Step 1: check the first role is ready to share you
Before adding a second Digital FTE, read the first role's record: at least one routine class promoted from a clean run, a send-back rate that has fallen and stayed down, a Brand Brain that has stopped needing corrections, and a budget you understand from usage. A first role still consuming an hour of your day in approvals is not ready to share you, and a second role would cost you two hours rather than teach you anything.
The first role's record is also what the second role's targets are calibrated against: you now know what a settled approval rate looks like.
Step 2: choose the second role by evidence, then by adjacency
Choose by the clarity of the evidence first: reconciliation, scheduling, first-line support, and CRM hygiene have checkable right answers and build clean records fast. Then by adjacency: a role whose output feeds the first, or is fed by it, shows the benefit sooner. A Search Visibility FTE finding topics pairs with a Content FTE writing them; an SDR FTE qualifying leads pairs with the marketing role generating them; a Finance Controller FTE reconciling pairs with a support role whose refunds it sees.
Avoid choosing the role with the hardest judgement work second; it needs the most management, and the third slot is soon enough.
Step 3: run the wizard and notice what it did not ask
Hire the role from the workforce view. The first-run wizard pre-fills the company, the website, the workspace profile, the billing details, and everything the first role learned about the business, each with a provenance chip, and asks only for what is new to the function: its tools, its remit, its targets. Setup takes a fraction of the first role's because the platform never re-asks known inputs.
Review the pre-filled Brand Brain anyway; the second role may read the same facts differently, and what it needs corrected is usually small.
- Pre-filled: company, site, profile, billing, first role's confirmed knowledge
- Asked: this role's tools, remit, targets
- Reviewed: the Brand Brain, briefly
Step 4: route routine approvals away from yourself on day one
Before the second role's first proposal, set the approver per category in its remit so that routine classes go to the team member closest to that function and only sensitive categories come to you. This is the single decision that keeps your management time flat. The team member learns the standard by approving with evidence, and their send-back reasons reach the weekly read like yours.
Keep every class at Level 0 for the first cycle regardless of the first role's promotions; each role earns its own record.
Step 5: read one brief, not two
From the first morning, start in the workforce view rather than in either role's workspace. The combined brief orders both roles' items by what blocks the most, so the finance exception sits above the routine reply. Clear the combined brief, then open a workspace only for a review, a remit change, or a memory correction. Both roles draw from the one wallet; set the second role's per-FTE budget inside it and watch the combined spend line.
A week in, the workforce view shows whether the routing held: if your own waiting count grew, a category was routed to you that should not have been.
Step 6: review both, separately, in the same sitting
At the monthly review, read each role's own report and record separately and make the three decisions per role, but do it in one sitting so the combined usage against the wallet is read once and the next block is sized from both. Look for overlap in targets, which means duplicated work and a remit boundary to redraw, and for adjacency working, which means one role's output visible in the other's targets.
Write two notes, or one note with two sections; either way, per role.
What does done look like?
Done is two roles with separate remits, targets, autonomy settings, and records, one wallet with two budgets inside it, one combined brief you clear in about the time one role took, routine approvals landing with the people closest to the work, and a monthly review that reads both records in one sitting. Your management time did not double; the second role cost you a shorter setup and a slightly longer review.
The third role is easier still, and the same discipline applies: add when the previous one is settled.