Should I fire my employee? small business |
- Should I fire my employee?
- How do you guys get enough support?
- Distributor wants money from over a year ago
- What want made you want to carry on your small business when things weren't going well?
- If you sell a service business - how does this usually happen? Do you sell your clientbase, and how do you communicate with the clientbase about the change in ownership? Any real world examples?
- Advice: your employees CANNOT give you 100% every day
- (Answer if you have a online business) Posted this on AmazonSeller but thought I’d get more help here as there’s more people
- Best Website Hosts/ Creators for Service Based Businesses???
- High quality marketing for jewelry
- Commercial Kitchen Help in Seattle, Washington
- Women employee. Different perspective.
- Advice or ideas for hosting remote holiday party
- My business is not growing, and i do not understand what i’m doing wrong.
- Does an LLC functioning as a holding company for a subsidiary have to have the subsidiary listed as a formal company, or can the LLC just be an informal company (within the corporate structure of the parent LLC)?
- Full time job + part time job and small buisness?
- When does an LLC expire?
- Parking Work Truck
- 40 hour employee or outsource the work which is the cheapest route?
- Single member llc $5,000 write off limit?
- Unique Marketing ideas
- Looking for Advisors - Cofounders - Staff
- Startup business and S Corp status
- Additional Insured Question- We provide a service
- Restaurant owners have you raised your menu prices to offset delivery fees?
- Reaching out prospects. Not getting responses. Do people even care about Blockchain?
| Posted: 23 Dec 2021 06:33 PM PST I run a small Etsy business making custom D&D items that does about $100k/year in sales. It's a lot of work for one person (especially during the holidays), so I hired a part time employee to help anywhere 12-18hrs a week. He basically handles all of my shipping, helps input orders into a queue, writes up slips, and occasionally some post processing work on our items. Hes 17 and it's his first job so I try to go easy on him when he makes mistakes, but he's been with me for about six months and I'm starting to get frustrated when he makes the same mistakes repeatedly that cost me money. The biggest ones are forgetting to include add-ons with people's orders (like dice) and occasionally mixing up orders (sending the wrong item to two people) - to correct these I have to pay double and sometimes quadruple (in the event of the mixups, which are less common) shipping costs which adds up. I've talked to him many times about being mindful of these mistakes, and even instituted extra steps in the process to try to catch the mistakes, but he still probably messes up close to once a week. He's also on his phone constantly - which I've let slide up until this point because he doesn't really take breaks, but I think it makes him very distracted. He's a good kid and I can tell he genuinely feels bad when he makes a mistake, but at the same time I feel like he just isn't really "listening" to what I tell him to correct when he messes up, because he ends up doing the same exact thing again. I guess in talking this out I recognize there's things I could be doing better to prevent these mistakes - e.g. his phone can only be used during designated 15min break that he has to take. Are the other ways I can try to mold him into a better employee, or should I cut him loose?? Edit: LOTS of great advice in this thread! Ultimately I think my consideration of firing him was a knee jerk reaction to his most recent mess up really irking me. I'm glad I posted this though, because it's really made me start thinking more about our space and process and how it impacts performance/accuracy. Our products are highly customizable so it's pretty nuanced, and doing most of our sales on Etsy limits us to confines of that platform, but I've heard some really great ideas today that I think can help reduce human error. And also some great input on what boils down to communication with my employee, and setting ground rules about phone use to stay focused. Anyway - thank you all! [link] [comments] |
| How do you guys get enough support? Posted: 23 Dec 2021 10:36 AM PST I genuinely try. I want to help these small/local businesses out so bad. I really do. But when a locally owned soap-maker sells a bottle of soap in a fairly small quantity for $21, I simply cannot justify it when I can get Irish Spring or an Old Spice for $4. The left over $17 can help me out so much. I understand, they have to sell at a higher cost in order to cover the costs to pay employees and run the business. Totally get it. And since it's handmade with fresh ingredients and not mass-produced factory junk in China, it's gonna cost more. But it's hard still. I feel bad. I mean it. I hate being part of the problem. I'm not even poor or low income but every dollar still matters to me. [link] [comments] |
| Distributor wants money from over a year ago Posted: 23 Dec 2021 06:20 PM PST A long time distributor of ours reached out today letting us know that we somehow had a total of 3 unpaid invoices from over a year ago. One in June, August and September of 2020. I checked credit card statements and they were correct, they did not charge us for some reason. So cool we owe them money and that makes sense. My issue is that they tell us the amount in full is due by end of year. It's not our fault and our problem that it took you over a year to realize this and then spring it on us that money is due in a week. It's not the end of the world and I wouldn't not pay them back of course, we're not thieves. However, the situation just kind of irked me. What do you guys think? [link] [comments] |
| What want made you want to carry on your small business when things weren't going well? Posted: 23 Dec 2021 04:05 PM PST Im just thinking of the costs of products + importing them and thinking to myself all this ain't worth it. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 23 Dec 2021 11:42 PM PST |
| Advice: your employees CANNOT give you 100% every day Posted: 22 Dec 2021 12:43 PM PST Workers are human. Workers are people. And people can't give 100% every day. People can give it their best every day, but their best isn't 100% every day. I've been seeing too many posts where a business manager or owner is trying to find ways to punish their employees for their own management mistakes. So when you see a situation where you want to blame an employee for a business goal that isn't being met... Take a couple steps back and reevaluate your management strategy. As an example, you rely on one person to open your store, and they show up 30 minutes before the store opens. There is a list of tasks that should get completed before the store opens, and if they don't get done, it hinders tasks later in the day. Maybe the store is a coffee shop, and new beans need to be loaded into the machines or something. And this task isn't getting done early enough. It's preventing you from selling your premium coffees and fru fru drinks right when the store opens. The first thought is that the one employee you have on the clock 30 minutes before opening isn't doing enough and this task not getting done is their failure. But here's the thing, it's not just their failure. It's your failure too. A failure to plan for failures, is a plan to fail. YOU need to accept responsibility for that. If you think it's a very important thing to sell your fru fru drinks right when the store opens then you're going to need to adjust your plan to match your goals.
Oh and remember fair labor laws people. I know it depends on the country, but I can't believe how many times I've seen people say "show up 15 minutes early" and expect someone to not get paid for it. If you show up to your work place ready to work, you are working. If you're paying someone ONLY for 8 hours of work and you tell them to show up at 8:45, there is no way they should be working til 5 unless you're paying overtime. There are employees who can be exempt from FLSA... Okay technicalities aside the point is to understand when you ask an employee to do something for work, as a requirement of their work, and they do it... they are working. You want a higher quality business? Pay employees more, hire more employees, or improve your business model. Hopefully, you can do all these things. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 24 Dec 2021 12:54 AM PST Share your experience and thoughts if you are Comfortable (scroll down for questions) Lately I've been feeling a lot of pressure to make tons and tons of money. I first got into selling on Amazon because of the YouTube gurus showing off their 6 figure annual revenue. Obviously it's not as easy as some Financial gurus make it look like and I was very disappointed. 2021 was my first year selling and due to the fact I'm completely new to this and because of coronavirus, I didn't make a lot of money I still didn't make a single sale because I'm still struggling to get my products into FBA warehouse Even though this is personal for the sake of the post I'd like to share that after calculating how much I'll make off of my 2 products and 40 units total I'm looking at just CAD $3000, After investing so much of my time and money Don't get me wrong that's a lot of money and I'd be grateful to make that much but I was hoping this would be a full time thing How much did you make when you first started selling? How much are you making now ? What would you recommend new sellers to do in order to make their business a full time thing? [link] [comments] |
| Best Website Hosts/ Creators for Service Based Businesses??? Posted: 23 Dec 2021 12:45 PM PST I am looking to start a service based business. There are so many website host/ platforms out there. Which is best for making appointments and collecting invoices from customers? [link] [comments] |
| High quality marketing for jewelry Posted: 23 Dec 2021 07:49 PM PST Hello! My family purchased a well established jewelry wholesale buisness earlier this year. One thing that I struggle with is effective marketing. I know our product is good, I know our prices are reasonable, I just don't even know where to start with an effective marketing strategy and how much to budget for it. Is it easier to do everything myself? Are there trusted firms that handle everything? Where would I go to find them? We have been running with as little overhead as possible this year and have had no problem with keeping our costs covered due to existing clients. We are doing a trade show early next year that will probably be a great opportunity to meet wholesale buyers but I really want to take advantage of being able to sell at retail prices ourselves. Thank you so much in advance, I know this may be an obvious question but I'd like to do this right the first time. [link] [comments] |
| Commercial Kitchen Help in Seattle, Washington Posted: 23 Dec 2021 10:01 PM PST Hello, my next step for opening my business would be preparing food in a commercial kitchen so I can start selling to the public. Some info on my products: All vegan and similar to a donut, but with different vegan filings like matcha, ube, chocolate, and strawberry. The pastry would be fried upon request in a deep fryer and filled with the fillings on a vending cart at different locations. Question: where or what should I do for a commercial kitchen so I can just prep my food and take it to the carts to fry and sell?? I have a home but only one kitchen for personal use and commissary kitchens are charging $$$$. Any advice or pointing me to a direction helps. Thanks! [link] [comments] |
| Women employee. Different perspective. Posted: 23 Dec 2021 06:10 PM PST I have an employee who is supervising a group of other employees. She is in charge of operations in that group and I am overseeing the process. She came experienced in similar field but not exactly the same, so she has a bit to learn. And she does, and she uses her skills well, but she also applies some ways she use to do things to current work and sometimes it is counterproductive and i am the one who points out this things. The problem is she has a strong petsonality, and very often takes my suggestions in a wrong way, getting offended as if it is my word against her word. You could say i am getting a vibe of a wife who is "wearing pants" in a household telling her husband how it is. I am fine working with men arguing and figuring stuff out. But with women i don't want to come out sounding like i am forcing her to do it my way, because as soon as she start arguing and not backing up a bit, taking an offensive stand i can not argue as i would do with men. I would actually prefer not to argue at all, but every time i have to bring something up i feel that she is ready to oppose me. I am not sure how to be in this case, she is a good employee but communication suffers because of me having trouble to connect. [link] [comments] |
| Advice or ideas for hosting remote holiday party Posted: 23 Dec 2021 03:13 PM PST Tonight is our company's first holiday party. We canceled a normal team meeting and I sent everyone $50 to buy some nice holiday food to snack on. There should be around 6 of us. I'm going to dress up a bit and give a short speech of thanks to everyone, maybe some optimism about the future, but that's all I got. We have some shy team members, but I'm hoping everyone can get the chance to speak at least a little. We don't really have any topics we need to cover. Work can wait, end of year bonuses are already paid out, no special awards or anything like that planned. I was able to sit in on my girlfriend's company's holiday party, which will serve as my guide, but they have a few more outspoken characters than our team, so it didn't get boring. Now I'm just looking for ideas. We are an international team, so everyone will be just in their own countries. The idea of a holiday party was just meant to recognize the team's hard work and give everyone break and socialize a bit with each other away from typical work. We are like family, but I'm nervous it might be a bit awkward. Any ideas for topics/games/etc? How long should we spend? It's the holidays and I don't want to keep people from their own activities, so if we just relax and hang out for even 30 minutes I'll be happy. Thanks for any thoughts and happy holidays! I hope everyone is taking this end of year opportunity to show your teams how appreciated they are! [link] [comments] |
| My business is not growing, and i do not understand what i’m doing wrong. Posted: 23 Dec 2021 03:26 AM PST Hi everyone, I recently created a company that sells digital goods (Proxies for my fellow network engineers out there). It's been around a year now, and my sales are still at 0. I have a good twitter presence for the niche (1.3k followers) which is higher than the majority of other companies in the same space. The main server is run on the platform Discord, I have around 700 members. The problem is, I'm struggling to turn these members into customers. I've invested thousands into arguably the best marketing teams I can hire, they've done a great job at putting the name out there. I say this in a completely unbiased way, the products that I sell are extremely high quality. The website is also custom designed and both easy to use and professional looking, with prices also being industry standard, or even slightly below. Perhaps i'm going about this the wrong way? is simple twitter growth the main way to attract customers for a digital business? I just need some advice wether it's worth it to continue to run the business and invest in it if it's dead, or if i'm going about this the wrong way. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 23 Dec 2021 05:05 PM PST Let's say we have company A (parent company). A has a subsidiary company/brand (company B). Does B have to be formally registered with the state government as its own LLC? Or can B just be an informal subsidiary (within A's internal documents)? [link] [comments] |
| Full time job + part time job and small buisness? Posted: 23 Dec 2021 08:46 PM PST Hi, I'm working currently 40h a week (22k€ a year) + (17h a week) 57h total. My 3rd source of income would be my small repair workshop at home, which i had just 1 customer that was willing to bring the device to me, im not willing to push ads and stuff much more for now as im low on stock still and waiting for more repair tools etc. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 23 Dec 2021 07:42 AM PST Young silly me last year made one for a online business that didn't do well so I stopped and focused on school. I keep getting emails to file my sales tax and im tired of doing it. When does my LLC expire so I don't have to do the sales tax every time? Edit: im from NY also when I made it last year in November but now when I try to file sales tax, noting pops up? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 23 Dec 2021 07:11 PM PST I have a work truck and trailer I need to park overnight, weekends and on days off. I can't park at house due to HOA so I'm looking for some suggestions on where to park. I'm thinking on contacting one of the local business to pay them a bit to park in their parking lot, but wondering if there's a better option. Anyone have any advice? [link] [comments] |
| 40 hour employee or outsource the work which is the cheapest route? Posted: 23 Dec 2021 06:57 PM PST Basically I'm trying to find a good way for me to convince local rental and used auto sales to let me detail their cars however a lot of them are wanting their own washer employee, which doesn't work for me ( being that I'm a full time mobile detailer) and plus I feel as if it's a waste of money. In my head I maybe wrong but when you have an employee doing something like that I highly doubt that they'll take the time to do a great job (They might I have no intention on speaking Ill on anyone) I mean they probably be using just cheap products and old rags I'm assuming, also the cost of having to employ this person and have to be responsible for this person to stay busy and not run out the clock. Whereas you could outsource it to someone who does it for a living, only comes when is needed, truly paid off of performance, gives you free marketing and isn't just waiting around for work. I mean like I said I could be dodging a bullet here by getting shut down but part of me wants to purses it and see what happens. I would love to hear from people who have have to employ people to do small task or people who outsourced with those small task and what your experiences was! [link] [comments] |
| Single member llc $5,000 write off limit? Posted: 23 Dec 2021 06:41 PM PST Will be forming a single member llc If it cost me $15 to buy tshirts and i sell them for $25 And at the end of the year i make 50,000 but has to pay 40,000 i can only write off 5,000 max? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 23 Dec 2021 05:52 PM PST New online marketplace coming in 2022... we are looking for unique marketing ideas for events both with customers and business networking. Sick of the common business cards or pens. Want something that makes you stop and think. [link] [comments] |
| Looking for Advisors - Cofounders - Staff Posted: 23 Dec 2021 04:33 PM PST Hi my name is Jasper, I am creating a startup, that provides a sort of online education. My goal is to be able to centralize the online education environment. Email me for more info. I am looking for either an advisor, to help guide me through the startup process because I am not very experienced, a co-founder to help me eith this process, or some sort of staff that is ok with no starting salary. Please email at [jbgould18@icloud.com](mailto:jbgould18@icloud.com) with any questions or interest. Thanks! [link] [comments] |
| Startup business and S Corp status Posted: 23 Dec 2021 04:30 PM PST Hi, I'm reading conflicting advice about whether to choose S Corp status or remain single member LLC. This year I will be profitable production wise but I won't recoup initial investment this year. Additionally, I will be reinvesting %100 of the income for a few years. If I pay myself w2 I don't know how I could reinvest. Should I stay single member or file for S Corp? Thanks for any response. -Matt [link] [comments] |
| Additional Insured Question- We provide a service Posted: 23 Dec 2021 10:08 AM PST We provide a service for company employees. Without going into too much detail, legally their employees could not do perform their work, unless they go through us to prove that they can perform that work safely and per THEIR contract owners procedures. We are completely third party. Meaning we are not liable to them or their contract owner. As an example, lets say there is a utility company, and they have contracted Adams Builders to install something for them. Before Adams can have their employees perform any work, they have to go through a company like us to prove that they can perform that work safely and according to the utility company's procedures. We are a very small company. Adams is asking to be added as additional insured AND asking that we add the utility company as additional insured on our insurance policy. This does not feel right. So let's say, their employee George, is qualified by us to perform his work. He has proven to us that he can complete his tasks safely and according to procedures. Then he goes out into the field, does not follow procedures, and causes an accident (this has happened). If they are sued, why should my company offer any protection? I really need advice as to whether I am just not looking at this correctly. I have already told them that we will not name their contract owner as additional insured, but do they have any reason to be added as additional insured on our insurance? If anything I feel like we should be listed as additional insured on their insurance- if their employee does not do their job correctly. Edit: Someone brought up a good point. The training we provide is not specific to a project. It is required in my industry, but the certification that their employee earns will actually follow the employee. It's the same as if someone worked for an IT company that provides cyber security to, let's say, a pizza place, and contracted with a company that will train and certify their employee on cyber security. Only now your employer is asking the guy training you to also name the pizza place as additional insured. The certificate is not specific to a project, the employer, or even in my case the utility company. Any of those parties can change at any time. The certification follows the employee. [link] [comments] |
| Restaurant owners have you raised your menu prices to offset delivery fees? Posted: 23 Dec 2021 04:45 AM PST I was wondering if the price of eating out inside a restaurant is now more expensive because of fees charged by all the mobile food delivery apps? [link] [comments] |
| Reaching out prospects. Not getting responses. Do people even care about Blockchain? Posted: 23 Dec 2021 02:25 PM PST We are targeting specific use case in supply chain using Blockchain solution. Somehow, we are not able to garner interests from prospects- atleast from cold email. Is it because they dont know what Blockchain is? My doubt is people view Blockchain as another word for crypto and stay away- which we want to change ofc. But from your perspective, is blockchain something you'd be interested in learning about if somebody reaches out to you and how it can help your current processes? EDIT: OUTREACH MESSAGE
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