I’ve owned and operated my own businesses for 18 years. I currently own a Cabinet Shop. A few years ago, I hit a wall — mentally, physically, emotionally. I broke down from trying to do it all, run it all, fix it all.
Since then, I’ve rethought everything.
These are some of the unexpected — and maybe even controversial — lessons that helped me rebuild and start running the business on my terms.

I Pay Myself Hourly

One of the biggest shifts I made was switching from a salary to paying myself hourly — and it changed everything.

I used to just keep going — late nights, weekends, doing every little thing that fell through the cracks. I thought that’s what an owner was supposed to do. But all it did was burn me out and make me a crutch for poor systems or underperforming employees.

Now, I pay myself an hourly wage, track my time, and cap my week at 40 hours. If I hit overtime? That’s a signal. At my rate, we can pay three employees to do the same work. So why would I keep grinding myself down?

It also forced me to get serious about priorities. I focus on the highest-value work only I can do — sales, pricing, design, vision. Everything else? Delegate.

And yeah, I used to hate hearing “not my job” from employees. Still do. But when I say it, it’s not about being above the work — it’s about clarity. It reminds me I’m not supposed to be the hero that saves every mess. I’m supposed to build a business that doesn’t need saving.

Good Processes Are Not As Important As You Think

Business advice online makes it sound like success is all about systems. SOPs for everything. Automate. Document. Streamline.

I bought into that for a while — until I realized how much time I was spending creating perfect processes that still didn’t work when I had the wrong people.

Here’s the truth: If an employee isn’t high enough quality to follow the process, then the process is irrelevant.

You can have the cleanest checklist in the world — but if the person running it cuts corners, doesn’t care, or doesn’t notice problems, the outcome is still garbage.

In a small business, you don’t have layers of middle management or QA to catch the slip-ups. So it’s people first. Always. I’ve had hires that made everything easier with zero formal documentation. And I’ve had hires that made chaos out of beautifully mapped workflows.

I still document things. But I don’t rely on documentation to fix a bad fit. I invest in better people — people who ask smart questions, spot mistakes, and actually care. That’s been more powerful than any system I’ve tried to build.

Processes are great when you’re scaling. But when you’re small? People are the system.

Efficiency Doesn’t Matter If You’re Selling the Wrong Work

We didn’t just dabble in Lean — we went all in.

We spent years refining our operations using Lean principles. We studied the books, mapped the value streams, minimized waste, and built a shop that could run like a machine. And to be fair, it did improve some things. But here’s what no one tells you:

Lean works when you’re making products. It breaks down when you’re doing jobs.

If you’re making the same thing every day — the same bracket, the same component, the same piece of furniture — Lean can drive serious efficiency. It’s great when you have stable products and processes.

But we’re not making widgets — we’re making snowflakes. Every project is different. Every client is different. The moment you standardize something, the next job requires a custom solution.

You read case studies about companies transformed by Lean. But most of those stories leave out the context — or the cost. I got to know a prominent Lean leader in our industry personally. His company looked flawless on the outside. Perfectly tuned systems. Smiling team. Everything Lean says you should be.

But in private? He told me he hated his business and wanted out.

That stuck with me.

Lean made us efficient — but it didn’t make us profitable. We were just losing money faster and with prettier spreadsheets.

What finally moved the needle? Selling the right work to the right people at the right price. That did more for our success than years of operational fine-tuning ever did.

These days, I care less about operational efficiency and more about margin. I’d rather have a slightly messy shop and a healthy bank account than a spotless one with razor-thin profits.

I’m not claiming to have it all figured out — far from it. But these lessons came from a lot of years, a lot of mistakes, and a few painful wake-up calls. If sharing them helps someone else skip some of the burnout, confusion, or wasted effort I went through, then it’s worth putting out there.

If you’re running your own thing, I’d love to hear the hard-earned lessons you wish someone had told you.