Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection

Today, Sima joins Gary Laben, the former CEO of Dynata, and Jason Sobel, Head of U.S. Advisory, Evercore Partners, for a panel discussion hosted by Dynata on reinventing and reinvesting. 

Sima’s background

Sima is a research practitioner. She worked on the supplier side early in her career and had some experience on the client side at IBM, understanding how people use information. Then she worked at the NPD Group before becoming an entrepreneur. She currently does advisory services and investment banking through Oberon Securities and has a podcast.

Jason’s background 

For the last 25 years, Jason has been doing investment banking, mergers, and acquisitions in information media and marketing. Before that, he was a singer and songwriter. 

Common threads that exist amongst companies that thrive in the current environment and any rapidly-changing environment.

Sima feels that leadership and employee experience are critical to activate, motivate, and inspire people to produce good quality work. Since Covid, it has also become necessary to account for the mental component and look at the entire person and their life to inspire them to do good work.

For companies to thrive in challenging times, Jason feels they must laser-focus on talent development. He also believes that companies must challenge their employees to innovate, be fearless, and go forth unafraid. 

Leadership

Leadership is no longer about command and control. It is about understanding where people are, meeting them there, and motivating them to do better. 

Investors and buyers

Now more than ever, investors and buyers look for focused teams that deliver value for shareholders or buyers. There is currently a lot more concern about risk and uncertainty. Sima feels that investors are asking for way too much right now. 

What companies that are thriving in the information services world are doing

In addition to employees, thriving data companies in the information services world are incorporating more and more AI, analytics, and technology to move up the value chain from descriptive to prescriptive data. That requires more data of all types to be fused, aggregated, synthesized, and integrated in real-time to form an accurate picture. Those companies are also being empathetic about what their clients are going through. So instead of just selling their world of data, they are being more consultative and understanding which other data assets they can infuse into their prescriptive recommendations and insights.

Democratizing data

Some companies are now looking at a layer of software that allows them to democratize a lot of data within an organization. 

A tech-enabled services layer

Companies and clients require customer service and help. Yet, Jason has found that many data and technology companies resist the tech-enabled service layer, even though it is a critical component. He feels that it is essential for companies to have a services layer to thrive.

The four components that make for a good business in information services:

Data

Technology

Domain expertise

Services

How do companies deliver value to investors?

Investors are looking to drive long-term shareholder values. A long-term shareholder value is sustainable and has terminal value. That is a moat, which is what investors try to assess. So companies can deliver value to investors by looking for different sources of moats. Other things investors look for in information companies are barriers to entry and the sustainable shareholder value they can create. 

Some other critical components that may be overlooked that investors look for in a business 

Investors look for the value created in a business. They often look at the worst-case scenario and see there is something of value they can ultimately use to recoup their investment. Investors may also look at the agility of a business and its ability to respond. 

Complacency

Sometimes, thriving companies get lazy and comfortable. So they overlook what’s around the corner and miss things that are right in front of them. 

What the future holds for the industry

Sima feels that if people in the industry are bold and fearless, their information applications could expand to a broader sector.

Jason feels we are in the second inning of a data revolution. He finds it exciting to see how quickly the industry has moved from brand-centric to customer-centric because that will provide unlimited opportunities for efficient and effective one-to-one marketing at scale in real-time, using data, in the future. The scary part for him is the integration of technology and data. He fears that the new competitive set is the tech giants who will come downmarket into the data world and end up owning it entirely. 

If the industry, as a sector, can be fearless and agile, Gary feels it can be relevant across a myriad of places in time.

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Evercore

Dynata

Books mentioned:

Competition Demystified by Bruce Greenwald

Today, Sima joins Mike Delaney, the Managing Partner of Court Square Capital Partners, and Gary Laben, the Former CEO of Dynata, on a panel discussion to discuss various issues related to the insights and marketing industry.

What is the biggest obstacle and gaps you see for the insights and marketing industry moving forward?

Sima thinks that the biggest challenges are getting used to all the change and managing all the available data.

One of the biggest changes Gary has seen is how talent has been disrupted over the last few years. That has created an entirely different environment for acquisition, retention, growth, and development. 

How are best practice companies dealing with how to work from home and culture?

Gary believes that the values of a company define its culture.

Mike believes that culture is singularly the most important thing that defines who will win in the marketplace. He has dealt with many leaders who feel that being in the office is essential for building a culture. However, many workers prefer to work from home. So the companies that tried to mandate going back into the office had to back off and opt for a more virtual environment because they had very high resignation rates.

What should industry leaders focus on to ensure their success and help move the industry forward?

Mike has seen marketing come a long way in terms of its importance to value creation within the enterprise. He feels that marketing has become a differentiator in how businesses can grow. However, there is so much data available now that typical marketing executives get overwhelmed by it, making it hard for them to take full advantage of it and consume it in a way that adds value to their businesses. So, industry leaders need to focus on making data more easily consumable for marketing executives and more tangible for them in terms of how it translates into actions. 

Gary thinks leaders must determine the most important KPIs and use them in a disciplined way.

How should leaders use various data sources to help them make better decisions?

Sima thinks that all the data within an organization should exist culturally as part of that organization. She also thinks leaders need to consider the decisions they need to make and be disciplined in pulling in the right data sets to inform their decisions.

What is Dynata doing to transform itself by connecting the insights and marketing industry to grow its addressable market?

Dynata is on a journey to use its data in more places than originally intended. In creating more products and services, they have had to retool many technologies to make them fit for a broader application. They have to secure additional permissions to use that application and offer additional training to ensure their people understand where the business is going. They must also create an ecosystem that acknowledges where they are headed and extend their value proposition.

Which skill sets are most critical for our industry?

People need to take risks, be willing to fail, and be prepared to learn from failing. They also need to learn how to be comfortable outside their comfort zones and be prepared to do things that are data-driven and informed, even when those things are done in an entirely different way from how they were programmed to think about them.

Coping with the current economic turbulence

Everyone is always looking for higher rates of return. Many marketing departments and people running businesses are thinking about paying off some debts and ways to drive more earnings. Mike thinks we will see a re-rating of how much risk will cost, and people will be more willing to put capital into those investments. He believes that that will impact marketing. Fortunately, marketing budgets are getting more respect than they used to because the return on capital can now be proven. 

Top predictions for the industry

Gary thinks the industry will continue to expand and extend data throughout the marketing suite and ecosystem. He also believes that the term 'insights' will be used beyond marketing to drive outcomes, and the data marketplace will expand.

Sima believes we will have more data literacy in companies as we build the knowledge and tools to make that happen.

Mike thinks people will come up with ways to use data more effectively. 

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Court Square

Aleksandra Bass joins Sima on the podcast today. She is the Vice-president of Product Management at Momentive (makers of Survey Monkey).

Aleks has had an exciting career! In today's episode, she talks to Sima about her career journey, what she does at Momentive and various aspects of product management.

How Aleks got to where she is in her career

It took a bit of luck, some passion, and a lot of hard work for Aleks to get to where she is today in her career. She was passionate about how people think and make decisions, so she studied psychology. When she realized that applied psychology was not the right fit for her personality, she sought business applications for it, and market research was an area where she could use her psychology background to help business answer some core questions.

Making changes

Aleks worked for a research agency in Los Angeles and loved it. Unfortunately, she saw very little getting done with the data, and it frustrated her. So she switched from research execution on the agency side to becoming part of an in-house research team for an organization. Then, she transitioned again and went into a product marketing role while still doing her research role.

Technology

Then technologies started surfacing that allowed people to program their surveys without having to know how to code. So, Aleks brought some of those into a few organizations and began to do the in-house research herself. In doing that, she forged a relationship with Qualtrics. So she stepped fully into a product management and product marketing role.

What Aleks does day-to-day at Momentive

Aleks has one-on-ones with her team to stay in the loop, understand their frustrations and pain points, and help them. She has regular check-ins with her cross-functional partners and ensures that there is alignment with product marketing. She also makes sure that her team is paying attention to the metrics and the broader strategy, certain initiatives get resourced correctly, and everything makes sense and matches with the structure on which the organization has decided.

The top three metrics for a product management group

From Aleks’s perspective, the top three metrics that the product organization needs to impact through its work in partnership with design and engineering are:

Acquisition

Retention

Expansion

The right skills and personality types for product management

Aleks believes that the number one skill and personality type that makes or breaks the effectiveness of product managers is their ability to communicate and collaborate without ego. To have the right kind of impact, they need an understanding and respect for the cross-functional partners they work with. Being brave enough not to react to the negativity they encounter and still share and get feedback on their ideas and thought processes is another helpful attribute for product managers.

Introversion versus extroversion for product managers 

Aleks has noticed that there seems to be a bias toward extroversion for those in the product manager role. She feels that her team is pretty balanced between introversion and extroversion. She would encourage more introverts to consider product management because they tend to listen more and have equally effective results.

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Momentive

Today, Colson Steber joins Sima on the podcast. He is the Co-CEO of Communications for Research and Co-CEO of Ag Access.

In this episode, Colson dives into the origin of Communications for Research and his journey to becoming Co-CEO. He also discusses his passion for personal evolution and relentless learning and explains how he integrates his learning into his personal life and work.

Communications for Research

Communications for Research is a research logistics business. They provide services for recruiting and data collection. They are unique in that they have a proven process for getting to the research outcomes and doing whatever needs to get done.

The history of CFR

Colson’s Father started CFR 26 years ago. Colson, along with his business partner and co-CEO, bought the company six and a half years ago. The company could no longer continue operating as it had before. So they had to figure out how to make it work as a business. The company is now almost triple the size it was when they bought it, and they operate as Ag Access in addition to CFR.

A struggle

In the first three years of his entrepreneurial journey, Colson experienced continual cash flow problems. He spent almost all of 2019 within seven days of insolvency.

The least risky thing

Through his entrepreneurial journey, Colson learned that the least risky thing was to bet on himself and find the most real-world way of developing himself personally.

Transformation

Colson wanted to be a leader and understood he was not the leader he needed to be. However, he did not realize the depth and breadth of transformations he would have to go through to get to where he is today.

Ag Access

They had always done a significant amount of work in the agricultural sector, but none of it stood out. Then, Colson realized that they knew a lot about that sector and it was a niche they could stand out in because it was so unique. So, after the great pause in the spring of 2020, they launched Ag Access. It was an excellent decision because it is the work they do best and has the highest margin. It is also unique. So people can find them easily.

Relentless intentional action

Relentless intentional action has become part of the fabric of who Colson is. That means he is always working toward aligning his life and business through self-expression and how he sees his purpose in the world. His word for this year is relentless.

Reading

Colson’s desire to be his own person, design his life, and act intentionally, led him to start reading something every day. He has continued to do so for the last four years.

The Art and Science of Joy

Colson volunteers for and supports The Art and Science of Joy. His goal is to 10x the joy and abundance in every facet of his life.

Living his best life

Colson has structured his life so that by the time he sits at his desk at 8 am, he has already spent more than three hours working on his personal development.

An entrepreneurial operating system

In 2019, Colson took a deep dive into listening better and asking better questions. Since then, they started implementing an entrepreneurial operating system into the business, ingraining the practices, and teaching people how to be the right boss. 

Trust

Even though Colson has built enough trust in his team to be completely open and transparent about their projects, workflow, and mistakes, he feels they are on a journey, so they still have to keep improving on where they are now.

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Communications for Research Inc.

Ag Access

Colson Steber on LinkedIn

Colson Steber on Twitter

Books mentioned:

The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz

Atomic Habits by James ClearMastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz

Dr. Emmanuel Probst joins Sima on the podcast today.

He is the bestselling author of Brand Hacks and the newly-published book, Assemblage. In addition to writing books, he is also the Global Lead of Brand Thought-Leadership at Ipsos. In this episode, he talks to Sima about his latest book and the changing narrative he has seen in brand purpose over the last several years.

Books

The second edition of Brand Hacks came out in September 2021. Assemblage: The Art and Science of Brand Transformation will be officially released on the 24th of January, 2023. Dr. Probst is considering writing another book in 2024.

Curiosity and fulfillment

Dr. Probst believes that curiosity is essential for finding solutions and becoming successful in the world of marketing today. He has found it fulfilling to learn from people from different cultures and professional backgrounds. He feels we can learn as much from those who started in the industry recently as we can from industry leaders with C-level titles and many years of experience.

The problem with having too many brands and too many product choices

Dr. Probst wrote the book Assemblage: The Art and Science of Brand Transformation because he was seeing way too many products and brands. He feels that having too many choices is counter-productive because having too many options makes it hard for people to know what truly matters and which products to choose.

What people expect from brands

Studies done by Ipsos have shown that people expect all brands- regardless of the industry, to deliver good products that work for them. They also expect those brands to make an impact on their lives and offer a positive contribution to the world at large.

A shift in brand purpose 

Since Covid, Dr. Probst has seen a shift in brand purpose. As a result of what is going on in the world today and the acceleration of social media, consumers no longer support brands that claim to have a purpose. They now support the brands that demonstrate their purpose intentionally.

Harnessing the power of the audience

In the past, brand leaders could dictate the narrative of their brand strategy to their audience. That no longer applies today, so in Assemblage, Dr. Probst explains what brands must do to harness the power of their audience, and co-create the narrative of their brand along with their audience.

The difference between expectations and intentions

Consumers’ product expectations relate to what they hope to receive and how reliably the products work. Intention is a co-creative process between brands and people to activate and inform what comes next.

The outcomes of the co-creative process of intention for brands

Co-creating with intention extends the value chain for brands because it makes the output more tangible and allows for a return on investment or ad spend to be perceived more realistically.

Challenges for brand managers

Big data can be overwhelming for brand managers. That’s why it is helpful to have professional guidance from a company like Ipsos, to inform them tactically and strategically, and assist them in teasing out the most significant data.

Some advice for brand managers

When talking to their audience, brands must understand and appreciate that people tend to get overwhelmed, confused, and anxious about who they are in real life, who they are on social media, and who they will appear to be in the metaverse. So brands need to create meaningful relationships and reassure people about the future of our society. They also need to sell less and provide better products with a longer lifespan.

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Ipsos

Dr. Emmanuel Probst’s latest book, Assemblage: The Art and Science of Brand Transformation, will available on Amazon on January 24, 2023.

Books mentioned:

The Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz

Sima is delighted to have Mark Stouse, the Chairman and CEO of Proof Analytics, joining her today to dive into his background, the years he spent building Proof Analytics, and the exciting work he is currently doing.

Mark’s story

Even though Mark understands data science, he is not a data scientist. He is a business leader who got hooked and wanted more after discovering the power of analytics. So he began climbing the hill.

Business problems

It takes a lot of effort to get a small amount of data. So Mark started focusing on business problems associated with analytics. He decided to adopt the role of a whisperer figure and began building that role within all the different global organizations he ran.

Building a team 

He had to spend millions of dollars each year, mostly on salaries, to build a team that could provide the latency needed for the various businesses. But it worked!

A valuable discovery

The huge and intricate mega-models that Mark and his team created were time-consuming, and business leaders could never quite wrap their heads around them. That led Mark and his team to discover the value of what is now known as the Minimum Buyable Model.

Code

Mark and his team wrote some code early on to allow them to federate models in case they needed to make them bigger, more explanatory, or more inclusive.

A better way

It all took a lot of work. So, Mark looked for a better way of doing things. Something that had never been fully automated or aided before was multivariable linear and non-linear regression. Yet, that is a lean-data analytic that still answers most of the world’s questions.

Big data

A problem many businesses are facing today is that they have tons of data, but very little of it is big data.

The problem with time lags

When looking at the impact of marketing on sales, almost everything marketing spends on increasing sales productivity has different time lags associated with each investment. Without knowing the normal time lag for each type of investment, you cannot know how to plan or find an ROI.

Proof analytics

At Proof Analytics, they used focused and targeted AI to assist and accelerate their modeling process. Once in production and linked to the necessary data sets, their models become mostly autonomous, so business owners need not be regularly involved with them. Their models get recalculated as new data gets presented, so people can see the historical reality, forecasts that get generated, and also, an updated reality as the future becomes the present.

Mark’s customers’ favorite part of the tool

Mark’s customers like that they can load data into the libraries and then attach file-level security to that data. That makes it impossible for anyone to see the data in the file, yet the algorithm can still see it.

Sessions

Mark conducts sessions with his customers to help them triage. That is important because even with everything done with the Proof Analytics tool, it is still not fully democratized. So even though it does not require a data scientist to run it, a data analyst or someone switched onto the topic can help marketing teams have a much better experience with it.

The ideal customer 

The ideal customer for the tool is someone already doing all the work the old-fashioned way and looking for a way to do it more efficiently.

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Anita Watkins, the Global Head of Qualitative Research at Kantar, joins Sima today to talk about how she got to where she is and what she does at Qualitative. She also gets into current trends within the industry, offers guidance for coping with uncertainty, and shares some career advice.

Anita’s journey

After leaving college, Anita worked in sales and insurance sales. She worked hard and did well even though it was not her ideal job. Then, the company asked her to do some focus groups with the field sales force. After her first presentation, she realized that working in qualitative research might be a better fit for her personality type.

She applied for a job with a small firm in the research space. She refused to give up when they told her she did not have enough experience, and they eventually gave her the job. The company went through many changes and mergers over the years and finally became Kantar, one of the largest research firms on the planet. Toward the end of 2017, Anita became Kantar’s Global Head of Qualitative Research.

Anita’s career advice

Anita advises listeners never to give up! She encourages everyone to stay open, keep learning, and adopt a growth mindset.

The impact of the pandemic

Just a few weeks before everything shut down in 2020 and travel bans kicked in, Anita managed to sneak in a meeting with 65 global qualitative leaders from various countries. In April 2020, 49 of their 55 countries went into lock-down. At that point, 85% of their work got done in person, so they had to figure out how to pivot, execute their work, and save their projects. They managed to shift to working almost entirely online within about six weeks.

Coping with uncertainty

In times of uncertainty, take the first step, even if you do not have a plan. Just make some phone calls, and get together with those you know you can rely on to brainstorm.

Journaling

Anita journals a lot because writing helps her to think better and process her thoughts.

Collaborative leadership

Anita has a collaborative style of leading and problem-solving, so she enjoys talking to people with different points of view.

A shift toward a more human-centric approach 

Since the pandemic, there has been a shift towards a more human-centric approach. As a result, there has been a change in the questions to which her clients ask her to find answers. Many want to understand how mindsets and behaviors have shifted and how people are coping with vulnerability.

Imagination

According to Kantar’s insights, companies that use imagination in the future are most likely to become successful and outperform the companies that fail to do that. Companies that get to the why and find a story in the human part of that data will have a competitive advantage.

Empathy

Anita has taken her inspiration from Brene Brown for creating much of the empathy training they do at Kantar. She has found that getting people to put their perspective aside momentarily, role play, and adopt the mindset of putting themselves in someone else’s story, helps them develop more empathy.

Bio

Promoted to an expanded role in December 2021. In addition to Global Qualitative, now responsible for:

Kantar’s Global Innovation Solutions is designed to help clients drive sustainable brand growth. Kantar’s Innovation offer includes helping clients: identify opportunities, co-create concepts, and provide expert guidance in successful product launch through advertising, media, and product optimization. A key focus for this role will be partnering with technology, operations, and analytics to enhance our current portfolio to work even more effectively with the world’s most successful brands.

Kantar’s Solutions Learning team which is responsible for creating world-class content for learning across all Kantar solutions areas as well as professional development for our colleagues around the globe.

As the Global Head of Qualitative for Kantar, Anita is accountable for all elements of qualitative research across Kantar's operating brands worldwide. At Kantar, we seek to inspire our clients, our people, and society to create and flourish in an extraordinary world and we do so by drawing on the expertise of our research consultants that sit across 60 countries.

Before being appointed Global Head of Qualitative, with an entrepreneurial spirit, Anita had successfully grown qualitative in North America for KTNS by over 900% and has transformed businesses in Latin America by building effective relationships with external and internal corporate clients.

A seasoned researcher, Anita's focus is always on providing insight into connecting consumers emotionally to brands to drive growth for Fortune 500 clients. She has extensive experience in new product development, brand strategy, communications, retail, and satisfaction research. Throughout her career, Anita has moderated hundreds of focus groups and one-on-one interviews for many Fortune 100 firms across CPG, Financial Services, Travel/Tourism, B2B, and B2C audiences. Anita is a strategic thinker with a big heart and thrives on uncovering significant opportunities in the small details of everyday life.

Anita has a BS in Marketing, graduating Magna Cum Laude, from the University of Dayton, USA. She recently served on Unilever’s Expert Panel for its highly regarded qualitative accreditation program and is recognized as an Accredited Professional Development Specialist for the Market Research Society in London. She also serves as the Vice Chair on the Advisory Board for Michigan State University’s Master of Science in Marketing Research Program.

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Qualitative Research at Kantar

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Books mentioned:

Dare To Lead by Brene Brown

Data Gurus – Episode 187 – Multiculturalism, with Adriana Waterston

Adriana Waterston is Sima’s guest for today’s podcast! She is the Chief Revenue Officer and Insight and Strategy Lead at Horowitz Research.

Multiculturalism is an important matter that has become a focal point for society in recent years. At Horowitz Research, they specialize in multicultural research.

Adriana joins Sima today to talk about what they are doing at Horowitz Research. She also gets into the concepts of culture and multiculturalism and discusses various issues related to multiculturalism.

The origin of Horowitz Research’s focus on multicultural research

Back in the mid-1980s, when Horowitz was focused on helping the nascent cable industry, they addressed the question of who would pay for television when television was free. That brought to light that multicultural people- especially black and Latinx individuals, watched the most television and were willing to pay for it. Yet, at the time, cable companies redlined black and Hispanic neighborhoods. So, in addition to their general market work, Horowitz also began to advocate for multicultural audiences and consumers, urban markets, international audiences, and foreign language-dominant communities.

Census 2000

The 2000 Census led many people to understand that America would eventually become a multicultural majority country. Adriana joined Horowitz Research in 2001. She is Latine and is fully bilingual and bicultural. Around the time she joined the company, people were starting to talk about multiculturalism in a way that had never happened before. So she began digging into the company’s data on multicultural audiences and developed a passion for it.

Multicultural research

As the company evolved and conversations about multiculturalism became more relevant and important, Horowitz became known for their thought leadership and advocacy for multicultural communities and audiences and their work in cultural insights.

Culture

Culture is not static. It is a very fluid and personal concept. It is about the meanings people attach to traditions, objects, experiences, places, and religious activities and the feelings they get from participating in those experiences.

Challenges

People are multi-faceted, and there is a lot of diversity in every community. A challenge that many marketers face when targeting different groups of consumers is the fluidity of the cultural groups into which people fit.

Unlearning

Recently, Horowitz has been focusing on helping marketers and content providers unlearn their old ways of reaching different segments and encouraging them to view everyone as part of a broader community.

Horowitz’s message

Horowitz’s message for marketers and content providers is that everyone’s story is unique yet universal. The more they can understand that, the better the job they can do.

Understanding the value of diversity, multiculturalism, and multilingualism

Many next-generation people growing up in immigrant communities in America complain of feeling underestimated because they have darker skin, an accent, or a Hispanic last name. In some, that feeling and experience may even open them to overachieving. Fortunately, the United States is now in a very different place in terms of understanding the value of diversity, multiculturalism, and multilingualism.

Maintaining a connection

The evolution of communications and travel has made it a lot easier for immigrant families to maintain a connection with and revisit their home countries than it was in the past. That strengthens people’s cultural connections and language skills and helps them stay connected with the food, music, and other ways of keeping their cultural traditions alive.

Mixed culture families

There is a growing number of mixed culture and mixed-race families, but people still tend to stay connected to people in their communities. Over the next few generations, however, we are likely to see an increasing number of mixed-culture, mixed-race, and mixed-ethnicity families.

Opening doors

Doors are opening for more and more people to participate in spaces of power in the United States. That change will go a long way toward shifting power and helping this country become the diverse Mecca it ought to be.

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Sima is excited to have Andrew Cannon and Debby Schlesinger-Hellman, the Co-founders of the Art and Science of Joy and EQJOY, joining her today!

Andrew and Debby are on a mission to empower people and inspire them to live more joyful lives! They use the art and science of joy to help individuals and companies elevate their personal and business success. In this episode, they talk about what joy is, what they are doing, and what inspired them to do it.

Andrew’s inspiration

Andrew’s inspiration for what he does comes from his journey to find purpose in life. He loved his career in the market research industry but needed to do more. His struggles led him to realize that he needed joy in his life. He also needed to use his talents and connections to bring joy to others.

Debby’s inspiration

We are all born with a certain percentage of joy in our DNA. Debby was fortunate to be born with lots of it. However, a few decades ago, due to circumstances, she started feeling less of it. About five years ago, she felt the need to build more joy for herself and realized she could help others do the same. She and Andrew are both research-minded, so they began talking about how they could use the art and science of joy to make the world a better and more successful place for individuals and businesses.

An alternative reality

Andrew started doing a podcast and spoke to experts on topics like gratitude, empathy, nutrition, crisis, family life, and what they did to help themselves. Talking to those people helped him find an alternative reality that was a much better space!

Elevating people

Andrew and Debby elevate people, give them a voice, and offer them joy through their connection to the research industry and the people within it.

A powerful industry

The research industry is powerful! Each year, about 30 million people get touched through research in the US alone!

The Year of Joy

The Year of Joy is about making 2023 a joyful year of not getting pulled into life's challenges and focusing more on the good things we can do for ourselves and others. It is not about ignoring the challenges but accepting them for what they are and understanding that they are external and beyond our control.

The doors to the Year of Joy online community will open on the 17th of January, 2023, and millions of people will be invited to join.

EQJOY

Joy is about being able to manage our emotions and feelings. It starts with the children, so Andrew developed a game to teach young children (and their parents, caregivers, or teachers) emotional intelligence. Then he and Debby decided to give it away by making it a non-profit.

Goals

Their goal for EQJOY is for the next generation of parents to instill emotional intelligence in their children and ultimately make the world more joyful within the next three to four generations. Another goal is to give the game to every child in the first grade worldwide.

Joy

It takes time and effort to build joy. Self-love is a fundamental requirement.

Although joy differs for everyone, research has shown that everyone has four building blocks of joy in common:

Sense of well-being

Sense of belonging

Having a positive impact on others

Having fun in life

Everyone needs a sense of well-being and the ability to love themselves. However, many individuals struggle to achieve that alone. That is why a sense of community is vital to inspire people looking to improve their well-being.

The most joyful people are those who positively impact people, the planet, or both.

Making a difference

Debby and Andrew hope to make a difference by allowing others to make a difference and giving people access to things that will help them become kind humans.

Pain

Everyone experiences pain in life. However, we can manage that pain, get pat it, and ultimately choose whether or not we suffer.

CEOs

Some CEOs get Andrew and Debby’s message and understand that joy is a powerful tool for engagement, while some do not. Andrew and Debby do not try to convince anyone who does not get it that joy is a thing.

Bio: Andrew Cannon

Andrew is co-founder of the Art and Science of Joy and EQJOY Co.

Andrew has spent his career building a deep understanding of people’s values, attitudes, and behaviors to help business people make better decisions. Over the last few years, Andrew has used this knowledge and his research skills to deep-dive into the art and science of joy.

Andrew’s journey in business has taught him many lessons about leadership; about the importance of purpose and people, as well as profits, and the role joy can play in companies to elevate both personal and business success.

Through his own struggle with depression, Andrew has learned the fundamental truth that without a strong love of self and a sense of authentic belonging, one cannot hope to lead a joy-filled life.

With these experiences and beliefs, Andrew is on a mission to use his passion and his skills to inspire and empower others to live more joyful-filled lives. The Year of Joy project kicking off in January 2023 is one way this mission is being fulfilled.

Andrew is also the creator of the EQJOY card game, a tool to help children develop their emotional intelligence through power play.

When not working on bringing joy to others, Andrew can be found working on building his own joy muscle: enjoying time with family and friends, nature, travel, and music to name but a few things which bring Andrew joy.

Bio

Debby is co-founder of the Art and Science of Joy and EQJOY Co.

Debby’s background in business has given her experience in coaching, mentoring, and building teams. She is currently interested in bringing that knowledge along with new learnings to advance more joy to both individuals as well as teams.

During Debby’s time developing leaders she has found that people are searching for more belonging and a sense of purpose in their everyday life, including the workplace. With this knowledge Debby is passionate about helping others find a path to that more joy-filled life, looking to have a positive impact on many.

The past couple of decades has highlighted the lack of Joy for many and filled it with fear, anxiety, and stress front and center. Debby has learned that taking the time and effort to rebuild the joy muscle through conscious work on well-being, belonging, positive impact and fun has helped her live a more joy-filled life.

With this knowledge, Debby is dedicating time to bring this knowledge to others in a way that will encourage them to build that Joy muscle and bring Joy to their lives and those of their loved ones. The Year of Joy is the perfect vehicle to allow many people to join in changing the Joy level of their journey.

Debby is passionate about working side by side with Andrew on EQJOY, a tool to help children develop their emotional intelligence through power play. If we are successful in guiding our children to emotional health and well-being, we will see them grow to be much healthier and more joyful adults.

While Debby is continuously working on her Joy journey you will find her collaborating with others on expanding their Joy through nature walks, discussing books, having fun-filled meals together, traveling to new places, and sharing stories.

 

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The Art and Science of Joy

The Art of Science and Joy on LinkedIn

Andrew Cannon on LinkedIn

Debby Schlesinger-Hellman on LinkedIn

Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of Data Gurus!

Sima is delighted to have Nihal Advani, the Founder, and CEO of QualSights, joining her today!

Nihal has been on an exciting journey since starting his first business. In today’s episode, he shares his story, gets into how he founded and pivoted his business, and talks about what they are doing at QualSights.

Nihal’s story

Nihal grew up in India and played tennis for the country. At eighteen, he came to the US to study and play college tennis. In his junior year of college, he was fortunate enough to be one of only ten people selected from more than 3,100 candidates to do an internship at Google. After graduating, he wanted to continue with tech. So he worked for Microsoft for five years and then decided to start a business.

Getting selected as a Google intern

Nihal got selected as an intern for Google for two reasons. One was that he knew Google inside out after spending an entire semester learning about all their various departments, so he crushed the interviews. The second was his background in sports.

Sports and entrepreneurs

Nihal believes that sports are important for entrepreneurs because they teach them the qualities they need, like teamwork, leadership, focus, determination, and persistence. Sports also teach entrepreneurs how to deal with losses and celebrate wins.

Nihal’s first startup

Nihal quit Microsoft in 2012 to start a travel planning company. It was called Georama and started as a recommendation engine to help people find places to go based on their budget, interests, and preferred activities. They were not making enough income by 2014, so Nihal decided to pivot into virtual travel and provide real-time video insights from anywhere in the world. They had great technology and attracted some decent clients, like Marriott, but he felt he had taken on too much.

Insights

In 2017, Nihal decided to focus on one single vertical. He found a program to help him select the right one and saw that the insights industry resonated very well with his value proposition.

QualSights

So, in 2018, he pivoted to focus solely on insights. He rebranded Georama to become an all-in-one qualitative suite called QualSights. QualSights is a one-stop shop for deep consumer insights.

Growing fast

Nihal attributes QualSights’s fast growth to its accelerator platform and having had momentum.

Covid 

Covid forced everyone to go digital. That forced people to use tools they would not have used otherwise. With digital, they found that they could do things fast and easily. With platforms like QualSights, they found additional tools like AI to help them make sense of all the data.

Remote ethnography

Remote ethnography is powerful because it allows clients to capture consumer insights in-person and in the consumers’ natural environments as they are cooking, cleaning, shopping, or eating.

The different stages of QualSights’s research projects:

Recruiting (QualSights uses recruiting partners to help them move faster than traditional qualitative research.)

Capturing (The QualSights platform starts with the capture side. 90% of their projects get done via their mobile app, and they have a suite of tools to capture the data.)

Analyzing (QualSights has a suite of AI tools to help find the moments that matter and analyze the data.)

Presenting (On the QualSights platform, photos, videos, audio, or whatever people have captured can be dragged to an area where they can be shared digitally and downloaded with one click.)

QualSights is the only platform with that much breadth and depth of capabilities.

QualSights’s positioning

Qualsights has clients across a wide range of industries, including CPG, pharma, tech, and retail.

 

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Nihal Advani on LinkedIn

QualSights on Twitter (@QualSights)