These questions need real answers before you make the call:
What’s the fully loaded cost? Salary is just the starting point. Add payroll taxes (roughly 7.65% for the employer portion of FICA), benefits, equipment, software licenses, and training time. A $50,000 salary often costs $60,000-$70,000. If you don’t have a system tracking your cost-per-employee, you’re guessing.
Can your cash flow sustain it? This is where most business owners miscalculate. You might have the revenue to justify the hire on paper, but if your cash flow is inconsistent — seasonal dips, slow-paying clients — you could end up stretching to make payroll. You need a cash flow forecast, not just a P&L.
Is hiring the right solution? Sometimes the answer isn’t another person. It’s a better process or an automated workflow. If someone spends 10 hours a week on manual data entry that could be automated, building the system is cheaper than hiring around the problem.
The real issue: Most growing businesses can’t answer these questions confidently because their financial data isn’t reliable enough. If your monthly close takes too long and your reports have numbers that don’t make sense, you’re making a six-figure decision on incomplete information.
Fix the data first. Then the hiring decision becomes obvious.
If this sounds familiar, the issue usually isn’t the work — it’s how the system is built. And that doesn’t fix itself.
Start with the Pre-Call Fit Check so we can determine whether a conversation makes sense.