BOBC Episode #132 – Interpreting Data. August 29, 2023
INTRODUCTION:
It is 50 degrees one day, 90 degrees. The next, on average, it’s 70 degrees, so no need to buy a coat or a swimsuit. You can use information to justify your complacency, or you can determine what really matters to you and act accordingly.
BODY:
So, I’ve been listening over and over again to people talking about the state of an industry or to talk about how this data point affects this data point and, you know, it’s all meaningful. And we hear about, economists talking about this data point to say whether we’re having inflation not having inflation.
Talking about what things to do, and at the global level, yeah, things really do matter, right? If we have global trends and we wanna affect global trends, our behavior will have an impact on that. So therefore, if you know there’s inflation and you wanna reduce inflation, our Fed will increase interest rates, right?
So data does have a meaningful impact on our lives. And of course there are data scientists and people coming up with what we know about things. But I just find it well, sad, frustrating, tiresome when I hear these data points that are very much global, if not national data points that really have very little bearing on a business that is looking for the 10 clients that matter.
And trying to figure out what to do with those 10 clients. And so while the data does have an impact, it doesn’t truly affect what you’re going to do in your interpretation of that data as having a direct impact on your business. For the most part it just gives you complacency. It gives you the reason to do the things that are going to be reactive to what you believe to be true.
So let me ground that. If you believe that, oh, higher interest rates are causing concern, and the slowdown in housing means that your interior design business is going to slow down and people are not gonna spend the money. So you, effectively have to come up with a cheaper way of doing things so that you can have the ability, you know, if those premium clients don’t show up, that you have the ability to go get the lower priced items available to them, then yeah, that was exactly what I’m talking about.
Because while those data points may mean something to you and might be out there and might have some little bit of anecdotal truth. In the 50 blocks surrounding where you’re working, does it really have an impact? Does it have a meaning way that somebody that would choose to do the work with you that they don’t need, by the way. To do that with you, would be deeply impacted because of what external circumstances are?
Maybe. Yeah. A global pandemic is gonna stop you from having a wedding. I totally get that. But at the core of it, If those are not the situations that are happening. Using , this Data to go out there and to drive your behavior, ultimately excuses you from doing the work of looking within.
And that’s my entire point from today. If you don’t start by looking in the mirror, start by saying who do you seek to serve and why? And how you’re gonna go about digging a deeper hole for those 10 people might. Might. I tell you that what you might decide to do is cheapen your service, and that’s just crazy to me.
It’s insane to me that you’re gonna slice off the bottom, which is the thing that I rail about all the time. Slice off the bottom to quote, Seth Godin is a race to the bottom. And that’s neither a race you want to be in, let alone win. Right? And that is his line, not mine. And I wholeheartedly believe it.
And the reason is because it just cheapens everything that you’re doing. And it excuses the idea that as you cheapen your product, you think that the top won’t suffer. You think that you’re, what you do at the top won’t be tainted by that, but ask yourself a question. If you knew that you were basically distracted by doing work that did not justify the level of work that was at the top, that why would you, if you’re that client at the top, want to be invested in you because you’re distracted by doing things that don’t fit the level to which you work.
And I find that to be amazing. And that’s what the example is like on average we have, you know, 50 degrees one day, 90 the next on average. It’s 70 degrees. Yeah, you make bad decisions. That’s the impact of what I’m talking about. Bad decisions for you to do what you do and how you do what you do.
And I just really want to be be very specific that it’s really about digging into what is it that you’re after and how are you seeking to get them? And the idea that you, I’ve heard this before too, is like, not every client is going to be your best client. And so therefore, you have to be willing to take those that are not your best clients in order to survive, right?
To pay the bills, to make sure that you have that stuff in order to take a vacation. And I fundamentally believe nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing could drive you further away from yourself than having to believe that in order to live the life that you wanna live, that you have to compromise the people who you seek to serve in order to serve those people who do not value you the same way.
The whole entire story does not work in a way that is not a factory economy, right? If you’re doing volume, if the idea is to sell more and more of what it is that you do, and you’re basically a commodity, then of course you’re gonna have that thinking. Of course, you’re gonna be doing the work of a hotelier and saying, A head in the bed is a head in the bed, right?
And no matter what it takes to get that head in the bed, so long as there’s a little bit of money there, then yeah, of course you’re gonna do it. But that is not true for 99.999% of you, right? You are after a micro set of business, and you’re then, and for the most part, a lot of you are after them one time, right?
And then you’re gonna do it again. And so ask yourself, what is the halo of doing the work for someone that doesn’t care about you the way that you care about it? Because the data is telling you that you must. The data is telling you that the sky is falling, so therefore you must react by effectively starting to eat things that you don’t want to eat.
Yeah, you’re gonna interpret the world that way. You’re gonna be affected that way. You’re gonna think that you are absolutely driven to do that stuff. And, and quite frankly, nothing could be further from the truth in the sense that you don’t really have a sense of who you are to be relevant to those that you care about and that’s the halo effect.
The halo effect is you took on a client that you never should have taken on because you’re not built to serve them. You cheapen your product. And do you think that the, what people are going to then talk about, is what? The brilliant piece of work that you did for the right client or the idea that you did things that you don’t do.
There’s a 50 50 shot that they’re gonna talk about both. And oh, by the way, as you go about marketing for the next year and the next client and the next client, guess what? The one who might say, wow, I got so much from you because why you undersold your work, whether you got paid for it or not, and did the work that you didn’t do.
I mean, that’s crazy. It’s just nuts to me. So my point to you is please have relevant data. Meaning the more relevant data is what does your community look like? What’s affecting your very local community? What is affecting the willingness and the desire, desirability of living where you work, right, and doing the things that you do, whether your community is broad based and national, or literally right around the corner.
Understand it. Understand it by asking questions, being curious. The part about dealing with data and thinking that you have to pay attention to data is it actually isn’t being curious. Being curious is going to talk to people that directly affect your lives. That is the data that you should care about, that directly impact how you work, not the global way or people that are living in a different world than you, but literally the people around the corner, and again, whatever that digital corner looks like. That can be impactful and being curious as to how can I seek to better serve them? Right?
And so what happens when you look at other data and you’re playing around and being impacted by, oh my God, interest rates have risen up so much, therefore no one’s gonna buy my service, whatever that might be, however my creativity is.
You stop doing the work of saying, well, wait a second. Is there other ways for me to leverage what I do? Are there other multiple revenue streams, which I’ve talked about just recently? Are there other ways of deciding how I can be pure to those I seek to serve? Am I telling my story really well and am I not telling my story to be very specific, not to manipulate the person who I’m talking to in order to get them to say yes? I’m doing the exact opposite.
I am talking about the clarity and purity of what I do so that it is crystal clear what I do. Crystal clear about how I’m going to impact your their lives. And so the entire punchline of this entire podcast is the following. What is the value of design? And I don’t care what design is.
Design is not visual. Design is anything creative that comes from between your ears. There are only four components. Talent, wisdom, experience and commitment to the process. I’ll say it again. The value of design is talent, wisdom, experience, and commitment to the process. If you aren’t crystal clear as to why those are valuable and why someone should buy that in with you so that they can give you the opportunity to create for them, however that might be, then you’re doing it wrong.
Point of fact, you’re doing it wrong and no data point and no BS whatever is gonna get you to think any other way. You have to look in the mirror and appreciate the biggest asset you have is the value of design. The value of design is what’s between your ears. Design, talent, wisdom, experience, and commitment to the process.
There is no other way to price it. There’s no other way to talk about it. Anything else you do is just an exercise of mental masturbation. so please get down to the work of ignoring those data points that don’t matter to you as a justification for you not doing the work to figuring out what design is for you.
Because that’s what your clients pay for. And so to use my metaphor that I just love the very most: If you want to be a caterpillar, fine, be a caterpillar. Caterpillars eat leaves, and then one day they dream about being a butterfly. But if you ultimately know that you are in fact a butterfly, appreciate the very fact that you no longer can eat leaves.
You must live as you are. And oh, by the way, caterpillars dream about what the world would look like if they were in fact a butterfly. People pay for butterflies. They hope that one day caterpillars will be butterflies and give them that opportunity. But the real players, the real ones who know they are butterflies, and all of you are.
So what I’m trying to tell you is to ignore data that might matter to a caterpillar as to how much leaves there might be. And instead, go act like a butterfly and see the world a different way and act differently because you can’t eat leaves anymore.
My whole rant is today is to act differently because you are in fact different and figure out what it means to be you, first and foremost. The power of design.
That’s my riff today. Until next time.
