I just got back from a week in the Smoky Mountains with my client.
We stayed in a big cabin and worked all day. At night we'd barbecue and play pickleball on the court out back. One afternoon we took a boat out on the lake and actually stopped talking about work for a few hours.
I run fractional marketing for this company. Before this I built and sold a dating app, landed 200+ press features without an agency, and coached founders into NYT, BBC, and Forbes.
But the biggest thing I took away from the week had nothing to do with marketing. It was about the people in the room.
Every morning we'd sit around the table and debate about where the company was heading and what needed to change. Nothing was political and everyone's voice got heard. The only thing that mattered was getting shit done.
What surprised me most was how easy it was to joke around at the end of the day. Nobody was managing their image or trying to look good for the boss. When you've been in rooms where every conversation feels like a performance, you notice pretty fast when one doesn't.
I realized something on day 3.
You can't scale a team you wouldn't want to spend 7 days in a cabin with.
That's the test. If you'd dread waking up next to them on day 4, they probably shouldn't be on your team at all.
I learned this the hard way at Filteroff.
We had a sales team running our $2K matchmaking service. The matchmakers were real humans doing real work for clients who loved the product. But the guy running the calls sounded like a used car salesman, and every time I listened to a recording my stomach turned.
Our close rate was stuck around 18% and he kept selling the smallest package. I spent a few weeks trying to train him and give him feedback (even though that was the responsibility of the agency). But it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the real problem was the guy making the calls.
So I let them go and took over every call myself. At night I'd watch my own recordings and hate what I heard. Eventually I stopped trying to sell and started asking better questions.
Close rate nearly doubled and average deal size went up. We hit $50K in a single month, and I wasn't paying commission to anyone.
And I slept better.
One bad hire costs way more than their salary. They drag everyone else down with them and break trust with the people who can see it.
One wrong person can kill a whole company.
And the worst part is that you usually know. You felt something off on the interview, you ignored it, and you told yourself they'd grow into it.
They never did.
The longer you wait to make the call, the harder it gets. Bad hires embed themselves over time. They build relationships with other people, they learn the systems, and they get hard to fire because you start telling yourself you can't replace them.
But you can. What you can't get back is the time you wasted keeping them around.
The client I just spent a week with in Tennessee? I'd spend another week. And another.
Because the work got done and the conversations were real. When someone disagreed they said it out loud instead of texting someone else later. And when it was time to play pickleball at 6pm, nobody had weird energy about who got credit for what earlier in the day.
That's the bar.
If you have someone on your team right now who you wouldn't want to share a cabin with for 7 days, you already have your answer. You're just stalling.
Hit reply if you’re struggling with this exact situation.
Zach
P.S. I built QuoteMagic because I hated making quote cards in Canva. Paste your text, pick a theme, export. Cards and carousels in 30 seconds. Try it free at quotemagicai.com.
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