Recently, I was catching up with a friend, and she shared a story that stuck in my mind. A friend of hers has a nephew who’s an undergraduate studying AI at one of the prestigious state schools in the Midwest. One day, out of the blue, he received an email from the founder/CEO of a famous AI company (you can guess which one) requesting to meet. Not thinking the email was real, he initially didn’t respond. After a day, he thought, “Well, what if it is real? I might as well respond.” So he responded, and the CEO replied that he would enjoy meeting at a certain date and time, leaving it up to the student to share whichever place works best for him. The student threw out a place and set it up.

Now, he expected the CEO to roll in with an entourage, team members, and a whole experience. Instead, it was just the CEO, and they had a great one-hour conversation, marking the start of a relationship. For many entrepreneurs, recruiting and building a team is one of the most important parts of the job. For many first-time entrepreneurs, it takes time—and sometimes even years—before it clicks that the recruiting function needs to happen in parallel across many different positions and well in advance of needing that hire.

One way to make this actionable is to build a list of potential hires and roles the organization will need in the next 12 to 24 months. With this list in place, start sharing it with friends, colleagues, investors, and partners, working to build a pre-pipeline of potential candidates. Taking it one step further, with this example from above, every time you visit a city to meet a customer, partner, or investor, make a point of reaching out to three to five potential candidates in that market and work to get at least one in-person meeting with them. While this does take a lot of work, building a team is as important as it gets.

The next time you hear an entrepreneur lament how hard it is to fill a role, remind him that 10 to 20% of his time should be spent on recruiting—both for roles open today and roles that will be open tomorrow.