I was lucky because my wife’s job pays well, so we could live off that. There were a few moments though where I would look at it and see all the money I’d pumped in and all the time and effort as well and the bottom line was still red. It can be brutal.
Staff can break your heart man. I had one girl with me for two and half years and then one day she just quits. No notice, just tells me she’s leaving. I asked her to stay for 2 extra days and she refused. Six months before that her daughter got sick and we’d paid some of the bills for the tests and treatments because she was struggling to pay for it. I felt like saying “ you don’t mind it when I pay for medicine for your sick kid, but you can’t give me two extra days when you resign.... The good ones can make it all worthwhile, the bad ones kill you!
Holy shit, that sucks. My wife also earns a decent wage which makes life a little easier.
Staff will always look out for themselves first sadly. We'll always be more passionate about what we do but it never stops us expecting the best out of people.
I've pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into this place so if it goes belly up I'll be pretty cut up. But I've learned to stop fearing that, I'll go insane if I think to hard about it.
My team are generally really good people, but I've also learned that my business cannot be built around them or reliant on any one of them. That was a hard lesson to learn and I'm still setting the place up so we don't have that reliance.
Are you still in business or did you move on from that?