We hired wrong — twice. Here's what we learned.

We've made a lot of mistakes building businesses. But the most expensive ones involved people.

Our first bad hire looked perfect on paper. Great resume, said all the right things, aced the interview. Three months in, it was clear: they could talk about the work, but they couldn't do the work. By the time we made the call, we'd lost a quarter's worth of progress.

Our second bad hire was different. They were skilled — genuinely talented — but they couldn't work within a team. Every project became a battle over approach. The work was good; the environment was toxic. We waited too long to act, and lost a good team member who was tired of the conflict.

Here's what those two hires taught us:

Hire for the work, not the resume. Give candidates a real problem to solve. Not a hypothetical — an actual challenge your business faces. Pay them for their time. How they approach the problem tells you more than any interview question.

Culture fit isn't a nice-to-have. A brilliant jerk is still a jerk. In a small business, one toxic person can poison everything. Ask yourself: would I want to sit next to this person for eight hours? If the answer is no, trust that instinct.

Fire faster than you hire. This sounds harsh, but it's mercy — for you, for your team, and honestly for the person who isn't working out. A slow termination helps nobody. If you've had the conversation, given it time, and nothing has changed — act.

Document everything from the start. Job descriptions, performance expectations, review schedules. Not because you're building a legal file — because clarity prevents most people problems before they start.

Every business owner gets hiring wrong at least once. The goal isn't perfection. It's learning fast enough that the mistakes get smaller and less frequent.