Moving From Data to Action ft. Josh Silverbauer

Speaker A: Sometimes people are just be like, great. You got it. But then there's going to be other ones who are like, I don't want to hear this. Like, just tell me an answer.

Speaker B: What is going on? Certified homies. M. Welcome to another episode of From A to B. Your Jeff, Shiva. And I'm joined by Josh, One of a Kind. Silverbauer.

Speaker A: That's my middle name, officially.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's your nickname. So do you want to hear the other name I was workshopping before I settled on One of a Kind?

Speaker A: Yes, I would love to.

Speaker B: So it was Josh. I literally can't create a nickname because you're so unique, Silver.

Speaker A: Love it. That was what my parents were going to name me too. So, like, it's just so weird that, uh.

Speaker B: Did it fit on the birth certificate?

Speaker A: It didn't fit. Yeah, that's why they scrapped it at the last minute.

Speaker B: That makes sense.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, cool. Josh, you are head of analytics and CRO at from the Future. And your. Your personal life is so interesting because you bring such a. Such a cool Persona, uh, to, like, conferences. Aaron was saying, Aaron Weigel was saying, for the longest time, like, you got to meet Josh. You guys are going to be best friends. And I was like. Like, I don't know if I'm, like, super theatrical or musical or whatever. Like, I don't get it. But then what. I saw what you guys had to put at Experimentation Island. I was like, no, get it. I love this. This is awesome. And no, I don't think anyone else is doing this level of just, like, creative outlet into getting people interested and excited in, let's just say, data, experimentation, optimization. So kudos to you, man. It's a cool niche you've carved out.

Speaker A: Thanks, man. Appreciate it. You know, it comes from a place of keeping myself interested. I think the first and foremost is, like, if you. If you're going to commit to your life to do something, you know, you want to make sure that you stay interested in it yourself and be true to your different sides of your brain. And, you know, I think, you know, really there's a lot to learn from. Like, it's not so far off to. And we'll talk about this today, to, like, include some level of theatrics or into, you know, or storytelling into how you present information. It's just all part of the keep, uh, yourself interested, and you will also attract other people into what you have to say.

Speaker B: And I think that's a good segue into, like, the clickbaity question I'm going to ask you to lead this episode off, which is what is more theatrical? Broadway or data to leadership?

Speaker A: I, um, mean, I guess you have to define theatrics, right? Because, I mean, there's an easy answer to this, and it's Broadway, but because Broadway is actual theater. Um, but if you drill down, like, what you have to do to convince leadership of a story, there is a lot of theatrics in that. There's. There is telling a good story. There is, ah, you know, data. Data is just metrics on a page, right. And if you just present it, there's very little that will be gained from it. If you lean into a meaningful conversation or if you understand what they are expecting, or if you understand, you know, how you need to present this information in a way that's palatable, you can move the audience, right? Just like in theater. And so just like with a good play or a bad play, your goal is to move the audience, right? And so there's a lot of commonality between Broadway and a stakeholders meeting.

Speaker B: So it's not as simple as just wearing a costume while you're presenting the data.

Speaker A: That helps, you know? Well, it could either help or hurt depending on the audience. It's knowing the audience, right? It's like, yeah, I mean, like, if I show up to a bunch of people who are wearing suits and I have like a wizard costume on, I might lower my credibility a little bit. But it really depends on who those people are, right? They might.

Speaker B: I mean, you have me hooked, right? Like when in an attention economy where everyone's obsessed with and their attention spans are like half a second.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I think a wizard costume would pause people and be like, let's hear what this guy has to say.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think there is a level of disarming the kind of like, the crowd a little bit, right? Like going in with comedy or jokes or like, it disarms everyone to feel like people can m. Relax.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Because if you are super serious and like, there is a level of, why should I pay attention to this? Who. Who is this person? Why should I pay attention to them? And if you can be charming or if you can be, you know, lean into creativity, it's refreshing. A lot of times that, ah, people say, oh, I can relax, you know, Oh, I can. I can laugh.

Speaker B: The disarming piece, I want to double click into that. That's a really interesting one. I don't do this purposefully. I do this because I like to do it. But I do think it disarms people, which is like, you know, the awkward when everyone joins a meeting but the person running the meeting hasn't joined it. So everyone's just awkwardly staring at each other or like off camera, right? Like, and I might jump in and say something stupid and get people going. Yeah, Like, I think there's something to that, which is the disarming. Like when you come into a meeting and it's not all business, all the time, it's an actual human having a conversation with another human. There's something to the psychology of that where it is disarming people.

Speaker A: You're building trust right away, right? You're, you're, you're telling people that you can be trusted because you're not just trying to sell them something, right? You're not just there to sell them an idea, you're trying to connect with them on a human level. And ultimately any type of data storytelling, you have to be able to convince them that your words are truth, even though you're all looking at the same information. That information can be interpreted so many different ways. People, people go, oh no, it's data, it's math. But that's not necessarily truth, right? There is so many holes that can always be poked in information. And you as a storyteller have to be trustworthy for them to believe you. And ultimately you are also not just competing with, you know, the actual numbers, you're competing with all of their pre existing ideas around what should be happening, right? So if you're telling them something that, you know, people have opinions already going into meetings of what should be happening, right. Or what they think the information should mean, right? And you as a storyteller are working with all of these different people, all these different opinions, and you're trying to unite them. So you have to be the leader. And the best way to kind of gain this authority is to disarm in the beginning by letting everybody in on the same page, right? Connecting in a human way.

Speaker B: So I'm going to pause, I'm going to take a step back and go to the pre meeting. I think that's totally right. It builds trust. How can we build trust? Pre meeting And I'll, I'm going to keep on using the analogy of like a theater or a play because fuck it, let's just go that way. The playbill, when you're sitting in your seat, you're reading the playbill. It's like a pamphlet and it has interesting photos. It talks about the actors and their stuff. Is there something to like a pre meeting that will help build trust, disarm Keep people involved. Should we be doing more pre meeting work to set the stage, pun intended, better for when we actually have some of these complex data conversations?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think like having some level of what the meeting is going to be about, like, like a playbill, right. Where you get the information about the show, you get all the songs that are going to be sung. Right. You get all of this information up. That helps build credibility. But you know, people walk into a, uh, Broadway show, most of them knowing that this might be something that they want to see, you know, versus a stakeholder meeting, which you still need to build something that you're assuming everybody is going to get value out of. Right. That's the same as a show. They're trusting you to provide value when they go into a meeting. So your first step, and this is, you know, when, before we started talking, we started talking a little bit about like how to make sure people get value or you can actually take action out of data. And the first step in that is always not necessarily stakeholder meeting. Right. Because yes, it's good to involve people to, you know, understand what they get value out of. But you yourself as a data engineer should be able to look at something like a website and say, what are they asking people to do? What is the point? What is the actions that they want? What kind of business is this? Does the website reflect clearly the actions that the business wants people to do? Right. And if it does, then how can we capture that in a way that is very clear so that we can show the stakeholders that we go into this meeting with what's actually happening based off of what they're doing and is the data accurate for that? And so starting there of using your common sense and saying, okay, what do people want to see? Just like when you're writing a musical, just like when you're writing a play, what do people, what's an interesting story? What do people want to see? And then making sure you create high quality data, uh, that help show that story that you're trying to present will prepare you for when you get into a meeting to say, this is what you should be caring about, because this is what you're asking people to do. And I think a lot of times people skip that and go right to stakeholder meetings and they're like, what do you guys think is valuable? And here's what people don't tell you. A lot of times they don't know. Stakeholders need your help to say, this is what you should be caring about because this is what you're actually asking people to do.

Speaker B: When you present data that's not interesting or valuable to them, or you present a perspective that's not interesting or valuable to them, the upstream, downstream, whatever, wherever is the root cause is. It's that lack of trust or what, Sorry, it's not upstream or downstream. It's the result of that will be a, uh, decrease in trust. If you're saying, I don't like, if you're talking to some. And this is true with websites too, by the way. If you're like trying to sell a mattress and what you're selling is the AI features in the mattress, not like, hey, it's comfortable, you're going to get good sleep, it's cost effective. There's a guarantee. If you're talking about all the AI features in your mattress, like, uh, not everyone's going to be like, okay, this is good. And that's a decrease in trust, which means they'll ultimately not want to listen to you or they won't care. That's like the downstream effects. They also mentioned something about your stakeholders and like the data and how you present it to them. Sometimes they might tell you something, but they might not even communicate. And you're doing your job badly if you're finding these things out or you're getting resistance in a broader meeting rather than connecting with those stakeholders off, you know, not in a big meeting and one on one. I think that's why one of the most underrated things, when I'd say any CRO, product manager, product owner, the most underrated thing is literally building relationships and understanding these people's perspective. When you're onboarding and starting a new job or when new people come in, getting some time and booking, it's. And you could shoot the shit. You can literally talk about your dogs for 20 minutes. And that's totally cool. I've done that. That work, I mean, I'm not saying it works is like trying to manipulate people, but like it's helped me build good relationships with showing cute puppy photos, because what sociopath doesn't like cute puppy photos? But like it is building this relationship to where it shouldn't necessarily be. The biggest surprise when you're presenting some of these meetings in the bigger stakeholder meetings, I think, uh. Would you agree with that? Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah. I mean it's, it's trust and authority. Right? Those, those are the two big things. When going into presentation, there's many different ways that you can lose trust. Right. One is not having a good relationship with your stakeholders. Another is Presenting bad information. Another is like, not having it laid out well, so it's confusing to them, right? Another is, like, not treating them like people whose opinions actually matter, right? Then there's also authority, right? You need to be able to present this information in a way that says, I'm the expert, right? But I value you, right? And I'm providing this to provide value for you, but you should listen to me. And that's where, you know, it's the combination of trust and authority. Because if you just have the authority, then you risk isolating the group, right? You risk, like, kind of being like, they're not going to pay attention to you because you're trying to one up them or, you know, trying to, you know, be the alpha in the room, right? You want to bring everybody in. And then also, if you just have the trust but no authority, then you get stomped on, right? And then, like, even if you present good information, it might get totally warped into a different direction because the other people's opinions matter more, right? And so, like, you can lose them in that way. So it's kind of that combination of, um, I know what I'm doing. I'm interpreting what you're asking me and building my own value by taking what you're asking me and doing it in the way that I know as an expert should be done, and then presenting it in a way that is received, you know, really valuably because you've built that trust in the room.

Speaker B: Uh, you mentioned trust and you mentioned authority. And I think those are really important pieces in helping you. Getting. Not for me to be, but getting from data to action. From D to A. Mhm. From D to A, baby, from D to A. I shouldn't. I gotta make new stickers, I guess. Like, what about confidence in this? Because there's a fine line of presenting data confidently and just being an arrogant asshole, right? So, like, what's the line of presenting the data with confidence that people should trust you versus almost just like, shoving it down their throat. Tell me how to thread that needle. Post production Shiva here. If you could do me a huge favor and subscribe to our newsletter. It's from A to B. B Hive B E H I I V dot com. That'd be amazing. I'm gonna have a companion newsletter for this episode and it's gonna plug everything that Josh does. He does some really cool stuff. He's on Spotify anyway. Really cool stuff. There's gonna be a companion for this that I think y' all should make sure you get first Access to. So from a to b hyive b e e h I I v.com now let's get back to the show.

Speaker A: This is kind of like where the authority conversation is too, right? It's like you go into a meeting and you know that you are the expert, but if you go in and you just hammer down on them, then you lose that audience because it becomes an us versus you. Or sorry, us versus them. Right. Or me versus you. You can be incredibly confident while being a leader that invites conversation. And the more you interact and you treat people like their opinions matter, that you're listening, you're empathetic, but also you go in there and you say, I know I stand on this hill, right? This is because I, I am the expert in the room. You include. It's inclusive, which helps them feel like they can trust you again. Right? So it goes back to trust and you're able to get the information across because you feel you are confident and you are speaking to something that you know is right. And yes, there might be some pushback, pullback, but ultimately there's respect on both sides that help sell the story.

Speaker B: I love the framing of us versus them. Um, I'm sorry, I hate that framing because that's bad. We shouldn't have enough versus that mentality. Right? Like it should be a team sport. We are all in the same boat. We might not be on the same sides of the boat, we might not have the same oars, but we all should be rowing in the same direction. This is more of a complex political question. I'm going to phrase this without trying to be passive aggressive, but it's going to come off super passive aggressive. Not to you, just to like people in general. Like there are some people who. It is us versus them. Like that's, that's their. They're in survival mode. That's their perception. And no amount of working with them will, or I guess, how might we work with them to remove that us versus them? Um, besides some of these conversations around trust, how else do we present that like, we're on your team? The data might not tell you that your idea is good, but I'm telling it to you, I'm presenting it to you, I'm trying to work with you because we should be rolling in the same direction. And even though I'm presenting something that maybe it's perceived that I'm taking you off in a different direction and I'm going to screw you over. I promise that's not it. Ah, like what? Why? How might I work on that relationship and communicate. Break down the us versus them.

Speaker A: Sometimes with agencies it's really tough because an agency wants to look good and clients know that agencies want to look good. Right. So the way that they present information oftentimes is in a way that makes them look good even if they're not doing good. Right. Like, oh, let's tell the story this way so that we look better. Right. Even if the numbers aren't good, reflective or like pay media is down or something like that. The best thing you can do always is to tell the truth so that you're working together on something. If things aren't going well, you don't spin the story so that you look good. You lean into this is what we're seeing that's potentially problematic. How can we work together as a group to address this? You are losing share because this competitor is doing this or that competitor is doing that, or we have, you know, some, um, people aren't searching this term as much as they were three months ago. How do we adjust together as a group, as one, so that we can solve this issue together? People a lot of times don't trust the agency relationship because they're being paid to look good. I think it's really important again for trust. If you have a bad month, you lean into saying that. And how are you going to address it together?

Speaker B: I know we've kind of talked about telling a good story when it comes to data to action. Keeping people involved, keeping them feeling valued, building trust with those stakeholders, knowing them, talking to them privately. What else am I missing?

Speaker A: Quality. The quality of the data itself, you know, which we, uh, you know, tend to overlook. Right. Like many, many times when I go into audit, something people are using words like conversions. Conversions. Oh yeah, we have, we got 10 conversions last month. What does that even mean to everybody? You go in there, that's 10 different types of metrics that are included in that. Some of them are get direction clicks, some of them are demo submits. Those are very different. So when we're talking about conversions, people are all thinking about it in different ways. Oh, like 10 people in the room, they assume that that means 10 demo submits. Other people are assuming that they're calls.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It's very important when you're presenting information to be very specific about what's happening. We got, uh, 10 demo submits because that's the primary thing that people care about. It's just very important to one understand the quality of not just understanding that everybody has the same definitions of things, but Also, you're validating that the data that you have is truth too, right? If I'm saying that there's 10 demo submits and I'm getting that information from Google Analytics, I'm also validating in somebody's HubSpot or in somebody's CRM because that's what they're looking at. And so you want to make sure those numbers line up. So there's a lot of making sure this data is accurate before going in a room and saying something, because that's one way that you will lose trust immediately. And then you go, oh, well we have to check. Oh, we didn't check that. Okay. You know, and that's something that is hard to come back from because once something doesn't make sense, then you start being like, now I have to go an uphill battle where something that I present, they'll have to be like, well, are you sure that's true?

Speaker B: I love that. I mean, and I hate it at times because that's like, I do my best to try and sanity check every data point that I present to anyone. And by the way, this is a really great use case for AI. I found like having AI look at a deck and play like the challenger role or like stress test the results. That's a really cool use case that I've had a lot of success with. To your point, like, I've seen this happen. Uh, thankfully it hasn't happened to me yet. I guess I gotta go find somewhere to knock on it. But I've watched this where you're in a meeting with like a senior leader and then as they're going through the results, a senior leader is like, wait a minute here you said conversion rate increased by 2%, but here you're saying it's 7%. So like, what's the number? When you think about it, maybe there's some nuance or context differences, or maybe it's a copy and paste error, or maybe it's a date range. But like, if you don't have that answer and you don't clearly explain the differences of the context. To your point, some bells are really hard to unring and that's a really fucking hard one.

Speaker A: And it could be true. Like you could be presenting, this is Google Ads and this is Google Analytics. But even if you, even if it is true, the fact that there's two different numbers automatically, like a lot of times those higher level leaders, they don't give a shit about different types of software and why, like they are different. Oh, uh, this is you know, well, Google Ads counts it this way. And then Google, they don't care. They don't want to hear that. They just want single numbers and no context of like, this is what it's doing. So you have to also be careful. Even if you are presenting true information that you know the room enough to be like, okay, this is not going to, people are going to glaze over if you start to have to explain why this is 2% and why that's 7%. Right? And so again, that's relationship management. Knowing your audience, knowing how they're going to receive information and being selective in how you present things.

Speaker B: So, okay, I love this and I'm going to play the other side and I want you to defend this. Is there some value in overwhelming people like a machine gun with a, ah, shit ton of data, so they shut the fuck up because here's the side I'll play. And I think there's. I'm not saying do this, I'm not, do not blindly do this, but sometimes there's some value in just coming off so smart, so well read, so nerdy that they're like, oh, they get it. I'm, uh, going to shut up because they clearly know their shit. Is there some value in that?

Speaker A: I mean, I do that all the time. Um, I mean, like when you go into a room and you start explaining everything and oh, this, this, you know, sometimes people are just be like, great, you got it, right? But then there's going to be other ones who are like, I don't want to hear this shit. Like, just tell me an answer. It's, it's really like knowing again, knowing the room, knowing the type of people in the room. I have one type of client who, like, if you start doing that, they shut down and they're like, I don't, like, you're not, you're not explaining things.

Speaker B: I don't get it.

Speaker A: Okay, is it up or down?

Speaker B: Up or down? Right?

Speaker A: And like that loses them. And I have another type of client who you just start presenting all this stuff and they're like, you got it, you know your shit. I'm not going to say anything. Right? And so, yeah, there is, there is a value in depending on the type of person, like, you know, over explaining, over, you know, delivering and yeah, I mean, uh, it can make your life easier or it can make your life harder. You just have to know the audience.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's something to consider. I'm not saying spray and pray because sometimes it's not gonna, it's gonna backfire sometimes. But there are opportunities when maybe you need to flex that a little bit. Um, I was, as you were talking, I was like, I wonder if at the end of the day I forget, I forget where this came from. But it was like, we're always, we're always selling something and like in some ways we're selling insights, data. Maybe some of us are also selling decisions in some way. But what's core to like sales as a process is knowing. And we kind of going back to like stakeholder management and knowing what makes them tick and not. There's some stakeholders who are like directors, VPs I've talked to who fucking love nerding out on insights and data and stats and experimentation. A, B, testing, right? And there are some who could not be further away from that. And they're like, I just say green or red. Are we good or are we not good? If we're not good, what do I need to do? And subtle, uh, plug to a past episode we did with kelly hopping, who's CMO at, uh, 6 sense now she's like, I just trust my people when they tell me that something's not going good. What do you need me to do to make it go from red to green? If you have a path to get to green, go do it and tell me if it got green. And if not, if it's red and you need help, tell me what you need to do. So it's like trying to suss that part out. Pre big meetings conversations I think will help you have those conversations because I think that's. In some ways I think that's the worst thing that could happen is like, you're in a meeting with someone who, you know, loves to nerd out and you didn't pre prepare that, like, talk track of that conversation. You might be able to like, get ahead of the curve if you give some generic information. But you're like, ah, ah, that guy loves nerding out. I should know that for this 3% conversion rate lift, is it going to ask, is it stat sigma? I know it's static. I have the number. I'm going to put it in the comments section and I'm good to go.

Speaker A: Yeah. And for those who, you know, like, love to nerd out, you can always sidetrack and go and look at the data together. And like, you know, that's one way too of like, showing your authority is like managing the software itself and like going into the software and showing them where these things exist and like, you know, building credibility that way as well, as opposed to it just being a presentation. The first thing that I ever do with a client is present a video of me going through their website, nga4, and showing what's working and what's not working. What opportunities could be good for them to track what's not tracking. Well, and it's a video. It's me going through the actual website and showing them why things are not working and what they could do about it. That presents authority right away, presents trust. And it allows them to see that I know what I'm talking about, right? In a way that they get in a way that, like, is very visual and very, you know, like, I'm bringing you in, I'm showing you. You can follow me along, right? And this is a way right away to establish some kind of rapport around. I know what I'm talking about. But you were able to understand it, and I'm bringing you in.

Speaker B: I so fucking love that. I had this happen recently, and my buddy who works at Mazda, shout out, Kumar, you'll love this. That I'm shouting out Mazda for this. I know other people do. This isn't like a Mazda. Uh, paid me for this. If you want to pay me, we'll talk offline. But what Mazda does, when you get, like, oil changes or work done, they'll have a technician and, like, the technology. They have the technician to, like, record.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, I have a Mazda. I get those videos. Yeah.

Speaker B: And it's like, hey, here's your oil levels. It looks good. Here's your windshield wiper fluid. We went around the car. Look at the tire pressure. Looks good. Here's the tread. Looks good. And like, I so fucking love that. Uh, because going back to, like, problem focus, the problem you're solving is people might not necessarily inherently trust. You might have authority, you might have confidence, but it's just an extra nudge to be, like, to your point, authenticity and like, I'm, um, telling you the truth, dog. I'm not hiding anything. Versus, unfortunately, I think a lot of car mechanics and car stuff in general has a tendency to be like, oh, you need an oil change, and you have this broken and this broken. Give me $10,000 to fix it. And it's like, uh, no, I don't believe you. I don't believe you. Because I think the industry as a whole has been kind of ruined by bad faith actors, let's say. But you're channeling that energy into what you do. Literally going under the hood of the website and being like, here's the stuff that I'm looking at. Here's the stuff that I see problems with. Here's what I would test. So much trust. That's such a cool fucking idea. Any consultant who's selling CRO steal this idea. That's fucking incredible. I love that. Also, it puts a human on the face, too.

Speaker A: Oh, totally. Right. Because if you just do that in a deck, right? Like, AI could do it, right? And you're always combating with AI now, too. So, like, I mean, I've been doing this for years before, AI was a thing, but even now, it's even more important because anyone can put together a deck now of what's wrong. Anyone can put together a presentation or a strategy on a piece of paper. What sets you apart is you. And so if you can present you immediately, then they have nothing that says, oh, well, this is, you know, this guy's not legit, or, this guy's just using AI. Or just, you know, this is you and showing your expertise and showing them that you can help them understand it too. Because that's also a problem with AI is you get these long documents and you're like, here you go. And they're like, whoa, okay, I guess this is right. And then you have AI reading those documents and then responding. It's just like. It's all bullshit.

Speaker B: The cool part about what you do is it's unfalsifiable, too. Like, you're going under the hood. You're showing the thing. It's not like I'm making a, uh. This is why I talked to Rishi about this in another episode. Like, I don't love heuristic audits where they don't have any access to the data. And it's like a vibe spaced audit. It's like, hey, I don't like this headline. And it's like, dog, you're not even our icp. Like, uh, like, you can make that observation, but it's so not backed in data. But what you're doing is it's unfalsifiable. You're like, hey, this is a choke point. Here's the data that shows a choke point. And here's some other corroborating data that maybe this is an interesting idea to explore and maybe let's prioritize it. Here's some inspiration for how other people are solving that problem. Like, I love all of that. That's incredible. I, uh, know we're coming up near the end of this, but one thing I want to explore as, like, the last topic here we talk about dashboards. Dashboards is such an interesting topic because a lot of times dashboards are just a colorful way of telling you things. And in some ways dashboards might actually foster less data to action. In some ways it might be more, depends on who you're talking to and what they're doing, but sometimes it's less. What's your opinion on? I'm not saying, heck, maybe it's just like, what's your opinion on dashboards? But like, how might we use dashboards intelligently to help us move from data to action rather than dashboard looks green, we don't need to change a thing because numbers go up. You know what I mean?

Speaker A: As an analytics specialist, everybody wants a dashboard. Everybody wants to have something that they can look at themselves. That is basically a snack. It's a snack. Does it provide you sustenance? Probably not. It's a snack, right? But everybody wants to be able to have a snack. When, when they feel like having a snack, you go and you get yourself a snack, right? And that's very important. But you still need breakfast, lunch and dinner, right? And that is where presentations come in, right? That is where you are going into the information and you are finding what actually matters and saying, this is the action that we need to take. This is what we should do with this information. You still need insights, you still need these things that you're presenting and to get anything meaningful out of, but to be like, we're not going to provide you a dashboard. Good luck with that. Because everybody wants to have a snack.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. I think to your point, like sustenance, it's something that's like a snack, but it's not going to get you over the hill. You still have to do something with it. You can't have snacks all the time and live a full, fulfilling life, but it'll help you move towards the next meal. Um, that's how we should.

Speaker A: And it's empowering, right? If you want to have a snack, you know, you go and you get a snack, right? Like it's, it's something that feels like you have access to the data in a way that like you didn't before. You have like some top line metrics which are like, you know, this is, you know, up, this is down, but you don't really have the why. The why is the important part, which is, you know what, you can take

Speaker B: action out of the last, the follow up last one is, I'm sure you've never dealt with this in your entire life. Sometimes dashboards can be a little bit misleading because they're too top line. It's like peeking at a test early. Sometimes too much information is bad because it empowers bad decisions to feel confidently being made when they shouldn't be. I've dealt with this. I'm sure you've dealt with this. Someone sees a dashboard and then it's like, oh my God, we're down 70% in conversion rate today. What are we going to do to fix this? And it's like, dog, it's 9:00am um, like, let's not be reactive to dashboards. I'm sure part of it's more of like a cultural political answer, which is like, people just have to be shitty, uh, less shitty sometimes if you're dealing with someone who's a dashboard reactor. I like that. I'm going to trademark that. What do you do? What do you do?

Speaker A: You just threatened to take their link away.

Speaker B: You know, honestly, that might be the best solution.

Speaker A: Look, guys, if we can't react to this data in an organized fashion, I'm going to have to take your link away. I'm sorry, you know, no, everyone. Oh, don't take my link away.

Speaker B: Oh no.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's put him in the place a little bit.

Speaker B: I forgot who I talked to. I think it was Taz. And it was like sometimes we just have to treat stakeholders like they're babies.

Speaker A: Mm mhm. Don't take my link away.

Speaker B: You know, they're whining with the rattle and it's like we're taking it away. You can't trust you with this.

Speaker A: You've had too many snacks today. I'm going to take away your link.

Speaker B: I love that. That's uh, a, that's a very fun way to end this. Josh. One of a kind. Silverbauer. Thank you so much for joining. Some stuff to plug. You are on LinkedIn so a link will be in your description. Go follow from the future. If you want to talk to Josh, if you want to see some behind the scenes videos or not behind the scenes. If you want to watch Josh do some like audits of your site and pay him to do it. I love that idea. So that's going to be a clip that we're going to share for free. But you could trust him because he's, he's doing you the thing. He's showing it to you behind the scenes. I love that.

Speaker A: And I do those for free. I do those for free. Just to show you that I know what I'm talking about.

Speaker B: That's amazing. I love that. That's. Man, that's incredibly valid. I'm going to gas you up a little bit because that's like, people pay for that. Like, people pay a lot of money for that. So instead of the AI slop where they don't have access to your data and it's just like, top ten bullshit best practices. Go talk to Josh. Go do an audit. It's free. Why not? And then on a personal note, you're doing, like, rock operas. That's so sick. I love that. Is there, is there a YouTube channel that we could find these? Or is there a Spotify? Where do we find these?

Speaker A: Yeah, so on Spotify, you can find them at Josh, uh, Silverbauer and Friends. That's. That's the band, uh, name that has all of that stuff. It's all, like, analytics kind of themed. It's. It's a weird story about an alien who has to get, uh, to a new universe. But it's all based off of, like, universal analytics on set. It's. It's convoluted, but go there, listen to it. It's very good. And, uh, analyical is my YouTube channel, so you can go there and find me there.

Speaker B: I love that those links will be in the description. So go check it out, go follow. Uh, I love it. It's just more stuff to get nerdy in our industry. And obviously that's who you are, so one of a kind. Josh Silverbauer, thank you so much for joining.