I own a small business with just me as the only employee. In December of last year is when I started it. We are a IT Support and Cybersecurity consultant company in a small town. I have the work experience in the IT field and the degrees in Cybersecurity from an accredited university. My first client had a couple big jobs for me to do. They own 3 companies and I did work for 4 of their stores. They made me an offer that sounded wonderful.
The offer was that they would pay me 800 a week, from their main company, and go into a partnership with me in my business. The partnership would be split between us 3 so almost 33% each. While I made the 800 a week, we will work on my business and get more business so we can share the profits. This sounded great to me since I just made $2000 from 4 days of work, on their invoices before they wanted to go into a partnership.
Well, I am in week 2 of the job and I am realizing that it may be a bad idea and that my company and I are going to get screwed out of $50,000. Let me explain it as it hasn’t happened yet.
All last week I worked for their main company which they call it the warehouse. They have internet connectivity issues, server issues, and all around networking issues. This is a problem since they work off of orders and ship them to their own stores and their client stores. All last week I was working on moving WAPs (wireless access points) and running new Ethernet cable because their old cables were not up to par and revealed shorts within them. I was using my own equipment and supplies. I have 0 help and I would like to grow my business. One of the owners paid off my $7000 SBA loan because he didn’t want me to stress out about it. Then they want to add their IT guy into the company and split it 25%. Their IT guy has a simple associates degree in computer science but he is their sales director. What can he contribute to the company and that would make 3 friends owning 75% of my company, giving it 1/4 of their attention, while I do almost 100% of the work and devote 100% of my time to it. Now they want me to do a lot more to their network to make it better, which I have written estimates for it for my own research.
BTW they want to make another bank account for my company and I am not comfortable having them have 75% of say so over it. I have plans to make my workers appreciate their job and I am going to treat them fair since I am on this subreddit and I have been mistreated by past employers. Will their ideas fall in line with how I want my business ran? Probably not.
Down to the money issues. I worked last week and put in 40hrs. They paid me $800. Now I wrote up what it would cost a clients and it would have been around $3800. Now My company has been screwed out of $3000. If they wanted to be a part of my company then they would have paid it from their warehouse company. That company made $64 million last year. I could have paid myself out of my company funds. Kept some for my company because I planned on splitting half the profits with me and my company. Do they plan the same type of payment for the owners? Probably not. Now the work they want me to do will cost around $48,000 including me getting an employee and paying them a living wage. That job would ensure that I could have a single employee and pay him/her for 6.5 months. They want me to do that job for $20/hr. That is essentially screwing over my company, me, and my family. I could be spending that time getting more clients but I am working there. I haven’t went the last two days due to my kids dr appointments. I haven’t signed anything and nothing has been paid to me for part ownership so I would rather be out the $3000 then the $45000. Any advice would be appreciated.