Collaborative Fuel

In every business I’ve ever started, there comes a point where the same question rises to the surface:

What am I actually making?

What is the offer?
What is the product?
What is the thing that becomes the backbone of the business while still staying aligned with the original vision?

That tension is real.

When a business is young, the vision is often tender. You know what you want it to feel like before you know exactly what it will be. You know the kind of life you’re trying to build, the kind of work you want to do, the kind of value you want to create — but the actual product, the thing that will carry the weight of the business, can still feel frustratingly unclear.

I’ve felt that every time.

When we started Coal Iron, we didn’t begin with a clear flagship product. We started by offering our services as blacksmiths and fabricators. Jobs slowly trickled in the door, and we just went with it. We were making what was needed, solving the problems that landed in front of us, trying to find our footing through the work itself.

Then we designed a press.

Not because we had some grand plan to become a press company, but because we needed one to do the work that was already coming in the door. It was a practical solution first. A tool for our own use. But the press started getting more attention than the fabrication work. People were interested. Demand shifted. So we went with it.

Eventually, we turned everything else off and focused almost entirely on building presses and tools for presses.

That path was not laid out neatly in front of us from the beginning. It emerged through doing, through responding, and through paying attention to what the work itself was revealing.

This time around, with FarmSmith, I’ve felt that exact same tension all over again.

What am I making?

What fits the vision?
What actually uses my skills well?
What creates real value for the people who will use these tools?
What deserves the time and energy it takes to build something well?

Those are not small questions.

And if I’m honest, they can start to feel paralyzing when you sit with them too long by yourself.

Last week, my family and I drove down to Oklahoma to take a class with the Meatsmith. We had been corresponding through email for the past few months about working together on a butcher tool lineup. I wanted to do more than just swap ideas from a distance. I wanted to come see the work up close. I wanted a front-row view of the tools, the process, and the needs behind it all.

That decision ended up giving me far more than I expected.

The class itself was fantastic, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in butchering, curing, and cooking done with great care and depth. But beyond that, I found myself overwhelmed by the opportunities that came into focus once I was standing in the middle of the work.

Butchering knives.
Skinning tools.
Outdoor butchering equipment I had never even considered before, but immediately knew would be incredibly helpful.

My notebook filled up fast.

And I left realizing something simple but important:

Firsthand experience is incredibly valuable.

Not just because it teaches you technical details, though it does. But because it opens your eyes to needs you would never have seen on your own. It reveals the shape of the work in a way that imagination alone cannot. Had I stayed home and merely tried to dream up a collaboration from behind my anvil, I would have missed so much.

That trip reminded me how limited my own view can be.

The fresh eyes of someone deeply engaged in a different but related craft helped refresh my vision entirely. Someone else’s needs became creative fuel. Their perspective gave shape to problems worth solving. Their world expanded mine.

And that has been true in more than one area.

Alongside the tools I currently offer through FarmSmith, I also do a fair amount of private-label work for larger companies — companies looking for soulfully crafted tools to share with their own audiences. That kind of collaboration has been another tremendous source of creativity for me.

Why?

Because their needs become my problems to solve.

And I love that challenge.

There is something deeply satisfying about stepping into another person’s context, seeing what they are trying to accomplish, and then designing toward it. It sharpens your thinking. It stretches your skill. It reveals blind spots. It forces you to consider use, context, workflow, audience, and form in ways you might never do if you were only building for yourself.

And as a bonus, that work builds you too.

It expands your tooling.
It deepens your process.
It grows your skill.
And often, it gives you the insight needed to refine your own products even further.

What begins as collaboration for someone else’s benefit often circles back around and strengthens your own work.

That has certainly been true for me.

All of this has made me realize that collaboration has not just been helpful in building FarmSmith. It has been one of the most important catalysts in shaping it. It has taught me something about the business, yes — but also something about myself.

Namely, how small my viewing window can become without outside input.

Left to myself, I can sit too long with my own questions. I can overthink. I can circle the same ideas. I can assume the answer has to come fully formed from my own mind, my own shop, my own planning.

But that’s not usually how it happens.

Often, the next right idea comes through conversation. Through proximity. Through listening carefully to someone else’s work, someone else’s needs, someone else’s frustrations, and letting that spark something in your own hands.

That’s one of the beautiful things about collaboration.

It reminds you that value is often found at the point where your skill meets someone else’s real need. Not imagined need. Not abstract market research. Real need, seen up close.

It breaks open the walls of your own perspective.

That’s where the work gets exciting.

That’s where creativity becomes useful.

That’s where vision stops floating around in your head and starts becoming tangible.

So if you’re in that place right now — trying to figure out what your business really makes, what your offer is, what the backbone of the thing will be — maybe the answer isn’t further isolation.

Maybe it’s a class.
A visit.
A phone call.
A partnership.
A chance to step into someone else’s world and let it show you what you couldn’t see from your own bench.

Maybe your next big project is just a conversation away.