Should you hire someone or fix the process first?
Here's when most owners make this decision: "I'm tired." "I shouldn't have to do this." "I can't do this anymore."
Something is clearly not working. Things are falling through, you're the one catching them, and you're tired. So you have an epiphany - "I have to hire someone." You start writing a job post - or tell the front desk girl who doubles as an assistant to do so (because you're tired).
This is a trap. It feels like relief's coming. But it's about to get expensive.
Sometimes hiring is exactly right. But it's worth 20 minutes of thought first, because a hire is the most expensive way to find out you had a different problem.
What hiring actually fixes
Hiring fixes capacity. If the work is understood, the steps are clear, and there is simply more of it than the people you have can do, another person solves that.
That's a real situation and it happens all the time. You may have more work than you do hands. You may have a practice with a full schedule and a front desk that can't keep up. Nothing is broken, there's just too much.
If that's you, hire, and stop reading.
What hiring doesn't fix
Hiring doesn't fix a process nobody has written down.
When how something gets done lives in your head, a new hire doesn't lift that weight off you. They add to it for a while. You explain, they attempt, you check, you correct. Or you don't check and then uh-oh. The first few months you're doing your job and theirs, plus teaching.
That's the part nobody plans for. Most budget the salary. Almost nobody budgets the months of your time that come before the person is actually helping.
And if the problem was that the work was unclear, you now have two people doing unclear work, and a payroll line that doesn't go away.
How to tell which one you have
Think about the last few things that went wrong. Not the big ones. The ordinary ones: the quote that went out late, the customer who didn't get called back, the order that got entered twice.
Then ask what would have prevented it.
If the answer is "somebody would have had to have time," that's capacity. Hire.
If the answer is "somebody would have had to know," that's a process problem, and a new person won't know either.
One more question that cuts through most of it. If you hired someone tomorrow, could you hand them a page explaining how the job gets done?
I'm not talking about a job description. I'm talking about a page that instructs them how to actually execute those bullet points on the job description. If you could, you're ready. If the honest answer is that you'd sit with them for 3 weeks and they'd learn by watching you, then the job doesn't really exist yet. It exists in you.
P.S. If you're overwhelmed right now thinking about having to figure this out, skip to the end. I'll help you clean this up so you can make a hire.
The version that usually works
In my experience the sequence matters more than the choice.
Write down how the work actually gets done, in whatever rough form you can manage. Then fix the parts that are obviously broken, which is usually 2 or 3 things, not 20. Then hire into the version that works.
Doing it in that order means the new person is productive in weeks instead of months, and you get to keep your evenings. It also means you know what you're hiring for, which changes who you hire and what you pay them. It also bakes in accountability - you have a standard and process to hold them to.
It's slower to start. It's much faster to arrive.
A last thing worth saying
If you're reading this at the end of a long day, half sure you need help and half sure you're not ready, both of those can be true. The way out usually isn't a bigger decision. It's a smaller one, made in the right order.
You don't need a plan before we talk. Book 30 minutes and vent. I'll take it from there.