Test of Thyme Ep. 11: Balancing Acts: Jaime's Journey as a Mom, Restaurateur, Wife, and Grandmother

hello everybody hi everybody Jamie and Marcus here welcome to test of time love passion and hustle in the restaurant business episode number 11. awesome so let's see we're having a lot of fun doing these we are having a lot of fun yeah and um we're creating good energy we're having a good time we're talking we're talking about our passion we're talking about our love we're talking

about all the things that we do on a daily basis um that we've been doing for the over 20 years so yeah so we own Aroma time Bistro in Ellenville New York since 2003 and we work together every day if you're just catching us for the first time we work together every day we've owned this restaurant together we're spouses husband and wife I've raised kids here

two kids that are now 23 and 20 and a grandson we have a grandson brand new grandson three weeks old so it's you know it's fun it's fun to watch you know our grandson every day learn right because they learn by doing and they learn by moving their hands and it's just amazing to watch the process I mean even in three weeks you know the learning

how to eat how to take a bottle how to breastfeed how to love to be held let's see how he's not holding a bottle he's not holding the bottle but just the process of when they're born they don't know any of those things right and it's just so natural for them to eat and it's so natural for them to um you know learn right I mean

you can see that he might not necessarily be making out our face yet but he's seeing light and he's seeing objects right so I don't really know when that happens I think it's it's in a couple weeks but so the amazing part is watching our daughter that's really cool to me yeah it is pretty cool and so you know this is all part of um the

love we have for our family business um we love having her around we love so do you know the question I'm asking you I have no idea how would I know you haven't told me you just said it was going to be a question well yeah we usually ask each other a question yes um unprompted I'm prompted so my question to you today is as a

wife and a mother and a business owner and a grandma now and a grandma now how did you do this how did you do all this I did all this I don't know like we'll open the restaurant yeah Courtney and Justin are how old four and 16 months born 16 months your first time in the restaurant industry altogether I'd been a chef for a while I

worked some nice places I knew you'd see me work for years and work my butt off and work hours and all of a sudden we open a restaurant and you've helped me in this restaurant it's our restaurant I thought it was going to be easy number one I thought oh I'm a stay-at-home mom I'm gonna just stay home I'm gonna we're gonna make lots of money

restaurants make lots of money I'm not gonna have to work hard um quite the opposite of of it but not every restaurateur works as hard as we do no um I I definitely think that you know we put in an extra um well here's the deal we opened with fifty thousand dollars not much nothing that was left over we opened up with fifty thousand dollars a

home equity loan of 50 Grand we rented a space bought equipment bought food and went into debt for many years and we were supporting our family and supporting our family and avoided going bankrupt several times in the first five years which we should have done could have done easily have done qualified to go bankrupt many times um but you being the mom another grandma just talk

to everybody like like what it's what your journey has been like to do that as that's a great question um so oh my gosh um let's see where do you start right um you know I was a teacher uh before we had the restaurant so I and then I was a stay-at-home mom uh for four years and then we opened the restaurant and I think the

process for me has been quite unique quite wonderful um it's taught me a lot about life about kids about the expectations that are given to you right um is it fair to say that having the Russian together saved our marriage I would definitely say that it's been great for us um because we're together all the time and we enjoy each other's company and we're not out

doing things on our own right we're doing things together even though we do do things on our own a lot of things but we also do a lot of things together um so I would definitely say yes that I feel the same way that has happened um because people say that it's they could never work with their detriment yeah and this is part of the reason

I think we started this show was to give other couplepreneurs some insight and some hope yeah and some tools to be able to do have what we have because we love it so raising kids um in the restaurant business has been fun right I never have to think about dinner I never have to you know because they're always we always ate here we always had food

made for us um I never cooked at home um never went grocery shopping so that made it a little bit easier for me um but looking so so there's a looking back and then there's a how it's happening while you're going through the experience as we're going through it I thought oh my God this is so hard this is so tough um I love what I'm

doing but oh my gosh being a mom trying to juggle all of the things that you have to juggle on a daily basis were hard and I was looking I was thinking today about um our daughter um and how lucky she is to be able to stay home uh right now for however long she needs to and her boyfriend goes to work um and then he

comes home at night and of course he's tired and I I can see it in him he's tired he's worked all day he wants to go to the gym um and he has to help with the baby when he gets home right and he the baby's three weeks old so the baby right now is very needy right needs needs to be held needs to be fed

can't do anything we changed on it can't do anything on his own and I don't know where I was going with this but um I was talking about watching Courtney um just watching her do all of these things back right it brought me back to where I was years ago and how lucky she is to be able to have the support from us have the support

from her boyfriend and also have the flexibility to work kind of when it works for her um when she decides to come back so you know we were talking about that and she works for us and she looks at the restaurant for us and she works in our office for us and we've been a little bit lenient with her the last nine months because she really

didn't have an easy pregnancy she didn't feel great um so um you know she she just didn't feel good but looking at her and looking at the experience I can foresee how much I actually did at the beginning and how men and this is masculine I don't want to say mask I don't want to say men in general because of today's world and Society but masculine

and feminine energy right so I've been I've been thinking about that a lot and how women we just have that instinct the instinct is to take care of our children to feed them take care of them to make all their appointments to you know to do everything really um and the masculine energy is to go and go to work right and to provide for your family

so maybe not go to work but provide for for the family and I I really appreciate what she's going through right now because it's kind of bringing me back a little bit to where I was and how how I struggled a lot with figuring out where where our jobs were and where we fit into the realm of being parents right so now I'm watching her be

a parent and and I'm watching the same types of things that happen right when we had our kids I was a stay-at-home mom you went to work you'd come home you'd help with the kids you'd go to work and it was the same kind of routine and when we were off we were off together and and then I started working and so now I'm juggling work

young kids a new business young kids and being a wife and I think my son that's still in college we have to go watch play baseball every week starting in a couple of weeks right so the juggle is real the frustration sometimes because you can't do everything when you want to do it um can be hard so I think for me I've I've definitely prioritized different

things and last year you know I tried to come up with a word every year of something that I want to work on and balance was my was my word last year and reflecting upon 2022 I really feel that I balanced really well and I really feel that my children my husband came first then the business and then getting all the other things I have to

get done finished and I I think we balanced that quite well I mean we we went to many of Justin's games we traveled last year um we traveled personally we traveled in group settings and four times in Mexico in one year yeah and so the balance was was real for me and you know I haven't quite come up with my word for this year I wrote

a couple down and um the end of December and I honestly don't even remember what they are so that's how crazy my world has been in the last month that I haven't even really looked at my word which will remind me to go look at it and say okay this is what I'm working on this year but I think does that answer your question I mean

is that what you were looking for I I know I know it's a complex answer and we keep these shows to 15 minutes I don't even know where we're at at this point I sort of looked at the clock when we started but I think I think it is a complex answer because I do so much um and I might not do the things that you

do right because we just kind of have our separate things that we do you do more of the um of the lives and the marketing even though I'm I'm looking at the marketing with you um and I'm correcting things and I'm you know I execute it you execute it and I finish it which kind of works well for us and sometimes I get frustrated because I

feel like I've more in me I've more to give but I don't know where to give it sometimes right because I don't have the opportunity because I'm doing so many other things right so um I I stayed up late last night with Sebastian I put him to bed after giving him a bottle so that um Courtney and her boyfriend could get little extra sleep so I

slept a little later today than I wanted to go to the gym then I went to the gym then orders started coming oh my gosh and then we had people in the office and I really haven't gotten much done in the office today well I haven't either so so I think the balance sometimes can be a little tricky but I felt it was important this morning

when I got home from the gym to spend 20 minutes with my grandson right like just sitting there relaxing enjoying that time with him so that was important to me which kind of threw everything else kind of off for the day so back to your word of last year 2020. balance so did you make a conscious effort throughout the course of the year to reinforce that

word and admission absolutely because I told myself that my kids come first so you did a fantastic job last year and of course you called me I mean I I left if Courtney needed something I laughed you know right we flew back from Mexico flew into Newark and then drove six hours six hours at four o'clock in the morning we got back or something after flying

all night and driving watch Dustin pitch one inning pitch one inning in Buffalo right and you know and I remember doing that ride I mean I was so hard I was tough but it was important to me to see him pitch in one of his first outings in college right and that was important to me to be there I could have watched it on on um

online but I wanted to be there and I felt that that was important and I know like this year I'm not going to be able to be at all of the games because I'm going to have to balance now I have to balance my grandson right helping Courtney and that's important and balancing my son and his baseball so that's going to be another juggle for us

you know yes there'll be sometimes we can take the baby with us there are going to be times that we can't because we're gone for you know two nights or whatever right so there's going to be a balance for us that we're going to have to work out because Courtney isn't going to be able to work every week the whole week while we're gone so and

that's going to be a balance that we're gonna have to figure out so what would you how would you advise somebody like how to pick their word out for the year let's say there's another couple preneur there or anybody like like whatever is different so I mean what are some options for words so come online and I always look up um words of the year I

think if you type that in to online it'll bring you up a list of like a hundred words for the year and I just kind of go through them and some pertain to me some don't and I go to the thing that feels the strongest to me for that particular year I go to the word that feels the strongest depending upon what's going on in my

life right right right so for me this year I haven't thought about a word yet but for me this year I have a lot of exciting things going on you and I just are releasing this new book that is out um I mentioned something new to you too that I really want to get done this year do you remember what it is yeah you want to

write a cookbook I want to write a cookbook I think as a couple preneur you are the chef right and I do a lot of baking and I think we could come up with a combo so now here's the neat thing you can also intertwine that with stories from the restaurant absolutely and travel and stories from the restaurant can come from this podcast like today was

a great lesson so there could be a chapter on how you as a mom balanced the business being a spouse and all we had to do was simply just get this episode transcribed right get it back and get it back in another book get it back in text form and then brush it off and then maybe have an editor go through it or ai go through

it and brush up yourself and people think like writing a book is a big task it's a big task to commit to do it but once you do it there's tools to make the books easier um but yeah but we could totally write a book this year we just have to do it right now I used to have a I used to be in a coaching

program where we do these morning calls it was only like a 15 minute Morning Call with another person I think I might start that again and we would have a word of the day so today I'm going to be um in charge today I'm going to be uh energetic today I'm going to be whatever it was we had a whole series of words that we would

pick for that day that was our mission for that day so I like this picking words and follow I really like that so uh so back to the juggling I was able able I keep a lot of calendars and I know this sounds crazy I am not an iPhone calendar person I'm not a digital calendar I've tried it it doesn't work for me I like to

see a big calendar for the month and know what's coming up for me and then I can go week by week and day by day and that kind of has helped me and I I mean maybe we've missed one or two things important in the past 20 years yeah I mean I'm pretty good at it I missed a haircut the other day yes you did miss

a haircut the other day but I didn't have it down on my calendar right because it was done through a text message I made the appointment and it wasn't run down or else I wouldn't have forgotten it you always say to people go to my office take a picture of my calendar and send it to me always if we're away and I need to plan something

or somebody's messaging me for something um but I think calendars make a really big difference and I think that has always helped me and I still carry a planner with me um I still have a a daily beginner well a yearly if you want to grab it um it's on my desk but it's it's a great it's a great calendar for me it's a great it

has a month by month and then it has day by day or week by week and then in each week has day by day so that really helps and then I have a calendar in the office a big uh 12 month calendar that I can put things on as well so well great well that was awesome well do you let me ask you I mean I

know we're gonna go over our time and we want to be safe for another episode but I don't want to be quick about anything I want to so so give me one one thing that you think has been beneficial in working together as a couple oh one thing one thing wow so it doesn't have to be the most important it's just one thing and we're always

with each other so always know what's going on okay we're always in communicating there's no surprises ever there's no surprises of of things like oh I forgot to tell you this this happened at work today or this or that um I like the fact that we're always here and we always know what's going on which is probably why sometimes we get frustrated when we don't know

what's going on because like we'll be out and doing something outside of the restaurant and then we don't know what's going on right it's very easy to it's very easy to look over the desk and say like you say to me like we want to go to Justin's game in two weekends and not have to call me at work and be like I'm busy at work

right now I get busy and it's like there's a lot of times I say I can't I'm doing you know I'm working on something or you're working on something not at the right time to talk to us about this but but at least it's out there but at least out there so we can just communicate back and forth and and when we were when the kids

were younger and they needed us like at school it was like somebody needs to go pick up Courtney right now who can do it right there was no calling another spouse well I'm at a job right or trying to figure out who's trying to figure it out right if we looked at each other and said who can break away now right and in most cases we

can both break away but I think what I like the most is you and I when we're when our business is running running good we and I you and I can plan our schedule yeah you and I decide what hours we want to work you and I decide and that's being an entrepreneurs and I decide let's call it a half day and go shopping let's call

it a half day and go hiking today let's take tomorrow off all together and go on a hike with some friends let's go cycling you know what let's take two days off and and go to the beach go to a hotel where we like to go or whatever go to the city and that for me is amazing that we we have that flexibility to do that

if our business is running yeah yeah that's the biggest thing that you and I are in the same schedule it's different like something sometimes you'll say well I have to bartend and tonight there's I don't have no staff that's different most times you and I can manipulate the schedule to do things yep so all right so this is the test of time with Jamie and Marcus

love passion and hustle in the restaurant business episode number 11. thanks for tuning in check out our restaurant Aroma time t-h-y-m-e bistro.com um check out five zeromistakes.com which we're rolling into restaurant growth secretsuniversity.com our 516 book theirs for free and our new book is there to buy it online and um go check it out we're happy to drop us a message I want to hear from

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