Jen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneurs Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski, this week’s guest host, and I’m here with Rassul Zarnfar, the Founder and CEO of Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company. Welcome back to the Playbook, Rassul.
Rassul: Thank you so much for having me.
Jen: Now, you’re an entrepreneur.
Rassul: Yeah.
Jen: You get to be your own boss.
Rassul: Yeah.
Jen: Kind of tell me about that. How is that?
Rassul: You know, it’s funny. Everyone always says, “I want to get into entrepreneurship so I can be my own boss.” I don’t think it’s actually like that at all. In fact, you start thinking about it as like I’m not the boss of anyone. My investors tell me what to do. My customers tell me what to do. And an employee comes in; they’re having a bad day; I’ve got to cheer ‘em up and get ‘em the equipment or the tools that they need to get their job done and do it so that everything keeps flowing smoothly. So you get to the end of the day and you’re like, “I’m not really the boss of anything.” It’s like everyone’s my boss.
Jen: Now, is there anything that you kind of wish you had known before you started this?
Rassul: I think the biggest thing that took me a while to figure out was to keep your eye on the big picture and don’t tie your ego up in every little thing because, you know, we’ll be having a really bad sales week, and then we’ll turn around and we’ll have an incredible sales week the next day. Or something will cut against it, and then it’ll work out to where it works out in our favor in the long run. And I think when I’ve tied my ego and my self-esteem to the day-to-day, the tumultuous aspects of the day-to-day, like you just get caught in this roller coaster ride that you just can’t recover from. So you really have to – you really have to keep your eye on the big picture and have your mission statement ahead of you so that you know that you’re always making progress, even with a little bit of a setback.
Jen: That sounds great. Well, thanks for being back with us.
Rassul: Thank you so much for having me.
Jen: This has been another thought-leader production brought to you by PKF Texas Entrepreneurs Playbook. Tune in next week for another chapter.