Founders: before your first people
How not to f*k up your first hires.
Who to bring in, how to choose them, and how to give them a proper chance of succeeding once they’re there.
Across eighteen years running and scaling companies and close to a thousand hires, I’ve made mistakes I’d really rather you didn’t have to repeat. This is a morning of the things I wish I’d known before my first few.
Who it’s for
You’ve launched something, or you’re about to. You’re doing most of it yourself, perhaps with a few freelancers, suppliers or friends helping along the way.
You can see that you’ll need people in the next few months. But who comes first? What should they take over? And how do you know whether someone who seems brilliant will actually be right for your business?
This morning is for founders approaching their first hires, and those with one or two people already who want to get the next stage right. You don’t need a vacancy ready. Bring the business you’re growing.
Why it matters
Your first hire comes into a business where so much still lives in your head: the standards, the priorities, the way you want things done.
It’s easy to hire someone you like before you’re clear on what you need. To look for one person who can somehow do everything. Or to find someone capable, then leave them guessing what good looks like.
Months later, you’re checking everything, redoing work and wondering whether you chose the wrong person.
We’ll look at how to avoid those traps before you commit: choosing the help your business actually needs, assessing people beyond a good conversation, and setting them up to contribute from the beginning.
What we’ll work through
Who you actually need first: an employee, a freelancer, a specialist or a right-hand person
What you’re hiring them to own, so you don’t advertise three jobs disguised as one
How to assess someone beyond chemistry, confidence and a convincing CV
How to approach pay and expectations before you make an offer
What they need from you in their first weeks (hint, its not a perfect onboarding process... it's much more simple!)
How to spot and address a mismatch early, rather than spending months hoping it will settle
Six seats, so every business in the room gets worked on, not just talked at. Bring the one people-thing that’s on your mind and we’ll use it.
How it will feel
Everything I know about growing companies I’ve learnt from inside them, and most of it was taught to me under pressure. I think that’s how most business education is written too, as if the reader were a machine that needed optimising, and it tends to leave us tighter than it found us. My work looks to the living world instead, because nature has been solving the problems of growth for rather longer than we have, and does it without panic. This morning is in that spirit. It’s work, held gently. I believe we learn more when we’re not bracing.
What you take home
Clarity on your next move, whatever stage you’re at, and one skill you’ll use in every working relationship from here on. And the Phyli Notes on First People, printed and numbered, one of six: eight pages on hiring, pay and the first weeks that you won’t find anywhere else, with a letter from me and a small signed piece.
The practical bit
Wednesday 25 November, 10:30 to 13:00, in a private space in Palma; the address comes with your confirmation. The seat covers the morning, the materials and something good to eat. Six seats; if they go, a waitlist opens. If you can’t make it, your seat is transferable to someone you choose, or refunded if the waitlist fills it. Otherwise it’s non-refundable.
About me
I’m Faye Pressly. I design companies for founders of beautiful brands: structure, roles, culture, decisions, rhythm and pay, drawn from the intelligence of living systems. I’ve spent the last two years writing the Phyli Founding Manuscript, twelve volumes on the inside of growing companies, arriving 2027. More at phyli.studio/faye