First: Apologies. When I started this blog in January I planned on a post every week. That lasted through to March. Then life got in the way (as it often does) and this blog fell off the priority list. Part of the problem was with my ambition on the type of content I wanted to share: The ‘Chapters’ for the book are all pretty meaty and rather than put up something half-thought through I just haven’t put up anything at all.

Second: My plan is to get back to the once a week blog post. I’ve come to accept that that will mean many of the posts will not be book chapters. Instead I will put out some form of content that will at least be helpful. I often find myself putting something about marketing or business in writing to friends or colleagues. My new plan is to just share that correspondence publicly here in weeks when I don’t have a new chapter to share.

Third: In the three months that I have slacked off in content generation I have managed to significantly grow my Twitter presence. I’ve grown my following from ~150 to over 4000 today. Most of my followers are marketing professionals themselves. I share a little of how I did this on my updated Twitter Follow-back page.

Finally: Here is my short post this week based on a conversation with the CEO/founder of ZendyBeauty.

ZendyBeauty is a start-up building “Priceline for Elective Surgery”. Basically by giving up exact choice on your provider and specific time of day of your appointment they will get you dramatic discounts on things like Liposuction or Botox. They have build a solid business and now they want to scale and they believe they need marketing help to do it.

These guys did it right. They started by building a product and testing it to make sure customer demand existed (in their case on both sides – the patients and the doctors). They refined their model until they got something that they know worked. They kept their costs low while this was happening, but now they are readying the ‘spend money to make money’. The problem is the skill set they have in house is all product and no demand generation.

This issue is common for start-ups that get to this stage. Rarely do you want a marketer on your team early on (unless they have other skill sets). But then you desperately need one and you don’t know how to find the right person.

The next problem you have is that, since it’s your first marketing person you need someone who can do everything. But you already have the core leadership team and can’t afford to bring in someone very senior at this stage (since you haven’t done any marketing to scale your business yet). It’s a bit of a chicken and an egg problem.

Here was my proposed solution:

Most of the time when you are looking to hire someone you have a total cash comp in mind that you are willing to pay. You also want the world (I love reading job descriptions where they are asking for the skill set of an SVP and for job titles like Specialist or Manager with ‘competitive compensation; of up to $60K). For any given compensation level you will have to choose what you want more of and what you are willing to accept less of (if you cant choose you can always hope to get lucky low-balling someone or you can choose to pay more).

Let’s assume, since you are a start-up, that you can’t pay more. Now you need to decide where you are willing to compromise. I like to think of any potential hire as fitting into one of three stereotypes:

1. The IQ-Jock
2. The All Round Player
3. The Specialist

The IQ-Jock is someone who has limited to zero experience in the role you are looking to hire for. But they have potential. They are really smart. Maybe they can learn to do the job?

The opposite of the IQ-Jock is the All Round Player. This is someone with experience doing everything you need. They know how to do social media marketing, and they can build your Google Adwords account, and they know the basics of content marketing. Oh and they’ve run email programs and done a little design and brand work. And PR. And television buying and… Basically they are a dream. The problem is that if they can really do all that stuff well they should be a CMO making a lot more than your start-up can afford. In practice they have touched on all those areas but they aren’t super skilled in any of them. It’s just not possible. There is too much to know.

The third type of hire is The Specialist. The Specialist has had a focused career in marketing. They have only really done Google AdWords or they have only done Social Media or they have only done Content Marketing. If you are lucky though they have been at an organization where they were sitting next to someone who did some other type of marketing. Since they have been in the space for some period of time they hopefully know enough to be dangerous in their non-specialty areas. But they definitely don’t meet half the criteria on they job description you wrote.

Most companies for most roles end up hiring the All Round Player. The ARP is the only one who actually checks the boxes on your laundry list of a job description. The Specialist can do some of it and the IQ-Jock really can’t prove she can do any of it.

Let me make a case of our two under-appreciated potential hires:

I like hiring IQ-Jocks a lot. You get less experience, but instead you get a lot more intelligence. The draw-back is you need to invest in training them and getting them up to speed. The advantage is once they are up to speed they should be able to figure a lot of things out on their own and take your training and run with it. The problem with IQ Jocks in this specific situation is you have no one else in marketing to teach them the basics. It could still work (you get them signed up with online training programs and count on their diligence to learn it all on the job), but it’s super risky. And your start-up has enough risk already. That said, if a founder has a strong marketing background then IQ-jocks can be a great “second marketing person”

I think in this case I would strongly argue for The Specialist. First, figure out what type of marketing you need the most. Then hire someone who is a specialist in that area. But here is the pitch: You hire them to blow away the area you need most, but they get the opportunity to do all those other marketing things they have seen but haven’t had a chance to do. It’s a great deal for them to develop their career and prove themselves. And because it’s a great deal for them you can get them at a discount. You should be able to pay them parity to what they are currently earning doing one activity and get them to deliver across your whole portfolio. And they have proven themselves to be an expert in a  specific area, so you know there is at least a basic level of competence.

Disagree? Other ideas on how you can hire for the first marketing role? I would love your comments below.