I went to Damien with the scientific aims from my chalk talk. From this, he developed a detailed budget for the first five years of my lab. With this, I was able to negotiate back and forth with the hiring institution to get the best possible start-up package I could. I was also fortunate that Damien helped me hire my first technician. He filtered out tens of candidates through CV review and phone screening. He pre-selected three candidates for me to interview, with whom we each met with separately. We ultimately decided on one candidate who has worked out great. Having Damien’s expertise saved me a huge amount of time and also reduced my stress levels considerably as I felt confident that if the technician made it through Damien’s rigorous screening they were unlikely to be anything other than first rate. Damien’s mantra, “I care about management so you don’t have to” has really allowed me to hit the ground running and get on with the science.