In a service area with a k population we do right around 2. The secret to my success has been my continued ability to stand back up. I was away at the convention for my second business, Handyman Connection of Fort Collins , and was looking for somewhere to have dinner when I got a message from my youngest sister who worked for me at the time.
She sent me a single screen shot of a conversation that it was immediately clear a LOT of my cleaning staff were involved in. She said it had been forwarded to her, and she was going to have the person who sent it to her message me the rest directly. Next thing I knew I had screen shots coming in faster than I could keep up with them. I sat down on the street corner and started reading. It started raining. I kept reading. My dinner companion tried to gently nudge me off the street and toward a restaurant, or any kind of shelter at all really… but I kept reading.
Now let me please preface this by saying I believed at the time that I was a very good and fair employer. Not too shabby of a gig, right? But discontentment was brewing, and had been for quite some time. We all have them from time to time. The ones that do perfect work, and the customers LOVE them, but they make you miserable. Just before leaving for my conference her and I had had a meeting and we had named all of our pot-stirring, drama causing, headache inducing employees, and talked about needing to find a way to move them out when I got back before they poisoned the pot.
We thought there were maybe 6. A few of the folks we had suspected started a group chat, and just kept adding more and more of my employees. The things they were discussing still make me sick to my stomach when I think about them — they considered the idea of tanking my reviews online and then trying to take all of my customers — one woman estimated as a group they could take half.
They wanted to put me out of business. I had actually attempted to explain some of the math of overhead to them a couple weeks prior, but it had not gone well. So, I told myself their opinions were none of my business and put it out of my mind. So, back to the street corner in Austin.
