Most founders build content teams by hiring silos: a YouTube person, a shorts person, a podcast editor. No coordination. The result? A "wonderful shitshow." The better path is hiring the content director first and letting them build the team.

We personally started with a first hire being content operations lead, and since then the rest of the team is owned and operated by them. We interface once and the strategy and work is propogated without us.

If you've read any of our articles about content operations you'll know them as a different name, but whether it's head of content, content director, content operations lead the role is the same. The head of the day to day of the content business unit.

Source: Interview with Caleb Ralston on Callum McDonnell's podcast. Caleb helped scale Hormozi's brand to 11.5M followers and has built content teams for major personal brands. His first hire when starting his own business was his content director, Trevor.

The hiring order for content teams isn't intuitive. You need videos, so you hire an editor. You need shorts, so you hire a shorts editor. You need a podcast, so you hire a podcast producer. Each hire solves an immediate problem.

Five years later, you have six people who don't talk to each other, contradicting strategies across platforms, and chaos behind the scenes. "At the highest levels of creators right now, this is happening," Caleb observed. "This is what we get hired to help with."

The Silo Problem

Most content operations are built as silos because that's how founders think about content. YouTube is a thing. Instagram is a thing. Podcasts are a thing. Each thing needs a person.

But content isn't a collection of independent things, it's a whole system and ideas become assets become formats become posts across platforms.

Without someone orchestrating, each person optimizes their silo and while your YouTube editor makes decisions that make sense for YouTube. The Instagram person makes decisions that make sense for Instagram. Nobody's thinking about how the pieces connect.

"None of them are coordinated together and it's just this wonderful shitshow."

The bigger the team gets, the worse it becomes. More people, more silos, more entropy. The founder becomes the bottleneck because they're the only one who sees the whole picture, but they don't have time to coordinate.

Content Director as First Hire

Caleb's approach (and one we back entirely based on our own experience): hire the content director first, before any creators.

"The best version is you hire the content director first that you believe in fully, trust fully, and want to build out your content team."

The content director isn't a senior editor who also manages. It's a different role entirely. Their job is to:

• Build the team (hiring, not just managing)
• Set the strategy (platform priorities, content pillars)
• Coordinate the system (how ideas flow to posts)
• Remove bottlenecks (so the founder isn't reviewing everything)
• Advocate for the team (creating an environment for best work)

When Caleb started his own business, Trevor was his first investment. Not an editor. Not a social media manager. The person who would build the content operation.

"The first month of me having my business, he joined the team. That was my first investment, not anything else. That is how important I think this is."

What Most People Do Instead

Most founders can't afford a content director as their first hire. So they start with what they need immediately: someone to edit the videos they're already filming.

That's reasonable. But the problem is that the pattern continues. Each new hire solves an immediate need. YouTube's growing, hire a YouTube person. Want to start a podcast, hire a podcast editor. Instagram's not performing, hire an Instagram specialist.

"What you do is you hire some YouTube characters over here, some short-form characters here, podcast person here, maybe a freelance copywriter. None of them are coordinated together."

By the time the founder realizes they need a content director, they've already built the silos. Bringing in a director now means untangling years of uncoordinated work. "If you do this for five years, it is a very very gnarly mess to untangle."

The Bottleneck You Don't Realize You're Creating

The other hidden cost of the silo approach: the founder becomes the permanent bottleneck.

Without a content director, all coordination flows through the founder. Questions get escalated. Decisions pile up. Content sits in review waiting for approval.

"Every single person listening right now that runs a creative team, you are the bottleneck and that is the worst thing in the world. If your team is like 'I can't do blank because so-and-so hasn't reviewed it yet.' Big problem."

Caleb's principle: "You as the talent should not be the friction point."

With a content director, the friction point moves. They become the person who coordinates, who answers questions, who makes decisions about execution. The founder stays involved in strategy without being involved in every piece of content.

"I got to a point where I didn't review any of the shorts. The talent that we were working for didn't review the shorts and I didn't either. I only reviewed long-form content."

What a Content Director Actually Does

The content director role is part strategist, part operator, part team builder:

Strategy: Sets platform priorities. Decides what formats to test. Figures out what content goes where. Manages the "Eye of Sauron" focus model.

Operations: Creates systems for idea flow. Manages the calendar. Coordinates between platforms. Ensures nothing falls through the cracks.

Team building: Hires creators. Develops their skills. Creates an environment where they can do their best work. Advocates for their needs.

Bottleneck removal: Takes decisions off the founder's plate. Becomes the knowledge hub for the content operation. Reviews content so the founder doesn't have to.

This isn't a senior editor with extra responsibilities. It's someone who thinks like an operator, not a creator.

When You Can't Afford a Content Director First

Most founders reading this can't afford to hire a content director before they have any content. That's reality.

The principle still applies: hire for coordination as early as possible.

Maybe your first few hires are creators. But your next hire should be someone who can coordinate those creators. Don't wait until you have six people and no system.

The longer you operate in silos, the harder the mess is to untangle. And the more you as the founder become the permanent bottleneck.

"As quickly as possible you want to hire that person to come in and clean up the mess. Because if you do this for five years, it is a very gnarly mess to untangle."

The Environment Question

Caleb learned something from Leila Hormozi that shaped how he thinks about the content director role:

"Your biggest goal when hiring somebody is not to motivate them. It's actually to get out of the way and not demotivate them. You need to steamroll everything around them and clear the way for them to do their thing."

The content director's job includes creating this environment for the creators. If the editor is constantly waiting for approvals, they're being demotivated. If the Instagram person doesn't know what the YouTube person is doing, they're being demotivated. If decisions take weeks, everyone's being demotivated.

"They don't have somebody who is on their behalf building an environment that allows them to do their best work. They're having to create that environment while also doing their best work. They're serving two functions and 99.9% of them are not good at that first one."

The content director builds the environment. The creators create.

The Payoff

When the structure is right, the results follow.

The founder stops being the bottleneck. Content ships faster because decisions happen faster. Quality improves because creators aren't context-switching between creating and coordinating.

And the creators themselves become better. Caleb describes building "gangster ninjas" by investing in people who can both create and strategize.

"If you are a great operator and you have a great opportunity, then you can continue to build something that excites them to be there and so there's just more firepower on your team."

The content director makes that possible. Without them, you have silos. With them, you have a system.