Life doesn’t give very many opportunities, take advantage of the dumb luck that comes your way.

This is a thing. Paid my buds $75/yr (10 yrs ago) to work for me and they just couldn’t stand it. Treated me like Mr. MonryBags when I was taking home about $30k net starting out. It was a bummer.

Don’t share your success, instead only let folks in that are excited about contributing to your creation.

Be kind, but exclude anyone else because it will never be enough for people coming at it from a place of bitterness. They are poison for your success and joy, which is hard to find as a business owner to start with

All you can do is manufacturer parts in separate countries with shell companies and assemble on site. Anything else, and it will be stolen.

Phukit restaurant in San Francisco. Thia place I think.

She can’t wait a few weeks for a refund, but can wait three months for small claims court date? Big whatever.

If you don’t have a system in place then all an employee can do is perform their job based on their own home made idea of what is best.

You simply need a pipeline to funnel your customers into different baskets and a flow chart for your office workers to follow.

1. Insured

2. Full cash

3. Needs financial assistance.

Then define what to do with each basket.

But all that aside, this person is toxic AF and why would you want someone like that in your life. This is your baby, your practice, the culmination of your life’s work.

Success and fulfillment as a business owner is correlated to your ability to hire fast and fire fast.

My step father was a dentist, my favorite doctor is a dentist who does jaw surgery exclusively. He is a saint. He has about 20 people in his practice and does trauma and facial surgeries for babies, amazing person. And yet his practice is all fucked up because he hasn’t been able to fire some toxic personalities and now his practice is divided and the customer experience is awful.

My step father was also a kind person and did a ton of work for underprivileged. But also suffered from the same issue. My mom was able to help him out. The reality is there are some people who prey on doctors and get into their practices and start to mentally manipulate them. These folks often end up embezzling money.

You have to find it in yourself to protect yourself AND your other employees AND your patients from these type of people.

You never know who these people will be but sadistic beliefs like the type you described this person having is a big red flag.

Best thing I ever did as a business owner was the Landmark Forum. The follow up class is about working with groups. And they have some side classes, my favorite one was the Money seminar (spoiler alert, it’s not about how to make more money, but I did as a result of taking that class).

If that is not your cup of tea, The Three Laws of Performance was written by the executive coaching side of the Landmark company.

And my last recommendation is Chris Voss.

All may recommendations involve some form of radical empathy and brutal self honesty, looking at your blind spots and how to clear your own hang ups and BS so that the things you create work. And by work, I mean getting others on board (and excited) with your vision, because the things we create live in the doing of others to bring them to fruition.

I was not a natural leader, I always saw myself as a driven supporter of leaders. It took actually doing classes with other students to hone leadership skills. Books are good, but the classes were a different level of self development.

If I was to sit here and type out what I think you should/could do with the other staff and how to get them to rally around the business, I would be making some shots in the dark.

Maybe start with a few short videos from Chriss Voss. If that clicks, get the Three Laws. If that clicks, do the Landmark Forum which I think is super cheap compared to Chris classes.

This person is engaging in identity fraud with you as the victim.

If you feel the advice here is missing the mark, hire and atty.

You can’t claim the expense as a write off so just know you will be footing the bill for his taxes.

You need to pay a coach to removed your head from your ass. It’s dark in there and it’s impossible to solve problems when your whole world is one big blind spot.

Your parents need to come to Jesus moment and you need to stop being a doormat. I’m sorry this is happening to you. Here’s my two cents as someone that has had a number of businesses and grew up in food service.

80 hours a week. So $150k per year of free labor. (Yes $150. after tax and other overhead, it would cost about $75k x 2 for two 40hr employees to take his place)

This means your business is running $150k in the red, AT LEAST.

Time for Dad to wake up and stop blowing money.

Have you heard the joke about the guy who lost his keys and was looking underneath the street lamp, and someone else walks up and asks what he’s looking for? The searching guy says I’m looking for my keys, I lost him over by my car but this is where the light is.

Meaning your dad doesn’t know how to do food service, so he’s focusing on the thing he does know how to do. And doing way too much of it, which is spending money to try and fix a problem.

Its nothing to be ashamed of, almost everyone does it, it’s a pretty natural reaction to your business failing, to throw money at the problem to make it better. It doesn’t, it’s not a big deal that he’s doing it, but he does need to knock it off and pivot, focus on the real solution which is bringing traffic through the door, not on expanding the menu.

And expanded menu is a non-starter on its face because more menu items to sell to who??? Doesn’t matter how many products you offer if there’s no one to sell it to.

You guys could have just started a coffee stand on the back of a trailer, and just sold coffee and would probably be making way more money having parked it across the street from a Home Depot then you’re making right now.

It’s not about a broad menu, customers don’t care about that. They want a few things done well, consistent, for a good price. Look at Starbucks. They do consist strong coffee, they get some bakeries to bake them some some baked goods and cheese trays, and that’s it. They don’t do anything in house except make the coffee everything else is outsourced.

Doing a whole bunch of menu stuff in-house completely violates and nullifies the primary profit point of a coffee shop in the first place. Coffee shops are profitable, because beverages are the most profitable part of the restaurant industry and YOU DONT HAVE A BUNCH OF EXPENSIVE EQUIPMENT TO MAKE COFFEE

Now you guys are a restaurant… Not an okay place to be. See if you can return some of that equipment, sell it, anything, to hyperfocus on highly marked up beverages, that is where the money is going to come from. And get traffic in the door.

The first restaurant my family had, they threw a bunch of parties at night. That really helped a lot of traffic during the day by creating some community around the place. My uncle had a Creole band and they would go late and sell beer. And if you’re unable to sell beer you can give it away for free with a couple of giant donation jars next to the kegs and still make a profit.

Your whole family needs to rally and figure out how to get traffic in the door.

“I’m going to decline this job, thank you”

Success is tied to two things.

How involved you are in uncovering your blinds spots and how quickly you can fire people who are a bad fit.