Epic Entrepreneurs

Crafting Purpose Through Furniture: The Journey of Jeremy French

• Bill Gilliland

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Jeremy French, founder of Making Whole, takes us on a profound journey through the intersection of craftsmanship, recovery, and entrepreneurship. What began as his personal battle with addiction in the 1990s evolved into a mission to create an apprenticeship program where recovering addicts build custom furniture—not just as a vocational skill, but as a metaphor for rebuilding their lives.

The conversation delves into the psychology of recovery, revealing how complex problem-solving in woodworking mirrors the challenges of navigating life after addiction. "If you don't believe that it's possible, then you're not looking for it," Jeremy explains, highlighting how belief becomes the foundation for transformation. His apprentices learn that each custom project presents unique obstacles requiring creative solutions—exactly the toolkit needed for sustained recovery.

What sets this discussion apart is Jeremy's candid assessment of the business challenges in the addiction recovery space. He shares eye-opening insights about misidentifying his customer base, navigating the expensive and competitive world of addiction treatment marketing, and the paradox of selling a service that requires suffering before flourishing. 

Beyond the practical aspects of his business model, Jeremy articulates a compelling philosophy about integration—bringing together personal experience and professional purpose to create meaningful work. His approach challenges conventional recovery models by focusing on capability-building rather than merely abstaining from substances. Join us for this thought-provoking exploration of how crafting furniture becomes a pathway to crafting whole lives.

Don't miss the upcoming Asheville Business Summit where Jeremy will be speaking about "The Business of Flourishing." Connect with him and other community members for conversations that go beyond superficial soundbites and explore the genuine intersection of business success and personal transformation.

Get in touch with Jeremy: jeremy@makingwhole.com

https://makingwhole.com/

Thanks for Listening. You may contact me or our team at https://billgilliland.biz/

All the best!
Bill

Thanks for listening. Please hit the subscribe button, leave us a 5 star review, and share this podcast. You can reach me at williamgilliland@actioncoach.com or at https://billgilliland.biz/

All the best!

Bill

Bill Gilliland:

Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I'm Bill Gilliland, your host. I am the principal of Action Coach, Business Growth Partners and one of the founders of the Asheville Business Summit. Speaking of the summit, it's coming up in a week and a half or so from when we're recording this podcast, so it is time to get your tickets. All you need to do is go out to wncsummitcom. You can follow the prompts from there. We want to see you there. It's going to be an amazing event and today I've got one of our participants in the summit he's helping us out. It's Jeremy from Making it Whole. So welcome to the podcast, Jeremy. Tell us a little bit about you and your business.

Jeremy French:

All right, thanks, bill. I'm looking forward to the summit. I'm going to be speaking there. The title of the talk is Business of Flourishing, and it's a reflection of the work that I'm trying to do. What Making Whole is is it's an apprenticeship program for recovering drug addicts, and we teach them how to build furniture and basically use that as a platform to teach not just the hard skills but the soft skills of existing in the world as a recovering drug addict, and we're using furniture as a way to create the problems and opportunities to learn and grow. And this journey that we've been doing this since 2018, my personal journey with this started in the 90s, and so the talk is going to be a reflection of what I've learned here.

Bill Gilliland:

That is awesome, and it's awesome what you're doing and making a real difference in the world and saving lives. So yeah, but there's a lot to be learned from you know from this. So tell us, how'd you get into this in the first place? You said you've been doing it since the 90s.

Jeremy French:

I got sober because I've got this allergic reaction to both drugs and alcohol that anytime I use either one of them, um, I break out in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, and so you do that enough times and, um, it's time for it's time to do something different, and so that started for me in 1995, and I just carried on about my life from that point until 2015, when I just kept having friends of mine dying and I started to ask the question is there anything that can be done that's reliable to keep people out of the grave when it comes to addiction? And while there are a lot of places and modalities to treat addiction, at the time that I had a lot of people who were really close to me and I was asking the question where could they go where they could receive the kind of help that I knew would be beneficial to them? I couldn't find a good option, and so I started asking the question in 2015, what do people need and how do people get better? And so, as I started to ask that question and just started to consider my own personal journey and the people that I had known, the people that I had known that had gotten better, there were some common denominators in those people, were some common denominators in those people. One of them was that there's always a story of somebody at the beginning, a mentor, a coach or somebody that was important to them.

Jeremy French:

The other part of that story is that these are all people, the people that I know, that I really value the lives that they have are all people who had either a profession or a hobby that presented them with complicated problems every day, and it was something they were passionate about and, in kind of engaging that work or that play that they were doing, they learned how to negotiate with complicated problems, and that's what life is. It's what life is for people that are faced with addiction. It's just always a new set of problems. And so when you're talking about how do you, how do you, equip somebody to go be successful in the world this is also the case of being a parent you know you can write a script on what you believe the best possible outcome is and what you hope for, and then life deals you a different hand. You know the same is true with. Life deals you a different hand.

Jeremy French:

You know the same is true with addiction, as you're going to get dealt, the hand you're dealt, there's no certainty of what that's going to look like, and so the question is a provider is what? What do I want to equip somebody with? What tools do I want to equip them with so that, whatever it is that's delivered to them, they're going to be able to negotiate that and navigate through those processes? And so this place was built on. Basically, how can I create an environment where people want to be there, where there's a lot of ancillary benefits from being there, but it's also something that continually engages people in complicated problems and provides them the tools to learn how to solve those problems, and that's what building custom furniture and architectural fittings like we do provides. You know, everything we do is different. It's custom work and with custom work means there's new problems all the time. It provides us an opportunity to show people how to solve problems.

Bill Gilliland:

So I love that and I want to understand. I think that makes sense. I mean, if you have something, that if you understand how to solve problems, then you can understand how to solve problems in your own life. And yeah, you can't do this world by yourself.

Bill Gilliland:

That's why they are mentors and coaches yeah, that's why I have, that's why I tell everybody, that's why I tell everybody in our business you can't do this stuff by yourself. That's why I have coaches and that's why I am a coach, that's why I have a job, because you, you can't, you can't do it by yourself. So, um, so the business of flourishing, that's, that's the next, that's so there's a first step of sort of getting into, you know, into survival and becoming okay, and then we're talking about. You know, I, I think flourishing sounds like climbing a mountain. So, uh, yeah. So I mean, I've got a model called be epic. That kind of goes through that, where you, you know somebody's going to fall into a hole, then they're in survival mode. You survive, you get out, you're only back to okay, some people think they've done something, but then you've got to go to flourishing. So talk about that. I mean, obviously you're taking the lessons of what you've learned, and I mean because what we want is people to actually flourish.

Jeremy French:

And I mean cause, cause. What we want is people to actually flourish. Yeah, it's a, I guess. For me, what? What the creative process is is a methodology to answer a question. It's a, it's a. It's a lot like science and the process, the scientific process and the differences that creativity doesn't require proof in the same way that science does, and the difference is that creativity doesn't require proof in the same way that science does. And so this begins with asking a set of questions and then arrive and it answers that answer those questions.

Jeremy French:

And so I think one of the big misconceptions for addiction is that is that that you get sober and you just survive. The reason why it feels that way and I think that that's probably common for a lot of people is that what's happened when you get sober is you basically give up the only tool that you know works, and so, for me, what I experienced when I was drinking or getting high is that all my problems got solved every time I did it, and so, whatever those problems, my brain does what brains do, which you know. If your brain solves a problem a couple of times the same way, it just goes into a part of our brain that operates without our consent, because it works right. You know, if you touch something hot, you pull away. Your brain doesn't need to tell you. You don't have to go to a cognitive process to pull your hand away. Our brain does that for us, and so for me. That was a solution to a lot of the different problems that I interfaced with in life, and the reason why it was really difficult to get sober is that I gave up that solution. What I've experienced with people who get sober is that if they arrive in a new solution to a problem, there's not a lot of time between suffering and flourishing.

Jeremy French:

The challenge is how do you help them find that solution and how do you help them believe there's a solution? So you know, if you don't believe that it's possible, then you're not looking for it. You're not asking the questions about where it exists. And even if you are asking the questions, do you have a process for asking questions that reliably produces results right? And so what making something here provides us is the steps to ask a question and find solutions, and most of those questions and solutions are objective, because we're creating an object. It's not subjective, it's not complicated. You know we want to build something that looks in a certain way, and so we have this opportunity to, you know, almost metaphorically, learn how to ask a question and get an answer, and so, when it comes to life, it's a lot easier to do that. It's a lot easier to believe through the journey.

Jeremy French:

So you talk about climbing a mountain or digging out of a hole. A huge part of that is the belief that there's something on the other side. You know any story you hear about somebody coming out of the darkness. It's a big story about. You know, the faith is a word that would be used in that belief. You know, do I believe that there's something worth fighting for? Do I believe that there's something worth, you know, digging through this swamp to get to the other side? Because if I don't believe it, I'm going to give up, right?

Jeremy French:

Yeah, no, I love that you know, flourishing is right at our fingertips and the hurdles that exist to flourish exist within us, and I've witnessed people who seemed like they had an insurmountable task very rapidly become people that exist in the world and flourish. They've become themselves. They exist successfully and wholly um, and the difference is that they have a way to navigate life um a toolkit, and they believe in it yeah, I like that, I like that.

Bill Gilliland:

So. So it seems to me that what I mean, what you said, is that what worked for you was, you know, drinking, and that was that was trained the brain one way. So part of this is what comes first. Is the belief come first or retraining the brain?

Jeremy French:

I don't know chicken or an egg, right, it could be either it could be either Okay, I'll tell you that, in the terms of language, you know, we start talking about belief and everybody's ideas about religion pop in really quick. So there's a hurdle to believe, just to get through the language of like, what does that even mean? You know, um. So I think a lot of people suffer to believe, struggle to get to the point where they where belief doesn't immediately turn them off, whether we're talking about, um, the spiritual realm or not, you know, just believing that things can be okay.

Jeremy French:

If you've got no experience of things being okay, it's tough to believe that now things are going to be okay, particularly when the journey between suffering and flourishing is not enjoyable. It's not a fun journey for anybody. I don't care if you're what the hurdle is you're overcoming. I'm sure you come across this with entrepreneurs. There's a lot of difficulty to create a successful business. A lot of it's not fun, you know, and the people that succeed in that are often people that have a deep seated belief. But if you're not sure it's going to work, there's a lot of suffering. And so how do you, how do you opt to suffer if you're not sure there's something worth it on the other side?

Bill Gilliland:

Right, a ton of sense because, I mean, I've always said that that, you know, no growth happens in a comfort zone. True story. So yeah, so you've got to be uncomfortable, you've got to, you've got to make yourself uncomfortable to grow, as, whether it's whether it's a business, a person and a person, businesses are people. So, essentially now, to make yourself uncomfortable, you got to want it pretty bad and you got to believe and you got to believe. So you've got to have both. You got to have enough dissatisfaction and enough vision Plus you got to believe it's possible satisfaction and enough vision Plus you got to believe it's possible. And what I'm hearing you is then you got to have the first steps, which basically is the tools to be able to have a plan to get what, what you, what you believe, what you now believe is possible.

Jeremy French:

Right, right.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah.

Jeremy French:

And where do those tools come from? And that's, that's ultimately um. I set out to create a business where those tools would exist regardless of who walks in the doors. And you know, from a business standpoint, that's the business I'm in is trying to figure out what tools does any given person that walk in here need so that, at the point that they're ready to quit suffering and they believe that there's a possibility, so, a coming in here, hopefully that generates a sense of belief. And B once you have that belief, there's a toolkit that's available to you if you're willing to do some simple work.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, we found that in growing businesses that the easiest way to grow a business is to grow the business owner. So, yeah, because if the business, you know, if there's a level of business, they're running up against the owner. So as the business owner grows, then the business grows. It's the same thing. It's the same thing with what you're doing. They've got to grow into it and that's, and you know, like you said, that's not comfortable.

Jeremy French:

Right.

Bill Gilliland:

So that's, yeah, that's pretty interesting. So so what I mean you've now you've done this for a while what? What have you learned, like, and and maybe what would what would you do? What would you do differently? Give us a couple of learnings and what you might might do differently.

Jeremy French:

Yeah, as a business, as a business um, this is a tough business to be in because of the language, you know. I uh the work that I did prior to doing this work I had a a bit. The business owner that I worked for I have a tremendous amount of respect for, and one of the things he taught me is that you know. He came to me I was running a division of his company and he said look, jeremy, I don't want you to go actively sell anything to anybody. What I want you to do is I want you to go solve our customers problems and trust the process. And so, in what that job afforded me, the opportunity to do was travel around the world and work with companies, and those companies were, you know, little mom and pop startups in a garage all the way up to Kohler and you know fortune 500 companies. And so in hearing that from him early on, I was always kind of tuned into does this business that I'm helping? Do they do that? And one of the things I discovered is that everybody that understood their customers and the problems their customers had, their needs and then provided a solution to those needs, all those companies, the people that were focused on that, were successful Right, and so one of the things I knew about this place when I started it is that I had a studio for years here in Asheville and people would come work for me, a lot of people who were new to recover. We would come work for me and every year somebody comes back to me and says, man, working in your shop is what changed my life, and they would explain what happened to them. And so I knew that the work that I was coming to do here would work. I knew that. I knew that it would solve these guys' problems because I had people telling me that consistently. That was a consistent message I got.

Jeremy French:

So when I came here I thought, well, that's, you know, my biggest hurdle is solved, and I know who my customers are and I know what their needs are and I can solve their problems. And what I found, and what I still suffer with a lot, is that somewhere in that equation I got the customer or their needs wrong. And so when we think about the who is your customer? You would think that the apprentices here are the customer, but those aren't necessarily the people that decide to come here and decide to pay for this work. So that's a different decision maker and to an extent, that decision maker is actually the customer in this scenario, and so that's one aspect that I got wrong is who my customer was in in that particular equation. The other thing that I didn't, that I miscalculated, is a belief about what the problem is Right, and so I thought the problem is that these people aren't getting better. But the problem goes is way different than that, and the people who ultimately make the decisions about an apprentice coming here is a pretty wide group of people, and so I got those things wrong and, as a result, the business struggled to grow and continues to struggle in ways around.

Jeremy French:

That is, identifying who is the actual customer, who's the decision maker that purchases this service and what are their needs, and that is very different than from the work that I'm doing here. It's two totally separate things, and I'd never seen that in a business, and I still don't know that. I fully appreciate how to navigate that, and one of the reasons why it's complicated is that this is people's health. It's wildly subjective. There are a lot of cultural stories and mythologies about what addiction is and what growth is and what sobriety is, and everybody's ideas of that are really different, and so, right out of the gate.

Jeremy French:

We're not talking about a hammer Right that drives nails that you can put a lot of statistics to. We're talking about something that's very different, difficult to develop metrics for, very difficult to communicate what the value proposition is when everybody internally interprets that information differently. So it's a lot more complicated than I realized it. Also, one of the things I discovered about my business when I was doing the preliminary research to start the business and doing a business plan is that you know google, every word that exists in google, it has a dollar amount attached to it yep and so there's.

Jeremy French:

Most words are worth 25 cents a click, something in that range. You and expensive words are two or three bucks a click. Um. The top 10 most expensive words in Google when I started this business were related to addiction treatment.

Jeremy French:

And one of the things that may and we're talking about $50 a click, we're talking about huge money, and so what that? What that unveils for you is is a snapshot into the industry, and so what you have is a bunch of first time consumers. People that show up looking for help with addiction have never done it before. This is not a cultural conversation that we have. Most people are very secretive, whether it's because of shame or uncertainty or whatever. That we have. Most people are very secretive, whether it's because of shame or uncertainty or whatever. They don't discuss it with their friends.

Jeremy French:

So it is, by some metrics, the least informed consumers on the planet and the most competitive market space to get their attention, and what everybody that arrives at the marketplace with is a lot of hurt, and so, from a marketing standpoint, that's really simple. Right, people are hurting. Well, what you can do to solve their problem is make them feel better, right, and so the language and the value proposition that exists in the marketplace for this particular service has a lot to do with feeling better. The problem is the actual service that's going to help somebody get better. You mentioned is that you're going to suffer first, and so if you're honest about your value proposition. You lose that consumer on the front end If you have enough money to even get access to them to begin with.

Jeremy French:

So the kind of budgets that exist in marketing for people that are are after the eyes. That I'm after is is more monthly than my operating budget budget in some cases is annually, and so it's a. It's a very curious problem about how to market the truth and about how to market suffering, and I've not cracked the code. So I've tried a lot of things and I'm going to continue to try different things in hopes that something registers, but it's a. I will say that that it's a far more complicated equation than I, than I.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah it's super complicated, because who? Who buys the services in the first place?

Jeremy French:

Right.

Bill Gilliland:

And I mean there's a lot of, there's a lot of constituents there, and then it's and then, like you said, it's a it's a big industry that, from a business standpoint of view, it's a big problem. So it's a big industry trying to solve the problem and there are a lot of people throwing spaghetti at the wall and, you know, figuring out what actually works, which I do think. I do think what you, what you're doing, from what I know, is is crack, is cracking the code. So maybe part of the maybe part of the solution is, you know, this podcast and speaking and just letting the yeah, yeah.

Bill Gilliland:

You know, I mean we got to get the word out, right?

Jeremy French:

That you know what. What you know, I mean we got to get the word out right, you know what, what, yeah, what works?

Bill Gilliland:

So, um, yeah, I think it's. Uh, I do think that, cause you never know, right? I mean, I don't know how people show up at your door, you know, and, and you know it's probably a lot.

Bill Gilliland:

You know, it's probably 20, 30 ways that that, that people would you know, that people could you know? There's probably six big ones, but that's usually what I find. But there's probably 20 ways where people you know people show up and are serious about getting help. Somehow guess is, it's even more complicated because the person sometimes paying the bill is not the person who's being helped.

Jeremy French:

More often than not, and their set of problems are different than the people that I'm helping and they're my customers at the same time.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, I mean the people paying the bills. I mean it's another customer. It's a little bit like speaking. There's usually a like. You think you're speaking to the audience, they're one of your customers, but the other one is whoever's putting the event on.

Jeremy French:

The event manager is really, is really, is really your customer in the speaking world.

Bill Gilliland:

So um, yeah, no, I, uh, I like what you're doing. Tell us you know, tell us why you believe someone should come and attend the business summit.

Jeremy French:

You know. So this is what you're talking about.

Jeremy French:

I, I, uh, I'm a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell and the work he's done and what you just talked about. I believe in that. I believe that there's a tipping point, and I believe that the only way you can arrive at that tipping point is by um, getting your hands dirty and engaging the conversation, engaging community, engaging the questions that you have. And so the value of any gathering is that you don't know who's there and you don't know what's to be learned. But what I do know as an entrepreneur is that if you don't put yourself there, you miss what could be the tipping point. And so part of the reason you know, even before speaking, the value proposition of the summit is just connecting with community. Also, you know, I have all the high level problems that I interface with as a business owner and, prior to this, as a business employee, but I've also got a hundred other little problems that I don't. Some some I don't even know I have Right, and so part of growing as an individual, both as a business owner and as a person and that's part of what I'm talking about is just the integration between business owner and human being is that you learn things that you didn't even know you needed to learn. And I think the other thing right now is that the way information and hot topics are discussed is in little 30 second sound bites and, you know, social media reels, and it's becoming cheap and it's becoming less, less. Uh, it reaches the depth far less. So people talk about real big ideas and sum it up in 30 seconds and it feels great, but it doesn't actually get to the core of what it is Um growth actually means, and so what I value about a summit like this is that it's more longhand real talk and it's about real life and it's among humans, and that's becoming increasingly rare. So I think just the opportunity to come and engage with the community, see who's out there rare. So I think.

Jeremy French:

Just the opportunity to come and engage with the community, see who's out there, see who has different problems to me, see who has the same problems to me, see who's doing stuff that I'd never heard of, hear the speakers and get a sense of these very successful people and how what it is they want to share in front of their community.

Jeremy French:

I think that there's value in that. So I'm I'm really looking forward to it. I'm just mostly looking forward to um being with the people that are part of this community, seeing what, um, a year away from Helene, looks like on people's faces. You know, I think everybody's starting to feel a sense of that and I'm just curious, uh, what that looks like. I think it's going to look like a lot of different things and, just as a member of this community, I'm always curious to engage with the community in serious matters, and I consider business a serious matter where people are serious about being there. You know it's not just fun and games and I think you get insight into life in a different way when you're around people in that context, A hundred percent.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, I love that and I love what you said about it. You know, part of the goal of the summit is to expand, and you can't expand your, you can't grow yourself in 30 seconds sound bites, you just can't do it. You know they're cool and it's fun to watch and I'm just like everybody else. I mean I can watch the, you know those reels and videos and, you know, get a kick. I get that dopamine hit. But if you really, you know part of what we're about is giving people like real things, real results, real actionable steps that they can take when they leave and act, like you said. I mean I've been looking at the, the ticket sales, and I mean we have a wide variety of people that I know and a bunch that I don't know. So I'm really looking forward to getting to know, uh, those people that are part of our community. So i'm'm excited as well. So I'm very interested in how you're going to, you know this idea of flourishing.

Bill Gilliland:

I mean it is the same principles for business. I mean, if you're, you know it's. How do you go from good to flourishing you?

Jeremy French:

know, right, it's the same principles for business and for being a parent and being for somebody who's in. Like I got a wolf in my brain that's hungry and it's going to eat problems, or it's going to eat my brain, one or the other, and I had gotten to a point professionally where the problems that I was interfacing with weren't feeding that wolf. And so what this journey in my professional life looks like is this integration from what was the most personal thing for me, which is my own personal recovery from addiction and all the things that come with that in my professional life, and the question of how do I integrate these two things and where are the opportunities in that integration and where are the liabilities in that integration, and is it possible to have life and work integrate? And that's what we're going to talk about.

Bill Gilliland:

No, I love that. I love that because it's I mean, that's the reason we're working anyway. It's all personal, right? So, yeah, I mean the businesses your business should support your personal ambitions, goals, calling, whatever you want to call it. So, yeah, I love that, love that. Hey, look, thanks for being on here. I mean this is this is really um, enlightening and impressive, and I'm I can't wait to hear this, uh, this, this talk.

Jeremy French:

So yeah, I look forward to seeing you there, bill, and everybody else who's watching this. I look forward to meeting you all and I look forward to a good, old fashioned connection. That used to be really common in Asheville has become increasingly less common, and I think that's probably the thing I'm most excited about is just um having a place where the density of the community the Asheville community, which I've known for 20 something years um is all in the same place. That sounds really, it says a really interesting community, really widespread Um. I'm excited to see that.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, it's going to be fun, it's going to be great. Hey, remember, if you haven't already gotten your tickets, go to wncsummitcom. Get out there, get your tickets. You're going to want to hear what Jeremy has to say and the rest of the speakers. So, uh, can't wait to see you there. Hey, and until next time all.