At a growing organization, hiring well is the single most important thing you can do. At this point, I’ve interviewed and helped bring in hundreds of people— more than the entirety of the company when I started! Those people have, in turn, gone on to bring in many more. If you had told me when I joined that I’d be one of the reasons why thousands of my coworkers are here today, I’d have thought you were crazy.

It’s between $1 million and $10 million that the team needs to focus on cash. Growth sucks cash, and since this is the first time the company will make a tenfold jump in size, the demands for cash will soar.

The key to affording higher wages (we’re talking frontline employees, not senior leadership) is a lower total wage cost as a percent of revenue.

For an excellent overview, read Geoff Smart and Randy Street’s book Who: The A Method for Hiring; to learn the details of the process, read Bradford D. Smart’s book Topgrading: The Proven Hiring and Promoting Method That Turbocharges Company Performance.

If you are creating a high-performing team and building for the future, you need to hire for potential as well as experience.