Podcast: How to Hire A-Players Who Actually Grow Your Business
If you're staffing up a lean e-commerce team and quietly hoping you can develop a mediocre hire into something better, this episode will make you rethink that plan.
In this episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair sits down with Agustin Morrone — CEO and co-founder of Vintti, a staffing firm serving over 40 US e-commerce and finance teams — to break down why hiring strong talent might be the most underrated profitability lever in your business. They dig into Jon's framework for grading talent in financial terms: A players make you money, B players cost you time, C players cost you both. Agustin lays out what actually defines an A player — autonomy, urgency, and business acumen — and why "hire fast, fire faster" is only half right. They also get into a practical system for deciding whether a borderline B player is worth developing, using effort KPIs as a leading indicator before the results show up.
If you're building or rebuilding your team this year and want a real framework for who to hire, who to cut, and who's worth investing in, this one's for you.
Episode Links
Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/
Agustín Morrone - https://www.linkedin.com/in/agustin-morrone/
Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/
Key Takeaways
A players make you money, B players cost you time to manage, and C players cost you both time and money.
You can't define the A player you need until you first design the seat, which is the specific responsibilities and accountability the role requires.
"Hire fast, fire faster" is dangerous advice without a proper process — the real mistake is hiring reactively just to solve a problem.
Meet Agustín Morrone
Agustín Morrone is the CEO and co-founder of Vintti. After years of watching US founders struggle with hiring, long timelines, rising salaries, roles that don't move the business forward, he built Vintti to help them scale with high-retention, culturally aligned teams across LATAM.
Transcript
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00:39 Introduction to A Players and Business Growth
03:15 Defining A Players: Characteristics and Importance
05:47 The Role of Culture in Hiring A Players
08:24 The Impact of A, B, and C Players on Business
10:47 Hiring Strategies: Avoiding Common Mistakes
13:18 Final Thoughts on Building a High-Performance Team
Jon Blair (00:39)
Alright, hey everyone, excited to be back for another episode. I've got my pal CEO and co-founder, Vintti Agustin Morrone. Agustin, what's happening, man?
Agustin Morrone (00:51)
Hi Jon, how are you? Happy to be here.
Jon Blair (00:54)
Yeah, so for those of you who don't know Agustin, he runs a staffing firm called Vintti. Free to Go CFO works with them. We actually co-hosted a dinner event with the local Austin e-comm community and our clients a couple months ago. Agustin gave a really awesome talk about hiring A players. And so today I kind of wanted to continue that conversation, also kind of see where things go. But the whole reason I want to have Agustin back on is because
When we think about scaling an e-commerce brand in 2026, one of the big themes that I'm seeing play out with our clients is that everyone is trying to run their business with a lean, high-performance team. And I'm seeing time and time again that the key, the secret to profitability that not enough people are talking about is hiring really strong talent. And a player can drive profitability in your business far more
than a B player or a C player. And so today, we're gonna get into talking about that more. So Agustin, before we dive into this conversation, can you give everyone a brief background of who you are and what Vintti does?
Agustin Morrone (02:07)
Amazing. Thank you very much, Jon. So my name is Agustin, CEO and co-founder of Vintti. I have a background in business. I have been all my life in sales and I started Vintti because I was selling some SaaS software, financial SaaS software to US companies while I was living in Barcelona. And one of the things that every CFO or people related to the finance team was requesting is, hey, I need also to hire.
someone could you recommend anyone because all the here in the US is very hard to find good A players that are not super super expensive right and I said they are this is must be a great opportunity because I'm from Argentina have a lot of contacts there and I start connecting those points and I realized that hey we can do a business here right so I jump out from my position at sales at that company and I started Vintti three four years ago
And it has been crazy. We are now a team of plus 30 serving more than 40, I think it's 43, 44 clients all in the US. So it's been pretty intense. And we are looking forward to this 2026 that it's been challenging in terms of growth. And we are dealing with that problem that you are mentioning, finding A players to us also, right? So yeah, that's a bit of us.
Jon Blair (03:36)
I'm smiling because it's interesting how much of a similar journey Free to Grow CFO has been on. We started four years ago. We have today 47 clients and about 25 team members. And so we're in different businesses, right, but overlapping worlds. We use Vintti for a big part of our recruiting our team. so before, really what I wanna dive into next is this concept of an A player.
Agustin Morrone (03:37)
Okay.
Jon Blair (04:06)
You gave a really great talk at our shared dinner a couple months ago about A players. In your words, what is an A player and why is it so valuable to understand how to define this type of individual when you're building a team for your business?
Agustin Morrone (04:27)
For me, the first thing is the player depends a lot on the stage you are and the position you are looking for. Because one thing is the type of people that you need when you're going, when you're starting a business and those first hires, and then the people that you need to scale that business when you have already a proven business, a profitable business, and then, okay, I have to go to the next stage and go hyper growth and really build a huge company.
Despite the different technicalities or things that you may need, I think that someone, an A player is someone that has a lot of autonomy, someone that you can delegate and you can trust that things are gonna be done, or that they are gonna bring you the problems to solve it together. But there are people that are really managing what is going on, and they really understand and they have control over the situation. They have this sense of urgency.
something that is super important in young companies, A-players generally understand that things should be done as soon as possible, right? And they are on the things, on the topics, they want to solve it as soon as they can, right? I think that another thing related to an A-player is they are intelligent. They are not people that...
they are not like Einstein's obviously, but there are people that they think, they have business acumen, they have criteria to make decisions. And this is related to autonomy. So I think those three things are really important and start building this character of an A player that you need in your team.
Jon Blair (06:16)
Yeah, there's a couple things I wrote down as you were talking. First is, it starts with what I call designing the seat, or some people call that the position, right? You don't just recruit an A player, you first figure out what is the seat that you need within your organizational design to drive forward the business, and then you go find an A player.
Agustin Morrone (06:26)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (06:42)
to fill that seat. right? You can't define what you need out of an A player if you don't know what they're going to be responsible for and accountable for. And when I think about this from the perspective of scaling a business, you mentioned something about like when you're looking for A players, looking for someone to help you scale the business. What I think about is what are the ceilings
that your business is running up against, the constraints that are holding you back, the goals that you have defined that you're trying to achieve or create within the business. And what I find as Ecom brands are scaling is what got them to a certain level of growth from a team standpoint is not necessarily what gets them through that ceiling into the next level of growth. But the point that I'm making is
You can't define an A player without first defining what are you trying to get the business to achieve. Because you then pair up looking for that A player with those needs. So one thing I wanna ask you is like, when you guys are recruiting business or you're going out and helping brands and other professionals find talent all the time, what are some of the things that you ask
your clients to come to you with information, vision of what they're looking for. What do they need to bring to the table to make sure that you guys at Vintti are successful in defining what an A player looks like for that position.
Agustin Morrone (08:19)
For me, are two groups of qualities that we look for. The first one is the technical qualities, obviously. So someone in sales needs to know how to sell or to know the industry or whatever. So those are the easy things because they more objective. But then the second group, and it's where we put a lot of effort, is the culture. And the culture Because, an A player - obviously, Good talent is good wherever you put them.
it doesn't matter, they have this inner force that will move them forward. But there are certain positions and certain organizations and certain moments of those organizations that they will shine most because they are more comfortable with the situation. So that's why It's very important to define the culture and the moment where that company is. For example, one of the things that we do is in our process,
We obviously request a job description, trying to know what you're looking at, et cetera. But then we do like a deep dive and you are aware of this, where we try to interview our client to understand, okay, which are the things that you value in someone? Which are the values of your company? Because we will go out there in the market and try to find someone that fits that culture for two reasons. First, the person, is gonna perform better,
in a culture where they fit. And that leads to second point, which is they will last longer. And the impact that these people will generate is huge compared to someone that does not fit with the culture. Right. And at the end, this is a business decision for us, because if I can allocate someone that fits your culture and performs good, you're going to come back. Right. So understanding the culture of our clients is one of the most important things and tasks that our recruiters have. That's super, super important.
Jon Blair (10:17)
Yeah, it's interesting, so like some of the ways that I like to think about it, and this is kind of a mixture of different frameworks that I've read about and learned about over the years of growing businesses, There's passion, there's proficiency or technical competency, and then there's culture fit. When you have someone that you put in a position that they're highly passionate about, they're highly proficient at, and then you put them in a place where they fit in with the culture,
It's like this explosion of value. You can be missing one of those three things, passion, proficiency, culture, and someone can still perform decently well. But if you want someone to create value and stay for a long time, when you have all three of those things, passion, proficiency, and culture, that's when you start getting kind of this snowball effect of, you know, growing value over time and also fulfillment on
Agustin Morrone (11:16)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (11:17)
fulfillment in the work and it becomes kind of self motivating for the employee. I want to ask you, this is making me think of something and I think you talked a little bit about this at the talk that you gave at our dinner a couple months ago. But you know, there's A players, B players, C players. I don't go below C because we just shouldn't even be talking about D or F, right? I like to think about if we kind of put some simple kind of rules to it.
Agustin Morrone (11:40)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (11:46)
A players make you money, B players cost you time in managing, and then C players, they cost you time and money, right? What are your thoughts on the difference between maybe B and C players versus A and how they impact the organization?
Agustin Morrone (12:05)
I mean, there is a huge discussion around this, but for me, C players are a hiring mistake, 100%. If you hire a C player, you have to just try to get that person off the organization as soon as possible because they are people that they drive the culture down. They push you far away from your objectives. So I agree that.
Those are people that you don't want on the team. They are not aligned with the culture. They are not good technically. They are a cost from whatever perspective. And for me, the energy, yes, the cost economically, yes, but again, going back to the culture, these are people that are gonna lower the bar of the rest of the team. And generally what I have seen is A players, want to work with A players. And when they see that you're hiring a C player,
or perhaps a B player, and then you maintain that person, they get demotivated. So you got, you don't, you're not only are maintaining someone is not good, you are like pushing away the good people because the good people want to work with good people because that's what will make them better also, right? So the first thing is C players, try avoid them as much as you can. Then the comparison between B player and A player.
It's very difficult for me. I mean you realize when you have an A player but The problem with B players is that they perform good sometimes Right, but in terms of the culture and of setting the bar and the expectations for the rest of the team You're gonna How to say like commit to an average performance and when you are building a company I don't know we are building Vintti. Vintti is in the staffing industry
The competition here is fierce. Entry barriers to staffing are super low. are staffing agencies popping up like nothing. So you have to compete a lot, a lot, in pricing, in quality, in service level. So you cannot afford having someone that is not pushing the bar higher. And if you settle with that, you are condemning your company to just be average and in an industry where you are competing like crazy, like most of the industries.
Agustin Morrone (14:30)
I mean, you are getting into a dangerous position, right? So I'm...
Jon Blair (14:33)
Yeah, so I couldn't agree more. I just recently finished reading this book that was really, I run our business on a framework called EOS. That's what I ran my, the brand that I helped start Guardian Bikes on. It's a framework for thinking about, it's a business operating system. And one of the components of EOS is the people component, right? And I just finished reading, yeah, Traction, so.
Agustin Morrone (15:01)
I have them all here.
Jon Blair (15:03)
I just got done reading the management, the book written by Gino Wickman. It's called How to Be a Great Boss. It's the EOS People frameworks, right? And he starts the book by saying this, but he also talks about, he says the same thing in traction, but that in a world of global competition, right, there are very few competitive advantages. One of the few competitive advantages left is your team.
Agustin Morrone (15:07)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (15:32)
It's your people. And luckily, the people component of business is so hard, even though there's fierce competition, most of your competition is managing people poorly. So if you can be the one in your industry that manages people well, regardless of how quality your service is, or your pricing, it ends up being, it actually ends up being the driving force that drives quality.
and even drives your ability to maybe raise prices compared to your competition. It really is the last competitive advantage left in a largely free market economy. So this brings me to my point about B players. When I wrote down A players make you money, B players cost you time to manage them. C players cost you time and money. The B players, the trap is
Do you or the question, which can be a trap, I was talking to my leadership team about this the other day, said, hey guys, we've got some people on the team that we can develop into A players. They fit the culture, they're pretty good, right? But my question to us is should we spend the time developing them? And I gotta tell you, it's not an easy question to answer. It's not straightforward. And you feel at times like,
it's so desperate to develop people and we have a heart to develop people as well, right? But when you're growing and you're scaling, it also is a time commitment. Do you have any personal thoughts or advice on like thinking through whether you should, how much leadership or management talent should go into developing someone?
Agustin Morrone (17:25)
For me, I'm going to add something which complicates the equation a bit more, which is generally in small teams, there is a personal or relational component that makes the decision even harder, right? Because generally, with C players it's easy because you think, I mean, they don't fit, so it's easy. B players, perhaps they fit the culture, you have a good relationship, you have a good time. The problem is, you need more from them.
Jon Blair (17:40)
Yeah, for sure.
Agustin Morrone (17:55)
For me, at least what we do at Vintti and what we have recommended to some clients is we try to have two types of KPIs. Obviously the KPIs of results. For example, in sales, in a VDR team, the KPIs is how many SQLs have you booked? That's objective, simple, and that's performance 100%. Then we have other KPIs which are the effort KPIs.
that you are doing that show me that you are putting the time and that you are putting all on your own from you to really push the bar higher, right? Perhaps we are not getting to the results yet, but if I see that those metrics of effort that are in the right place and we are getting into the objective of putting the time, putting the effort, putting that mind, that...
that time and everything. And if I see those numbers go up, say, okay, the time will come where the results will arrive. Having said this, if the results don't arrive in the long term, mean, you're a business and you need to perform, right? And that's objective. But those measures, those effort KPIs help me to understand, okay, this person is in the right path or not. And it's worth investing time or not.
Right.
Jon Blair (19:25)
Yeah, no, I like that. That is a solid framework. It's like the effort is the activity KPI. It's almost like the leading indicator or even doing the actions that might drive the outcome. But at the end of the day, and obviously I'm a finance guy, so it probably makes sense that I'm saying this. At the end of the day, we're a business and every person in the business owns, I always say this, every person in your business owns one or more of the following, a line or lines on the P&L.
a line or lines on your balance sheet, the advancement of some strategic objective, right? And when we think about A players, and I keep coming back to A players make money, right? You mentioned they're proactive, they don't need to be managed, they're solution oriented. They're just naturally figuring out how to increase revenue, reduce costs, drive forward some other initiative of value. They take personal pride in knowing.
that they're moving the needle ultimately on the business's financials. So look, we only got a couple minutes left here, but I have a couple last like really important questions for you. The first is being that you're in the staffing world, so you're seeing hiring decisions every day at a volume that most people are not. For the founders listening, what's the single biggest mistake or trap that you're seeing again and again and again that you advise listeners?
of this to avoid in their hiring efforts.
Agustin Morrone (20:56)
For me, this is a bit polemic, but the phrase, hire fast, fire faster, I just agree with the fire faster. But hiring fast, that fire faster, yes, I mean, when you see there is something wrong, do it, execute it. But the hiring fast, every time I see a founder comes, not with a clear idea of what they want, because they just need to hire someone to solve a problem and they don't think about.
Jon Blair (21:05)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Agustin Morrone (21:24)
how that person is gonna solve that and how that to set that person for success, almost every time that ends in a wrong place, right? So, I mean, it's not hiring fast because if you have the right idea, it's okay to hire fast and with a proper process, with that interview process, okay, but people that don't think what they need and they just throw people to the problem, that does not solve anything and it ends up in find someone making us...
lose time and everything. So for me, the number one mistake is hiring fast without a proper process to understanding what you need and executing that process to discover that person that you need.
Jon Blair (22:05)
Yeah, that's great advice. if you could leave everybody listening right now with a final thought that you want them to remember from our discussion today, what would that be?
Agustin Morrone (22:19)
invest time in defining a good interview process. That for me is I see there is a huge difference in terms of the companies that they hire through a thoughtful interview process. Those process end up in hiring good people that ends up in multiplying every aspect of your business when you hire good people. And when you don't have a proper interview process and you just hire
Jon Blair (22:23)
Hmm. Yeah.
Agustin Morrone (22:48)
for intuition or whatever, generally it ends up in a bad place where you have no idea what went wrong. So having a good, settled interview process for me is a game changer.
Jon Blair (23:02)
That's such great advice and definitely gonna wanna listen to this one again guys. A lot of really good stuff here. What I'll leave everyone with our final thoughts is just remember, A players, they're gonna help you make more money. They're gonna help you break through that growth ceiling. B players aren't all bad, but they're gonna cost you management time. C players are gonna cost you time, money, and probably they're gonna cost you your A players as well. So before we leave here, Agustin,
Agustin Morrone (23:04)
Thank you.
Jon Blair (23:30)
Where can everyone find more information about Vintti?
Agustin Morrone (23:33)
So you can just go to our web www.vintti.com or you just can reach out in LinkedIn to me or to any one of the of the SAFE team and we are super happy to
Jon Blair (23:49)
Yeah, we'll have all your information in the show notes. Definitely check out some of Agustin's content on LinkedIn. He's putting some good stuff out. And yeah, Agustin, I appreciate you coming on, man, and I look forward to chatting again soon.
Agustin Morrone (24:00)
Thank you very much, Jon. We have a great time.
