Honest. I have 17 employees in the company I formed last May and I haven't paid any of them a single penny.
Not only have I not paid them, when we have staff meetings, they have to buy their own meals and beverages.
Of course, the company hasn't made any money, yet, and I've promised them free food and a scholarship into the event we are planning. So they are working for me on a promise.
See, last May, we were all sitting around complaining that the people who had organized and put on the Oklahoma Steampunk Exposition weren't going to do it anymore. It was more work and more effort than they'd realized it would be. They did a decent job of it - the flubs and mistakes were quite minor ones in the grand scale of things and the attendees all had fun.
We were all sad that there wasn't going to be another steampunk convention in town.
And then I uttered the fateful words of "Why not?"
Because I was the one who suggested we could do it, I became responsible for getting it done.
We held a meeting. We outlined what needed to be done, and everyone looked to me to create the time line, coordinate all the different aspects of it, design the webpage, and fund it out of my shallow pockets. My really shallow pockets.
So I formed it up as an LLC so I wouldn't be personally liable for a lot of things. It was faster and easier to set up as an LLC than as a 501 (c) 3, even though we knew we weren't going to make any money. Running conventions of this sort is expensive and usually a money drain, not a money maker. The fact that we decided to set this convention up like a school - with workshops, classes, demonstrations, panels, a "student lounge", a "professors lounge", and all only marginally impacted the type of business structure we were starting out with. We just needed to have some sort of quick official business structure in order to negotiate contracts with the venue and the guests we were calling visiting professors, and at the time, we only needed it for this one convention, and an LLC was the fastest - I set it up in under an hour for about $100.
Before I knew it, I had a staff - an accountant, a contracts person, a webmistress, a chief engineer, an art gallery curator, a stage manager, a costume director, a tea parlour hostess, a professor's lounge chef and supervisor, a volunteer director, a games director, a security chief, a guest liaison, a merchant director, a hotel liaison, a registrar, and a floater.
All willing to work for me without pay. Just to have a steampunk convention.
I admit I still need a few more people - a workshop director, an educational director, a panel director, a scriptorium director, a children's director, an anime director, a PR director, a Sales director, and, of course, a large group of volunteers for the event itself.
I wish I could pay them all.
I've been faithfully buying 1 lottery ticket a week. I know, the overall odds of hitting a lottery large enough to pay for all of this is slim, but as a math teacher told me, each time I buy a lottery ticket my chances are 50/50. Either I'll win that lottery or I won't. If I never buy a ticket, I will never ever win.
I've also been researching people and places that might fund us. The local library system wants in on this, as does one of the local art museums, so I've been looking to partner with other museums and art institutions locally. I may not get money from them, but I'll get publicity and attendees. And attendees will buy enrollments to attend. Enough attendees and that will pay for the entire venture.
But not to pay my employees.
So I've been looking into other sources of funding. Kickstarter. Grants. Potential donors. Selling advertising in our student handbook and course schedule and at out Teas and lectures and classes that we are doing around town to generate interest and hopefully secure attendance.
I bought a book called "The Ask" because I am utterly clueless about how to ask for funds. I know we don't qualify for a loan - how would we pay it back? But in reading this book, I am getting answers and ideas.
Along the way, somehow, this little venture became a much bigger thing than any of us anticipated. We are doing monthly Teas which include giving a lecture or demonstration to the attendees - and many of them are people whom we've never met before. We've been asked to give lectures at colleges. The high schools will count volunteering for us as part of the community service high school students need in order to graduate. The library and a museum asked to partner with us. It's gone from a simple single convention to nearly a full time business filled with lecturing, demonstrating, and educating people on art, literature, crafts, history, science, and how all these subjects support one another. We have become a resource as well as a convention.
Sometimes, as big as this is getting, I've thought perhaps we should have bitten the bullet and just gone ahead and filed as a 501 (c) 3.
For now, though, I may be the only company where all my employees are working for me for free.
And since you read this all the way through, here's a gratuitous picture of Itzl in another Halloween costume: