You're doing two jobs. You've known it for a while.
One is the job you started the company to do. The other is the one it grew into. The hire that would hand one back is the most expensive you'll make, and you can't quite describe it yet. So it waits. This defines the seat so clearly that you hire once, hire right, and get your own job back.
You've thought about this hire more than you've talked about it.
- You've scrolled LinkedIn profiles at 11 pm.Titles like General Manager, COO, Director of Operations. Every one looks good on paper. None of them looks like your business.
- You can't write the job description.Not because you don't know the work. Because you've never had to separate what's yours from what's just landed on you.
- Maybe you tried once.You promoted your best person, or hired someone from a bigger company. It didn't stick, and you quietly took it all back. Now you're careful.
- You worry about what you'd be giving up.Control. The way things get done. The team coming to you first. You're not sure you'd like the business with someone else in the middle of it.
- Your team already routes around the gap.Everything comes to you, because there's nowhere else for it to go. Every week that proves to you that you can't step back yet.
- The people at home have stopped asking when it gets easier.You told them it would, after the next milestone. You've passed a few of those.
So the hire stays on next quarter's list. And you keep doing both jobs, a little worse than you'd like, because doing both feels safer than getting one wrong.
It's not the candidate you're afraid of. It's the empty outline.
A #2 hire rarely fails because the person can't do the work. It fails because nobody decided what the work was: which decisions they own, which ones you keep, what a good first 90 days looks like, and how anyone would know. Without that, you hire the best interview, and then you both find out.
Vision, key relationships, the big sales, the product, the bets. The reason the company exists.
Scheduling, hiring, fires, follow-through, the weekly meeting, the 40 small calls a day. This is the seat. Nobody has drawn its edges.
Why new hires fail within 18 months
Leadership IQ study of 20,000+ new hires. 46% failed within 18 months.1
The résumé tells you the least about whether they'll last. The seat has to tell you the rest.
Waiting isn't free. Neither is getting it wrong.
Put in your own numbers. The first side is what the second job costs you while you keep doing it. The second is what a wrong hire costs, using Gallup's range for replacing an employee.
Your numbers
Ops, people, fires, approvals. Be honest.
What it produces when you spend it on the first job: selling, building, leading.
Base salary you'd expect to pay.
The Blueprint costs $3,500. That's 0% of the low end of a wrong hire, and less than 0 weeks of doing both jobs.
Estimates only. Waiting: hours × hourly value × 52 weeks / 12. Wrong hire: one-half to two times annual salary, per Gallup.2 Neither counts the months it takes to notice the hire isn't working.
Picture a Tuesday where the questions go to someone else.
Today
- Every "quick question" finds you, wherever you are.
- You run the weekly meeting because nobody else can.
- The work only you can do happens after 7 pm, if it happens.
- A week off means a week on your phone.
- The hire stays on next quarter's list.
After
- The team takes questions to your #2. They know the answers because the seat says what they own.
- Someone else runs the weekly meeting. You show up for the parts that need you.
- Your best hours go back to the first job. Selling, building, deciding.
- A week off is a week off. The business keeps moving.
- You hired once, with a 90-day plan that got them to full speed faster.3
Growth past your ceiling
Right now the business can only grow as far as your hours stretch. A real #2 moves that ceiling.
A business worth more
A company that runs without its owner is worth more to a buyer.4 A #2 who owns the operation is how you get there.
You choose which job to keep
For the first time in years, you decide what you work on. Usually it's the one that made you start the company.
And "when does it get easier" finally has a date.
Three weeks. About four hours of yours.
- Week 1 · 2 hours of your time
Map what's on your desk
Two working sessions with you, short interviews with up to five people on your team, and a two-week log of every decision that crosses your desk. That log is where the seat comes from.
- Week 2 · none of your time
Design the seat
What they own, what you share, what you keep. The five numbers they'll be measured on. The pay range, from current market data for your size and region.
- Week 3 · 2 hours of your time
Build the hiring kit
Interview questions that test for the things that make hires fail, a 90-day plan for their first quarter, and a walkthrough so you're ready to post the role that week.
Use it to hire, promote, or decide to wait.
- The seat, on one page. Its purpose, what it owns, and what stays with you.
- Decision rights. Who decides what, written down before anyone has to argue about it.
- The scorecard. Five weekly numbers that say whether it's working.
- Your accountability chart, today and with the #2 in place.
- Pay range and interview kit, with questions built for coachability and fit.
- A 90-day plan for their first quarter, milestone by milestone.
One page your candidate reads and either leans in, or opts out.
A sample, built on a fictional company. Yours comes from your own decision log and your team.
General Manager, Ridgeline Home Services
$4.2M revenue · 34 employees · owner-led since 2014Why this seat exists
Run the day-to-day so the owner can run the future. Every job scheduled, staffed, finished and billed without the owner in the loop.
Owns
- Scheduling and dispatch
- Hiring and firing below manager
- Weekly leadership meeting
- Vendor terms up to $10K
- Customer escalations
Shares with owner
- Annual budget
- Manager hires
- Pricing changes
- New service lines
Owner keeps
- Vision and three-year plan
- Top 20 commercial accounts
- Bank and lender relationships
- Final say on culture calls
The weekly scorecard
The first 90 days
Who thrives here, and who won't
Thrives: has run a 20 to 60 person operation hands-on, likes the trucks as much as the spreadsheet, takes coaching from a founder without taking it personally.
Won't: needs a large staff to execute, wants to rebuild everything in month one, sees the owner's involvement as interference.
Sample only. Ridgeline is fictional and its figures are illustrative.
Delivered in 15 business days, or you don't pay.
You've already waited long enough on this hire. If the Blueprint isn't in your hands within 15 business days of kickoff, the full $3,500 comes back to you, and you keep everything.
The only condition is the one that makes it possible: the two working sessions happen in week 1. If one moves for your schedule, the 15 days move with it.
You're ready to hand one job over. You need it done right.
- You own the business, it does $1M to $15M a year, and you have roughly 10 or more people.
- You want someone in the seat within the next six months.
- You can afford the role, or will once you stop doing it yourself.
- You're hiring from outside, or deciding whether someone inside is ready.
- You want a recruiter to find candidates. This defines the seat; it doesn't fill it.
- You already have a #2 and it's working. Look at Off the Front Line instead.
- You're not willing to give up any decisions yet. Be honest with yourself on this one.
I've sat in it.
I'm Mark Skalla. For three years I was the founder's #2 at a 75-person company: hired as Marketing Director and EOS Integrator, and running the business as President and COO by the end.
I know the seat from the inside: what the founder has to let go of, what the team tests in the first 90 days, and exactly where it breaks when nobody drew its edges. I've also run my own company for six years, so I know the other chair too.
Before you apply
Do you find the candidate?
No. The Blueprint gives you a seat so clear that any recruiter, job board or referral works better. If you want help in the interviews themselves, that can be added.
Can I promote someone who already works here?
Often that's the best outcome. The Blueprint gives you an honest way to measure an internal candidate against the seat, instead of against your gratitude.
What if the answer is "don't hire yet"?
Then you'll hear that plainly, with the reason and what would need to be true first. Saving you a wrong hire is the point.
How much of my time does it take?
About four hours over three weeks. Two working sessions in week 1, a walkthrough in week 3, and keeping a simple decision log for two weeks.
What happens after?
Hire on your own with the kit. Or add help through interviews and the first 90 days. Or keep working together monthly. Continue within 30 days and the full $3,500 is credited.
Two minutes now. A straight answer within one business day.
If it's a fit, you'll get a link to a short call to confirm and start. If it's not the right time, you'll hear that too, with the reason.
Three weeks from now, the seat could have edges.
Sources
- Leadership IQ, "Why New Hires Fail" (Hiring for Attitude study), 20,000+ new hires tracked. leadershipiq.com
- McFeely, S., Wigert, B. "This Fixable Problem Costs U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion." Gallup, March 2019. gallup.com
- Byford, M., Watkins, M., Triantogiannis, L. "Onboarding Isn't Enough." Harvard Business Review, May to June 2017. Well-integrated executives reached full performance in four months instead of six. hbr.org
- "When the Owner Is the Business: How Dependence Derails Deals." M&A Source. masource.org