A few weeks ago, I sat down with my advisor Jordan to map out what it would take to hit a $25M valuation.
We did the math. We don’t need to go viral. We don’t need a new product line.
We just need 243 more clients.
That number changed everything. It turned a vague “scale up” goal into a concrete, solvable equation.
And the good news? Jordan has a plan. He’s going to open doors to influencers, press play on a network of intros, and pour gas on the fire.
We could turn this thing on tomorrow.
But we haven’t.
Because we have one big problem.
That’s the bottleneck.
If we bring in 100 new clients next year and our backend breaks? We’re toast. We’d damage our reputation, overwork the team, and miss the opportunity entirely.
So Jordan and I had the conversation every founder eventually faces:
Do I try to hire a magic expert to fix this?
Or…
Do I jump in and figure it out myself?
Neither felt right.
I don’t believe in unicorn hires - plus I don’t have 6 months to figure out if someone is a fit.
But I also don’t have the time to build a recruiting engine myself. I’m the CEO. If I go full-time into solving this, I become the bottleneck to everything else.
I hired someone who isn’t a recruiter.
They’re not even from HR.
But they’re smart, scrappy, and insanely proactive.
They’re the kind of person who, when given a goal, will figure it out or die trying.
Their job? Fix this.
“I’m going to guide you. You’re going to solve this.”
For the next six months, their full-time focus is to turn recruiting into a machine.
Not to run the machine.
Not to be the machine.
To build it.
Do it right? We’ll hire someone else to run the machine and then they can move on to build some other part of the biz.
A “Chief of Staff”, in training.
Most founders make the same mistake in every area of growth:
But the real move is this:
Hire someone who can build the system.
This kind of hire is the best of both worlds.
You delegate the outcome - not the process. Make them figure out the process.
But be available to give them feedback and offer suggestions. Save them from mistakes.
Give them a concrete (but realistic) goal - an outcome they need to make happen.
But don’t give them the guardrails of how.
If they’re smart and scrappy, they’ll figure it out.
Before I move forward, I’m recognizing that this may not work - and I’m verbalizing that to my new hire.
You may not be able to solve this problem.
This is an experiment. The problem is hard, messy, and possibly bigger than either of us can see right now. But I believe that with the two of us putting our heads together—his time and execution, my direction and context—we have a real shot at cracking it.
And even if we don’t fully solve it, that’s okay.
If we make the problem more clear, that’s a win. If we gather enough data to understand what’s broken and what’s needed to fix it, that’s progress. And if he proves he can drive that clarity, there’s absolutely a future for him here—because that kind of thinking is exactly what this company needs.
I’m not measuring success by whether he hits some magical finish line. I’m measuring success by whether we understand the bottleneck better. Because once the problem is clear, the solution is always close behind.
Where are you still looking for a unicorn?
Where in your business are you waiting for the perfect hire… when you could be building the system instead?
This shift - from people-dependence to system-dependence - is the difference between staying stuck and scaling up.
We’re getting close to flipping the switch.
When we do, everything changes.
And I’ll know exactly what made it possible.
Want help building your delegation machine? Shoot me an email and we can set up some time.