attention to the race since I'm so busy traveling right now) ... if that happens our business will have hard choices to make. Our instructors all make much more than that... by design. But front desk... We have 15 desk staff and at any given time we're paying 1-2 employees (there's some overlap) basically all day from 530am until about 8pm and they make $10/hr ... all college kids right now.

So this would be a 50% increase in our second biggest expense without a revenue increase ... we'd basically have to either:

1) Pay them $15/hr and increase prices on all customers. Given that many of our customers are college kids on a fixed budget from parents, many will simply not be able to afford it anymore. Frankly, if we could get away with charging more, we'd already be doing it. Even if we give this plan max benefit of the doubt and say they're making $15/hr now too so they'll have more money to pay, 1) prices across the board will up ... quick service food in particular which is the major expense category for college kids and 2) college kids don't work that much where they'd really have a big difference in disposable income.

2) Scale back how much somebody is there to match current payroll ... studio is dirtier, runs less smoothly, now people are willing to pay LESS for classes (further exacerbating problems).

3) Slave away myself in the business which means I have no time to work ON the business or innovate for customers ... never mind risking my own capital and opening new locations putting other people to work.

So those are my very real 3 options for my very real, pretty small business that employs about 30 people (instructors + desk) all on a part time basis. I suppose option 4 is look for people willing to work for barter/free classes, but honestly not even sure if this is legal? Also we already give our desk free classes, so this either means changing the game on them or firing all them to hire new people who have lower expectations.