Business School- Your First 10 Hires: Who to Add, What to Pay, What to Stop Doing Yourself

BUSINESS SCHOOL  ·  OPERATOR LESSONS  ·  WEEK 3 OF 12

Start here if your business only works when you are in the room.

Weeks 1 and 2 of this series looked at making your product price honest and how to put a flag on the load sheet when collections stall. That work still sits with the founder in most African startup firms. You quote. You chase. You drive. You pack the gap when someone does not arrive. The business is not small. You are the system.

Hiring is often wrongly treated as a mood. A cousin needs a job. A brand person looks impressive on LinkedIn. A PA is hired so the founder can “focus on strategy.” - Strategy does not load drums. The first ten hires in your business should exist to take work out of your hands in order for the cash drive to survive. Wrong first hire and you have added a salary to a bottleneck that still sits with you.

This lesson is for a firm scaling, and one that can almost feel like a team but where the founder still cannot take a Tuesday off. Our fictitious CleanLine company is still the useful example for illustration.

A worked example: CleanLine stops being a one-person firm

After the pricing audit and the collections sequence, CleanLine’s book was cleaner. Debtor days were down. The 1-litre bottle was gone. The founder was still the person who released loads, answered the chain’s WhatsApp, wrote quotes and drove the afternoon deliveries when the driver was “coming now.” Headcount was the founder, two packers and a driver who reported to nobody.

They did not hire a marketing manager. They hired an accounts-and-orders person first. 

The Scorecard: This Hire age reviews the book every Friday, sends the 7 / 14 / 30 messages, flags stop-supply before another  load is picked. If collections hit Ninety days - Keep or let go. No third option called “give it another quarter.”

Hire two was dispatch. One number: loads out on the promised morning, returns are logged the same day. Hire three was a salesperson who could quote at the floor from Week 1, not invent a price to close the month. By month five the founder still did supplier negotiations and dealt with the ugly accounts. He no longer sat in the WhatsApp thread at 21:00. That was the point.

Three hiring realities this market will not negotiate away

1. Do not hire the job position you wish you had

A brand manager, a culture lead, an office manager who manages the office. Those roles assume there is already a machine. There is not. The machine is quoting, collecting, packing, delivering and coming back with proof. Hire against the constraint that stops cash or stops delivery. If you are still the person who flags the overdue account, that is hire one. If the bakkie waits for you to write a delivery note, that is hire one.

2. You cannot match the corporate package. You can pay for one number.

A bank will take your best clerk with medical aid and a title. Do not pretend otherwise. Pay a clean base the firm can meet on a bad month. Then attach a weekly cash incentive to one key number the person controls. Collections: debtor days and no load past terms. Dispatch: on-time loads and returns captured. Sales: invoices at or above the floor, collected, not quotes sent. If you cannot name the number, you are not ready to hire the role.

3. Probation that does not end is a permanent maybe

Ninety days has to be cut-off. Write the keep-or-go test sheet on day one. Review at day 30 and day 60 so day 90 is not a surprise. If the number is not moving and the stop-doing list is still on your desk, let the hire go. Keeping a weak first hire because you are tired of recruiting is how the bottleneck grows a salary.

The order: what to hire before ten people

This is a suggested sequence, not a law. Change it if your business constraint is different. Do not start at the bottom of the list because the title sounds senior.

•   1. Accounts and orders. The Week 2 system needs an owner who is not you.

•   2. Dispatch or delivery lead. The truck and the promise date need one focussed responsible person.

•   3. Sales person that can hold the floor. Not a closer who discounts. A person who quotes Line A at the number you wrote down.

•   4. A packer or maker who can run a day without you present on the floor.

•   5–7. A second hire on the most critical constraint that is still breaking down your system — usually another driver, another collector, or a buyer who can order concentrate before you stock out.

•   8–10. Only then consider a supervisor who can run a morning meeting, or a bookkeeper who is not also chasing invoices. A brand or “growth” hire waits until the first seven roles have numbers.

Five steps you can run this week

1. Capture the founders week in hours

For five working days, mark every block: quoting, chasing, driving, packing, suppliers, firefighting. Circle the two blocks that appear every day. Those are the first roles. If everything is circled, pick the block that moves cash.

2. Fill one scorecard before you place an ad

Role name. The one number. What they own. What they do not own. What you will stop doing the week they start. If you cannot fill the last line, you are hiring a companion, not a role.

3. Set the pay band the current account can stand

set a base you can pay if sales dip 15%- 20%. Weekly incentive you can pay in cash on Friday if the number is hit. Write the cap. Do not promise a package you will renegotiate in month two.

4. Hire on a 90-day decision, said out loud

In the interview: here is the number, here is day 90, here is what keep looks like. People who want a title more than a number will select themselves out.

5. Hand over the stop-doing list on day one, not day sixty

The accounts hire gets the invoice threads that week. You stay on the thread for five working days, then you leave. If you are still sending the day-37 message in month two, you did not hire. You added a witness.

The first-hire scorecard

Copy this for the role you will fill next. One page. No values poster.

What to measure next month

•   Hours the founder still spends on the role that was hired. Target: falling every week after day seven.

•   The one number on the scorecard, every Friday.

•   Whether stop-supply was held without a founder override. If you overrode it three times, you hired a messenger.

A single monthly target: one role filled against a scorecard, and the matching block gone from your own week by day 45.

The mistake that looks like progress

Hiring a PA so you can “get out of the weeds,” then using the PA to print the invoices you still chase. Hiring a salesperson first because revenue feels like the problem, then watching them discount the floor from Week 1 because nobody owns collections. Hiring family into a role with no number because the wage stays in the house. A full office is not a team. A number with a responsible and accountable owner is a team.

If you only do one thing

Tonight, list the hours from yesterday. Circle the block that moved no cash and still needed you. Write that block as a job scorecard — one number, what they would own, and what you will stop doing. That is hire one. 

PS. Do not write an organogram.