time to make the donuts

[“Time To Make The Donuts”. Famous Dunkin’ Donuts campaign from 1984.]

I was talking to a very successful New Yorker friend of mine, a finance guy, about why he never went into the restaurant business, in spite of his family connections with it.

“Uuuugh, No thanks,” he said. “Look, with a restaurant, you have three basic scenarios.”

He went on:

1. Let’s say you open a restaurant and business never takes off. Congratulations! You’ve now lost all your money and have spent the last three years of your life watching your life’s work go down the drain.

2. Let’s say your restaurant is really successful. Congratulations! You’ve now got 7 days-a-week, 18 hours a day of high stress craziness, dealing with all those pushy customers, the neurotic waiters and the psycho kitchen staff.

3. Let’s say your business is just so-so. Neither a hit, nor a disaster. Congratulations! You’ve now got the worst of both worlds. All the stress and the hours, none of the money or glory. Woo-hoo!

Hmmm…. Listening to my friend, it kinda sounds like all the businesses of pretty much every self-employed person I know these days.

See “Fred The Baker” in the video above? That’s pretty much all their lives, right now. And mine. “Time to make the donuts”. No wonder I find it the ad so funny.

Would my friends have it any other way? Of course not. But if you want to be successful, that’s the life you must choose, for better or worse. So it goes.