Playbook / Lessons / The system runs: operating cadence

Hire the roles that bring in income before support roles

Okelikwu, a business writer who studied small business owners, says most owners hire wrong rather than too early or too late: they wait until they are drowning and then decide in desperation. The owners who did well hired customer-facing roles first, the people who generate income, with sales, service delivery and core operations ahead of admin and support. They also planned ahead and started recruiting before the busy season.

“Sales, service delivery, core operations – these roles should actually come first.”— Chinedu Okelikwu, When Should You Actually Hire? (What My Findings Taught Me), Nov 2025

Do this

List the roles that directly sell or deliver your service and decide which one you would hire first, before you consider admin help.

More in this pack

• Hire a COO who can hire and manage executives
• Step away to find what breaks, then build a system for it
• Delegate decisions, not only tasks, as you scale
• Build systems that free your best people to do great work

Get your plan

All steps · Trust · Pricing