Insightly_Ep26
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Alyssa McGinn: [00:00:00] it's April, the mid-April when we're recording this

We're in a new Q.

New Q.

Jordan Walker: in a Q

Alyssa McGinn: I'm feeling, I'm feeling good about this Q personally.

Jordan Walker: I am just because the sun is out.

Alyssa McGinn: personality's det.

Jordan Walker: Uhhuh, I mean, my birthday is the first day of spring, so I feel like my body like comes into like, we are alive again. But I just need nature.

Alyssa McGinn: just hate winter.

Jordan Walker: Yeah. I'm not a winter person. Like I'm [00:01:00] not a snow person. And here where we're located, we actually got snow this year.

Alyssa McGinn: a lot.

Jordan Walker: got like fluffy snow, but that's not typical.

We're usually just ice

Alyssa McGinn: and like gross,

Jordan Walker: misery. Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: Well, I'm happy that it's April and warm. This week has been beautiful I'm

just like, so it just,

Jordan Walker: this weekend is gonna be hot.

Alyssa McGinn: Is that good, like to go

Jordan Walker: Well, I mean like this seat, so like seventies weather. I like, because like during the day you get warm and you can like put on shorts in a tank or whatever. If you're like. You know, you're not probably gonna go swimming in the lake or anything, but you know, you dip your toes in and whatnot.

Unless you're into that cold plunge thing, I'm not there. But how are two y'all?

Alyssa McGinn: That's like the natural cold

Jordan Walker: Yeah. But the reason why I like this season is because then at night it gets chilly. So here in Kansas we can burn fires and like fire rings and stuff. Whereas if you go like camping in Colorado and whatnot, you've [00:02:00] got fire bans.

So, and I love sitting around a campfire, and I love cooking over a campfire. I love just having my little wine next to my campfire. So we're in the season of campfires?

Alyssa McGinn: Oh, I'm here it. Well, I think I never was really exposed to camping, I had this preconceived notion that I hate it.

Jordan Walker: I'll take you.

Alyssa McGinn: and I feel

like I'm a glamper kind of gal.

Jordan Walker: bought a camper. You can set, you could stay in. Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: I just feel like I don't know, I just, I feel so like extra, but I'm like, I just dunno if I sleep in a tent, but,

Jordan Walker: actually I don't mind it, but growing up like road trips and going camping on the weekends, we were Lake rats, we would go out to the lake almost every weekend during spring and summer. It was just our family deal

Alyssa McGinn: yeah. And that's, that's maybe why I just like

didn't have the exposure. And so I'm just like, oh, I don't, I think I don't like it, but I just think I haven't tried it really as an adult.

Jordan Walker: Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: Maybe I should do that. A little [00:03:00] getaway. Yeah. Okay, so this is not related to data at all, but I heard a really good question this week and I want to pose it to you because I don't know about you, but I get the ick from just like.

Really surface level networking conversations. And I just, that's my job. You know, I do business development and I have all those conversations, but I'm always looking for ways to like, make them just better, quicker, more enjoyable, and less like surface level. So this question really struck me because I felt like it was a way to get to know people on a personal level, and people just get really passionate about it.

So the question is,

If you had to get up on stage in front of a group of people right now for 30 minutes and talk about one topic not related to your work, what could you talk about for 30 minutes straight?

Jordan Walker: well, I think I just hinted at it, but it would be anything around hiking and camping. So like right now I think off the [00:04:00] cuff, I could talk about all of the kansas State parks that are really kind of considered hidden gems that a lot of people don't really know about. And how many state parks we really have.

Alyssa McGinn: Is there a lot?

Jordan Walker: Oh, there are tons. And like there are state parks in like lake areas and wildlife areas in super small towns that people would just drive on by and not even realize that there is this gorgeous lake in the middle of it. One of my hidden gems that I discovered actually during the pandemic years, I grew up going out to an area called Kanopolis Lake here in Kansas.

It's right outside of Lindsborg, if anybody knows what I'm talking about. Kanopolis totally my jam. They've got a lot of really cool hiking trails out there. It's more like lime stoney kind of environment. Cool little features that you can go look at, but I think I've found my new favorite state park. And it's in Toronto, [00:05:00] Kansas, which was never a place on the map that I ever considered.

And it's called Cross Timbers State Park. So for people in the Wichita area, that might be Lake Rats and they go out to like boat, they might know a fall river state park because it's like 20, 30 minutes before you would get to cross timbers. Fall River's great. It's a great family zone. It's kind of, to me it kind of feels like it's meant for like RVs and boating more than like tent camping and things like that.

But Cross Timbers to me is like such a little hidden gym. You can go there on a Memorial Day weekend. Okay, now that I'm saying this, y'all better not walk there. But like you could show up there on a holiday weekend and still find a place to camp, whereas probably not at a Canopolis or a Cheney or an El Dorado or something like that, but Cross Timbers, great campsites.

Full, like tons of like tree coverage. So like during the hot months you've got good shade lot. If [00:06:00] you're a birder, tons of birds,

Alyssa McGinn: Are a

birder?

Jordan Walker: I've become a birder. I'm on the backside to my forties. I am now in my birding era. They've got some decent like hiking trails too that like kind of take you in and out of like the canopy area and into like the prairie and stuff like that.

And so, I mean, if you're like a big hiker and you love like mountains and whatnot, like I'm not gonna sit here and convince you that Kansas can necessarily compete with that. But I do think that Kansas has a lot of beautiful areas and some of those little hidden gem state parks that nobody ever thinks about have some of the best little viewpoints that you wouldn't know are there unless you go and try 'em.

Alyssa McGinn: I'm inspired

Jordan Walker: yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: I won't

say I'm at

my birding era yet, but

I also did see an ad that made me stop this week of an automatic bird feeder,

Jordan Walker: Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: and I was like, oh, that's cool because I can appreciate putting that in your backyard and just kind of seeing what comes.

Jordan Walker: well there are a lot of statistics that [00:07:00] also show that just listening to Bird song can lower it, like lowers anxiety levels and what I mean, nature in general can really ground you. You know, when you're getting away from all of the distractions. But even just like sitting in your backyard, turning off all of the devices and just listening, that can lower your anxiety and make you happier

Alyssa McGinn: oh,

Jordan Walker: So I say, get that automatic bird

Alyssa McGinn: feeder girl

okay. Birds, I see you.

Jordan Walker: Well, what would you talk about for 30 minutes?

Alyssa McGinn: Well, I, don't think I've talked to this on the pod, but I have two small kids and I could talk about sleep training for 30 plus minutes. I'm very passionate about the topic and I feel like it's very misunderstood and slightly judged. And you gotta love topics like that.

And I think it's like one of the best thing that's ever happened to my, so far to my kids is that they can put themselves to sleep. They're able to wake up in the night and go back to sleep. And it's just, you know, for a working [00:08:00] parents, like, just a huge, I need my

be able to sleep

Jordan Walker: person.

Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: And so I think one of the big misconceptions is that. The old school way of sleep training that like our parents era, there was like one book that they all followed and it was just like the cry it out method. And that's not really what I'm talking about. It's like a hybrid way of teaching your kids actually how to soothe themselves and how to you know, go put themselves to sleep.

And so it's also not void of love and compassion. Like there's snuggles. There's a whole process. There's a whole thing. But it's not just like, all right, kids.

Jordan Walker: go to bed.

Alyssa McGinn: to bed. But a huge blessing to like our family because like we all

Jordan Walker: Yeah. I always think like moms have to have, like, I'm not a parent but I always think that the minute you become a parent, you grow a new like superpower Gene, that allows you to function on very little, and I don't understand it.

Alyssa McGinn: There's a lot of random things that happened to you when you become

Jordan Walker: are a super [00:09:00] woman the minute that you enter that era

Alyssa McGinn: I also sleep eight hours a night,

Jordan Walker: that's beautiful.

I like, I want to sleep eight hours a night.

Alyssa McGinn: but I just am like, okay, I have to do it. I just feel like there's like a badge of honor for parents out there that's like, I don't sleep and I'm running on empty, and I'm like, that's not really a badge of honor. We can do this a different way.

Jordan Walker: it's, it goes to like, you have to fill your own cup before you can pour it for others, right? And, or you've gotta put your ma, your gas mask on before you can help someone else. And like, sleep is such a big part of your health and wellness. It's how your body resets and regulates itself

Alyssa McGinn: how cleanses itself and detoxes and that's a whole nother rabbit. I was listening to a podcast about that and it's crazy what happens. amazing. Like at a cellular level, like what happens? And I'm like, whoa.

And I'm like, what does that mean about my dreams if my body's going through cleansing and detox?

Like, you know,

Jordan Walker: That is. Oh

Alyssa McGinn: Weirdly, think about that.

Jordan Walker: like [00:10:00] Okay sounds like a cocktail conversation we need to have because Yeah, I could go down that hole for sure.

Alyssa McGinn: That's the thing. I feel like I was, this was dangerous to bring this up because we, I feel like we have so many random rabbit holes we could talk

Jordan Walker: I know,

Alyssa McGinn: but we're here to talk about data, so, okay.

Jordan Walker: but to like, I guess relate your icebreaker question though back to data. So I shared with you before we started that I was teaching a course this morning on data analytics, super foundational. It was mostly to professionals that are already in their careers and they're trying to upskill themselves.

One of the things that we were talking about is the differences between quantitative and qualitative data. From a business development and a sales perspective, the more you can understand about your customers and not just focused on how they, operate within your sales process, the deeper relationships you can actually build and potential, other opportunities that you might be able to find.

Asking an icebreaker question like that, that gets 'em to kind of talk [00:11:00] about something other than the product or service or what they need helps you understand who they are as a human. And the human connections is what forms the relationships and the partnerships and the longevity. And so I think that's a great icebreaker to even consider.

Like how can you learn about your customer in a way that's not just particular to your sales model that helps you go in deeper with them.

Alyssa McGinn: And I think a sales, I mean, we've talked about this a little bit, like just the new age idea of like spray and pray and you know, that's kind of gone away now, but now there's AI bots and I don't know about you, but I get like so much spam on LinkedIn and so much crap that I'm like

Jordan Walker: You can pick it out so easily now, like I can immediately tell if a social media post was written with ai. I've actually gotten letters from partners and clients and whatnot that I can definitely tell they just wrote with ai [00:12:00] and of those things where I'm like, I'm not gonna fault you for taking an efficiency route.

However, like that now says to me that you didn't care enough to spend time on that. And so it just kind of diminishes that partnership and that credibility a little bit. And so, yeah, like being able to take in some of that qualitative data about what you know about your customer, to be able to like personalize something that really speaks to them, like human to human, peer to peer is always going to work so much better.

Alyssa McGinn: And you're gonna get bigger contracts and you're gonna do longer term talk about lifetime

Jordan Walker: Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: Like that just expands that so you're not constantly having to find new customers because built depth

Jordan Walker: It starts to train the customer also to start feeling comfortable with asking you, what else can we do together? What else can I take advantage of? What else do you offer?

Alyssa McGinn: allows you to bring in partners, referrals, things that you maybe don't do, but you're, you become their trusted advisor.[00:13:00]

Like, oh, let's, let's ask, you know, she probably knows someone that can X, Y, Z. And I really do think it's that extra step that people think is so

laborious and so time consuming.

But like, to me, it's the reason I like sales and the reason that I like being in business development is because actually like

Jordan Walker: You like people? Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: Yeah. And that's why I've really never done, we've done, like, we've tried some outbound and then I've just killed it because I'm like, it

Jordan Walker: Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: But I think to your point, like I've heard you talk about building out like personas and looking at, I specifically think with your camper. Yeah. company you worked with

Jordan Walker: Which is the camper that we bought, by the way.

Alyssa McGinn: That's, fun. like I remember you laying out like, here's where they are, here's what they like, and just like a very full view of that person and not just limited to like their

professional life

Jordan Walker: Yeah. Personas are so helpful to, so like one, it helps you walk a mile in [00:14:00] your customer's shoes and really get to understand them. But even from like an outbound or like a marketing perspective, it allows you to kind of like hone in on who you're talking to in that moment. Like there's always like the awareness stuff, but like it doesn't benefit anybody if you go out and just kind of like spew off all of your features and benefits when maybe that customer only cares about three of those benefits. So like for example, the camper that we just bought, it's really a travel trailer. It doesn't have an onboard bathroom or kitchen or anything. That is actually perfect for me because I love tent camping.

But I want the ease of use of being able to just like drive up so that we can get up and go camping more frequently instead of having to pull all of our gear together. It's just already in the camper, and then it's just about packing our clothes and our food and whatnot, and then we can go. The other thing is that my husband really wanted a more comfortable sleeping situation.

Like I can sleep on a sleeping pad on the ground and be great with it. [00:15:00] He is older now and has back problems, so now we need, we need some cushy. So this one has a queen, like an actual gel queen mattress in it. So it's like we're sleeping at home when we're in it. But I still get the amenities of like tint, light experience with it.

There's a ton of other features that are within this whole thing, but those are like really the two things where I'm like, I can get up and go. It's lightweight, I can tow it on my vehicle and I've got a bed. Everything else is an add-on to me. For other people though that are maybe more experienced campers, they might wanna know more about the differences between, like what, how does, how does your configure, like how does the chassis compare on this versus an Airstream or you know, a TAD trailer or something like that.

Yeah. Like I don't need to know that information. Right now, you know, other people might, so personas are great because then it also helps you, like, you don't have to tell everybody every little thing immediately wet the whistle, let them get, [00:16:00] let them get comfy and ask you questions.

Alyssa McGinn: Yeah. Well, I think this segues perfectly into the actual topic for today in some

Jordan Walker: Yeah. What are we talking about?

Alyssa McGinn: so we did a part one of this episode we didn't make it through the whole thing, like, all right, part two. Previously we had talked about data monetization strategies.

had talked about direct monetization strategies. What we meant by that was selling your data to third parties putting it online on marketplaces putting it in industry reports some way where you're taking the data you've collected and selling it to others directly, and you're making money off of that.

So, basically make using your data for an additional revenue stream. And what we didn't get to was indirect monetization strategies. Which is how can you use your data to still grow revenue or increase profit, but internally within your business?

Jordan Walker: that's The area I tend to live

Alyssa McGinn: yeah, this is kind of, I know we've actually talked about this on stages together and on panels, [00:17:00] because this is kind of where it all started

Jordan Walker: The wheel of innovation.

Alyssa McGinn: of Innovation. The Wheel of Innovation. Yeah. We'll link that. But I think, okay, let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4 different ideas for how you can use data to, and I'm sure we'll have others can increase revenue or I would say increase margin

not just about top line revenue. And actually you'll see the wheel of innovation pretty well laid out in these examples.

The first is enhancing existing products with data-driven features. That's why I thought this was a perfect segue because it's really adding personalization. It's adding customization based on user behavior.

So, it's kind of a mixture of probably qualitative feedback data with

Jordan Walker: Maybe some like product usage.

Alyssa McGinn: product usage. Yeah.

What people are using, what they're asking for in, you know, anecdotal from the salespeople, what they're hearing and just enhancing products that you've already made and just making them better.

Jordan Walker: Apple's a great example of that. If we just wanna call out an [00:18:00] easy thing that people can hold onto, I actually used this example earlier this morning where, you'll get those alerts sometimes, like on your laptop or whatever of do you wanna automatically report this to Apple?

And you're like, yep, please. Like, I'm good with it. Well, it would be fascinating to see inside of Apple's operations because they've got this. Entire data warehouse full of that feedback loop that's just automatically occurring. And so they're able to use that to like fix immediate glitches that might be happening on the devices, but then they're also able to take in the quantitative data to show, okay, well where are the themes?

What themes are we seeing that are creating hurdles or obstacles that we need to resolve for the next iteration?

Alyssa McGinn: Which applications are failing or not

Jordan Walker: I love this topic because it's also like, okay, if you do have a product that you can monitor how people are using it or you're getting the qualitative data, like you might find out that they're using your product very differently than what you [00:19:00] intended it for.

That can open up a whole new target market

Alyssa McGinn: New new use cases.

Jordan Walker: That's innovation within itself without having to actually like reconfigure your product. It's just how are you going to market it after that?

Alyssa McGinn: I'm sure also based on the questions that they're receiving, like, I wanna do this, can I do that this way? And it's like, oh no, actually I can't. We hadn't thought about that. And then you start to get that same question in a different way. A lot of times, maybe that's data from a chat bot. Maybe that's data from a customer service team, which I feel like is rare these days.

Jordan Walker: I have a good example of how that happened in like a not typical. So when I first launched my business, you know, you have to go through and like get all your things pulled together. And one of those things is you need a business bank, like where are you gonna bank, right? And I am not the kind of business where I needed to take out a loan or anything.

I just literally needed a place for my business money to go. I work my [00:20:00] personal. Bank is not a bank that I would, I wanna move away from them anyway, so anyway, where I'm going with this is I opened up my business banking accounts. Well, as I started, I was like hiring a lot of contractors, so I was paying through like a lot of like, you know, 10 99 contract work.

At that point in time though, like the contractors would have to send me their invoices and then depending on how they prefer to get paid. You're paying through portals that are taking an extra percentage or adding an extra percentage on top. Yeah, like Stripe. I had a lot of people that were going through like the professional PayPal where in order for me to pay them, you know, I would have to add on the 2% fee onto me.

So anyway, I started to realize oh, I'm paying a lot of fees on top of already paying people, so what are my options? I can either. Ask for a decrease in rate. I could increase client scope to cover [00:21:00] that, or let me go back to my bank and see what options we have. So they didn't have a CH wire transfer or direct deposit at that point in their business banking portal.

So I was talking to my representative and I was like, do you have this? And they're like, no, we don't. But we'll submit a ticket. Letting the team know that it's been requested literally within two months or less than that. I got a note from that team saying, Hey, we saw that you requested this.

We wanna let you know it's now implemented. Could we hop on a call and show you how it works and get your feedback? And I was like, 100%. So we hopped on, they walked me through how easy it was to set up templates and get all the information that I needed to transfer.

And then we went through okay, well what's the cost of that? The cost of the monthly fee to be able to do that was less than the fees that I was paying through like QuickBooks, PayPal, any of those services. [00:22:00] So any who, that was a really great example of. I reached out, I gave that feedback of like, I'm looking for this.

They locked it in a ticketing system. They resolved it and it saved me money. I will be an advocate for this financial institution forever now because of that.

Alyssa McGinn: And I don't normally have much faith in that process. Like, we're gonna submit a ticket. I'm like, cool, that's

Jordan Walker: yeah. Cool. We'll never hear from you again.

Alyssa McGinn: So that's actually really encouraging and like, and I think that's a huge missed opportunity. And maybe some people are doing that stuff behind the scenes what you want as a consumer it never makes it to the top of the list. Yeah. 'cause maybe you're not their ideal client pro, you know, profile or what you want is so, you know, fringe. But I think that's, that's exactly like, and that's innovation.

Jordan Walker: It is innovation. Like if that wasn't going to be possible, if the fees kept. Like, the last thing I wanna do is have to charge my customers or my clients more [00:23:00] just to cover a fee that I'm paying. Like, if I'm going to have to increase rates, I want it to be more value driven, you know, instead of like, I could make more profit off of this.

Right? Like, I want it to be value driven. And especially when you're in a service-based business, like literally everything has to be looked at as value driven because it's easy to pick apart, you know? But if that was not a feature that was added, I'm sure that I probably would've explored other business banks and then gone through the challenge and the hurdle of having to switch, you know, banks, which you don't wanna have to do.

It's not really that bad, but who wants to spend time doing it? But yeah, like that they kept me as a customer I've submitted testimonials. I've been on videos with them, like to promote how great the team is to work with. They immediately sent me from just a member of the bank to I am now an advocate, purely because they took my feedback and then they had the feedback loop from it.

Alyssa McGinn: That's, they probably have no [00:24:00] idea how valuable that is.

Like they, they don't know probably all the people that you've told

about it. All the people that you know that are starting businesses.

Jordan Walker: They're the fir. Like whenever people ask me, who do you bank with? I'm like, you go there.

Alyssa McGinn: Yeah,

Jordan Walker: This is where you go.

Alyssa McGinn: This made me think of another example. Speaking of like new verticals is we had this tool, which I know you know about, called revenue management. And it's all about customer data and accounting data and all about customer segmentation and understanding your revenue drivers and IICP from a data driven perspective. And the use case for us was like our internal clients using it or other people that wanna understand their customer base. But what we found out is that the process of buying and selling a company, which we now pretty much focus on was really important for a company that was going to market to be able show their customer base and to show that it wasn't fully overly leveraged or concentrated

Jordan Walker: have one big whale that was generating all the revenue

Alyssa McGinn: right? [00:25:00] Yeah. And so that the, we hadn't looked at it in that way, and then someone pointed that out, made a referral. This guy who is an investment banker came to one of our webinars and he was like, why have you not thought of this like use case? And so like his persona was not at all a part of like our original persona for the product.

And now that's like a huge part of our business. So I was like, you just, I mean, that's, there's, I don't know what, where the data exactly came from. It was pretty much qualitative and

Jordan Walker: Mm-hmm.

Alyssa McGinn: you could trace it along story, but we just don't always have a clear picture, which is why data the evolution of that in a business is so powerful.

Jordan Walker: Well, and I think this is a good, and the whole reason why, like, this morning when I was teaching that course, the reason why we went so foundational with like quantitative and qualitative data to like understand that we, I wanted to really help people understand that both of them are important.

We're very [00:26:00] comfortable with quantitative data because it's objective, you know, 50% of our target consumers use the product in this way. Cool. Like, that's not disputable. You know, like 50% of them use it that way. But that doesn't help you understand what opportunities you might be missing, you know?

And so in getting that feedback loop and just asking good questions or having those moments where maybe you're just pulling together like. Different people that you maybe work with, you know, or a webinar like that. And then you can open up and ask a question, like, what other ways could you see using something like this?

Like there might be some great aha moments that don't really jump the shark from your business model. You know, like that opportunity didn't mean that you info fluency had to completely reconfigure its business structure. It was an easy, you know, adjacent, you know, vertical to go with.

Alyssa McGinn: the exact same product. It's just for a different purpose.

So that just shifts the way that you market it and who you go and talk to about it. [00:27:00] Value proposition is you can help your clients get better outcomes because they can clearly show the story of their data and their customers better outcomes for everyone the transaction. And that, that's obviously not our value proposition for a company who wants to use it to internally for a marketing strategy sales strategy but yeah, like that's not a, it change anything fundamental for us.

Jordan Walker: I think those opportunities are some of the best opportunities because it typically, when we think about innovation, we've talked about this in some of our early innovation episodes, but typically when we think about it, we think about either new features and benefits, new products and services. Ver new verticals and new customer profiles is a sign of innovation, but if you're not using data to help you understand what that looks like, it's fine to be in a test mode and kind of go and explore, but you're not gonna wanna put a lot of energy and budget behind just exploring. [00:28:00] So the more that you can implement like those feedback loops, the less you're throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks.

Alyssa McGinn: This CFO reached out to me on LinkedIn and he was like, I love your posts. Can we chat? And we ended up getting on a call and he was like, he is kind of a serial CFO, so he goes to private equity backed companies. Is it in a, that role for five years? And it kind of moves on. And he was like, you won't believe the amount of times that we have, like a product team or a

sales team that comes to me and says, we've got go to expand out east. We've gotta go east because we've heard they're gonna love waiting for us to there. Like They cannot wait. And he is

Jordan Walker: went to one convention and

Alyssa McGinn: everyone said that. they should come. And so then they do it and it falls flat. He's like, I cannot tell you how many times I've seen like the same, some version of that story.

And I was like, you know, the question is, well, was there. Data, and it's like, okay, well there actually was a little bit of qualitative data potentially. It's just like a few people said [00:29:00] that they

Jordan Walker: What was the survey from where that data came from?

Alyssa McGinn: And it was like such a small pool of people that are obsessed with it, you can't just like launch a whole new product line because you, you are convinced that people are gonna buy

Jordan Walker: Yeah. Unless you've got the wiggle room to take risk, you know? Yeah. But instead of having to go completely off of assumptions, you can. Look at your data sources to understand, okay, well if we're getting it from a small pool, allow that to help you understand, okay, what budget are we going to put toward this?

What are the measurables that we're going to put toward this to see if a, we're closing in this small pool and identifying other growth opportunities? Because if you can't, you know, identify that within a certain timeframe, then maybe it's not worth continuing to

Alyssa McGinn: Well, it's like what's the next step of validation? Not like, let's do it. Because it's like, I think that's kind of what had happened is you know, they were talking it up as if everyone and their [00:30:00] mom would buy this product, when really it was a small group. It's like, it's almost like the startup world, product market fit. That's the same thing within a company in regards to. Innovation. It's like, oh, that's interesting. Like here is a data, a data point.

This is interesting.

Jordan Walker: But you gotta go prove

Alyssa McGinn: yeah, let's go see, let's go talk to more people. Let's, before we just like spin up a new division or, but hire, they hired like five new people to like start this office.

Jordan Walker: yeah. That's a big investment.

Alyssa McGinn: that's, I mean, you're talking probably, I don't know, a million dollars at least to like, have a few people and get an

Jordan Walker: an office. Yeah. And then all of the marketing and outreach that comes with that. Yeah. Interesting.

alright, so that's one way

Alyssa McGinn: one

Jordan Walker: can innovate within your company.

Alyssa McGinn: We got one down. Okay. Well this one's easy. We can go through this quickly. Creating an entirely new product, which we've just talked about. And I think part of the innovation wheel we've referenced [00:31:00] and back to Apple, there's almost like this idea of a product.

There is an idea of this product ecosystem. Creating they've, apple has

Jordan Walker: product systems.

Alyssa McGinn: Geniusly because Geniusly But now did you know that you could copy from your iPhone and paste onto your MacBook

Jordan Walker: Uhhuh. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah. I mean like, okay.

Alyssa McGinn: never

Jordan Walker: laptop

Alyssa McGinn: one.

Jordan Walker: is probably like, she is a 2015, so, and you know, tech years,

Alyssa McGinn: She's a grandma

Jordan Walker: needs to probably get moved into

Alyssa McGinn: assistant,

Jordan Walker: home. Yeah. But I mean, all my job, like my whole job is on the internet, you know, like, so it's not like I really need a lot of storage, so as I've been like thinking about, okay, I probably need to get a new laptop, like she's showing signs of wearing down, you know, she doesn't hold a charge as well, like all these things, and I'm like, oh, but I just really don't like want to spend the money.

It's not even a matter of like whether I can or can't. It's just like I don't want to,

Alyssa McGinn: And then [00:32:00] just set it back all up

Jordan Walker: Yeah, exactly. That's really what we're talking about here is the time it takes to get it all back to what I want. Yeah. Somebody was like, why not just get a pc?

And I was like, how Absolutely dare you. And I like no shame, like no shame if you really love your PC device, but I don't think I could live without airdrop. I do so many presentations, I need airplay because that's how majority of the places that I'm doing presentations can mirror on screens.

You know, like I already have a workflow. I don't wanna change my workflow unless I absolutely have to. So Apple is going to convince me to drop more money on another product and I will keep that for another 10 years, hopefully as well. Like I have gotten my investment back for sure.

Alyssa McGinn: and it's funny that airplay is, it's just a small product

Jordan Walker: It's just one little thing, but it's really what's holding me.

Alyssa McGinn: I'm sure that's different for different people.

Oh, [00:33:00] I mean, for me it's like my air. So I have AirPod. I mean, I have

Jordan Walker: Yeah. You got the AirPods, you got the, do you also have the Apple Watch too, don't you?

Alyssa McGinn: MacBook, phone,

Jordan Walker: Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: deep, deep. I'm so, I'm so deep. But I also. have like over the head Bose headphones, which I love, but they just don't connect as easily.

Jordan Walker: You know what though? Like, okay, so here's my one annoying thing, and this is, so we just talked about some good examples of user experience. Like, because I don't have to work extra hard to screen mirror, or if I want something off my phone and onto my laptop, boopty boop, air dropped in, copy paste, all of that kinda stuff.

My browser settings are like saved where if I like go into Chrome on my laptop versus my phone, like those are all like very great ease of like use, you know. Okay, but the AirPod and like the headphone connection thing, bone of my existence, like if my phone and my laptop, if like, let's say that I just had my AirPods connected to [00:34:00] my laptop, but then I start like, you know, doing whatever on my phone, my AirPods will want to connect to my phone.

Even though like I've turned off whatever setting it is to just like always connect to the last device and then I will manually reconnect it to wherever it needs to go. The other night I was laying in bed and my home office is right next door to our bedroom and I was listening to my AirPods, like a book,

I was connected to all of the things, air through my AirPods laptop, my phone, and then also my phone was on like connected to our JBL at one point in the day I lay down, my phone was off at this point I'm like settling into my slumber. All of a sudden my laptop starts blaring some tribe, tribe called Quest.

And I'm like, what is happening? And I get up and I'm like, how did this just randomly start playing? And it's because my Spotify was connected on one of my devices, and I think my cat like jumped on something. [00:35:00] I did not know where the problem started, but that connectivity piece of things, I was like, okay, I don't want that.

Like whatever feature that is, turn that off.

Alyssa McGinn: sometimes it's like too good. You're Like, no, no. I was listening on here and I wanna here. And you're trying to like make it easier for, but like I have that

happen too cause I also have a.

Jordan Walker: Uhhuh. Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: In the office, I have the desktop and that's where I listen to music. But then I'm also just like, yeah, texting on my and then I get on a call and my headphones are connected to my phone and I'm like, you guys are trying too hard to make this my life too easy. And it's making it hard.

Jordan Walker: so like, because Apple does have the mechanism to kind of like track how people are using it and what's happening, like. On a positive. All of these, like ease of uses that we've received are because of how people, like they've been monitoring how people want to use it and how they can make it even easier.

Another example that's kind of in the same vein of things [00:36:00] is well actually, let me just make sure that I am on topic here since we a little bit of a tangent. Okay. Creating new data powered products or services. Okay. It was at Wichita Startup Week a couple years ago there was someone who came to speak to us from Amazon and they were talking about Amazon's innovation culture, I really appreciated that topic of conversation because they were talking about data governance and the ability of letting, multiple people in the organization have access to the data so that they can be innovative and what their process is like.

Anybody in the organization can bring up an idea. And potentially go from, bottom of the chain to being the director of this new product. One of the case scenarios where this happened is the guy was telling a story about how somebody was looking at the consumer behavior of, people who are shopping on Amazon, where else are they also shopping online to like book an order, what have you?

[00:37:00] One of the many things that they uncovered was that there was a common theme that people who ordered food-like products on Amazon were likely shopping at Whole Foods Market. And so then they came up with the idea of, well, why not just buy or partner with Whole Foods?

To make sure that in the cities where we can do like the hour deliveries or less, you know, kind of things that if, if people are already shopping at Whole Foods, let's just make it easier for them to do it on our platform. They were also solving for the, nobody likes going to the grocery store. More people on Whole Foods were actually ordering online and then picking up their groceries.

Well, we are shipping and delivering already. Why not make that easier for them? You don't ever have to go to the grocery store. You can actually order from your favorite grocery store now. Just order off of Amazon along with all of your other doodads, and we're just gonna drop it off on your doorstep like we would with anything else.

Look at where they are now. They're now an online grocery store. You know,

Alyssa McGinn: [00:38:00] which I love going to the grocery store

Jordan Walker: I don't mind it.

Alyssa McGinn: I just like to browse and see what's,

Jordan Walker: Oh, I love me some Aldi browsing. Aldi is my

Alyssa McGinn: the weekly fines

Jordan Walker: Ah, and every week there are new fines.

Alyssa McGinn: And cotton candy, green grapes are the best at

Aldi. Yes.

Jordan Walker: Yes.

Yes. Oh, they also have they're called specula Lows, and they're literally like biscoff cookies, but oldie versions, and they're bigger.

Alyssa McGinn: Oh,

Jordan Walker: Oh, they are so delicious. Yes. Get you some specs.

Alyssa McGinn: Okay. Noted.

Jordan Walker: Alright, what's else? What else are we talking about?

Alyssa McGinn: Okay. I think the third one's my favorite, which is optimize operations and profitability. I have a lot of examples of increasing profitability and or just getting rid of things that are not profitable, whether it be customers, whether it be service lines, [00:39:00] products whatever it may be.

And I mean, optimizing operations, I think there's a whole

Jordan Walker: Oh yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: Tons of ways you can do that.

Tell a quick story about profitability. So we have a client who does home health. So they go to, there's like these certain things where they need to go and have a nurse come to their house and or have a physical therapist.

But the problem they were running into is they were billing insurance. And insurance has cutoffs for different types of diagnosis codes. And so with a certain diagnosis, code insurance would cover three visits from a physical therapist and, let's say a different diagnosis code. It was like they actually cover six months of to their house. So they were starting to run into like losing money on some of their patient types because of obviously billing insurance is like a huge pain. And then they also had these contractors, so like some of the specialties like physical therapy where they would [00:40:00] contract them out and then they would pay them. And then insurance still had

Jordan Walker: And so they were basically like the bank because they were already having to pay while they're still waiting to get that revenue

Alyssa McGinn: So it's not only cashflow problems, but profitability too.

So, what the data showed them was they had to pull in data from their, there's like a specific medical software.

Jordan Walker: Sure.

Alyssa McGinn: The patient type, the aging ar. Then also like the analysis of the insurance coverage of the different diagnosis types. So what they ended up finding, long story short, was there was three different types of, I think three or four different types of diagnosees that were just purely unprofitable or just like the tiniest margin. And so, they stopped.

They just cut him out. You think about that as kind of the, it's like, well, they're not directly making more money or adding revenue, but they are increasing profitability, which increases cash, [00:41:00] then can be put into things that are more revenue

generating.

Jordan Walker: I can imagine, in scenarios like that, there's always the conversation of, is it a lead loss or is it just a loss, you know, kind of a thing. Like, and so that's where matching it up with, I mean, home health might be a little bit different because you have a very specific need that may be short term, it may be long term, but like if you're looking at it from, okay, well it's only like a two month tops service, the goal is that they're gonna graduate from it. We don't really have add-ons to, we're not upselling more home healthcare services necessarily, you know? But if you're looking at that also against the product combinations and you identify like, okay, well that might be a lead loss because it actually leads to more opportunity down the road.

If you are seeing a loss and you're also like coupling that with, okay, well our team is getting stretched. Like, I mean, in some of these industries we've got workforce, you know, challenges where there's only so many PTs and OTs [00:42:00] to go around. You know, when you start kind of looking at it from like your business model and your profit model of, it's not just about the service and the insurance code and stuff like that, it's, you know, my team is already stretched really thin that we can't take on the other opportunities that actually we really can serve.

A lot better that like that is a great scenario of when you can look at your profitability data that really makes sense. Not just even on a profit level, but also like a team and a culture perspective. Because the unfortunate thing, especially in that category is that you do wanna help everyone, just the nature of it. However, you can't burn your workforce out. Because either they're gonna go somewhere else where they get a little bit more like work-life balance, or they're gonna leave the profession completely and we don't want to cause problems that lead to that

Alyssa McGinn: yeah. It is true that that industry, feels almost harsh to say we're cutting out these diagnosis codes. And I said that, so just like flippantly, because I was, [00:43:00] I've just thought about it from this like business perspective, but you're right, it's like if you look at the bigger picture, like there's people that they can serve better that they're not getting

Jordan Walker: Yeah. And you know, okay, we've talked about this a little bit, but like a part of that innovation wheel that one of the 10 areas of innovation that you can make within your business is looking at your partner network. Is there another home health service that actually rocks those diagnoses codes that you can't handle anymore?

Make a referral to them. Maybe you get a little bit of a kickback on it or something, like if you are in that situation where, and I love compassionate business owners in that realm, like, but we all also have to know that we can't save everyone. But in this situation, if you've got a network of other resources that you feel confident in referring to, that actually helps you in the long run because maybe that particular patient really doesn't need you beyond a couple of months, but maybe one of their family members [00:44:00] might at some point.

And because you provided not only the direct care for them, but you became that trusted advisor as well, that can come back in dividends, you know? So.

Alyssa McGinn: that's a good point. I hadn't thought about the partner network. But then that also, I mean, I think that's true in like more, how do I say it, more non people's health related industries

Jordan Walker: Yeah, like, okay. You could even put it in like, my industry, I'm not saving lives or I'm not like I could look at, the time that I'm putting into particular client services and the types of services that are being offered.

There are some that lead to longer relationships versus those that may only be like one to two month long gigs. The ones that are one to two month long might be easy, or how do I wanna phrase this? Like it's good revenue. Like I'll never say that it's not good revenue, [00:45:00] but if it's not a direct client relationship, it's actually not profitable because we're literally like using the entire scope in order to provide the service. Then it's just kind of like, cool, thanks. See you later. It's fun work. Usually it's like research and putting together just like some insights for people. It's good, it's fun, but it takes away from the longer term engagements that are actually a lot more profitable because the more that we understand about a customer's business, the better we can be.

And we also aren't having to start from scratch. Like once we kind of. The basics, and we can really use our time and energy very well.

Alyssa McGinn: And I would say too is like I've heard you say to other marketers, like there isn't really like a silver bullet. Like you come in and figure out exactly what's gonna work and you just like deploy it and it works. It's like, it feels like it's a very iterative process. well, here's kind of an assumption we have.

Let's kind of see what that leads to. Let's try this and this. [00:46:00] And or like, let's put a strategy in place for a year.

So it's like the longer term relationships actually lead to higher ROI for the clients and you

too.

Jordan Walker: Yeah. I had that conversation with one of the individuals in the class this morning where we were kind of talking about, well, how do you talk to clients about the results that they're seeing? And the biggest thing that I can share there is, well, you have to set expectations up. Like if you wait until half of that conversation.

It's always gonna be a challenge because then you have to explain what the different metrics are, why you think these results are good, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, if you are trying to put a strategy direction together, or like an annual plan, the starting point should always be what data do you already have that we can look at?

If I'm showing from a consumer behavior, like doing some consumer behavior research, that these are platforms that your audience is on, here's how frequently this is [00:47:00] what they're doing on the those, I can pull that information, but I also need to look at, well, how are you already activating some of these platforms?

Because if your platforms, let's say. 90% of your target market overlaps on YouTube, and here are the things that they're doing, but you don't have a YouTube channel. You've never done any video. I'm probably not gonna recommend that you start on that platform. You know, we're probably gonna look at, okay, what are some of the other areas so that you can start getting, the wheels on the track a little bit, and then maybe we see that as an opportunity to build up as we go along, or it supports why you need to put some paid media. Out there to reach those audiences?

Alyssa McGinn: Yeah, and it's, I'm assuming that's not just something that you discover

Jordan Walker: no, I mean, it probably, it takes us in our process. Like we don't actually like start on anything without a discovery session. And typically what that discovery always includes [00:48:00] is a customer journey mapping workshop where we get, okay, from your perspective, who are your customers? We have like a whole audience definition session.

We talk about from our perspective and our experiences and what we know, what does that journey look like? We're doing an audit on all of their platforms in the background, and then we're coupling that with consumer behavior research, so then we can come back and say, okay, here's kind of what we think is happening from an internal perspective.

Here's what's actually happening. Here's areas that you are doing really well in already. Here are areas that we need to optimize. So little, little dials to be turned. Here are things that you're completely leaving on the table and here, and so based on all of this, what your audience wants, what they need, blah, blah, blah.

Then here's how we would recommend going forward, but that alone, depending on schedules, like if we can kind of do things like boom, boom, boom, that's at least a month and a half of work before. We [00:49:00] can even put a plan together. And so like for companies that call and want us to turn something around and like, I need an ad campaign pulled together and it needs to launch in two weeks.

What you're asking for is a package service and we're not it. And that's fine if that's what you're truly

Alyssa McGinn: Partner network, you could refer that out to

Jordan Walker: Yeah. Like if you already have an idea of what you think you want and you're not willing to like go through the process, then I'll point you in a few directions of people. Or just say, sorry, not us if I don't have a great recommendation for it.

But otherwise if you really want long-term results and a sales and marketing platform that is sustainable, that allows you to scale or allows you to optimize along the way, this is how we go about it. And so that's why we typically work with mid-size organizations 'cause they're a little bit more patient

Alyssa McGinn: that's good. I have one more example and then wrap up. Which I think is one that's will be hopefully enlightening because. [00:50:00] I had a guy that's actually in town here called me and said he was looking at buying, or he was approached about buying a business and one of his main concerns about the business was that on paper, the most profitable clients are the highest paying, even like on a retainer, clients actually took a lot of time. And so I think that's a way to look at profitability. In relation to your people costs, in service based businesses where it's not just a product that you can have high margins on, its people answering tickets.

So in that industry, they have, as I'm sure many people have interfaced with they have like a ticketing system.

So you have like a help desk, you submit a ticket, someone on their team gets to the ticket, they help you. And so he's very wise. He's been in the industry for a while and was like. I don't wanna just look at the top five customers. I also wanna pull the data from their help desk system and look at how much time and how many tickets have they submitted over the course of, you know, the past 12 months with, [00:51:00] in relation to the revenue. So are they on a large retainer and we're, you know, doing our typical services and they're really submitting pretty few tickets that take a lot of our people's time. Are they paying a really small retainer and and they're ton of time? So I think that there's a lot of times people can look at top line revenue or even at profit margin and not really understand how it can be optimized because of against, when you look at, I guess, the cost of goods sold or however you want the indirect labor costs, that it doesn't really tell the full story.

Jordan Walker: Yeah. And I think that kind of goes into that like profit, the profit model and structure conversation too, where, you know, maybe these customers are actually really great, you know, like you wanna be able to help them. But the retainer model. Is actually what's not feasible for your business anymore.

So maybe it's okay. [00:52:00] Maybe we need to reconfigure how our retainer model looks moving forward. Retainers are great, if on some months, you might be really heavy on help desk tickets, but then other months you're really low, so you're actually making a lot of profit off of that because you're basically just on call.

Essentially, when those things come through.

Alyssa McGinn: to retain you.

Jordan Walker: Like, especially in a service based scenario. We don't do retainers anymore at Bonfire because it does, like where does the line get drawn? And it really had nothing to do with whether or not we felt clients were kind of abusing the privilege or anything. Like, I don't want it to come across like that at all, but it really came to, well, the retainers that we have are really taking up all of our team's time.

And, but we're not like, but we still need to grow in order to make this sustainable long term. And so when we started kind of like realizing that, okay, retainers were built on like a certain number of hours, but we're actually averaging [00:53:00] almost like double what that looks like now. I mean, a lot of faults on our end for not like trying to have better conversations throughout that process, you know?

But it brings up, like in that case, it's. No services feel great. Client types are awesome. The way that we're selling it doesn't make sense for us anymore, so.

Alyssa McGinn: And you just named like there's a lot of different factors. not always the model

But sometimes it's the customer type. It's not, but you won't know. That's the point of all this. You won't know you're digging into. I think a lot of this comes down to customer and financial data we've talked a lot about, but that was a long episode, so we're gonna cut it there.

I'm not even gonna do number four because we've kind of already like talked about it. I wanna link the innovation wheel I we referred to it so many times in here. And I think it's just no matter what type of business you're in, it's really helpful as, especially as, you know, we've talked about technology just [00:54:00] progressing at the pace it

is like innovation and just taking some of these methodical approaches to innovation is gonna be paramount, I think, especially in some of these sleepy industries that haven't really been shaken in a few decades.

Jordan Walker: The thing that I like about this conversation is that it reminds us that innovation doesn't just occur within product and service features and benefits. There's a lot of things within your business that you could be optimizing that actually increases.

Alyssa McGinn: Hundred percent. That, that was good. I'm gonna leave it at that. That's the pod. Thank

Jordan Walker: See you next time.