678: (Solo) The First Hire Mistake That Trips Up Almost Every Solo Founder

**Nathan Chan** (0:01)
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Hey guys, Nathan here. Welcome back to another solo episode, Foundr to Foundr Podcast. And today I wanna talk about one of the biggest decisions a solo founder faces. And it's one that I think a lot of people get wrong. And we work with a lot of members in our Foundr Plus community, with our Foundr Operators community. And it's something that comes up a lot. It's like, hey, I'm overwhelmed, I want more help. I wanna make my first hire. Who to hire? When to hire? And I think it's something that a lot of Foundr's get wrong because they either move too fast and they hire reactively, or they wait too long and burn themselves out and do everything alone. And then we've got this new kind of revolutionary thing that is rocking our world right now. Like I think it's safe to say that agentic AI agents, AI employees is really here now.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:53)
Here are the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan.

**Nathan Chan** (2:07)
Here's what I see most often. A founder is doing everything. You're doing B2B sales, wholesaling your product, you're doing marketing, you're doing operations, you're doing customer service, you're doing ad creative, you're doing social content and you just stretch real thin.
And you feel overwhelmed, frustrated and exhausted. So you're like, I just want to hire somebody to take care of all the stuff that I don't want to do. And without the least amount of involvement that is required, so they can just take care of it. And you hire reactively, you bring in somebody to take the pressure off right now without really thinking about what that business actually needs, and the result is that you get really frustrated because after a month or so, it's really, the first few weeks, it's exciting. Then after a month or so, you kind of start to see some cracks and it's just like, oh, I'm really frustrated. And the quality of the work's not there. And then you feel like you're getting having to get involved and then you lose trust and then it's harder to delegate. And then you find yourself kind of in this rock in a, in a hard place a few months later and just like, oh my God, like this person is not working out. And I made this mistake countless times. I've watched a lot of other founders make it too. So before you hire anyone, I want to go through some principles and concepts that have really helped me. Then this is, you know, whether it's your first hire, your 10th hire, your 50th hire that I think really helps. So I think you first and foremost need to work out what is the thing that only you can do in the business? And what is the thing that gives you the most energy? And whatever those answers are, that's what you should be spending your time on. And everything else is what you hire for. So if you're the best person in your business doing the social media content and creating founder led content and product development, then that's what you should be doing. Hire for operations perhaps. So if you're a product person, stay close to the product. Hire for marketing or customer experience. The mistake that most founders make is they hire more of what they're already doing, or they choose this kind of broad kind of role, especially if first hire as an e-com founder, they hire this broad kind of role of like, I want an assistant and they're going to do 101 different things. And these are the things that I don't want to do. And it's overwhelming me. But then it's really tough because the quality work is not there, or the expectations aren't set correctly. And then there's no clear measurable outcomes and it's not clear what success looks like. When that person came on, it wasn't really clear or sold to them exactly what they're going to be doing. And then they're kind of an all-rounder and it just becomes a real mess. And this is the part that I don't think gets talked about enough. A lot of founders also wait too long to hire, not because they can't afford it, because letting go is genuinely hard. When you've built something from scratch, it's your baby. Every part of the business is personal. You have things that you want done a certain way. You have a standard in your head, and you unconsciously expect that person to know that standard. And the idea of handing something over to someone else is hard, right? It's uncomfortable, even when you know it's the right thing. But the truth is, and this is something that I had to learn the hard way at Foundr, if you are hiring someone to do a job that you could do yourself, you are not getting the most out of that hire, because the goal is to find someone who is genuinely better at that skill than you are. And if they are, that is awesome.