How to Hire and Fire for Small Business Growth (Stop Hiring for Potential)

If you're not hiring for the reality and you're just hiring for potential, think about what that actually means. It's like getting married to someone you know would be a terrible spouse but thinking, hey, maybe they'll come around. You're going to spend more waking hours with this person than with your significant other. You're getting married to them at work. So hire for who they actually are. What do they bring to the table right now. What are their real skill sets. Is their attitude actually right. That's the hire.

I've been self-employed my whole life, and over the last 11 years scaling Bartlett Roofing from a one-man startup to a $50 million company with 200 employees, I've made almost every hiring and firing mistake that exists. We're shooting for $70 million this year. That means I've got to get this right. And if you're trying to grow, you've got to get it right too.

The message is simple: hire faster, hire right, and fire faster when someone isn't in the right seat. Those three things are the difference between a company that scales and one that plateaus.

Hire Faster Doesn't Mean Hire Recklessly

When I say hire faster, I don't mean grab the next person who walks through the door because you're overwhelmed. What it means is this: if you're spending significant time doing work that isn't your highest time-value activity, you haven't hired fast enough. You already needed that person. Now you're just doing their job for free while your best work sits undone.

Before you post anything, get clarity. What exactly needs to happen in this role? If you're early on with fewer than ten employees, the first hires should be freeing you up to stay in your strength. Start by looking at everything you do that pulls you out of your highest-value work. That becomes your first job description. Maybe you're spending ten hours a week on books. That's not enough to hire full-time yet, so you outsource it. When you get to the point where you need a full-time person, you define exactly what they're going to do and you hire specifically for that.

And here's something I used to say explicitly in early interviews: your main job is X, but if I need the toilet cleaned because we haven't hired a cleaner yet, I'm going to ask you to do that. Not to be demeaning. Just because things need to happen, and early on everyone's on the same team. If someone walks out over that, fine. The person who stays is the one who gets it. They can see you're growing and they want to be part of it.

Define the Role Before You Fill It

Once you've got 20, 30, 40 people, the flexibility conversation changes. Roles need to be tightly defined. That means a written job description, clear KPIs, specific expectations on output and hours, even dress code. The more clearly you can set expectations upfront, the better off you're going to be. Vague expectations lead to vague performance and then you're stuck managing confusion instead of managing growth.

When you're screening, go through your resumes, narrow it down to your five best candidates, and interview them. If you don't feel it after those five, keep the ad running. Don't let desperation drive the hire. A few extra days finding the right person pays back in multiples compared to six months managing the wrong one. A company I know of in Japan has a policy where if someone isn't showing up early, they let them go. Not because showing up early is the whole job. But because if someone's just trading their hours for a paycheck and isn't invested in what you're building, they're already the wrong person.

You're either adding a sail to your ship or you're dragging an anchor. There's no neutral. Figure out which one it is and act on it.

Once you hire someone you trust, give them the ability to make decisions. I'd start new people with a $500 threshold. Anything under that, make the call yourself. Don't ask me. As trust builds over time, that number grows. I have people on my team now making $100,000 software purchasing decisions with little or no input from me. That's what you're building toward. You can't get there without giving people room to operate.

Fire Faster. And Stop the Sunken Cost Thinking.

This is where most owners get it wrong. You get emotionally attached. You like the person. You've invested time training them. You don't want to have to start over. So you let it slide, and then you let it slide some more, and before you know it you've got someone who's been in the wrong seat for a year and has been slowing you down the whole time.

Here's the thing about sunken cost: the time and money you've already spent is gone. It doesn't come back whether you keep the person or not. The only question is what happens going forward. If they're not hitting their KPIs, if they don't share your urgency about where you're trying to go, if your gut's been telling you something's off, that cost keeps compounding every day you don't act on it.

I learned this from going to Dave Ramsey seminars. The question you need to ask is whether they share your urgency. Not whether they're trying or whether they're a good person. Do they share your urgency about what you're building and where you're going. If they don't, you need to have that conversation directly and tell them their job is at risk. Not as a threat. As the truth. Because weak leaders avoid that conversation and it sinks them.

The One Question That Cuts Through Everything

There's a question I ask myself any time I'm unsure about someone on the team. It makes the answer simple. Knowing what I know now, would I hire this person again today? Not accounting for the training I've put in, not accounting for what they were like in the beginning, not accounting for how much I like them as a person. Would I hire them again right now, today?

If the answer is no, you already know what needs to happen. Have the alignment conversation first. Tell them you don't feel like your goals are aligned. Tell them you need them to share your urgency. Give them a real shot at getting there. But if it's not happening, let them go. Be honest about it. There are other opportunities out there that are a better fit for them, and you need someone who fits what you need. That's not cruel. That's the truth. And people respect truth a lot more than they respect being managed around.

When you've got a whole team of people who are genuinely bought in, who are trying to build something together because you've cast a clear vision about where you're going, it's game over. You win. There's no question about it. But you only get there by being willing to make the hard calls on both ends: hiring the right people fast enough and letting go of the wrong ones before they pull the whole ship backward. I cover this in depth on the Monster Mindset podcast — if you want the full conversation, that's where to go.