Still building: Blanski left corporate America, never looked back

It’s been 22 years since Tim Blanski and Lisa Catton sold what had been their dream house in St. Paul, left their busy jobs and re-settled in Spring Grove, nearly three hours to the southeast and not far from both the Wisconsin and Iowa borders.

They went in search of a simpler life and found what they were looking for on a historic hobby farm there where they started The Granary Woodshops.

“Like a lot of people, we wrestled with more, more, more, faster, faster, faster at work and at home, for that matter,” says Blanski, who makes elegant, rustic furniture pieces out of recycled wood. “We just said ‘Let’s not do that.’ And we threw all that away, kind of crossing our fingers and hoping that, well, we’ll find our way.”

What’s the update?

It helped that they didn’t have kids and he wasn’t setting out to build a company that would require hiring employees. He just wanted to do enough projects to bring in some money and stay busy. He’s busy enough where he doesn’t have to market his wares regularly on the show circuit like he did early on, having built up a regular client base.

“That was fairly prescient at the time,” he says of his decision to work on antique, recycled or reclaimed wood. “That’s really kind of exploded and become a big deal.”

And he turns down orders when they don’t fit his interests. For example, he has been asked to make kitchen cabinets, or teak or hickory dining room tables.

“They weren’t building barns out of hickory, they weren’t building buildings out of hickory,” he says. “So, it just isn’t my wheelhouse. I prefer to stick with what I’m good at and I think that’s allowed me to focus.”

Lisa does finish work on some of his projects and maintains a small bookkeeping and tax prep client list.

“So, you can’t ask for much more than that,” he says. “You’ve got everything you need all under one roof.”

Never plans to stop

Blanski is in his early 60s and they have a lot of friends they keep in touch with from the Twin Cities. Many of them are talking about retirement, but uncertain of what to do after leaving the workforce. Blanski says that’s not a problem for him — he sees himself doing his woodworking through his entire life.

“I always hope to have some work to do,” he says. “It’s always work that is generating revenue, which is a good thing. We continue to pay the bills. We moved ourselves years ago to basically a debt-free environment. We own our home, we own the property. And so, our bills are low.”

One thing working alone did was shield the couple from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were no worries about going into work each day because he works alone in a building just across his driveway. 

“COVID almost didn’t even happen in our life because we just stayed here and live on the farm anyway,” he says. “There was no quarantine and all that other stuff.”

Lessons learned

One thing Blanski wishes he’d picked up on more quickly was sticking to his niche. At the beginning, he spent a lot of time making figurines and characters out of wood that he had to sell for $45 or $65. 

“You can’t make a living doing that,” he says, adding that it took a couple years of fine-tuning the model to realize he wasn’t pricing his larger pieces high enough and shouldn’t spend his time on those smaller items.

The inflexible work rules at the time also played a role in the move. One of the reasons Catton was willing to leave her job, Blanski says, was Catton’s desire to work from home for a day or so each week. As incredible as it sounds now, her request was denied. “She was looking for a day,” he says. “Well then, boom. One day everyone is at home and employers kind of all of a sudden discovered that it’s not actually impossible, and maybe a lot of people work better.”

Whiskey on the side

While he’s long committed to his woodwork, Blanski did get involved, if only briefly, in a side project. About five years ago he stumbled upon Christian Myrah, who was looking to start a bourbon distillery. 

Blanski had recently been on a barbecue trip in Texas that involved visiting a couple distilleries, so when he found out about Myrah’s plans, he said they should keep in touch.

“I’d love to sell that story all day long,” he says 

About a half-year later, they ran into each other again in the grocery store parking lot and Myrah’s still had been delivered just the day before.

“I went over there the following day and I basically never left,” Blanski says. “I said ‘if you’re making whiskey, I’m going to be a part of it, whether you like it or not.’”

Soon after, the RockFilter Distillery was born. One of two other minority partners sold Blanski enough shares to provide 10 percent ownership in exchange for some early-stage marketing and branding efforts. It’s become an award-winning product.

In keeping with his downsized lifestyle, when the chase for growing the start-up Rock Filter Distillery became more work than expected, Blanski sold his shares. But he enjoyed taking part in the company’s early stages.

“It was unbelievable. It was really fun, really exciting coming back around full circle,” he says. “It was a reacquainting myself with the fact that growing a business, a growing business, and a business that hires people and makes a product and tries to sell it is way difficult. And that’s not what I came down here to do.”

But he remains an outspoken fan and brand advocate. 

“I’m officially,” he says, “an unpaid, fully equipped-with-bourbon brand ambassador for RockFilter Distillery.”