Business
The First Hire Most Founders Get Wrong
Revenue is growing, you are drowning in work, and you are about to hire the wrong person because you are hiring for relief instead of for leverage.
When founders finally hire, they usually hire a version of themselves — a generalist who can do a bit of everything, because that is what the founder does. It feels like relief. Within four months it usually is not, because two generalists produce confusion, not capacity.
The better question is not what am I most tired of doing, but what is the single constraint on this business right now. If you cannot deliver fast enough, the hire is in delivery. If you can deliver but nobody is coming, the hire is in sales or marketing. Hiring outside the constraint just moves work around.
The test is uncomfortable but clarifying: if this person were brilliant at their job, would revenue actually go up? If the honest answer is no — if they would simply make your week calmer — then you have identified a task to outsource, not a role to hire.
In practice
A Lagos agency owner hired an operations manager because admin was consuming her evenings. Six months later the admin was handled and revenue was flat, because the actual constraint was that no one was doing outbound sales. She had bought back her evenings and paid for it in growth.
Hire into the constraint, not into the exhaustion.
Action step
Write down the one number that most needs to move in the next 90 days. Ask whether your next hire would move it.