As mentioned in my other post, the brewery/pub project is picking back up again. The whole process is exciting, as I’ve been sort of pushing myself into the Paris food and beer scene, I’ve made a lot of connections and met lots of cool people, and I feel comfortable saying, despite not having yet done a POC/Market test, that a brewpub would work pretty darn well, even if it’s in the suburbs.
I am not terribly concerned about income, as the current pub is packed every single weekend and they don’t even serve good food, and I’m not terribly concerned about raising money because with a combination of kickstarter, our own funds, and friends helping out, I know we can afford the price he’s asking.
My real concern is being able to maintain a healthy lifestyle, one which allows me to be with my kids and wife as much as possible. I’ll give you an example of the way it is right now: I am less than enthused with my current job, as I have ~3 hours of commute every day, and my coworkers are annoying and the work is boring. But, the pay is great, and I have my weekends to do whatever I want with the wife & kids, plus evenings can be pretty calm. Pretty standard 8-7 (like 9-5 but with crappy commute) living, really. I make enough to allow my wife to not have to have a job so she can take care of the kids at home, and while we don’t have a Mercedes, we have a couple nice cars and I really love our moderately-priced house.
The thing that allows us to live like this is the fact that I am a contract worker with my company based in the US. If I was a salaried employee, I’d be lucky to be making 35,000 a year, and that is not enough to continue our lifestyle. So if we do the pub thing, I’d be taking on part-time contract work to make ends meet, getting up a little earlier and going to bed a little earlier to fit in the hours. I’ve done it before and it’s worked out alright. But my concern is, with the pub, how do I balance work and life? The current owners have made the pub their life, and I don’t want to do that. I want to hire good talent and farm out whatever I can, but I also want to have ‘creative control’ over the enterprise as a whole.
Am I just dreaming, is this even possible? I am willing to accept some sleepless nights and a few days of ‘when will this day end,’ but I DO NOT want that to be my day-to-day. I want to be able to have two consecutive days off and I want to not have to be in the pub every night until close. I figure this will be much easier to do as I live literally next door to the place, but, oof. So many questions…
How do you guys do it, without giving up on family?