What the First 90 Days Really Reveal About Your Hiring Process

Last month, we talked about expectations.  What happens when they’re never written down, never spoken clearly, and only discovered when something goes wrong, usually after the first 90 days of employment. 

Today is the next layer.  Because once you see that expectations weren’t clear, the next question shows up fast:

Should I be training my staff myself? And what will that take out of me? 

Here is where I think so many business owners are confused. I am not talking about training your people to bathe or groom, I am talking about training them to come into your business, this is called Onboarding.

I made every training mistake first,  so you don’t have to.

I’ve "trained" staff from scratch. 
I’ve assumed common sense was common.
I’ve explained the same basics more times than I can count.

I believed that if someone was passionate, they’d “pick it up.”
That if I showed them once, it would stick.
That real training happened on the floor.

Here’s what I learned the hard way:

Most hiring problems aren’t about effort or attitude.  They’re about the foundation.  And that shows up fast, especially in the first 90 days.

The first 30 / 60 / 90 days decide everything

Whether you’ve formalized it or not, every new hire lives inside this unspoken timeline:

First 30 days:
They’re observing everything.
What you correct. What you ignore. What “good enough” looks like.

First 60 days:
They’re forming habits, right or wrong.
This is where the shortcuts get locked in.

First 90 days:
They decide whether this job feels manageable or overwhelming, whether they belong, and whether they can succeed here.

Here is what most owners discover too late:

If you’re teaching basics during these months, you’re not onboarding,  you’re compensating.  And that’s exhausting.

Training isn’t the same as teaching fundamentals

There’s an important distinction we don’t talk about enough.

Training is how you do things in your salon.
Fundamentals are what make someone ready to step up in their role.

When staff arrive without a shared baseline,  handling knowledge, structure, terminology, and professional standards,  owners end up carrying the entire weight of education themselves.

That’s when leadership starts to feel like babysitting.
That’s when resentment sneaks in.

Onboarding changes the first 90 days

When a team member comes in already onboarded, something subtle but powerful shifts.

You’re no longer teaching what grooming is.
You’re guiding how it’s done here.

The early months become:

• Alignment instead of correction

• Reinforcement instead of re-teaching

• Leadership instead of survival

And for the exhausted owner reading this,  that difference matters.  A lot.

This isn’t about perfection, it’s about relief

Requiring onboarding isn’t about telling or demanding how things are done.
It’s about lowering the load you carry every single day.

It’s about protecting the energy you need to lead.
It’s about giving new hires a real chance to succeed in those critical first months.
It’s about building a salon that doesn’t depend on you explaining the same fundamentals forever.

There is light at the end of this tunnel, but because the structure does.  And structure is something you can choose.

A steady next step

If this question has been sitting in the back of your mind,  you don’t need to solve it all today.

So start by asking yourself: are you onboarding to your systems, or still teaching fundamentals that should have been in place before day one?

That answer will tell you exactly what needs to change next.