.
But then as the order started to come in, it was pretty clear like this is going somewhere.
Kurt (06:38.698)
And so it's interesting about this one as a business, where like, with a ring, material cost is low, because the item is very small. Labor cost, it's you. You know how to do it, right? Which then, it's like, okay, the trouble then is scaling. How does that work? But you, the initial like, we could try this and go. The capital outlay is low. And especially, there's not a retail location. You're gonna do this out of, I assume this is out of your garage.
Mike Yarbrough (06:45.561)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (06:50.645)
Yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (07:07.937)
It's out of my garage, yeah.
Kurt (07:09.034)
and then we could sell it on a marketplace, while simultaneously building an audience and brand. And you'd been blogging, was that audience valuable in any way?
Mike Yarbrough (07:21.593)
That's a good question. I think maybe just the traffic to that particular blog lended some traffic to the website eventually because I updated that blog to say, hey, we've got a Shopify store, we're official now, go check out what we're doing. And so that did help probably get some organic traffic, but I don't think that was the, I wouldn't say that I had to have that or it wouldn't have worked type of thing. But sure, I mean, anything you can do to help initially is great. But really, I mean, like if you think about it, we're selling wedding bands.
most of your friends are probably already married or they're not in the season where they're ready to buy a wedding band. And most of my audience for the blog, not in that same season of life either. So we really had to start with just like, how do we find people that wanna get married and direct them to the website? And so, yeah.
Kurt (08:07.506)
What that's my question of how do you get that initial audience that you know those first hundred orders? Where where do they come from?
Mike Yarbrough (08:14.057)
Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. So I mean, on Etsy, when we started that people are, you know, that they're searching for it. So they're finding it themselves. But we quickly realized, like, you know, Etsy, it doesn't really provide the experience. It doesn't give them the brand experience that we want to give the customers. And we also can't really track them, convert them, you know, as from a lead to a customer. There's none of that kind of stuff. Right. So once the Shopify store.
really kind of got started in earnest, which was very early on, it was still 2016. We really started directing customers there and we started with Facebook ads, just really simple ads. And I don't know if it's the same on Facebook now, but back then you used to be able to say like, target people who are engaged and are within this age range, right? You could literally just say like, they're engaged and there are a couple of issues with that now and one of those issues is that the...
the younger audience that was there seven years ago, they're not really active on Facebook anymore. So, more of them are on Instagram, which doesn't have the exact same kind of information. But that's how we started, just simple ads. And we just saw when people realized sort of like the light bulb moment when they would come to the website and realized that we made these really unique rings, they were like, oh, this is awesome. And typically the guy would go from like, I guess I gotta get a wedding band to actually excited about getting.
something because he's like, oh, I can put whiskey barrel in it. I can put elk antler in it. Like, this is awesome. And, uh, yeah, we just love seeing that, that sort of, that moment when they realize they can get something they actually are interested in.
Kurt (09:48.074)
Yeah, I think likely for a lot of men, they've never worn rings before, or they've never worn, you know, at least something better than a costume ring that you're going to be with a wedding band higher stakes, because you're potentially wearing this for decades. I went with the simple, I just have a rose gold band I got that I like, and I bought it with a matte finish.
Mike Yarbrough (09:52.577)
Hmm. Right.
Kurt (10:15.486)
And with our brushed finish and what's funny because gold is so soft it wears itself smooth. It's like right now It's polished and then like once a year I'll take scotch-brite, and I'll give it its brushed finish back And then like six months later it is you know I could see myself in it But it's not I didn't polish it is you know gold is soft my fear is one day. I'll like wait. I'll just You know if it's wearing itself polished well that gold's going somewhere like at what point does the ring disappear off my finger?
Mike Yarbrough (10:18.508)
It's not shiny. Yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (10:31.297)
Yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (10:43.159)
Right.
Kurt (10:44.926)
The... but... yeah, your rings are beautiful. But part of that is the photography. How are we doing this? Or I see a Polaroid in the background. Do you or your wife or somebody have photography experience? Because these photos are quite extraordinary.
Mike Yarbrough (11:01.229)
So yeah, the photos are fantastic. So I started with me because that was just like, that was a passion of mine. And I was actually getting started with photography through this business, but I discovered that I had a particular style that I wanted to do. And if you guys can't see the website because you're listening to the podcast, think sort of like a, we try to go for sort of like the 19, somewhere between 1920s and 1940s, 50s kind of style with some of the layout that we do on some of the photos.
especially the more the military side of the men's rings. And so I kind of got a style down that I liked, but then we ended up hiring a photographer named Lindsay. She does a fantastic job. And so most of the photos that you see on the website now are probably hers and the stuff that you see popping up on Instagram, that's her as well. But once we kind of had that style, then the trick was finding a photographer that could sort of mimic that and then take it to that next level. And we really want to, a lot of the websites that you go to, they'll just have a plain white background.
for the product or a plain black background. And that's what Google recommends, but it's extremely boring, I think. And it doesn't, with a ring, yeah, what would this look like in the ideal setting that kind of complements the story of the ring itself? And so that's what we try to do. And I think people see that and they go, wow, this is cool. I like the, just the overall vibe that I'm getting from this. And I promised myself I wasn't gonna use the word vibe in this podcast, but I did. All right, yeah.
Kurt (12:06.64)
Yeah, especially with a ring.
Kurt (12:25.174)
The, you know, I'm fine with vibe. I've accepted and adopted vibe.
Mike Yarbrough (12:29.309)
It's not going away. But they like it. So, you know, that's, like you said, that initial just instinctive reaction, like this is something beautiful and I wanna be a part of this draws them in.
Kurt (12:41.378)
I'm so over the photos on white. Just step it. The... because on yours like the photo I'm looking at the Apollo a hammered titanium wooden band ring. The photo is gorgeous, but it is taken on top of what appears to be in an old parchment paper written in cursive with a fountain pen. And so it really hammers home that idea of, you know, like this is handmade. This is rustic or antique. It's got...
Mike Yarbrough (12:43.809)
Yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (13:07.724)
Yeah.
Kurt (13:10.454)
just such a great look to it. So there's storytelling in that photo for sure.
Mike Yarbrough (13:13.141)
Yeah, for sure. Well, there really is. Those, the paper that you're talking about is actually letters from World War Two that were written back home. And if you ever want like a tear jerking session, just go read some of these letters because it's like, these are, you know, these are people that don't know if they're going to make it back and they're talking, you know, this is like the 1940s, right? So they're, they got that sort of really nice handwriting and, and you have the letter from the lady to the guy and from the guy to the lady and the sort of back and forth. I just found them in an antique shop, but they're really touching. So we, you know,
People don't know that when you see it in the photo, but for us, there's even a deeper meaning because we know what's kind of going on behind the scenes.
Kurt (13:52.366)
And at what point, what's the moment where you say, all right, I'm quitting my job, I'm doing this full time?
Mike Yarbrough (13:58.793)
Yeah, so like I mentioned, so end of November or December of 2016, so that's the year that we started, more orders are coming in than I can make. I remember actually going to some relatives house for Thanksgiving and my phone just starts to do the Shopify cha-ching, right? Like cha-ching, cha-ching as orders are coming in. Yeah, as orders are coming in. And I'm like, I don't know if I can make all of these. I don't have enough time. I still got a regular job. And so really from that point...
until we hired our first guy, maybe like January 2017. Middle of 2017, we had enough orders coming in that I could quit my six figure job as a software developer and go into this full time. And my wife is such a champion. Not only does she help with the business, because at this point it's getting busy and it's like, we need help. She jumped in and we both have different roles that we played in the business. But she was game, she was just like, yeah, you wanna quit your job and just make circles in our garage, that's fine.
So we did that. So that's middle of 2017. And then by the end of 2017, we had about nine people working out of our house. And out of our house, yeah. So we're trying to like watch, oh yeah, the parking was not great. Yeah. And yeah, so I mean, we had, you know, the garage is getting filled with dust and then we're trying to like watch shows or something like at 7.30 at night. And we still got people finishing up rings and like coming in and showing us. And we're like, okay. So we're like, all right, we need a building.
Kurt (15:05.174)
out of your house. So, I'm sure the neighbors were thrilled with the number of cars constantly showing up.
Mike Yarbrough (15:27.245)
But that's part of the American startup story. You see these old photos of people who started their home and they just got their kitchens just full of boxes and packing stuff. That's the way it goes. And there's no shame in that. It makes the story great.
Kurt (15:38.655)
When
Kurt (15:42.146)
Famously Apple rented their garage in, I assume it was Palo Alto. The, okay, there's a... First challenge, fulfilling the orders. Then it sounds like you hire pretty rapidly, at which point you have a team of people working in your garage. And then you transition out and move into a larger dedicated space. But you've got this software background that has to have been helpful here.
Mike Yarbrough (16:11.925)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So in the software world, there are a lot of principles that we use to help get things done. And really those principles come from manufacturing. And so we kind of, you know, you got the manufacturing world starting like with Toyota and the lean principles, those get brought into the software world to do that digitally. And so now I'm bringing that back into sort of a manufacturing small business world. There's actually a really great book for those of who are interested in this. If I mentioned anything about lean and you're like, that sounds cool.
and you want to know how to apply that to business. There's a great book called The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, R-I-E-S, and he kind of takes some of these lean principles and uses those and says like, here's how you could apply these to your business. But everything from how do we actually, you know, break down processes and tasks to make them manageable to the actual leadership itself, and then also just the culture that we wanted to have inside the business, and then a lot of lean principles that we utilized really from day one.
So if you care to hear, should I go on a lean? Is that boring? I don't know when it gets boring. Okay.
Kurt (17:16.458)
Well, let's do it applied. So like you had to transition from garage to this larger operation, plus have a team of people. It's not the easiest thing to make that transition very quickly, but you have, as a software developer, you would have worked in teams, you would have understood, and you've got this idea of software development principles.
Give me like, you know, challenge example. Like where did you have a struggle, then how did you fix it?
Mike Yarbrough (17:45.29)
Okay.
Yeah, so one of the things is things can get very, especially in those early days when I've got to go to work and then believe people with other things to do, right? Or when we're starting to get to such a big team where I can't check everybody's work and that kind of stuff, make sure it's all exactly right, because I'm kind of busy juggling other things, doing the marketing side or whatever the case is. There's a lot of principles that would really help out with that, that you just kind of teach the people ahead of time. So like...
Um, one, we implemented pool systems. So this is a big lean principle. So instead of like, typically what would happen in the work environment that nobody likes is the manager would come to you and say, here's your assignment. And here's the due date that is, you know, needs to be done by. And usually the due date is something that you can't, it's like, uh, next week or something like that and Friday, right. And it's Thursday or something. Um, that's a very much a push system, which everybody hates, but pool systems are more queue based. And so we would put orders, for example, into a queue.
And it's the responsibility of the crafter to come in and go, okay, I think I want to do these two or three rings today. They kind of get to choose that. But that happens everywhere. The same thing happens with shipping. We don't push work on our shippers. We don't push work on the marketing team. We don't interrupt them and say, oh, this needs to happen now. Things do happen where you're like, this is an emergency. But for the most part, that pull system and that really respect for other people's autonomy.
has been key for us to be able to just say, you're responsible for doing your work. I'll leave you alone if you just do it right. And when you start with that, you're not starting with micromanagement and all the kind of craziness that comes along with that. That's how entrepreneurs get burned out a lot of times, especially startups. They're just trying to manage too many things and you've got to implement the system of just like, empower your team to make their own decisions.
Kurt (19:37.578)
I love this philosophy. This is so good. It's like, all right, here's the expectation. Here are the tools we support you and we trust you to get from A to B. You could figure out the rest on your own. And then the, well, thinking about leadership, the disadvantage to micromanaging it is people will encounter a roadblock and they know they're not empowered with
the autonomy to make the decision. So they go back to the manager or the boss or you. And I go, well, here's my issue. And then because you're a micromanager, you go, well, don't worry, I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it. I mean, just kiss of death right there, right? And so, yeah, now you own that task forever. Where if you're not micromanaging them and they come to you with a problem, they probably know the answer, but they're looking for permission. So if you go, well,
Mike Yarbrough (20:22.409)
and you never stop doing it. Right, that's the thing.
Kurt (20:34.426)
What do you recommend? What do you recommend? So much more powerful than I'll take care of it Are there It could not have been all smooth sailing. What uh, what were some early challenges here?
Mike Yarbrough (20:47.287)
Oh no.
So when we first started, we hired a lot of people that were just good friends, good people. We happen to know just really cool people that have some talent and are willing to take a risk and come in and make rings and do crazy stuff like that. And when we began to implement processes, it started to feel less like working out of Mike's garage and it started to feel more like a business where there's expectations and you need to show up at a certain time and there's certain output requirements.
That definitely caused some challenges just personnel wise. And a lot of businesses experience this when they go from that start up phase to like, okay, we actually have to have real business structure and some HR things. Not everybody fits that mold. That's not what they were looking for. And they wanted it to just stay like the garage days forever. So that's a challenge, right? Personally. And you got to make some tough decisions. Like I may be ruining a friendship now by having to have a conversation that tells somebody, you can't stay here and be...
you know, stuck in the past type of thing. So those were challenges. We had a lot of financial challenges because we're growing so quickly. We've got money coming in, but we're also trying to hire leadership and put them in place to manage things with the expectation that we'll make more profit the next quarter or more profit the next year. And that didn't always happen, especially when 2020 hit, weddings were crazy. Really those probably about three years of just nuts, not nearly sure what to expect. And it was hard going, that's for sure.
There's a lot more to lose when you go from being a garage startup to being an actual business with like 25 employees, marketing team, multiple buildings and that kind of stuff. And there's a lot more at stake at that point.
Kurt (22:33.112)
What did you do? It sounds like you needed capital. Did you take loans?
Mike Yarbrough (22:37.609)
Yeah, we did. Actually, yeah, so we did the EIDL loan when that came available. And I don't know if we should have done it now. We're paying it back now. And it just feels like we're just giving the government more money, which never feels good. But we did the EIDL. Oh, it's not too bad actually. It was really, really cheap. I don't remember what it was, but I remember it was cheap. But because of the amount of money that it is. Well, here was the interesting thing that we didn't know early on was that
Kurt (22:52.638)
What's the, do you know what the effective interest rate is?
Mike Yarbrough (23:06.669)
when you take out the EIDL, they pretty much said, we're gonna defer payments back for like a year because everybody's like, they're assuming all the businesses are struggling and whatnot. Well, interest is actually starting from that point. So they're actually collecting interest on that loan that whole entire year. And then we were like, what? Like we didn't realize that was happening, but live and learn. But we had a loan there, we had a small loan with the bank as well. And we would try not to ever to use that stuff for payroll, but that was usually for like, we've got a...
we want to do the next thing. So let's invest in that, like buy a building or buy some equipment or something along those lines. But yeah, it got pretty freaking scary for a couple of years. And it was like, okay, well we made it through. Let's see how next year goes.
Kurt (23:54.71)
Yeah, I mean, trying to scale a new business that, you know, your mortgage and family depends on, and then also doing that through COVID. You talked about how the pandemic affected your business, you know, just the uncertainty is really the big, scary, horrible thing. You know, in retrospect, that seems silly, but at the time, you're like, who knows what's going to happen?
Do you recall any strategies you implemented to adapt during that time?
Mike Yarbrough (24:27.673)
So early on, so like when they made the call, I don't remember when it was in 2020, but they made a call for like businesses to basically shut down unless you were essential, right? Or basically send all of your employees home or something. They were like, just don't come in. So yeah, and we didn't, I mean, at that time we didn't know. We thought like, this is like the next major plague and everybody's gonna die. But I mean, it was bad, but it wasn't like what we all thought at the beginning. But we were like, we still have all these wedding rings to make, people were getting married. Like they still have, as far as we know, wedding plans.
Kurt (24:40.406)
Yeah, it's like mid-March, I think.
Mike Yarbrough (24:56.821)
So we, like within a weekend, we basically just scattered all of our people home with their own set of tools and supplies and everything to continue making rings on their own. And then we just had like a central drop off place to check all the, you know, the rings, make sure they were good, ship them out, hand sanitizer and you know, all that kind of stuff that you would expect back then. And so that was like, we got to keep going. We can't just stop. We can't just like say, well, we're going to close our doors for six months. That wasn't going to happen. And so yeah, within a weekend, we just sort of.
put everybody back into their own. So now they're working in their garages or working out on their front porch or something like that, making rings. Yeah, crazy.
Kurt (25:34.862)
Did you end up bringing them back to the workshop?
Mike Yarbrough (25:39.529)
Oh yeah, yeah for sure. And there was actually some challenges from that because people got comfortable. Like I can go out here and make a ring for a little bit and then go inside and tend to the kids. It's kind of like working from home, right? And, but productivity suffered, craftsmanship quality kind of suffered. You know, people would try to, you know, work way late at night when they're not their freshest. And so we like had to rein that back in. But yeah, we definitely brought everybody back into the shop. That's where we are now. Yeah.
Kurt (25:50.571)
Right.
Kurt (26:06.198)
And you've got, you address some interpersonal issues with having initially hired friends, people you knew, but you also work in this business with your spouse. Has that ever been challenging?
Mike Yarbrough (26:25.901)
Definitely challenging, but so we got married, we met at 16 in high school, we got married at 18. And so by the time we're starting this business, we've been married for almost 25 years or something, right? And so we weren't in a great place, like marriage-wise, we actually went through some things while we were business owners that helped us become really, really great spouses now. Our marriage is great. But early on, we're still trying to, even after all those years of marriage, we're still trying to figure each other out.
And she has skills that I don't have, they were very different personality wise. I have skills that she doesn't have, but at the end of the day, we're both very creative. And so we would have a really strong creative input on a project or what we should do next. And so that would cause some tension, but we would also find both of ourselves, especially her, more in non-creative roles that are kind of draining. So if you're naturally a creative and you get put into like doing finances or HR stuff, that could just exhaust you, right? And so...
trying to find ways to put other people in those places as well so we could stay focused on the creative stuff, marketing and new product creation, stuff like that was good. But yeah, definitely challenging. But one of the things that I found out just about our marriage that applies to business as well was that if you look at like, it doesn't matter if it's like the Chinese, like a horse shouldn't marry a snake or whatever the things, or if you look at like zodiac symbols, or if you look at like the personality types like.
Kurt (27:49.515)
of the zodiac symbols.
Mike Yarbrough (27:53.909)
we should never get married. Nobody would ever suggest this. Like if we were on match.com, they'd be like, she goes in a different category, he goes over here, right? But then I found something that said, if these two people get married and they actually figure it out, they will actually become really, really awesome because they have to adapt to such a different personality in their life than how they see the world. And that's what we've done. And I have no doubt that those differences really helped our marriage, but also helped our business.
in a lot of ways that I couldn't have predicted.
Kurt (28:26.946)
How do you maintain that open and honest communication?
Mike Yarbrough (28:32.441)
Oh, that's a good question.
Mike Yarbrough (28:38.813)
I think that this is just some good tactics, asking questions instead of making statements. So instead of like, you did this and I didn't like it, asking questions sort of like, you could even ask a question to get feedback. I have some thoughts to share. You cool with that right now? Right? Right, you're just checking the timing of things. Or I kind of felt like this was going on. What's your perspective on that? Right, so kind of softening it up a little bit.
But we're both very transparent. Our challenge is not actually being transparent. Our challenge is being too rough with how we present our perspectives. You know? So, and I think other couples would have the opposite challenge. They would have the issue where it's like, they feel something, but they don't want to bring it up with their spouse because they don't want to start a fight or, you know, they're more avoidant of that. We're the opposite. We actually would bring it up. We just wouldn't do it with the proper amount of tact.
and then the other person will take it the wrong way and we would be like, why are you mad at me? I'm just, you know, you wanted me to be honest. So yeah, I think you just gotta have good communication. You know, you gotta have that existing in your marriage if it's gonna happen in your business, you know, and you've gotta model that with everybody else too.
Kurt (29:52.47)
Yeah, I think that open and honest communication is the cornerstone that's critical. I figured that out early, luckily. But with that, radical honesty can also come across as, you're being mean, right? Like, yeah, I appreciate the feedback, but you're a dick, bro. That can happen. So you need to, it's not like a free pass. You need to be kind and respectful and knowing of what...
Mike Yarbrough (30:07.714)
Yep.
Mike Yarbrough (30:11.803)
Yeah.
Kurt (30:22.866)
what issues or sensitivities your spouse or business partner may have, because they're very similar. A business partnership being a sexless marriage, but in your case, it's also your marriage.
Mike Yarbrough (30:36.405)
Yeah. And the challenge is, you know, we bring everything home. And so, you know, whatever's going on at work, there's some thoughts that are still spinning in our head when we get home and inevitably we would end up talking about it, you know, during dinner or in the morning before we go to work. It was just always work, work. So we had to have zones where it's like, if we're in, you know, in our bedroom, we don't talk about work. You know, if we're in, you know, if we're actually sitting down for a meal, we don't talk about work and we would have to hold each other accountable to that, which is kind of tough.
because one of us would sort of like enter our way into it, like something that didn't sound like it started with work, but it would eventually lead into that conversation and we'd have to cut each other off. So just setting those boundaries was really key. And we kind of learned that maybe about two years or so into it, but we've had to try to like work on that constantly over the years.
Kurt (31:25.202)
like that idea of like there are physical boundaries in which business cannot be discussed. And you have to have, I think it's important to have those hard rules. Even if to someone from the outside looking in, it's like, oh, that seems arbitrary. It's really not like there's an interpersonal reason for it. We don't discuss new business until the next quarter.
Mike Yarbrough (31:29.909)
Yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (31:46.806)
I heard some-
That's right. I heard somebody say this is really good advice and it seems extreme, but it's key, is that business owners, a husband and wife business owners should take a vacation at least once, one week in a month, and if, and they, and probably two weeks a quarter, right? And then like, you know, a little bit longer than that once per year. And then basically just that time away is so important because you're just so enamored with it while you're in your house or you're close to your business.
You just, you're constantly thinking about it. You gotta have that away time to create space and margin, even just to come up with new ideas, much less just refresh. But it's really key. That's, you know, that seems like a lot probably for some people because you're thinking, I can't take that much time away from work. It also helps you test your business out to see if it actually can function without you for a period of time. And you do that in small spurts. And that helps you to kind of know where the holes are and where you're really not needed. And there's a lot of times, there's a place, a lot of times as business owners, we think we're needed a lot more than we are.
And if you have good people in place, you can be gone for a weekend, a week, two weeks, and things still keep running, and that's what you want.
Kurt (32:56.022)
I love that advice. I mean, I'm not disappearing every weekend. But yeah, getting out of your business could be quite helpful and illuminating. I want to talk tools. Alright, so number one, you've been on Shopify a long time. And so I'm always curious about people who've been on it a while. Years ago, why choose Shopify?
Mike Yarbrough (33:08.792)
Okay.
Mike Yarbrough (33:19.433)
When I first started looking Shopify and I think like big commerce or something like that, there was another one there. There were like two other possible contenders and Shopify just like kind of barely edged them out at that time. Um, remember this is like six, it's like seven, almost eight years ago. So, uh, since then it's, it's like Shopify just keeps making awesome updates. And, uh, and if you've ever used this, the system is like so simple. Um,
The integrations are great, the support is fantastic. So I got nothing but positive things to say about Shopify. This is after being on it for so many years. Usually I would have some negative things to say at this point. I'd be like, yeah, but they kind of suck at this or this or this. I really don't have anything negative. And some of that has to do with the fact that as a developer, I can fully take advantage of things that Shopify might not do in-house or natively, or there's not an app for that really meets our needs. I can just kind of make that. But even that experience has been really good.
So the ability to just extend it has been great.
Kurt (34:18.176)
Well...
some of those developer skills? Are we talking Zapier flows, Zaps, custom API, you're running your own third-party app, what are we doing?
Mike Yarbrough (34:26.391)
Yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (34:33.289)
Yeah, so we do a lot of stuff with Zapier, and I don't know either. They're called Zaps, but Zapier, I don't know, like rapier, like a sword, I don't know. Yeah, so I don't know. Yeah, maybe, I don't know. I don't even know if they even say it. I need to watch some of their videos and be like, how do you guys pronounce it? They probably just avoid it altogether. Anyhow, but we use that. So let's say, for example, for us, an order comes in, somebody buys two rings in an order.
Kurt (34:36.414)
I'm never sure.
Kurt (34:41.47)
Yeah, cause it's written like rapier, so I'm like, Zapier.
Mike Yarbrough (34:59.781)
We want an easy way to be able to track all the little details of that order. When are they getting married? What kind of size ring do they need? Have they even been sized yet? There's a whole process flow that we have to kind of track. We can't really do that in Shopify. It's like Shopify is good about getting the order. But at that point, it's like, you know, you could print it out maybe, but it's not really in little details like you would want even in the reports. So all that stuff actually goes into Zapier just as a, you know, a just kind of gets shot over from Shopify.
We've got some script that we run. And then that goes into Airtable with all of these little details. And then from there, we can print it out into like little stickies, kind of like if you order a burger and fries or something at a restaurant, you know, we just keep it simple. It's like, oh, here's what they want. Oh, they don't want tomato on this one, okay. And then the crafter can go and grab that and know exactly what to make. But then we've got all that data as well that tells us, here's where they are in the flow, here's where they are in the process. And then there's a lot of triggers that we do just for customer experience.
If I'm a crafter and I go and I say, I'm gonna make your order, I'm gonna make Kurt's ring today, I mark that in Airtable, you're gonna get an email with my picture in my bio that says, Mike just started working on your ring. And so like there's that, you know, that little, that connection, right? You're gonna learn a little bit about me and you just put a face to the person who's actually doing the work. But we automate all of that stuff. And so, yeah, Shopify is fantastic at that. But it does take custom development, but it's not like...
is not ultra, ultra difficult.
Kurt (36:32.903)
I'm looking at a ring now and yeah, it's got custom options. So it's like, you know, what inlay metal, what offset metal do you want? Do you want to add engraving? And so they place the order. I assume that's written into line item properties on the order. Zapier then is able to parse that and post it into Airtable, which is fancy spreadsheets, and then from Airtable, you essentially make a pick ticket for it.
Mike Yarbrough (36:34.346)
Okay.
Mike Yarbrough (36:46.485)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mike Yarbrough (36:53.908)
Yep.
Mike Yarbrough (36:57.561)
Mm-hmm, yeah. You said that so much more eloquently than I could. That was awesome. I didn't even know you were familiar with all this stuff like that, so that's good. But that's exactly how it works, yeah. Yeah.
Kurt (36:59.342)
That's pretty cool.
Kurt (37:06.179)
Oh, of course. I love my toys. What, how do you deal with the nightmare of sizing?
Mike Yarbrough (37:19.437)
You cut out a little bit there.
Kurt (37:20.886)
Oh, sorry. How do you deal with the nightmare of ring sizing? I don't, I wear a ring that fits, but off the top of my head there's no way I know my ring size.
Mike Yarbrough (37:26.296)
Oh yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (37:29.909)
Here's the craziest thing. You would think that there are universal, here's what a size nine ring should be. The inside of it should be so many millimeters. But when you go to a jeweler, there's not really a guaranteed, we all use the exact same sizing kit for everybody across the board. So you might go to a jeweler, get sized, and it's wrong compared to how we size things, or if I go to a different jeweler, right? There's also stuff that's a nightmare. Some guy will get sized.
three months before his wedding, and then he drops all this weight for the wedding, and then now the ring doesn't fit, and it falls off and he goes on the honeymoon in the ocean or something like that, right? So there's some of those things that happen. What we do, what we found that works the best is we actually have custom ring sizers that we create, the 3D printed just for us, and we just send those out to customers. So like you said, most guys don't even know what size, they don't even know what hand to put the ring on, right? They're like, I don't know. So they have to figure all that stuff out. So we just send them a sizing kit and say, hey,
You try this on, if it fits, great. That's the size that you are, we'll guarantee it. And so if in the rare case, I mean, it's very rare now, somebody gets sized with one of our sizers and something happens, it doesn't fit, we just say, hey, we'll take care of you. We'll fix that for you. Make a new ring or resize it if we can. So that's the best thing. Yeah.
Kurt (38:46.722)
So yeah, there's a thing on here. It's like ring size and width and the default option is I have not used your ring sizer And then when I do that, it's like alright. Well, what's your hand size small medium large? I don't know medium
Mike Yarbrough (38:58.261)
Yeah. Yeah, right. That's usually most guys are like, well, I don't know. I've never.
Kurt (39:02.782)
We'll go in the middle. I mean, I wear them in mechanics gloves. I wear a size medium. So I know that's, I'm gonna go by that. And then, so once I edit to cart, you just mail me the ring sizer and then follow up on like, Hey, what's your size?
Mike Yarbrough (39:08.086)
Yeah. Boom.
Mike Yarbrough (39:16.545)
Yep, so what happens is you'll get an automated email that says, hey, we shipped you a Sizer. Once you've tried it on for 48 hours, click this link and just update your size. You just do it yourself. So you can choose, you might even decide then, like I don't really want a size, an eight millimeter wide ring because that's a little bit too wide for me. Maybe I want a seven or a six and you can make those choices then and just update it.
Kurt (39:41.206)
And I'm attempting this now, so I've set my date needed. This ring is not for a special event. Add to cart.
Mike Yarbrough (39:43.383)
Oh yeah.
Mike Yarbrough (39:48.693)
Yeah. But even like what you're seeing, yeah, so what you're seeing there on the page where it's like Shopify gives you those variants, like what kind of gold do you want or what kind of, some of those things we can add in that's just part of Shopify. But all those little details like what's your event date, what's your hand size, all that kind of stuff, we had to do that sort of, Shopify allows us to do that, which is nice. But we had to kind of add that stuff in to make it specific for us. And
Kurt (39:51.006)
Oh yeah, it's line item properties.
Mike Yarbrough (40:18.201)
because we have so much customization that we do.
Kurt (40:20.598)
Alright, I'm about to make you thousands of dollars. I... I hit add to cart, and then it opened to drawer cart. I went to checkout. No one ever styled the checkout. This, I swear, this is in at least half of stores. Regardless of size. There's... Yeah, it's just plain text, rustic and made. No logo. Fonts don't match. Colors aren't set. Go. Brutal. That's, I... I feel like it's the majority of folks.
Mike Yarbrough (40:22.869)
Oh sweet, I like this.
Mike Yarbrough (40:33.481)
Oh, the it's just a plain old regular checkout.
Mike Yarbrough (40:40.545)
Oh, there's no logo. Okay.
That's on me. I will do that.
Kurt (40:49.43)
The poor checkout always gets forgotten.
Mike Yarbrough (40:49.657)
Okay, so, all right, so this will be interesting. So I'll make this change, I'll super style it so it looks like ultra branded, right? And then if we get a bump, I'll shoot you like some kind of, I don't know, I'll do a shout out for you of some kind to say, hey, this actually helped conversions considerably. I'll let you know.
Kurt (41:07.198)
I appreciate it. The... And I see you've got like a wishlist app going on here. Alright, favorite app. What do you got?
Mike Yarbrough (41:13.385)
Oh, favorite app, that's good. Honestly, something really simple like a bulk price updater is key for us because gold prices change. So if we're buying gold, I think it's gone up like 15% in about last year. So if we were like, okay, we need to increase the prices on all of our rings, that's a kind of a pain in the butt process, to be honest. That's one of the things actually I wish Shopify did differently because you have to say, if my base price of the ring increases,
Kurt (41:23.926)
Of course.
Mike Yarbrough (41:42.765)
then all of my variants also have to increase by that same amount, right? And you can't just say like, update the base price and then it all just magically happens. But if you have a bulk price update, or you can say like, I'm gonna go increase everything by 20%. So simple apps like that are really great. We also have some customization apps that are really nice. I don't know the names of them, honestly. They're kind of, they seem somewhat generically named. But just like utility tools are great. Like I just love that kind of stuff.
Kurt (42:11.882)
Yeah. Me too.
Mike Yarbrough (42:12.589)
where you're just like, I need to do something in mass. This ought to exist probably within the app, but it doesn't, you know, that kind of stuff.
Kurt (42:20.438)
Those are the things that make me feel like a power user. They call people who are like developer types, who are really good and you just are typing in a computer all day, power user. Anytime I get like a bulk operation to work via Matrixify or whatever, I'm like, yes, I am a computing god.
Mike Yarbrough (42:39.073)
Yeah. There are apps that we use more frequently like Yacht Po or something, right? But it just kind of lives there. We don't really do stuff with it. It's just sort of there. It's critical, but we don't really, we don't think about it. But yes, it's just those that we're like, this is gonna take me a week to do this. And then you're like, oh wait, I could just use this app. And you do it in an hour or two, that's a win for me.
Kurt (42:49.738)
Yeah. Yeah, set it and forget it.
Kurt (43:05.034)
Alright, I want to know, briefly, what is a typical workday for you look like? What's a day in the life at Rustic and Maine?
Mike Yarbrough (43:19.641)
Okay, for me or just like for other people? Oh, for me? It looks a lot different now than it used to. So I typically will do, so we use a system called 90, and I like 90, like the number 90. That's from EOS, that's an entrepreneurial operating system. Other entrepreneurs have probably heard about this, but basically it allows us to kind of say, what are our priority things that we need to accomplish and get done week to week?
Kurt (43:22.295)
for you.
Mike Yarbrough (43:49.065)
So I've always got a list of things that I need to get done. Most of them are technical. So a day for me would look like waking up looking at 90 and going, okay, here's the stuff that I agreed to get done. Here's a couple of technical changes on the website. Here's some, you know, I need to call somebody about maybe like, um, uh, sourcing new wood from some historic place. So I'm just kind of going through that list and just kind of knocking off whatever I think I can get done. Also keeping in touch with my team through Slack and just, you know, uh, talking to them about whatever is going on. Like, uh,
Sometimes we'll have a supplier that's like, they're behind on something that we need, like boxes to ship out or something like that. So we're finding alternatives or just kind of fixing stuff like that. And then twice a week, we have a meeting. So we have about, I have about three meetings that I attend a week. That said, they're usually pretty short. And so we have a pretty strong meeting structure that just keeps things on track and just really, really short and efficient, I guess I would say. And so work with the marketing team quite a bit.
I do a lot of reviewing of other people's stuff. So like if we're getting ready to launch, like I said, engagement rings, we're currently taking pictures of those. So I'm looking at the pictures and going, yes, I like this one, not that one. Oh, more like this. Can we add some of these things, right? So it's a lot of management and just decision-making for the most part. And I haven't made a ring in a few years now, actually. I'll come up with the designs. Yeah, but I haven't actually. Sometimes I occasionally think about like,
Kurt (45:12.178)
Oh no! Do you miss it?
Mike Yarbrough (45:17.037)
I'll go out there and just make one for myself. And then I just think about how embarrassingly slow it will be for me. Compared to the other guys out there who are just cranking them out day after day. So I haven't done it in so long, but usually I'll just come up with an idea now and I'm like, you guys are gonna make this look twice as good as anything I can come up with. So, because they've got the hours, they've put in the work, they've got the hours into it now and they just make such beautiful products.
Kurt (45:48.054)
The... All right. We've got... We went a little long. So we're at the end here. What's your one piece of advice for someone's listening, they're earlier in the career, first 12 months of their Shopify business. What do you want them to know?
Mike Yarbrough (45:54.21)
Okay.
Mike Yarbrough (46:08.077)
So here's what I would say. You need to see and really believe in the future value of your business. And you need to hire people and structure your business based upon that future, what you believe it's going to be. So I'll give you an example. If I thought, well, we're just making a couple of rings in our garage and it's not really anything important. And who's even gonna work for me anyhow, right? We don't even know if this is gonna last. If I had that sort of mindset, the people that we would have brought on early.
would not have been the same quality as the people that we actually decided to hire. Because we were thinking, man, this business is taking off and it's going to be a multimillion dollar business in the next two years. This thing is going to just explode. We know it. And we could see the culture and we could see, we had a vision for the kind of business that we wanted to have. And so early on, we just had that belief. And so we hired people based upon those premises. And we said our culture and our...
our core principles and ideals all around that. And I think so many business owners, they just undervalue themselves and they actually kind of kick their own feet out from under them early on because they don't really see the true potential in their business. But if you start with that mindset of like, I'm actually building something that I wanna be proud of, I'm making a legacy here, from the very beginning, then that's gonna change who you hire day one. And that's also gonna reduce the number of problems that you have day one.
and it's gonna set that culture off on a really good footing. I think that's key. And so don't undervalue what you're creating.
Kurt (47:42.858)
I love that advice. What, give me one fun fact about the jewelry business or rings that would surprise me.
Mike Yarbrough (47:50.637)
Hm. Oh, about rings. Let's see here. So I already mentioned the sizing thing. There's not really a universal size, which is kind of weird.
Mike Yarbrough (48:02.521)
That's a good question. So here's the thing, if you were to come into our shop, it would look more like a wood shop. You would feel like you're coming into some kind of interesting crafter space, rather than a traditional jewelry space where there's a bench jeweler and he's got a bunch of little gold nuggets and things that he's working with. And I think that if I had started off as a traditional jeweler, I don't think we would be where we are, because the fact that I started off as just sort of a woodworker and tinkerer,
kind of influenced everything that we do. And so I don't know if, I don't know if this is really interesting. It's interesting for us is just that people are amazed when they come in and they see how we work. We're just a small operation. And we work in sort of not a microcosm, but we just work on small individual canvases. And so that just changes up how we do everything, how we think about everything is on a small scale and very modular, very mobile. And yeah, and so that's.
But I would just say if you're entering into a space that already exists, an industry that already exists like jewelry, you can easily disrupt that space in a good way by just bringing your own unique experience to it and kind of ignoring how things have been done in the past.
Kurt (49:15.41)
I like that advice as well. Alright, if I wanted to ring or to learn more about you, where do I go?
Mike Yarbrough (49:21.081)
You're gonna head over to rusticandmain.com. That's main like Main Street. So the idea is like you're sort of rustic living, you got chickens and goats and stuff like that. And then you just sort of got this main street where you can get your latte and dress up a little bit nicer. So that's sort of the idea rustic and main. And we try to bring those elements together. Rusticandmain.com.
Kurt (49:40.651)
I will include it in the show notes, but Rustic and Maine, just check it out even just to see their photography. It is so gorgeous. Mike Yarbrough, Rustic and Maine, rusticmane.com. Thank you so much.
Mike Yarbrough (49:51.885)
Thank you, Kurt. This is awesome.