🦅 Nick here! Let’s get started on another great week.

Most owners hire to get relief, not leverage. They add people to do work while keeping all the decisions for themselves. This post explains why that never works and how to think differently about hiring if you want your time back.

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Friends,

Most owners are hiring for the wrong outcome.

I know because I did it for years. And now I’ve listened to and watched this same pattern play out with dozens of owners.

When things piled up so high they started brushing our knuckles, I panicked. Every reaction felt urgent, like the entire company depended on this one hire.

We rushed an ad out.
We hired the best person we could find as fast as possible.
We told ourselves, this will finally give us some breathing room.

It rarely worked.

Sometimes the work just shifted around. Other times, I gained another person to manage and hand-hold until they hopefully figured it out. Either way, my time didn’t come back.

Not because the people were bad.
Because the goal of the hire was wrong.

The mistake is hiring for relief.

Relief from the inbox, calls, and piles on the desk.
Relief from the bottomless task list.
Relief from being needed for every decision.

So, we hire someone to help, with the same good intentions everyone has.

A virtual assistant, technician or junior manager.

Let’s be honest. Hiring feels good. It boosts our ego and gives us a hit of dopamine. It reassures us that we are “doing something.”

Help feels productive.
It reduces effort.
But it is not leverage.

Look at the research coming from Gallup;

-          Roughly half of employees are unclear on what decisions they own

-          Clarity around ownership strongly correlates with productivity and engagement

The hires that change everything are not about more hands. They are about replacing who makes decisions for a specific slice of the business.

You are not burning the boats or replacing yourself entirely, so calm down. You are replacing yourself in decisions you should not be making forever.

Most owners believe they are hiring people to do work. What they actually need are people who can own judgment and make decisions within clear structure and boundaries.

Until decisions leave your desk, your calendar never clears enough for you to consistently focus on the decisions only you can make.

If someone does the work but still checks with you on decisions, you did not delegate. You added a relay runner.

When decisions still funnel upward, problems still land on your desk, and time off still feels tense, that is not a people issue.

It is a design issue.

Good people defer to whoever holds authority. That is how competent adults behave. When rules are unclear and stakes feel real, they wait.

If ownership is vague, they will always look back to you.

Stepping out of daily operations is not a hiring moment. It is a role transition.

The shift is from handing off tasks to handing off judgment.

That transition takes time. More time than you expect. It also requires restraint.

Clear ownership boundaries.
Repeated trust-building.
Letting decisions happen without your fingerprints.
Allowing outcomes you would have handled differently.

This is the biggest hurdle I help owners overcome.

Most owners quit here.

They jump back in to “fix it,” and in doing so, they confirm the dependency they say they want to escape.

Stop asking:

“What do I need help with?”

Start asking:

“Which decisions should no longer come to me?”

That question changes the hire, the role, and the result.

And this part matters.

McKinsey’s research shows top performers stay longer when they are given real decision authority, not just more work.

If you want people who will truly own decisions, expect to pay for it.

Plan on paying 20–30% above market for the right people. People who commit. People who stay. People who grow with the business.

Cheap hires feel safe. Yes, I’m speaking to you, Control Freak.
Strong hires compound.

Look at the last five decisions you made.

Ask yourself:

• Should this decision belong to me long term?
• If not, who should own it?
• What is unclear that keeps it coming back to me?

You do not need to solve everything at once. You just need to stop assuming hiring alone will fix it.

If this hit a nerve, you are not failing. You are early in a transition most owners never complete.

Pay attention to where you are still the default.
That is where your next leverage lives.

📣📣 Cheering you on, Nick 📣📣