When you own a business, your natural desire is to guide it to a pace of growth that would make a roided out teenager gasp in terror. You want your business to grow like the Incredible Hulk when he gets really angry, and for a very good reason. Your business is not only the engine of your personal wealth, but the symbol of it as well. If your business is doing well, times are great for you. And if your business is doing less than well… you might be tempted to climb into a bottle for the rest of the quarter. So when you start to expand your business, your first instinct will probably be to hire plenty of the best people, so that you can get ten times as much done and close sales like an absolute maniac. It is an addictive feeling, knowing that if you hire the right people and give them the right tools, you can become unbelievably wealthy. However, expanding too quickly can torpedo all that you have built.
The first thing you need to think through is the relationship between a new employee and the amount of money that they are going to make and or save for your business. If their pay and benefits are not easily made up for by how much value they are going to add, do not hire them in the first place. It is almost always going to be easier for you to make a valuable employee better than to attempt to scrape value out of a costly employee.
Life in business is such that every person you add is going to change the entire makeup of your business, until you reach a certain threshhold. With this being the case, you have got to carefully consider how the person you are considering adding to your team will interact with the rest of the team. Until your company is measured in at least a hundred people, there is not going to be any avoiding anyone at any time. So they have all got to get along with one another.