The First Hire Decision: A Capacity Bet, Priced

The sample solo operator turns away $4,800 a month and works 58-hour weeks. Hiring unlocks $10,975 of monthly capacity — most of it not the new hire's output, but the owner's freed hours, rebilled. Against that: employee #1 truly costs $5,381 a month ($33.63 an hour for a $22 wage) and must enable $11,958 of revenue. Full-time coverage: 0.9× — a bet that loses slowly. Part-time: 1.7× — a bet that wins.

How it works

• The Overflow Meter — three months of turned-away work (one hot streak is weather; three months is climate) plus your redirected hours at your realized rate
• The True Cost & the Verdict — wage, burden, the insurance jump employee #1 triggers, gear, admin → the true monthly cost, the breakeven, and coverage at full-time AND part-time
• The Ladder — VA first (it tests whether you can delegate — the real skill the first hire requires); subs to rent capacity at zero risk; part-time as the smaller bet that wins; full-time only with six months of the cost in cash. Hope is not a runway
• What to hire for — the bottom of your hours-by-value list, not a clone. Owners who hire clones compete with their own employee for the good work

Built for

Every solo operator staring at the leap: contractors · freelancers · cleaners · booth renters · one-truck shops. Re-run it quarterly — the month coverage crosses 1.5× with the runway funded, the decision makes itself.

What you get

One .xlsx file, four tabs, instant download. Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice. No macros, no subscription.