Reflections

My wife and I bought a coffee shop in 2023.

My wife was encouraged by my daughter-in-law to bake for the owner of the shop after his previous baker quit. My wife was a stay a home mom, homeschooled our children, and was as ambitious and talented as anyone I have ever met. I was leery of her leaving the house and knew the toll it would take, but she was always one to jump in and get things done. She agreed to come in for 2 days a week and jumped in with all that she had. She balanced the work with teaching our children and growing an ever-expanding cut flower garden that she adored with this new demand on her time. Sure enough, it was exhausting work, and she often came home and crashed in bed as soon as she walked in the door.

The coffee shop is in the same building as a floral shop, so she was able to start selling some of the cut flowers from her garden when she drove in for work. She loved her flower garden, and we had invested a lot of time, money, and energy getting it just the way she wanted it. Every year she expanded a little bit more, made it a little better, and it was stunning!

My wife knew that the owner of our shop had lost interest and was looking for a buyer. She called me one afternoon and said she thought we should buy it. Long story short, we did, and we have just passed the one-year mark of our ownership. Since we have made it to a significant milestone in our ownership journey, here are a few reflections on the past year.

1) Being an owner is not for the faint of heart. The investment required to keep a business running is incredibly difficult. Not only do you have to put a lot of money into the business, you also have to learn a lot of things that you have never had to deal with before. Employment papers, payroll, business taxes, business insurance, government regulations, and a ton of other things all hit you at once - required to open and continue running your business.

2) You start to value people's contributions more than ever before. Imagine being so overwhelmed with new situations every day that you can barely keep up with things. That is what starting a business is like - even if you are buying an established business. Every person, employee or contractor, who can take one thing off of your plate and accomplish that while you work on your never-ending to-do list becomes a huge blessing! From simple electrician work, cleaning windows, running quick errands to pick up supplies, to fixing any little thing that has broken, the relief they bring is incredible!

3) You will doubt yourself in ways you never imagined. When sales are low, you wonder if you've offended the community in some way, or you have missed the mark with your quality, or you simply don't know how to run a business. You will question yourself 100 times a day and feel like a total failure over and over, again.

4) You will be challenged to stick to your convictions. When your business is not doing well and you need money in the bank you will be tempted to compromise your priorities. You will be tempted to drop the quality of ingredients, to stay open later, to work all of the shifts possible yourself, to open on a Sunday when it is your only day off, a day you need to rest.

5) You will absolutely adore employees with good attitudes! In the chaos running through your head, nothing is as stabilizing as employees with good attitudes, cheerful demeanor, and can-do personalities. They are the foundation of your business and your day. Likewise, nothing is quite as destabilizing as employees who are the opposite of that.

6) You become responsible for the livelihood of many people, and you feel the weight of that responsibility. Having been an employee for a very long time, I have always joked that when the paycheck bounces, loyalty will be revealed very quickly - and nobody would be around for very long. Holding the account from which those paychecks are written, that is a very scary thought some weeks.

7) You will be faced with your own limitations and shortcomings. In my wife's case, she has cut back her flower garden to 1/2 of what is was last year, and next year she is eliminating the flower plots completely, moving only her favorite flowers into the perimeter of our fenced in back yard. She sat in her garden and wept for hours when she realized she could not continue to nurture it and own a business (we had talked about this sacrifice before buying the shop).

Most of what I have stated above would be taken as negative to many. However, it is very enlightening and has made both my wife and I stronger than ever before. We are closer together than ever before. Our family as a whole has profited from owning the business. Almost every one of our children has come to work for us at one point or another, and 3 of our children we depend on daily to keep the operations running smoothly. They are growing. Their bank accounts are growing. And they are learning valuable lessons in economics, supply chain, training, customer service, and so much more.

I still have a full-time IT job, so some weeks the balance is difficult, but it also shows how much time we have and how much time is often wasted.

And... then there are our regulars. Men and women who come in faithfully, many daily, and stay for hours. We have a table of veterans that come in every day. Most of them have lost their spouse and they gather together and support one another. They have told us countless times that they need our business to be there, that they appreciate the efforts we have gone to, and that they genuinely love our employees and family.

We have the visitors who have seen our website or our facebook and instagram posts and are so excited that they have finally gotten a chance to stop in for a visit. We have families that can't wait for visitors so they can bring them into the shop and share a hidden gem. And we have so many people who simply say that we are their favorite place to visit.

So, having been on the corporate ladder for a very long time, I can honestly say I really appreciate the struggles of the businesses I have worked for. It may seem that they "don't care" or that I am "just a number", and maybe that is even right to an extent. I do see the other perspective, now, though. A business that is serving others still has to turn a profit to keep doing the good things it does. I, as an employee, need to work hard to generate more revenue than my salary demands (much more than I realized before owning a business), and I have a duty to my peers and managers to be the cheerful, can-do, always learning, always supportive employee that I would want to hire.

At the top of my post is a ladder. At first glance, it appears to be a ladder to freedom. Maybe, just maybe, climbing down that ladder and pushing a host of people up from the bottom is what a business owner is really like. My bank account may be lower than ever, and I may be putting a lot of time, money, and effort into this business with no tangible return, but I know that over time and with consistency, the rewards are going to be worth it. Let's see what this next year has for us and who knows where our steps will lead us by this same time next year.

Blessings to all of you... and if you find yourself quite literally lost in the middle of nowhere, stop in for a coffee and a delightful treat from our 3 generations of bakers at Feed Mill Coffee located in Algona, IA.

If you are an employee, be thankful. If you are an employer, thank you. Either way, together, continue to work together to bless the people around you.