#718 - Replacing Yourself With an Amazing Team

·57 min·5 clips

Hiring four people with 90+ cognitive scores can cut your 12-hour workday down to eight hours.

Tai Lopez opens the episode by stating that the hardest part of making money is finding, hiring, training, and managing good people. He frames this within the classic economic factors of production: land (brand), labor (people), and capital, focusing solely on labor. Lopez shares his credentials, noting he has scaled businesses beyond $500 million annually and has managed up to 8,500 employees. He begins with practical recruitment advice, recommending Instagram story ads as a low-cost method to generate a steady flow of applicants. Lopez emphasizes the importance of continuous recruiting, not just hiring when needed. He then delves into the hiring process, advocating for the use of objective quizzes. He highlights three key quizzes: a cognitive quiz for IQ assessment (crucial for operations and marketing roles), a career type quiz to match roles, and a worldview quiz to gauge traits like honesty and ruthlessness. Lopez stresses that high IQ is correlated with reduced entrepreneurial frustration, as such employees exhibit 'mentalism' or mind-reading abilities, citing examples like his lead programmer and Napoleon's field marshals. He claims hiring high-IQ individuals can significantly cut daily work hours. Next, Lopez discusses onboarding, defining it as a 67-day evaluation period based on his '67 Steps' framework. He advises hiring multiple candidates for the same role simultaneously to create contrast and identify top performers, referencing biological CVS (criteria, variance, selection) principles. He states the typical ratio is one good hire out of 12 applicants. The third phase is nurturing and retaining top performers after they pass the evaluation. Lopez shares that he invests time through daily calls, Slack engagement, and bringing key employees on trips, like a recent retreat to Palm Springs. He argues all humans are motivated by attention and investment, drawing parallels to relationship dynamics and reciprocal altruism. Lopez warns against skipping any phase and compares building a team to the Amish method of constructing durable barns. Throughout, he promotes his resources: 12types.com for quizzes, his '18 Strategies' system for scaling to $100 million, and a private coaching program for entrepreneurs over $10 million. He concludes by encouraging humility and seeking mentors, citing examples like Mark Zuckerberg learning from Steve Jobs.

As heard by us

A direct case for treating team design as the real test of scaling.

The host makes a direct case that the hardest part of building a business is not the machinery around marketing, social media, sales, or operations, but the human work of finding, hiring, training, retaining, managing, and improving strong people.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want to reclaim hours from your workday by getting sharper about finding, hiring, training, and managing people.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Tai Lopez Show