This week, I took on my first ever employee. This has been a long time coming but the whole experience of these first three days has actually been nothing like I expected.
When Rose started on Tuesday, I was so excited but as the day wore on I just started to feel more and more emotional. As work goes, it was a great day and we both hit our stride immediately but when I got home, I wanted to cry.
This swell of emotion didn’t seem to match the situation and it’s taken me a few days to really get my ahead around what I was feeling.
I think it comes from two places. The most obvious is the anxiety around being responsible for another person’s wages. The imposter syndrome has been nudging its way in and I’m thinking, ‘what if I can’t do this?’.
The second reason is that suddenly I’m sharing the business I’ve built over the last eight years with someone else.
I’ve always found being an entrepreneur quite lonely and I really struggled with that. As much as friends and freelancers were involved in the business, it was always mine. I ran it alone. I faced the ups and downs alone and I was in my own head every day working through all the things I was juggling.
Now, suddenly, I have someone else in the business every day.
That’s a huge step and I have to relinquish a little control.
This is why I avoided employing someone for so many years. I know it stalled my growth and I had so many times where I thought, ‘this is the start of something big’ but it never really was.
This time it’s different.
I’ve taken a massive leap but I know it’ll pay off because, as I said in last week’s newsletter, we can do anything we put our minds to.
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Social Experiment
Going back to my introductory messages on LinkedIn, I had a fair bit of success with them but what I’ve found far more valuable is creating engaging, thought-provoking posts and using a couple of industry-relevant hashtags.
One post from the end of last week has passed 4,000 views but, more importantly, it’s also generated a number of great conversations.
Just for comparison’s sake, I also created a post with no hashtags and it didn’t do anywhere near as well.
Take a look at my LinkedIn to read all my recent posts.
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