How was he caught? Neighbor called in to ask questions? Co-worker saw him etc? For only a 500-1k job. Would be sweet to award the whistle blower if it was a co-worker. Not only does a guy get fired, but the guy who blows the whistle gets paid. That stuff should resonate with the crew for a long time.Nice. Just caught an employee going offsite to bid a job from a neighbor asking for a bid. He was bidding a side job against the company.
I'll let him finish out the day and then fire him.
Adventures with Lyrical: Buying a Business (REPOST)
- Thread starter Shonuff
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Shonuff
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My Manager was out laying out door hangers in the neighborhood. In the Winter, when we are working, we sometimes put out door hangers at homes where we see people need work. This is in between calls for estimates. My Manager looked up, and saw him walking off of the job, followed him, and saw him bid the job personally.
There will be a lecture on that with the guys tomorrow. Steal once and you are done. There is no coming back from that. Enjoy looking for a job in this industry for the next four months. It's offpeak, no one is hiring, everyone is laying off but me.
As an aside, we had 15k of work come in today on contracts. My average December has been a paltry 22k in sales, if I hire another guy, we'll do 40k, which is a 100% increase year over year. Yay.
Everyone wants to always label employer's and business owners as evil, but my experience has been the same as yours Lyrical....no matter how well you treat your employees, there are always bad apples in the bunch. For every shitty boss, I feel there is like 100 shitty employees. I hope none of my top people ever steal from me the way they have for you, I would feel so betrayed after all I have done for them.
One of the biggest problems with owning a company is that unless you are there to run it first-hand, you will definitely lose money due to theft....sad but true. I had an interest in opening up some franchises, like Subway or Togo's, just to help build more passive income, but my financial advisor told me not to unless I could be there on a regular basis checking on the business and my employees (which I don't have time for).....otherwise in his experience, your employees, even your managers, end up stealing enough as to not make the enterprise profitable or worthwhile.
One of the biggest problems with owning a company is that unless you are there to run it first-hand, you will definitely lose money due to theft....sad but true. I had an interest in opening up some franchises, like Subway or Togo's, just to help build more passive income, but my financial advisor told me not to unless I could be there on a regular basis checking on the business and my employees (which I don't have time for).....otherwise in his experience, your employees, even your managers, end up stealing enough as to not make the enterprise profitable or worthwhile.
Shonuff
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I'm numb to stealing any more. I took the advice of one of the wealthiest businessmen I've ever known on stealing. He told me it's going to happen, don't take it personally. Just limit your damage, cut it off and move on. I used to get butthurt over this, I don't now. I hope he enjoys what the competition is trying to pay, his check will go down by half (I pay more and have more hours). And that's if he can find anything. I'm disappointed in a guy that's been with the company five years, but he got fired before. He's always been sneaky. He's got four kids and a newborn, and now they'll suffer for his choices. The last time he left the company he made $6 an hour and his hours went from 50 hours a week to 30.
You can't tolerate stealing when you are an owner. When I dreamed about owning a business, I didn't think this would be an issue. I always thought the biggest issues would be having enough sales and making payroll. But literally, theft is my #1 issue. We have more demand than we can handle.
Tmac
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Must be a tree business thing. One of my companies directly deals with security in the timber industry. It tracks timber from the landowner's property to the mill and uploads all the valuable data in real-time. The biggest problem is getting truckers (who get paid by the companies that pay for the app) to actually enter the data...lulz.
Shonuff
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I'm calculating that my discretionary income for 2012 will be 190-200k, on sales of 560k (with eight operating days left this year). I can't wait for some of the new advertising initiatives I have going for 2012 to kick in. I want to get back to the old days, where the business was a license to print money. Since we have high fixed costs and low variable costs, moving to 700-900k in sales is a huge difference in profitability (like 400k on 900).
My first year in business, we had a lot of emergency work that put sales at 880k. I had more money than I knew what to do with, so I ended up giving half of my personal income to charity.
My first year in business, we had a lot of emergency work that put sales at 880k. I had more money than I knew what to do with, so I ended up giving half of my personal income to charity.
Lyrical do you still owe money to the bank for buying your company? If so why not pay the loan off? Can you maybe elaborate on your debt situation and you corporate structuring (LLC/LLP?). I am just curious how it works over there!
Shonuff
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I'm about half way through the loan, and am looking at potentially restructuring the loan. I still owe 400k on the business, currently about 5k a month is going to reducing principal. Keep in mind that debt payments get added into the discretionary income number. I want to get to the point where I'm debt free. The previous owner was, and he got to the point where might only lose money in December.
We are having our best December on record. I'll be pretty close to break even. The other Decembers, we lost 20k profit. Between Santa and shutting the company down for vacations, that's a lot of money lost. I'm going to take the extra money we would have lost and put it in a radio campaign starting January. I already negotiated on a local talk station that we'll be mentioned every hour on the hour as a sponsor, 24/7, and have 15 radio ads during drivetime for $400 a week. We'll be going from just 12 radio spots a month, to 27 a day (during the workweek).
Since I'm playing with house money right now, I may as well reinvest it. We typically lose money Dec, Jan and Feb. Jan and Feb get better, but not as much. Last year, we lost 20k in Dec, and then 9k a month in Jan and Feb before going green. I'm hoping we can turn a profit next month. The other nine months out of the year, we lose 2-3k a week in jobs we couldn't get to.
I may sponsor a banner ad on one of the local news channels, or may find another station to go balls deep.
Shonuff
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I just signed the contract on the radio campaign, it will be 987 mentions in a month for $1,600, and the station is my target demo (over 35, 75k+ HHI). I'm excited about it, I can't wait to see the results. We'll be going from 12 spots a month, to 15 spots a week and an hourly banner ad 24/7. So we'll go from 12 spots a month to 27 spots a day on some days.
That seems insanely cool. Less than $2 a mention. For anyone who listens to that station at work etc, you'll be ingrained in their brain.
Shonuff
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It is cheap per spot, but I'll be spending 2k in January doing it. I looked at a calendar, it is $400 per week, which gives you about 200 mentions a week.
Tmac
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Shonuff
Mr. Poopybutthole
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The hourly banner ads are 24/7, at the top of the hour. The three spots a day will be rotated Morning, Lunch and Evenings (6am to 10pm). I'm not really happy with the evenings, but I got most of what I asked, based on the price I was willing to pay. I pretty much got a station sponsorship for 60% of the going rate. The way the deal was structured, they could have put my three spots at 2 am (which is not good for me). If I wanted to be more specific, I'd have had to pay more.
Shonuff
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Crap, sorry, it's been a long day. I've been arguing dayparts with them for a few days now, so it's still fresh in my mind. This is AM radio.
Tmac
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So, you're getting banner ads on their website at the top of every hour (24) and 3 radio spots daily?
Shonuff
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Yup. With my 2k, I'm the only official sponsor of the station, and they'll say it.
Tmac
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Are you willing to share your transcript?
The reason I'm asking is because I have larger timber companies coming to me wanting to use my system. I'm considering doing radio, because the areas I'll be pursuing are smaller and I can actually afford it. However, I have no idea how to do radio or where to look for advice on the topic. One company is large and wants me to help their local office in South GA while the other company is smaller and services NE Georgia, E Tennessee, SW North Carolina and West South Carolina. Given the geographic spread, radio would make a lot of sense, especially if I could pay around $2 per impression.
The reason I'm asking is because I have larger timber companies coming to me wanting to use my system. I'm considering doing radio, because the areas I'll be pursuing are smaller and I can actually afford it. However, I have no idea how to do radio or where to look for advice on the topic. One company is large and wants me to help their local office in South GA while the other company is smaller and services NE Georgia, E Tennessee, SW North Carolina and West South Carolina. Given the geographic spread, radio would make a lot of sense, especially if I could pay around $2 per impression.
Shonuff
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I'm not willing to share personal info. I shared it with Tuco, but that will be it. With all of the stuff that went down with Tyen and the nutjobs on these boards, it' not worth it. And I have NDA's with my bigger customers, with the amount of data I shared in the other thread (which is archived for all to see), with the business name, anyone could see who those customers are. I could think of a myriad ways that my company could be screwed with.
But let's see if we can't get a train of thought going. What customers are you trying to gain by radio? Those big companies you were talking about, or someone else?
Tmac
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My demographic includes landowners who have over 40 acres of land. This generally includes baby-boomers, those who have inherited land, or young wealthy entrepreneurs who have recently purchased land (ages 35-90). So, part of my demographic has grown up around land (babyboomers) and generally "think" they know more about timber management, while the younger demographic tends to do more research on the topic, which is good for us.
We connect landowners with timber companies within our network, so I don't have to spend any money to get timber companies involved, since the people that keep them in business are coming to me.