Welcome to Slow Sunday: a weekly feature exploring the journey to slow living and embracing joy in simplicity. Today’s post is a toe dip into slow living from an entrepreneur who is still learning what that means.
Usually Amber is the one to post Slow Sunday articles; while her “Slow Sunday” may not always fall on the specific day of the week, she is deliberate in carving out a day of the week to spend being present and connected to herself, her husband and her son. For me, not so much. I have been burdening myself with more and more work as a small business owner, and my time for relaxation, recuperating and being an active participant in my life has fallen to the wayside.
As spring starts to poke it’s head out and I start to dream of patios and sun dresses and iced teas and leisurely strolls, it dawns on me that I have not had a summer free in six years. For six years, I hustled as a small business owner to take advantage of those tourist dollars, the markets, the festivals and the lovely weather to make an income. Has it been worth it? Is this what I want my life to look like?
Today’s Slow Sunday is a musing in what it looks like to hustle, and presents the question of “is this simply what it always looks like to work for oneself? Is there dare to dream of discarding the hustle for the joy of living simply, but still surviving financially?”
Background: The restaurant
In 2016, Amber and I decided we would buy a restaurant together. Specifically, the restaurant her parents built from the ground up in the tourist town of Wells, BC. Amber and I are first cousins, and she grew up living above the restaurant. I had worked in some sort of food service capacity for the past eleven years, and the thought of owning my own restaurant was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. We worked there together for a summer learning the ropes, and in 2017 we bought the restaurant off her parents and embarked on the journey of entrepreneurship. (2024 update: I have written more about the experience at the Bear’s Paw Café here)
I wish to preface this by saying that I don’t regret this decision in the slightest. We were two fiercely determined women in our late twenties who couldn’t wait to make this restaurant our own. And we did some really cool things there. We learned so much about how to open and run a business. Plus, we got really good at building maintenance, general carpentry, and fixing appliances (crying laughing emoji).
However, we faced a lot of unprecedented challenges along the way. Our dreams of work-life balance went to the wayside. We worked so hard during the summer seasons, and then went back to full time jobs in the winter to get us through the summers. We hustled. As I said, we were determined.
But at some point, we took a hard look at what we were doing. Maybe it was watching Amber, six months pregnant at the time, struggle to get through the back door of our food truck carrying a giant bin of fries that made it all click. Is this working for us?
It’s hard to admit when something isn’t working. For us, we had dedicated five years to our restaurant. Wildfires had all but killed Wells’ tourism economy for our first two summers, and we were finally getting our feet back under us when Covid hit. We had sunk so much time and energy and love into our business, but is this how we saw our lives playing out? It simply wasn’t. Could we have continued on? Definitely. But we wanted to get off the hustle-train and find some simplicity in our lives.
I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world, and Amber and I learned so much along the way.
Spoiler Alert: I didn’t learn my lesson
Quickly, I found myself launching another business. We had acquired a food truck from our restaurant days, and I brought it back to my hometown and started a doughnut business. It was really fun. I made really tasty treats, and people gave me money for them, It also mean late nights followed by early mornings and no weekends off for the summer season. Again.
My life lesson I took away from the food truck: just because you can do something, and do it well, doesn’t mean you need to.
This happens to me all the time. I am a confident person, and I dive right into new projects. Very quickly, I again parceled out my free time to another business venture before asking myself what I wanted my days to look like.
Owning a business is hard. I won’t argue that you often have to put in the time for the first while to make it work. It does require the hustle and drive at the beginning, when profit margins are tight and you are still in the rapid growth phase. However, my biggest advice for small business owners is this: have a strategic plan for how and when you will have the balance you desire in your life. Do not assume it will happen organically. Find out how much revenue you need, what you can outsource, and when and who you can hire so you can carve out time for the life you desire. Or else, why are we working for ourselves?
I’m not there yet, but I think I’m getting close.
I sold my food truck and bought a coffee shop in a building that is only open Monday-Friday (so I can’t be tempted to be open more). Then, I reached a monthly revenue target so that I could outsource some of my more labor-intensive tasks. Lastly, I hired an amazing baker to help me. It’s coming together.
And yet, I find myself thinking, should I open a brick and mortar doughnut shop?
Deciding what you want your life to look like
As I sit here with my Sunday free for the first time in a year (minus major holidays, I do take long weekends off on principle), I think to myself, what would it be like to always have weekends free? Be able to spend my summers at the lake or dragging my partner up a mountain or sipping iced tea on the patio? And can I have that life as a small business owner?
I’m not quite sure yet. I do know that right now, I am more determined to have Slow Sundays with my cat on my lap and my dog at my feet and the birds chirping on my deck and a full pot of coffee than I am to start another business venture.
I often sit and think about the way capitalism has taught us that we need to be productive. Rest is thought to be a reward for hard work, or a luxury that is afforded to a few. In the end, everything comes back to me ranting about capitalism, and so I will spare you those thoughts today. I know rest is still a luxury for many people, so this is aimed at those of us who fill our time because we feel we need to be productive, not because we actually need to.
Today’s Slow Sunday takeaway: be intentional about creating the life you want to have. Whether it’s small decisions like how you will spend your free time, or big life decisions like jobs and moving, be deliberate in making choices that bring you rest, joy, and simplicity.
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