Hiring When You’re Still Figuring It Out

One of the most expensive mistakes I made early on wasn’t hiring too late.

It was hiring too permanently before I had real clarity.

When a product-based business starts to grow, there’s this moment where everyone tells you the same thing:

“You need to build out your e-commerce team.”

So you start mapping the vertical. Marketing. Lifecycle. Paid. Social. Operations. It looks clean on paper. Professional. Legit.

It’s also incredibly expensive—and surprisingly risky.

Because here’s the part no one says out loud:

when you hire full-time, you’re not just paying for output. You’re committing to a structure you’re still inventing.

Let’s talk real numbers.

To properly build an e-commerce vertical, you’re often looking at something like:

• Ecommerce Director: $140K–$180K

• Lifecycle / Email & SMS Manager: $90K–$120K

• Paid Ads Manager: $100K–$130K

• Social Media Manager: $70K–$90K

Before benefits, before overhead, before mistakes—you’re easily at $400K–$500K+ a year.

And that’s assuming you hire well.

If they’re salaried and it doesn’t work? You’re stuck unwinding roles, morale, and burn.

If they’re freelance? You’re stuck managing a fragmented team with no real ownership—and still no system.

Either way, here’s the kicker:

you’re still the one creating SOPs, context, and direction in the beginning.

You’re paying top dollar and doing the heaviest thinking.

That’s the part founders don’t budget for—the cognitive load.

This is why I’m deeply opinionated about when to bring things in-house.

There’s a stage where what you actually need isn’t a team—it’s a fully owned e-commerce function. Strategy, execution, prioritization, and systems handled end-to-end while you get clarity on what works before locking in permanent hires.

That’s the gap I work in now: embedding as an e-commerce operator so brands can scale intelligently—without prematurely committing hundreds of thousands of dollars or burning founder time on infrastructure they’re not ready to cement.

Hiring isn’t the goal.

Clarity is.

And once you have that, bringing things in-house becomes obvious—and much cheaper.

If this feels uncomfortably familiar

If you’re scaling and unsure whether to hire, outsource, or wait—I offer a Growth & Ops Diagnostic to map what your e-commerce function actually needs right now, versus what can wait.

No pressure. No long-term lock-in. Just a smarter bridge between chaos and commitment.

If you’ve been feeling this tension, you’re not behind.

You’re being prudent.

Why Hustle Stops Working at $5M in Revenue

Hustle is an incredible teacher.

It gets you off the ground. It helps you survive when no one is coming to save you. It sharpens your instincts and builds the muscle memory of figuring things out as you go.

It’s also the reason many businesses stall right when they’re supposed to take off.

Somewhere around $5M in revenue—there’s no exact number, but every operator knows the moment—hustle stops compounding and starts leaking. The hours don’t produce the same return. The urgency stops creating clarity. And the thing that once made you exceptional becomes the bottleneck.

For me, it showed up quietly.

I was still working hard. Probably harder than ever. But decisions took longer. Teams waited on me. Growth felt fragile—like if I stepped back even slightly, everything might wobble.

That’s when I realized: hustle works when you are the system.

It fails when the business needs one.

First-gen founders feel this especially deeply. We’re wired to carry the load. To be useful. To prove our worth through effort. Rest feels risky. Delegation feels indulgent. Structure feels like something you earn later.

But scale doesn’t care how hard you work. It only responds to how well things are designed.

Hustle creates motion. Systems create momentum.

That shift—from being the engine to building one—isn’t talked about enough. And it’s why so many capable founders burn out right as the business becomes viable.

Today, when I work inside scaling e-commerce brands, I look for where hustle is quietly doing the job of infrastructure. That’s usually where growth is bleeding—time, money, and confidence.

Hustle built the business.

But it won’t be what saves it.

A quiet note for founders in this stage

If you’re still pushing hard but feel diminishing returns, it may not be a motivation problem. It may be a design one.

This is the work I do now—embedding inside product-based businesses to help founders transition from effort-led growth to system-led scale.

No reinvention required. Just a smarter build.

If this hit close to home, you’re not behind.

You’re right on time.

From Survival Mode to Scale Mode: The Hardest Transition No One Talks About

For a long time, I thought the chaos meant I was doing something wrong.

Every time the business grew, my life got harder. More revenue meant more fires. More customers meant more decisions. More opportunity meant more anxiety. I was always behind, always reacting, always telling myself, Once we get through this next phase, it’ll calm down.

It never did.

What I didn’t have language for then—but understand clearly now—was that I was still operating in survival mode while trying to scale.

Survival mode is scrappy. It’s instinct-driven. It’s making things work through sheer will. And for a lot of us—especially first-gen founders—that mode isn’t just familiar, it’s inherited. We’re excellent at patching holes, finding workarounds, and pushing through discomfort.

But scale demands something entirely different.

Scale doesn’t reward hustle. It punishes it.

I couldn’t pinpoint the problem at the time, so I did what many founders do: I chased solutions. New agencies. New tools. New hires. More spend. More tactics. I wasn’t irresponsible—I was searching. But that search cost me time I couldn’t get back and money I should have protected.

The real issue wasn’t marketing. Or operations. Or talent.

It was that no one—including me—was accountable for the whole system.

That realization changed how I build businesses—and why the work I do now is personal.

Today, I step into scaling e-commerce brands not as an advisor on the sidelines, but as an embedded growth and operations partner. I take ownership because I know how dangerous it is to ask founders to “figure it out” while everything is on the line.

Survival mode built the business.

Scale mode almost always breaks it—unless you build differently.

If this feels familiar

If you’re running a product-based business and feel like growth has made everything heavier, not clearer, I offer a Growth & Ops Diagnostic—a focused engagement to identify where survival-mode thinking is quietly limiting scale.

No hype. Just clarity.

If this resonated, you already know why.

When the Founder Becomes the Bottleneck (and How to Fix It)

No one tells you this part.

You spend years being the reason the business works. The decision-maker. The closer. The fixer. The one who holds everything together when there’s no safety net.

And then one day, the very thing that made the business possible starts to slow it down.

I didn’t notice it at first. I just felt tired in a way rest didn’t fix. The team had questions I should have already answered. Progress paused until I weighed in. Everything flowed through me—even the things I no longer needed to touch.

I wasn’t failing as a founder.

I was succeeding into a new problem.

When founders become the bottleneck, it’s rarely about ego. It’s usually about responsibility. About caring too much. About being conditioned—especially as first-gen operators—to carry the weight ourselves.

But scale changes the job.

The work shifts from doing to designing. From solving to sequencing. From being indispensable to being replaceable in the right places.

Here’s what actually helps:

1. Name it without shame.

If the business can’t move without you, that’s not leadership—that’s fragility.

2. Separate control from clarity.

Most founders don’t need to approve everything. They need the right guardrails.

3. Build owners, not helpers.

Delegation fails when responsibility doesn’t come with authority.

4. Design the system before hiring into it.

People can’t fix what hasn’t been defined.

This is the transition most founders aren’t prepared for. And it’s where many get stuck—not because they’re incapable, but because no one ever stepped in to help them redesign the business around them.

That’s why the work I do now is embedded. You can’t fix a bottleneck from the outside. You have to step inside, see the flow, and rebuild it with care.

The goal isn’t to disappear.

It’s to stop being the ceiling.

If you’re here right now

If everything still depends on you, the business isn’t broken—but it is asking for a new version of leadership.

This is the work I do with scaling product-based businesses: helping founders move from being the engine to building one that runs without burning them out.

You don’t need to work harder.

You need a better design.

Why “Just Run More Ads” Is Lazy Advice

“Just run more ads” is what people say when they don’t understand the business.

It’s not malicious. It’s not even always wrong. It’s just shallow.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been brought into a brand where ads weren’t the problem—they were simply the most visible lever. So that’s where everyone pulled. Harder budgets. New creatives. New agencies. Same underlying friction.

Because ads don’t fix bottlenecks.

They expose them.

When growth stalls, the real question isn’t how do we get more traffic?

It’s what breaks when we do?

Here’s what I look for before touching spend:

• Conversion friction: Are customers confused, hesitant, or overwhelmed once they land?

• Offer clarity: Do we know why people buy—or are we guessing?

• Fulfillment & CX strain: Does more volume create delays, tickets, refunds?

• Lifecycle leaks: Are we paying repeatedly to reacquire customers we could retain?

• Decision latency: Are teams waiting on approvals, data, or direction?

If any of those are weak, more ads just pour pressure into a cracked system.

What makes this tricky is that ads feel actionable. You can turn them on. See numbers move. Report progress. But activity isn’t the same as progress—and founders pay for that confusion in margin, time, and morale.

This is especially common in product-based businesses, where marketing is often asked to compensate for operational ambiguity. No one owns the whole flow, so everyone optimizes their piece in isolation.

The result? Expensive motion. Minimal momentum.

The brands that scale well do something different: they treat growth like a system, not a channel. They identify the constraint, fix that first, then add fuel.

Sometimes that means ads.

Often, it means everything around them.

The uncomfortable truth is this: if the business can’t handle more demand cleanly, you don’t have a traffic problem. You have an operational one.

And until that’s addressed, “just run more ads” isn’t a strategy—it’s a tax.

Why It’s Okay to Walk Away From Something That’s “Working”

It’s December 2022 in Andermatt, Switzerland.

I’m sitting in the lounge at The Chedi Hotel with friends…low lighting, soft leather chairs, that quiet, expensive calm you only find in places where no one is trying to impress anyone else.

Across from me is an old friend. A trusted business friend from London. We worked together in real estate development back in 2005. He’s done very well for himself since. His company has built most of Andermatt into what is now a quiet, if-you-know-you-know ski destination in the Alps, anchored by the five-star resort we’re sitting in.

At some point between sips of a drink, I tell him I’m stepping away from my business. Possibly selling it.

He looks at me and asks the most reasonable question in the world:

“Is it cash flowing?”

“Yes,” I say. “It’s e-commerce. It’s basically an unlimited ATM.”

He doesn’t hesitate.

“Then why would you get rid of it?”

I pause. Shrug. Take another sip.

“I want to do something else.”

It didn’t sound like a good enough answer. And at the time, I didn’t have a better one.

But hindsight is 20/20. And if I could answer him now, I’d say this:

I had already done it.

It started as proof of concept and turned into a cult brand. One I was the face of. One where too much hinged on my presence, my energy, my constant involvement.

It wasn’t a laundromat. I couldn’t just show up once a month and collect the winnings.

Even transitioning from CEO to Chairman would required me—my time, my identity, my emotional labor. And I didn’t want to do that anymore.

What I really meant that night was:

It was time to move on to work that didn’t feel so hard.

It was time to get out of the weeds.

It was time to bet on myself again.

There’s a huge misconception in American culture that if you quit something, you’ve failed.

That you didn’t fight hard enough.

That you weren’t worthy.

That you gave up.

But sometimes quitting isn’t failure. Sometimes it’s discernment.

I was at a point where I wanted to leave behind good enough in search of something better. Something that brought me more fulfillment. More joy. More alignment.

And let me be very clear about this:

Leaving something that is objectively successful, something that is working, profitable, admired, and stable takes an enormous amount of bravery.

Especially when you’ve poured your blood, sweat, and tears into building it.

I wasn’t running from something.

I was betting on myself.

I was betting on the belief that there was something out there that was better for me.

And the real question I had to answer was this:

Would holding on jeopardize my long-term happiness, fulfillment, and joy?

For ten years, I lived a great life.

No money stress.

Stability.

Freedom, on paper.

But for me… it was just good enough.

So why did that one conversation, fireside at The Chedi, make me hesitate?

Why did that one question—why would you get rid of it?—make me scared to do a clean exit?

Instead of divesting in one decisive move, I held on.

I took a sabbatical.

I turned off the engine one valve at a time.

I told myself I was resting. Recovering. Catching my breath after an incredible ten-year run.

But the truth is, I was putting my dreams on the back burner.

A small part of me thought I’d just fire up the old website, dust off the balloon printer, and start again.

But that ignored the reason good enough was no longer enough.

2026 is the year I stopped putting my own desires on hold.

My true passion is community.

It’s helping others.

It’s building things that don’t require founders to sacrifice themselves at the altar of their business.

That’s why I launched ONT.

We’re not an agency.

We’re not idea sellers.

We’re an embedded e-commerce business partner.

We give founders agency.

We help people who are stuck in growth put systems in place so their business doesn’t keep them hostage the way mine did.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth I learned too late:

If you’re thinking about an exit after year five, you’re already behind.

Systems take time.

They need to be built early.

They need to become second nature.

When my business started growing fast, our systems were built for a small to mid-size company, not a company about to 6x its revenue.

So I panic-hired.

I spent a lot of money trying to fill the gaps growth had opened.

People were happy to step in, do busy work, and collect a paycheck.

But what I actually needed was structure.

Clear pillars.

Teams with real ownership.

By the time I figured that out, we were in year seven.

Too late? Or just late?

That question is exactly why I do what I do now.

I embed myself in growing companies to help founders build the teams and systems that allow their e-commerce businesses to print money without constant oversight.

So, should I have sold my business when I had the chance?

Yes.

Should I have had a better answer that night at The Chedi?

Probably.

But I didn’t have it figured out yet.

And I was alone on Founder Island…which, if you’ve been there, you know can be a very lonely place.

If you’re reading this and you feel stuck in the weeds…

If your business is “working” but costing you more than you’re willing to admit…

If you’re carrying it instead of leading it…

You don’t have to do it alone.

If you want to talk, schedule a call with me.

Let’s see if my curated team of senior operators can help you build something that works for you—not the other way around.

Sometimes walking away isn’t quitting.

Sometimes it’s choosing yourself.