I need a second me. Cheap. Fast.

You know that feeling when someone tells you their story and something inside you tightens because you've already been there?

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About a month ago, I had a conversation with a founder that I still can't stop thinking about. She told me that over the past few months, everything had started growing. Exploding. Clients were coming in, more and more projects, and all that effort was finally paying off. That moment you've been working your ass off for - and finally, it's happening. And then she says: "I'm drowning. I’m looking for someone to help me handle all of this."

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When she described who she was looking for, I smiled. Because she was describing herself. Literally, a second founder. Someone who understands all the context. An expert in her niche. Responsible. Independent. And preferably cheap. Even better, commission-based. And what I heard wasn't a complaint. I heard fear. Fear that she won't handle it. Fear that growth will stop tomorrow, but commitments are already made. Fear of hiring someone worse than you and having to redo their work. And at the same time, the realization that you can't do it alone anymore. Quite a cocktail. The kind that makes hands go cold.

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I'd heard all of this before. From myself.

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The trap I spent years in

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Honestly, in some ways I got lucky with my first hire. I had a partner who handled sales - the hardest part for me. I didn't have to split myself between finding clients and delivery. I could focus on the work. I had someone to share the fear and responsibility with. And he was more experienced than me, so I wasn't looking for a star. I just needed hands. Another person to do what I didn't have time to do. At least that's what I thought. And that's where I fell into a trap I didn't notice for years.

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You sit down in the evening, open an employee's project, look at it. Wrong layout. Not correct button behavior. Missed section. Only much later did I understand something that seems obvious now: they just don't have what's in my head, so that was really expected. They don't know why this particular thing needs to be done this particular way. They don't feel where the client expects something different. Explaining takes too long. It's easier to sit down and fix it yourself. So you do. Once. Again. Ten times. For a very long time, I honestly believed that maybe this was what management, leadership, and support looked like.

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If I hadn't had a partner taking sales off my plate, I would’ve been done. Completely. I would've decided that business was basically checking other people's work all day and quietly swearing to yourself at night. Only years and dozens of hires later, by then without a partner, did I start to understand that "hire hands and control everything yourself" simply doesn't scale. All your work becomes endless checking. Growth? Strategy? At that point, you'd be happy just to get one weekend to breathe.

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So I'm sitting there listening to this founder - alone, without a partner, with projects on fire - and I can see it. She's standing exactly where I once stood. Only even in tougher conditions. Fear that she won't manage. Fear she'll hire the wrong person. And behind all of that, the secret hope that someone will come in and immediately start doing things exactly like she does. And finally, she'll be able to breathe. I can still remember that feeling so clearly.

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What actually comes first

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So, I recorded a short Loom for her. Not about how to hire, but about what comes before hiring.

I think looking for a copy of yourself can easily turn into a waste of time and energy. Finding someone like that is almost impossible, and definitely won’t be cheap. And more importantly, I'm pretty sure you don't even need that person right now. Instead, take one specific part of what you do. Just one. And make it transferable. Ask yourself the question: Not "What kind of person should I hire?" But: "What exactly should stop needing me?" It took me years of checking other people's work to learn it.

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For that piece of work, write down what a good result looks like. What does someone need as input to get started without asking you questions every twenty minutes? Make an actual list. Put down: here are the decisions I usually make in these situations, and why. Here's what to do if the client doesn't reply or doesn't send the information you need. Not endless documentation. Not "if A, then B, unless C happens under condition D..." Just enough context so that a normal person - not a genius, not an expensive superstar, just a responsible person - can sit down and do the work.

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That piece can already become a real test task. Paid, of course. That's how we always did it at our agency. When people feel that you value their time and efforts, they work differently. And you immediately see how many questions they ask and what isn't clear to them. That's also feedback. Not only about them. It's feedback about you. About everything you thought was obvious but actually wasn't.

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She wrote to me later that this was exactly the direction she needed. "I'm definitely going to implement it." Will it work? Well, I don't know. The crazy weeks ahead will test it. But personally, after dozens of hires and years of being the eternal checker, this is the main thing I've learned:

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The first question isn't: "Who should I hire?"

It's: "What exactly should stop depending on me once this person is here?"

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Something to try this weekend:

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Take one task you do regularly that eats up your time. Not the hardest one. The most repetitive one. Write down three things:

What someone needs as input.

What "done well" looks like.

And one decision you usually make along the way without even thinking about it.

Even if you're not hiring right now, you'll see how ready that task really is to leave your hands. Or how much of it still exists only inside your head.

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I'm curious: when you were thinking about hiring, or when you actually hired someone, did you ever catch yourself hoping that a person would come in and you'd finally be able to breathe? That they'd figure it out themselves. Understand everything themselves. Know everything themselves. I did. Many times. And that moment of relief never came until I did the boring preparation work that there's never time for. Especially when everything is on fire.

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P.S. The first hire is always something special. Almost like your first business. So many years have passed, but it still feels fresh. And every time someone asks me about hiring, I still get a little nervous because I remember how many mistakes I made before I learned to ask the right question.