Lunch & Learn - Session 1 with Katie Powell Hinitz, Ph.D., MBA

Hi, there. Welcome to this week's Lunch and Learn with the Founder's Office, and I'm Tom Powell. And joining me today are our co hosts, Jacqueline Kuyper and Candice Powell. And we have a very special guest Today with us, Dr. Katherine Ann Powell Hinitz, who we also know as Kiki. And, yes, there is some resemblance in the names there. But I want to start off, you're catching us right as we're starting lunch, and that's how these things oftentimes go. And we had an opportunity. Katie and I were walking yesterday, and she was telling me about a very interesting program or an idea or a framework which is ideally matching the capital to the idea and the people that are moving, something growing, and it's oversimplified, but, Katie, welcome to our Lunch and learn. Thank you for jumping on with us.

Thank you for having me. So excited to be here.

And Jackie and Candace aren't really sure what we're talking about today, but I think it's a perfect lead in tell me about this word that you introduced me to yesterday, which is psychographics.

Yeah. So I think the best distillation, it's a framework that I think most everyone, once they know the fancy term, will be like, oh, of course. Of course I know that. But it's a combination of what culminates into a psychological profile of a group of people that you're in business trying to target. So it could be for funding, it could be for actual customers. It could even be for employees. It's really just a way to really round out what would come into as a Persona of individuals that you are trying to understand and effectively target. What the. The. It's. It's really just the additive of what people most often to a fault, deep default to which is demographics. So people go, okay, I need to know where my people are. I need to know, you know, what age bracket they're in. I need to know their race and ethnicity, their culture. Really, the external environment in which people operate. Psychographics takes it to an individualized level. And that internal landscape of, okay, yeah, maybe I fall into those categories, but what really motivates me? How do I show up? And what interests me in getting involved or utilizing something or really dedicating my time and money to something. That is where the rubber really hits the road when you want to know your customer, your partners, and really any group of people to a much deeper level.

So in our capital alignment methodology, we actually back up into just basic marketing psychology, which is if you tell the story right you will attract the right type of customer and repel the wrong type of customer so that you're not wasting your time. And in our model of raising capital or helping founders raise capital, we say the same thing, right. You build your story where you articulate your problem that fast. And if you can articulate the problem that you're solving and then you can show the simplicity and the value of solving that problem, you, you will attract the investors that have already identified that. And what was interesting about that is then you and I went off tangent, as I often do, which was we were talking about nonprofits because I've been sitting on nonprofit boards for over three decades and raising capital and investors and people that give money to nonprofits are motivated by what problem they're solving.

Sometimes, not always it's not. Yeah, sometimes you're right. Sometimes, sometimes they just write it because somebody asked. But, but, but you, we were specifically targeting down to a, I think it was a county led group that you're doing with and you're like, that county's not going to invest in you because they don't have the right model to invest in what you're doing. Right. So is that something you align with in this psychographics?

Yeah. So I'm going to take it kind of a step back because you said some really interesting points. I think I, A psychological profile has to be handled with patience and an under, like a level of humility. Right. I think we can all walk in and go, well, we can assume what resonates or we start to test what resonates and ooh, that resonates really well. But we have a confirmation bias inherent in our, in our personal hardware. And so if you're going to deploy a framework of psychographics, it's, it's inherently a behavioral science model. It's a methodology that helps you really move yourself out of the way, get your assumptions out of the way to get to the core picture. An example that you were sharing is a client that I have right now and not getting too many, too many specifics. The broader scope of what they're doing is they're looking for funding right now for a specific, specific expansion of their services. But really they're, they're homegrown for decades in a particular region. That region will not, based on the sentiment analysis that I've been doing with them, find it a compelling enough reason to give to this foundation for the purpose of them expanding services elsewhere. Why? Because they are interested in keeping their healthcare focused in their region. And so the psychographics start to help paint a picture of dispelling some pretty critical assumptions. Right. You can say, oh wow, we've had in this case decades of support. We have a strong community backing. People believe in what we do. We have all of these positive signals. Here's how we can show them. We're going to even expand, expand on our mission. We're going to do even more great work. But the critical.

The critical thing that people often miss is actually talking to those people and not with leading questions that you think are great, but having an approach that's objective to actually get down to what their core motivations are. In this case, it's been wildly compelling to be able to say yes, they'll fund you not for that. And if you were to go out with that, you might fracture some of the great reputation that you've built. So I think this was a stark example as we were talking about the importance of moving your assumptions out of the way. People in this, in any line of field, any, any kind of executive level often thinks that, well, they know I know the customers or I can intuit, you know, what my customers or funders want. But a critical component that can really give you the data that you need to make the right decisions is an objective and more methodical understanding of the psychological profile.

Can you give us some examples of that like objective line of questioning? I think you talked about this confirmation bias and we, our biases are so inherent and so deep and so multi layered that we can think we're being objective and there's getting too objective is really, really, really difficult.

Right? Yeah.

Like peeling an onion. So how do you, yeah, give us some examples of what an objective line of questioning would actually look like.

Yeah, I think you, you raised such an important question and it really comes down to the who. And this is something that I think people underestimate the power of influence of. If you have a vested interest and you are talking to somebody who you have a strong relationship with, the likelihood that they will be as transparent with you about their behaviors or perceptions is vastly over overestimated. It's just if people, people aren't as candid when there's relationship and social complexities on the line. And so one of the fastest ways to objectivity is to get yourself out of the way, actually have somebody on speaking on your behalf. There's also some really great questions in terms of just asking the same question. They say about four to five times in slightly varied ways. There's a book that's called the Dark Art of I'm looking. Hold on. Okay, well, I will link it to you guys. It says this. Now I'm like, sidetracked on this book. The dark art and magic of marketing or something like that. All about psychographics. Well, not all of it, but he touches on this where if you say, jackie, I swear I'm getting to your question. But it's so interesting.

No, you are. You are. You've answered by saying, get out of the way. That's. That's smart. That answers the question. But I know there's.

There's layers.

Layers to it. Of we don't even know our own motivations. And I think that's the even more compelling piece. And so one of the most poignant examples is there was a study done where people were asked what made them buy a particular pair of jeans online. Okay. And so when you say, what's the biggest factor for you buying a pair of jeans? People will say, fit, first and foremost. But if you bought it online, how do you know the fit? And so it's again, starting with that same question of, well, what motivated you? They'll tell you one answer, then you put it into context and say, that's interesting. Thank you for sharing that. Within this landscape, you didn't have that ability to test fit. So what else motivated you? Oh, well, price. Price was a big one. Right. Well, you could have gone somewhere and gotten a better price. So what else would have motivated you? It's being patient with someone to disentangle their own underlying expectations of what motivates them that helps you get that. That level of psychographics that's really just that rich culmination of self reflection, I would say.

I love it. And you're helping people learn themselves. You're learning them by helping them learn themselves.

Yeah, absolutely.

So how does someone in the. In the thick of this, who is currently in their own way, which I think is what we see most of the time. Right. One of. We were talking earlier. Jackie and I were chatting earlier, and I. The number of times I get asked, whenever we host an event and I'm talking to a founder about our event, they go, are there investors in the room? And I've always just inherently thought, that's. That's such the wrong answer. You don't know if they're the right investors for you. You don't know if this is the right environment. You don't even know. That's such a vague question that you don't know who the audience is. Yes, there's investors in the room. Are Your investors in the room, do you know who your investors are? How does somebody in thick of this go through this journey, this self exploration journey.

So like, I mean, I think the, there's kind of the gold star approach which is get an external person to come do these analysis for you because that's really where you're, you're going to get your confirmation bias out of the way. You don't have to do that to get started. Big believer in progress over perfection.

But I think you hit on something really interesting, Ken, which is, hold on.

Our dad's having a big proud moment.

He's gonna cry. He's gonna cry.

Kiki, let's get this on camera.

Just doing the Lord's work over here. Can you and me. But one of the, you hit on something so interesting, which I think is the core signal of a problem is if you get asked, do you know who your investors are? Do you know your ideal investors? Most people are going to say, Yeah, I do, 100%.

They absolutely know who it is for certain.

And that is, that is why I preface this of like there is a level of humility that you have to embrace of I really don't. And honestly, they might not know either. And it's such an individual game. Right? The motivate. The thing that's going to motivate me to do something is going to be largely different than what motivates you. But what we can do is aggregate themes and get more data to understand nuance and how we approach a profile of a cohort of potential investors. But at its core, it's always going to be an individual game. It's always going to be something where you have to understand themes of individual motivations that culminate into a group. So to answer your question, I think you can make progress first by understanding and dispelling your own beliefs that you do know, that you do know. And I mean in this day and age, you can look at questions, you can start your own survey of what motivated you. Go deeper than maybe an NPS or a demographic profile and start talking with individuals and ask them what motivates them. You're not going to get that deep level. You're still going to have some of that confirmation bias. You're going to be listening with a certain ear. You're going to be compelled to actually sell them while doing this research which muddies the water. But you don't have to be a scientist to be able to get this information. You just have to stay curious and stay really humble that there's a lot that you don't know. And being curious to find that out will benefit you immensely.

So, Katie, on that line again, back to our capital alignment model that we work with is not every investor is meant for your venture and actually the majority aren't. But the more you cultivate a relationship with those investors, and for many of our founders that are going to be serial founder, serial entrepreneurs, that cultivating those relationships allows them to find the right investors. And I think this is one of the keys that we've had over our career, specifically Candace and I and then Jackie working together, was that we found what the investors were looking for and then we matched the right investment to them for that risk profile or what they were interested in. Various things. So what you've done is you've created a framework around knowing those people that allows the nonprofits, the founders, whatever it is, the business people to align with the right type of capital.

Yeah.

And ideally for a long term, whatever that looks like. Right. Because if you know them, then when it gets tough, it's like any other relationship. It's not about when it's rosy, it's about when it's tough.

Yep, Yep. I would say I have one clarification. I certainly did not create the methodology of psychographics, but it is something that I'm a big proponent of. I would say I think you made up the word.

I just want to say because.

Googled it beforehand. I am not, I do not have the level of influence to be googleable yet in terms of my vernaculars.

So I love it.

But I, I think, yeah, to, to go back to what you're saying about your model, it is, it's about, it's about having a rich understanding of what motivates the people you are trying to target. And so it's just a, a layer deeper to really understand. Okay, this is who we think is our ideal customer profile, our ideal investor model. Our just the people, the sizable group we want to target. Now you need to answer the question of, well, what motivates them to choose us? What motivates them to withstand maybe a different environment with me as a partner? And so it's, it's continually. It. This isn't really a one stop shop. It should be project by project. It should be something that you continuously invest in just like you would with quality improvement. It's understanding that people change, so do their motivations. And if those people are the people you want at your table for a long time, you have to invest in knowing them over time.

Wow. I love that because I think that we've definitely had founders in the past entrepreneurs that one, swore that they were the smartest person in the room and two, swore that they knew everybody that they were doing business with and they knew very little about. They just used their filter and this tool seems like that you could help them actually visually and intellectually and just intuitively also be able to understand.

How that goes. So Katie, Dr. Kathryn, tell me about the kind of clients that you work with and how would someone go ahead and reach out to you and where could you fit in this founder's process of what people are doing business in.

Yeah, that's a great question. One I probably should have a more prepared answer for.

So we can post my my client intake form link with you all from my website of Kindred Consulting Group. I would say that the process that we're talking about largely is. Is a project by project basis. That's more of a, of a contract of saying, hey, I've got this ideal customer profile. I've got this ideal investor model. And I am humble enough to say I'm not sure we've dug this deep. Right. Or I would like to learn more. Or maybe it's. We're not getting a lot of traction here. And one of the, one of the best things about something like this, like a psychographic project is you get an external advocate. You. So with some of my clients, right, I'm, I'm there and I'm going, oh my gosh, you know, tell me about your experience with them. They go, it's great because they were willing to talk with me. So obviously they have a great relationship with this person. And then I get to share some of their, their insights from me. And it just, it's another layer of deepening their understanding and commitment to your organization. At least that's what this process really is. It has a byproduct of. So a project like this would really just be what would probably be a feasibility assessment that happy happy to support people with. But the scope of the project is really dependent on where, where folks are and what their needs are. But I think a core central component of if I would be the right person to support is are you interested in learning more about the, the behavioral motivations of why people choose you and why they may be not choosing you in this moment and you know, trusting an objective person to come in and do that analysis for you?

I see so much value in it. I also love the pictorial graphs that you could add to this. Candice, it looks like we've got a question or two.

From someone in the audience. Okay.

I'm gonna let that because we're on a tight timeline with the.

I know we are.

Dr. Katie Powell, you said I can get started on my own after getting out of my own way. What is the best first step to checking my bias? I don't know that I'm ready to hire a consultant just yet.

That's a great question.

We're in the age of you can have your own research assistant. Treat it like a research project. This is science. And so the, the better methodology that you have up front will check your bias. You're going to have to really question your assumptions. So. So two things there is first treated as a research study. Work with whatever AI engine you're using. Perplexity is probably a really good one for any research steps that you need and have it come up with questions, really speak to it to create a research plan that is bespoke to your needs. Then ensure that you have a sufficient population size. One of the bigger things that people can often miss, and it speaks to our confirmation bias, is you talk with five people, you talk with 12 people, and you go, this is a theme. And really you need to be thinking about it to be statistically significant within the size of population you're targeting. You're not talking with everybody. And if you can't talk to that many people, just know that that's an assumption. Know that that's going to sway what you hear and what you don't. But talk to as many people with that research plan as you can and you should have a good, good ground.

So, Jackie, you just finished up with a weekend with prime prime AI, a group that we send a lot of referrals to and help people with. And for anybody that has ever asked Chat a hard question, it always comes back and says you're the smartest, you're the most beautiful, you're the most talented, and this is a great idea. Whoops. Not really. That's not really a good idea now that you, you pointed out something bad to me. So Katie, what I just heard you say is prompt engineering. And I'm going to throw it over to Jackie. Jackie, you just spent a weekend on prompt engineering. How do you prompt engineer? What Katie just said at first, first.

You head in and you go in with the assumption that AI is lazy. And as Joel Stoti says, it's a glaze machine, so it is going to just be your wild sunshine. So work with it on critical thinking like it's a sparring partner, make it challenge itself, and it is going to return to you data that reflects how good and how challenging your critical thinking is as you're prompting it. So use your brain. Rather than give it a lazy prompt, use your brain to give it a really sharp, crystal clear prompt that says, don't be lazy. Stretch on this. Seek, you know, research. Go deep on this for me. And then craft, craft your question with maybe multiple parts and make the AI Perplexity Chat whatever you're using, make it work. And then when it returns something to you, say, okay, give me more, tell me more, go deeper on this again, use it as like a critical thinking sparring partner. And I think in that way you'll come back with results that are more rewarding, accurate, thoughtful, useful, all of the above.

So back to you, Katie. That's not using AI. Also, what I heard you in prompt engineering of just the human interaction, it was ask deeper questions, ask more questions. Don't just go surface. Right. So whether you're using AI or you're working with humans, it's the same scenario. If I heard that correctly.

Yeah, I love that parallel of. It's just stay curious. If you just approach your day with, I'm still curious. Tell me more, learn more. That. That transcends whatever.

Whatever you're doing in life. I would add, you know, there's. This is a, this is a methodology. It's a.

Research methodology. Methodology. Excuse me, that has been done before. I mean, you can find frameworks, you can find information that then you could add into your prompt. Of like, here's what the American Psychological association says on psychometrics. Like, really have the data there that says this is the fidelity of an approach that you would use. I can only speak. Here are my limitations. I can only speak to 15 people, like, help me. And then, Jackie, I love what you're saying about the, the sparring partner. Like, let me take a big practice and distill it to my, my unique needs.

I would, I think there's tests out there where you can test your own biases that are in place, sometimes for free, sometimes they're paid. Same way you can go find out what your Myers Briggs is.

Right.

So I would start there, I'd go take a test, then I'd feed it into an AI machine and go use all of the theories, all the methodologies, all of the, the research that's been done. Don't miss anything, and come back and tell me what this test might have missed.

Oh, I love that. I love that.

Well, we've Got a couple more questions, but I'm gonna have to pick just one. I'm so sorry if we can't get them all done. Do we have time for one more?

Yeah. Okay.

I've already raised a small friends and family round, but now I'm unsure how to identify the right kind of investor or capital I should be looking for. I want to raise 10 million to acquire established accounting businesses looking to exit. How do I figure out what kind of capital structure and investor profile best fits my goals? That's a great. I picked that one because I think it's a great one. I think a lot of times if you were to scan the audience, they're like, well, you're my niece. So I invested because it's hard to scale. So how do they go about that?

Yeah, I mean, this is the crux of a client that I'm with right now is they started with a goal, they started with their personal need, and they're like, okay, well, now we just got to go find the money. And you're not meeting the need with the motivations of the individuals. And so, you know, you're. You're going to be hard pressed to find people outside of your sphere of influence initially. But understand what in your sphere of influence would motivate somebody to do that that will give you great breadcrumbs to follow. One of the best questions that you can ask is, who else should I be asking when I consider this, when I consider going through this? Who else should I involve in this work? And people will tell you, you just got to follow the breadcrumbs. But you're. You're starting with the.

With your need. And now you really need to delve into, well, what would motivate somebody to see that need as their need as well.

You know, I love that. And we're going to tie that up. One other one I love to throw in there, too is what did. What did I not ask that I should have asked? So. Because I get so going in these things. And so that's that. Okay, well, Dr. Katherine Ann Powell hennet. It is the kindred.

Consulting group.

Consulting group, thank you very much. We're going to put the link in there. I know I'm horrible at names. I got her name right, which is great because I've known her all of her life.

And you help name her at least a good chunk of that.

Yes, it is all one name, Catherine Ann.

But yeah, that's. That's all. But I appreciate, Katie, you coming on last minute because we were, we were planning to do another show. We have actually some other questions that were going to be there. But for this particular show, it was timely with our walk yesterday because I'd actually just met with another person who's doing this overseas but doesn't have the specific framework that you did. So this is something that I think is really in the forefront of people's minds today because there's a lot of people out there helping others raise capital, whether it's in the for profit, nonprofit arena. And they have not actually done it themselves, nor have they been involved in it themselves. And they're coming out there as experts. So this is a great place for us in these lunch and learns. We'd love to have you. This is also going to go out in a recording, so if you'd like to participate in next week's lunch and learn and you can't make it, you can actually send in questions and then see the recordings out there. But we're very, very pleased to have you join us this week. Thank you so much for the short intro introduction and I hope people come out to you and see it.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. And Jackie, as always, thank you for joining us.

Thank you so much.

So nice.

Thank you. We'll close out. Thank you, guys. Have a great week and we'll see you guys next week. Take care. Thank you.