Building an Operations Function From Scratch

MTRX had reached the point where operations could no longer be run by feel.

Nobody owned the cross-pod operating system. Productivity standards, capacity forecasting, delay prevention, cost discipline, and operational reporting all sat with whoever noticed the problem first, which usually meant a founder.

The numbers lived across six tracking files with no single source of truth. Problems surfaced after they had already cost money.

The problem was already showing up in production. Editor output dropped from 6 to 4 concepts per week and nobody caught it in time. MTRX covered the gap with freelancer spend.

The growth target was 60+ people and 30+ brands, with a fifth pod launching on a planned date instead of a scramble. A fifth pod was already scheduled. Nobody could say how many people it needed.

The search brief

Finding an Experienced Agency Operator

MTRX needed someone in at least their second operations leadership seat.

The bar was 5+ years of operations leadership inside an agency or service business, with hands on capacity planning, forecasting, workforce modeling, and dashboard ownership.

They also needed to be numbers-native, comfortable inside the P&L, and willing to hold people accountable instead of being liked. MTRX already had someone internally who chased fires. This seat was for the person who prevents them.

The initial challenge was compensation. MTRX's proposed $100K budget sat below market for the level of operator they wanted. Comparable candidates were asking $140K to $200K+.

Resetting the compensation, then the profile

Constant Hire pushed back on the $100K budget using live comparables from the search itself.

One candidate in the process was at $200K+. Another was around $140K. Those two data points reset what MTRX expected to pay. The client agreed that $140K to $150K was reasonable for the right person.

When the US pool ran thin, Constant Hire opened the search internationally.

The hire came out of a fractional COO practice built around this exact problem, replacing founder-run execution with operating systems at marketing agencies and service businesses. Before that she spent eight years at a manufacturing group that went from 600 to 1,200 people, running a 12-person operations and customer management team through the growth. She had already built the kind of capacity model that sets hiring against workload ahead of demand, which is the gap MTRX had been covering with freelancer spend.

MTRX operates across GMT and EST. The hire is based in Serbia, an hour ahead of London and six ahead of New York, which covers the UK working day in full and the EST morning through mid-afternoon. Overlap stopped being an argument against hiring outside the US.

Testing How Candidates Would Actually Operate

Scenarios built from live incidents

MTRX built its interview scenarios out of problems it was still solving. Candidates had to work through the 6-to-4 concept drop and forecast staffing for a fifth pod that had not launched yet.

The format showed whether a candidate could design a system on the spot or only describe one they had inherited. Our side of the process was the profile and the comp. MTRX designed the interview.

Process

Seven candidates cleared our screen. All seven went to MTRX, and the founders took three rounds to work through them.

• 7 candidates interviewed
• 7 candidates submitted
• 3 interview rounds
• 2 founders involved in the decision
• 20 days to offer
• 1 finalist
• 1 offer accepted

Kickoff was April 30, 2026. The offer was accepted May 20, 2026, with a June 1 start.

The First Dedicated Operations Leader

MTRX hired its Head of Operations starting June 1, 2026. The role now owns capacity planning, forecasting, productivity standards, and cost reporting across all pods, and forecast staffing for a fifth pod that had not launched yet.

This is the first time operations at MTRX sits with someone other than a founder. The mandate is to catch the next 6-to-4 style output drop from a dashboard instead of a freelancer invoice, and to staff the fifth pod against a forecast rather than a scramble.

Positioning Highlight

Constant Hire took a $100K budget and made the case, with live comparables from inside the search, that the operator MTRX described costs $140K to $150K. The profile got tighter at the same time: second-seat ops leadership only, agency or service business only, numbers-native enough to work inside the P&L. When the domestic pool ran short of that bar, we opened the search internationally and found someone whose day job was already building operating systems for marketing agency founders.