Susan Strachan, a devout Christian and daring entrepreneur who ventured into the food industry, quickly realised the stark differences between working for a Fortune 500 company and managing her own business.
When Strachan opened the Grove Grill in New Jersey, she found herself swimming in a sea of bills, headaches, and stress, realising she was fast losing control of the money that came into the business. Money came in and went out twice as quickly. She had no time for herself, and it seemed the restaurant was taking up all her time, leaving her feeling as if she was losing her mind.
“If I’m keeping it real, there were times when everything felt like it was falling apart—business was slow, finding staff was hard, I was working 18-hour days and had depleted my safety net. In those moments, I questioned if this was really from God. My prayer life was next to non-existent. I felt disappointed in the process and in myself,” she shared with Freedom Come Rain.
The Grove Grill, which has now been open for almost three years, saw her wondering whether it was truly her faith or her ‘daredevil’ side that pushed her into the food industry.
She had absolutely no experience in the food industry.
Looking back, she concluded that it was a mix of both.
“My faith gave me the courage to take the leap, trusting that God had a purpose in it, while my adventurous spirit made the challenge exciting. I’ve learned that sometimes faith looks a lot like risk—stepping out before you see the whole plan, believing it will come together.”
Convinced that God was in the mix, Strachan decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. She said it required a deeper level of surrender, and she made the decision then and there to truly delight herself in the Lord once more and rebuild her prayer life day by day.
“My faith in Christ has been my anchor as an entrepreneur. One of my favourite sayings is to ‘do it scared’—to trust God and take bold steps even when I feel uncertain and afraid. Also, that childlike faith inside of me gives me the courage to move forward, knowing I’m not doing this alone and that every risk has a purpose bigger than me,” she noted.
Strachan, who never fails to highlight her Jamaican heritage, attributes her entrepreneurial drive to always having “more than one thing going on.”
When her corporate career ended, she didn’t go straight into the food industry. She first opened a beauty salon, then created a hair and skincare line—which she still runs today—the NBI All Natural products, and eventually stepped into the restaurant business.
“There’s a saying that the devil finds work for idle hands, and I’ve never been someone who could sit still. But I will say this very clearly: compared to the food industry, those other businesses felt like a jog in the park.
The restaurant industry is, in my opinion, the hardest industry on planet earth. It is non-stop. There are no real pauses. Between staffing, preparation, customer experience, and constantly fluctuating food costs, the margins can move from decent to extremely tight very quickly. So the biggest shock wasn’t the work itself—it was realising that in this industry the work never truly stops,” she shared in hindsight.
Commenting on some of the ‘shocks’, Strachan said it seemed the surprise was everything. The biggest for her was underestimating the flow of how everything works.
According to her, she thought everything would be straightforward—buy the food, cook it, and serve customers.
“It was so much more than that—managing inventory, controlling costs, scheduling staff, and making sure the numbers make sense every single week. Everything was harder than I imagined. Your brain just doesn’t stop working. It requires a much deeper level of discipline than it appears,” she explained.
Pointing out the differences between corporate life and entrepreneurship, Strachan said that in a corporate setting the budget isn’t really yours. You are simply operating within a structure that someone else has already built, with systems, guidelines, and safeguards in place to help ensure the company’s success, while you receive a salary at the end of the day.
“When it’s your own business, it’s completely different. You’re building everything from scratch. Every decision you make—purchasing, staffing, pricing—directly affects the survival of the business. So the realisation comes quickly that the success or failure of the operation sits entirely on your shoulders. There is no safety net whatsoever. You are solely responsible for protecting every dollar for your livelihood and for others,” she pointed out.
All her struggles and discoveries are chronicled and shared, along with the wisdom she gained in making the business work, in her recently released book Built Under Pressure, now available on Amazon.
Strachan said anyone reading it can use it as a roadmap—not only for the food industry but for building any kind of business.
