Nick Perry says founders should hire three roles early: a salesperson to acquire customers, a marketer who understands customer pain to pre-sell at scale, and an operator (starting as a virtual assistant) to build systems. Hire for impact, not cost.
If you haven't hired these 3 people, then you are leaving money on the table. So hire before you think you can afford them. First, a salesperson, because without customers, you don't have a business. Don't hire your cousin or use some shitty AI. Get a real salesperson who understands your customer, their pains, and their frustrations, because your next hire will need that information, which is hire number 2, your marketer. Because when your marketer understands your customer's pains, problems and objections, they can pre-sell customers at scale, which will allow your salesperson to have shorter calls and as a result, close more deals. And third is an operator. Every ambitious person has a graveyard of half-finished ideas, and the operator is the one who makes them all possible because they build the systems to support them. So start with a VA and scale up from there.
