Free strategic advice

Hiring three people when revenue slows down sounds backwards, but it's not automatically wrong. The question is whether you're being strategic or just hoping things work out.

Here's what matters: Do you know your capacity ceiling? Not what you're doing now, but what you could actually handle at full efficiency. Look at your best months - what does peak performance look like? If you're realistic (say 80% of theoretical maximum), where does that put you? And where are you sitting right now? But capacity is only half the picture. What does your market actually look like? Is it growing or contracting? What's your share of it? What are your competitors doing - are they hiring or cutting? Understanding whether there's actually demand to capture matters just as much as knowing whether you can handle it. You might have the capacity to take on more work, but if the market's shrinking, those three new staff become expensive overhead. The other question is what you've actually hired for. Are these three people filling critical gaps that were holding you back? Or are they just more hands doing what you're already doing? There's a big difference between hiring a salesperson who can generate new revenue and hiring three more operators when you don't have enough work to keep them busy.

Here's what concerns me: You've pulled a lever, but you're not sure if it's the right one. That uncertainty is expensive when you're carrying payroll. Your financial position dictates how long you have to answer these questions and prove whether this was a good decision or not. If your cash flow is tight, you've got months to make this work. If you're in a strong position, you've got runway to get it right. Growth requires investment, but smart growth requires knowing your numbers first - capacity, margins, conversion rates, market opportunity, how long until new staff become profitable. Growth isn't a lucky hire, it's strategic.

What I'd want you to do is map this out properly. Get clear on your actual capacity versus current utilisation and your market position versus opportunity. Understand what each of these three people is meant to achieve and by when. If you can't articulate that clearly, you might need to have some difficult conversations before things get more complicated.

Being ambitious is good. Taking action is better than sitting still. If you need help mapping this out and getting clear on whether you've made the right call, that's exactly the kind of work we do.

Hold up. Before you hand over a chunk of cash to anyone promising to double your revenue, let's be clear on one thing: doubling revenue rather than profit can be the quickest way to sink the ship if you're not careful.

First question: Do you actually know what's working for your business right now? If most of your customers come through word of mouth and you're about to drop $50K on Facebook ads, you're potentially burning money. Do you know your current customer acquisition cost? Their lifetime value? Without these numbers, you're guessing - and an expensive agency won't fix that.

Second: Can you handle double the revenue? Sounds like a weird question, but I've seen businesses break under rapid growth. Do you have the systems, the people, the cash flow to deliver if this agency actually delivers on their promise? Growth that outpaces your operational capacity is a recipe for disappointed customers and burnt-out teams.

Third: What's the agency actually promising to do? "Double your revenue" is a nice headline, but how? Through what channels? Based on what assumptions about your market? Get specific. Get evidence. Get references you can actually call.
Here's the thing about marketing: its job isn't to double your revenue. Marketing exposes your business to potential customers and generates leads. It's the role of sales to capitalise on that marketing. You need both working together. Every industry and each business is unique - a business that relies on low margin, high volume might need to spend more in marketing to drive volume. If you're low volume and high margin, it's likely a more intimate relationship with your customer. I'd hope the marketing agency you're talking to is interested in understanding who you are, what your brand is about, how you make money and what an ideal customer looks like.

Here's what I'd actually do: Go through your existing customers and develop some personas. Which of them do you derive the most value from, both financially and for satisfaction? Where will you find more of them? Then run some small experiments, advertising in a variety of ways where that type of person spends their time. In parallel to this, perhaps run a small general online campaign and evaluate the two. Learn what resonates with your best customers before committing big money. If you need help working through this decision or testing what actually works for your business, we can help you figure that out before you commit to big agency dollars.