{"id":4144,"date":"2023-10-03T15:13:17","date_gmt":"2023-10-03T21:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:10043\/?p=4144"},"modified":"2025-03-07T07:16:25","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T13:16:25","slug":"entrepreneurs-face-stress-of-growth-with-first-hire-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/entrepreneurs-face-stress-of-growth-with-first-hire-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Entrepreneurs face stress of growth with first-hire decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared in\u00a0The Tennessean<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was both excited and scared.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s every entrepreneur\u2019s dream and every entrepreneur\u2019s nightmare, and it was the biggest decision of my young career.<\/p>\n

I was a one-person computer consulting business. With no office, no employees, and no phone line, the word \u201cbusiness\u201d was an exaggeration.\u00a0 I was really just a freelance computer geek doing everything from writing software to fixing printers for a handful of customers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I was working hard, pulling regular all-nighters, and coding every weekend when I got a call to build a large software development project for big name business<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What an opportunity! \u00a0This will be a piece of cake.<\/p>\n

But … wait.<\/p>\n

I was booked solid and there was no way of taking on anything else by myself.\u00a0 I was faced with one of the biggest decisions of my life\u2014hiring my first employee.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a matter of who to hire, but whether or not to take on the huge responsibility and pressure of hiring anyone at all.<\/p>\n

What if work dries up?\u00a0 What happens to cash flow if a client is slow to pay? Will I be a good manager?<\/p>\n

Anyone who\u2019s started a business from scratch knows what I’m talking about.\u00a0 You dream of growing from a one-person shop into a real company, but when the time comes to hire your first employee, the decision isn\u2019t as easy as it sounds.<\/p>\n

Next to proposing to my wife, for me, taking on the responsibility for someone else\u2019s livelihood was the most nerve-racking proposition I\u2019d ever undertaken.<\/p>\n

The decision became scarier when I began interviewing potential candidates. I quickly realized that the word \u201cemployee\u201d didn\u2019t accurately describe what I was taking on.\u00a0 It felt like too cold a term to describe the human beings that were willing to put their career in my hands.\u00a0 Every person I talked to had dreams, fears, and responsibilities of their own that my tiny company might have a large impact on.<\/p>\n

When I finally decided to take the plunge and hire someone<\/a>, my anxiety was sky-high. \u00a0It took me a full week to get a good night\u2019s sleep as I worried about all the \u201cwhat-could-go-wrongs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while I was stressing out, my first-ever hire was thriving.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long to see that one plus one equaled three.\u00a0 Not only did our small tech consulting<\/a> firm’s productivity triple\u2014but I also gained a teammate whom I enjoyed working with.\u00a0 It was a win-win-win for our company, myself, and my new colleague. We all began to grow.<\/p>\n

Thinking back, there were a few things I learned:<\/p>\n