It’s not easy! One day I was a content employee, the next I was full throttle into a business as an employer.
After 23 years in a company helping it grow along the way I was laid off. Boy what a shocker!
Luckily for me I had already started the cleaning business (part time) going out at night and cleaning. Now I had to go full time in order to keep my head above water. I had to get more business, before my unemployment ran out. Then once I got some new clients, I had to hire people to work in the business.
I had a lot to learn, and I had to do it quickly.
I had to pay all my own taxes, buy my own insurance, pay into social security myself and the added bonus of making sure I had enough money to pay my employees. Then came my pay! My employer took care of all that for me before. What a reality check!
Then I had to learn accounting, human resources, marketing and sales ASAP. Thankfully Tom is better at accounting than I am. So he became our money guy. My forte is talking to people. I will talk to anyone, so that helped to get the word out that we were in the cleaning business and looking for more customers.
Hiring employees was a challenge. We read a lot about it, talked to HR people, joined a Chamber of Commerce and used their resources when we could. When we did hire people we assumed they would cared about our business as much as we did.
This was a wrong assumption on our part.
We found many of them lazy, only wanting a pay check. Some did a real lousy job. I wasn’t that way as an employee, was I? No I wasn’t, I cared about my job and fellow employees. So I expected the same of my employees.
I thought I was fair in paying a decent hourly rate, treating them like I wanted to be treated as an employee (sometimes too nice). I was taken advantage of a few times. I found that acting and being professional, and not being “their friend” got me a lot farther than laid back and too nice.
This employee problem was of course all our fault. We were learning on the fly! It was like being placed in the pilots seat with no instructions. Over the years though we figured out how to do things properly.
As we have stated in earlier posts, take your time to hire the right employee and not just a “butt in the seat”. It saves a lot of time and money in the long run.
With all that said, it was not all that hard to go from employee to employer, it was just the crush of learning it all in a short period. You shouldn’t have that problem.
This site alone gives you much more information than we ever had when starting our cleaning business. And if you decide to purchase the course, it will be even easier. If you have any questions about the process just visit the contact page to get a hold of me.