Under $25M in revenue, hiring rarely solves a business problem — curating your existing team does. Gallup data shows 69% of the average workforce isn’t fully engaged, so before adding headcount, grade every seat A/B/C against clearly defined outcomes and fix the C’s first. Only past $25M, once systems and cadences are documented, does importing outside talent reliably work.

Almost every owner I work with under $25 million in revenue thinks their next move is to hire someone. A salesperson, an operations lead, a head of marketing… somebody who will finally take something off their plate. And almost every one of those hires makes the business worse.

It’s the most common (and most expensive) mistake I see at this revenue level. It’s also the one nobody warns you about. So let me say this as plainly as I can: when you’re under $25 million in revenue, you’re never going to hire anybody to fix your problems. Because hiring isn’t the answer. Curating is.

Why “just one more hire” makes everything worse

When you hire to fix a problem in a business that doesn’t have clear systems, you’re asking a new person to carry the weight that your existing team can’t carry. They walk into ambiguity, they get blamed for outcomes they don’t control, and within six months, either they’re gone, or your culture takes a hit.

Worse, every premature hire raises the stakes on your existing team. Now there’s an extra payroll line. Margins compress. The pressure rolls back to the founder, who works harder, hires another person to “help,” and the cycle compounds. That’s how a profitable $5M business can turn into $9M business that barely breaks even.

The hiring problem is almost never from a scarcity of people. It’s that you don’t have the right people doing the right work in the right cadence.

The 69% rule no one talks about

Gallup’s latest research shows that 69% of the American workforce is either not engaged or actively disengaged. That doesn’t mean two-thirds of your team is bad. It means two-thirds of your team, on average, is not bringing their best effort. They’re showing up, doing the minimum, and leaving.

In a $1M to $25M business, that math is brutal. If you have a team of fifteen and ten of them are coasting, hiring person sixteen doesn’t move the needle. You’ve added cost without adding capacity. Liability without ROI. You needed to deal with the tenth employee before you ever wrote a job description for the eleventh.

The 69% rule says this: before you hire, you have to figure out who in your existing team is actively pulling the business forward, who is neutral, and who is pulling it backward. The answer often surprises owners. The people you thought were carrying the team? They aren’t. The people you wrote off six months ago? Probably had more capacity than you realized. They just needed clarity.

Curate before you hire: the sequence

Curation isn’t firing. It’s a deliberate, three-step process for getting your existing team aligned before you spend another dollar on recruiting.

Step 1: Define the work that has to get done

Before you grade a person, you have to grade the role. What are the three to five outcomes this seat is responsible for? What does great look like, measured weekly? Most owners can’t answer this for half their team, which is why their grading feels like guessing. Define the role first, the person second.

Step 2: Grade every seat against the role

Now look at each person and ask one question: are they an A, B, or C in this seat? An ‘A’ is exceeding the role’s outcomes. A ‘B’ is meeting them. A ‘C’ is consistently below. You’re not grading whether they’re a good person. You’re grading whether they’re the right person for this seat right now.

Step 3: Decide, document, transition

For every C, you have a 30-day decision: coach them up, move them to a different seat where they’re a B or A, or transition them out. Drag this out, and you’ll lose your A players, because nothing burns out high performers faster than watching low performers stay protected.

What you do with the top 31%

Once you’ve curated, the top third of your team (the 31% who are actually engaged) becomes where your leverage lives. Most owners ignore them because they’re “doing fine.” That’s a big mistake. These people are starving for clarity, autonomy, and growth. Give it to them, and they will quietly do the work of three average hires.

Specifically: clarify their outcomes weekly, remove their blockers, give them ownership of one function that scales beyond them, and pay them as ‘A’ players. The cost of investing in your top 31% is always lower than the cost of hiring around them.

When you actually do start hiring (and where they should come from)

At around $25 million in revenue, the math flips. Now you have a system worth joining because you have documented roles, defined cadences, real metrics, and a leadership bench that can onboard people without the founder doing it personally. At that point, you can safely start importing outside talent, and they’ll actually thrive.

Below $25M, the answer to “should I hire?” is almost always “Not yet. Curate first.”

What to do this week

Stop the next hire you have on your desk. Before you post that role, do three things: write the actual outcomes the seat is responsible for, grade every existing seat against its outcomes, and pick the one ‘C’ you’ve been avoiding. The cost of avoiding that conversation is always higher than the cost of having it.

Need help running this?

Curating a team without burning down your culture is one of the hardest things an owner does. At Cardone Ventures’ Elite Edge, we walk owners through the proven blueprint for building a real leadership bench, one that can scale through any market shift, without sacrificing the culture that got them here. Join us for three transformational days by reserving your seat at the next Elite Edge.

FAQs on when to hire employees