December 29, 2024 • 51 mins
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What happens when you blend the worlds of exercise physiology and marketing? Our latest episode features Leanne Dow-Weimer, a fractional marketing leader, who shares her unique journey from gym floors to executive offices. Leanne's story offers a fresh perspective on how personal training parallels marketing—it’s all about understanding and motivating people. You'll learn how aligning marketing strategies with seasonal trends and focusing on sustainable, evidence-based approaches can lead to lasting success, avoiding the pitfalls of quick fixes.
But that's just the beginning. We also tackle the often tricky balance between maintaining a profitable business and pursuing altruistic goals. Using insights from John Mackey's path with Whole Foods, we explore how understanding finance is crucial for social impact and growth. Leanne and I dive into the importance of financial literacy and effective communication in gaining stakeholder buy-in. We share strategies to discern which business ideas hold water, emphasizing the need to blend operational and financial insights for overall success.
Finally, we unpack the essence of brand identity and the power of data-informed decision-making. With examples like Southwest Airlines, we highlight how a brand's core values permeate every aspect of the business, influencing everything from hiring decisions to customer service. We stress the importance of data literacy, advocating for meaningful storytelling with data rather than relying on raw numbers. This episode is a must-listen for anyone eager to understand the intersection of data, humanity, and marketing.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by all
the MoPros out there.
I am your host, michael Hartman, flying solo today.
We will get Mike and Naomi backsoon, I'm sure.
Joining me today is Leanne DowWeimer, and we're going to talk
about why there needs to behumanity for data-driven
marketing to work, so we'll getinto that a little bit.
(00:22):
Leanne is a fractionalmarketing leader and advisor who
is also the host of theMarkagee the Science of
Marketing Strategy podcast.
She has over eight years ofexperience in online and offline
marketing involving branddemand, gen and product
marketing, and over 15 more indirect customer service slash
sales roles.
So, leanne, thank you forjoining today.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah.
So this is going to be.
I think this is going to be afun conversation because I've
been saying for a while that,well, first off, I hate the term
data-driven marketing because Ithink it's non-sequitur I don't
know what the right word is.
Like.
Data-driven is like peopledon't really know what that
means is what I'm saying, butwe'll get into that probably
(01:10):
later and I don't need to get onmy soapbox just yet.
Um, all right, so let's getstarted.
So I did a very brief overviewof your recent career, but
something I didn't mention isthat your undergraduate degree
is in, if I got it right,exercise physiology, and that
you started your career in a gym.
So we've had all kinds of crazystarts to careers that end up
in marketing, marketing ops, butthis is a first, I think.
So tell us about thatexperience and how it informs
(01:30):
your marketing related worktoday.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, thank you.
So my undergraduate degree isexercise physiology.
It's basically the nerdiest ofthe kinesiology majors of the
kinesiology majors and my peerswent on to be doctors, physical
therapists, occupationaltherapists all sorts of working
(01:53):
with the human body inhealthcare settings.
I chose a more proactiveapproach and my focus was also
aimed at women and children, andso I spent a lot of my early
career teaching group exercise,personal training, sports
coaching, things like that,where I was trying to help
(02:13):
people do the best with theirbody before they broke and
needed physical therapy.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
That was my goal Live longer, happier, healthier
lives across the board.
And while I was doing that isthat there's kind of this
learning moment I had.
That was explicitly said to me,so I don't want to take all the
credit for it, but personaltraining is a sales job.
Training is a sales job, andit's true because you are trying
(02:50):
to get someone to pay youthousands of dollars so that you
can convince them to dosomething they have inherently
been avoiding doing.
And not only are you trying toconvince them to do it, but
you're trying to convince themto have so much fun showing up
at 5 am to do a workout thatthey've been avoiding that.
They're going to listen to youthe rest of the week when
they're not with you and thenpay you again to continue your
services and still like you.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
That's an important part there, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
And still like you and want to be there and make
that choice, knowing that's whatthey're choosing.
And so it requires a lot ofreally getting to know what
makes people tick, whatmotivates them, what, how you
can answer their needs and whatthey came to you to get done,
even if they're saying you know,I just want to, I just want to
(03:38):
fit into a dress.
Okay, why do you want to fitinto that dress?
It helps you to like, pull thosethreads of like how to motivate
people on an individual level.
Um and so, while there's thataspect of the work you have to
it's I'm going to borrow aphrase from someone else but you
eat what you kill and first ofall, we don't.
(03:58):
We don't actually kill anybody.
We are not.
I'm very like a gentle, likesoul, I swear, but the only
clients you get are the clientsthat you find for yourself.
No one's out there like passingout personal training clients.
That's just how it works If theyare like, oh, that's awesome,
(04:19):
you're getting paid pennies ifthat's the case, but to where
I'm trying to get to with thisis that you have to create some
sort of allure and attraction orway to get clients.
And so what I found myselfdoing before I took a single
business class ever was creatinga content calendar.
(04:40):
I was planning out my year andsaying, okay, during March this
is kind of March madness, it'sspring training, these are the
sports I'm going to try to helppeople enjoy and help give them
that sport specific training,for it's a kickoff of marathon
season.
They're going to want to beattheir time, they're going to
want to do their first marathon,they're going to want to get
(05:01):
ready for those summer weddingsLike what is happening in the
seasonality and how can I changemy offering to be in the
language that answers that whatthey're trying to accomplish of
their goals.
And so I also found myselfgetting backlinks online and
being on Twitter and Instagramand all these things, before
fitfluencers even existed.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Fitfluencers I hadn't heard that term yet, okay, yeah
.
Fitness influencers I hadn'theard that term yet, okay.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, fitness influencers are-.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I'm old, though, so I'm behind on the times.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
You're not.
There are some veryknowledgeable people, but it's
been a constant struggle in thewellness industry is that you're
not just fighting to unraveland learn more about people,
You're fighting that temptationof the get it quick schemes, and
(05:52):
so that was also part of why Iwas like I need to get real good
at marketing.
I need to get real good atsales, because not only am I
fighting people's status quo,their inertia, I'm fighting
these snake oil people.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Right yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
And trying to really, you know, lead with
evidence-based, long-termsustainable things for people.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
So I found myself in marketing.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
That's interesting, it's happened.
I'm surprised.
One of our first guests, brandysanders, said something that
still sticks with me about how,like, sometimes this kind of
role requires.
It's like you should know howto play chess, right?
It's a complex kind ofcomplicated thing in human
psychology or something likethat.
(06:40):
Right, and I think what's whatyou're talking about is like
understanding people and whatmotivates them probably goes
both in terms of building abusiness, like you were, as well
as navigating your ownorganization, right, right,
figure out what.
What motivates people?
Why is that person a pain todeal with, while this person you
know it's easy to deal with butdoesn't get anything done,
(07:01):
right, that kind of stuff.
So I can totally see that youtouched on um, taking business
classes.
So I think you you then, atsomewhere along the way, you
also got, went and got an mba.
You got exposure to other partsof business what were like, see
, it sounds like you already hadsome exposure to what it's like
(07:21):
to run a business, because youhad your own business selling
yourself.
Basically what, uh?
What did to run a business?
Because you had your ownbusiness selling yourself,
basically what, uh?
What did you?
What additional things did youpick up from going back and get
an MBA.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, um I, it flips my world I.
I went into it knowing that Ijust this was a blind spot for
me.
Um, you know, I don't reallyknow a lot about this stuff.
I know what's happening insideyour body with the cells and the
different physical responses.
I could draw a Krebs cycle.
(07:53):
I could do all this reallynerdy stuff, but I didn't know
how to make a businessprofitable and I recently posted
about this on LinkedIn.
Is that, at the end of the day,you can't help anybody if you
have no income.
You just can't.
You need to have revenue andhow to do that in a way that
matches this very altruistic,beauty pageant answer that I
(08:15):
have, that I care about people.
How to connect those dotsbetween running a business that
has revenue, that is sustainablethat can you know, have these
holistic thoughts and practicesand mindsets.
How to do that in a way thatprovides growth opportunities,
so that you can positivelyimpact the economy around you,
(08:36):
so that you can employ others,so that you can continue to
service the people that needyour help.
And so you know it.
Just, it taught me so much aboutnot just like the hardcore
business principles where I waslike, oh, that makes sense,
that's what I was doing, but Ididn't know I was doing it.
But also ones that like Ireally like had to sit down and
(09:01):
like put on, like you know, allof the motivating music I could.
All of a sudden there's dubstep, so I could do this financial
projection worksheet, but it wasthese heavy business theories
and practices and ABBA andaccounting and here's what your
(09:23):
interest does over timeamortization, all these things
that you do need to know thatare very functionally-.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Tax implications of decisions.
You make all those kinds ofthings right.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, roi, return on ad spend.
Just how are you going tobalance all of these things and
how are you going to get yourmargins?
How are you going to tell yourcustomers when you have to
increase prices, because youcan't just be their best friend
and never increase your pricesand then go out of business.
It's very tempting, but even anonprofit needs to have grants
and money coming in so that thenthey can disperse it or provide
(09:57):
the service or provide the good.
It's this liquidity idea thatreally was very important for me
to understand, so that now,when I look at a business choice
, I make it knowing this isgoing to impact our margin, but
here's what we can expect out ofit.
Here's how that's going to letme get headcount.
(10:17):
Here's how that's going to letme invest differently yeah.
And then also listening tosmarter people than I, like the
venture capitalists that were atthese angel expos, and hearing
them talk about people'sbusiness ideas, that was huge,
(10:38):
because sometimes we have we,sometimes I too too have these
wonderful pie in the sky ideasand we can always have these
great ideas.
But if your idea doesn't havesubstance or it doesn't have a
method of like, operationalizingor it doesn't, you know, answer
(11:00):
the need for big enough people,or it's just, you know, a
lovely idea, but it's not, itcan't functionally exist.
Then you know, you've got toknow that, you've got to be able
to have that discernment.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah Well, I think it's easy to get caught up in an
idea that you believe is I'llcall it the right thing to do or
a good thing to do, and justsort of feel it in your bones
and maybe even have a little bitin your head of like this is
why I think it'll it'll bebeneficial.
But if you can't communicatethat to the people that have the
(11:36):
influence, the purse strings,the ability to enable you to do
it, it's probably going to be areal challenge to get it done.
It's probably going to be areal challenge to get it done.
This is why I keep coming backto.
One of the soapboxes I get on isthe importance of understanding
the basics of finance.
So I think it pays dividends inunderstanding if you're going
(11:58):
to a public company.
Certainly it helps you evaluatefinancial statements and things
like that.
Same thing with private, Iguess, if you get access to
those and things like that samething with private, I guess, if
you get access to those.
But even just pitching an ideainternally at an organization
where finance has to sign off onit, like knowing how to
evaluate something like that andbuild the case for it and
structure it and get that buy-inis really, really valuable and
(12:20):
it pays off.
It doesn't matter what industryyou're in, right, it just really
doesn't matter, and so that'slike one of those things that I
really, really believe in.
It's interesting you talkedabout, like the um so that the
some people get into some ofthese or these businesses, for I
don't want to say altruisticmotives, but, right, they, they.
(12:42):
They see they want to dosomething good for whatever
their client or customer isgoing to be, and I don't want to
get too far into a rabbit holethat might be dangerous.
But the first time I ever heardsomebody talk about that
realization was do you know whoJohn Mackey is?
He was the founder of WholeFoods.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yes, yeah, yeah, whole.
Foods was a case study I clungto.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah, yeah, so I think I think I was.
He was the first one I everremember hearing talking about
like he really wanted to do goodand it and he, he was kind of
struggling against himself ontrying to reconcile this, like
this idea of having this youknow, whatever you want to call
it right Nutritional, oriented.
You, you know, retail storethat was affordable to people in
(13:28):
the neighborhood but they, atthe same time, was sustainable,
and that you know he could makea living off of, and and enable
others to make a living off of,and you know it took him a while
, I think to, to get to thatpoint.
So, um, it's, it's interestingto me, so that you bring that up
cause it's.
I think it's.
It's a.
(13:48):
I think it's a.
It's one that probably manypeople who are starting out on
their own struggle with.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah, I agree completely.
It is a very industry agnostic.
It's just bare bones business.
You need to understand how tomake the revenue, you need to
know what goes into the sausageand you need to know what flavor
your sausage is.
And that's like a really weirdway to phrase this.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
You're not talking about your fitness clients,
right?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I mean, I do want them to know if they're eating
like some.
I'll save the nutritionaljudgment.
The thing is, you know, this iswhere totally going off on a
tangent here this is where itcomes back to this kind of
universal truth.
Universal truth is that thereis no such thing as a bad food.
(14:39):
There is a bad food that youeat too much of, or, to you know
, like it just takes over itsdisproportionate amount.
In business, there are bad ideas.
They're ethically wrong, butthey're like in marketing.
There's not necessarily a badcampaign.
It's just how much time, moneyand effort should it get.
(15:00):
And because you need to havethat space for experimentation
so that you might strike gold or, if it fails completely, you
didn't just blow your year'sbudget on it.
And so it's this universal truthof moderation and proportion
and really being able to discernhow much of what should get
(15:20):
what and that's where thebiggest levers and strategy
occur is what gets whatallotment.
And I'm kind of relating thisback to your internal buy-in
with the finance department.
Even if you aren't directlytalking to the finance
department, you're talking tosomeone who answers to the
finance department and they needto be able to champion your
(15:43):
idea.
And so if your idea is thisvery innovative idea and you're
so excited about it but no one'shad any way to say that this is
for sure going to work and youtry to get your whole year's
budget behind it, the peoplethat answer to finance are going
to have a really big struggletrying to plead your case and
(16:05):
get that investment.
But when you look at it likethis is an experiment and you
frame it correctly and yourequest a appropriate allotment
to do a sandbox to prove it'sminimal, viable product and it's
case use and it's all thisstuff to get some some traction,
(16:25):
then you can scale it right um,last thought, thank you for
listening to this tangent um,but this is why repeatable,
scalable processes andeverything we do in a business
is the keys to the kingdom,because you can take that
experiment and then you can plugit in to some sort of process
(16:49):
or flow and then you can grow it.
Um, so you made a face.
I want to hear.
I did.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I did because I don't totally agree with this.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
You have to do you have to do some things that are
unscalable.
You have to, but I think thatwhen you're looking at okay,
I've got this small thing and itworks, how do I repeat this At
some point, you can't bereinventing the wheel every
single time.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
No, I don't.
So the nuance I would throw inis that I don't believe that.
So in general, I agree for youto get the benefit of these
things you need to scale.
But I think if you're doing anexperiment or you're building
something new and you don't knowall the things, that might be
(17:38):
challenges along the way in whatyou're doing.
A couple of thoughts One I thinkyou're right.
(18:02):
A couple of thoughts One I thinkyou're right the more low risk
and higher reward you can getout of it, the more likely you
are going to get the okay to doit, especially when you're
competing with other people andother ideas that you may not
even know about, that arecompeting for the same dollar,
what, what I where I sort of hadthis look on my face was, you
know, I think in those cases,right, trying to put in place
highly structured processes atthat point is kind of
counterproductive, right, it'skind of and I'm not saying you
don't want to put in somestructure, but I have my own
(18:24):
belief about what the level ofstructure should be.
But what I do believe is youshould go into it with mindset.
We want to learn what we can sothat, if it works, we want to
be able to scale it, but wedon't want to necessarily put
ourselves in so much structurethat we can't move and adjust
quickly, because we know that wedon't know everything.
And I think that's really kindof why you saw that look on my
(18:44):
face is because I think, yes,you want to try these
experiments, you want to do themas quickly and learn as quickly
as you can.
But part of that learning ishow do you enable yourself to
scale?
Or you learn that you can'tright and that by itself would
be a good lesson to learn.
Yeah, so that's what I thoughtwe agree.
(19:05):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Fundamentally, we agree, right.
No-transcript Agreed.
(19:33):
So it's in budget, right,because a bootstrap business of
five people is going to operatevery differently than a heavily
invested five people that haslike 10 agencies.
Right?
So there is so many ways to doit.
Five people that has like 10agencies Right?
So it's, there is so many waysto do it, and that's one of the
beauties of it.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Right, I mean, I think this is the other like.
One of my other things is likethere's usually not one right
answer to these things and lotsof reasons why.
But I believe that the world ismade up of lots of trade-offs,
right, and so everyone's.
You know, the simple one, or acommon one, is risk tolerance,
right, so you know, if your risktolerance is relatively high,
right, you're, you're, thetrade-offs you would consider
(20:15):
that I, you know someone else'slower risk tolerance would
consider, are very different.
And so I think there and youcould add all kinds of other
things to that list of what thetradeoffs are, you know, some of
it is like even, I will sayeven finance people sometimes
use their gut, right?
I mean, it's like I justbelieve this idea is more likely
(20:43):
to succeed, even though there'srisks associated with it, than
this other one.
And if it does, it's going topay off bigger than this other
one, which also might pay off,but not as much for the amount
we have to put into it.
And so that's just the natureof experimentation and
innovation is, you know, trythings to see what's going to
have an impact, and thatsometimes depends on what it is
(21:03):
you're trying to maximize for oroptimize for?
Yeah, so this is what happenswhen I've been spending.
I spent the morning at theengineering school at SMU, where
I graduated from, and so I'vegot my too much academic sort of
thought process in my headright now.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Hey, no, it's good.
I love the discourse right,Because one of the ultimate
things that you have to do ischallenge ideas.
And you have to challenge yourown ideas first, because if, if
you're going to somebody andyou're presenting this thing and
you haven't challenged yourideas and gone through the
potential objections, then youmight be missing something that
(21:48):
you very quickly see as like ahuge mistake.
Right, like, and you don't, youdon't.
You need to start with like wasthis assumption right?
Is this premise true?
Is this you know it?
What are they going to say?
Reasons not to AI?
And can I make the argument,like, earnestly, honestly,
transparently, that this isstill the right thing to do,
(22:08):
despite the objections that Ican?
come up with.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
No, I think it's like I tell it's been a while since
I've said, but I definitely havetold my kids, I've told people
I work with my goal is to beconfident, but humble, but
humble, right.
So I believe that I know a lotand smart and can make good
decisions, but I'm also open tothe idea that there are other
people who might have evenbetter ideas, and I want to be
open to the idea of listening tous, um, and I think that's you
(22:37):
know that's not for everybody,but it's.
I think it's worked for me andI, like you, know it's how I
want to live.
So let's switch gears a littlebit, um, and I talked earlier
and you had a point of viewabout what brand is and said and
I would tend to agree with thispart at least as you said, it's
(22:57):
more than fonts and colors.
Agreed, but you also said it'show we operate.
But I'd like you to kind ofdrill down on that.
What does that mean?
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
But I'd like you to kind of drill down on that.
What does that mean?
What do you mean by that?
Yeah, so when I say that brandis more than fonts and colors,
it's how we operate.
I'm saying that it is themanifestation of every
interaction with our customers,whether they see, directly or
indirectly, contact the company,or they hear about it from
their friend, or they're justleft with some sort of feeling.
(23:29):
And so all of the accumulationof those touches or indirect
touches, and all of that is whatactually makes a brand.
You can have any logo and peopleare going to have a notion of
you and you can't control whatpeople think, but you can
(23:49):
communicate in a way that saysthis is what we want you to
think we are.
And then you can back up thatbrand promise with how you email
, how you respond to inquiries,how you respond to complaints.
What is the time lag betweensomebody saying, hey, I want a
(24:10):
demo and actually get a demo?
If you're saying that you're acustomer-centric company, and
then someone puts in an inboundrequest the biggest goldmine of
requests, where they're justtrying to shove their money at
you and you don't like follow upfor a month, like six months,
(24:31):
well, you're dead, like, like,that's not.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
you're not who you say you are so, even though
bananas, yes, it's it'smind-boggling because it still
exists no, it's like I I'msmiling because mike and I got
on and recorded.
Uh, it was probably within ourfirst year or so of doing the
podcast because I had hadexperience, just like you talked
about, where I had submittedrequests to multiple vendors
(24:56):
multiple times to still knowlike I started shaming them
online actually and eventuallygot somebody to talk to me and
we kind of went on this rantabout or had a discussion where,
like how to sell to marketingops folks which you could, and
it was really interestingbecause we had a subsequent
episode because a couple ofsales people like kind of pushed
back on us and we wanted to gettheir set and there's some.
It's an interesting one and Iwould encourage people to go
(25:19):
listen to that, but it stuns mestill, like these companies that
make it so hard to take yourmoney.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
It's like come on, I'm trying to help you.
Like, take my money, like Iwant your service, this is what
you exist to do, um, yeah, no,that grinds my gear so much, um.
But on the on the opposite side, if you have kind of a blah
font choice or color or logo,but like you're known for going
(25:48):
above and beyond on a human tohuman level, that's your brand.
That's not codified,necessarily, but it's
operationalized, it's manifested, it's what that person says to
their friend, to their friend,to their friend, you know.
And so that's where I thinkthat brand is a transcendent
manifestation, and I know that'sa very California way to
(26:10):
describe things.
But it's not just omni-channel,it's omni-interaction, it's lack
of direct interaction, it'sreputation, it's so
all-encompassing that it's veryhard to call it marketing when
(26:32):
it starts at marketing.
But it has its own life.
That's ingrained from everychoice within the company, from
the leadership to what theyinvest in and what they don't
invest in, to how they respondto customers, to what platforms
they choose so that they canoperate.
It's, it's everything, and itbecomes a personality of
(26:53):
organization.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, I think so because I am in Dallas, right.
What all that reminds me of isthe story of Southwest airlines,
right, which I don't know ifit's still a hundred percent
matches what, what they wereoriginally, but, like I think
they were very, very.
I would argue this where itstarts, before marketing, it
starts with core values, right,and really making sure everybody
(27:16):
who comes on board knows about.
It goes into hiring, it goesinto all those choices you
talked about.
In their case, it enabled, like, making sure that everybody
knew that if you wereinteracting with a customer a
year, you were empowered to dowhat you could to solve that
customer's problem Right Withinreason.
Again, whether or not that'sstill true, right, that's a
(27:39):
different story, but I think itpretty long into it, right.
They were well known for that,right, and I've worked at a
handful of places where thevalues they had on the walls in
all the offices actually matched, they actually reinforced that
with the things that theycelebrated and the things they
condemned in terms of behaviors,and I think that goes a long
(28:04):
way towards it.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Culture is what is enforced.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yes or not?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Or not.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's how.
If you have a set of rules orvalues, it's how it happens.
It's what is praised and whatis ignored.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah and what is ignored.
Yeah Well, and I think thecompanies I know who really
really take that to heart it isa pain to get hired by them, but
it's because they are verydeliberate about getting people
into the organization that havethose you know they know will
(28:46):
have the same values.
I mean, one of my kids justlast summer worked at a local
college leadership that's knownfor having really, really great
customer service ethos acrosstheir multiple dealerships
service ethos across theirmultiple dealerships.
And the process he had to gothrough for a summer job was, I
(29:07):
mean, I think he had fourinterviews, a couple of
screening tests, right, all thisstuff Like and um, it wasn't,
like it wasn't just because himright, it was, that's what they
did with everybody, and I thinkit's it's very telling when you
see that Um, so all you peopleout there who are just trying to
grab at any job, right, payattention to how that process
(29:28):
works.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, and at some point you know, 10 interviews is
too many yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Why too many?
Yeah, well, or at least itgives you insight into, uh, some
of the norms in theorganization about decision
making right?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
yes, yeah, it definitely shows what it.
If a hiring decision is one ofthe biggest impacts on their
bottom line and they come at itin a certain way, it is heavily
reflective of their internalpersonality.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And so I yeah, that's a whole different episode.
We will, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
I could, I'm sure we could get.
We could get a panel of peoplewho could come on and we would
probably be on for four hours.
It would be a long time.
So we said at the top of thisthat we were going to talk a
little bit about why it'simportant to have humanity and
maybe I put that in air quotesto be a data-driven organization
(30:37):
.
So that was like a term thatyou, or a phrase that you shared
with me when we first talked.
So what do you mean by havinghumanity to be data driven?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yeah, I mean and I think that our conversation that
we've had so far builds intothis, because we've talked about
how it's how people operatewith each other, it's how people
make decisions, it's how peopleneed to get the buy-in for
brand or marketing or theseother things is that, when we
look at the data, data and evenquantitative points on a bar
(31:11):
graph is still reflective of asnapshot in time or a series of
snapshots in time of choicesmade by humans, by people.
And while we all love, you know,gumball machines, if I put $5
in I get five gumballs out.
(31:33):
Where that, there's alwaysnuance, right, there's nuance in
how people operate, how theymake their buying decisions, how
that's influenced.
There's your actions.
There's the NBA speak would bethe SWAT and the pestle analysis
.
You know there's there's moreto it.
(31:53):
There's also did did thatcompany have snacks that day?
Was everybody in back to backto back meetings?
They were hangry and they justcouldn't be bothered.
You know, like you, gotta youpeople, people aren't always
rational and you can't alwaysexpect the if this, then that
outcome.
Um, because in any givensituation, there's a multiple
(32:18):
variables and multiple outputsthat a single person could have,
and and that's the beauty ofthe human, human mind, human
experience is that we're allunique and you know, if you put
five people in the samesituation, you're not, you're
almost never, almost sometimes,though never going to get a
(32:39):
hundred percent of the exactsame behavior for the, for the
same reason, every single time.
Now, there's always things thatthere's always nuance, there's
always exceptions, there'salways outliers.
So anything I say acknowledgesthose exist.
What I'm saying is that if youlook at a data point and you are
(33:02):
data driven, you still need tobe data cynical, and what I mean
by this is that, ok, we got,you know, 10 clicks on this
email, so now they all want todo demos.
That's a win, well, is it?
Why did they click on thatemail?
What happened on that salescall next?
Did you promise them somethingon that email?
(33:24):
What happened on that salescall next?
Did you promise them somethingin that email?
And then they got to the salescall and it was just off enough
that it was no longer relevantand valuable to them.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Is that still a win?
You just got 10 MQLs?
No, it's not a win because theydidn't convert, so it's a waste
of money.
And so we all feel this painwhere we want to be able to be
like, yeah, I won, my metricssay I won, but you have to look
at the whole picture and youhave to say was this actually a
(33:55):
conversion?
Was this actually answeringtheir need?
Was this framed in a way thatmade sense, that enticed them to
a relevant offer?
Was this building value forthem?
Are they going to stick arounda year from now?
Or did they purchase oncebecause they didn't know what
they were doing and we misledthem in some way, shape or form,
whether intentionally orunintentionally, or we didn't
(34:16):
plan for a circumstance change,and now they've churned, and now
we've got to restart the wheel.
And now they've churned, andnow we've got to restart the
wheel.
And so this is where havingexperience matters, where you
can look at yes, we got thelowest cost per lead.
Those leads were junk.
They were leads technically,but the more expensive leads are
(34:39):
actually the ones that convert.
So our customer acquisitioncosts, yeah, okay, maybe it went
down because we thought we weregetting all these leads, but we
actually ended up getting fewercustomers.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And so you have to be cynical, you have to be like
well, that's great, but whatabout the rest of it?
What is actually happening?
Where is the full story of thisdata point, and how does this
interact with the rest of ourdata points, and are we making
business sense in the long termand in the short term?
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, I mean I said, I think at the beginning that I
don't really like the term datadriven, and I've tried to use
the phrase data informed becauseI think it's, because I think
if you are driven by the data Imean this is getting really
picky about the word choice, butit makes it seem like the data
(35:29):
is going to tell you exactlywhat to do, and I just don't
think that's true.
Right, I think there's a lotlike you need to be able to
interpret it and understand whatit means.
I had, until we had talked, Ihad not thought of a term like
data cynical, you know, or datacritical, I think, your point
being, you can want to be led bydata, but there's also some
(35:53):
component of being smart abouthow to interpret it, and I think
that's really what we'regetting at.
It's like it's not just that.
I also think, when I thinkabout humanity being into it is
one of the downsides to me I'veseen, with people who just go
like just present data andcharts and they think they're
great, is they forget thathumans are like we're pattern
(36:16):
recognition animals.
You know very much so and weare moved by stories, right?
So if you're not, you you knowtelling a story about it.
Just showing the data is notgoing to motivate a lot of
people to change, especially ifand this is why I don't like
(36:36):
data driven to be like, I think,just by the nature of the kind
of data that marketers and salesteams deal with.
You alluded to one like itslices at time, right at a point
in time, but it also doesn'thave the kind of controls that
you would have with, say,accounting and financial data
right, which is highly regulatedand has very strict rules about
(36:57):
it, whereas marketing salesdata just doesn't right.
So you should just assume it'snot going to be right, yeah, or
whatever.
Right means right, like I don'teven like using that term
either, but it is what it isright.
So just assume that you cantrust it to some.
Like there's some degree oftrust you can have with it in
terms of making decisions, but,like you need to be cognizant of
(37:20):
how to use like know that thatdata is not probably telling the
full story, and I know that wecould all come up with examples
of where we were looking at dataand it uncovered some sort of
weird way in which, say, thesales team was doing something
or a broken technology step inthe marketing technology stack
(37:41):
or whatever Right, and that'sthe kind of stuff that drives
like.
I see that all the time.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah, yeah, and, and it's the trust but verify
component, but also um, there'sso much of that that I just I
resonate with Um.
It's hard to mentally thinkabout it at all.
One thing is that if you are avery like literate person and I
mean literal literate person, Idon't mean like you can read.
(38:12):
I hope you can read, please, ifyou need help with literacy,
like there's programs.
But what I'm trying to say isthat the worst thing that you
can do and I fall into this trapall the time because I'll be
deep in the thick of it, in theweeds and I'll be so proud of
this spreadsheet I made Do notjust share your spreadsheet.
(38:34):
Don't do it.
Don't do it, don't do it.
It is a pitfall, unless you areeven if you are also a
spreadsheet person.
You need to put it into a deck,you need to do a presentation
and this is a meeting.
That needs to be.
A meeting is the discussion andinterpretation of the data
(38:55):
points.
That is a dialogue inconversation.
Another component of what yousaid is this this this concept
of what gets measured getsmanaged.
I am still a big advocate forhaving data points and
attribution everywhere you canget it so that you can
investigate.
(39:15):
So I see it as a constellationof stars, right right.
Yes, these data points areconstellation of stars.
Inside a star is a ball of firethat has chemical processes,
that is impacting gravity andall this other stuff that you
can't see.
You need to get your telescope,you need to zoom in on the star
, you need to look at it and itsnebula and its star system in
(39:38):
the universe and you need tohave it as an eye point to to
notice and to investigate.
It is not the end, all be all.
It is not the universe, it is astar.
Yes, still gigantic, still stillin, like you know, credit, like
remarkable, still still matters.
Um, and that's when I say whatmeasure gets managed is that
(40:02):
without having all the data thatis reasonable to get, you can't
get quite the same feel forwhat is going on and there's a
lot of blind spots and a lot ofwe don't know this, we don't
know that, and there's there's alot of opportunities when you
have the data points, to thentry to say, almost like the
(40:25):
Charlie Day murder board on thewall where he's got the strings
from different things, I don'tlike thought it all out and then
look at it from 1,000 feet, 100feet, 3 feet, and you got to
look at it from the differentPOVs three feet and and you got
to look at it from the differentpovs.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
well, I think I think your point um, if I at least
what I one of the things I tookaway is right there's not a
single metric that really cantell the full story, right, and
you need you need different ones, you need them from to look at
it from different perspectives,understand how they're connected
.
So, if all you're measuring iswe generated enough mqls or
sal's, or or we can attribute Xamount of pipeline revenue to
our marketing activities,there's nothing wrong with any
(41:08):
one of those.
It's just that like is it thefull story?
And I think that's the.
It's an easy trap to fall into.
There's that.
And there's also the trap ofwhat's easy to measure is not
always what's truly indicativeof what's working, and what's
(41:29):
working meaning what's actuallymoving the needle for the
business overall.
Are we delivering profitablerevenue to the organization?
Are we delivering revenue,profitable revenue to the
organization?
And I think that's something Isee a lot of people get caught
(41:49):
up in.
So a lot of this now comes like.
Where I keep coming back to isthat everything we talk to like
to me all makes sense, soundslike it makes sense to you, but
I think there's an assumptionthat we're making is that, like
you, that people should have acertain level of data fluency,
uh, to be able to do thesethings?
And I do think that that's amissing element for a lot of
(42:12):
marketing ops professionals,most of who we, you know, most
of our listeners, fall in thatcategory.
Sorry, not saying most of ourlisteners fall in the category
of not being data fluent, butthat they are our audience.
But I do think there's a gap,right, and understanding that.
And so I mean, do you see thesame thing where people get, get
followed these traps becausethey just it's, they're reacting
(42:34):
to requests for data, so theygenerate a spreadsheet and just
send it off, right?
What's your take on thissituation?
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, I think that data literacy is.
One of the biggest plagues inour society is that we are told
something and we take it at facevalue and that's.
There's just more to it and noteverything is.
(43:02):
It's the critical component,right, that criticism, like that
cynicality, that, okay, thissays that I brought 10 MQLs and
I keep coming back to thisbecause in a mops setting, this
is going to be one of thefrequent ones and then your CMO
may be even less data fluentthan you and they've got this
(43:25):
presentation you made, youexplained it, but they
understand things the way thatthey understand things which you
have no control over, and theypluck out something that's going
to look good to the executiveboard because that's how they
interpreted what you said, andthey cherry pick and I it can be
(43:48):
very misleading becauseunintentionally right,
unintentionally I'm never gonnasay that somebody did this like
with, uh, you know, malevolent,like malicious intent, uh, but
there's certainly you, the I'venever experienced anyone like
that, but those people certainlydo exist and you know they
(44:10):
definitely do.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah, people will spin the numbers, right yeah,
the sandbag it like.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
no, I don Like.
But there you, there's thisliteracy to it where you have to
come back to like this how doesthis actually interact with the
world?
How does this actually interactwith the humans?
Is this the right conclusionfrom the right number?
Are these two things reallyattached in that way?
Is it correlation, is itcausation?
Is it made up like fiction?
(44:36):
Is it correlation, is itcausation?
Is it made up like fiction?
You know, is this what is thesignificance of this metric in
the context of the world?
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Yeah, and that's where.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Context really matters.
It matters so heavily, and Iwant there to be this knowledge
of logical fallacies.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
And these.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
I put up a post I post way too much on LinkedIn,
but I put up a post where Ilisted out 10 different logical
fallacies that you must avoid tobe day-deleterate.
And there's things likecorrelation is not causation.
This is the most common one,but it's also the slippery slope
one where, if this means this,then this other thing, no, no,
(45:21):
this just means this, it you.
It cannot mean more than itmeans right and we want to tell
stories and we want to have thatdialogue, but we can't then
infer things that aren't thereto infer and and it's that that
like buckets of things, thatlike buckets of things I know,
buckets of things, I think inbuckets of things I can prove,
(45:42):
and I'm that's another phrasingthat I stole from my friend
Teresa.
But you really you've got tothink about how can I prove this
?
What am I proving it on?
Is it you know?
Is it hearsay?
Is it circumstantial?
Is it what?
What are the?
What is the context?
What is the story behind it?
And how does that really lookin the real world?
(46:03):
Like can I say that I saw thisthing and it means this thing,
and then go talk to 10 customersthat are representative of that
metric and hear the thing thatI'm saying.
That happened.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Right, yeah, I totally.
I think that's great.
It's one of the things I havesuggested now through white
paper I did for the community,but also I've done myself is one
of the things marketers coulddo a better job of is
storytelling within theirorganizations, and part of that
I'd say is this to B2B reallybut go find recently closed one
(46:42):
deals and just do the forensiclook at what happened during
that customer's journey that ledthem to ultimately buy and
build a story about.
These are the kinds of thingsthat worked to.
This is when we win.
If you get good at that, youcan also look at what lost and
what did we lose about.
These are the kinds of thingsthat that worked to.
This is when we went.
If you really, if you get, ifyou get good at that, you can
also look at what, what lost andright what when we lose, right
(47:02):
what.
And you want to find thingsthat are like you don't want to
just sandbag sandbag, it's notthe right term but like you
don't want to just pickeverything that's like you know
is perfect, right, you want tofind things that had some
challenges, but the idea is likeyou want stuff that's hopefully
, hopefully specific, butgeneralizable to your overall
go-to-market approach, and whatcan you learn?
And it goes across sales andmarketing, so you're not getting
(47:25):
into this game of who getscredit.
And, again, so it's not againstattribution or other models for
trying to put a financialmetric to marketing's activities
, models for trying to put afinancial metric to marketing's
activities.
What it does, though, is bringsback that humanity to it and
(47:45):
the storytelling that peoplegravitate to, and I've seen
success myself doing that,Especially getting over the hump
with skeptical sales leadershipright About things, so I
encourage people to that.
Um, uh, I wish we could keepgoing, I know, I know, I know we
have, uh, we had more that wewanted to talk about, but I
(48:06):
think we're gonna have to wrapit up here.
Um, so, leanne, first off,thank you for joining.
This has been a funconversation.
Um, not very often we get likeyou, you know, like you are,
like you're this, like balanceof between.
So this academic thoughtprocess and practical, it feels
like.
So I like that people.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
So thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah, yeah, that was meant as a compliment.
Hopefully you took it that way.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Was it one then?
Oh well, that's who I am.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
No, I, I I enjoy any outlet to think critically and
deeply about what it is we'redoing, why we're doing it and
who it's serving, and at the endof the day, that is what I
(49:00):
think helps us push ourselvesforward as professionals and as
people is to have those deepconversations and that
investigation of our practices.
Yeah Well, I will have toencourage people to go look at
your list of fallacies logicalfallacies because that's an
important one.
I'm a big fan of theFreakonomics books and podcasts,
and they were some of the firstbooks that I ever read that
really broke down that idea.
They were some of the firstbooks that I ever read that
(49:22):
really broke down that idea.
In the whole field ofbehavioral economics, it all
came about because humans didn'tact like robots.
Surprise, right, anyway, so youmentioned LinkedIn, but if
people want to keep up with whatyou're talking about, or learn
more about what you're doing,what's the best way for them to
do that?
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Right now it is LinkedIn.
There's also my podcast.
I have a newsletter I started.
It is I call it the MarkergyMorsel and it is a very small,
digestible inspiration for yourweek.
It has three parts.
It has creativity.
There's almost always a fungift and some lesson from it.
(49:58):
There's three things to thinkabout as you think about what
you're working on in yourstrategy.
And then there's a science fact, and the science fact usually I
keep hidden if you subscribedirectly because you know we got
to market, but usually thatincludes things about like how
your brain works or your bodyworks and how that manifests in
in like the real world, um.
(50:19):
And so I really want toencourage people to sign up for
that.
You can find the links for thatalso on my linkedin um or the
podcast at markagycom,m-a-r-k-i-g-ycom, um.
And then my name is leannedalweimer, l?
-ee-a-n-n-e, and then two lastnames D-O-W-W-E-I-M-E-R.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
M-E-R Got it All right Well.
Thank you, leanne again, andthanks to our audience for
continuing to support us asalways.
We are always open to ideas forguests and topics, or if you
want to be a guest or have asuggestion for a guest, feel
free to reach out to Naomi, mikeor me, and we would be glad to
talk to you about it.
Until next time, bye, everybody.
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by all
the MoPros out there.
I am your host, michael Hartman, flying solo today.
We will get Mike and Naomi backsoon, I'm sure.
Joining me today is Leanne DowWeimer, and we're going to talk
about why there needs to behumanity for data-driven
marketing to work, so we'll getinto that a little bit.
(00:22):
Leanne is a fractionalmarketing leader and advisor who
is also the host of theMarkagee the Science of
Marketing Strategy podcast.
She has over eight years ofexperience in online and offline
marketing involving branddemand, gen and product
marketing, and over 15 more indirect customer service slash
sales roles.
So, leanne, thank you forjoining today.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah.
So this is going to be.
I think this is going to be afun conversation because I've
been saying for a while that,well, first off, I hate the term
data-driven marketing because Ithink it's non-sequitur I don't
know what the right word is.
Like.
Data-driven is like peopledon't really know what that
means is what I'm saying, butwe'll get into that probably
(01:10):
later and I don't need to get onmy soapbox just yet.
Um, all right, so let's getstarted.
So I did a very brief overviewof your recent career, but
something I didn't mention isthat your undergraduate degree
is in, if I got it right,exercise physiology, and that
you started your career in a gym.
So we've had all kinds of crazystarts to careers that end up
in marketing, marketing ops, butthis is a first, I think.
So tell us about thatexperience and how it informs
(01:30):
your marketing related worktoday.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, thank you.
So my undergraduate degree isexercise physiology.
It's basically the nerdiest ofthe kinesiology majors of the
kinesiology majors and my peerswent on to be doctors, physical
therapists, occupationaltherapists all sorts of working
(01:53):
with the human body inhealthcare settings.
I chose a more proactiveapproach and my focus was also
aimed at women and children, andso I spent a lot of my early
career teaching group exercise,personal training, sports
coaching, things like that,where I was trying to help
(02:13):
people do the best with theirbody before they broke and
needed physical therapy.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
That was my goal Live longer, happier, healthier
lives across the board.
And while I was doing that isthat there's kind of this
learning moment I had.
That was explicitly said to me,so I don't want to take all the
credit for it, but personaltraining is a sales job.
Training is a sales job, andit's true because you are trying
(02:50):
to get someone to pay youthousands of dollars so that you
can convince them to dosomething they have inherently
been avoiding doing.
And not only are you trying toconvince them to do it, but
you're trying to convince themto have so much fun showing up
at 5 am to do a workout thatthey've been avoiding that.
They're going to listen to youthe rest of the week when
they're not with you and thenpay you again to continue your
services and still like you.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
That's an important part there, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
And still like you and want to be there and make
that choice, knowing that's whatthey're choosing.
And so it requires a lot ofreally getting to know what
makes people tick, whatmotivates them, what, how you
can answer their needs and whatthey came to you to get done,
even if they're saying you know,I just want to, I just want to
(03:38):
fit into a dress.
Okay, why do you want to fitinto that dress?
It helps you to like, pull thosethreads of like how to motivate
people on an individual level.
Um and so, while there's thataspect of the work you have to
it's I'm going to borrow aphrase from someone else but you
eat what you kill and first ofall, we don't.
(03:58):
We don't actually kill anybody.
We are not.
I'm very like a gentle, likesoul, I swear, but the only
clients you get are the clientsthat you find for yourself.
No one's out there like passingout personal training clients.
That's just how it works If theyare like, oh, that's awesome,
(04:19):
you're getting paid pennies ifthat's the case, but to where
I'm trying to get to with thisis that you have to create some
sort of allure and attraction orway to get clients.
And so what I found myselfdoing before I took a single
business class ever was creatinga content calendar.
(04:40):
I was planning out my year andsaying, okay, during March this
is kind of March madness, it'sspring training, these are the
sports I'm going to try to helppeople enjoy and help give them
that sport specific training,for it's a kickoff of marathon
season.
They're going to want to beattheir time, they're going to
want to do their first marathon,they're going to want to get
(05:01):
ready for those summer weddingsLike what is happening in the
seasonality and how can I changemy offering to be in the
language that answers that whatthey're trying to accomplish of
their goals.
And so I also found myselfgetting backlinks online and
being on Twitter and Instagramand all these things, before
fitfluencers even existed.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Fitfluencers I hadn't heard that term yet, okay, yeah
.
Fitness influencers I hadn'theard that term yet, okay.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, fitness influencers are-.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I'm old, though, so I'm behind on the times.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
You're not.
There are some veryknowledgeable people, but it's
been a constant struggle in thewellness industry is that you're
not just fighting to unraveland learn more about people,
You're fighting that temptationof the get it quick schemes, and
(05:52):
so that was also part of why Iwas like I need to get real good
at marketing.
I need to get real good atsales, because not only am I
fighting people's status quo,their inertia, I'm fighting
these snake oil people.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Right yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
And trying to really, you know, lead with
evidence-based, long-termsustainable things for people.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
So I found myself in marketing.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
That's interesting, it's happened.
I'm surprised.
One of our first guests, brandysanders, said something that
still sticks with me about how,like, sometimes this kind of
role requires.
It's like you should know howto play chess, right?
It's a complex kind ofcomplicated thing in human
psychology or something likethat.
(06:40):
Right, and I think what's whatyou're talking about is like
understanding people and whatmotivates them probably goes
both in terms of building abusiness, like you were, as well
as navigating your ownorganization, right, right,
figure out what.
What motivates people?
Why is that person a pain todeal with, while this person you
know it's easy to deal with butdoesn't get anything done,
(07:01):
right, that kind of stuff.
So I can totally see that youtouched on um, taking business
classes.
So I think you you then, atsomewhere along the way, you
also got, went and got an mba.
You got exposure to other partsof business what were like, see
, it sounds like you already hadsome exposure to what it's like
(07:21):
to run a business, because youhad your own business selling
yourself.
Basically what, uh?
What did to run a business?
Because you had your ownbusiness selling yourself,
basically what, uh?
What did you?
What additional things did youpick up from going back and get
an MBA.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, um I, it flips my world I.
I went into it knowing that Ijust this was a blind spot for
me.
Um, you know, I don't reallyknow a lot about this stuff.
I know what's happening insideyour body with the cells and the
different physical responses.
I could draw a Krebs cycle.
(07:53):
I could do all this reallynerdy stuff, but I didn't know
how to make a businessprofitable and I recently posted
about this on LinkedIn.
Is that, at the end of the day,you can't help anybody if you
have no income.
You just can't.
You need to have revenue andhow to do that in a way that
matches this very altruistic,beauty pageant answer that I
(08:15):
have, that I care about people.
How to connect those dotsbetween running a business that
has revenue, that is sustainablethat can you know, have these
holistic thoughts and practicesand mindsets.
How to do that in a way thatprovides growth opportunities,
so that you can positivelyimpact the economy around you,
(08:36):
so that you can employ others,so that you can continue to
service the people that needyour help.
And so you know it.
Just, it taught me so much aboutnot just like the hardcore
business principles where I waslike, oh, that makes sense,
that's what I was doing, but Ididn't know I was doing it.
But also ones that like Ireally like had to sit down and
(09:01):
like put on, like you know, allof the motivating music I could.
All of a sudden there's dubstep, so I could do this financial
projection worksheet, but it wasthese heavy business theories
and practices and ABBA andaccounting and here's what your
(09:23):
interest does over timeamortization, all these things
that you do need to know thatare very functionally-.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Tax implications of decisions.
You make all those kinds ofthings right.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, roi, return on ad spend.
Just how are you going tobalance all of these things and
how are you going to get yourmargins?
How are you going to tell yourcustomers when you have to
increase prices, because youcan't just be their best friend
and never increase your pricesand then go out of business.
It's very tempting, but even anonprofit needs to have grants
and money coming in so that thenthey can disperse it or provide
(09:57):
the service or provide the good.
It's this liquidity idea thatreally was very important for me
to understand, so that now,when I look at a business choice
, I make it knowing this isgoing to impact our margin, but
here's what we can expect out ofit.
Here's how that's going to letme get headcount.
(10:17):
Here's how that's going to letme invest differently yeah.
And then also listening tosmarter people than I, like the
venture capitalists that were atthese angel expos, and hearing
them talk about people'sbusiness ideas, that was huge,
(10:38):
because sometimes we have we,sometimes I too too have these
wonderful pie in the sky ideasand we can always have these
great ideas.
But if your idea doesn't havesubstance or it doesn't have a
method of like, operationalizingor it doesn't, you know, answer
(11:00):
the need for big enough people,or it's just, you know, a
lovely idea, but it's not, itcan't functionally exist.
Then you know, you've got toknow that, you've got to be able
to have that discernment.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah Well, I think it's easy to get caught up in an
idea that you believe is I'llcall it the right thing to do or
a good thing to do, and justsort of feel it in your bones
and maybe even have a little bitin your head of like this is
why I think it'll it'll bebeneficial.
But if you can't communicatethat to the people that have the
(11:36):
influence, the purse strings,the ability to enable you to do
it, it's probably going to be areal challenge to get it done.
It's probably going to be areal challenge to get it done.
This is why I keep coming backto.
One of the soapboxes I get on isthe importance of understanding
the basics of finance.
So I think it pays dividends inunderstanding if you're going
(11:58):
to a public company.
Certainly it helps you evaluatefinancial statements and things
like that.
Same thing with private, Iguess, if you get access to
those and things like that samething with private, I guess, if
you get access to those.
But even just pitching an ideainternally at an organization
where finance has to sign off onit, like knowing how to
evaluate something like that andbuild the case for it and
structure it and get that buy-inis really, really valuable and
(12:20):
it pays off.
It doesn't matter what industryyou're in, right, it just really
doesn't matter, and so that'slike one of those things that I
really, really believe in.
It's interesting you talkedabout, like the um so that the
some people get into some ofthese or these businesses, for I
don't want to say altruisticmotives, but, right, they, they.
(12:42):
They see they want to dosomething good for whatever
their client or customer isgoing to be, and I don't want to
get too far into a rabbit holethat might be dangerous.
But the first time I ever heardsomebody talk about that
realization was do you know whoJohn Mackey is?
He was the founder of WholeFoods.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yes, yeah, yeah, whole.
Foods was a case study I clungto.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah, yeah, so I think I think I was.
He was the first one I everremember hearing talking about
like he really wanted to do goodand it and he, he was kind of
struggling against himself ontrying to reconcile this, like
this idea of having this youknow, whatever you want to call
it right Nutritional, oriented.
You, you know, retail storethat was affordable to people in
(13:28):
the neighborhood but they, atthe same time, was sustainable,
and that you know he could makea living off of, and and enable
others to make a living off of,and you know it took him a while
, I think to, to get to thatpoint.
So, um, it's, it's interestingto me, so that you bring that up
cause it's.
I think it's.
It's a.
(13:48):
I think it's a.
It's one that probably manypeople who are starting out on
their own struggle with.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah, I agree completely.
It is a very industry agnostic.
It's just bare bones business.
You need to understand how tomake the revenue, you need to
know what goes into the sausageand you need to know what flavor
your sausage is.
And that's like a really weirdway to phrase this.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
You're not talking about your fitness clients,
right?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I mean, I do want them to know if they're eating
like some.
I'll save the nutritionaljudgment.
The thing is, you know, this iswhere totally going off on a
tangent here this is where itcomes back to this kind of
universal truth.
Universal truth is that thereis no such thing as a bad food.
(14:39):
There is a bad food that youeat too much of, or, to you know
, like it just takes over itsdisproportionate amount.
In business, there are bad ideas.
They're ethically wrong, butthey're like in marketing.
There's not necessarily a badcampaign.
It's just how much time, moneyand effort should it get.
(15:00):
And because you need to havethat space for experimentation
so that you might strike gold or, if it fails completely, you
didn't just blow your year'sbudget on it.
And so it's this universal truthof moderation and proportion
and really being able to discernhow much of what should get
(15:20):
what and that's where thebiggest levers and strategy
occur is what gets whatallotment.
And I'm kind of relating thisback to your internal buy-in
with the finance department.
Even if you aren't directlytalking to the finance
department, you're talking tosomeone who answers to the
finance department and they needto be able to champion your
(15:43):
idea.
And so if your idea is thisvery innovative idea and you're
so excited about it but no one'shad any way to say that this is
for sure going to work and youtry to get your whole year's
budget behind it, the peoplethat answer to finance are going
to have a really big struggletrying to plead your case and
(16:05):
get that investment.
But when you look at it likethis is an experiment and you
frame it correctly and yourequest a appropriate allotment
to do a sandbox to prove it'sminimal, viable product and it's
case use and it's all thisstuff to get some some traction,
(16:25):
then you can scale it right um,last thought, thank you for
listening to this tangent um,but this is why repeatable,
scalable processes andeverything we do in a business
is the keys to the kingdom,because you can take that
experiment and then you can plugit in to some sort of process
(16:49):
or flow and then you can grow it.
Um, so you made a face.
I want to hear.
I did.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I did because I don't totally agree with this.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
You have to do you have to do some things that are
unscalable.
You have to, but I think thatwhen you're looking at okay,
I've got this small thing and itworks, how do I repeat this At
some point, you can't bereinventing the wheel every
single time.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
No, I don't.
So the nuance I would throw inis that I don't believe that.
So in general, I agree for youto get the benefit of these
things you need to scale.
But I think if you're doing anexperiment or you're building
something new and you don't knowall the things, that might be
(17:38):
challenges along the way in whatyou're doing.
A couple of thoughts One I thinkyou're right.
(18:02):
A couple of thoughts One I thinkyou're right the more low risk
and higher reward you can getout of it, the more likely you
are going to get the okay to doit, especially when you're
competing with other people andother ideas that you may not
even know about, that arecompeting for the same dollar,
what, what I where I sort of hadthis look on my face was, you
know, I think in those cases,right, trying to put in place
highly structured processes atthat point is kind of
counterproductive, right, it'skind of and I'm not saying you
don't want to put in somestructure, but I have my own
(18:24):
belief about what the level ofstructure should be.
But what I do believe is youshould go into it with mindset.
We want to learn what we can sothat, if it works, we want to
be able to scale it, but wedon't want to necessarily put
ourselves in so much structurethat we can't move and adjust
quickly, because we know that wedon't know everything.
And I think that's really kindof why you saw that look on my
(18:44):
face is because I think, yes,you want to try these
experiments, you want to do themas quickly and learn as quickly
as you can.
But part of that learning ishow do you enable yourself to
scale?
Or you learn that you can'tright and that by itself would
be a good lesson to learn.
Yeah, so that's what I thoughtwe agree.
(19:05):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Fundamentally, we agree, right.
No-transcript Agreed.
(19:33):
So it's in budget, right,because a bootstrap business of
five people is going to operatevery differently than a heavily
invested five people that haslike 10 agencies.
Right?
So there is so many ways to doit.
Five people that has like 10agencies Right?
So it's, there is so many waysto do it, and that's one of the
beauties of it.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Right, I mean, I think this is the other like.
One of my other things is likethere's usually not one right
answer to these things and lotsof reasons why.
But I believe that the world ismade up of lots of trade-offs,
right, and so everyone's.
You know, the simple one, or acommon one, is risk tolerance,
right, so you know, if your risktolerance is relatively high,
right, you're, you're, thetrade-offs you would consider
(20:15):
that I, you know someone else'slower risk tolerance would
consider, are very different.
And so I think there and youcould add all kinds of other
things to that list of what thetradeoffs are, you know, some of
it is like even, I will sayeven finance people sometimes
use their gut, right?
I mean, it's like I justbelieve this idea is more likely
(20:43):
to succeed, even though there'srisks associated with it, than
this other one.
And if it does, it's going topay off bigger than this other
one, which also might pay off,but not as much for the amount
we have to put into it.
And so that's just the natureof experimentation and
innovation is, you know, trythings to see what's going to
have an impact, and thatsometimes depends on what it is
(21:03):
you're trying to maximize for oroptimize for?
Yeah, so this is what happenswhen I've been spending.
I spent the morning at theengineering school at SMU, where
I graduated from, and so I'vegot my too much academic sort of
thought process in my headright now.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Hey, no, it's good.
I love the discourse right,Because one of the ultimate
things that you have to do ischallenge ideas.
And you have to challenge yourown ideas first, because if, if
you're going to somebody andyou're presenting this thing and
you haven't challenged yourideas and gone through the
potential objections, then youmight be missing something that
(21:48):
you very quickly see as like ahuge mistake.
Right, like, and you don't, youdon't.
You need to start with like wasthis assumption right?
Is this premise true?
Is this you know it?
What are they going to say?
Reasons not to AI?
And can I make the argument,like, earnestly, honestly,
transparently, that this isstill the right thing to do,
(22:08):
despite the objections that Ican?
come up with.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
No, I think it's like I tell it's been a while since
I've said, but I definitely havetold my kids, I've told people
I work with my goal is to beconfident, but humble, but
humble, right.
So I believe that I know a lotand smart and can make good
decisions, but I'm also open tothe idea that there are other
people who might have evenbetter ideas, and I want to be
open to the idea of listening tous, um, and I think that's you
(22:37):
know that's not for everybody,but it's.
I think it's worked for me andI, like you, know it's how I
want to live.
So let's switch gears a littlebit, um, and I talked earlier
and you had a point of viewabout what brand is and said and
I would tend to agree with thispart at least as you said, it's
(22:57):
more than fonts and colors.
Agreed, but you also said it'show we operate.
But I'd like you to kind ofdrill down on that.
What does that mean?
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
But I'd like you to kind of drill down on that.
What does that mean?
What do you mean by that?
Yeah, so when I say that brandis more than fonts and colors,
it's how we operate.
I'm saying that it is themanifestation of every
interaction with our customers,whether they see, directly or
indirectly, contact the company,or they hear about it from
their friend, or they're justleft with some sort of feeling.
(23:29):
And so all of the accumulationof those touches or indirect
touches, and all of that is whatactually makes a brand.
You can have any logo and peopleare going to have a notion of
you and you can't control whatpeople think, but you can
(23:49):
communicate in a way that saysthis is what we want you to
think we are.
And then you can back up thatbrand promise with how you email
, how you respond to inquiries,how you respond to complaints.
What is the time lag betweensomebody saying, hey, I want a
(24:10):
demo and actually get a demo?
If you're saying that you're acustomer-centric company, and
then someone puts in an inboundrequest the biggest goldmine of
requests, where they're justtrying to shove their money at
you and you don't like follow upfor a month, like six months,
(24:31):
well, you're dead, like, like,that's not.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
you're not who you say you are so, even though
bananas, yes, it's it'smind-boggling because it still
exists no, it's like I I'msmiling because mike and I got
on and recorded.
Uh, it was probably within ourfirst year or so of doing the
podcast because I had hadexperience, just like you talked
about, where I had submittedrequests to multiple vendors
(24:56):
multiple times to still knowlike I started shaming them
online actually and eventuallygot somebody to talk to me and
we kind of went on this rantabout or had a discussion where,
like how to sell to marketingops folks which you could, and
it was really interestingbecause we had a subsequent
episode because a couple ofsales people like kind of pushed
back on us and we wanted to gettheir set and there's some.
It's an interesting one and Iwould encourage people to go
(25:19):
listen to that, but it stuns mestill, like these companies that
make it so hard to take yourmoney.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
It's like come on, I'm trying to help you.
Like, take my money, like Iwant your service, this is what
you exist to do, um, yeah, no,that grinds my gear so much, um.
But on the on the opposite side, if you have kind of a blah
font choice or color or logo,but like you're known for going
(25:48):
above and beyond on a human tohuman level, that's your brand.
That's not codified,necessarily, but it's
operationalized, it's manifested, it's what that person says to
their friend, to their friend,to their friend, you know.
And so that's where I thinkthat brand is a transcendent
manifestation, and I know that'sa very California way to
(26:10):
describe things.
But it's not just omni-channel,it's omni-interaction, it's lack
of direct interaction, it'sreputation, it's so
all-encompassing that it's veryhard to call it marketing when
(26:32):
it starts at marketing.
But it has its own life.
That's ingrained from everychoice within the company, from
the leadership to what theyinvest in and what they don't
invest in, to how they respondto customers, to what platforms
they choose so that they canoperate.
It's, it's everything, and itbecomes a personality of
(26:53):
organization.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, I think so because I am in Dallas, right.
What all that reminds me of isthe story of Southwest airlines,
right, which I don't know ifit's still a hundred percent
matches what, what they wereoriginally, but, like I think
they were very, very.
I would argue this where itstarts, before marketing, it
starts with core values, right,and really making sure everybody
(27:16):
who comes on board knows about.
It goes into hiring, it goesinto all those choices you
talked about.
In their case, it enabled, like, making sure that everybody
knew that if you wereinteracting with a customer a
year, you were empowered to dowhat you could to solve that
customer's problem Right Withinreason.
Again, whether or not that'sstill true, right, that's a
(27:39):
different story, but I think itpretty long into it, right.
They were well known for that,right, and I've worked at a
handful of places where thevalues they had on the walls in
all the offices actually matched, they actually reinforced that
with the things that theycelebrated and the things they
condemned in terms of behaviors,and I think that goes a long
(28:04):
way towards it.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Culture is what is enforced.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yes or not?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Or not.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's how.
If you have a set of rules orvalues, it's how it happens.
It's what is praised and whatis ignored.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah and what is ignored.
Yeah Well, and I think thecompanies I know who really
really take that to heart it isa pain to get hired by them, but
it's because they are verydeliberate about getting people
into the organization that havethose you know they know will
(28:46):
have the same values.
I mean, one of my kids justlast summer worked at a local
college leadership that's knownfor having really, really great
customer service ethos acrosstheir multiple dealerships
service ethos across theirmultiple dealerships.
And the process he had to gothrough for a summer job was, I
(29:07):
mean, I think he had fourinterviews, a couple of
screening tests, right, all thisstuff Like and um, it wasn't,
like it wasn't just because himright, it was, that's what they
did with everybody, and I thinkit's it's very telling when you
see that Um, so all you peopleout there who are just trying to
grab at any job, right, payattention to how that process
(29:28):
works.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, and at some point you know, 10 interviews is
too many yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Why too many?
Yeah, well, or at least itgives you insight into, uh, some
of the norms in theorganization about decision
making right?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
yes, yeah, it definitely shows what it.
If a hiring decision is one ofthe biggest impacts on their
bottom line and they come at itin a certain way, it is heavily
reflective of their internalpersonality.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And so I yeah, that's a whole different episode.
We will, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
I could, I'm sure we could get.
We could get a panel of peoplewho could come on and we would
probably be on for four hours.
It would be a long time.
So we said at the top of thisthat we were going to talk a
little bit about why it'simportant to have humanity and
maybe I put that in air quotesto be a data-driven organization
(30:37):
.
So that was like a term thatyou, or a phrase that you shared
with me when we first talked.
So what do you mean by havinghumanity to be data driven?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yeah, I mean and I think that our conversation that
we've had so far builds intothis, because we've talked about
how it's how people operatewith each other, it's how people
make decisions, it's how peopleneed to get the buy-in for
brand or marketing or theseother things is that, when we
look at the data, data and evenquantitative points on a bar
(31:11):
graph is still reflective of asnapshot in time or a series of
snapshots in time of choicesmade by humans, by people.
And while we all love, you know,gumball machines, if I put $5
in I get five gumballs out.
(31:33):
Where that, there's alwaysnuance, right, there's nuance in
how people operate, how theymake their buying decisions, how
that's influenced.
There's your actions.
There's the NBA speak would bethe SWAT and the pestle analysis
.
You know there's there's moreto it.
(31:53):
There's also did did thatcompany have snacks that day?
Was everybody in back to backto back meetings?
They were hangry and they justcouldn't be bothered.
You know, like you, gotta youpeople, people aren't always
rational and you can't alwaysexpect the if this, then that
outcome.
Um, because in any givensituation, there's a multiple
(32:18):
variables and multiple outputsthat a single person could have,
and and that's the beauty ofthe human, human mind, human
experience is that we're allunique and you know, if you put
five people in the samesituation, you're not, you're
almost never, almost sometimes,though never going to get a
(32:39):
hundred percent of the exactsame behavior for the, for the
same reason, every single time.
Now, there's always things thatthere's always nuance, there's
always exceptions, there'salways outliers.
So anything I say acknowledgesthose exist.
What I'm saying is that if youlook at a data point and you are
(33:02):
data driven, you still need tobe data cynical, and what I mean
by this is that, ok, we got,you know, 10 clicks on this
email, so now they all want todo demos.
That's a win, well, is it?
Why did they click on thatemail?
What happened on that salescall next?
Did you promise them somethingon that email?
(33:24):
What happened on that salescall next?
Did you promise them somethingin that email?
And then they got to the salescall and it was just off enough
that it was no longer relevantand valuable to them.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Is that still a win?
You just got 10 MQLs?
No, it's not a win because theydidn't convert, so it's a waste
of money.
And so we all feel this painwhere we want to be able to be
like, yeah, I won, my metricssay I won, but you have to look
at the whole picture and youhave to say was this actually a
(33:55):
conversion?
Was this actually answeringtheir need?
Was this framed in a way thatmade sense, that enticed them to
a relevant offer?
Was this building value forthem?
Are they going to stick arounda year from now?
Or did they purchase oncebecause they didn't know what
they were doing and we misledthem in some way, shape or form,
whether intentionally orunintentionally, or we didn't
(34:16):
plan for a circumstance change,and now they've churned, and now
we've got to restart the wheel.
And now they've churned, andnow we've got to restart the
wheel.
And so this is where havingexperience matters, where you
can look at yes, we got thelowest cost per lead.
Those leads were junk.
They were leads technically,but the more expensive leads are
(34:39):
actually the ones that convert.
So our customer acquisitioncosts, yeah, okay, maybe it went
down because we thought we weregetting all these leads, but we
actually ended up getting fewercustomers.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And so you have to be cynical, you have to be like
well, that's great, but whatabout the rest of it?
What is actually happening?
Where is the full story of thisdata point, and how does this
interact with the rest of ourdata points, and are we making
business sense in the long termand in the short term?
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, I mean I said, I think at the beginning that I
don't really like the term datadriven, and I've tried to use
the phrase data informed becauseI think it's, because I think
if you are driven by the data Imean this is getting really
picky about the word choice, butit makes it seem like the data
(35:29):
is going to tell you exactlywhat to do, and I just don't
think that's true.
Right, I think there's a lotlike you need to be able to
interpret it and understand whatit means.
I had, until we had talked, Ihad not thought of a term like
data cynical, you know, or datacritical, I think, your point
being, you can want to be led bydata, but there's also some
(35:53):
component of being smart abouthow to interpret it, and I think
that's really what we'regetting at.
It's like it's not just that.
I also think, when I thinkabout humanity being into it is
one of the downsides to me I'veseen, with people who just go
like just present data andcharts and they think they're
great, is they forget thathumans are like we're pattern
(36:16):
recognition animals.
You know very much so and weare moved by stories, right?
So if you're not, you you knowtelling a story about it.
Just showing the data is notgoing to motivate a lot of
people to change, especially ifand this is why I don't like
(36:36):
data driven to be like, I think,just by the nature of the kind
of data that marketers and salesteams deal with.
You alluded to one like itslices at time, right at a point
in time, but it also doesn'thave the kind of controls that
you would have with, say,accounting and financial data
right, which is highly regulatedand has very strict rules about
(36:57):
it, whereas marketing salesdata just doesn't right.
So you should just assume it'snot going to be right, yeah, or
whatever.
Right means right, like I don'teven like using that term
either, but it is what it isright.
So just assume that you cantrust it to some.
Like there's some degree oftrust you can have with it in
terms of making decisions, but,like you need to be cognizant of
(37:20):
how to use like know that thatdata is not probably telling the
full story, and I know that wecould all come up with examples
of where we were looking at dataand it uncovered some sort of
weird way in which, say, thesales team was doing something
or a broken technology step inthe marketing technology stack
(37:41):
or whatever Right, and that'sthe kind of stuff that drives
like.
I see that all the time.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah, yeah, and, and it's the trust but verify
component, but also um, there'sso much of that that I just I
resonate with Um.
It's hard to mentally thinkabout it at all.
One thing is that if you are avery like literate person and I
mean literal literate person, Idon't mean like you can read.
(38:12):
I hope you can read, please, ifyou need help with literacy,
like there's programs.
But what I'm trying to say isthat the worst thing that you
can do and I fall into this trapall the time because I'll be
deep in the thick of it, in theweeds and I'll be so proud of
this spreadsheet I made Do notjust share your spreadsheet.
(38:34):
Don't do it.
Don't do it, don't do it.
It is a pitfall, unless you areeven if you are also a
spreadsheet person.
You need to put it into a deck,you need to do a presentation
and this is a meeting.
That needs to be.
A meeting is the discussion andinterpretation of the data
(38:55):
points.
That is a dialogue inconversation.
Another component of what yousaid is this this this concept
of what gets measured getsmanaged.
I am still a big advocate forhaving data points and
attribution everywhere you canget it so that you can
investigate.
(39:15):
So I see it as a constellationof stars, right right.
Yes, these data points areconstellation of stars.
Inside a star is a ball of firethat has chemical processes,
that is impacting gravity andall this other stuff that you
can't see.
You need to get your telescope,you need to zoom in on the star
, you need to look at it and itsnebula and its star system in
(39:38):
the universe and you need tohave it as an eye point to to
notice and to investigate.
It is not the end, all be all.
It is not the universe, it is astar.
Yes, still gigantic, still stillin, like you know, credit, like
remarkable, still still matters.
Um, and that's when I say whatmeasure gets managed is that
(40:02):
without having all the data thatis reasonable to get, you can't
get quite the same feel forwhat is going on and there's a
lot of blind spots and a lot ofwe don't know this, we don't
know that, and there's there's alot of opportunities when you
have the data points, to thentry to say, almost like the
(40:25):
Charlie Day murder board on thewall where he's got the strings
from different things, I don'tlike thought it all out and then
look at it from 1,000 feet, 100feet, 3 feet, and you got to
look at it from the differentPOVs three feet and and you got
to look at it from the differentpovs.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
well, I think I think your point um, if I at least
what I one of the things I tookaway is right there's not a
single metric that really cantell the full story, right, and
you need you need different ones, you need them from to look at
it from different perspectives,understand how they're connected
.
So, if all you're measuring iswe generated enough mqls or
sal's, or or we can attribute Xamount of pipeline revenue to
our marketing activities,there's nothing wrong with any
(41:08):
one of those.
It's just that like is it thefull story?
And I think that's the.
It's an easy trap to fall into.
There's that.
And there's also the trap ofwhat's easy to measure is not
always what's truly indicativeof what's working, and what's
(41:29):
working meaning what's actuallymoving the needle for the
business overall.
Are we delivering profitablerevenue to the organization?
Are we delivering revenue,profitable revenue to the
organization?
And I think that's something Isee a lot of people get caught
(41:49):
up in.
So a lot of this now comes like.
Where I keep coming back to isthat everything we talk to like
to me all makes sense, soundslike it makes sense to you, but
I think there's an assumptionthat we're making is that, like
you, that people should have acertain level of data fluency,
uh, to be able to do thesethings?
And I do think that that's amissing element for a lot of
(42:12):
marketing ops professionals,most of who we, you know, most
of our listeners, fall in thatcategory.
Sorry, not saying most of ourlisteners fall in the category
of not being data fluent, butthat they are our audience.
But I do think there's a gap,right, and understanding that.
And so I mean, do you see thesame thing where people get, get
followed these traps becausethey just it's, they're reacting
(42:34):
to requests for data, so theygenerate a spreadsheet and just
send it off, right?
What's your take on thissituation?
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, I think that data literacy is.
One of the biggest plagues inour society is that we are told
something and we take it at facevalue and that's.
There's just more to it and noteverything is.
(43:02):
It's the critical component,right, that criticism, like that
cynicality, that, okay, thissays that I brought 10 MQLs and
I keep coming back to thisbecause in a mops setting, this
is going to be one of thefrequent ones and then your CMO
may be even less data fluentthan you and they've got this
(43:25):
presentation you made, youexplained it, but they
understand things the way thatthey understand things which you
have no control over, and theypluck out something that's going
to look good to the executiveboard because that's how they
interpreted what you said, andthey cherry pick and I it can be
(43:48):
very misleading becauseunintentionally right,
unintentionally I'm never gonnasay that somebody did this like
with, uh, you know, malevolent,like malicious intent, uh, but
there's certainly you, the I'venever experienced anyone like
that, but those people certainlydo exist and you know they
(44:10):
definitely do.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah, people will spin the numbers, right yeah,
the sandbag it like.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
no, I don Like.
But there you, there's thisliteracy to it where you have to
come back to like this how doesthis actually interact with the
world?
How does this actually interactwith the humans?
Is this the right conclusionfrom the right number?
Are these two things reallyattached in that way?
Is it correlation, is itcausation?
Is it made up like fiction?
(44:36):
Is it correlation, is itcausation?
Is it made up like fiction?
You know, is this what is thesignificance of this metric in
the context of the world?
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Yeah, and that's where.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Context really matters.
It matters so heavily, and Iwant there to be this knowledge
of logical fallacies.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
And these.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
I put up a post I post way too much on LinkedIn,
but I put up a post where Ilisted out 10 different logical
fallacies that you must avoid tobe day-deleterate.
And there's things likecorrelation is not causation.
This is the most common one,but it's also the slippery slope
one where, if this means this,then this other thing, no, no,
(45:21):
this just means this, it you.
It cannot mean more than itmeans right and we want to tell
stories and we want to have thatdialogue, but we can't then
infer things that aren't thereto infer and and it's that that
like buckets of things, thatlike buckets of things I know,
buckets of things, I think inbuckets of things I can prove,
(45:42):
and I'm that's another phrasingthat I stole from my friend
Teresa.
But you really you've got tothink about how can I prove this
?
What am I proving it on?
Is it you know?
Is it hearsay?
Is it circumstantial?
Is it what?
What are the?
What is the context?
What is the story behind it?
And how does that really lookin the real world?
(46:03):
Like can I say that I saw thisthing and it means this thing,
and then go talk to 10 customersthat are representative of that
metric and hear the thing thatI'm saying.
That happened.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Right, yeah, I totally.
I think that's great.
It's one of the things I havesuggested now through white
paper I did for the community,but also I've done myself is one
of the things marketers coulddo a better job of is
storytelling within theirorganizations, and part of that
I'd say is this to B2B reallybut go find recently closed one
(46:42):
deals and just do the forensiclook at what happened during
that customer's journey that ledthem to ultimately buy and
build a story about.
These are the kinds of thingsthat worked to.
This is when we win.
If you get good at that, youcan also look at what lost and
what did we lose about.
These are the kinds of thingsthat that worked to.
This is when we went.
If you really, if you get, ifyou get good at that, you can
also look at what, what lost andright what when we lose, right
(47:02):
what.
And you want to find thingsthat are like you don't want to
just sandbag sandbag, it's notthe right term but like you
don't want to just pickeverything that's like you know
is perfect, right, you want tofind things that had some
challenges, but the idea is likeyou want stuff that's hopefully
, hopefully specific, butgeneralizable to your overall
go-to-market approach, and whatcan you learn?
And it goes across sales andmarketing, so you're not getting
(47:25):
into this game of who getscredit.
And, again, so it's not againstattribution or other models for
trying to put a financialmetric to marketing's activities
, models for trying to put afinancial metric to marketing's
activities.
What it does, though, is bringsback that humanity to it and
(47:45):
the storytelling that peoplegravitate to, and I've seen
success myself doing that,Especially getting over the hump
with skeptical sales leadershipright About things, so I
encourage people to that.
Um, uh, I wish we could keepgoing, I know, I know, I know we
have, uh, we had more that wewanted to talk about, but I
(48:06):
think we're gonna have to wrapit up here.
Um, so, leanne, first off,thank you for joining.
This has been a funconversation.
Um, not very often we get likeyou, you know, like you are,
like you're this, like balanceof between.
So this academic thoughtprocess and practical, it feels
like.
So I like that people.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
So thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah, yeah, that was meant as a compliment.
Hopefully you took it that way.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Was it one then?
Oh well, that's who I am.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
No, I, I I enjoy any outlet to think critically and
deeply about what it is we'redoing, why we're doing it and
who it's serving, and at the endof the day, that is what I
(49:00):
think helps us push ourselvesforward as professionals and as
people is to have those deepconversations and that
investigation of our practices.
Yeah Well, I will have toencourage people to go look at
your list of fallacies logicalfallacies because that's an
important one.
I'm a big fan of theFreakonomics books and podcasts,
and they were some of the firstbooks that I ever read that
really broke down that idea.
They were some of the firstbooks that I ever read that
(49:22):
really broke down that idea.
In the whole field ofbehavioral economics, it all
came about because humans didn'tact like robots.
Surprise, right, anyway, so youmentioned LinkedIn, but if
people want to keep up with whatyou're talking about, or learn
more about what you're doing,what's the best way for them to
do that?
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Right now it is LinkedIn.
There's also my podcast.
I have a newsletter I started.
It is I call it the MarkergyMorsel and it is a very small,
digestible inspiration for yourweek.
It has three parts.
It has creativity.
There's almost always a fungift and some lesson from it.
(49:58):
There's three things to thinkabout as you think about what
you're working on in yourstrategy.
And then there's a science fact, and the science fact usually I
keep hidden if you subscribedirectly because you know we got
to market, but usually thatincludes things about like how
your brain works or your bodyworks and how that manifests in
in like the real world, um.
(50:19):
And so I really want toencourage people to sign up for
that.
You can find the links for thatalso on my linkedin um or the
podcast at markagycom,m-a-r-k-i-g-ycom, um.
And then my name is leannedalweimer, l?
-ee-a-n-n-e, and then two lastnames D-O-W-W-E-I-M-E-R.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
M-E-R Got it All right Well.
Thank you, leanne again, andthanks to our audience for
continuing to support us asalways.
We are always open to ideas forguests and topics, or if you
want to be a guest or have asuggestion for a guest, feel
free to reach out to Naomi, mikeor me, and we would be glad to
talk to you about it.
Until next time, bye, everybody.
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