We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Courtney Wells a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Courtney, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?
Let me begin by saying that being asked if I ever wonder about going back to a life with a ‘regular’ job, literally makes me feel so heard!!!! I thought I was the only one who goes through this. Don’t get me wrong, I am so happy and beyond thankful that I am the owner of a thriving small business but man… I would be lying if I said it was easy to be one.. Let me paint a picture of what my basic, less hectic, week to week looks like, but keep in mind that every single week is different because I don’t get the luxury of a set schedule every day/week/month as a food truck owner. Every Sunday I sit down for about an hour, at least, and plan my whole week. I start by reviewing the events I have for the week and from there plan my prep days. So for example, lets say I have four events this week, well that doesn’t mean I only have four days of work. It means that in between those events I am moving my truck back and forth from storage, shopping for product (if i’m lucky one store has everything I need but sometimes I end up driving all around town to the different restaurant supply stores- BOO.), making my dough from scratch, and catching up on administrative work. What this list doesn’t include is all the extra task that are being done behind the scenes that just aren’t every day things such as; truck maintenance/appointments, cleaning the truck, picking up wood, the time it takes to prepare and load up for an event, or the simple fact that while i’m doing all of these things every single day, I am also managing the schedules of my two kids and maintaining my household and my health.
So imagine having this long To-Do list that is literally never ending and then throw in my arch enemy- STRESS. Now let me tell ya, the stress of being a business owner is what makes my mind wonder what going back to a normal job would be like. Honestly, the last time I dreamt of a normal life was recently, after working a 6 hour long event, cooking in front of my wood fired oven, while it’s 115 degrees outside. That day ended with me curled in a ball on my bathroom floor, vomiting, shaking, and feeling like I couldn’t breathe. Knowing in the back of my mind I had to get up the next morning and do it all again because I can’t just call out of work. I know, I know, I chose this as my business so I shouldn’t complain, but imagine what my body is going through to survive this four to five days a week during events, and really not having any time in between to rest and recover. Which brings me full circle back to the word STRESS.. It’s the stress, from constantly being on the go and then realizing your kids are growing up and life is flying right on by. It’s stress from needing a break or a vacation, like really bad, but constantly being worried to turn down events and take the time off because you don’t have a steady paycheck coming in and what if my truck breaks down next week? It’s stress from not having normal job benefits, a big one for me was health insurance. It’s all of these little things that i’ve mentioned that build up to be these big hurdles physically and emotionally, that are truly just difficult to navigate through sometimes, that have me in a chokehold, wanting to throw in the towel and go back to normalcy and not have all of these responsibilities..
Like I said before I started this rant, I LOVE what I do, and couldn’t be more appreciative for what my business has provided for me and my kids. But sometimes the weight of the responsibilities you take on to maintain a successful business, mixed in with life and worrying about failure, is enough to make my head wonder off and think about how simple things would be if I worked a ‘normal job’.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Hey there! For those of you I have yet to meet- My name is Courtney and I am the owner of Copper State Pizza truck. My pizza truck specializes in personal size, hand stretched, wood fired pizzas. I can proudly say that our dough and pizza sauce is made from scratch. I also focus on providing a menu that offers choices for anyone who eats at my truck, by offering not only a large variety of pizza toppings and combinations but carrying a gluten free pizza crust and dairy free cheese as an alternative as well. Yes I work hard, but my business is successful because I take pride in making sure that every single customer at my truck walks away confident and happy. Wether that be leaving an impression during a quick chat while they wait for their food, or by ensuring that every pizza we put out our window is cooked to perfection. I love being able to connect with people through my business and doing so is what has kept my business alive. So to all my crazy pizza lovers out there, this one is for you!!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
In the last year, my followers have sky rocketed. N0, I don’t have millions of followers but when I first started I stuck strictly to only sharing my weekly schedule on social media, nothing more. I was stuck on this idea I had to make it all about my pizza and nothing else.. Until one day I made myself vulnerable and shared a post basically breaking down the difficulties I was having being a single mom and running a business and ended the post just thanking the few followers I had for being there.. After that went public, more and more people started following. So I changed my strategy and now post just about everything relevant like behind the scenes stuff, or updates on the business/life. Once people were able to connect more with me as an individual, the support for my business grew tremendously and continues to.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Talk about being vulnerable… I am going to leave out some details of this story out of respect for the other person involved but lets take it back to 2021. I am married, raising three kids (my bonus son and my two littles who are only 18 months apart), at the time my ex-husband worked full time and helped with the pizza truck as needed, the truck at this point had been going strong two years in business. Well just as many married couples, we were just really going through it. The pain and deceit I endured had me in a very dark place mentally, for a long time. But I was so stuck on thinking I’d never survive on my own or not wanting a broken family. So I stayed and took it and took it. Until one day I snapped, I realized that you can’t make someone change, and I knew I had to save myself in order to be the best mother I could be and really just to find myself again. So yes, I made the heartbreaking decision of leaving, to protect myself and find my self-worth that had been stripped away from me. Why am I telling you all of this? Because people don’t realize what it took to save my business during and after my divorce. My truck just sat there, for months while the lawyers did their thing. I refused to let all my hard work be taken from me. But obviously I knew right away I needed a source of income while I waited for our case to be closed. My savings as you can imagine was quickly vanishing from the lawyer fees, and then having normal bills to pay. So I stumbled upon a job at a restaurant called La Madeline, with intentions to just keep my head low and survive until I won my truck back. Well I quickly was promoted to a General Manager and was asked to reopen their Phoenix location. Being the GM meant I basically lived at that place. A few months I spent in that position and then the verdict on the pizza truck business was finally reached… I got to keep it! I was so happy but that didn’t mean I could just quit my job and go full time pizza truck. I had no real savings at that point because of how much my lawyer cost me, I knew I had to keep working at the restaurant and slowly start booking events again at night. So literally, picture waking up at 4am every morning to open up a restaurant at 5am, to rush home after and make it to an event and if not an event prepping for my event the next day since I had no time the day of. I tried really hard to only book events the days I didn’t have my kids but for a good year I had to live in survival mode. Which ultimately meant working 17 hours a day sometimes more and never seeing my kids.. It was a very long year of just surviving, not really ever seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, living under a cloud of mom guilt, and in a constant state of exhaustion. If someone told me during that time that I would be where I am today I wouldn’t believe them.
Fast forward just over a year later, and here I am. I did it. I finally see where my hard work went. I don’t share stories like this because I want people to feel bad for me, I share my story because I made it out alive and want anyone going through a similar situation to know that they are not alone. It will be extremely hard, but don’t give up, you got this!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cspizzatruck.com
- Instagram: @cspizzatruck
- Facebook: Copper State Pizza Truck
Image Credits
Brian Penland