The biggest mistake owners make when hiring their first real leader: finding someone exactly like them. Two people doing the same things isn't leverage. It's overlap. Hire for the gaps, not the mirror. Start with a field supervisor role before the title changes, and train them in that seat long enough to know if they can actually handle it. The title should confirm what's already working, not create pressure to figure it out on the fly. That's how growth compounds. Not by cloning yourself, but by building around what you're not.

One question I get a lot is when should I hire a service manager? When should I hire an ops manager? What does that look like? What I always look for when I'm hiring kind of in this instance, what would be my right hand is do they have skills that complement mine? I don't want someone who's exactly like me because at the end of the day, then we're both going to be trying to do the same things where I want is I want managers who bring a different skill set to the table so that we can then kind of compound our growth. We can continue to grow by I'm focusing on these things. This person's focusing on other things and so on and so forth. What I would start out with is potentially like a field supervisor position where you have someone that's out in the field still running calls, but it's kind of the go to for people and then train that person. The next worst thing we can do is promote someone without ever training them on what it is that we want them to do or whatever it is that they need to do. We often promote somebody because we think that's the next level in their journey. In fact, what we need out of a service or ops manager may not even be something that they want to do on a daily basis and so getting really clear with a job description and what their day is going to look like is extremely critical in this being a successful transition.