How do you collect the right data for your business, and once you have it, how should you respond? In this episode, Path for Growth coach Matt Aiken joins the podcast to talk about a data-driven approach to leadership. He shares 5 key principles for growing your business based on data. Matt and Alex also share a new perspective for leaders who might feel less comfortable with numbers and figures, reminding us that good data is ultimately telling a story.
----------------------------------- Information isn’t the gap between failure and success—action is. Path for Growth’s 1-on-1 coaching helps you create a plan and execute on what matters most for your business. Apply today at pathforgrowth.com/coaching. -----------------------------------
Episode Recap:
Why is data-driven business so important to you?
If you’re uncomfortable with the concept of data, think of it as a story
What gets measured gets managed
Bridging the knowing/doing gap requires proactive leadership
Wise strategy is rooted in healthy single-mindedness
Wisdom does not come from experience, it comes from evaluated experience
Decisions are bets, not certainties
Tomatoes are fruits, but don’t put them in a fruit salad!
----------------------------------- If you’re ready to move beyond just gathering information and start executing on what truly matters, Path for Growth’s 1-on-1 coaching can help. Apply now at pathforgrowth.com/coaching. -----------------------------------
How do you collect the right data for your business, and once you have it, how should you respond? In this episode, Path for Growth coach Matt Aiken joins the podcast to talk about a data-driven approach to leadership. He shares 5 key principles for growing your business based on data. Matt and Alex also share a new perspective for leaders who might feel less comfortable with numbers and figures, reminding us that good data is ultimately telling a story.
----------------------------------- Information isn’t the gap between failure and success—action is. Path for Growth’s 1-on-1 coaching helps you create a plan and execute on what matters most for your business. Apply today at pathforgrowth.com/coaching. -----------------------------------
Episode Recap:
Why is data-driven business so important to you?
If you’re uncomfortable with the concept of data, think of it as a story
What gets measured gets managed
Bridging the knowing/doing gap requires proactive leadership
Wise strategy is rooted in healthy single-mindedness
Wisdom does not come from experience, it comes from evaluated experience
Decisions are bets, not certainties
Tomatoes are fruits, but don’t put them in a fruit salad!
----------------------------------- If you’re ready to move beyond just gathering information and start executing on what truly matters, Path for Growth’s 1-on-1 coaching can help. Apply now at pathforgrowth.com/coaching. -----------------------------------
Matt, you're a small business owner yourself. You're also one of our one on one coaches that helps guide small business owners around the country. Why is this topic of data driven business something that you're so passionate about?
Matt Aiken:
Yeah. When you first asked me this question, my my mind was spinning and racing. I was like, why? Well, it's just like the why is something that's formed over decades of small instances and reinforcements of seeing data, playing with data, and watching it shape and impact my life. I I always grew up around computers.
Matt Aiken:
I remember when I was a a young kid, my dad had a a PC for, like up in the office and I'd go up and I'd play games and trying to navigate that. And and so pretty early on, figured out like, and there's so many things you can do with a computer. And what's a computer? Organized data. And so spent so many years playing with it, seeing the impact of it, whether it's in school or just in my personal life.
Matt Aiken:
And then kind of in my formative post college years, I started realizing how many great decisions were based on great data. And and I think, like Netflix in particular, right? One of one of my favorite stories. I used to spend hours in Blockbuster and, you know, it's so sad that they're not around anymore, but but who's actually saying that other than me? No one.
Matt Aiken:
Why? Blockbuster and Netflix were looking at the same data. Mhmm. Like, how long are people keeping their their DVDs? And they were like, oh, longer and longer and longer.
Matt Aiken:
And the reason we have Netflix today is because in the way that we do. Right? Because remember, they used to be this this mail in, you know, you get your two oh, you get two DVDs at a time, three DVDs at a time. They started realizing, like, people were holding them forever. And Blockbuster said, oh, this is great.
Matt Aiken:
Late fees. And what did Netflix say? This is odd. Is behavior changing? And so that's when they launched the subscription model and and put put Blockbuster in the gray that they're in in today.
Matt Aiken:
So it's just a long history of playing with it, feeling comfortable with it, and then just the stories of all the impacts it's had just, like, driven that passion in me.
Alex Judd:
I love that you referenced that case study too, because something that I haven't thought about is the idea that they both had the same data that they were both looking at the same thing. It's the way that they responded to the data that really mattered. So I think part of what we're getting into into these couple episodes, it seems like, is both the process of getting the right data because that in itself is a hurdle for small business. But then once you have it, how do you respond to the data that you have and maybe even equip your team to respond to the data that they're seeing? Does that feel right?
Matt Aiken:
Yeah. I was on a customer call working with one of my businesses who she and I had been talking about a KPI dashboard for about three months. And We finally were like, Let's get on the phone. What's blocking us from this? Thinking through, What's going on?
Alex Judd:
She was like, I
Matt Aiken:
know I need it. I just don't know what I need. Can we start building it? I was like, Well, no. Why?
Matt Aiken:
Like, is this important? We had to start with the why and and and start to use those principles to to steer and shape the conversation towards, really loving what access we have to to great information.
Alex Judd:
That's so good. And I think it really sets us up for today's conversation because even by having the word data in an episode title, we run the risk of all the visionary creative leaders checking out and be like, oh, that episode's not for me. But what's so cool is I think I am a little bit more creative, I see the word data, and I veer away and say, okay, I'm avoiding that topic, right? That's how I'm wired. And I think you might even say to a degree, you can be wired that way too.
Alex Judd:
However, when I remind myself of like, Okay, what is data? Data is done properly is a really compelling story about the present that can help us make decisions and assumptions about the future, well, then I actually start to get more passionate about this topic that can be really dry. So with that, can you set us up for the content that we're going to walk through today and what people should expect to get out of it?
Matt Aiken:
Yeah. Well, I mean, today we're really focused on the why. Like, why should you care about data? And and maybe even to a to a greater extent, why thinking about data properly through the lens of principles and not a set of rules or a checklist is so powerful for taking your business from where it is to where you want it to go. What are the mindsets or the guideposts that help us veer and navigate through the creative aspect of data?
Alex Judd:
That's right. And let's define principles for people because we have a specific definition that we use at principles. We say it's a concisely worded statement of truth circumstance. We say that if you want to make someone's day better, help them solve a problem. If you want to make someone's life better or the totality of their business better, help them learn a principle.
Alex Judd:
And so what we're going to do today is not say, hey, this is the cookie cutter data you need to go get for your business today, because that is a very well, it's a pragmatic approach. It's really just a tactical solution to what really we want to give you is a greater awareness and understanding of what is possible if you, and by extension, your team, start thinking about data in a principled manner. And so that's really our aim and goal and objective out of walking through these five principles. And unfortunately, I didn't include as one of the questions for our episode, Matt, is it pronounced data or data? And so I think you and I are just going to interchange both, and we're going to say that either works.
Alex Judd:
Does that feel good to you?
Matt Aiken:
Yeah. That sounds great to me. You you schooled me, when we first talked about this episode. You were like, why do you call it data? And I was like, well, uh-oh, Google.
Matt Aiken:
I went and got the data that that's how you can have data. I know.
Alex Judd:
I we had that conversation and then like literally now I hear you use it as data all the time and now I see myself using it. And so I don't know, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pirates of the Caribbean, I'm not sure. Data, data, tomato, tomato, right? Very Okay. With that, let's jump into principle number one.
Alex Judd:
What's the first principle people need need to understand?
Matt Aiken:
Yeah. And I I mean, this is probably one of the most well known quotes in and around data from Peter Drucker. Right? What gets measured gets managed. That's the that's the first principle.
Matt Aiken:
And and and this principle gets thrown around a lot. And so I wanna make sure, like, what we're talking about is, again, the principle of it. Like, okay. What what what gets measured gets managed? This is not a a rally call to measure everything.
Matt Aiken:
What is it? It's measuring what matters most. And when you measure what matters most, you and your team can manage that outcome, that success that is getting measured. And so, yeah, that's that's the principle. I mean, you're a big Peter Drucker fan.
Matt Aiken:
Is there any other quote you've heard from Peter more so than this one?
Alex Judd:
Probably not. No. It sounds way better with his Austrian accent than in your accent, unfortunately, Matt. But we'll stick with your accent for this episode. Yeah.
Alex Judd:
But here's what stands out to me as it relates to this quote in this context. We work with so many small business owners that a hunger that they have and I've been there too is that like, man, I start these things, and they prove to be successful, but then we can't sustain the success of this project, of this business unit, of this product or service unless I'm attending to it. And they're kind of saying like, I wish I could look away and go do other things, and this thing could still be successful. What you're really saying there is I wish this would be managed. I wanted to start and lead things, and I wish we could manage this well.
Alex Judd:
And sometimes we think, oh, that's a personnel problem. And in reality, I think it's actually a process problem in that we go and start the thing, it becomes successful, but then we don't define, hey, what has made this successful and how do we measure that? We don't ask that question, and therefore, because we don't know how to measure success, we can't provide those clues to the person that we're assigning to manage it, and therefore they might be doing the best they can, but they don't even know what to manage. So I think that's actually a very hyper practical application of this principle for the small business owners that we work with.
Matt Aiken:
Yeah. I mean, just the idea of ownership. I want my people to own it. I want them to and I go, own what? I want them to own this task.
Matt Aiken:
Well, like, if they own the task and you didn't get the outcome you were looking for, would that still matter? You know, they start scratching their head. And so that's why what gets measured gets managed. And so, you know, there's there's really, like, three categories for this that that Drucker teaches, and I've seen over and over and over again. When you measure something, what are you doing?
Matt Aiken:
You're getting clear. You're getting clear on on the result, or the the the rate at which you're successful in certain areas of the business. Right? You get clear and everyone can see it. That's the number.
Matt Aiken:
It's clear. It's visible. I can see it on a report, on a dashboard, or in our conversation. Hey. What's, what's the conversion rate?
Matt Aiken:
What's their retention rate? Hey, what's our net income? You you get that number and everyone can see it and then go, okay. K. I can I can I get it?
Matt Aiken:
That's that's where we're that's where we are. And so then that creates a second thing. It creates a culture of alignment. And this is something like you you can't miss. It doesn't happen on its own.
Matt Aiken:
But when you see a number, you, a business owner, go, this is why the number is the number. But if you don't say it out loud and you don't tell it or preach it to the team, well, they might have their own thought. And so what does it create? If I think that retention is, you know, where it is because of x y z and you think it it's there because of a a b c, what do we have? We have misalignment.
Matt Aiken:
We are clear on the number, but are we aligned on the why behind it? And so like when you start measuring things, you want people to manage it, but we're managing our expectations. Why is that number the way it is? And when you start having that conversation, the third thing happens. You start creating this culture of a continuous improvement.
Matt Aiken:
How do we get the number from where it is? Because we've agreed that's the number. Now we've probably agreed. We think this is why the number is the way it is. Okay.
Matt Aiken:
Well, what do we do about it? And so that's where the managed piece comes in as people start taking action on the the clear data that's provided.
Alex Judd:
And something that strikes me there is, like, we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about how, as a leader, man, you really step into your most powerful role when you can play the role of coach for the people that you lead. But in the absence of clear aim and clear measurement as it relates to how we're doing on that aim, so clear picture of here, clear picture of there, it's really hard to ask questions because we're basically like, we don't know where we're going. We don't know where we are, so we're kind of just chatting at that point. Whereas whenever we contextualize this in the terms of the journey that we have both opted into, well, then I can ask really great questions about how can we go from here to there. Okay, Let's go to principle number two.
Matt Aiken:
So second principle, a little bit of Stephen Covey here. Like, bridging the knowing doing gap requires proactive leadership. Okay? So if that if that principle is true, then you're gonna see yourself in one of two ways. I'm either more on the knowing side or I'm more on the doing side.
Matt Aiken:
Well, what does great leadership require? It requires you to proactively bridge that gap. So often when I sit with leaders on this, they, you know, hey, Alex, what data do we have? Like, let's dive in. Let's figure out what's going on.
Matt Aiken:
And you're going, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's just go get some stuff done. Like, let's go knocking now. Let's get after it. Let's go do.
Matt Aiken:
And then there's someone else on your team like, woah, woah, woah, woah, how do we know we're doing the right thing? And so proactive leaders bridge this knowing doing gap in a proactive manner. And data helps you do
Alex Judd:
Yeah, so can you explain for us what is the knowing person? The person that's more predisposed to like, hey, I'm going to aim for knowing first versus the person that's predisposed to doing. Let's make that really clear. And then I would love to know which one are you more predisposed to and which one are the business owners that you work with around the country? Is there a trend that you see they're more predisposed to?
Matt Aiken:
Yeah. I'll start with your second question first. And this is really coming back to our Being a Strategic Thinker podcast series we did back in the fall. Are you more visionary or strategic? Was it strategic or tactical?
Matt Aiken:
That's right. And so oftentimes I find that the people that find themselves more vision oriented, more strategic oriented, They're the ones that want to know the data or at least they're going to define where they want to be. They're going to have a number, a target in mind. And so they're often that vision strategic side versus that tactical side, that doing side, they've got that bent towards, I don't care what the data says, this is my aim, this is my target, I'm going in, I gotta get after it. We're gonna do the do.
Matt Aiken:
And so what is knowing? Knowing is having an understanding, right, knowledge and an understanding around what is reality. What is the data telling me? And what is the data versus the doing side is like, how do we execute at a really, really high level? We're gonna go do this.
Matt Aiken:
And I've seen people on both sides be successful. So so to be clear, there's not one that's better than the other. Although I think if you ask people in that camp, which one's better, they everyone's gonna say, you know, their camp is better. But, yeah, for me, I definitely, have a bent towards that that knowing side because it's really fun to look and to see and to know and then have confidence in the doing side assuming you can execute at a high level.
Alex Judd:
Yeah. That's so interesting. I think for me, it depends on the arena. But I think this podcast is actually a great example where we started this podcast I mean, shortly after we started the business, a a dear friend of mine, Zach Way, reached out and said, hey. I think y'all should have a podcast.
Alex Judd:
And, like, I'll do it I'll do all the work for you for free if if you we just get up and running. We're like, okay. Well, that's definitely a doing mindset. I said, we're not going to do it for free, but that's awesome. Let's go for it.
Alex Judd:
And at that time, if you had asked me, how many downloads do you want to get a month? And how are you going to go about getting those downloads? Or even how many downloads did you get this week? I would have been like, I have no clue, and I don't care. We're doing a podcast, right?
Alex Judd:
And there was so much joy and also fruitfulness in just doing the podcast, and so we were certainly doing oriented. But we are now seeing the value and validity of saying, okay, let's kind of make up for some of the knowing that we didn't do at that time. And it's not because we're in this toxic growth, like we have to do this, otherwise this podcast is a waste of time. But the data I'm learning is like, oh, is a really valuable way to see like which episodes are actually providing value to leaders and how can we amplify the things that are serving people well. And I'm just having so much fun looking at what the data is telling us about how each episode is performing, and we're looking at seven day downloads and thirty day downloads.
Alex Judd:
And it's like we're kind of bridging that knowing doing gap. And so it sounds like what you're saying is exactly that. It's like it's okay to have a propensity towards one or the other, but there does become a time where you can't always just do, you need to know, or you can't always just know, obviously you have to do.
Matt Aiken:
Yeah, and what's so fun, right? What's what's the principle requires proactive leadership. Proactive leadership doesn't necessarily mean you doing it yourself because there's probably people on your team that have a bent to the other side of that. The person that has been looking at data with you likes looking at the data. We were we did a public workshop yesterday, and and his first question was, who came?
Matt Aiken:
How many people? How were they broken down? Were they qualified? And so he was he was what was he doing? He was trying to harvest and collect the knowing side so that he could then bridge the gap to the what do we do now side of things.
Alex Judd:
Yeah. So good. Okay. Let's go to principle number three.
Matt Aiken:
Principle number three, wise strategy is rooted in healthy single mindedness. I've seen this, in my company. I you know, in addition to being a coach here, I also have an ownership stake and take an active role in a board game publishing company. And and so often in this creative landscape of making board games, there's so much we could do. And honestly, there's been many seasons where we have maybe gotten distracted.
Matt Aiken:
Right? Distraction. You said this yesterday. Distraction. We've lost traction because we didn't have this healthy single mindedness.
Matt Aiken:
And and so data helps us do that if it's visible, present, repeatable. Right? Okay. Cool. We know we could do all these other things, but what have we committed to?
Matt Aiken:
Well, we've committed to these set of metrics.
Alex Judd:
Mhmm. Yeah. It's it you know, I I think of it if we were to use a very tangible metaphor, and it's really not a metaphor. It's actually a reality. You know, if if you're shooting for a sub three hour marathon, right, and you say, like, that's my goal, that's my aim, there's a lot of things that you could do.
Alex Judd:
You could build your upper body a lot. You could engage in some CrossFit workouts and prep. You could do all these things. And it's like, well, that is not the best way to run a sub three hour marathon, right? There is a proven best way to run a sub three hour marathon.
Alex Judd:
It's amazing how the minute you commit to that, if you are wholeheartedly committed to that for the right reasons, like there's a pretty clear path on how to get there. But the minute we get a little bit more vague of like, oh, I want to run a fast marathon, well then it's like, Okay, well then if I'm fine with the ambiguity of that and I'm going to be satisfied with the ambiguity of that and the ambiguity of what is fast, then it's all good. But then I'm going to be way more likely to get distracted and maybe eat ice cream on a Wednesday night or go to CrossFit a couple times a week and not stretch a couple times and things like that. But the more laser focused you get on the outcome, you get really, really measurable steps at that point. Here's the question I have for you on this.
Alex Judd:
How do you keep it healthy, right? How do you say healthy single mindedness?
Matt Aiken:
It's it's definitely the most important aspect of this principle. I've seen so many leaders who who start looking at data, and what happens is it becomes an obsession. Yeah. And they're like, okay, hey, can I get the report? Can I get the report?
Matt Aiken:
What's this number? What do do? And they maybe over index on one metrics or they over index on moving that needle at the expense of others. And so, you know, when I was thinking through this principle, was, what what do I really want you to know about how to apply this principle healthily? It's not to make the most important thing the ultimate thing.
Matt Aiken:
It's to make the most important thing the most important thing and then give vision, cast vision for everyone else's metrics that they own, funneling up into or building the foundation up into that that single-minded aim. So it's it's not just this is the number and we're gonna we're gonna break ourselves to achieve this number. It's this is the number. We're focused on this. How do all the other numbers play into this?
Matt Aiken:
Yeah. What do we need to say no to as far as looking at data or focusing on fixing right now in order to accomplish the ultimate or the most important thing that we want to accomplish.
Alex Judd:
This feels like an appropriate time to ask. I am a Christian business owner. I desire to attend to the numbers faithfully. How does this align with my beliefs, and how do I do this in a way that aligns with what the Bible teaches?
Matt Aiken:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think about the parable, what is it, in Matthew about the ruler who goes away and hands the minus to to the workers. Right? Hey.
Matt Aiken:
Here here's 10. Here's five. Here's one. And and then he leaves, and he has an expectation. Right?
Matt Aiken:
What are you going to do with that? And he comes back, and the first one says, with your 10, I made 10. Ah, great. Here we go. Here's a reward.
Matt Aiken:
With your five, I made five. Oh, well done. Here you go. The other one, hey, with my one, here's your one. Like, I didn't do anything with it.
Matt Aiken:
I was I was afraid of what I might that I might lose it, that I might mess up. And why that principle? Why did that or not principle. Why did that parable come to mind? Well, because it's the idea of stewardship.
Matt Aiken:
The resources that we have, the impact that we're making is a gift from God to us. And we are not recipients that now go, this is us, this is mine, and I can do with it what I please. But rather we're stewarding it. We're stewarding our employees. We're stewarding our our resources.
Matt Aiken:
We're stewarding our customers. And so wait, what does a healthy steward do? They give an account for it. Right? They give an account for what was given to me and what I did with it.
Matt Aiken:
And so just knowing that not only ensures that you're a good steward, but also can give you a sense of, yeah, that's right.
Alex Judd:
I am being a good steward and I've got options in how I can be a good steward. Really good. And and it you know, I think we can stray away. As Christian business owners, we can stray away from being too empirical because we're afraid of being or appearing greedy, which greed is certainly an enemy of the virtue of generosity that we are called to. That is for sure.
Alex Judd:
But the other twin enemy of generosity that we should be on the lookout for is fear, right? And it's like, if I'm afraid of what the numbers might tell me or I'm afraid that I might not hit the goal, that's actually a very selfish thing that is preventing me from investing the resources God gave me in service of others. Let's go to principle four, Matt.
Matt Aiken:
Yeah. Wisdom does not come from experience. Wisdom comes from evaluated experience. These next two principles, comes from a book that I remember when I read it. I was like, yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna recommend it to anybody, but I'll recommend these principles, to anyone.
Matt Aiken:
It's from Annie Duke is is where I first heard these things. And and she's a a a poker player, former professional poker player, who's now a a business speaker and professor. And she just talks about the principles of what do we know, what data do we have, and how does it inform the decisions we make going forward. And so wisdom coming from evaluated experience. Let's use a poker analogy.
Matt Aiken:
If we're playing poker heads up, know, like, you're James Bond and I'm the the villain, you know, in Casino Royale. And and you go, great. I'm going all in with two seven. This is the worst hand in poker. Right?
Matt Aiken:
Two seven. You you literally it's got the the lowest percentage of possibly winning. And you go all in and I've got aces, the best hand in all of poker. Right? And then you win.
Matt Aiken:
Right? Okay. Cool. What are you gonna do the next time you get two seven, Alex?
Alex Judd:
Yeah. I'm gonna do the exact same thing that I just You do
Matt Aiken:
the exact same thing. And guess what? You might have won the first time, but you're unlikely to do it the second time. And so why why use this example as far as this idea of evaluated experience? We need a rhythm, a method to continually evaluate our experience, to verify the decisions that we're making that will result fruit in the future.
Matt Aiken:
This is just powerful, right? How often do we do we have success and then we just either double down on the thing we're doing or ignore the thing we we do and and not do it again because we didn't take the time to evaluate what happened, why did it happen, and
Alex Judd:
what do I do now? Man, number one, I just wanna say I so appreciate you making me James Bond in that story because I really value that. But then number two, I think what you are talking about here is a skill set that many founders, including myself, have to level up in if they want to get to the next stage of business. And this is an area where I I mean, I don't know that I could have put words to this before this conversation, but you're highlighting it for me here is founders, what are you great at? You're great at drawing conclusions from anecdotes.
Alex Judd:
Your intuition says, oh, I experienced this with this customer, and I'm seeing this in the marketplace. And because of what I'm experiencing anecdotally, experientially, I'm going to make these decisions and take these actions. And I speak from my experience. If I hadn't done that for the past four years, I don't think Path for Growth would have been the success that it is. However, you reach a point where it's like, number one, my experience is limited, right?
Alex Judd:
I mean, it is finite. It has a lid to it. And eventually, you can start making decisions on experiences where it's like, that was a variable. It wasn't the cause. It's exactly what you're saying in that poker analogy, where it's like, I happen to win with that hand last time, but that's not a guarantee that I'll win with that hand every time.
Alex Judd:
And for you to be able to make more educated decisions, which is part of the next degree of sophistication in business, you've got to have data. And you can't rely on just anecdotes and experience. So Matt, that's so, so, so good. Okay, let's jump to principle number five.
Matt Aiken:
Yeah, so principle number five, decisions are bets, not certainties. This maybe feels like an ancillary principle to this idea of what do great leaders do when they're building a data culture. They they realize that the bets that they're making are just that. They're bets. They're based on some amount of knowledge, some amount of wisdom, but they're not certainties.
Matt Aiken:
And if you treat all of the decisions you're making in your business as certainties, one, you're you're gonna find yourself sounding a little foolish in front of your team because they're gonna go, oh, here he goes again. Alex is on another one of his, harebrained ideas that he is certain this is gonna work.
Alex Judd:
No. I like the James Bond illustration. Oh, sorry. Don't use don't use the James Bond would never do that. Remember, I'm James Bond.
Matt Aiken:
That's right. That's right. So Matt comes in with another hair brained idea. He's searching it's gonna work. But but this idea of training your team or modeling to your team, this idea of we're about to make a bet.
Matt Aiken:
That's what it is. Here is the the data that we're using to support that bet, and we're going to make sure that when we get a result, we're gonna compare it to the data and say, did it happen the way we thought it was gonna happen? Treat it like treat assumptions like assumptions is another way we talk about this Mhmm. Around my coaching customers. Because I have been around so many people that they are not afraid to make the bets, and they make so many bets with so little data.
Matt Aiken:
And you know what that leaves? That leaves a team going, what are we doing? What's gonna happen? Have we have we been wise in this situation? Are we competent in our decision making process?
Matt Aiken:
So we gotta we gotta treat decisions like bets, not certainties.
Alex Judd:
Yeah, it's interesting. Some of the wisest, most experienced entrepreneurs I've ever worked with, some of them are serial entrepreneurs, right? Like, they're really good at starting new things. And the most experienced one, like, everyone around them, whenever they launch something, of course, they make the launch of something a big deal. And everyone around them is saying, this is gonna be such a wild success.
Alex Judd:
You're gonna crush it with this. Oh my gosh. Like, the market is so ready for this. And they will always respond some version of the same thing, God willing, we think the market's right for it. We've done a lot of research.
Alex Judd:
We've done a lot of homework. We're going to do our absolute best, but we're not positive this thing is going to be a success. Essentially, what they're saying there is like, we are making a data driven bet. But that's like way better than someone what's crazy is it's the people that don't do their homework that speak with certainty, whereas the people that do their homework that have actually maybe earned a little bit more confidence, they're like, hey, God willing, we're just going to do our best and see how this goes. And so I think it's helpful.
Alex Judd:
I think even just from an emotional and psychological perspective, to think about it with a little bit of a looser grip like that. Okay, I'd love to hear your kind of closing thought for people on this topic. Then I'd love for you to set up the next episode on this topic of data driven business. Give people kind of insight into what they can expect.
Matt Aiken:
In summary, this idea that what is data? Why does it matter to me? How is it gonna help me get where I wanna go? I I wanna use just a a little a little joke. Right?
Matt Aiken:
Okay. Here here we go. Let me tell you some data. Right? Tomatoes are fruits.
Matt Aiken:
K? That's data. Like, that's some knowledge. We know that. Right?
Matt Aiken:
Well, is wisdom? Not to put it in a fruit salad. Yes. Yeah. You can try it sometime.
Matt Aiken:
And then what? You can go, oh, that was not my best fruit salad. Every leader needs to be kind of matching this idea of we need the knowledge that tomato is a fruit. We need to develop the systems, the structures, the the the wisdom not to put it in a fruit salad. And so just to know, data is just a tool.
Matt Aiken:
It's not the ultimate end. It's something that's gonna get us from here to there. And and so again, that's probably the summary, like thinking through how do we approach it well, how do we think through it, how do we engage with it, how do we proactively lead, not just by ourselves. Like I'm going to look at the data, but how do I create a culture where we are growing in knowledge and our wisdom as it relates to decision making. Now you might be at the end of this episode like, Matt, I wanna be that leader.
Matt Aiken:
Great. Well, you've got some good principles to start practicing. But what I've found with my customers is a desire and some principles gets you to a place where you're ready And then one of two things happen. There are blockers in your culture and in yourself that prevent you from taking the next step. And so, you know, we're gonna walk through five common blockers that prevent people from taking the next step along with kind of the, we'll call it the remedy, the way to jump over those hurdles in the next episode.
Matt Aiken:
And then after that, we're going to be talking through how to get started. We're really going to dive in and get practical with a how to guide of how I walk my customers from our our our discovery conversation to using data wisely and well.
Alex Judd:
So good, Matt. And thanks for the homework that you've put into this topic. Thanks for your passion for this topic and for sharing it in service of others. Well, there you have it. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode.
Alex Judd:
If you want any of the information or resources that we mentioned, that's all in the show notes. Hey. Before you go, could I ask you for one quick favor? Could you subscribe, rate, and review this podcast episode? Your feedback is what helps our team engage in a sequence of never ending improvement.
Alex Judd:
We wanna amplify what's valuable to you and obviously reduce or even remove the things that aren't. Also, you leaving a positive review is what helps us connect with, build trust with, and serve other leaders around the country. So thanks in advance for helping us out on that front. Are you a leader that wants to grow your business in a healthy way, serve people exceptionally well, and glorify God in the process? Go to pathforgrowth.com to get more information about our community of impact driven leaders and schedule a call with our team.
Alex Judd:
Hey, thank you so much to the Path for Growth team, Kyle Cummings and the crew at PodCircle, and the remarkable leaders that are actively engaged in the Path for Growth community. Y'all are the people that make this podcast possible. Y'all know this. We're rooting for you. We're praying for you.
Alex Judd:
We wanna see you win. Remember, my strength is not for me. Your strength is not for you. Our strength is for service. Let's go.
