When to Hire an Operations Manager vs. an Operations Consultant
Full-time ops manager ($120-200K) or consultant ($5-15K/mo)? The real math, decision framework, and when each makes sense for your business.
You're doing $1.5M in revenue. Your calendar is stacked. You personally handle client escalations, chase invoices, onboard new hires, and answer the same Slack questions from your team every single day.
Something has to give. You need operations help.
But when you start looking, you find two very different options at two very different price points: a full-time operations manager at $120,000–$200,000 per year, or an operations consultant at $5,000–$15,000 per month. Pick wrong and you burn six figures and six months with nothing to show for it.
Here's how to pick right.
These Are Not the Same Job
This is where most founders get it wrong. They think an operations manager and an operations consultant do the same work at different price points. They don't.
An operations manager runs your machine. They manage daily execution, keep workflows moving, hold people accountable, maintain systems, and handle the hundred small things that keep a business from falling apart. They're inside your company, full-time, every day.
An operations consultant builds the machine. They diagnose what is broken, design processes that don't exist, implement tools, create SOPs, and architect the operational infrastructure your business is missing. They bring pattern recognition from dozens of companies, work on defined engagements, and hand off working systems when they're done.
One executes. The other architects.
Hiring an operations manager when you need an architect means paying someone $150K/year to run systems that don't exist yet. Hiring a consultant when you need daily execution means paying premium rates for work a $70K coordinator could handle.
Getting this distinction right saves you a year and a hundred thousand dollars.
The Real Cost Comparison (With Actual Numbers)
No hand-waving. Here's what each option actually costs for a company doing $500K-$5M in revenue.
Option A: Full-Time Operations Manager
| Cost Category |
Annual Amount |
| Base salary |
$120,000-160,000 |
| Benefits (health, dental, vision, 401k) |
$24,000-40,000 |
| Payroll taxes (FICA, FUTA, SUTA) |
$10,000-14,000 |
| Recruiting fees (20-25% of salary) |
$24,000-40,000 (year 1 only) |
| Onboarding and ramp (3-6 months at ~50% productivity) |
$30,000-40,000 in lost output |
| Equipment, software licenses, workspace |
$5,000-8,000 |
| Year 1 fully loaded cost |
$213,000-302,000 |
| Ongoing annual cost (year 2+) |
$159,000-222,000 |
That assumes the hire works out. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows roughly 30% of new hires leave within the first year. If yours does, you restart the cycle: another $24,000-40,000 in recruiting, another 3-6 months of ramp time, and the institutional knowledge walks out the door.
At the higher end of the salary range ($160K+), you're looking at a senior hire -- someone with 8-12 years of experience who can do real strategic work. At $120K, you're getting a solid operator who needs direction. Know which one you need before you write the job description.
Option B: Operations Consultant or Fractional Engagement
| Cost Category |
Annual Amount |
| Monthly retainer ($5,000-15,000/month) |
$60,000-180,000 |
| Project-based add-ons (if any) |
$0-25,000 |
| Benefits, payroll taxes, overhead |
$0 |
| Recruiting fees |
$0 |
| Ramp time (they have done this before) |
Minimal -- 2-4 weeks |
| Annual cost |
$60,000-180,000 |
The range is wide because scope varies. A $5,000/month engagement might be 15 hours of focused strategic work. A $15,000/month engagement could be 40+ hours with a senior operator embedded in your business multiple days a week.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Factor |
Full-Time Ops Manager |
Operations Consultant |
| Annual cost (all-in) |
$159K-222K ongoing |
$60K-180K |
| Year 1 cost (with recruiting/ramp) |
$213K-302K |
$60K-180K |
| Time to real impact |
3-6 months |
2-4 weeks |
| Weekly availability |
40+ hours |
10-25 hours |
| Expertise depth |
One person's career |
Pattern recognition across 10-30 companies |
| Flexibility to end |
Severance, morale risk, legal |
30-day notice |
| Builds long-term culture |
Yes |
No |
| Handles daily fires |
Yes |
Not ideal |
| Designs new systems |
Sometimes |
Core strength |
| Risk if wrong fit |
$80K-150K in sunk costs |
$5K-15K (one month) |
The math is clear. The consultant is cheaper, faster to value, lower risk, and easier to exit. The manager is always there, deeply embedded, and handles the grind. Both are the right answer in different situations.
The Decision Framework: Five Questions to Ask Yourself
Stop overthinking this. Answer these five questions and the decision makes itself.
1. Do You Have Systems, or Do You Need Them Built?
Hire a manager if: You have documented processes, established tools, and clear workflows. You need someone to run them consistently every day. The machine exists. It just needs an operator.
Hire a consultant if: Your processes live in the founder's head. You have no SOPs, inconsistent workflows, and every project gets handled differently depending on who is working on it. You need someone to build the machine before you can hire someone to run it.
Here's the honest test: open your project management tool right now. Can a new hire look at it and understand exactly how work flows through your company? If the answer is no, you need a builder first.
2. Is Your Problem Strategic or Executional?
Hire a manager if: You know exactly what needs to happen. The bottleneck is that nobody is dedicated to making it happen every day.
Hire a consultant if: You're not sure what the right process should be. You need someone who has solved this exact problem at 15 other companies and can tell you the fastest path forward. This is the same pattern we describe in founder burnout and delegation -- founders stuck doing everything because the right systems were never architected in the first place.
3. Is There Really 40 Hours of Work Per Week?
Hire a manager if: There's genuinely 40 hours of operational execution work every week. Enough process, enough team members, enough complexity to fill a real full-time role.
Hire a consultant if: You need 10-20 hours of high-impact work per week. You would rather pay $200/hour for focused expert work than $75/hour for someone sitting in meetings and waiting for things to do.
Here's a test most founders fail: write down every single task the operations person would do in a week. Be specific -- not "help with operations" but "review and approve 12 client proposals, run Monday team standup, follow up on 8 overdue invoices." If you can't fill 30+ hours with real tasks, you don't need a full-time hire yet. You're paying for a chair, not output.
4. What Can You Actually Afford?
Hire a manager if: You can commit $160K-220K annually (fully loaded) for at least 18-24 months. You have the cash flow to absorb a 3-6 month ramp period where you're paying full salary for partial output. You have the margin to survive a bad hire and start over.
Hire a consultant if: You want to start at $5K-10K/month and scale based on results. You want to prove ROI before committing to a permanent headcount line. You would rather spend $60K on a 6-month engagement that builds lasting systems than $250K on a year-one hire who might not work out.
5. How Fast Do You Need Results?
Hire a manager if: You're building for the long haul. You want someone who will grow with the company over 3-5 years, absorb institutional knowledge, and become a core part of leadership. You can afford to wait.
Hire a consultant if: You need results in 60-90 days. You have a specific pain point costing you real money right now. A new client onboarding process that loses 20% of clients. A project delivery workflow that runs 40% over budget. A hiring process that takes 90 days when competitors hire in 30. You can't wait six months for a new hire to ramp up.
The "I Can't Afford Either" Objection
This is the most common thing I hear from founders in the $500K-$2M range. Let me reframe it.
You can't afford to keep doing what you're doing.
Run this math for your business:
| Hidden Operational Cost |
Monthly Amount |
| Hours/week you spend on ops (x your hourly value as founder) |
$_____ |
| Revenue lost to dropped leads, missed follow-ups, slow proposals |
$_____ |
| Client churn from inconsistent delivery quality |
$_____ |
| Overtime and rework from broken handoffs |
$_____ |
| Employee turnover from operational chaos (replacement cost: 50-200% of salary) |
$_____ |
| Total monthly cost of doing nothing |
$_____ |
Most founders running service businesses at $500K-$2M in revenue are bleeding $8,000-25,000 per month in hidden operational costs. Not a guess. We have quantified this across dozens of engagements. The operations consulting ROI calculator walks through exactly how to track these numbers.
A $5,000/month consultant who eliminates even half of that waste pays for itself from day one.
If you genuinely can't afford $5,000/month right now, here is a three-step path:
Step 1: Get a one-time operations audit ($2,500-6,000). A consultant spends 10-15 hours understanding your business and gives you a prioritized list of what is broken and what to fix first. Many consultants offer this as a standalone engagement.
Step 2: Fix the single highest-ROI problem yourself. Use the audit findings. Usually it's documenting your top 3 client-facing processes so you can stop being the only person who knows how to do them. This alone often saves 10-15 hours per week of founder time.
Step 3: Hire a part-time operations coordinator ($40K-55K/year). Not a strategist. Someone organized and detail-oriented who can run the systems you documented in step 2. Then bring in a consultant for 6-8 weeks to build the next layer of systems for them to run.
The worst option is doing nothing and assuming it gets better with growth. It doesn't. Operational problems compound. What costs you $10K/month today costs $30K/month at double the revenue.
The Smart Middle Ground: Fractional Operations
There's a third path most founders don't know about, and it's where the majority of companies in the $500K-$5M range should start.
Instead of choosing between a full-time hire you might not need and a short-term project that ends too quickly, you get ongoing operational leadership at a fraction of full-time cost.
How it works: A senior operations professional works with your company 10-25 hours per week on an ongoing monthly retainer. They build systems, coach your team, manage key processes, and drive operational improvements. But they're not on your payroll.
What it costs: $5,000-15,000 per month. Compare that to $13,000-18,500 per month for a fully loaded full-time operations manager.
What you get that a full-time manager often can't provide:
- Cross-company pattern recognition. A fractional operator has seen your exact problem at 10-30 other companies. They know what works and what doesn't before they start. A full-time hire is learning on your dime.
- Senior expertise at mid-level cost. You're getting someone with 10-15 years of experience for the price of a 3-5 year hire. At $5M in revenue, you probably can't attract a $180K operations leader. But you can get one fractionally for $10K/month.
- Built-in accountability. They have to prove value every month to keep the engagement. There's no coasting, no "I'm still ramping," no hiding behind busyness. Results or they're gone.
- Scalable commitment. Start at 10 hours per week. Scale to 25 if it's working. Drop to 5 when systems are stable. Try that flexibility with an employee.
What a full-time manager provides that fractional can't:
- Daily presence for fire-fighting and team morale.
- Deep institutional knowledge built over years.
- Cultural contribution as a team member.
- Availability for ad-hoc needs throughout the day.
For most agencies and service businesses in the $500K-$5M range, the fractional model hits the sweet spot. You get expert-level operations help without the commitment, overhead, or risk of a full-time executive hire. As your company scales, the fractional partner helps you define exactly when to hire full-time, what the role should look like, and what systems that new hire will run from day one. We break down this progression in detail in what is a fractional COO.
The Hybrid Playbook: Sequence Both for Maximum Impact
The smartest operators do not pick one option. They sequence both.
Phase 1: Consultant Builds the Foundation (Months 1-4)
Bring in a consultant or fractional operator to:
- Audit current operations and identify the top 5 cost centers
- Design and document core processes (SOPs, workflows, escalation paths, decision frameworks)
- Implement the right project management, CRM, and communication tools
- Create the job description, KPIs, and onboarding plan for your future operations manager hire
Cost: $5,000-12,000/month = $20,000-48,000 total
Phase 2: Hire a Manager to Run the Machine (Month 5+)
Now hire a full-time operations manager who:
- Steps into documented, working systems instead of chaos
- Has clear KPIs and measurable goals from day one
- Ramps in 4-6 weeks instead of 4-6 months because the playbook already exists
- Focuses on execution and continuous improvement, not building from scratch
Cost: $120,000-160,000/year salary + benefits
Phase 3: Consultant Returns for Level-Ups (Quarterly or As Needed)
Bring the consultant back for targeted engagements when you:
- Cross a new revenue threshold and current processes start breaking
- Add a new service line, market, or product that needs operational infrastructure
- Prepare for a funding round, acquisition, or major partnership
- Hit a new ceiling and need fresh outside perspective
Cost: $5,000-15,000 per engagement
Total first-year cost of the hybrid approach: $140,000-208,000. That's roughly the same as a full-time hire alone, but you get working systems, a dramatically faster-ramping manager, and expert support when you need it most. The scaling operations playbook walks through exactly which systems to build first at each revenue stage.
Real Scenarios: What Would I Recommend?
Scenario 1: Marketing Agency, $800K Revenue, 5-Person Team
The situation: Founder does everything. No documented processes. Team members make up their own workflows. Client delivery quality is inconsistent.
The recommendation: Fractional operations at $5,000-7,000/month for 6 months.
Why: There's no machine to operate yet. You need someone to build client onboarding workflows, create project templates, standardize delivery processes, and document the repeatable parts of your business. A full-time ops manager would spend months figuring out what you need. A fractional operator starts building in week two.
Expected ROI: 15+ hours per week of founder time recovered. At $300/hour founder opportunity cost, that is $18,000/month in value against a $6,000/month investment.
Scenario 2: B2B Services Firm, $2.8M Revenue, 14-Person Team
The situation: Processes exist but are breaking under growth. Client onboarding takes 3 weeks when it should take 5 days. Team members don't know who owns what. Three people quit in the last six months citing "chaos."
The recommendation: Full-time operations manager at $130,000-150,000.
Why: There's40+ hours per week of real operational work. You need someone to own the daily machine -- run standups, manage project timelines, handle vendor relationships, coordinate cross-functional work, and keep 14 people aligned. The processes exist, they just need consistent management and gradual improvement.
Consider adding: A 2-month consultant engagement ($10,000-15,000) before the hire to fix the onboarding process and document workflows so the new manager has a foundation.
Scenario 3: SaaS Company, $1.4M Revenue, 8-Person Team, Growing 50% YoY
The situation: Scaling fast. Hiring 2-3 people per quarter. Current processes are held together with duct tape and founder heroics. Preparing for a Series A.
The recommendation: Fractional COO at $8,000-12,000/month.
Why: You need strategy and execution simultaneously. The fractional COO designs scalable systems, builds the ops infrastructure investors want to see, and creates the hiring playbook for rapid team growth. A mid-level ops manager can't do this. A project-based consultant doesn't provide the continuity you need during a 12-month scaling push.
Transition plan: When you close the Series A, use part of the funding to hire a full-time VP of Operations. The fractional COO helps write the job description, screens candidates, and onboards the hire. Clean handoff.
Scenario 4: Consulting Firm, $450K Revenue, Solo Founder + 2 Contractors
The situation: Revenue is growing but the founder does everything from proposals to delivery to invoicing. Needs to free up time for business development.
The recommendation: Project-based consultant engagement, 15-20 hours total, $3,000-5,000.
Why: You don't need ongoing operations help at this stage. You need someone to spend two weeks documenting your core workflows, setting up a basic project management system, and creating templates your contractors can follow. That's a project, not a role.
When to revisit: When you hit $700K-$800K and the volume justifies ongoing fractional help.
Red Flags to Watch For
Red Flags That an Ops Manager Hire Will Fail
- You can't write a specific job description. If the description says "handle operations" with no measurable outcomes, you're not ready to hire.
- You're hiring them to figure out what is broken. That's consulting work. Managers execute solutions. They do not diagnose problems from scratch.
- They have never worked at your company size. An ops manager from a 500-person company will over-engineer everything for your 12-person team. A manager from a 5-person startup will be overwhelmed at 40.
- You expect transformation without authority. If they need your approval for every decision, you have not actually delegated. You have added a middleman.
Red Flags That a Consultant Engagement Will Fail
- No defined scope or success metrics. "Make operations better" isn't a scope. "Reduce client onboarding from 15 days to 5 days" is.
- Leadership will not implement recommendations. If the consultant builds systems nobody uses because the team resists change and the founder doesn't enforce it, you have wasted your money.
- You expect them to run daily operations forever. Consultants build systems. They do not operate them. Plan the handoff from day one.
- You chose based on price alone. A $2,000/month "operations consultant" is a freelancer with a LinkedIn title. Real operations expertise from someone who has built and scaled businesses costs real money.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I hire an operations manager or an operations consultant first?
If your business lacks documented processes, standardized workflows, and clear operational systems, hire a consultant first. They build the foundation in 2-4 months for $20,000-48,000. Then you hire a manager to run those systems. Hiring a manager into operational chaos means paying $160K+ for someone to improvise rather than execute. The consultant builds the machine; the manager runs it. Sequencing them in this order cuts the manager's ramp time from 6 months to 6 weeks because they step into working systems instead of building from scratch.
How much does an operations manager cost compared to a consultant?
A full-time operations manager costs $159,000-222,000 per year fully loaded (salary of $120-160K plus benefits, payroll taxes, equipment, and workspace). Year one is even higher at $213,000-302,000 when you add recruiting fees and ramp-time productivity loss. An operations consultant runs $60,000-180,000 per year on retainer ($5,000-15,000/month) with zero benefits, recruiting fees, or overhead. The consultant is typically 30-50% cheaper with significantly faster time to value -- 2-4 weeks versus 3-6 months.
What is fractional operations help and who is it for?
Fractional operations is a senior operations professional working with your company 10-25 hours per week on an ongoing monthly retainer, typically $5,000-15,000 per month. It is designed for companies doing $500K-$5M in revenue that need expert operational leadership but can't justify or afford a $160K+ full-time hire. You get cross-company pattern recognition from someone who has solved your problem at dozens of other businesses, built-in accountability (they prove value monthly or lose the engagement), and the flexibility to scale hours up or down as your needs change.
Can an operations manager do the same work as a consultant?
Rarely. An operations manager excels at running established systems -- managing daily workflows, keeping teams accountable, maintaining processes, and handling the operational grind. A consultant excels at diagnosing problems, designing new systems, implementing tools, and building the infrastructure that doesn't exist yet. Hiring a manager to design your operations from scratch is like hiring a pilot to build the airplane. Both roles are essential, but they're fundamentally different skill sets applied at different stages of a company's operational maturity.
How do I know if my business is ready for a full-time operations hire?
You're ready when four conditions are true simultaneously: you have documented systems that need daily management (not just ideas in the founder's head), there is genuinely 40+ hours per week of operational work (write out every task to verify), you can commit $160K+ annually for at least 18-24 months (including the 3-6 month ramp period), and your core problem is execution and consistency rather than figuring out what your processes should be. If any of those four conditions isn't met, start with a consultant or fractional engagement and build toward the full-time hire.
What if I can't afford either an operations manager or a consultant?
Start with a one-time operations audit ($2,500-6,000) where a consultant spends 10-15 hours diagnosing your biggest operational drain and giving you a prioritized fix list. Then fix the single highest-ROI problem yourself -- usually documenting your top 3 client-facing processes, which saves 10-15 hours of founder time per week. If you need execution help, hire a part-time operations coordinator ($40-55K/year) and pair them with a short 6-8 week consultant engagement to build the systems they will run. The real question isn't whether you can afford help. It is whether you can afford to keep losing $8,000-25,000/month in hidden costs from broken operations. Most businesses at $500K+ revenue are bleeding more than a consultant would charge.
Cedar Operations builds the systems your business needs to run without you -- whether you're preparing for your first operations hire or replacing founder-dependent chaos with real infrastructure. If you're stuck between a full-time hire you're not sure about and doing everything yourself, let's figure out the right move together ->
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