Rule of 3

December 30, 2024: Writing a few blog posts while clients our on vacation.

If we haven't met yet, welcome! Shoot me message, would love to connect.

I have a Rule of 3 when building a business (and when buying suits).

When you are starting a business, you are happy to just have extra hands to do the work. Over time, you start selling work you know someone on your team can solve for. Usually one key person can do this work.

When that happens, you need to quickly scale out of that dependency. They have now have a stranglehold on you as a business owner. Start showing up late to client calls or missing deadlines but what can you do about it? You quite literally need them.

But now you found traction and selling even more work so that person gets burned out.

Do you stop selling work? Do you put up with poor performance?

Terrible position to be in.

This is where my Rule of 3 comes in.

Rule of 3: You need 3 of every key role in your business.

Do you do technical integration work? Then you need at least 3 technical integration resources.

Is your business outbound sales driven? Then you better get a few more BDRs to drive pipeline.

So why 3?

Preventing Key Man Risk: With 3 people in each critical position, your business isn't held hostage by the departure or absence of one individual.

Burnout Prevention: With 3 resources you can spread the work around a bit easier. With 2 specialized resources, if 1 goes on vacation then the other picks up the slack. With 2 specialized resources, if 1 quits then you’re back to being held hostage.

We just hit 3 truly technical integration resources and it’s given so much more breathing room for our team. Work is being spread around, more smiles, and more comfort for us to sell even more work.

Why not 4?

Well yes ideally you have more redundancy but 3 gives you the minimum comfort you need for stable operations.

Buy 3 suits if you are buying your first set of suits.

You’ll wear out 2 suits quicker than 3 suits.

What questions do you have?

I am still writing quite a lot but mostly on LinkedIn to grow my social following and on X to network. I do love writing these longer form posts.

The End

2024 2H is about building for me. If you’re building, shoot me a text so we can schedule something. 404-731-7814.

Go big!

- Nik Fuller