I own a baklava bakery in San Francisco. Life as a small business owner in a city flush with AI money has been hard.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tolgay Karabulut, the 43-year-old founder of BaklavaStory, a baklava bakery in San Francisco. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been running a baklava bakery, the thing I’m most passionate about, for the last five years. But the financial pressure I’m facing in San Francisco makes me question whether I can continue doing this forever.

I moved to the United States from Turkey in 2005, when I was 21, to work as a lifeguard at a water park in New Jersey. During that time, I visited California for a month. I knew immediately I wanted to move here.

I’d always been an entrepreneur at…