Rule No. 22 📔Hire slow, fire fast.

The Principle: Don’t hire someone just because you need a body in the seat. Take your time, check their character, and make sure they can do the job. And when you know you’ve made a bad hire, don’t keep hoping it will get better. Deal with it. The right person can make your business better. The wrong person can drag everyone else down.

Hire slow, fire fast.

The Hard Truth

One bad hire can hurt a business for years.

Executive insights 👥 Let me tell you how that played out in my company.

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📖 the book behind the Rule

Who: The A Method For Hiring, by Geoff Smart and Randy Street

Who provides a simple, repeatable system to identify, attract, and select “A Players”, people who consistently deliver results. The authors break hiring into four disciplined steps:

  1. Scorecard – Define success in the role before interviewing.
  2. Source – Build a steady pipeline of talent through networks, not job boards.
  3. Select – Use structured, chronological interviews to uncover patterns of success and failure.
  4. Sell – Close the right candidates by aligning the role with their motivators.

The book emphasizes clarity over gut instinct, process over personality, and consistency over charisma. It reframes hiring as a skill that can be mastered, not a gamble you hope pays off.

Executive Takeaway: Your biggest competitive advantage is your people. Stop gambling on hiring and start treating it like your most important process. The wrong “who” costs years. The right “who” multiplies results.

“Nothing will accelerate your success more than getting the right team in place. And nothing will derail it faster than keeping the wrong people too long.”

The First Step to Hiring Talented Teams

A bad hire costs more than a paycheck. They can hurt your good employees, your customers, and your bottom line. Most owners know when someone isn’t working out. The problem is waiting too long to do something about it.

🎓 MASTER Rule No. 22 —Hire slow, fire fast.

  • When to Apply | Red Flags
  • Rule Overview
  • Ask the Right Questions
  • Contrarian View
  • Actionable Strategies
  • Real World Scenarios
  • Leadership Team Discussion
  • Rules to Results Workshop
  • The Right Track | Green Flags
  • Key Terms
  • Book Summary
  • Author Links
  • Executive Insights
  • Worth Watching
  • Related Reading

October 2026

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Help us build each of the 50 Master Classes, by adding your insights and sharing your entrepreneurial stories.

Class begins Monday, January 4, 2027, with each Rule being built out as we go. Each will contain the study sections listed above and will continue to evolve through your contributions. As business leaders continue to challenge these ideas, the Institute becomes more and more valuable, not because it’s finished, but because it never will be.

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