When should I hire my first employee?
Short answer
When you are visibly turning away work you would have taken last year, not when you are tired.
The wrong reason
Being tired means you need a vacation or a better process. Hiring someone while exhausted gets you the wrong person, trained poorly, in the wrong role.
The right signal
Revenue is leaving the floor. You can name three jobs in the last month you didn't follow up on. You are doing $20/hr work while $200/hr work waits.
Run the math. A $20/hr hire costs $30 to $35 fully loaded. They need to generate two to three times that in margin or the math doesn't work.
Ask your version of this question
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Now run it against your numbers.
This answer is written for shops in general. Inside Ask a Shop Owner it becomes your answer: your revenue, your crew, your market, your history. Ask "When should I hire my first employee" and get the version that accounts for what you already told us.
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