About this video
Leila Hormozi is an entrepreneur, investor, and Chairwoman of Acquisition.com who built and sold multiple companies, including Gym Launch and Prestige Labs, and is known for helping founder-led businesses scale through operational systems, leadership, and company culture.
Hiring an operator is not simply about delegating work. It is about finding someone whose capabilities match what the business needs at its current stage of growth. A strong operator removes bottlenecks, develops people and improves execution, while the wrong appointment can introduce bureaucracy, weaken accountability and slow the entire organisation.
The critical decision is not whether your business needs an operator, but what kind of operator it needs now — and whether that person can evolve as the business grows.
Full Video at the end of page
Core Insight (Plain English)
Growing a business requires different capabilities at different stages. The skills needed to build something from scratch are not necessarily the same skills required to manage a mature organisation.
In the early stages, progress depends heavily on speed, adaptability and the willingness to work through uncertainty. As the business expands, the challenge shifts towards consistent delivery, financial discipline, stronger management and repeatable performance. Eventually, further growth may require another shift towards innovation, attracting senior talent and developing new sources of revenue.
This creates a difficult leadership problem. An operator who performs exceptionally well during one stage may struggle when the business enters another.
Two broad operating styles help explain the distinction.
A builder thrives in uncertainty, creates processes from scratch and solves problems without extensive direction. An incremental improver is more effective at refining established operations, strengthening accountability and making performance predictable.
Neither is inherently better. Their value depends on the problems the business needs to solve.
How Operating Needs Change With Business Maturity
- Below US$1 million
Primary Challenge: Finding product-market fit.
Operator Emphasis: Builder — someone who can work through uncertainty, execute quickly and establish operations from scratch.
- US$1 million–US$10 million
Primary Challenge: Improving customer profitability and delivery.
Operator Emphasis: Builder with management skills — someone who can organise growing operations, develop teams and introduce essential processes without sacrificing speed.
- US$10 million–US$50 million
Primary Challenge: Achieving consistency, operational efficiency and financial discipline.
Operator Emphasis: Incremental improver — someone who can strengthen systems, improve accountability and deliver predictable performance.
- Above US$50 million
Primary Challenge: Sustaining growth through innovation, talent development and new revenue streams.
Operator Emphasis: Experienced builder and change leader — someone who can reshape the organisation, attract senior talent and support new growth opportunities.
These revenue bands reflect the framework presented in the discussion, not universal thresholds for every industry or market.
The broader lesson is that operational leadership cannot remain static while the business changes. A founder must periodically reconsider whether the current leadership structure is still appropriate, rather than assuming that past success guarantees future effectiveness.
7 Practical Lessons
Hire for the problems you have, not the title you want.
A growing SME may benefit more from a capable operations manager than an expensive chief operating officer. Define the operational responsibilities first, then determine the seniority required.Choose someone whose strengths complement your weaknesses.
If your strengths lie in sales, marketing and developing new opportunities, look for someone who excels at managing people, following through on commitments and maintaining delivery standards. Hiring another visionary may leave the same execution gaps unresolved.Prioritise builders while the business model is still developing.
When products, customers and processes are changing frequently, an operator must be comfortable solving unfamiliar problems. Experience in large, established organisations is not automatically an advantage if it comes with excessive dependence on formal structures.Measure operators by business outcomes, not administrative activity.
More meetings, reports and procedures do not necessarily indicate stronger operations. Assess whether decisions are made faster, customer delivery improves, employees become more effective and commercial performance strengthens.Develop leaders rather than creating another bottleneck.
As the business expands, the operator must become capable of delegating responsibilities and developing managers. Someone who insists on personally controlling every decision may eventually recreate the same dependency the founder was trying to eliminate.Introduce systems selectively and remove unnecessary complexity.
Standard procedures, financial controls and management software become increasingly important as an organisation grows. However, each new process should solve a genuine operational problem rather than merely make the business appear more professional.Review leadership suitability whenever the business enters a new stage.
A reliable operator may excel at improving established operations but struggle when expansion requires experimentation and organisational change. Assess adaptability, willingness to learn and the ability to attract talent before assuming the existing leadership arrangement can support the next phase.
Summary & Reflections
The distinction between builders and incremental improvers is useful, particularly for founders who have never formally considered what they need from operational leadership.
However, it would be a mistake to treat these categories as rigid personality types or the revenue thresholds as universal rules.
A manufacturing business may require formal quality controls and experienced operational leadership much earlier than a digital services company. A regulated healthcare provider cannot afford to postpone compliance procedures simply because it is still small. Likewise, a business with complex supply chains may need structured operations well before reaching the revenue levels described.
There is also an important distinction between loyalty and constructive independence.
An operator must support the company's direction and maintain a productive working relationship with its founder. Yet unquestioning agreement is not necessarily healthy leadership. The best operators should be willing to challenge poor decisions, raise uncomfortable issues and provide an independent assessment of operational risks.
The discussion places considerable emphasis on operators protecting founders from day-to-day distractions. This is valuable, but it should not become an excuse to conceal material problems. Effective delegation requires clear escalation rules, transparency and mutual trust.
Similarly, revenue stagnation following an operational appointment is a reason to investigate, not proof that the appointment caused the problem. Market conditions, pricing, product quality and changes in demand must also be considered.
Regional Consideration — Southeast Asia
For SMEs operating across Southeast Asia, an additional consideration is market fragmentation. Differences in labour practices, customer expectations, regulatory requirements and distribution channels can make operational consistency harder to achieve.
An operator capable of managing a business in Singapore may not automatically possess the relationships or local knowledge required to execute effectively in Indonesia, Vietnam or Thailand. Regional expansion may require stronger local management rather than simply extending headquarters' procedures.
The most useful principle is therefore not to hire a particular personality type, but to match operational capability to business complexity, maturity and direction.
Who should watch the full video
Most relevant: Founders and owner-operators who are preparing to hire their first operations leader, struggling to delegate responsibilities or questioning whether their current operator can support further growth.
It is also relevant to general managers, operations directors and COOs seeking to understand how their responsibilities should evolve as their organisations mature.
The greatest practical relevance is likely to businesses moving beyond founder-led execution towards a structured management team.
Decision Rating
Decision Usefulness — ★★★★☆
The framework provides a practical way to evaluate operational hiring and leadership suitability. Its strongest contribution is encouraging founders to assess operators against the company's current needs rather than relying on titles or previous experience.
Operational Relevance — ★★★★★
Directly addresses common SME challenges involving founder dependency, delegation, accountability, process complexity and management capability. These are relevant regardless of whether the business has a formal COO.
Practical Applicability — ★★★☆☆
The distinction between builders and incremental improvers is readily applicable to hiring and performance reviews. However, the discussion offers limited detail on structured candidate assessments, performance measures, succession planning or implementation, leaving founders to develop their own evaluation methods.
Until next time,
The SME Signal editorial Team
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