Episode #143: These Are a Few (More) of Our Favorite (Analytics) Tips

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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.

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0:00:27 Michael Helbling: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. This is Episode 143. You know what movie was better than Toy Story? That’s right, Toy Story 2. You know what movie was better than Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope? Yeah, you got it, Star Wars Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back. I’m sorry to mention movies while most of us don’t have the ability to go to a movie theater and see them, but here’s the thing: Episode 134, where we shared some tips and tricks, was very popular. And while we usually eschew trying to do anything that our listeners seem to like, Tim felt that we had some really useful tips he didn’t get to use last time, so he insisted, and it became this whole thing. So here’s tip number one. Once Tim gets his heart set on something, you just better go with it. Am I right, Moe?

0:01:21 Moe Kiss: Abso-freakin-lutely.

0:01:24 MH: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Okay, Tim, I guess it’s time to get you involved and offer you a chance to give a 30-second rebuttal.

0:01:30 Tim Wilson: That is not how this came together at all. [laughter] The end.

0:01:34 MH: Yeah, yeah, okay, that’s all the time we have. We need to get on. [laughter] So our original episode was Episode 134, and we did get great feedback from listeners, and we all liked the idea of potentially getting a chance to share some more of those tips and tricks. And so, no, it was not Tim Wilson, senior director at Search Discovery’s opinion alone, but all of ours. Moe Kiss, senior leader of Data…

0:02:01 TW: I love how National Public Radio’s, NPR’s podcasts have started allowing the background noises to come in and they’re like, “That’s the dog, I’m making a real reel,” and I like how we’ve rolled that into this one.

0:02:16 MK: Really? Are they really doing that?

0:02:18 TW: I…

0:02:18 MH: We are. [chuckle]

0:02:18 TW: I can’t tell exactly why. They certainly could edit around them, but man, Mara Liasson has been like, “That’s my dog,” or somebody’s like, “Oh, my husband bringing me flowers, I’d tell him not now.”

0:02:30 MH: That’s my dog, barking up a storm back here.

0:02:34 MK: People can always bring flowers.

0:02:35 TW: You can put ’em in outtakes.

0:02:37 MK: Always flowers. Anytime.

0:02:39 MH: I was going to say, and also Moe Kiss, who is the senior leader of data analytics at Canva…

0:02:47 MK: Marketing analytics. [chuckle]

0:02:48 MH: Marketing analytics. I always forget the marketing, I don’t know.

0:02:52 MK: Just looks after marketing data stuff.

0:02:55 MH: Yeah, absolutely, looks after it and all the people related. And I am Michael Helbling, the owner of AJL Analytics. And we have some more tips and tricks to share, including a couple that were sent in by some listeners. Okay, Tim, since this is your passion project, why don’t we let you kick it off?

[laughter]

0:03:20 TW: Oh man… [chuckle]

0:03:20 MH: I just… I like how that’s going.

0:03:24 TW: So, one we didn’t get to last time, and I feel like it’s continued to burn me a few times with stuff I’ve seen from other analysts since, is including context around the data, specifically the time frame for the data. The number of times that I will see in a presentation that includes a chart and it doesn’t actually have, either front and center, or in a footnote, the… What time frame is this covering, and it’s like, “Well, yeah, but it was the report from May, so everybody’s gonna assume that it was May.” And it’s like, well, but you’re comparing it to something else. Are you comparing it to April? May of last year? Year-to-day average? I have no idea. So I think that’s one of those… As much as it’s, declutter your content and your visualizations, when is this data from, would be one.

0:04:22 MH: Yeah, that’s a good one.

0:04:24 MK: But I think also… I was going through this, actually, with an analyst in my team the other day where we were sharing some work that she’d done. And she had all these caveats that she’d done in her analysis, and I was like, “Cool, I know that this… ” ‘Cause we obviously do everything in Canva, the slides will get shared. I’m like, “This is where you put your caveats at the bottom, because I know that at least 10 people who are coming to this session are gonna listen to your analysis, are gonna share them with other people in the company. So just footnote the caveats there of how it was calculated or what you included, didn’t include, because you lose the ability to control it.” And I think the date is the exact same thing, where I’ve had people lift a chart out of a presentation, throw it into something else, and you’re like, “You need to put the date on there because maybe it was in a May deck at one point, but then it’s gonna get added to some shareholder deck, which you suddenly have the context lost about when the date was.”

0:05:22 TW: What… And I think… There are times when… I tend to say, here’s our standard spot where we’re gonna put the data source, and at the minimum, what was the source? But if you think about having some huge segment built in Adobe Analytics, it’s like, no, you don’t have to detail everything, although you need to have a path to where it’s detailed. And I have a case right now where I’m like, okay, there’s some little minor things, but there’s the two or three… What dimension was I using, and you know what? Put it in light grey, it can be small, it doesn’t even matter if somebody initially says, “Well, where did that come from?” And you’re like, “It’s in the footnote right there.” And then they’ll remember. Like it’s… You don’t want it to overwhelm, but I completely agree that having… And I also, with slides, will sometimes say, “Put the key stuff actually on the slide, you don’t know if it’s gonna be printed or PDF-ed or something, but then you can use the notes and put more detail.” If it really needs more detail, that data source can say, “See the appendix for the detail on the process.” And that’s a convention for scientific papers is the, “Let’s spend as much time on the methodology and the approach.” Well, point people to what that was, if it’s too much detail. ‘Cause they’re not gonna know where to go look unless you tell them.

0:06:47 MK: And not only that, I actually find it’s a bit of like cover-your-own-ass thing as well, where when you’re doing your analysis, you’ve probably tried 30 different iterations that are all slightly different. And then, suddenly, you’re presenting to a bunch of people, and someone will ask you something specific about how it was calculated or what you did or didn’t include, and you have it there. Even if it is in really small font and very light, you have it there to back you up, so that if you’re like, “Shit! Wait, which version was this again?” You’ve got a… And, yeah, the cover-your-ass policy.

0:07:24 TW: But you’re also showing that you’re deliberate about it. I think that it can also head off that when you’ve got a, “No, I didn’t just go in and log in and just take the bluh-bluh-bluh… I filtered out this business unit. We did this.” Like you’ve got the little… So I think there can be a little bit of credibility adding, too, like, “Okay, they’re… This wasn’t they just logged in and said, ‘Give me the number.’ They clearly put a little thought into it.” But, it’s a balancing act. I try to keep it at one line, maybe a second line; you don’t want a full paragraph.

0:07:56 MH: Yeah.

0:07:58 MK: “No… I’m not gonna show you my slides.” But Helbs, I was… I’ve picked up “Never Split the Difference” again, and it’s really funny. I’ve gotten to that bit where they’re talking about negotiating salaries or numbers, and he talks about the concept of, “You should never have 42,000. It should be 42,918.” And it actually, rightly or wrongly, makes people think that you’ve put thought into that exact figure, and I think it’s the same concept, right? It’s like by showing that thinking, it actually, as an analyst, is helping you build trust and credibility, that you’ve put the thought and the effort into your work.

0:08:34 TW: But, to be clear, when presenting, where would… Where do you fall on… That, I think it’s a great point, and I definitely have seen that from… But sometimes, on analysis, I just went through this week, where the old like putting too many decibels of precision or showing 1,657,538, where you’re like, “Make it shorter and just say it was 1.7 million.”

0:08:56 MK: Oh, hells no. Yeah, I’m totally for rounding.

0:09:00 MH: Well, and to be clear, that was the negotiation tactic as opposed to a reporting the numbers thing. But I get what you’re saying, though.

0:09:09 TW: But I like the parallel of doing the, yeah, showing the thought, the data source piece in it.

0:09:15 MH: Yeah. Yeah, I like it. Which is interesting ’cause a lot of times, when I estimate or propose projects, I will round the numbers a little bit to make them a little more clean. So I typically don’t do it.

0:09:29 TW: What was the number on your very first invoice that you sent out? I’m assuming it wasn’t invoice 001. Did you start with like, “Oh, this is… ”

0:09:36 MH: No, it was invoice one.

0:09:39 TW: Really?

0:09:39 MH: Yeah.

0:09:40 TW: Oh, okay.

[laughter]

0:09:43 MH: I mean the system generates this, and the system I use generates an automatic number. I’ve changed the numbering scheme now ’cause as you add clients, the numbering is just sequential by when you send them out. So if you want your clients to get a sequential number, then you need to do something a little different, so I had to switch that, but, okay, we don’t need to… That’s not a tip or trick. [chuckle] Just like, “Hey, if you’re running a small agency or a small company, here’s how you do invoicing.” Okay, let’s do another one. Moe, you got one or two, you wanna start in on?

0:10:21 MK: Yeah, so I probably learnt this one the really hard way. I find that most companies, there is a way you can check if your spidey senses are right. And this is particularly the case when something looks a bit weird or something’s dropped. Most people nowadays have more than one tool or one data source, rightly or wrongly, that’s a whole another thing. And so what I would suggest doing is always finding a way to check an alternative source, and just see very roughly if things align. Like, is it following, overall, the same trend? Or is one thing gone off a cliff, and the other one looks like following the same trend? The reason for that is because I’ve just been burnt so many times where you’re like, “Oh, my God! This thing happened. I need to investigate it.” And then you realise actually something stopped collecting, or someone’s changed something in the data warehouse, or like… Just finding a way to QA your own work, I think, is a really strong process to set up early on.

0:11:28 TW: [chuckle] Well, yeah, we had a client recently also who a senior executive said, “Hey, someone, this person just told me that this metric, this… It’s really bad. Everybody, battle stations. Drop everything you’re doing and let’s go figure this out.” And we had some alternative data source; we still don’t know what the original source was. Multiple of us, ’cause we’ve done it… This is all in a BI platform, and we’re like, “We’re not seeing that at all.” Maybe this ties a little bit to the last tip where ultimately, we’re like, “We’ve looked at it two or three different ways, and all of the ways we’re looking at it is showing the opposite of that. Here’s the way we’ve looked at it. Can you find out how they were looking at it?” And it basically went away ’cause it was…

0:12:18 TW: It sounded like somebody had looked at a number, misinterpreted it, too hastily ran to the CMO, and said, “X is happening,” without diligence or context. Kinda destructive ’cause it sent a lot of… It was pretty quick, luckily, to say, “We’re not seeing that at all. Either our data’s wrong or we don’t understand what you’re actually looking at.” And our client was like, “Yeah, somebody jumped the gun on that one.” But I think that can also help you, thinking through how you’d triangulate on it, a lot of times, it is going back to… It forces you to sorta think about the systems and the process and what’s generally… Like what’s happening. So I think it gives… Having the discipline to do that, recognising that you will get burned if you don’t, but it also can generate some other thoughts or ideas like, “Oh, why… What else should be happening if this is happening?” And to me, you can help you come up with a bit of a richer story. And it also heads off the somebody else looking in a different system that should track with it, and saying, “I don’t see that at all.” And it’s like, “Well, I’m preemptively saying that we’ve checked that as well.”

0:13:34 MK: Yeah, yeah, nice.

0:13:35 MH: Tim, was it you that said that if your analysis is showing a massive improvement, it’s probably wrong? Was that on your list of 50 things?

0:13:44 TW: Yeah, I think I have the… If it’s very surprising, it’s probably bad data.

0:13:48 MH: Yeah.

0:13:49 MK: I disagree…

0:13:52 MH: Well, but it was sort of what it reminded me of, Moe, with this one about using your spidey sense to… I don’t say that it would always be wrong, but it’s like, “This doesn’t make sense to me.” You should always follow your intuition of dig a little deeper and find out why.

0:14:09 TW: It should be your default position, is to have this skepticism. Years ago, a guy ran around me. This was like late ’90s, early 2000s, and a guy was like… SEO was just coming on. And he made some tiny little changes to the landing page for this one product line, and then the next time the monthly reports ran, ’cause this was a log file analysis, the numbers had jumped way up on that page and he ran around and told everybody. And then he told me and I’m like, “Really? You really changed that little thing?” And so then I dug in a little bit further, and Gomez was apparently pitching us and it turned on their checker to that page and we weren’t filtering it out. And I was like, “Yeah, dude, did you really think changing from an acronym to a written out word that inside of two days, that that’s gonna quadruple your traffic? ‘Cause, come on.”

0:15:02 MH: That’s SEO Tim, we just… That’s how it works.

0:15:06 TW: So I think a default position of skepticism is…

0:15:09 MH: It is good.

0:15:10 TW: Yeah.

0:15:11 MK: I think… Yes, that makes sense. However, you do have to keep in mind your business context. So for example, at the moment, yeah, like I work at Canva, which is a super crazy place where growth and… We hit new records like every bloody week and month, and I always look at them and I… You see those graphs that everyone gets really excited about, of things going up. And I’m like, “Oh, is that actually happening?” It actually is happening. So I think it’s one of those things where you really need to keep in mind the business context, ’cause at the moment, for example, like online tools, everyone’s going gangbusters. If you were looking at Zoom stats right now, like things would be going off the charts and there are reasonable explanations for that, but you need to know your business really well to know if that’s plausible or not.

0:15:55 TW: But there’s a judgment around the data source. If you’ve got the data source that you’ve been using again and again and again, and you know the metrics in the slides and that goes off, that’s one thing. I would say the flip side is what happens when there’s a massive disruption, like COVID-19, that any data that looks whackadoo, people are like, “Must be right. It’s another COVID-19 thing.” So I still think there’s just, in general, the “Take a breath and… ” And I still have to fight it, but the more interesting… And this is not holding the data hostage. It is such a massive credibility bust, if you launch some… ‘Cause if you’re excited about it and you share it, there’s a very good chance it’s gonna spread like wildfire. Christa, that used to be… Christa used to have the example of the test that she ran and then she had to walk back for that reason. It was a fantastic example that… It is hard to learn… Like you gotta touch the stove a few times, get your hands burned before you…

0:17:03 MH: And the other thing is, about that scepticism, is you have to be careful where you display it sometimes in your business. So it’s really important to maintain your scepticism of the data, but maybe not show as much open scepticism of all of the tactics and strategy of all of your co-workers. Because, eventually you would become known as this really negative person, who’s like, “I don’t think that’s right.” And, so you just have to be a little bit cautious so you don’t end up sort of being that stereotypical…

0:17:32 MK: But I also think that you need to be really careful, and I’ve had discussions with my team about this, about being skeptical around data in an open office, where your stakeholders are sitting a row over. Because you have concerns about the data that you’re talking about with your teammates, they overhear and they’re suddenly like, “Can we trust this data?” And you’re like, “No, this is the process we go through. This is our job.” But you need to be super careful about slamming something in a team discussion when your stakeholders are close by. Well, if we’re ever all gonna be back in an office anyway.

0:18:06 MH: That’s right. That’s why you don’t get to… Well, sometimes you do get to eat in the kitchen. I was like, “I don’t know what the right analogy is?” [chuckle] But, hey, it’s…

0:18:13 TW: Well, I was heading the same way, like being careful about… It’s a fine line to walk, to not have the data that your tools are producing being treated as the absolute gospel, but also not having it be like, “Well, once again, you’re telling me shit, I can’t trust anything you tell me, ’cause you told me ITP… What?” But, yeah, I want the marketers to realise that my new versus returning visitors may be shifting a bit, but I wanna work with them to say, “Well, does that mean we can’t make decisions? What numbers can we rely on?” Yeah, so…

0:18:51 MH: I definitely tend to be a little more on the optimistic side naturally, and so I’ve definitely learned to check your assumptions again and again and again, so you can tone down that optimism when you’re finally talking to someone. ‘Cause once you do that wrong once, you know you’re like, okay, yeah, don’t tell people, “We’re gonna get $5 million of lift out of the website this quarter.” And then it’s like, “Well, no we’re not.” [chuckle] “So about that analysis I did, it’s incorrect.”

[chuckle]

0:19:22 TW: So can I shift to one that I wanna make sure we don’t miss, ’cause I’m not good at it and I feel like Moe might be.

0:19:28 MH: You can right after we do one sent in by a listener. So yes, yes you can. Just give me a minute. So we actually got… After last episode, we said at the end, like, “Hey, if you have a tip or trick, send it in to us,” and so we actually got a couple and so this one is from Jen Yacenda and I actually really like it. It’s very fast, Tim, so it won’t take long. But it was: Set up a Google search alert for either any clients you have, or for your own company, so you can stay on top of trends and things that you might not hear about in your day-to-day work. And I just thought that was such a great tip. I think I tend to be very… Like input is a strength, so I consume a lot of information, I’m always sort of checking in on the news and all these different things throughout the course of my week, but using Google Alerts is actually a great day… You get just a little email that alerts you to anything that’s out there and if you have a set of competitors, for instance, if something changes about their business or you have clients, if you’re an agency and they get a new CEO, like, it’s just all these things that you can bring up that you heard, you understood and you got to. So I just love that. That was from Jen Yacenda.

0:20:48 TW: I like that as well. I mean, from a consulting agency side, having those set up, they’re just good conversation… Waiting for a call to start or, “Hey, I noticed this,” and there are cases where it’s like, “Hey, I caught that news, should we be looking at X, Y or Z?” But I’ll also throw in… That listening to… For clients, I’ve never done this for my clients’ competitors, but certainly for clients that are public companies, to listen to their quarterly conference calls.

0:21:22 MK: Jesus.

0:21:24 TW: And I did that when I was in-house as well, like the… I mean… [chuckle] I’m not as diligent about it as I should be. Certainly, will do it when ramping up with a client to hear… I’m doing it now with some because of COVID-19. Like, this is where the executives with the very… With sharp analysts in the market asking them questions, and you literally get to hear straight from them what they’re thinking and what their challenges are and that can often be directly…

0:22:01 MK: Dude, where do you get the time for this? Like, I love Jen’s tip but I’m never gonna do that. I get too many emails already. I’m cull, cull, cull. I’m like…

0:22:10 MH: It’s a skimming thing. And I do most of it, I do most of mine in other channels than email too, Moe, just FYI. Like I’ve other ways, but it’s more about just getting to that piece of information in some orderly fashion.

0:22:28 TW: Yeah, and it’s triggered, it’s not… I mean, yeah, it’s tricky if it’s something where there’s 50 stories a day on someone but that’s the thing depending on who you’re working with and you can set up the filters to be like, “I just want new stories, I want stuff that’s hitting the wire.” It’s just… It’s interrupt-driven.

0:22:49 MK: Tim, how many emails, like, things that you signed up to that send you at least one email a week? Like, to do with industry stuff or client stuff.

0:23:00 TW: I probably get a dozen a day but I will go through… I have some that I read every day, those are like… There are like three or four that I read every day that are more industry, but one… Like I skim ’em. I mean, David Rob’s CDP Institute, that’s literally 15 seconds to scan that. So, but I’m inbox zero, still, I… Ish. I say that, how many do I have in my inbox right now? It’s the old check. I’ve got four and one of them is, “Your meeting attendees are waiting.” [chuckle] Oops. I have three in my inbox. [chuckle]

0:23:40 MK: If I had 12 things I had to read every day, even four, I’d… Yeah, anyway.

0:23:46 TW: I don’t. Some of them I don’t, yeah. But that’s the discipline of not… It’s at a point and you scan through ’em and… It’s just… I mean, finding things like, “Oh, their CEO just announced that they’re gonna step down at the end of the year.” Like, okay, that would come up eventually but way better for me to be like, “Hey, I saw the announcement.” So… The quarterly conference calls are literally the most important things about the business, and it’s not that uncommon for companies that are not pure play digital to talk about their digital investments on their quarterly conference calls. “Hey, we’re seeing ecommerce do X or we’re seeing… ” And you’re not gonna talk to the CEO directly, so why not listen to the CEO or CFO talk about how they’re seeing it, what their expectations are.

0:24:41 MH: Yeah. You have to find something that works for you, because I think the same thing so that number…

0:24:46 TW: No, you have to do it my way.

0:24:48 MH: That’s true. We have to do it Tim’s way. And that’s pretty much the final word on that. [chuckle] No, Tim, if I was getting that many daily emails, I would just delete them all without reading ’em. I get maybe four.

0:25:00 TW: No, no, some of them I do so and I will go and unsubscribe. I get some that I don’t remember that are like industry ones, so I’m not saying I read them. You’re asking how many do you get. And some I get weekly and so then I have time on the weekends, on Saturday or Sunday, where I can muse through them at a slower pace or whatever.

0:25:20 MK: No, I refuse to read emails on the weekend. It’s like people send me… I’ve started to think about having an auto-reply on my personal email that just basically says, “I barely look at this email because I look at my work email all the time and I’m sick of it, and I’m like rebelling against looking at my personal email.” I don’t wanna read stuff on the weekend.

0:25:39 TW: So quick tip, unsubscribing. I went through and did this over the holidays this year, is I actually went through my personal email and unsubscribed like crazy, I need to do it again, my personal email blows up a little bit more, I’m like, “Why am I getting… ” But even like going through like, “Yes, I like uncommon goods, but I don’t really need to get three emails a week on it. I’ll come look at you… ” So, that, some of the brand sign-ups, but I’m a fan of that, like if you’re never reading and you’re always deleting it, take the time to click through and unsubscribe ’cause then it’s not the clutter that overwhelms you with other stuff.

0:26:21 MK: I do. I do a cull every single… I reckon I do a cull once a month, at least, and it’s like you make a dinner reservation and suddenly you’ve got emails from the freaking restaurant and you’re like, “This is bullshit.” Anyway, we’re spending a lot of time talking about email.

0:26:34 MH: Well, but I think you’re bringing up something that’s probably really common occurrence for analysts, Moe, so I think it’s actually really good to talk about because that’s one aspect. It’s not really a tip that we’re talking about, but it is one aspect of the analyst life of just how do you stay on top of so much changing information on a continuous basis. And so I think there are seasons where your level of busyness can fluctuate much higher and sometimes be a little lower. And so, I do know at different points in, let’s say, my years at Search Discovery and stuff like that where I had a lot more going on, I was definitely not doing the same routine everyday, like stuff just gets pushed to the side, it has to. So, I would just say… And it’s also, I like finding out this stuff, it’s enjoyable to read through new information, to me, but that’s not how everyone is set up, so not everyone is gonna feel that way. Some people probably listen to this podcast because they like that we like it and they don’t like it, which we’re sorry. [laughter]

0:27:37 MK: But it seems like, for Tim, email has always been a big part of how you’ve kept up with the industry, whereas for me, it’s probably less though.

0:27:46 TW: I was a big RSS person for… I mean, I have, I’ve subscribed… I do much less of the reading of blogs.

0:27:56 MH: Google Reader, pour one out for Google Reader. Twitter is my RSS feed now.

0:28:01 TW: But I don’t think going to a quarterly conference call falls as an email thing or checking in on the client’s in-house social network and saying, “Yeah, I’m not gonna contribute to it, but what’s trending on their workplace environment might be just good to know.” So there’s a client aspect to that.

0:28:22 MH: And, Moe, to be clear, I have never actually listened to a live quarterly earnings call. I have listened to them after they’ve happened or read someone’s review of it, but I’ve never actually dialed it.

0:28:34 MK: But I suppose the thing, though, is like if you’re client side, for example, if we had a call like that, I would have been involved in helping prep the data and the content of what was gonna be shared. So I don’t know, different strokes for different folks.

0:28:47 TW: When I was in-house, I never was… Never was that far up the food chain, other than maybe… I mean, we may be generating a chart or two, but I was not in the planning in the conference room with the papers all along the wall and all the reference stuff for the CFO to have at their fingertips but…

0:29:05 MH: Wow, Canva IPO confirmed.

0:29:07 TW: Yeah.

0:29:07 MH: Okay, let’s go…

[laughter]

0:29:11 MH: Alright. It’s like, I’m like, “Somebody alert TechCrunch.” No, okay. Next tip. Tim, you had one, you wanted to cover, I forced us to go down this path and look where we are now. Okay, go.

0:29:25 TW: Well, this is one that I’m not good at, and it was the getting really good with shortcuts. I feel like I get to level one of shortcuts. Yes, I use command C and command V, I have actually watched people who were analysts who were doing the copy and paste in the menu and I just wanna throw them out a window. But I know people like Liz Echols, years ago, I remember her saying, “Oh I… ” She’s one of those, “I don’t touch my mouse while working in Excel.” And there are times when you see these… I get overwhelmed by the number of shortcuts, and I’m like, “How am I ever gonna remember these shortcuts?” But I think, Moe, are you a heavy shortcut user?

0:30:09 MK: I’m a moderate shortcut user. People in my team are power shortcut users, and I am a little bit jealous because just the speed at which they can do something when we’re like doing peer programming, I’m like, “Holy shit,” like they can go so much faster because of the shortcuts. But it’s funny because even the other day, I was peer programming with a woman in my team and I showed her that trick in SQL, which I remember sharing on the show ages ago, where I learnt how you could edit multiple lines of code at the same time, and she’s like, “Oh my God, I didn’t know Snowflake did that.” I’m like, “Dude, that’s not a Snowflake thing, that’s a SQL thing, every single… ” She was like, “Single-handedly, that shortcut is gonna change my life,” and I still think that’s my favourite. But I think it’s also one of those things where you have to add a few gradually. Like, don’t try and suddenly have 50 shortcuts. Just every couple of weeks, introduce a new one or two and then you’ll actually be able to remember them.

0:31:09 MH: That’s right. If you go take a class on shortcuts, you’ll end up not using any of them. But if you’re working in a tool constantly then building up some over time, that’s absolutely the way to do it. And I think it’s in the technical side of our world, where that’s the most applicable. Tim, do you have shortcuts for cleaning up charts and stuff like that?

0:31:30 TW: Not… Part of me is, I use themes in R and, therefore, I don’t have to do the chart clean up. I mean, I, like… But I hit their basic ones, like the command shift M, to do the pipe in R. There’s some that I’m like, “Okay, these are so fundamental,” and I used to, in Excel, I did have a set of customized and I actually had a way that I could load it when I transferred machines, but those were… A lot of ’em were more around like paste special and that sort of thing, but… I don’t know, there’s so many guides.

0:32:00 MK: Sorry, did you just say command shift M?

0:32:01 TW: Makes a pipe.

0:32:03 MK: For the pipe in R?

0:32:05 TW: Yeah.

0:32:05 MK: I feel like that’s gonna be my new life-changing shortcut.

0:32:08 TW: Yeah. So, yeah…

0:32:10 MH: Listen…

0:32:12 MK: I actually wanna open R right now and practice and see if this works. I somehow disbelieve you.

0:32:20 MH: Oh… We do this show for us.

0:32:20 TW: And there’s… Yeah, well… And I think there are times when I wanna watch somebody… Occasionally, I’ll watch somebody programming, like a video or something or a tutorial, and I’ll see something like pops where I’m like, “Okay, they did that with a shortcut.” But I feel like I wanna go have more diligence, ’cause there will, there’re always the post of like “These are 500 shortcuts you can’t live without in RStudio. 500, you can’t… ” And I’m like, “I really just need to print those out and put a little diligence around the… Let me go through and find which of these should be useful and then just set a goal to use them.” ‘Cause it does seem like those little micro-improvements to be able to navigate the repetitive stuff.

0:33:04 MK: Especially when you start using the command line, because then it’s like a whole new level of, you wanna do things as quick as possible. And I can’t… Did I share this in the last one? All the git shortcuts that you can create in your Z shell or your Bash profile?

0:33:20 TW: I don’t think so.

0:33:21 MK: I can’t remember if I shared it. I think I shared it in my Superweek presentation, but maybe not on the show. Basically, there’s a whole bunch of git shortcuts, so if you’re using git from the command line instead of writing like git pull, I think it’s… I actually think it’s GL, so basically it’s like you just upload it into your profile and then it has all those git shortcuts, which is gonna save your life. So I can link to that in the show notes.

0:33:44 MH: Very cool.

0:33:45 TW: Yeah, I think I now have a personal mission to just to do better with shortcuts in applications.

0:33:51 MH: Yeah, I just hit Control+T in Chrome, opened a new tab and started Google searching shortcuts.

0:33:58 TW: What? Control+T?

[chuckle]

0:34:00 MK: Okay, can we talk about your KPI one, Tim? Because I feel like that is one right now that I’ve actually been working with a lot of the team on, and I think it’s super important, so take it away, Tim.

[chuckle]

0:34:17 TW: This is the core of presentation in training, the “Don’t ask ‘What are your KPIs?’.” I feel like I’ve been trying to beat that drum for a while. Because if you ask, “What are your KPIs?” the default is, respond with metrics that I’m used to looking at. And an easy way to take that up a level is to say, “What are we trying to achieve?” We don’t need the data. Just let’s real quickly make sure we’ve captured, “Why are we doing this?” And then from that, say, “How will we know if we’ve done that?” And I’ve been doing it a lot more… I’ve had a lot more opportunities lately to do that with stakeholders that I’m newer to, and it’s just… It winds up being almost liberating when it comes to the “How would we actually measure this?” And all of a sudden you find yourself saying, “Oh wait, we could actually ask our market research… They might actually be able to measure whether we’ve changed perception of our brand in this very niche area.” Asking “How would we measure this?” Using podcasts, were actually an example I used with a client because having… Knowing a lot about all the data that’s not available, starting with, “Why do you have this podcast?” Okay, how do we know whether we’ve… What are we trying to achieve with this podcast? Okay, how could we actually measure that?

0:35:36 TW: And it’s surprising how many… Getting the mindset out of, let’s first think about how we could effective… What we’re really trying to do, opens up a lot of doors when it comes to data.

0:35:49 MK: I also think that lots of times stakeholders are actually using the wrong KPIs, and this is why this has been coming up a lot from my team at the moment, is like, the data literacy probably wasn’t at the level that we wanted it to be. So people, yeah, they got used to having a particular set of KPIs, which are not the best KPIs at all, and so even just by framing it of like, “What are we trying to achieve?” you’re getting your data analyst as well, by asking that question, to think about the broader context and get the stakeholders down a path of, “Actually, is there a better KPI that we should be using?” Because in lots of cases, they’re using really crap ones that probably aren’t even measuring the thing that they think that they’re measuring.

0:36:33 MH: Yeah, this is such a good call back to systems thinking, which… This is actually what the analyst is doing when they enter that, is they’re helping devise a system of thinking about the problem as opposed to just a reaction or a tactical response to it. And, check episode 55 with Christopher Berry for more information on systems thinking. [chuckle] But I like that, because you’re saying you’re basically helping think through a systematic approach to the problem, as opposed to… This is that thing that always gets me is, we walk into situations with our stakeholders where we have got all the knowledge about analytics and they have all the knowledge about what it is they’re trying to do, or their shared knowledge of some of that across but that’s where it lives, and then we say, “What of our stuff do you want?”

0:37:23 MH: And it’s like, “Well no, it’s my job to tell you what works for what I know the most about. So describe your end state to me, describe what success looks like to you, describe what you’re trying to accomplish, and then I’ll come back and say, ‘Hey, here’s ways that we can use your data to get to this end.’” And I think that works way better than being there with a pad being like, “Hey, what do you have? And do you want… That comes with fries, do you want coleslaw instead?” It’s like, we’re not taking people’s orders.

[chuckle]

0:37:55 TW: I’ve been on a tear about click-through rate when it comes to media, and I’m like, it is trying to point out, and in this case, it’s often to analysts where, yes, you want for whatever your channel is, you would like… A higher click-through rate is better than a lower click-through rate, but I’m like, “What are they really trying to do? They’re trying to spend money and get this result, and you know what?” If we found a way to buy some super cheap ass impressions with a shady click-through rate but for the dollars they spent, they got the result they cared about, I’m like, this is not denigrating click-through rate as a metric, I’m just like, “I’m pretty sure the business doesn’t or shouldn’t give a shit about what the click-through rate is.”

0:38:39 TW: ‘Cause that’s just a component in the system that is achieving that goal. They don’t… In and of itself, a higher click-through rate has no inherent business value and is disconnected from what they’re trying to achieve. Doesn’t mean there aren’t cases where click-through rate is absolutely a KPI. I mean, even in product analytics, it may be, it could be, but yeah. So, I’ve lived in that world for quite a long time and it seems like such a simple idea that it’s sad how people… How analysts could be scared of it.

0:39:15 MK: Maybe we should turn to another one from one of our listeners. So, this one comes from the infamous Michele Kiss. The funny thing was… So she suggested this off the back of our previous episode and it actually came up for someone in my team. And I was like, “Yes, I remember this tip from Michele.” So, I didn’t know that Google Sheets has… It’s actually from the Google Cloud stack, but basically it has the ability to detect a language and then translate it. So, obviously Canva is a company that’s global, so we were getting lots of people submitting feedback in other languages. And one of our user feedback analysts was like, “What the hell am I gonna do with this?” And I was like, “Oh, there’s this nifty thing in Google Sheets, which I didn’t even know was there. But it’s amazing.” And for that analyst on my team, it’s been a bit of a life-changer, ’cause there’s lots of situations where you’re gonna have different languages.

0:40:09 TW: What is the actual…

0:40:11 MK: I think it’s Detect Language. So, you have to detect it first. And then there’s a translate. I think it’s called Translate. Yeah.

0:40:19 TW: Okay. So, it’s like the Google Translate. It’s the Google Translate functionality pulled into Sheets. So, if you’re getting feedback… Interesting. I like that one.

0:40:27 MH: That’s pretty cool.

0:40:29 MK: Yeah, it is pretty cool. I mean, the only limitation is you have to use the Detect Language first for the Translate functionality to work, which when you have big volumes of data can be a bit of a shitstorm in a tea cup, but I think for the majority of people, it’s gonna fit their needs. So, thanks to Michele for that one.

0:40:49 TW: And another opportunity, not only is Canva growing like gangbusters, but they are a global company. So…

0:40:55 MH: That is true.

0:40:56 TW: Checking off whatever your marketing department has told you about needing to plug the quality of your organisation.

0:41:03 MK: No, but it’s more… I actually more give the context because I assume people don’t know what the fuck it is, and know that we might be getting user feedback in like… I don’t know.

0:41:11 TW: Quick aside, is there confusion in the market between Canva, your company, and Canvas, the… Which is like an educational… Does that come up at all?

0:41:23 MK: No, not really.

0:41:24 TW: No, not so much?

0:41:25 MK: A little.

0:41:26 TW: Okay. We’ve got a client where we’re doing online learning. And I guess it’s being used by a lot of the at-home is Canvas. And every time I see Canvas, I think Canva. And I’m like, “Uh.”

0:41:35 MK: But you could also use Canva for education.

[chuckle]

0:41:38 TW: I’m sure. There you go. That’s number three. Hitting for the cycle. [chuckle]

0:41:44 MK: Okay, can we talk about the “I don’t know” one? Because I do have a little riff off this that I also wanna get some thoughts on. So, Tim’s got a tip that’s basically, “Don’t be afraid to say ‘I don’t know’ but follow it up with ‘but I’ll let you know’.”

0:42:00 TW: Yes.

0:42:00 MK: Tangentially, there’s another one that I’ve been facing in my team, where some of the analysts are apprehensive to share thoughts in process. So, you might not 100% know the answer, but you might have a few ideas. I suppose my perspective on that is that sometimes I do say them, or share them in a meeting with stakeholders and be like, “We don’t know the cause of this yet, there are a few ideas.” And I do that as a way of trying to get feedback from the SMEs on whether or not those things are plausible, so I can help rank what I should look into. But people in the team are apprehensive to do that ’cause they’re like, “Well, I haven’t fully thought this through. I don’t know if that’s actually the right answer.” So, they just won’t say anything. And I’m like, “Yeah, cool. But then you’re also not getting any feedback on your stakeholders and directions.” So, I wanted to say, do you think I’m just totally messing it up, or?

0:42:57 TW: I think, I feel like we’ve had a discussion where… It’s one where context is key. Like they shouldn’t be presenting an analysis to a senior set of stakeholders who they don’t interact with much. And I fundamentally agree with you. I think, and Michael talks about vulnerability… I think analysts have this idea that they need to always have the answer, and the answer always has to be right, and it leads to some really not productive behaviours to not be able to say… Or even say, “I don’t know. I’m stumped. This is going on. I’ve looked at a few things. None of those are making sense. Why?” You definitely wanna tap into the hive mind, which may be the people who are looking to you for an answer. But to say, “I don’t have it.” I feel like analysts just put, to their detriment, will put pressure on themselves to… And will clam up. And they’re like, “Nope, I gotta give the answer.” Which means when they do speak, that it’s… They’re saying smaller things. If they’re only pronouncing the absolute truths, they’re not ever really exploring the bigger ideas. So, I agree.

0:44:16 MK: And so how would you develop that?

0:44:18 MH: There are two things going on there that I think… I feel like analysts sometimes have to balance. So, there are certain business metrics that a well-connected analyst has to have sort of an ongoing mastery of. So, a website conversion rate, or some of these core metrics that sort of define the context for how the company fashions. When I was responsible for certain business functions in my job, it was made very clear to me, “You should know the answer to this question at all times.” Like, “What was it like this past week?” “It was this.” “Why was it?” “Well, here’s what we think so far.” But the key there is, as soon as people start asking you what is driving that number, or you get further doubt from your area of certainty, which is like, “I know what the number was, but why was the number… ” Then you have to start playing a little bit more zone coverage or whatever and start working through, “I suspect it has something to do with this relationship, but we have to dig in to be certain.” Or you can say, “I don’t know yet, but here’s our plan to figure it out, and here’s when I’ll know more for you.”

0:45:28 TW: But that’s another case where if somebody, if one person in the room says, “Oh, well, that’s probably because of this thing that you knew nothing about that we did that changed.” I’ll point that out often as well. This is why I am for the get the data that is accurate and valid in the hands of the stakeholders as quickly as possible, calling out that there may be some things that you can’t explain yet, because hell of a lot cheaper for them to say, “Yeah, we accidentally turned paid search off for two days last week,” instead of me rediscovering something that everybody already knows.

0:46:04 MK: But it’s one of those things where sometimes, even, I remember… Oh God, this one nearly killed me. I’d spent two days looking into this huge spike we’d had, and I couldn’t figure it out. And I was just chatting to one of our engineers over a coffee in the kitchen, where I was like, “Yeah, this thing is killing me. It makes no sense.” And he was like, “Oh, we did testing on that day.” And I was like, “I’m sorry, you what?” And he’s like, “Yeah, we did testing.” I’m like, “Cool! So did you block the IPs?” And he’s like, “What do you mean block the IPs?” And I was like, “Well, what… ” My head exploded because I’d spent two days banging my head against a wall, and you’re just like… I never would have figured that out if I hadn’t had shared with someone my, “Shit! This is what I’m working on. I don’t know the answer.” And I just think, yeah. But the truth is I also don’t know how to train people in the team to have that skill, and that’s where I’m getting really stuck, is like, yes, you can tell people to be open and raise some of your, I guess your thoughts with stakeholders in the right context, but how do you develop that skill for your team? Michael, I’m looking at you.

0:47:15 TW: Hoo. There’s a topic. There’s a topic for an episode. [chuckle]

0:47:18 MH: Developing skills for your team? I don’t know. I was never really able to get that worked out, is… I’m kidding. [laughter]

0:47:26 TW: But there, I will say the part of it, and we’re… Val and I have been having this discussion, Val Kroll, who are co-workers at my awesome company that I work at, but there’s a degree of the learn by seeing. So I think that’s the case of having… Moe, if you’re in every meeting and you’re doing that, but the people on your team you’re trying to teach aren’t in those meetings and trying to figure out that, “Yeah, you’re coming… You’re maybe not gonna super actively engage, but you need to see an analyst do it and have it work and see how she does it.” So I think it is very hard to tell, other than calling, then calling up afterwards, and you realise, “I had to admit, I didn’t know the answer to that there.” So maybe do a little bit of the debriefing, but we’ve struggled, agency-side, to say, “When do you pull these people in?” The client’s gonna be like, “Why is that person just there?” It’s like well, you gotta figure out to say, “They’re learning.” Maybe, “We’re not gonna bill you for that,” on the agency side. A little bit easier to do in-house.

0:48:27 MH: Yeah, I had a conversation with someone, I dunno, a week or so ago, and they said, they’re like, “Michael, I learned the most just sitting in those meetings with you, and listening to you work through, talk about… I picked up so much, you don’t even know.” I was like, “Oh, geez!” ‘Cause I walked out of most of those meetings being like, “Well, I really screwed that up.” But that thing is I think experiential is a great way to learn for a lot of people. And so putting people in the position to see, like now, and then break it down afterwards, it was one of my favourite things to do, to go with someone who’s more junior to a client together, and we could talk about, “Here’s what we were seeing in these meetings today. And here’s some cool things I noticed,” or, “Here’s something great you did. And watch out ’cause sometimes, we hear this line of questioning, it’s leading to this. And so here’s how you can work your way through it.” So all of those things are just, experience is the teacher for all of that, and/or other people tell you things that you take to heart, and so I just keep doing it, the, what is it? The… Just keep iterating on the process and you will get good at it.

0:49:34 TW: So we have time for one more?

0:49:35 MH: Let’s do it, one more.

0:49:37 TW: Maybe we’ll go with a Tim’s pet peeve? The… It seems so… One of these seems obvious, like telling your stakeholders, like if you told them you’d have them something by Thursday, telling them if you’re not gonna hit it, don’t wait until Friday to tell them. Don’t wait until you’re supposed to deliver it to say, “Oh, by the way, I’m not gonna deliver it.” Proactive communication on deadlines. Even if you know, you said Thursday, they were like, “Yeah, whatever. Any time in the next couple weeks.” If you said Thursday, then you need to say, “Hey, I know I said Thursday… ” It might have gotten de-prioritised for a legitimate reason, but that goes over so much better than when it’s, “Hey, where is that thing?” And you’re like, “Oh yeah, it took longer than I expected.” And I’ve had some analysts who regularly do that, and I’m like, “Do not wait for them to ask. You need to tell them first.” And it just takes a little organisation.

0:50:37 MK: And can I just add to that? I’ve had two analysts who were pretty senior in my team who… We’ve just gone through this whole thing where their stakeholders started grumbling a little bit. The stakeholders love them, they’re completely amazing analysts, but it was one of those things where the analyst took for granted… Yes, they’d been pulled into doing something for a board report that’s super important and obviously urgent, but the stakeholder was like, “Cool, you said this thing would be done by the end of the week,” and they just assumed that the stakeholder knew that they’d been pulled on to this other thing, and so their request had been de-prioritised. And I’m like, “You’ve got to tell them.” And like, “Oh, but they asked.” and I’m like, “No, send them just a Slack message being like, ‘Hey, just letting you know I’ve been put on this urgent thing, it’s gonna push your thing back by two or three days.’”

0:51:26 TW: If this stakeholder may be the one who’s actually… The stakeholder could be asking something else and the analyst can assume that, “Well, the stakeholder ask me for this other thing. Clearly, that’s a higher priority. They must understand that that bumped their other thing down the list.” Like, “No, you need to… ” That… Even when the stakeholder is the source of… Is the cause of the delay, you still need to communicate proactively.

0:51:49 MH: I… This isn’t even an analytics one, this is just every life situation: Communicate ahead. The other little addendum I’ll make to that is make sure you’re really aligned on exactly what analysis you’ll be presenting. ‘Cause I’ve definitely been in a couple of meetings in my life where you thought you were clear, you walk into the meeting and they’re like, “And now, we’re gonna get a presentation on… ” like random topic that you had no idea you were about to present on. And that’s some fancy footwork too, a little bit different, but both of those go to expectations, just more generally. Set expectations early, often, every day. Let people know, “Here’s what’s gonna be happening.” Because just that, if they get a little frustrated because something you owe them is gonna be a couple days late, but they heard it from you first, all that’s gonna happen is they’re gonna be like, “Well, could I get it faster?” “Well, probably not, because I’ve had an ask to prioritise this thing, which now if you’d like to duke it out with the CEO, who’s now making me do this other report, you go right ahead. Meanwhile, you’re going down the list, buddy.”

0:52:51 MH: And the person is gonna be like, “Alright, well, I get it,” like it’s not… And then you can manage… You get yourself out from under that fight a little bit. So, yeah, I think this is an excellent advice. Primarily, I think it’s excellent advice because I was the analyst who did this wrong for many, many years. I am not good at this, like as a discipline. And so, it was only after I went client side, I started as a consultant, and I went client side, and I saw what it was like to be the client and not hear from consultants on stuff, and I was like, “Oh, so that’s what it’s like.” So it took that for me, so don’t let that happen to you, dear listener.

0:53:35 MK: It’s also, it’s one of those things that’s so little that your stakeholders won’t ever give you feedback on it because it seems like such a little thing. So when you are getting feedback, it’s probably not gonna make the list of things that they give you feedback on. But can lead, I guess, from someone being like a really good advocate for you in the business to being someone that’s a bit like, “Yeah, man, they’re like, they’re good… ” And it’s up to you to really tweak that, because I probably won’t ever tell you it.

0:54:03 MH: Yeah, it’s a credibility killer, is what it is. And that’s the death for an analyst. If you don’t have credibility, you walk in with an analysis and other thing, and they’re like, “Well, they’re not very dependable.” So they probably take all that and add it to your analysis, and… It could be the best analysis you’ve ever done, but you’re not gonna get any of the headway.

0:54:23 MH: Alright, well, that was a really great one to end on, thanks both of you. Alright, but this is good, I really enjoy these conversations, and I do hope they’re helpful for you, the listener. But we’re gonna spin up last calls and Moe, do you wanna share a last call?

0:54:41 MK: I was so super pumped, I think this is probably gonna be my favourite last call ever. So former guest and professional idol, I don’t know, Emily Oster has…

0:54:52 TW: Oster, maybe I do know… Okay. [chuckle]

0:54:56 MK: Has put together a new page with, I can’t say this name but, Galit Alter, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Both, two very, very, very smart people who put together a website called explaincovid.org. And it’s Emily Oster’s typical tactic that she does of talking through the risks of things like, “Should you send your kids back to day care? Does UV light really kill the virus? Should I drink bleach? Why do I need to wash my hands?” Like all of the common things you think about, but really pulling apart the evidence on mask wearing, a whole bunch of other stuff. So if you want to get any more data around COVID, you might be totally sick of it, but it’s a really incredible resource. So you did know it, Tim?

0:55:43 TW: I was familiar, and also, I had seen her… She’s been using the Twitter to try to find data sources, so actually trying to… Because she can actually take and do some slicing and because she, from when she had, when she was on our, on the podcast talking about like the… Assessing the data, and so, so many things that are, where the data is incomplete or unreliable and… Okay, what does that actually mean? So, yeah. She is so brilliant, no matter what she tackles on that angle, that sort of thing.

0:56:18 MH: Nice.

0:56:19 MK: Tim?

0:56:20 MH: Okay, Tim, what about you?

0:56:23 TW: Well, mine a little different. I have been trying to check out a little bit, but it’s hard to completely check out, so I’m gonna go with pleasure reading of fiction, whatever the genre, and just find time to do something that’s just that. Having said that, my… Specifically, and it’s only people who are into this sort of thing, I have brought up in the past how, Michael, you and Jim Cane got me turned on the David Scalzi, and I think the fifth or sixth books I read, somewhere along there, were “Lock In”, so which was like a two books and a novella. It’s just, from a title, the lock-in and even from the concept of, “Gee, what if we were all actually at home, but controlling these droids walking around?” So I’m gonna say, if you’re looking for recommendations, those are fun, and he’s a delightful writer. But then, also Brandon Sanderson, who just casually, Mike Gustafson at Search Discovery turned me on to him. But the Mistborn Trilogy…

0:57:25 TW: And the tie-in to the world we’re in right now is that there are these mists that are in, later in the series, those mists turn out to start killing a very precise percentage of people who inhale them. So they’ve got somewhat of a parallel, but they’re still escapist and enjoyable, so find time for some pleasure reading.

0:57:47 MH: I would say that Brandon Sanderson is probably my favourite fantasy author, for sure. In fact, I may have been the person who told my Mike Gustafson about Brandon Sanderson. I’m not sure.

0:57:57 TW: That is entirely possible.

0:58:00 MH: Anyway…

0:58:01 TW: What do you have?

0:58:02 MH: Okay. I’m sure, Tim, you especially know all about stats TikTok.

0:58:08 TW: No. [chuckle]

0:58:10 MH: No?

0:58:10 MK: What?

0:58:11 TW: No.

0:58:12 MH: Oh. Well, that was disappointing. Well, I’m gonna tell you how you could find out more, ’cause there’s this amazing statistician, this woman named Chelsea Parlett-Pelleriti, which, she… I started following her on Twitter and I can’t remember even how, but she is sort of a graduate-level statistician. She does a lot of work but makes it super approachable and she started a TikTok account where she talks about different stats concepts, and it’s amazing. Anyways, my dream is to probably have her come be on the show as a guest and talk about all these things. So, Tim, you’ll need to get TikTok going to understand what it’s about. [laughter] It’s partially like… Part of why I think it’s hilarious because it’s like… Anyways, I already sent it to Jamarius and told him, “Jamarius, this is your future. Get up on this game right now.” So he is on it, he’s on it, so…

0:59:04 TW: That’s good.

0:59:06 MH: Next generation stats knowledge in an easy-to-consume way, so Chelsea Parlett-Pelleriti is amazing. And she actually has a pretty cool thing she offers people. She’s like, “Hey, do you wanna talk through a stats concept?” She’ll do phone calls, brief phone calls, or hour-long phone calls for a nominal fee, which I thought is actually a pretty cool idea as well. Anyways, it’s just fascinating to see sort of that next gen innovation of statistical concepts across platforms that aren’t necessarily known for their educational content, like a TikTok. Anyways, so go follow Chelsea on Twitter and if you’re a TikTok user find her there, too. I don’t really know how that works either, but I know that TikTok exists.

0:59:51 TW: [chuckle] We’ll figure it out before we have her on.

0:59:53 MH: It’s not our demographic, Tim, you and I. So, it’s not… That’s not our world. Apparently, I’ve been hearing about this clubhouse thing and I looked for it, and it’s not apparently the project management software. It’s something else. It’s not even available yet, so, anyways, I digress. Okay. You’ve probably been listening and you’re like, “Come on with the tips and tricks already, we’re sick of it,” Or, maybe you’ve got one that you’d like to share as well. I’m not saying we would do a version three of this because just look how Return of the Jedi turned out, so [laughter].. We’ll have to weigh our options there.

1:00:28 MH: But we would love to hear from you, and the best way to do that is on the Measure Slack. Please do join the Measure Slack. I talked to someone the other day and I was like, “You’re on the Measure Slack, right?” And they’re like, “No, I’m not.” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m gonna need you to just… We’re gonna stop the call and you’re gonna go do that and then, well, we can talk again in the future.” Anyways, just get on the Measure Slack, is what I’m saying. That’s more than 10,000 analytics people all over the world, excited about something you’re excited about, and helping each other and communicating and networking and having a great community, so, worth your time. And check us, we can also be reached on Twitter and at our LinkedIn group page.

1:01:09 MH: Okay. Our show is nearly complete, but no show would be complete without talking a little bit about Josh Crowhurst, our wonderful producer who does such a phenomenal job every episode and in between episodes, helping us keep everything on track and on the rails. So thank you, Josh, it’s a delight and a pleasure. And just like both of my co-hosts, Moe Kiss and Tim Wilson. No matter whether you don’t know or you do know and you’re skeptical of what you see in the data, just remember, keep analyzing.

[music]

1:01:45 Announcer: 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 at AnalyticsHour on Twitter.

1:02:05 Charles Barkley: So smart guys wanted to fit in, so they’ve made up a term called analytics. Analytics don’t work.

1:02:12 Thom Hammerschmidt: Analytics, oh my God. What the fuck that does that even mean?

1:02:21 MH: Well, at my high point, I had about 46 people directly reporting to me. But it…

1:02:27 MK: I know, and I thought you were fucking nuts.

1:02:29 MH: It wasn’t a good job to have, I’ll be honest… [laughter] It was rough, most the time. But you know what, I got good at it, eventually. So the key thing there is figuring out…

1:02:44 TW: Easy there, cowboy. Let’s just… [laughter]

1:02:49 MH: By the measures that were placed before me by the senior leadership, keeping Tim happy was not of those measures.

[laughter]

1:03:01 MH: Or it should have been. Well…

1:03:06 TW: But that’s a… We can’t give people impossible jobs.

1:03:08 MH: Exactly.

[music]

1:03:11 TW: Here I go. The analytics startin’ again. There I go… Yeah, I know that is the thing…

1:03:16 MH: Moe is leaving the…

1:03:19 TW: Running away.

[laughter]

1:03:23 TW: All the data’s gone and privacy reigns.

1:03:28 MH: Privacy reigns.

1:03:31 TW: Stuck here on the phone…

1:03:33 MH: Stuck here on the phone…

1:03:35 TW: With the lawyer’s birthdays.

1:03:38 MH: With the lawyer’s birthdays. Yeah.

[music]

1:03:42 TW: Rock flag and email me the TikTok.

[laughter]

1:03:49 MH: Email me the TikTok…

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