One of the hardest decisions in a small business that is growing is knowing when to hire. Everybody works out, sooner or later, that they need people. The hard part is the moment.

The mistake most owners make, and I made it with real commitment, is believing that we can manage everything ourselves. For a while it is even true. You write the courses, you build the back end, you answer the messages after midnight, and the business survives because you are holding it up. Then, slowly, the thing that kept it alive becomes the thing that slows it down. Everything has to pass through you to be approved, and there is only so much that can pass through one man in a day.

I did not see it happening. Eva did. She told me more than once, and each time a little more insistently, and I gave her the answer every founder gives: I know my own business, I do not need somebody else to tell me. But in the end somebody does have to tell you, or you go round and round on the same spot believing you are moving.

I have jumped into cold water before. I jumped when I sent the order for the machines, before we had a building to put them in. I jumped again when I signed the lease in Ras Al Khor. Both times I had no idea what was underneath, and both times I learned to swim on the way down.

The trap is what comes after you survive. You get into the sea, the waves do not kill you, you learn to float, and then you sit there floating and call it competence.

Floating is not a stroke. At a certain size, floating will move you one metre.

So the question changes. It is no longer whether you are brave enough to jump. It is whether you are willing to jump again, now, with more to lose than the first time.

That is the part nobody warns you about. The fear does not shrink as the business grows. It scales with it. When we started, a mistake could cost us a little, and a little was everything we had. Now a mistake can cost us more, and that is still everything we have. What changes is not the fear. What changes is the arsenal you have to face it with, and that is a real difference, but it is not the same as safety.

Every new person in a small company is a jump. It is a commitment that exists whether the work arrives or not, and it means handing over something you have held on your own since the first day. For a long time I told myself I was protecting the business by keeping it close. I was not. A team that is not allowed to grow becomes a team that runs on frustration. Beyond the contract and the salary, every person wants to show that they can contribute something, and if you never let them, you have not protected anything. You have only told them you do not rate them.

So this time I am trying to learn a stroke rather than congratulate myself on not having drowned. It is slower than floating at first, and it feels worse. You swallow water. You lose the rhythm and have to find it again. But you can learn freestyle, and after that you can learn others, and each one makes you stronger and safer in open water.

There is a cost, and I will not dress it up. My workbench has been quiet for a long time now. I run a woodworking company and I barely make anything, and I feel that every week.

We have reached the top of a small mountain. From here I can see the base of the next one.

Luca