Building a top-tier team requires the same continuous effort as building a sales pipeline. Leaders should not passively rely on HR or external recruiters. Instead, they must actively and continuously 'pipeline generate' for A-player candidates, treating recruiting as a core, non-delegable responsibility to handpick their ideal team.

Qualified's CMO, Mara Rivera, argues that a leader's success isn't about being an expert in everything. The key is to conquer imposter syndrome and build a team of A-players in domains like demand gen or ops, who can then teach and guide you.

Don't hire preemptively. Katelin Holloway's "hire when it hurts" principle advises founders to perform a job themselves until they are overwhelmed. This ensures they develop a deep understanding of the role's requirements and sincere empathy for the person they eventually hire, leading to better hiring decisions.

When an executive leaves, the CEO should step in to run their department directly. This provides invaluable operational context for hiring a replacement and empowers the CEO to make necessary but difficult changes (org structure, personnel) that a new hire would hesitate to implement.

Marketing leaders often fail when hiring for functions they don't deeply understand. Success comes when you've done the job yourself first, like Capsule's marketing lead who ran events before hiring a specialist. This first-hand experience allows you to know precisely what "good" looks like and evaluate candidates effectively.

After failing to hire the right leader for Expedia's largest business unit twice, Dara Khosrowshahi realized he didn't understand the job's requirements. He took on the role himself for several years. This hands-on experience gave him the deep operational understanding needed to finally identify and hire the right person.

Your internal monologue is a powerful hiring filter. Thinking, "I really have to fill this role" often leads to compromising on quality. The right hire sparks the thought, "I don't even care if I have a role for this person, I have to get them in."

The long-term cost of a bad hire—in time, morale, and opportunity—far outweighs the short-term pain of a missed headcount target. Figma's CRO would rather leave a seat open for months than fill it with a candidate he's not truly excited about, even a "solid B player."

A core, often overlooked, part of a marketing leader's job is managing the team's composition like a sports GM. This involves making difficult decisions, such as letting go of a high-performing employee whose role is wrong for the company's current stage, in order to reallocate budget and headcount to functions that will drive immediate growth.