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Abstract

ing, she presented herself as someone who enjoyed working hard. I later realized that she enjoyed being in control, and she would work hard to wrest control if that’s what it took, but at the time, I was thrilled and overjoyed to have someone who seemed to care about her job and my business.She constantly talked about expanding the business. She wanted it to be bigger, national, global. She said she’d get bored if we were just a tiny mom-and-pop small bakery with one location. She said I needed her. She said this was the best job she’d ever had and she loved it. She said the timing was right to broaden our offerings and service area. And like a little fool, I ate it all up. In truth, I was secretly relieved that she seemed so eager. It had been years since I was passionate about the business, but leasehold obligations — and ego — kept me going. For a decade, I was the primary breadwinner at home and we had bills and a mortgage. Then, a ten-year lease on a new location and an equipment loan to repay made me feel trapped into continuing.My Was-band started getting frustrated with his co-workers and bosses. He’d present ideas which they would ignore for months, and then one of his bosses would present the same idea and everyone was suddenly on board. He started talking about leaving his job and quitting, which would put the financial stresses of maintaining our home and cars back on my shoulders.“Open another location,” he coaxed. “Even if you can take home 50% of what you were earning at the flagship store, along with a little extra from the first location, I won’t have to work any longer.”And like a little fool, I ate it up.I first saw the building in February of 2019. I had met a food writer friend of mine for lunch and despite the watery light of the gray, dreary, winter day, the building across the street shined. It was a remodel of a decrepit but formerly-popular karaoke bar and the new building was made of dark red brick, giant windows on the ground floor for shops, high industrial ceilings with pipes running across, cement walls, and topped by four floors of high-end studio apartments that cost more than my monthly take-home from the bakery. It was beautiful, and initially, it felt like kismet.Lucy lived in the neighborhood and had been pushing for something near there to capitalize on all the 20-somethings who were living and working in the area. The leasing agent was available to meet that afternoon for a walkthrough, and when I called my banker to tell him I might have found a space and needed a preapproval letter for a loan, the phone call lasted less than 60 seconds and I had my letter.I’d already looked at a dozen locations with Lucy and this one…felt right where none of the others had. My Was-band was excited too, and I thought perhaps this was fate.So I negotiated (with th

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e help of a commercial broker) and signed a 10-year lease in the summer of 2019, and began construction on the interior. We opened on a blustery, rainy day in the late fall of 2019, and it felt full-circle from that rainy February day when I first laid eyes on the building.A month later, my Was-band got fired and I remember thinking, “Well, now I can prove to myself that I’m not just staying with him for his paycheck.” Ideally, I’d have consoled him, been optimistic about our future, and talked about our next steps. It could have brought us closer together. I’m still ashamed that this was my first thought.And then, just a few months after opening the bakery location, when we were starting to get our stride and inching toward the monthly black on my ledger sheet, the pandemic hit and government orders to cease all operations and shut down caused a ripple effect. I laid off employees so they could collect unemployment and though I hired them back six months later, everything was different. If I thought I was run down, burnt out, and lacking motivation before, now I was a completely scorched earth, barren of creativity, resilience, and motivation.My personal life collapsed during this time too. I’d divorced my Was-band, been forced to sell my home, bounced around from temporary place to temporary place trying to find a more permanent living situation. I stayed for a spell with friends, and with family. I had had no income in over a year so I didn’t qualify for renting anything, anywhere, and I was terrified.I found out the books weren’t adding up at the bakery, and when I quizzed Lucy about it, asking if she knew what was going on, she promptly gave notice. Digging deeper revealed the extent of her betrayal.In April of 2021, I couldn’t split my focus between the two bakery locations and permanently shut down the new one, though as of today, I’m still paying back the business loan and monthly lease.I owe somewhere north of 1.4 million dollars.This is not a “woe-is-me” story but a cautionary tale, and the TL;DR lesson is this: Never do anything purely to please others, especially when you know you don’t have the heart for it. If you’re going to lay down your blood, sweat, and literal tears, make sure it’s something you’re passionate about. Make sure the idea feels like yours, even if you didn’t initially come up with it. Make sure you’re in it for internal satisfaction, and not merely to appease people who threaten to leave if you don’t. Make sure you want to do it. Make sure you’re surrounded by people who will build you up and remind you that you’re capable and support you however they can. Make sure there’s at least a part of you that is doing this for you.I have now had a very expensive education in motivation. This is a mistake I’ll be paying for for years to come.</article></body>

I Made a Million Dollar Mistake

The lesson I learned about doing things to try to please others

I made a huge mistake and I’ll be paying for it for quite a while. Before the pandemic, before my divorce when he was still my husband, and before I found out she was embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from my company, I tried to be a good wife and good boss. I tried to be collaborative when it came to both my marriage and my business.

And that mistake is costing me over a million dollars.

My was-band didn’t want to work. When I met him, he was finishing his doctorate degree and didn’t have income. He bounced around from job to job, earning some but not a lot of money, and for a short time toward the end of our marriage, he maintained a stable job and pulled in really decent money of the 6-figure variety. It was the most he’d earned during our relationship, more even than he’d made cumulatively in the 11 years prior, and it was a huge weight of relief off me. He’d designed a job for himself managing a product line at a company that hadn’t previously incorporated those functions, and he was energized and excited about working. For awhile. I was thrilled to see him enthusiastic about something — he’s been blasé for so long that I’d forgotten what his passion looked like — and that for the first time in our relationship, the burden wasn’t on my shoulders to pay the bills. I felt like I could exhale for the first time in over a decade.

Lucy had been hired as my operations manager at work. Following a car accident that left me with debilitating migraines four or five days a week for months on end, I could no longer hoist 50-pound sacks of sugar or carry trays laden with sticky cinnamon rolls or stand on my feet for eight hours rolling out sugar cookie dough. I also couldn’t sit at a desk and stare at a computer all day while I figured schedules and inventory and ordering and invoicing… so I needed someone to run the bakery for me while I couldn’t. Although we talked daily about the overall direction and marketing and creative ideas for the bakery, I handed the salary I had been taking home to her, along with the daily operations.

I had no idea that she would go on to pilfer over $50,000 from me, steal, alter and delete protected intellectual property, lie to my employees' faces, treat them abusively and retaliate on them when they went over her head to let me know what they dealt with in my absence. I failed my team by hiring and trusting her, but it would be two years before I realized the extent of my failure.

Lucy was the daughter of an extremely rich architect father and socialite mother, but despite her cushy trust-fund upbringing, she presented herself as someone who enjoyed working hard. I later realized that she enjoyed being in control, and she would work hard to wrest control if that’s what it took, but at the time, I was thrilled and overjoyed to have someone who seemed to care about her job and my business.

She constantly talked about expanding the business. She wanted it to be bigger, national, global. She said she’d get bored if we were just a tiny mom-and-pop small bakery with one location. She said I needed her. She said this was the best job she’d ever had and she loved it. She said the timing was right to broaden our offerings and service area. And like a little fool, I ate it all up. In truth, I was secretly relieved that she seemed so eager. It had been years since I was passionate about the business, but leasehold obligations — and ego — kept me going. For a decade, I was the primary breadwinner at home and we had bills and a mortgage. Then, a ten-year lease on a new location and an equipment loan to repay made me feel trapped into continuing.

My Was-band started getting frustrated with his co-workers and bosses. He’d present ideas which they would ignore for months, and then one of his bosses would present the same idea and everyone was suddenly on board. He started talking about leaving his job and quitting, which would put the financial stresses of maintaining our home and cars back on my shoulders.

“Open another location,” he coaxed. “Even if you can take home 50% of what you were earning at the flagship store, along with a little extra from the first location, I won’t have to work any longer.”

And like a little fool, I ate it up.

I first saw the building in February of 2019. I had met a food writer friend of mine for lunch and despite the watery light of the gray, dreary, winter day, the building across the street shined. It was a remodel of a decrepit but formerly-popular karaoke bar and the new building was made of dark red brick, giant windows on the ground floor for shops, high industrial ceilings with pipes running across, cement walls, and topped by four floors of high-end studio apartments that cost more than my monthly take-home from the bakery. It was beautiful, and initially, it felt like kismet.

Lucy lived in the neighborhood and had been pushing for something near there to capitalize on all the 20-somethings who were living and working in the area. The leasing agent was available to meet that afternoon for a walkthrough, and when I called my banker to tell him I might have found a space and needed a preapproval letter for a loan, the phone call lasted less than 60 seconds and I had my letter.

I’d already looked at a dozen locations with Lucy and this one…felt right where none of the others had. My Was-band was excited too, and I thought perhaps this was fate.

So I negotiated (with the help of a commercial broker) and signed a 10-year lease in the summer of 2019, and began construction on the interior. We opened on a blustery, rainy day in the late fall of 2019, and it felt full-circle from that rainy February day when I first laid eyes on the building.

A month later, my Was-band got fired and I remember thinking, “Well, now I can prove to myself that I’m not just staying with him for his paycheck.” Ideally, I’d have consoled him, been optimistic about our future, and talked about our next steps. It could have brought us closer together. I’m still ashamed that this was my first thought.

And then, just a few months after opening the bakery location, when we were starting to get our stride and inching toward the monthly black on my ledger sheet, the pandemic hit and government orders to cease all operations and shut down caused a ripple effect. I laid off employees so they could collect unemployment and though I hired them back six months later, everything was different. If I thought I was run down, burnt out, and lacking motivation before, now I was a completely scorched earth, barren of creativity, resilience, and motivation.

My personal life collapsed during this time too. I’d divorced my Was-band, been forced to sell my home, bounced around from temporary place to temporary place trying to find a more permanent living situation. I stayed for a spell with friends, and with family. I had had no income in over a year so I didn’t qualify for renting anything, anywhere, and I was terrified.

I found out the books weren’t adding up at the bakery, and when I quizzed Lucy about it, asking if she knew what was going on, she promptly gave notice. Digging deeper revealed the extent of her betrayal.

In April of 2021, I couldn’t split my focus between the two bakery locations and permanently shut down the new one, though as of today, I’m still paying back the business loan and monthly lease.

I owe somewhere north of 1.4 million dollars.

This is not a “woe-is-me” story but a cautionary tale, and the TL;DR lesson is this: Never do anything purely to please others, especially when you know you don’t have the heart for it. If you’re going to lay down your blood, sweat, and literal tears, make sure it’s something you’re passionate about. Make sure the idea feels like yours, even if you didn’t initially come up with it. Make sure you’re in it for internal satisfaction, and not merely to appease people who threaten to leave if you don’t. Make sure you want to do it. Make sure you’re surrounded by people who will build you up and remind you that you’re capable and support you however they can. Make sure there’s at least a part of you that is doing this for you.

I have now had a very expensive education in motivation. This is a mistake I’ll be paying for for years to come.