Episode #142: Analytics Tribe of Mentors with Jen Yacenda

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0:00:04 Announcer: Welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. Tim, Michael, Moe and the occasional guest discussing digital analytics issues of the day. Find them on Facebook at facebook.com/analyticshour and their website, analyticshour.io and now, the Digital Analytics Power Hour.

0:00:27 Michael Helbling: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. This is Episode 142. Digital analytics is still a relatively new profession in some senses and as you progress in your career, it’s sometimes hard to find other people who’ve sort of been there and done that in the things that you find that you’re doing day-to-day in your job and with plenty of people and vendors saying this or that technology is “changing everything” about once every three years or so, it can also be confusing what to spend time on and how to prioritize your efforts. Correct me if I’m wrong Tim but really only one person could be the quintessential analyst.

[chuckle]

0:01:12 MH: Is that… Or and how are you doing?

0:01:15 Tim Wilson: I… There can be many and it’s… Oh, you’re killing me.

0:01:17 MH: It’s our co-host, Tim Wilson, Senior Director of Analytics at Search Discovery and Moe, when are you gonna come up with a really cool name for you. Maybe we could run a fan contest but how are you doing?

0:01:29 Moe Kiss: I’m good but I don’t think that’s necessary.

0:01:32 MH: Oh I don’t know. I think, you know… I’ve learned something about personal branding.

0:01:36 TW: He’ll get bored with me at some point and…

0:01:39 MH: No.

[chuckle]

0:01:39 TW: Then he’s gonna turn his sights on you and you’ll get to squirm uncomfortably for a few years.

0:01:45 MH: It’s just a reflection of my great admiration and respect. Anyways, Moe Kiss, Analytics Lead at Canva. Canva, I don’t know how to pronounce it. How do you pronounce the company’s name?

0:02:00 MK: Canva.

0:02:01 TW: It’s Canva?

0:02:01 MH: Canva. Well you say data.

0:02:03 MK: An author just like just within marketing. I’m the Marketing Analytics Lead. Yeah.

0:02:10 MH: Marketing Analytics Lead at Canva so that’s good. I’m finding out finally what your job title is. It seems like you get promoted pretty regularly over there so I feel like it’s not totally my fault.

[laughter]

0:02:21 MH: So in that sense, you’re kind of like, you know, kind of a rising star and I’m Michael Helbling and I’m just talking randomly. Okay.

[chuckle]

0:02:30 MH: We meet a guest who has taken a lot of the combined wisdom of some of the great people in our industry and she worked alongside Eric Matisoff from Adobe into creating a really great presentation for Adobe Summit, which was then turned into Adobe Virtual Summit because of the coronavirus pandemic and we just thought, “Hey, what a great opportunity to hear a little more about this topic.” So Jen Yacenda, she spent the first 12 years of her analytics career growing and leading the digital analytics practice at Starwood Hotels and then in 2018, she transitioned and started her own hospitality-focused analytics consultancy called Travel Perspectives and today, she is our guest. Welcome to the show, Jen.

0:03:15 Jen Yacenda: Thanks Michael. Thanks, Tim, Moe. Great to be here.

0:03:18 TW: I feel like Michael, you didn’t throw in… And not only she was… Had a jam-packed, full-on, solid core Summit session and then as Summit kinda shrunk things down to be shorter like… Yeah.

0:03:31 MH: There are so many things that we’ve lost in the pandemic and one of them is the full session that Jen and Eric worked so hard to create so in a certain sense, we’re just delighted to have you but maybe to kick us off, maybe just go back to the original idea and kind of explain, Jen, what you were thinking about as you kind of broached this topic and then we’ll kinda dig into some of the questions that came from it.

0:03:56 JY: Yeah I mean, first and foremost, we’re hoping whenever we are allowed to travel again, that maybe there’s a conference where we can actually put on the full hour plus whatever session of content that we’ve got but in lieu of that, we’re yeah, taking all opportunities to show the great content that we collected but for a little bit of context, Eric and I were talking about different sessions to run at Summit and we thought there was a little bit of a gap in… There’s not too many sessions focused on career advice, how to grow if you’re looking for the next promotion, if you’re looking to get into analytics, you’ve got a team that you’re recently managing, there’s not really a ton of sessions dedicated to how to become a better analyst, how do you become that manager leader for analytics that you wanna be so we kinda put our heads together and we’re thinking of ways of how to become that “rock star” within your organization as a rock star analyst, which is something Eric has a couple of other sessions at Summit around.

0:04:56 JY: And so at the same time, I’d been listening to this podcast of Tim Ferriss and he wrote a book called Tribe of Mentors, where he created this masterful recipe of questions, 11 questions that he goes around asking, you know, the Tony Hawks, the Arianna Huffingtons, the Brené Browns, the people that have reached the top of their game in their fields and he asked them the same 11 questions so we thought, “Why not do that for analytics? Let’s go out to the community with that same list of 11 questions.”

0:05:26 TW: It was funny. That was like the seconds… It was helping people grow with their career. I’m sure the first thing on the list was, “We need more sessions about how Adobe’s platform can help you be successful.” And that just didn’t quite make the cut ’cause… Yeah, no.

0:05:42 JY: It didn’t. We needed to go beyond… A session at Summit that had nothing to do with an Adobe product. [chuckle]

0:05:51 TW: It was bound to happen at some point.

0:05:54 MH: But you could probably use the Adobe products to create the session so you know, just tie it all together.

0:06:01 TW: Which, I mean, the… Yeah, the Analytics Rock Star Session which he took over from Brent Dykes, right? And that was always one of my… Even though it did always wind up being kind of very Adobe Analytics-centric but that was definitely always a super practical tips session but it was definitely baked into with Adobe so.

0:06:23 MK: Okay, can we talk about the questions?

0:06:25 MH: Yes, we can. Go ahead, Moe.

0:06:28 MK: Okay so Jen, I’m really curious. I have listened to some of Tim Ferriss’ podcasts previously. Actually, the one on how to say no was one that actually did resonate with me because it’s a skill that I have yet to perfect. I probably need to listen again but I suppose… I’m just curious to start with, when he asks these questions of all of these amazing people, what are the highlights for you that you’ve taken away from some of those conversations he’s had? Like are there specific moments or is it more that you found asking these questions has led to inside yourself in the analytics community?

0:07:07 JY: Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I was blown away with the number of people that agreed to answer and participate in the process so the people willing to share their stories, their experiences was awesome, just to collect, I think we had 38 poll participants. I probably reached out to about 90 so I had a third, 33, a little bit more than a third kind of accept which is I thought pretty decent and then compared to some of the questions that Tim Ferriss would ask, a lot of people got super personal with their responses.

0:07:39 JY: I think when Tim writing his book and he’s asking some of the most famous people in the world, I think they were kind of a little more straightforward and then when I reached out to the analytics community, whether it was someone fighting… Balancing motherhood with their career or someone who was battling depression or some mental challenges, they were very forthcoming with a lot of their answers and responses and I was really touched to be on the receiving end of those answers.

0:08:08 TW: Well, doesn’t Ferriss kind of… Didn’t Tim Ferriss sort of set up like… And I haven’t read the book and I have to freely admit that from the four-hour work week on, I have… I cannot stand Tim Ferriss so…

[laughter]

0:08:28 TW: But am I right in thinking from kind of reading about the book and watching his video talk, he does kind of encourage people to say, “These were the questions I was asking and why I was asking them.” And does he kind of encourage people to go ask people in their lives those same questions or is he really just putting them out saying I’ve asked these questions and gotten them from these famous people that I know and just read my book.

0:08:52 JY: Yeah, it’s more of the latter and he kind of encourages like he… There’s so many people that he interviews and it’s just… Yeah, it’s just kinda like, you hop around, you jump around to different people and little nuggets that you get out of some of the success that they’ve had. One of my favorite responses which during corona time, we’re unable to do but one of the investments, one of the… I will have to find the name but he took flying trapeze lessons and that was one of the investments that he said was profound impact on his life just with a different perspective that leap of faith with flying trapeze and the physical experience of it was something that really changed his perspective so that’s the one that I added to my list from Tim but yeah, the book is really just a manual that people can pick up at different points of their career, get inspiration from various people.

0:09:44 TW: And since this is in audio form, it was… You held up the book, it’s like a good two inches thick but it’s also like his promo video, he kinda waves it around a lot and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s a… It’s a hefty tome.”

0:09:55 MK: So Jen, have you answered all these questions yourself?

0:09:58 JY: I tried, I mean, that’s kind of where I started. I tried to go through and answer the questions. That’s where I was wondering whether or not it would fit as a conference like, if I could actually go out and collect these responses if… And it was really hard to answer all 11 so when I went out to ask respondents for their answers, I said “Look, answer three to five. The questions that speak most to you.” and Tim Ferriss does the same in his book. Not everyone answers all 11 questions so it is quite difficult to answer all 11 but I tried for sure.

0:10:30 TW: I feel like we haven’t actually touched on it, what any of the questions are. Like, can we…

0:10:34 MK: I know.

0:10:35 TW: Should we try like a rapid fire where we each get to pick a question and then like free association, Jen’s like, “And here was… “

0:10:40 MH: Let’s do it.

0:10:42 TW: Actually, I had one other set-up question. Did you have anybody respond? Were there any responses where you thought “Huh, that seems like a terrible piece of advice and I would never share that.”

[laughter]

0:10:53 TW: And I’m not gonna ask you to share what that… I mean or…

[laughter]

0:10:54 MK: That’s the set-up question.

0:10:57 TW: No, well, I mean, were there any where…

0:10:58 MK: Oh, oh, you mean setting her up. I thought you meant like laying the foundation set up question. I was like, “That’s just cruel.”

0:11:04 TW: No, no, no. [chuckle] Well, no, I’m curious ’cause it’s like were there… ‘Cause we’re all living our own life and there are definitely people who have different opinions on things.

0:11:15 JY: To be honest, because it was a session that… Or content that we were collecting that I was gonna prepare for a session, I wouldn’t say that there was necessarily bad advice given but I was definitely looking for themes to pull together into a presentation so yeah, there was a lot of advice that didn’t make it into the presentation I will say but…

[laughter]

0:11:36 JY: A lot of it was also just more personal, less professional so it was hard to delineate.

0:11:42 MH: Yeah.

0:11:42 TW: Did anybody move markedly down in your opinion of them based on the collection?

[laughter]

0:11:47 JY: No.

0:11:47 TW: No.

0:11:49 MH: You don’t have to answer that question. Do not answer that.

[laughter]

0:11:54 JY: It was more the people who chose not to answer I was a little bit more disappointed with to not participate and just not get a response.

0:12:02 MH: You know who you are out there. Next time Jen Yacenda sends you some questions to answer, you better get on it and just to be fully transparent with our listeners, Tim and I both were respondents to some of these questions so I think this is Tim fishing to find out whether or not Jen thinks less of him now that he’s answered these questions.

[laughter]

0:12:28 MH: Okay, let’s dive into this ’cause we definitely have now fulfilled the banter requirement upfront so let’s cut into some of these. I think the first question so the… I’ll kinda do the question, well it doesn’t matter how we do it. I’ll just do this one and then you guys can jump in so the first question that’s in this is, “What is the book or books you’ve given the most as a gift and why?” or “What are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?” I’ve… First off, I just wanna say how much I enjoyed the structure of that question ’cause I feel like I recommend books all the time but when I sat down and thought like “Well, which ones have I bought for people and given away” it changed or shrank my assessment criteria so anyways, I’d love to hear Jen, what kinds of answers you got for that one?

0:13:12 JY: I mean, this one and I can shamelessly plug our Adobe Summit session to go check that out, the recorded version but we cover this question in our session. It was one of the most overwhelming, most prolific questions that we got. I mean, the list of even just reading all the different books that people recommended, I felt like I got smarter knowing all the books that were out there that people found valuable and were giving as gifts. For me, personally, one of the books that I usually give to direct reports on my team was Dona Wong’s Inform… The…

0:13:47 TW: Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics?

0:13:48 JY: Wall Street Guide to… Yeah.

0:13:49 MK: Infographics, yeah.

0:13:50 JY: It’s just, it’s such a quick read and it still stands the test of time and I continue to give that one as gifts to analysts that are potentially struggling with visualizations but we got things from memoirs to science fiction to a lot of psychology books, How We Sleep, Blink.

0:14:10 MK: Yes!

0:14:10 JY: A lot of, Power of Habit. There are so many so many titles that were just blew me away.

0:14:18 MK: How We Sleep, I love that book.

0:14:20 TW: That was just everybody wanted to prove to you that they actually, everybody wanted to prove to you that they actually have read a book. [chuckle] I mean that is one. There are times where I think that’s the sort of thing where it’s like, “Well I read this book” and I don’t know, there were definitely a couple that kind of bubbled up for me that were ones that I’ve read and were super impactful. The, I don’t know about the Why We Sleep…

[chuckle]

0:14:44 MK: Except that it’s brilliant. Mathew Walker.

0:14:49 TW: It’s high on the list of books that I did not manage to finish but I got the basic gist.

0:14:55 MH: You’ll love the one that I said that I gave away the most, Tim because…

0:15:00 TW: Oh, I’m sure yours were… Oh StrengthsFinder, had to be…

0:15:02 MH: Yes! StrengthsFinder 2.0 because I gave it to every single person on my team so that was a book I gave away a lot.

0:15:10 TW: Fortunately, he had stopped that by the time I came to work.

0:15:13 MH: Yeah, we shut all that down.

0:15:15 TW: But I’m pretty sure I’d already gotten one or two copies at past jobs as it was so…

0:15:19 MH: Yeah, I made sure somebody handed you a copy.

0:15:23 MK: I actually stole this idea from my sister so I will begrudgingly give her credit for it but the book that I buy the most to give to people is actually Emily Oster’s book Expecting Better so any time a friend says they’re pregnant, I just give them the book and it’s like, “Here is some data so you don’t have a bunch of people freaking out and making your life awful and you can make growing up decisions on your own like the very smart, capable woman you are.” So my sister did that for all of her friends and now I do the same so yeah, the Kiss sisters are just bankrolling Emily Oster is the summary.

[chuckle]

0:16:01 MH: Yeah but it’s interesting too because I think there’s books that you give away but then there’s also books that you are pretty influenced by so it’s sort of like those are almost two different categories. I don’t know, did people answer that that way or was I the only one? [chuckle]

0:16:17 JY: No, yeah, I think very few people answered it both ways, most people answered it by books that influenced me the most so…

0:16:25 MH: Okay.

0:16:26 JY: We don’t have a lot of book gifters. I’m a book gifter so that’s the way I answered it. I love to give books so…

0:16:34 MH: Wait so what book do you give away the most besides the Dona Wong book?

0:16:38 JY: That was the one for my team and then another one that I’ve given often is Simon Sinek’s Start With Why.

0:16:46 MK: Yes, that’s a good book. Oh God! Tim’s like eye rolling like, “Shit, I can’t handle this.”

[chuckle]

0:16:52 MH: Oh, let’s talk a little more about that ’cause that’s really good. I like that book.

0:16:58 MK: I love that book.

[chuckle]

0:17:00 MH: Somebody actually just recommended to me his most recent book, which I forget the name of so I’m gonna look it up before the show’s over. Maybe I can talk about it then.

0:17:07 MK: Tim, what about you, what book do you give away the most?

0:17:10 TW: So mine have kind of evolved but I actually would fall in the well, the one that I count whether I’ve given it, which I have definitely ordered it and given it or I’ve had people get is the Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few. I think I’m gonna shift actually to Cole Knaflic’s Data Storytelling ’cause I think she actually covers a little bit broader and hits, I mean she references Few, she references Wong so that’s just on the this data visualization stuff really does matter and it’s not that hard. I mean the…

0:17:47 MH: Yeah.

0:17:47 TW: But I also recommend that Dona Wong because it’s so… ’cause it’s even tighter.

0:17:53 MK: See, I actually give away Nancy Duarte’s book more than Dona Wong’s.

0:17:57 MH: Which one?

0:18:00 S1: The Slide: Ology, although now I probably would choose Data Stories over Slide: Ology but Slide: Ology for me completely changed the way that I thought about presentations and how I communicated stuff and it was like my aha moment so I’ve shared that with lots of people.

0:18:16 MH: I just wanna point out that as we’re talking, actually most of us give away books about communicating data. I’m noticing that trend and I just think that’s really interesting because…

0:18:31 TW: StrengthsFinder?

0:18:32 MH: Not me, I was like the rest of you, I didn’t say all of us.

[laughter]

0:18:37 TW: I mean you go through the thing and you score it so that’s a pointless metric.

0:18:41 MH: And technically, if you understand your strengths Tim, you will be more effective in communicating data and I have a copy of Information Dashboard Design that I bought for myself so you didn’t have to gift it to me but yeah, no I just think that’s interesting ’cause all three of you kind of unbeknownst to each other all think that that’s what you give those books away to people.

0:19:04 MH: No, I just think that’s fascinating ’cause it could be some other thing about digital analytics, methods or other things like that but communicating data seems to be an interesting theme. Anyways, not trying to make causal elements where there aren’t any, I just noticed that’s something very interesting. Alright.

0:19:23 MK: Oh God! I wanted… I would go to, like do a three-hour episode and get through all of these but I really wanna know about the purchase. So what purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months or in recent memory? I don’t know why, that one just sings to me.

0:19:39 JY: Yeah, this one was interesting because to have a positive influence on your life but it was more from a professional lens so it was kind of hard question I think to answer, for me personally my answer was the Wall Street Journal, which is a little bit of a cheat ’cause it’s not $100, it’s a little bit more for an annual subscription but just as an analyst, well, first they do a great job… Well, for a lot of the time they do a good job at presenting data within and some of them can be biased of course but I think that a lot of their graphics can be really strong in their journalism which is fun to see and then just staying, as an analyst, staying up-to-date on the headlines is something that for travel in particular, it is super helpful just to know when there’s major tornadoes or shifts in weather or globally what’s going on across the world so the Wall Street Journal for me is something that has really positively influenced my life but that one was a kind of mixed bag.

0:20:34 JY: Some of my favorite responses that I remember getting was massages, investing in kinda like in, we sit at our desk chairs all the time and just getting some me time, really investing in a monthly habit of going out and getting massages and treating yourself was a great one. Jen Koontz had a really interesting one where her hobby is bird watching so she had invested in a really… And I don’t know the terminology but a photography lens that allows her to more properly bird watch and it’s just a therapeutic, an activity to get out of the house and it’s just something that has positively influenced her life that way so.

0:21:12 MH: Very nice.

0:21:13 JY: And then we got ones like running shoes and video games, we got a whole gamut of responses.

0:21:20 MK: You can buy running shoes in America for under $100?

0:21:23 MH: Yeah, sure.

0:21:24 MK: Yeah, actually, I feel like I get a higher cap because of the currency exchange so I feel like for me…

0:21:31 MH: Okay so for 150 Australian dollars Moe, what would you… What have you bought that impacted your life?

0:21:37 TW: And I think Jamie may say the same thing, he was like, “Yeap, that feels like our purchase pattern that we set a budget and then… “

[laughter]

0:21:43 TW: “Rationalize why we need to spend more.”

0:21:43 MK: See, my problem one, my thing is like I had one that immediately popped to mind but it’s not recent and it was actually a gift from Jamie but he bought me a SodaStream for my birthday like seven years ago and it hands down like changed my life because I went from drinking one bottle of water a day to maybe like five so I feel like that has made my whole being better but it’s, that’s a weird one but then I’m… And I’m always spending money on plants and they make me super happy and I talk to them and I name them and I’m kinda weird.

[chuckle]

0:22:18 MH: You know Moe, unrelated, I’ve… Recently someone told me you SodaStream milk and use it in your pancakes and it makes them super fluffy.

0:22:28 MK: That’s the weirdest thing I think I’ve ever heard.

0:22:31 MH: I know but it really works so go figure.

0:22:33 MK: Okay.

0:22:33 MH: Anyway, sorry.

0:22:34 TW: We have lost the show.

0:22:35 MK: Okay Tim, what about you?

0:22:37 TW: Well no, this question again seems like one of those where 38 or so responses, there had to be, again, I’m not gonna ask you to name them but there had to be one or two where you’re like, “Huh?” Were there? You don’t have to share what it was.

0:22:49 MH: Again, Tim, quit fishing.

0:22:51 JY: Oh yeah, this was…

[laughter]

0:22:53 JY: Actually, this one was more not all the people answered this one, people ignored this question.

0:23:00 TW: Yeah.

0:23:01 MH: Tim, did you answer this question?

0:23:03 TW: I don’t think so. I can’t… If I did, I don’t remember what I did.

0:23:06 MH: Oh, okay.

0:23:07 TW: I’m not sure how I’d answer it now.

0:23:09 MH: I did. I bought a couch for $44 at a thrift store and it was just like, “I didn’t know you could buy a couch for $44.”

[laughter]

0:23:19 MH: It’s not a nice couch.

0:23:22 MK: Why has it positively impacted your life? Is it just the fact that you got a bargain and you still had like 60 bucks left?

0:23:28 MH: No, it was really about solving a problem creatively. We just needed… Like, we didn’t need anything as fancy, we didn’t need anything but I always mentally think about couches costing like yeah, $1,800 to $2,500 or something like that, like…

0:23:42 MK: I’m not gonna lie, we just bought a couch and it was in that ballpark.

0:23:44 MH: Yeah no, that’s what I would… I go to furniture stores and buy couches when I buy couches and I had never even thought of it and then one day, I can’t remember why but all of a sudden Maria calls me and she’s like, “Hey, go rent a U-Haul and come over to this store, we’re gonna buy the… ” and I was like, “What?” She had gone over there with our sister-in-law and so it was like “Okay” and then I saw it, it was like, “This couch looks fine to me.”

0:24:08 TW: Well, wait a minute so, it sounds like that $44 was the cost of the couch.

0:24:13 MH: $77 Tim.

0:24:14 TW: Okay, just checking.

0:24:16 MH: Yeah ’cause you can rent a U-Haul for like 15 bucks an hour. It was easy.

0:24:20 TW: Okay.

0:24:20 MH: So yeah, all in 77, still a big deal, good savings. Anyway…

0:24:25 TW: Still met the criteria of the question. Very good.

0:24:27 MH: Yeah. Yeah, it was still under 100. Okay so that was… I liked that question because it is hard to answer that in a way that’s sort of like, “Hey, this is advice I wanna pass on, like, write this on my tombstone.” and actually as I went back through the answers I gave you…

0:24:42 MK: Buy a couch for $44…

0:24:45 MH: No, I…

0:24:45 MK: Is what you want written on your tombstone?

[laughter]

0:24:46 MH: That’s what I mean, Moe, I don’t wanna write that on my tombstone. I’m just saying like it’s hard to answer, that’s what I mean, it’s hard to answer and some of them were really hard and then I look back and I’m like “Man, I was in a weird head space when I answered a lot of these questions.” So anyway, that’s just a me thing.

0:25:07 JY: Yeah, a lot of the questions have that profound impact that makes it a little bit harder to answer.

0:25:13 MH: Yeah. Alright so now we’re gonna move into tougher territory. Ready Moe?

0:25:18 MK: Oh, I’m scared.

0:25:19 MH: How has a failure or apparent failure set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours?

0:25:26 MK: I knew we were gonna get to this one and I was really nervous about it.

0:25:31 MH: Why are you nervous about it?

0:25:32 MK: Because I do have a favorite failure but I’m now gonna talk about it on the podcast.

0:25:38 MH: Well, you don’t have to if you don’t feel comfortable.

0:25:40 MK: No but I feel like… So the thing is, I’ve actually talked about this one at lots of women networking events and we actually did this question pretty much as an exercise. Like, what’s a failure of yours and I suppose what did you learn from it? And for me, I got fired, which I never thought would happen in my whole fucking life. Like I am not a get-fired person but it weirdly was the absolute best thing that’s ever happened to me and I learned a shit ton about the type of places I wanna work, the places I don’t wanna work. Also, the red flags, like you know when you’re going through an interview process and there’s red flags and you ignore them ’cause you really wanna leave your current job?

0:26:24 JY: Mm-hmm.

0:26:25 MK: And I ignored them and I know now that would never ever happen again because I realized how wrong it was but I was also so thankful to get fired ’cause I think I wouldn’t have quit and I would have been really, really unhappy for a very long period of time so yeah, I don’t know, it’s weird ’cause this moment that I feel like I should probably be ashamed of, I’ve ended up being okay with and yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s interesting. Tim, what’s your favorite failure?

0:26:55 TW: I don’t know. I mean, all I can do is like riff off of… I definitely point myself to the, I’d say it’s the nine longest months of my career was the nine months that I worked at a large insurance company and it was the same thing that it was a… I don’t know if that’s my apparent but I pointed people to, that still gave me a deeper lens into the inside of the massive companies that I…

0:27:16 TW: When I’m consulting with a large enterprise now, having lived the ponderous nightmare of whether it’s in the hospitality industry or banking or wherever like, yup, I know this is why I don’t wanna be there again and learning that like yeah, that’s not the life for me. There could be some very large and great companies that are very admirable but I don’t know, I knew same sort of thing, day one orientation, I’m like “This was a big mistake,” and then nine months of it’s a big mistake but at the same time, I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a bad thing to have done but I don’t know, I don’t know if I consider that a failure or just the reality of a career progression and trying to learn from it.

0:28:02 MK: Jen?

0:28:03 JY: My favorite failure was that I failed, early on my career failed to ask for a promotion. It was my first job, I was at Starwood Hotels and I worked my butt off for the first, I don’t know, two to three years, whatever it was and as a naive, relatively first job right out of college, I didn’t think you had to ask for promotions. I just assumed that hard work got recognized and hard work deserved a promotion and I was clearly in my head, deserving of a promotion but I didn’t ask for it in the cycles of corporations that you need to hit the budget and the big five review and all that personal development, jazz and yeah so I had failed to ask for promotion but and so my boss at the time, it was just, he gave me a really strong lesson of like, “You know you need to ask for these. You’re lucky I asked for one for you” but it was just a powerful lesson to learn that yeah, people in big companies in particular are always asking for promotions and as a young employee, I just hadn’t got onto that yet.

0:29:12 MK: Oh my God! That is amazing.

0:29:16 MH: Yeah.

0:29:16 MK: Like what a huge lesson, oh!

0:29:18 JY: And I continue to tell every single one of my direct reports, like that’s yeah, the reality of big organizations. That that’s the reality of how to progress and yeah, I’m no longer at a big company. [chuckle]

0:29:35 MK: And with all the stuff I manage, I always ask them, any time they get good feedback, I don’t care if you put it into a notes file or if you forward the email and them put them all in a folder but every time you get good feedback from someone in the company, you just put it in one place because you’re gonna have to pitch at some point about why you want a promotion or a pay increase and if you have all that feedback stored somewhere, it will make it really bloody easy to be like, “Here is all the work I’ve done and this is why I deserve this” and it’s like a habit that has actually… I found it’s been really useful for me as well. Okay, Michael, your biggest failure?

0:30:13 MH: Oh jeez! I was hoping we could skip me because we gotta get to all the questions. [chuckle] No so what I wrote in there…

0:30:20 TW: Time management of this episode, maybe.

0:30:22 MH: Yeah no, actually Tim, I’m all over it. I wrote down our start time as we got going so we’ve all been going for a little over 30 minutes so we’re still good for a little while.

[laughter]

0:30:34 MH: Alright so well Moe so you’re not alone. I also was fired from one job which I am also not a get-fired person typically and it was a real moment of trying to figure out sort of I think there’s a lot of, in those moments, it’s sort of like “Well, they did the wrong thing” but it also forced me to say “Well, how did you contribute to that?” And kinda look inside myself to sort of say, “Well the one thing you can change about that situation is just you.” and so that’s what I did and it was probably the best thing that could have happened. In fact, I’m really positive, it was and in actually the resulting years but actually a better failure from earlier in my career was when I was just starting out doing consulting with Web Trends Software and I went to a client and I was installing it and setting up their reports and they had given me a list of reports that they wanted created and so I created those reports and I still had a little extra time that day after setting some of those up and so I was like “You know what, they’ll probably want this report, a couple of these.”

0:31:39 MH: So I set up some additional reports as well to give them some extra stuff and I believe, a couple weeks later, the account manager gets a phone call from the client and I just happened to be sitting in her office talking to her when she listened to this voicemail and it was the client calling and saying “Hey, when Michael was out here, he set up all these extra reports we really don’t want or need, it’s confusing a lot of people. Is there anyone that you could send back out here to fix this, hopefully, somebody different than Michael?”

[chuckle]

0:32:13 MH: And I was sitting there and here’s the worst part, there was no one else. I was the only analytics person in the company so I had to go back out to that client and fix those mistakes and the valuable lesson is, really listen to what clients are asking from you and don’t freelance on those kinds of things. I thought I was adding value but really, I was creating a problem for them and so it’s really important to think about, “Okay, what is it that they really need?” And so I’ve tried to take that lesson to heart so that was painful, going out and spending half a day at a company where I knew they did not want me there, they were like, “We’re both here because you have to be and it’s your fault that we’re together.”

[laughter]

0:32:54 MH: So, oh yeah.

0:32:57 TW: I feel like I should share that I’ve never been fired, I’ve been laid off from my first job ever and I’ve had two bosses scream at me that they should fire me.

[laughter]

0:33:08 MH: I think – Tim, I did not scream at you. No, I’m just kidding.

[laughter]

0:33:12 TW: Oh I didn’t listen to the conversations you’re having in your head.

0:33:14 MH: Yes, right. Those internal dialogue. Oh, you could hear that? Oh…

0:33:18 TW: Yeah.

0:33:19 MH: Alright, we gotta… Let’s keep going, let’s keep going. Okay, this is such a good question and it’s gonna take some explaining so if you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or maybe billions, what would it say and why?

0:33:36 TW: And how many people answer… Like I’d like to know on a lot of these, what ballpark, was this a heavily answered, lightly answered, middle-of-the-road answered question?

0:33:46 JY: I know. I need to go back and do some counting for each of these but this was probably a middle, I would say but this was one where there was a clear theme across everyone that answered it and it was just to have more empathy. It came in multiple different flavors. One person literally just answered with one word “Empathy.” “We’re all human,” was another one. “In a world where you can be anything, be kind,” and then mine personally is to live by the golden rule: Do unto others as you wish done unto yourself so just this whole notion of being a good person, was a clear winner in this question.

0:34:20 MK: The funny thing is, my immediate reaction when I saw this question was something about kindness and there was a really beautiful video I was watching the other day about the crazy world of COVID and post-COVID about how… I don’t know, people are actually being kinder to each other right now and I’m sure that there are lots of examples of they’re not but there are lots of examples in the world of where people are and not that there’s a silver lining to this whole hot mess but if people can get reminded of that, that’s a nice thing but I don’t know, I feel like I’d really have to think about the words. Tim?

0:35:00 TW: I think I’d be immediately negotiating for I’m like, “Can I get… ” There’s three billboards outside. I’ve got a lot to say. [laughter]

0:35:09 MK: I was actually like, “How are you gonna fit this all on one billboard?”

[laughter]

0:35:12 TW: Yeah, exactly. You’re like, “Oh, how about if I had five?” Yeah, I don’t know, I passed.

0:35:19 MH: Well and honestly, don’t put a paragraph on a billboard. You didn’t answer this one, Tim.

0:35:23 TW: I don’t think so. I really feel like maybe I should pull up what I actually…

0:35:27 MH: What you did, yeah. I said my catchphrase, which is, “Analytics is people business.” It’s about people. Which isn’t totally the same as some of the things that people said about empathy but it’s in there. It’s sort of like people and people, on all sides of this, is all what analytics is about and anyways, that’s really…

0:35:47 TW: So it wouldn’t have been, “Know your job, do your job.” See, that’s the sort of thing I would have been…

0:35:52 MK: That is so what you would have said.

0:35:54 TW: Do your fucking job.

0:35:55 MH: That would be good too. Because if your job is people and empathy, then you need to know how to do that and do it. Yeah. Great insight, Tim.

0:36:04 MK: Yeah but my only thing is, some of the best teams that I’ve been in, is when people do more than their job. Tim’s like “No, just do your fucking job.”

0:36:15 MH: Tim always does more than just his job, just FYI, from personal experience.

0:36:20 TW: I’m just playing through in my head that the whole debate we had months ago around the…

0:36:26 MK: Oh dear.

0:36:27 TW: The people who… Well, there was somebody who was a coworker here at the time that was like, “Nope, nine to five and then I’m out. I’m off.” And we were having a… Where I was like well, you need to find your… If you find your passion… Yeah, if you love what you’re doing, if you love your work, it’s not work, sort of thing. That’s a whole rabbit hole to go down, that if you don’t find what you actually really enjoy doing, then yeah, you’re gonna be watching the clock and you’re gonna have a hard time so know your job but find the right job, I guess.

0:37:01 TW: I don’t know. I’m not a billboard kind of a guy.

0:37:03 MK: Okay.

0:37:04 TW: Out of home, it’s all digital these days.

0:37:07 MK: Okay, wait. Okay Jen, this one I need to talk about purely ’cause I need to hear what other people said because this is one I’m not good at. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? If helpful, what questions do you ask yourself? I so wanna hear what people said to this.

0:37:24 JY: Yeah, this was a fun one and we didn’t get to this one in our presentation. There was two very distinct categories of people that emerged answering this question. There was either the group that decided that they needed to go sweat it out, go outside for a walk, go surfing, get some exercise, someone chops wood. Anything to get their physical endorphins going was one camp and then there was another camp of people that was they’re gonna sit down and write it out and just write up to-do lists, write out what the starting point is. More of like a project management type approach, was just to sit down and word vomit what everything needs to get done before then re-prioritizing, rearranging and then tackling it so that was two very distinct camps of people.

0:38:14 JY: I was more on the write it out. If I’m getting overwhelmed and I need to refocus, I will just take the time to list out a to-do list, just to get it all down on paper and then, the physical kind of “Let’s cross things off the list.” That really helps me.

0:38:29 TW: Plus one to that one.

0:38:30 MK: The funny thing is, when I write a paper to-do list and I’ve actually told my team this because I want them to call me out on it. When I write a paper to-do list, that’s where I’m really losing my shit. That’s where I’m so overwhelmed. I’m freaking out. The list very quickly has 30 small things on it and one of my team members the other day, he’s the best person at helping me. Every time he sees me do this, he’s like “Moe, we’ve got our one-on-one now. We’re gonna end 15 minutes early.” This is a one-on-one where I’m meant to be coaching him. He’s like, “We’re gonna end 15 minutes early. I want you to use those 15 minutes, go to Jira, put all your stuff in Jira and throw away your paper to-do list because you’re in a spiral.” and I’m like, “Okay, alright, alright. I’m gonna do it.” and so he gives me the 15 minutes in my day back. I go to Jira, I put all my tickets in there properly and the list gets done and then I’m back in the zone.

0:39:26 MK: For me, he was only able to do that because I told him what my spiral signs were but now I’m so thankful because any time he sees me do it, he calls me out on it straightaway and yeah, I don’t… It’s not necessarily something I do for myself but sometimes letting the people around you know what are the signs that you’re unfocused or you’re feeling really overwhelmed so that they can also help you refocus.

0:39:55 TW: I also feel like I know you but your accent still throws me a little bit so when you said go to “Jura”…

0:40:01 MK: Jira.

0:40:02 TW: I heard Jura like Jura whiskey which is making some of a podcast rounds and so I was like, it could be that both of them might go to Jura and when you’re done go to Jira. They’re completely different approaches. There’s Medicaid, self-Medicaid or organized.

0:40:20 MH: That interesting.

0:40:20 MK: What do you do Helbs, when you’re getting unfocused overwhelmed?

0:40:23 MH: So it’s really interesting ’cause now I’m like, “Oh I should try taking walks when I feel this way. I’m like, “That’s a great idea.” I was like, “That really does work. I needed to think of that more.”

0:40:33 MK: It does.

0:40:34 MH: I spend time writing out what’s going on in my head so it can be a couple of different avenues. If it’s emotional or just confusing or frustrating situation or I feel like something is not right in my head that I just write out like I just do an emotional inventory just like what’s going on and then if it’s all these tests and everything and it’s too much then I have a system and I use Evernote but I just start writing a list and I actually have started taking audio recordings on my phone even because I just take 15 minutes and I just start talking into my phone or just start typing and everything that comes to my head gets on the list, every single thing so just it all has to come out.

0:41:17 MH: So just like it came up, boom, it goes on the list, came up, boom, it goes on the list again, again, again. Literally things like attend this meeting, it goes on the list. I’m attending that meeting today, it’s going on my list so that way I could check it off and it’s a thing I did even though all I did was just show up to the meeting or whatever so it could be send an email to so and so that’s literally just sort of like a sentence but if I send that email, I get to check it off my list.

0:41:43 MH: So the little to big things and then I can go back through after I get a little more control of that and go prioritize that list and I use my little system to bold the things that are really important, I can bubble those up but sometimes you just have to get a system to pull it out of you, stick it somewhere else, then you can look at it and start making some progress.

0:42:06 MH: But no, I’m totally like the thing as you Moe, where I can get… You just get overwhelmed with stuff sometimes and you’re just like, “Okay, learn those signals, learn how to stop yourself, learn how to take a step.” So that’s been a big, big deal for me, yeah.

0:42:20 TW: Fascinating. I just lash out at my podcast co-hosts and it’s kind of like it saves me the walk. I still get a little bit of heart rate kind of…

0:42:30 MH: I don’t know, Tim.

0:42:30 MK: Tim, what do you actually do?

0:42:32 MH: You in the last month have published a very public list so I’m thinking maybe there’s a list process that you do go through.

0:42:40 TW: Oh, I have lived and died by lists forever. If I find myself not taking the time to put it on in to-do list, then that’s when I’m like, “Oops, I’m getting to the point” but then it is pretty that I’m like, “Let me just put it on there… ” and there’s all sorts of… But I also believe that there are; lists work for some and lists don’t work for others. There are people who really should have lists working for them because shit is falling through the cracks right and left. It has worked for me for so long and I’ve gone through the paper mode and then I’ve been digital lists for years now.

0:43:19 TW: Because it sort of forces you to say, if I write it down, I’m not gonna forget it and it’s there and I can assess that yeah, you know what, this can wait for three days but I’ve written it down, I’m not gonna forget it. If I need to tell somebody I’ll use it. Hey, it’s on my list, I’ll be getting to this whatever so.

0:43:35 MK: Yeah but I think the thing that happens to me is lists can also then be the cause of being overwhelmed because suddenly you have 30 things on a list and you’re like, “Yes shit, there is no conceivable way I’m gonna do all of these things and still sleep.”

0:43:51 TW: Well that’s where some of the list oracles will say don’t do some of what Michael said, which was write the gimmies down which I’m not sure I completely buy into ’cause I’m kind of of the, if it’s gotta get done and I can write it down, yes, it’ll give me progress but the idea is that if you capture it, then that will force you to say, “Well I can’t do them all at once. Let me put them in the right order and once I’m eating that elephant one bite at a time, I’ve at least defined the elephant. Now, let me start taking bites of it.

0:44:24 TW: You’re looking at me like you’ve never heard that expression before.

0:44:26 MK: I have not but…

0:44:28 TW: How to eat an elephant one bite at a time?

0:44:29 MK: Well vaguely but it still seems weird to eat an elephant but for a while, I did do the important urgent, not important, not urgent journals which works better for me I find but…

0:44:43 TW: I think it’s a construct, that actually works just to remind myself but there is the weird thing of defining important to who and urgent to who because it’s very easy to… I think as analysts, we tend to… We’re such pleaser’s that if somebody else… If it’s urgent for them, we will make ourselves believe it is super important for them and we’ll just assume that and so I think putting that kind of construct around like, “Wait a minute, this person responds to me four to seven days after I asked them anything. I’m pretty sure they asked me something, they’re not expecting an answer in 20 minutes.”

0:45:17 MH: Yeah so that actually dovetails really great into a different question which is, in the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? What new realizations and approach has helped? Any other tips? ‘Cause I think you connected that dot Moe and you’re like it gets too many things on it, then what do you do? And that’s an answer that I have is sort of like when I get it out of my head, it helps me see everything, the cold light of day and say “Okay we’re not gonna prioritize that because there simply isn’t enough time that I can make those choices.” But anyways, I don’t know who else wants to talk about that question.

0:45:55 MK: Jen, why don’t you share, did very many people answer this one?

0:46:00 JY: I was gonna say no. This is probably one of the ones that… And it kind of made sense that asking analysts that, I think we struggle, all of us struggle with this one. We did not get a ton of responses. Some people are just… Yeah, it’s no problem, saying no. I think the one thing that probably won my favorite answers, which I probably struggle with the most is saying no to that one last drink especially when you go to conferences or going to happy hour. I end up staying but there was a one response that had a really great kind of, I’ve got a 9:00 PM curfew and that’s it. I’m home. I have no problem with just living with that kind of steadfast rule and then the other clear one, which is probably a little bit different now in COVID, is saying no to meetings.

0:46:51 JY: Michael, I think you were in the camp of saying no to meetings and I don’t know if you have a specific rule for what you say no to but that was one of… Unnecessary meetings was one that a lot of people were aware of but that’s not really a how-to or how you develop it.

0:47:07 MH: Yeah, it comes from this place of having too much to do than you can possibly accomplish and so you literally have to force yourself to make decisions you consider sub-optimal in the moment and so the way I talk about it is, learning how to build the capacity to disappoint people and I think Tim, you’re on to something, which is, we don’t want people to be upset with us. I really want people to like me. I wanna get on things and as an analyst, I wanna get to your question and those kinds of things and you’ve gotta space it out and time it out.

0:47:41 MH: I remember certain days in the midst of growing the analytics practice at Search Discovery and we were just growing at such a tremendous rate, I’d be on the elevator on the way up to the work in the office and I’d literally be giving myself a pep talk. “I’m gonna go in there and I’m gonna cancel these three meetings and I’m gonna push those back and I’m gonna… ” and I’d have to psyche myself up because it was so hard for me. Luckily, I was alone in the elevator, just FYI no one else was there.

[laughter]

0:48:07 MH: Just the crazy person in the elevator.

0:48:08 TW: You were slapping yourself in the face and you were…

0:48:13 MH: But literally, I would be psyching myself up to go in and go do these things that I was afraid to do, in a certain sense and it’s hard but after you start doing it and nothing bad happens, it builds up this competency to start understanding more clearly what’s most important and what can actually wait and where your focus needs to be and I think that was actually, over the course of a year, a year and a half where I was learning some of those lessons, some of the biggest development in my leadership capability was the ability to start taking those things on and be able to actually address them. It’s tough, I don’t know.

0:48:52 TW: I feel like that one can be kind of a dangerous one, because to me, I’m not good at saying no and I’m not good at delivering right at expectations. I wanna go above and beyond. I think a lot of us are wired that way but when I look at, when you hear those lectures of like, “Work smarter, not harder. You shouldn’t be… ” to me, I’m like “Well, a shit ton of my career is probably because I got interested in doing something, I really wanted to do it well or somebody asked me if I could help,” and yeah, I could have said no half of the time but some of those were professional development opportunities. I got to push myself. I got to do more and so I haven’t ever gone and asked for a promotion.

0:49:42 TW: Actually Jen and I had a whole separate little exchange about that, where I also, I think, believe calling out that I’m an upper middle-class white cis-gendered dude so there’s that whole piece as well. It’s easy for me to say, “No, I just work hard and stuff comes.” But I think there’s a danger for where you are in your career if you’re like, “Well, I’m gonna say no because by golly, you’re asking me for this at 4:30 and it’s gonna take me two hours.”

0:50:12 MK: But I don’t think that’s the intent, right? I think… So for example, we reached out…

0:50:16 TW: But there’s gotta be good judgment in knowing which one of those it is.

0:50:20 MK: Yes but I don’t think people who are new in their career are struggling with this. I think generally the skill to say no or to push back is something you have to develop as your responsibilities grow and yeah, we reached out to someone who we’d love to have on the podcast at some point and she was basically like, “Look, I’m working five days a week. I have three little kids. I’m really… I don’t have capacity for this right now” and I’m like “Cool. I’m really glad that you told me that because I agree,” and I get asked do stuff and I probably say no maybe 10% or 20% of the time where I’m just like, “You know what? I don’t have the brain power. I want to be able to do a good job of whatever it is that you’ve invited me to do and I don’t have the bandwidth to do that right now and I’m gonna say no.”

0:51:09 MK: And I could say yes to every single opportunity but I also would do some of them at a really… I’d do a really shitty job at them which…

0:51:18 TW: Jen’s thinking right now, she was like “Son of a… I could have said no.”

[laughter]

0:51:24 TW: “Son of a… And I did the questions. What the hell!”

0:51:29 MH: We’re so glad you didn’t realize you had that.

0:51:32 JY: No, this is a no-brainer. I would never say no.

[laughter]

0:51:35 MH: Okay. We’re out of time. We’ve gotta start wrapping up but here’s one last question. Only Jen is allowed to answer. Here it goes.

0:51:42 MK: Nooo!

0:51:42 MH: This is the way it is, that sometimes… My job is to… sometimes no.

0:51:48 MK: No but okay people, if you really like this topic let us know ’cause I’d be happy to do a whole another hour on the other six questions we haven’t even gotten to.

0:51:57 MH: So this is the one that I would love for, Jen, you just to give a little bit of some of the advice ’cause I think it’ll be applicable. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student or junior analyst about to enter the “real world?” What advice should they ignore also?

0:52:13 JY: I would say we didn’t get so much of the advice to ignore answers. There were actually a ton of themes that popped up on this one of just re-occurring. People had a lot of great advice to share, which was great. Two of my personal favorites I will share. One is careers are not linear. That was a theme of just letting early students entering the workforce, letting them know that there’s no clear correct path for a career so that’s just a lesson that I don’t think, coming out of college, a lot of kids know. There’s certain expectations that they wanna live up to with their jobs and careers so that was a good take away.

0:52:51 JY: And then the other one is always be learning that came through and a lot of answers of just always looking for opportunities to continue to build your own skillset and Tim, this comes naturally for him but being able to do things that aren’t necessarily expected of you and then just finding opportunities if someone doesn’t know how to do something, especially when they’re young and motivated and hungry that there’s tons of learning opportunities out there to be impactful within a new organization, new career and then you can also find what you may not realize that you love to do. You could find things by accident that way as well.

0:53:28 MH: Awesome.

0:53:28 TW: Nice, good job Michael, figuring out the question to wrap on.

0:53:33 MH: I do this. This is like a thing I’m kinda… I’m just kidding, it’s was dumb luck but I figured it’d probably have a pretty awesome answer. Thank you so much Jen.

[laughter]

0:53:43 JY: That’s a perfect example of questions, we just collected so much great advice that was really fun trying to distill it and now even in this podcast format, just being able to share some of those answers it’s rewarding so, thank you for that opportunity with that question was a good one.

0:54:00 MH: Alright, we’ve gotta start to wrap up and again, really awesome conversation and I think all the engagement that we’re having, hopefully will transfer over to all of you listening. One of the things we do on the show is called the last call. We go around the horn and just talk about something we found interesting that we think might be of interest to our listeners and Jen, you are our guest, do you have a last call you’d like to share?

0:54:22 JY: I do and keeping in tune with this entire podcast episode, the question one was my favorite question with the book recommendations and I actually went out and bought one of the books that was recommended, it’s called The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman and it’s essentially a condensed MBA in a book, it’s a very awesome guide to everything between sales and marketing, everything that you would typically learn in a business school setting without the business school price tag and it’s just a different way to look at whether or not you need… Whether or not it’s worth the investment for the higher education which is also very timely given the current state of education and everything moving online so it’s a great read, very easy just to help highlight what you do and don’t know about how businesses run.

0:55:17 MH: Outstanding. Alright Moe, what about you? What’s your last call?

0:55:21 MK: I, big shock, have a weird one. I’m doing a throw back to Episode 96 with Lizzie Allen which was all about how we learn. One of the reasons I’m telling you all this is so you can hold me accountable, the other reason is because I wanna encourage other people to do it but Lizzie’s argument was that basically, it was very similar, like you don’t need extra qualifications, you just need to build out your portfolio of work which for analysts can be a public GitHub so one of the goals that I’ve set myself for the next quarter, literally last night at 6:00 PM was that this piece of code I’ve been working on and it’s like a mistake that I have made probably 30 or 40 times.

0:56:05 MK: It’s not a mistake, technically the code works but it’s more just like I know it’s hugely inefficient and so by the end of the season, I want to fix that problem and have the code on GitHub public so, you’ll all know whether or not I actually achieved my goal.

[laughter]

0:56:25 MK: But I’m also just putting this as a last call I guess to encourage other people to make the same commitment and then it will also help share some of our codes so other people know how to do stuff.

0:56:37 TW: I just stood up GitHub pages on Netlify over the weekend.

0:56:42 MH: Oh boy, yeah Tim, what’s your last call?

0:56:45 TW: I now have the great fortune to get to work with Cory Underwood and I know he did this in a very compressed form amount of time but he wrote on LinkedIn a 50 Things I believe about MarTech and it is just like it’s a little 50 point listicle and it opens with the, “Anything that includes ‘with a single line of JavaScript’ in the marketing material likely isn’t being fully honest.” Which we’ve all… You’re like, okay, that’s good, that’s solid, we all kinda know that but it just has other little… They’re little couplets and triads.

0:57:22 TW: I think one of my favorite 15, 16 and 17 are, anything dealing with the concept of time is likely to be buggy on release. 16 is any bugs related to the concept of time are likely to be difficult to find and then 17 is any bugs related to the concept of time are likely difficult to explain so the whole thing is kind of… And it bounces kind of broad and very very narrow but from as an analyst and knowing that Cory for a while now is kinda like knows browser tech inside and out and he’s kinda been on the Dev side but definitely has a foot in analytics and it’s just… It’s a quick and fun little read.

0:58:04 MK: I swear you were gonna say delightful but…

0:58:07 MH: Nothing is delightful to Tim.

0:58:09 TW: It is delightful as well.

0:58:11 MK: Michael, what’s yours?

0:58:13 MH: So my last call, I have a couple but we should just start with about a month ago, Tim Wilson made a list of 50 Things I believe About Analytics, which was the inspiration for Cory’s list that Tim just talked about so if you’re gonna read Cory’s, you should definitely read Tim’s. Tim you’re only wrong about a few of them so that’s pretty exciting.

[laughter]

0:58:35 TW: When I did that the number 51 which was go read Cory’s list on Martech.

0:58:38 MH: Okay so fair enough but actually, the thing that’s been banging around my head as we prepped for this episode and I was thinking about it was there’s a really famous column on by a journalist named Mary Schmich. I don’t know how to say her name, sorry Mary if you ever hear this, which you probably won’t. She wrote, it’s basically sort of like a commencement address if she was going to give a commencement address and it was put to music and spoken word by Baz Luhrmann and Ozie and so probably most people are familiar with him saying this, it’s just the Wear Sunscreen song basically is what it became known as. It’s actually kind of a hit in Ireland and the UK and stuff.

0:59:15 MH: Anyways, it is a very excellent sort of advice column, I guess, if you were gonna give people graduating advice. Anyways, I just… It was kind of going through my head ’cause of the topic of this podcast so that’s also my last call. If you have not heard that, check out both the column by Mary Schmich and also the, I’m pretty sure, we can find on YouTube a copy of the Baz Luhrmann spoken word of the same thing, which is interesting ’cause I actually thought it was for the longest time a commencement address but it turns out it was a column instead.

0:59:46 MH: Okay, you’ve probably been listening and thinking, “Hey I wanna think through some of these things” or “I’d love to react to some of those” and we would love to hear from you and the best ways to do that is to reach out to us. You can reach us on our Twitter account. You can reach us on the Measure Slack. You can reach us on our LinkedIn page and Jen, you’re on Measure Slack, right?

1:00:08 JY: Yes.

1:00:09 MH: Okay I thought so. I was like I’m pretty sure. I think I’ve talked to you on the Measure Slack before so I was like I’m pretty sure you are. Anyway so you can reach out to Jen too and certainly if you do and if you haven’t yet, go back to, I believe the content’s still available, the Adobe Virtual Summit. You should definitely go, take the time to go listen to that ’cause you also get some of Eric’s Metasoft perspectives which are also really excellent so great use of your time.

1:00:33 MH: Jen, we can’t thank you enough. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Now that you know that you could have said no to this it’s even more, we’re even more thankful that you said yes.

[laughter]

1:00:45 TW: That round two, that round two for the other six questions is gonna be tough.

1:00:49 MH: But seriously thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

1:00:51 JY: Sign me up for round two.

1:00:52 MH: And all the work that you put into getting all these questions in and finding this advice, it’s actually really great content and we really appreciate you putting that effort into it. Also we always wanna mention our show producer Josh Crowhurst who does such a fine job and we are super thankful for his efforts and I know I speak for both of my co-hosts Moe Kiss and Tim Wilson when I say, no matter what questions in life you’re answering right now, just keep analysing.

[music]

1:01:29 S1: Thanks for listening and don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter or Measure Slack Group. We welcome your comments and questions. Visit us on the web at AnalyticsHour.io, Facebook.com/AnalyticsHour or @AnalyticsHour on Twitter.

[music]

1:01:48 Speaker 6: So smart guys want to fit in so they’ve made up a term called analytic. Analytics don’t work.

[music]

1:01:57 Speaker 7: Analytics, oh my God. What the fuck does that even mean?

[music]

1:02:12 MH: Don’t ever change agendas on Tim at the last minute.

1:02:16 MK: You really sound like you…

1:02:17 TW: I’ve moved on.

1:02:17 MH: You’ve moved on. No I sense residual emotion and all.

[music]

1:02:23 MK: Oh and Tim thanks for, was it you? Who? I am, I don’t even know what day it is.

1:02:32 MH: I don’t know what day it is for you either Moe.

1:02:36 MH: Most people, somebody tried to tell me the other day that that song didn’t come from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I don’t remember who it was.

1:02:43 TW: Well they’re wrong.

1:02:44 MH: Yeah I know. I was like no.

[music]

1:02:47 TW: Rock flag and the four-hour analysis. That’ll be a little bit of a… People will have to think about that.

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