The other day I stood in a room with about 50 owners at one of my Growth Accelerator Workshops and asked them one of my favorite questions…

“How many of you have ever regretted firing someone?”

Almost no hands went up.

Shocker.

I’ve hired hundreds of people, built a $1B+ investment business, and bought and built dozens of companies doing over $100M in combined revenue.

Some of my hires have made me millions, while others have cost me almost as much.

I’ve hired people who looked incredible on paper and turned into disasters in practice. I’ve kept people too long, trusted the wrong leaders, and paid a lot of money for lessons I could’ve learned for free.

And the data says the gap between getting this right and getting it wrong can be enormous.

McKinsey found that high performers are roughly 400% more productive than average performers, and in highly complex roles, the productivity gap can reach 800%.

Translation?

The right person in the right seat isn’t a little better. They can change the trajectory of the entire business.

Here are the 7 keys to making sure you don’t regret your next hire.

I once hired a sales leader who was a a bit of a cowboy. Charismatic, confident, and freaking terrible at building a repeatable sales process.

He didn’t want scripts, SOPs, or any type of written record of how he did what he did. No. He just wanted to sell HIS way.

I call this the Golf Course Sales Guy.

In a business with massive customer lifetime value, where a handful of relationships carry the whole year, he can be incredible. But put him in a high-volume sales business and he’ll tank your revenue.

That hire cost us hundreds of thousands in comp and probably millions in lost sales.

Here’s what I learned:

You can’t scale charisma.

If you want to build a $100M+ business, your systems need to be so good that ordinary people produce extraordinary results. Because while your people can be plenty talented, talent just doesn’t scale predictably. Systems do.

The best sales leader is the person who can make 20 average salespeople consistently good. Sometimes that’s your best closer. Often it’s somebody else entirely.

I call it The Donkey Test. If your business only works when unicorns show up, your business model is broken.

One of the best hires I’ve ever made: a woman named April at First Trust.

She started running operations (and eventually became CEO) for our Latin American business where we grew to over $1 billion in assets under management.

April had 3 traits I’ve learned to obsess over.

When things went sideways, she didn’t panic or blame. She didn’t need to prove she was the smartest person in the room.

One of her favorite lines:

“We can do that. But should we do that?”

I still think about it. As a founder, I have about 100 ideas a week, but most of them shouldn’t happen.

You need people who can disagree without becoming disagreeable. People whose pulse goes down when the pressure goes up.

Because hiring a leader doesn’t just affect the work they do. It affects the work everyone around them does. In fact, Gallup found that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement.

That’s a ridiculous amount of leverage sitting inside one hire.

And it’s why the most dangerous executive in your building is the one whose ego won’t let them admit they don’t know.

So hire calm people, especially when you’re building chaotic things.

Back to the Growth Accelerator Workshop…

Across these informal show-of-hands polls, fewer than 1% of owners say they’ve regretted a firing. But in plenty of owner circles, that number is zero.

Then I flip it. How many of you regret keeping someone too long?

Almost everyone has a story.

Even our president, Marc, who’s helped build billion-dollar businesses including MrBeast’s, admits slow firing is one of his weaknesses.

Mine too.

We wait because we like the person, because replacing them sounds exhausting, or because we think another 30 days will magically fix it.

It usually doesn’t.

Meanwhile your best people are watching you tolerate the exact behavior you say is unacceptable.

Every day you keep the wrong person, the right people pay for it.

And that cost is bigger than most owners realize.

Research across more than 180,000 teams found that top-quartile engaged teams had 23% higher profitability and 18% higher sales productivity than bottom-quartile teams.

Culture eventually hits the P&L.

So give people clear expectations, real feedback, and a fair shot to improve. Once you know the answer, act.

Compassion without accountability eventually becomes cruelty to the rest of the team.

Some of my best hires never came from a job posting. They came from relationships I built long before there was a job.

Chris, our head of investments, hired someone he’d known for years. Marc and I worked together for months before he officially joined. Bobby, who runs BizScout, worked with me part-time for months before we made it permanent.

Now think about how bizarre traditional hiring is.

You meet someone 3 times. Ask a bunch of questions they’ve rehearsed. Call 2 references they handpicked.

Then you offer them a big salary and enormous responsibility.

That’s getting married after 3 dates because someone had a really good résumé.

I prefer to date before I marry. Work on a project together. See how they handle pressure and whether they do what they say.

An interview shows you how someone performs for an hour, but a project shows you who they are.

Here’s your homework: write down 10 people you’d love to work with someday, and start building those relationships now, before you’re desperate.

The best time to recruit an A-player is before you have a job for them.

I believe in above-market salaries and specific, performance-based bonuses.

Across our companies, we try to pay great people well enough that money isn’t their daily worry. Then we tie incentives to the outcomes we want.

Charlie Munger hammered on the power of incentives his whole career, and I’ve seen why firsthand.

Plus there’s some pretty compelling data behind it.

When Safelite Glass Corporation moved workers from hourly wages to performance-based pay, output per worker increased 44%.

And the increase wasn’t just because more productive workers were attracted to the company. Roughly half of the productivity gain came from existing workers becoming more productive under the new incentive system.

The lesson?

Want more profitable sales? Reward profit, along with revenue.

Want better retention? Pay for keeping customers, along with landing new ones.

Want managers who build independent teams? Stop rewarding them for being indispensable.

Show me what you pay people for, and I’ll show you what your company will become.

Now the unpopular part…

Most people discount equity.

They’ll tell you they want it, but hand them a choice between uncertain future equity and meaningful cash today? A lot of them pick the cash.

And I get it. I mean, how many employees will realistically grind beside you for 20 years?

Very few.

Equity can be incredibly valuable for the right long-term partners. Just keep hypothetical future wealth from becoming your excuse to underpay people today.

One of the most frustrating parts of being a CEO: asking someone to do something and getting back something completely different.

For years I thought the problem was execution. Sometimes it was.

Often, though, the problem was me.

I’d say “Improve sales.” “Fix operations.” “Build a better process.”

And assume everyone knew what I meant.

They didn’t.

Turns out, it’s not just a ‘me’ problem. This poll found that less than half of employees (47%) strongly agreed they knew what was expected of them at work.

Think about that.

Over half the workforce isn’t sure what winning looks like. And you can’t hold someone accountable for a target they can’t see.

So we got specific.

Here’s the 6D Execution Brief I use to make sure communication is clear.

Here’s the difference in practice.

Vague: “Improve our close rate.”

6D: “You own our close rate. Get it from 9% to 15% by end of quarter. You can change scripts, coaching, and call reviews within budget. Report results weekly.”

Now there’s a real outcome on the table.

Leaders have 2 jobs.

You can’t hold people accountable for expectations you never made clear. But if every decision still needs your approval, you haven’t delegated anything.

Try this today. Pick 1 thing you handed off this month that came back wrong, then rewrite it as a 6D brief.

It takes 5 minutes, and I’d bet you spot the gap in 2.

I’ve seen the same mistake in companies we’ve bought and companies we’ve built.

An owner hires an incredible operator, the operator becomes the only person who understands the business, and every question routes to them.

I call that a risk. Because what happens when they leave?

A great leader builds a machine that keeps producing results without them.

That’s what made April so valuable. She didn’t need to be the hero.

She built processes, made calm decisions, and grew the business into something she could eventually lead as CEO.

It’s also why I obsess over documentation, scorecards, and decision rights across every one of our companies.

If all of someone’s knowledge walks out the door when they do, they never built an organization. They built a hostage situation.

After hiring hundreds of people and building businesses from zero to 9 figures, I’ve learned something uncomfortable.

People are bad at hiring. Period.

They hire for charisma over competence. They tolerate the wrong people too long. They reward activity instead of outcomes. They hand out responsibility with zero authority.

Then they wonder why nobody takes ownership.

I’ve made every one of those mistakes.

Here’s what I know now.

Your team becomes a mirror of what you tolerate, and the right system makes that reflection a lot less dependent on luck.

Own or be owned.

-Codie

P.S. Before you fix your hiring, you need a plan for the next 30 days.

Bizee’s FREE guide gives you 1 clear action a week, whether you’re buying, starting, or growing.

Download it HERE.