Basically, if you have fewer than (I think) 50 employees you are not required to offer insurance. Group healthcare is INSANELY expensive. Our rates have gone up something like 40% in the last 4 years. I’m shouldering the bulk of the increase and it’s substantial. In my industry, it’s hard to hire top tier employees if I don’t offer group coverage. I consider it a cost of doing business.

That said, your margins are razor thin. Here is a theoretical - you provide group coverage, you hire an employee with a serious long term medical condition, boom your rates go up 50% since that person is 15% of your entire staff. You now can’t even leave your carrier for new coverage since everyone will decline you. You either pull the rug under everyone, or dance around the situation with this happening right after hiring someone with a serious medical condition. In that situation you would’ve been far better off giving everyone a pay rate increase to get their own short term health plans and term life. Then you aren’t closing your doors due to hiring someone that turned your group plan upside down.

My suggestion, first talk to your general business attorney and get some advice. Ideally someone at a small firm who understands how difficult this is to navigate. Also find out what you legally can and cannot say to avoid risk of being sued over it. And ultimately increase pay, ideally you can explain you looked at group and there’s no way it’s financially feasible but you’re increasing pay 5-10% as long as business is good. That it isn’t completely separate from reviews. And here are links to group coverage/aca/etc. I personally use a broker because I hate HR trying to advise staff on what to do. I don’t want them to tell someone how to gets their meds covered, or that they will be covered, then it blow up and have an employee blaming my firm.

Until I started offering group I had no idea how complex it was and how much rates fluctuate. To give you a comparison, I am a family of four. When I was getting the company off the ground we had some short term health plan with a long term rider (cancer, etc treatable but serious 1 year+ disease). It was I think around $1100/month. I currently pay $2600 a month for group health insurance and the coverage is worse. My family is completely healthy. No routine meds, nothing but urgent care for the kids maybe once a year for ear infection or something.

Also consider that if you have a small group (less than 10-15) you are likely changing carriers every year or two due to significant rate increases. This infuriates staff since some doctors aren’t covered, some meds aren’t covered or require a bunch of forms from the doctor. It’s a huge pain in the ass.

Honestly the entire thing is a scam.

Personally I would very seriously suing them. It wouldn’t make sense from a financial perspective. It’s more about making a very clear statement to staff about what happens when you commit criminal behavior. But I deal with a lot of sensitive proprietary info and someone stealing a laptop or hard drive is a big deal. Know that, even if it settles out early it’s going to cost you $75k-150k in attorneys fees. If you go through discovery you’re looking at $400-500k. If you win, you can likely go after him for punitives and your fees. But, if he doesn’t have any assets he can easily fight you, run up a huge bill, get a judgment, and just declare bankruptcy.

You should have a general business attorney. Get their advice

It’s not often talked about, but there are certain management and people skills that you ONLY get from working for someone else. My suggestion is to put that 30k into an investment fund for a solid 5 years. When I meet other business owners, the ones who never worked for anyone else are very easy to spot and tend to be very difficult to work for.

Very, very common. There are therapists that deal with business disputes. If you can find one, you might suggest it if they would be receptive.

Partner disagreements very rarely get resolved amicably, unfortunately. And one partner offering to buy out the other is similar to telling your spouse you want a divorce - hard to come back from that.

If your revenue supports it, go with a local printing company. They can lease you a printer with a $1 buyout at the end. They provide service. They know what type of printer you need. Anything “card” related you’re probably going to have a hard time finding an off the shelf amazon printer that is reliable. Edit: If you go this route, I suggest having your main interactions with the service manager. That’s the group who has to keep it running. The sales guys tend to upsell and not be super smart about not over-buying.

Not trying to mean to you at all, but a business that can’t shoulder a 2 week delay in payroll is an enormous red flag. If I were in your shoes, I would absolutely buckle down - you’re eating chicken and rice for dinner. ham and beans. Cooked at home. Zero eating out. Zero random gas station food purchases. And get your cashflow to where if all revenue stops you can pay yourself/staff at least 4 months.

I would say it’s going to be pretty difficult to get something like this off the ground, for a myriad of reasons. Nosy neighbors are going to report you for using a residence as a retail front. Lots of people are going to be leary of going to someone’s home.

I’ve been pretty involved in a formal art gallery years ago. Most of the work is sold … what’s the word. Basically the artist pays nothing until the piece is sold. Once it’s sold, artist gets paid (minus the cut that the gallery takes). Brutally honest the trope about starving artists is VERY accurate and galleries know this. That’s why their business model is surrounded entirely by displaying art where the artist has $0 upfront cost.

I’m the type of person you are marketing towards. I have had HORRIFIC luck with mobile detailers, even ones that cater to high end vehicles, and so has everyone I know in a similar situation. If I were in your shoes I would do the following

If it’s a major city there are semi-secret facebook groups for this group of people. A good review posted in one of these results in a ton of work. If you can somehow figure out how to access one via a customer, it would be an instant increase in your business. This group doesn’t like people begging for reviews - I would leave a flier with every customer that you are trying to increase business, if they are members of fb groups or word of mouth you will give them an x% discount for a review.

Also, please advertise that you use the two bucket method, grit guards, only use lambswool or premium MF, you use X brand drying towels. STRESS this. It’s been my biggest issue - I’ll ask them to do two bucket method, they do it once or twice, then if I’m not there they BLAST through the wash with one mitt barely rinsing it.

For “budget” services it’s almost always flat fee. For “premium” services you often pay hourly. For washing my nicer cars, I do not care if you take your time, I want it done correctly. I’m always leary of the $150 mobile detail because I know the guy is trying to knock out my cars and move on.

Third thing, look into facebook ads. I don’t use instagram or tik tok or whatever trending thing. If you’re going to market to me, it has to be via facebook, linkedin, nextdoor. Door knocking won’t work, and ads taped to my mailbox will never be returned. I personally like see service providers who have youtube channels. It gives great insight into the type of work they do. Maybe make a video on how to do a high end DIY wash. Make the video short but with lots of info - prefer slightly warm water, not too hot or it can take off any coatings, etc etc etc.

Last, let’s say it’s two neighborhoods, 200 houses each. You could send out 400 mailers. It would cost you $200 to blindly mail a postcard to every single home. Be REALLY smart about the design of the postcard, stressing attention to detail, stress that you don’t even do budget washes period. ZERO typos, zero extra info, be direct, classy, look at how higher end limo and armed guard services market. There aren’t cartoon character or whatever. Have a QR code to scan for your website that explains your wash process in detail (I know QR codes are “dangerous” but us borderline boomers don’t know that yet). Again, go to great lengths about two buckets, grit cards, rinsing mitt after every pass, drying towels are properly washed/dried then sealed in tupperware crates so they don’t get dusty.

I’m not really a knife guy, but I have a business partner who is, and he is really hooked on the youtubers. He buys custom knives from them and etc. Their channels put out videos multiple times a week. By doing this you’re essentially creating a combo audience and customer base.

Really not enough info - how big is your city, what do the bulk of the workers in your city do, etc etc

Renting out a monthly motel situation sounds like an absolute nightmare to me. Drugs, prostitution, evictions, etc. That said, know that build out costs are CRAZY right now. So converting this to something else is likely to be costly.

Finally, what are you skilled at? I would try to find a use that crosses over with your existing skillset.

If your city has enough clientele, axe throwing venues can make decent money. There are a number of youtube channels that discuss it. Very low startup costs, the biggest risk is the lease on the space, and you have that covered.

I am on the client side, but everyone here is SO insanely busy that I get skeptical whenever a trades company pops up doing tons of marketing. The main residential GC I work with does zero marketing and is 15-20% higher priced than his competition. He has a constant 4 month+ back log.

My suggestion would be to attack this from the client side. Very politely and not pushy, that if they are happy with your work and willing to give a fair review online you will send them a $50 target gift card. Some angle like that. You have to be delicate, I had a guy literally get on his knees and beg me to post on nextdoor that he did a good job. That is not the way to do this.

Also, your website should be simple but well-designed. It should have drone shots of your roofs, not stock photos.

You assume have a bunch of company trucks. Have them all wrapped with your website, phone number, free quotes. There are pros and cons to this - you have to be insanely strict with your drivers to not drive like idiots.

I didn’t accuse you of anything, I’m genuinely curious how you got PPP if you aren’t running payroll and it’s an unused business account. As someone familiar with SBA and PPP loans yeah it sounds sketchy. Maybe there’s an explainable reason, like you run payroll out of a second acct for some reason, but on the surface it’s an extremely unusual situation.

I do most stuff myself - plumbing, electrical, etc. I am familiar enough with codes to where it’s not a problem. I honestly would prefer to hire it out but finding people who do quality work is practically impossible at any price.

Anything requiring a permit I hire a local residential gc. I went with him because he does zero advertising, has a 3-4 month backlog. I found him via word of mouth. Things are so crazy with trades that doing a bunch of advertising makes me feel like they likely don’t do great work.

I generally don’t do any financial business with anyone cold calling me. Way too many scams out there

Along with Nextdoor, I would reach out to small local florists and set up some sort of referral agreement. Another headache I deal with are corporate gifts. Packing wrapping shipping etc is a pain.

I’m assuming the thing two years ago was PPP? If so, how on earth could you qualify since you don’t run payroll. Honestly whatever that situation is sounds sketchy, if so, you don’t want it tied into whatever new venture you’re spooling up.

That said, yes your bank can modify the ein tied to the account.

Short version, probably not. Long version, maybe, but it would have to be a smallish local bank and you need to have enough equity in your home to borrow against.

Good advice

Depends on the city. In my area I pay $125-150 for corporate headshots. This includes them driving to my office, staging the photos, and editing. I greatly prefer photographers who are direct. IE “sit like this, one arm crossed” etc vs ones that just say “act natural”. If you don’t have one, look into getting a drone and license.

I’ve dealt with it, both for developing an app and offloading excess production for my core business. In both situations work quality was horrific and not something I could feasibly use. I’ve gotten to where I generally only work with local companies, or at least US based. Due to both quality and there’s an entity I can sue if things get crazy.