“I Hate Hiring.” Why Small Business Owners Feel This Way

“I hate hiring. It never works out.”

I heard this recently from a small business owner, and if you’ve spent any time around founders, you’ve heard it too. It’s not just frustrating but a belief that hiring is a necessary evil and that people are the problem.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth most founders don’t want to hear: Hiring isn’t the problem. The absence of foundational systems is. When hiring feels painful, unpredictable, and expensive, it’s almost always because the business hasn’t properly prepared to hire.

The Real Reason Hiring “Never Works Out”

Most small business owners hire reactively. They’re overwhelmed, behind, and stretched thin. The hire is meant to be a relief valve but instead is setting everyone up for failure.

Here’s what’s often missing before the hire ever starts:

• Clear roles and accountabilities

• Documented processes (even simple ones)

• Defined standards of success

• Decision rights and boundaries

• A clear operating rhythm for communication and feedback

Without these, the new hire walks into chaos and chaos doesn’t scale. The founder then concludes: “People just don’t care like I do.” Of course they don’t. They weren’t given a system to succeed.

Hiring isn’t the Problem, You Have a Foundation Problem

This exact pattern is why I conceptualized the Founder First Program. Most growth programs jump straight to hiring, delegation, or leadership development. This assumes the that the business has a solid foundation. In reality, many founders are trying to build a second story on a house with no framing. Founder First slows things down with intention not to stall growth, but to make growth sustainable.

Before we ever talk about staffing changes, we work with founders to:

1. Stabilize the core

   • Clarify what the business actually does (and does not do)

   • Identify where the founder is the bottleneck

   • Separate urgency from importance

2. Identify broken or missing systems

   • How work flows through the business

   • How decisions get made

   • How priorities are set and reviewed

   • How performance is measured (or avoided)

3. Create clarity before capacity

   • Define roles before filling them

   • Define outcomes before delegating tasks

   • Define standards before enforcing accountability

All of this to makes hiring a strategic move not a desperate one.

When Systems Come First, Hiring Feels Different. Founders who build the foundation first report something surprising:

• Hiring feels calmer

• Onboarding takes less emotional energy

• Performance conversations are clearer

• Letting someone go (when needed) feels cleaner and fairer

And structure doesn’t kill culture — it protects it.

Founder First Is about building the business before It Breaks you. Created for founders who feel like they aren’t growing fast enough, tired doing it all themselves, and feeling like growth always comes at a personal cost.

• You don’t need to work harder.

• You don’t need to lower your standards.

• And you don’t need to accept that hiring just “never works.”

• You need a foundation that supports people, performance, and progress.

That’s what Founder First is built to do.