Jul 15, 2026 · 53 min · 12 segments
Everyone thinks hiring an associate means stepping back and watching the money come in. It doesn't. In this episode Angus, Nathan, and Aaron break down what an associate actually costs — financially…
We joked about this last week.
I think the belief is, "I'll hire an associate, then I get passive income, and life's gonna be breezy." We both know that that's not the case, so we thought let's talk about it, because I think there's a lot of people that still think that.
So we wanna talk about the true cost, not just the financial cost, the energy cost, the stress on the business, the relationships you gotta manage.
Like, there is so many things that come up, uh, when you actually hire an associate.
And I think, like we've spoken about the double blow as well, one of the biggest things is that p- people hire...
I think what happens is people get really stressed.
They hit their own capacity.
At some point, they get their, they get the advice of, "Hey, you've hit your capacity.
You should get an associate to open up that capacity." And it's like, okay, that logically makes sense, but then the associate, the way the associates are sort of built and the pay structures is that there's, like, this huge gap between where, like, zero and then covering their own costs.
And that gap, you know, s- let's call it 80 grand, might also be 12 months.
So you lo- like, literally lose money for 12 months, and it's like if you're not prepared to, to float that, because that's not passive income.
Like, that's a liability.
And if they don't get past that point, if your business model doesn't support that, if your advertising doesn't work for that, it is not, not a nice place to be.
That's, they're kind of the things that we wanna talk through.
We joked about this last week.
I think the belief is, "I'll hire an associate, then I get passive income, and life's gonna be breezy." We both know that that's not the case, so we thought let's talk about it, because I think there's a lot of people that still think that.
So we wanna talk about the true cost, not just the financial cost, the energy cost, the stress on the business, the relationships you gotta manage.
Like, there is so many things that come up, uh, when you actually hire an associate.
And I think, like we've spoken about the double blow as well, one of the biggest things is that p- people hire...
I think what happens is people get really stressed.
They hit their own capacity.
At some point, they get their, they get the advice of, "Hey, you've hit your capacity.
You should get an associate to open up that capacity." And it's like, okay, that logically makes sense, but then the associate, the way the associates are sort of built and the pay structures is that there's, like, this huge gap between where, like, zero and then covering their own costs.
And that gap, you know, s- let's call it 80 grand, might also be 12 months.
So you lo- like, literally lose money for 12 months, and it's like if you're not prepared to, to float that, because that's not passive income.
Like, that's a liability.
And if they don't get past that point, if your business model doesn't support that, if your advertising doesn't work for that, it is not, not a nice place to be.
That's, they're kind of the things that we wanna talk through.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
