Do you REALLY know...

...what it's like to own your own business?

I think that most people don't really understand or know. They only see the glamourous side of it....like when you can be off any time you want, you are your own boss, you are raking in lots of dough (seriously can't wait until we can experience any of those things!)

A recent e-mail from my sister made me think about how people have a different idea of what running your business is really like (sorry sis, not slamming you -- just trying to enlighten you a little). I'm sure that each business is different and of course my experience is only with running a pizza shop -- but I'm going to tell you all that it's not like what you think.

I remember a few years back when my family was upset because my brother couldn't make events that they thought he should be at because he was running his business. Their thought was "he should just be able to get off". It's not that easy. First of all when you are in a service oriented business -- you have to provide service.....great service. Food service is immediate and people don't want to wait. It's not like something you can schedule a day later if you are too busy. You HAVE to handle how many customers are there wanting their food right now! Therefore, if Jane and Joe don't show up for their shifts -- YOU have to be the one to cover. There always has to be enough people working to handle whatever business comes in that night. You can schedule heavy and the phones don't ring. You can schedule light and get slammed. It's always a guessing game, but a game you ALWAYS have to be prepared to deal with on a moment's notice.

That means......no matter what your own personal plans for the evening are.....if you are short-handed and you get busy -- YOU have to be the one to go in and work. That is if you care about the service you provide and you care about keeping your customers happy (and trust me you do care about this because you want them to keep coming back. Give bad service -- they'll go elsewhere)

Another thing we constantly have to worry about is making money. Not just to keep our own life running, but we have 30 other employees that we need to make sure we make enough money to pay them at the end of every two weeks. We also have to make enough money to pay for our insurance, our rent, our food and supplies, and unexpected equipment failures. Right now our stress level is elevated because the price of gas is astronomical. Therefore the drivers want more money per run because they are having to pay more for their gas. Our cheese prices have doubled since the beginning of the year. Green Peppers have doubled in price in the last two weeks. Romaine lettuce is on it's way up. And we have heard rumors that flour prices will also be increasing soon. What do we do......well we have to raise some prices, but we have to be cautious because we have competitors that want to sell their pizzas for $10 (crappy ones). We raise our prices too high -- the customers will go elsewhere.

There are other assorted worries as well: dealing with vendors, dealing with irate customers (thank goodness we do a good job and don't have to deal with that too often), paying bills, paying staff, doing marketing, reports for all the government agencies, taxes, our competitors, and the list goes on and on.

So don't think we are making up excuses when we say we can't do something because of "such and such". Please understand that this is the "bread and butter" we live on and we have 30 other people that rely on us doing a good job as well. We are constantly working our butts off to make sure we are doing a good job, but sometimes it's stressful and we get tired.

Some day I need to write about all the good things that happen when owning your own business, but for now the mountains of paperwork are calling my name.