"What do you mean we only have 4 weeks of money left in the business??!!!""
Do we need data transparency in our small-to-medium business...?? You bet we do...

All right. Hey, this is Grant Larsen. Thank you for joining another episode of ClickAI Radio. So all right. I was thinking about data right how important data In data is and I was talking with one of the one of the entrepreneurs that I know, he's been running his business here for several years, doing a fantastic job knocking it out of the park. But I was doing some AI work with him, right. And, and he was pointing out something I thought was really critical, which was He's like, Hey, you know, Grant, he's like, a lot of us, you know, small to medium business owners. We're just trying to keep the lights on, right? We're trying to get stuff done trying to keep things going. And the fact of the matter is, we don't always have the ability, or the opportunity to go back and really look at our data. In fact, lots of times we're making a lot of decisions by intuition. And I thought, gosh, you know, that's, I think he's spot on. And so it prompted me in this particular episode to talk about the need for data, not not to replace intuition, but to augment it. So let's talk about that. So years ago, When I did my very first startup company, gosh, this was almost hate to say it. This was in the 80s. So my, my wife and I had we had just come out of college and, and, and we were going to move to Chicago Actually, I had my first job offers with a large technology company. I don't even think they're in existence today. Actually, they're not 30 plus years later, but anyway, so I had received an offer from them. I actually accepted it. And then about a week later, I'm up on campus on at the college worth college and I'm working through and I see this entrepreneur opportunity on the board there. And I look at it and I'm just drawn to it. And I'm like, No, I actually think that's the route I want to go. So I go home to my wife. I'm like, honey, I got, I got, I got this great idea. How about we leave the you know, hey, here's all this security Sort of job opportunity, let's go after a startup company. So it took a lot of convincing of eventually, we did it. So I went, I turned down the sort of for sure deal with the big company with a startup company in Chicago. So at the time, we had our first child. So this is a big decision, right to go at the higher risk, sort of opportunity. So what I did was, you know, rented this truck got my wife and my little baby in the in the truck, we drove across the country. We ended up in Chicago, I remember pulling in thinking, Man, where in the heck am I gonna live? I mean, it, it pivoted so quickly. It's just shocking to me how fast you know, our trajectory changed. So we pull in, we figure out a place to live. And I start with a startup company. And of course, a few weeks go by pretty soon as a few months now. It's about six months that we're into it. And I was focusing mostly on the technology so I really wasn't thinking much about others. things right in terms of running the business certainly wasn't thinking about the finances. One day though, I happen to take a look at the finances. And so I, I opened it up, and it there's this number, and I do the quick math and realize we've only got four weeks to live. And so I approached the owner, and my partner and I said, Is this true? And he's like, Yeah, it's true. We are actually about out of money. I'm like, Wow, man, you know, if I'd have known that four months ago, I would have made some different decisions. Right. So looking back at it, I realized, wow, I would have operated differently, if I would have known that right if I had access to that or been aware of it. So for me, this was just one of those first realizations in business, right? Just coming out of college where I realized Not only do I need the data I need, I need the transparency of the data. I need to be able to see it and you know, In small to medium businesses, you know, we're all taking on different roles, and we're busy and so forth. But running on intuition alone isn't sufficient. So augmenting it with data makes a lot of sense. Now, of course, it depends on your role, right? So the CFO or the CEO, obviously, they tend to look at that more, quite frankly, though, in today's world, technology and business is blended so much doesn't make sense, especially in small medium businesses to keep those separate. So as a result, we ended up having to make some pretty drastic decisions. We I was only there another week, because I realized we don't have enough runway to actually turn this thing around at this point. And I really like the guy I was working with and wanted to give him a chance to survive even longer without me being involved. I think he stayed on for another year with it eventually ended up shutting shutting it down. So here's the point. We got to have this blend of not just data on its own, and not just intuitive Now lots of times as you know, startup companies or small to medium businesses, it's intuition that gets us to the point where we get an operating model where cash is flowing and people are, are making money in the business is growing. But there's a point where that becomes risky, where we actually can't just run the business just on intuition, we actually need the insights that data can provide. Now, lots of times that data will come from things that you're already doing, right? Like, it might be your CRM system, or you know how you're capturing the transactions or the sales. It's not that you have to go do a whole bunch of extra things. But one thing is important, the need to start being intentional not only about tracking the fact that transactions are taking place, but then stopping to extrapolate from that, do some analysis on it and figure out do we need to adjust course, what are the patterns that are working that are while are those things that are bad? So Who needs data? You know, it's interesting. Sometimes marketers don't always need data, right? So when you think about if you got a small to medium business, you got the CFO or a CEO, you've got maybe technology people, you've got marketers and people who are doing sales. Lots of times, the marketers are thinking about, hey, how do I improve conversion rates, right? Or how do I better serve the customers, things like that. And they're often not looking at the data. Turns out that when we get data into the hands of marketers, they're great intuition capabilities that can build these businesses. They're great intuition capabilities actually can be amplified when we can augment their strong intuition with good data patterns, good data analysis, I would dare say, with artificial intelligence. So it's critical to augment the powerful capabilities of people in our small to medium businesses with well informed data. That's teaching and And providing insights to you. So who needs data? Heck we all do. Hey, thanks again for joining. My name is Grant Larsen and until next time, go get some data.

Thank you for joining grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your FREE eBook visit ClickAIRadio.com now.