Nathan Barry warns founders against hiring fixed-cost assistants for routine tasks when revenue is unreliable. Instead, use a variable-cost model: pay coaches only after you receive revenue, like allocating part of a $1,100 payment to them. Once revenue stabilizes, you can safely add fixed-cost staff.
A lot of people, and I, I've fallen into this trap too, is like, oh, I'm going to hire an assistant, or I'm going to hire somebody to write my emails for me, or I'm going to hire somebody to take these mundane tasks off my plate. The problem is though, that just sucks revenue, right? Right. And so what I did instead was started building this team of coaches where I only pay money once I've gotten money in. So once I got my $1,100 in, then I take $350 and I give it to somebody. But if that $1,100 disappears next month, I don't have to pay them $350. And so now I don't have this fixed cost. Then I only added fixed costs as we reached certain levels. As we reached a certain level in one of our things, it's like I need somebody to manage this, but now we're— I can run the numbers and there's enough money there that I can pay this person this fixed cost and reliably pay them, pay everybody, and I can still look at the profit that's coming out the other side.
