I Should've Fired Him Week One

Let me start this one with something I got wrong.

I'll be honest, this isn't a lesson from this week. I've been traveling, and most of the business work lately has been development. Heads-down stuff. But the travel gave me room to think, and what I kept coming back to was a hire I made a few months ago that I never should have made.

Someone I knew reached out. Not a friend, we just knew each other. He told me he was a hustler, that he'd done door-to-door sales for a full summer and done well at it. He wanted to sell for me.

I hesitated. I didn't know him well enough to really judge his character. But he offered to work commission-only until he proved himself, so I figured there wasn't much risk in it. I said yes.

The headaches started fast. He missed appointments and dragged his feet on the actual work. He'd call me in the middle of the night for advice, usually about things that had nothing to do with the job, with endless questions and strategies he'd clearly pulled from some YouTube guru.

My gut had already made the call. But he seemed to be in a financial bind, and he kept telling me he just needed a little more time and he'd get to work. So I gave him more time. Then I gave him more after that. Every extension came with another late-night call and another excuse.

Looking back, the problem was the math I'd done in my head. He was commission-only, so I told myself he couldn't cost me anything. That was the whole mistake. I was only counting money. The real cost was my time, my attention, and the energy he pulled out of me week after week. If I'd had a team, it would have come out of them too.

Gary Vaynerchuk has a line I knew long before any of this. Fire fast. I ignored it. I kept extending the courtesy and telling myself maybe I was wrong about him and he'd come around.

I wasn't wrong. I knew inside the first week that he wasn't a fit, on character or on competence. I just didn't want to be the guy who pulled the plug, so I let it drag on.

If I did it again, I'd pass at the start, when my gut first told me to. Not out of any hard feelings. He wasn't a fit, and I knew it.

So that's what I'm carrying forward. I'm taking standards seriously now, culture fit most of all. I want people who are self-motivated, who want to be the best and do the best work, the kind you don't have to hold by the hand. If someone needs convincing to do the job they signed up for, the pay structure doesn't make them cheap. They cost you plenty.

This is the first Weekly Note. The plan is simple. Every week, an honest look at what building these businesses actually takes. The wins, the losses, and what I'd do differently, while it's still fresh.

Thanks for being here for the first one.

Fa'res