Yehuda Nathan // YN Design

I was born and raised in Flatbush. My father is an accountant who also grew up there. He is Sefardi, and my mother is from a Chabad family. She worked in the office at Bais Rivkah in Crown Heights for close to 40 years. This was a second marriage for both my parents, so I have Chabad siblings and Sephardic siblings. When my parents married, they brought their kids into the marriage and then had my older sister and me.
“I went to Mir Yeshiva, and my sister went to Yeshiva of Brooklyn. She lives in Lakewood with her husband, who is in kollel. I ended up living in Florida, as did two of my siblings; one started a community in Orlando, and another lives in Miami.
“I was in Mir in Brooklyn until tenth grade, and then I went to a small yeshivah in Far Rockaway called Shaarei Chaim for a year. Instead of going to 12th grade, I went straight to the Chofetz Chaim Miami beis midrash. I was there for two years and then went to Zichron Aryeh (ZAJ) in Israel, where Rav Meir Cohen and Rav Blumberg are the roshei yeshivah. It was a very small Chofetz Chaim-style yeshivah. After yeshivah, I went back to Miami, where one of my sisters lives.
“Growing up, woodworking was always a hobby of mine. In tenth grade, when I was at the Mir, I built the amud for the yeshivah in the high school beis midrash. It’s still there. That was my first big project.
“When I was in Chofetz Chaim Miami, one of the rebbeim asked me to build some shelves and other furniture in their house. I bought some tools and started building. Once I acquired all of the tools, I took an extra dorm room and turned it into a little wood shop. However, the mashgiach was unhappy with that and put an end to it.
“When I turned 18, I made a deal with the yeshivah and signed a waiver for them to let me use the room. For four months, I had my little woodshop in the yeshivah, where I built projects for people. I built a four-foot tzedakah box for the Lubavitch Educational Center in that dorm room, as well as a few other smaller items.
“Then I went to Israel, and when I came back, I started to renovate my sister’s house. During that time, her sister-in-law asked me to help renovate a clothing store. Someone in the community saw the work I did in the store and in my sister’s house and asked me to build a bookcase for them. When they were satisfied with that, I redid their staircase and did a few other projects around the house. After I spent a few weeks in their home learning how to build these projects, my customer was kind enough to allow me to use their front lawn to set up shop. I was there for a couple of months and built things for people in the community.
“That summer, I had the honor to be at Camp Simcha for two months, and I joined the amazing night crew. In Camp Simcha, there is a new theme every day, and our team would build a new set-up in the dining room to match that day’s theme. We built a fire station with a life-size fire truck that had working lights, a café, a circus and much more. We even built a gazebo that is still there today; it features a personalized piece of wood that each camper got to decorate. The kids got to wood-burn their names and paint each plank, and when they come back to camp each year, they get to see their own work that’s there forever.
“When I came back from camp, I bought a van and started doing more projects. I eventually got myself a small shop, where I spent most of my time building bookcases and small shelving units for people. I was the only employee for about a year or two. I wasn’t making any money, but I was learning a lot about woodworking. I was doing maybe $100,000 a year in business at that point. I was living in my sister’s house, and it worked for me.
“Eventually I started to sub out the cutting to a local shop in order to take on more jobs and scale the business, but it was still kind of shvach. I built bookcases by myself, and it would take me about a month and a half just to do one project. I had only about six to ten projects a year.