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The process of entrepreneurship, if you think from a big picture perspective,

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it's always just buying back your time, right, so that you can level up the amount of time you're

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spending on high leverage activities. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to sell more

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stuff to more people in more ways and build businesses worth owning. I'm trying to build a billion

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dollar thing with acquisition.com. I always wished pesos, musk and buffet had documented their

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journey, so I'm doing it for the rest of us. Please share and enjoy.

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I'm going to walk you through the first five hires that you need to bring on in your company

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as you are growing. And as a front of an framework to think through this, you want to think about,

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especially for the first five, that they are really just helping you do more. And so think of them

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as extensions of yourself. Over time, we're going to transition from that philosophy to really

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building a team in departments. But each of the five will more or less correspond to being an extension

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of you and doing the repeated tasks that are time consuming, but do not necessarily add as much

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value as some of the more strategic pieces of each of the roles. All right, so the first of these

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things in terms of the order and sequence that you're going to be hiring them in is going to be

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in the reverse order of the value that's being delivered and or what you can get in the marketplace

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in terms of dollars per hour. And so the more valuable the skill, the more it will cost. And so you

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want to replace the skills that cost the least amount of money for you, right? It should make sense.

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And so typically one of the first two hires and this can happen in any order is going to be one

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person is going to be more of an administrative help to you because as you start a business, especially

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in the beginning, there's lots of administrative work that needs to be done. It must be done,

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but it's not necessarily the high value work that's going to move the business forward, but it must

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be done. And so number one will typically be someone in that type of role. The second hire will

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typically be somebody in the customer success or customer support role, all right? And you're still

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likely going to be heavily involved in the success or delivery of the product to service that you

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have. But this person is going to help take away some of the repeated tasks that you are doing

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that are not necessarily value additive, but must be done. All right. So this is like handling

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returns, talking to customers about repeated tasks, you know, switching out billing stuff. And again,

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you'll see that there's some crossover between this administrative role and the help with delivery

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because in the beginning, that's where a lot of your time is going to start occurring. Note that

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you're still probably marketing. You're still probably selling because that's what you need to do

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at this point in the game, all right? The third piece will likely be the first salesperson,

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all right? And that's because, and again, this will depend based on how good you are at sales,

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right? So like if sales is not necessarily your strong suit, then you might take this earlier,

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right? If it is a strong suit of yours, you're going to take it a little bit later because your

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dollars per hour in that role continues to grow. So I don't want you to take these as hard and

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fast rules. These are just general rules of thumb that the the corresponding framework

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that you need to be thinking this through is how much value am I making per dollar per hour?

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And then how much would it cost me to replace that dollar per hour? So it's like, if I do not

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generate a lot of dollars per hour and it doesn't cost a lot of money, then that will be the first

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day. Now, if I'm generating a lot of money and I can replace it for a medium amount of money,

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then it's like, well, I'm it's the net difference, right? And that's what we're looking at in terms

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of how we're replacing each of these roles, right? And so right off the bat, you're going to have

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some sort of administrative help, then you're going to have some sort of customer support help,

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then you're going to probably hire some sort of sales role, right? From there, now kind of depends

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a little bit on the role. You'll probably have someone who starts assisting you with the

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promotion or marketing of your business. So this is oftentimes somebody who's doing setting or

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doing prospecting for you or if you generate customers based off content, this is probably somebody

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who's being a videographer of some sort or or helping you create the content in some way,

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some of the more laborious parts that are not as valuable. That would be kind of that fourth

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looking higher. And again, that can flip with the sales role. So like if, for example, you're a

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killer salesman, then you might have somebody who's prospecting and doing some of the intro calls

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for you so that the majority of your time is spent just closing, which is the higher value task.

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So hopefully this common theme is working out and making sense to you because it's like the number

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one question I get or one of among the top questions again is like, what order should I hire

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people in when I'm starting my business, right? The next one is and again, all of these roles

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can be some of these things can be fractional right in the beginning. So you'll probably have some

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sort of fractional bookkeeper, which is really filling the gap for the finance hall. So they're just

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doing basic level of accounting for you to get. So you just know how much money you're making at that

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time. They can help you take control of your expenses, et cetera. Over time, that role will probably

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come in house, but much a little bit later, right? So like before you're at $100,000 a month, you really

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probably don't have a ton that's going on. So just having a fraction bookkeeper is sufficient. Same

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thing with a, you know, somebody who's helping you with your taxes, somebody who's helping you with

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legal stuff like you'll have a lawyer, but it's not going to be in house, right? And so as you're

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moving up this value ladder in terms of the value per hour and the cost per hour that you can get

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this, the process of entrepreneurship, if you think from a big picture perspective, it's always

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just buying back your time, right? So that you can level up the amount of time you're spending

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on high leverage activities. Now here's a key point. Hey guys, love that you're listening to the

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podcast. If you ever want to have the video version of this, which usually has more effects,

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more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff, sometimes it can help hit the brain centers

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in different ways. You can check out my YouTube channel. It's absolutely free to check that out if

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that's what you are into and if not, keep enjoying the show. I see this happen all the time.

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I'll see how entrepreneurs replace all of their time and then they don't do anything with that

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added time to add more value. And so in that case, your profit margins will go down because you

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are not continuing to add and do the things that generate the income, right? Now, as you progress,

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each of these roles become more solidified and these people, ideally in a perfect world,

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actually can ascend up and then have teams underneath them. The person who's helping you

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originally now has a team of people helping them. The administrative person originally,

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you might have to ascend them into a director of operations, who's really pushing each of the

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tasks and projects for it. They end up being a mini project manager for you if done properly,

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right? The salesperson might become a sales director or a sales manager who's actually leading

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in training a series of salespeople. Now, I will tell you that a lot of times people have the

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difficulty of going from an individual contributor on a high level to a manager. It's one of the hardest

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transitions in business and it's commonly messed up by most people. All right. And so one of the things

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that comes with the experience in entrepreneurship is you recognize the people who have the talent

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to do the thing that is required later. So you can hire those people earlier on. Now, you can't take,

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you know, a COW of a billion dollar company and put them in as your operator or one because they

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probably can afford it and do the problem without that. It's just in the opportunity yet. Unless

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you have funding or some sort of vehicle that you can acquire that talent earlier. And so,

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as a final concept that I want to introduce to you is that whenever you were starting a business,

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you are occurring debt. All right. And this is something that I know very, very convinced of.

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And so you are incurring lots of types of debt. You are incurring life debt. You are incurring

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management debt. You are incurring financial debt. You're incurring technological debt, right? So

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that, a technological debt, which by the way is probably the, the, if you had another next full

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time hire, it's usually a tech person who's helping you manage the CRM build outsides. They kind of

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make all the things that you want to have happen or know should be happening. The background actually

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happened in the role world. They're helping manage passwords on new people in terms of getting

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demo against all the kind of jazz, right? And so in terms of the debt that you're incurring,

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if you don't have a good CRM that's in place, you will incur that debt and then you'll have to

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pay it back with interest later when the company's bigger. If you don't have a good bookkeeper in

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place, you'll have your finances will be a mess. And as you scale, you'll have to fix and pay back

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that debt later. If you have not the best people or the values are not there, then you're encouraging

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management debt, which means you'll have cultural debt, which means you'll have to pay that back

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later. And so the idea in terms of moving quickly in the game of entrepreneurship is recognizing which

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debt I want to incur in what order. And so I used to poo poo the idea of investors and venture

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capital and things like that who gave people money to start because I was like, that's not a real

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entrepreneurship. And I think as I've, you know, weathered or aged in the game, I don't see it that way

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anymore. I just see it as just fundamentally an advantage is that they're choosing financial debt

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to incur fewer other debts, incur fewer operational debt, incur less talent debt management debt,

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CRM debt. You might have to have a bigger CRM that's better for you so that you can scale

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with having to switch platforms, which is common, but it would cost more money up front. So if

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you're bootstrapped, you might not be willing or able to do that. But if you have funding or you

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have money that you're willing to invest in the business upfront, then sometimes you can do that.

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And so one of the things that is difficult with people who go bigger companies faster is that

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they skip through the earlier stages because they know how to do it. And so it's the reason that

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each of the companies that we've had subsequently have grown bigger faster, stronger than the companies

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that preceded them because we are willing to incur less of the other types of debt

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rather than financial debt because we have the finances. And so we can skip steps in the growth

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process that would normally off-rail a quarter's worth of growth by implementing a new CRM or

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offload a quarter, you know, or set me back another quarter because I have to fix my financials

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or set me back another, you know, year because I have a whole bunch of management team in

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a place where I'm inexperienced and I need to get more bin there done that's on the team and fewer

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all learners as I go, right? And so as we're thinking through this and you're hiring your team,

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the two major frameworks that I'd like you to take away with this is number one, you're hiring

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in a reverse order of value that you are providing and cost to the marketplace that you can use to

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replace it. And so typically you will one gets customer support, two, some sort of administrative

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role, three, some sort of sales or settle role, four, some sort of marketing assist, five, some

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sort of fractional bookkeeper and or a sixth, which would be your IT person or tech person.

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That is usually the beginning of the core team and then a Christmas tree is down, you'll have five

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people hanging off of each of these, not necessarily five IT people, but hopefully you can understand

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a split, especially on the marketing of the sales and on the delivery, those are the teams that

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tend to grow as the companies grow and the, you know, IT and and finance departments and HR departments

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which end up getting built over time. There's a ratio that is a higher ratio as in you need fewer of

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them per amount of customers or employees that you have in the company, right? And so as you scale,

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that is frame of number one and then frame number two is be mindful of the type of debt that you

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are incurring and make sure it is the type of debt that you would prefer to incur if you have the choice.