Episode 80: The Superstar You Want to Hire Is Already on Your Team

Team & Operations

Nov 4

Written by David Hoos

"It's sometimes easier to go, 'I just need the next... Bring in the superstar.' The superstar's already on your team."

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TL;DR: Key Takeaways

Many owners are stuck because one person brings them every decision. The usual fix is to replace that person with an "A player."
Clint Williams coaches that person instead. In his first engagement, the owner saw a night and day difference within the first month.
People stop deciding for a reason. Usually someone shot them down once, and they learned to stay quiet and ask permission.
Hiring from outside costs more than the salary. A new person has to learn your team, your clients and your culture, and clients notice the change.
The person you'd replace already has years of history with your clients. You can't hand that over in a document.
Owners have their own block: "I can't let any of this go." Letting go means accepting the work may get done a little differently.
Test for today: who brings you the most questions? Ask them to bring three options and a pick next time, and see what happens.

Does This Sound Familiar?

Your day fills up with questions. Can we do this? Which one should I send? Is this okay with the client?

Most of them come from the same person. Someone good, who knows the clients and cares about the work. But they won't decide without you.

So you start to wonder if they're the problem. Maybe you need an A player. Someone who just handles it.

Clint Williams says look again. In his experience, that person is usually not the problem. They just learned, somewhere along the way, that deciding wasn't safe.

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Meet the Guest

Clint Williams is an advisor and coach to agency owners and the people they lean on most, like project managers and operations leads. He started as a graphic designer, moved into agency operations, and co-founded a digital agency in 2015.

He calls his work a hybrid of coaching and advising, and he works across pricing, positioning, pipeline, process and people.

Visit clintwilliams.co →

Episode Summary

1. Paying to leave

Clint co-founded a digital agency in January 2015 with three partners. For a couple of years it was a high. Then in 2017 one partner left, another had a family emergency, and they lost a big client.

By 2020 it was down to Clint and the friend who had first asked him to join. They were on track for their best year. Then the world shut down. Clint had two small kids at home and a lot going on, and he stepped away.

Here's the part he says nobody talks about. There was no big exit. "I actually owed my business partner my part of our debt. So to leave, I had to pay to leave my own business."

He said it out loud for the first time this spring, at a marketing conference. And people came up afterward to say the same thing had happened to them.

Watch this moment (3:13) →

2. Two layoffs, then a choice

2024 started well. Clint pitched a new line of business at a software agency and got the go-ahead. Three weeks later he was laid off. He took a business development job at a small agency, and six months later that role was cut too.

So he faced a choice. Keep "building someone else's dream," or do the thing he'd been planning in his head since he left his own agency. He chose to become "the person that I wish that I would have hired when I started my agency."

3. The owner who asked for something different

Clint started out advising agency owners on pricing, positioning and pipeline. Then, this past March, an owner asked for something new. She wanted him to coach her right-hand person, "so that they're not coming back to me all the time."

That person had been at the agency for years and loved it. But some past work trauma made it hard to own decisions. Clint checked in with the owner at 30, 60 and 75 days of a three-month engagement. "Within the first month there was a night and day difference."

And the owner got something back too. The way Clint describes it, it gives the owner "capacity in their brain to go work on the bigger pieces of the business instead of answering questions all day long."

This is the moment I'd point every agency owner to. We talk a lot about founder dependence as a sales problem or a delivery problem. Sometimes it's one person who was never told they're allowed to decide.

Watch this moment (7:10) →

4. Where the fear comes from

Clint's method starts by going backward. Where did the fear come from? Usually not the current job. "It's one that happened 5 years ago, 10 years ago." Someone spoke up and got shot down, or got in trouble.

After that, people go quiet. And the quiet turns into asking permission at every step. Instead of saying, "I see this problem. There's 3 ways we can solve it. Which one should I do?"

"It doesn't take but one time for someone to be unkind in a position of leadership for that to be carried with you for the rest of your life."

His other line I keep coming back to: "Advisors tell you what you need to do, and coaches question your answers." His work is a mix of both.

"They're not second string. They just haven't had the right training or maybe the right coaching."

5. The superstar is already on your team

When someone isn't performing, the usual answer is to find an A player. Clint asks owners to look at the bench first.

Think about what a new hire costs. They're not part of your culture. They don't know the team or the clients. You spend the same brain space, and maybe the same budget, on someone who may not fit. Meanwhile the person you have "loves the clients. He loves the culture."

And their history matters. In Clint's first engagement, the person had been there five years. "You can't just transfer that in a document."

Turnover also costs you with clients. It's a waterfall, he said. Clients notice new faces, fill in the gaps with worry, and start asking, "Are you stable? What's happening?"

6. The owner has to let go too

Owners have their own limiting belief: "I can't let any of this go. If I do, it'll fall through the cracks."

Clint's answer is to say the fear out loud first. Then accept that when you hand something to your director of operations, it may get done a little differently than you'd do it. Something might slip while everyone learns. That's okay.

He also thinks we're "scared to death to tell our clients the truth sometimes." But clients are human too. A quick, honest note that you're testing a new process usually builds more trust than keeping up appearances.

Notable Quotes

"The superstar's already on your team."
"So to leave, I had to pay to leave my own business."
"Within the first month there was a night and day difference."
"Advisors tell you what you need to do, and coaches question your answers."
"They're not second string. They just haven't had the right training or maybe the right coaching."