In my main business I am a co-owner with my ex-wife and her husband and we employ quite a few people. A couple of other small businesses I either own or co-own and operate either by myself or with a couple of co-owners and a few part time employees.
In our main business we have 2 locations, tattoo shops, in 2 different states: Iowa and California. We employ artists, piercers, bookeeping/secretarial help, shop managers, etc.
After graduating highschool in San Diego I knew I wasnt going to college, I was going to play music or be an artist. I first went to a music school in San Francisco and then at night I took a course at a mortuary school. My mom said I needed a backup in case the music didnt work out. On weekends I played gigs at punk and metal dives to help pay my rent. After music school I went straight into a program at a San Francisco art school. Me and my ex met after I finished art school and joined the same shop to apprentice where she was already working- she was doing piercing and tattooing. I was learning tattooing but mainly cleaning up the shop, running errands, etc. My apprenticing was going to take a few years with literally no pay and I had alot of bills to pay with a first marriage to a girl from highschool who was in the middle of medical school plus we had a kid on the way and living in the bay area was not as cheap as back home in San Diego. So I did alot of stuff on the side to make money. My parents were driven business people who started and ran their own businesses when I was growing up and they always encouraged us kids to learn about business from an early age. Ever since junior highschool if I wasnt working for my father I was always doing stuff on my own to make my own money.
After my first wife divorced me, me and my now ex got together and eventually married, and then we had a kid. We scraped up the money to start our own small shop. Most times back then she was the only artist and piercer in the shop as I had also been playing and touring as a professional musician since I was in highschool and that career was taking off too. When home I ran or helped run a couple of small businesses: a club PA/sound system rental company that was basically a 2 man operation- if I wasnt there working I would hire a guy to work with my partner, a small guitar and amp repair/custom build shop that I bought into that kept one guy very busy, an auto detail/audio install/custom shop that I went in on with a couple of old highschool friends that I worked in some times, and an arcade coin-op game distribution business that I pretty much ran myself with some part time help here and there when things would get crazy busy.
Things really took off for us when we bought out a friends much larger shop in northern California. A few years later we were able to buy out a friends shop in Des Moines Iowa and eventually ended up moving there so my ex could run the shop as it was really getting busy. I then was the one who got to drive I-80 regularly back and forth between the Iowa and California shops and our house and my side businesses in California.
Now 20 something years later I am still working my businesses and putting in alot of window time while also adding the challenge of living in northeastern Oklahoma with my current wife and stepkids.
Wow very interesting, good read!