Stop Letting This Fear Run Your Firm

One of the most common fears I hear from small firm owners is not about cost or quality. It is a much more personal fear, and one that means you place a high priority on human capital: What if I bring someone on, the pipeline does not fill the way I hoped, and then I have to let them go? Unfortunately, that fear ends up keeping a lot of high-potential firms smaller than they want to or should be.

This is something I want to talk about honestly, because Tim Derrington did. Tim runs Derrington Building Studio in Austin, a small firm we have worked with for a while now, and his straightforwardness about this subject is more useful than any reassurance I could write.

Tim has lived that exact scenario. Trusted business coaching had given his entire cohort the same blanket advice: Hire an administrator and hire an architect, and do it today, whether or not you feel ready. 

As many people in his shoes would do, Tim gave that advice the benefit of the doubt. He was not fully confident the work was there, but the projects seemed likely to come, so he committed, but ultimately, not everything came to fruition. He ended up having the conversation nobody wants to have with a person who, by his own description, was fantastic. While she was self-motivated, respectful, and very capable, he simply did not have the work to give her.

Looking back, he now considers it a very embarrassing moment. It is painful, he said, to tell somebody you cannot continue to pay them, and it is even more painful because that person was counting on you. There is a particular sting in confronting what feels like your own inadequacy, even when the real culprit is an optimistic forecast that runs straight into a slower than expected market. Anyone who has been through it knows precisely what he means.

Here is the part I want every hesitant firm owner like Tim used to be to sit with: The fear of that moment is legitimate, but it is not a reason to never begin. 

Tim started, and he did so more than once. Even though initially it did not go the way he planned, his firm is still successful, still clear on its vision, and still building towards an even better future. Yes the thing he was afraid of happened, but like most things in life, it was survivable. That deserves to be said, because in most owners’ heads, the worst case almost always plays as a catastrophe. In reality, it is a hard week, an honest conversation, and a lesson that sharpens your next forecast.

What really makes the difference when the hard moment arrives is how the relationship is structured. When Tim came to us and said he was not going to be able to keep someone on, it did not become a cold, one-way announcement. Instead, it became a dialogue where we built an action plan together. We decided to see how the next stretch went, and if any one of our options panned out, here is what we would do. And if nothing worked, then there was no expectation to continue.

Tim said that level of comfort and support mattered most in a moment of stress, when he was confronting what he perceived as his own shortcomings. The point of a real partner is to absorb some of that weight, not add to it.

So if you are stuck at the edge of your first hire, frightened of what might happen if you need to  change course, take Tim’s example as inspiration. 

Have an open conversation up front about what happens if the work does not come, and build in flexibility from day one. Then start. You’ll quickly discover that while the fear might never really disappear, it stops being the thing that runs your firm.

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