I’ve been in Europe for three weeks, and back less than one week. I’ve only just begun catch­ing up on unread RSS items (over 2000 of the lit­tle bug­gers) and came across an amus­ing post by the very tal­ented James Edwards aka Broth­er­cake: The Crack-head’s Guide to Hold­ing Down a Job.

I like James’ writ­ing and this one had me chuck­ling qui­etly to myself. Dave and I decided to start Clever Starfish two years ago for a num­ber of rea­sons but the attrac­tive ones are the things like “going to work look­ing as scruffy as you want” and “turn­ing up as late as you want” – so James’ clos­ing state­ment “And if you really can’t stand to get down this way, you’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off self-employed!” rang par­tic­u­larly true. My ses­sion at Web Direc­tions South is going to be all about our deci­sion to go out on our own and what worked and what didn’t.

How­ever, Dave and I soon realised that as soon as you make the deci­sion to take on employ­ees, all of that free­dom goes out the win­dow. You have to set an exam­ple of how you want your employ­ees to behave. Which means being at your desk at 8.30am (ok, maybe 9am), dress­ing nicely (at least wear­ing pants, any­way) and not being (too) disruptive.

Of course, I’m not com­plain­ing – a bit of self-discipline never hurt any­one and impos­ing rules on our­selves makes every­thing run much smoother. But even after two years full time, I still feel most days like I’m pre­tend­ing to be the boss.