“I’m in talks with a senior talent manager and a big part of the appeal is the roster she currently manages. I know why I can’t get a guarantee she’ll bring people across – I write the same non-competes for my own staff. But I still need to protect my business financially.
How do other founders structure this so they’re not the ones left out of pocket?“
Good question, and worth saying: you’re already ahead of a lot of founders just by asking it this way. Plenty of people in your position skip straight to wanting the guarantee anyway, even when they know it’s not really theirs to ask for. You’ve clearly moved past that, so let’s get into the actual protection.
Start with how you think about the offer itself. It can be tempting to hedge by offering a lower base and hoping incentives make up the difference, but that usually backfires as you end up looking like you’re not backing the hire, and the best candidates simply go elsewhere for a stronger base. Pay properly for what she’d be worth to you even if not a single client came with her. That’s what actually gets you someone good in the first place.
Where the protection comes in is on top of that, not instead of it. A separate bonus structure tied to what actually happens over the first six to twelve months gives you upside without touching the base she’s being hired on. It rewards the outcome you want without making the offer itself feel conditional or half-hearted.
The other lever, and honestly the more useful one, is the conversation itself rather than the contract. Ask her directly what she thinks is realistic before you make the offer, not what sounds good in the room. Anyone experienced enough to be worth this hire will usually give you a straight, unglamorous answer, and that tells you more than any clause could.
The bit that’s genuinely hard to protect against is what happens after she joins. You can’t force relationships to move, and you can’t fully stop them either, if she’s good at her job. What you can do is make sure staying here is genuinely more appealing to her than leaving again in eighteen months to do this all over somewhere else – and pay her properly enough from day one that she’s got no early reason to look elsewhere while you wait to see what follows.
Hope this helps x
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