Being busy is the reason most owners hire, and it is the wrong reason on its own. Busy and able to afford somebody are different states.
The three tests
Is the work reliably there? Not one good quarter. Enough backlog or recurring work that you would still need them through a normal slow period.
Can the margin carry it? A new person raises break-even permanently and immediately. Work out the new figure before hiring, not after.
Do you have the cash to bridge? A technician costs money from week one and produces billable work from week four at the earliest, more usually week eight. That gap comes out of working capital.
If any of the three is a no, the answer is not yet.
What they actually cost
The wage is roughly two thirds of it. Add employer taxes, insurance, a vehicle or a share of one, tools, phone, training, and the time you spend supervising rather than earning.
Assume meaningfully more than the salary. Businesses that get this wrong usually got it wrong here rather than in the decision to hire.
The alternatives worth exhausting first
Subcontract. Costs more per hour, costs nothing on a bad month, and proves the demand is real before you commit to it — see fixed and variable costs.
Raise prices. If you are turning work away, the market is telling you something about price before it tells you something about capacity.
Fix utilisation. If technician utilisation is under 70%, you have capacity already and a routing problem rather than a staffing one.
Hire admin rather than field. Frequently the better first hire. If you are doing quotes at nine at night, the constraint is your time and not your field capacity.
Getting the first one right
Hire for reliability over skill. Skill is teachable and turning up is not.
Write down what the job is before advertising. "Help out" is not a role and produces a bad hire and a bad leaver.
Have the first week planned before they arrive — see onboarding.
What it does to the numbers
Expect margin to dip for a quarter and recover. Growth capacity should be checked before rather than after — see growth capacity, which asks whether the business could absorb more work without breaking.