There’s been a lot of talk about the potential to have a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour. One of the things we hear is “I don’t know how my business will survive“. If the minimum wage is $15. Well, I’m here to tell you that is time to put your thinking cap on because outside circumstances will always have an effect on your business, and minimum wage is one of those.
Now, I personally don’t believe there should be a minimum wage. “I think people should be paid based on the value that they provide“. Not based on some federal standard of what someone else values their work at. If someone’s a poor worker they should receive less in hourly wage than somebody who does a fantastic job. I’m sure you’ve all got workers who have earned their raise that will probably get another raise on top just because a federal standard changes.
The reality of it is when minimum wages increases, there are two things that happened to our economy. The price of everything else goes up and unemployment goes up because you’ll have to lay off some if you can’t afford them, a business owner will need to take a few actions. You’re gonna need to make sure that your labor usage is efficient.
If you’ve got struggling employees who are not doing their job, not earning their keep, they’re gonna be gone. But more importantly, besides raising prices, which is the number one thing you’ll have to do. Now I want you to evaluate a couple of other things.
First off, What can you outsource? What can you get somebody else to do for you? Are you handling some of your internal work that somebody else could do more efficiently and more effectively and take that off of your plate? I’m a perfect example, accounting is one of those tasks for most business owners. You probably shouldn’t be doing your own accounting. If you have things that you need to get done on your to-do list that are not getting checked off.
Another opportunity is Automation. What is it that you’re doing manually that could be automated for some that might be their point of sale system? It might be tracking their sales tax. It might be barcodes on inventory. It could be as simple as you’re doing some mailings that you could automate use bill pay through your bank to automate, rather than writing checks. There are a lot of things, big and small that can be automated.
And the third opportunity I want you to consider what you’re doing, that you just don’t need to do many more. You could just stop doing it. So what somebody cares or notice if you stop doing something, look at those tasks, run those three criteria through it on a day-to-day basis.
As you perform tasks, ask your staff to do this, to do we really have to do this? What does it do for us? I mean, obviously, if it’s cleaning the bathroom, yes, you have to do that. You could look it out outsourcing that have a janitorial service or a cleaning person who does that for you on some routine basis. You could also look at automation. Now, automation of cleaning, the toilet is coming. I’ve seen it okay, but for automation, look at those tests that you do on a routine basis that might be able to be automated. So for example, if you are calling people to tell them to pick up their purchase, is there a way you could automate a texting service to do that for you? So think about those things. And sometimes we just have to deal with what is given to us as business owners.
You probably should not appreciate or like a mandatory minimum wage increase. However, “things happen to us all the time and we have to figure out how to deal with them“. I would love to help you deal with this issue and many others. I’m Donna Bordeaux with CalculatedMoves.com.
Donna Bordeaux, CPA with Calculated Moves
Creativity and CPAs don’t generally go together. Most people think of CPAs as nerdy accountants who can’t talk with people. Well, it’s time to break that stereotype. Lively, friendly and knowledgeable can be a part of your relationship with your CPA as demonstrated by Donna and Chad Bordeaux. They have over 50 years of combined experience as entrepreneurial CPAs. They’ve owned businesses and helped business owners exceed their wildest dreams. They have been able to help businesses earn many times more profit than the average business in the same industry and are passionate about helping industries that help families build great memories.