Perfect-match partnerships, not just placements.
Second-In-Command matchmaking for entrepreneur-led businesses.
Stop Hiring. Start Matching.
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The relationship between a CEO and their Second-In-Command is unlike any other in business. You're not just looking for someone with the right resume, you need your yin to their yang. Someone who complements your strengths, covers your blind spots, and shares your vision. Find your perfect-match COO, Integrator, VP, Director, CoS, or EA using Second First's Executive Matchmaking.
Traditional Recruiting vs. Executive Matchmaking
Hiring a Second-In-Command based on resumes and LinkedIn profiles is like swiping to find your soulmate.
Executive search firms find candidates. We create partnerships.
While recruiters focus on skills and experience, we understand that the CEO-Second relationship is built on something deeper:
- Personality fit that creates natural chemistry
- Values alignment that drives shared decision-making
- Complementary working styles that fill gaps rather than create friction
- Trust and communication patterns that work under pressure
“We are so deeply grateful for Second First. We came into that time not even knowing what questions we should be asking, and we left with clarity, inspiration, and a refreshed perspective on how we want to grow our business. Your clear, approachable, step-by-step guidance was exactly what we needed in this season of our business. We had no idea how badly we needed it.”
Co-Founders
Nashville, Tennessee
The Problems Our Process Solves
- Today’s recruiting methods are only as good as the data they’re given. Bad data in (inadequate "profiles" or resumes) is bad data out (bad matches). The problem in “matching” is a data problem.
- Most founders & entrepreneurs don’t know exactly who they need in a Second-In-Command, or hire using gut feel and networks rather than structured data.
- 89% of hiring failures are due to cultural and motivational misalignment, not skills (Harvard Business Review).
- Traditional recruiters are expensive in time and cash. Hiring a Second-In-Command takes 2-3 fiscal quarters, draining time and momentum. A mis-hire can cost as much as 27x their annual salary (Dr. Brad Smart, CEO of Topgrading).
About
human is a patent-pending AI-driven human connection platform that creates profiles from multiple sources of data – a person’s actual behavior – to arrive a single source of truth – rewriting the rules of matching.
human connects people’s online and offline behavior into the type of intelligence a person or company needs for an exceptional match.
Second First chose to partner with this award-winning platform to combine behavioral, psychographic, operational and vision alignment for matching executives.
Second First's deep knowledge of the role now leverages human to use predictive analytics and machine learning to manage the entire “relationship”.
Executive Chemistry (noun): The magical phenomenon where two executives can finish each other's sentences, disagree without drama, and make the impossible look effortless.
Hi, I'm Megan Long, and I've been in both seats.
A Second-In-Command Specialist.
I understand both sides of the founder-Second-In-Command partnership because I've lived it from every angle. As a COO for a $10 million IT company, I spent a decade mastering the art of the founder-Second relationship—even with my Masters and CPA, there was no playbook for becoming the perfect right-hand leader.
Through obsessive study (I wore out my Harvard Business Review subscription), countless trial-and-error moments, and plenty of long nights, I built an extraordinary partnership with my founder that drove real business results. The professional recognition followed (40 Under 40, Stevie Woman of the Year, Nashville Emerging Leader) but what struck me most was how many duos felt “mismatched”.
Frustrated entrepreneurs couldn't figure out why their “perfect on paper” hires weren't working out. Both sides wanted the same thing—a partnership that worked—but nobody was speaking the same language.
That's what led me to create Second First and develop my executive matchmaking practice. Now I help founders find their perfect Second-In-Command match while coaching those executives to excel in their roles.
My unique perspective of understanding what founders really need AND what makes Second-In-Commands thrive has helped hundreds of leaders build the transformational partnerships that drive exponential growth.
find your perfect match
Send us a confidential message and a member of the Second First team will be in contact with you!
