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Hiring A COO << How to Qualify? (17)

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It took me forever to decide to hire a COO and fucking focus on strategy and have him implement the deal.

Now - I need someone like me, and since that's hard to find, I wrote down important skills for me and I need an input from you:

• Aggresive in follow ups, fast in making shit done
• When things are involving multiple people and steps, organize so that time is working for you.
• Knows direct response
• Understands split testing
• Perfect English

What else makes a good COO -- and I hope coo is a guy I tell like: "hey make this page green, contact Jon for copy, put new split testing on optimizely, get the links to media buyer Marc, have him start test buy of 1k" and that he fucking understands it.

Am I asking too much to expect there is a person who can make it happen at good enough level?

Where to find such person. What pay?

I'm ready. My supplement company now is preparing one surprise (soon about that) so until then, help me as this guy will eliminate a lot of my struggles, and help me focus on strategy and deal making..

Cheers!

Dominic

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Hiring someone in this position, first would require you to be able to share sensitive information like plans, strategies, financial related stuff and be able to delegate the tasks that he/she has to follow without getting in between. Failing to do so, can lead that person to failure despite all efforts he/she can make to succeed.

On top of what you can find googling about this matter, I would suggest looking out for someone who meets the following requirements:

- Previous experiences on managing and leading teamwork (this is a must).
- Previous experiences on creating, implementing and enforcing internal policies.
- Good understanding of business functions like human resources, finance, sales, marketing, logistics etc.
- Ability to fairly evaluate employees performance and spot non-performers.
- Ability to motivate lazy ass employees to get more shit done in less time.
- Ability to delegate tasks and responsibilities at the same time.
- Good problem solving skills and ability to make fast decisions.
- Ethically keen and a good negotiator
- Highly available

Make a background check when evaluating candidates, their reputation during their previous experiences tell a lot. When deciding, make an official introduction to your other employees, this will help on cutting down initial misunderstandings.

Hope this helps

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Dominic

Something to consider, are you wanting to hire direct industry experience (potentially harder to find and will come at a premium) or hire on attitude (following the golden rule of hiring people smarter than you) and provide the training and space for your new team member to grow and learn.

I've found hiring premium rate industry experience has never worked out as well as hiring great growth mindset learners and proving them with the right environment to develop. In fact all my management team arrived with a great attitude but no industry experience.

Short term this creates a greater overhead on you as you need to take responsibility for supporting their development but long term I've found it's paid dividends.

Above you talked about giving your COO very specific tasks to follow rather than illustrating the desired outcome and goals and letting them get on with it - in the knowledge that either they might screw up and learn in the process or actually cover off things you hadn't thought of!

With the right culture your COO would never need such micro management instructions.

Nows the time to consider the culture of your organisation.

Here's my reading list much of which helped shape the framework for our organisational culture:

Growth Mindset - Carol Dweck
Mulitipliers - Liz Wiseman
Crucial Accountability - various contributors
Coaching for performance - John Whitmore

Good luck with the hire

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Thanks guys - both gave really good answers - where do you recommend as a go to place to start hiring?

@clickwork7 I thought I want someone with industry experience - but you might be right...

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If I was in your situation, I'd hire a burnt out associate from the M&A industry. Preferably female, as in my experience men are terrible at multi tasking.

- Shit hot at excel
- Super organized
- Comfortable at bossing analysts around
- Used to working long hours
- Can probably pick up marketing quick, as not actually involved in creative

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Where is a go to place to find a kickass COO?

Or a head hunter who knows this industry?

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Its hard to find the right person in AM world for being a COO. If they are good at all these things and have skills, they would do it all for themselves. I suggest you build someone fresh. Find fresh blood with potential, be a coach & build people to that level. And keep looking for more people, if you are lucky, you will find someone. Else you don't want to end up waiting for one, instead build one!

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Apso thanks for advice - I just teach them too well - so they go and make hundreds of k a month themselves (Case of my ex assistant) or they own a multi-million company now (case of my ex copywriter protege) or they retire young (case of my former designer guy who turned marketer and bought a house + couple of local businesses online and retired)

Plus it takes time.. and I'm not the most patient..

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Definitely looking for fresh blood with great potential would be an option. In case you consider on going on that option investing on that person by providing the right trainings and resources will pay back on your investment pretty fast.

Besides the 6WAMC that delivers all needed knowledge for someone who haven't ever heard of performance marketing, a PMP training will help a lot. I've had one of my ex colleagues delivering extreme quality based on knowledge acquired from this training (projects of $2-$5M budget).

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Wow Platinum thanks for that PMP recommendation - that's something my guy should know I think.

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Personally I think that's amazing and your hiring USP!

Hire talent, give them the skills, you get value while recognising they will eventually move on and you manage succession planning.

Rinse and repeat and enjoy the fact that you build a reputation as a "talent magnet". Hell, your post above makes me want to apply

Of course for a c level position you can build retention through share option schemes - don't know about your location but here in the UK there are authorised schemes that carry tax advantages - it will still cost you equity but you set conditions on growth targets to mitigate.

Finally don't underestimate the motivations of the majority of team members that place great value on security (of an employed position), acceptance and belonging (team dynamics, mission and achieving shared goals). There's a real feel good, non-financial satisfaction in nurturing your team members up Maslow's pyramid - or I'm just getting woolly in my old age!!

BTW In terms of recruitment process we:

- nail the job description
- try to avoid recruiters
- pay job boards for their CV search service to locate suitable candidates to invite for interview

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I'm qualified in PMP (PMI) and Prince2. 90% of the course is on paperwork and project documentation. Great for a "project manager" role where a lot of charts are required, but then you actually need to have someone to do the work also.

As another approach, I'd get them to go through the "Asian efficiency" course and be great at using omnifocus and Asana for delegation

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A COO needs to primarily have strong organiser/people skills, he does after all just deal with daily operations
and hire/fire/synchronise the teams of employees, skilled in their own profession.

If I was hiring a new one, I would try to find some local website development or outsourcing companies with a headcount of 50-100, then try to steal their COO or a senior project manager.
In Europe I'd offer a salary between 3-5 k EUR net (so 6-10k gross) / month, with some 1-2% bonus of current monthly profit (so if guy leaves, he loses bonus) rolling after a year or so, if goals met.

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Man, 2% bonus of profits makes no sense as it would mean he will get 30k+ a month on our operational months... and still is high overhead when things aren't running.
Or I'd consider that if he would be paid in % only.. then it's a different beast. But salary guy (safe) with fruits of risk, makes no sense.. ever.

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He is not getting it from your current business - if you need a COO, he should make your business that much more efficient and scalable that he pays for himself, obviously. So the 2%, or whatever performance bonus, is based on improvements he makes. He shouldn't freeroll your existing performance without him.

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Thanks. That makes sense in a way. Problem is, for example now... I am cleaning my platform that did 43 mil in sales in direct vsl to shopping cart process. During cleaning it makes next to nothing, we are moving to fresh everything. I know with him and without him I'm going to get it to a million a month quickly. Becuse I've been doing it all the time over that amount. Now, what I want him and I'm not even having problems is paying people who get what I couldn't without them. Even 50%... but to pay for something I can do, even 1% seems too much, if that makes sense.

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Yeah, I see what you mean. At the same time, I re-read your first post and this part alongside saying you don't wanna pay for performance makes me think you actually want something very different from a COO.

This sounds much more like a project manager of sorts. A COO is much more high level in the whole company and would certainly have both an impact and deserve some performance bonus, while the project manager is much more about juggling tasks for some team members and setting them in a flow.

A COO may have knowledge of how to do that but they would be wasted potential if you actually make them do that. Also there's this quote that you might like, which has a lot of merit - "Pay peanuts, get monkeys". If the general market offers for a COO are much better than you can offer, you won't get a good COO and you will think a COO doesn't make sense/doesn't deserve the money.

I'm not saying you necessarily need a COO, I'm mostly saying that I think you might have the wrong idea of what they are or should do.

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