Build the foundation before the demand.

The hires everyone makes first

When a company starts to grow, the first hiring plan usually looks the same. A salesperson to bring in revenue. Maybe a CFO to manage the money. Someone on product or research to build the thing.

I'm not saying any of those are wrong. They can all be the right call. But from my experience, there's one role that almost always gets pushed down the list when it should be near the top: an operations person.

If you're planning your first few hires, I'd argue operations belongs in your top three. Not because it's glamorous, but because it builds the foundation everything else grows on.

You get the product and the demand. Then what?

I've watched so many companies lean hard on production and research first. And yes, that work matters. You need something great to sell.

But here's the question nobody asks early enough: what happens when it works?

The product is ready. The marketing lands. Demand shows up. And suddenly there's no process for handling it. Orders pile up, clients wait for answers, the team improvises, and every day turns into firefighting. The very success you worked toward becomes a massive bottleneck.

Growth doesn't break businesses because demand is bad. It breaks them because nothing was built to carry it.

What happened when we launched at 80%

One of my earliest clients hired me to scale the business and open two new locations. It was an exciting project, and we made real progress.

As the launch date got closer, we were about 80% there. The space was ready and the excitement was high, but internally we weren't. Some processes weren't finished, and the team hadn't been fully trained on how things would run day to day.

The owner wanted to launch anyway. I pushed back, because I could see what was coming. We launched.

And it played out just as I'd predicted. The back end got overwhelmed. The team was stretched, small issues snowballed, and the client experience wasn't what any of us wanted it to be. Not because anyone did a bad job, but because the foundation wasn't there to support the volume.

I see this happen all the time, across industries. Great product, great team, real demand, and a rocky start that could have been avoided.

What an early operations hire actually builds

A good operations person doesn't just keep things tidy. They build the structure that lets growth stick:

• Processes for the work you'll do over and over. Intake, delivery, fulfillment, follow up, so nothing depends on memory or heroics.
• Training so the team can run without you. Clear expectations and documented steps mean new people get up to speed fast and deliver consistently.
• Systems that scale. The right tools set up the right way, before you're too busy to set them up properly.
• Visibility into what's working. The numbers and checkpoints that tell you where things stand before problems reach your clients.
• A plan for capacity. A clear sense of what the business can handle today, and what needs to be in place before you take on more.

Your salesperson can bring in the demand. Your product team can build something great. Operations is what makes sure you can actually deliver on both.

You don't need to be 100% ready

To be clear, I'm not suggesting you wait for perfect. You'll never be 100% ready for a launch, and waiting for that moment is its own kind of risk. Plenty of things get refined once you're live.

But there's a difference between rough edges and missing foundations. Before a big launch or a growth push, a few things should be in place:

1. Your core processes are written down. The team knows how the most common situations get handled.
2. Your people are trained. Everyone knows their role on day one, not day thirty.
3. You know your capacity. You have a realistic sense of how much volume you can handle well.
4. You have a plan for when things go sideways. Who steps in, and how issues get resolved quickly.

Get those right, and the rest can be polished as you go.

Build it before you need it

The best time to build your operational foundation is before the demand arrives. Once you're overwhelmed, you're fixing the plane while flying it, and your clients feel every bump.

So when you're planning your first hires, put operations on the shortlist. Build the processes first, train your people, and know your capacity. Then when growth comes, you're not scrambling to catch up. You're ready for it.