When your business is turning over around a million, you might have ten or a dozen people on your team. You’re all super-aware of what’s going on. You will work nights to get a big order out or prepare for a big pitch. You read each other’s minds and jump in to help. To some degree, you are all capable of doing each other’s jobs in a pinch.

North of this first million, and it starts to become important that you have specialists, and sometimes specialist teams. That means new management and new processes. Sometimes you will find there is an inner circle (the original team) and everyone else.

At this stage of growth, you begin to need more experienced staff to manage teams and bring in workflows and practices that they have seen work well elsewhere. In other words, you need more senior people.Except you can’t afford the really experienced ones yet. 

Up to the fi...