I was a general contractor, top rated in my area for bathroom remodels. It wasnt anything to make $10k a month when things were good. My first 4 years in business were outstanding. But then things slowly started dropping off, phone stopped ringing as much, I started losing steam so I stopped advertising and started looking for a brown life-raft.
I think that there are some businesses that are much lower risk, lower insurance, and higher profit margins than construction. I have one in mind that I might start and will let you know hw it goes but I will definitely need employees to run it as I obviously wont have the time. That was another thing that killed alot of business for me back in the day, Obamacare. If I had more than 2 employees, I was forced to pay workmans comp insurance ($7000 a year) and Obamacare health insurance for my employees. It ended up being that I would make more money doing jobs on my own occasionally hiring helpers from Labor Ready than it would be to have staff of my own. So most of the time I took on large jobs by myself and paid helpers $100 a day. Once the ACA is done away with, I can hire people again. Kinda glad it worked out the way it did though cause I have a better business plan now that I got my feet wet.