There is no question it's a hard business, and there is a lot of competition. Jeff has had two letters this year; I've had a half dozen, and it's still January!
I guess the ones that bother me are all of the older guys who think they should succeed like Alister MacKenzie or Pete Dye, with golf architecture as a second career. Maybe you can do that if you are wealthy enough to fund your own projects; otherwise you must believe you are somehow smarter than everybody else, to make up for the years of experience you don't have. And that sorely underestimates the intelligence of the many young people who have gotten into this business over the past 25 years.
There are plenty of people already in the business who might run circles around me, if only they got the chance. There will be a time when I turn to helping them do just that, but I've got a few more ideas I want to get into the ground first.
Adrian,
To answer your question specifically, yes, I do! I looked into other things, but after being self employed for 37 years, I deem myself unemployable by others, especially approaching age 66. I like your plan of investing in other things. I once owned part of a golf course I had designed and should have kept it. The secret to wealth building is developing ongoing passive revenue streams, and while it lasted, I did get $30K per year without doing anything. After that, I decided to just save money and invest in OTHER industries to avoid excessive concentration in golf.
As I stated in another post, my income (in the percentile of the US terms) has ranged from top 2% in the go-go 90s to a low of 50th percentile in the 2006-2009 era. Thanks to my conservative approach to money, I do have sufficient savings for when I (at least semi) retire soon. As you know, gca is sort of like the pro golf tours....every year the hopefuls all start out at zero dollars. No guaranteed NFL contracts for us! Consulting fees, even for the self employed, make you comfortable if you are a success, but not wealthy. And, the struggle can get easier, but then again, it can get harder, as well.
So, yes, it can vary, but even a mid level gca had a chance at making some decent money at one point.
[size=78%] [/size]As Mike says, I'm not sure that is true now, but even 50 seems low, who at least make a middle class living wage. It's a big world out there. As you so astutely know, it's not making the money, it's keeping and growing it. And being a small biz owner is so hard, and people always think it's easy. Most small business owners in the US really do it for a small bump in a living wage, plus freedom and satisfaction. And, most small businesses are famous for being "90 days from going broke" in perpetuity.
TD and Adrian,
One other sound bite sticks with me. When I announced I was quitting my job and moving to Texas to start my own business, one of my father's comments was, "Well, it helps to be too young and stupid to know what might go wrong." And, it did! It was no leap of faith to try it, with a wife who earned a living, no kids, etc., etc. etc. But after you pass the first test of not letting anyone talk you out of it, the second has to be never once believing you can fail. At the end of my first year in the biz, I had $5000 in my company bank account. One day, while running prints at the local blueprint shop, I saw they had fireproof drawing file cabinets and printers on sale, which I felt I needed, so I spent almost $4000 of that without a thought. LOL on me. I still use the phrase, "What could possibly go wrong?" when embarking on some semi crazy idea.