What Ten Years of Running a Hospitality Business Actually Did to Me

I dont usually talk about this.

Most of what I write is practical. Frameworks, tools, insights pulled from experience and shaped into something useful. Things you can take away and apply.

This is different.

Because before I can talk about how to carry the weight of running a hospitality business without it breaking you, I think you deserve to know that I know what that weight actually feels like. Not theoretically. Not from a textbook. From ten years of living it, losing myself in it, and finding my way back out the other side.

This is that story.

It Started With a One Way Ticket

I wasnt always in hospitality. In my twenties and early thirties I was running events in Bournemouth. A record label, a non profit that educated musicians, the Dorset Music Awards. I was considered an authority in that world. But I wasnt happy and I couldnt tell you why.

At thirty two I sold nearly everything I owned, kept my guitar and my comic book collection, and bought a one way ticket to Mexico with no plan beyond getting there.

They say wherever you go, there you shall be. They're right. Mexico didnt solve anything. But it gave me eighteen months of growth, connection, and a question I couldnt shake. My best friend Mike visited and sat in a little local eatery and said: there's nothing like this in Bournemouth.

That thought grew until I couldnt ignore it. I sketched an entire concept on an iPad in a hostel. I came home with nothing but an idea and an enormous amount of belief. And two years later, after funding applications, a call centre job I took so I wouldnt get distracted, and more moments of almost quitting than I can count, Ojo Rojo opened its doors.

I have never been prouder of anything in my life.

And Then the Industry Changed Forever

The early years were a blur of busy nights, awards, and learning the hard way on almost every aspect of running a business in an industry I had never worked in. We found our rhythm. We got good at it.

And then covid happened.

If you work in hospitality you know what followed. The last five years have been unlike anything this industry has ever faced. A generation of young people grew up without the social drinking culture that would have brought them into venues. Chefs left in their thousands and most of them never came back. Spending habits changed. Predictability disappeared. An entire industry had to relearn itself overnight and, honestly, it hasnt fully recovered since.

I had learned how to run a busy restaurant in a difficult industry. Now I had to figure out how to run a quiet one in an industry that felt like a completely different world. And instead of building structure around that pressure, I absorbed it.

When I Started to Lose Myself

I said yes to everything. I shouldered everything. I told myself it was my job.

And slowly, without noticing it happening, I stopped being present for any of it. I became expert at moving straight from one problem to the next without letting a good moment land. Awards, great services, brilliant reviews, I was already three problems ahead before any of it had a chance to exist.

By the time I noticed, I was just sad all the time. And I didnt feel like me anymore.

I remember sitting in a pub surrounded by close old friends on a rare night off, completely submerged in anxiety, convinced I was one bad week from failure, looking at the people who loved me and thinking they had no idea. I was missing everything they were giving me because the business had taken up every available space inside me.

The physical toll followed. A panic attack alone in the restaurant replacing tea lights. Sitting on the floor of a locked toilet for ten minutes because I couldnt stop sobbing before staff arrived. Going home and telling nobody. Not even my wife.

I had forgotten who I was. I had forgotten what it had taken to build the thing I was now being dragged along by.

The Way Back

The turning point wasnt dramatic. It was small, deliberate, and built over time.

A morning routine that gave me my power back before the day could claim it. Hours spent 3D printing and painting models, something absorbing and creative that had nothing to do with work and everything to do with reminding my nervous system what calm felt like. Sobriety. Exercise. Breathwork. Structure around the week. Boundaries I actually held.

And then a supermarket car park where I stopped the car, turned to my wife Siobhan, and apologised for the dark few years.

She broke down in tears. So did I.

That moment cemented something. I didnt want to be the person who thought it was acceptable for the woman he loved most to carry that weight because of him.

I havent looked back since.

Why I'm Telling You This

We moved Ojo Rojo last year to a smaller site. Less overhead, less scale, more soul. It feels like a family again. And the work I do now, the coaching, the consultancy, this channel, all of it came from that period of learning everything the hardest possible way.

I dont work with hospitality leaders because I have it all figured out.

I work with them because I remember exactly what it felt like to be completely submerged with no idea that another way existed.

If any part of this resonates, I'd love to hear from you. You can watch the full story on my YouTube channel, the link is below. Or if you're carrying something right now and want a conversation, the first call is free and there's no commitment involved.

You dont have to figure it out alone.