You’re great at running your business. Training isn’t your job.

Why training a second-in-command so often goes wrong.

Most owner-operators we meet are excellent at what they do. But their job is running the business. It isn’t training people, and it’s certainly not training someone to take their place.

So when they finally hire a second-in-command, the training happens on the fly. The new person shadows them from job to job while the owner tries to run the business at the same time. The questions keep coming, and before long the person who was meant to take work off their plate feels like someone in the way. Frustration builds on both sides, and the hire leaves or gets let go.

Hand the training to us.

You keep doing what you’re good at, and we do what we’re good at. We get the job out of your head through conversations with Clara, turn it into a complete training program, and stay with your new hire through their first 90 days. You answer questions; you don’t run a classroom.

Because the training is built from how you actually run things, not a generic course, it takes much of the risk out of the hire.

No hire is a sure thing, and choosing the right person is still your call; we don’t recruit or assess candidates. What we change is what happens next. Your new hire isn’t left to learn the job from someone who’s also running the business full time.

What’s included.

Everything below is built from your business, checked by an expert on our team, and yours to keep.

1. Capture. Clara interviews you about the role, and the two or three people who’ll work closest with your new hire. We also go through the records that go with the job.
2. The role. What they take over, what stays with you, what they can decide without you, and the order you hand things over.
3. The training program. A week-by-week 90-day plan. Playbooks for the recurring work. Guides for the judgment calls, like how you price a job and when to call you. A library of real situations from your business and how you handled them. Briefing notes on your key customers and suppliers. A first-week checklist.
4. The hiring kit. A job posting. Interview questions drawn from real situations, with notes on what a strong answer sounds like; you do the judging. Reference-check questions.
5. The check-ins. Clara checks in with your new hire at 30, 60 and 90 days, and after each one we update the training wherever something didn’t land.

What hiring usually costs.

A recruiter typically charges 15 to 25 percent of the first year’s salary to find someone. For a $90,000 manager, that’s $13,500 to $22,500. Their guarantee usually covers the first 30 to 90 days. After that, if it doesn’t work out, the cost is yours.

In a business that runs on the owner’s judgment, finding someone isn’t the hard part. Teaching them the job is. That part usually never happens, because the job lives in your head and you’re too busy running the business.

That’s the part we do. We don’t find the person. We make sure the person you find can actually learn the job, and the program is yours for every hire after.

$15,000 for most roles.

Larger roles are quoted before we start.