Wowzers what a time since my last update. A chunk to talk about for sure.
On a personal note I went and got my hearing checked and discovered I have moderate hearing damage to my upper frequencies. Probably not a surprise to anyone who has tried talking to me while facing away from me.
We come to our business year end, and while some amount of low total profit is due to a pretty big financial mistake, we've also tweaked some numbers while identiftying a pretty big financial hole in our business.
First though, the tweaking of numbers. We've pushed the sell price of our PL and HP cards up a bit. Not a ton, our competitive prices are still important to us, but enough that we earn around $500 more per every $10000 of PL and HP cards we sell.
The financial hole in our business. We find that we have busy periods and slower periods of work each year. These busier periods usually happen around events, or someone selling their collection to us. The problem is that during our slower periods the business is paying more in wages than it can realistically afford, and so our busier periods often end up trying to play catchup.
The hardline financial advice here is to give my main employee less hours during our slower period. This is something I'd really prefer not to do, if you've interacted with David you might understand why I value him so highly.
But nonetheless we are in this spot. During slower periods his work covers most of the work the business needs to do each week and I'm left with doing minor bits of admin and staring at my bank account numbers feeling helpless to do anything about it.
I've considered and thought a lot about part time work in the past, but this doesn't end up working, because when we are busy I need to be here, and when we are busy isn't really consistent in any way, shape, or form. What I do have, is periods of 3-4 weeks where I can be an extra pair of hands to someone who needs them and can pay me for the time. The other thing I have during these periods is freedom to be able to be an extra pair of hands basically anywhere in the country as the small amount of work I need to do for the business can be done so long as I have an internet connection.
So this is me putting myself out there to all of you. I semi-regularly have periods of 3-4 weeks where I can be an extra pair of hands, and provided I have accomodation sorted I can be that extra pair of hands basically anywhere in the country. (though I don't have a car or drivers lisence, so more remote places are harder).
I'm actively looking for work in 2-4 week chunks to help stabilize our business income during the quieter periods of time that we have each year. Please let me know if you could use my help :).
I'm really don't want to turn to less ideal situations to solve this whole. There's also the option of having David instead for this extra hands work, as I can always take on the work he does here, but that has to always go through him and he always has the final say.
- Rose Willis.
