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Uncharted Entrepreneurship - hosted by Brent Peterson out of the Minnesota chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization – brings you daring stories straight from the trailblazing entrepreneurs who are unmapping business frontiers across every industry. Settle in around our virtual campfire as Brent sits down to pick the brains of startup pioneers, visionary founders, and intrepid CEOs whose origin stories - marked by unexpected twists, lessons, and stumbles along unpaved paths - will inspire your own trek in launching a boundary-pushing venture. Trading war stories, strategies, and even warnings, these audacious guests invite fellow founders and future leaders into their confidential circles in a uniquely transparent, wise, and motivational way. So join us off the beaten business trails to light your entrepreneurial fire!
Brent Peterson (00:03.518)
Welcome to this episode. Today I have Luke Kamisky. Hope I got that right. The same, almost the same as the stadium in Chicago that's now called US Air Cellular Field or something like that. It's great to have you on our show and you run a company called Data Drive. Luke, go ahead, do an introduction. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your role, and one of your passions in life.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (00:32.939)
Yeah, thanks for having me on. And you're spot on with the pronunciation. It's unfortunate that I am one letter off from probably a great inheritance, but it's my last name is spelled with a K, not a C.
Brent Peterson (00:45.423)
I wasn't going to bring that up, but go ahead.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (00:49.544)
As far as a quick background, I was, we'll go a little bit further back, born and raised in Wisconsin and moved up to Minnesota after getting my degree in computer science and specifically around data and analytics. Started out my career, you know, going through corporate America, working various data roles, data consulting roles. And then ultimately, during my journey through corporate America, left.
my job in 2016 to experience a quarter life retirement with my wife. We traveled the world for all of 2016, sold everything and just traveled till we ran out of money. And then when we returned at the beginning of 2017 is when I wanted to fully scratch the entrepreneurial itch that I've had throughout my entire life with a bunch of odd businesses I did in my childhood and founded
As the name suggests works within the data analytics space, the services we provide is specifically called the analytics managed services. And what that means is most people are familiar with what managed services are, but we particularly focus around the concept of running hosting managing how data flows through a business. And we provide fully hosted reporting platforms and provide the ongoing support so that
Organizations can have a data capability without necessarily having to go out and hiring a bunch of data analysts and data engineers and data scientists to make that possible.
Brent Peterson (02:21.182)
Very cool. And a passion in life?
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (02:25.483)
I mean, my number one passion is always in the realm of travel. I have a, I have a personal goal to always travel to more countries than my age that I've done a really good job of staying on track with. And then I also have a family with two young kids that take up a lot of my time and have also made my travel experiences less global, but a lot more interesting and fun along the way.
Brent Peterson (02:49.73)
So if our life expectancy gets to be like 190, are you gonna hope that at some point there's more than 183 or 185 countries in the world?
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (03:00.879)
That's amazing that you have that like stat on the ready. I haven't really thought about that possibly happening. I think my goal is just to stay ahead of the age curve right now. I will solve that problem. If we get to 150, I will have to rethink my plan.
Brent Peterson (03:12.777)
There you go.
Brent Peterson (03:33.756)
Okay, good.
Brent Peterson (03:47.454)
That Bill Gates or somebody like that would have come up with because it's so fantastic. So here we go All you have to do is give me a reaction What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter? pumpkin pie
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (04:05.055)
Yeah, that one can definitely remain free.
Brent Peterson (04:07.622)
Oh, geez, that was kind of a math joke too. All right, let's keep moving. So, I mean, for those of you just listening on the podcast, Luke, you look like you're about 21. So tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got into the space. And I think more interesting, let's do that first, but I think it's super interesting that you just took a year off and went traveling right in the middle of your corporate career.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (04:36.691)
Yeah, so the two parts there. So I've like, from a technology side, I've always, I grew up kind of in that age of getting the internet that would, you know, you jump on the internet and you couldn't pick up the phone because it would knock you off the internet, the whole dial-up scene. And so I've seen, technology has always been a big part of obviously my childhood growing up. And I've always...
I wasn't like one of those hardcore programmers that was just like in my basement all the time programming, but I've always been a big fan of math and solving puzzles. And I've always just loved the technology scene. I was pretty fortunate that like I went to college and got my computer science degree. And it was at a time where either you could go be a mobile app developer and, you know, create the next Angry Birds I was going to take over, you know, the app store.
Or data and analytics was kind of like this. It's always been a thing that you can do, but data analytics probably wasn't as hot of a topic that it tends to be nowadays. And, uh, for me, I, what I really just loved about that blend of like technology, uh, especially within data analytics is that it really combined really cool problem solving, using technology with actually working like with front end business leaders to try to figure out how can we bridge that gap between how they view their business.
and what technology can provide for them. So I've just been very fortunate, I think, just to like my first role out of college was all data related. I loved it. I love that there's a lot of like complex problem solving behind the scenes. And then on the front end, there's a lot of the art of data visualization and how people ingest insights along the way. And so it gives me a good blend as like a very extroverted computer scientist to be able to talk to people and then also be able to go back to my computer and work on things.
And then, yeah, what I loved about during my career journey is, you know, getting into consulting and being exposed to more businesses than ever. And you're right. As soon as like I did about two and a half, three years of consulting, I was just getting to that point where like, I could, I could tell my career could keep going on this great trajectory. But for my wife and I, it's always been a big part of our lives is traveling. But during our kind of like college career, dating career together, we always traveled on our own and we never really had truly that travel experience.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (06:55.119)
Uh, and so I don't really know what possessed us outside of that every year we would stay in corporate America. It felt like another reason we just couldn't leave, right. Buy in a house, starting a family. Like there's all these thousands of reasons that we, you know, could have just stayed, but I don't know if it's something, something got in us that were like, we want to have this experience together. We took our down payment on what was going to be our first house and blew it all on travel. Uh,
people thought we were crazy, our parents thought we were crazy, but I look back now and it was probably one of the more life altering decisions you can make. It, it totally changed my perspective and I think ultimately made me more open to entrepreneurship because I mean talk, talk about taking risk and taking bets and seeing the upside and things. Uh, that's, that's what that global trip was. And that's what entrepreneurship continues to be for me.
Brent Peterson (07:45.474)
Do you think that there's something within you that made you switch from being an employee to an employer? And was that switch during that transition while you were traveling all that time?
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (08:02.347)
Yeah, during my childhood, there was a lot of just like the little entrepreneurial things that I did around like selling, selling gobstoppers at the back of my school bus, trying to buy all of the school equipment at the school store to see if I could raise the margins on it by reselling it back. So there's like all these, like these little entrepreneurial ventures that I've took along the way. But I think for me, once I got, you know, going through the education system and then getting a job like that created safety and comfort and.
I think for me, like I've always had that entrepreneurial itch, but it was until I had that kind of like moment where essentially I'm unemployed for a year that you just start to kind of open up like what else could you do to just experience different things in life. And for me, I think what I learned during that global trip was wanting to live a great story. And I tend to think of my life and kind of these like series of chapters of like college Luke and world travel Luke. And now like, you know, young, young dad, Luke. And
at every step of the way, I just want interesting parts to be in that chapter. And for me, entrepreneurship, the ability to break out of what I was seeing everyone else on a network do, or just do at that time, uh, just felt like a great opportunity for me to, um, just see if I could kind of test the waters on my own. And during the first year of data drive, it was a glorified freelancing business. It wasn't with this grand aspirations of
hiring a ton of people and building out operations. I think it's just as I continue to evolve as like a business owner, an entrepreneur, those are just new experiences I'm always trying to go after.
Brent Peterson (09:33.678)
Um, do you think at some point in that, in that journey, that transition journey, was there, was there a country that you can look at that you kind of came upon this epiphany or do you, did it, was it just a slow roll to, Hey, I'm going to get back to Minnesota, I'm going to start this company or the use of land. And like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just going to do this.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (09:56.803)
I mean, definitely it was like a combination of the entire journey, but I know in particular, for me, my mindset shifted a lot when I got to the Southeast Asia portion of the world. I think for me, it was just such a jarring experience that it was, you know, I've gone to Europe many times. It's like, you know, westernized civilization. And for me, like Southeast Asia was just a very different scene, particularly going to areas where
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (10:27.147)
the standard of living or I guess like the way people really set up their homesteads was just so different that I think it helped put in perspective for me like the American dream versus like what everyone else considers just having a good life and for me just seeing a lot of people like either finding digital nomads in Southeast Asia or staying with families around Asia It's just like the views that people had about like what it means to be successful in America
It just didn't align with like how happy these people were with nothing, nothing in comparison to like what we kind of like set up as our standards as Americans. And I don't know. I think for me, as I think back to just that huge gap in perspective, I'm like, if it worst comes to worse and like I crash and burn with any new business, I start like, I, you know, could just be stuck with the clothes on my back. And in that moment, I was like in Southeast Asia with just the clothes on my back.
Uh, and I was like, you know, it's not that bad of a life. And so it's, it's just worth taking that, that type of risk. And, and I don't know, just being more willing to risk a little bit. And it's really not that much risk at the end of the day, but to have a new perspective on, uh, you know, just playing it safe didn't seem very fun. So I wanted to try something different.
Brent Peterson (11:40.65)
I had a conversation with a friend of mine who just retired and is now living his retirement dream. He retired early and he talked about a friend of his who waited an extra two years to retire because he'd get an 8% uptick in his pension or whatever and then he died like, I don't know, six months later. Do you think in that scenario there's a difference between the entrepreneur where you don't really
work until you can you do what you like to do until you have enough to just not do it anymore? Or do you think that you're just going to do what you like to do and it's not really work?
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (12:25.135)
I think before I got into entrepreneurship, I would have maybe answered a little bit more of the latter of like, it's an opportunity for you to have just all this freedom and all this upside. I think what I've learned about my own journey in entrepreneurship is like, you just have a lot more control about when you wanna switch on and switch off of that kind of like career journey. Cause there are, I think there are phases in my life of like, you know, even like pre-children and now having kids and like building the team that I think what I needed in that moment was just
different experiences and that really changed like what kind of entrepreneur Luke was at that point trying to drive for growth or set up for a better just kind of like work life integration. But I think an entrepreneur has the ability to more look introspectively about what they need in that moment and be able to toggle that work up and down. And sure that might that could mean that you want to work for the rest of your life. But I mean, that is the decision and freedom you get to make as an entrepreneur.
that might not be in that standard career path that most people think about.
Brent Peterson (13:28.518)
I like that toggle that work up and down because I think entrepreneurs struggle with that. It's not even an age thing. It's just a thing that there's a drive. I think if you look at Elon Musk, he talks about you can only be successful if you work 100 hours a week or whatever. He has this different ethic on how he should work and maybe family comes second. But I think as an entrepreneur, you can put...
whatever you want to put in front and make that the priority for the amount of time you need it to gives you that freedom to do it and from my own experience I've in the past have given up a high paycheck even as a contractor to pursue my own dreams because I think at some point you get beaten down to the point of hey you know as much money as there is it's is it really worth it to be miserable or would I rather be happy and poor?
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (14:27.356)
Yeah, and I think the mental picture that comes to mind as you're talking about that is like this, you get off the ladder, and it's more about just like, I don't know, like a maze of little pivot points you can make, right? It's not about you need to climb, and then if you get knocked down, that's the end or like you can't recover, but it's more of
you're working your way through a maze as an entrepreneur. And like there might be just different turns you have to make at different stages of your life or things that don't work out, but there's still a broader maze or a game that you get to play here.
Brent Peterson (14:58.138)
Let's switch gears a little bit into EO Minnesota and tell us a little bit about entrepreneurs organization and maybe do a little experience sharing on how it's changed your outlook on how you run your business and how you manage your team.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (15:19.107)
For sure. Entrepreneurs organization, I mean, just found me at a really perfect time in my business journey because I was about maybe three years into running Data Drive really mostly just trying to figure out all of the things you need to set in place to build a scalable business. I got introduced because one of my customers was actually an EO member and just said one day, oh, you should look into this organization. That's what ultimately got me exposed to EO Minnesota.
at face value when I went to that first event or trying to figure out like, am I going to join this or not? I really viewed this as like a, Oh man, this is going to be my professional networking group that's going to give me all the secrets to business success and like, you know, how to, how to, uh, hire XYZ and drive up margins and everything. And what I was, I learned and I was surprised by and ultimately just, uh, loved about why I'm still in an EO today is
recognizing that like that journey as an entrepreneur, there's just so many different facets to like how you have to like think and operate about with, as you're being an entrepreneur, there's the, you know, the three pillars that EO constantly talks about with like being professional life, your family life, your personal life, and all of those are going to go through their own seasons of whether they're in alignment ahead of schedule behind schedule of what you want it to be, but for you to be successful as a, as a business owner, you have to, uh, I guess be aware.
of all these things that are going to go into how you show up as a human being for everyone who is important in your life, family, friends, employees, everywhere. And yeah, I think for me, what I've just unexpectedly got out of EO is obviously just a broader network of business owners that I'm able to go, and we talk about this concept of like going deep with and being able to talk about.
some of the trials that you go through as an entrepreneur or something that you're going through that is just kind of this level of conversation that goes just beyond like, how are you doing? How's the weather? How's your kids? And going right down to stuff that I think is just hard to have similar experiences shared back with you. And so I love that when I meet other EO members, even if it's not in Minnesota, it could be across the world. It's like, you just go instantly there with people that just understand that level of conversation that you're trying to get to. And it's that.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (17:39.799)
depth of conversation that before I found EO, I just, I didn't realize I needed in my life. And then now that I have that, it's like, I want more of those types of conversations, which is what keeps me in the organization and why I go to as many EO related events as possible, just because like, I feel like you get to be a lot more human at a deeper level than you would in most normal conversations.
Brent Peterson (18:02.934)
Do you feel like before you joined EO that it was harder to have that conversation with people or even it was maybe a better question will be, was it harder to identify people that you could have that conversation with?
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (18:17.675)
Yeah, it's honestly all the above. It's like you, you don't know how to have that conversation with somebody. There's never, there's a lot of like, just social norms about talking about huge failures or big successes with people that just aren't in that type of entrepreneurial scene to begin with. Um, but I think it also has helped me just figure out the language and emotions that I want to put around my thoughts.
Uh, I think a lot about how NEO that we meet on a monthly basis with our forum. So it's, it's the same entrepreneurs that you're meeting with on a monthly basis. And I think just the way you get to take the time that I never would have, if I wasn't an EO to like reflect on the last 30 days of my life and say, what are those like really big things that I've like are like sitting up in my head, but are left unsaid anywhere, uh, and I'm sure like, this is why people journal. I just, I.
I journaling was never part of my life. And now that I've unlocked that I'm like, man, there's just like, there's big therapeutic value to not only writing it down, but then to be able to express it with somebody else that might be able to share a similar experience that, uh, allows me to connect with somebody at a, at a different kind of level.
Brent Peterson (19:31.906)
Um, so you're also on the board for U of Minnesota. And do you find it a challenge to sort of try to lead leaders? And I bring back memories of a commercial that in, and I'm going to show my age in the 90s by this company, EDC, where they're herding cats. And it's a fantastic commercial. They have all these cowboys that are herding cats. And there's cowboys that have some scratches on their face, you know, and...
Do you see that as a particular challenge or do you enjoy the board so far?
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (20:06.423)
Yeah, I've definitely enjoyed my time on the board. And I think between being on the EO Minnesota board, even having to act as a MC or a leader within various EO events that I've gone to, yeah, it definitely is a unique and rare opportunity to stand in front of people that are leaders within their organization, very different personalities from all across the board. I mean, you would think that it would be just like all these strong personalities. But I mean, like.
Personalities of leaders are all across the board, but I mean, one thing that they're not lacking is opinions on how things need to get done, especially high-driven entrepreneurs. And so, yeah, I love that challenge. I think more than anything is just anything EO related, I tend to really be able to inspect people's personalities and kind of understand, try to understand their full self of like, what's making them act this way? What makes them tick? Like it makes me wanna be connected to them more as a human than anything. And I think EO...
whether the board or not is just like, you get an opportunity to like work with people that I think are operating at that same level. Uh, and I don't know, it just, uh, yeah, it's a, it is a cool opportunity. And one of those rare things of like how many times you're going to be able to like, try to lead a meeting with a bunch of other business leaders, trying to get them on the same page, like it is truly hurting cats, but in the best way possible.
Brent Peterson (21:26.078)
Getting them on the same page is always the hardest part, right? Have you seen it more of a challenge going back to your own company, Data Drive? Has it been difficult managing the business part of it or the people part of your business? Like the numbers part of the people part, what's been more challenging for you?
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (21:29.562)
Yes.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (21:50.699)
Yeah, I think as like as, as the data guy on the call, I think understanding the numbers side of it has always come pretty naturally to me. I think the, the part that I knew going into building a business and. The, you know, the variables as a data guy, you can't control is, is the, is the people aspect of building an organization. I think it is one of the more challenging parts of building a business. And you can read all these articles about like how to hire that first employee or how to build out an org chart or.
be very clear about job responsibilities. But yeah, I think like spoken like the true data guy is just trying to make sense of human personalities and like what drives people. And like, I didn't even know, I wish somebody would have told me seven years ago when I started my company, that there'd just be like this global pandemic like thrown in the middle of all of it. It just makes it really challenging, especially now in a more of a remote.
remote world to be able to connect with humans, because everything happens out of home offices and Zoom calls, particularly in the data space. We can do all of our work from anywhere in the world. But I think that the toughest part for me, and I knew it, it didn't surprise me, but it's definitely the how to build out the right people, the structure for the people to be able to be successful and help them achieve their goals within the organization.
Brent Peterson (23:15.154)
have you found it a challenge to hire people that are older than you, that may have different thoughts and ideas around how the office has worked in the past compared to younger people that have a completely different vision of how it should work, right? And I just think that
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (23:39.832)
Mm-hmm.
Brent Peterson (23:42.174)
If you haven't kept up with it and you're used to going to the office, you're not used to, you know, living off of Slack or something like that and communicating in that way. It might be difficult for some people to work remote that are somewhat older and, and yeah. So if you see any challenges around that.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (24:01.687)
For sure. I'll speak mostly from my experience of, in the data space, it tends to skew a lot more of the younger demographic, and particularly for a data analytics startup that tends to bring in people that tend to be on the younger side. And another kind of wrench thrown into this is that global pandemic of originally when I started my company, it was really built around a type of consulting type work that...
be done from the comfort of your Minnesota home, but you wouldn't have to go to an airport to fly out to all these clients like most traditional consulting was at that point. When you throw in a COVID pandemic, that completely flips my business model where that whole value prop of not having to go to the airport, nobody's going to the airport anymore. I had to find halfway through my entrepreneurial journey to figure out what is the best way that we can shift from a very office-centric culture to completely remote.
And I think from the challenges that I've seen with it, it's a lot harder to connect with humans over Zoom calls. I mean, you have to go this extra bit of the setting up extra time with people to connect with them because there's just no more random run-ins at a water cooler if those things even exist anymore. And I think as we've shifted more to just a remote culture, I think what I've also learned is that
There are, I think there are certain personalities that, that can work within a remote world and there's certain personalities that I think it's just, it's just hard to focus in or maybe because of like the setup within their own lives or house, whatever. Uh, I don't think that like remote work is like necessarily for everyone. And I, and like, I can speak as someone who kind of throttled back and forth of like, I was a remote freelancer and then I started hiring a team and going back to an office and I was like, this is awesome.
Uh, but then when you flip back to being remote, uh, you know, you've got a lot of other responsibilities that are in your head that it might be really hard to focus for whatever reason in your situation. And so the big thing that I look for when I'm, uh, trying to build out the team and especially building a remote center culture is like, I want people that have some kind of proven history of like actually working remotely. Cause it does sound like a cool idea in theory, but after, as we probably found with COVID after three, six months, that novelty of being remote wears off. And then it's really like.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (26:28.179)
is this how you want to work or how you want to exist? And it's okay if you want to go to an office because maybe it helps to actually have that clear distinction between work and the rest of not work. But I want to know that people have that type of remote working experience because I do think it makes all the difference and it's not for everyone and that's okay.
Brent Peterson (26:49.462)
Yeah, and I guess as a business owner, if you want to build your business as a lifestyle business plus make a living, the ultimate work remote is working from Thailand and making sure your team's up to date and doing everything you can from anywhere, right? Where you're not being throttled by the fact that if you're not in the office in a personal meeting or something like that, that things grind to a halt.
And I think in general, nowadays in 2024, we have to be cognizant that people are both gonna look for a partial where work are all remote or even the job market, you know, in the tech space, Minneapolis is a hard place to hire people still. And you may find somebody in New Mexico that...
that's a better fit or you might find somebody in Mexico that's a great fit and half the price. So it does, you know, having that environment and culture helps to build a better team.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (27:55.543)
Mm-hmm.
Brent Peterson (27:57.834)
So tell us a little bit about Data Drive. Tell us about some of the clients you work with, maybe some of your offerings, something like that.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (28:07.627)
Yeah. So like I mentioned, the core focus is around managed analytics services. And so, uh, our target clients are organizations that don't necessarily have a data team built out. Uh, but they are looking to do something with their data and doing something with their data might look like, you know, what you typically think with analytics executive style reporting, uh, being able to provide interactive dashboards to all levels of the organization to be able to make faster informed decisions across, across the company.
Uh, some organizations that come to us because they want to move into the realm of data monetization, where they are sitting on the gold mine of data that might make sense to report back out to their customers, to their vendors, to their partners, to their community. Uh, and so a lot of companies are recognizing that data can actually be an asset and a way to add a new revenue stream, uh, within that. So organizations might leverage us to. Uh,
connect all their disparate business applications together, clean it up, and then put it in a presentable format that they could charge it back out to somebody external to the organization. Some examples of industries that we've worked heavily within, there's a lot of SaaS companies that love working with us because they have their own databases that need to connect up and being able to tell information about usage stats or any kind of ROI that their customers might have from using their product or service.
We have a handful of media agencies that we help bring together their disparate traditional data sources with digital data sources to be able to tell a whole picture of marketing so that they're paying customers can say that when I give you a dollar for media marketing spend that I'm hopefully getting more than a dollar back in return. That's an important, very data centric business where the data is literally all over the place. And then the last one that's been a really fun space for us that
And I love, I just love working with, with so much are actually school districts and school districts are super interesting because they, they have so much data about students, their testing assessment scores, their attendance, their behavior. Uh, and it's such a really cool use case for, uh, all levels of the organization, because a district is, is going to want to be able to share a story of that. We are.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (30:29.483)
you know, creating positive student outcomes with increased testing scores, students showing up for school and equitable classroom teacher effectiveness. And then equally as so there's teachers that are super busy flying between different courses and classes and teaching students that, uh, if we can provide that types of stats around, I'm about to walk into a class with 20 students sitting in there. And if I could have instant access to know how they did on their last state assessment score for math. Uh, that would be really.
helpful for me to be able to guide and steer this class in the right direction and provide the type of instructional support that's going to help move the needle for their outcomes. So it's just a very like unexpected data-driven use case that has a very real impact on data for good, right? It's like you're educating the future of our nation and with a system that you know could use all the help that they can get and helping make their jobs easier and it's just been a really fulfilling use case to be able to work with school districts.
Brent Peterson (31:28.99)
You mentioned businesses that are sitting on a gold mine of data. Do you feel, and I'm going to go out on a limb, that most businesses don't understand how much data they have and how they could use it and how it makes their own business more efficient? And I'm going to say it's probably 90% of the businesses that don't even bother to look at the data they already have and don't use it to make their business better.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (31:54.187)
Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty, pretty close to accurate. Uh, there are certainly a lot of organizations and part of the challenge of the role that I provide, uh, just trying to sell the services that we're doing is that data analytics is a meaningful ROI positive investment that you can make in your business. Uh, I feel like a good chunk of my role is actually just talking about what, what kind of data driven questions an organization could even be asking.
to be able to just even share with them the art of the possible. It is just a lot, like there's so many use cases and what's cool, what I love about my experiences in consulting is, you know, I've worked with, I feel like every single industry vertical at this point, I'm just, it's, and it's amazing how organizations, like 80% of them operate about the same fundamental processes behind the scenes with the same data points. And there's like the 20% secret sauce that they have going on in their data. But the ability to, you know, be able to forecast out
what their business is going to look like using actual data points instead of the gut feelings of a experienced owners that can serve you well as a scrappy startup. But as you start to scale, you want to figure out ways to process and systematize the intuition. And the answer is so often in the data. But it's but it is like a journey to like integrate all that data together and to like share what you could actually be doing. And I what I love about my role is just
these constant aha moments with people have seen the true power of data. And that's super cool.
Brent Peterson (33:26.622)
Yeah, I'm going to remember that term system and system and systematize your intuition and maybe that'll be the title of the podcast. That's a great one.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (33:36.075)
I love it. I love it.
Brent Peterson (33:37.946)
Luke, we have a few minutes left. If you had some advice to give somebody this year, 2024, even, you know, for a second quarter, what would you say to them in terms of collecting their data and using their data?
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (33:51.147)
Oh man, now's the time because we have all of the kind of past few years of just talk about the crazy experiences we've had with both like a pandemic and a recession that maybe is not a recession, but it sort of is a recession. This is the time where you want to be looking at what has been working within your business and be able to double down confidently on those marketing channels. Those
those business operations, the things that are working within your business. And the only way you're gonna understand that is by having a near real time view of what has actually been working over the last few months. And so if you're looking for that type of perspective on a ever evolving world that never changes, the answer will often lie within the data. And when you spend so much of your time and energy buying applications and training people how to follow a process to enter data in point A and make sure they fill out point B.
You also may want to consider making that investment to actually take advantage of all of those data points and be able to zoom out and see your business more from the lens of System systematizing your intuition
Brent Peterson (35:03.006)
Yeah, that's so well said and it goes beyond marketing and sales. I mean, and we can talk about leading and lagging indicators. There's so much to go into. So, Luke, as I close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you would like. Would you like to plug today?
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (35:23.691)
I think my shameless plug is going to be for if you are an entrepreneur, I would highly, highly recommend you check out entrepreneurs organization. It has been a life changing experience for me. I love the entrepreneurs I get to hang out with. I owe so much to the entrepreneurs I get to hang out with on a monthly basis through my forum is one of the best investments you can make in just your life in general, not just necessarily your business. So, um,
join entrepreneurs organization, or at least find somebody who's in it and ask them questions about why it's so awesome.
Brent Peterson (35:55.81)
That's perfect. I will put those links in our show notes. I will put your company as well as eonetwork.org for those worldwide listeners. And it is truly worldwide. And our chapter's eominnesota.org. So I'll get all those fun things in our show notes. Luke, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you so much for being here.
Luke Komiskey | DataDrive (36:18.007)
Thanks for having me.