Tim Reed

Tim Reed got into the hearth industry the old-fashioned way—completely by accident. At 18 he was playing guitar in a punk band up and down the West Coast when his future father-in-law, who ran a small shop selling and installing wood stoves and gas fireplaces, called and asked for help setting a wood insert. Tim had no idea what a wood insert even was. He showed up to the job site in cargo shorts and skate shoes and found out fast how demanding—and how precise—the work really is.

He spent about four years as an installer, learning the trade from the ground up in the work van: how these products actually go into a home, why the details matter, and what separates a job done right from one that comes back to bite you.

From there he moved into sales, eventually building and leading the retail division of Fireside Home Solutions, a multi-showroom fireplace retailer across Portland and Seattle. Out on hundreds of in-home visits he put that installation knowledge to work—teaching his team to solve a customer's actual problem instead of reciting spec sheets, and cutting an overwhelming catalog down to a clear good-better-best so people could finally see what fit. Two lessons stuck: pricing has to be transparent, and the tools have to be simple enough for anyone to use.

Those lessons became WhyFire, the company Tim founded about eight years ago. WhyFire helps fireplace companies across North America make it easy for customers to find the right fireplace—and along the way its tools have generated more than 100,000 leads and helped connect tens of thousands of homeowners with a local dealer who could take care of them. Tim is invited to teach across the continent on the same theme: cut the jargon, speak plainly, and remember that people don't buy from whoever knows the most—they buy from whoever makes it easiest.

Find My Fireplace is a dream he's carried for years: one national resource where a homeowner answers a few simple questions, sees the options that genuinely fit their home, and gets connected with a trusted local dealer to handle the rest. He hosts the weekly Fire Time Podcast, where he talks with the people who build, sell, and install fireplaces for a living.

It all comes back to one idea—making it easy—so more families get to enjoy the warmth and comfort of a fire the way his own family does. That's why every guide and reference page on this site carries his name: the advice is his, grounded in real installs and 20+ years, not spec sheets.