Session 6
Areas of Focus & Your Team
Culture is the cheat code. Who not how. The Mars Test. And why C-players will sink your company faster than any market can.
Founder Files
I tried to hire an operator at $2M. Wrong move. At that stage, the role is still mostly doing, and the company didn’t have the systems for someone to actually operate. The operator became a glorified project manager and we both ended up frustrated.
The second time, I waited until we had the systems in place. The operator I hired had something to operate. Same role title. Completely different outcome. Timing matters more than talent for this role.
What Are Your Areas of Focus?
I call the different functions of a business “Areas of Focus” or “hats.” Every founder wears too many of them. The first job here is to name them — because the areas you can’t name are the ones quietly hijacking your future growth.
Common Areas of Focus:
- Marketing / Sales / Brand
- Customer Service / Experience
- Innovation / R&D / Product
- Operations / Finance / Admin
- Leadership / Team / Culture
- Digital / Web / Analytics
The sweet spot is generally five to seven areas. Too many becomes unmanageable. Too few and important things get neglected.
Drucker's Big Three
If you want to keep it minimum-viable, start with Peter Drucker’s three:
- Marketing — how you create new customers
- Innovation — how you better serve those customers over tim
- Operations — how the business actually runs
Everything else is a sub-category of these. Start there, then expand.
Rate Each Area 1–10
Once you’ve named your Areas of Focus, score each one honestly: “How well is this functioning today?” Then for each area ask: “What has to happen to foster growth in this area?”
This single exercise is one of the most clarifying things you can do as a founder. It forces you to confront the areas you’re avoiding — usually the ones secretly capping your growth.
"Culture is, hands down, the cheat code to business. Build it with intention. Past 8 figures, your #1 task should be recruiting A-players, maintaining, and improving the culture."
Culture Is Your Superpower
Most founders treat culture as a hiring afterthought. That’s why most businesses plateau. Culture is the operating system that runs underneath every other system. If your culture is broken, the systems don’t matter — the team will execute them poorly, slowly, or not at all.
Culture isn’t a poster on the wall. It’s the behaviors you reward and the behaviors you tolerate. Define your core values, score people against them, and make every hire/fire decision through that lens.
Defining Core Values — The Mars Test
If you had to rebuild your company on Mars and could only take 10% of your team, who would you bring? Write down their traits, habits, and mindsets — the things that make them indispensable. That list becomes your pool of potential core values.
From there, combine and cut until you have 3–5 values. Those values become the DNA of your business. Every hire, every fire, every promotion, every quarterly review — judged against them.
Who, Not How
Stop asking “How do I get this done?” Start asking “Who can do this for me?”
Every time you stay stuck in the “how,” you trap yourself in $10/hour tasks. The right “who” collapses time, brings expertise you don’t have, and frees you to focus on the big bets only you can make. The right “who” beats the perfect “how” every time.
Know Your Weakness. Hire Their Strength.
You don’t need to be good at everything. You can’t be. The founder’s job is to be self-aware enough to know where you’re weak, and then go find the strongest person in that lane.
The magic of a great team isn’t a roomful of clones of you. It’s complementary strengths — your vision paired with their expertise. That’s how you build a company that outgrows you.
Only Hire A-Players. Fire C-Players Fast.
Yes, A-players are expensive. They’re worth every penny. Stop complaining about the salary and dish out the cash — that’s how you get to 8 figures.
The reverse is also true: C-players will run A-players off. The single fastest way to lose your best person is to make them work next to someone who doesn’t pull their weight. Your tolerance of mediocrity is a tax your A-players pay. They will leave.
"Failures are mine. Wins belong to the team. As CEO, everything is my fault. Bad quarter? My fault. Weak team? My fault. But when we win? That credit belongs to the team. My job is simply to build the arena where they can win."
Recruiting Is Marketing
The best operators have options. You don’t get to “post a job” and have them come. You have to sell them on why working for you is a better bet than the other ten offers in their inbox.
Treat recruiting like the marketing function it is. Tell your story. Show the mission. Make the offer compelling — pay, equity, autonomy, growth, culture. The same energy you put into ads to acquire customers, put into pipeline to acquire talent. Talent is the bigger ROI.
Autonomy Builds Ownership
Once you have A-players, get out of their way. Hand them outcomes, not tasks. Let them fail occasionally — that’s how they learn. Let them win — that’s how they stay.
If you can’t stop reaching in and touching their work, you don’t have a team problem. You have an identity addiction problem (go re-read Session 0).
When (and How) to Hire an Operator
Don’t do it too early. At $2M, the operator role is still mostly a job — there isn’t enough system for them to actually operate. You need to build the systems first, then bring in the operator to run them.
Rough rule: have your weekly cadence, your scorecard, your KPIs, your SOPs, and at least one fully delegated function before you hire an operator. Otherwise you’re paying a six-figure salary to a glorified project manager.
Borrowed Brilliance
Alex Hormozi · Acquisition.com
Acquisition vs. Operations Split
Hormozi splits the company brain in two: Acquisition (how money comes in: marketing, sales, offer) and Operations (how the work gets done: fulfillment, service, support). The two need different leaders, different metrics, and different mindsets. Trying to find one person who’s great at both is why most operator hires fail. Hire for the side that’s actually broken.
Build the Future Org Chart Now
Draw the org chart you’ll need 18 months from now. Then look at it. Who’s in each box? Half of them don’t exist yet — that’s fine. The point is to know who you’re hiring next, why, and what they’ll own.
An accurate future org chart turns hiring from a panic move into a planned move. Big difference.
The $10K Question
If your top A-player walked into your office tomorrow and quit because they were tired of working next to someone you should have already let go — what would you do, and why aren’t you doing it today?
Action Steps for Session 6:
- List your Areas of Focus (aim for 5–7).
- Rate each from 1–10. For each area below an 8, write: “What has to happen to foster growth here?”
- Run the Mars Test. Distill your top traits into 3–5 core values.
- Identify one C-player you’ve been tolerating. Decide your timeline to coach up or move out.
- Sketch your 18-month future org chart. Note which seats are empty.
- Add Areas of Focus, ratings, and your core values to your CEO Snapshot.
