May 8, 2025 • 35 mins
Think your business data is under control? Think again. In this eye-opening episode, Jim James talks with Paul Graeve, founder of The Data Group and author of Data Driven Leader, about why owning and mastering your data might be the biggest business edge you're overlooking.
Paul reveals:
- The mindset shift every entrepreneur needs to treat data like gold.
- The hidden costs of siloed data across tools like HubSpot, Shopify, and Salesforce.
- How to unify scattered info with cloud-based solutions like Snowflake.
- Why dashboards and alerts should empower everyone—from interns to execs.
- A powerful tip for business continuity most startups miss.
- His personal journey writing Data Driven Leader—and what leaders often get wrong.
If you're building a business that lasts and scales, this episode is for you.
Listen to the full conversation on The UnNoticed Entrepreneur—available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
Grab Paul's book: Data Driven Leader
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jim James (00:01):
if you're like so many people including me, you've
got your company's data acrossseveral different platforms.
In my case, I've got a CRM,I've got an email, I've got a
training course platform.
In fact, my business data is onmultiple platforms and I don't
really have control over it.
This is a problem because weare more and more reliant on
(00:26):
data.
In fact, 90% of the world'sdata was generated just in the
last two years, according to myguest.
Today he's a data expertjoining us from Birmingham,
alabama.
We're joined by coach datacoach Gravy Paul Grave, who is
the founder and CEO of a companycalled the Data Group.
Paul Kent Graeve (00:48):
Welcome, howdy .
Thanks for having me here today.
Privileged to be here.
Jim James (00:52):
Look, it's great to have you, because data is
probably a bit like accounting,one of the things that most of
us I put myself in this campdon't really do very well.
Put myself in this camp, don'treally do very well, and yet, as
a business, the informationabout the company is really the
(01:12):
tea leaves.
It's telling us how well we'redoing, how well we're going to
do so.
David, do you want to just takeus through data as a business
owner, what should be, first ofall, our mindset and then what
should be our approach so thatwe're in control?
And ultimately, if we want tobuild a business to sell, we
need to have control of the data.
(01:33):
Don't we so take us through atthe beginning, the mindset we
should have about data and thenhelp us to understand how we can
start to take some control?
Paul Kent Graeve (01:44):
Yeah, great.
Yeah, you asked about 10questions in there, so let's go
back.
Jim James (01:49):
I realize all my data points are all over the place.
Let's start with mindset.
You've been running businessesin the data area for nearly 30
years, so help us first of allwith mindset.
What should we be thinkingabout when it comes to data?
Paul Kent Graeve (02:06):
Yeah, and that's why I call myself Data
Coach Gravy.
I've been starting and runningdata companies for over 30 years
now, and that's what I'verealized in helping so many
companies and leaders with theirdata is that they believe this
lie because they've beenlistening to the technology and
(02:27):
data people that this is reallycomplicated and they don't
understand it and they need tostay out of it and just kind of
let IT alone.
And this is what I'm, as a datacoach.
I'm trying to tell leaders islook, data is incredibly simple.
It is has three ingredients,just like gravy does.
(02:49):
Data has strings, dates andnumbers.
That's it.
The strings are thedescriptions, the dates are when
it happened and the numbers areyour KPIs, your measurements,
and so that's all there is todata.
And definitely, if you are smartenough to be a leader, if
you're smart enough to start andrun a company, you're way, way
(03:10):
smarter than you need to be tolead your data for your company.
And this is the mindset wereally need to have as leaders
is that our data is one of, ifnot our, most valuable asset of
our business, because what ourdata is is the absolute truth
about our business.
We might have our own biasesand opinions and visions and
(03:34):
passions about our business, butthen, when you get into the
systems and you extract the dataand you look at it, that's the
unbiased real truth about whereour business is and where it's
going and what's happening.
And so, from that perspectiveand from that mindset is this is
the truth about my business,and so it is an incredibly
(03:55):
valuable, if not the mostvaluable, asset about my
business as I'm leading it, andso I can't not own it and I
can't not control it.
I need to own it and control itand be able to use it
efficiently and effectively.
And that's really my message toleaders is you've got to own
(04:15):
and control this data, andthat's really difficult to do in
today's cloud-driven,saas-driven world.
Jim James (04:23):
Well, I was going to say this idea of data that it's
no longer in one place.
When I started my firstbusiness back in 95, I had a
Blade server in the office and Ihad an ACT database Right, and
everything went in there and atthe end of the week we used a
tape to back that up and I usedto take that home on the
(04:46):
weekends in case we had a fire.
I mean, it was that old rightin.
Paul Kent Graeve (04:49):
Singapore.
That's good.
You had a good disasterrecovery plan, very nice.
Jim James (04:55):
Yeah, it was good, but of course, now you talk
about SAS and no one really hascontrol.
We're all renting.
Really has control, we're allrenting.
So how do we first of allidentify the different data
types or formats or silos?
Do you want to take us throughthat first and then we can look
at how we can start to buildconsolidation and dashboards?
Paul Kent Graeve (05:19):
Yeah.
So again, yeah, it's themindset as you go into this.
Saas is wonderful.
I don't want to.
You know, we don't want to goback to the archaic days of you
know, on-premise software,especially as entrepreneurs.
All the SaaS systems out there,they're wonderful, they're easy
, they're affordable.
You put in your credit card andsubscribe to all these amazing
(05:39):
SaaS systems that can help growyour business.
So I don't want to discouragethat, but what I do want leaders
to do, and especiallyentrepreneurs, is, as you're
subscribing and purchasing theseSaaS solutions for your
business, have that mindset ofwait a minute, I've got to own
and control this data.
I can't just let my data becomesiloed in 25 different silos
(06:03):
that I don't own and I don'thave access to and I can't
consolidate it all into oneplace.
So, as you subscribe to theseSaaS systems, have this mindset
of well, how am I going to getmy data back out of this system?
We're going to be putting allof this, say, digital assets, in
here, or we're going to beputting our social media data in
(06:23):
here, or we're going to haveour CR, whatever it is.
How am I going to get that databack out?
Do they have an API that I canextract the data?
Do they have automated exports?
That will send me my data everynight.
So that just needs to be athought process, as you're
subscribing and purchasing theseSaaS platforms is making sure
(06:44):
everybody just says this is it,this is the features that we
want and this is the price pointwe want.
There needs to be a thirdquestion in there features,
price point and how do I own andcontrol the data?
Do not let that SaaS providerbe in control and ownership of
your data, for many reasons.
One, it's your most valuableasset.
(07:05):
Two, you need to be able to useit efficiently and effectively,
which means getting it out ofthat system and into a place
that you wholly own and control.
And three, someday you may wantto leave that platform and go
to another one, and if they haveyour data hostage, that makes
that very difficult.
Jim James (07:21):
You are absolutely right about that and you've
raised alarms for me there aboutall the different disparate
places that the data is.
First of all, then let's justthink about your place, your
vault, where you're going tohouse all of that.
(07:41):
You know, in the old days Italked about having a blade
server and we put it all onthere, but also we just ran one
or two hero applications andeverything else was in print.
Now you might have a CRM, youmight have a sales platform, you
may have a purchase orderprocurement platform Right, how
(08:05):
or what do you do to kind ofaggregate all that content then,
coach?
Paul Kent Graeve (08:10):
yeah, so just a little bit of history.
I mean going back.
You keep talking about theblade servers and the tape
backups I'm dating myself.
I apologize no, no, it's goodI'm, I'm right there with you.
I think we're in the same agecategory, but, um, so you know,
it used to very, very difficultto do what you need to do now,
(08:33):
which is own and consolidate allthat data in a single place.
Before we didn't have.
You know, one of the beautiesof the cloud is we now have
these very simple cloud-baseddata warehouses that you can
consolidate all your data into.
Building a data warehouse 10,20 years ago was incredibly
difficult.
We had the wrong tools for thejob and that's why most data
(08:54):
warehousing projects failed Imean, it's over 75 to 90%,
depending on which statistic youlook at, which study you look
at of data warehousing projectswere total failures and the ROI
was negative.
And so that's one of thereasons people like data
warehouse.
That sounds terrible because itused to be and it used to have
(09:15):
a terrible ROI.
But with today, with tools likeSnowflake, which we love we're
Snowflake partner, the datagroup we try to push all of our
customers on to Snowflake.
It makes it so simple and soeasy to load your data,
consolidate your data,consolidate your data, transform
your data and make it veryefficient to use it effectively.
So that's the great part isthere's great data warehousing
(09:39):
tools out there now that are soeasy and affordable and simple.
Just like any SaaS platform,you can subscribe, pay as you go
.
Snowflake is very affordable toget started with.
And then the other thing isthere's so many SaaS has been
around long enough now that ithas matured enough that now
there's providers that donothing but connect to all these
(10:00):
SaaS platforms and extract thedata.
And so you have a plethora ofavailable tools that have
pre-built connectors to almostany SaaS platform that you're
going to subscribe to.
That will make it very easy toconnect to that SaaS platform,
extract that data and automatethat process of loading that
data into your Snowflake datawarehouse.
(10:21):
So that's really you know.
The mindset is you know whatSaaS systems do we need to
subscribe, that is, you knowwhat SaaS systems do we need
Subscribe.
Is there a pre-built connectoron one of these platforms out
there that we can use to extractthat data?
Get a Snowflake subscription and, as you add these SaaS
platforms to your company,always make it where hey, we're
not going to lose ownership andcontrol of our data.
(10:42):
As we add these platforms,we're going to create the
connectors, create the automatedjobs to extract that data from
those systems and load it intoour what I like to call a one
version of the truth cloud-baseddata warehouse.
That is the truth about yourcompany, and once you have the
ownership of that data, goingall the way to what you were
talking about at the beginning,all the way to that idea that,
(11:03):
hey, someday I sell this company, idea that, hey, someday I sell
this company I mean, justimagine a private equity company
looking at 10 differentcompanies in your space and
trying to decide which companythey would want to purchase.
You're going to put yourselfwith a strong foot ahead of all
the other companies they mightbe looking at when you say, hey,
we have total ownership andcontrol of all of our data over
(11:25):
here in this one version of thetruth cloud-based data warehouse
, snowflake data warehouse.
Jim James (11:30):
That's going to be a big selling point for your
business yeah, it is actuallygoing to be, because your
customer data, for example,transaction data, and all housed
in the same place.
And so, coach, gravy at thedata group, dot cloud, uh, for
anybody that wants to just gostraight to the Oracle, as it
were, can I use the word Oracle?
(11:51):
I know it's another softwareand they're not, but you talk
about saying goodbye to siloeddata and hello to unification
and the way you've now describedthat you can, if you like, get
automatic, I guess, datatransfers from the various
sasses, uh, in I guess it'salmost a glorified zapier or or
(12:15):
make style where theseintegrations are happening.
Yeah, on a scheduled basis.
Um, what does that mean in termsof dashboards?
Because in the old days we'dhave one platform or even a
spreadsheet with everything kindof feeding into a large pivot
table, because the goal, at theend of the day, is to have a
(12:40):
dashboard of the business Fewsales, future sales, cash
position, employees, stock inhand, and so on future sales,
cash position, employees, stockin hand, and so on.
Coach, tell us how are youhelping people to get a better
understanding of the business?
Because the data in itself is,you say, honest, but it's what
(13:04):
we can understand about ourbusiness from the data.
Paul Kent Graeve (13:07):
That really makes it of great value.
Yeah, absolutely, great value,yeah, absolutely.
And back in the day when thiswhole idea of data warehouses
started, that was the thinking.
We're going to build a datawarehouse so that we can build
analytics, so that we can builddashboards, so that we can
understand our data.
And that still is a verycritical piece of why you want
to own and control your data andbuild your Snowflake data
(13:27):
warehouse, piece of why you wantto own and control your data
and build your Snowflake datawarehouse, and I want to talk
about that.
But I also just want to cautionand say, once you've invested
this time and energy in buildingthis one version of the truth
data warehouse about yourbusiness the uses for that are
just unlimited.
And whether it's AI, whetherit's alerts, whether it's
integrations, whether it'sbuilding apps and portals off of
(13:49):
that data there's you know,there's no end to the
possibilities once you have thisdata and you can effectively
use it.
Dashboards and analytics isjust one of those uses, and I've
tried to.
It's one of the things I'mcoaching leaders on is look, we
used to just think datawarehouse, analytics, that's it.
But no, I mean once you havethis data, there's an endless
(14:15):
thing of possibilities.
One of them that I say is kindof the low hanging fruit.
I mean, you've kind of spentthis money building this data
warehouse, and analytics issomething important and
dashboards are something veryimportant, but that takes some
time, that takes some investment.
One thing that's very cheap andvery affordable and kind of
that low hanging fruit and youcan get some ROI right out of
the gate is alerts.
So as you're loading the datainto the warehouse and you're
(14:35):
combining this data from allyour systems, it's a perfect
opportunity to kind of set upsome business rules to say, hey,
if this data comes in and thistransaction is way out of whack
and it doesn't line up with ourtypical, throw an alert, throw
an email If a system's goingdown, if we're getting low on
inventory.
Whatever the case, those alertsare so easy to do and they make
(14:56):
your company so much moreproactive.
They help you to solve problemsbefore your customers are even
aware of them.
I mean, one of the stories Italk about in my book is we had
a customer in the morning.
Overnight a job had failed andwe didn't know about it and the
customer's entire e-commercesystem went down and of course
(15:17):
we're.
You know the customer's callingme and calling me very bad
names and bringing my motherinto the conversation and all of
those terrible things that youdon't want, and so you know what
you do is you learn from theseand you say, hey, first of all,
we need an alert and we need toknow about this way before the
customer does.
And then, second of all, youget the problem fixed before the
(15:37):
customer's ever even aware ofit.
Or let's say, you can't andthis problem's still down.
There's such a huge differencebetween the customer coming in
and just seeing the problem thesystem's down and I have to call
these knuckleheads and tellthem, versus them coming in and
going the system's down.
But I've already gotten sixemails from them saying we know
(16:00):
the system's down, we're workingon it, we're going to give you
an update every hour.
I mean, their system's stilldown and they're not happy, but
they're a lot happier thatyou're already on it, you're
already working on it.
It's a game changer in terms ofthe perception with your
customer that you're alreadyaware of the problem and you're
already working on it.
(16:21):
So, alerts are a wonderful thingto implement as soon as you get
your data warehouse built.
But, yes, the dashboards arehuge and one of the things I
coach leaders on is you not onlyneed a dashboard for you, the
leader, the C-suite of theorganization.
Yes, that's probably the firstdashboard to work on, but what I
try to tell the guys is look,you need dashboards at every
(16:42):
level of management in yourorganization Because if you can
get dashboards, say, three andfour levels down and now those
people are making betterdecisions and they're stopping
problems before they go up theladder, you're just calming the
waters and you're enabling theC-suite to think more
strategically, to focus on thosebigger picture dashboards and
(17:03):
strategic decisions, because youdon't have so many problems and
fires coming into your officebecause you have dashboards at
every level of management,making better decisions, putting
out fires before they start.
So, analytics just trying toget people to think analytics is
not just for the C-suite, it'sfor everyone in your
organization.
That is, leading teams, yeah,and I remember that the
(17:25):
statistic is incredible.
Jim James (17:26):
It's something like 50% of all the time of a senior
manager is spent fixing theproblems that their junior
people have.
I remember when I ran my agency, I used to spend nearly half my
time fixing things likecomputers, phones, email, so
that they could be functional.
And you know, if you can thencreate alerts, as you say, and
(17:49):
probably omni-channel, rightthrough SMS, through email,
through WhatsApp, then you canstop the problems before they
get to be problems and escalated, and that is going to liberate
the management time.
Paul Kent Graeve (18:02):
Yeah, and that's just such a wonderful.
Stop those problems before theyhappen, learn from them, fix
them permanently.
I mean, how many times do youneed to get the same alert
before you go?
Hey, why don't we fix this sowe don't get this alert anymore?
Let's solve the problem that'sdriving these alerts, and so it
helps get your team and alertsreally help your team become
(18:24):
more data-driven, because asthey see the alerts coming from
the data, they see the problemscoming, and now you can start to
get them to see the value ofthe data.
And, hey guys, let's payattention to what this data is
telling us.
Jim James (18:37):
This data is guiding us to problems that we need to
fix, and so it helps kind ofcreate that data-driven culture
driven culture and I have to say, coach, you've opened my mind,
because maybe I opened theconversation with so many
questions at once just becausemy data is so distributed and,
(18:59):
in my own mind, it's sofragmented.
And this concept that you canhave a simultaneous and
automatically synchronized setof data being centralized to a
platform like Snowflake is arevelation to me.
To be honest, I really didn'tknow that was possible.
(19:20):
I have got multiple platformsand have asked exactly that
question how have I got anycontrol?
That's really interesting verymuch a relief, to be honest,
because you've also got thesecurity issue, haven't you that
?
Now, with the possibility of badactors coming in, just tell us
(19:44):
about business continuity anddata, because so much of our
businesses are tied up now insystems.
If any one part of that systemgoes down, our whole business
can be caught and ransomware isa big issue.
So how does data management andwhat you're doing help with
(20:04):
business continuity from sort ofa malware perspective?
Paul Kent Graeve (20:08):
Yeah, I mean you know the great thing is,
especially for smaller business,even medium-sized businesses
the problems kind of solve foryou.
I mean you talked earlier abouthow you had to take the tape
home, you know, because you hadthe blade server on premise in
your office.
And now you know we don't havethat problem anymore.
We don't have to worry about,you know, the fire in our office
because all of our data is.
(20:29):
So those are some of thebenefits of the cloud, right Is
that we don't have to worryabout this as much and we don't
really have to worry about, youknow, the bad actors as much.
If we're using SaaS platforms,you know they're the ones that
are in charge of keeping the badactors out of our data that's
housed in their platform.
And then, like you said, we'vegot Zapier and Make and these
(20:51):
pre-built connectors andintegrators.
They're responsible for keepingthat data safe in transit.
And then you got Snowflake,who's the largest data warehouse
provider, and they're housingfinancial data and HIPAA data
and all sorts of data.
So they're gonna be a lotbetter at protecting your data
than you are.
So it's kind of the wonderfulthing is these companies are
(21:15):
kind of solving that problem foryou, which is allowing you to
not really have to think aboutit and to focus on your business
.
So it's another real benefit ofSaaS.
There's so many benefits toSaaS.
The problem is the scatteringand the siloing of your data,
and that's the one thing you'vegot to pay attention to.
Is these SaaS systems arewonderful, the cloud is
wonderful.
It takes all of these thingsoff your plate.
(21:37):
But if you're not intentionalabout hey, I've got to own and
control my data and get all thisdata unsiloed and get it into
my Snowflake data warehousewhere I wholly own and control
it, it just gets away from you,yeah, well.
Jim James (21:51):
I say feel very blessed, Paul, that you've come
on the show to explain this andalso to introduce the company
that you've run for over 20years.
That really helps take thisburden from entrepreneurs and
business owners entrepreneurside of life.
(22:15):
I'm going to talk about thebook you've got coming out,
because part of what I'minterested in is how you build a
brand for the company, but alsoas an entrepreneur, you build a
brand so that one day you mighttransition and be known as the
entrepreneur, not just thecompany.
Tell us about how you've beensort of building the brand for
(22:35):
the data group and what have youbeen doing to get noticed as a
company.
Paul Kent Graeve (22:41):
Yeah, we've gone through several transitions
in branding and ownershipstructure.
You know you're going to learna lot being an entrepreneur as
long as I have about ownershipstructures and investors and
venture capital and privateequity, all those wonderful fun
things.
You know, where I've come fullcircle over 25 plus years and
(23:08):
finally kind of rebranding withthe data group is is that I want
to just own the company 100percent.
That's not for everybody.
Some people want to haveinvestors and angel investors
and venture capitalists andprivate equity and all those
things for very good reasons.
But I've been down those roadsand kind of at a new period in
(23:28):
my life where I just wanted tohave 100% control of the equity
and so I kind of branched out,took my team and rebranded the
company as the Data Group and wenamed it the Data Group because
it's what we really decided.
You know, after 25 plus years ofdoing a lot of different things
a lot of analytics companies, alot of dashboard companies, a
(23:49):
lot of companies that kind ofgot into more of the user
interface on top of the data wedecided to really just focus on
the backend, on the data, thedata integrations, owning,
controlling your data.
We do have a great API platformin Foxtrot, so we love the
integration part of the data andproviding access to the data
(24:11):
through our REST API platform.
That is our Foxtrot datathrough our REST API platform.
That is our Foxtrot.
But that's where we stay.
We stay just in the owning,controlling and effectively
using your data, and then that'sjust so.
That's why we call it the datagroup and that keeps us locked
in and that keeps us focused onwhat we do, which is that back
end and now trying to, yeah,kind of create this brand as a
(24:34):
data coach and helping leadersreally understand that data is
simple, that they do need to ownit and control it.
And so I wrote this book calledData-Driven Leader and that's
coming out later this year.
I'm really excited about thatand just talking about all of
these things that you've that's.
You know, data is the future AI.
However you want to look at it,ai and data is the future of
(24:58):
your company.
You're collecting more of it,but it's more and more scattered
than it's ever been before, andwe've got to come up with a
plan and a strategy toeffectively own it, control it
and use it.
And that's why, you know, themessage to leaders is hey, this
is simple.
You don't need to beintimidated by this.
Data is not complicated.
(25:18):
It's strings, dates and numbersand it's the truth about your
business and you've really gotto own it and control it.
Jim James (25:26):
Tell us, then, about the book process.
So you've got your hands fullwith the data group and it looks
amazing and I can see nowyou've really defined the
proposition.
Why go down the path of writinga book, which, frankly, is
quite a lot of work?
I mean, you could just do morepodcasts, for example.
You're great on these.
Why would you go down the pathand the pain of authoring?
Paul Kent Graeve (25:53):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I guess I just had enoughpeople telling me that I should
write a book.
I kept talking to people kindof the same message and the same
message and all of these thingsthat I've been talking about
owning your data, controllingyour data, using your data
that's our data-driven leadermantra and people just kept
telling me you should write abook.
And so I started looking intoit and yes, it is, it's an
(26:15):
elephant.
And so I started looking intoit, and yes, it is, it's an
elephant, you know, and it's.
You can't eat it all in one day, you can't eat it all in a
month.
And you have to go into it withthat, with that philosophy that
, hey, this is an elephant, Igot to eat it one day at a time,
(26:35):
single day.
It would just be writing time,writing, thinking, reflection
time, and just had that, youknow, just religiously, on my
calendar.
And it did.
It took a year and a half, butI just chipped away at it every
day, every day.
And if you decide to go downthat journey, the one thing I
would encourage is there arepeople out there that are
unbelievable.
They have a different brain thanI do as an entrepreneur.
(26:59):
I think our entrepreneurialbrains were full of ideas and
the ideas just flow.
And so when you start writing,you have that same
entrepreneurial problem is, theideas just flow and you end up
with just hundreds of pages ofgreat stuff, but it's not
organized, it doesn't flow, it'snot structured into chapters
(27:23):
and it's just a bunch of stuffon a lot of pages.
But there's these people that Ifound who can read all of that
and somehow they can rememberwhat you said 40 pages ago and
what you're writing about 40pages later, and they can go.
This content should be togetherin a chapter.
And so those people were sohelpful to me in the writing
(27:45):
process in helping me organizeall of my ideas and thoughts
into something that actuallyflowed and was a book.
So don't be discouraged thatyou know when you write it's not
flowing and organized like abook, because there are people
that can help you with that.
Jim James (28:00):
Yeah.
Paul Kent Graeve (28:01):
That's the one tip I would give to anybody
writing a book is you're notgoing to be able to do it alone.
Like everything in life andlike building and starting a
company, you're going to need ateam and you're going to need
some team, some really good teammembers, to help you write a
book as well.
Jim James (28:16):
Okay, getting a book coach right.
Did you do a ghost writer ordid you write it and have a
coach to help you with thestructuring?
Paul Kent Graeve (28:21):
because they no proud to say it is 100
written by me.
It is not written.
There's no ghost writing andthere's no ai writing.
Uh, I wrote the whole thing.
I just had people that werereally good, helped me organize
it and structure it so thatactually flowed like a book and
made sense.
You know, it didn't jump allover the place, so there's
(28:41):
people that can really help youwith that.
And as entrepreneurs, you knowthat's just a real struggle we
have because our minds are justbouncing everywhere all the time
yeah, I think we're better atdoing cartoons than doing, uh,
full-length books, really, butit but good on you.
Jim James (28:55):
And, as you say, once repetition built the narrative,
then structure that into thebook and then it's going to be a
great platform for you.
So look forward to that comingout.
Paul, if there's a number onetip that you would give to me as
an entrepreneur, from yourexperience now 30 years running
(29:18):
businesses and we both go backto the sort of tape days so
we've survived what would beyour tip be for building a
business?
Paul Kent Graeve (29:29):
Well, I'll give you two.
I'll give you one kind of likejust a generic entrepreneurial
leadership tip, and then I'llgive you one data tip.
How's that?
Jim James (29:38):
Okay, sounds great.
Two for the price of one.
Paul Kent Graeve (29:41):
The one entrepreneurial.
Just a leadership tip I wouldgive is and it's straight from
John Maxwell is just you got tolove your people.
You can't lead people unlessyou love them.
So your team, your customers,your partners, your vendors, you
just got to love people, loveworking with them, love building
relationship with them, andjust not make it all about
business.
(30:01):
Make it about the relationshipwith them and get to know your
people and generally genuinelyshow that you care about them.
You know, I get asked like I'vehad the same team with me, the
same core leaders working withme for over almost 20 years, now
over 17 years, and it's youknow.
How do you keep the same team?
(30:22):
Well, you know you pay themwell and you pay them more than
they're worth and you love themand you care about them and you
make them feel known and valuedand heard and part of the team.
And when you do those things,you know people aren't going to
look to go anywhere else becausethey feel known and valued and
heard and loved and compensintentional about using and
leveraging the tools that areout there to harvest and mine
(30:59):
the data from all of your siloedsystems and get it into a
Snowflake data warehouse whereyou can fully own it and control
it and use it efficiently andeffectively.
Jim James (31:08):
Great.
I think that at the end again,we'll give you a company name,
because people may be sayingthat's great.
I think I'm just going to go toDaily Coach Gravy for that.
If you have a book or a podcast, paul, what would that be?
Paul Kent Graeve (31:26):
Would you?
Jim James (31:26):
recommend a book Other than your own book, of
course.
What book or podcast would yourecommend?
Paul Kent Graeve (31:32):
Oh yeah, that's an easy one the Craig
Groeschel Leadership Podcast yourecommend.
Oh yeah, that's an easy one theCraig Groeschel Leadership
Podcast.
He's my favorite leadershipguru and I love his leadership
podcast.
He's great and he's got greatguests and if there's one
podcast, it would be the CraigGroeschel Leadership Podcast.
Jim James (31:50):
Okay, craig Groeschel , we'll put that in the show
notes.
Thank you, because I willlisten to that too.
I haven't heard of that one yet, so that's fantastic to
introduce the new one.
If people want to get hold ofyou, it's a bit confusing
because you call yourself DataCoach Gravy, but that's because
of your surname, which isspelled G-R-A-E-V-E, right.
(32:13):
So it's Paul Kent Kent, thecounty I'm from, and then Paul
Kent Gravy.
If you want to get a hold ofyou, how can they do that?
Paul Kent Graeve (32:20):
Well, you can spell it correctly or you can
spell it the way my last name isspelled.
Either way, it'll get to me,gravy, or G-R-A-E-V-E at the
datagroupcloud.
That's the best way to get ahold of me.
Just email me and, like I said,either spelling will work.
Jim James (32:35):
That's perfect.
Well, they've got two datapoints, two kinds of spellings.
Paul Data Coach Gravy, thankyou for joining me and opening
my eyes to what's possible andactually A making me think, oh,
there's something I need toreally think about doing, but
also give me the reassurancethat it's possible.
So, thank you so much.
Paul Kent Graeve (32:58):
Absolutely Enjoyed it Appreciate you having
me on.
Jim James (33:01):
Well, it's really really illuminating.
I normally talk to people abouthow do they get noticed, and so
Paul's story about how he'sbuilt the business was what was
interesting.
Then we started to dive intodata and I was like, wow, this
is something that we really needto think about, because if we
don't control the data, we mightbuild a brand but then have no
(33:23):
measurement about how well it'ssurviving.
But also when it comes to anexit.
Paul talked about this earlieron.
You know, owning the brand isone thing, but knowing the data
points that that brand cangenerate in terms of sales,
revenue, margins and so on isreally going to be what the
customers or the company thatbuys the company is going to be
(33:46):
interested in.
Paul Kent Graeve (33:47):
So we'd be talking data.
Jim James (33:49):
Yeah.
Paul Kent Graeve (33:50):
Sorry, say that again.
I said it's going to be a hugedifferentiator for your business
, Absolutely.
Jim James (33:55):
Yeah, it is.
So.
That's why I thought let's havea little bit of a change from
not just talking about marketingbut talking about data, because
that is the underlying truth.
As Paul has said, if you'veenjoyed this show, it's been a
little bit different, but Ithink you'll find it's been
really, really rewarding.
Please do share it with afellow unnoticed entrepreneur,
(34:15):
because we don't want anyone togo unnoticed and until we meet
again, I just encourage you tokeep on communicating.
if you're like so many people including me, you've
got your company's data acrossseveral different platforms.
In my case, I've got a CRM,I've got an email, I've got a
training course platform.
In fact, my business data is onmultiple platforms and I don't
really have control over it.
This is a problem because weare more and more reliant on
(00:26):
data.
In fact, 90% of the world'sdata was generated just in the
last two years, according to myguest.
Today he's a data expertjoining us from Birmingham,
alabama.
We're joined by coach datacoach Gravy Paul Grave, who is
the founder and CEO of a companycalled the Data Group.
Paul Kent Graeve (00:48):
Welcome, howdy .
Thanks for having me here today.
Privileged to be here.
Jim James (00:52):
Look, it's great to have you, because data is
probably a bit like accounting,one of the things that most of
us I put myself in this campdon't really do very well.
Put myself in this camp, don'treally do very well, and yet, as
a business, the informationabout the company is really the
(01:12):
tea leaves.
It's telling us how well we'redoing, how well we're going to
do so.
David, do you want to just takeus through data as a business
owner, what should be, first ofall, our mindset and then what
should be our approach so thatwe're in control?
And ultimately, if we want tobuild a business to sell, we
need to have control of the data.
(01:33):
Don't we so take us through atthe beginning, the mindset we
should have about data and thenhelp us to understand how we can
start to take some control?
Paul Kent Graeve (01:44):
Yeah, great.
Yeah, you asked about 10questions in there, so let's go
back.
Jim James (01:49):
I realize all my data points are all over the place.
Let's start with mindset.
You've been running businessesin the data area for nearly 30
years, so help us first of allwith mindset.
What should we be thinkingabout when it comes to data?
Paul Kent Graeve (02:06):
Yeah, and that's why I call myself Data
Coach Gravy.
I've been starting and runningdata companies for over 30 years
now, and that's what I'verealized in helping so many
companies and leaders with theirdata is that they believe this
lie because they've beenlistening to the technology and
(02:27):
data people that this is reallycomplicated and they don't
understand it and they need tostay out of it and just kind of
let IT alone.
And this is what I'm, as a datacoach.
I'm trying to tell leaders islook, data is incredibly simple.
It is has three ingredients,just like gravy does.
(02:49):
Data has strings, dates andnumbers.
That's it.
The strings are thedescriptions, the dates are when
it happened and the numbers areyour KPIs, your measurements,
and so that's all there is todata.
And definitely, if you are smartenough to be a leader, if
you're smart enough to start andrun a company, you're way, way
(03:10):
smarter than you need to be tolead your data for your company.
And this is the mindset wereally need to have as leaders
is that our data is one of, ifnot our, most valuable asset of
our business, because what ourdata is is the absolute truth
about our business.
We might have our own biasesand opinions and visions and
(03:34):
passions about our business, butthen, when you get into the
systems and you extract the dataand you look at it, that's the
unbiased real truth about whereour business is and where it's
going and what's happening.
And so, from that perspectiveand from that mindset is this is
the truth about my business,and so it is an incredibly
(03:55):
valuable, if not the mostvaluable, asset about my
business as I'm leading it, andso I can't not own it and I
can't not control it.
I need to own it and control itand be able to use it
efficiently and effectively.
And that's really my message toleaders is you've got to own
(04:15):
and control this data, andthat's really difficult to do in
today's cloud-driven,saas-driven world.
Jim James (04:23):
Well, I was going to say this idea of data that it's
no longer in one place.
When I started my firstbusiness back in 95, I had a
Blade server in the office and Ihad an ACT database Right, and
everything went in there and atthe end of the week we used a
tape to back that up and I usedto take that home on the
(04:46):
weekends in case we had a fire.
I mean, it was that old rightin.
Paul Kent Graeve (04:49):
Singapore.
That's good.
You had a good disasterrecovery plan, very nice.
Jim James (04:55):
Yeah, it was good, but of course, now you talk
about SAS and no one really hascontrol.
We're all renting.
Really has control, we're allrenting.
So how do we first of allidentify the different data
types or formats or silos?
Do you want to take us throughthat first and then we can look
at how we can start to buildconsolidation and dashboards?
Paul Kent Graeve (05:19):
Yeah.
So again, yeah, it's themindset as you go into this.
Saas is wonderful.
I don't want to.
You know, we don't want to goback to the archaic days of you
know, on-premise software,especially as entrepreneurs.
All the SaaS systems out there,they're wonderful, they're easy
, they're affordable.
You put in your credit card andsubscribe to all these amazing
(05:39):
SaaS systems that can help growyour business.
So I don't want to discouragethat, but what I do want leaders
to do, and especiallyentrepreneurs, is, as you're
subscribing and purchasing theseSaaS solutions for your
business, have that mindset ofwait a minute, I've got to own
and control this data.
I can't just let my data becomesiloed in 25 different silos
(06:03):
that I don't own and I don'thave access to and I can't
consolidate it all into oneplace.
So, as you subscribe to theseSaaS systems, have this mindset
of well, how am I going to getmy data back out of this system?
We're going to be putting allof this, say, digital assets, in
here, or we're going to beputting our social media data in
(06:23):
here, or we're going to haveour CR, whatever it is.
How am I going to get that databack out?
Do they have an API that I canextract the data?
Do they have automated exports?
That will send me my data everynight.
So that just needs to be athought process, as you're
subscribing and purchasing theseSaaS platforms is making sure
(06:44):
everybody just says this is it,this is the features that we
want and this is the price pointwe want.
There needs to be a thirdquestion in there features,
price point and how do I own andcontrol the data?
Do not let that SaaS providerbe in control and ownership of
your data, for many reasons.
One, it's your most valuableasset.
(07:05):
Two, you need to be able to useit efficiently and effectively,
which means getting it out ofthat system and into a place
that you wholly own and control.
And three, someday you may wantto leave that platform and go
to another one, and if they haveyour data hostage, that makes
that very difficult.
Jim James (07:21):
You are absolutely right about that and you've
raised alarms for me there aboutall the different disparate
places that the data is.
First of all, then let's justthink about your place, your
vault, where you're going tohouse all of that.
(07:41):
You know, in the old days Italked about having a blade
server and we put it all onthere, but also we just ran one
or two hero applications andeverything else was in print.
Now you might have a CRM, youmight have a sales platform, you
may have a purchase orderprocurement platform Right, how
(08:05):
or what do you do to kind ofaggregate all that content then,
coach?
Paul Kent Graeve (08:10):
yeah, so just a little bit of history.
I mean going back.
You keep talking about theblade servers and the tape
backups I'm dating myself.
I apologize no, no, it's goodI'm, I'm right there with you.
I think we're in the same agecategory, but, um, so you know,
it used to very, very difficultto do what you need to do now,
(08:33):
which is own and consolidate allthat data in a single place.
Before we didn't have.
You know, one of the beautiesof the cloud is we now have
these very simple cloud-baseddata warehouses that you can
consolidate all your data into.
Building a data warehouse 10,20 years ago was incredibly
difficult.
We had the wrong tools for thejob and that's why most data
(08:54):
warehousing projects failed Imean, it's over 75 to 90%,
depending on which statistic youlook at, which study you look
at of data warehousing projectswere total failures and the ROI
was negative.
And so that's one of thereasons people like data
warehouse.
That sounds terrible because itused to be and it used to have
(09:15):
a terrible ROI.
But with today, with tools likeSnowflake, which we love we're
Snowflake partner, the datagroup we try to push all of our
customers on to Snowflake.
It makes it so simple and soeasy to load your data,
consolidate your data,consolidate your data, transform
your data and make it veryefficient to use it effectively.
So that's the great part isthere's great data warehousing
(09:39):
tools out there now that are soeasy and affordable and simple.
Just like any SaaS platform,you can subscribe, pay as you go
.
Snowflake is very affordable toget started with.
And then the other thing isthere's so many SaaS has been
around long enough now that ithas matured enough that now
there's providers that donothing but connect to all these
(10:00):
SaaS platforms and extract thedata.
And so you have a plethora ofavailable tools that have
pre-built connectors to almostany SaaS platform that you're
going to subscribe to.
That will make it very easy toconnect to that SaaS platform,
extract that data and automatethat process of loading that
data into your Snowflake datawarehouse.
(10:21):
So that's really you know.
The mindset is you know whatSaaS systems do we need to
subscribe, that is, you knowwhat SaaS systems do we need
Subscribe.
Is there a pre-built connectoron one of these platforms out
there that we can use to extractthat data?
Get a Snowflake subscription and, as you add these SaaS
platforms to your company,always make it where hey, we're
not going to lose ownership andcontrol of our data.
(10:42):
As we add these platforms,we're going to create the
connectors, create the automatedjobs to extract that data from
those systems and load it intoour what I like to call a one
version of the truth cloud-baseddata warehouse.
That is the truth about yourcompany, and once you have the
ownership of that data, goingall the way to what you were
talking about at the beginning,all the way to that idea that,
(11:03):
hey, someday I sell this company, idea that, hey, someday I sell
this company I mean, justimagine a private equity company
looking at 10 differentcompanies in your space and
trying to decide which companythey would want to purchase.
You're going to put yourselfwith a strong foot ahead of all
the other companies they mightbe looking at when you say, hey,
we have total ownership andcontrol of all of our data over
(11:25):
here in this one version of thetruth cloud-based data warehouse
, snowflake data warehouse.
Jim James (11:30):
That's going to be a big selling point for your
business yeah, it is actuallygoing to be, because your
customer data, for example,transaction data, and all housed
in the same place.
And so, coach, gravy at thedata group, dot cloud, uh, for
anybody that wants to just gostraight to the Oracle, as it
were, can I use the word Oracle?
(11:51):
I know it's another softwareand they're not, but you talk
about saying goodbye to siloeddata and hello to unification
and the way you've now describedthat you can, if you like, get
automatic, I guess, datatransfers from the various
sasses, uh, in I guess it'salmost a glorified zapier or or
(12:15):
make style where theseintegrations are happening.
Yeah, on a scheduled basis.
Um, what does that mean in termsof dashboards?
Because in the old days we'dhave one platform or even a
spreadsheet with everything kindof feeding into a large pivot
table, because the goal, at theend of the day, is to have a
(12:40):
dashboard of the business Fewsales, future sales, cash
position, employees, stock inhand, and so on future sales,
cash position, employees, stockin hand, and so on.
Coach, tell us how are youhelping people to get a better
understanding of the business?
Because the data in itself is,you say, honest, but it's what
(13:04):
we can understand about ourbusiness from the data.
Paul Kent Graeve (13:07):
That really makes it of great value.
Yeah, absolutely, great value,yeah, absolutely.
And back in the day when thiswhole idea of data warehouses
started, that was the thinking.
We're going to build a datawarehouse so that we can build
analytics, so that we can builddashboards, so that we can
understand our data.
And that still is a verycritical piece of why you want
to own and control your data andbuild your Snowflake data
(13:27):
warehouse, piece of why you wantto own and control your data
and build your Snowflake datawarehouse, and I want to talk
about that.
But I also just want to cautionand say, once you've invested
this time and energy in buildingthis one version of the truth
data warehouse about yourbusiness the uses for that are
just unlimited.
And whether it's AI, whetherit's alerts, whether it's
integrations, whether it'sbuilding apps and portals off of
(13:49):
that data there's you know,there's no end to the
possibilities once you have thisdata and you can effectively
use it.
Dashboards and analytics isjust one of those uses, and I've
tried to.
It's one of the things I'mcoaching leaders on is look, we
used to just think datawarehouse, analytics, that's it.
But no, I mean once you havethis data, there's an endless
(14:15):
thing of possibilities.
One of them that I say is kindof the low hanging fruit.
I mean, you've kind of spentthis money building this data
warehouse, and analytics issomething important and
dashboards are something veryimportant, but that takes some
time, that takes some investment.
One thing that's very cheap andvery affordable and kind of
that low hanging fruit and youcan get some ROI right out of
the gate is alerts.
So as you're loading the datainto the warehouse and you're
(14:35):
combining this data from allyour systems, it's a perfect
opportunity to kind of set upsome business rules to say, hey,
if this data comes in and thistransaction is way out of whack
and it doesn't line up with ourtypical, throw an alert, throw
an email If a system's goingdown, if we're getting low on
inventory.
Whatever the case, those alertsare so easy to do and they make
(14:56):
your company so much moreproactive.
They help you to solve problemsbefore your customers are even
aware of them.
I mean, one of the stories Italk about in my book is we had
a customer in the morning.
Overnight a job had failed andwe didn't know about it and the
customer's entire e-commercesystem went down and of course
(15:17):
we're.
You know the customer's callingme and calling me very bad
names and bringing my motherinto the conversation and all of
those terrible things that youdon't want, and so you know what
you do is you learn from theseand you say, hey, first of all,
we need an alert and we need toknow about this way before the
customer does.
And then, second of all, youget the problem fixed before the
(15:37):
customer's ever even aware ofit.
Or let's say, you can't andthis problem's still down.
There's such a huge differencebetween the customer coming in
and just seeing the problem thesystem's down and I have to call
these knuckleheads and tellthem, versus them coming in and
going the system's down.
But I've already gotten sixemails from them saying we know
(16:00):
the system's down, we're workingon it, we're going to give you
an update every hour.
I mean, their system's stilldown and they're not happy, but
they're a lot happier thatyou're already on it, you're
already working on it.
It's a game changer in terms ofthe perception with your
customer that you're alreadyaware of the problem and you're
already working on it.
(16:21):
So, alerts are a wonderful thingto implement as soon as you get
your data warehouse built.
But, yes, the dashboards arehuge and one of the things I
coach leaders on is you not onlyneed a dashboard for you, the
leader, the C-suite of theorganization.
Yes, that's probably the firstdashboard to work on, but what I
try to tell the guys is look,you need dashboards at every
(16:42):
level of management in yourorganization Because if you can
get dashboards, say, three andfour levels down and now those
people are making betterdecisions and they're stopping
problems before they go up theladder, you're just calming the
waters and you're enabling theC-suite to think more
strategically, to focus on thosebigger picture dashboards and
(17:03):
strategic decisions, because youdon't have so many problems and
fires coming into your officebecause you have dashboards at
every level of management,making better decisions, putting
out fires before they start.
So, analytics just trying toget people to think analytics is
not just for the C-suite, it'sfor everyone in your
organization.
That is, leading teams, yeah,and I remember that the
(17:25):
statistic is incredible.
Jim James (17:26):
It's something like 50% of all the time of a senior
manager is spent fixing theproblems that their junior
people have.
I remember when I ran my agency, I used to spend nearly half my
time fixing things likecomputers, phones, email, so
that they could be functional.
And you know, if you can thencreate alerts, as you say, and
(17:49):
probably omni-channel, rightthrough SMS, through email,
through WhatsApp, then you canstop the problems before they
get to be problems and escalated, and that is going to liberate
the management time.
Paul Kent Graeve (18:02):
Yeah, and that's just such a wonderful.
Stop those problems before theyhappen, learn from them, fix
them permanently.
I mean, how many times do youneed to get the same alert
before you go?
Hey, why don't we fix this sowe don't get this alert anymore?
Let's solve the problem that'sdriving these alerts, and so it
helps get your team and alertsreally help your team become
(18:24):
more data-driven, because asthey see the alerts coming from
the data, they see the problemscoming, and now you can start to
get them to see the value ofthe data.
And, hey guys, let's payattention to what this data is
telling us.
Jim James (18:37):
This data is guiding us to problems that we need to
fix, and so it helps kind ofcreate that data-driven culture
driven culture and I have to say, coach, you've opened my mind,
because maybe I opened theconversation with so many
questions at once just becausemy data is so distributed and,
(18:59):
in my own mind, it's sofragmented.
And this concept that you canhave a simultaneous and
automatically synchronized setof data being centralized to a
platform like Snowflake is arevelation to me.
To be honest, I really didn'tknow that was possible.
(19:20):
I have got multiple platformsand have asked exactly that
question how have I got anycontrol?
That's really interesting verymuch a relief, to be honest,
because you've also got thesecurity issue, haven't you that
?
Now, with the possibility of badactors coming in, just tell us
(19:44):
about business continuity anddata, because so much of our
businesses are tied up now insystems.
If any one part of that systemgoes down, our whole business
can be caught and ransomware isa big issue.
So how does data management andwhat you're doing help with
(20:04):
business continuity from sort ofa malware perspective?
Paul Kent Graeve (20:08):
Yeah, I mean you know the great thing is,
especially for smaller business,even medium-sized businesses
the problems kind of solve foryou.
I mean you talked earlier abouthow you had to take the tape
home, you know, because you hadthe blade server on premise in
your office.
And now you know we don't havethat problem anymore.
We don't have to worry about,you know, the fire in our office
because all of our data is.
(20:29):
So those are some of thebenefits of the cloud, right Is
that we don't have to worryabout this as much and we don't
really have to worry about, youknow, the bad actors as much.
If we're using SaaS platforms,you know they're the ones that
are in charge of keeping the badactors out of our data that's
housed in their platform.
And then, like you said, we'vegot Zapier and Make and these
(20:51):
pre-built connectors andintegrators.
They're responsible for keepingthat data safe in transit.
And then you got Snowflake,who's the largest data warehouse
provider, and they're housingfinancial data and HIPAA data
and all sorts of data.
So they're gonna be a lotbetter at protecting your data
than you are.
So it's kind of the wonderfulthing is these companies are
(21:15):
kind of solving that problem foryou, which is allowing you to
not really have to think aboutit and to focus on your business
.
So it's another real benefit ofSaaS.
There's so many benefits toSaaS.
The problem is the scatteringand the siloing of your data,
and that's the one thing you'vegot to pay attention to.
Is these SaaS systems arewonderful, the cloud is
wonderful.
It takes all of these thingsoff your plate.
(21:37):
But if you're not intentionalabout hey, I've got to own and
control my data and get all thisdata unsiloed and get it into
my Snowflake data warehousewhere I wholly own and control
it, it just gets away from you,yeah, well.
Jim James (21:51):
I say feel very blessed, Paul, that you've come
on the show to explain this andalso to introduce the company
that you've run for over 20years.
That really helps take thisburden from entrepreneurs and
business owners entrepreneurside of life.
(22:15):
I'm going to talk about thebook you've got coming out,
because part of what I'minterested in is how you build a
brand for the company, but alsoas an entrepreneur, you build a
brand so that one day you mighttransition and be known as the
entrepreneur, not just thecompany.
Tell us about how you've beensort of building the brand for
(22:35):
the data group and what have youbeen doing to get noticed as a
company.
Paul Kent Graeve (22:41):
Yeah, we've gone through several transitions
in branding and ownershipstructure.
You know you're going to learna lot being an entrepreneur as
long as I have about ownershipstructures and investors and
venture capital and privateequity, all those wonderful fun
things.
You know, where I've come fullcircle over 25 plus years and
(23:08):
finally kind of rebranding withthe data group is is that I want
to just own the company 100percent.
That's not for everybody.
Some people want to haveinvestors and angel investors
and venture capitalists andprivate equity and all those
things for very good reasons.
But I've been down those roadsand kind of at a new period in
(23:28):
my life where I just wanted tohave 100% control of the equity
and so I kind of branched out,took my team and rebranded the
company as the Data Group and wenamed it the Data Group because
it's what we really decided.
You know, after 25 plus years ofdoing a lot of different things
a lot of analytics companies, alot of dashboard companies, a
(23:49):
lot of companies that kind ofgot into more of the user
interface on top of the data wedecided to really just focus on
the backend, on the data, thedata integrations, owning,
controlling your data.
We do have a great API platformin Foxtrot, so we love the
integration part of the data andproviding access to the data
(24:11):
through our REST API platform.
That is our Foxtrot datathrough our REST API platform.
That is our Foxtrot.
But that's where we stay.
We stay just in the owning,controlling and effectively
using your data, and then that'sjust so.
That's why we call it the datagroup and that keeps us locked
in and that keeps us focused onwhat we do, which is that back
end and now trying to, yeah,kind of create this brand as a
(24:34):
data coach and helping leadersreally understand that data is
simple, that they do need to ownit and control it.
And so I wrote this book calledData-Driven Leader and that's
coming out later this year.
I'm really excited about thatand just talking about all of
these things that you've that's.
You know, data is the future AI.
However you want to look at it,ai and data is the future of
(24:58):
your company.
You're collecting more of it,but it's more and more scattered
than it's ever been before, andwe've got to come up with a
plan and a strategy toeffectively own it, control it
and use it.
And that's why, you know, themessage to leaders is hey, this
is simple.
You don't need to beintimidated by this.
Data is not complicated.
(25:18):
It's strings, dates and numbersand it's the truth about your
business and you've really gotto own it and control it.
Jim James (25:26):
Tell us, then, about the book process.
So you've got your hands fullwith the data group and it looks
amazing and I can see nowyou've really defined the
proposition.
Why go down the path of writinga book, which, frankly, is
quite a lot of work?
I mean, you could just do morepodcasts, for example.
You're great on these.
Why would you go down the pathand the pain of authoring?
Paul Kent Graeve (25:53):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I guess I just had enoughpeople telling me that I should
write a book.
I kept talking to people kindof the same message and the same
message and all of these thingsthat I've been talking about
owning your data, controllingyour data, using your data
that's our data-driven leadermantra and people just kept
telling me you should write abook.
And so I started looking intoit and yes, it is, it's an
(26:15):
elephant.
And so I started looking intoit, and yes, it is, it's an
elephant, you know, and it's.
You can't eat it all in one day, you can't eat it all in a
month.
And you have to go into it withthat, with that philosophy that
, hey, this is an elephant, Igot to eat it one day at a time,
(26:35):
single day.
It would just be writing time,writing, thinking, reflection
time, and just had that, youknow, just religiously, on my
calendar.
And it did.
It took a year and a half, butI just chipped away at it every
day, every day.
And if you decide to go downthat journey, the one thing I
would encourage is there arepeople out there that are
unbelievable.
They have a different brain thanI do as an entrepreneur.
(26:59):
I think our entrepreneurialbrains were full of ideas and
the ideas just flow.
And so when you start writing,you have that same
entrepreneurial problem is, theideas just flow and you end up
with just hundreds of pages ofgreat stuff, but it's not
organized, it doesn't flow, it'snot structured into chapters
(27:23):
and it's just a bunch of stuffon a lot of pages.
But there's these people that Ifound who can read all of that
and somehow they can rememberwhat you said 40 pages ago and
what you're writing about 40pages later, and they can go.
This content should be togetherin a chapter.
And so those people were sohelpful to me in the writing
(27:45):
process in helping me organizeall of my ideas and thoughts
into something that actuallyflowed and was a book.
So don't be discouraged thatyou know when you write it's not
flowing and organized like abook, because there are people
that can help you with that.
Jim James (28:00):
Yeah.
Paul Kent Graeve (28:01):
That's the one tip I would give to anybody
writing a book is you're notgoing to be able to do it alone.
Like everything in life andlike building and starting a
company, you're going to need ateam and you're going to need
some team, some really good teammembers, to help you write a
book as well.
Jim James (28:16):
Okay, getting a book coach right.
Did you do a ghost writer ordid you write it and have a
coach to help you with thestructuring?
Paul Kent Graeve (28:21):
because they no proud to say it is 100
written by me.
It is not written.
There's no ghost writing andthere's no ai writing.
Uh, I wrote the whole thing.
I just had people that werereally good, helped me organize
it and structure it so thatactually flowed like a book and
made sense.
You know, it didn't jump allover the place, so there's
(28:41):
people that can really help youwith that.
And as entrepreneurs, you knowthat's just a real struggle we
have because our minds are justbouncing everywhere all the time
yeah, I think we're better atdoing cartoons than doing, uh,
full-length books, really, butit but good on you.
Jim James (28:55):
And, as you say, once repetition built the narrative,
then structure that into thebook and then it's going to be a
great platform for you.
So look forward to that comingout.
Paul, if there's a number onetip that you would give to me as
an entrepreneur, from yourexperience now 30 years running
(29:18):
businesses and we both go backto the sort of tape days so
we've survived what would beyour tip be for building a
business?
Paul Kent Graeve (29:29):
Well, I'll give you two.
I'll give you one kind of likejust a generic entrepreneurial
leadership tip, and then I'llgive you one data tip.
How's that?
Jim James (29:38):
Okay, sounds great.
Two for the price of one.
Paul Kent Graeve (29:41):
The one entrepreneurial.
Just a leadership tip I wouldgive is and it's straight from
John Maxwell is just you got tolove your people.
You can't lead people unlessyou love them.
So your team, your customers,your partners, your vendors, you
just got to love people, loveworking with them, love building
relationship with them, andjust not make it all about
business.
(30:01):
Make it about the relationshipwith them and get to know your
people and generally genuinelyshow that you care about them.
You know, I get asked like I'vehad the same team with me, the
same core leaders working withme for over almost 20 years, now
over 17 years, and it's youknow.
How do you keep the same team?
(30:22):
Well, you know you pay themwell and you pay them more than
they're worth and you love themand you care about them and you
make them feel known and valuedand heard and part of the team.
And when you do those things,you know people aren't going to
look to go anywhere else becausethey feel known and valued and
heard and loved and compensintentional about using and
leveraging the tools that areout there to harvest and mine
(30:59):
the data from all of your siloedsystems and get it into a
Snowflake data warehouse whereyou can fully own it and control
it and use it efficiently andeffectively.
Jim James (31:08):
Great.
I think that at the end again,we'll give you a company name,
because people may be sayingthat's great.
I think I'm just going to go toDaily Coach Gravy for that.
If you have a book or a podcast, paul, what would that be?
Paul Kent Graeve (31:26):
Would you?
Jim James (31:26):
recommend a book Other than your own book, of
course.
What book or podcast would yourecommend?
Paul Kent Graeve (31:32):
Oh yeah, that's an easy one the Craig
Groeschel Leadership Podcast yourecommend.
Oh yeah, that's an easy one theCraig Groeschel Leadership
Podcast.
He's my favorite leadershipguru and I love his leadership
podcast.
He's great and he's got greatguests and if there's one
podcast, it would be the CraigGroeschel Leadership Podcast.
Jim James (31:50):
Okay, craig Groeschel , we'll put that in the show
notes.
Thank you, because I willlisten to that too.
I haven't heard of that one yet, so that's fantastic to
introduce the new one.
If people want to get hold ofyou, it's a bit confusing
because you call yourself DataCoach Gravy, but that's because
of your surname, which isspelled G-R-A-E-V-E, right.
(32:13):
So it's Paul Kent Kent, thecounty I'm from, and then Paul
Kent Gravy.
If you want to get a hold ofyou, how can they do that?
Paul Kent Graeve (32:20):
Well, you can spell it correctly or you can
spell it the way my last name isspelled.
Either way, it'll get to me,gravy, or G-R-A-E-V-E at the
datagroupcloud.
That's the best way to get ahold of me.
Just email me and, like I said,either spelling will work.
Jim James (32:35):
That's perfect.
Well, they've got two datapoints, two kinds of spellings.
Paul Data Coach Gravy, thankyou for joining me and opening
my eyes to what's possible andactually A making me think, oh,
there's something I need toreally think about doing, but
also give me the reassurancethat it's possible.
So, thank you so much.
Paul Kent Graeve (32:58):
Absolutely Enjoyed it Appreciate you having
me on.
Jim James (33:01):
Well, it's really really illuminating.
I normally talk to people abouthow do they get noticed, and so
Paul's story about how he'sbuilt the business was what was
interesting.
Then we started to dive intodata and I was like, wow, this
is something that we really needto think about, because if we
don't control the data, we mightbuild a brand but then have no
(33:23):
measurement about how well it'ssurviving.
But also when it comes to anexit.
Paul talked about this earlieron.
You know, owning the brand isone thing, but knowing the data
points that that brand cangenerate in terms of sales,
revenue, margins and so on isreally going to be what the
customers or the company thatbuys the company is going to be
(33:46):
interested in.
Paul Kent Graeve (33:47):
So we'd be talking data.
Jim James (33:49):
Yeah.
Paul Kent Graeve (33:50):
Sorry, say that again.
I said it's going to be a hugedifferentiator for your business
, Absolutely.
Jim James (33:55):
Yeah, it is.
So.
That's why I thought let's havea little bit of a change from
not just talking about marketingbut talking about data, because
that is the underlying truth.
As Paul has said, if you'veenjoyed this show, it's been a
little bit different, but Ithink you'll find it's been
really, really rewarding.
Please do share it with afellow unnoticed entrepreneur,
(34:15):
because we don't want anyone togo unnoticed and until we meet
again, I just encourage you tokeep on communicating.
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