Financial perks of DEI, becoming your own media, & TikTok revives Converse’s discontinued sneakers

The question is, will diversity actually make you rich? And when we talk about diversity, we talk about diversity in terms of a context of a company. And this tweet's from Chamath Palihapitiya. And this actually comes from Wall Street Journal. So, I don't know if you know this, but there's a study done in 2015 that everyone cites from McKinsey where it declared that it had found a link between profits and executive racial and gender diversity. It was a breakthrough, right? The research was used by investors—

Whoa, you're saying not diversity in your money, you're talking about diversity in—

DEI.

Oh, I thought you meant diversity is like owning multiples. Like, no, Bill Gates would have been richer if he just kept his Microsoft shares. Yeah.

So anyway, will diversity make you rich? So the question here is, okay, McKinsey declared in 2015 that it found a link between profits and executive ratio and gender diversity. It was a breakthrough. The research was used by investors, lobbyists, and regulators to push for more women and minority groups on boards and to justify investing in companies that appointed them, which we've seen in the last couple of years, right? Now, since 2015, the approach has been tested in the fire of the marketplace and failed. Academics have tried to repeat McKinsey's findings and failed, concluding that there is no link between profitability and executive diversity. The methodology of McKinsey's early studies, which helped create the widespread belief that diversity is good for profits, is being questioned. Now, I find this interesting. One, because a lot of people give credit to McKinsey. You're paying millions of dollars for this research. People pay for these ideas, all these decks, all these things, right? And sometimes you really have to question the data that you're getting from people and you have to learn to think for yourself. But I don't know, this is an interesting discussion because we both have companies, right? And we have diverse people. We've hired people of all colors, of all preferences and all that type of stuff. And so, you know, at least for me, I haven't found that to be the X factor. The X factor is, you know, do they align with our values? And, you know, are they people that Are they good at their job?

Bingo. The last one hits the nail on the head. And I'm, I'm so stupid. I should have realized you're saying diversity and not diversification.

That's okay. That's why that's on me.

But, um, but when you look at diversity, you hit the nail on the head. We have tons of diversity. I remember someone came to me one time and they said, Neil, you know, they went to my co-founder and I, we gave this person a raise within, you know, period, and then within like 3 months they wanted another raise and they wanted a promotion. And we're like, you're not ready yet. So they came to us and they say, you only like Caucasians and you also don't promote women. So then we went back to them and we said, well, both my co-founder and I are not Caucasian. We're minorities, technically, at least.

You are for sure.

Yeah, in the classification of the United States. Yeah, based on population of the world, I'm not— Mike is too. I'm not considered a minority because there's so many Indians.

Yeah.

And then the second thing we said to them is, do you know what percentage of the executives in this company are women? And they're like, not enough. You only have men. And we're like, actually more than half of them. So majority are actually women and not male. And then if you actually look at our stats for, you know, LGBTQ, is it Q at the end? We have a higher percentage than if we look at our US the last time I checked at least, if you look at our US employee base, we have a higher percentage than that ratio in the United States, right? Percentage-wise.

Mm-hmm.

And I look at this and I say, we're not trying to just say, oh, you're a specific kind of gender or race, so we're trying to hire you. We're looking for the best people and the best people are out there and it doesn't matter what race or gender their beliefs are. The key to winning is hiring amazing people. And you can find them in all categories. You just—

Everywhere.

Exactly. You just got to look for them. And I believe if you hire amazing people, you'll do well. If you hire someone to hit a quota, it's kind of offensive. You're like, I'm hiring you because you meet a quota. Why not hire a person who's amazing? And you should be able to find a person who's amazing within that ethnicity, race, or whatever. Just go and hire amazing people. I think the DEI stuff really got out of hand. I know quite a few companies who are just hiring people to check a box instead of looking for qualified people. And if you're looking for qualified people, you said it, I say it as well, you can find qualified people in all races, all, you know, with LGBTQ, etc. You just got to look for it.

Yeah, look, talent is abundant everywhere. And I think, so what I've told my team now, I was like, guys, like, look, by the way, 4 years ago, 5 years ago, when we'd hire people, we're looking for recruiters, right? I felt like something was off when they were really— the question was phrased in such a way, it was like, hey, so what's your stance on DEI? And I'm like, it was like a really aggressive question, right? And then now I'm realizing, man, like, That's probably not a favorable thing to do when you're asking a potential employer moving forward because people have kind of woken up to this. What I would just say is this, right? Like diversity is important, but the most important thing is taking care of your customers. That's number one. 2 is taking care of your employees, right? That's number 2. And then the 3rd thing is, look, the social issues are the social issues, but your company has its own mission already.

Yes.

You just got to take care of that company's mission. Otherwise, you're getting distracted and you're going to be in a world of hurt. And I think Those CEOs that are still focused on kind of meeting quotas. By the way, I don't know if I— I think I told you this before, but I had an African American executive assistant. She was great. And she told me straight up face to face, right? She was like, if you hired me based on meeting a quota, I would be offended. Exactly what you said.

You're just like putting those people down. You're like, I'm only hiring you because I have to meet a quota. That's like, it's like if someone said to me, we need an Indian employee and I want to hire you because you're Indian. So it meets the requirements. I would feel offended about that.

Yep.

It's like screwed up.

You saw what I tweeted a week ago or so, right? There's that kid that got a 1560 out of 1600 SATs, 97% GPA, was the captain of the volleyball team, the captain of the math team, also played the saxophone too, okay? Went to a good school in New York, couldn't get into Harvard, couldn't get into Yale, couldn't get into MIT, I think. And so, I'm just like, okay, you're going to talk about this stuff. It's like, look, it also doesn't look like it's working either, right? So, point of saying all this is we don't think diversity is going to make you rich. The data shows it as well. We've seen it in our companies. Got to focus on your customers, got to focus on your employees. Everything else, just got to, you know, keep it away.

Yeah, and Eric and I aren't saying that you shouldn't hire people from a specific race or beliefs or gender or anything like that, or gender neutral. We're saying hire good people. And both Eric and I have people on our team who may be gay or, you know, are considered a minority. But they're great at what they do.

Yeah.

It was like the other day I was talking to one of my leaders and this guy's amazing. He's one of our best leaders. So I was talking to him, 'cause as you talk to your team members and dude, you know this, you end up becoming friends with a lot of them, right? So I was talking to this guy, he's based in Asia and I'm like, dude, when are you gonna have kids? And he's like, Neil, I gotta tell you something. You know, we've known each other for a while now. I gotta tell you, I'm gay. And I was like, I already know this, but I'm like, this is not a big deal. This is not even a discussion point. What does this have to do with you not having kids if you want 'em? And he's like, yeah, I do want 'em. And it's something, you know, considering in the laws. And he was then telling me in the country he's in, it's not that easy adopting. And I was like, well, this sucks. You know, I was like, there's tons of kids that need homes, but—

By the way, I mean, so finish your thought, go ahead.

No, I was just saying like, it's not a big deal. And funny enough, I think in a lot of corporations, people tiptoe around the subject on, oh, if I'm trans or if I'm gay, like, it's not a big deal. It's just normal. It's part of life.

It's not. The guy that I'm working very closely with on building product right now, he's gay. Like, and I asked him about his relationship, right? Like that, That's not— and we're getting to this point over here and we can wrap it up. We can move on to the next thing. Diversity is beautiful. Diversity in thought, diversity in skin color preferences and all that. But diversity in skill level or diversity in like— you cannot have that. That's bad for the company.

Yes.

That's the pushback.

And to clarify what Eric's saying is when he's saying diversity in skill level, he's talking about having people who just suck at their jobs and are doing terrible work. You need a standard.

It's disparity in skill, right? If you're an A player and I'm an F player, the disparity's too big and it drags the company down.

It's like me paying a company for work and they gave it to someone who sucks. I don't care what nationality, race, or gender preference or anything that person is. I care about, I paid you for a job, I want the job done to the standards I paid you for and that we agreed upon. That's it. Who does the work? I don't care.

Yep, exactly. I got to take a minute to tell you about the Agency Owners Association. This is a peer group for agency owners. Think YPO or EO. But for agency owners. And I just wanted to read you a couple of testimonials. So this first one comes from Carrie, and we asked her, what do you like most about the group? She said, having a group of people to discuss and bounce ideas. The leads are great too. Yes, we share leads in this group as well. This one from Aliyan, he says, the ability to really post whatever I want and need and the group responds. Great experienced members. Getting a lot of insights from conversations with other members. Getting a lot of value from sessions from Eric. Getting advice from from others as well. And so if you want to grow your agency faster and you want a peer group to do so, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. This is a group that both Neil and I created, and our hope here is to create a vibrant community of agency owners and do a lot more with it in the future. So again, marketingschool.io/agency, and we'll see you inside.

The next one that I want to talk about is, you are the media now. I'm curious on what you mean by that.

Okay, so this tweet comes from Balaji Srinivasan. You would know how to pronounce that more than I do. So Balaji, Um, he tweeted this. He says founders should only talk to founder-run media. Talk to Mike Solana of Pirate Wares. Talk to David Sachs of All In. Talk to John Coogan of Power Law and talk to Paki M of Not Boring. I know two of the four there. Tech now has more followers and more authenticity than the establishment. We are the media now. And if you look at this image over here, it says TechCrunch's wild spiral into madness reminds us of the stakes. A brief history of quote unquote new media and notes from Pirate Wires, what we knew, what we learned along the way, and where we're going. And you know what's interesting? Um, I had a, I had a topic that we didn't cover last time about how TechCrunch is spiraling because they went after that Alexander Wang guy about MEI, so meritocracy, excellence, intelligence. Um, they went hardcore and they basically said F you on, in a TechCrunch article, inside of the article, they're like, F you, F all the way off. And it was just too hardcore. Everyone's like, dude, what are you guys doing? Right. And so—

So they're spiraling as people are not reading them as much.

Yeah. So TechCrunch is going down while you think about, you know, We both listen to All-In. I listen to some other podcasts. You do too. And we are becoming like— we actually, I mean, we talk about business, we talk about a lot of different things. We are very much becoming the media. And when you think about it, Trump did an interview on All-In. Like, that to me is a moment where it's like, okay, it's the thing. The media is kind of starting to flip now. Yep.

Dude, that makes total sense. You know, on a side note, did you end up seeing— a little bit different topic, but did you see what ended up happening with social media and Converse?

Let's jump to that in a sec. I just want to finish Balaji's thing over here. Go for it. So, he says, to be clear, founders still need to go direct and build their own channels. Creating your own content is as crucial as writing your own code. But if you're looking for external validation, tech founders now have more traffic and prestige than tech haters. And again, we go back to your history. You were blogging way back in the day, 15+ years, right? Over the years, we've evolved our content flow. Like, you know, I've been doing podcasts for 11, 12 years, this podcast 8 years. And so I still, I don't, I think today is still as good a time as any to start creating content. And any of you listening, you should probably start doing it. So back over to you.

Dude, I'm with you. I think creating your own platform is great. You're not relying on as many channels. If you're building your own email list and you start having this audience, it just helps you with whatever you're promoting. But the key here is build that media related to what you're doing, not do it just for Fame, because if the audience is irrelevant, it doesn't help you with anything that you're doing.

The number one challenge for businesses is hiring. And more specifically, the number one thing I get asked for all the time is, Eric, where can I go find an amazing marketer? And the reality is, right now, when you think about the world, we have inflation. That also means wage inflation right now. And it means that when it comes to hiring talent, you can't spend as much as you would have in the last couple years because it's just become too cost prohibitive. And so we've partnered with one of the best offshore recruiting firms when it comes to marketing. They've been a great asset for us, and I believe that they will be a great asset for you. All you have to do is go to marketingschool.io/hire. Again, it's marketingschool.io/hire to learn more. You can fill out the form there, and we're going to place you with the best marketing hires that we can help you find.

But on a side note, did you end up seeing what happened with Converse and social media?

No.

TikTok specifically? Dude, the comments, based on what a lot of people were pushing in comments, told Converse to bring back their knee-high sneakers.

Oh yeah.

Like literally knee-high Converse sneakers.

Did you have those before?

Me?

I had those.

You had the knee-high sneakers, goes all the way up to your knees.

Okay, fine. No, I had the high tops.

I had the high tops.

Yeah, not the high tops.

I'm talking, they still have the high tops.

Yeah.

I'm talking about knee-high where they're going to your knee.

Okay, no, no, no. Why? No, no. Why?

They're bringing it back just based on the social media comments.

Wow.

Eric's mother, if you're listening to this and Eric had the knee-high Converse sneakers.

No idea.

Do you have a picture of that?

I don't think I have the knee-high Converse sneakers.

Send that on over.

Did you have the knee-high stickers?

I never had Converse shoes.

Oh, too expensive?

No, I had Nikes.

Oh, Nikes are expensive.

But one time my mom bought me these Nike shoes from the mall for my birthday. I think it was $120.

That's expensive.

It was expensive, especially back then. I felt guilty, so the next day I went back and returned them. I got them for like $60. I couldn't do it.

I just felt bad. Did you pocket the $60?

No, I gave it back to my mom and dad. My mom was a teacher, you know, like how much—

That's a lot of money.

$120. I felt bad as a kid. I'm like, man, I'm spending all this money on my parents. And it's like, I needed shoes because mine had holes.

Yeah.

But I was like, that's just too expensive. Too expensive to spend on shoes.

I bet you your shoes that you buy for your kids now are more expensive. No.

No? No, dude. The kids' shoes are cheap. Are you saying that $120?

$120.

They're cheaper. They're expensive because they're Nikes, but they're not $120.

Eventually in the next couple of years, we'll get there.

But if you actually look at how much I spend on kids' shoes on an annual basis is way more than the $120 shoes. Yeah. Because they grow so fast and the shoes don't last long. You're just cranking out how many you buy.

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah, it's a good racket. But what we do is we buy gender-neutral shoes like gray, and then you just pass them down.

Ah, save money.

Very good.

Very good.

But my kids' clothes were definitely way more expensive than the clothes I bought when I was a kid, because my daughter will be like, oh, let's go to Rodeo Drive. Dude, after this podcast recording, I'm going to Rodeo Drive to take her shopping.

Well, I'm going to Erewhon, I'll tell you that. By the way, do you know, this is a completely bonus part, but so one of my Indian friends who lives in London, he told me his billionaire friends buys all this Loro Piana for like 60-70% off.

How?

And you go to— there's a—

You were telling me about this though, the warehouse that makes them.

No, no, no, it's not even a warehouse. You go to Florence, okay? So there's a mall, it's actually called The Mall in Florence, right? And there's Loro there. There's all the top brands. There's Tom Ford there. There's Bottega Veneta. I'm not even pronouncing that correctly, but they have all those brands there, right? And there's another outlet that's near Milan, but if you just go to Florence, it's like right there. And I was checking it out last week and you can actually mail order it too. So I reached out, I was looking at their catalog and everything. And legit, I went to the Tom Ford version of their site. So the sticker price for one jacket, and I don't buy jackets this expensive, I just wanted to see. Well, there's a $6,000 jacket, but US sticker price. And then when I checked on the catalog, $1,500.

Do they have the latest collection?

Mm-hmm.

It's not like an outlet where it's outdated old stuff?

There's new arrivals.

How do I get this for Loro Piana?

So I'll send you the link later, but it's literally, it's an outlet in Florence called The Mall.

And I can just order over the phone and mail it all?

Yeah, you can mail. Yeah, exactly. And they have all of the phone numbers and some are like WhatsApp numbers and all that. So yeah, I emailed, but I just remembered telling you this now that I need to call them. So yeah, hey, you can call them and let me know. Yeah, you do that.

So like a $4,000, $5,000 sweater from Loro Piana will be like $1,000.

Yeah, and it's fully labeled too.

So it's not like a knockoff.

No, it's not a knockoff.

It's a legitimate thing.

It's legit. Yeah. Huh.

Yeah, I'll call. I'll actually place order tomorrow just to see, to test it out. All right, because if it works, then I'll just You just—

yeah, I just saved you a lot of money.

Yeah, you saved me a lot of money.

So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe, and we'll catch you later.