This One Was On Me

I made a bad decision this week..

There are moments as a business owner that don’t look like a big deal on the surface, but they sit with you longer than the big, obvious problems.

This week, I made one of those decisions.

Nothing catastrophic. No major fallout. If you walked into the restaurant, you probably wouldn’t have noticed anything was “wrong.” But behind the scenes, I knew. We were too short-handed. And the truth is, it didn’t happen by accident, it happened because of a decision I made.

I made a call too quicky and I assumed we could make it work. I didn’t adjust early enough. And in a business like a restaurant, especially out here in Terlingua, those small calls compound quickly.

And, what that looked like in real time was a team stretched thinner than they should have been, longer ticket times, and more pressure in the kitchen. There was less margin for error. Everyone still showed up, still worked hard, still delivered, but it wasn’t the standard I expect from myself as a leader. I screwed up.

And that’s the part that sucks. I put my team in a tough position.

These are the things people don’t see when they think about owning a business, especially a restaurant. They see the full dining room, the food, the atmosphere, the brand, and fun times. What they don’t see are the decisions made days before… the ones that either set your team up to win or quietly make things harder than they need to be.

This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.

Not because it was a disaster, but because it didn’t have to happen.

As an owner/operator, you carry a different level of responsibility. You don’t get to pass it off or explain it away. If the team is struggling, if the system is strained, if things feel harder than they should: it’s on you to trace it back and own it.

And this one? It was on me.

But there’s something important in that, too.

These small mistakes are rarely about one bad decision; they’re about awareness. They’re signals. They show you where your systems are tight, where your assumptions are off, and where you need to level up as a leader.

Because if you ignore them, they do turn into bigger problems.

It leads to staff burnout, inconsistent service, missed opportunities, and resentment to your own business. It’s all a slow erosion of the standard you’ve worked so hard to build.

That’s how it starts. Quietly.

So here’s the lesson I’m taking with me:

Small decisions deserve the same level of attention as the big ones.
Because in business, there’s no such thing as “just this once.”

Every schedule you approve, every shift you leave uncovered, every time you assume it will “probably be fine”: you’re either protecting the standard or chipping away at it.

And leadership is really just a series of those choices, stacked over time.

This week was a reminder that the standard doesn’t slip all at once. yet it slips in moments. In decisions that feel minor and in the things no one else would ever notice.

But you do, and you will.

And if you’re doing this right… you don’t ignore that feeling. You learn from it, you tighten things up, and you move forward better than you were before.

That’s the job.

I’m always learning.

-M