being a small business owner/employer

[Gravdigr]

Basically this is an essay about a bunch of random crap that entered my head and I had to put somewhere.

So I have been working in my wifes families small business since I was 18, so going on 14 years now. We run 2 cemeteries and dig graves in a third. We also have a monument company making headstones. I started at the bottom apprenticing as a sandblaster and worked my way up to running the stencil press, designing and laying out the headstones, then salesman. At this point my brother in law quit headed for greener pastures (funny he wound up moving back in with his parents and has been mooching off them for the last 8 years).

Anyway after he left I took over running the city office until I finally convinced my father in law to close it and move manufacturing to our rural community as the city office was hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate, which I discovered was due to my brother in law imbezzeling money from the company.

So we moved our manufacturing into a building we put up right next to my house in the cemetery. Shortly after this happened our gravedigger quit. The gravedigger was also responsible for pouring the cement foundations that go under the headstones we sell as well as setting the headstones and keeping the cemetery mown. So being the hands on guy I am I took over his jobs as well.

So now basically I am the only person in my wifes family business to ever have done every job associated with what we do. I can't say I didn't kind of plan it since it made me indispensible. Without me, there is no business.

Now this april my wife and I finally got full ownership of the company. My wife, god love her, even saw fit to put my name in the company so instead of Waring Monuments we are Waring-Burket monuments. Now as a business co-owner (we split it 50%-50% her and I) I find I have a problem. For the last 10 years or so I did everything but run the show. My father in law hired part time help in the summer but most of those guys were close to useless. What's happening now is I'm finding myself saddled with a ton of other responsibilities. I forgot to mention when my dad died 2 years ago I had to petition the court for full guardianship over my mother as she is a bi-polar paranoid schizophrenic.

So I am finding I do not have the time to get all my work done. This means I have to get a worker to do some of my jobs. I am having a serious problem with this as I don't trust anyone else to do my job and do it correct. When I do have a worker installing a foundation and I'm sitting in the office making phone calls and such all my mind is on is what my worker is doing to the point I have to leave and go check on him.

I know some of this is a trust issue I have after seeing how much my brother in law imbezzeled from his parents with no remorse at all (he almost bankrupted a 90 year old business in it's 4th generation). I have also watched some of the yo-yos that worked for my father in law over the years and saw what he didn't. I would watch him send them out to a cemetery to dig and pour a 36"x14"x30" deep foundation for a headstone and only come back with 1 wheelbarrow of dirt on the truck. Done correctly that foundation should have been 3-4 wheelbarrows of dirt. The problem is once the foundation is poured there is no way to check how deep it was dug unless you remove the foundation or when the stone starts to sink and tilt in a few years.

I have been through dozens of workers in my time here and most of them were, to use a polite word, slow. Not to sound conceited but I am of above average intellegence and never really realized it. Every job I learned I picked up very fast, often teaching myself. Then when I started training workers I had to let some go for stupid stuff, one guy could not figure out how to lay out a grave no matter how many times I showed him.....he couldn't learn to use a tape measure Others were just lazy or worked one day and never came back. One young guy I worked on and tried to help all summer. He was a young kid (22) who had gotten in trouble a lot and had problems with alcoholism and xanax. The summer he worked for me I got him cleaned up. During the week he was too tired after work to go drinking limiting his partying. His parents even commented about it to me. Then winter came around and we did our layoff as we do every year. I promised this boy a full time job the next year as well as a car he could have for personal use. I loaned him money over the winter to keep him going until work started again. The fool that I am I didn't realize he was using the money for booze and pills. He stiffed me on paying it back and did not return to work this year. Hence another trust issue.

Now it seems I may have struck gold. I have this kid working here this year. He's only 24 and everyone else in his family is a waste of life, yet this kid is a worker constantly trying to better his life rather than coasting along. He recently became a daddy and is petitioning for full custody of his child from his girlfriend who he caught cheating on him and shooting heroin. I tested him by loaning him some money to buy a used car. And to 'help him out' I told him we'll put the car in my name and insure it on my insurance which saved him $120 a month. It also meant if the loan was not repaid at least I had the title to the car. Well he paid me back fast and has never been late with an insurance payment. And yesterday when he showed up for work he brought me coffee Usually it's me buying them coffee.

I don't want to get my hopes up but I think this guy is a keeper as a worker, and he's turning into a pretty good friend. My wife and I cannot have kids and her brother is gay so it seems the family business will end with us. But maybe I found someone capable and deserving of taking over when we retire.

Yet even with all this I just get this knot in my stonach every time I think about sending out a worker to install a foundation, dig a grave, or set a headstone. At this point I still will not send a worker(s) out to do a job unless I am with them. I will say that while the pay is definitely better as an owner, I really preferred getting my hands dirty and doing the work myself. Sitting in the office is like torture.

Thanks for reading my rambling. If you made it this far I am very impressed.

 

[dooleysm]

I would think that the kind of guy you're looking for would not be interested in a job that involves getting laid off every winter. A person with the skills you desire could find a much better job elsewhere. Much more stable anyway.

My dad ran a large cemetery for 35 years and I worked for him for 7 summers during high school and college. My cousin digs graves for a bunch of small cemeteries in southern Indiana and mows and maintains several of them. Cemetery work seems similar to farming to me. There's alot more to it than most people realize, and there's alot of physically demanding work, mowing, trimming, cutting up trees, pouring foundations, setting monuments, moving caskets, vaults, etc. Granted, we weren't out there digging graves with a shovel, but still, there's alot of work to it. Dad's cemetery averaged about 7 burials/day. It was good work for a teenage boy.

 

[randy41]

why can't your wife handle the office and you oversee the physical work?

 

[Charlesaf3]

I understand your problems - many of us deal with some variation.

Even if your wife can't do office work, why not look for someone who can?

Or bring this guy along - I always like to say you can teach everything but attitude and enthusiasm. And like you alluded too, your best chance of selling/passing on the business is to have a good employee who you can sell it to on a payment out of profits basis - best retirement plan for most small business owners, and good for the key employee as well.

 

[riptides]

Gravdigr

Dang! I am hubbled by your drive in the face of your troubles.

I cannot offer words of advise, other than trust is earned. Once lost, equally harder to get back.

I hope if I ever have a headstone, a person like you will have taken the time to ensure it doesn't tilt with age.....

 

[dooleysm]

At our cemetery age wasn't the enemy of headstones, 36" mowers were.

 

[sunspot]

Well said Charles. I was thinking along the same lines. Gravedigr, it sounds like you want to get out of the office. I don't blame you one bit on that urge.
I can also see that you are leery about turning over the office to another person after being burned.
It may be that if your new worker could help in the office, you can keep an eye on the books. You could also have an auditor to go over the books?

 

[ToadHill]

If this guy is as good as he seems, make sure you pay him well enough that he can raise a family without having to look elsewhere. You might even consider a end of the year bonus for work well done. I owned my own business for years and the good help can and will go elsewhere if you don't show them some appreciation.

 

[AlanB]

Welcome to Management

As I became a manager, I realized why folks that were my managers did some of the things they did.

No good answers to help you, I think if you asked 100 Small business owners what their biggest problem was, it would be hiring good employees for all 100 (and I really do ask)

My initial knee jerk reaction to your post though, other then the tease about management, is that you need to sit down carefully and evaluate your business. (this is very easy for me to say, and led to a fairly heated fight between SWMBO and myself Tuesday)

What you need to answer imo is

Where do we want to go?

Quantify it how you would like, money, employees, # of graves whatever.

How do we get there?

You have to answer the first one first.

Now, what do you lack, people? Skills? parts? General Cody said P4 T2 I think it was, Plan, people, parts, Procedures, Time tools (he would smack me if I got that wrong

In your business where I see you could make the most bang for your buck is what can I buy, to keep from having to hire people. Dingo? Bobcat etc. etc.

But there comes a point where you have to manage people, and you may find that is a weak area of yours. If it is, you have two positive choices. Work on yourself, go to school, read books, get tutoured by folks that know it better or hire it out, find someone else to fill in your weak spots with their strengths.

I cannot sell, if I was to do Tractor equipment, I am good at repairs, assesments etc. but I am NOT a sales person. If that was my business, I would need to hire in someone to overcome my weakness selling as I am not willing or able to learn to be a salesman.

So, you know all this already, how does it apply?

Hire a manager if you don't want to do it.

Being a "freind" with employees can lead to problems. Having an employee on your personal insurance imo is asking for problems. Firing "freinds" is tough at best.

Hire a job service to put someone in with you.

Hire a manager to do the inside stuff and you supervise the outside stuff.

And bear in mind, that as easy as this is for me to say, I struggle with it daily on many fronts.

Oh, and one other sidebar, if you want good employees, keep them year round, time to get creative.

My BIL a mason in Germany now works 48 hours per week in the summer and draws 40 hours pay, that way in the winter lean times they continue to draw 40 hours pay even when they are not working. Have to be careful with this you do not run astray of labor laws.

In your business I would think you could come up with things to do with the equipment for the cold times to keep folks on the payroll.

You will be hard pressed to get great folks that want to work if you are only giveing them work 9 mos out of the year.

We are blessed to have 2 right now, and it is one of the best employee times we have ever had in our business.

Good luck.

 

[Gravdigr]

Thanks for all the replies.

We are still working out all the bugs with the business. As I said I have been doing the working end for 14 years, and my wife has been involved for 12. She is basically the artist doing all the layouts and design work that frees me up to do other jobs. She also manages the books and tries to juggle 3 business accounts plus the personal account. She is slightly agoraphobic due to her being overweight all her life. She does not deal well with people, in person or on the phone, so I take care of that end of the office work. I am also the salesman since I could sell and ice machine to an eskimo and get more return customers than any of our previous salesmen ever did. Mostly that is because my customers like dealing with the person who is reaponsible for making and installing the stone. I consider that a plus since if there is any problem the customer knows they can deal directly with me to get it solved....and I rarely ever have a problem with a stone.

The problem is for the last 8 years or so the previous owners (my wifes parents) really seemed to care less how the business did. Our reputation went from bad to worse so we have a few years of rebuilding until I can get some actual estimates on what our expected business income will be. But I have been picking up equipment to make us more effecient. The previous owners believed in only buying what was necessary to get the job done. Graves were dug with a ford 1510 with backhoe, our dump truck was only 2wd which caused problems in the winter since one of our cemeteries requires hauling the backhoe on a trailer with the dump truck. Our air compressor was barely enough to run the sandblaster and was always breaking down. I have since purchased a used F350 dually dump with a 460, 4wd, and a crane...a grimmerschmidt 210 cfm air compressor with an 80hp john deere diesel engine, an older gehl skid steer. I'm in the market for a mini excavator in the 8k lb range but so far the only thing I found locally that I would purchase is a Gehl 383z with 105 hours on it but they want $39k for it, maybe I'm shooting too high

As for my workers when I say full time I mean working year round. The part time work is seasonal and I will not hire a full time worker until they have worked a summer to prove to me that they are willing and capable of learning what needs to be done. Anyone can pick up a string trimmer, but can you learn to run a backhoe, mix and pour cement, lay out graves and foundations? This training takes time and I need to make sure the investment is worth it. And I need to make sure the worker will do what I want the way I want it done without me having to babysit.

But I do take care of my workers, even the seasonal ones. Most of them do not have their own vehicle or have lost their license for 1 reason or another but they live in town so I pick them up every day, stop at the convenience store for coffee, make sure they have cigarettes or whatever. The workshop fridge stays stocked with gatorade and I make sure they take plenty of breaks and drink fluids since a worker with heat exhaustion is no good to me. Most of the time I buy them lunch as well. I want my workers to respect me rather than fear me. Respect me and it will be returned. Disrespect me and you will not work for me anymore.

As for my golden boy, his name is Danny, his car is actually registered as a business vehicle and as an employee that drives my business vehicles I had to have him on my insurance anyway. And I figured this would also be another test, if he doesn't respect his own vehicle how can I expect him to respect mine. But the guy is so mature for his age, once I teach him how to do something he only needs to be shown once. And he has expressed an interest in making this a career. Now I just need to get over my own hangups. I figure by next spring I will have enough confidence in him to send him out with a part time helper to get jobs done when I can't.

At our cemetery age wasn't the enemy of headstones, 36" mowers were.

We actually use 52" zero turn mowers in our cemetery. A 36" deck would take forever and a day to get the mowing done . The nice thing about the zero turns iis if a stone gets bumped you can tap it back into place with the front of the mower and move on. But when you go into a cemetery and see sinking and leaning headstones the #1 reason is an improper foundation. #2 is digging a grave in front of a foundation and not settling it properly. If you dig a grave in front of a headstone foundation and do not settle the grave properly over time the foundation will tilt into the soft ground where the grave was.

I always like to say you can teach everything but attitude and enthusiasm

I like that quote. And it is so true given the person you are teaching is of normal intelligence. We used to have a mentally challenged guy work here years ago and he had the attitude and enthusiasm but the poor guy could not go a full week without breaking something no matter how hard I tried to teach him right.

Anyway I need to finish this novel and get back to work But at least I do get to decompress this saturday at the rockstar energy mayhem music festival in pittsburgh. Had to plan it 7 weeks in advance but it will be worth it, I'm taking 3 of my workers + one guys girlfriend with me. Gonna have some fun and maybe even meet Slipknot