I had a construction related business and I found that the exact opposite approach worked best for me. Every employee was encouraged to build relationships with every customer. I would tell them that they should be the customers advocate first and in situations where business profitability might be negatively impacted, I would weigh in, and be the “bad guy” if necessary. I told them that their job security was based largely on the level of customer satisfaction with their role. The best praise an employee could receive was a comment like this “I don’t need to talk to the owner, because I know you are able to help solve my problem”. My employees also knew that if a customer voices their concerns about a specific employee, it’s a big deal.

The bottom line is that you (the owner) are really going to limit your business growth potential, if you insist on holding all of the cards. It’s just a short sighted approach IMO. Is there a risk that an employee who has unrestricted access to customers could leave to go to a competitor or start their own business, sure. As an owner, you have to view that possibility in the same way that you view all potential competitive factors. Over the 18 years we were in business some of my employees did leave to start their own business or work for competitors. I maintained friendly and professional relationships with them as well. When they left, the door opened for someone else to step up, take more responsibility and earn more money.

Yea, this is the right answer IMO. Take on as much work as possible and use the profits to fund future growth and pay himself W2 earnings not to exceed the cap rate. Then, after the terms earning cap has expired, he’ll be setup to earn more. It’s a really unusual situation and quite fortunate. He could potentially create quite a strong business over the next 15 years. Since he is really forced to pay others for work that he himself could do, he may find out that after 15 years his labor contributions are not even necessary for the business to continue. He might be in a perfect position to sell out entirely.

OP I think you are comparing the wrong things here. First what are you long term life goals? Making YouTube videos in and of itself is not a viable life goal, no more than bottling mineral water is a life goal. So without understanding what your personal life goals are, we have no way of knowing which choice may be more likely to help you achieve that goal.

Second and equally important what are the revenue opportunities that you could realistically achieve at either career and how much time (money) will you have to invest to obtain a reasonable return on your business venture.

Let’s start with your parents business. It sounds like your father is the primary source of management labor for his business. He may be also be fulfilling other lower skilled labor tasks too. When you describe a business where the owner is working 7 days a week 12 hrs per day, it sounds like he may be severely understaffed. So the first question is how much money does their business make? If the business earns $300K in profit right now and your father is earning all of that money. If you just split the business responsibilities and profits equally, you could each work 40hrs per week and make $150K in profit.

Obviously I am severely oversimplifying the example, but you need to assess how much earning potential you would have at this business. It may be a total financial loser, and no amount of effort will overcome the fact that he is running a crappy business in a saturated market with a low barrier to entry. If that’s the case, it’s not even a binary choice. However, if his business is profitable, shows signs of strong growth, and the only reason he is working so hard now, is to really scale the business to the next stage. There may indeed be room in the company to pay yourselves well without working 80hrs a week. Unless you have done this financial analysis, you cannot even answer your own question.

Now the same can be said for your YouTube business. If you were trying to make the same income per year as my previous example $150K you have to first calculate your top line revenue. A very rough guide would be $1 per daily view at a 50% engagement rate per year. So that means you would have to create sustained content to keep 150,000 daily viewers engaged at least 50% to earn possibly $150K in revenue.

The second part of that equation is how many hours of content creation would it take to capture 150,000 viewers per day every day, for every year you need to work? Is your content that interesting and unique to capture that audience? Can you sustain the level of creativity to continue to capture that large of an audience? Do you have any idea how much personal time would be required to create and edit that content? You have to ask yourself these questions and answer them.

Choose the most lucrative option and learn to like it. Then maybe you will have the time and money to pursue the things in life that you love.

I wish you success in whichever endeavor you choose.

Another thing that is going in her favor is that construction adjacent fields were really the last bastion of male dominance. As a male who has been in the construction business for close to two decades, I’ve really started to see a lot more women Project Managers and Field Engineers over the past 10 years. It’s really accelerated lately. I see there is a much different style of management between men and women and some women who I have worked with are very effective construction project leaders. They often bring a different level of planning and organization to the teams. Professionally it’s refreshing. Don’t be afraid to let your daughter loose in the field. She’ll never really develop a sold 3 dimensional engineering understanding if she is stuck behind a desk all day. Seeing how projects come out of the ground and understanding how structures are integrated into the terrain is a crucial and often lacking ability.

Civil engineering is not bad. Engineering careers in general are still good choices and open doors to long term employment. There is still a lot of demand in the US. Also unlike some engineering careers which can be easily outsourced Civil engineering has an technical element that requires a knowledgeable field presence. So there may be less foreign competition in a local job market.

The bottom line is that she won’t graduate in a vacuum. She will face competition from other grads, so she should strive for academic excellence now, while in school. Also take on part time jobs in adjacent fields of work, in order to build her resume with some relevant experience.

Lastly when starting out be prepared to live anywhere. Tell her to find the hardest and most challenging engineering job that she is qualified to do, right out of school. What she will learn in those next two years will impact her long term career trajectory more than her degree.