When to Hire Your First Person in Your Coaching Business: The Ultimate Guide

As a coach, you started your business with a passion for helping others transform their lives. But as your client roster grows, you may find yourself drowning in administrative tasks, content creation, and sales calls—leaving less time for your actual coaching work and strategic growth. The question becomes not if you should hire someone, but when. The short answer? As soon as possible. In this guide, I'll share exactly when and how to make your first hire to scale your coaching business effectively.

The CEO Mindset: Your Primary Role as a Business Owner

Before diving into hiring timelines, it's essential to understand your true role as the CEO of your coaching business. As I've learned from working with high-ticket offers generating over a million dollars per month, a CEO's role is twofold:

1. Create and communicate vision - Repeatedly articulate your mission and vision to your team and audience
2. Recruit, hire, and retain top talent - Build a team that can execute on your vision

Most coaches get stuck in day-to-day operations, spending countless hours on tasks that don't directly generate revenue. This misalignment prevents you from fulfilling your primary CEO responsibilities and limits your business growth.

When you're handling everything from bookkeeping to content editing to sales calls, you're not operating as a CEO—you're working as an employee in your own business. This approach might work initially, but it creates a hard ceiling on your growth and income potential.

Tasks to Outsource First: Focus on Revenue-Generating Activities

The key to successful hiring is identifying which tasks to outsource first. Based on my experience training numerous sales teams and closers, here are the primary functions you should consider delegating as quickly as possible:

Administrative Tasks

• Email management
• Phone calls and scheduling
• Bookkeeping and financial tracking
• Basic customer service

Content Production

• Video and audio editing
• Social media management
• Content repurposing
• Graphic design

Sales Functions

• Lead generation
• Appointment setting
• Sales calls (eventually)

The guiding principle is simple: Delegate or automate everything that doesn't directly help you make money. This approach allows you to focus your energy on revenue-generating activities—the lifeblood of your coaching business.

Many coaches make the critical mistake of focusing too much on perfecting their backend systems while their business suffers from lack of revenue. Instead, prioritize making money first, and the rest will fall into place as you can afford to build out your team and systems.

The Financial Milestones: When You Can Afford Your First Hire

Let's talk specific numbers. When is the right time financially to bring on your first team member? Based on industry standards and my experience helping coaches scale:

For a Sales Setter

A full-time setter typically aims to earn $4,000-$6,000 per month. If you're paying a 10% commission on closed deals, you'll need to be generating approximately $40,000-$60,000 in monthly revenue to support this position comfortably.

However, you don't necessarily need to wait until you reach this revenue level. You can bring someone on earlier by:

1. Creating a compelling vision that allows them to grow with you
2. Setting clear expectations about the ramp-up period
3. Providing a roadmap showing how you'll scale together
4. Being transparent about the current state of your business

The key is consistent lead generation. Your setter needs a steady flow of qualified prospects to schedule calls with, or they'll quickly become discouraged and leave. This is why many coaches lose their first setters—they fail to create a system that generates enough leads to keep their setter productive and earning.

Building for Success: How to Structure Your First Hire

When bringing on your first team member, particularly a setter or closer, clear expectations and systems are critical. Here's how to set them up for success:

Clear Expectations

• Outline specific performance metrics
• Define exactly what success looks like
• Create realistic revenue projections
• Set appropriate timelines for results

Comprehensive Onboarding

• Provide detailed product knowledge
• Establish consistent communication channels
• Create scripts and frameworks for calls
• Implement tracking systems for accountability

Lead Generation Pipeline

• Ensure consistent lead flow
• Define lead quality standards
• Create lead nurturing processes
• Track conversion metrics at each stage

When you lose team members, particularly in sales roles, it's often because you haven't set clear expectations or provided the resources they need to succeed. By creating a structured onboarding process and ensuring a steady flow of quality leads, you dramatically increase your chances of retention and success.

Conclusion: Take Action Now to Scale Your Coaching Business

The most successful coaching businesses understand that hiring is not an expense—it's an investment in scaling your impact and income. By delegating lower-value tasks and focusing exclusively on revenue-generating activities, you position your business for exponential rather than linear growth.

Remember the two primary functions of a CEO:

1. Communicate your vision repeatedly
2. Hire and retain top talent

Everything else can and should be delegated as soon as your finances allow—and sometimes even sooner with the right structure and expectations.

The coaches who struggle are those who refuse to let go of control, who try to do everything themselves, and who focus on perfecting systems rather than generating revenue. Don't make these common mistakes. Start planning your first hire today, even if you're not quite ready financially. Having a clear hiring strategy will motivate you to reach the revenue goals necessary to bring on support.

Your coaching business deserves to scale, and you deserve to operate as the CEO rather than wearing every hat in your business. The sooner you make your first strategic hire, the sooner you'll experience the freedom and growth you started your business to achieve.

Ready to hire your first team member? I've created a free comprehensive training resource that includes everything you need: trackers, scorecards, playbooks, scripts, and even welcome email templates to onboard your first setter or closer successfully. 

If you'd like more personalized guidance on building your high-performance sales team, book a call with me using the link below. Let's work together to scale your coaching business to the next level.

Fight Hard!