In this presentation Negar Riazati outlines a practical framework for "mission hiring" – recruiting a general manager (GM) to execute a founder’s growth strategy. She begins by stressing the minimal prerequisite: a validated idea or proven skill (e.g., a profitable solo plumber or a market‑validated prototype). Once the concept is tangible, the owner should craft a simple three‑year strategy that includes concrete sales and margin targets and a single, clear lever for growth (such as geographic expansion or new service lines). The GM’s role is defined as the sole executor of that strategy, not a support function; the founder may be hands‑off or selectively involved. Riazati then tackles affordability, arguing against high fixed salaries and proposing performance‑based compensation: profit‑share, zero‑salary arrangements tied to production milestones, or a structured reward over three years that matches or exceeds the GM’s market salary. She illustrates the math with a profit‑doubling example and explains how the GM’s incentive to “bet on themselves” aligns their motivation with the mission’s success.
Chapters
So let's look at the steps in this mission hiring. Like, you know, how do we start the execution of it? The first thing is it obviously minimally needs to be a good idea or the founder has some good skill. So this is a very minimal step because you could have not started something and go, I have a fantastic idea, maybe I don't even have the money or I don't have all the knowledge I need, but you can start the process because someone else out there that knows how to get the money or looks at that idea or that product, loves it and goes, you know what, I'm gonna go in and be this person's general manager and make this work. It's also good if the idea or skill can be proved. So it's much— the next step would be that, you know, the plumber, he's got out there and he's already turning over a few hundred thousand dollars as a one-man show. Because obviously, firstly, that puts a little bit of cash flow there, but that proves that the person has a particular skill that can go— that can be taken to the market. Or if the idea is proven, so someone— the prototype's been made, or someone's willing to buy it as a minimum, then it's— you're past that first step, and you're not selling hope as a mission anymore, but you're selling actually like, we have A tangible, provable, verifiable skill or idea. Then your next step is to just work out the broad strategy like you saw earlier. If it's a new— the plumber, it's like, you know, my strategy over the next 3 years is to get to 10 plumbers and have these types of clients and deliver these sorts of services at these sorts of margins. That's enough to really get the ball rolling. If it's an established business, it could be, you know, we want to take our sales to $30 million, we want to open interstate offices, we want to add on some new product lines or new services. We want to just— that can be the simplicity of it. The strategy, I believe, should always include a real sales target, a real margin target, and some idea of how that's going to be achieved. Usually just one line of the idea like going interstate or do more marketing or something very simple. Chances are that when you get the person in, that could change. But usually the dollar and profit targets, they shouldn't change down. If anything, you should try and change them up. And then you bring someone on to execute this. And it's not someone, like I said earlier, it's not someone to help out with it, but it's someone that will grab this strategy, polish it if it needs polishing, and then they'll run hard and fast to make sure that this happens. And you as the owner or one of the owners, you can be as involved or not involved as you feel suits you. Sometimes not being involved can make it go faster. A lot of the time being involved in the right areas makes the whole thing move faster. So this is not someone to come in and help do it. This is someone to come in and do it. Your job really is to guide and you help them where required. And hopefully it's like they don't need your help so much, but if you still want to be involved in parts of the business, then that's just got to be part of the tactical Now, how's it affordable? You know, some of the general managers that we've put into organisations actually have come off salaries at, you know, close to half a million dollars. And I haven't met so many business owners that themselves are pocketing half a million dollars out of their business each year. So, you know, the idea that I'm going to get the best person and pay them half a million dollar salary is just not going to fly. It may be the right investment and it might work, but putting all your profit and more into one person and pinning everything on them to make this work could be quite dangerous. Also too, it actually probably would mean it would be less likely to succeed because, you know, when you bring someone in that actually doesn't care so much about what their salary is but cares more about executing your mission, Bringing the right person, bringing a person in that's not motivated so much on what the salary is but motivated by the satisfaction of achieving your strategy, this is going to give it much more chance of success because they want to see it work for the satisfaction, not the money. So it helps make it affordable because generally, like I said, the high Salary person is more comes in to help out, and it can also mean that you're paying them so much money, so you're worried about keeping them busy all the time. It's like, just cost me another $1,000 for the day. Did I get that $1,000 back? I better make sure that everything's running right. If the person that we bring in on Mission Hiring Their salary can actually be zero. We've actually done some GMs that have come in on zero salary. Okay, it doesn't mean they get paid nothing, but it means that their pay, their reward, is actually fixed to some type of production. So it means that, you know, they've got to— things have got to occur on a daily, weekly, monthly basis so that they can actually pick up some slice of what's actually happening in the organization. So it doesn't mean they're not going to get any salary. It just means that they're going to get rewarded for the things that build towards the mission. And of course, they'll take some share of the extra value that they add to the organization. So if your organization is Made $400,000 profit last year, and then without a general manager working in the organization, you think it's going to make $500,000 this year. And you take on a general manager, and this general manager comes in and he drives the profit to $1 million. So per my maths, he's added half a million dollars of profit. So it would be fair to share some of that improvement with the general manager, wouldn't it? And it makes it easy for you because you actually now have $1 million of profit instead of $500,000. So to share some of that profit out means you still have done better by putting this general manager on. Because whatever salary you pay that general manager as well, that's in the profit already. So if you paid some salary, that's there. And if he now with his own salary and his expertise doubled the profit, added another $500,000, Then you're sharing what he created. You know, generally in the first year there might be a 25% share of that profit, but every circumstance is different. But what we try and achieve for the General Manager is over a 3-year period, right, they should be able to earn at least the same amount they could have if they stayed in their last job or got a job in the larger end of town or a normal general manager job. And so to give you an example of that, to give you an example of that, then if this person was earning $300,000 per year, they would earn $900,000 over 3 years. And the strategy and the reward system should work that they create enough extra value in your organization that you can pay them more than that $900,000 they would have got. And now the person actually, they may lose out in the beginning and they're putting what we call, you know, sweat labor because they're not getting paid their normal rate for it, but over the 3 years they will get the reward plus the satisfaction. And so we're really motivating the person to come in based on the challenge and based on the accomplishment. And also what's so important about this is now they're putting, they're betting on themselves. They're not sitting there going, I need to have a $300,000 a year salary because, you know, well, I don't really trust that you're gonna make your strategy. No. They're saying, I'm happy to take no or much less salary because I'm betting that I can execute the strategy, get the satisfaction and accomplishment. from achieving that strategy, and I'll even get more rewards because I know I can pull that off. So it creates a very different relationship to perhaps any other staff member you've hired before in your organization.
