Pod Insights Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips Will Podcasting Drive You More Customers? About this episode In episode #2905, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the effectiveness of podcasting as a marketing tool, the middle market opportunity, creative financing strategies for business acquisitions, the implications of viral marketing through the Oreo experiment, and Coca-Cola's successful expansion strategy. 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 Value of Podcasting for Business Growth (02:58) Exploring the Middle Market Opportunity (06:12) Creative Financing in Business Acquisitions (08:57) The Oreo Experiment and Its Marketing Implications (12:03) Coca-Cola's Market Expansion Strategy (15:13) Leveraging Reddit for Customer Insights (18:00) Hiring for Competence Over Diversity (20:55) 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
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot 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. Here's the question. The question for everyone here, so Neil and I are talking about, hey, how to grow a podcast, why you should start a podcast in 2025. The question, the million dollar question is, will podcasting drive you more customers?
0:48 Speaker 01 A podcast like this, I don't think it'll drive you customers in quantity or enough for the time and effort and cost, if you actually put a cost on our hourly time. I think if you have a very specific podcast, yes. Because doing a podcast on something like marketing, most of the audience is going to be people who are looking for information. And the way you monetize is, yes, every once in a while, you'll get some revenue from it, from a customer. But the real revenue driver is advertising revenue. I'm assuming you agree with that.
1:19 Speaker 00 You know, I was actually pleasantly surprised when I look at the leads, because we have ads for your agency, for Carrot. Like, we rotate a couple of things for this podcast, right? And I look at the leads, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of YouTube and a lot of podcasts. And a couple of enterprise companies for Carrot, it's from this podcast. And then when I talk to them, it's like they know me. I'm like, they're like, kind of shell shocked that I'm on the sales call. And they're like, hey, thank you so much, man. You taught me marketing, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, they're like, director of demand gens at these companies that have raised like, you know, either a lot of money or they have like thousands and thousands of employees.
1:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:53 Speaker 00 So I've been, I would have answered like you a couple of months ago, but I'm pleasantly surprised.
1:58 Speaker 01 So our sales teams ask people, we Get people saying they listen to the podcast, but it's typically not directly attributed for them coming to the podcast and they've learned about us before.
2:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:11 Speaker 01 Uh, what we find is, and the people who come through the podcast, because we've gone a few customers over the years, they're typically not large.
2:19 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
2:19 Speaker 01 So it's not working out well for us from a revenue standpoint. It's great for branding, but to try to get like a $2 million contract from someone listening to the podcast is just tough.
2:31 Speaker 00 Mm hmm. I just look at it as whether it's you're doing this podcast with CMOs or this, this to me is just a touch point of the many touch points that they have to go through. But again, like just looking at it recently, I'm like, whoa, these are like really big company. Oracle the other day.
2:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:44 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:45 Speaker 01 But, but think about it this way, right? Forget just the company, but look at the contract size. Cause if you get headed by Oracle, for them to send you a million, $2 million contract, it usually has to go through procurement and it has to go through RFP process.
2:56 Speaker 00 This wouldn't be agency. This is a.
2:58 Speaker 01 For the software.
2:59 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:00 Speaker 01 And what we found is if you're interviewing CMOs, a lot of them get to know you and they'll include you in future RFP processes. It doesn't mean you're going to get the business.
3:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
3:10 Speaker 01 But we have a really high close rate on RFPs.
3:12 Speaker 00 Yeah.
3:12 Speaker 01 And we see that as a massive ROI channel compounding over, call it three plus years. We like, we actually first ran this experiment in Brazil. Uh, you know, we interviewed the McDonald's CMO.
3:25 Speaker 00 Solo's idea?
3:26 Speaker 01 No, uh, Marine's idea. And it's worked extremely well. And then we started doing it in the United States.
3:31 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
3:32 Speaker 01 But again, it's a really long play and it works if you're going whale hunting and you want enterprise.
3:36 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
3:37 Speaker 01 But if you want enterprise revenue, B to B from a podcast, that is actually very tough unless you're going after a very specific audience, like what I'm doing, going after CMOs versus this at marketing school.
3:47 Speaker 00 Yep.
3:47 Speaker 01 Um, but there's different purposes for different types of podcasts. Like I think this is great for brand recognition and building relationships.
3:54 Speaker 00 Yep. By the way, okay, so that's, those are our three episodes on podcasting, but I want to talk about the middle market opportunity. Do you know what that is?
4:03 Speaker 01 I'm assuming you mean not enterprise, not, not small businesses in the middle?
4:07 Speaker 00 So this guy, Brent Bishore, he has, he has a private equity company called Permanent Equity, and he does his shareholder letter every year. So he basically talks about acquiring lower middle market companies is the best opportunity to build wealth right now. So this is for general population. Excuse me. So there are 350,000 US companies classified as lower middle market, which is 5 million to 100 million in annual revenue. The ecosystem is highly inefficient due to size and lack of institutional interest in these companies. So they want, so typically private equity wants 100 million plus, right? And so it says the biggest variable to success here is operation expertise.
4:50 Speaker 00 If you can endure the day to day ups and downs of running a business, you can acquire a profitable business and reap the rewards. So it shows here, the number of businesses, we're talking 5 million to 100 million or so, you have about 300,000 or so.
5:03 Speaker 01 In the United States?
5:04 Speaker 00 In the United States, yeah. And then under, under 500,000, you have like 14 million and then, you know, you have like these over here, like a billion plus, you have 5,300, 500 million to a billion, 4,100.
5:15 Speaker 01 100 million plus is, 100 million to 500 is what, 24,000?
5:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, 24,000. So this is interesting because I just listened to a podcast recently, speaking about listening to podcasts. This guy bought a $13 million company and with no money down. It was 3 million EBITDA, 3.5 million EBITDA, okay? And the way he structured the deal was this company had, he had, this company had real estate. So he did a sale leaseback, which is he, he sold the real estate and then he leased it back, okay? So that covered 10 million and then he took the inventory, took, took out a loan against the inventory and that covered all of the payment. And I'm just like, yeah, I mean, that guy's a perfect example, $13 million, 3.5 million EBITDA, and he got it for no money down.
6:03 Speaker 00 I think we're gonna see a lot more of this. So I think it's an interesting discussion.
6:06 Speaker 01 It's creative. If you can do creative financing like that, you're great. The other thing is, I bet you he's also the one running the business.
6:13 Speaker 00 He's not.
6:14 Speaker 01 Really?
6:14 Speaker 00 He's not, which is, I don't, he sounds inexperienced with operating. I think that's gonna come back to bite him. He's like, I'm just gonna focus on buying other businesses. I'm not gonna be the CEO. I'm gonna hire CEO, blah, blah, blah. And I'm just gonna buy like four or five of these. And this is the first one that he did. I'm like,
6:28 Speaker 01 Good luck with that.
6:29 Speaker 00 I don't think that's gonna go well.
6:30 Speaker 01 In most of these cases, you ideally wanna be an operator and be the one.
6:34 Speaker 00 He should focus on that business. That was such a good deal. He should, he should do it.
6:37 Speaker 01 He should make it work before he looks at another one and he should get hands on.
6:41 Speaker 00 It's not that easy to operate.
6:42 Speaker 01 It's not. And what you wanna do when you buy these is you wanna keep the operating team there. And you want to get trained up by them, learn everything, and then improve upon the business over time.
6:51 Speaker 00 By the way, the founders are staying with the company for the next two years or so. Ideally, he would be there with them.
6:56 Speaker 01 Yes, to learn.
6:57 Speaker 00 And he's like, oh, I live in Florida. And then, you know, they're up in Connecticut. I'm like, you should be up in Connecticut like all the time. So.
7:02 Speaker 01 You should just actually move to Connecticut temporarily and make it work.
7:05 Speaker 00 Yep. So I think, look, there is a middle market opportunity. I think buying businesses in general, we both talked about it on this podcast. And I think if you've, I think it's really just like, if you find a good deal, great. But you have the most incentive to make it work. So please be involved. Don't just follow what all these other people say about hiring an operator. It's not that easy.
7:25 Speaker 01 No, it's not that easy at all. On a side note, for your carrot, is it carrot or Kara?
7:32 Speaker 00 Kara.
7:32 Speaker 01 Kara, ABM?
7:33 Speaker 00 K A R R O T.
7:35 Speaker 01 Okay, Kara ABM. Have you guys tried running message ads in Google?
7:42 Speaker 00 No.
7:43 Speaker 01 So, you know, in Google, you can use message assets in your ads to make it so someone can just directly WhatsApp you and communicate with you.
7:52 Speaker 00 Google the WhatsApp?
7:53 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
7:54 Speaker 00 Oh, I didn't know that.
7:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, you should try it out. It converts really well for B2B. Especially enterprise. Assuming you're going very specific with your keywords.
8:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. Okay.
8:04 Speaker 01 And you're targeting.
8:06 Speaker 00 This is interesting. I'm gonna send it to the team right now.
8:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, try it out. Most B2B companies don't run it. But as long as you have someone on sales and you can do WhatsApp, you're golden.
8:16 Speaker 00 Yeah, sending it. Alright, you pick a topic while I send this.
8:19 Speaker 01 Uh, oh, did you see how going viral can hurt you?
8:24 Speaker 00 No.
8:24 Speaker 01 The Oreo experiment?
8:26 Speaker 00 No. This is the Oreo experiment from the Super Bowl, right? A couple of years ago?
8:31 Speaker 01 What was the Oreo experiment from the Super Bowl?
8:32 Speaker 00 You don't remember? Okay, so the Ravens were playing the Niners and then the Super Bowl blacked out during halftime and then Oreo capitalized and made these Oreo like ads. And they got a lot of reach.
8:45 Speaker 01 No.
8:45 Speaker 00 Okay, what's this?
8:46 Speaker 01 So, Oreo recently has been going viral all over the social web.
8:49 Speaker 00 This is Google chat ads, right? What do you call them?
8:52 Speaker 01 Uh, message ads.
8:53 Speaker 00 Okay.
8:54 Speaker 01 Just Google, tell them to Google, like, Google message ads connecting to WhatsApp, they'll find it.
8:59 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:00 Speaker 01 I don't know the exact name, but it works.
9:02 Speaker 00 Okay, cool.
9:03 Speaker 01 Message assets, something like that.
9:05 Speaker 00 Got it.
9:07 Speaker 01 Dude, I haven't actually gone in to try to actually run ad, I just tell my team to go do it.
9:11 Speaker 00 Yeah. Well, okay, how do you follow up with them?
9:15 Speaker 01 I follow up an hour later, being like, is it done?
9:18 Speaker 00 With a happy face, right?
9:21 Speaker 01 No, just, how's it going, is it out?
9:24 Speaker 00 Do people ever push back to you when you're just pushing them like this?
9:29 Speaker 01 Uh, if they push back, I find another person in the organization to do a part of me.
9:34 Speaker 00 That's good.
9:34 Speaker 01 And I usually know who's gonna get it done at the timeframe I want before I even reach out.
9:37 Speaker 00 So you'll push until they push back and then you push someone else until they push back and you go back to pushing the original person?
9:43 Speaker 01 No, if I try to push the original person and they don't do it, I won't go back to them, period.
9:49 Speaker 00 Cause it's just like, oh, I can't count on you.
9:51 Speaker 01 Not to say I can't count on you. You can do certain things. Look, not everyone in their job is great at everything. People are really good at certain things.
9:59 Speaker 00 Nobody's great at everything.
10:00 Speaker 01 Exactly. So if I need someone to execute really fast, I actually look for the person, first off, who is scrappy and can execute. Uh, and I'll go to them directly or I'll ask an executive in the company, who is the person who can get it done for me really fast? And I go to them and it usually works out. If not... I'll tell them it didn't work out. Who's your next person on the list that I can go to that can just get it done?
10:20 Speaker 00 Who can I bother next?
10:21 Speaker 01 Yes. And I usually don't know a lot of these people. I'm like, hey, can you put me on a text introduction?
10:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
10:26 Speaker 01 I don't ask for email. I don't ask for a team's introduction. I just want a text introduction and I call them right then and there.
10:31 Speaker 00 I can't say like, this is so underrated, the ability, like Neo's ability, this, it's, I wouldn't even call it pushing because that sounds negative. It's just checking in. The ability to check in consistently and to remember that, it pushes the company so much faster. And it's very underrated.
10:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's very underrated.
10:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
10:49 Speaker 01 It actually is what causes a lot of our growth.
10:51 Speaker 00 Yeah. Not enough people talk about this.
10:53 Speaker 01 It works really well. I don't know why people don't do it.
10:56 Speaker 00 Dude, back in our like mid twenties or something, I think I was like 24 years old. Remember I was helping Crazy Egg for a little bit?
11:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:01 Speaker 00 And Neil would check in with me every day.
11:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:02 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:03 Speaker 01 It's like clockwork. Some people I'd check in with like five, six times a day.
11:06 Speaker 00 This is Neil at 25 years old, by the way, guys.
11:08 Speaker 01 Up and running.
11:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:09 Speaker 01 And then if I don't get the answers, the results I want, I'm like, you're done. Next person.
11:15 Speaker 00 All right, what do we want to go back?
11:16 Speaker 01 So, okay, the Oreo experiment, going back to it. So on the social web, people have been taking Oreos and they've been taking a blowtorch. All right?
11:24 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
11:25 Speaker 01 And then cooking an Oreo because there's a lot of food chemicals or whatever they want to call it that Oreo uses to make their cookies.
11:33 Speaker 00 So they do it on like one second, five seconds, and then once like three minutes.
11:36 Speaker 01 Uh, so they take, they, they take a cookie, quite a few cookies, they line them up, they'll do one second, then two seconds, then like five seconds, then 10 seconds, then 20 seconds, then 30 seconds. And they're putting it behind cardboard because you're using a blowtorch. You can't just put it on like a piece of paper. It's going to easily catch on fire. And what they're finding with one second, like the Oreo looks the same. You go all the way to 30 seconds, the Oreo roughly looks the same. It hasn't burned much at all. It didn't really burn quite, really at all. Uh, and it's the back, which is wood, is burning up, but the Oreo still looks edible.
12:12 Speaker 01 How bad do you think that is for their marketing? People are like, what the heck? This thing won't even flame up?
12:18 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:19 Speaker 01 Should I even be putting it in my body?
12:20 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:21 Speaker 01 That's virality really hurting Oreo. And I think this will hurt their sales.
12:25 Speaker 00 It went for a minute on the last one. It turned red, the Oreo.
12:29 Speaker 01 I did not see the minute. I've seen up to 30 seconds.
12:31 Speaker 00 Oh, you got tired of watching it. How many views did that get? Cause I watched that video. This is weeks ago when I watched this.
12:35 Speaker 01 Oh, there's tons of them. That's what I'm saying, it's going viral. No, no, not just reposting.
12:39 Speaker 00 Many people are posting.
12:40 Speaker 01 People are creating their own Oreo experiments and doing this. They think it's funny.
12:43 Speaker 00 So this is like billions of views.
12:45 Speaker 01 Uh, probably. My guess is billions at this point.
12:48 Speaker 00 Wow, okay.
12:49 Speaker 01 And it's in multiple languages too. Cause I'm talking to my team in Portuguese. Like, yeah, you don't see it, it's so cool. I'm gonna do it with my kids. And I'm like, uh huh.
12:56 Speaker 00 Could you share this on Seed Oil Scout? Yeah, Seed Oil Scout's a, that's a legit, um, that's a legit app that tells you what has seed oil and what doesn't. And so a lot of people follow that.
13:06 Speaker 01 But it's kinda crazy to think about, or it's not burning. I'm like, yeah, I don't wanna eat an Oreo ever again.
13:12 Speaker 00 When's the last time you ate an Oreo?
13:13 Speaker 01 I can't even remember.
13:15 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly.
13:15 Speaker 01 But I probably have had in the last 12 months, uh, cookies and cream ice cream.
13:19 Speaker 00 Wow, and the thing is, they can't, they can't really sue anybody for this.
13:23 Speaker 01 No, it's reality.
13:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:25 Speaker 01 Put clean ingredients in your product, make it taste good, and it will then burn.
13:30 Speaker 00 Wow, okay, alright.
13:33 Speaker 01 I think that's true, right?
13:34 Speaker 00 Yep. Well, hey, hey, hey, I got another Coca-Cola one for you, cause we're talking about food right now. Do you wanna know how Coca-Cola went from a $4 billion company to $150 billion company with one question?
13:46 Speaker 01 They just gave it many, many years and they didn't even need a question? They've just been in business such a long time, you continually generate more revenue.
13:52 Speaker 00 No. What percentage of the entire liquid market do we have? So before, in the 1980s, Coca-Cola was doing pretty well. They had 45% market share of total soft drinks market. But the CEO, he asked two questions ahead of that. But the, the main question is, what percentage of the entire liquid market do we have? When the answer to the question was only a paltry 2%, they realized they can't just target the soft drink market. They have to go way larger than that. And so that's when Coca-Cola grew from $4 billion in 1981 to roughly $150 billion in 1997.
14:26 Speaker 01 So they had 45, uh, 45% of like the Coke or carbonated drink market?
14:32 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:32 Speaker 01 And then they decided to go out of soft drinks and they just went after the beverage market? And they only own 2%? And I don't know what they own today percentage wise, but it can't be forty five percent or anything like that of the total beverage market is too large.
14:46 Speaker 00 No.
14:46 Speaker 01 Um, but I bet you they're in the, call it, single digits or low double digits.
14:51 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:52 Speaker 01 I guess.
14:52 Speaker 00 But you, we saw.
14:53 Speaker 01 It's a massive market.
14:53 Speaker 00 We saw in the nineties, I mean, they expanded into like, you know, um, sports drinks, they expand into like Aquafina or Dazani, right? Yeah. And then I, I think now they own like a couple of like, um.
15:03 Speaker 01 There's like the Gatorades, the, uh, Propel.
15:06 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:06 Speaker 01 I don't know which ones.
15:07 Speaker 00 I don't think they own Gatorade, Powerade or whatever.
15:08 Speaker 01 Vitamin water.
15:09 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:10 Speaker 01 Right? Healthy versions and there's energy drinks and the list just goes on and on and on.
15:15 Speaker 00 Yeah, they, I mean, one, they either invented things or they went on an acquisition, um, spree, but I think this just flipped everything for them. It's like, okay. We're not just gonna go soft drink, we're gonna go everything. Yeah.
15:25 Speaker 01 So, no, that's true. That's the one question.
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16:06 Speaker 01 All right, let's talk about the impact of Reddit answers. I'm curious on this one. You have a tweet on this.
16:12 Speaker 00 So they just, Reddit just launched their own LLM search engine. You saw that, right?
16:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:16 Speaker 00 I haven't quite used it yet. I think we can talk about our reaction to this, but it aggregates and summarizes relevant responses across threads. Um, and so I think this is interesting because for me, even yes, actually this morning I was at the gym and I got bored and I, I, um, this is in between sets. I was looking at the jiu jitsu section, the Brazilian jiu jitsu section. And the communities are very vibrant in there. They're very engaging and they're sharing like crazy stuff, like injuries that are having in all these things, right? So you're getting raw responses from people that you can mostly trust, right? Um, and so I think Reddit is one of the best places to go to if you want real feedback from users that actually participate in this stuff.
16:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think Reddit is a great place to go for not just community feedback, but building relationships with your crazy, diehard customers. And when I say crazy, I mean that in a good way. People who just love a brand or hate them, and you can turn the haters into lovers. But I think Reddit is a really underutilized social network that not enough marketers leverage. And the reason they don't is they're worried that, oh, what if people say negative things? Well, people can say negative things anywhere on the web. They can leave negative reviews. They can create hateful websites that just, you know, talk crap about you. And funny enough, a lot of them just keep popping up and then they ask you for money to take it down.
17:32 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, look, this is, I think we're gonna see a lot, like Grok does this with Twitter. Okay, I think a lot, if you have a lot of data, Wikipedia will probably do this as well.
17:43 Speaker 01 Eventually, yes. Yeah, I think they gotta reallocate how they spend their money because there's a lot of inefficiencies. I could be wrong, but the last article I read.
17:49 Speaker 00 Well, we saw how much they spent on DEI.
17:52 Speaker 01 It's a lot, it's a large chunk of the revenue.
17:54 Speaker 00 Server cost was like three million a year or something like that. And then it was like fifty, sixty million dollars a year towards other stuff.
18:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, and if you wanna spend fifty, sixty million or have DEI programs, that's fine. But you should make sure you're spending the majority of your money to improve the, improve the business and improve the experience for your customers before anything else.
18:15 Speaker 00 Dude, I'm just looking at the sidebar here. It says FBI closes diversity office ahead of Trump's inauguration. So you're just, I think we're gonna see costs.
18:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think we're gonna see it.
18:23 Speaker 00 There's gonna be a cost cutting, so.
18:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:26 Speaker 00 Yep.
18:27 Speaker 01 So then, dude, the market's tough. If you're not optimizing for what's best for your customer, you're gonna end up losing to someone who does.
18:34 Speaker 00 So what I told my, my people team is like, not that diversity isn't important, but more so you have to focus on the mission of the company. If you start to have two different missions, people get distracted. And it's really, it's already hard enough to do one company. So if you have two or three different missions, you're fighting for all these different things. It makes work really hard and makes it unfun because you have to focus on too many things at once.
18:57 Speaker 01 The way I look at diversity, especially in marketing, is if you have people from all different types of groups, religions, you know, countries, nationalities, skin colors, etc., they can bring a unique perspective when you're doing marketing campaigns, which is amazing and great. And as recruiters, you should go search out there for the best people, no matter what skin color they are. But at the end of the day, you want to hire the people who are the best. Doesn't matter if their skin color is different than what you may be used to, or if they're a guy or a girl, or they're gender neutral. Just hire the best person for the job. If you hire the best person for a job, your company should grow and you should see the best results.
19:36 Speaker 00 Look, if you're hiring someone based on merit, usually what ends up happening is diversity is built in. Because the reality is, in a very competitive market, especially in technology, for example, it's very competitive, right? You actually can't afford to be racist. You have to hire the best person possible, and it forces you to be colorblind, right? This is assuming you are racist, which I think is like, if you are racist, like, it doesn't quite make sense. Like, if you're a smart person, it doesn't, it really doesn't quite make sense. You just want the smartest, you want to work with the smartest people, and you want to build the coolest things. And so you, you actually don't have time to be racist.
20:07 Speaker 01 So I'll ask you a question. You, you take a guess on what I did. Few years ago, I was on an offsite meeting, and it was for one of our divisions. And quite a few people were there, it was all leadership. There was this guy who was running it. He was running that whole division. He was, you know, in charge of it in essence. So every time I asked him questions, he passed it off to the person who was underneath him, who was a female. And he kept doing that. What signaled, or what do you think that made me think right away when he kept doing that?
20:37 Speaker 00 The female's more competent.
20:38 Speaker 01 Uh huh. What do you think I ended up doing?
20:40 Speaker 00 You promoted her and fired him.
20:42 Speaker 01 Yes.
20:43 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:43 Speaker 01 Didn't care about race, skin color, if female, male, I'm like, oh, she's more qualified. People look up to her. And I can tell that people go to her for answers and for solutions. I'm like, I don't want that guy running anything. He doesn't know the answers. I want the person who does. I don't care what skin color, you know, gender she is. She is competent. She is qualified. She should have that role.
21:04 Speaker 00 You want to know Netflix's philosophy when it comes to hiring?
21:07 Speaker 01 What?
21:08 Speaker 00 Adequate performance gets a generous severance package.
21:12 Speaker 01 I love it.
21:13 Speaker 00 That's the line I've been repeating to everyone, to my people team. Adequate performance gets a generous severance package.
21:18 Speaker 01 You're a startup, you don't have to do generous severance package.
21:20 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:21 Speaker 01 Netflix is publicly traded, they probably do.
21:23 Speaker 00 So it's interesting, I told the team, they're like, no, I don't know about generous. I'm like, adequate performance gets a severance package.
21:31 Speaker 01 There you go. But of course, you should look out for people, you don't want anyone.
21:33 Speaker 00 Of course, no. And by the way, I told my team, like, nobody gets any joy in having to let someone go. It's actually our fault for making that hire in the first place. And so we want to make sure that they're taken care of. They can do their best work somewhere else, all jokes aside, because they will do their best work somewhere else. And you don't want to make them miserable in your company, so.
21:49 Speaker 01 And I've seen Eric lay people off and then he'll hit his friends up saying, hey, do you want this person? They're really good at X, Y, and Z, if you have any openings for them.
21:58 Speaker 00 Even if it's a firing, still.
21:59 Speaker 01 Yes, and I've done the same thing on my end as well.
22:02 Speaker 00 Yep. So anyway, guys, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and go to marketing.com slash agency if you want to join 50 plus other agency owners to grow your agency faster.
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