To second one of the other comments I'm a little unclear how your consulting plays into this?

I'll address the question purely from the perspective of getting great people.

I spent years working on cracking the "A Player" code both for my own businesses as well as a recruiting company I owned and I found in general the entire mainstream mindset and methodology is generally backwards.

First a quick note on money though. It's a satisfier not a motivator meaning yes good quality people expect you to pay them fair market rate for what they are doing at their skill level, which if they are very good is at the upper end of the bracket but that's not what's driving them it's merely a requirement in most cases to work with them.

To the more significant question of how to find the best quality people.

FACT #1 - the best people don't need to look for work! This is how come "head hunting" is so popular for upper end jobs because no one who is truly world class needs to hang out on a job board looking for work. They have skills that speak for themselves and reputations with people they've worked with to do the rest. You're far more likely to have to pull them away from something else than to find them posting on Upwork or Guru. Generally, people on Upwork and Guru, though they might be good value actually need the work, which generally isn't a characteristic of the best.

FACT #2 - if they are really exceptional usually a lot of people know about them and their work is fairly easy to find. Think about top logo designers if you get into the community of people who are truly passionate about these things a handful of names start showing up consistently as people who produce amazing quality work.

What is the end result of this? Randomly looking for or advertising for positions is highly unlikely to locate the best people. The best way requires a twofold process:

1. Get immersed in the field and start identifying work you consider is world class then work backwards to find those people

2. Network within groups of people who know those people and get recommendations, the initial results likely won't be your ideal but you use the process to climb the ladder because good people know good people and by getting curious about the field and working with people who are in the field asking questions like "what makes someone outstanding?" "What sets apart the work of someone like x?" "Who is the most talented designer you've ever worked with?" then repeating the process when you find those people and collecting a lot of data you'll start to weed out and find some really good ones at which point the beauty of designers is their work speaks for themselves provided they themselves actually did the work.

This process is not fast or easy it takes work up front but has a very long term pay off.

If you'd like feel free to message me and I can give you a couple people who would make a strong place to start.