“I’m sorry, but I have to let you go.”
I never wanted to have to say those words. Especially not to my very first employee! Hiring, and then having to let go my first employee was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my young career, bootstrapping a business.
It was 2011 and my newly launched SaaS business was off and running. I was extremely busy, working 12+ hour days. As a solo-founder, I was doing it all.
I figured there was more than enough work to fill up an employee’s plate. So I went for it. I hired my first virtual assistant.
I started by giving her a few basic tasks, like formatting a blog post and posting to social media. That took about 2 hours. Then she pinged me, “All done. What should I work on next?”
I stopped what I was doing and thought about what I could assign to her next…
I remembered there was that PR plan I learned about from watching a Mixergy course. So I spent an hour writing instructions for her to gather press contacts into a spreadsheet. That filled up another day of work to keep her busy. She did a great job. Too bad that PR plan didn’t produce the results I had hoped for. Back to the drawing board.
Again, my employee is left waiting for her next task. So once again, I stopped what I was working on, and thought about what I could give her. Continue reading >>>
