I’ve been thinking a lot about starting or buying a business lately. It’s no easy feat, and I want to write out some of my thoughts. It might help me work through some things.
I grew up in a very busy household. My parents ran a masonry construction business. My dad was out in the field working on job sites, quoting, solving problems, and generally running himself ragged. My mom worked in the office. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her first choice for a career, but she made it work.
Both of my parents were busy and stressed. Running a business, especially a construction business has lots of challenges. A couple that come to mind (from what they complained about the most) were employees and customers.
Employees because they broke stuff, messed up work, lost stuff, didn’t come to work, claimed workers comp for stupid reasons, broke more stuff. You get the idea.
Customers because they didn’t pay. I see the challenge of doing a job that doesn’t always pay until the work is completed. It’s a rough business model because you can’t really repossess a new basement after you build it. A lean isn’t the same, but it was a common enough thing that I learned about them when I was pretty young.
So what kind of business would I want to run?
I’ve worked in manufacturing now for more than a decade, so my mind first goes to a small manufacturing company. But what? I’ll come back to that.
There are also service companies, restaurants, and vacation properties. I would group all of these together because they are more traditional and would require more interactions, employees, and financial support to get started.
All of those things stress me out. They’re not insurmountable, just challenging.
On the other side of my personal entrepreneur spectrum are sole proprietorship opportunities.
This could be something like freelancing as a writer or project manager. Something like this could start small and maybe grow with time.
Of course, as this websites existens shows, I would love to be a full time fiction writer, but I haven’t given that the effort or time that it really needs.
I’ve been on tic tok recently. Lots of people on there pushing their affiliate marketing ideas. It sounds too easy, I know it’s not. But I did start a blog, https://toolreviewsplus.com, just to try it out. I also have affiliate links under some of my youtube videos and on other articles on this page. The idea here was to just test the water a little bit. The idea is too aluring to pass up.
I also had an idea to start a blog with my wife. It would be written from her point of view. I think she has lots of great ideas and a well thought out point of view. This idea goes back to our days as parents of young children when every mother had an opinion of what was the best way to raise or discipline or feed their kids. I just knew that she had good ideas and others needed to hear what she had to say. But nothing ever came of it. Maybe someday I’ll still make something like that happen.
We have other ideas, businesses that we could run together. I mentioned manufacturing above. I still have no idea what we would make, but she’s said that she’s willing to try something with me if the right idea comes along. We look at business listings together sometimes.
And she often talks about buying or starting some kind of restaurant. She’s an amazing cook. She was selling baked goods at a local farmers market for a while. She had a good following a loyal customers, but it was so much work. On a good day, we estimated she might average out to $12-$15 per hour. Fair, but it wasn’t going to change our life. And it was so exhausting. I fear a restaurant would be kind of like that, but with more overhead.
Mostly, I like the idea of being my own boss, but I’m afraid of the risk and challenges. I have a good job. It doesn’t bring the most happiness, but our bills are paid. We’re comfortable.
Maybe someday this blog will announce some new business venture. For now, I’m just sharing my musings, and looking for an excuse to post a backlink to my affiliate blog up above. Don’t visit it. I’m kind of embarrassed about it.