Today we’d like to introduce you to Conner Wright.
Conner, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
It’s a bit of a long one! But I’ll do my very best to keep it succinct.
I worked in the oil industry straight out of school. I accepted a job in a specialized program within a large oil and gas company. I took this job in large part because of a number of promised perks (international stints, accelerated advancement, and more). Unfortunately, those perks were removed right when I started due to a global industry downturn and more specific instability within my company. I was taken into a room on my very first day and told that the program was more-or-less being stripped down to its name and a vague semblance of its former structure. Fortunately, however, this caused me to see immediately that I had taken this job for the wrong reasons. With the cool perks gone, I realized that I didn’t feel any purpose in my role. I wasn’t passionate about what I was doing, and I wasn’t excited about any future I could see for myself there. When someone would ask me why I worked there, I couldn’t give them a strong answer and I hated that. But it was a job, and I was grateful to have one. So, I continued to work there while I tried to figure out what I would do.
Now, I’ll back up a bit. I had played music all through high school and more seriously throughout college, and I had always absolutely loved it. In fact, all while progressing through school, a tiny dream of doing music vocationally sat in the back of my head. But I never really told anyone or did much with it. I had taken opportunities here and there, and I was confident in my abilities, but to try to make a living at it seemed silly, unwise, risky–that kind of thing. I also feared that it would deem the business degree I was pursuing a huge waste of money. I didn’t want people to think I was foolish. So, I downplayed it and kind of assumed it would never happen. I continued to pursue a more traditional career path, and towards the end of college, I was given an internship at this oil & gas company. When I started, I learned about a full-time program that only a few people were let into a year. The individuals in this program were without a doubt the rising stars of the company. They were considered future leaders, highly trusted, and given some very unique opportunities. I decided immediately that this was what I wanted. I essentially made the internship my life. I worked hard, met the right people, and did what I could to give myself the best odds of being selected.
A few months after the internship ended, I got the call that I had made it into the program. I was ecstatic! It was one of those sweet moments when hard work paid off, and I had secured a position that I wanted badly. I was finishing school up in December, but I wasn’t set to start until the next July because of the program’s schedule. This meant that I had to occupy myself for about six months before my job started. I still had some music opportunities, and so I figured I’d just do that until my job started. But it wasn’t long into this season of traveling and playing more consistently that I started to imagine doing it full time. The prospect was exciting. The dream that I had buried was coming back to the surface. I was getting to do what I loved, and I was trying to enjoy it as much as I could before I had to cut it off again and start my job. In fact, though I tried not to admit it to myself at first, I began to dread the arrival of July. Eventually, I conceded that I had undergone a change of heart. I was in a weird place. July, which would bring the job that I had worked for and had once wanted so badly, had become this looming burden that I never wanted to arrive.
But, July obviously came, and I had made the commitment. I tried to convince myself that it was okay that I was cutting off music and doing something else. I reminded myself that it was a great opportunity and that I would be able to enjoy some really amazing experiences. Maybe I’d go through the program and re-evaluate at the end. This is why it hit me particularly hard when I learned immediately that the program was dropping everything and I’d no longer be doing what I signed on for. And in addition to losing the perks and feeling no purpose there, I had literally JUST began a new job. I felt like I had to stay there, purposeless while watching my dream escape me.
I do want to mention here that I was still grateful for this job. Any job is a blessing. But it was hard for me to work a job every day that I found no meaning in while having a specific dream that I earnestly believed I had a shot at. I had just enough of a network in music towards the end of my stint that I mayyyybe could have made it work. But it was still a risk. And it never seemed responsible to make the jump. So, I continued working at this company and dreaming every day.
Now, back to the instability at my company. The industry downturn and a pending merger made things really tough. Lay-offs were happening left and right. During my entire time there, batches of people were being let go every other week or so. The general feeling was that you never quite knew how safe your job was. This was the landscape that I operated in for about a year until I was called into an office one day by my supervisor. I was being laid off. Now, I believe that I am a hard worker, and I believe that I did a good job while I was there. Additionally, they had laid off upwards of twenty thousand people globally at this point. So, I didn’t take it personally. In fact, I was excited! I was a little shocked, yes, but I also knew deep down that I was being given a clean opportunity to pursue what I wanted to do. I’m grateful that it happened, and I’m grateful for the timing of it.
After praying and talking through things with my wife, Allie, and with some other trusted people in my life, I decided I was going to go for it. This had all happened when I was still very young, and it very much felt like a “now or never” situation. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and pursue music vocationally. Now, especially starting off, it can be pretty sporadic. Sometimes I’d be blessed with a lot of work, and sometimes I’d have none for a decent period of time. So, I wanted to couple music with something else. This is where furniture comes in. I had always been fascinated with fine furniture. The way that wood and other materials could come together cohesively with no nails or screws seemed like an enigma and amazing art, and I had always wanted to know how it was done. At this point, with the free time I had during dry periods, I dove in. And what started out as a vague idea and fascination became a true passion. “Building furniture” turned into a company and brand called Seventry Handmade of which I am very proud. I’m excited about its future.
Since the start of it all, I have been blessed with slowly and steadily accumulating more and more opportunity and work in both of my pursuits. I balance my time between the two as the schedules of each work very well together. I absolutely love both and am continuing to pursue both. I try to learn something new in each discipline every day. I’m so grateful.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I wouldn’t exactly call it “smooth”, but all-in-all it has been pretty amazing.
I can think of two main ways that it’s been difficult.
First, I did deal for a while with the fear of what people would think. I was worried that people would think I was being unwise, or wasting time on a pipe dream, or not supporting my wife well, or you name it. Especially after working in oil for a year, it was tough to see the subtle looks that came across peoples’ faces when they asked what I was doing now and I told them I was trying to be a professional musician and build furniture. I mean, I know how it sounds. And I definitely dealt with the “Well, I would love to be a professional baseball player but you don’t see me trying that” type of comments.
Ultimately, it was just my own insecurity, and I had to learn to get past it. And if you are in a similar position right now, know that if you remain disciplined and stick to your guns, people will realize that you are DOING this and they will eventually catch on. And if you believe in what you are doing, other people will start to believe in what you’re doing as well.
My dad is a successful businessman. He’s got a good business mind and has done well, and he’s been in that world his whole working life. He never forced me to pursue business, but since I did, he would always encourage me along the way. Throughout school and various internships, we would always talk, I’d update him, and he’d give advice. I was basically following in his footsteps. So, when I decided to change course and pursue something artistic with no guarantee of success, I didn’t know how he would react. He is a pretty pragmatic person. I remember wanting to talk through the decision with him and being afraid of what he was going to think. What he said, though, was “I’m older now, and I’ve worked most of my life. I can tell you that life is too short to work a job that you hate. It might be a harder road, but if you really want this you should try. You’ll never know if you don’t.” It was one of the sweetest moments of the whole process.
The second challenge was financial. It’s the obvious obstacle to making a leap of faith and trying anything like this. And in my case, I went from a well-paying oil job to attempt to make money playing music. Additionally, no one was paying me for furniture yet. I was still trying to learn how to build it. Our cash flow changed drastically. The number one weapon against this challenge was a supportive wife. We made the initial decision together, and she was bought in and did what she had to while I was figuring things out. This does not mean it was easy–Allie made sacrifices, sometimes things got tight, and we would have hard days and hard conversations. But ultimately she had my back and I had her full support. That alone gave me enough confidence to press on, even if it was sometimes excruciatingly slow progress because I knew that we were in it together and she believed in what we were chasing. You should interview her just because she’s so awesome 😉
The other way through it was discipline and patience. When you’re doing this and things aren’t going exactly to plan, it’s super easy to get mentally off-course. Sometimes, I would doubt everything. I’d compare my current income to what it could have been if I had gone back into the normal workforce, and I’d compare my situation to the situations of people who were where I wanted to be. I’d wonder if I had made the wrong choice. The solution was advice I got from others: to set goals, to just stay disciplined, and to stay patient. Even if it was small, I would do my best to take some step in the right direction every day. I would have to remember that success doesn’t happen overnight, but that it happens slowly with discipline. I’d trust that and keep making the daily choice to press on. And I watched over time as I would reach one goal, and then another, and slowly things began to look better and better.
I certainly don’t feel like I’ve “arrived” at this point. I’m still working towards where I want to be. But my dreams certainly feel more like a possible reality than they did when I started. I don’t have doubting days nearly as often, though I’m still not immune to them. I don’t know if I will ever be. But I feel extremely grateful for and proud of where I am now. I have consistent work doing things I love, I have the blessing of new opportunities all the time, and I have all kinds of people around me who support me.
All in all, it’s been an amazing road.
For Seventry Handmade and your music – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Seventry Handmade is a custom furniture and design shop. We make one-off commissions for individual clients as well as build our own designs available for general purchase. Our passion is to make beautiful, real, high-quality furniture while providing our clients with an amazingly easy, personal, transparent experience the entire time.
We are a simple, small operation which enables us to keep quality over quantity mindset. Every step of the process involves individual care, thought, and attention, we keep close communication with the client from start to finish, and we carefully consider every angle while making decisions during the build process. We like to gather the most accurate picture of the client using the final product in their home or place of business or wherever the piece is going, and work from that idea the entire time.
Every step of the build process is completed by human hands, and every material is high-quality and completely real. We exclusively use kiln-dried hardwoods for our furniture. Secondary materials like metals, joinery woods, and finishes are also heavily researched, curated, and top-tier. We handpick and individually procure every material that goes into a piece and every tool that touches it along the way. We are highly selective so that our furniture is beautiful, solid, and lasting.
I genuinely believe that we give our clients the best furniture designing-building-buying experience out there. We make fantastic furniture but we also focus just as sharply on offering a highly enjoyable, super personalized, extremely transparent experience. It is important that our clients feel important to us and genuinely valued because our clients ARE important to us and we DO genuinely value them. To us, this is just as defining for Seventry Handmade as the actual furniture is.
I am also a professional musician. Lately, I have been doing mostly contemporary worship. If you’re not familiar, the genre of music would be closest to pop/rock/alternative. I mostly play the drums and keys, but I also play guitar and lead worship from time to time. In addition to worship, I also play with some local artists around the Dallas area. I do live music and session music (studio recording), and I am also beginning to get my hands into production work.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I think success, in short, is to achieve your goals without compromising your principles. You pick your goals based on your principles and then try to achieve those goals without compromising the very principles you used to establish them.
Allie and I deeply desire to work together one day. Being with her more than nights and weekends is a guiding principle for me. She sings really well and she loves the furniture business. So, one of our goals is to grow this until we can both do it together full time.
Other things that I care about are providing for my family, creativity, and pride in my work and autonomy of my schedule. These are principles that have shaped my goals.
So, very specifically, success for me would be to do work alongside Allie that is creative and that I am proud of, that provides for our family well, and that allows us to be around each other and our future children (we hope) more than we are apart.
By the way, I think it’s worth mentioning that I am talking about career success here. There is more to life than work, and there are more versions of success than the kind you achieve by working a job.
One time, a friend told me that I had inspired him to chase his own dreams. He was considering different career paths, but watching me had encouraged him to go for it as well. This caught me so off guard, because at the time I was about one year in, relatively early on, and very much had my head down just trying to figure things out myself. What this person did not know is that I was in a particularly rough season. Things were moving slowly, and I was feeling very unsure. It was immensely encouraging to hear this–to know that I had helped someone else have the boldness to chase their own goals even though I didn’t (and still don’t) have everything figured out. You never know how you are inspiring and encouraging others. You might be even if you don’t feel like it. I also call this success.
Contact Info:
- Website: seventryhandmade.com
- Email: conner@seventryhandmade.com for furniture // connerthomaswright@gmail.com for music & personal
- Instagram: @seventryhandmade for furniture // @connerwright__ for music & personal << that’s two underscores
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seventryhandmade/
Image Credit:
Josh Helms, Taylor Leys
Suggest a story: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
