Business

Acquisition.com CEO says leaders ‘have it backwards’ when it comes to hiring

Published

7 hours ago

January 12, 2026

Now more than ever, it’s difficult to know what makes candidates in a competitive labor market. While layoffs and unemployment remain low at the start of this year, jobseekers face an uphill battle as AI eliminates entry-level roles and employers added just 50,000 jobs in December. One founder says more than technical skills, being a good person is the quality that makes job candidates more appealing to hire.

Leila Hormozi, founder and CEO of Acquistion.com, said she learned her guiding principle for hiring from the Ritz-Carlton. Their philosophy is: “We don’t hire people who know how to make beds. We hire people that are good people,” she said in a video on Instagram to her 1.2 million followers.

“Our process was to hire the right people. Not just hire people but select people and then orient them, not just put them to work but orient them to our thinking,” said Ritz Carlton Hotel Company cofounder Horst Schulze, reflecting on how the global chain developed their high standard, in a 2019 interview with Chief Executive.

Hormozi says she echoes this philosophy: “I want to hire people who have the natural traits that I just need to give them the technical skills.” Hormozi cofounded Acquisition.com with her husband, Alex, in 2021. Before starting the private investment and advisory firm, Hormozi worked as personal trainer and launched fitness companies Gym Launch and Prestige Labs, and a software company ALAN. By 28, her net worth passed $100 million, she says. Acquisition.com now has a $200M+ portfolio and partners with companies to scale and grow business.

“Your business is only as strong as the people you pick to lead it. The fastest way to destroy your business is to hire the wrong people.” Hormozi wrote in a caption on Instagram.

Some leaders “have it backwards,” she added. “People overvalue technical skills and undervalue social and emotional skills.”

As AI masters technical skills used in administrative, human resources, finance, and logistics jobs, soft skills such as adaptability and creative and analytical thinking are growing in demand, according to research from LinkedIn. People with strong foundational skills, such as collaboration, adaptability, and basic math skills typically learn faster and acquire more complex skills over time, one 2025 Harvard study about about long-term performance and advancement shows.

Other business leaders share Hormozi’s philosophy.

“My advice to people would be critical thinking, learn skills, learn your EQ [emotional quotient], learn how to be good in a meeting, how to communicate, how to write,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said last month. “You’ll have plenty of jobs.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has also long advocated for empathy and emotional intelligence as foundational skills in the workplace.

“IQ has a place, but it’s not the only thing that is needed in the world,” Nadella said in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner in November. “And I’ve always felt at least as leaders, if you just have IQ without EQ, it’s just a waste of IQ.”

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Business

Is Powell’s Fed head independence dead? It’s just one more diversionary Trump trick

Published

15 minutes ago

January 12, 2026

Jace Porter

Is Powell’s Fed head independence dead? It’s just one more diversionary Trump trick | Fortune

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is Lester Crown Professor of Leadership Practice at the Yale School of Management and founder of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. A leadership and governance scholar, he created the world’s first school for incumbent CEOs and he has advised five U.S. presidents across political parties. His latest book, Trump’s Ten Commandments, will be published by Simon & Schuster in March 2026. Stephen Henriques is a senior research fellow of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. He was a consultant at McKinsey & Company and a policy analyst for the governor of Connecticut.

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Business

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Published

46 minutes ago

January 12, 2026

Jace Porter

The alphabet soup of interpretations for today’s economy has lately landed on the letter “K” to describe the diverging ways inflation has impacted Americans: boom times for the asset-wealthy at the top, and a much more painful moment for those struggling to stay afloat amid rising prices for groceries and electricity.

The logic of the K-shaped economy has been used to explain why consumption has yet to dip towards recession levels. While low-income shoppers are cutting back on spending, high earners keep infusing the economy with their cash, fueled by stock and real estate gains. One estimate by Moody’s Analytics calculated last year that the top 10% of earners made up nearly half of all consumer spending.

Economists as well as Fed Chair Jerome Powell have said that model will be unsustainable in the long run, risking widening wealth inequality or a broader economic downturn if the wealthy are unable to maintain their spending habits.

But what if they can? Analysts have warned that a stock market slump could force high rollers to tighten their belts too, but some economists say there is reason to believe lavish spending will persevere. Many of the economy’s highest spenders fall relatively neatly into demographic age groups with predictable consumption habits. For them, there could yet be good times ahead.

Instead of K-shaped, a more useful way to break down the current economy would be by age groups, according to Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, who in a blog post last week described how he might interpret today’s divergence in spending.

“We believe that a better way to understand consumer resilience is to focus on what we call the ‘gen-shaped’ economy,” the market veteran wrote.

The highest spenders today are the 76 million baby boomers who made out the best from appreciating asset prices over the past few years. Meanwhile, Gen Zers and millennials are relatively new to the labor force. A high youth unemployment rate, tight labor market for junior roles, and mounting student loan and credit card debt mean many younger Americans are struggling financially, Yardeni explained, and likely account for much of the spending slowdown at the bottom end of the K.

Baby boomers might be leaving their healthy paychecks behind as they retire in greater numbers, but they depart the workforce as the wealthiest generation in history, with a net worth of around $85.4 trillion, he added. While younger Americans struggle to buy their first home or break into the stock market, boomers retain their tight grip on assets. Because of their deep pockets in savings, Yardeni expects boomers to keep up their spending well into retirement.

Gen Z and millennials will have to wait until later in their career to dream of having similar net worths. In the meantime, Yardeni wrote, many are likely to continue receiving financial support from their well-off parents.

Younger Americans do eventually stand to inherit much of the wealth baby boomers have accumulated. The so-called “Great Wealth Transfer” could be worth as much as $124 trillion, with nearly $300 billion inherited last year alone. But this mass inheritance will take time to play out in its entirety, with some analysts estimating Gen Z and millennials will continue receiving these funds until 2048.

To be sure, the wealth transfer will be contested between widows and charities as well as children, and not all younger Americans are likely to receive enough financial support from their parents to compete in today’s economy with many struggling to afford a home.

But for now, there are few signs of sunsetting for baby boomers’ amassed wealth. In 2023, more than half of corporate equities and mutual fund shares were in the generation’s hands.

“Baby boomers can’t possibly spend all this, so some of this is going to flow down,” Yardeni said in a video last week discussing the gen-shaped economy.

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Business

5 daily tasks that can double as exercise

Published

1 hour ago

January 12, 2026

Jace Porter

Send this to someone who hates the gym but loves home improvement: Research shows that you can get some of the key benefits of a workout just by putting some extra oomph into your chores.

It’s like doing daily activities on hard mode. Raising your heart rate for just one to two minutes, three to four times per day, can lower your risks of cardiovascular disease and early death, compared to people with sedentary lifestyles, according to recent studies. To accrue those minutes, some researchers recommend working it into your daily routine, whether that means playing with your dog, power walking between household tasks, or taking multiple trips up and down the stairs to purge your closet.

Have a fireplace? Try swinging an axe

Fans of the so-called lumberjack workout swear that there’s no better way to engage all your muscles than by chopping timber. Chris Hemsworth, who typically wields a magical hammer, got in on the trend in recent years, Instagramming a video of himself splitting wood in his backyard that’s now one of his most-liked posts.

Meanwhile, TikTok’s favorite log cutter is a Californian named Thoren “Thor” Bradley, who has amassed more than 10 million followers by splitting enormous pieces of wood and sometimes taking his shirt off. He also sells conventional fitness coaching.

British actress Elizabeth Hurley was early on the trend. She told Extra in 2019 that, at the age of 54, she got her exercise from “gardening…cutting down a hedge, using my chainsaw to cut down a tree, logging.” Proceed with caution, y’all.—ML

This report was originally published by Morning Brew.

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