Why Toyota, Walmart, and Target Are Cutting DEI

In episode #2879, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the recent trend of companies like Toyota, Walmart, and Target cutting back on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. He emphasizes the importance of meritocracy in hiring and the need for cultural fit within organizations. Don’t forget to help us grow by subscribing and liking on YouTube! Check out more of Eric’s content (Leveling UP YT) and Neil’s videos (Neil Patel YT) TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: (00:00) The Shift in DEI Initiatives (03:00) Meritocracy vs. DEI: A Business Perspective (05:49) That’s it for today! Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe! Go to https://www.marketingschool.io to learn more! Leave Some Feedback: What should we talk about next? Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric’s ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel X @ericosiu

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot's starter plan brings all of those details together, so it's easier to track what's happening with every deal and what to do next. It pulls information from calls and emails. Then it gets to work, logging and summarizing them. Right after your call ends, HubSpot pulls next steps from your call notes and drafts suggested follow-ups. And it stays up to date for you, so you can build demand, win more deals, and spend less time on repetitive work. Your records, insights, and next steps are ready for you to act on. And you don't have to miss a beat searching for any of it. Try the starter plan for $10 a month. Learn more at hubspot.com. Toyota, Walmart, Target, and other brands are cutting DEI.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Here, I'll tell you what I think about it. I'll take the juicy one first, okay? I just think, man, like, enough is enough. Like, yes, this stuff matters at the end of the day, but what matters the most is that you do good work and you be kind to people. That matters more than anything else. And the more we can cut these, I'm gonna call it, like, they're distractions, the more we can focus on doing good work, the more we can focus on being kind, that is all we need to do.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I look at DEI as, I don't know how DEI organizations are run. As a business owner, it's really simple to me. I don't look at someone based on gender, color, or age, or any of those factors. I look at it as black and white. Good person for the job, bad person for the job. If someone can do a good job, or get trained into it, or they're smart, ambitious, and willing to work hard and learn, I'm all for it. If someone's lazy, I don't care about any of the other factors. In theory, why should lazy people who suck at what they do get paid well, when there's a lot of hardworking people

• 1:48Speaker 01

  who should deserve that job? And again, I don't look at gender, or race, or age, or any of that, or even education.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Both of us employ across the spectrum.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, we employ all things, and people can't say, based on our organizations, that we're sexist, or anything like that, or we discriminate against any kind of race, or if someone may be gendered- Neutral, none of us discriminate or you and I don't discriminate against any of that. And we look at it as like, you do good work, awesome. You know, you're going to do well in our organization, keep getting promoted, keep getting paid well. If you do terrible work and people hate the results and you don't want to show up or even work or do anything. Why should you be around in the organization? It's not fair to all the other people who could either have the job or it's not fair to the people who are working hard.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  Merit, people like, people like to poo poo on merit. It's like, oh, you think America is a merit based economy? Yes, I do. And so, you know, more than most countries, right?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  I do think organizations should look hard for all qualified candidates.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  And not just be like, this one person applied, so I'm going to hire him. And I think that's a bad part about recruiting. For me, that has nothing to do in DEI, but you can lump that in. Because when people apply for a job, even if that person is amazing, we still go out there and try to find other people, no matter about their gender, race, or age, or anything like that. Finding other people who could be potentially skilled. And what you'll find is you may end up finding people who are better for the job. And I'll give you a great example of this. I won't name the person. We had someone interview for one of our positions as a leader of one of our countries, male. All right. And in this country, almost all of the leaders are male. Did amazing on the interview.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  And they probably would have killed it in the job. We said, nah, one person, let's continually find more people. We found this female. And when you look at this female, in this country, a lot of people will talk down because that's how culturally they are, which sucks, but that's the reality and it's changing, but changing slowly. We ended up picking the female, not because the person was a female. We picked them because they had similar experience, if not even a little bit better of experience. They were more expensive, believe it or not, and they were a much better cultural fit. So a little bit better experience, even though they're more expensive, we look at

• 4:16Speaker 01

  the experience and better culture fit and we're like, that's worth it.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Never in my thirteen years of knowing Neil that I've expected him to talk about cultural fit.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Which is really important. When you have a lot of employees, it is, and I'm not saying we have a ton compared to like a Microsoft, but at our scale, it's still a lot when you're over a thousand plus. Cultural fit is really important.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  It's everything.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, because when someone has to work with hundreds of people, it doesn't work out if they're not a cultural fit.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  And culture is just how you do things and everything has a culture, every organization has a culture, your company does, your family has a culture as well. So that's all it is. All right, quick note, this is about my company. It's called Single Grain and Single Grain is an ad agency where we're focused on driving innovation. Want to talk about a couple of new strategies and if you need help with marketing, great. If not, here are a couple of new strategies that you should try out. One is programmatic CRO. So we are doing programmatic conversion rate optimization on our site. So it's building products that will automatically optimize your site to increase conversion rates. We're also auto optimizing, auto updating from an SEO standpoint. And we're constantly thinking about what else we can do in terms of enriching the visitors that are hitting your website and also tailoring custom messages for them using AI.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  And so there's a handful of things that we're doing from a marketing standpoint and our mission is just to drive more innovation. So if you want to learn more, just go to singlegrain.com, grain like rice. So singlegrain.com to learn more and we'll see you inside.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  And it was funny, when I interviewed her, she was telling me how she's a woman and, oh yeah, and you know, in the country, it doesn't go as well. Cause some people, I'm like, I don't care. And what do you, she's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, if you're telling me people are giving you problems because they're female and they're no good, we can make changes. And she's like, really?

• 5:53Speaker 00

  Well, not only that, she's dealt with it.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's dealt with it.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  She's got the thick skin.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, she has a thick skin and she's just like, I can put up with it. And I'm like, well, if people are giving you issues and you don't think they're the right fit, we can make changes if you don't think that's best for our day. She's like, really? I'm like, yeah. She's like, you don't care I'm a female? I'm like, no, you're better fit for the job. I'm like, gender doesn't matter to me. The question is who's best for the company?

• 6:17Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  I think it's you. We'll make changes if people don't want to fall in line. It's that.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  That's simple, right? That is it for today. Go to marketingschool.io/agency. By the way, that price keeps going up. It just doubled last yesterday, actually. So yeah, go check it out and we'll see you tomorrow.