The Secret is in the Data!

Secrets in the data. Hey, Polk County, we're back for another episode of the Elevate Polk podcast. I'm hoping you're having another wonderful week. My name is Chrissanne Long. I'm here again with my co-host Nate Kendrick, who's always here to help us get these unique stories told or to help us dig into some really cool topics about entrepreneurship. Welcome. Welcome.

Hey, Chrissanne, happy to be here and excited about our topic today.

I'm glad you're excited because you're going to add a lot of insight to this topic where I come from it, at it from one angle, and you're going to come at it from another. So let me just kind of lay it out there. You know, in marketing, one of the big components of strategically helping businesses grow is in helping them build systems that help them track and measure their success.

Yeah.

And so it's easy to say, hey, I'm going to get a billboard on South Florida Avenue and it's gonna cost $5,000 and we're just gonna go do it. A lot of times the question then becomes at the end when it's time to renew, do you wanna get that billboard again? Well, the question is, is it working? How do you know if that billboard is working? And so a lot of times we introduce strategies like call tracking numbers or specific URLs to drive people to. It's not like people are on their phones when they're driving by your billboard, you know, and saying, oh, let me go to that website. So it's really gotta be strategic. But when it comes to the digital side, there's so much more available from the data that you can gather about what's happening with your content or with, with your sales or your sales processes and stuff. So, um, I recently did a video specifically about this topic. And so we thought, hey, let's just dig in a little bit more than a 2-minute video can, can dig. And so, you know, from your perspective, coming into it from your e-commerce experience would be interesting because I know that there was some, there's some understanding that you have from that third party Amazon owning the data versus you owning your own data and really not having 100% visibility of to what is working and what isn't working.

Yeah.

But also now with, you know, Mike and Mike's and the cupcakes. So I don't know where you want to start, but why don't you kick us off?

Yeah, for sure. Uh, I would say that this, this conversation is almost something that is not commonly thought about when you start a business, but it's the most vital and most important part of your business. Uh, we spoke a little bit before, and we, you know, we were talking about someone that has a great idea for a new restaurant item and does a data set of 10 people and they all say yes, and then you put it on the menu and no one buys it because that data set is relatively small compared to the grand scheme of things. And I think about it from the perspective of kind of what you mentioned with Amazon and e-commerce. We were in a massive, massive ocean and we were one of many, many products. But the key was we did research initially to find trending products, and that was taken on a data set of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of different individuals that were putting in specific keywords and typing in specific things. And it just happened to be around the same time that the California fires were going off. Mm-hmm. And that was the reason why we were able to succeed. Succeed initially in launching the product, getting people to notice it on a relevant platform, having the trust in Amazon. Because a lot of times if you have a blank canvas e-commerce site on a third-party site that's not Amazon, it's really tough to sell because you have to get that immediate trust. So we were very self-aware that by being on a site like Amazon, people— a lot of times people unconsciously didn't even know that it wasn't Amazon selling the product because people don't Didn't know that back then.

Right.

It's becoming more and more relevant now, but that was where we were able to really get our success. When it started to become a little bit more challenging was not understanding the deeper data of who is our customer, what's their age demographic, what do they look like, where are they located on a regular basis, what's their email so we could retarget them.

Right.

The only information that we were getting is kind of like their name and their state. And that's good and all, and we could start to really hyper-target specific areas in the country. But what was tough about it is if you're trying to retarget or trying to send them a message, right?

Building your business on someone else's property, basically, and saying, you know, it's— if at any point in time they want to demolish your building, you're, you're at their mercy because they own the property, right? Correct.

Which changed my mindset on how to build a business. It's, it's I told myself, I said, from now on, I want to make sure that I build a brand that can stand on its own.

And I am a huge preacher. Most of my clients are people who have worked with me in any way, shape, or form. Own your own assets.

Yeah.

I mean, when you're not, when you're putting, when you're building your business on someone else's property, whether that's using Facebook to rely on 100% to help, you know, grow your business or Amazon or a third party that owns your data. A lot of third-party website builders are like that.

Yeah.

Um, you're basically paying rent for something that you actually should own.

Yeah. And with Amazon, that rent was extremely expensive. And the thing about it is, to your point about third-party platforms, these third-party platforms change their algorithms, change the information on a regular basis anytime.

And, and they're doing it— so this is about data— they're doing it based on data, right? Not based on what's good for you or what the customer— you know, their customer is you, the person who's renting the space on their property.

Yeah.

Um, they're doing it based on your customers.

Yeah.

And they're your customers. And so they're making decisions based on your customers, but you don't know any of that information about what your customers are doing or how they're behaving on the online side of things.

Exactly. Exactly. And that's, and that's why I always tell people all the time when they approach me about starting a business on Amazon is, first of all, own the brand 100%. Make sure that, that you can control the, the distribution side of things and make sure that you have an immense amount of capital to really focus on differentiating yourself and having your own brand that, that's just not living on Amazon alone.

Mm-hmm. And it's good to maybe do test markets.

Absolutely.

You know, like use Amazon as a test place. I always say, especially for people who are looking at search engine optimization to, to help gain more visibility online, my strategic, you know, suggestion generally is let's run a couple of months of AdWords. Let's do some Google search. Because then we get more insight about the keywords people are actually searching and clicking through to your website for. And then we can use those as kind of our starting point for the keyword approach we want to use for the organic search engine optimization. So it's the same with Amazon. You have a product, maybe you're going to use, that's your first product. Maybe that's your, you know, your test product as, hey, how is it? Is it interesting? Is it going to sell? What do we need to do to tweak it? What do we need to do for the product description? Do we need any additional variables for the product? And that's that's your prototype, so to speak. Yeah, but don't put the whole inventory, right? Like, if you've got 10 products, maybe 1 or 2 on Amazon. Yeah, but if people want more, if your business is set up for them to come back, then you need to have that property, that inventory, somewhere else other than 100% in, in Amazon's land, right?

Correct. And one thing I just thought about is every— and even even with Mike and Mike's, uh, in grocery stores, everybody has a certain way that they run things. And Amazon's was essentially an algorithm. And when you understood the algorithm and understood how to work with the data that they gave you, that you could be more successful with your business or less successful.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's the same with, with Amazon as it is with Etsy, as it is with, you know, um, Shopify, as it is with any of these, and they make it easy. Right. Oh my goodness. It's so easy. And that's where they get you, you know, because if it were growing, if growing a business were easy, like if you were growing a sustainable business with the end in mind, I'm always a big fan of saying you build it with the end in mind.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

So if your end in mind is at some point in time, I'm going to sell this business, which generally that's the advice that anyone getting into entrepreneurship should be thinking about. Am I, am I creating a job for myself or am I creating a business asset that I can sell to someone someday?

Correct.

And if that's the end in mind, then You need to be thinking about how, how can I make this marketable to the person who's going to buy it?

Correct.

Well, if I'm selling them something that they have to pay somebody for the rest of the life of the business to keep it live, then that's not an asset that I would invest in. Like, I'm not going to buy something that you built on Amazon or that you built on Etsy. I'll buy something that you have as your own property, as your own inventory, as your own asset. And, and that's when you have full ownership because technically speaking, if you're depending 100% or even 60%, 60% of your business comes from Amazon, well, that's 60% that Amazon owns.

Correct.

Because that's their customer, not yours.

And a lot of times people are, and that's why data is so important, because people really are just buying an audience at the end of the day.

Yeah.

And if the majority of your audience, like you said, 60 to 70% of your audience is already on Amazon, you're just another product to them.

Right, right. And they don't care about you.

Correct.

And they're gonna, like you said, change the algorithm to benefit them, not to benefit you. Um, and so, you know, And for me, this is the part where I get somewhat, ah, I try not to get frustrated because I know it's an educational process, right?

Yeah.

And I know that business owners don't have the experience, or maybe they started the business with maybe just, let me just see if it works, right? Maybe this won't work. So I don't want to invest hours and hours and hours and thousands and thousands of dollars in building something and then find out that it doesn't work. So from a test market standpoint, I get it. From a let me see if this works standpoint, I get it. But when you're an entrepreneur and you're all fricking in, yeah, then that doesn't make sense. And so it's like if you're keeping your toe in the water and you're just putting your toe in the water, but you're talking about it as if you are full all in there, that doesn't equal like to me, that's, that's an imbalance in perspective, right? You might tell me that you're all in, but what I'm looking at is something completely different than what you're saying.

And your, and your results will be different and The data will be so skewed. You'll always, you're, you're, you're almost kind of pointing out that the, and this is not any individual person, but the entrepreneur that is always constantly changing things every other week.

Yeah.

Because they're not all in and they aren't working yet. Because when you're all in, you can do things at such a high velocity. You can see the data quicker versus kind of being half in and you get, you don't see it. And it's like, I've been doing the same thing for a month. Well, it's like, well, yeah, maybe you haven't been doing it at a high enough velocity to truly see where you need to tweak things, where you need to change things, what your customer's saying, how you're adjusting things. Your customers will tell you what they're looking for and what they're not looking for. And you'll know how to direct and structure your business. So with Mike and Mike's, there's a lot of extra layers. There's what does the end customer want? But we also have to think about what the buyer wants to even get into the store to sell to the customer, right? And the more buyers that we talk to, the more data that we're able to gather and say, this is what— these are the 5 top things that these buyers are looking for and what's important to them. So when we're going into a sales meeting, we have to make sure that we're hitting those 5 points, right? And hitting those 5 points efficiently and effectively to where they can see the overall project objective. And they— because they, they're looking at the data too and say, okay, this is what is in the industry. This is what we need. This is what we're looking for. This type of turnover we're looking for. This is the capacity that we're looking for. Can you deliver? And can you— and when you're on the shelf, are you going to sell? Do you have an audience already? You know, all these things.

Yeah. And then there's the comps, right? They're not looking at you compared to nothing. They're looking at you compared to technically your competitors.

Correct.

And how well are you going to perform next to the competitor?

Correct.

Because you're not going to be the only guy on the shelf.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

So there's Hostess, you know, which is, you know, everybody knows the name, the name Hostess. And then there's your cupcake and you've got to figure out how, okay, well, how are you, how well are you explaining the brand to the people who want a better, to make a better decision, but have that sweet tooth? Because the Hostess has been there since they were 4 years old and you're just a brand new company.

I think the greatest advice, I won't say the name, but the greatest advice I got was from someone that was extremely experienced. In the retail grocery space. And they basically told me, they said, Nate, the difference is we'll hold your hand because we understand that you're a startup and you're relatively new, but you have to realize that we have these guys that are coming in that are very robust and experienced. So we're only going to hold your hand for a short period of time before it's like, okay, you guys have to figure it out already. And that's important because again, it's data, it's information to understand, okay, This is the game that we're playing. To your point, there are other— because that's the thing that you can get so excited about your business. You almost think that unconsciously everybody's just as excited.

Yeah.

Everybody wants to buy my product. Everybody wants to buy this service or whatever it is.

It's going to change everybody's life.

It's going to change everybody's life. But you have to understand, these people are human just like you or me. So the buyer at the, at the, at the, at the other side of the table, they're thinking about what makes sense for them. They're thinking about quotas that they have to hit. They're thinking about making sure that their, their boss or their company is going to succeed based on the purchase of this product. And it's going to be innovative and it's going to be successful and it's going to make sense for what they're doing. So you have to kind of detach yourself and detach your ego and say, okay, I'm one of many, but here's how we're different.

Right.

And we understand that.

I love that you said detach your ego because the data, doesn't have an ego. It doesn't have emotions. It doesn't have feelings. It doesn't have any judgment. It's just data. It's just numbers. It's just real, right?

Correct.

So in that video I mentioned that I had done recently, um, you know, I talk about that, um, you know, doing a survey, checking with your friends. Hey, do you think I should do this? Do you think I should do this? Well, let me just break it to you. If you ask your friend to give you an honest opinion, they're not going to be honest.

They're going to be biased.

I mean, they're going to be honest. They're going to want what's best for you, right? But they're not going to be able to give you an unbiased opinion.

Correct.

Data can be unbiased. Right. So it's really, that's why one of the recommendations for a prototype is to go even before you have a product to go out and run an ad campaign and discern from the ad data. I always, I always go back and forth between data and data, but I did Google it and it is data. So I'm going to try and stick with it. The, The reality is what you can get from that data tells you, do you have a product that is going to fit into the marketplace? And if you do, great, go for it. And if you don't, maybe you don't have the right market.

Correct.

It's not that your product sucks or that it's not going to sell, but maybe you're delivering those ads to the wrong group of people who don't have the problem that your product's solving.

Yeah, I agree. I agree 100%. It's, And that's why data is so important to analyze and understand and really dive in deep. And to some people it's like, I don't want to do that. It sounds like a waste of time. It sounds like it's not— I just want to sell my product. And that's the thing too. You have to kind of sit back and say, well, what am I ultimately trying to do? Am I trying to create a sustainable business or I'm trying to create just a hobby?

Right.

Because if it's just a hobby, then okay, by all means, don't, don't ever look at the data.

Right.

You don't have to worry about that. But if you're trying to create a sustainable business, you have to. You have a responsibility. To your, your, you yourself, your team, your customers, to understand what they're saying. A lot of people, especially in the restaurant business, that do really well, they listen to their customers. They listen to what they have to say. They listen to the likes and dislikes. That's why, you know, I look at Publix and George Jenkins. George Jenkins understood his customers and did things that were very innovative to the retail industry, but it was because the customers we're always coming first.

Exactly.

And that's how I was able to be innovative and grow this business.

So one of the other parts of this is, so where is the data coming from?

Mm-hmm.

Right. And so you think about it and you think about big data and you think about Google and Facebook and, and the big four, you know, Amazon and all of those.

Mm-hmm.

And there is a feeling about this big data of it's Big Brother. I don't want people knowing this stuff about me. I want my privacy, you know, don't tread on me, don't come into my space and all of that. Okay. I understand in the theoretical, like I feel your pain. Right. But what's interesting is that our behavior is not matching that attitude. So that means we don't like Facebook is gathering our data, but we're not getting off of Facebook. We don't like Google is gathering our data, but we're still going to Google and asking all of these questions. Right. I am not a, I'm not a person who's afraid of my privacy. I don't believe that there is any privacy, honestly. And so I just, I feel like if I don't have, if I need to be private, then I probably need to change who I am because I just need to be okay with who I am. If I'm not breaking any laws and if I'm being the best person that I can be, I shouldn't have anything to hide. And if, you know, if I'm, if I'm doing something illegal, then I shouldn't be allowed to get away with it because big data doesn't exist. I don't know. That's just kind of where I come from. Maybe we need to, um, you know, I need to get down.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no worries. Yeah, I agree. I think it's important, kind of to your point, where the data is coming from and understanding how it's being analyzed. And like to your point, a lot of people freak out and get kind of annoyed of Google's tracking me, Facebook's tracking me, YouTube's tracking me. But a lot of it really is, it's catering content and especially when you're starting a business, it allows you to put stuff on different platforms. YouTube ads or bumper ads, right? Or Facebook ads or Instagram ads or ads on Hulu. And you have an idea of who the audience is. You can target based on demographic, based on location. You can get really get finite details down to the job descriptions and where they work and how much they spend on a regular basis and how much they, they make in a year.

Right. And then as a business owner, you're making those decisions. Based on a data, a data set that is collected and then used for your marketing purposes. Right. So how this whole process works is that if it weren't for Facebook gathering that data, you wouldn't have a way to reach your market. And so it's like there's this, there's this feeling of symbiosis, like we have to accept that that is the way or we wouldn't have a way.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And if we can embrace that, even if it's on a micro level, like entrepreneurs and people listening to this show are really on a micro, micro level going back to, well, what can I do as an entrepreneur and a business owner to make sure that I am leveraging what data I can gather? Right. And so to me, like you go, you went back to when you were selling on e-commerce on Amazon, it was like, can you get their email address? Can you get them to subscribe to your newsletter? Because that's your database. Those are people that you can retarget to. Those are people that you can reach back out to directly and say, hey, having been a customer of ours in the past, I wanted to let you know that we're having this new product or we've got a new update or we've got new things to share. And you'd be surprised a lot of when we take our own hats off, I think that's the problem is that most entrepreneurs that don't like data gathering, they think of themselves as a consumer and they like, oh, I don't like data gathering. I don't want people to know anything about me. So they operate with that mindset as an entrepreneur, which is the exact opposite of how they need to think, because there should be enough customers who want to tell you about themselves or be interested in your product, or you don't have a company.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And if there's nobody, if everybody is like you thinking like you and how you operate, then you're going to have a hard time getting anybody to buy.

Yeah. There's, yeah. And, and there would be no customers anywhere.

Exactly.

Ever. And I think that's the thing. That was a really good analogy, Chrissanne, because I think that's the thing. A lot of people, when they start a business, they're very optimistic, but pessimistic when it comes to stuff like that. Oh, I don't want to do that. But it's like, wait, you do though.

Yeah.

I can guarantee you've done it with Netflix.

Yep.

Or Hulu or your favorite TV show sent you something and said, oh, you know, enter this now to, to learn more about your top favorite characters or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

Or a book that you like, or you, we unconsciously do it all the time. Yeah. And so like you said, take off the hat and, and put yourself in the, shoes of a customer and understand, hey, look, this is what we do. But then also understand that there is a specific way that it's done to where there's value added. Because a lot of times people try to do those things and then the customer doesn't fill in the information. They're just like, why did they not fill in the information? Well, look at it. Was it— was there too many clicks? Was, was it too abrasive?

The data is the secret.

And again, exactly, it tells you. The information tells you and says, oh, well, they Hey, after this they clicked out, or Google Analytics is really great. It'll show you like a little flowchart and show you where they bounced and what your bounce rate is on your website.

Yeah. And the heat maps will show you where they're actually putting their cursor while they're on your page, on that individual page. And then the other part that just totally just blows my mind is that we're not even looking at abandoned shopping carts. I love, like, not that I love it always, that, you know, those companies that have it figured out. When I actually did something, I went to their website, I clicked add to cart, and then I squirreled, right? Totally forgot, didn't finish, didn't have my credit card with me, didn't complete the process. But because their systems are so sophisticated, they were able to send me a message or retarget back to me saying, hey, did you forget something? You know, if I already had an account with them and they had my email, then their funnel would allow them to say, hey, you know, don't forget you left this thing in your, in your shopping cart. But if you don't have that direct communication with the abandonment of your shopping cart, the data still tells you something, correct? Right. You had 75 abandoned shopping carts in a 30-day period of time. What are you doing? What's, what's slowing the process down? Too many clicks, like you said, or, um, you know, maybe your offer, your, your add-on offers or your suggested, you know, things aren't there, or maybe it's just too cumbersome and clunky for people to get to the, to the part where they check out. But if you don't have that data, you don't know. And so you send out this advertisement that shows to be performing really, really well as far as like reach and, you know, click-throughs, but conversions are down the tubes. If your conversions are down the tubes, there's one of two things wrong. Your offer sucks. They'll get you, get there. And whatever the offer is, is not selling or compelling, or your sales process, that process. And the reason why Amazon and Etsy and all of these other third parties are good, because they have a good user experience.

Absolutely.

You've got to have a good user experience, but that doesn't mean you have to put all of your marbles into a third party's basket, right? You still can invest in making sure that that process is streamlined on your website.

Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And again, like you said, you have to look at the information that, that these platforms are giving to you and you, and that's the thing. What we're, I think what we're truly saying is you do have to depend on these third-party platforms initially, but then create another basket in which it's an email list that's yours and yours alone that you own. And within the email list, you understand your customer, you start to cater specific offerings towards your customer to create a fan base, a very strong fan base, to where as you move, they move, right? And there's ownership within that, as opposed to if Facebook tomorrow said, hey, we're getting rid of Facebook pages, some businesses would die, right? Just because they put everything in there, put everything in that.

Yeah, all those eggs are in that one basket, and that is the scary part for me. You know, I can speak to it from a group standpoint. So I was talking to you earlier about this and going back to that anecdotal, like, hey, we asked 10 out of 10 people if we should add this to the menu, or I asked my friends if I should, you know, do this or that or whatever. And that's all anecdotal. And that's important because that's like genuine feedback that you can get. And it's just sometimes it's important. But again, your egos are in the way and your relationships are there. So that could be skewing your data.

Yeah.

Um, but what, when I was growing the Lakeland Business Leaders Facebook group, um, I was more focused myself on the digital data, right? There's gotta be a balance. And so this kind of story is trying to articulate the fact that you can't 100% put all your eggs in the digital database building part, because you definitely have to talk about the customer human experience and understand what what's happening there. And the digital data will only get you so far. Okay. So here's a story. As I was building Lakeland Business Leaders, I was looking at the data and I was looking at click-throughs like, all right, I'm going to share a link to the Lakeland Business Leaders website to have them join and become members. Okay. So then I'm looking at analytics and seeing, okay, how did that perform? So from a, you know, from a post to a, you know, how many clicks did we get? Then how many members did we get? Because you we didn't run any ads, but it was just kind of how frequently are people actually clicking the action, taking the action of clicking inside of the group versus wanting to read it all inside of the group. Like, definitely did some tests with this and my data wasn't telling me anything good. Like, I wasn't getting these great click-through rates. I was like, oh man, this kind of sucks and nobody's really paying any attention. So maybe we should just put the kibosh on this whole thing. Right? And so the numbers of the group were going up and the engagement was going up. But not necessarily the click-throughs. Okay. So I'm thinking, all right, well, does this work? Well, then I had my next event and at my next event, people were like, hey, can I join here? Like they didn't want to click through. They didn't, you know, maybe it was, maybe my user process wasn't fleshed out. So it was the combination of human feedback. Hey, I'm ready to join. Here's my money. I know that I'm here for this event and this is why, but I didn't want to join online for whatever reason. And then they came in, they joined in person. So there's, there's that hybrid or that, you know, there's different customers, right? And a lot of my customers were more of those in-person, touchy-feely, wanting to connect offline.

Yeah.

Even though that feeling of connection online was helping them stay connected between our events. And so that was one kind of part of the story of like, okay, what's the other side of the— what's the other side of the data is, you know, are people showing up to events and maybe not engaging online? The other one was the feedback like I was starting to feel like I was not getting anywhere at the early, early stages. Right. This is— I've got, I don't know, 50, 100, 250 people in this Facebook group, but I was getting people talking to me going, I'm really loving what you're doing. Keep doing what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But they weren't engaging in the online— in the online world.

Yeah.

So I couldn't use that data to tell me whether this was working or not, but I could tell the human data. That it was, you know what I mean?

Yeah. I see what you're saying.

So it's like, you've gotta have that balance between what does the human actually say and what is the data telling you? Don't just 100% throw it out the window if the online data isn't doing well. Right.

I agree. I agree. When we, for Mike and Mike's ran, we ran various ads and the data was definitely telling us a specific audience, a specific demographic. Demographic, and then we did a few pop-up shops and that demographic was exactly the one that was coming to the pop-up and asking about the product and getting excited about it, about the product and wondering where they could buy the product and asking us different questions and information. And then within that, we started to say, okay, well, this is the customer, but then now you break it down and say, okay, well, what, what are they looking for? What are specific things that they've kind of wanted in these products? Or they're just happy that the product exists, right? In general.

And are they only going to be able to get your product if they come to the market every single time you have a market?

Correct.

Right.

Correct. Correct.

So that's when you start asking for email addresses and saying, hey, you know, stay on our list so that when we do start to sell online or when we do have a new place that we're available, correct, we can let you know that that's happening.

Correct. Exactly. Exactly. You have to, you have to capture them in some way, whether it was either Hey, follow us on Instagram. And then we put a, you know, a little Linktree right in there to guide them through a funnel that gets them on an email list. Or say, hey, sign up, here's an email list, or here's our email list to learn more, to stay up to date about what we're doing, when we're launching in the stores.

Right.

That's— those are ways that you're building, because it's the first initial interaction with the customer. They're excited, they want to learn more about the brand, they want to understand where you guys are located, what you're doing, what your offerings are. You have to, you have to hold on to that connection. You can't just— even It's a per— you get excited about the purchase, but then they're gone forever. You don't want them to be gone forever. You want them to continue to coexist in your, in your brand and in your brand community.

Right, exactly. And it's not the one and dones that are going to grow your business. It's the one and ongoing fan base, you know, like building that fan base and saying, oh, this was great. Or a sample, you know, you, you've got a sample. They taste it, they buy it, they become a customer then.

Yeah.

A customer in that moment. But how do you win them long term?

Correct.

How do you get them to become brand ambassadors or to start telling the word of mouth? Everybody wants word of mouth. I mean, that's the ultimate, like, you know, crown jewel.

Yeah.

When someone is talking about your company and telling others that they should go buy it or that they should try it. But that doesn't happen organically, systematically. It happens organically when you have a good product, you have good customer service, and people are happy and pleased. But as far as being able to put the accelerator on it, there is no— like you can't say, okay, everybody go tell all of your friends today so that we can sell out of our inventory because you don't have a way to control that word of mouth. That's just, that's just the pièce de résistance. Once everything starts to grow, then you start to get that. But how do you build a strategy around getting word of mouth? And a lot of businesses live in that really, you know, that lower tier of, oh, I'm good, I'm good. I've got word of mouth. That's how I grow my business. That's great. But this month nobody talked about you. What are you gonna do when you don't get a customer?

Yeah. Really great businesses, the Ubers of the world have done it. I'm pretty sure Netflix has done it as well. They, they, they have referral-based programs where they incentivize customers that are already spending money on their platform to tell their friends about their product. And when they tell their friends, they get bonuses or they get free rides or whatever. And that's ways that I've seen, like one of the greatest models I ever saw was when Lyft entered in the market. I was in college at the time and it was almost unreasonable, but they were offering 50 free rides. And me and my college roommate, we would just hop in the Lyfts and said, hey man, we're going to save money on gas probably for the next month. Cause we just took Lyfts to school every single day. And guess what? Friends would see us and say, dude, where's your car at? Oh, I took a Lyft. I'm gonna take a Lyft. What's Lyft?

Right. You weren't intentionally going about telling everybody about Lyft. It just was the answer to the question.

Exactly. Because they understood if they could immerse themselves in our lives, it would just come up within conversation. And again, it went back to the dataset and understanding, hey, look, if we offer this to college students or in college communities, these kids are going to be saving money and they're going to be excited about it and they're just going to tell it to their friends. And that's what happened.

And these companies built their businesses because they gathered data.

Yep.

That is the only thing you, if you ask the founders of Lyft or of Uber, what kind of company they are, they're not a taxi company. They're a tech company. They're a software company.

Correct.

Right. That's what their business was built on. Because in order to get a Lyft or in order to get an Uber, guess what you have to do? You have to give up your email address and nobody, no cars coming to pick you up just because you're waving. I mean, if you want a taxi, you can wave your hand.

Correct.

Correct. And that's— it's like success leaves clues, right? Success doesn't— is not a mystery. But why are we so resistant on a micro level, on these entrepreneur, smaller businesses level, to follow the steps of the successful businesses, even if it's a smaller scale, right? You don't need 10 million people on your email list. 1,000, 500 even is better than zero. And so when my, when my clients kind of are like hesitant to ask for emails on their website, like, what am I going to, what am I going to email them? That's your consumer hat. Like you're, you have to think about it. Like somebody wants to give you their email address. You might not want to give you your email address. And that's a personal problem. Yeah.

Yeah.

But somebody is going to say, you know what? I want to stay in the loop with this company because I might need to travel and I want to, I want to book a stay there someday. Not today, but I want to, I want to remember them. You know, sometimes getting on an email list for me is like a bookmark. It's like a way for me to remember that this exists so that I can eventually get to get around to being able to explore more or follow along or see what kind of content they put out.

Yeah.

The other question that comes along a lot when you're talking about building an email database is how often am I supposed to send an email? Hmm. Well, email, like you said earlier, it's all about value. So if you can't bring value, don't send an email. Don't send an email just because.

Yeah.

But you can set— consistency isn't daily, it's not weekly, and it's not monthly. Consistently is setting a plan in place and saying, I'm going to send an email once a quarter.

Yeah.

And that's all.

Yeah.

You know, if that's all you have value to share and time to be able to put into the thought of what you want to send to your email just once a quarter is still a consistent strategy.

Yeah, for sure. Um, and I think it all goes down to, again, understanding your audience, understanding your customer, understanding your industry. That— I think those are key things to, to understand. And based on how you understand your industry is based on how you will maneuver your email list, because every industry is different. Some industries, like you said, they can function off once a quarter, but other industries, they have, you have to be consistent because things are always changing. Things, there's always updates. If you're, if you're in anything tech, there's an update almost every week. So you have to continuously update your customers and let 'em know the changes and let 'em know the tweaks, the new information that's out there.

Yep.

So that's, that's at least how I think about it.

Yeah. And then there's also that, when you, if, if you've invested in gathering the data and you have seasons in business where business is slow and you have the opportunity, you know, you've got team members that you're paying whether you have customers or not, right? I mean, you're hoping that when the dry season or the wet season or whatever it is that your season is high, you know, that you're able to meet the demand. But what about when your season goes? I mean, because there's usually an ebb and flow in every business. You know, you've got your high season, you've got your low season, and most of the time holidays and things like that are that high season. But my question is, what could you do with data for filling your empty book during the slower times? So if you had a database of, let's just say, 1,000 customers and you wake up one day and you're just like, well, you know, this is pretty slow for a Tuesday. I would really like to get some, some customers today. And what could you do? Well, without a database, without data, you can do nothing. You could do a Facebook post and maybe hope for the best. But if you have a targeted list of people who have been your customers over time and you go, hey, all of you beautiful people, why don't you come in and say hello and mention this email and we're going to give you your appetizer for free, or we're going to give you one service, you know, at 50% off or something. Because it's not necessarily about— it's not always just about your cost of goods sold, right? It's also about making sure your investment in the things that you're spending money on is good. So I'm going to give you an example. We have web designers, we have graphic designers, we have content creators on staff, right?

Yeah.

And if I don't have any websites for my designers to work on, I have to pay her, I have to pay him, you know, I have to keep— so I need to make sure that even if I'm selling a website at cost, I'm not paying that person to do nothing, right? I've got to have enough business in order to keep that person on staff.

Yeah.

And so sometimes it's making those kinds of decisions where it's not like all about I don't want to do a giveaway because a giveaway is— if you're doing a giveaway with the right strategy and gathering data, you know, you've got to put a value on that, right? So if you get doing a contest, for example, or if you're doing something that you can allow people to start to enter to become a part of your newsletter list, if you're bringing value, then people are likely to want to be a part of your network or become a part of your database. Yeah. But if you're doing it right, like you said, if it's clunky, if it feels awkward, you know, if, if you're, if your messaging is off, then, you know, they'll, they're going to opt out.

Yeah. Yeah. And I like, I like how you presented it because as a business grows, you have to think about, you have to think about ultimately sales and what drives the business and how you're getting those sales. And so to your point, if you have other people on the team that are depending on these sales in order to get paid, that is going to determine your strategy and how you do things.

Right.

I mean, it's determining our strategy and how we do things. The more sales we get, the more people we can add to the team, the more people we can pay, the more people we can pay consistently. It's all about that. So you're, you're really thinking about that. You're thinking about, okay, we're structuring the business this way and this is the funnel that we currently have and this works. But as your business grows, maybe that funnel has to change a little bit.

And Again, if you want to hit the throttle, you've got to have some sort of data to be able to hit the throttle to do it. I mean, that's really ultimately the point. You can argue that you don't like it. You can argue that you wish big brother wasn't watching, but you know what, here's, there's enough people like me out there that aren't concerned about that, that those are your customers. Find people who aren't trying to run for the hills and actually double down on, on building up that database so that your business can grow and be consistent and strategic. Now here's another thing. If you're listening and you're not in the growth mindset, That's okay too. I've learned, you know, starting to become a strategic growth coach and having these conversations, and it's really interesting because I can go all the way back to like 10 or 11 years ago when I was really early on in building my business, and I thought everybody, every business wants to grow, right? Every business wants to grow was my, my, my like approach. And you would be surprised at how many people early, early on were clear on, I don't want to grow. Yeah, if I 2 more customers a month, that means I'm going to have to hire somebody and that means I'm going to have to get 6 more customers in order to pay for that other person. And if you know your numbers that well and you know that where you are is where you want to be, fantastic.

Correct.

But if the message you're sending is different than what the actual numbers are saying, then there needs to be some alignment in figuring that out, right? Don't say you want to grow if you don't have the systems to, to prepare yourself for that. Yeah, because get ready. Ready, because there's a lot, there's a lot of opportunity out there. There's a lot of meat on the bone, so to speak.

Yeah.

Um, and, and so when you hit that throttle, um, then be prepared, I guess, is what I was trying to say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I, I think, I think to your point, if there, there's, there's two things that could happen. Either, either you could be completely wrong with the data that you've gathered and it doesn't quite hit right, or you could be extremely right and you better make sure that your backend is ready to capture these new customers and make sure that the customers that you have are happy. Because like we've said it multiple times, you have— you, you really have one chance and one opportunity with these customers. That first impression is everything. If it's a bad impression, it's really tough, extremely tough to get that person to continue to buy or continue to be willing to be a part of your brand because I do it all the time. I don't know this person from Adam if I'm hopping on a new website. And so I'm not being biased at all. I'm just being a customer. So if I have a terrible experience, I'm probably never going to interact with them again. And again, it goes back to data that, that the data's there. I'm sure there's the data's there on what number, like if you're, if you're a little bit off with your customer, what percentage you have of being able to convert them again, it's probably extremely low.

Right. Right. And, and don't don't get me wrong, open rates, and it's abysmal. I mean, you gotta be prepared. Like, I love one of the things that Donald Miller said a long time ago. Somebody asked him, how do you feel about when people opt out? He goes, I love it because that tells me something. It tells me that the information that I shared wasn't necessarily for them. And so now I want people on my list that want to be on my list. I don't want to be dissonant. I don't wanna be a clashing symbol. Bubbles in somebody's ear when I'm sending out a message, right? But it, it puts us on like where we have to be accountable. We have to look at that and go, okay, wait a minute, am I targeting the right people? Do I get— did I get the right people on my list? And, and is that message aligned with them? But it also is just the, the celebration of the— it's like, I like people when they call themselves out so I don't have to worry so much about that, you know? So it's like, don't be afraid for people to come on check things out and then leave, because that's, that's reality.

Yeah.

And then also the other, the other discussion, since we spent so much time on like email lists and that kind of database, open rates, generally speaking, depending on industry, are no better than 20%. If you've got a higher than 20% open rate, you're killing it. You're killing it.

Yeah.

So that means if you have 100 people on your list, 20 people are going to open it. That means 80 of them are not. That doesn't mean those 80 people didn't see your email. It just means they didn't open it. And that doesn't mean they're not gonna open the 3rd or the 10th or the 25th or the 100th email. So you can't just stop and go, oh man, nobody opened my email. You've got to have a consistent plan. But as you're doing that consistent plan, getting more people on the list, it's a numbers game.

Yeah.

So if you have 100 and you can only have 20, if you have 1,000, you have 200, if you have 2,000, you have 400, you know, then, then you're starting to cook with grease.

Yeah.

And now when you push that button that says send that email, you can start to guarantee that people are going to be taking action and doing a certain thing. And obviously the open rate isn't the conversion rate, so you're one— you're gonna probably look at a 1 or 2% conversion rate from your 20% open rate. And it's understanding those numbers so that you can do something to drive traffic to your business.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that, because if you don't understand the numbers, then you'll, you'll get discouraged and say, oh man, this is, this is terrible, only had 5 people open the email. And I sent this message and I worked so hard on it. But again, you're, you're working towards something, you're working towards a goal, and that goal is to just be consistent. And again, we talked about the industry and we talked about understanding what industry you're in, and based on what industry you're in, that can determine your consistency.

So, yeah. Yeah. So what are some of the places that you gather data in your business?

That's a good question. So for us, since we're a product, a lot of it, the biggest thing for us has been pop-up shops. And Instagram. Instagram's probably— because if you look at, especially with food, and Instagram to me is the, is the, the best platform to be on for food. Okay. And so we'll, you know, run a quick hyper, hyper-targeted local, local ads because we've really been promoting in Lakeland and kind of getting people excited about what we're doing. And we'll be able to have a strong understanding of kind of who the customer is, kind of what they're looking for, what ads that they'll click on, what ads they won't click on. And then pop-up shops again for us has been huge because again, you can show the product, they can taste the product, they can get an idea of what the product is like. They can get an idea of the price of the product, if there's any hesitancy, if there's any pushback. And we were, you know, we've been able to really kind of determine what the price point is and what people are looking for and what flavors that they like the most. And really kind of back into our model and say, okay, well, people consistently asked for, hey, can I get one of each? And it's like, well, we don't sell one of each yet. So it's like, oh, well maybe we should sell one of each. So maybe we should have a variety pack. And different things like that, that's gold. That's a lot of times people kind of overlook that. They're just like, oh no, this is how I do things. It's like, no, your customer's literally telling you exactly what you're looking for, exactly what they're looking for.

Yeah, absolutely. That made me think of a guy, I'm trying to remember his name. His name's Marcus Sheridan. And what you just talked about was how he made himself, like he went from being a pool guy, like a local pool guy in, I don't know, North Carolina maybe. But then it was during the recession in like 2008, 2009, whenever the, the things started to plummet and he was like, I have all this time 'cause nobody's buying pools. So he started to do his own market research based on emails that he would get from previous customers or questions he would get to his email, to his, through his website. And he, he turned that into a frequently asked questions kind of blog strategy. And so it was like, you know, what's the difference between Marcite and whatever other, you know, blah, blah, blah there is because people were Googling those types of questions. And so he ended up becoming the targeted, like, place where everybody was going because his website was optimized and all the content, and he was answering all these questions. And so he took that, and he's no longer a pool guy. Now he's like a content guy. Like, he's an influencer in the space. He's written a book. He's done all these things, but he never had any intention to do that. He just sat down one day, you know, late at night. He's like, I, I, I, how am I gonna keep my business afloat? Because nobody's buying pools. And he— that's the strategy that he did, but it was all based on data. Yeah, he was just doing something with the data that he had collected, and then once he put that on, on his website, then that data was like, look at all these people coming and asking these questions. And he was the number one pool guy in his area because of SEO, because he was the highest ranked. And then, and don't discount the fact that when you're highly ranked, staying there depends upon how valuable the content is.

Correct.

When someone clicks the link, right? If they bounce, then you're sending a trigger to Google that says, oh, this said that it was going to be good, but it's not. As you can tell, I get really excited about this stuff.

So, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, I think, you know, understanding what to do with the data and putting it into play, it's like, okay, now I know that people want us to do one-offs or one, you know, how many different ones of the product that you were just describing. But what are we going to do about it?

Correct.

Does it make financial sense for us to start to do this and meet that demand? And A, should we wait a little bit to see if it's just a one-off person that's asking that question or if there's enough people for us to do it?

Yeah. Consistently asking the question. Exactly. And that's the thing too. Again, when the company first launched, it was just MVP, but when it hit, it's like, wait a second, there's something here. So then we went back in, did research and realized, oh wow, okay, well it's because the market that we launched in is in the top 4 in the entire country healthy, conscious cities. So that's why when we launched this product, people were so excited and willing to buy and purchase the product because the market was already there.

Right, right. So I asked you the question about ways that you're gathering data. You know, we've mentioned Google Analytics in a previous conversation. It's surprising to me, eh, how many websites are out there that don't have Google Analytics installed. It's a simple script. Yeah, it's free. There should be no reason why people aren't gathering that data. And then again, going back to, are you looking at it? Like, yeah, log in to Google Analytics at least once a month and just see if your numbers are better or worse than they were last month. Even if you don't set goals, even if you just the bare, bare, bare minimum. Right. But one of my favorite places to gather data or to look at the data nowadays for business owners who have a hard time wrapping their head around it is Google My Business.

Mm.

Their GMB listing is so chock full pool of insights to what's going on in the marketplace, right? Like how many people are clicking for directions? How many people are clicking to call? How many people are— how many often are you showing up in the map pack, the 3-map pack versus the organic results and all of these different things with a click of a button. You just install the Google My Business app on your phone. You connect, make sure you're logged into that Google account on your phone, and then you just click it and you can see a lot of things. You also know Like, I don't know if you've noticed as a consumer where you can see it's usually busy at this time or it's usually not busy at this time. You know, they're gathering all of that information on your behalf to help serve the consumer that you are busy or not busy. This is a good place, good time to come. But with the pandemic and also all of these different things, they've added some really great features that you can go in and update. So I don't know, I'm not trying to do a sales pitch, but it might be time for businesses that are listening to this to go in and look at their GMB because it's free. It's accessible. It's simple. My team's kind of working on a, on a basic Google My Business course, like a course that we're getting ready to launch. So that's why I'm kind of— we're in, we're in all of this right now.

Yeah.

But there are tools out there that are free, you know, installing Google Analytics. I said Search Console is another incredible tool that allows you to get more insight to the keywords and the behavior of how your website is performing inside of the search engines themselves.

Yeah.

Um, but it's just, it's fascinating to me, I guess why I care so much about this is because when you want to make decisions, if you don't have the data, you're starting at zero. And so build a website, do it the right way, put Google Analytics on there and let it ride. Right. 6 months, a year, whatever. Just, just do that much. And then when you want to come talk to somebody, or if you're looking at a strategy, then you can say, well, let's look at the data. And decide where we want to ramp up or where we want to focus our attention or what goals we can set so that we can be a little bit more sophisticated in what we're learning about the behavior of people who come to our website.

Yeah, I love that because we're in the process of— we've fully revamped our website and one of the first things I'm going to do is reconnect Google Analytics because that, to me, Google Analytics is a, is a great, relatively free tool that you can just look on the back end and see, do they come from Facebook? Did they come from Instagram? Did they come from some third-party website? Where in the country did they come from? Oh, they came from this place here. How long did they stay on? What's the bounce rate? Bounce rate is basically how long they stay on the website. Oh, it was really quick. Why was it so quick?

Yep.

Obviously that was not what they were looking for. So maybe that's not my customer.

So yeah, for sure. And, and then also if it's overwhelming to think about all of that, there are tools and softwares to create dashboards and also opportunities to kind of connect website to social messaging and then use all of those tools that can help people who don't really want to have a live chat on their website to connect that to kind of a unified inbox, if you will, where all of those messages are kind of coming to the same place because it can get overwhelming.

Yeah, for sure.

But I just really love data.

I agree too. Numbers, numbers never lie. It tells you the truth and And the greatest thing that I get excited about is you, you look at, you look at the, the data, you analyze it, you go to the market, and if you're right, the market confirms what you already know.

Yeah.

And that, that's what gets you more excited. 'Cause it's like, okay, I'm on the right track here.

Exactly.

Now let me take the next step and the next step and the next step.

So for sure. All right. Well, thanks for listening everybody. And this was a great show, a topic that I hold near and dear to my And if you'd like to help us get the word out about this podcast, check out the post on our Facebook page. We'd love to know how you're feeling about our new audio wave videos that we're creating. So send us a message to the Facebook page. If you've got any comments about your favorite part of this episode, please let us know. We're looking forward to learning what you loved and what you would like us to have on future episodes. We'd love to hear from you. We'll see you next week, Polk County. Woop woop!

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