Dashboard: It’ll Change Everything

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard brought to you by our sponsor the great game of business I'm Lauren Feldman and I'm here with Sean busy to talk about things we think business owners should be following this week as you know from our weekly conversations Sean is CEO I'm and founder of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy welcome to dashboard Sean morning Lauren good to be here great to have you here uh Sean you wrote a really interesting LinkedIn post recently in which you expressed some skepticism about Big Data uh you you wrote that the skepticism first arose back in your previous Life as a college professor tell us about that yeah sure um actually it's kind of funny how the post came about I was I was on a Instagram page that was the uh uh post for the national parks and there was a a picture of somebody who had given the national parks a one star review because the mountains weren't good enough if you're not following national parks they seem to have a pretty good sense of humor um on Instagram so there were some others that were just you know really Priceless like you know showed up at the park but the you know the clouds blocked the The View so I was really disappointed two [Laughter] stars oh anyway I you know it reminded me of what back when I was teaching teaching at the college level and how they started using more and more surveys to determine if professors were I don't know good effective or making the students happy and uh you know what drove me nuts about those was that you know kind of everybody's vote counted equally even if even if a student you know only attended half the classes they still got to you know give you a one star review and uh and that kind of got me to thinking about businesses and how often businesses use surveys and and try to understand things through you know surveying people just stop for one second this is slightly off point but um what were you teaching yeah I was teaching Fine Arts you know I was teaching sculpture Ceramics painting drawing design interesting and how did you make the leap from that to founding a business well um the quick version sorry so the quick version was I realized that Academia is kind of a pyramid scheme um you both on the student side as well as the teaching side so uh in order to get into teaching it doesn't matter whether whether you're a great teacher or not you have to have a good body of work and then you have to do really kind of drudgery uh teaching assignments for many many years until you can get tenure and then once you have tenure you're kind of bulletproof and you you get to be in the job forever even if you're a terrible teacher um so I just I just eventually decided I wasn't willing to kind of put up with awful jobs for you know 10 or 15 years before I had any kind of job security were you getting poor reviews from your students Sean well that was the real reason I quit no um no actually I I got very binary reviews I either got five stars or one Stars so interesting yeah they I mean and I think that's kind of like businesses right you know you go online when you're either really happy with with something or you're really upset and uh you know I got one star review from the students who were lazy and didn't want to work very hard and then I got five star reviews from the students put in the work how did you know that aren't they supposed the reviews supposed to be anonymous yeah you could kind of you could read you could figure it out it wasn't that hard you know okay you know you're grading papers so you're seeing people's writing style um you know you see yeah their ability or inability I get it you get it yeah yeah so anyway all that to say I think it's just really important when you're um looking for feedback to make sure you're asking the right people for the feedback which is kind of a religion I mean a lot of businesses do this you know net promoter score and all that stuff and you're kind of raising an interesting question about whether that data is as valuable as people would like it to be totally you know this came up at Kinesis a couple months ago we we had our Catalyst event which was a you know Summit for owner operating ated businesses and it's a two-day event so the first day is a Thursday evening and that's really kind of a social event where everybody gets to meet each other and you know have good food and talk and connect and then the Friday after is a full day and the year prior what we discovered is that people who didn't attend Thursday universally gave us lower marks on terms of feedback and what we realized was happening it they also they also complain that there wasn't enough time to network which is ironic because that's what Thursday was for so um so what we realized is that you really needed to come to Thursday in order to have the value of the event and so when we marketed it this year we said we said very specifically if you're going to come to the event make sure you attend Thursday because you'll have a great chance to connect to people so as is human nature some people didn't attend the Thursday event and my team really wanted to survey attendees and I was like don't let's not do it this is a waste of time let's if we're going to ask them for something let's ask them for something different but you know I just said all right this is what you want to do let's do it and universally the people who gave us low marks didn't attend the Thursday part of the event and you know what I mean like you know know what I'm saying there yeah so you could if if if you weren't very insightful about this you would you would pay attention to those folks in their poor experience but why do they have a poor experience they didn't actually have the whole experience so there's something to be learned there from like okay how do we make sure people attend maybe we need to be really aggressive about it and like call them up and say if you're not going to come Thursday don't come at all but it's kind of squeaky wheel gets the oil kind of situation or give away a big prize Thursday night yes dinner with Lauren Feldman I think there next year that's the prize yeah yeah it's I think it's just really important to ask the right people um when you're looking for information and it doesn't mean that you ignore unhappy customers or people who've had a bad experience I mean you can learn a lot from that too but like when we work with clients the first thing we do is we talk to customers that they have that are their best customers meaning they want more of those customers that that sounds kind of counterintuitive well in the sense that you're talking to people who by definition are likely to be happy and by definition are less likely to tell you if there's a problem you need to know about why why is that not the case well okay so first just saying that's a valid thing you know talking to unhappy C customers or customers who may give you negative feedback and we get that from those customers and and when I say best customers I I want to preface it and say those who are going to be the most truthful with you authentic but then on the on the other side of it is spend more with you or repeat customers have higher lifetime value and the reason I want to listen to them most is because I want to go get more of them like I want more of the clients who are more profitable better for your bottom line better for your emotional well-being more fun to work with and I think when you survey an entire cohort of customers you can sometimes Miss the things that are really important to the winners it's a lot like in management how often managers will try to coach the most failing employees in your organization and then they'll ignore the top performers until they quit right it's so that is that same idea it's like don't ignore the top performers just because they're the top performers actually you probably should put more energy into the top performers and those that are really at the bottom and you're having to work really really hard hard to coach them up you might actually be better off getting rid of them you know so I think customers the same way in your LinkedIn post you wrote that if you actually do take the time to talk to your best customers it'll change everything could you give us an example of that the kind of thing you could maybe a client or or you your yourself at your firm Kinesis have learned through this process yeah so I think the other piece I would put in there is uh have somebody else do it oh interesting yeah so this gets to the like will they tell you the truth I think it's easier for a customer to tell somebody else about your business than you you know there's just a human nature of of in relationships where you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings you want to be kind and compassionate and I think your your authenticity goes up when you're talking to somebody who's a step removed from the owner or the business itself so that would be the first piece they're probably also likely to do a better job asking the questions as opposed to getting defensive right and trying to argue the customer out of a negative opinion or or ask leading questions right so that's the other the other problem of asking questions to your customers is you'll tend to ask a leading question um as opposed to more open-ended questions that that discover new things because that's what you're trying to do you're trying to discover new things with people who want you to succeed um so yeah hire somebody or or recruit somebody to do the job outside of your business it would be lesson number one and then and and and I would say even though we do this for clients like you know day in day out we've done it for many many years and we're very very good at it when we went to our customers we hired somebody to do it for us like we we definitely believe in it that much um interesting to to pay for it yeah yeah um and then I think you asked what what's something I learned um so from that process for us something that I learned that I can share you know because the stuff we do for clients is mostly confidential I could probably generalize some but I can speak for Kinesis and and the thing we learned for us is how often clients got something that they weren't expecting so you know they were thinking oh I'm hiring you to do marketing and build a website and then they would learn that one of the first things we do is try to figure out is the culture really thriving and if it is how can we amplify it even more um so that that that came as a surprise to them and so it's changed our sales process to where we're more deliberate about talking about that in the sales process um so it wasn't a bad surprise but it's still like you want to be clear with with customers what they're getting so they aren't um pushing back on you all right next topic you were just on a panel talking about the current economy tell us about that what was the purpose of this yeah so it's a a pretty cool organization here in Portland cenum they're a outsourced um HR and peo and they do an economic and Leadership Forum once a year this is their 12th year so you know they've got a track record and they brought uh three businesses to the stage all in different Industries so you got you got Sean here with Professional Services Consulting you know marketing brand culture work you had uh um another guy he was a farmer uh he actually he uh grows hop for the beer industry and then you had a kind of steel fabricator so um Alicia builds you know Bridges and you know infrastructure you know so um just all three of us were sharing our thoughts you know to the audience and then before we shared our thoughts they had an economist give kind of the overview of the macroeconomic picture and it was very much like your morning report it was like yeah everybody's been talking recession and negative negative negative but all the data says it's pretty good you know we just had a blowout 4.9% annualized GDP growth quarter which I think took Everyone by surprise yeah so one of the things I'm curious about I had just had lunch with a friend and he's like do you think GDP is the right measurement like maybe it should be something different you know so I'm wondering about that too because all three businesses on stage we were all struggling in some way or the other like we were like the cops guy man the beer industry has just taken it in the shorts even the fabricator you know who's working in you know infrastructure I thought she would be on fire and she's like no all this government chaos is killing me like it's it's just creating inaction I can't you know because a lot of her contracts are through you know by extension the federal government it's really interesting because I mean we've had this extended period where everybody keeps waiting for the the other shoe or the recession to drop and it doesn't come and in fact the economy seems to to get stronger um and [Applause] yet I don't think you guys are alone there I talked to a lot of business owners who who say they're struggling and um you know I'm curious about that it's you know they're there always going to be businesses struggling even in good times I mean sure you know that's always been the case it will always be the case it has to be the case uh but this feels different somehow does it feel different to you too it really does I mean I the the word I put out there is defense meaning I think so many owners right now are still just kind of playing defense and and I think a lot of that comes from the pandemic and sort of the psychological challenge of it we have been through a lot we've been through a lot you know and I think it's easy to underestimate that the guy I had lunch with he he sold his business a year ago for a ton of money and you know the look on his face he was like he was tired you could tell he was just tired today or when you sold it he was tired when he sold it today he feels more invigorated um I bet but but even that even that he's like yeah it was really hard and I feel better that I have taken so much money off the table but uh he was just talking about just the Ripple effects that it that the pandemic had on him even though he's very successful um so I think you've got that you got the psychological component and then um I don't know you know how to how to put this but the government putting a lot of money in the pockets of a lot of people I think it made it easy to kind of like cruise and not really do something you know uh whether that's you're talking about the covid related funds yeah yeah the co funds PPP eidl ERC you know all these acronyms that translate into hundreds of thousands maybe millions of dollars for businesses I've just seen that I've just seen a lot of defense like H I don't know you know probably also kept some businesses alive that might have struggled even absent covid now that times are good they have to get back to operating in a normal market and they're struggling now the way they would have previously if they hadn't gotten that money I think that's a great point you know I think there are a lot of zombie companies out there um I think the commercial real estate market is full of zombie companies um meaning these like I was looking the other day there are buildings in Portland they did it like a summary of vacancy rates we're talking big buildings Lauren we're talking 100,000 square feet and up and you would see a building 150,000 Square ft occupancy or or maybe vacancy rate how about that 150,000 vacancy rate 130,000 meaning 20,000 ft was all that was being used and you know and they were like building after building after building like this it was crazy but there's there's not much mystery about that we we we know what's causing that problem we do but we haven't felt it right like we haven't those B those bus those those buildings haven't largely been taken over by the Banks yet you know so we're just I think we're at the ti that Iceberg so if you think about the financial ramifications there the data may not show that but the the how that impacts things like think about all the cleaning companies and you know office furniture companies on and on and on and on so zombies I think there's a lot of zombies there are always Ripple effects like that I mean you know just the the higher interest rate is having a big impact on housing and that has a big impact on all kinds of businesses that are dependent on people moving into new homes uh which isn't happening uh right now but but then you come back to that 4.9% GDP growth it's it's it's it's hard for me to get my head around that I I know I I I I'm kind of Wonder too if this isn't like a white color recession or or like a it's like certain sectors are just totally taking off but others aren't um that's something that I I I I just I'm so mistrustful of single data points that and I'm not saying we're in a recession I I'm not saying that at all I'm just saying that I just know a lot of businesses that are they're not dying but they're not thriving either and right and I and I'm trying to figure out what what that is and I I think it's the PTSD from recession I think it's the PTSD from the great resignation and then I think it's you know if you had some resources it allowed you to not be very you know you could you didn't have to be ambitious you could just sort of cruise so yeah I don't know I could go on and on about this and then the baby boomer is retiring I think that's a huge Factor you know but anyway I'm sure we'll come back to this one last topic for today I almost hate to do this but I I recently highlighted a story in the morning report about Mark Andre who was long been one of the most prominent venture capitalist in Silicon Valley andrion wrote a Manifesto recently covering a lot of ground way too much for us to discuss here but among other things it argues that the last thing we need are guard rails on the development of Technology uh especially artificial intelligence uh you're out there on the west coast there's a lot of tech companies in Oregon not quite Silicon Valley but have you given this any thought um yeah I just wonder if Mark andreon has a teenage girl daughter you know like I mean come on you know like there are just so many examples of where technology left unfettered has been very harmful to the Commonwealth you know like I the data the data is showing us now like it's it's like a cliche we all know this and yet he's there saying that if we don't if we put guard rails on artificial intelligence people are going to lose their lives um well first let's talk about the narcissism that somebody has to have in order to kind of write that sentence you know I okay or the self-interest the self-interest it's just I I don't know I I feel like that folks that aren't in Tech are starting to become exhausted with tech and and sort of like the tech tech will save the world kind of thing I mean I was a believer in the early days of the internet I was like wow the transparency that's going to be created by this and the access of you know for businesses to reach other businesses I was super excited and I was super excited at Twitter in the early days too like I was like wow look at what's happening in terms of movements you know remember the the Arab Arab Spring you know like like all these ideas and then oh yeah also you know China can use technology to surveil its people and like lock them up for life you know and like so it's like this idea that it's this like universally benevolent Force is is just I don't know seems kind of stupid like I if if you actually read his Manifesto it it includes an actual enemies list um and if if you disagree even slightly uh with his prescription for everything you're an enemy which I found really discouraging I mean I don't pretend to know anything about AI I barely know how to use chat GPT let alone how to how it should be regulated I'm I'm not going to offer my opinion on that but but I would argue we need more open de debate not less and it's just amazing to me that in this Center of Entrepreneurship th this kind of thinking has taken hold um has it always been that way and I just didn't know it or I I think there's been a sea change you know I I mean I used to have tremendous admiration for Elon Musk and what he's done with engineering and hardware and design and and and then you know he he's kind of gone off the deep end too and I I I don't know if it's the com combination of like late middle age irrelevancy male ego and like money like that V diagram is pretty wicked um but I just like okay look I always whenever somebody offers an opinion I try to understand what are their incentives and Mark andreon is nothing if not a successful person who's deployed money to make more money and he's deployed that money in the realm of technology and been very successful at it props to him uh at the same time lots of folks are starting to question that domain and I think he just doesn't want to be questioned and and I think he wants to make more money I mean wasn't he part of the whole uh nft kind of nonsense of like the world's going to change with digital money right am I right about that big supporter of crypto crypto guy yeah right and I mean h how many people lost their shorts on that nonsense I mean crypto is basically a good way for criminal to get money to places that it shouldn't be that's that's crypto's value and I'm proposition right yeah I'm sure there are listeners that are going to be like no no self-executing contracts and that's probably fair you know but like crypto crypto largely is just great for criminal Enterprises so so you you and I are are ringing our hands about this does it matter is there a reason to care I don't think so I mean I I think what matters is like parents are starting to say should our children have cell phones at the age of 12 right and if they do have cell phones can we make them so that kids only can do certain things like call their parents in an emergency or text their friends but not have access to maybe social media you know because it is harmful to them and and so let's actually be parents like let's actually care about our children and do the job we're supposed to do and I think that in a large way andri is sort of suggesting yeah let's go Lord of the Flies on all this stuff let the kids range you know like like I'm so cynical on this I just because the track record just is not good man obviously I kind of agree with you the it I just find it discouraging that this is what Silicon Valley has come to and that's the Pinnacle of Entrepreneurship in the minds of many people in this country I want to hope that a lot of people believed in kind of those guys you know just for the same reason I sort of used to think Elon mus was great is that they did do some really great things full stop and amazing things and I also think part of being an adult is like evaluating things and making decisions with complex uh inputs and those complex inputs can be health of the Commonwealth Care for others concern for children you know functioning governments you know like and I think a lot of the these guys love the fact that they have a little private mansion on New Zealand with a bunker because you know if the American government all falls apart their their exit plan is to just go to New Zealand you know they don't care all right I don't know we we're end know such a cynical note here I mean well there are some awesome technologists I know some fantastic people using technology to solve for things like climate change you know to help make the workplace more equitable able to provide access to education so I think we need to kind of keep that in in in in our sites you know technology took us to the Moon technology helped us you know communicate more easily it's a lot of great things it's just there are people out there that should just shut the [ __ ] up sorry sorry well that's probably not going to happen but it's Monday morning and we need to get back to the real world all right you can believe me Sean busy is CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy this episode was brought to you by the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to help build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com I hope I haven't depressed you too much Sean thank you for doing this uh thank you Lauren that was fun have a great week everybody [Music]