The Pros and Cons of Being Your Own Boss

After 15 years of being someone else’s employee, Nicholas Krewson established his own company, which he has found to be both rewarding and challenging

The Pros and Cons of Being Your Own Boss

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Nicholas Krewson knew what he wanted when he launched his company San Diego Drain Krew. Just as important, he knew what he didn’t want.

Krewson, 40, worked 15 years for what he describes as a very good and reputable drain cleaning company in San Diego. He enjoyed his time there, until he didn’t.

“I was working six or seven days a week for 10 straight years, 60- and 70-hour weeks, sometimes 80 or 100 hours,” Krewson says. “I learned a lot of good things there and got really good at the trade.”

Yet the work schedule finally overrode his good feelings.

“I learned finally that if I can’t change the owner and the schedule, I needed to leave,” he says.

Even then, it took four years for Krewson to get a game plan together. Cutting back on his work hours would mean cutting his pay, after all, leaving him and his family living on less money. He finally pulled the plug in January 2019 and began working for himself. While it was a career and business decision, really it was about family. Krewson and wife Kelly have two daughters, Katie, 12, and Karly, 9, and two sons, Karter, 6, and Kyle, 4.

“The long hours were tough on the family and hard on the marriage. I decided I would rather have time for the family than have the extra money,” he says.

Krewson is enjoying the change.

“I wanted to pick up the kids after school without having to ask for time off from my boss. Now I enjoy taking the kids to school on my way to my first job and can get off around 3 or 4 o’clock and take them to practice.”

Still, being a business owner is demanding. Krewson can drop off the kids at practice, but he still has invoices to prepare, jobs to schedule, text messages to send, and planning to do for the next day. He laughs about the notion that it is easier to be an owner than to be an employee.

“It’s funny. You go on your own to be your own boss and you end up working 24/7 if you don’t watch out,” he says. “But when I worked for the other company, in my head I always worked like it was my own company, so I already was doing a lot of this stuff.”

The difference is that now he makes the decision when enough is enough. Says Krewson, “Owning a business isn’t for everybody, because being the owner can be hard. But it is very rewarding.”

Read more about San Diego Drain Krew in the June 2022 issue of Cleaner magazine.



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