Jack Tompkins Founder of Pineapple Consulting

Sounds good. You know, we talk about decision making all the time. Whether it's you, maybe you make the right one, maybe you make the wrong one sometimes. Of course, I've been known to do that. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Just taking the action to make those decisions, but also having the data to back it up. You know, the, the, the triple D. Right. Data driven decisions are so powerful. And on, on this episode, we have a great guest that is just embrace that whole conc. And Chuck Tompkins is just. He's got it dialed in on how small business owners can visualize. Take the data you already have and visualize it in a way to really help you learn from it and make less mistakes. So I'm really excited to hear today's show.

Yeah, man, this is. I like data. I hate data, sure. But I understand the value in it and it has been able to drive me to make some really good decisions in my business. And also I've made some really bad decisions when I haven't used data properly. So this is. Jack is someone that I wish I had met 10 years ago, but, you know, the second best time to meet him is today. So, yeah, I'm really eager to, to share everybody.

You know, we often joke around when we hear a comment. We are, you know, a phrase. We really like that it should be on a T shirt. And Jack dropped a comment during the show kind of towards the end. You don't want to miss that, man. All of us should be wearing on a T shirt. And it's going to be great. I'm not going to give it away now, but listen in and I think you'll really enjoy it.

Yeah, I think so too. All right, well, I'm ready to small business if you're ready to small business.

I'm totally ready to small business. Let's do it.

Well, let's do it. He's Shannon Gene. I'm Dave Hamilton and this is episode 307 of the Small Business Show.

Definitely a seeing is believing type business as it should be really focused on visualization. Right. So they definitely, they can definitely sense the value, I would say before talking with me. And it's a lot of. It comes down to a time saver, really, if we're talking pain points. I've worked with clients where it's, you know, they spend. I have one actually, currently it's four hours per month per client of his that he's copying and pasting the data and stuff like that and then going through it with his clients. And it's a long process. When you have to do all of that stuff. But if he just has that light bulb moment, which he did because he hired me of man, if I could just put this into something that's easy to digest, then that's gonna. It literally saves him hours per client per month.

You know, we, we talk about making decisions like on every show.

One of our big part of being a business owner.

Yeah. One of the big things we're really trying to embrace is action. And I can't think of, you know, a better action to take is actually making decisions. Right. And, and.

Oh, that's a. Wow. We could do a whole episode on just that.

Yeah. Just do it. Even if you're not sure.

Right.

Because you never, you never know. I mean, never.

You can't be sure. That's the point.

But, but one thing that does help you make sure about this last week when we did our end of year kind of tasks and opportunities episode was getting the right data together so you could make those decisions. Right. Because oftentimes. And I always come back to Brian Frist, one of our first guests on the show many years ago that said, you know the famous comment, don't make fear based decisions for your business. Right. And the flip side is making data based or data driven decisions. I love that, that phrase.

Sure.

So today on the show we have a guest that's all about making those kinds of driven decisions and how using the data, not just leaving it in a spreadsheet and then looking at your P and L and all that kind of stuff, but actually visualizing it so that you can, you know, create a story and include it as part of your story for your business. Which, you know, I think that's so important. So Jack Tompkins is managing partner and founder of Pineapple Consulting. We're going to learn about that name a little bit. I'm really interested in hearing how they use the small businesses, their existing data to help them succeed. Jack, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Thanks for having me. Shannon and Dave. Pleasure. Pleasure to be here. I'm looking forward to this too.

Yeah, it's cool. We really love geeking out on this stuff.

Perfect.

We really are just business geeks.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

Pretty much. So give us some background on where this. You know, I look at your background online, I'm doing some research, and it kind of. Where did this love of data come from? You know, I, I know you have some background as an analyst in the insurance industry. Did that impact what you do now? Where did you kind of get into this stuff.

Yeah, that's. It's really where it started, is kind of in the insurance world, which, if you're not familiar and a lot of people aren't, it is a very, very data driven industry that the saying there is, there's never a wrong risk, there's just a wrong price. So everything is very data driven.

I like that.

That's a nice one.

Yeah, that's good. That's gonna be on a T shirt.

Yeah, right. I think I'd be the only one wearing it, though.

Oh, no, there's two of us here. You could order three.

Perfect.

That's economies of scale already, right?

There we go. Look at that. We probably get a discount on shipping there. Yeah, that's right. I got it. But yeah, so that's. That's kind of where it started. And, and honestly, it's. It's a love of data. Don't get me wrong. It's also a love of data, kind of removing the stigma of it. Because coming from the big business insurance world, where everything was data driven, now being in the small business world, there's still plenty of data to be had and it's just in different formats these days. But data for the average small business owner is a bit of a scary concept. So as much as I fell in love with data, it was also the love of kind of demystifying it for the average small business owner.

I like it. Yeah, that's cool. So was that the impetus to start Pineapple and then give us your background of how you made that leap from the corporate world out to your own consulting gig? And what's the significance of the name?

I think I get that every time. Yeah, I'll start there if we want. So Pineapples to me, I absolutely love pineapples and those sort of the very first beginning of the name. But it sort of evolved further from that. And I'm located in Charlotte, North Carolina. So in the south, when you get a new neighbor, you're supposed to bring them a pineapple as a sign of, you know, welcome to the neighborhood. So it's a very welcoming sign. But what really drove it home for me was again, going back to that average small business owner, they can't really take a true vacation. And vacation to me. Right, exactly. And vacation to me is symbolized by a pineapple. You know, picture drinking a Bahama Mama or a pina colada out of a pineapple on a beach. There's just nothing that beats that for me. And so if I could give a small business owner that vacation Whether it's saving the time or making the money, whatever it is, if I could give them that, that, that just be, that'd be awesome to me. And so that's my goal. And so Pineapple kind of started based off of that ideal scenario, and let's give you that vacation that you deserve.

That's cool.

Thank you. And so answering, I guess, part one of that question now going out of order is the small business focus for analytics and data and things like that. It was. It was the transition from the big business world to. And I was like, hey, this stuff is really cool. But I bet small business owners, either they don't have it or they need it and it's just not available to them or whatever the situation is, it's just not as readily available as it is in the big business world. So I was kind of building on the side for a while, and along came this pandemic, which I don't know if you guys have heard about yet, but towards the beginning of it back in April, I went full time into this business, into Pineapple, and I was kind of practicing what I preach of. Hey, look, small business owners, they need this sort of analytics and they need this knowledge of data. And by the time when they're scrutinizing every single expense and trying to grow wherever they possibly can, data could be your absolute best friend there. So I decided to jump two feet in. And I've had a heck of a time so far. It's been an absolute blast.

That's great. And so you had launched this while you were still in the insurance industry and kind of doing it as a side hustle and then decided to take the leap and go out full time. Right?

Exactly. Right. Yep.

That's a great way to do it. I love that.

Thank you.

So one of the things I really like about this whole your concept and you talk about in your marketing material on your website is this concept of visualizing the data. Because as someone that's owned a bunch of small businesses, you know, I'm super familiar with Excel. I use it every day. But trying to get it to look great is difficult for me. And I would imagine a lot of small business owners and so talk about the importance of that visual visualizing when working with small business owners.

Oh, it's huge. It's huge. You put a black and white income statement in from a business owner and you. Even if they're the most financially savvy person that you know, it's still going to be. It's. I don't Know, it's a little dry to look at, you know, and it's not really that enticing to look at, especially for the business owner that's, you know, they're just a really great widget maker and they went into business to make their widgets or, or sell their service or what have you. They, that's what they want to do. They want to sell, they want to go do their thing. Looking at their financials as an example is they know it's important, but it's just, it's kind of a task and it's, it's a boring task at that.

Oh yeah.

So putting that income statement into a chart and a graph and I have this example, I think it's on my website too, but it's one I always share when I present. I have an income statement on the left directly from QuickBooks, you know, obviously messing up the numbers a little bit. So it's not confidential information.

Sure.

But I have that on the left and it's black and white and it's profit and loss for January, December of 2020. And on the right I have a dashboard that is in their brand colors and you have giant green arrows that are pointing up to signify that your revenue is better than it was against whatever time period that you're comparing against. And so that juxtaposition of the two, it really, it's an eye opener and because it is so much easier to digest, easier to look at and honestly a bit more fun to use even for the non data nerds. It really gets people to use their data a bit more. And so you kind of get like a business coach from your own data because you're checking it. Ooh, how am I doing? Oh, my green arrow went to a red arrow. And it's just that is so easy to understand when it's in front of you in a picture. It's, it's really tough to beat with just your average income statement. That's. Even if you have somebody describing it to you, you can't be the visual and I imagine.

Oh, go ahead, Dave.

No, I'm curious. Like when, like I get the value of what you're describing as you're describing it here, but I'm curious, like when people come to you, are they coming to you because they say look my, I need to present my financials to someone and please help me make them look good or are people really able to sort of see the value in, in what you do for themselves? Like you said as that business coach from within almost you know, when you, when you look at your financials, I mean really, you're helping them.

So you're the business coach.

But, but I get, I get the concept, right? Like you're not bringing any data to the table. You're just helping people see the, what's actually inside the data. So I'm just curious, you know, how, how smart are these business owners that are coming to you before they get to you? I realize after the fact they know what they're getting, but.

Yeah, no, it's a totally fair question. And it's, it's definitely a seeing is believing type business.

Yeah.

As it should be really, if I'm focused on visualization. Right. So they definitely, they can definitely sense the value, I would say, before talking with me. And a lot of it comes down to a time saver, really. If we're talking pain points. I've worked with clients where it's, you know, they spend. I have one actually, currently it's four hours per month per client of his that he's copying and pasting the data and stuff like that and then going through it with his clients. And it's a long process when you have to do all of that stuff. But if he just has that light bulb moment, which he did because he hired me.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Of man. If I could just put this into something that's easy to digest, then that's gonna, it, it literally saves him hours per client per month. And you know, there's a bit of backend automation kind of stuff that I, that I worked with him on too. But yeah, it's, it really comes down to a time saving activity.

Makes sense.

Makes sense. Okay. Okay. So that, that's the, that's the initial sort of value that you're providing is like, look, all this stuff that you're doing, we can, I can help you do it faster. Then once you see what we've done. Well, now there might be more in it.

Exactly.

Yeah. And I imagine it's easier or more impactful for a business owner to also share that data with their employees or their business bank or investors or whoever they're talking to, presenting it in versus just giving it in black and white. It's got to be way more powerful for them, right?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I have a great example of that. I have a client who he works with a bunch of different, in the logistics world, so he works with a bunch of different carriers. And so he built a scorecard. And on that scorecard we have little speedometers. Right. Because industry specific Stuff, it's fun. So it goes from green to red and it's. Whatever it is, miles per gallon or miles driven, whatever, whatever they're talking about. And it's on a nice little speedometer and he's saying that just. It makes a world of difference to be able to see, oh, my needle's in the red. That's not good. Let's talk about that. It's just such an easier conversation.

Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. So you talk about on your site and the services that you do. You talk about Excel a lot, which I know a lot of and I'm in it literally every day. But you also talk about a product or service called Tab. Tableau. Tableau, I think. I don't know how to pronounce it, but tell us. I'm not familiar with it. Talk about how that works and how you use that as part of your service.

Sure. It's. So it's tableau, which I, you know, it is. It's just one of them weird looking words. Yeah.

You always gets me.

Oh, yeah, it's always tough. But it's, it's. People call it Excel on steroids. Excuse me. And it's not completely accurate, but it's, it's got a, a kernel of truth in there because Excel is obviously great for so many different things and there's plenty of use cases for it. Tableau is great for dealing with a massive amount of data. So I'm sure we've all been in Excel files where there's too many charts or too many rows of data and it gets real slow and crashes sometimes. You're never going to find that with Tableau. I've, I did back in my corporate life. We dealt with, I think it was like 25 million different rows of data. And Tableau was like, all right, cool, what's next? And it was so seamless. That's one big difference there. Another one is automatic refreshing of data. And so it can connect to pretty much any data source out there. QuickBooks is a standard one that I use a lot. It's a nice automatic update there, but you can schedule a refresh for 3am on a Sunday morning or whatever time you want. And I love Excel, I absolutely love Excel. And I was, you know, a hero in the corporate world because I made a template so I could do what we could for automatically refreshing things and took me five minutes. But with Tableau, if I can just do that while everybody's sleeping, I could be the best analyst in the world. And it's just really tough to compete against that.

Yeah, that's cool.

So, yeah, tableau is neat. It's really. I should back up. It's a data visualization tool.

Okay.

And it is very user friendly. And it's, it's kind of. It's kind of Excel on steroids in that sense that is this kernel of truth.

Yeah.

But it's really just meant for the, the user who can just go to a website, pull up their tableau dashboard and boom, there's their data that was autocally connected and refreshed overnight.

That's great. So, okay, this may be kind of a weird question, but when I was working with lots of employees and I wanted to share data, but I always felt like, you know, I need to share some data. Not everything either. Either in an overly positive way of how great we're doing, so people think they should be getting a lot more money, or in an overly negative way where, you know, they're going to worry. And maybe that's just the control freak in me, I'm not sure. But I always wanted to present the data in ways that were really impactful to that individual or to maybe their department. Because obviously in the service industry, and we had sales department too, but maybe it was a service metrics that we needed to talk about so they could see how their individual actions could impact the overall business. Because so much of the business was kind of beyond their control that I always felt like, how can I hold them accountable to this when it doesn't, you know, it doesn't. They don't do it very much. Is that something that you see and deal with or is that just. I'm just weird.

I can't. You might be weird either way.

Yeah.

But it goes on, I guess. Yeah, it definitely does come into play a bit. Sort of. If I were to summarize, kind of their piece of the pie. Right?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Something. Because if I'm going to show you something, I'm hopefully asking for some kind of action. Either appraising you like, look, you guys are killing it. This, that, let's do this, or I'm asking you to change something or to implement something new to fix. Maybe what may be a problem. Like let's. In a repair business, maybe our numbers are just, you know, using kind of your logistics example. Our speedometer is way down. They. Maybe the repair department wasn't getting enough repairs out in a certain, you know, period of time, something like that.

Yeah, that's. It's. I, I have seen that. Let me short answer. Yes. What's nice about it is, and I talk about this a decent amount too, is sort of the gut instinct versus the science of data. The art versus the science. Yeah. And when you're talking to the employee saying like, hey, like, this isn't really working, they can be like, oh, whatever, that's just my boss being my boss, you know?

Absolutely.

But you show them the numbers and say, hey, look, no, seriously, this is not working. And here's the numbers to back it up. It takes on a new life. And that's same thing for the good side of the story too, of, hey, you're doing great. Oh, cool. My boss is just, I don't know, having a good day or, oh my goodness, I'm whatever, the best salesman in the region. And here's the numbers to prove it. It definitely takes on a new life. Right.

And if a business owner came to you and said, hey, I want to track this kind of data, is it correct that you could then say, okay, well, here's how, here's how I would suggest you capture it and then, then here's how we can visualize that. Is that right?

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Okay, that's cool. That sounds great. I would I wish I met you about 20 years ago.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah. I'm sitting here and I found myself not getting distracted from the interview, but thinking, oh, man, like, how much do I need this? Yeah, no, this is great. Hey, I want to take a minute here and talk about our two sponsors this week. All right, look, we know that we're all working online now, and a lot of us have been doing this for a long time, in some ways, maybe always, or maybe at least some of the time. And I think we're all going to be doing a lot more of it going forward. And here's the thing, you know, we need tools that aren't just about a video conference. We need a video conference, but we also need true collaboration. Right? And we want to have all our web tools and our people in one place, essentially replicating online all the ways that people work together physically. And that's where our sponsor, Remote HQ comes in. They have this high security, enterprise grade collaborative workspace that empowers all of us remotely to work together in ways that just aren't possible with other tools because they enable teams to work together as if they're in the same room. And there's no download because it's all browser based, which means you can just do this and create your virtual office with Remote hq, you create this workspace and then you have Remote HQ rooms and you can bring different apps into a Remote HQ room to customize your collaboration. So you can have like a virtual war room or a meeting room, and you can bring things like Trello in or Google Drive in or even a shared browser in so that people can just work together and really truly control what's happening. You can have cold control and co browsing going on. And of course you've got a searchable digital trail because you've got all this stuff right there inside Remote hq. You got to check it out. And here's the thing. Go to RemoteHQ Co SBS for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use the code SBS for three months for free. So you get the free trial and then code SBS three months for free. But you gotta go to RemoteHQ Co SBS are thanks to Remote HQ for sponsoring this episode. All right, so look, you have content to push out, you have a story to share with your company, but it's super complex because you're not that person that does those things. You can remove the complexity with our next sponsor here issue issu.com podcast with promo code SBS is where you're going to go. Because Issue is is an all in one platform to create and distribute beautiful digital publications. From brochures to magazines to sales collateral and more. It's perfect for creators and marketers and designers and educators and publishers and salespeople or really anyone who wants to create and make eye catching content. Because Issuu makes it easy. You just upload your PDFs and your files and ISSUU transforms them and using your vision and customizable templates to create exactly the content that you want. And with issuu, what's really cool, you create it once and distribute it everywhere. Everything is optimized to post on your website and social platforms like Instagram and Facebook. They can even help you make animated Instagram stories. And here's the thing, you can start using ISSUU for free. They also offer premium features that give even more customizability to the experience. So get started with ISSUU today for free.

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Okay, cool. So yeah, like I said, I wish I would have had a lot of this information, you know, maybe 20 years ago, but. And maybe that was one of my mistakes because I've made so many. But let's talk about mistakes. We really like them a lot on the show because we really consider like their tuition. Nothing teaches you more than when you really screw up and it stays with you. So I was thinking about Pineapple and your recent launch, but you've done it for a while. Is there a mistake, something that might have happened and maybe it's back in the other data analytical stuff. So we don't, you know, keep you to a small window because we really like the juicier stuff. Something the mistake you made related to data. Stuff that has stuck with you and taught you a lesson.

I'm sure there's plenty. Yeah.

I'm not going to let you get away with. You want to share one though?

It's kind of our thing. So.

Yeah, let me think.

It gets easier after you share the first one. Let me just tell you that we wrote a book about it so now we're like experts on mistakes in that we make them all the time and we admit it. So that's, you know.

Right. I love how you guys did it part. That's right.

That's the trick.

Yep. That's the full circle. And I love how you guys call it tuition too. That's perfect.

Well, because they've cost us so we have to. Because tuition is better than I lost money.

Well, it kind of goes to, to not, not to take away from what you're going to tell us.

Not going to. We're not going to let you get.

Off the hook here. But what this, the conversation, it's kind of how you frame the mistake. You know, if you look at it as just a complete screw up and you just beat yourself down about it. Well that, that's not a, that's not tuition. That's not positive. But if you look at it as right, well that powerful lesson and it often you have to get some distance from it to really start to value it and not think, you know, oh, I was an idiot when I did that. Speaking for myself only, of course. So yeah. So if anything like that that we'd love for you to share.

Yeah, I think I've got a good one. And it's around data. It is about like quality checking data is sort of the headline and I was working. This is actually back in my, in my corporate life and we're going through and we're looking at all this data and like I said, insurance is a very data driven world. So we were relying on the numbers and I put together this great dashboard and this great analysis and stuff like that. So I think it was, we were changing the price in a specific territory and months later, because again, insurance I guess didn't mention this before and it takes a long time for things to actually show themselves in the insurance world. And that's why it's, you got to kind of keep on the data. So months later we figure out that the price change that we made was the absolute wrong direction. And you know, it's. Without getting into the nitty gritty, we're basically charging too much for something that should cost very little. And I'm sure everybody listening is now thinking, yep, classic insurance company, right?

I wasn't gonna say it, but yeah, yeah.

So it was a data mistake. And the reason it happened was because we didn't do enough quality checking. And by enough I mean we did very little quality checking. Or I shouldn't say we, I should say me and see, it gets easier.

As you're doing this.

Right.

I forgot about this.

Right. And it was something really simple where basically as simple as changing a formula from like a 1 to a 2 or you know, something as, as basic as that. Right. And it came down to that and had this literally month, several month long impact and I couldn't tell you how many dollars it was. It, you know, obviously didn't hurt the company that much, but it, it was very impactful for myself and my small team and the large department. And it was just a quality checking thing. So I think it's, there's some saying out there. Maybe it was like Abraham Lincoln or something. He's like, if you give me a chance, if you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I'll spend the first four sharpening the ax or something like that. That is very much true in the data world. Quality checking, making sure everything is flowing correctly, trying to break it, honestly, trying to break whatever it is you're making. And that's something I encourage all of my clients to do. Whatever I send them, it's, hey, mess with this, try and break it, because there's going to be fixes that you don't find right away. So I, yeah, I think I'd start with that. With my mistake of quality checking.

Yeah. So I like that. Yeah, me too. So.

And I like that try to break what you're making thing too. I mean, that goes beyond data. That's a great piece of advice for. For many things that we do as business owners.

Yeah, yeah. No, thank you.

Yeah. And so sticking on this mistake concept is. I mean, is there a common or are there common mistakes that you see small business owners making when it comes to looking at their data, whether it's financial or different kinds of data, do you see similar problems over and over?

Yeah, to an extent. I would say so. First off, I would say not looking at their data is probably number one.

Yeah, that's true. I hate that because I'm such a, you know, I'm a gut instinct guy, and it comes down and always, you know, bites me in the butt when you don't follow that up with that. With that good data.

Right. And to your point, Shannon, that's. There's room for both, right? There's plenty. I mean, you should use gut instinct and data and combine the two. That's the ideal situation. So that is sort of, number one is not actually looking at your numbers and that, you know, Shark Tank says it, and everybody else says it too. You got to know your numbers. And that is absolutely true. And you guys know that better than I do.

Sure. It doesn't mean we look at it, but it's totally true.

Right. And so that's number one. Another one I would put up there is putting some context around the numbers. And so what I mean by that is, if you made $10,000 last month, fantastic. That's. That's great. Maybe. Or not. What does $10,000 mean?

Sure.

If you're a solopreneur, then all right, that's not bad. You're probably okay with that. But if you've got five, six employees, that's probably not cutting it.

That's disaster time.

I'm glad. Yeah. I wanted to put it softly, but thank you. So putting some context around it with that and also adding the historical context to it. So, okay, $10,000 is fine or whatever. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. But what was it last month? If it was only eight grand last month, then all right, cool, you're growing. But if it was 50 grand the month before or the year before for the same month, that adds. That paints an entirely new picture. And I would say that's one thing that I see. A fair amount is either not looking at the historical comparison to get that context or simply not tracking the historical nature of it. Because it's a firm believer that most, if not all data is best. Best looked at over a trend. Because one data point, as we all know is not enough to make a decision off of. You have that trend, then you can start seeing things. And so my long winded summary, look at the data, number one, know your numbers and number two, add some historical context to it.

Yeah, I think that's really good advice. I think that's cool.

So thank you.

Yeah. So do small business owners typically hire, you know, you to come in for specific projects or ongoing help? How does it work?

It's really both. So it's sort of drawn in as we were talking about earlier of that light bulb moment of, man, this could be great in a dashboard. It starts off with a project and whether that's Excel or Tableau, it doesn't really matter to me. They're both fun for me. And we make the dashboard and it's all right, cool. This is a fun project. Oftentimes that evolves into, well, this is great. I wonder if we should also look at this other piece of data and so we start building extra views or other dashboards even. Or they just want me to stick around to do the analysis because they're still pressed for time, as every small business owner is. So they'll typically keep me on for whether it's additional dashboard making or additional views or just the analytics piece of it.

Got it. That totally makes sense. And you mentioned everything going on with the pandemic and stuff. Are you seeing any of your business or people asking you for help related to, hey, we've been impacted by Covid and we need help to recover this way? Or are you implementing things going into 2021 to help businesses that have been impacted by Covid?

Yeah, I've seen a bit of it and definitely have some things that have been and will continue to be implemented. And it's typically around. Let's get in and kind of scrutinize some of the numbers. So there's been kind of two groups or two schools of thought that I've seen since the pandemic. One of them is in regards to a service such as myself, oh my gosh, we have no way that we could possibly pay for that. Or the other school of thought is, holy crap, that's the only thing we can spend money on.

Interesting.

And the reason for that is some folks, and neither one is necessarily right or wrong, but some folks see it as well, this is going to be a, you know, tight cash flow environment. So let's get in there, look at every single expense, look at every single piece of revenue, and let's really see what's necessary, what's good. What's not good? I think I listened to your guys last podcast that was published and doing the year end review of what has worked and what hasn't worked or something along those lines. You guys are saying. Yeah, yeah, completely agree. I have the exact same mantra. And that's where I come in with the data saying, okay, well this is what has worked. Let's keep doing this. This has worked. Okay, maybe we can keep stop or start it. And this hasn't worked at all. Let's, you know, for the time being let's just not focus on it. And that goes for top line and bottom line and, and kind of throughout the income statement.

Yeah. So it's what I really like about the concept. It's, it's almost like you're giving these business owners a roadmap.

Right.

You know, here's where you could focus on and improve and based on this and because a lot of times with COVID what I've been going through is like, well, you know, is this caused by the pandemic? I don't really know. You know, is our sales down or sales up? You know, some, some channels that were in sales are way up and some are down. So it's, it, it's really a puzzle and I don't envy you, but I'm so glad there are guys like you out there to help help small business owners, you know, put that, put that stuff together. So, so, okay. I've really enjoyed learning a lot about this stuff. It's, it's really, I think, a powerful message to really look at your data. One of our themes for 2020 has really been to try to convince people that the term small business should be a verb because action is just it, it's so wrapped around your success.

Yes.

Is there one action or is there an action item that you could recommend to our small business owner listeners that they could do today that would help them?

Absolutely, yeah. And it's, it's going to be data centric, of course.

Yeah, sure.

I would say my number one is. So I think that the concept of knowing your numbers, everybody either knows that they should know the numbers or already does. And that's great. So I would say my piece is actually make sure you have a process to digest the information. And that could be downloading a P and l statement from QuickBooks and then putting it into a template in Excel or whatever it is. If you have a process that you can do quickly and it doesn't become this three hour long hassle for you, that's Huge. It makes a huge, huge, huge difference. So put some structure around the data and both on the intaking the data. So getting the file from QuickBooks or wherever it is or marketing information to. But also on the presentation side, so throw it into a chart and a graph and you don't need some fancy speedometer thing like I would make. You can just make a simple bar chart in Excel and it does really help the process. So the front and back end making it as efficient as possible.

That makes sense. Coming up with a system, right?

Yes, exactly. That's. That's what. Yeah, that's my short answer. Perfect, thank you.

No, I like this idea though because I mean you can, you can pull up your P and L&quickbooks or whatever and that's. And it's. I mean it's fine depending on how complex things are. It's either complex or it's easy to see. But it's a. Most other than clicking the, you know, reports P and L, it's a very fairly passive process. Right. You're just looking at it and then moving on. Having some sort of a system like you said, to digest these numbers forces you to interact with them a little bit at least. And that, you know, I mean, I love the, you know, that which is monitored is managed concept. And so this sort of thing where it can't be on autopilot too much. Right. You want enough of it to be on autopilot, so you do it. But having to be engaged with it, I guess is the right word. That's a good thing. So. Yeah, I like this.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Jack, some really great tips on managing data, trying to make it presentable to, to make it more powerful. We really appreciate you coming on the show today. What's the best way for our listeners to connect with you and to learn more about data? Pineapple Consulting.

Sure. So thanks for having me. Shannon David again, absolute blast. This is so much fun. I always love nerd about. About this stuff. I would say head to my website for anybody that's curious. Pineapple cf.com Just in case you're listening on fast forward. It is Pineapple CF as in consulting firm dot com. And that's got. It's a very visual website, as you might be able to guess.

Yeah, it's cool.

And it's got a lot of examples and on there I've got how to contact me and all that good stuff. And I'm going through things now where I'm happy to take a look at your process that we were just talking about and what does your data look like and how are you monitoring it to manage it? To Dave, your point earlier, then I'm happy to just go in and take a look for free and that's fun for me. So definitely take a look at the website.

That's great. That's awesome. We really appreciate you coming on. Please keep in touch. Reach out to us, you know, as you grow your company and, you know, cheers to your success and thank you again.

Thank you guys. This is again, a pleasure and definitely looking forward to stay in touch.

Yet another good one, man. I love this concept of engaging with data. What a great thing. And I loved, you know, what I really loved was watching, watching him step down the process of admitting he made a mistake. Right. Like it started with, you know, he.

Didn'T really want to talk about it. No.

Well, he didn't want to talk about it, but even when he did, it was a data company made a data mistake. And then he stopped and he's like, I made a formula mistake. Right. He got there and it. It, like I go through, we're, as I said, you know, but we talk about all the time. I'm so used to admitting mistakes, but even still, like, I wind up, up going through that process in my head often where it's like, oh, you know, we screwed this up. Stop, I screwed this up.

Well, that's why that, that mistakes question is so powerful because it just brings so much to the forefront and it's ultimate accountability.

Right.

And, and also helping you change the framework of, oh, I screwed up here, but man, after that I was so much more powerful or I learned this, I learned that.

That's true. Yeah. It really did kind of get to share that, that, that like you said, reframing it is the key. That's the key.

Yeah. Otherwise you can let it bury you. You know, if you, if you look at coaching, when somebody screws up on a football team or whatever makes a mistake, first thing the coach is telling them, okay, forget about it now we're going to go do this. Because dwelling on it doesn't. Doesn't make, it doesn't make you succeed, right?

No, no. You need to kind of get past the it and have a little, little perspective on it and then, and then you can learn that lesson. And, and the benefits of the tuition you have already paid. And if you need the lesson in sunk cost, there it is. Right. You know, you've already made the mistake. What can you learn from it? Don't worry about what it did to you. You already paid that price.

That's right. That's right.

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