Movin' on up

So much for blog action day, as I write (and post date) this entry... Ah the trials and tribulations of running a business. Kyle has been traveling like a mad man again. In his absence I've been keeping Synergy on track. And man, I know I haven't blogged about Synergy in a long while - so here's a quick summary of our life in the franchise business thus far: 1) opened the business with my mom as office manager, 2) hired a part time marketing person, 3) let my mom go and brought marketing person on full time, 4) marketing person turned out to be the most worthless piece of trash on the planet (more on that later), 5) the North Austin franchise closed and we acquired its clients and employees, and fired our worthless marketing person (WMP), 6) at our new super-star client/community relations person's suggestion we hired a part time kick-butt office manager and let our super-star focus on clients, boards, and events, 7) we frantically looked for bigger office space.

Long story short, we wound up sub-leasing from a CPA that we found on Craig's list. The location is great and the terms of our agreement are perfect. We found great, affordable used office furniture at TOPS and are now all moved in ... except for phone and internet, which I'm working on. We're not official at the new location until Nov 1, so there ought to be plenty of time to get our number transferred - though leaving for Hawaii next weekend might complicate things.

But, back to the drama. So yeah, we had this part time marketing person (WMP) that seemed all on the up and up. While WMP was part time they turned in mileage and activity reports, answered their phone and email and was conscientious as far as we could tell. Then WMP came on full time, at a negotiated higher salary than we had originally offered. To make a long story short, Kyle and I have strong reason to believe that WMP took another job and was doing their work, letting our business idle, and collecting pay checks from both parties - probably cash on the other side, though I'd love to find a record of it and take WMP to court to recoup their wages. WMP literally quit answering the phone when we called, informed us of taking days off instead of asking for them (despite not having any vacation accrued), quit filling out reports, and quit sumbitting mileage (most likely due to lack of any actual marketing which in turn could have been verified). We've heard it through the grapevine (our industry is too small for game playing) that WMP was telling people we were only paying $X an hour (vs being on salary) and "refused" to reimbursing mileage. Whereas WMP actually did refuse to meet Kyle during business hours in the very office where they were supposed to be working, forcing him to terminate them over the phone - a call which they answered during the time in which they were supposed to have been in a parent-teacher conference. Now what elementary school teacher schedules a parent meeting at 3:00 on the Friday before Labor Day weekend? None. Obviously it was one of countless lies that WMP told us over the months.

It's sad to think that Kyle and I were both naive or maybe gullable enough to be duped by WMP, but you live and learn. We truly feel that we now have the right team in place and are excited and hopeful again about the business. It's amazing how much better things are already in such a short span of time.