Let understand this with a story of a boy who is not famous but his story can give you great lessons for life.
The story is of my cousin brother who was living in Faridabad when I visited him first in 2007.
He was true from the heart and himself told his parents after Class 10 that he didn’t like studies.
So, his father talked to his neighbor Mr. Sushil Banik to give some training in something related to arts.
As he was very good at drawing, he accepted him to give training as well as some stipend to him as encouragement.
This was back in year 1995 with 1000 rupees Stipend.
Though 1000 rupees was not a big amount, it was of great help to their family.
Mr. Banik was giving him training in Textile designing, Tracing, and other technicalities related to the work that their company Classic Design Studio needed.
Classic Design Studio was a Partnership Firm with two partners: Sushil Banik and Sanjay Sharma.
Both partners were working in some other companies and Classic Design Studio was their part-time venture.
It was the year 2007 when I visited him during my admission to Narayana Coaching Center for the AIEEE exam.
And, before my class started, I used to accompany him to the office.
Working as his own Company
I saw him doing everything for the company: starting from cleaning and mopping the floor to cleaning two computers, tables and other peripheral device like scanner, printer, router etc.
He used to come to the office before 9:00 am with light breakfast and packed lunch from home and drink Mausami Juice near office before starting his work.
As he almost bring lunch every day, he used to save a lot of time in work.
The two partners of the Business used to come after finishing work at their respective companies.
So, sometimes, the time my cousin brother used to go home was as early as 7:00 PM and as late as 9:00 PM.
When they had some urgent designs to give it to clients, he used to work late at night or come very early around 4:00-5:00 AM in the morning.
He was actually working like Classic Design Studio was his own startup.
In 2007, his salary was around 4000 rupees.
Though he never complained about that.
Collapse of the Firm
In the year, 2017 the partners’ duo agreed to pay him 20% of the annual profit the firm gets along with his salary.
I was happy that at least they are giving this reward to a loyal employee who worked for them for 22 years of his life without asking a salary hike.
You can’t imagine his salary was increased to 10000 only in 22 years.
But when the day finally arrived, they refused to pay the share of profit.
This is very critical in a Business.
Even if they were bringing clients but from designing the artwork to final delivery, receiving payments from clients all were being done by him.
I am not saying all these because he is my brother. When an employee gives 100% and you promise to give profit shares, then you should keep your promise.
Bringing clients only will never help, if you will not be able to provide services and when you work 8 hours in a different company and the only employee of your firm is giving 10 hours of his time, then you should respect the employee’s effort and encourage him/her with benefits/salary hikes/percentage in profits.
The next year, my brother left the Firm and the partners were not able to find someone who will do everything at such a low salary. They had to dissolve the partnership firm in 2018.
Moral of the story: Know Business well before doing business
Value the efforts of your employee and measure your efforts too.