We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sara Abernethy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sara, thanks for joining us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

On a day-to-day level? Honestly, not always. There are plenty of moments that are exhausting, overwhelming, and riddled with doubt. But looking back—and even zooming out in the present—the answer is a resounding yes, I am ultimately happier as a business owner. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s allowed me to create and pursue my own destiny in ways that wouldn’t have been possible had I stayed in a traditional job. But it comes at great sacrifice.

Owning a business is never, ever boring. If anything, the hard days are often the most clarifying. The biggest challenges are often mental: conquering imposter syndrome, staying true to your “why” when everything around you feels like it’s being held together with scotch tape. Owning a business comes at great personal and financial risk, but I truly believe that nothing that is actually important to me can ever be taken away from me. If everything came crashing down, I would still possess my talents, my skills, my experience, and my family and friends. A business failure couldn’t strip me of those vital pillars of my life. At least – that’s how I sleep at night, remembering this insight!

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is to define success on my own terms—not based on external expectations, because there’s no finish line. You’re never “done”. You’re constantly shifting between putting out fires and trying to build something bigger than the moment you’re in.

This path has come with real sacrifice, and nothing can truly prepare you for the weight of that. I have no regrets. It’s required me to anchor into who I am, who I want to be, what I believe in, and where my strengths lie—again and again. I am grateful for the experience.

Sara, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m an interesting cocktail – a few parts opera singer, a few parts hospitalitarian, a few parts storyteller.

I’m a trained professional opera singer and have a background in performance, classical music and musical theatre. In pursuing that, I made a living working many a restaurant job over the years, especially excelling in a front of house role. I met my now husband working at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, where he was the Technical Director for 20 years. It may not seem obvious at first, but putting on a dinner service and putting on a production are extremely similar pursuits. With my experience in restaurants, and Chris’ experience creating bespoke theatre magic (and his abilities as a handyman), taking on a career in restaurants has been a natural fit for our unique skills.

What I’m most proud of, to be perfectly honest, is staying married to my husband throughout a near decade of being in business together. Working with your spouse is an incredibly trying experience, because you end up being everything to each other – but you don’t necessarily communicate with each other the way you do with professional colleagues. You see the absolute best and the absolute worst in each other, and there’s no escape because you’re going home together every night. I am extraordinarily proud of how I’ve seen Chris evolve as a leader, and I am equally as proud of how I’ve supported the business in a thousand intangible ways to help it continue forward.

What we’re really, really good at doing together as a team is seeing an opportunity in what we call “destination dining”, seeing the business need for a restaurant based on location, and creating a holistic vibe for a dining experience. Both Glasshouse Kitchen and Wye Hill Kitchen & Brewing were exceptional locations for a food & beverage establishment, and we seized the moment when it came across our path.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The lesson I will spend my lifetime learning is: You are not what you do.

I’ve exclusively pursued vocations where success is so obviously linked to external factors – as a performer, you’re only as “good” as getting cast or booking a job. As a sales person, you’re only as “good” as the sales you produce and the dollar value associated with that. As a leader, you’re only as “good” as your business is perceived, or deemed successful by the outside.

But we are so much more than that. We, each of us, possess an inimitable source of worth that is our birthright. Just for existing. It has nothing to do with how much money you made, or how many jobs you booked, or how many awards you won, none of that. It belongs to each of us, and cannot be increased or diminished by any external force.

Your productivity does not define your worth. You do not have to “earn” rest. You are worthy just for being here. The rest is truly icing on the cake.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

There have been many, many of these moments for us since 2018.

The most significant one that comes to mind is not unique to my industry – in the spring of 2020. Securing capital funding for restaurants to continue to pay bills and try to bridge the gap of months without any income was extremely confusing, stressful, and complicated for us. We did not have private investors that we could circle back to for assistance, since we were bootstrapped from the get go. Our home was on the line, and we had a crazy amount of personal debt just from purchasing the business and operating the first year.

In short, the landscape was bleak. We were looking off the edge of a cliff.

One morning, over coffee, I noticed an op-ed in the News & Observer specifically trying to reach restaurant owners, offering private financial assistance in exchange for a letter and a short business proposal, from an anonymous source. The “Santa Claus” of restaurants in Raleigh.

I mustered every ounce of experience I had as a fundraiser, a storyteller, and a Raleigh native to craft our plea and share our circumstances. Our restaurant location is known for being a beloved location for both Raleigh residents and visitors – and we were committed to preserving its local charm in the light of so many corporate restaurant groups taking hold in our market.

The benefactor met us in the Tap Room on a clear Tuesday morning. We stood socially distanced from each other, dutifully wearing our masks. We had a short conversation, and he wrote us a check, as a bridge loan, that covered all our costs for 3 months.

When he walked out of the building, Chris and I fell into each others’ arms and sobbed. We popped a bottle of champagne on the patio and celebrated. From that moment on, I had a deep knowing that we could overcome just about anything that the rest of the pandemic experience might throw at us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wyehill.com; www.glasshouskitchennc.com
• Instagram: @sara.abernethy; @wyehill; @glasshousekitchennc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarakwabernethy/

Image Credits

JME Photography

Forest Mason