And no, I’m not mad. But I do want to tell you what they gave up.
Here’s what happened.
Two months after we placed a fantastic team member with a client, the client ended the contract. They went direct, cutting us out — even though it was against the agreement.
It’s a common assumption. They saw a great hire and figured they could just go direct and keep the magic going. From the outside, it looked like we added a markup and then disappeared.
But here’s what many business owners forget when they think like that.
We didn’t just plug in a person and walk away.
We listened when they told us what they needed.
We politely disagreed and recalibrated the role so it made more sense.
We filtered over a thousand candidates across three time zones.
We onboarded, aligned, and coached through the first thirty days.
We ran reviews, check-ins, and gave her a roadmap to thrive.
We stayed in the background to solve problems before they turned into churn.
What they saw was a great hire.
What they missed was the system behind her success.
Great hires aren’t just people. They’re the product of systems, coaching, and care.
If you’re not hiring every week, you don’t have hiring systems. You don’t have a ready pipeline or a backup plan. You don’t have time to coach, review, and replace.
And that’s the invisible value a good agency brings. It acts like a fractional HR department, always there to step in.
So yes, they saved money on paper. But with the next hire, they’ll be starting from scratch — without the systems that made this one thrive.
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Grand Design
The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question.
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Rosemary Czopek
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean.
Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen. She packed her seven versalia, put her initial into the belt and made herself on the way.
She had a last view back on the skyline of her hometown Bookmarksgrove, the headline of Alphabet Village and the subline of her own road, the Line Lane. Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek, then she continued her way. On her way she met a copy.
-John Doe
It came from it would have been rewritten a thousand times and everything that was left from its origin would be the word “and” and the Little Blind Text should turn around and return to its own, safe country. But nothing the copy said could convince her and so it didn’t take long until a few insidious Copy Writers ambushed her, made her drunk with Longe and Parole and dragged her into their agency, where they abused her for their projects again and again.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.
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Hiring Doesn’t Fix Chaos, It Amplifies It
Before you hire, ask yourself this: am I ready for a new team member?
A lot of founders are in pain. Overwhelmed. Buried in tasks. Stretched too thin and running on fumes.
So they do what feels logical: they hire someone. Maybe a VA, maybe an operations manager, someone to finally take things off their plate.
And here’s what I’ve seen again and again: if the foundation isn’t ready, the hire won’t save you. Most people don’t come in and build systems for you. They execute what’s already there.
So before you hire, ask yourself:
• Are your workflows documented?
• Do you know what success looks like in this role?
• Is there one central place for tasks and communication?
• Are you available to onboard and give context for the first two to four weeks?If the answer is no, even the best hire will feel lost—and so will you.
Hiring doesn’t fix chaos. It amplifies it.
And yet, this happens all the time: founders hiring to feel productive instead of getting prepared, adding people instead of fixing systems, confusing motion for progress.
Hiring isn’t about making you feel less lonely in your business. It’s about making it run better. And that only works when there’s clarity.
So the next time you’re tempted to post that job listing, pause and ask yourself: are my systems ready?
The right hire can be transformational, but only when the business is ready to receive them.
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