To incentivize faster, high-quality onboarding, offer trainers a bonus for accelerated timelines (e.g., training in two weeks vs. six). Couple this with a penalty: the trainer must fix any of the new trainee's mistakes for free for a set period, ensuring they don't sacrifice quality for speed.

An effective model for consultants is to build a core, talented team that works well together, then offer that entire unit as a "fractional team" to clients. This provides clients with a high-functioning, pre-vetted group without hiring overhead, while giving the entrepreneur project flexibility.

Resist hiring quickly after finding traction. Instead, 'hire painfully slowly' and assemble an initial 'MVP Crew' — a small, self-sufficient team with all skills needed to build, market, and sell the product end-to-end. This establishes a core DNA of speed and execution before scaling.

When hiring, prioritize a candidate's speed of learning over their initial experience. An inexperienced but rapidly improving employee will quickly surpass a more experienced but stagnant one. The key predictor of long-term value is not experience, but intelligence, defined as the rate of learning.

Rushing to implement a new strategy in a CPO role can be catastrophic. A structured 90-day plan prioritizes understanding nuance first. Spend the first 30 days on customer and team interviews, the next 30 drafting and aligning on strategy, and only begin executing changes in the final 30 days.

When deciding who to hire next, the most effective strategy is to identify the biggest pain point. Specifically, hire someone to take over the task that you, as the leader, are spending the most time on that you don't want to be doing. This is the key to unlocking your own productivity.

Before hiring a full-time specialist (e.g., for events or SEO), the existing team should first test and prove the channel's effectiveness. Hiring a dedicated owner for an unproven function is a high-risk bet. Validating the strategy first ensures the new hire is set up for success and the investment is justified.

A new hire's first project was planning a major event happening in three months. This trial-by-fire approach is an effective onboarding method, forcing rapid learning of company systems, team dynamics, and external vendor management, which quickly and effectively integrates the new person into the team.

Hiring external executives is risky because the best talent is rarely looking for a job. A better strategy is to promote hungry internal candidates, even if they seem underqualified, and support them with rented expertise from executive coaches and advisors.