Nick and April Ray | ModerNash
Owners of ModerNash
Nick and April Ray are the owners of ModerNash, a kitchen, bath, and closet cabinetry business in Middle Tennessee. They share their entrepreneurial journey, from starting with debt to learning the power of pivoting along the way. Their story is full of valuable lessons for anyone looking to grow their business.
What businesses do you run?
Nick and April Ray are the owners of ModerNash, a company specializing in kitchen, bath, and closet cabinetry, as well as small home remodels. Serving the Middle Tennessee area, ModerNash helps clients design, source materials, and install functional spaces for their homes. Nick and his wife, April, work together to manage every aspect of the business, from design to installation.
How did you get started as an entrepreneur?
Nick’s entrepreneurial spirit started at a young age. He recalls selling candy in elementary school and taking on various odd jobs in his teenage years, but it wasn’t until his late twenties that he realized how deeply his drive to create something of his own ran. Nick officially launched ModerNash in 2007, although the path wasn’t always easy. The first several years of running the business were tough, primarily because they started with debt instead of capital. While that made things difficult, it became an important lesson. Looking back, the couple would recommend starting with capital, not debt, but they are grateful for the experiences that shaped their entrepreneurial journey.
How do you think about growth in your current business? How do you plan for the future?
When Nick and April started ModerNash, growth was a more aggressive pursuit. With two young boys and a desire to succeed, Nick’s early years in business were all about pushing forward. But as the business has evolved, so has their approach to growth. Today, Nick and April focus on consistency rather than expansion for the sake of growth. They’re not looking to “take over the world” but instead prioritize maintaining a healthy work-life balance. They also believe in the power of pivoting. In the early days, much of ModerNash’s business relied on suppliers like IKEA. When the market changed, they had to adjust. For them, pivoting became a key skill, one that’s necessary for navigating the unpredictable nature of entrepreneurship. The business landscape is always evolving, and being able to adapt is essential for long-term success.
What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs?
Nick’s advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is simple: know yourself. The more you understand your own strengths and weaknesses, the better positioned you’ll be to build a business that plays to your strengths while addressing your gaps. For Nick, recognizing his own limitations meant finding partners who could complement his skills, especially in areas like financial management and business processes. He also emphasizes the importance of allowing others to scrutinize your business. Having someone offer fresh perspectives on your numbers and processes can open your eyes to blind spots that you might miss on your own.
Another key lesson they have learned is the importance of being humble—especially when it comes to working with a partner. As a husband-and-wife team, Nick and April bring different personalities and skill sets to the table. While working together full-time has its benefits, it also requires patience, humility, and the ability to listen. Constructive criticism is part of the process, and being able to accept it helps improve both the business and their partnership.
Nick also highlights the reality of entrepreneurship. Success isn’t a straight line. In fact, he keeps a chart above his desk that shows the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey. The road to success is often filled with unexpected challenges, moments of doubt, and painful decisions. But being an entrepreneur is about pushing through those tough times and staying committed to the long-term vision.
“Success isn’t a straight line. It’s a journey filled with ups and downs, and it’s your commitment to pushing through the tough times that defines your growth”
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Nick 0:02
My name is Nick Ray, and my business is modern Nash, and we do kitchen, bath and closet cabinetry, as well as small home remodels. It's my beautiful wife, April.
April 00:12
I do most of the administration and HR and bookkeeping accounting for our company.
Nick 00:19
A little bit more about what our business does is mainly focused on kitchen, bath and closet cabinetry in the Middle Tennessee area, but we also have, just in the last year, got into home remodeling, and so pretty much everything from the floor to the ceiling and in between. There's three main things, we help you design your space, we help you source the materials, and then we help you get it installed and functional so you can use it.
April 00:49
So we did have some early successes and failures. I would say we had more successes at the beginning than failures. One of our biggest failures at the beginning was we didn't start with capital. We started with debt, and that made the first several years of running a brand new business difficult. If we could go back and start over, we would start with capital, and instead of starting with debt, and that's what I would recommend. Our successes though, we started small, so that was good. We started out of our garage, and then we built from the garage to renting a corner of someone else's space, and then we went from there to renting our own space. And so we started small and we built. So I think that was part of what helped us to be a success at the beginning, one of the hardest lessons, but also one of the best lessons that we've learned as an entrepreneur is the ability to pivot. Our company started one way. At the beginning, the market changed, or, like a lot of our business was dependent on IKEA, and what IKEA did as a company, and so when they changed something, we had to change. And so we just got used to pivoting.
Nick 01:54
Pivoting is huge, I think, also realizing that life doesn't necessarily happen in a vacuum that you're not going to have every single moment is going to be awesome. There's going to be challenges that you run into. Some of the best advice that I could give to fellow entrepreneurs or future entrepreneurs is get to know yourself, know yourself better than anybody else. If you have that ability to because you're gonna know what your strengths are, you're gonna know what your weaknesses are, and in the areas that you're weak, I encourage you to find somebody who can partner with you to fill in that gap. I think one of the greatest skills that you can have as an entrepreneur is allowing somebody else to scrutinize your business, to look at your numbers, to look at your processes, to look at the things that you do, to operate your business and be able to give you input on what they see is beneficial. What they see may be hurting you, and a lot of times that will open up some blind spots that you may not see.
April 03:01
We are a husband and wife team, and in some ways that is really great for our business. It helps because we're always together. We can talk about we don't have to schedule meetings. You know, we can always, we're always thinking about the business together, and we're on a trajectory together. In other ways, it is difficult to be a husband and wife team, because we have different personalities, because we have different functions in the business, a lot of times we can be at odds. So if you are a husband and wife team, then you have to find ways to work together. You both have to be humble to accept quote, unquote criticism from each other. You just have to be humble with each other and love each other through it. I think being an entrepreneur definitely changes you as a person, because you're always pursuing something new. So you're always realizing something new about yourself. You're never you're not just sitting at the same job day in day out. You are constantly challenging yourself. There's always challenges presenting themselves to you. So if you're realizing where your weaknesses are, you're trying to get better, you're you're just constantly working, working on yourself, working on your business. You're never just satisfied with the status quo, I think, as an entrepreneur.
Nick 04:17
So you're always growing. One thing that I would have liked to known when I started my entrepreneurial journey was that it wasn't just going to be all the way up. That success doesn't look like this. Success is actually more like I printed this off because I've got this above my desk, and this as a day in the life as an entrepreneur. And as you can see, there's lots of ups and downs, and it's filled with pain points where you you don't think that you're going to succeed, you think that you made a bad decision, and all is lost. The truth is is being an entrepreneur isn't all. Is an upscale it's ups and downs. It's followed by leaps and bounds and valleys, and sometimes feels like cliffs, and you have to be committed to going through all of that to be able to get to the end result.
