I’m in the middle of signing a really big deal.

It’s one I really want. I’ve spent a year thinking about it, working towards it, going back and forth on the details.

And now that we’re actually close, I’m scared.

Not scared enough to walk away from it. But definitely scared enough to wake up at 3am and start doing maths in my head.

I think that’s the bit of building a business people don’t really see.

You see the new centre. The partnership. The launch. The photograph when everyone is smiling and the deal is finally signed.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about whether we can hire fast enough, whether the numbers work if we’re three months late, whether I’ve forgotten something in the contract and how on earth we are going to add another launch to an already slightly insane few months.

And then there are the people.

I definitely underestimated that part when I started Elixir.

As you grow, you don’t just get more staff. You get more personalities, more disagreements, more misunderstandings, more drama, more people having bad days and more people resigning at exactly the wrong time.

There are days when I open my phone in the morning and before I’ve even had water, there are screenshots of some staff drama I knew absolutely nothing about the night before.

And suddenly hours of my day is gone.

Sometimes the entire day.

You become part founder, part HR, part therapist, part referee. The tissue box in my cabin is often consumed by this too.

And it is incredibly time consuming.

There are weeks when I think, I have all these big things I need to be thinking about – and instead I’ve spent half my morning sorting out why two people aren’t speaking to each other.

That’s growth too.

Nobody puts that bit in the announcement.

The funny thing is, every time we’ve taken a big leap, I’ve felt some version of this.

You want something so badly. You chase it. Negotiate it. Fight for it. And then you have days when you are so sapped of energy you wonder why you were so ambitious in the first place.

Then you get the yes and there’s this very brief moment of:

Oh shit. Now we actually have to do this.

I used to think there would be a point where I’d feel completely confident making these decisions.

There isn’t.

If anything, the decisions have become scarier because there’s more at stake now. More people. More money. More responsibility. And more consequences if I get it wrong. (And two little humans who depend on me alone for everything and are watching constantly with awe and often concern).

I still overthink.

I still my best friend and and ask, “Am I being completely mad?”

I still run the worst-case scenario in my head.

Probably way too many times.

But I’ve also learnt that being scared of a decision doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the wrong one.

Sometimes it just means it’s big.

So here I am again.

Another deal.

Another slightly terrifying leap.

A growing team, plenty of chaos, far too many WhatsApps and a very long list of things that could go wrong.

And I still want to do it.

Maybe that’s what building something is.

Not reaching a point where the fear disappears.

Just getting a little better at saying:

Okay. I’m scared.

Let’s do it anyway.