The One Thing...

To be an entrepreneur, you have to stick with it and see it through. You can wish it to be easy, but it usually isn't.

-Donald Trump

In starting a business together, my husband and I want something better for ourselves. Layoffs, traveling out of town, being under paid, and not having passion for your work are just some of the reasons we are taking the plunge into the unknown. I saw the above quote on Facebook and wow, is it ever true. My oldest daughter is old enough to realize that we don't have quite as much as we used to. She has a hard time with not being able to get a lot of the things that I would normally buy for her. And it. is. hard. Something to learn for our family during this time is being able to distinguish between our needs and our wants. I realize kids stuggle with understanding this concept, but I will do my best to teach them the value of things. For example, we aren't doing much school shopping this year. We are using some of the clothes that the kids have from last year and only provide them with the needs.

Some of the best lessons that can be learned while going through this time with our kids are happening right now. Instead of daddy going off to work every morning and then coming home at night to be with us, they see a much different picture of business and work. They see how hard we work for our business and how we are making it grow. Instead of wondering what dad does at work all day, our kids know exactly what he does and that is making pizza for people and the passion he has for doing what he does. We visit the farmers markets where daddy works and see him in action. Over these years we will watch the business grow and turn into a restaurant, a place for families to come and eat together and love the pizza we cook for them in our brick oven.

Through our conversations my older kids are picking up on what it takes to run a business. They were playing with Lego's and they created this brick oven pizza restaurant complete with a pizza oven, cash register, dough maker, and seating for customers. My oldest daughter was engaged in pretend play at it's finest and having her younger brother stay back and manage the restaurant while she and her other brother went on "vacation." Well, my son didn't want to stay back and "miss" the vacation with her so she gently told him that it was important for him to stay back and take care of the business while she was "gone." This very scenario had just happened with our business. We, as a family had gone on vacation and had one of our trusted employees run a couple of events for us while we were gone. Isn't that the whole idea and luxury of owning your own business? Have all the systems and people in place so you can go and come back and things run on their own. But in reality, that take some major work, time and planning to make that happen. So worth it though.