WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.800 Welcome back to the game podcast. 2 00:00:01.800 --> 00:00:04.560 We talk about making fat stacks of money 3 00:00:04.560 --> 00:00:06.400 or just helping people in doing good stuff. 4 00:00:06.400 --> 00:00:10.240 Anyways, today this is the third in our little mini series 5 00:00:10.240 --> 00:00:11.480 of audio first podcasts. 6 00:00:11.480 --> 00:00:13.320 Please, again, let me know if you like this 7 00:00:13.320 --> 00:00:14.920 by tagging me and sharing it 8 00:00:14.920 --> 00:00:16.480 because I'm looking at the metrics 9 00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:18.840 if these podcasts do better than I will do more of them. 10 00:00:18.840 --> 00:00:20.480 But today I want to talk about data, 11 00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:23.640 which sounds really boring, but it's really important 12 00:00:23.640 --> 00:00:26.680 and it will make you a lot of money. 13 00:00:26.680 --> 00:00:28.760 So I'll just frame it that way. 14 00:00:28.760 --> 00:00:32.160 But I had a few recent very frustrating instances 15 00:00:32.160 --> 00:00:33.320 that occurred in my business 16 00:00:33.320 --> 00:00:35.000 that may have occurred in your business 17 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:37.680 that I didn't recognize as data problems 18 00:00:37.680 --> 00:00:40.400 and then once I did was able to resolve them. 19 00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:44.840 And so I want to show you at least another one of these patterns 20 00:00:44.840 --> 00:00:47.040 so that you can recognize it faster 21 00:00:47.040 --> 00:00:49.120 and solve it to grow. 22 00:00:49.120 --> 00:00:51.000 That being said, I want to talk about a meeting that I had 23 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:54.000 this last week or two or three. 24 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:55.480 It was incredibly frustrating. 25 00:00:55.480 --> 00:00:58.360 And when something's frustrating, a lot of times for me 26 00:00:58.360 --> 00:01:00.400 it's because I don't know why it's frustrating. 27 00:01:00.400 --> 00:01:01.560 Because if you know what the problem is 28 00:01:01.560 --> 00:01:03.280 then it's just like, great, let's just go solve the problem. 29 00:01:03.280 --> 00:01:04.560 There's not really a lot of frustration there. 30 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:07.040 It's the unknowns that are the ones that drive you mad 31 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:08.720 or at least drive me mad. 32 00:01:08.720 --> 00:01:11.280 And so I'll describe the scenario 33 00:01:11.280 --> 00:01:14.520 because hopefully if you have the same scenario 34 00:01:14.520 --> 00:01:16.880 you can recognize the pattern faster than I did. 35 00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:18.680 And so I'll tell you probably two or three stories 36 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:19.520 here to make this real. 37 00:01:19.520 --> 00:01:22.120 So first stories from years ago. 38 00:01:22.120 --> 00:01:24.520 One of our portfolio companies came to me 39 00:01:24.520 --> 00:01:27.720 and he was super stressed out and he was like pulling his hair 40 00:01:27.720 --> 00:01:29.480 and I was like, what's going on dude? 41 00:01:29.480 --> 00:01:32.640 And he said, dude, there's so much money coming in 42 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:34.800 and I was like, well that's a wonderful thing. 43 00:01:34.800 --> 00:01:36.480 And he was like, yeah, but there's so much going out 44 00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:38.040 and I was like, oh, well that's not as wonderful 45 00:01:38.040 --> 00:01:39.120 of a thing, okay. 46 00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:40.680 But what's the issue? 47 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:43.280 He said, I just don't know where everything's going. 48 00:01:43.280 --> 00:01:45.480 And this was a business that we were scaling rapidly 49 00:01:45.480 --> 00:01:48.000 and it was a business that had a reinvestment. 50 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:49.360 Basically we had to get returns on capital. 51 00:01:49.360 --> 00:01:51.720 So some businesses have low cap ex. 52 00:01:51.720 --> 00:01:53.640 So if you have an accounting firm 53 00:01:53.760 --> 00:01:55.000 you just hire more accountants 54 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:56.040 and you can continue to expand. 55 00:01:56.040 --> 00:01:57.120 If you have a manufacturing business 56 00:01:57.120 --> 00:01:59.400 after you get to a thousand widgets a day, 57 00:01:59.400 --> 00:02:01.560 you can't, you need to buy another machine. 58 00:02:01.560 --> 00:02:03.800 You have to reinvest capital to expand the business. 59 00:02:03.800 --> 00:02:06.080 And so this was a capital heavy business. 60 00:02:06.080 --> 00:02:09.640 He basically said, I don't know the rate at which I can expand 61 00:02:09.640 --> 00:02:10.640 based on the cash that we have. 62 00:02:10.640 --> 00:02:12.160 And I'd still like to taste distributions 63 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:14.320 and I obviously am a big fan of distributions as well. 64 00:02:14.320 --> 00:02:17.800 I said freeze this moment because he was really stressed out. 65 00:02:17.800 --> 00:02:20.200 I was like, this moment, this feeling you have 66 00:02:20.200 --> 00:02:22.280 was like, is a lack of a finance function 67 00:02:22.280 --> 00:02:24.040 or an underdeveloped finance function? 68 00:02:24.040 --> 00:02:25.240 And he just kind of looked at me. 69 00:02:25.240 --> 00:02:26.800 I was like, right now you have a bookkeeper 70 00:02:26.800 --> 00:02:28.240 and we've scaled far beyond that. 71 00:02:28.240 --> 00:02:29.480 Like we need an in-house controller 72 00:02:29.480 --> 00:02:31.520 not just somebody who's going to manage credits and debits. 73 00:02:31.520 --> 00:02:34.040 That person could then give us kind of financial, 74 00:02:34.040 --> 00:02:35.960 like operationalize the financial information 75 00:02:35.960 --> 00:02:37.960 to give us cash flow projections 76 00:02:37.960 --> 00:02:40.120 so that we can see how many locations 77 00:02:40.120 --> 00:02:41.800 or how many reinvestments we can do 78 00:02:41.800 --> 00:02:45.480 and still maintain cash flow as we meet these projections. 79 00:02:45.480 --> 00:02:47.360 We got that installed and then a quarter later. 80 00:02:47.360 --> 00:02:48.400 He was like, dude, oh my God, 81 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:49.760 I'll like all my stress is gone 82 00:02:49.760 --> 00:02:51.880 because I know exactly how many we can open 83 00:02:51.880 --> 00:02:53.280 or reinvest every single month 84 00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:54.360 and still get distributions. 85 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:55.520 And I was like, right, wasn't that great? 86 00:02:55.520 --> 00:02:57.880 And so the constraint of the business at that time 87 00:02:57.880 --> 00:03:01.560 was a lack of data, specifically finance data. 88 00:03:01.560 --> 00:03:05.640 And so this got me thinking about data 89 00:03:05.640 --> 00:03:07.880 as a constraint overall within businesses. 90 00:03:07.880 --> 00:03:10.200 If you think about departments of a business. 91 00:03:10.200 --> 00:03:12.520 So you've got marketing, you've got sales, 92 00:03:12.520 --> 00:03:14.400 you've got product, you've got customer success, 93 00:03:14.400 --> 00:03:16.560 I would consider those core value creation. 94 00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:18.640 And then you've got supporting value creation 95 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:21.440 which should be like HR recruiting 96 00:03:21.440 --> 00:03:24.520 if you pull that out of HR which we do. 97 00:03:24.520 --> 00:03:27.680 IT, so information technology, you've got finance 98 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:29.640 and legal maybe to some degree. 99 00:03:29.640 --> 00:03:31.640 You've got these other departments, right? 100 00:03:31.640 --> 00:03:34.240 Interestingly for me, IT, what it literally stands 101 00:03:34.240 --> 00:03:36.920 for is information technology, it's data tech 102 00:03:36.920 --> 00:03:41.920 and finance, both of those are data departments. 103 00:03:41.960 --> 00:03:44.360 Their entire department's what their output is 104 00:03:44.360 --> 00:03:45.400 is information. 105 00:03:45.400 --> 00:03:46.840 So think about it, like when you have 106 00:03:46.840 --> 00:03:49.120 a good finance department, they send you data. 107 00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:49.960 That's actually what they do. 108 00:03:49.960 --> 00:03:51.920 They literally send you a sheet of data. 109 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:54.400 Which sounds weird for me to say this 110 00:03:54.400 --> 00:03:55.400 because it's like, what will do? 111 00:03:55.400 --> 00:03:56.800 But I haven't thought about it like this 112 00:03:56.800 --> 00:03:58.160 and maybe you have and so if you have 113 00:03:58.160 --> 00:03:59.400 then you're smarter than I am. 114 00:03:59.400 --> 00:04:01.480 But thinking about that way, it means that 115 00:04:01.480 --> 00:04:03.440 the output of finance is data 116 00:04:03.440 --> 00:04:06.800 and the second part is in order to make decisions. 117 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:09.040 And so if the data that you get from finance 118 00:04:09.040 --> 00:04:12.560 doesn't change how you operate, you don't need the department. 119 00:04:12.560 --> 00:04:14.240 Now it would make the argument that you do 120 00:04:14.240 --> 00:04:16.040 and that if you aren't using any of the data 121 00:04:16.080 --> 00:04:18.280 that they're giving you the wrong stuff. 122 00:04:18.280 --> 00:04:20.120 And the same can be said for IT, 123 00:04:20.120 --> 00:04:23.360 which is that IT isn't actually a real department. 124 00:04:23.360 --> 00:04:28.200 It's just that 100 years ago, IT was just ledgers. 125 00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:32.000 Somebody who kept contacts, like we should put 126 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:33.200 their name and address somewhere. 127 00:04:33.200 --> 00:04:37.360 It was how we organized the information of the business. 128 00:04:37.360 --> 00:04:40.160 Both of those IT and finance 129 00:04:40.160 --> 00:04:42.680 kind of spread across the entire organization. 130 00:04:42.680 --> 00:04:45.360 Because if you change your offer for example, 131 00:04:45.360 --> 00:04:46.440 then finance needs to know 132 00:04:46.440 --> 00:04:47.960 because they're gonna have to change the contracts 133 00:04:47.960 --> 00:04:49.200 and they're gonna have to change the invoicing 134 00:04:49.200 --> 00:04:50.400 and they're gonna have to change the billing 135 00:04:50.400 --> 00:04:52.200 and maybe if the processor know 136 00:04:52.200 --> 00:04:53.480 that you're gonna have to increase your limits 137 00:04:53.480 --> 00:04:55.240 or you're gonna go to a recurring model, whatever. 138 00:04:55.240 --> 00:04:56.640 Like it's gonna affect things. 139 00:04:56.640 --> 00:04:59.080 If you change anything about your offer, for example, 140 00:04:59.080 --> 00:05:01.680 you're gonna have or your sales process, IT has to know. 141 00:05:01.680 --> 00:05:02.800 The pipeline's gonna change. 142 00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:03.880 The stages are gonna change. 143 00:05:03.880 --> 00:05:05.520 Our funnels are gonna change. 144 00:05:05.520 --> 00:05:08.240 How we tag people inside the serum is gonna change. 145 00:05:08.240 --> 00:05:09.960 But fundamentally, the only reason we have 146 00:05:09.960 --> 00:05:12.200 either of these departments is to have data. 147 00:05:12.200 --> 00:05:13.720 You're like, okay, I get it Alex, 148 00:05:13.720 --> 00:05:15.400 why are you bringing this up? 149 00:05:15.400 --> 00:05:20.400 So, fast forward to the meeting that I had a recurring meeting 150 00:05:21.240 --> 00:05:23.920 with my marketing team recently in-house, 151 00:05:23.920 --> 00:05:28.840 I haven't been this frustrated in a while on a meeting, 152 00:05:28.840 --> 00:05:30.600 on a recurring basis. 153 00:05:30.600 --> 00:05:31.960 And I even brought up, I was like, guys, 154 00:05:31.960 --> 00:05:34.040 why is this so painful? 155 00:05:34.040 --> 00:05:34.880 Like this is horrible. 156 00:05:34.880 --> 00:05:36.080 This feels like pulling teeth. 157 00:05:36.080 --> 00:05:37.440 Like what is happening here? 158 00:05:37.440 --> 00:05:40.520 And so basically, what I had never had before 159 00:05:40.520 --> 00:05:42.840 is a big brand, right? 160 00:05:42.840 --> 00:05:44.120 We were like, well, Alex, you've been doing this a while. 161 00:05:44.120 --> 00:05:47.800 It's like, yeah, but I haven't really done anything 162 00:05:47.800 --> 00:05:49.120 very much with my brand besides, 163 00:05:49.120 --> 00:05:51.520 we field inbound inquiries that come in 164 00:05:51.520 --> 00:05:52.360 for portfolio companies. 165 00:05:52.360 --> 00:05:53.840 And we don't do a tremendous amount of deal volume 166 00:05:53.840 --> 00:05:55.880 in terms of deals per year. 167 00:05:55.880 --> 00:05:58.440 It was novel for me because we basically get traffic 168 00:05:58.440 --> 00:06:01.280 from all over in many different places. 169 00:06:01.280 --> 00:06:05.240 To improve things, we still didn't have adequate tracking. 170 00:06:05.240 --> 00:06:06.800 Like if you just have ad tracking, 171 00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:08.680 which is what I was accustomed to, 172 00:06:08.680 --> 00:06:12.640 that tracks all your ad traffic for the most part. 173 00:06:12.640 --> 00:06:16.240 And in my history, that was the only traffic I had. 174 00:06:16.240 --> 00:06:19.560 But with organic, you have word of mouth, 175 00:06:19.560 --> 00:06:23.320 you have all of the different sources of organic traffic. 176 00:06:23.320 --> 00:06:25.360 And if you start emailing, you have email traffic. 177 00:06:25.360 --> 00:06:27.400 Now, of course, there's attribution for email. 178 00:06:27.400 --> 00:06:29.080 There's some levels of attribution 179 00:06:29.080 --> 00:06:31.000 that you can do on organic. 180 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:34.400 But all of this was just honestly a mess. 181 00:06:34.400 --> 00:06:37.600 And so it was like the third meeting in a row 182 00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:40.760 where I would end the meeting and I was like, what happened? 183 00:06:40.800 --> 00:06:42.800 Because I like to have very clear marching orders 184 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:43.880 for everyone if we end the meeting. 185 00:06:43.880 --> 00:06:45.280 It's like, what are we going to change our way of behavior? 186 00:06:45.280 --> 00:06:46.880 If we don't change our behavior from this meeting, 187 00:06:46.880 --> 00:06:48.600 we shouldn't have had a meeting, right? 188 00:06:48.600 --> 00:06:50.000 Like, what are we going to do? 189 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:51.800 Three in a row, we had nothing to do. 190 00:06:51.800 --> 00:06:53.480 And so I was like, this has to change. 191 00:06:53.480 --> 00:06:56.600 And so the big realization was that I was in the exact same shoes 192 00:06:56.600 --> 00:06:59.000 as that founder with the missing finance function, 193 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:02.440 except I was lacking marketing data. 194 00:07:02.440 --> 00:07:04.760 I was like, oh, it's one of those, right? 195 00:07:04.760 --> 00:07:06.760 And I try to get into pattern recognition 196 00:07:06.760 --> 00:07:09.760 as fast as I can so that I can make faster, better decisions 197 00:07:09.760 --> 00:07:11.920 within businesses, which is why every business 198 00:07:11.920 --> 00:07:13.960 that I started has made more money than the one before it. 199 00:07:13.960 --> 00:07:15.840 Because hopefully you recognize all the patterns 200 00:07:15.840 --> 00:07:18.240 to get to this level and then you have to learn new patterns. 201 00:07:18.240 --> 00:07:21.080 And so for me, this was a new pattern, 202 00:07:21.080 --> 00:07:22.520 whereas the finance pattern was one 203 00:07:22.520 --> 00:07:24.280 that I had encountered plenty of times before. 204 00:07:24.280 --> 00:07:25.880 And so it was just that this pattern 205 00:07:25.880 --> 00:07:29.680 wasn't just 101 ad attribution, which you should do that. 206 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:33.840 But it was omnichannel tracking and attribution. 207 00:07:33.840 --> 00:07:38.840 And then funnel conversion across different types of traffic. 208 00:07:38.960 --> 00:07:41.760 And so you can't even run all types of traffic to one funnel 209 00:07:41.760 --> 00:07:43.600 because they're going to convert differently. 210 00:07:43.600 --> 00:07:45.160 Again, what do I do with this? 211 00:07:45.160 --> 00:07:46.720 And so I'll tell you what we did to solve it. 212 00:07:46.720 --> 00:07:48.120 And so I think there's two kind of takeaways 213 00:07:48.120 --> 00:07:49.440 that I changed about my behavior 214 00:07:49.440 --> 00:07:50.360 that maybe will help for you. 215 00:07:50.360 --> 00:07:52.880 So number one is, and you'll see it on our sites. 216 00:07:52.880 --> 00:07:56.720 I made a change for acquisition.com, the URL, 217 00:07:56.720 --> 00:07:59.160 within all of the stuff we send out. 218 00:07:59.160 --> 00:08:03.680 And so emails, it's like acquisition.com forward slash one 219 00:08:03.680 --> 00:08:04.720 or two, right? 220 00:08:04.720 --> 00:08:06.640 And my Instagram will be another number. 221 00:08:06.640 --> 00:08:08.640 And YouTube will be another number. 222 00:08:08.640 --> 00:08:11.440 And so the very first version of this by team sent back 223 00:08:11.440 --> 00:08:13.560 was like blah, blah, blah, forward slash, 224 00:08:13.560 --> 00:08:14.400 IG for Instagram. 225 00:08:14.400 --> 00:08:15.480 I was like, don't be that obvious. 226 00:08:15.480 --> 00:08:17.280 But I am telling you guys the secret behind the scenes, 227 00:08:17.280 --> 00:08:19.040 which was we just put a number next to it 228 00:08:19.040 --> 00:08:20.560 because I also like to be short, right? 229 00:08:20.560 --> 00:08:21.760 I want to be able to say that this is not 230 00:08:21.760 --> 00:08:25.640 common for a slash four if it's the podcast one. 231 00:08:25.640 --> 00:08:26.960 That was the first thing that we did. 232 00:08:26.960 --> 00:08:30.040 Was that attribution for tracking is really tough. 233 00:08:30.040 --> 00:08:32.200 And so the most basic level, I just 234 00:08:32.200 --> 00:08:33.600 put different links for everything. 235 00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:35.840 Now you can say UTM parameters, whatever, it's up to you. 236 00:08:35.840 --> 00:08:37.720 But that's what we did. 237 00:08:37.720 --> 00:08:40.640 The second thing is that I have like a meta lesson, which 238 00:08:40.640 --> 00:08:42.600 I'm taking away from this, which is that if I'm ever 239 00:08:42.600 --> 00:08:46.360 confused about what to do, it's because I don't have data. 240 00:08:46.360 --> 00:08:49.160 And data itself is the constraint rather than what 241 00:08:49.160 --> 00:08:51.320 I need to do about the data. 242 00:08:51.320 --> 00:08:53.680 And so I kept trying to come up with actions 243 00:08:53.680 --> 00:08:58.160 to take to change in the marketing, but it felt frivolous. 244 00:08:58.160 --> 00:09:01.000 Because every time I would come up with a potential solution, 245 00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:03.280 the team was like, well, here's this other thing 246 00:09:03.280 --> 00:09:05.440 that could be conflating that decision that you had. 247 00:09:05.440 --> 00:09:08.800 And so it felt like I just kept my ideas deflated by the team 248 00:09:08.800 --> 00:09:10.680 not because they were trying to be malicious or something, 249 00:09:10.680 --> 00:09:13.600 but because they rightfully were like, we don't know anything. 250 00:09:13.600 --> 00:09:15.720 And I should have just been like, well, shoot. 251 00:09:15.720 --> 00:09:17.920 We don't know anything's the problem. 252 00:09:17.920 --> 00:09:21.240 And so if you find yourself kind of in these meetings again 253 00:09:21.240 --> 00:09:25.280 and again and again, not being able to make a clear directive, 254 00:09:25.280 --> 00:09:29.360 pick a clear directive of what to do next, 255 00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:32.680 then you might need to chunk up a level and say, 256 00:09:32.680 --> 00:09:34.840 I lack data. 257 00:09:34.840 --> 00:09:37.360 And once I have the data, making the decision 258 00:09:37.360 --> 00:09:39.040 tends to be the easiest part. 259 00:09:39.040 --> 00:09:41.920 That was a meeting that recently happened. 260 00:09:41.920 --> 00:09:43.720 So that became the priority and they fixed that stuff. 261 00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:44.400 And so here we are. 262 00:09:44.400 --> 00:09:46.880 But I thought I would share that very frustrating experience 263 00:09:46.880 --> 00:09:47.560 with you. 264 00:09:47.560 --> 00:09:49.040 And I'll give you one more caveat. 265 00:09:49.040 --> 00:09:51.280 The team might say, well, OK, cool, we need to track data. 266 00:09:51.280 --> 00:09:54.320 And they come to you and bring you 100 pieces of data, right? 267 00:09:54.320 --> 00:09:55.480 Well, that's not useful either. 268 00:09:55.480 --> 00:09:57.160 And so there's a little, I think there's 269 00:09:57.160 --> 00:10:00.280 an Irish tale of a Catercatch as a leprechaun 270 00:10:00.280 --> 00:10:03.000 to get the pot of gold, right? 271 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:04.280 The kid says, he catches him at night. 272 00:10:04.280 --> 00:10:06.520 He says, OK, tomorrow morning, when there's light out, 273 00:10:06.520 --> 00:10:08.040 I will, like I'll give him a wish. 274 00:10:08.040 --> 00:10:09.280 I don't remember how leprechaun's work. 275 00:10:09.280 --> 00:10:12.720 But basically, he was going to tie a ribbon around a four-leaf 276 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:13.440 clover. 277 00:10:13.440 --> 00:10:15.600 And if he picked it, then he'd be able to get the wish, whatever. 278 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:17.800 So the next morning, the kid wakes up 279 00:10:17.800 --> 00:10:20.520 and he looks at the field to find the ribbon. 280 00:10:20.520 --> 00:10:25.640 And to his dismay, there are millions of ribbons. 281 00:10:25.640 --> 00:10:29.400 Because the leprechaun put a ribbon around every single clover. 282 00:10:29.400 --> 00:10:32.280 And so it became possible to find the four-leaf clover. 283 00:10:32.280 --> 00:10:35.920 And so having too much data is a lot like that, which 284 00:10:35.920 --> 00:10:40.000 is you don't know which piece of data is the right piece of data. 285 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:42.520 And so I want to give you a filter that I use for data 286 00:10:42.520 --> 00:10:47.600 in general, which is if this data, singular for data, 287 00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:49.840 changes. 288 00:10:49.840 --> 00:10:52.520 Does it change something about what we do? 289 00:10:52.520 --> 00:10:54.680 If you say, OK, you're warning this number. 290 00:10:54.680 --> 00:10:56.720 If this goes up, what do we do? 291 00:10:56.720 --> 00:10:59.000 If the answer is nothing, delete it. 292 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:00.720 You don't need to track it. 293 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:03.440 If the answer is, well, if that, because whenever we're 294 00:11:03.440 --> 00:11:07.120 like, well, we want to keep tabs on that, I'd be like, why? 295 00:11:07.120 --> 00:11:10.560 Well, it's good to keep tabs on why. 296 00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:12.000 Why? 297 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:14.800 I had a vendor for one of my platforms years ago 298 00:11:14.800 --> 00:11:19.200 who told me we want to make, you should make shorter podcasts. 299 00:11:19.200 --> 00:11:20.920 And I was like, why? 300 00:11:20.920 --> 00:11:22.800 He said, so we have longer completion times. 301 00:11:22.800 --> 00:11:27.400 And I was like, so why does that matter? 302 00:11:27.400 --> 00:11:29.840 And basically, I was trying to get to the point where, 303 00:11:29.840 --> 00:11:33.040 if you can say, this will grow the podcast, 304 00:11:33.040 --> 00:11:35.080 or this will get more people to listen, 305 00:11:35.080 --> 00:11:36.680 then I would say, sure, that makes sense 306 00:11:36.680 --> 00:11:39.080 if growing the podcast is the objective. 307 00:11:39.080 --> 00:11:43.680 But the three questions that we ask are, number one, 308 00:11:43.680 --> 00:11:45.240 what does that mean? 309 00:11:45.240 --> 00:11:46.160 So you have this piece of data. 310 00:11:46.160 --> 00:11:47.680 What does this mean? 311 00:11:47.680 --> 00:11:49.560 What does it measure? 312 00:11:49.560 --> 00:11:52.480 Number two, how do you know? 313 00:11:52.480 --> 00:11:54.400 So when someone says, well, this is going to grow the podcast, 314 00:11:54.400 --> 00:11:57.360 I would say, great, how do you know that? 315 00:11:57.360 --> 00:12:00.760 Well, short form is going to grow, is going to grow the, 316 00:12:00.760 --> 00:12:02.760 is going to get more people to watch long form. 317 00:12:02.760 --> 00:12:03.960 That sounds a good narrative. 318 00:12:03.960 --> 00:12:05.080 How do you know that? 319 00:12:05.080 --> 00:12:07.000 And if you don't know that, then you're just making it up, 320 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:09.800 in which case, fine, but don't make decisions off that. 321 00:12:09.800 --> 00:12:13.000 And then the third question is, so what? 322 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:14.440 Logic evidence utility. 323 00:12:14.440 --> 00:12:15.520 Logic, what does it mean? 324 00:12:15.520 --> 00:12:16.680 Evidence, how do you know? 325 00:12:16.680 --> 00:12:19.120 Utility, why is that useful? 326 00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:21.880 And so you can think of those as the filters 327 00:12:21.880 --> 00:12:25.000 through which you analyze the few pieces of data 328 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:26.480 that you want displayed to you 329 00:12:26.480 --> 00:12:29.480 so that you can make the decisions to move the business. 330 00:12:29.480 --> 00:12:32.880 I would encourage you to try and eliminate 331 00:12:32.880 --> 00:12:35.240 as much of the data, which sounds counterintuitive, 332 00:12:35.240 --> 00:12:36.880 but because I don't think the human brain 333 00:12:36.880 --> 00:12:38.400 can handle that much data. 334 00:12:38.400 --> 00:12:42.160 And so you can usually make most decisions in the business 335 00:12:42.160 --> 00:12:47.160 if you have the right data with two or three key points 336 00:12:47.920 --> 00:12:51.240 that you need to track for department or for a role. 337 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:52.880 And it doesn't usually take much more than that. 338 00:12:52.880 --> 00:12:55.960 The rest of the stuff, just because you can measure it, 339 00:12:55.960 --> 00:12:57.840 doesn't mean it's important. 340 00:12:57.840 --> 00:13:00.840 And I think that a lot of employees conflate that. 341 00:13:00.840 --> 00:13:04.040 And because it takes them time to put the data together 342 00:13:04.040 --> 00:13:05.720 and they hear that data is important, 343 00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:09.240 they then put lots of data into slide decks, into reports, 344 00:13:09.240 --> 00:13:10.560 because they want to do a good job. 345 00:13:10.560 --> 00:13:12.840 And there's nothing wrong with them wanting to do a good job. 346 00:13:12.840 --> 00:13:15.680 But I think translating you doing a good job 347 00:13:15.680 --> 00:13:18.600 means that you help inform decisions 348 00:13:18.600 --> 00:13:21.120 and decisions create changes in behavior. 349 00:13:21.120 --> 00:13:25.040 And so two massive departments in every company, 350 00:13:25.040 --> 00:13:27.840 depending on your size, finance and IT, 351 00:13:27.840 --> 00:13:29.960 both are data departments. 352 00:13:29.960 --> 00:13:32.160 And if they are not clear about how they make 353 00:13:32.160 --> 00:13:34.040 the business more money by informing decisions 354 00:13:34.040 --> 00:13:35.960 that change behavior, then it's very likely 355 00:13:35.960 --> 00:13:38.720 that they will be wasting your time and your money. 356 00:13:38.720 --> 00:13:41.120 Again, if this was cool, let me know. 357 00:13:41.120 --> 00:13:42.920 And if it sucked, you can let me know too.