Mimicking what others said here, but there is one very important thing: you and your wife need to be on the same page on this.

Owning a business involves your whole family, you can get better at it, but there’s no way around it. Whatever your reasons are for taking this path, make sure they understand. When there’s friction and you need to prioritize the business it will help a lot. The key that helping is to have it be a “we” decision though. You may reach a point where one of you wants to continue and the other doesn’t. You will fight about it. But fighting about if this is getting you where you want to be better than an alternative path is a lot more productive than just fighting about stress.

Re: time: I always say that it’s usually not the hours (although sometimes it certainly is), it’s that you’re never really off. You’ll start to fall into rythem and realize what is critical and what can wait. It gets easier but it never gets easy.

For construction in general, without knowing the type: be very careful to set yourself up for success. Do not get saddled with loans for equipment that you don’t need. Do not be afraid to rent on a per job basis for a while. If it helps you avoid oversizing/buying the wrong piece of equipment it’s well worth it.

Grow your client base intentionally. You’re going to have shitty customers. My best friend does a mix of residential, muni, and private. The shit developers have pulled on him is astounding (“I need to sell a house before I can pay you”). They will grind you on bills because they know their ongoing expenses are less than yours; you’ll cave if they wait. Make liberal use of late fees (usually capped by state) and property leins. The art of “playing the game” and not getting rolled over is hard learned. When you get good clients that pay their bills on time and don’t grind, do whatever you need to keep them. especially now, make sure there are material cost escalation and availability clauses in your contracts.

Last: avoid “the lifestyle”. Do not judge your companys success on the fanciness of the equipment or what it’s name is on. Judge it on the balance sheet. You have no idea what other firms books look like. Be intentional about your networking time. That vendor that hosted a golf outing, did you really get good connections out of it or did you go because you needed a break and could call it “work”? If it’s the latter, would you have been more recharged taking a break with your wife around the house? Networking is intangible, you’re going to be the only one who can make that call.

You will fuck all of this up, thats how you learn. But you CAN do this.