The Most Expensive Hire Isn't Always the Highest Salary

Our first two hires at CUENTO (opens the CUENTO site in a new tab) were significantly more expensive than we had budgeted.

I remember talking to one of my mentors about it. His advice was basically: pull up your big boy pants and go find the money.

His point was simple.

We could hire someone cheaper and spend our time training them, developing them and checking their work.

Or we could spend more, hire the people we already knew we wanted and buy back our own time.

We did.

That additional capacity gave Katie and me more time to generate business, work with clients and grow revenue.

It changed how I think about hiring.

Obviously, there’s a point where you can spend beyond what the business can support. But founders can get so focused on the salary that they miss the value on the other side of it.

Sometimes the question isn’t, “Can I find someone cheaper?”

It’s, “What becomes possible if I hire the right person now?”

The most expensive hire isn’t always the person with the highest salary.