Why I've Always Hired More Women

April 10, 2026·19 min·1 clip

Omar Zenhom reveals that women on his teams hit targets 95% of the time, while men hit only 65%.

Host Omar Zinhome opens the episode by disclosing a pattern he has never discussed publicly: across every business he has built, the majority of his hires have been women. He presents a specific performance statistic — women hit targets approximately 95% of the time, men approximately 65% of the time — and frames this as a business observation rather than a political stance or diversity initiative. He traces his first professional relationship with a woman to his co-founder and wife Nicole, whom he met as a fellow educator when he was head of a university department. He stresses that their professional foundation predated their romantic relationship and credits this ordering with the strength of their partnership. Omar describes Nicole's strengths as complementary to his own: she asks questions he misses, reads people and rooms more accurately, and slows down decision-making in ways that ultimately improve outcomes. He acknowledges that collaborative decision-making takes longer but argues that higher-stakes decisions justify the additional time investment. He notes that The $100 MBA Show draws a larger-than-average female listenership among top business podcasts, which he attributes partly to Nicole's influence. Omar then outlines five categories of observed difference: time management, goal-setting, risk management, employee retention, and listening skills. On time management, he argues women are better at distinguishing signal from noise, partly because many carry disproportionate personal and professional responsibilities simultaneously. On goal-setting, he argues that men's preference for ambitious targets creates a pattern of missing goals and losing momentum, whereas consistently hitting smaller goals compounds confidence over time. On risk management, he says women take fewer unnecessary risks, which he frames as a protection against catastrophic failure rather than a limitation — illustrated by his observation that women consistently reach final tables in poker tournaments despite being a small minority of participants. On retention, he argues women are less likely to feel the grass is greener elsewhere and more likely to invest in the team they are part of. On listening, he credits women colleagues with modeling listening to understand rather than to respond, which he describes as a transformative leadership lesson. He cautions throughout that he is describing patterns, not universal rules, and explicitly acknowledges high-performing men and difficult women he has encountered. He closes with a hiring framework: look for collaboration, achievable goal-setting, emotional intelligence, ownership, and cultural contribution — and be honest about where those qualities tend to appear most often.

As heard by us

A hiring argument built around execution, not ideology.

Omar Zinhome makes a plainspoken case for hiring more women, treating it as an execution problem rather than a policy fight. He draws on more than two decades of building businesses, his cofounder partnership with his wife Nicole, and what he says he has seen again and again in…

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