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My guest today is Giovanni Passiatore, Head of US MSLs at Chiesi Rare Disease and he shares insights on how to find success as a Rare Diseases MSL   Giovanni discusses…

Most fitness gadgets, like the Fitbit or the Apple Watch, encourage you to get out there every day and “close your rings” or “do your 10,000 steps.” But there's one activity tracker that's a little different. The WHOOP isn't designed to tell you when to work out—it's designed to tell you when to stop. Harry's guest this week is Emily Capodilupo, the senior vice president of data science and research at Boston-based WHOOP, which is based here in Boston. To explain why the company focuses on measuring what it calls strain, rather than counting steps or calories, she reaches all the way back to the beginning of the company in 2012. That's when founder and CEO Will Ahmed had just finished college at Harvard and was looking back at his experiences on the varsity squash team. Ahmed realized that had often underperformed because he had overtrained, neglecting to give his body time to recover between workouts or between matches. To this day, WHOOP designs the WHOOP band and its accompanying smartphone software around measuring the physical quantities that best predict athletic performance, and giving users feedback that can help them decide how much to push or not push on a given day.Capodilupo calls the WHOOP band “the first wearable that tells you to do less.” But it's really all about designing a safe and effective training program and helping users make smarter decisions. Meanwhile, the WHOOP band collects so many different forms of data that it can also help to detect conditions like atrial fibrillation, or even predict whether you're about to be diagnosed with Covid-19. It's not a medical device, but Capodilupo acknowledges that the line between wellness and diagnostics is shifting all the time.  And with the rise of telemedicine, which is spreading even faster thanks to the pandemic, she predicts that more patients and more doctors will want access to the kinds of health data that the WHOOP band and other trackers collect 24/7. The conversation touched on a very different way of thinking about fitness and health, and on the relationship between big data and quality of life—which is, after all, the main theme of the show.Please rate and review The Harry Glorikian Show on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:1. Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. 2. Navigate to The Harry Glorikian Show podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.3. Scroll down to find the subhead titled "Ratings & Reviews."4. Under one of the highlighted reviews, select "Write a Review."5. Next, select a star rating at the top — you have the option of choosing between one and five stars. 6. Using the text box at the top, write a title for your review. Then, in the lower text box, write your review. Your review can be up to 300 words long.7. Once you've finished, select "Send" or "Save" in the top-right corner. 8. If you've never left a podcast review before, enter a nickname. Your nickname will be displayed next to any reviews you leave from here on out. 9. After selecting a nickname, tap OK. Your review may not be immediately visible.That's it! Thanks so much.TranscriptHarry Glorikian: Hello. I'm Harry Glorikian, and this is The Harry Glorikian Show, where we explore how technology is changing everything we know about healthcare.If you're a gadget lover and data aficionado like me, you've probably tried a lot of different fitness monitors and other wearable devices, like a Fitbit, or an Oura ring, or an Apple Watch.We've talked about a lot of these devices on the show. Usually they come with a smartphone app, or they run their own apps. And the job of the apps is to track your fitness progress and encourage you to get out there every day and “close your rings” or “do your 10,000 steps.”But there's one activity tracker that's a little different. It's the WHOOP band. The WHOOP is not designed to tell you when to work out. It's designed to tell you when to stop.My guest today is Emily Capodilupo. She's the senior vice president of data science and research at WHOOP, which is based here in Boston. And to explain why the company focuses on measuring what it calls strain, rather than counting steps or calories, she reaches all the way back to the beginning of the company in 2012.That's when founder and CEO Will Ahmed had just finished college at Harvard and was looking back at his experiences on the varsity squash team.I'll let Emily tell the whole story, but basically Will realized that had often underperformed because he had overtrained, neglecting to give his body time to recover between workouts or between matches.To this day, WHOOP designs its signature WHOOP band and its accompanying smartphone software around measuring the physical quantities that best predict athletic performance, and giving users feedback that can help them decide how much to push or not push on a given day.Emily calls the WHOOP band “the first wearable that tells you to do less.”But it's really all about designing a safe and effective training program and helping users make smarter decisions.Meanwhile, the WHOOP band collects so many different forms of data that it can also help to detect conditions like atrial fibrillation, or even predict whether you're about to be diagnosed with Covid-19.But it's not a medical device.But Emily acknowledges that the line between wellness and diagnostics is shifting all the time. And with the rise of telemedicine, which is spreading even faster thanks to the pandemic, she predicts that more patients and more doctors will want access to the kinds of health data that the WHOOP band and other trackers collect 24/7. It was a fascinating conversation that touched on a very different way of thinking about fitness and health, and on the relationship between big data and quality of life, which is, after all, the main theme of this show.So I want to play the whole interview for you now.Harry Glorikian: Emily, welcome to the show.Emily Capodilupo: Thanks so much for having me.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, I have to tell you, I was reading your background and I'm like, oh, my God, I'm so excited. She comes from like, you know, like real training in sleep. And we're going to talk about these devices. And it's one of the things I use them all for, as you can tell, like I'm I'm sort of geared up and I've got all of them and I and I cross correlate and I can tell when somebody has updated something and the algorithm, like I can see like all of a sudden they start moving apart from each other or being different from each other. But, you know, for those people who aren't, say, up to speed on the world of fitness monitors, I'd love for you to start, you know, by explaining you WHOOP's mission, and then maybe talk about different parts of your system, you know, like the band, the sensors, you know, the basic capabilities, that sort of stuff.Emily Capodilupo: Sure. So WHOOP's mission is to unlock human performance. And in a lot of ways it started out at the beginning. You really focus on athletic performance. Our origin story is very much in preventing overtraining. But as we started to do more and more research, we started to discover that the things that predict athletic performance at the sort of root physiological level are actually the same things that predict all kinds of performance. So we've seen them predict things like cognitive performance. We've seen them predict like emotional intelligence and, you know, like how short you are with people, stuff like that, you know, as well as like how people feel like they're performing at work or in their jobs, in their relationship, stuff like that. So while ...physical performance is, where a lot of those algorithms and sort of like our research started, we started to realize that without tweaking any of the algorithms at all, they started to be really good predictors of other elements of performance as well. So we've really broadened our mission. It's all about unlocking human performance in the broadest sense possible, and we do that with this device. Some of the things that we think are really important about our design as it compares to some of the other wearables, is that as you'll see, it's screenless. And we really think about the device just as this itty bitty little bit that slides out from the fabric.Emily Capodilupo: And so it's actually capable of being worn almost anywhere on your body. So we have clothing that totally hides it. You can wear it in your underwear, on your bra, on a t shirt, anything like that, as well as sort of the traditional wearable locations like on your wrist or bicep. And one of the reasons why we wanted that form factor is we really wanted to collect 24/7 data and be able to get this complete picture of your body. It actually charges wirelessly so you don't even have to take it off to charge it. And that allows us to get the most complete picture of what's going on. And so we don't miss like the 2 hours when you take it off to charge or you don't charge it overnight and then miss the sleep or anything like that. So it gives us this like really incredible picture. Kind of one of the other important differentiators just in the hardware itself is because we're not powering a screen, we're able to put 100% of the battery into driving the sensors and getting the most accurate signal. And so when you start with the most accurate signal, the most accurate raw data, you're then able to power better feedback, better coaching, because you're starting with something more reliable. And so we've done a lot on the coaching side and the algorithms side that other wearables just haven't been able to do.Harry Glorikian: Interesting. So Will Ahmed and John...and I'm going to try to pronounce it. Emily Capodilupo: Capodilupo.Harry Glorikian: Thank you. Started WHOOP in 2012, right? While John was at Harvard and Will had just graduated. Right. So, you know, I mean, maybe a little bit about the company's origin story or. I don't. God, that was you know, if I go back that far, the fitness monitoring market was like in its nascency.Emily Capodilupo: Yeah it was, the Jawbone Up had just come out, the original Fitbits had just come out. And not too long after that the Nike FuelBand started, which no longer exists, of course. And, you know, if you look at what wearables were doing at the time. Oh, and then, of course, there was this other class of wearables that had been around for a little bit, which were like the Garmin running watches. So it kind of GPS watches that you put on for the run or for a bike ride or whatever it is. It would capture all the GPS data, give you information about your pace, and then you take it off when the run was over. And so you kind of had those like two classes of wearables. We had these like 24-ish/7 step counters, and then you had the like more intense while you were working out data, but nobody was really bridging those things. But the sort of theme across all wearables, both of those different categories at the time, was this like push harder, more is more, faster is better, just do it, right. All of those kinds of messaging. And we weren't really seeing, at least with the like kind of step counter class of wearables, we weren't seeing any kind of adoption in like elite athletes or even like collegiate athletes because they didn't really need to be told do more.Emily Capodilupo: And actually what happened is, sort of the WHOOP origin story is, Will was captain of the Harvard squash team. And when he got named captain, he sort of committed that “I'm the captain. I should work harder than everybody else. That's what a leader does.” And he worked so, so hard that he overtrained, really burnt himself out and like did really poorly. And he had this moment of like, you know, I'm in a Division I school and I'm like the fanciest, you know, squash programs that there is. How come nobody knew I was overtraining and like, told me to stop. And like, who knew that this was a thing? Like, I always thought that if I worked harder, I'd get better. And actually, you can work too hard and working too hard is bad. And he found that like everybody on his team was really motivated to work hard and sort of motivating each other to work harder. And they didn't have that balancing voice of like, Oh, I should take a rest day and like sit out, even though like my teammates are practicing. That would have felt like very uncomfortable and like not being a team player or something like that. But he started digging into the data and it really did show that like actually when you need a rest day, you will be stronger for having taken the rest day, than you will be for like manning up and pushing through.Emily Capodilupo: And so he really set out to create the first wearable that was going to tell you to do less. It was very countercultural in that moment. But he was trying to address kind of the highly motivated market that needed almost like permission to pull back and to be told what their limits were. And so from day one, we were really focused on like, how can we create a recovery score that's going to tell you, like, you're better off resting today than you are like doing this program or that, like, a coach could use and see the data and say, okay, these four players, they're going to do an extra set or an extra drill or whatever it is. And these four players, they're actually going to stop 20 minutes early and, you know, go sit in the sauna or stretch or whatever it is. And by modulating people's training in response to their bodies, readiness to respond to that training, actually create like safer and more effective training programs. And that was where we started and then kind of evolved into the product we are right now. But a lot of that is very, very much, that philosophy is still kind of at the core of what we're doing.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, I definitely have questions. We definitely have to talk about the recovery score and sleep apnea, because I have a vested interest in understanding this better. Actually, it's funny, I try to talk about this with my doctor and he's like, “Man, you know more than I do about this.” But so, you know, thinking about how the company is evolving. It's been moving forward. I've been watching it. I mean, what is the company's sort of larger philosophy about like the role of technology in fitness and health. I mean, do you feel like we're headed towards a future where everybody is going to rely on their mobile and wearable devices for health advice?Emily Capodilupo: I think so. And I think that, you know, there's a big asterisk to that answer, which is I don't think that wearables are ever going to replace doctors, and I don't think that we're trying to do that either. But we do have a lot of information that doctors don't have. And there's a really, I think, exciting opportunity if the medical community were more open to it. And they're definitely shifting in that direction. And that's been accelerated by the pandemic and the rise of telemedicine, where there really is an opportunity. I mean, if you think about it, just like the really simple basic stuff like telemedicine appointments skyrocketed during the pandemic.Harry Glorikian: Right.Emily Capodilupo: Every other in-person doctor's appointment I've ever been to, the first thing they do is they take your vital signs right, often before you even get to see the doctor. They've taken your vital signs, or if you've a telemedicine appointment, they just totally skip it, right? And so it's like, well, you know, my wearable can tell you what my resting heart rate is, could tell you not just what it was this morning, but what it's been all month and all that kind of stuff. It also can tell you what my blood oxygen level is, my temperature. And that's a lot of information that's like, you know, is a lot better than having nothing. Which is what telemedicine has right now. And so it's not like let's throw out all the EKG machines and all of that.Emily Capodilupo: But, you know, there are a lot of situations where remote monitoring can add a lot of value. And then there's other places where even if the doctor was there to take your vital signs, sometimes vital signs in context have a lot more information than an isolated reading. So like we published a paper about a little over a year ago now where we were looking at respiratory rate in response to COVID-19 infections. And what we found was about three days before or up to three days before reported symptom onset, people's respiratory rates were starting to climb. And we would see this like because daily your respiratory rate when you're healthy, it doesn't change at all from night to night, it's super flat. And so it will be like the exact same thing night after night. And then all of a sudden you'd see this spike like two, three days before COVID-19 symptom onset. It would stay up or keep climbing. And then three days later, people would say, like, Oh, I don't feel well, whatever. They go get a COVID test, and lo and behold, it would be positive. And so it was this like interesting early warning sign. But what was really, really interesting about that study is that oftentimes people's respiratory rates were only going up like one or two breaths, which didn't make them like clinically like high respiratory rates, like clinically significant.Emily Capodilupo: It was only significant in how it was compared to your baseline. And so that's a case where like if I had gone to my doctor and they measured my respiratory rate, they would have said, this is a normal human respiratory rate, you know, between 12 and 20 breaths per minute, which is sort of normal. But like my baseline is about 14. So if it went up to 18, that's a huge, huge rise for me, but it's still technically clinically normal, so they would have completely missed that. But by having a wearable that's like passively monitoring my respiratory rate every single night, you could see like something's going on, and that can be a huge red flag that something's going on with your respiratory system. Right. And of course, COVID-19 is a lower respiratory tract infection primarily. So it's going to show up there. But we would expect to see similar things with somebody who had pneumonia or certain strains of the flu. And so these kind of like early warning signs that can show up in your vital signs before symptoms. You're not going to have a fever yet. You're not going to be complaining about not feeling well or have any other indication that you might have COVID. And so I think that's like an example of where a wearable paired with a doctor can provide information that like a doctor in their office wouldn't be able to provide alone.Harry Glorikian: Well, I mean, I think, you know, if you took respiratory rate plus a slow change in temperature, right now you have two biomarkers that you can use to show something is physiologically off.Emily Capodilupo: Yeah. What we were seeing was that respiratory rate was climbing before temperature was climbing, which was interesting.Harry Glorikian: Interesting. Okay. You know, another story. It's funny because I was talking to a friend of mine and he has A-fib [atrial fibrillation] and he knew he was going into A-fib and then he got together with his doctor and his doctor was actually digging into the data from the WHOOP to sort of see like when he was going into A-fib and sort of, you know, using the technology, because he wasn't wearing a Holter monitor or anything like that. This, this sort of acted as a way for him to peer into when it started, how long it lasted and things like that. So I think when a doctor wants to, it's interesting because some of these wearables like yours have that data available for them to, you know, interrogate.Emily Capodilupo: Mm hmm. Yeah. And I think A-fib is such an interesting example there because, like, people who have paroxysmal A-fib can go into A-fib for just, like a couple of minutes a month. And so your typical like seven-day or 48-hour Holter monitor reading could easily miss it. But A-fib puts you at risk of all kinds of things like stroke that you might want to be treating, and so like having 24/7 data collection over months and months and months can give you a better picture versus I don't really know too many people who are going to be willing to like or Holter monitor for a year.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. So I mean, I'm going back to your 24/7 and the wearable and the fact that you're driving all the power to the sensors, I mean, you guys collect, I think I saw the number, 50 to 100 megabytes of data per day, per user, which is a gigantic amount of data compared to maybe like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch. I mean. Why collect that much data? I mean, what do you do with it? I mean...Emily Capodilupo: Yeah, great question. You know, we keep all of the data because it has tremendous research value in addition to being able to power the features that we're providing today. You know, there's all kinds of fascinating early research, you know, different things like the shape that your pulse makes. So if you look at not just how fast your heart is beating, but literally, you know what that raw, we called PPG, photoplethysmography signal, looks like, you can actually tell a lot about the health of a cardiovascular system. And we published a paper a couple of years ago now where we're looking at age as a function of this like cardiovascular pulse shape. And we haven't productized that research yet, but stuff that we're exploring down the road and there's just there's so much, so much you can answer with large data sets that traditional academic research just hasn't been able to answer because they haven't had access to data like this. And so by keeping it all around, we're able to do a lot of research and move the field forward as well as create really, really feature rich experiences for our members.Harry Glorikian: Can I suggest, you know, custom consulting for guys like me who actually would love to dig into the data as as a service that that people would be willing to pay for. But correct me if I'm wrong -- the WHOOP doesn't really detect when I'm exercising. Right. I've got to tell it, no, I'm exercising.Emily Capodilupo: We detect when you're working out.Harry Glorikian: Because it seems like it's more accurate when I push the button first and it starts rather than wait for it to like if I'm about to start a weightlifting session, it's more accurate when I push the button, then when I wait for it to tell I'm doing something.Emily Capodilupo: Yeah. Well, with certain activities it's hard to get the exact start times right. And different people have different attitudes about things like warm ups and downs and if they should be included. So if you do have a strong preference about whether or not you want those included, we do give people the opportunity to manually trim the bounds of their workouts or to just start and stop them manually. But we do detect any activity with a strain above an eight that lasts at least 15 minutes will get automatically detected.Harry Glorikian: Okay. And by the way, I love the fact that you guys integrated with the Apple Watch because, like, because when I go on my treadmill, it automatically connects to the watch and then tracks the whole thing and then ports the info. That's great. That is fantastic. As a as an opportunity. But, you know, how do you think about WHOOP versus any of the competitive technologies? And I'll tell you why I say that when people say, well, what do you see is the difference? I'm like, you know, the Apple Watch is more of what what I think of as a data aggregation device in a sense, because it's sort of taking all sorts of stuff. You know, the WHOOP I think of almost like a coach in a sense, as opposed to it's pulling in data and pushing it out to different apps and I can do different things with it. So I don't want to misrepresent how you might frame it, but that's sort of how I think about it.Emily Capodilupo: No, I think that's totally spot on. I think that we have a very strong stance around not showing or generating data that we can't tell you what to do with it. And so we really want to be like your coach or your trainer or at a minimum like your workout buddy kind of thing, where it's somebody that or something you can kind of look to, to understand, you know, am I reaching my goals? What are the things that are helping and hurting me and sort of how do I then make changes to go forward? I think one of the biggest examples here is, we've been very much like countercultural in not counting steps and we've been asked a lot by our members, like, why don't you count steps? It's not actually that hard. It's not because we can't figure out how to do it. It's that we actually don't think that they're valuable. Steps count the same if you run them or walk them. If you walk them upstairs or flat. You don't get any steps if you swim for a mile and you certainly don't get any steps if you're wheelchair bound. And we didn't like any of those constraints, they didn't really make sense to us as a metric. And we also really didn't like this kind of arbitrary, like everybody needs 10,000 steps. Well, is that true if I'm 90 versus 19, is that true f I ran a marathon yesterday, should I still be trying to get 10,000 steps today? Is it different if I've been sitting on the couch for three days? And so we came up with this metric of strain where instead of being an external metric, like steps are sort of something that you did and you can count them and it's objective, we wanted an internal metric where it's like, How did your body respond to that thing that you did and how much flow did you take as a function of what you're capable of? And so sort of what strain does, it's very much like in opposition to what steps does, is they're internally normalized to reflect like if I ran versus walk to those steps, if I ran versus my brother ran and he's more fit than I am, or if I do a two mile run this weekend and then I train a whole bunch and get more fit and then do the same two mile run six months from now, I should actually get a lower strain when I do it, when I'm more fit than I did when I got did it this weekend. Like all of a sudden, strain becomes this very rich thing because it has this, like, natural comparison where like a higher strain actually mean something objectively, both within and across people, than a lower strain does. Whereas that that's not really true with steps. Right? I could walk fewer steps than you, but have done them up a mountain. And so I've actually put a lot more strain on my body than if I'd done the same number as you, but like flat pacing around my kitchen, eating snacks and making dinner or something like that.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, well, actually there was an interesting paper that it was a sort of a study that brought in all sorts of studies to show that, you know, at an older age, you actually, you know, you need less steps, and it has a difference in mortality. And, you know, if you're younger, then you want a higher level of steps. And, you know, so it was a good paper. I'll actually I'll send you the reference later. But you know, the interesting thing about strain is and this is the good part about the body and the bad part about the body, in a sense, is that it optimizes itself. Right. And so if you want to get the same strain goal and if you're fit, you really have to…I mean, at some point, I'm like I look at if I had an incredible night, which is rare and it's really in the green, I'm like, I'm never going to hit that. Like, I'm going to have to run ten miles to hit that, that goal. So, I mean, I try to like get out and lift that day and maybe get a run in, then get a walk in. And I'm still you know, when you can't hit that high mark, if you're actually in shape. When you're not in shape, sort of, you can get there a little bit easier because your body is has optimized itself in a sense. Which is great, I guess. But when you're when you're holding yourself up to that number, you're like, Oh, my God, I'm never going to hit that number.Emily Capodilupo: Yeah. I mean, it's super interesting how the human body works, right? There's almost like this weird kindness in how we work where it's like easier and more fun to make progress when you're brand new and starting out and it's harder to make progress the better you are.Harry Glorikian: I mean, it's an efficient machine. It has to optimize itself. Right. So, again, you were saying no display, no interface. All the information happens on the associated device, the phone. I mean, you mentioned some of the pros and cons, but are there any other that I haven't asked or I know that at some point it pings me and says like. You need to connect because it's been some time between connections. So is there an offloading time frame that it needs to...Emily Capodilupo: No, it can store up to three days of data on the device itself.Harry Glorikian: Oh, interesting. Okay.Emily Capodilupo: Yeah. So if you like went camping for the weekend or something and didn't have internet, we would just store the data locally and then transmit it all when you got back. But it tries to transmit the data more or less consistently, constantly throughout the day. What it's pinging you about is not that you're in any way in danger of losing the data, but just that you're behind. And so you might be missing any kind of analysis or getting credit for your strains. We want to make sure you're up to date so that if you want to look at your data from the day, you would have access to it.Harry Glorikian: Here's a question. Would it ever make sense to make a WHOOP app for the Apple Watch? Or is the device sort of inextricably linked to the app?Emily Capodilupo: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of good reasons to think about something like that, right? You can make it a lot more affordable if you didn't tie it to hardware. Right now, we believe that we have the best hardware on the market, but there's sort of valid pushback that some people are willing to settle for something less than best in order to only wear one thing. And they want to wear their Apple Watch because they like the phone call notifications and the texting and email and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of great features that Apple has that we don't. I'm certainly not trying to hate on the competitors at all. But I think like the way we kind of think about what we've done is like if Apple Watch does a lot of little things, you know, at like a relatively shallow depth, so it's like a lot of coverage, we do a small subset of those things, but we do them very, very, very well. And so by not doing things like putting on a screen and letting you text and all of those things, we're able to have all of the power of the device drive towards getting the most accurate signal data. And so we are sampling the heart rate more frequently than Apple is, and the device is more purpose built around optimizing both internally and externally for the sensors. So there's even little things like electrical coupling on the circuit board. When you try and shove too much functionality into something small, they kind of like run into each other. And, you know, so we're not trying to make room for a GPS chip or make room for a screen or like all of those things. And so it lets us lay out the hardware very specifically for this purpose. And so we believe that in data to support that, we're getting more and more accurate like metric data.[musical interlude]Harry Glorikian: Let's pause the conversation for a minute to talk about one small but important thing you can do, to help keep the podcast going. And that's leave a rating and a review for the show on Apple Podcasts.All you have to do is open the Apple Podcasts app on your smartphone, search for The Harry Glorikian Show, and scroll down to the Ratings & Reviews section. Tap the stars to rate the show, and then tap the link that says Write a Review to leave your comments. It'll only take a minute, but you'll be doing a lot to help other listeners discover the show.And one more thing. If you like the interviews we do here on the show I know you'll like my new book, The Future You: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help You Get Healthier, Stress Less, and Live Longer.It's a friendly and accessible tour of all the ways today's information technologies are helping us diagnose diseases faster, treat them more precisely, and create personalized diet and exercise programs to prevent them in the first place.The book is now available in print and ebook formats. Just go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and search for The Future You by Harry Glorikian.And now, back to the show.[musical interlude]Harry Glorikian: So switching to sort of business model, because you sort of touched on that, is like it's a subscription model. You don't buy the device. If I'm not mistaken. The service starts at say 30 bucks a month and the package actually includes the WHOOP band. They'll just ship it to you like I'm wearing mine. Right. And so what was the rationale behind subscription versus just selling the device. If you have insight into, how did they pick 30 bucks? You know, I just wonder, like, you know, did they, is that something you guys felt reaches the broadest market sort of thing?Emily Capodilupo: Yeah, pretty much. So when we actually first launched, it was sold more like a traditional hardware product. So it was $500, one time fee, sort of use it as long as you want. And then we switched over to the subscription model in 2018. A nd we chose the price of $30. It was sort of designed to make the product accessible and lower the barrier of entry. $500 up front is a lot of money, especially for younger athletes. We want to make sure that people in college could afford it and stuff like that. And so we found just by market testing, that $30 was an approachable price point. And so after a couple of different market tests, that was what we landed with and more or less where we've been. We occasionally discount it and different things like that, and you can get a lower rate if you commit to more months upfront.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, I think I signed up for the maximum, which then brought it down to I think it was $18. Yeah. So here's a, you know, because this show is, you know, supposed to focus on AI and health care and things like that, I'm just sort of imagining in the back of my mind with that much data, you really have the opportunity to build some really cool analytics on top of it. You know, what role, if any, like does machine learning or other forms of AI play in you know how you analyze the data and then how do you, do you actually use that to personalize it back to the individual using it.Emily Capodilupo: Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much all my team is doing is machine learning. No, it plays a huge role in what we're doing, from like very traditional ML approaches, so like if you think about how we're doing our sleep staging, we have polysomnography is like the gold standard for getting sleep truth data. So that's like the stages when we know we're in REM sleep or slow-wave sleep. So we sent thousands and thousands of people into a clinical sleep lab with two straps on and they underwent a clinical sleep study. And then we took all of the data from the sleep study, lined it up with the WHOOP data, and then used all kinds of different traditional ML approaches in order to figure out how to get from a strap the same sleep staging information that we're able to get from this gold standard approach. Obviously the sort of gold standard sleep study uses a lot of sensors that we don't have right things. EEGs, which you need to be on someone's head to use. You can't get EEG from the wrist. EOGs, which you have to measure eye movement. So you need a little sensor there. And then we were able to find good proxies from the data that we can get at the wrist for all of those different signals and reconstruct the same sleep stage information.Emily Capodilupo: So that's a super fun ML problem. We also do things like when we detect a workout, we can figure out what, which sport or exercise modality you're using. And so the ability to classify those workouts is kind of again like a traditional ML like time series classification problem where you can tell the difference just from the heart rate and accelerometer signals. Are you doing basketball or CrossFit or running or anything like that? And then so those are kind of more traditional ML approaches. And then we've also done a lot around trying to understand behavioral impacts and how your body responds to different things. And then we're doing things like much, much more personalized. So we have a feature called The Journal where every day you fill out this little diary and you answer a bunch of questions about what you've done in the last 24 hours and can self report things like when you were eating, if you did different like kind of wellness activities like, meditate, journal. You know.Harry Glorikian: How much alcohol you had. I always wonder, like how honestly somebody answers that question.Emily Capodilupo: Any of those kinds of things. And then we look at the sort of signals in your data and try and separate out which of the things are helping you, which are hurting you, so that we can then recommend the things that are good for you, and for the things that are less good for you, maybe help you quantify the cost of those things that you can deploy them strategically. We certainly don't expect everybody to become like a teetotaller and never drink again, even though we're going to tell you it's bad for you, because it's pretty much always what shows up in the data. But we do want to help people make those informed decisions because a lot of people think like, Oh, I can have two drinks and it won't affect me tomorrow. And like, okay, here's the effect. And if tomorrow's not that important, go for it. And you have that really important meeting tomorrow, maybe don't. Y rou know, we're not trying to kill all the fun by any means, but we do want to make sure that people are empowered by data to know understand what they're doing to their body and then make decisions accordingly.Harry Glorikian: So I'm throwing in sort of like something important to me, right? Which is, you know, I have sleep apnea. Right. And it's funny because my wife diagnosed me, but then, you know, all the devices at some point, my Apple Watch actually asked me once, you know, have you ever been diagnosed with sleep apnea, which was interesting. But I've noticed like, the recovery number, if don't wear my CPAP, my recovery number tends to be much higher than if I do wear my CPAP. And I always wonder, does the positive air pressure cause a difference in how much your heart actually rests or not? Because it is pushing, it is positive air pressure on you all the time. So even in between apneas, you don't really maybe not rest as much. And I'm wondering if you have any insight on that.Emily Capodilupo: Yeah, we, we haven't specifically dug into why, but we have seen that as an unexpected pattern. You're not the only person to report that. It's on the to do list to better understand what's going on there. I think your theory is a valid one. We haven't verified or ruled it out yet, but I think there's a lot to be learned there. And I think one of the things that's exciting about the data that we're collecting is that if you wear a CPAP is one of the things you can report in our journals. We do have a tremendous amount of data on that and therefore the ability to kind of tease that apart and get insights that haven't been made available yet by traditional academic research.Harry Glorikian: Oh, I didn't know I could add CPAP in there. I have to go back and and check. But yeah, because my strain score ends up, my recovery score ends up lower. So it's like, you know, then of course, I always exceed on the strain side because I'm going to go work out the next day. And you know, it is what it is. But the other thing that you guys offer is like WHOOP for teams. And I don't know if you mean sports teams. You mean organizations. I'm not 100% sure because obviously I don't use that. I'm using it as an individual. Can you explain the additional value that provides when a group of people are using it together?Emily Capodilupo: Yeah. So all the above, we do it corporate teams as well as athletic teams, and there's a couple of different layers of the added value. So sometimes it's just accountability. I'm on a team with my family and it's just kind of fun, make fun of each other when our recovery scores are poor and, you know, cheer each other on when we have particularly good strain scores. And, you know, there's a lot of data to support that when you have a workout buddy or an accountability buddy or anything like that, that you tend to stick with things longer. And so creating just like a really friendly way for people to compete and cheer for each other just helps with the accountability and motivation keeping people on track. And deeper and more importantly, we do have a lot of people who create teams around different kinds of research initiatives or trying to understand a certain life stage. Like we create teams for people based on the month that their babies are due. So pregnant women can join a team of all the women on WHOOP who are expecting a baby in June 2022 can join this team together and pregnancy is this like very foreign weird moment in your body where everything's changing all the time and it just creates, like, a way for people to connect and be, like, this weird thing that's happening to me, is it normal? Like, who else is sleeping funny? And I think it's just very comforting to know that, like, all these weird things happening to your body aren't so weird. And then with like the sports teams and different things like that, what we're seeing is that the coaches are using the information to make better training or like decisions because now they actually have information that they didn't have access to before.Emily Capodilupo: So we've done a lot of work with different like collegiate programs and professional programs where they do things like if you're red, they will have you do a lighter version of the practice or skip a section of the practice in order to give your body a chance to recover. And if you're green, they might have you push a little bit harder. And so by modulating the training to where your body is today, we've actually shown in a project we completed a little over two years ago that you can reduce injury without reducing performance gains over the course of like an eight week training period. And so by reducing your training, when you're red, so your recovery score is below 33%, you actually like you will reduce injury without reducing performance gains. We've shown this. And so there's like literally zero value for those coaches to like push the athletes to complete the program or the day's rtraining. And so we've seen a lot of coaches make those different training plans as well as game day decisions about who should start. You know, somebody might be your best player ordinarily, but if they're red, they're not all that primed on game day to perform. And so being able to make those kinds of different decisions. And then on the corporate side, people have used it in order to triage different access to supportive resources. So we've seen people offer like breaks to people who have been red for a number of different days in a row or things like that suggest that somebody might be burning out or overwhelmed or something like that.Harry Glorikian: Okay, so. Everywhere it states that it is not a medical device, is not intended to diagnose, monitor any disease or medical condition. Right. What's the line in your mind between, say, a fitness monitor and a medical device, because I think I always think that line is getting….because you guys and others like you guys have so much data, the level of insight that I've seen when I've gone into some of these is crazy. So. What what is that line in your mind?Emily Capodilupo: Yeah. I mean, I think that there's you know, it's always been the case that technology moves faster than the law. And so, like, you know, I think a lot of these things are going to shift as the technology is going to force them to shift. But, you know, like you said, we have a lot of data that's quite similar. The official line is what the FDA says is the line. And the FDA has carved out this like space that they've you know, they've called this wellness devices. They've sort of reserved the right to change their mind at any time, and we very much expect them to. But WHOOP falls into their definition of what a wellness device is, not a medical device, which is why we can say things like, this is your heart rate, but we can't say, because then you would cross into a medical device, like “Your heart rate is healthy, your heart rate is unhealthy,” right? You can't give those kinds of any kind of diagnoses or any kind of, like, you will prevent a heart attack if you do these things or something like that. So we have to keep the recommendations a bit more general, a little bit more vague in order to not cross over into that regulated health space. One of the things that we're seeing that's interesting, is that there's been a movement in wearables to get these like SAMD clearances, Software as a Medical Device, where pieces of wearables need different features or different algorithms do end up going through an FDA process and getting clearance to make certain claims in different settings.Emily Capodilupo: And I think that that's going to really accelerate over the next couple of years. These are very long processes, and then the lines are going to get more and more blurry because you're going to have this like hybrid consumer medical device, which is something that until a couple of years ago we really didn't have. There was like step counters and GPS watches and they were over here and then there was like medical stuff that didn't look cool and wasn't comfortable or easy to use and was very, very expensive. And it was all over here. And now we're seeing them kind of come into the middle where more and more the medical stuff cares about being like all the human factors like that's comfortable to use and that people want to wear it and they can get good compliance. And the wellness devices are finding more and more applications for their data in the health care space. So I think a lot of it's going to come down to what doctors end up getting trained on. If they're willing to look at this data, if they have any clue how to use it, sort of by being in the medical world and science training their whole lives, a lot of them just don't have the education and training to understand big data and to understand technology in that way. So they're not being trained on how to make use of the data or how to apply it. And I think that that's something that might change in the next couple of decades.Harry Glorikian: Well, it's interesting, right, because I always tell people I'm like, this is a medical device. Like I you know, I mean, you know, you may think it's not, but it really has certain capabilities that allow it to get FDA clearance in a particular area. Right. And they're picking their space one by one. But the amount of data that you guys pick up on all of these devices, I mean, you know, we've seen atrial fibrillation. I'm sure that tachycardia shows up on there. You know, there's different things that they, because it's 24/7, it's looking, right and it's monitoring and it's got multiple sensors which you can now cross-correlate. There's so much insight that comes from this that I would almost like love to encourage the companies to think about moving down this road because I think it would be so helpful to patients. But, you know, jumping to a different thing. So. How do you guys define success for WHOOP? If you hit all your product and sales goals and for the next, say, 2 to 5 years, what does success look like for the organization?Emily Capodilupo: Yeah. I mean, I'll let the finance team worry about the sales goals and things, but I mean, for me in my team, like what success really comes down to is like, can we help people make actually better decisions? I think like a lot of the first generation of wearables, like it was this stream of fun facts. And we're all obsessed with ourselves, right? Like humans are sort of naturally narcissists, at least to a certain extent. And so it's like fun to be like, ooh, I slept for 7 hours or like, ooh, I ran a mile. But it's like kind of you maybe already knew that, right? And I think, like, what we're trying to do and like where we see a lot of success is, can we tell you something that you don't know? And can we convince you that you should do something about it? And then can we make you, like, realize, like, oh, wow, this, like, incredible thing happened and I feel so much better. And the features that we get the most excited about are like the sort of user stories are not, like, “Wow, it's so much fun to see my sleep data” or like, “This was fun.” But like when we released our paper showing that this respiratory rate spike sort of predicted or often preceded COVID symptom onset and therefore COVID infection, the paper came out like right before Thanksgiving and we saw so many people tell us that like because they had a respiratory rate spike, they didn't go home for Thanksgiving or they didn't travel and then like they tested positive a few days later and they were like, my grandma was at Thanksgiving or like my uncle who's in his eighties or stuff like that.Emily Capodilupo: And you know, those kind of moments where it's like, we educated you, we showed you this vital sign that like, you never would have felt anything. You didn't know you were sick, you weren't feeling bad. It's not like you went to go get a test because you weren't feeling good, like you just saw this in your WHOOP data and you're like, You know what? I'm going to stay home and not risk like seeing grandma because WHOOP said so, right? And then like, who knows how many COVID infections didn't happen and like what kind of role we played there. And like, it was probably like the most meaningful thing we did that year. And we did a lot of other cool stuff, but to think that by helping people notice that pattern, potentially they saved a relative's life and all the like crappy things that would happen if you thought you were responsible for killing your grandma and how much that ruins your own life as well? I think like we just get really excited about that. And one of the features that we released is last year was we were looking at how your reproductive hormones is part of your menstrual cycle affect your ability to respond to training. And I was an athlete my whole life. I was a gymnast, like before I could walk, and like nobody asked me a single time when my last period was or anything like that. That was just totally not part of like the coach-athlete relationship. But we know that like your ability to put on muscle and your ability to recover from training is totally different during the follicular phase, the first half of your menstrual cycle, than it is during the luteal phase, which is the second half. And if we modulate your training so that you're training more during the first half of the cycle than the second half, you can way more efficiently build muscle and strength, have fewer injuries, make more efficient gains. And if we now we do coach, in our product, women to do this, and we've gotten this incredible feedback of like people saying they feel so much better and like they're, well, you know, their training is going more smoothly and they feel like their body so much less random, it feels more predictable and they kind of understand what's going on. Nobody ever told them that reproductive hormones were relevant beyond their role in reproduction, but they actually affect everything we do. Like when progesterone is elevated in the back half of our menstrual cycle during the luteal phase, we sweat more and we lose a lot of salt by doing that. And so we need to eat more salty foods and we need to be more careful about hydrating, which is really important if you're an athlete, but nobody's telling us this. And so like we can connect these by looking at big data because we are tracking your menstrual cycle around the clock or around the month.Emily Capodilupo: We can put that into the product and then we see people are making better training decisions, understanding their body, feeling like things are less random. Right. And that's so empowering. And I think like female athletes in particular have been so underrepresented in research. There's a paper that came out eight months ago that said that just 6% of athletic performance research focused on women, 6%. And it was looking at all research between 2014 and 2020. And it was trending down, not up. So it was worse in like 2018, '19 and '20 than it had been like earlier in the twenty-teens. And so it's like completely neglected. And there is all this data that like wearables and WHOOP are sitting on and we're able to create features around that and just help people understand their bodies in a way that nobody else is doing right now. And so those are the features that, like I really define as like big successes. If we made our sleep staging accuracy 1% more accurate or we caught one more workout, like those are obviously like from a pure data science perspective, they can feel like wins. But what we really care about is like, am I helping you, cheesily going back to our mission, am I helping you unlock your performance in some way by helping you understand your body and making a better decision? Like, are you better off for having been on WHOOP? That's what, internally, those are the KPIs that we track the most closely.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. And I mean I would encourage you as well as all the other companies to, you know, peer reviewed papers, get them out there. Right. I mean, just when I search the space or peer reviewed journals for things utilizing the technologies, I mean, there's not a whole lot out there. And then the other thing is, is sometimes I read the devices they're using, I'm like, whoa, what is that? I've never heard of that device. And if I haven't heard about it, it must be on the fringe sort of thing. So I would highly encourage it because, you know, people like me would love to be looking at that sort of data. Because I'm constantly investing in the space, constantly working with the different technologies, you know, constantly talking to people through the podcast or writing a book, you know. So that information is incredibly useful to someone like me as, as, as well as the average person. So if you could send a message back through time to yourself in 2013 when you joined the company, you know. What would you say? What have you learned about the wearables and fitness market that you know you wish you knew then?Emily Capodilupo: Oh, what a fun question. You know, I think, like. It's hard to know what I wish I knew earlier because like in so many ways and I feel so lucky that this is true, like the vision that Will pitched me on when I met him, like when he was like, “Come join WHOOP, this is why it's super cool,” is exactly what we're doing. And so, like, I did trust him. I guess my message in a lot of ways would be trust him that like this is for real. I think the space has been so exciting and just there's so much opportunity. I came from doing academic sleep research and I would work on these papers where we had like 14 subjects and it was like, “Oh, that's a, that's a good size sleep study. Like that'll get into a good journal.” And everyone was like excited. And then it's like, you know, I just, I'm working on a paper right now and we have 300,000 people's data in it. We're looking at like a year of data at a time. So we've got just like millions and millions of sleeps and workouts in this data set that we're combing through. When we did this project, which was published in the British Medical Journal last year, where we were looking at the menstrual cycle phases and how they affected your training, we looked at 14,000 menstrual cycles, like just the orders of magnitude more data than what you can do in traditional academic research. And that's what I got really excited about. It's why I became a data scientist because I realized that like the most interesting questions that there are to answer about how humans work are going to require larger datasets than we've had access to before.Harry Glorikian: So I'm putting in a plug for sleep apnea, man, if you get a chance, I'd love to see a study on that one.Emily Capodilupo: No, sleep apnea, it's definitely on the list. About 80% of sleep apnea is believed to be undiagnosed. And it does have tremendous effects on long term health when it goes undiagnosed, especially in later stages. And so anything we can do around helping people realize that they might have sleep apnea and then helping them treat it once they do and better understand the disease progression. And all of that has a huge quality of life implications down the road.Harry Glorikian: I will happily volunteer. So great to speak to you. Very insightful discussion. I'm going to tell my wife about the whole menstrual cycle thing and working out and this is exactly why she eats salty food like at certain times. But this is great. I'm so glad to have you on the show and I look forward to seeing the progress of the company and the technology.Emily Capodilupo: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me. This is such a fun conversation.Harry Glorikian: Thank you.Harry Glorikian: That's it for this week's episode. You can find a full transcript of this episode as well as the full archive of episodes of The Harry Glorikian Show and MoneyBall Medicine at our website. Just go to glorikian.com and click on the tab Podcasts.I'd like to thank our listeners for boosting The Harry Glorikian Show into the top three percent of global podcasts.If you want to be sure to get every new episode of the show automatically, be sure to open Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player and hit follow or subscribe. Don't forget to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And we always love to hear from listeners on Twitter, where you can find me at hglorikian.Thanks for listening, stay healthy, and be sure to tune in two weeks from now for our next interview. 

Welcome back! And Happy 4th of July everyone! Today we celebrate 246th year of independence but this day also marks our 100th episode! Its not just special day for our country but a special episode for everyone! And with that this episode a very special guest! The one and only Gino Barbaro!  Gino is an investor, business owner, author and entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, he has grown his real estate portfolio to over 1600 multifamily units & 175 Million in Assets under management.  Gino and his partner, Jake, are teaching others how to do the same through Jake & Gino, a multifamily real estate education company. To date their students have closed 35,000+ units and have$ 1.5 Billion in Deal volume!  He is the best-selling author of three books, Wheelbarrow Profits, The Honey Bee and Family, Food and the Friars. Gino graduated from IPEC (Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching) where he earned his designation as a Certified Professional Coach. He currently resides in St. Augustine, Florida with his beautiful wife Julia and their six children. [00:00 - 07:17] Gino Barbara: The Pizza Guy Who Became an Empire Builder Gino is the co-founder of Jake and Gino, an investor, business owner, and entrepreneur. He has grown his real estate portfolio to over 1600 multi-family units and $175 million in assets, under management. Gino, and his partner, Jake are teaching others how to do the same. For Jake and Gino, a multifamily real estate education company and to date their students have closed 35,000 plus units and have $1.5 billion in deal volume. [07:17 - 13:07] How to Succeed in School Without Going to School Gino shares that the elites teaches their children three things:  Reading: Which develops understanding in comprehension. Writing: When you know how to read, you'll be able to write and formulate ideas  and Reckoning: Which is learning to negotiate and creating an environment for discussions. All of those are important for business especially in multi-family  [13:07 - 19:10] How This Entrepreneur's Growth Mindset Allows Him to Do It All It is my day-to-day focus to educate myself and help others. Gino share's about his family's involvement Founding Jake and Gino has been a huge part Gino's success, it allows him to do things he never would have been able to do without it living the growth mindset by sacrificing time with his family, working hard, and being willing to take risks. Quick Ad: Nico Invites you to join Jake's & Gino's Multifamily Mastery 5 in Florida this coming November 2022 If you're joining, Nico Salgado offers early bird pricing for you! All you got to do is connect and message him through his Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn or email him directly at nico@smallaxedcommunities.com to get the code that you can use to avail a discount! [19:10 - 26:43] How to Succeed in the Multi-Family Housing Industry Gino has a growth mindset and is willing to take risks in order to achieve his goals. He recommends new investors clear their goals and be educated about the multifamily space before investing. He also recommends having accountability in a group of likeminded individuals. [26:43 - 32:56] How to Start and Grow a Real Estate Business: Join a Group and Take Education Gino share's that you don't need 20 years in order to grow a business, find someone who has done it and find someone that resonates with you and get started with that education. Gino think most real estate is market specific. Choosing one or two markets in the beginning, preferably one, really good market and learn that market really well. Understand the dynamics, the jobs, the population. The cap rates in [32:56 - 39:03] How to Achieve Success in Real Estate with These Rhythms Gino discusses their daily routine, including 15 minutes of work with their team every morning and monthly meetings with all team members. Gino talks about how to create rhythms in your business to help you manage it better and scale up, key performance indicators (KPIs) and how to measure them to help optimize their business. They talk about how to create a legacy by teaching their children skills that will help them succeed in life. [39:04 - 40:07] Closing Segment Connect with Gino visit their website: jakeandgino.com LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who wants to explode their business growth by sharing this episode. I believe that you only need a small axe to build a lasting empire. Let's start building yours!   To know more about me and all the real estate opportunities you can find, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, or check out my website https://smallaxecommunities.com/ and book a call with me.   Tweetable Quotes: “ I think you need to surround yourself with people that you want to be around. People that have done it before. And you don't want to take 20 years to learn how to do this business. You don't need 20 years. Find somebody who has done it, find a group that resonates with you and start taking that education. And then ultimately as you start focusing on it and doing the education, you'll figure out that multi-family aand most real estate is market specific.”    - Gino Barbaro  

Topics discussed in the episode: From bootstrapped to profitable exit VC funding vs targeted mentorship Creating a JTBD (jobs-to-be-done) framework Launching DFY services on top of software products Finding opportunities in churn surveys SOPs and KPIs: the cornerstones of team expansion The components of successful link building Infographics as a backlink-magnet Incorporating humor in outreach The future of Postaga Presenting Sponsor: ZenPilotAnd be sure to check out ZenPilot, where we help agencies optimize their operations using our proven systems and processes.ZenPilot knows that you are tired of wasting time on trial-and-error — that's why we provide tried-and-true solutions that will help you grow and scale quickly and sustainably.So, what are you waiting for?Go to zenpilot.com to learn more.Resources mentioned in this episode: ZenPilot Postaga TinySeed Charm Offensive Grow Together SEO Facebook group

The large companies that are present in more than 10 countries and have more than 50K employees need operational efficiencies at a different scale. The efficiencies at the plant or at the entity level are no longer enough. You need to figure out the shared services model where the lower-cost services can be provided by the countries where the costs are likely to be lower. But managing this process requires changes in the systems and processes. You need to share data across the entities and have a shared vision for the entire organization. But executing it is far more difficult than you would think. So how to implement shared services in larger organizations?In today's episode, our guest, Brian G Shannon, shares his insights into the importance of centralizing shared services for large global rollouts. He also talks about several KPIs such as cycle time and how to measure them to ensure the data quality you expect from your financial processes. Finally, he provides insights into prioritizing the rollouts where multiple countries may be involved with the ERP deployments along with setting the vision for the team.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

What I know is that goal mapping not journey mapping is a new way of leading, uniting your organization and earning the right to customer driven-growth. Goal mapping will drive you to reflect on new customer-driven KPIs. Thinking about: how will you operationally measure the outcome metrics that will earn their goals? Not just asking them how we did or how satisfied they are. And also recognizing in a B2B standpoint, what are you doing to help them achieve their goals?

Your marketing strategy has finally worked! Organic and paid leads are finally coming in. But now what? What is the next step to ensure that a new lead will go down the sales funnel and turn into a sale? In this episode of the Keeping it Real podcast we sat down with Greg Harrelson to talk about what you should do as an agent. Keep these tips in mind so you'll know how to take action and convert those leads into paying clients! New Perspectives: The Right Ratio for Your KPI Before everything, let's discuss your key performance indicators or KPIs. Most agents refer to the contact-to-close ratio, which frequently shows low numbers. That's why we want to introduce a better KPI to help shift your focus: capture to contact.  This way, you can focus on increasing your number of conversations versus closings. You'll be in touch with more people you can convert instead of contacting a few leads and converting even fewer. Reaching Out to Your Leads Now that you have leads, it's time to contact them using a method called double dialing or calling them twice. This changes their way of thinking and prompts them to answer you on the second call. However, if that doesn't work, you can activate a workflow on the Real Geeks customer relations management (CRM) platform. That way, you'll have as many touch points with the lead as you need to close the sale. Make sure you're in control of the platform or autoresponder and not the other way around. Your leads will be more willing to engage with you if there's a recognizable human element to these communication efforts. There's No Dead Lead As a real estate agent, you'll want to abandon the phrasing “dead lead.” They might be inactive, or maybe they've simply “ghosted” you, but they're probably still looking to buy a property — just not with you. You need to activate a workflow that will reengage them or contact them manually so they can have a one-on-one conversation with you. Nurture the Lead, No Matter What Phase They're In You may encounter leads that are not ready to buy or leads that are just thinking of buying. Many agents abandon these leads in pursuit of those more likely to convert immediately. However, it's essential to keep the three phases of a buyer in mind: dreaming, exploring, and buying. If somehow a buyer calls you and is ready to buy, remember that they've probably talked to other agents who abandoned them early in the game, thinking that the buyer was still in the dreaming or exploratory phase. So be patient, nurture those leads, and take advantage of technology like the Real Geeks CRM to ensure that you manage them efficiently. Realistic KPIs You Can Target For a contact-to-closing ratio, 16% – 18% is good enough for the average real estate agent, but it's low compared to the potential of a capture-to-contact ratio. For that, you can focus on getting at least 30% before aspiring for 60% – 70%. That's an almost 300% increase in contacts, with no additional expenses! Contact Real Geeks! Ready to learn more about our real estate CRM? Contact us today and tell us how we can help! You can also watch this podcast episode on YouTube for a more in-depth discussion of the concepts above.

On this episode Jamie chats with JEBCommerce's own Director of Affiliate Marketing, Blagica Bottigliero, about the convergence of Affiliate Marketing and Public Relations (PR).We noticed a trend occurring over a year ago with more PR professionals and agencies entering the affiliate marketing space. It's one of the reasons we set out to find someone with significant affiliate marketing AND PR chops to lead our Affiliate Marketing team. And Blagica fits the bill perfectly being a pioneer in the affiliate space (managing the Orbitz affiliate program back in the day) and having significant experience and success in the PR world with her time at Edelman. She also has significant experience in social marketing as well. Oh, did we mention she won an Emmy for her marketing? It's true. On today's episode we discuss the following topics:The general merging ofAffiliate Marketing and PR, and how that impacts affiliates, PR professionals, and advertisersHow Affiliate Marketing and Public Relations are very similar in relationship building and pitching/recruiting publishersHow the advancing technology of the affiliate channel can help PR firms and professionals track way more than they have before and protect the top-of-funnel publishers and track outside of pixelsHow affiliate marketing can increase the speed and reach of PR campaignsHow we need to change our KPIs to measure in this new worldYou can reach out and follow Blagica on LinkedIn.And don't forget to read our blog posts on the subject:Welcoming Public Relations to the Affiliate Marketing PartyAffiliate Marketing Can Boost the Speed of Public RelationsKPIs Need to Change With the Merging of PR and Affiliate MarketingAffiliate Recruitment and PR Pitching Have a Ton in CommonTechnology Available to PR Teams Through Affiliate Marketing

Platicamos con Oscar Medina, Supervisor de Logística de Vitechmex, una compañía proveedora de la industria automotriz. Aquí nos explica de los 4 KPIs que tienes que tener en mente para transportar en esta industria.

Welcome to another episode of the Growth Marketers Podcast! Many manufacturers we work with struggle to break into the Healthcare space. Our today's guest will explain us how to make it possible. Meet Nicole Koharik - B2B Marketing Leader and Communications Expert currently working as a Senior Director of Enterprise Marketing and Corporate Communication at PartsSource. PartsSource is a 20 year old Healthcare technology company that serves over 5000 Healthcare providers and 6000 suppliers, including all major OEMs around the United States. A couple of points we discuss: - How to organize effective internal communication; - How to manage your brand as an industrial manufacturer; - How to develop and execute a successful content marketing strategy as a B2B organization; - How to distribute your marketing resources effectively; - How to measure success, what KPIs to track, and much more. Tune in! ►Follow OneIMS online: Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/OneIMS/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oneims/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oneims/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/oneims?lang=en

If you're not measuring content, you might be losing out on optimizing your efforts. In this podcast episode, Bretta & Kyle are discussing how you can audit your content. They break down the exact process for what you need to do to audit your content. Assisting you to gain KPIs for your brand. Listen to the podcast here!

Today's marketing analytics are very complex, and the customer journey is more complicated than ever for B2B and B2C businesses. You need to have strong analytics to be more successful in your business. With the help of a great team, you can achieve easy-to-understand model visualizations that help both the marketer and the data analyst uncover the cause-and-effect relationships that drive meaningful business outcomes. In this episode, we have Mark Stouse, CEO of Proof Analytics, a marketing analytics platform that helps CMOs and CFOs bridge the ROI gap by providing cause-and-effect analytics that shows marketing and sales true business impact and financial worth. He is one of the first leaders to connect all types of marketing investment to revenue, margin, and cash flow impact in complex, long-cycle companies. Mark often gets so caught up with operational KPIs that we lose sight of our revenue goals as marketers. Resources: Proof Analytics SiteProof Analytics FacebookMark Stouse LinkedIn

In 2019, with a belief that work was becoming increasingly borderless, Alex Bouaziz and his cofounder Shuo Wang started Deel. They built a global compliance and payroll solution that helps businesses hire anyone in over 150 countries. Fueled by a shift to distributed work unlocked by the pandemic, Deel has experienced unprecedented growth: the company has raised over $600M in funding, scaled to over $100M in ARR, and now has over 1,000 employees in 75 different countries. Alex shares why he holds two KPIs sacred (monthly growth and customer satisfaction), the importance of keeping money in the bank and spending like you're a round earlier, and why larger companies are beginning to think more about output than input.

Today's business needs little introduction. Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest businesses in the world and run by arguably the most famous investors of our time, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.  To break down the business, I'm joined by Chris Bloomstran. Chris is the President and CIO of Semper Augustus and has gone as deep on Berkshire as anyone I've ever encountered, making him the perfect person to do this with. Given the reams of excellent content already out there about Buffett and Berkshire, we focused our conversation on the specific elements that make this business so special. Please enjoy this breakdown of Berkshire Hathaway.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.   -----   This episode is presented by Visible Alpha. The team at Visible Alpha built a platform to analyze consensus data and financial metrics on over 6,000 publicly traded companies. Rather than having to dig through models one by one, Visible Alpha extracts data from every line item across sell-side models so you can better understand expectations on metrics beyond just revenue and earnings. Listeners are invited to try Visible Alpha for free by visiting visiblealpha.com/breakdowns   -----   This episode is brought to you by Daloopa. Daloopa streamlines a major pain point for investors. By capturing all of a company's KPIs and adjusted financials into their database - Daloopa makes it easy to quickly update your models for what matters. Daloopa uses AI to find every KPI disclosed - from charts, to text, and even from footnotes of investor presentations. Daloopa updates these KPIs and data points in your existing Excel models in one click, regardless of your source or format. Test Daloopa for free at daloopa.com/Patrick.   —--   Business Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Business Breakdowns, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.   Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter: @JoinColossus | @patrick_oshag | @jspujji | @zbfuss   Show Notes [00:02:26] - [First question] - What Berkshire has taught the world about float [00:14:00] - How much of Berkshire's success was predicated on insurance  [00:23:17] - Whether or not Berkshire's capital source has been more important than stock selection  [00:30:04] - Why there's such a disparity between good stock pickers and holding companies [00:36:24] - What the major signposts of durability are when evaluating companies [00:38:29] - Acquiring Alleghany and using that as a case study that reflects their values [00:47:22] - The role that energy has played in Berkshire's growth  [00:59:54] - Thoughts about the major pieces of Berkshire and the future of the company  [01:05:46] - Important lessons learned about investing and business from Berkshire's story

Creating connections + Giving value = Community-led growthToday, our host Sammy shares how he grows community by creating connections & giving value back to his network. You'll learn:1. How to leverage a podcast show to drive growth and create content2. How Sammy builds communities3. What KPIs to use to track community growth success4. Why meetups work for building strong connectionsThis episode was originally published on the “Peers Over Beers” podcast, hosted by Chris Detzel. About Chris:Chris is a versatile Digital Community Strategist with several years of experience. He is responsible for leading the development and execution of community engagement programs, creating compelling content for customer communities at his company Reltio, and acts as the voice of the customer. He believes that data should drive decisions, as it is the key element of any long-term successful strategy.Find Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisdetzel/ __________About the Peers Over Beers Podcast:A fun and straight shooting podcast for enterprise community leaders / managers and digital savvy professionals. With easy and natural inquisitive banter, Chris tackles hard issues community leaders and managers face in their day-to-day: They discuss everything community, from starting new communities, digitally transforming enterprise culture, moderation, over globalization techniques.Website: https://www.peersoverbeers.com/ __________About Sammy:Sammy helps you to:1. Build your community of big whale clients2. Win employees3. Drive B2B salesGet in touch with Sammy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammygebele/ __________ Past guests on the GROW B2B FASTER Show include:  Justin Welsh, Ian Koniak, Jamal Reimer, Mike Troiano, John Kaplan, Greg Alexander, and many more. 

Alexey Gusev is a lead performance marketer at Goodgame Studios, a mobile and browser game developer and publisher based in Hamburg, Germany. In this episode, Alexey shares his team's journey to adapt its performance measurement strategies with SKAdNetwork, not only for their range of mobile game titles and genres but for each game. He also gets specific about the differences of working with SKAdNetwork 4.0. Questions Alexey Answered in this Episode:What does it feel like when a new game launches?How long after you launch until you have good KPIs?Have certain titles been difficult to manage with SKAdNetwork?Across your titles, have you tried to create a uniform way of measuring conversion values with SKAN? Do you apply the same logic across all your titles?Is it fair to assume that even if you've built out a great infrastructure for SKAN on hardcore titles you still have fewer insights than you used to two years ago?At what point when you lose that granularity of data do you just look at macro effects and media mix modeling to determine the effectiveness of your overall strategy?What are a few of the major changes to SKAdNetwork that you've recognized?Timestamp:2:02 On launching a new game4:36 Alexey's background8:00 About Goodgame Studios10:28 How Goodgame Studios managed changes with ATT14:32 Why every game needs its own measurement strategy18:00 What determines the profitability19:43 Adapting to SKAdNetwork 4.0Quotes:(14:33-14:43) “What we learned during this whole process is that every title, every game–not even every genre–every game needs to be approached very differently.”(15:12-15:36) “If it's a hyper-casual genre, within 24 hours you have plenty of events. It gets a bit tricker when we're stepping into the mid-core, hardcore genres where just the volume of the events is completely different and the user behavior patterns are way more complex in comparison to the rather straightforward casual user flow. (16:10-16:17) “Given the fact that we don't get as granular information, we try to look at way more information in general.”Mentioned in this Episode:Alexey Gusev's LinkedInGoodgame StudiosBitLife

Today we're mixing things up and learning from Tash Todd Williams, founder of digital marketing agency Word of Mouth Collective. I've known Tash for circa 10 years now and have had the absolute pleasure of watching her journey from launching a fashion publication that she exited before she was 24, to today running a successful digital agency with a special love for female founders and entrepreneurs. Today she's coming on to share part of that journey and a bunch of interesting tips and advice for early-stage bootstrapped founders including where she sees a lot of small businesses go wrong, the challenges that founders have in today's landscape post iOS apple updates when it comes paid marketing and when a small business owner should actually be looking to engage an agency. One thing we often hear on the podcast is that founders regret having spent on an agency too early on in their journey. In this episode, we explore the best time for bootstrapped founders to actually make this move and start working with an agency. At which stage in the journey it would pay off. And this is all about looking at tipping points of scale. There's one scenario where you've just raised and you have a lot of capital so that's totally separate. When you have strong KPIs to reach and the capital to get there, it makes a lot of sense to hire an agency. It's not these founders, but rather the bootstrapped founders we often hear about regretting investing in an agency early on. At this point, it becomes more about which stage of business you will be ready. If you're running lean and doing this alone, you can come to a tipping point where you do not have the time and resources to upskill yourself and you have too many moving parts in the business. This would be the point to consider outsourcing to an agency. As Tash says, they're not in the business to bankrupt anybody. Audit yourself, audit where the business is at, and based on that draw conclusions if this actually makes sense for you. So many gems in here, I know you're going to love her! And btw, are we friends on TikTok? I'm having so much fun on that platform, Id love to connect and see what you're creating on there too. Find me at @dooneroisin in all the places. LINKS WE MENTION: Natasha's LinkedIn World of Mouth Digital LinkedIn Word of Mouth Digital Instagram Female Startup Club's Instagram Entrepreneurs on Fire Instagram Doone's Instagram Doone's TikTok Learn more about Dymo at Dymo.com Learn more about Athletic Greens at Athleticgreens.com Try Zapier for free today at zapier.com/STARTUP In partnership with Klaviyo, the best email marketing tool for ecommerce businesses. Female Startup Club's YouTubeFemale Startup Club's Private Facebook Group Say hello to Doone: hello@femalestartupclub.com Female Startup Club + Clearco: Clear.co/partner/female-star

As the CEO you have the unique ability to see into the future - and use that Vision to make the right decisions about today.  Your “role in the village” is to create a 3 Year View of your business and craft a 3 Month Action Plan for the Team. As the Visionary, you must create and convey this Vision to your Team, so that they can see it, be compelled to create it, and be clear as to their role in manifesting it.   You must stretch the capacity of your team and their ability to see into the future and act accordingly. In fact, an individual's ability to look into the future and act accordingly today is the best predictor of their capacity to earn!  Tune into this episode to discover the specific tools and rhythms you must leverage to harness your vision and turn it into production and impact - without it all being dependent on you!  Episode Highlights02:22 - If you're going to troubleshoot any issue in your business, the first place you have to go back to always is “what's the vision?”04:19 - A review of the scorecard and the KPIs involved in them.09:08 - It is important not to just have a vision but be actively casting it to your team members.14:51 - Going through challenges can help you develop more clarity, move conviction, more certainty, and a better direction of how you are going to get to your vision. 19:23 - It s critical that as a CEO you protect your mindset23:53 - Success Partner, Dr. Omar Ayouby from Innate Radiology, joins Dr. Pete in this bonus interview. Having merged his background as a radiographer and chiropractor, Dr. Omar was able to provide teleradiology services to Australian Chiropractors. Learn about his entrepreneurial spirit that drove the creation of Innate Radiology and how they can help you decrease your liability while increasing your services as well as your bottom line. Resources MentionedTo learn more about the REM CEO Program, please visit: www.theremarkablepractice.com/rem-ceoFor more information about Innate Radiology please visit: https://www.innateradiology.com.au/Schedule a Brainstorming call with Dr. PeteDr. Stephen's LinkedInDr. Peter's LinkedInThe Remarkable CEO WebsiteDr. Stephen's Book – The Remarkable Practice: The Definitive Guide to Build a Thriving Chiropractic Business

In honor of our upcoming IO2022 innovation Accelerated Summit, which is happening September 19th and 20th in Lincoln Nebraska. Thought it'd be nice to pull some of the best interviews and sessions from our IO2020 virtual event. So, over the next few weeks, check out some of our amazing speakers and grab a ticket for the upcoming event. We'd love to see you there. Tickets and more information can be found at io2022.com. And now back to the show. Inside Outside Innovation is a podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Steph Smith, Trends.co / The Hustle / HubspotBrian Ardinger: We are excited to have Steph Smith here with the Hustle and Trends to talk about one of these amazing new trends that we're seeing. It's the whole move to remote work. Steph is the Head of Trends and Product Manager at the Hustle, which is a great newsletter, if you don't subscribe to that. Trends is their exclusive group. And I I've got to say it's, it's one of the best groups out there to talk about new things that are happening out there, new business leaders, things along those lines. She's got a new book out called Standing Out in 2020. Doing Content Right. And I know she's been doing a series of sessions on that. It's an eBook. You can check it out at stephsmith.io. She's been blogging for a ton of time. And she's also been in this world of remote work. Been a digital nomad for a while. So, with that, I'm going to just turn over to Steph. And we'll talk the trend of remote working. Steph Smith: Sweet. Thanks so much. That was a great intro, Brian. Today, I'm going to be talking about something that I care a lot about. I saw some other people in the chat mention that they've been working remotely for a long time. Two, I'm going to be talking about thinking past the office and designing what I call resilient, remote teams. And I do this in a little bit of a different way than I think most presentations on this topic are, which give you a lot of super, super concrete, like you must do this. I like to think of this more so as how do we think about what has changed? What does that mean? And what can we learn from this? So, I use three books and I'll get into that in a second to actually convey some of these points. But just quickly, I don't want to talk about myself very much. Brian gave me a great intro. All you need to know is that I have been working remotely for the last four or five years now. And I did that originally at a company called Top Tell, which was one of those kind of remote first companies built from the ground up to be remote. Now I work at a company called The Hustle and I've done some remote training for different companies. And in general, have been nomadding around for the last couple years as I work remotely. So that's enough about me. Let's talk about where we are in this world. As I mentioned before COVID there was a series of companies I'd say only a couple dozen of scale that were built up to be remote. From the ground up, they said, you know what, we're never going to have any offices. Or if we do, we're going to be remote first. Companies like Zapier Basecamp, Web Flow. All these companies were built from the ground up to facilitate positive remote working environment. Now, as we all know, you saw this kind of trend, the slow trickle of people that were searching for remote work overtime. This is Google trends from 2004 to present. Then as we all know, 2020. crazy year. We see this big spike and we're all remote, whether we want to be or not. And this includes huge companies like Google, Cora, Coinbase. Shopify that at least are either going to be remote for several, several years or in some cases like Shopify have just claimed that they are now remote first from here forward. The question then becomes with all of these companies with now millions, if not billions of people that are kind of thrown into this new environment, what happens. What happens to these organizations that weren't built from the ground up? Like Zapier, Base Camp, or Buffer. Some of the questions that I have here, allude to what I'll be talking about in this presentation. So how does remote work or the shift influence how people interact with one another? How does it influence the social fabric or culture of the company? How does this change how potentially leaders should or can operate at these organizations?And in general, this all brings me back to the title of this presentation. How do we build resilient teams? And resiliency in this case means teams that thrive in the environment that they're put in, right. It doesn't feel like they're kind of pushing against walls. It doesn't feel like there's friction to achieve certain things.It feels like they're put in an environment where they're put in a place to succeed by nature, by the nature of the environment that they're in. So, as I said, this presentation is really based on three books that I've read and, and I think are excellent. It's Give and Take, Algorithms to Live By and The Four Tendencies.And I like using books like this to really frame these conversations because these books are actually not based on remote work at all. They're based on human psychology. They're based on how people interact in given situations or environments. And then I just layer on a question. Is this still true with remote work or how does this change as people go from an in-person environment to remote. And so, we'll talk specifically about how giving and taking behavior may change with remote work. We'll talk about how we can design systems. So, using something From Algorithms to Live By, Game Theory. How do we incentivize people to actually act in their best interest? Because they don't always do that on their own. And how do we in general make remote work sustainable. And then I'll talk about the potential archetype of remote worker using this four tendencies framework. To preface the three books and the three things that we'll talk about, I want to jump back to summarize where we are.So, we as a society had a majority of people working in offices. And now we have a majority of people working remotely. And I like to kind of facetiously say that when you work in an office, you work in a box. And that box is predefined for you. And even though it's a little facetious in terms of the analogy, a lot of that is true in the sense that you have a lot of things, whether it's, you know, where you're physically working, how you're working exactly, when you're working. A lot of that is super predefined for you. And for some people that's actually better. Some people that's worse. I'm not trying to ascertain whether one is better or worse, but the idea is that before you had a lot of things mapped out for you, right? And now when you're working remotely, the way, the analogy that I like to give is that box is kind of like stripped clean.So, you get rid of the walls, you get rid of exactly when, how you work. And now a lot of people are left to figure out how to build their own box. And what I see a lot of people doing, whether it's individuals or companies is they basically do this Control C Control V where they basically say, you know, we had all these things, these processes, these systems, these frameworks that worked in our office. So, let's just take all those and let's paste them into our new environment. And that can work. But what I think we have a unique opportunity to do is in fact, rethink the box. So, build our new box from the ground up. So instead of just copying everything and saying, oh, this worked there. It should work here. Let's just rethink what are the things that we should operate by in this new environment? How do we rebuild our box? And something more important than that is instead of giving our employees a new box saying, hey, this is your box. Please take it. And again, abide by these rules or operations or logistics. Let's actually just give them the tools to build their own box. And this kind of summarizes part of what I'm, I'm getting to at least to preface three examples is, is a quote from Amir. Who's a CEO of Doist one of those kind of remote first and companies. And he says, basically, remote. Isn't just a different way to work. It's a different way to live. We have to acknowledge that we're kind of blurring these lines and people, you know, experience isolation, anxiety, depression. And in general, we need to figure out ways in systems to resolve this new, almost more complex issue where you have people, people's work and their lives just meshing into this continuous system.All right. So, what are the cornerstones of remote work? I mentioned this because this bleeds into some of the examples. So remote work overall, at least prior to COVID, when people weren't forced into it, really prioritized three things over three other things. Meaning output trumped input, which meant that didn't matter exactly how many hours you were working or exactly what you did to get to the impact that you're driving for a company.What mattered was the impact, the output. Similarly, remote work tended to favor autonomy over administration. Again, this idea that didn't matter exactly how you got from Point A to Point B. You had the autonomy to figure that out. And similarly, flexibility over rigidity. So, let's keep these cornerstones in mind throughout the presentation. And consider that even those cornerstones sound kind of resoundingly positive, all of us at face value are like, yes, I love being graded on my output. I love being graded or given the autonomy to figure out how I deliver that output. And I love being given flexibility. But let's just keep those in mind and consider that they're not always strictly positive. All right, so let's dive into the first example in the book, Give and Take. Obviously, these books are very in depth and I only covered one small sliver of them in this presentation. But the key takeaway from Give and Take is that Adam Grant, he's a professor at Wharton, amazing writer as well. He talks about three different types of individuals. So, Givers, Takers, and Matchers. All you need to know about them for the purpose of this presentation is that givers basically believe in this world as a positive sum game. Meaning they believe in mutually beneficial situations. They're willing to give without expecting anything in return. Takers are kind of the opposite of that. They think zero sum game. I'm sure you can imagine or conceptualize people in your life that you've encountered that really are trying to get ahead at the expense of other people.Now matchers fall somewhere in the middle. They basically believe, or kind of function off of this idea of reciprocity and fairness. All right. So with that in mind, the question or sorry, before I even get to the question, something I want to mention is that the whole premise of Adam Grant's book is a little surprising in that most people would expect that given Takers and Matchers and Takers in particular, their approach to life in terms of kind of utilizing other people to get ahead or prioritizing their own growth over other people, you would expect those people to be the most successful.Now, interestingly enough, he found that Givers were both at the very top of the spectrum of success, and the very bottom. You can notice two different types of Givers here. One is selfless. One is, is otherish. All you need to know here is that Otherish Givers are Givers but have found a way to prioritize their own needs.So really interesting that Givers not only elevate other people, but they are actually the most successful on their own. So, this is kind of a summary or a quote from Adams, which basically says they succeed in a way that creates a ripple effect, enhancing the success of others around them. You'll see that the difference lies in how Giver success creates value instead of just claiming it.So, in general, I think the obvious takeaway here is that we want more Givers at our organizations. Now the question becomes, and this will be a repetitive question throughout, is this the same with remote work. Or how does this change with remote work? Some of the sections here are based on actual data sources.This one, not so much. This is me more hypothesizing. And what I've come to in terms of my many years leading teams, interacting with teams, being individual contributors on teams is that because if we remember the cornerstones of remote work, we prioritize output. We prioritize impact. That which in remote, all that matters is that impact, right?Are you delivering value? Are you worth your salary? Are you hitting your KPIs. In person when you're in an office? All that stuff matters. But it's also weighed against certain unspoken things, unspoken rules, like the amount of time you're spending in the office. Whether you're on time for things, whether you stay late to help another employee in general, everyone knows who the team players are in an office.That's not always true when you work remotely. I think if you've worked remotely over the last couple months, especially if you were in an office before, you can probably resonate with this idea. In remote, there's a couple thing, other things that I want to know. This idea of staying on longer to, you know, as a Giver, let's say you're helping other people.That's super difficult to quantify because when you're working remotely again, our work life and our lifeline blend together. So, it's actually hard, if I were to ask anyone on this call, how many hours did you spend this week working remotely? I think a lot of people would struggle to actually quantify that.So then layering on, am I working extra? Am I not working enough? It's really hard to kind of parse that out. Additionally, if you support someone. Let's say I have a friend and her name is Sally at work. And she says, Hey Steph, can you help me with this project? And it actually takes like, you know, five hours out of my day.I end up helping her. All of that work for better or for worse is hidden online. Sally knows about it. But everyone else at work, didn't see me stay late to help Sally. They didn't see the output of that work. They didn't see the Giving behavior. And so, in addition to this, KPIs in general, when you work remotely by nature of trying to ascertain that output of people, tends to be more individual. You even hear people use terms like manager of one when they're working remotely.And in general, the idea that I'm trying to get across here is that by nature, when you're working remotely, because there are so much emphasis on output and impact, which has many positives, basically takes away the recognition that you typically get in an in-person environment of these Givers, and what happens is these Givers end up burning out, they become more of those selfless givers that you saw at the tail end. Instead of the Otherish givers that were the most successful individual. And something I want to call out here is that regardless of intentions, morals, or values, and what I'm saying here is it doesn't matter if someone's a good person or bad person. That's not what I'm trying to ascertain. Bad incentive structures result in bad behavior, no matter how good of a person you think you are. So, what's the takeaway here? Again, I'm trying to go through this quickly, so I won't go through everything. But the idea here is that you still won't have a water cooler. In the office, which almost acted like, you know, animals in the wild. There's like a certain hierarchy and there's a kingdom and, and it kind of regulates things, right. You just subtly, but it does. You don't have that anymore with remote, or at least it's not created without intentionality. And so, there are a couple quick things that you can do. The first thing is just ask your team very simply who helped you this week? Who did you work with? Where did you put in extra hours? Where did someone else put in extra hours for you? You must ask this because it will not be surfaced as naturally as in the office. The second thing is build KPIs to incentivize teamwork. This is a little harder to do because again, when you work remotely, you're trying to ascertain output. But think about how you can do this to incentivize teamwork. So, you're not kind of encouraging people to act more as Takers versus Givers. And then finally create an environment where you're not just recognizing good behavior or giving behavior, but you're actually rewarding it.So, some companies like GitLab have actually started things like micro bonuses, where in addition to the bonus structures or the compensation structures that you get from your boss, other people around you can actually reward you based on your giving behavior. Because that's really important. You're not just recognizing it in like kind of shout outs or things like that, but you're actually rewarding this behavior. So, you're incentivizing people to continue doing it. The final thing I want to call out is that you can do as much as you can once you have people at an organization to incentivize giving behavior. But you can also kind of integrate this into your hiring process. Which means bringing in people who are more naturally Givers.So, Adam Grant mentions in his book. This is directly from Give and Take where he, during the hiring process asks this question, can you give me the names of four people whose careers you have fundamentally improved? And the idea here is that people who are Givers tend to mention either people at the same level as them or below them in terms of the people that they've helped.And it's a natural response. Of course, this is again, not quite scientific versus Takers, tend to mention people that are above them. That they've helped, because again, there's this nature of people who are Takers, trying to get ahead and using things like status to get ahead. So, something to keep in mind as well as you're hiring.So, the second example that I want to go through is from Algorithms to Live By. Again, excellent book. This is a book where basically they take principles from software development or software engineering and use it to help us think through problems that are outside of that scope. So, things like Cashing Theory or Kneeling or making intractable problems tractable.The one that I want to talk about today is Game Theory. So, in Game Theory, I'm not going to go into depth, but it's this idea that within a game, there are certain rules. And within those rules, they incentivize people to act a certain way. And once a game is predefined, you tend to get to this equilibrium where all the players individually are acting their own best interest.But sometimes the kind of aggregate of those actions actually may result in outcomes that are worse for everyone. Again, depending on the rules that were set for that game. And this equilibrium that I'm specifically talking about is called the Nash Equilibrium. And it's this idea again, there's this kind of long definition and talks about a stable state.The idea here is the Nash Equilibrium is within an environment within a game. It's the outcome or the optimal state, where there's no incentive for any individual to deviate. Now, this may not sound super actionable. So let me give you a precise example of what I'm talking about. So, with remote work, a lot of remote first companies tend to go with unlimited vacation.And I think this is something that probably more companies will end up moving towards as well. But something you keep in mind here is the Nash Equilibrium of unlimited vacation approaches, zero days. And the reason for this it's a little counterintuitive because you think unlimited vacation sounds amazing. Sounds like a great perk. Well, what happens with unlimited vacation is that people look to be perceived as more loyal, more committed, more dedicated than their peers. And therefore, they look to take just slightly less vacation than their peers. And what happens is a cascading effect, which approaches zero.This is actual data from Buffer's Data Remote Report from 2019, where you can see in blue, the amount of vacation offered, and then in orange, the amount of vacation that was actually taken. So, you can see around 30, 35% of people had unlimited vacation. And if you look at how that's actually distributed, most of the people who had unlimited vacation took anywhere from no vacation to two weeks' vacation. Versus the people who had, you know, six weeks, five weeks, four weeks were likely to actually take that amount of vacation.So, what is my point here? Well, in Game Theory is this idea where basically you have a game and then those rules are set for the game. And then you just see what behaviors actually emerge from those given set of rules. Well, I think with remote work, we have to be a lot more intentional about not just kind of throwing rules out there, again, kind of redefining our box and, and not just taking a box that already exists. And you can do that through Mechanism Design, which is kind of flipping that script and saying, what are the behaviors that we actually want and what rules do we need to establish to actually generate those behaviors? So kind of again, reversing the question and figuring out what behaviors you want to incentivize. And then figuring out what rules need to be in place to actually achieve that.As I mentioned, the box has changed, the game has changed. So, here's a couple examples of things that people struggle with from the same report, when they're working remotely. It's things like unplugging, loneliness, distractions, culture, and communication. If you were to ask the same question to people who are working in an, in an office, these would not be the case, which shows us the game has changed. The problems have changed. The things that we're solving for have changed and therefore you must come up with rules or incentives so that people act in their own best interest. So again, you're thinking backwards. You're asking the question, what are the KPIs that you need to actively design to encourage people to, for example, have a work life balance outside of just the freedom to define their own. And this is really important because it sounds counterintuitive to say a I'm actually going to define more rules. Because flexibility sounds like a great perk or sounds like a great thing to have. But actually, you can help your employees in certain situations to actually help them again, this idea of building their own box.Something I want to call out here is again, is Wall Street, which is again, the most like capitalist type environment there is, has mandatory off hours. So that brokers don't push themselves to their Nash Equilibrium, which would be the sleepless equilibrium, where they're constantly trading. So, you have to think backwards and figure out how to design an environment that people succeed in.Quick couple examples before we move on to the third example. The third book are things like a minimum vacation policy, mandatory days that they must take off, allowing people to take back their calendars and actually block off significant parts so that they're not encountering what people call Calendar Tetris. I like this example from Keith, I don't know Keith personally, and this was pre COVID.But basically, he decided to close his office on Friday. Simple things like this, where he basically said it's a mandatory weekend. You are not allowed to work, even though it seems strange in a digital environment. And I'm giving you 50 bucks to go eat at your favorite restaurant. So, think about how you are intentionally designing systems for your employees.Finally, third example that I'll breeze through is the Four Tendencies. And I'll caveat this example with this quote directly from Gretchen Rubin, the author that says the happiest, healthiest, most productive people aren't those from a particular tendency, but rather the people who have figured out how to harness the strengths of their tendency, counteract the weaknesses, and build lives that work for them.So, what is the Four Tendencies? It's this idea that there as it sounds like four tendencies. Upholder, Obliger, Questioner, and Rebel. Now these two highlighted in green are not highlighted, because they're the best. As Gretchen said in that quote, it's just that they're they are the most common. Now the Four Tendencies is basically a two-by-two framework, which identifies how people respond to expectations or accountability.So, do they readily meet outer expectations? Do they readily meet inner expectations? Do they resist both of them or do they kind of fluctuate towards or air towards one or the other? So, I personally am a Questioner. I resist outer expectations and I meet inner expectations. To give a quick example, if I wanted to get fit, having a gym buddy as an outer expectation expecting me to show up that actually wouldn't help me. And that actually is something that I've tried to do throughout my life. Hasn't worked. Meanwhile, something like actually understanding the science behind why I should be fit or kind of convincing myself that my identity, or I want to be the type of person who, you know, respects their health. That works for me. So as a Questioner, I meet inner expectations. I resist outer expectations.Now I did a poll on Twitter a while ago, got around 400 votes from people who had been working remotely again, pre COVID. And it was interesting to see that the most popular tendencies among this again, non-scientific poll were Questioners and Rebels, and I thought, huh, that's interesting.If you remember questioners and obligers for the most common in the overall population with remote workers, or at least those who sought out remote work. Where questioners and rebels with the, the familiarity or the common thread here is that they both resist outer expectations. I thought that was really interesting.And I think that relates to this idea that there's a level of self-selection or misalignment with outer expectations of society, of people trying to at least identify their own work norms, identify their own vision or how they can actually build something, build their own box. And this isn't again, mean that they're more successful or less successful.It's just perhaps that they actively sought out this type of environment. Now, what's the takeaway here. This is a brief section compared to the other two, but it's the idea that people actually respond differently to inner and outer accountability. We used to have everyone in an office and that didn't necessarily work with everyone.Now we have everyone remote that doesn't necessarily work for everyone. So, I think the idea here is that leaders need to actually learn past, just the high level this person is good at these skills. This person is good at these skills. This is my top player. This is my, you know, less valuable player. And more so think about how to tailor their leadership stylers to figure out how to motivate their employees. Whether they're in a remote environment or not. But especially if you're in a remote environment, how do you incentivize, if we just quickly go back, how do you incentivize Upholders and Obligers when Questioners and Rebels tend to naturally seek out this environment?And on the flip side, if you're in an office, how do you naturally incentivize Questioners and Rebels so that they're motivated when Upholders and Obligers may more naturally fit into those traditional environments. So just something to consider. Right. This is the final slide I have, and I know we're running out of times, but the idea here is just, again, there are certain things or certain ways that humans tend to interact in, in an person environment.And they don't necessarily act the same ways in a remote environment. And in particular, they may not even act in ways that benefit themselves all the time. So, we must as leaders, if you're leading a team, if you're leading a company, It's good to consider some of these things and figure out A: How do I encourage Giving through discovering, hiring, promoting, and acknowledging and rewarding as I said before Givers. How do I select incentives or develop the right systems so that we're using Mechanism Design and not just throwing people into a game and hoping that they choose the best outcomes that are best for them or best for everyone?And then finally, how do we actually learn about our people past the face value in terms of their skills and figure out how to harness their unique strengths, whether they're in an in-person environment or a remote environment. If you want to find me, or if you have questions, happy to answer them now, but you're also welcome to email me or DM me on Twitter and that is it.Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. If you want to learn more about our team, our content, our services, check out InsideOutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. Until next time, go out and innovate.FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER & TOOLSGet the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HEREYou can also search every Inside Outside Innovation Podcast by Topic and Company.  For more innovations resources, check out IO's Innovation Article Database, Innovation Tools Database, Innovation Book Database, and Innovation Video Database.  Also don't miss IO2022 - Innovation Accelerated in Sept, 2022.

For Stéphanie Herbots, a finance perfectionist, everything was going to plan. Stéphanie got her masters degree. Sailed into a career in finance. Controllership and FP&A roles for the most prestigious companies followed This included budgets and forecasting for a division of telecoms giant, Orange.  Then it struck. Stephanie faced a series of challenges in the midst of the 12th revision of the annual budget (no exaggeration!). Becoming a mum. Staff leaving. Being forced to pick up the slack for FP&A challenges with strict deadlines. Stephanie could not cope.  Stephanie faced burnout and a spiral of low mental health she describes as “slow and vicious.She had no option but quit finance In episode 8 of FP&A Today, discussion Stephanie speaks about her journey, with Zoe Cooke, FP&A Director at We are Social, who has been a powerful advocate of mental health in finance throughout her career.  Leading the discussion FP&A Today host Paul Barnhurst, who himself has seen the impact of mental health first hand and is among those leading the drive for better recognition and transparency  among the FP&A profession. This wide-ranging conversation discusses The specific mental health challenges within the FP&A profession Proven advice to lead and cope with stress, burnout and mental health in finance The limits and challenges of forecasting in uncertain times How challenges with data and manual processes can be overcome Follow Stéphanie Herbots on LinkedIn Follow Zoe Cooke on LinkedIn  FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails. Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models. With Datarails on your side for FP&A you get improved data integrity and visibility helping your relationships with your internal business partners and external stakeholders; real-time latest version of all your company's data in one place, with version control, audit trail and records, ensuring errors and multiple versions are avoided; the ability to let your data tell your story through proprietary, built-in visualization of critical KPIs in real-down; and drill-downs to answer questions on underlying data on the spot. Get in touch at www.datarails.com Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news Read the Full Program Transcript Watch the Full Episode on YouTube  To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Pro being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com  

An active media buyer shares the nuances of the “new” Facebook platform and some paid social wins right now. If you are struggling with your ad performance right now or if you're trying to learn more about Facebook advertising and how the platform works you will learn a lot here.  We all know what a nightmare ad performance has been in the last 12 months so this episode is to give insight into how some eComm brands are managing their ads accounts right now and give you some tips and ideas to improve your own performance.   What You'll Learn From This Episode: Big ideas for acquisition and retention marketing right now If Facebook is still a viable growth channel for brands with smaller marketing budgets What a successful marketing mix might look like for early-stage 6-figure eComm brands Analytics and how to track your KPIs when data is skewed Sustainability and the future of ethical eCommerce Resources: 7-Figure Founder (Get Austin Brawner's help & scale to 7 figures) @BrandGrowthX on Twitter Review or subscribe on iTunes

בפינה זו, נגיש לכם מידע על העבודה היומיומית בסביבת ענן מנקודת המבט שלנו.דוברי הפרק: אריאל מונפו, אבי קינן וערן לדור. בפרק הקודם, דיברנו על Amazon Lightsail. מהו השירות, למי הוא מיועד, מה השימושים שלו, מה ההבדל בינו לביו ה-EC2. כמו כן, אבי ביצע דמו בלייב ליצירת שרת חדש. בפרק זה, נדבר עם ערן לדור, מנהל תחום ה-FinOps בחברת AppsFlyer על אופטימיזציה בעולמות ה-FinOps. ניגע בסוגי האופטימיזציות שניתן לעשות, נשוחח על התרבות הארגונית, KPIs ונושאים מגוונים נוספים בחיי היום יום של צוותי ה-FinOps. רוצים להתעדכן בתכנים נוספים בנושאי ענן וטכנולוגיות מתקדמות? הירשמו עכשיו לניוזלטר שלנו ותמיד תישארו בעניינים. להרשמה: https://www.israelclouds.com/newslettersignup

Jeffrey Mosher welcomes back Mark Ostach Digital Wellness Author and Human Connection Expert; who works with Fortune 500 companies & entrepreneurial start-ups. His company is Mark Ostach, based in Beverly Hills, MI. For their latest discussion, they dive into thoughts about: A saying with deep roots in yoga and faith communities is becoming part of today's hybrid workplace strategy and credited with helping to relieve overwhelmed employees and stop the revolving door of staff turnover. With a record number of 45 million employees calling it quits in March, managers are offering grace to employees as part of their management approach. “Grace is about offering people what they need when they need it without fear of them taking advantage of you”, says Mark Ostach, Digital Wellness & Human Connection Expert who works with Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurial startups and nonprofit organizations. “With the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions both in our personal and work lives, employees need to get what they need to succeed, whether that's specific encouragement, constructive feedback, a new assignment, or a second chance.” What is the research by Berne Brown showing?, empathetic employers can make all the difference: ● 81% of employees reported a greater willingness to work longer hours for an empathic employer. ● 66% of employees indicate they would be willing to make trade-offs on pay if it means working for a more empathic employer. ● 90% of employees are more likely to stay with an organization that empathizes with their needs. “The thought that money was the top driver for employees - doesn't that still hold today? doesn't necessarily hold today,” shares Ostach. “Sometimes employees stumble and when a manager extends grace, it shows that employers actually do care.” Ostach notes if leaders can model grace, (tell us more about what can happen) it may not always be scalable as far as a specific business matrix but it can become contagious. He recommends for managers to regularly re-evaluate your hybrid workplace plan and understand the pulse of their staff to understand their needs. “Just as managers look at KPIs, they need to keep a pulse of employees.” Examples of grace include: ● Offering to help ● Listening without reacting ● Asking clarifying questions ● Being transparent ● Supporting others ● Mentoring new hires ● Encouraging self-care ● Flexing with purpose » Visit MBN website: www.michiganbusinessnetwork.com/ » Subscribe to MBN's YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCqNX… » Like MBN: www.facebook.com/mibiznetwork » Follow MBN: twitter.com/MIBizNetwork/ » MBN Instagram: www.instagram.com/mibiznetwork/

A goal map starts with the goals your customer wants to achieve and shifts your KPIs. By measuring the things that your customer cares about, it transforms how you do work. Find the show notes and more information at customerbliss.com/whatiknow.

In today's Shopify ecommerce podcast, my guest is Alexa Kilroy the Head of Brand of Triple Whale.They have developed an analytics platform for key stakeholders of Shopify brands looking to scale their businesses.Triple Whale's (mobile-first) data-driven dashboard combines centralization, visualization, and attribution to illustrate KPIs in a simple and actionable way, making sophisticated insights into advertising performance accessible for any Shopify store.Profitably GROW and SCALE your Shopify store with the resources mentioned in today's ecommerce podcast episode.CLICK HERE > eCommerceFastlane.com or eCommerceFastlanePodcast.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Waseem Daher, Founder and CEO at Pilot.com.   Fundraising is never easy, but the right preparation can make all the difference.   Waseem joins us to share the KPIs and questions that investors look at during various stages of investment.   Waseem is a three-time founder with two successful exits (Ksplice acquired by Oracle and Zulip acquired by Dropbox) and he has recently raised $100+ million from Jeff Bezos (and other notable funds) at a $1.2 billion valuation.   Today, Waseem covers: 1:42 - The backstory behind how he got started 7:35 - Metrics investors may look at during a seed round 10:35 - Determining product market fit 16:02 - What drove the decision-making that led to a $1.2 billion valuation 17:17 - The right time to start fundraising 20:13 - The average process of raising capital and getting money in the bank 23:32 - Top factors driving valuation in the market 28:31 - Most crucial items in your data room 32:37 - Top three reasons why investors decide to invest in a company 38:38 - How founders should think about dilution 43:15 - Building your executive team 45:04 - Making sure everyone is aligned with your vision and values when you're not in the room 47:21 - What the CEO should focus on when the right team is in place   Learn more at https://tractionconf.io   Connect with Waseem Daher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wdaher/   Check out Waseem's substack at https://waseem.substack.com/   Learn more about Pilot at https://pilot.com/   This episode is brought to you by:   Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses. But the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process, enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don't get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI.   Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6,000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa, visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca    Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline its podcast production. Learn more at https://contentallies.com

Key Things Discussed How OKRs can shift company cultures towards more outcomes-based approaches – especially relevant for Covid-inspired distributed workers. The difference between OKRs, KPIs, and their sometimes complementary goals. How to infuse company-wide meetings and employee evaluations with OKR-oriented measures and priorities. Deployment of CLEAR – Career Path, Learning Objectives, Expectations, Accountabilities & Rewards – in a sales context. How leaders who are vulnerable to personal challenges set a tone that trickles down and encourages OKR adoption throughout the ranks. Why creating an environment where it's safe for employees to ask questions – and fail – is a key element to successful OKR implementation. Tips and tactics for anyone getting ready to adopt an OKR approach. Show Notes [00:20] Growing up in a big, rambunctious family, Bradford realized early on that he was energized by two things: Making people happy and understanding how business works. [02:25] Bradford defines the HR function and its multi-dimensional role in showcasing and aligning departments across the enterprise. [03:30] About Bradford's take on the freight industry and Loadsmart, a provider of digital solutions to manage industry logistics. As CPO, he was part of creating a powerful, scalable, synchronous clearinghouse for automating communications and industry flow.  [07:10] What it will mean for Loadsmart to provide an AI-driven platform that coordinates and connect not only shippers, who are the primary customers, but also carriers, ports, customs, warehouses – the many dispersed elements that have never before had access to shared data. [10:00] Throughout his career and multiple engagements, Bradford has been building on OKRs that weren't much more than KPIs when he started on the journey – a journey, he says, that never ends. [12:00] Defining the core difference between an OKR and a KPI, based on the lens used and varying indicators. [15:10] Bradford highlights the transformational impacts on company-wide meetings that focus cross-functionally and creatively to expand ideation and stretch goals. [16:58] KPIs do have a place within organizations, particularly in areas where baseline goals are important for level-setting. [17:42] About linking OKRs and evaluations, for Loadsmart a quarterly process based on four check-in questions focused on exceptionality. [19:50] “Loadee” evals include results-focused OKR questions that flip the paradigm to emphasize effort and output rather than a check-the-box mentality. [23:49] About CLEAR (Career Path, Learning Objectives, Expectations, Accountabilities & Rewards), an automated progression program that offers employees flexibility from quarter to quarter in how they pursue objective goals. Bradford shares examples from sales, where he recently rolled out a highly successful program. [29:27] Accelerated by Covid, workplace culture is rebranding performance management to shift from a performative (long hours, butts in seats) mentality to an impact- and measures-based orientation.  [31:09] Ideation and expectations at the senior level in terms of how to bring OKR strategy to life, starting with the pyramid of progress:  At the individual level it's about initiatives and tasks and making progress towards long-term team objectives. Then measuring for key results. Expectations can be set top-down, but individuals are empowered bottom-up to try things, fail fast and drive initiatives autonomously. Ideation comes into play as observation and opportunity-oriented rather than imposed problem-oriented solutions as a starting point. [34:45] Testing ideation is a critical next step in successful OKR deployment: Build tools (they can be fairly basic) to create evidence-based data analytics rather than blindly pursuing initiatives based on hearsay or intuition. Test adoption and outcomes via KPIs by tracking things like revenue. [37:25] Bradford explains how he once used the creation of a cricket league for employees in India as a strategic initiative (including data metrics) to drive corporate OKRs like employee engagement and productivity. It was a fun and popular way to get there! [40:48] Why employees have to be empowered to fail in order to be successful.   [42:45] Bradford's advice for how people managers should respond when employees fail? (Which they inevitably must …)  Whether an individual or a team: Do they have clarity as to what went wrong? Be prepared to do a retrospective to uncover the reasons for derailments. OKRs can be as critical for indicating what not to do as what to do.  Meet regularly to go over OKRs and identify what's red, yellow, green – and why.  Is it psychologically safe for people to proactively raise a hand and get help? Leadership should not shy away from being vulnerable. Humility and authenticity trickle down through the ranks in liberating ways. [46:10] When it comes to OKRs, sales is a somewhat different animal. There are, however, great opportunities to partner and leverage in a marketing context. (46:52] Quick-Fire Questions: What's your dream and, if you've got a deadline, what's that? It's changeable based on his evolving family life and the new dimensions it brings. What do you appreciate most about your team? Their openness to trying new things, which is critical when rolling out unfamiliar, innovative initiatives.  What's top of mind these days? Budget planning and performance. No. 1 tip for launching new OKR initiatives?  Less is more! It's much easier to measure for quality through patient sequencing. It's all about progress. Are you developing metrics and milestones rather than “to do” lists?  When success is clearly defined and measurable, OKRs are lots of fun! Relevant Links:Follow Our Guest: Website | LinkedIn

King of cold calling Scott Morse is on the show today and he's absolutely killing it. Some of the biggest, most active wholesalers are still using cold calling to scale their business. Scott founded Lamassu Media, an enterprise-level call center that generates highly qualified and highly motivated seller leads for wholesalers all over the United States. Prior to getting into real estate, Scott sold leads to attorneys for about eight years. He's now down in Columbia where he moved to launch his company and has been there for about two years. If you're new to the business and starting to form a team, make sure you know your numbers. Tracking KPIs and knowing your lists is fundamental. Before you even think about outsourcing cold calling to another firm, you have to be intimately familiar with how it works within your business. Scott shares how he built Lamassu, the KPIs he tracks, and some examples of scripts used by his team. If you're interested in learning more about Scott and Lamassu Leads, check out his Instagram page linked below. Also head to JoeMcCall.com/Lamassu to learn how you can get 10,000 dials a month for free.What's Inside:—How Lamassu Leads helps real estate investors scale through cold calling.—Tips for cold calling if you're just getting started.—Which call tools to use for your business.

"The Customer Is Always Right" - perhaps this is the most famous retail quote. But is it true? In this episode, we'll explore some of the widely believed myths and frequently used mottos. In the build up to the inaugural Productivity & Transformation event, Oliver Banks is joined by Rethink Productivity's Simon Hedaux to test and reflect on these phrases. Listen to this episode of the podcast to discover: Why the customer isn't always right. How it's easy to get your KPIs wrong and what that can do for your business. And how you can attend https://obandco.uk/productivity-transformation-2022/ (Productivity & Transformation 2022). Full show notes at www.obandco.uk/192.

Today we're mixing things up and learning from Tash Todd Williams, founder of digital marketing agency Word of Mouth Collective. I've known Tash for circa 10 years now and have had the absolute pleasure of watching her journey from launching a fashion publication that she exited before she was 24, to today running a successful digital agency with a special love for female founders and entrepreneurs. Today she's coming on to share part of that journey and a bunch of interesting tips and advice for early-stage bootstrapped founders including where she sees a lot of small businesses go wrong, the challenges that founders have in today's landscape post iOS apple updates when it comes paid marketing and when a small business owner should actually be looking to engage an agency. One thing we often hear on the podcast is that founders regret having spent on an agency too early on in their journey. In this episode, we explore the best time for bootstrapped founders to actually make this move and start working with an agency. At which stage in the journey it would pay off. And this is all about looking at tipping points of scale. There's one scenario where you've just raised and you have a lot of capital so that's totally separate. When you have strong KPIs to reach and the capital to get there, it makes a lot of sense to hire an agency. It's not these founders, but rather the bootstrapped founders we often hear about regretting investing in an agency early on. At this point, it becomes more about which stage of business you will be ready. If you're running lean and doing this alone, you can come to a tipping point where you do not have the time and resources to upskill yourself and you have too many moving parts in the business. This would be the point to consider outsourcing to an agency. As Tash says, they're not in the business to bankrupt anybody. Audit yourself, audit where the business is at, and based on that draw conclusions if this actually makes sense for you. So many gems in here, I know you're going to love her! And btw, are we friends on TikTok? I'm having so much fun on that platform, Id love to connect and see what you're creating on there too. Find me at @dooneroisin in all the places. LINKS WE MENTION: Natasha's LinkedIn World of Mouth Digital LinkedIn Word of Mouth Digital Instagram Female Startup Club's Instagram Entrepreneurs on Fire Instagram Doone's Instagram Doone's TikTok Learn more about Dymo at Dymo.com Learn more about Athletic Greens at Athleticgreens.com Try Zapier for free today at zapier.com/STARTUP In partnership with Klaviyo, the best email marketing tool for ecommerce businesses. Female Startup Club's YouTubeFemale Startup Club's Private Facebook Group Say hello to Doone: hello@femalestartupclub.com Female Startup Club + Clearco: Clear.co/partner/female-star

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Sahir Azam, Chief Product Officer at MongoDB.   Sahir shares how MongoDB transformed from a traditional software company—sales driven, longer cycles, etc.—into more of a consumer-style self-service model.   Overseeing the growth of MongoDB's Atlas, Sahir shares his learnings (the good, the bad, and the ugly) about building and bringing to market one of the fastest-growing cloud products of any scale (70% YoY, $400M ARR, 26K+ customers).   In this session, Sahir discusses: 7:44 - MongoDB sales-led model prior to going product-led 10:31 - What main KPIs were focused on 16:01 - Recommendations and best practices for building teams 20:07 - Tactics to make sure that cross-functional dialogue is happening regularly 26:57 - The ideal squad structure for a cross-functional team 32:46 - The product development framework at MongoDB 37:34 - Best practices for developing a go-to-market strategy for a product-led company 41:36 - Product marketing roles vs product manager roles 52:29 - What kickstarted growth for the MongoDB Atlas customer base 55:31 - Top pieces of advice that were learned the hard way 57:54 - Recommended books and resources   Learn more at https://tractionconf.io   Connect with Sahir Azam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahirazam/   Learn more about MongoDB at https://www.mongodb.com/   This episode is brought to you by:   Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses. But the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process, enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don't get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI.   Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6,000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa, visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca    Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline its podcast production. Learn more at https://contentallies.com  

Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Asset Management podcast!Today's podcast guest, Rod Khleif, and host Gary Lipsky talk about seizing opportunity in the current real estate environment and what we can expect as it moves forward.About Guest :Rod Khleif is a multiple business owner and philanthropist passionate about business, high performance, real estate, and giving back. As one of the country's top real estate and peak performance luminaries. He has also owned over 2000 properties. Key Points From This Episode:Current real estate environment and what we can expect How to prepare for upcoming opportunitiesRod's upcoming BootcampHow to overcome common real estate fearsWhat's coming for  asset managementWhat a less experienced operator needs to be aware ofHow to provide a quality customer experience.How to take advantage of upcoming opportunitiesTweetables:“They need to take ownership of the quality of the customer experience.And boy, you better be all over that. You better be mystery shopping. You better be checking on, you know, do surveys of your tenants, ask them what they think, and look for the critical feedback, you know? You'll get good feedback, but look for the critical feedback, see, who they love, see who didn't treat them well, and deal with it immediately.”{ Rod Khleif}“When work orders do you have, are you responding? You know, are you following up with your tenants immediately to make sure they're thrilled? What can you do to build a culture at your asset so that people don't wanna leave, you know, make it a family-type thing and focus on that right now.”{ Rod Khleif}“Well, what you teach asset management is going to be critical in what's coming. Okay. If you don't run a tight ship where you're staying on top of your KPIs, you know, on your metrics on a weekly basis, maybe even biweekly right now, paying attention to what's going on, paying attention to the competition, what are they marketing at?”{ Rod Khleif}Follow us:✅ Join our group for the latest updates – https://tinyurl.com/mhp5t6  ⠀ ✅ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/break-of-day-capital/                       - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-lipsky/ ✅ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/BreakofDayCapital ✅ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/breakofdaycapital/ Today's Show Sponsor :Garzella/Multifamily Risk Advisors https://garzellagroup.com/

You can subscribe, rate, review, and listen to every episode of the "Unleash the Awesome" podcast at https://gambrill.com/podcast .  0:28 "If you're not assessing, you're guessing." - Paul Kolody 1:18 "What gets measured gets managed." - Peter Drucker 1:30 How people typically measure weight loss, and what they need to be looking at instead. 2:48 Leading vs. Lagging indicators. 6:35 Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) to consider as you are starting and scaling a business. 8:08 "Build your email list!" - Dave Gambrill 8:30 "Using the power of AIDA in Your Marketing" - Episode 18 of the "Unleash the Awesome" podcast with Dave Gambrillhttps://gambrill.simplecast.com/episodes/using-the-power-of-aida-in-your-marketing . 10:49 Digital products and group coaching have fat profit margins.  16:40 "The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals" - Chris McChesney, et al. https://amzn.to/3bn7LhU . Come join the conversation in our communities... Digital Marketing Mentorship with Dave Gambrill Facebook Grouphttps://www.facebook.com/groups/dmmdavegambrill . Digital Marketing Mentorship with Dave Gambrill Telegram Channelhttps://gambrill.com/telegramdmm . And let me know what you thought of this episode and what you'd like me cover in future episodes over on Instagram.https://www.instagram.com/gambrill/ . If you're on TikTok, you can follow me over there too.https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdEb7qbW/ . Here are some of the other most popular episodes of "Unleash the Awesome"... "Russell Brunson Shares Powerful Insights from his Book 'Traffic Secrets" - Episode 23https://gambrill.simplecast.com/episodes/russell-brunson-shares-powerful-insights-from-his-new-book-traffic-secrets . "Job Search Secrets and How to be a STAR in the Interview" - Episode 34https://gambrill.simplecast.com/episodes/job-search-secrets-and-how-to-be-a-star-in-the-interview . "Dr. Robert Cialdini Shares Powerful New Insights Regarding Influence and Persuasion". - Episode 66https://gambrill.simplecast.com/episodes/dr-robert-cialdini-shares-powerful-new-insights-regarding-influence-and-persuasion . "The Secret Behind How John C. Maxwell Became the World's #1 Leadership Expert" - Episode 9https://gambrill.simplecast.com/episodes/the-secret-behind-how-john-c-maxwell-became-the-worlds-1-leadership-expert . #unleashawesome #mindset #metrics #davegambrill #techtools #entrepreneur #success #sidehustle #digitalmarketing #coaching #toolset #digitalceo #onlinecourses #10x #funnelhacker #successhabits #speaker #trainer #coach #consultant #habits #goals #paulkolody #author #mentoring #masterminds #practice #repetition #teaching #publicspeaking #keynote #kpis #sixsigma #mentor #goals #dreams #10x #4hww #process #systems #caloriedeficit #burncalories #loseweight #losebodyfat #strength #conditioning #speed #agility #hunterdoncentral #hcrhs #4dx #lead #lag #indicators #2cc CONSUMER NOTICE: You should assume that I have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this broadcast and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

Hundreds of millions of Americans are overweight and at risk for life-shortening conditions like diabetes and heart disease. So one thing we know out of the gate about F45 fitness studio franchises is … there's definitely a market need! And, as Jackie Mendes explains on this episode of She Turned Entrepreneur, the highly successful Australian export has a formula that sets franchise owners up for success from Day 1. A regional sales vice president with F45, Jackie has devoted a 20-year career to fostering the most cutting-edge, creative and – most of all – fun workouts possible. The fitness industry is all about acquisition and retention, which this unique franchise model supports through a detailed step-by-step playbook and training/mentorship that extends throughout the life of the business. Learn why you might make an ideal F45 franchisee, including what it takes to get started and why it's a great entrepreneurial fit for people who have a heart for building community and improving quality of life. There's nothing like pulling together as a team, which is why F45's low-cost setup, high-profit model is so compelling and has caught fire across the world! Click here to listen to, rate and review this or previous She Turned Entrepreneur episodes. Here are key takeaways from the conversation:· F45 growth has rocketed in its first decade of business, with some 3,300 franchises launched globally.· Because it deploys multiple joints and muscles simultaneously, the F45 exercise model is highly time-efficient.· A rolling schedule of classes maximizes client access to facilities.· Fitness, hospitality, healthcare and entertainment are the trifecta that motivates people to join and keep coming back to F45 studios!· The F45 process is highly detailed and replicable, which bolsters success. It's also a living agenda that is constantly evolving and improving based on current on-the-ground conditions and best practices. Here's a quick look into the episode:· F45 is a studio boutique fitness concept based on functional training (the “F”) and the length of workout (45 minutes).· Since the Australian business model emerged in 2012, year-over-year growth of franchises has been exponential and today includes 3,300 studios worldwide. · Functional fitness focuses on movements that occur in everyday life, emphasizing foundational elements that support quality of life in athletics and daily living.· Cross-functional training increases “bang for your buck” in terms of the amount of fitness garnered through a quick 45-minute workout.· Customers can book classes pretty much every hour of the day.· The two key performance indicators (KPIs) at F45 are: Acquisition and Retention.· A Day in the Life of an F45 Franchise Owner:o Hands-off owners tend to focus on overseeing the growth and vision of the studio rather than operations.o Owner-operators are involved every day, maintaining a community profile through class participation and interactions, tracking and tweaking marketing and sales efforts and making cross-promotional appearances that drive business.o Overseeing the recruitment and retention of talented staff.o Maintaining facilities and supplies.· F45 differentiators include:o A heavy emphasis on community.o Open, brightly lit, welcoming studio designs.o Workouts that each have their own unique name, brand and personality.o A focus on teamwork, bonding and pulling together.· Franchise owners will ideally:o Have a big heart for community and interacting with people.o Have at least $100,000 in liquid financial resources (financing help available).o Some sales or marketing experience (but these can also be taught).o Business ownership skills (such as accounting, retail or team management).· F45 Training and Support includes:o An immersive two-week training in Austin based on a detailed agenda covering everything you need to know about the business.o An intranet platform that features a step-by-step process covering:§ Site selection.§ Lease negotiations.§ Pre-construction and build-out phases.§ Pre-sales support to ensure cash-positive member commitments from Day 1.§ Post-Grand Opening mentors with deep industry experience who help owners and managers monitor KPIs and reach their goals through the entire life of the franchise.To learn more about F45 Training or other franchise opportunities, click here to set up a call.

It's always nice to talk to someone in the business who is doing it RIGHT. Tommy Mello, “The Home Service Expert,” knows how to take care of his team members, customers, and himself. His business, A1 Garage Door Service, began in 2007 and grew to be a $30 million-plus home service business with over 200 employees in nine states in just seven years. He hosts The Home Service Expert podcast and has written a book, The Home Service Millionaire: What Successful Home Service Entrepreneurs Do To Make More Money AND Work Less. Tommy has built a thriving Facebook group, the Home Service Expert Community, which is “a community of resilient business owners who are hungry to learn and grow.” We can learn a lot from Tommy– because whatever you are going through, he has been there. He knows what he's doing, and he has practical principles that can set you on the path to success. Join us!   What you'll hear in this episode:   How Tommy has learned to hire out the tasks he knows he isn't good at and live a life he enjoys Why Tommy focuses on living big today and surrounding himself with successful people How Tommy has learned to live with perseverance and tenacity Why it pays off to build a business that is a sellable asset Why you have to start with your WHY Why it's important to know your numbers and operate with accountability How Tommy has been committed to working ON his business–not IN his business The importance of the three letters A-S-K How Tommy trains employees to master eye contact, body posture, and building relationships with clients What it takes to be a good salesman What's most important in recruiting A-players The most important KPIs (key performance indicators) to track  Why Tommy makes the investment to have coaches to help him  Resources:   Connect with Tommy: Website(and podcast), Home Service Millionaire book, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn   Vetted Sponsors of the Roofer Show Check out the programs that will help you gain confidence in your sales process, become a better leader, and build a winning sales team at Salestransformationgroup.com/roofershow   Tee up the sale and make a great first impression by having a friendly, professional receptionist answer your phone with  https://www.callruby.com/roofer    Be the modern-day contractor! We help you leverage technology to generate, organize and maximize commercial roofing leads. Find out more about Peak Leads -  Peakleads.io.  

#cio #chiefinformationofficer #digitaltransformation Oshkosh Corp., founded in 1917, has 15,000 employees and builds specialty trucks and construction equipment. In this exclusive interview with CXOTalk, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Oshkosh Corp., Anu Khare, explains how the company invests in digital transformation.Keep reading to learn how a major American conducts business and financial planning for its digital transformation strategy.The conversation includes these topics:-- Innovation and digital transformation-- What is digital transformation?-- How does digital transformation enable innovation?-- How does the Oshkosh CIO conduct IT investment planning?-- Foundations of digital transformation strategy at Oshkosh Corp.-- What is the role of IT in creating business and digital strategy?-- Change management and the digital transformation journey-- Metrics and KPIs to evaluate digital transformation-- Role of data management and analytics in digital transformation-- On the importance of employee experience-- Advice for change management in digital transformation consulting-- Employee hiring, retention, and loyalty-Anupam Khare is Oshkosh Corporation's Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, a position he has held since April 2018. Mr. Khare has responsibility for all digital technology efforts to support Oshkosh's business growth and innovation efforts. In this role, he leads the Company's intelligent enterprise agenda which includes data science and artificial intelligence practice, digital manufacturing, cybersecurity and technology shared services to drive technology-enabled business transformation.Prior to joining Oshkosh, Mr. Khare served as the Executive Director of Digital Technology at United Technologies Corporation from 2015 to April 2018. Mr. Khare also served in positions of increasing responsibility at DuPont and Koch Industries in the U.S. and Asia.

Joe Soltis, CEO, ChoiceLocal (Cleveland, OH)   Joe Soltis is CEO at ChoiceLocal, which Joe describes as “the top performing franchise growth engine” with a “money back guarantee.” The agency offers a wide scope of services for franchisors and franchisees of over 50 brands, enabling them to provide “Fortune 500 level customer service, results, strategy, and ROI on the franchisee level” for a “small and medium size business price.”  Large clients might be parent companies of franchise systems, franchisors owning 20 or more franchise systems where each system may have from 20 to 200 franchisees – and up to as many as 6,000 internal franchise units. Small franchise systems may have 10 units. For these smaller clients, the agency facilitates franchise development, consumer, new customer, location, company, and digital talent recruitment marketing. Joe says hiring is a challenge, especially in the franchise space. The agency needs to understand its client's hiring needs, the kind of candidates it desires, and the historical hire rates to know the number of applicants to target . . . then reverse engineer the hire rate/cost per quality candidate by channel and implement the most effective marketing strategy to ensure future growth. Joe says they use the same channels as they do for consumer marketing (in a different order), plus some that are recruitment specific. Joe notes that franchise operations need to beware . . . a lot of agencies will lock clients into proprietary technology solutions . . . that don't fit. ChoiceLocal strives to find the right tools for each client to build a “win-win” ecosystem where franchisor, franchisee, and the agency all win. He says it's important that the tool providers are companies sensitive to client needs, adaptable to a changing market, and willing to invest in “making sure that you can use their tool to provide the best in the world customer service to your end customers.” Joe started his career working his way up for 10 years in a company that grew to serve Fortune 500 companies. At a time of great personal loss, he changed the direction of his life. In his words, I always said I wanted to be successful so that I could help people, and that day it changed to “I don't want to just build something; I want to help people and I want to do it now. I don't want to be successful so that I can help people later. I want to do it now.” Joe started ChoiceLocal with the mission “to help others” – the agency's franchisor and franchisee partners, agency teammates (to make their dreams and aspirations reality), and people in the community.  Joe structured the agency with the goal of having employees work their 40-hours, then “unplug and leave work at work.” With a teammate Net Promoter Score in the 70s (far exceeding the “good” score, which is in the 30s), the agency has been a Top Workplace in Northeast Ohio for the past five years. When Covid struck, the agency created a ChoiceLocal Economic Stimulus Package to help its customers “grow through the downturn,” an initiative that Joe estimates saved 30 franchisees from going out of business.  Giving back to the community is “baked into” the agency's DNA, with 10% of profits dedicated to helping “kids in need.” Joe says the agency's “big hairy audacious goal is to help 10,000 kids a year.” As of this interview, the agency had already helped 6,000 kids in 2022 through such things as meal programs, partnering with Habitat for Humanity to provide a home for an in-need family, and through team members' personal volunteer work in the community. Joe says the next thing after achieving this goal would be to “raise the goal.” Recently, the agency spun off a dental franchise, Broadview Dental Group, which Joe targets to be “the largest provider of dental care in the United States within 10 years.” Expectations are that dentists following this franchise system “can have 4.5 times the profit of a typical dental practice and only have to work three days a week to do it.” In this franchise system, a dentist maintains 100% of the business's equity and, on retirement, can sell the franchise. Joe can be reached on his agency's website at choicelocal.com, by following ChoiceLocal on social media channels @ChoiceLocal, by following Joe on Twitter @helpothersjoe, or by connecting with him on LinkedIn.  ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Joe Soltis, CEO at ChoiceLocal based in Cleveland, Ohio. Welcome to the podcast, Joe. JOE: Rob, great to be with you today. ROB: Excellent to have you here. Why don't you start off by telling us about ChoiceLocal? What is the firm's specialty? What is your superpower? What are you known for? Hit us with it. JOE: We're the top performing franchise growth engine. We work exclusively with franchisors and franchisees, and the reason we do that is we want to give Fortune 500 level customer service, results, strategy, and ROI, but we want to be able to do it when you look on the franchisee level at a small and medium size business price while delivering that. When we do that, we offer a money back guarantee. We're the first and only franchise marketing agency to offer that money back guarantee. We work with 50+ brands. We're one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S., members of the IFA, the whole nine yards.  ROB: Wow, congratulations. There's a certain clarity to that that is certainly appreciated. Let's peel it back just a layer. When we think about franchise, I think some of us think about restaurants, but there are franchises of all stripes. There is plumbing. There are franchise marketing agencies, for that matter. So what does a typical customer look like? Is there a particular range of franchises, of locations? Because you could have two or two thousand. What's a typical engagement look like? JOE: We work with some franchise systems that are owned by what we would call a platform, like a parent company that owns franchise systems. There are some franchisors that we work with that actually own 20+ franchise systems, and within each of those franchise systems there can range anywhere between 20 franchisees on the small side and 200 on the large side. So, we're talking within these companies 2,000-unit franchise operations, and some franchise systems that we work with even have 6,000+ franchise units within them. Also, on the other end of the spectrum, there are franchise systems that we work with that are 10-unit franchise systems. We power them on franchise development, we power them on consumer marketing and new customer marketing for their franchisees as well as their company and locations, and we also power their talent recruitment through digital marketing to drive highly qualified applicants. Staffing is obviously a huge challenge in today's world, and particularly within the franchising space. ROB: That's a little bit of a wider scope of services than I think we often hear in local marketing, especially once you get into the recruitment side. So that's interesting. Is it the same channels for getting customers in and getting employees in? Is it different? What's the mix of touchpoints there? JOE: It is the same channels, used in a different order, plus there are additional channels that are recruiting specific. Obviously, there's different job boards that are highly important in the recruiting space, and then there's also a whole host of digital channels that can be activated, from geotargeted Google Ads to Facebook advertising. Each of them has their strengths and their weaknesses. Our job within these franchise systems is to understand what their hiring needs are, who they're looking to hire, what their historical hire rates are so we know how many applicants we need to drive, and then we can also reverse engineer the hire rate by channel, and then we can from there figure out their cost per quality applicant by channel and then develop a marketing mix that's going to allow them to continue to grow. ROB: There's a lot going on there. Over time we've seen different platforms that have tried to jump to the forefront to help, I think, organizations like ChoiceLocal, handle marketing for multilocation, for franchises. What's the state of the tool ecosystem for this? Has any tool that tries to help with this problem and actually create a library of content to push out to different locations worked? Or has it not worked and you end up building some of those solutions yourselves? How do you look at dozens of locations, different local needs, some shared content, that sort of thing? JOE: There are a lot of agencies that will come in and sell franchise systems, their own proprietary tech in order to bring that about. What we've generally found is when these marketing agencies bring in their proprietary tech, it's more in the agency's interest and less in the interest of the franchisor and the franchisee. Essentially, it's “Here, take this marketing solution. Take our proprietary tech, and then it's impossible for you to leave us.” That's how they set that up, and it can create some difficulty and a lot of angst within these different franchise systems. When working in the franchising space, what you need to do is build a win-win ecosystem where the franchisor wins, the franchisee wins, and as a byproduct of that, as the agency you win as well. There's a whole host of various tools in this, from Rallio to WebPunch to SOCi. There's a lot of others. Yext. These are all various powerful tools that can be used and deployed. There's other powerful tools in the call tracking space, too. You have companies like CallRail who do a really strong job with this, with call analytics and those types of things. The job of the agency is to find the right tools that are right for that franchise system while also using their agency buying power to leverage economies of scale and do what's in the best interest of their client partners. ROB: If I hear you correctly, there's not a one-size-fits-all best franchise management tool. It is a little bit of a best of breed, it's a what are the needs of your particular brand/set of stores, that kind of thing. Sometimes it is Yext, maybe sometimes you bring CallRail to the table. You're the experts, and you're prescribing the menu that you recommend. JOE: Yeah, that is right. One thing, too, as you follow these companies – depending on how much they're investing in R&D, how much they're willing to listen to their customer, how much they're willing to allow their agency partners to fuel their product roadmap and guide their product roadmap – that's really how you're going to pick your partners, in large part. There's a lot of these SaaS companies that are not very customer service minded. They're more like “Get in, sign up for a product, and then leave us alone” kind of deal, and as an agency, that's not the kind of partner you're looking for. You're looking for ones that will invest in making sure that you can use their tool to provide the best in the world customer service to your end customers. Why I say that is that's something to look out for in the beginning. And the other reason I say that is the companies that are willing to invest in their customer service also tend to invest in their product development, and you'll notice there's ebbs and flows of who's good and who's bad when they do this. And things change, so you've got to find a partner that's always looking to change and adapt with the market as it changes and evolves. ROB: It's interesting how the cast of characters has changed. When I google for this problem space, Hootsuite is out there, Content and Sprout are out there contending for just a small slice of that franchise deal. But you know they're chasing every other vertical in social as well. I can certainly appreciate – we're in Atlanta; CallRail is a neighbor company here. Do you know their roots a little bit? It's an interesting background on them. JOE: It's a really neat company. ROB: The founder started off with a site to help people with BMWs that were out of warranty to find a local repair shop. My understanding is if you have a BMW that's out of warranty, you need a local repair shop. That's what I've heard. So, he started off doing lead gen for these local shops and then built call tracking to help prove the value of his BMWershops.com website, and ended up building CallRail from it. JOE: What's neat about CallRail, too, is they really have come in – there's a lot of companies that historically have played in that place, and they really trounced them. Some of their advanced features and some of their call analytics, listening to calls, transcribing calls, turning them into qualified leads, or basically saying what's a qualified lead, what's a hot lead, what's not a lead, and how they built some of that technology – it's pretty cool stuff. ROB: Yeah, there's a tremendous customer focus there. I do want to shift gears for a moment; I want to get to the origin story of ChoiceLocal. What led you to create this firm? What led you to this point of focus, of all the areas you could have focused on helping and niches you could have served? JOE: I served at a company that served multibillion dollar companies. I was a Vice President of Operations of Product Development there. We served Fortune 500 companies – FedEx, CBS, other multibillion dollar publicly traded companies. That's where I spent my day and that's who I served. We built a team of 180 full-time digital marketers. Kind of a neat story. Started as employee #8, within a few years worked my way up to VP of Ops and Product Development and did that. It was cool. I learned a lot and I had some really great mentors while I was there. The owners there have done some really amazing things outside of agency, just building multimillion dollar companies and multibillion dollar companies and taking some of them public, like NCS Healthcare and others. So, I learned a ton while I was there over that 10-year period. Then in 2012, we had a pregnancy. Went into an ultrasound room with my wife and there was no heartbeat. So we lost our son, Ben, pretty late in the pregnancy. I always said I wanted to be successful so that I could help people, and that day it changed to “I don't want to just build something; I want to help people and I want to do it now. I don't want to be successful so that I can help people later. I want to do it now.” That's actually how ChoiceLocal got started. In its simple form, our mission always has been – our mission and our core values were written prior to even having a business plan – our mission is help others. We help our partners succeed, our franchisor and franchisee partners, help their dreams and aspirations become a reality. We help our teammates' dreams and aspirations become a reality. We've been a Top Workplace in Northeast Ohio five years running. We have a teammate Net Promoter Score in the 70s, which is unheard of high. You ask people, “What is a good employee Net Promoter Score?”, the answer is 30. We're hanging out in the 70s. So, we really work to live that mission and really care about others. Working in the agency space, a lot of agencies will bring in talent, they will work them like crazy for like five years until they burn out, and then they leave and they go in-house. Having experienced that and have friends who've experienced that in other companies, I wanted to do something fundamentally different. That's why we founded ChoiceLocal and built it the way that we have. But our mission of help others is also giving back. We take 10% of the profits out of the company and we use it to help kids in need. Our big hairy audacious goal is to help 10,000 kids a year. We created the Benjamin Isaac Foundation, named after our son, Ben. We just gave a home to a single mother with three kids. Her name is Brie; she's got three beautiful boys. We just had their house dedication two weekends ago, and that was through Habitat for Humanity. We were the sole sponsor for the home. Got to meet her beautiful boys. We helped them move in, had the housewarming and a dedication. It was so cool. It's just so cool. We do tons of other stuff like that. So far this year – it's now June, and we are at a little over 6,000 kids that we've helped through various charities that we partner with. ROB: Well, 4,000 more to go and then another goal. JOE: Yes, raise the goal. ROB: There's a depth in that origin story. I think something that is interesting to think through – when you have a team, when you're giving to causes, how do you connect the day-to-day of what the team is doing to the causes that the company is giving to and really ensure that there's an authentic connection there? I think it can be very disconnected sometimes. Here's the owner, here's the team, we're building this stuff, some money got shot out over here – to a good cause, but maybe it doesn't feel relevant to the day-to-day. So how do you think about connecting the team to the cause? JOE: That's a great question. It's a really great question. The first thing is we hire for people that have the core values that we have. Family, giving, integrity in all things. There's certain ways that you can interview people to make sure that they have those. And if you actually study some of the psychology behind it, if you study various hiring techniques that are used in books like Topgrading and WHO and those types of things, there's ways you can interview for those core values and competencies to screen people out that don't have that. So, you're hiring people that believe what you believe and then you're coming into a culture that celebrates those core values and celebrates those things. For example, we have a team meeting every single month where we update on everything that's happening in the agency, what's going on with business strategy. We're transparent on financials and performance and all of those things so everybody can see what's going on. We have a part where we talk about help others and core values. In core values, people nominate teammates and they celebrate how they live those core values out, and we tell those stories. A lot of those core values are how we help our partners and internally, but it's also how we give back. And then we tie in our financial performance. We then say, “Because we were able to do this, we were able to give Brie and her three boys this gift.” We make it very personal. Along those lines, we also have quarterly volunteering. We try to get every teammate to volunteer once a quarter so they can see, feel, and touch the work they're doing. My personal favorite is when we go to the Boys and Girls Club of America. Those kids need love, they need support, they need good mentors, and when you go there, you feel fantastic afterwards because you've been able to deliver some of that for them. So that's really powerful. And then we also do this BHAG walkthrough. BHAG stands for big hairy audacious goal. We have this roadmap, and then we say, “Here's three kids that were helped because of this. Here's 1,600 kids that were fed for a year in a place of education.” We did this charity giveaway through our annual thing at the International Franchise Association called the ChoiceLocal 10k Charity Giveaway. People enter a drawing giveaway. There's a really cool story – there's a woman who served as a board member of the International Franchise Association; today she owns about 20 Taco Johns franchises. Very successful businesswomen. She picked the Great Harvest Heartland as her charity, and she ended up winning. What I found out after she won is that as a kid, she was so poor that she needed to go to the foodbank to eat. So, it was a very personal gift for her. That's the type of stuff that really hits home, when you always tie it to that personal story. And then when you say, “Because you were able to do this specifically,” and you name the person, “it allowed us to be able to do this.” Sorry, I'm passionate about this – the last thing I'll add to it is helping the business owner. This particular franchisee is having a really hard time and they're on the verge of going out of business. We had a good amount of this through COVID. We announced the ChoiceLocal Economic Stimulus Package for our customers. We have this whole “grow through the downturn” quarterly priority and theme. We saved probably 30 franchisees from going out of business during COVID, and that was really cool. We celebrated each one of those as a company during the team meetings and made a really big deal out of it, because it's a huge deal. They put their life savings into the business. Together, we helped save their business. That's flipping awesome. It's really cool. ROB: What an opportunity. I hear a certain proximity that you're referring to within the team. Is all of your team right there, one office, one team? Is that your world, or are people in different places? JOE: It used to be that way, pre-COVID. We were in the office three days a week, and Monday/Friday work from home. COVID hit and we went 100% remote. Then we had highest teammate Net Promoter Score ever, highest client Net Promoter Score ever, highest revenue ever by far, highest profit dollars. We're like, this is working really well. So we surveyed our team and said, “What do you guys want to do?” and everybody said basically, work from home, come into the office once. So, we instituted that. What we then found is about 10-15% of our staff in a given week would come into the office, and they'd come in on different days, and when they came in there was like 3% of our staff there. It felt a little lonely, and some people like that connectedness. So I just met with our leadership team on this this past week; we're probably going to be instituting now – we do a lot of stuff on Slack. I know a lot of companies do. Basically, we're going to have ChoiceLocal In-Office Day. It's going to be completely optional, but everybody that's going to go is going to go into Slack, fill out this poll, and RSVP and say “Hey, I'm going to be in the office this day” and try to get other teammates to come in. And then they're going to have a group of probably 30-40% of the company in on that individual day, and they can hang out together. Plus we do all the fun stuff. We have team meets once a month. Those are in person. About half the company comes to those; the rest are virtual. We bring in catered food. We're in Cleveland, so we're going to watch a Cleveland Guardians, which used to be the Cleveland Indians, game. ROB: Yeah, that's an adjustment there as well. JOE: Stuff like that. We do Topgolf. We do a big Christmas party every year. Stuff like that. It's fun. It's so fun. ROB: It sounds like an adjustment, but it sounds like listening to the team, it sounds like adjusting well. When I think about folks I've known in the agency world in Cleveland, there's no shortage of opportunity to lose your team to the revolving door of brands. That seems like it's probably the way of life there – not to mention the regional opportunities with vendors. It really does take some work to keep them on the agency side, I think. JOE: Historically, at my prior agency that was definitely a continual challenge. We launched ChoiceLocal with the mission of help others, with the goal – we're not perfect at this; I don't want to sugarcoat it – but with the goal of being a fast-paced, high energy environment, but you work 40 hours, then you unplug and you leave work at work. We were able to build our systems so that's possible. We historically have had almost no turnover. Now, with that said, this year during COVID, our turnover rate has spiked a bit, but it's nothing like I was ever used to. In a year we would have maybe, out of 100 people, like 1 to 2 people leave that we didn't want to leave. Historically. This year that number is probably up to like 4 out of 100. ROB: Yeah, that's turnover, but it's not a high turnover rate. It is managing what it is. It sounds like you have learned a lot along the way. As you think about lessons you've learned building ChoiceLocal, are there particular things you think of that you would wish to go back and tell yourself to do differently if you were able to? JOE: There's a whole host of things. One of the things I have as an advantage is I was a political science major, and I learned absolutely nothing in college that is useful to me today. [laughs] ROB: A beginner's mindset is what you're saying. [laughs] JOE: Yeah, exactly. There's this book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, and there's so much truth to that. I was raised treat others the way you want to be treated, and that's how I've always operated. I've always brought that to what I do because I thought it's the right thing to do. But I've actually found it's an amazingly sound business strategy. What I'm going to say now may be a little bit controversial, but there's so much stuff that you learn in business school, like when you're getting your MBA and those types of things, and so much of that you need to throw out and ignore because it's trash. For example, you're a service-based business, so a person is not a commodity. A person is not a tool to be used. A person is not a KPI. They are a person with dignity, a person who has a family, a person who deserves to be cared about, loved, and appreciated. If you just do that and focus on that first, the business results tend to take care of themselves. But at the same point, KPIs are important. Accountability is important. Ensuring that you have that is critical. Knowing that you hire right for core values first and for performance second, but also critically important – all of that integrates really well, and those are really important things. The last thing, from a mistake that I made, that I'll say is there's a book called Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Else Smarter, and basically the premise of the book – and this happens for a lot of folks in agencies, particularly in leadership positions – how did you get successful? You got successful by busting your butt and being pretty smart about the way you do things. That's how you were successful. The weakness that comes with that is as you get a bigger team, you need to shut up, you need to ask questions, and you need to be humble. That's the next level. And that book, for me, as I was evolving and growing as a leader, taught me those skills. It played a really important role, and now it's something I believe in so strongly. I met with a future VP of our organization who's probably going to get promoted to a VP very, very shortly, and I said, “Read this book. Take it to heart and do it.” Then I said, “Here's all the stupid things that I did, and here's how this book helped me.” ROB: You start to pull apart some pieces, many questions come to mind. I start to think about – clearly, when you talk about future VP, there's some planning there. There's still some awareness of individuals in your organization, even though at 100 people, it starts to get hard to know everyone. Especially when some people aren't even coming in one day a week, possibly. It's an interesting mix. I think this probably had to be intentional for you as well – building up the leadership team. What are the pieces you've put in place at different stages in the business to build around you to be your best, but also to help the company be its best, maybe where you aren't? JOE: Hire generous people, people that love helping other people be successful. If you have people on your leadership team that don't believe that, don't have them on your leadership team. And if you don't believe that, work on it. [laughs] It's so critical. You need to hire generous people, surround yourself with generous people. It's funny; I was like, we're the world's best at marketing for franchise systems, world's best at franchise development, consumer marketing for franchising; we're the world's best at recruiting for franchise systems. Why don't we just own a franchise system? So, we launched a separate franchise system, hired a guy who led another franchise system to $750 million in network revenue to be the CEO of it. And he believes what we believe. What attracted him to us first and foremost – and he's got an amazing track record in franchising – was our values. He's a generous person. He believes in integrity. He believes in accountability and performance at the same time. So, you've got to find people that believe that and have those competencies. The other thing I'll say is it's important, if you're hiring somebody to lead a business, that they understand that business. You can do it and you can be successful if you don't understand it inside and out, but it's way harder. If you can find people with the right values but also who have worked at different levels in that industry over the course of their career, they can understand the strengths and weaknesses of various decisions, and when you make a decision, how it affects people in different parts of the organization or what you're actually asking and what it entails to make it happen. Which tends to result in better decisions being made, better business performance, less mistakes. Those are the types of things that you really look for. ROB: What franchise business have you got yourself into, then, now? JOE: The name of it is Broadview Dental Group. Our vision is to be the largest provider of dental care in the United States within 10 years. We have some aggressive plans, but I am very confident that we're going to be able to pull it off. ROB: And I've heard that some different models of roll-up franchise operating groups – I've heard they're taking the dental world kind of by storm. The independent dentist is starting to dry up a little bit. Are you seeing that? Is that part of the move? JOE: Yes, it is, and it's sad. What's ended up happening – there actually is one other franchise system in the dental space. I wouldn't call it a real franchise system. That sounds arrogant. I don't mean it that way. But if you look at how franchise systems typically operate, where they basically have some sort of buy-in and then some sort of royalty, it's set up very different with the buy-in being extremely, extremely, extremely high. It's different. But if you look at most of them, they're called DSOs or DPOs, and what they basically do is a dentist is like “Hey, I want to get my practice to the next level.” Then these DSOs or DPOs, which are typically funded by venture capital – this isn't always the case, but typically with venture capital, they care about one thing, which is maximizing shareholder wealth. They'll say, “Okay, you want to take your business to the next level? Sign here. We get 70% equity in your business up to 90% over time, and we can fire you if we want to, and we'll help get your business to the next level.” When you're a dentist and you're passionate about helping others and you're passionate about your practice and your trade, you basically just need a really good business mentor, and most dentists really haven't had it. So what we're doing is giving them 100% equity in their own business, a way to get to the point where they can have 4.5 times the profit of a typical dental practice and only have to work three days a week to do it, and all they need to do is follow our system. And they own 100% of their business. They can sell it when they want to, and when they sell it, they'll sell it for a higher multiple because guess what? In franchising, when you sell your business when you're ready to retire, it's worth more because it's a franchise system and it's proven. There's less risk involved. ROB: Right, it's not (Your Name) Dentistry. It is part of an umbrella. There's brand equity there, there's a system. They don't have to figure it all out. One of my college roommates, his dad was in the dental world, and when you mentioned the high fee to buy in – he always told me dentists like to buy expensive things, so I guess the franchise must be one of those things, just priced for the market, I suppose. When we look ahead to what's next for ChoiceLocal, what's next for marketing in the franchising world, Joe, what are you seeing? What are you excited about for the firm, for what is going to be necessary for your clients to continue as the marketing world evolves? What are you seeing? JOE: There's so much exciting growth ahead. One of the things that I love about being an agency that focuses on ROI and provable results is every time there's an economic downturn, it's good for the agency growth and it's good for your customers. What happens is when there's an economic recession, which I believe we're headed into – we have horrible inflation and there's certain policies that have to be implemented to bring it under control, and the result of that is going to be a recession. What happens in those cases is companies tend to pull back in marketing. But if you're driving marketing where for every dollar they spend, you're giving them $18 in new customer revenue, it's stupid not to spend that. You can grow through the downturn. You can take market share. Imagine putting a dollar in the stock market and getting $18 back within a year. It's a brilliant investment. It's a simple investment. So, what's going to end up happening is that's going to accelerate growth within agencies that are ROI-focused as this economic recession hits, and for however long it hits for. That's exciting. But what I'm also excited about in the newer leading-edge things within agencies is the ability for big data backed with artificial intelligence to transform marketing, to transform business, and frankly to transform medicine. I was talking with the COO of ChoiceLocal, who serves a role with Broadview as well, and we're like, who ever thought that two internet marketers would fundamentally change healthcare and dental care in the U.S.? You'd be like, “Explain that.” It's the same thing you do in marketing with big data. If you have a massive amount of data in a HIPAA compliant way, you can anonymize it, data mine it, and find correlations and causations and literally, with that type of patient data pool, you can change medicine. Similarly, you can do the same thing with marketing, where you can data mine, you can find ways to micro-target ideal customers based on who current ideal customers are – and you may not even know what some of those things are – and then you can target them and measure the performance and lift. That's crazy cool stuff. And that's the newer leading-edge stuff that's really exciting, particularly when you're dealing with franchise systems and the volume that's behind that. ROB: Right. You've got volume there, you've got a growing scale in the business. To think about leveraging it for more than just “Hey, we're bigger” – lots of interesting things there. Joe, when people want to find and connect with you and with ChoiceLocal, where should they go to find you? JOE: They can go to choicelocal.com. Everything is there. They can follow ChoiceLocal on pretty much every social media channel that exists @ChoiceLocal. So they can do that. They can follow me personally on Twitter @helpothersjoe or connect with me on LinkedIn. I try to post a lot of content there that's specific to purpose-driven business, which is a huge passion of mine, as well as franchising and marketing as well. So yeah, @helpothersjoe on Twitter is for me personally. ROB: That's excellent. Joe, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Congratulations on what you've built so far and why you're building it. I think everyone listening has enjoyed the depth in the origin of the business and the intentionality as you build it. JOE: Thanks, Rob. Thanks for all you've done and thanks for having me on today. It really is a great pleasure. Really appreciate you. ROB: All right, appreciate you. Take care. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. 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