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Don’t Hire a Captain If the Ship Isn’t Built
“Should I hire an operations manager?”
Maybe not.
The inbox is overflowing, deadlines are constant, and you’re still the one catching the details. The instinct is to think, “If I just find the right person, they’ll clean this up.”
I used to believe an operations manager would save me. Until the third one quit.
Here’s what I’ve seen inside my own company, Gorilla Stationers, and in many others: operations and building are two separate things. Most operations professionals are great at optimizing, but not at building systems from scratch.
If intake happens five different ways, case handoff depends on memory, and no one’s really sure who owns what, most operations managers will struggle. They first need to understand what’s going on, then build a system, and only then can they run it. When they realize it’s not about running but about building, they often leave.
So before hiring someone to run the ship, ask yourself: is the ship built?
And by built, I mean:
• Standardized onboarding
• Clear case handoff
• A follow-up system that doesn’t rely on you at 10 p.m.These are the things we as founders have to create first. In my experience, maybe one in a hundred operations managers is both good at building and happy to do it.
They’re two different jobs.
Don’t hire an ops lead to figure it out. Build the system first, then hand over the keys.
Because even the best captain can’t steer a ship that’s still under construction.
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They Cut Us Out. And Here’s What They Lost.
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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Weekly Podcast 2
The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question.
