How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: The Toll of Owning Your Business

I think the US can legitimately claim to be the barbecue kings of the world, but there are some really interesting barbecue traditions elsewhere, from Japan to Brazil. (I've since become somewhat addicted to Brasilian barbecue, which fits very nicely with a Paleo diet.)

I, meanwhile, come from the UK. We love our barbecue. We're also, natively - and weirdly for a food-loving nation - absolutely terrible at it.

This restuarant appears out of nowhere in Bushwick/warehouse district. Being a North Carolina native I was a huge skeptic walking in. Mr. Ho has an NC (and SC) flag on the wall, usually not a symbol of pride outside the state (even for me), but in the case of BBQ it's respectable and makes a statement to anyone who know's anything about pulled-pork BBQ.

If you're ever in Brooklyn, definitely check it out. There's something to be said about eating, drinking, and enjoying the vision of an entrepreneur. Impossible to do with your stereotypcial start-up.

My instinct is that if you're smart about your time investments, you can get pretty far on most those burners without out a lot of time invested.

For example, for me, health is a non-negotiable. But I can maintain it with only 4-5 hours a week of investment vs. 0 hours if I abandon it. I just have 3 rules: get enough sleep, eat only healthy things, exercise at least once a week.

If you are running your own company and you can't sleep enough, I think you are either not prioritizing it or you're doing something wrong. You're unsustainably stressed or not managing your company's execution well enough. Not enough sleep affects your performance and ability to think as much as your health, so I really don't see any benefit to being chronically sleep deprived.

Eating healthy doesn't take much more time than eating unhealthy. It means buying groceries, and knowing what's open around you that's cheap and healthy (Most Chinese take-out vegetable stir fry is a good option). The groceries come from Amazon Fresh, and mean 2-3 hours more per week cooking than you would if you got fast food.

And exercise takes no more than 2 hours a week. The goal here is not to be athletic, it's just to be healthy.

I think that whatever your main burner is, you can usually maintain the other burners adequately with 4-5 hours per week, and no more unless something unusual is going on.

The key word here is adequate - it's not the main dimension of your success, and you may just be ok at it. But I don't think you need to fail at it in order to succeed at the thing you're focusing on.

And if you can hit adequacy, you still have more than enough time for your main burner. If other burners combined take 15 hours per week, you very likely still have at least 80 hours a week left for your main focus.

The specific numbers I hypothesize here applies only if you don't have kids, which I imagine skews your family number significantly.

Typically NY situation is, up-and-coming restaurateur opens in a crappy underutilized space, takes a long-term e.g. 7-year lease. Lease is up, every established restaurateur and dilettante thinks they can make a fortune there, rent rises to where nobody can make much of a buck, often new restaurant closes shortly after.

I don't know why there are so many freaking banks, New Yorkers refuse to walk and are worth money to banks. But a restaurant is a huge pain in the ass to a landlord compared to a bank.