You know, I don't hear enough of the "battle scars" here in SMB land.

I want to encourage us to talk about the bad stuff in operating businesses more.

Here is a short story to kick it off...

🚨Spoiler - I f@cked up with an employee

🧵 A couple of years ago we had a Head Chef in our kitchen that was known to fly off the handle from time to time.

This is normal in the kitchen environment

I don't like this personality trait in chefs, but I have had to accept it to a certain extent.

I bought my family catering company in the middle of the COVID pandemic.

I broke down in tears on more than one occasion in 2020-2021.

I honestly don't remember entire months at a time.

Here is a dose of reality for first-time buyers.

A 🧵 🚨Buying a company is hard....

💣Buying a family company is harder...

You have to manage emotions on both sides of the table and come out the other side getting along. Your happiness depends on it.

One of my favorite small business ideas:

1. Pick a hobby that you spend too much $$ on (mine would be aviation or cars) 2. Create a newsletter for that hobby

This could also be a Youtube channel with voiceover and animation.

I accumulated 500 flight hours then took 10 years off of flying... ✈️

I recently got back into the air to renew several of my licenses.

Here are 5 lessons I have learned from getting current as a pilot.
#alwayslearning #entrepreneur

🧵 Number 1 with a bullet

If you have a passion, you MUST find time for it.

Be militant about carving out time in your schedule for the things that feed your soul.

I work aviation into my professional life, but if it was 100% pure hobby, I would still make an effort.

The process of valuing small-medium business may be broken

Here's how I bridged the gap between a seller and myself recently.

THREAD 🧵 ... Maybe too long... 😂 CONTEXT... 📚

I happened upon an events based business that provides custom fabrication work for large scale corporate activations and festivals.

Since my first business is in the hospitality space, I dug in....