Staffing is a double edged sword when your business is in a college town like New Brunswick.  We have no shortage of help.  College students flood my restaurant almost daily in search of work.  That’s the good news.  Now the bad news, college kids are not that reliable.  Must view a job in any restaurant as a pit stop on the road to real life.  As such, they do not take the work seriously and as a result we experience high turn-over.  It is expensive to constantly hire and train new people.  We have another restaurant located at the Jersey Shore.  We have the opposite problem at that location.  It is impossible to find anyone to work.  The pool of qualified workers that actually want to work in a restaurant is almost non-existent.  As a result we have entice people with a greater salary and benefits.  This also costs us money.

Can you describe the hiring and firing processes?

We hire more people than we need because sooner or later someone just stops showing up for work.  We have two interviews when we hire.  A modest amount of experience is required to get the job.  A little bit of luck is also required due to the 100’s of applications we receive each month.  To get fired you have to earn three strikes.  Each time an employee makes a big mistake we fill out a form that both employee and employer sign.  After three strikes the employee is fired.

How do you keep talented employees?

This is a restaurant in a college town. Most talented employees eventually get jobs that offer more growth potential.  The ones we have that stay, we try to treat with respect and dignity.  We try to compensate them well.  These seems to work.

What are some of your daily activities and the amount of time you spend on each activity?

I own the joint.  I have hired people to handle most responsibilities.  I handle the books, and all accounting functions.

Are there any programs / events run by the company to try to promote employee interactions and camaraderie? If so, please describe.

We plan two trips a year.  We might rent busses and take the entire restaurant to Atlantic City.  We have rented party boats and gone fishing.  Any type of event where we can get everyone out of the restaurant is a good thing.

How have local demographics effected the people you hire and has diversity played a role?

No.  We hire the best candidate at the time we need help.  Most of our candidates seem to have the same background.  As a result we are not as diverse as I would like to be.  That being said, we always try to hire the best person for the job.

What are the risks / benefits of over- versus under-staffing?

It is always better to have too many people than too few people.  If you have too many people the people that are hungry and want to work will work harder to keep their job.  They will fight to survive.  If you have too few people they have the upper-hand.  If they are late or don’t show up, there is no penalty because you can’t fire them… as you already are short personnel.

I won’t try to make this incredibly long. What have I been up to all this time? Well- I’ve taken a lot of leadership positions in my fraternity and that has kept me very busy. The social connections I’ve made in the past semester probably out number the number of connections I’ve ever made in the past.  I’ve made friends and brothers. I’ve definitely learned a lot  during this time and I’m being challenged everyday. I’m pretty used to “being my own boss” and doing everything on my own as an entrepreneur. However, the fraternity is forcing me to learn how to work with others, deal with difficult situations, outside input, and most of all (so far my most difficult challenge) dealing with criticism.

I sometimes wonder where I’d be if I didn’t join the fraternity. I think about whether I would have been better off. Would I have stayed more focused on entrepreneurship? Yeah probably. However, being a brother is teaching me a lot about working with others as well as allowing me to implement my creative side. Thus far, I have held positions of External Social Chair, New Member Education, and now Rush / Publicity Chair. I look forward to using my marketing skills to pursue a successful Rush this semester. However, being that this isn’t a one man show- I’ve already encountered a ton of doubt, criticism, and aversion to new / riskier ideas from my fellow brothers. All I know though, is that I will continue to be a part of this as long as I see purpose in it. If it any point I feel like my involvement is not a part of a bigger purpose, I’ll reorganize my efforts. I can’t see this happening soon as I do believe in what the fraternity tries to uphold.

As for entrepreneurship, I’m still promoting Walamu on campus and making new advertising partnerships for the upcoming semester. I will also be expanding to another school where I have backing from the fraternity. In addition, I am getting my feet wet in affiliate marketing and hope to create a consistent income by the end of this year. I’ll try to keep everyone updated on my journey, but if anyone ever needs to talk to me just shoot me an IM on AIM at romastaflex. I do tend to get lazy and procrastinate with email so just send me an IM anytime. Once again, I am so sorry for leaving for so long. I am grateful for every one of the friends, readers, and sponsors that I have made through this site.

It’s sad because when school is in session I always wish I didn’t have to go to class so I can be a full-time entrepreneur, but when I do have all this free time I seem to get distracted and lose a bit of that flame. I guess that’s one positive thing about school then- it acts as a bit of a motivator by forcing you to do stuff you’d rather not be doing like class and studying for exams and makes you think about what you’d really rather be doing like entrepreneurship.

I don’t have any excuses for not posting. I have been very busy with my social life, but even then I’ve had free time. I lost a bit of the flame because I knew there were more relaxing things I could be doing. However, I think I will be  back on the entrepreneuring train as soon as school starts.

I’m curious- how do you keep yourself motivated when there are so many more short-term relaxing things to do?

P.S. I do apologize to my regular readers who haven’t seen a post in a while. I have to be honest and say that this is now more of a journal as to what is going on in my life than an informational blog. And some people do enjoy that, but sometimes it means a lack of posts. I will definitely try to post more often once September rolls around.

how many clients we have, how many users, and how much revenue for the month. There is often a lot of discussion about keeping in good health and managing the stress that comes with being an  entrepreneur. I personally haven’t cared much for health since the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey although I know I should. In fact, I intend to start caring now. This is actually because I

used to think doing proper maintenance on your body wasn’t important, but it’s apparent that it is. A lot of what Healthy Body, a regular commenter on this blog (Gina?), has said has also made me think about taking care of oneself as well. I plan to change my diet, do some detoxing, and start hitting the gym. I just got myself some of that Kombucha tea. What are some things you, as an entrepreneur, do to keep in good health or keep yourself motivated to take care of your body?

]]> http://www.rohailrizvi.com/ye-interview-series-part-6-jesse-lear-serial-entrepreneur.htm/feed/ http://www.rohailrizvi.com/risk-and-repeat.htm http://www.rohailrizvi.com/risk-and-repeat.htm#comments Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:47:05 +0000 RohailR Entrepreneurship http://www.rohailrizvi.com/risk-and-repeat.htm I just want to thank again all my friends that were cool enough to do an interview for my readers. I think everyone gained a lot from your insights.

One of the common themes that I noticed from all the answers was that these entrepreneurs were natural risk takers from their first venture to their current ones and that they do everything they can to follow what they are passionate about. I was definitely reminded of the importance of continuing to take risks and pursuing ventures whether your past ones have been successful or not.

I’m currently involved in a variety of new ventures and have several learning curves ahead of me. I’ve just started on the eBay business as you know and am now entering affiliate marketing (which is made oh so easy using ClickAdEqualizer…easiest money ever, Aff. link). I have a network marketing business, which I may drop because I haven’t paid much attention to it and it’s just draining money right now. Furthermore, there is Project Seafire which is in the works. I was also just hired as the Product Manager of a consulting company based out of NYC, which I am very excited about.

I’m hoping to be able to create sufficient automated income in the next few weeks and put a lot of work into my new position. It should be exciting.

For all you bootstrapping entrepreneurs out there who want to repeat, but not risk as much, I highly encourage you to check out this list put out by BusinessFund.com: Top 25 Alternatives to Venture Capital.