1. Tell us about yourself – What is your educational and professional background (schools, degrees, jobs that led you to your current endeavor, location)
I’m a high school graduate, and did a few years of college. Then I had an opportunity to take over my dad’s construction business for 15 years. Then I took the money from that and invested into PJ’s bar.
2. How did you first get started in your industry? What are you most passionate about in your line of work?
I’m most passionate about making money. I have always been more interested in business than the actual industry. In my concrete business, though, I was very interested in doing a good job well, since people will only hire you again if the job is done well. So, I was more interested in quality of the out come of my work in that industry. I took pride in my work, and it was important to me to that people had good quality work in their homes. With the bar, I just wanted to make money.
3. What was your deciding moment, when you decided to open your own business?
I jumped at an opportunity. The timing came together where I was in a position to invest money from my first business into another. We bought the building, the liquor license and the existing business. With my construction company we were able to renovate the building well for cheap, which helped a lot later when I sold the bar to retire. The decision came because I had the money and the borrowing power to take from one business and invest in a second business.
4. Pros of business ownership
Of course, you can do whatever you want, have creative say – it’s limitless.
5. Cons of business ownership
Dealing with the help and the customers can be difficult. With a bar, you have a cash business, people stealing, it’s very stressful. You can’t trust people, although you want to.
6. Any mentors that helped you get started/stay on the right track or create your vision?
My first business, Dale our foreman taught me how to do the job and be the best at what I do. With the bar, Bruce our biz manager who had been a bartender for 15 years came with a lot of experience. He taught me everything I know about running a bar.
7. Is your current company still representative of your original vision?
No, everything changed. The business takes its own path, you just can’t control it, it is very hard to know how it will go. In the beginning we had a great restaurant that our two cooks really created. Then one was arrested for DUI which interrupted the whole creation process, and we become just mostly a bar after that. The restaurant also wasn’t profitable enough, so instead of being a restaurant w a bar, it became a bar with good food.
8. Is there anything in the beginning stages of your business that, in hindsight, you would have done differently?
Made everyone more accountable on their shifts, even the waitresses – I didn’t enforce enough rules right from the start, and I trusted too much. In retrospect I should have taken more precautions to protect myself.
9. What have you done to get new clients and retain existing clients?
Ensuring the quality of your product, what you are serving in food or drinks or your personnel being welcoming. In construction, it was about doing qulaity work and craftsmenship.
10. Any tips you have for budding entrepreneurs?
The devil is in the details. Save a dollar every moment that you can. And hire well. If personnel is not working out, get rid of them, it’s not worth the loss in the end.
