If you want to scale your business, at some point you need to hire someone to run it so you can focus on growth. But how do you actually find the right person, what do you pay them, and how much equity do you hand over? These are the exact questions founders at every stage wrestle with — and the answers are more nuanced than most people expect. Here is a practical, no-fluff breakdown of how to hire someone to run your business the right way.
How Do You Hire Someone to Run Your Business?
The first and most important rule when hiring someone to run your business is this: do not wait for them to come to you. The best operators and executives are not scrolling job boards. You have to go find them, and you have to go hard.
01:45
Advice on using your personal network first before going outbound to find a CEO or operator
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Start with your network. Go through your phone, your Instagram, your LinkedIn connections, and ask yourself who do you know that would know someone like this. Put the word out. Referrals from people you already trust are almost always the highest-quality leads you will get for a role this important.
If your network comes up short, go outbound on LinkedIn. Think about what companies have a similar internal structure to yours — not necessarily the same industry, but similar team dynamics and operational complexity. Find people in those companies who hold relevant roles and message them directly. When you reach out, lead with credibility. Share your name, your company, what you have built, what you are looking to do next, and exactly what you are looking for. Make it clear this is not a random cold message — it is a serious opportunity from a serious operator.
One more thing: if you are the founder, you should be the one doing this outreach. There is a meaningful difference between a top-tier executive receiving a message from the company founder versus a recruiter. If this hire is the biggest bottleneck in your business, treat it that way. Throw everything at it.
Do You Need an Operator or a CEO?
Before you start your search, you need to get clear on what you are actually hiring for — because an operator and a CEO are not the same thing, and confusing the two is one of the most expensive mistakes founders make.
03:10
Breaking down equity percentages and vesting cliff structures for executive hires
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Ask yourself these questions:
- Do I need someone to manage department heads and handle day-to-day fires, or do I need someone to drive company growth?
- Am I stepping back from operations entirely, or just one layer of them?
- What do I need now, and what will I need in 12 months?
A lot of founders hire someone to manage the day-to-day and then get frustrated when that person is not growing the company. But that is not what they were hired to do. Be precise about the job before you start looking for the person. If you are at around $20 million in revenue with department heads already in place, you might only need a strong operator who can hold people accountable to scorecards and keep things running — not a growth-focused CEO.
Where Do You Find a CEO for a Small Business?
For a small or mid-sized business, finding a great CEO or general manager almost always starts with your personal network and expands outward from there. Here is a simple two-step process:
Step 1: Mine Your Network
Reach out to everyone you know who might have a connection to the type of person you need. Do not be vague — describe the exact role, the company size, the challenges involved, and the opportunity. Be specific enough that people can actually think of someone.
07:22
The owner-operator mindset and why it leads to twice the profitability at single locations
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Step 2: Go Outbound on LinkedIn
Search for people at companies similar to yours or that have operational structures you admire. Look at their career history, their titles, and where they have worked. Start conversations. Use your track record as your pitch. You are not asking for a favor — you are presenting a real opportunity to someone who might be ready for a new challenge.
Also check platforms like Glassdoor to get a sense of what compensation looks like at companies similar to yours — more on that below.
How Much Equity Should You Give a CEO or Operator?
Equity for a professional CEO or executive operator typically falls in a narrow range. Based on what is standard across companies doing $50 million to $150 million in revenue, the range looks like this:
- Less experienced operator: Around 1% equity
- Highly experienced operator: Up to 4% equity
Smaller businesses sometimes offer higher percentages, but at serious company sizes, 4% is generally the ceiling. Do not let anyone talk you into dramatically more than that unless there are very unusual circumstances.
Critically, never give equity on day one. Use a vesting cliff structure. A standard approach looks like this:
- One-year cliff: nothing vests until they have been with you for 12 months
- Year one: 1% vests
- Year two: 2% vests
- Year three: the remainder vests
This protects you if the relationship does not work out and gives the executive a real incentive to stay and perform.
On top of equity, structure a cash compensation package that includes a base salary plus a performance incentive tied to both revenue growth and profitability. You want them focused on both — not one at the expense of the other. For salary, use tools like PayScale or Salary.com to benchmark your company size and role, and cross-reference with what companies similar to yours are actually paying based on sources like Glassdoor. Rough range for most small-to-mid-market operators: $200,000 to $450,000 depending on company size and scope.
What Should You Look for When Hiring a General Manager?
When hiring for a general manager or operations manager at a physical location, character traits matter more than technical skills — but you still need the right combination of both.
Top Character Traits
- Hardworking — willing to put in discretionary effort, not just clock in and clock out
- Enthusiastic — genuinely excited about the role and the business
- Detail-oriented — catches the small things before they become big problems
Key Technical Aptitude
For single-location businesses especially, prioritize someone who is sales-driven. If your general manager cannot generate or support revenue, your location will struggle. You can teach operational and customer success skills to someone with sales aptitude. It is much harder to teach sales instinct to someone who is purely back-office focused.
One data point worth noting: in businesses with multiple locations, the ones run by people with an owner-operator mindset — where the GM treats the location like it is their own business — are consistently twice as profitable as locations run by people who simply show up and do the minimum. Hire for hunger, not just competence.
How Do You Train New Employees Fast?
If you are hiring people without prior experience and training them yourself — which is actually a smart approach for avoiding bad habits — the key to fast, high-quality training is a structured onboarding accelerator, not a casual ramp-up period.
Think of onboarding not as paperwork and introductions, but as acceleration. The goal is: how fast can you get this person producing real value?
The 7-Day Immersive Accelerator
Batch new hires together and put them through a full week of immersive training before they touch any real work. During those seven days they should:
- Learn the core skills they need to be fundamentally successful
- Build relationships with teammates and leadership
- Absorb the company culture and context at a level that months of weekly meetings could never replicate
To design those seven days effectively, look at your best early performers. Ask two questions: what skills did they already have when they started, and what skills did you successfully teach them? That analysis tells you what your training program needs to cover and what level of aptitude you should be screening for at the hiring stage.
After the initial accelerator, continue with weekly group training sessions and self-directed assignments to reinforce and build on what they learned.
Should You Hire People With No Experience and Train Them?
In many skilled-labor and service businesses, yes — hiring people with no prior experience is often the better strategy. The reason is simple: people without experience do not have bad habits to unlearn. You get to build them the right way from the start.
The key is having a system robust enough to actually develop them. If your onboarding is weak, no-experience hires will flounder. But if you have a strong accelerator program and ongoing training, a motivated person with good aptitude and character will almost always outperform a technically skilled hire who is difficult to work with or set in their ways.
As one founder put it: it is always easier to teach skills to someone with aptitude and a good heart than to fix the attitude of someone with technical skills but no cultural fit. That is true at every level of hiring, from entry-level workers to executive operators.
