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0:00:05.9 Announcer: Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. Analytics topics covered, conversationally and sometimes with explicit language. Here are your hosts, Moe, Michael and Tim.

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0:00:21.9 Moe Kiss: Hi everyone, welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. This is episode 188. If you’re listening to this shortly after it became available, happy International Women’s Day. I’m Moe Kiss, who you’re used to hearing, but not as the show introducer and that’s because I’ve schemed and manipulated and gotten Michael and Tim to give up the seats for this episode. Did I do it by threading the needle of being feminine while exhibiting just the right amount of masculine energy? Perhaps. Did I resist my natural inclination to avoid conflict and firmly impose my will? Maybe. The reality is that we do this every year in recognition of International Women’s Day. We have a kick-ass women-only episode coming to you today, which is intended for our entire audience. Our male listeners might even just learn a trick or two. Without them though, I do have a guest co-host who knows her way around a randomized control trial like the best of them. Julie Hoyer is a senior analytics associate at Search Discovery, which means she currently works with Tim, used to work with Michael, and is free to throw either or both of them under the bus over the course of this discussion. Thanks for joining me, Julie.

0:01:33.3 Julie Hoyer: Thanks, Moe. Excited to be here.

0:01:35.3 MK: Oh, I’m really excited to have you here I feel like Julie and I, yeah, we could chat. Now, while we celebrate the progress that has been made when it comes to diversity in analytics and in our professional lives overall, we also have to acknowledge that women still face a lot of day-to-day challenges throughout the course of their career. We didn’t actually read The Prince for this episode, but we did read Machiavelli for Women, which applies many of Machiavelli’s ideas. And well, people like Julie and I can get a lot out of it. It’s really tactical handy tips, basically women trying to figure out how to navigate the murky world of work. So I’m super excited that our guest today is the author of the book. Stacey Vanek Smith will be a familiar voice to anyone who is a regular consumer of public media in the States. She spent over a decade as a senior reporter and fill-in host for the Marketplace from American Public Media before joining National Public Radio as a reporter for Planet Money. She went on to create and now co-hosts The Indicator from Planet Money, and somehow still found time to write an incredible book during the pandemic.

0:02:41.9 MK: I’m thrilled to welcome her as our guest for this episode. Welcome, Stacey.

0:02:46.1 Stacey Vanek Smith: Thank you, I’m thrilled to be here.

0:02:48.5 MK: So, for those of us who haven’t read the book… Obviously, Julie and I had a whole interlude before the show, ’cause we just had to get some things out of our system. Can you talk to us a little bit about Machiavelli for Women? How did you make this connection between The Prince and what women are experiencing in the workplace?

0:03:06.8 SS: Yes, that’s a very good question, especially since Machiavelli is not typically associated with female empowerment.

[laughter]

0:03:14.1 MK: Yeah, totally.

0:03:15.7 SS: The book came about… Actually, the Machiavelli part came second. So the book came about because, like you said, I’ve been reporting for almost 20 years on business and economics the whole time, and when you are on the same beat for that long, you do certain stories multiple times. So I had done probably a dozen stories about the gender pay gap over the years, and the gender pay gap, it’s women make about 80 cents on the dollar compared to men in the US. For Black women, it’s 63 cents, and for Latina women, it is 55 cents.

0:03:48.6 SS: So it’s a lot. Anyway, I was doing my umpteenth story about the gender pay gap, and I was talking to this economist, this woman, Francine Blau, who’s done a lot of really amazing work about the gender pay gap. And she just tossed off this remark, she was like, “Well, these numbers have barely moved in 20 years,” and I was like, “What?” Because that was my whole career. My whole career, I’ve been covering the economy, it’s so dynamic, it’s moving, I’ve seen all these companies rise and fall, industries, 40% of businesses are now started by women. More women than men go to law school in the US, almost as many women as men go to medical school, I just seen all this change and transformation. Also the global economy is just such a dynamic place, and the idea that this one thing had been stuck with all this change happening around, it was so strange to me. And I said, “20 years?” And she said, “Well, they really, really haven’t moved in 10.” And she said, “It’s the same problem with CEOs,” and I looked after our interview, and she was right. The 80% of CEOs are male in the US, 90% are White. Those numbers have gotten worse somehow, and the more successful the company…

0:04:58.6 SS: Fortune 500 companies, the numbers are worse. And so I was talking this over with my editor, this wonderful woman, Karyn Marcus at Simon & Schuster, and I was like, “It’s just not adding up.” I see all this change, I report on all this change every day, it’s like we’re putting all this new stuff in one side of a machine and the other side, for 10 years, the CEO numbers have also been stuck for 10 years. And I was like, “I just don’t understand what’s going on.” And she said, “It’s almost like women need Machiavelli.” So that was the first moment that Machiavelli’s name came up. So I bought a copy of The Prince and read… This was in the before times when you could go to a cafe and read about disinfecting everything and hitting the ceiling every time someone coughs. It is just short, it’s like 40 pages, The Prince. And I had read it in college, and I had just remembered hating it and wanting nothing to do with Machiavelli, just this power obsessed, basic crushing people, I had no interest in it. It was like… It felt like the Renaissance equivalent of Art of the Deal, I was just like, “I’ve no interest.”

0:06:01.6 SS: But as I read it, I got so excited because I felt like Machiavelli answered this question I had, which was, how is this not changing? What is the problem here? Why is all the stuff changing and yet all the stuff is stuck. And well, you guys are like data analytics people, so there were all these other numbers that were stuck too. There’s something called the female labor force participation rate. That’s just the share of women in the US population who are in the workforce, also had been stuck for 10 years. It was climbing, climbing, climbing since the ’50s, all these numbers had, climbing, climbing, climbing as more women started to participate in the workforce, to just frozen, frozen.

0:06:42.9 SS: So anyway, Machiavelli starts out his book, where he says there are two kinds of princes, there’s the inheriting prince, and then there’s the conquering prince. And he says for the inheriting prince, things are pretty easy. Everybody knows his name, he’s the status quo, his family has been in power, everyone’s like, “Oh, this guy… Yeah, of course.” And then there’s the conquering prince, and he said for the conquering prince, he says, “Difficulties abound.”

0:07:07.9 SS: Everybody’s like, “Who’s this guy?” The conquering prince has just taken over this new territory, so he’s in control, but everybody’s like, “Why is he in control?” They have mixed feelings about him. Why am I not in control? Who gave him this power? Where does this power come from? And so he’s like my book, his book, The Prince, is basically a guide for conquering princes who have all this trouble, who get challenged all the time, whose power is always in question, and I was like that… To me, this light bulb went off. I was like, “That’s it.” That is exactly what’s going on. Women are in the workplace, breaking into new fields, starting businesses, getting degrees, everything. So we’re in the workplace, and this is true for a lot of marginalized workers, by the way. It’s in the workplace breaking into fields, all that, but it’s still new, and everybody it’s still… It’s not established power yet. So everyone’s still questioning why are you there? Everyone’s pushing back, everyone’s… Even if it’s not conscious, which a lot of it isn’t, which makes it harder to deal with, I think. So that’s why I was so struck by Machiavelli, and that’s kind of where the idea for the book came from, and why I chose this legendary merciless and misogynistic man to be a foundation for my book.

0:08:28.1 MK: It’s funny, even I noticed you did talk about the definition of power, and I think that was something that was really interesting that you kind of drew out the fact that women don’t kind of… I guess when you say the word power, there’s all these negative connotations, but it’s like women really just want the license to do their jobs well and to have autonomy and drive things forward. And it was something that I kinda didn’t think about the fact that even the notion of how power is interpreted might kind of exacerbate the problem.

0:09:01.0 SS: Yes, well, I was… It’s funny that you mentioned that. I hesitated to include it in the book because it felt like a middle school essay, you know what it’s like? The definition… Webster’s Dictionary defines power as, but I, of course, looked it up because I love word etymology, and I think it can tell us a lot about where things come from and what things mean, and the layers of meaning in words. And so, of course, I looked at power and I was so fascinated by it that I was like, “Okay, I have to include it, even if this is like a middle school essay move.”

0:09:31.2 SS: But the root of the word is poer, which is to be able. And that was so… That felt illuminating to me, where I’m like, “That’s what I want in the workplace.” I’m not interested in Machiavelli and crushing people. I know that there are some people who are interested in crushing people, but I don’t think most people are interested in that, I think. But to be able, to feel free, to have agency in the workplace, I think that spoke to me. I was like, “Yes, that is the thing that I want. And I think that’s the thing most people want, they just want to be free to do the work they want and to be properly valued and to have avenues for advancement that are fair and equitable. I think it’s that simple, but… Well, it’s not easy, but it’s simple.

0:10:15.2 MK: Stacey, there are a thousand directions we can take this conversation in, but I think my favorite thing about the book is how much practical advice was in there, so I really want to get to that content today, because as I said at the start, I actually think there’s lots of men that can learn a thing or two from your book as well, and the one that is probably a good starting point, is softeners. Because soon as you started to explain it, I was like, “Oh,” and I knew that I do it, and I always edit women’s work, and I find myself removing exclamation marks and smiley faces, and I know that I’m doing them, but… Julie, what… Do you have that same realization when you were reading the book?

0:10:57.3 JH: Yeah, I definitely did, and it’s funny because I don’t know if I ever knew of them as actually being called softeners, but as soon as you gave them the name, I thought to myself, yes, I use these, and I know they exist, and I think I’m almost on the other end where I re-read my emails because I re-read my emails five times before I send them, even if they’re two lines. Who knows why, but I still do. And sometimes I think, “Oh, do I have to be that enthusiastic?” Are they gonna think I’m too young? And I’m using all these exclamation points, so I’m almost on the other camp of where I’m just stripping them out of my own work, and I don’t know if I’ve really, know how you said you notice them in other people’s… I don’t know if I notice them much unless they’re mine, but if they’re mine, I feel like they’re just glaring.

0:11:42.5 SS: Yes, softeners was fascinating. Softeners is basically just anything that… Women use them all the time to soften language. It’s things like I just think… Or I’m sorry, could I just say… Or going up at the end of a sentence. Is this way to soften things… Exclamation points, emoji, all those are softeners. And the thing that… I was so excited when I started researching this, because I had just… I have to listen to my own voice for my job all the time. I listen to myself asking questions, and it is basically an exercise in shame spiral, because I’ll hear myself packed so many softener, so many thousands of softeners in every question, and I was just basically riddled with shame about this. What is wrong with me? Do I have to… Why do I have to put exclamation points in every single thing? Why do I always say like? Why do I always say, can I… I just think… Can I just like… Sorry, I’m sorry, can I just say all the time? All the time, all the time, and I would try to stop myself, and then I would be so focused on stopping myself, I couldn’t think of what I was gonna say in the first place and get all hamstrung.

0:12:46.6 SS: So I read a study and I felt so much better the second I read it, but the study showed that when women use softeners, men retain more of what they say. And I realized, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m not using them because I’m some flibbertigibbet or I can’t express myself properly or I’m an airhead, I am using them because I know they work,” and that is why women use softeners. And the irony is, of course, women get criticized for softeners, this is something I think comes up quite a bit, with money and negotiating and everything, which is that not only are women and a lot of marginalized workers experiencing discrimination, but then you beat yourself up for responding to the discrimination. So the softeners moment was such a wonderful moment of revelation for me. I thought, “Oh, I’m just… I’m only using them because they work.” That is why I’m falling all over myself with just like, and are you saying, and little laughs in the middle of millions of interviews with economists about whatever, the Federal Reserve, because it’s an effective way to communicate. It’s a way to get my point across more effectively.

0:13:56.3 SS: Now, there’s another side to softeners, right? So Dr. Cecilia Ridgeway at Stanford has done some great research about softeners, and she said they’re a double-edged sword. On the one hand, your thoughts are more likely to be remembered and people are more likely to respond positively to what you say. On the other hand, you’re kind of undermining your own point. I’m sorry, I just think, I’m really sorry. Can I just say? So it’s this little bit of a double-edged sword. So what she recommended was kind of a certain kind of softener, where you would say, let’s say in a group setting, instead of, hey, this might… I don’t know, I don’t know if this is… I don’t know, I just… Could we have the meeting at 10 instead, it just seems like it might work better for everybody? Say something like, “This might sound crazy, but let’s try having our meeting at 10.” Or just something that undermines your point less, so just be aware of the softeners you use. A softener, for instance, could be in the beginning of an email, a set of a million exclamation points, which had been my go-to, something like how was your trip to Puerto Rico? I hope you’re doing well. Hope all is well with you.

0:15:01.9 SS: That’s a softener also, that’s personal and kind of warm, but it doesn’t necessarily undermine what I’m trying to say like a dozen exclamation points might. She said, don’t not use them, use them, but just kind of be mindful of the ones you’re using and pick ones that don’t undermine your credibility or the point that you’re trying to make.

0:15:23.9 JH: It almost sounds like maybe not diminishing return on them. Maybe there is a point where you’ve used enough of them in an instance, but it almost sounds like the sophistication of your softeners. There is a hierarchy of maybe the softeners you could use.

0:15:37.6 SS: There’s absolutely a hierarchy, and I am also quite aware in saying this, that this is yet another layer… Not only do you have to have an idea that you wanna introduce in a meeting and then find a way to introduce it, and then you have to find a way to introduce it with a softener, and then you have to find the proper softener. It’s exhausting. So, I do wanna acknowledge that.

0:15:56.7 MK: I was gonna say that as I was reading the book, a lot of it, even just then, as we were all talking about softeners, or how often we check our emails, as a woman in the workplace, there are multiple times that even before I send a message, a Slack message, I’ll send it to another woman and be like, “Can you read this for me before I send it? I wanna make sure I don’t come across bitchy or bossy or whatever the other thing is, I wanna make sure someone’s not gonna misinterpret this,” and I don’t know… I don’t have a lot of male colleagues that do that, but it’s one of those things where you’re like, the mental energy that I expend to think about every single message I send, and that’s with people that I get along really well with. I went through a situation previously where I was bullied, and I had to really think about every single message I sent and that was 10X, but it’s like this is with people that I work well with, and that mental energy throughout the whole day is exhausting.

0:16:53.6 SS: One of my favorite interviews in the book had to do with this, the newspaper article that I came across, there were these two workers at this company, a man and a woman, and they switched email addresses. Basically, it happened by accident, but they decided to try this natural experiment. They worked for a company that put together LinkedIn profiles and resumes, basically professional materials, where people would hire them to spruce up their professional profile. And there was a man and a woman, and the woman was always getting in trouble for being less productive and slower, getting through clients more slowly than the man was. So they ended up accidentally switching email addresses and then they decided to do it on purpose in this natural experiment. And the man tweeted out a Twitter thread about this experience, which ended up getting picked up by newspapers, is how I found them and put them in the book, but he said he couldn’t believe it. People just spoke to him so differently, suddenly we’re questioning his competence, one person asked him out. He said it took him three or four times longer to do his work, because he was getting questioned, he was getting push back.

0:18:00.3 SS: A lot of who do you think you are? Are you qualified to do this? The woman said it was like the best two weeks of her life that she was able to communicate just very directly exactly what she wanted to say. She was given the benefit of the doubt, she was getting through clients faster, faster, faster. People were respectful. It was about business. She could actually do the job. And that, I think, ties in with all the softeners and things too. She said she naturally began to communicate in a more direct, straight forward fashion. If you do that as a woman in the workplace, even with colleagues that you like, much less if you’re in some kind of a bullying situation or a competitive situation that’s hard, 10 X, like you said, even in a situation with people you like, people expect women to communicate differently. And essentially, you have to look at that and find a way to work with it, whether it’s you just communicate directly, whatever, or find softeners or whatever it is. The truth of the matter is, people expect women to communicate differently and they communicate differently with women. And so that is something that we are dealing with all the time consciously or subconsciously, and this is why we’re sending emails to our friends, is this too emotional? Do I sound too girly? Do I sound too serious?

0:19:16.4 SS: I talked to one woman for the book who got in trouble from her boss for communicating too directly. She worked in tech. Most of her colleagues were male, she got very used to kind of slacking with them in a very super direct way, and her boss came to her multiple times when she would email clients and he would be CCed, saying, “You seem really dower. You seem really upset. You need to include some exclamation points to make it clear that you’re cheerful, keep these up beat and she said she was looking at almost identical emails that her male colleagues were sending and just making herself crazy, trying to figure out, “Am I supposed to email like a woman? That feels like a defeat. Am I gonna just keep doing what I’m doing and continue to get in trouble with the CEO of the company?”

0:20:04.5 SS: The communication issue, it gets at the heart of everything, which is people expect women to behave differently in a more gracious, warmer, subservient way, and whatever you think of those expectations, those expectations are there. And we pick up on them in a million ways. And so yeah, softeners.

0:20:27.6 JH: It makes me think too, when you were talking about the way we communicate and the way people expect women to communicate, and even I think how they receive communications, and one of the things that really struck me in the book was when you were talking about hepeat, and I suddenly just thought to myself, “Oh my gosh, yes. That has happened. Drives me nuts.” I always thought, “Did I say it weird? Did people not hear me? Did they not understand what I was saying?” I do find myself trying to agree and say something to reference that like, “I have that same idea, I agree with you.” So I wanted to hear your guys’s experience with hepeat because I know for me, after I read the book, I started thinking through one of my experiences I know I have, and it actually to me, from my experience, was I got it more from men that are my peers or actually below me than men that are above me, but I didn’t know if that was something kinda common or if it just depends on, you know, your work situation.

0:21:25.7 SS: Yes, so hepeating is basically… Women have a lot of trouble getting heard in meetings. This is much worse for women of color, by the way. Women will be interrupted, talked over, and hepeating is basically having their ideas stolen. So Julie, you say something like, “You know, I think we should move our meetings to 10:00 AM,” no one says anything, and like five minutes later, Ralph says, “We should move or meetings to 10:00 AM,” and everyone’s like, “Yes, we should. Go Ralph,” another stellar idea from Ralph.

[chuckle]

0:21:56.2 SS: In pitch meetings, as a journalist, this happens all the time. I see it happen now, I became conscious of it much more so after I looked at the research for the book, but you know, a woman will pitch an idea like, “Maybe we should do a piece on oil prices,” everyone’s like, “No, whatever.” And then 10 minutes later, a guy is like, “You know what’s interesting, why are oil prices rising, when I thought we had all these fracking well set up?” And it’s like, “That’s amazing. That’s so interesting. I was just reading this piece in the New York Times the other day about oil.” You’re just like, “What?” happens all the time. And so dealing with it’s like really awkward. Like you were saying, Julie, trying to sort of re-own the idea like, “Oh yeah, yeah. When I was mentioning oil earlier.” It just, it’s so hard to deal with.

0:22:41.3 MK: Yeah.

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0:22:43.9 MK: Let’s step aside for a brief word about our sponsor, ObservePoint. I’m actually gonna let Tim on the mic for a bit.

0:22:50.5 Tim: Well, this doesn’t feel awkward at all, but Moe, you just can’t keep me away when it comes to singing the praises of ObservePoint.

0:23:00.5 MK: Right, so smarty-pants, I’ve got two questions for you. One, have you found any new ways to explain ObservePoint, and two, can you do that without mansplaining?

0:23:12.2 Tim: Well, I think our listeners know at this point that ObservePoint is a fantastic tool for automatically auditing the data collection that is occurring across your site, alerting you immediately if there’s an air or missing tag and enabling you to track your data quality over time. Well, what occurred to me today was that there’s a great freeway to wrap your head around ObservePoint that I don’t think we’ve ever brought up.

0:23:30.5 MK: What’s that?

0:23:31.5 Tim: The ObservePoint TagDebugger free Chrome extension that many analysts have used for years to check out what tags are firing and with what values on their website. I actually just used it today, as I was ramping up on a new client and trying to get a sense of what their tagging look like. It’s handy. And essentially, what I was doing manually with the TagDebugger is a window into what ObservePoint can be scheduled to do more thoroughly and on a recurring basis. So there you go.

0:23:56.4 MK: Okay. Fine, I hate to admit it, but that is a pretty good example, and you’re right that we’ve never brought it up before. So if you’d like to learn more about ObservePoint’s capabilities, you can do so by visiting observepoint.com/analyticspowerhour. Now, I’m going to kick Tim back to the producer part of the show, and we’re gonna get back to the real show.

0:24:18.5 MK: One of the things I actually wanted to talk a little bit about the amplifying effect, Stacey, ’cause you mentioned the Obama administration, and believe it or not, I did actually A/B test this in the workplace, although Julie would be utterly disgusted with what I’m referring to as an A/B test, because it was not randomized, my sample sizes were not big enough. There were so many issues with this. But basically, a group of women, which we called Campaign Fishing Net, were part of the test group, and the other group, we didn’t do anything with. And the group that were in our test, we decided to start amplifying each other’s ideas. So if someone suggested an idea in a meeting, someone immediately would be like, Oh, that’s a great idea, or would help give credit to it. So let’s say, I don’t know, Emily came up with an idea, and then a second later, John kind of repeated it.

0:25:14.2 MK: I would then come back in and be like, “Oh, John, that’s a great… That’s a great addition to Emily’s idea from a few minutes ago, or even if someone was getting interrupted, we would kind of use each other to be like, Oh, I’m not sure that Sarah was finished saying what she was saying, like Michael, do you wanna just give Sarah a sec to finish her thoughts? Because it’s tapping into that mentality that you talk about, Stacey, about if women are advocating for other people, their actions are less likely to be perceived negatively. And look, I do have the results. They’re definitely not statistically significant.

0:25:47.1 SS: I’m very excited. I’m so excited to hear these.

0:25:49.4 JH: I am. Me too.

0:25:49.4 MK: Yeah, the overall… I guess the difference was the sense of inclusion and feeling part of something and feeling like they had support. That was the key difference, right? But like I said, it was all very anecdotal. I would love to work at an organization where I could properly do this test again at some point.

0:26:11.1 JH: That’s awesome. Do you feel like it had a lasting effect? Does that amplification, is it something you have to keep going a 100% of the time, or does it actually seem to have that lasting effect where maybe the males that are experiencing the amplification of other women’s ideas become a little more aware of it and what was happening?

0:26:31.4 MK: There was one occasion actually, where I did it in a meeting where someone had suggested like a new structure, and I know that one of the women in the team had suggested the exact same thing like five months ago, I had a deck that she had suggested in, and I said something to the effect of like, Oh, I’m so excited to see we’re all coming around to what Jenny mentioned months ago. It’s so good. This is finally getting traction, and then we’re all aligned, and I just saw this massive smirk from one of the guys in the leadership team, and I was like, I wonder if he’s picked up on what I’m doing. I don’t know. Maybe Stacey, what do you think? Do you think it’s something you have to keep doing or…

0:27:10.1 SS: That’s a great question. Amplification was one of my favorite solutions in the book because I thought it was so elegant, and I also thought it sort of had a nice side effect of creating a little network of allies.

0:27:22.9 MK: Totally.

0:27:25.0 SS: So you come to people before a meeting and say, “Hey, listen, I’m gonna pitch this idea about a 10:00 AM meeting, will you back me up?” And so suddenly you’re creating a network with the idea of just getting people’s ideas heard and backing each other up, and I really thought that was beautiful. Some of the advice I gave in the book was hard for me to give, like it troubled me and troubles me. Amplification was one of my favorites, and also my feeling is, and Julie, this is very, very far from any kind of empirical evidence or a study. My feeling is that it does start to change the culture of a place. When you hear that happening over and over and over again, people backing up each other’s ideas, people crediting other people, people develop an awareness, maybe subconscious…

0:28:07.4 SS: I don’t know, my gut feeling would be that it would create sort of a lasting effect. I definitely think I’ve started doing it more in meetings too, I’ve become more conscious of it. So I’m very aware of doing it, and I feel like I know what to do now, I feel like I would notice other people’s ideas getting taken, of course my own getting taken. And like you said, Moe, it’s so much easier to call out on behalf of someone else. It’s so awkward when it’s you. It’s so easy and wonderful when you’re standing up for someone else, so if you’re trying to say, yeah, actually, I had that idea back in July, whereas you can say, “Oh, I’m so glad we’re coming around to Jenny’s idea that she had back in July.” It just makes you look like a hero. It makes Jenny look brilliant.

0:28:51.4 SS: If Jenny’s saying, Oh, you know, actually, I mentioned that back in July, it’s like, Oh man, is she so obsessed with credit grabbing? It’s so awkward, but like you said, for women grabbing credit or grabbing is a loaded word. For women, claiming credit is very complicated. That’s kind of not what you’re supposed to do. It’s not something that we tend to think of as like a… And I say this… There’s some great studies. Harvard, actually, has this great online study you can do to talk about your unconscious biases. And it’s an unconscious feelings that women should not be claiming credit for themselves, they should be supportive and nurturing and kind and modest. So when women claim credit, it goes against that, and people have adverse reaction, s more so than if a man does it. But like you said, if women are fighting on behalf of other people, that is very much in line with what we think of as like, what good women do, so you take…

0:29:50.3 SS: There’s no backlash for that, and it just becomes a really wonderful solution. That said, I think if you are in a situation where you either let it go or take credit awkwardly, depends on the situation, you have to think of the holistic… Your long-term goals, and obviously, you don’t wanna be grabbing for credit in every meeting and correcting people and saying, excuse me, can I please just finish my sentence? That’s gonna have a long-term bad effect. But I do think err on the side of awkward. It’s… I mean, I’ve done it before, and it is just so crushing, but it draws a line. I think those boundaries can be important.

0:30:27.7 JH: And they wonder why women overthink everything, like this is just scrolling through our head constantly, like I joke with my husband, of like, I feel like you can think of one thing at once, but I’m thinking of five things at once. And I think there’s been studies that women actually can think of multiple things at once, and they usually are, and this just aligns perfectly.

0:30:45.7 SS: Well, it’s like sending the… Sending the Slack note to your colleague, is the perfect example, Moe, that there’s so much… We’re not comfortable in the workplace yet as a whole. It’s not our natural territory yet, so we’re… Does this sound angry? Is this still professional? Am I being too, too, too? It’s this line that we’re aware of.

0:31:13.4 MK: Okay. We’ve got to talk about the parent trap. I’m not gonna lie. Like I said to Julie before you jumped on the call, when I listened to that chapter, I almost wanted to burst into tears because I just came back from that leave about six months ago, and I was like, Oh Fuck, I’ve done it all wrong. Why didn’t I read this book six months ago? I’ve done it all wrong. Can you explain a little bit about the parent trap, ’cause I feel like if you don’t choose to read the whole book and you ever wanna have a family, read that chapter, at least.

0:31:47.9 SS: I think that was the part of the book that surprised me the most when I was researching it. I think discrimination against mothers is some of the least understood and least addressed of all different kinds of discrimination, but it is truly eye-opening. The pay gap between mothers and women with no kids is larger than the gender pay gap, and when women have children, their work is looked at more critically, they are paid less, obviously pay gap, and promoted more slowly, there’s mommy tracking that happens. And the worst… I think one of the real issues with discrimination against mothers has to do with the fact people think they’re doing you a favor. They think they are being considerate, it’s like, Oh, well, Moe has this new baby, we don’t wanna put her on this super intense project, it’s gonna require all these nights and weekends. Let’s just cut her a break, we’ll put her on this easier project. Let her hang out with her kid. That seems thoughtful, but the problem is, it compounds, and it’s one of the things that causes women to leave the workforce often permanently, because it’s so discouraging, and it’s so hard to balance, often, parenting and work.

0:32:55.5 SS: A million women left the US workforce that have not come back during the pandemic, a million. Millions left, millions have come back, but a million women are still out of the workforce, because childcare, family care still falls disproportionately on women, even in mixed gender couples where both people work full-time. It’s just housework, childcare, family care, often falls more to the women, not in every case, of course, but in most cases. So women are already in a difficult situation, just taking on more childcare, going back to work, and all of that, and then there’s just this huge raft of discrimination that comes in at a point when you’ve got a new baby, you’re exhausted, I don’t know what time your baby woke up this morning, Moe, but it probably wasn’t 10:00 AM, and it’s not like you can be like, Hey, can we just sleep in today and like totally get up at 5:00 AM with you tomorrow? Like babies don’t negotiate.

0:33:53.9 MK: I think the thing that really stuck, ’cause my husband was listening. My husband actually is the most freaking phenomenal partner. We had a baby home from daycare yesterday sick, and I kind of… We’re meant to do half, half, and he ended up having a kid for like 95% of the day, ’cause I was like, “Dude, I’ve got an intense day.” He’s phenomenal. But one of the things that really stuck… And I actually had heard this data point before we had kids, I was like, “Darling, you know that after you have children, you’re more likely to get promoted.” And I think they actually say the same thing about married men. Married men are more likely to get promoted. I know it’s bullshit, isn’t, Julie? Julie is facing… Right now.

0:34:33.9 MK: But women are less likely to once they get married, because then it’s like, “Oh, you’re probably on the baby track,” and then once you have a child, it compounded. But listening it too with my husband and watching his face, where he was like, Oh… And one of the things you mentioned, Stacey, that I thought really interesting. We haven’t even gotten to talk about salary negotiation and title, which are things that I also really wanted to get to, but I really liked your point about mentioning specifically to your manager, like, Oh, I’m the primary bread winner, because of that notion that the business will start to think of you as like, “Well, you’re a caregiver now, and so therefore your partner is doing the financial heavy lifting.” Can you explain a little bit more about that?

0:35:24.1 SS: That was probably the advice in the book that was the hardest for me to give because I don’t have kids, and a lot of the advice just felt monstrous. It’s like the retro horrible advice, but I really… It was very important for me to talk about the research that I found and at least offer women options. So like you said, one of the issues, when women come back, is people keep off important projects, and you’re just looked at now primarily as a caregiver, it’s like, Oh, well, she’s still working, but really, she’s being supported by her handsome rich husband, and she’s raising babies, and so people start to act in that way, even though there are tons of single mothers in all kinds of situations, that just tends to be what happens. So to counteract that, one of the things you can do is before maternity leave, basically meet with your boss and basically just act like you’re going on a trip, say like, Hey, so I’m gonna be back in February, I’d really like to pick up this case, I’d love to work on this project.

0:36:30.6 SS: I’ll be back on the 13th And just basically treat it like, Okay, so when I’m back, I’m gonna be on X, Y and Z, and be clear, saying, “Listen, my career is really important to me, and obviously I’m thrilled to be having this baby, but I’m very serious about this job, I wanna make sure that I’m picking up where I left off.” That also feels very monstrous to me because you’ve got this life-changing event, and you’re basically sort of… And the other advice that I give is just when you get back from maternity leave, just really show up, which is very easy for me to say, especially knowing that, like you say, babies don’t negotiate, they don’t sleep. There’s a lot of times they just don’t do that sleeping thing. But then to just show up and to… It just crushes me to even say these words and maybe not show lots of baby pictures, don’t talk about the baby a ton. Basically, when you come back, you are establishing yourself as a professional, like do not put me in the mommy box. Here I am, I’m back. Put me on the big cases. I’m back as a lawyer, and that is a really…

0:37:38.0 SS: That’s just really, really gruellingly hard. And I talked with a lot of women who had negotiated that, some who had adopted, some who’d had natural kids about that, and they all said that they kind of basically pretended like they didn’t have kids in order to… And that is one way to deal with it. But I think also just being very clear with your boss is the most important thing. You could say like, Listen, I’m pretty exhausted. The baby’s not sleeping. I think I might wanna take kind of a quiet month this month, ’cause I’m still adjusting. But come March, I’d really love to really step up and kind of pick up where I left off, or something like that. But I think just being super clear about that, trying to counteract those assumptions as much as possible is powerful.

0:38:27.3 MK: One of the things I’ll just add to that is like, I… Listening to that chapter, I was like, to be honest, I actually kind of did that. I’m very passionate about my job. It’s a huge part of my identity, like, I love my work. And there was a little bit of me that was terrified that after I had a kid, I wouldn’t wanna come back to work, and thankfully, literally two months after I had him, I’m like, So work, I still love it. I still wanna be… I obviously took off longer. Yeah, I think the point that I wanna make is that I 100% agree with your advice, and I would do all of those things. If you change your mind, and then after you have the kid and you decide you wanna make a different choice, that’s totally fine too. It’s easy to backtrack and be like, Actually, I changed my mind, I would like to take a different role or go this way, or whatever. That’s cool, but I think you’re so right about setting the expectations before you go on mat leave, of like, This is what I want when I come back, these are the projects I’m gonna be on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then if you change your mind, that’s cool too. But that’s easier to do than to be like, Oh, I don’t know how I’m gonna feel, maybe I’ll do this, maybe we’ll do that. I think it’s easier to change your mind than to work back from the uncertainty.

0:39:38.6 SS: Yes, just pretend like you have no doubts, no question in your mind, pick up where I left off, even if you have huge questions. And this is one of the things that occurs to me, is that this is not very authentic, this is not you being your authentic self at work. And I do think this is a moment to maybe not be authentic, because it’s just too easy for people, unconsciously, sometimes with the best of intentions to slot you into like, Oh well, yeah, Moe’s dealing with her baby, we’ll just… And just to write you off or put you on projects that don’t matter, because there’s just such a laser focus, especially I would say, the best advice I can give is before you’re leaving, pretend like even if you’re not even sure if you wanna come back to the job, just act like you’re going on vacation, you’re coming back, you’ve no questions in your mind. When you first get back, if it is all possible, work as hard as you can and seem as focused and present as you can, even if just for the first month, just to set that precedence, like, Oh, Moe’s back. Okay, great. Yeah, she’s back and then people sort of forget that you have a baby and then you can ask for more leeway maybe after that. But right when you come back, when things are still a little soft and people have their like, Oh, so how’s the baby? Oh, the baby’s great, thank you. Anyway, so back to… Just get people on topic, and then… But that’s hard advice to give. I feel a little monstrous.

0:41:02.6 MK: But to be honest, it’s not any different. The chapter that you talked about, I actually have talked about this with women lots. I used to work at the Department of Defense and people… I was really involved in the mentoring group, and people will often ask me about clothing attire. And this is something you mentioned as well, like, Yes, I get it, like I wanna be my authentic self at work. But there’s this kind of thing that I always say when I’m talking to women about working in Tech, it’s like, play the hand you’ve been dealt. When you’re playing a game of cards, it’s not… Like some people have a better hand, some people have a worse had, that doesn’t mean you can’t win with your hand. You’re going to maybe have to be a bit more strategic, you’re gonna have to hope that one card drops the right way and be a bit more tactical than someone that’s got two aces in their hand, but don’t make it harder on yourself. So if there are little things you can do to make it easier, whether that is, Fine, I’m just gonna do the smart casual dress code, or whatever it is…

0:42:05.6 MK: I have one friend that I work with who looks really, really young, she never wears casual clothes to work and she’s worked in tech her whole life. She’s just like, I already have this bias of looking like a young Asian woman, so I’m going to dress like a little smarter than everyone else because I need that extra credibility, and it’s like, Yes, it kills you a little bit on the inside. I loved in the book where you talked about wearing crazy underwear so you feel like you still have your identity. But it’s the same with the kids. It’s like, you need to think about who you are in the work place. I mean, it’s the same when you talk about mentoring and not getting rollicking drunk with your mentor and it becoming super personal.

0:42:46.3 SS: That was not a high point in my career.

[laughter]

0:42:46.4 SS: No, I think that’s absolutely right. It is… Yeah, Dr. Tina Opie talked to me a lot about that authenticity in work. She’s done a lot of research about it, and she said she would have a lot of her students… She’s a professor at Babson College, of Management, come to her about what to do with their hair, and should I wear my hair natural? And she was specifically working with a lot of Black students, and she would tell them like… She said, “You know, listen, I’ve done a lot of studies which show people think that… People will assume that you are sort of more assertive, more militant if you wear your hair in a natural style, and she’s like, I love hair in a natural style, that’s how I wear my hair.” But she’s like, “I’m 50, I’m established in my field. It’s different for me.” And she said, You know… And this is, I think, very true with a lot of the advice in the book, she says, “If you conform, your authenticity takes a hit,” and that is hard. There are a lot of studies that show that that’s hard on people psychologically. If you are not your authentic self at work, it takes a toll, it really does. If you are your authentic self at work, that can mean that you, whatever, don’t get a job, don’t get a promotion, don’t get a raise or whatever.

0:44:12.1 SS: So it’s not like there’s one win, it’s I think just recognizing that there’s a trade-off and a trade-off that shouldn’t exist, a trade-off that exists because the workplace can be racist and sexist and anti-mothers, and all that stuff exists, and the thing is it shouldn’t exist, so you’re having to deal with something and put effort towards something to accommodate racism or sexism, and that is like stomach-churning and terrible, but it is, like you said, this is the hand that we are playing with right now. I think things are changing, but they haven’t changed yet in a lot of cases, and so it’s just an awareness. At least that way, you can make an informed decision, and be like, you know what? I… I’m literally wearing a hoodie right now. I’m gonna… Like, I am a person who… Wearing casual clothes or… It’s different with clothes, ’cause that’s a choice than it is with basically hiding aspects of your racial identity, but it’s just saying, Listen, I’m gonna make this call because I don’t wanna work at a workplace that’s gonna not accept me, and so… But at least you can make a decision.

0:45:02.2 SS: I think there’s something empowering about looking at all the facts and making the decision that feels the best to you, but none of the decisions is great. It’s not great to be like, Okay, great, well, I just won’t get this job. And it’s not great to be like, Okay, well, I’ll just hide my racial identity and then get this job. Neither of those solutions is great. You shouldn’t have to make that call, but at least you kind of can make that call in the best… Like you said, play your hand the best you can.

0:45:33.6 MK: I feel like we could sit here pretty much for the rest of the day and I could keep talking, and I feel like Julie also has a thousand more questions, but we are running tight on time. And normally, we’d step away for a minute now for the Conductrics quizzical quiz, but we’re gonna do something a little different for this episode. So firstly, as you know, Conductrics builds industry-leading experimentation software for A/B testing, adaptive optimization and predictive targeting. For more information on how Conductrics can help you, visit www.conductrics.com. And with that, I’m gonna now hit Stacey and Julie with, for what this episode, we’re calling, Conductrics Hotfire questions. So I’ve just got a couple of rapid questions coming your way, brought to you by Conductrics. So firstly, Stacey, what would you say to the woman in the workplace who regularly says no to speaking opportunities, say, at a conference or to present at a big meeting, because they’re just terrified of public speaking?

0:46:34.9 SS: I would say, you are missing out on opportunities. And I understand those anxieties can be really crippling, but I would tell her to see a coach. I would say try to get coaching, because those can be some really amazing opportunities, those can put you in front of new jobs that could propel your own job. I would say that kind of public opportunity is important, so if there’s some kind of coaching that you can deal with your anxiety, do it. If it’s just gonna be up and down pain, maybe find a way that it’s less painful, maybe you could do it over zoom. If you’re, whatever, in your pajama pants, maybe you’ll feel more comfortable holding your kitty or whatever will calm you down, do that. I would say try to find a way to say yes if it is at all possible. That’s what I would say. That’s a long answer. I don’t think that’s rapid fire at all.

0:47:24.5 MK: I think it’s rapid for us. Alright, Julie, so I feel like this might happen to you a fair bit, but how do you handle walking into a meeting site with a client, and you’re clearly the subject matter expert, the most technical, smartest person in the room, don’t do any self-deprecating stuff right now, and your clients or whoever it is, keep looking at the old white dude in the room?

0:47:45.9 JH: To be honest, I try to just speak up when they ask questions and they look at him, because I have great male colleagues, and I will say they will toss it to me or ask me like, Well, I think this, but Julie actually has been more involved here, what do you think? Or they’re fine if I jump in and answer the question that was kind of softly posed to them. A lot of times, these are over zoom, but I just kind of jump in.

0:48:10.2 MK: Nice.

0:48:12.3 JH: I don’t know if that’s very male energy, female energy. I know you talked about that in the book, but I just go for it.

0:48:19.5 MK: Nice. Okay, Stacey, what would you recommend to a woman who’s managing a team and she wants to help another woman in her team, say, build their profile or their personal brand at work? Like, what’s a tactical way that a coach or a manager could help another woman in their team grow their profile?

0:48:36.5 SS: I think it depends on what the job is and what the position is. I think just becoming a mentor can be really helpful and meeting with the woman in question to talk about her career, the opportunity she sees for her at the company. Sometimes a little encouragement or a push or someone saying, I think you should… Why don’t you apply for this promotion? I think you’d be great, is very powerful to hear that kind of validation. There are all these studies that show that men will… There’s a very famous study from Hewlett-Packard, there’s also a study that happened at Google, where men would nominate themselves for a promotion when they had like 60-ish percent of the required skills, and women would wait till they had 100%, and that’s just like whatever, decades and decades of messaging and everything.

0:49:27.4 SS: But I think it can make a real difference to say, Listen, I think you’d be a shoo-in, like, you should apply for this. I think you can go in this direction. So I think maybe having a one-on-one meeting and just talking those things through, finding out what is holding this woman back, if she’s not branding herself properly, just become a mentor, if it’s possible, or just become a… Whatever, it’s not your report or something, someone who’s equal to you, position-wise, you can just be a friend and say, “Hey, I think you have really amazing ideas. I think you should try applying for this grant. I feel like you’d be a shoo-in.” So I feel like that can be totally transformative. It’s a very small, easy thing to do, and it’s huge. I think it can be huge.

0:50:14.2 MK: Nice. Okay, Julie, after all the lessons we’ve learned in this book, what do you wish you’d known in your first job now?

0:50:22.0 JH: Oh my gosh, I mean, everything. [chuckle] To be honest, I think I learned a lot from this book even moving forward, so that parent trap one for me, actually taking a little spin on this hot take, I think it was really eye-opening for me as I kind of hit that point in my life where I’m thinking about starting a family, and I’m looking at trying to move up in my current company and should I worry about the timing of those two things? How will I balance those? Should that be a thing I think of? Yes, probably. So to be honest, I think I’m in a nice area where it’s like I got to learn a lot from this book that I would want to know moving into my next phase.

0:51:04.0 MK: Nice. Okay, Stacey, I’ve got to ask because this is another topic we haven’t even touched on but I am super passionate about. And given your expertise, we definitely have to go there. What is the first step that you would give to a woman who wants to increase her financial literacy?

0:51:21.1 SS: Like, personal finance, savings, and retirement, and things like that?

0:51:25.7 MK: Yes, yes.

0:51:27.5 SS: The first step is, I would say I would recommend meeting with an expert, actually. I think just to get a feeling for options. I think meeting with a financial planner, even if it’s just once, can be really empowering, so you just get a handle on everything, where all of your things are, your savings, if you have a 401K, where that is, what the investments are, just have someone go over with you sort of holistically. Just get a lay of the land. I think that’s so important, just to know where your money is, where it’s going, where the opportunities are that you’re leaving on the table. Oh, if your employer is like a matching 401K, and you’re only contributing, whatever, 7%, and they’ll match up to nine, maybe match up to nine if it’s possible. And just talk to someone who can look over the landscape of your finances, student debt, whatever you’re dealing with, and help you kind of wrangle it all, because I think it can be so overwhelming. There’s so many different things to think about, and women aren’t generally really encouraged to save or invest, ’cause that gets taken care of by your handsome male husband or whatever it is. That is not the case for… Women are twice as likely to retire into poverty as men, and it’s very serious, so I would just say get a lay of the land, start to get to know where all your money is, where the opportunities are, how you can grow, and I think just start very basically, and then build.

0:52:55.7 MK: Nice. So those were our Conductrics hotfire questions. Thank you, ladies. Everyone is a winner today, and it was way less pressure for me than the usual Conductrics quiz, so that was great. So now we’re gonna move on to our last calls, this is the portion of the show where we go around, we share a tip, an article, something we found that’s interesting. Stacey, since you’re our guest, would you like to go first?

0:53:18.8 SS: Well, I think my favorite thing that I’ve been kind of looking at recently, because I cover the economy, and… I’m very excited right now at how much power workers have. I think in all my 20 years of reporting, I’ve never seen a moment when workers have this much power, which is important to remember if you’re going in to ask for a raise, and I think it creates great opportunities for women and other marginalized workers. But my favorite thing… So this is like… Shows up in a bunch of things, but I have to say my favorite sort of just moment of delight is that in January, I think there was record amounts of calling in sick. Now, we were also dealing with the Omicron variant and people who are actually sick. But a lot of people who are just calling in sick, which I just found kind of hilarious and delightful, and I’ve sort of enjoyed watching workers be like a little bit drunk on power, because for so long, I feel like the company was just holding all the cards and it was like you…

0:54:18.0 SS: And I’ve certainly felt this myself where it’s like, I’m really lucky to have this job, and just to be in a little bit of a moment of like, Yeah, I could go somewhere else, and just a moment where companies are scrambling a little bit and workers are kind of stepping into their power, is… I don’t know, I found the record number of people… I think people calling in sick was just… Part of it’s very serious, obviously, but part of it, there were all these hilarious anonymous reports of people just being like, I have all these sick hours saved up that I’m not using, so I’m just taking the time. But good. There was… One of the most commonly Googled questions of last year was like, What’s the best excuse for missing work?

[laughter]

0:55:00.3 SS: And I just kind of… I like that, I feel like we’re re-evaluating the place of work in our lives in the US, which is very long overdue, ’cause work has been so central to our identities and everything, and I’m just kind of enjoying watching that happen. I mean, it is a terrible time in our… It’s very… There’s a lot of bad stuff going on, and I don’t mean to diminish that at all, but there have been some moments where I’ve just… A little delighted. [laughter]

0:55:23.0 MK: Nice. And what about you, Julie?

0:55:27.0 JH: Well, actually, so one of the things that I was most obsessed about after reading your book was about educating yourself on the industry around you and your worth, and how do you do that? I was like, Oh my gosh, how do I do this? Like, who do I ask? Who can I talk to? And it’s funny, ’cause I had been getting these emails from Fishbowl, and of course I’m like… In the title, they’re like, Come join Fishbowl and talk in honesty. I’m like, yeah, no, I don’t have time for that. Don’t have time for that. And then I see a video ad of this girl doing a testimonial of Fishbowl, so… I like to tell Tim that I think marketing actually does work, because then I clicked through Instagram and had them send me the verification code, and I signed up. But it’s this app where you can… It’s kind of social media-like, and I just got it, I’m vetting it. But it’s all anonymous, you put in your level, your title, and it ends up… It’s by Glassdoor, I found out. So you go on there and you can join all these different Fishbowls, so like consulting, data and analytics, women and consulting, women in the workplace, whatever it may be. And it gives you like a news feed, but I’ve seen a lot of interesting anonymous posts and a lot of people respond.

0:56:38.1 JH: There have been ones about salary, there’s been ones about just being a woman in the workplace, and she says her boyfriend doesn’t wanna move with her to this huge job opportunity across the country. She’s like, What do I do? And there are these women in director roles saying like, If he’s gonna clip your wings now, he’s gonna clip them later. Take the job. So just some great stuff, and I feel like I would use that possibly if I ever needed to gather that type of information, so I thought it might be cool.

0:57:04.6 MK: The other tactic is to get your male colleagues a bit drunk and start talking about the gender pay gap, and you find nine times out of 10, they’ll be like, “Oh, this is what I’m earning. Is that more or less?” [chuckle] Totally.

0:57:18.7 SS: No, that’s a great thing. There’s so much information asymmetry when asking… In salary and all that stuff, and I think anything that can lessen that, whether it’s through beer or a social media app, is like, that’s so empowering. So I think getting that information is probably the single most important thing in negotiating…

0:57:38.1 MK: Totally.

0:57:39.4 SS: Is knowing… Having that information and being like, “Well, listen, I know what you’re paying Jerry, because he was like three tequila shots in.” [chuckle]

0:57:47.9 MK: And also, we all work in data, right? The biggest tip for salary negotiation, collect data, collect all the data you possibly can. Now, I am not gonna do a traditional last call, I’m actually gonna give everyone some homework, who’s still listening. So what I’d like everyone to do, I’d like to say, commit to it for a week, so do try and make one effort a day for a week, and I’d like you to think about this amplify concept. So, either in a meeting, when a woman suggests an idea, just back her up and be like, “Oh, that was a great idea,” or if she gets interrupted, try and stop that momentum and be like, “Actually, Sarah wasn’t finished her thought,” or one of the other ones I really like is, when you’re in a meeting, walk out of the meeting and mention to someone else a really good idea that a woman had in that meeting. So it’s a way of spreading women’s brand at the company, of like, “Oh, I was in this meeting and Marika suggested blah, blah, blah. Don’t you think that’s an awesome idea? I’d never heard that before.” And it’s a way of sharing people’s ideas outside of sometimes what can be a really small group to the bigger company. So everyone has some homework, I’d like you to do it five times, so one action a week, and commit to it so that it can be your homework for International Women’s Day. I’ve gotta say, huge thank you, Stacey, for coming on as a guest, and Julie, for helping me steer the ship and share some anecdotes. It’s been phenomenal.

0:59:19.8 MK: Like, this episode is always… I feel really stressed about it because I’m obviously on my own, but I always get to have these amazing women on, and I’m so thankful for you both being here.

0:59:29.2 JH: Oh, it is so great to talk to you.

0:59:31.1 SS: Oh, thank you for having me. You guys had… The time really flew by, wow.

0:59:35.8 MK: Yes.

0:59:38.4 SS: It was such a pleasure.

0:59:38.4 MK: So with that, I’m probably ready, almost ready to pass the moderator chair back to Michael for our next episode. I can’t do that without first thanking our producer, Josh Crowhurst. He continues to make us all sound great. And also Tim, who served as producer for this particular episode, which he does every year for me. So I have one little less thing to worry about. So whether you’re fretting about the Parent Trap, obsessing about if you’re using the right softeners, or whether you’re amplifying sufficiently, remember that with all of these things, to also keep analyzing.

1:00:17.6 Announcer: Thanks for listening. Let’s keep the conversation going with your comments, suggestions and questions on Twitter at @AnalyticsHour. On the web, at analyticshour.io, our LinkedIn group, and the Measure Chat Slack group. Music for the podcast by Josh Crowhurst.

1:00:32.8 Charles Barkley: So smart guys want to fit in, so they’ve made up a term called analytics. Analytics don’t work.

1:00:39.9 Thom Hammerschmidt: Analytics, oh my God. What the fuck does that even mean?

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