As revenue grows from $200K to $20M, your hiring strategy must shift. At $2M, replace loyal generalists with functional leaders who own departments. Beyond $20M, stop being the smartest person and recruit seasoned leaders whose reputation attracts talent. Eventually, build recruiting as a core capability that sources talent at scale.
The team you hire should look very different at $200,000, $2 million, and $20 million. If you're a $200,000 CEO, you don't want to think about hiring rock stars and A-players for the very simple reason that actual rock stars and A-players don't want to come work for you yet. What you want here are scrappy executors, people who can just get the work done. And if you want to make the leap from $200,000 to $2 million, at some point you've got to stop hiring helpers. It can't just be about assistants. It can't just be about VAs. It's got to be about actually getting real leaders. And now at $2 million, the thing you gotta stop doing here is hiring for just loyalty. Oh, they're so loyal, they're so great, let's keep 'em around. We gotta make the shift to competence no matter how loyal they've been. We need to begin hiring functional leaders. So heads of sales, heads of marketing, heads of fulfillment, people who can own a department of the company. And if you wanna make the leap, then we gotta think about replacing people, not coaching everybody up. You're not gonna be able to save every little puppy. And at $20 million, if you're a CEO, you gotta stop trying to be the smartest person in the room. You're not gonna be, you don't wanna be. If you are, that's a problem. And what we need here are actual experienced leaders, the kind of people who you look at and you go, I can't believe this person's willing to come work for me. I would work for them. That's a good sign. And then if you wanna level up from $20 million and beyond, we have to actually build a recruitment engine. At scale, all businesses become banks and they become recruiting companies. It's time for you to build your internal recruiting company here.
