I have a friend who was convinced his business was dying because he didn't have a COO.
He was doing $3M in revenue. Good margins.
But every time he tried to scale, the business would stall.
So he started interviewing for this magical "integrator" who would take all the chaos off his plate for the price of $150K per year in salary plus bonuses...
I asked him:
"What exactly would this person do?"
He rattled off:
"Manage sales, oversee fulfillment, handle finances, run marketing, keep me organized..."
I stopped him.
"You're not looking for one person. You're looking for five. And you're about to overpay for someone who will burn out in six months."
Founders often think their problems can be solved by hiring one magical person.
A COO...
An Integrator…
A “rockstar” Operator who does all the stuff you hate doing…
It sounds good. But it almost never works because you're trying to hire one person to do the job of five.
If you want to scale beyond $2M and build a business that runs without you, you need five real leaders who each own of the following five (5) critical business functions:
Head of Marketing - Owns traffic, leads, CAC, ROAS
Head of Sales - Owns traffic/lead conversion, close rate, revenue
Head of Fulfillment - Owns NPS, retention, delivery margin
Head of Finance - Owns cash, budget, net profit
Executive Assistant - Owns your time, inbox, calendar
My friend stared at the list.
"I'm doing three of these myself right now."
Exactly.
He was Head of Sales, Head of Marketing, and his own EA…all while trying to be CEO.
No wonder the business stalled every time he tried to scale.
Obviously, he couldn’t hire for all these roles at once, so I had him focus on his biggest bottleneck, which at the time was sales.
So instead of hiring a $200K COO who would attempt (and fail) to do everything, he hired an $80K Sales Manager who did the one thing he needed really well.
Within 90 days, revenue jumped 20%.
Six months later, he hired a Head of Finance. Then a Head of Fulfillment.
Today, his company is at $7M, and he doesn’t have to do any of the “Big 5” roles himself.
And if he wants to hire a COO, he can…but he probably won’t want to.
It turns out, running a business is a lot more fun when you have a real leadership team and not just an army of “helpers.”
Ask me how I know. 🙂
⚡️ Action Step: Write down the Big 5 roles and circle the ones you personally own today. Then ask, “Which one is the biggest bottleneck to growth right now?”
Don’t hire a unicorn. Hire for that seat first.
Ryan Deiss
Co-Founder and CEO, The Scalable Company
P.S. I’m looking for 5 business owners who want to work 1-on-1 with my team and me to install a custom “operating system” in 2026, so your business can scale and so you can exit the day-to-day. Click here for the details.
Quick Hits
Here’s some other content from the Scalable network, plus some other cool stuff I liked and thought you might like, too:
🧰 Tool of the Week: This free “CEO Dashboard” template allows you to manage your entire business in just 14 seconds from a single spreadsheet.
🤯 60 seconds of pure business wisdom. (I just had to share this.)
🤖 Is AI going to put us all out of business? Here’s my take…
❌ 5 reasons you DON’T want an 8-figure business. (#3 surprises everyone.)
