Who to hire between $5M and $50M.
If you are running a $5M to $50M company you are probably already in one of these. An expert, a system, a room, a course, a firm, a fractional hire, or AI. That is the right instinct. Past $5M the job stops fitting in one head. Each was built to fix a real problem, and not the same one.
The same pattern shows up in the owners Max interviews on his podcast. The strongest companies were not running just one of these. They were running more than one at once, and the best were running these three.
Knows your trade from the inside. Makes what you already do better.
Owners your size, once a month, who have carried the same weight.
One person inside the business, across all of it, who tells you what he thinks. This is the seat Max sits in.
Here is what each is built to do, when it is the right call, and what owners say afterward.
Industry experts and industry groups
The person or group that knows your trade from the inside. Benchmarks, margins, vendors, equipment, hiring norms, what the good operators in your category are doing this year. It makes the thing you already do better.
The right call when the gap is trade-specific. Your numbers are off against the category and you do not know why, or you are entering a piece of the market other operators already learned the hard way.
Go in knowing what they are for. They shine at the trade. Many stretch into coaching, consulting and facilitation, and that is not where they shine.
Operating system implementers
EOS, Scaling Up, Metronomics and the Great Game of Business install a repeatable rhythm: a scorecard, quarterly priorities, a weekly meeting that ends, and one name against every seat. The implementer runs the sessions and holds back on purpose, so the answers come from your team instead of from him.
The right call when your people are capable and the operating cadence is the mess. Nobody can name the numbers, meetings wander, last quarter's priorities went nowhere.
Go in knowing the implementer's job is the install. The rhythm holds only if you enforce it once he stops running the sessions. An implementer's own write-up puts it plainly: “for every business that successfully adopts EOS there are two who want to but abandoned it. Weekly meetings become monthly meetings. Scorecards fall by the wayside.” Owners also raise the pace. A sixty-person manufacturer paying about $80,000 a year: “We gave our implementer feedback about the pace around the six-month mark. Nothing actually changed.”
Peer groups (Vistage, EO, YPO, TAB, C12)
A confidential monthly room of owners running companies of a similar size, led by a chair. What you get depends on the room. Vistage groups and TAB boards give advice, and members put real numbers on the table. EO Forum runs the opposite rule: experience only, no advice, so members tell you what happened to them and you draw the conclusion yourself.
The right call when the problem is isolation. You have no one to say it out loud to, and you want people who have been through the size you are entering. Some of Max's clients are in EO, YPO or Vistage while they work with him, because a peer room is a different kind of support.
Go in knowing four things owners raise.
Cost: “$12K to $15K is a meaningful expense that gets cut when business gets hard,” and “the most common failure mode isn't a bad group but a $16,500 subscription used seven times.”
Cadence: monthly means “your urgent question waits up to four weeks for the room.”
Chairs vary: “it wasn't apparent that Chairs had any qualifications or training, that it was something they did in their retirement.”
And read the exit terms before you sign: “they make you stay at extra 90 days at $1700 per month AFTER you tell them you want to leave.”
Courses and masterminds
This is where most owners meet a good framework, and where an unfamiliar skill gets learned fast and cheap.
The right call when you can name the specific skill you are missing.
Go in knowing at this size the gap is usually not knowledge. Two owners: “save your 8k and utilise this reddit, 95% of it will likely be the same info someone would give you for 8k,” and “programs where the curriculum is generic enough to apply to any business, which means none of it actually fits yours.”
Consulting firms
Analysis on a bounded question. They study it, deliver the answer, and hand it back.
The right call when the question has a defined scope: pricing, a market entry, make or buy, a valuation, a systems selection. One owner: “Consultants are worth their weight in gold and a very intelligent investment IF (that's a big if) they are good.”
Go in knowing the deliverable is a document. The decisions it triggers happen after they leave, and those are yours.
A fractional COO or CFO
One senior function, part time, in the business more days a month than any advisor.
The right call when the gap is a seat and you can name it. Nobody owns cash and forecasting. Nobody owns operations.
Go in knowing a fractional hire is staff. They build and run their function well. They are not positioned across the whole business, and they report to you, so telling you the strategy is wrong is not their job.
AI as a sounding board
Fast, cheap, available any hour. It drafts, structures, compares options, and gives you a competent second read on anything you can describe. One owner: “I could get half of this done with AI over paying for this.”
The right call when you want to think faster and start from a draft instead of a blank page.
Go in knowing what it does not do. It will not push back: “ChatGPT will never tell you your idea is boring, a real person does it in four seconds.” It only answers the questions you knew to ask. And it cannot hold you to anything. It also moves the bottleneck without removing it: “every decision still routes through me, just now at higher volume.”
If you are looking at a system, decide before you install
A full install runs about three years and somewhere between $80,000 and $120,000. It is a good buy for the right company. The structural point is the simple one: the implementer is paid to install, so he is not the neutral party on whether you should, or on which system. Before you sign a three-year commitment, a second read from someone who is not paid to install one is a reasonable use of fifteen minutes.
Where Max fits
Of the three seats, Max Kozlovsky is the strategic partner. He sits next to the owner, across the whole business. He is certified in Scaling Up, Metronomics and Exponential Organizations, and works with the Great Game of Business and the principles behind EOS. He installs none of them whole. He takes the parts that fit the company in front of him and puts them in at the right time. He has run companies himself, and has sat with owners at this point for seventeen years.
For most owners he takes the place of an implementer or facilitator. Some keep both. One of Ben Hubbard's companies runs on EOS, and Max still works with Ben on strategy and on Ben himself.
Go in knowing he is one person, not a room, and not the industry expert. He does not pretend to be.
“You're the one person who gives me the space.”
Harmony Brownwood, Greenworks Inspections
If you can only fund one seat
If the gap is the trade, fund the expert. If it is isolation, fund the room. If nobody near you will check your thinking before you act on it, that is the strategic partner's seat. Max builds the operation so it runs without the owner, and puts AI to work inside it. If you cannot tell which one is empty, text Max at (210) 880-5690. That is what the fifteen minutes are for.
What is the difference between a business coach and a consultant?
A consultant is hired for a bounded project, studies it, delivers an answer and leaves. A coach or advisor stays through the decisions that follow. Owners hire a consultant for a question and an advisor for what comes after it.
Is Vistage worth it?
It is worth it when isolation is your actual problem and you will use the room every month. Owners who leave usually cite three things: a chair who was not qualified, a monthly cadence that made urgent questions wait four weeks, and exit terms they did not read.
EOS or Scaling Up, which should I install?
EOS is simpler and installs one clear cadence fast. Scaling Up carries more strategy and financial depth and asks more of the leadership team. Either one only works if you enforce the rhythm once the implementer stops running the sessions.
That is the map. One seat is probably empty.
This page is written to be forwarded. If you are about to sign something, or you have been in one of these and it did not take, text Max one line about what you are looking at. He tells you which seat is empty, even when it is not his.
He reads it himself and texts or calls back, typically the same day, or early the next. Nothing to prepare. He asks the questions.