I would like to add something –
Although my casino site is only 2 months old, as I mentioned before, I have other non-casino related retail sites, 5 to be exact and I have to speak from my experience from those.
I still work from home (do my web work at night when its quiet) and during the day I work from my office which is in the back of our store. We have 5 employees, and I have to agree with Kevin on what he says. Good employees are SO hard to find. When you find them, do whatever it takes to KEEP them!
I’ve found that I’ve had to train in and teach many of the things I learned the hard way to our employees too, just as Kevin has. This can be scary as they can walk away with all this knowledge handed to them the easy way and you’ve lost a good employee. But then, growing a business is all about risks, isn’t it?
I have a partner in my business, who is my significant other. Four years ago, he quit his $250,000/year job to join me in growing my business. Everybody thought we were both crazy! We were sitting good financially at the time and we knew it was a HUGE risk, but I couldn’t continue to grow the business without his help and he saw the potential in what I was doing.
If I had to say what has been the most trying during these years, I would have to say that many times I thought we were going to kill each other! Many times we almost broke up and destroyed the business. In fact, one time it went as far as all the sites being taken down and we seperated. It almost happened. What a mess that was to put back together when we both finally came around.
Whew – Hang in there, nomatter how tough it gets. We’re still in this and its much easier now. We still have our differences from time to time, but over the years we’ve each learned to settle into our own parts of our jobs and a system is in place. He manages the sales, shipping and receiving and I manage the store, accounting and all web related stuff.
Today – its the best decision we have ever made. I still put in some really long hours, but those hours are at my discretion and we have a fine business that continues to grow every year.