If you’re willing to lose an additional $100+ daily, keep the video going.

Tomorrow, start out a new. Give your store a $100 / day raise.

Reddit has spoken;

• Call the police today
• Fire him today
• Cut your losses immediately

The good news is, people get married in a shitty economy. The better news is, they still take wedding pictures. However, they may choose to spend less. You can make the same margins buy creating smaller photo packages to fit a tighter budget.

It’s all about sales and marketing.

The basics are your online marketing: setting your Google Business Profile and receive client reviews. That’s critical. Both are free.

The sales part to your business growth is critical. Every place that plays a role in the wedding is a prospect for you. All of these places interact with each other for a wedding and often recommend other event professionals.

• Hotel banquet managers
• Bridal Shops
• Wedding/Event Planners
• Churches & Synogogues
• Party/Event rental places
• DJ’s and Bands
• Florists
• Catering companies
• Restaurants with party/banquet/event room.
• Banquet Halls

Expand your business base beyond weddings and include Quinceañera (a big celebration of a Latin girl coming of age at 15) and Bar Mitzvah/ Bat Mitzvah (a big celebration of a Jewish boy(bar) and girl(bar) coming of age at 13).

I went through similar feelings 2 yrs ago after making the decision to shut down/dissolve my company.

The feeling was like the end of an amazing relationship or losing someone who I loved.

The first 6 months were the worst. I had done a lot of walking and thinking(most was at the beach). Then it hit me. I was in an amazing position to do whatever I wanted, wherever, however.

About a year later, I was out with my wife and we were asked what we did for work. I caught my wife off-guard when I answered “I’m retired!”

I’ve dabbled with a few things, made a few bucks here and there and took up a couple of hobbies. I actually love this life style!

Without knowing your age, it’s tough to give too much advice (I hung it up 2 months before I turned 59.)

Invest the majority of the money. Use a small amount to get away…explore, travel and relax. You’ve earned it. Use a small amount to start something that won’t kill you if it bombs.

Enjoy!

This reads like my former partnership that failed.

I do agree w/Mom.

However, Mom may not understand the fineline for a business owner between focusing to finishing a task vs the impact of a 30 second interruption.

Maybe put together 2 line auto reply/copy-paste for when one of those inquiries flows in.

It’s the business’s responsibility to have change.

Red flag should have been cash only which they’re not declaring.

NotoriumPlanetorium hits the nail on the head below.

Ignorance is blis.

An employee manual is a basic component of good corporate governance for any size business that employs people.

Yes. Absolutely this simple.

I agree that you must consult with an business attorney who has bankruptcy experience.

However, First, you need more information.

1. What is the owner’s plans regarding startup of a new company?

2a. What is the necessity of cause of going bankruptcy?

• For example: his large receivable would not a cause.
• His inability to pay rent could be a cause
• His inability to pay vendors/suppliers could be a cause
• His inability to make loan or lease payments to creditors could be a cause.

2b. Is his plan to bankrupt the company or liquidate the company and/or to file personal bankruptcy? {This is not an unusual situation if the owner’s business has a loan that he has personally guaranteed. In the case, the client who hasn’t paid, could impact your boss’s company’s ability to make his monthly loan payments. }

3. How long after the owner files does he plan to start up his new company? (The bankruptcy process should take 90-120 days if there are no slowdowns in the process.)

4. What % of ownership does he plan to give you?

5. How much do you have to invest into the company?

6. What role, if any, will you have in the new company?

It’s difficult to go beyond this without knowing anything about the company.

For example, If the company has physical assets that it owns such as; a building, vehicle, equipment, the Bankruptcy Trustee will order the assets liquidated with the proceeds going to creditors.

If you can get answers to the above questions which you can intern provide to an attorney, the attorney will be in a better position to advise you.

Best of luck.

Either you or your consultant, both from a consulting & sales perspective, via basic discovery of the client should be able to ask them their thoughts on why they want to change the marketing strategy.

It may be one simple question. "I’d like to better align myself with you and your business plan regarding marketing and business growth. Based on the terrific results of our online ad campaign, why are you interested on different marketing strategy at this time? "

A good follow-up would be to understand how much capacity he has to grow (how many more clients can be handle?)

You can’t provide him what he wants (or needs) if you don’t ask and understand what his thought process is.

Conversely, he may just be making a ‘bad’ decision based on his own assumptions, in which case, you may be able to get him back on track.

We sent invoices on the last day of the month for next month’s service. Payment terms: “Due Upon Receipt”.

Our clients flipped at first. Obviously they didn’t read the service agreement. They complained about paying before they received service until I explained service like telephone, mobile, Internet bill the same way.

I found after we made calls for 3 months in the 3rd week of the month, we started receiving payment quicker; ~50% before end of wk 3 and ~75% during wk 4.

Before you hire another employee, create an employee manual. This will spell out all expectations for employees, how they’ll be evaluated, corrected etc., performance reviews, compensation etc.

Even though you told them everything at the interview and repeated some of it on day one, they’ve already forgotten 2/3 of it.

Walk around the city and hand out a pair to each homeless person or take them to a shelter. Will cost you 1,300€ but you’ll feel good about it.

I can’t give much advice without knowing what you sell or how you market it.

I do know this:

1. It’s simple & inexpensive to take high quality photos
2. Marketing is how you make sales. Discounting 50% is not. If you discount 100% but your marketing sucks, you will sell nothing.
3. The original 3 P’s of marketing: Product, Price, Placement are still important as are the new 3 P’s: People, Personalization, Privacy.
4. The 3 C’s of marketing: Customers, Competition, Company which are components of your marketing strategy. 5.You need a marketing strategy.

OP; I want to correct your statement:

“High ticket sales is what I really want to do but the barrier to entry is much greater. It’s all about who you know, networking and would take time that I don’t have”

Corrections:

1. It is not about who you know. {I knew no one, nor did my colleagues.}

2. It is not about networking {I had no network, nor did my colleagues.}

3. The barrier to entry is not much greater. {It takes knowledge, and consistent, successful results to go from SMB to Midmarket to Large Enterprise. I did it. My colleagues have done it and none of us are anything special.}

My advice is the same as Warren Buffet’s:

Invest in yourself! Go to college or go get a sales position or some other job where you can learn the necessary skills and get the necessary experience to move yourself up the ladder a few rungs year. If you’re knowledgeable and consistently productive (aka successful), you could be in “high ticket sales” or a leadership position by the age of 25.

At the age of 20, you’ll have a higher probability of failure than success because you don’t have much real world, business experience. You’re at a point where you don’t know what you don’t know, but you think you do.

Warren Buffett: “You’ll have a more rewarding life not only in terms of how much money you make, but how much fun you have out of life; you’ll make more friends the more interesting person you are. So go to it, invest in yourself.”

Best of luck.

What causes the initial surge in business?

Is the product shelf location changed?

Do you provide your own display or does it sit on the customer’s shelf?

If this is a baked product, is it displayed in the bakery area?

Here in Massachusetts we have Bunghole Liquors.

Here the Risk Analysis you requested: This analysis is based on; If a lender is dumb enough to lend you $1 Million:

1. Failure
2. Personal Bankruptcy
3. Your home repossed
4. Your children’s future is fukt

OP, why would you even consider wasting $1.2 million, to run a failing business with an absentee owner as

1. An absentee owner ?
2. No prior ownership experience?

This is called “rinse and repeat.”

You will have the same outcome; FAILURE.

The good news:

• It appears unlikely you have $200k for a downpayment
• IMO no lender will gamble on a $1million loan for a failing business to someone with no experience
• You won’t F-up your childrens’ future.

Don’t do it!

Let your customer know you’re the wrong party to be sued. If she has a claim, she should sue the shipper, USPS.

Don’t let her scare you.

I’ve been threatened with being sued a few times, none occurred, including some clown-customer who wanted me to pay him $20k.

I applaud your patient focused approach and for recognizing your staff problem.

I don’t believe this calls for a Performance Improvement Plan, but a new Office Manager.

My advice: Prior to interviewing her replacement, You should have a fully written detailed job requirement document.

You need someone who has similar values as you with a “patient first” focus and who has experience with the financial aspect for both the practice and the patient.