I’d ask myself a few questions if I were you.

1. Did I set clear expectations on what is expected and what is not allowed?
2. Have I given any feedback yet on their performance as to where they’re at with my expectations?
3. Am I 100% positive that they know exactly what they’re supposed to be doing?

If your conscious is clear on all of these, then see what your hiring contract says. Usually there’s a probationary period that makes it very easy to fire someone. If you don’t have that and their performance is bad, just let them go. You’re going to waste more money on a wasteful employee than them trying to collect unemployment after 5 days.

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All that being said, this sounds like a hiring issue. You’ll learn with time what to look for during interviews.

I don’t have firsthand experience with this, but if you’re doing craft shows and some wholesale, then I don’t think the break would hurt too bad. If you were selling online, that would be a different story. It sounds like your candles are sold where you are, so you won’t be hurting yourself in the future if you take a break.

Taxes you’d still just have to file for what was sold so far this year. If you break before the start of next year then you’ll have a nice cutoff.

If you’re not making the candles personally yourself, then I’d suggest really looking into the online aspect. You could run a shopify site remotely, send all candles to a 3pl to fulfill your orders and not even need to be hands on for anything. Just depends how your manufacturing is set up.

It also depends how many people even saw that 50% discount though. It could be a problem of not enough eyeballs coming across the sale or site or product at all.

I saw previously she had difficulty running a Google Ad campaign which means she could be making sales if she gets ads running correctly and on the right platforms.

Wondering what you’ve done for marketing? What platforms are you selling on? Is it a direct Shopify store or are you using marketplaces?

What are you doing for advertising?