Meeting Title: Brainforge Data Strategy Discussion Date: 2025-12-19 Meeting participants: Demilade Agboola, Luke Scorziell, Luke’s Notetaker
WEBVTT
1 00:04:25.170 ⇒ 00:04:26.450 Luke Scorziell: Hey, Demon Lloyd.
2 00:04:29.150 ⇒ 00:04:30.099 Luke Scorziell: How’s it going?
3 00:04:30.100 ⇒ 00:04:32.049 Demilade Agboola: Sorry, I’m, one second.
4 00:04:35.820 ⇒ 00:04:36.910 Demilade Agboola: Can you speak now?
5 00:04:37.260 ⇒ 00:04:39.010 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, can you hear me fine?
6 00:04:39.010 ⇒ 00:04:43.690 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, it was routing the… the sound out the wrong way. It’s fine now, though.
7 00:04:43.690 ⇒ 00:04:46.839 Luke Scorziell: Oh, cool, okay. Let me see if I can get my,
8 00:04:49.110 ⇒ 00:04:52.080 Luke Scorziell: My note take her to pop in. How are you doing? Are you… where are you?
9 00:04:52.470 ⇒ 00:04:57.910 Demilade Agboola: I live in Malta, so right now, I am… like.
10 00:04:58.380 ⇒ 00:05:01.590 Demilade Agboola: 6 hours ahead of the ET, or Eastern Time.
11 00:05:01.740 ⇒ 00:05:06.970 Demilade Agboola: But yeah, I’m largely either in motor or,
12 00:05:08.030 ⇒ 00:05:11.850 Demilade Agboola: Minnesota, where my girlfriend lives, so I go back and forth quite a bit.
13 00:05:12.300 ⇒ 00:05:15.400 Luke Scorziell: Oh, dang. Okay, how often are you going back and forth? That’s a lot of.
14 00:05:15.560 ⇒ 00:05:20.960 Demilade Agboola: 14. I know, I was… I literally, I literally got in from Minnesota on…
15 00:05:21.080 ⇒ 00:05:25.979 Demilade Agboola: Sunday, like, this Sunday. So, like, if you had called me last week, I would have been in Minnesota.
16 00:05:26.100 ⇒ 00:05:28.270 Demilade Agboola: In negative 4.
17 00:05:28.270 ⇒ 00:05:31.039 Luke Scorziell: Oh, jeez. What’s the weather like in Malta?
18 00:05:31.040 ⇒ 00:05:37.220 Demilade Agboola: Oh, way better. A cold day in Minnesota. I mean, in Malta is probably, like.
19 00:05:37.400 ⇒ 00:05:39.999 Demilade Agboola: 50 degrees, maybe 40 degrees.
20 00:05:40.700 ⇒ 00:05:41.470 Demilade Agboola: So…
21 00:05:42.150 ⇒ 00:05:45.440 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I was like, I gotta look at where Maltivent is, because I was…
22 00:05:45.440 ⇒ 00:05:48.389 Demilade Agboola: It’s an island. It’s an island off the coast of Italy.
23 00:05:48.960 ⇒ 00:05:50.940 Luke Scorziell: Wow, did you grow up there, or how…
24 00:05:50.940 ⇒ 00:05:54.420 Demilade Agboola: No, no, I’m Nigerian, born and raised in Nigeria,
25 00:05:54.720 ⇒ 00:05:57.190 Demilade Agboola: But I just moved here in, like, 2023, so…
26 00:05:57.830 ⇒ 00:05:59.560 Luke Scorziell: Oh, cool. Okay. Dang.
27 00:05:59.820 ⇒ 00:06:03.240 Luke Scorziell: That is quite a ways from Minnesota.
28 00:06:03.470 ⇒ 00:06:11.429 Luke Scorziell: Yes, of course. It’s, 15 hours a week from Minnesota. Yeah, that’s like, geez,
29 00:06:11.700 ⇒ 00:06:13.860 Luke Scorziell: I’ve… I flew to Israel once.
30 00:06:14.060 ⇒ 00:06:16.100 Luke Scorziell: And, it was like…
31 00:06:16.490 ⇒ 00:06:28.629 Demilade Agboola: quite the trip. Yeah, it is. Like, it kind of makes you realize how far, because I’ve gone from Malta to, California, too, because I had… I did, like, last year, I did Christmas in California.
32 00:06:29.160 ⇒ 00:06:39.310 Demilade Agboola: So, yeah, that was quite the ways, because I had to do… I flew to, I believe, Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to Boston, then Boston to…
33 00:06:40.140 ⇒ 00:06:41.890 Demilade Agboola: California, so it was literally…
34 00:06:41.890 ⇒ 00:06:44.359 Luke Scorziell: Why were you in California? What was in California?
35 00:06:44.360 ⇒ 00:06:51.389 Demilade Agboola: No, I have… I have family there. I have, I have some of my cousins, and we were doing… they were doing, like, a Christmas get-together, so…
36 00:06:51.730 ⇒ 00:06:53.270 Luke Scorziell: I mean, like…
37 00:06:53.520 ⇒ 00:07:00.320 Demilade Agboola: almost 20 years. I was like, I… one of my cousins there, I hadn’t even seen him at all.
38 00:07:00.320 ⇒ 00:07:03.790 Luke Scorziell: Like, yeah, so it was… it was…
39 00:07:03.790 ⇒ 00:07:08.930 Demilade Agboola: I was looking forward to going into that, and so I went. So, yeah, it was pretty cool.
40 00:07:09.520 ⇒ 00:07:10.600 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
41 00:07:11.020 ⇒ 00:07:14.140 Luke Scorziell: I am… I’m in LA, so I’m, like.
42 00:07:14.670 ⇒ 00:07:15.729 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, the LU team.
43 00:07:15.730 ⇒ 00:07:22.490 Luke Scorziell: California. And yeah, so I’ve,
44 00:07:23.530 ⇒ 00:07:28.290 Luke Scorziell: Grew up out here, like 2 hours away, went to school at USC.
45 00:07:28.430 ⇒ 00:07:29.570 Demilade Agboola: Go to church.
46 00:07:29.570 ⇒ 00:07:33.799 Luke Scorziell: out here, and then met Robert through someone at my church.
47 00:07:34.150 ⇒ 00:07:34.679 Demilade Agboola: Bye.
48 00:07:34.680 ⇒ 00:07:40.270 Luke Scorziell: And then, and that was in April, and then they reached out to me, like.
49 00:07:40.800 ⇒ 00:07:47.289 Luke Scorziell: Earlier this month, and we’re like, hey, can you come and help out, doing, like, go-to-market stuff, so…
50 00:07:47.480 ⇒ 00:07:51.779 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it’s been fun, but I’m very,
51 00:07:51.900 ⇒ 00:07:56.410 Luke Scorziell: unfamiliar with the Minnesota weather, and… I have… I’m…
52 00:07:56.720 ⇒ 00:07:59.819 Luke Scorziell: My grandpa is, from Italy.
53 00:07:59.960 ⇒ 00:08:01.010 Demilade Agboola: Oh, God.
54 00:08:01.010 ⇒ 00:08:03.420 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, so I don’t… I don’t know.
55 00:08:03.420 ⇒ 00:08:05.690 Demilade Agboola: Explain the surname, because, you know…
56 00:08:06.450 ⇒ 00:08:07.400 Luke Scorziell: Oh, yeah.
57 00:08:07.590 ⇒ 00:08:08.000 Demilade Agboola: Yeah.
58 00:08:08.000 ⇒ 00:08:09.910 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it used to be Scorts Yellow.
59 00:08:10.260 ⇒ 00:08:12.920 Demilade Agboola: Oh, okay. So, why did you knock off the O?
60 00:08:13.400 ⇒ 00:08:20.119 Luke Scorziell: I think when they, like, immigrated here, it was… it was in fashion to, like, make your name more American, I don’t know.
61 00:08:20.120 ⇒ 00:08:21.169 Demilade Agboola: Oh, fair enough, right now.
62 00:08:21.170 ⇒ 00:08:24.290 Luke Scorziell: There’s, there’s, like, no one else in the world that has this name.
63 00:08:26.300 ⇒ 00:08:31.299 Luke Scorziell: But, yeah, okay, well, cool, it’s good to meet you, and .
64 00:08:31.300 ⇒ 00:08:31.990 Demilade Agboola: Meet you too.
65 00:08:31.990 ⇒ 00:08:32.769 Luke Scorziell: for, I don’t know.
66 00:08:32.770 ⇒ 00:08:35.410 Demilade Agboola: How’s it been… how’s it been so far, like, Brainforge?
67 00:08:36.299 ⇒ 00:08:42.789 Luke Scorziell: It’s been fun. I think, I’m coming from running my own, like, marketing agency.
68 00:08:42.929 ⇒ 00:08:50.469 Luke Scorziell: And I like the level of, like, autonomy and ownership that, like, I think Robert knew Tom
69 00:08:50.689 ⇒ 00:08:53.469 Luke Scorziell: Like, give to try to… to just…
70 00:08:53.599 ⇒ 00:09:00.809 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it’s like trying things, and experimenting a lot, and then, like, right now, I’m just kind of on this journey to learn.
71 00:09:00.919 ⇒ 00:09:09.749 Luke Scorziell: more about, like, the products and services that we offer. And I think, in particular, I was curious to ask you about, like, the data side.
72 00:09:09.859 ⇒ 00:09:13.999 Luke Scorziell: Okay. Which seems to be… to be a split, but…
73 00:09:14.359 ⇒ 00:09:19.359 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it’s been fun. I think I see, like, a lot of potential, and I’m just excited to get to be
74 00:09:19.639 ⇒ 00:09:23.609 Luke Scorziell: Like, a part of, helping things out, and then coincidentally.
75 00:09:23.949 ⇒ 00:09:27.499 Luke Scorziell: Robert and Utam are meeting in San Francisco tomorrow.
76 00:09:27.859 ⇒ 00:09:30.829 Luke Scorziell: And I’m Flying up already.
77 00:09:31.480 ⇒ 00:09:32.450 Luke Scorziell: Go.
78 00:09:32.600 ⇒ 00:09:36.050 Luke Scorziell: So we’re gonna… I’m gonna get to meet… meet up with them.
79 00:09:36.090 ⇒ 00:09:37.220 Demilade Agboola: That’s pretty cool.
80 00:09:38.300 ⇒ 00:09:39.900 Luke Scorziell: But, yeah, and how long have you been here?
81 00:09:40.580 ⇒ 00:09:46.850 Demilade Agboola: Bring forward for, like, 8 months. I joined in March of this year, so…
82 00:09:47.160 ⇒ 00:09:49.190 Demilade Agboola: I’ll take 8, 9 months.
83 00:09:49.550 ⇒ 00:09:50.909 Luke Scorziell: And how’s it been for you so far?
84 00:09:51.680 ⇒ 00:10:01.410 Demilade Agboola: So far it’s been pretty good. I mean, you get the same old thing with a consulting, from a data perspective, is that it’s really fast-paced, and, like…
85 00:10:01.960 ⇒ 00:10:08.610 Demilade Agboola: the days can be very unpredictable, like, you try your best to make it predictable, because you’re like, oh, this is our roadmap, this is what we need to do.
86 00:10:08.830 ⇒ 00:10:23.609 Demilade Agboola: But all that goes out the window if, like, a dashboard breaks and, like, no one can see any data, no one can see any data, right? Like, yeah, all that goes out that window, and you just… today is just for triage or figuring things out. And we have some big, big clients that,
87 00:10:24.510 ⇒ 00:10:31.060 Demilade Agboola: Obviously, if things go bad, it’s… it’s really… so we’re trying, like, for… have you ever heard of the Eden Project?
88 00:10:31.520 ⇒ 00:10:33.399 Luke Scorziell: Yes, yeah, yeah, they’re, like, the biggest client, right?
89 00:10:33.400 ⇒ 00:10:37.209 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, so, like, Aiden… there have been days where Aiden just goes.
90 00:10:37.310 ⇒ 00:10:51.380 Demilade Agboola: yo, our numbers look off, and everything just gets pushed to the side, because we need to figure out, like, why, that happens. Now, thankfully, it’s… the frequency has, like, reduced, so we have been able to put that, like, ship
91 00:10:51.380 ⇒ 00:11:01.999 Demilade Agboola: That you can’t just sell, largely. And apart from, like, extraordinary circumstances, which sometimes they do happen, but, like, nothing really breaks anymore.
92 00:11:02.260 ⇒ 00:11:08.259 Demilade Agboola: But yeah, it’s been nice, it’s been nice, the team’s pretty good.
93 00:11:08.480 ⇒ 00:11:13.150 Demilade Agboola: And it’s been fun to work with different people, so yeah.
94 00:11:13.630 ⇒ 00:11:14.190 Demilade Agboola: Yeah.
95 00:11:14.190 ⇒ 00:11:20.469 Luke Scorziell: Tell me, so… because there’s kind of… it’s interesting, because as I’ve talked to… People on the…
96 00:11:20.900 ⇒ 00:11:33.559 Luke Scorziell: ground level, it’s like, there’s, like, oh, the… there’s a big divide between, like, data and AI. And I was talking to Utam yesterday, and he was like, oh, there shouldn’t be a divide. But I’m kind of curious, like, from your perspective, like, what…
97 00:11:34.300 ⇒ 00:11:35.650 Luke Scorziell: Or even just…
98 00:11:35.940 ⇒ 00:11:39.579 Luke Scorziell: Like, regardless of whether or not there should be a divide, like, what is it that you’re working on?
99 00:11:39.790 ⇒ 00:11:44.630 Luke Scorziell: Versus, like, the AI team and, oh, yeah.
100 00:11:47.850 ⇒ 00:11:55.200 Demilade Agboola: I mean, technically, yeah, there shouldn’t be a divide, because the idea is we should be trying to leverage the AI team.
101 00:11:55.650 ⇒ 00:11:59.330 Demilade Agboola: I mean, I think more in practice is that…
102 00:12:00.900 ⇒ 00:12:05.529 Demilade Agboola: A lot of jobs come in for us, like, say,
103 00:12:06.170 ⇒ 00:12:21.789 Demilade Agboola: you know, we need a data audit and get our, like, our shipping order, like, we… you know, we don’t have any idea of what the numbers look like, or the numbers have been messed up for a very long time, and we’ve just been trying to get by, but we’re done with that. So we’re just trying, like, audit.
104 00:12:21.890 ⇒ 00:12:29.080 Demilade Agboola: And then give them reports, as well as actually now build out the, like, proper infrastructure required for them to be able to see their data.
105 00:12:29.200 ⇒ 00:12:32.539 Demilade Agboola: As I went in. So, like, every morning, every…
106 00:12:32.640 ⇒ 00:12:35.849 Demilade Agboola: Every hour, whatever frequency they desire.
107 00:12:36.260 ⇒ 00:12:41.310 Demilade Agboola: The AI team, on the other hand, we do have a couple projects that they work on.
108 00:12:42.130 ⇒ 00:12:47.109 Demilade Agboola: And they also help us, like, internally, so… I don’t know if you’ve seen, like, the platform.
109 00:12:48.190 ⇒ 00:12:49.599 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, the Forge thing.
110 00:12:49.600 ⇒ 00:13:05.640 Demilade Agboola: approach, exactly, yeah. So the platform is, like, largely, you know, powered by the AI team, so they help us, like, you know, like, all of our meetings are recorded, you can get transcripts of that, you can get summaries of that, you can go ask questions of it. So, like, that’s all the AI team.
111 00:13:05.940 ⇒ 00:13:06.510 Demilade Agboola: Right.
112 00:13:06.950 ⇒ 00:13:11.719 Demilade Agboola: Obviously, the idea is that superpowers you, so, like, you can always easily go back to…
113 00:13:12.110 ⇒ 00:13:17.830 Demilade Agboola: a call, and instead of watching everything or trying to hop around, you could just ask the question and get, you know, the answers.
114 00:13:18.480 ⇒ 00:13:19.580 Demilade Agboola: Or…
115 00:13:19.940 ⇒ 00:13:31.330 Demilade Agboola: And then we talk to them, like, we do interviews with them, and they tell… they ask about, like, our workflow, and then they try to figure out, like, where they could use AI to, like, improve certain processes.
116 00:13:32.070 ⇒ 00:13:49.700 Demilade Agboola: So yeah, like, like what Tom said, it’s not supposed to be, like, a divide, but there are periods where, like, we have no idea what the AI team is doing, like, at least if you’re not necessarily in their stand-ups, or in their meetings, or, like, what’s going on, like, they’re doing their own thing. We’re kind of doing our own thing, if that makes any sense.
117 00:13:50.090 ⇒ 00:13:55.250 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, well, and Tommy, so I’m curious, too, like, what is data from your perspective? So, obviously, I’m, like.
118 00:13:55.700 ⇒ 00:14:00.299 Luke Scorziell: You know, but what are, like, the types of data and the things that you’re working with?
119 00:14:00.400 ⇒ 00:14:01.560 Luke Scorziell: from customers.
120 00:14:02.230 ⇒ 00:14:06.270 Demilade Agboola: So, like, data is…
121 00:14:06.440 ⇒ 00:14:19.740 Demilade Agboola: everything. Like, it’s just basically any piece of, like, information that, like, a client has about their business. And so where we come in is we’re just like, okay, number one, do you have that data? Number two.
122 00:14:20.610 ⇒ 00:14:27.150 Demilade Agboola: like, what do you want to see, right? So that decides a lot of, like, what we do.
123 00:14:27.270 ⇒ 00:14:31.080 Demilade Agboola: So, for instance, a client who wants to see if,
124 00:14:32.130 ⇒ 00:14:52.060 Demilade Agboola: people… well, like, the website optimization and conversion, and if people are dropping off on any certain pages, well, obviously, you need to be tracking what’s happening across the pages, right? Like, you need to know if someone on this page, what do they click, what’s the next thing they go to, and then eventually, you can kind of start to create a funnel and figure out, like, okay.
125 00:14:52.170 ⇒ 00:15:05.450 Demilade Agboola: The purchase button is here on this page, and this is where, like, people that land on the homepage, this is how often they finally get to that purchase button, and we can kind of see the different drop-offs until they get to that point, right?
126 00:15:06.480 ⇒ 00:15:24.720 Demilade Agboola: But, like, if you’re not tracking, for instance, you don’t have that data. So, we can then come in and say, okay, we need to set that up if you don’t have the data, and then if you do have the data, then what we start to do is we can either pull that data into a warehouse, where, like, we keep a lot of the data that our clients have.
127 00:15:25.000 ⇒ 00:15:26.190 Demilade Agboola: Yep.
128 00:15:26.340 ⇒ 00:15:32.109 Demilade Agboola: And so that’s why you might hear things like Snowflake, or BigQuery, or Redshift, or all that stuff that’s just a warehouse.
129 00:15:33.770 ⇒ 00:15:41.430 Demilade Agboola: And so we load the data in there, and then we start to apply logic to it to ensure that, like, it makes sense for easy interpretation.
130 00:15:41.750 ⇒ 00:15:54.210 Demilade Agboola: And so, the analysts would then take that data, and then visualize it, and say, hey, this, or, you know, create a report off of it, and say, hey, this is… these are the numbers you are trying to see. As we can see here on the landing page.
131 00:15:54.790 ⇒ 00:16:11.319 Demilade Agboola: from the landing page to, you know, the contact us form, you can see a drop-off of, like, you know, 20%. So, 20% of people that land on your landing page don’t go to the contact us form. They tend to go here, or they might just chant. Maybe 10% of them just chant, they don’t go anywhere else, they click off the page.
132 00:16:11.440 ⇒ 00:16:26.730 Demilade Agboola: Or maybe, you know, the other 10% tend to go to this other page. Like, you can start to see the funnel and start to make interpretations, and so you can start to use that logic and go, hey, if we were trying to optimize this page and reduce, like, the bounce rates, so the bounce rate is people that come on and then go off.
133 00:16:27.150 ⇒ 00:16:36.440 Demilade Agboola: How do we need to, like, what do we need to do? Maybe our website, let’s try making a more responsive website. So you try that, and you can monitor your bounce rates, or your, you know, the numbers for…
134 00:16:37.090 ⇒ 00:16:49.089 Demilade Agboola: the next, like, 30 days, and then get an idea of, like, okay, is this working? Or, you know, all of that stuff. So, yeah, so that’s basically data from my perspective. It’s… we just try and figure out what people need to see.
135 00:16:49.090 ⇒ 00:16:59.209 Demilade Agboola: what drives their daily decisions, and what drives, like, what knowledge they need to have to make those decisions. It can vary, like, obviously marketing focused, finance-focused.
136 00:16:59.250 ⇒ 00:17:06.090 Demilade Agboola: marketing and finance combined. We have, like, in certain cases, operations, so if we worked with,
137 00:17:06.859 ⇒ 00:17:18.959 Demilade Agboola: a flower company, right? Like, Urban Stems was a flower project, they deliver flowers across the country, so obviously for them, ops is a very important part. They need to know how much things they have in stock.
138 00:17:19.359 ⇒ 00:17:22.809 Demilade Agboola: How quickly he finished, what was going on with that.
139 00:17:22.819 ⇒ 00:17:23.279 Luke Scorziell: Awesome.
140 00:17:23.280 ⇒ 00:17:35.779 Demilade Agboola: So, like, everyone has different needs and what they need to see to not be, to be able to be effective at their jobs. So, we kind of go around and try to understand that for different people, help them, like.
141 00:17:36.410 ⇒ 00:17:37.990 Demilade Agboola: Build that out for them.
142 00:17:38.100 ⇒ 00:17:43.639 Demilade Agboola: And then… They usually like what we do, so…
143 00:17:44.350 ⇒ 00:17:51.450 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah. So, okay, that makes sense. I think.
144 00:17:56.450 ⇒ 00:18:03.870 Luke Scorziell: So it’s kind of… it’s taking, like, what might be disparate information that they have, or they’re not utilizing, or don’t even know that they could have.
145 00:18:04.150 ⇒ 00:18:11.600 Luke Scorziell: And helping them turn it into… Like, experiments, and dashboards, and…
146 00:18:11.750 ⇒ 00:18:14.459 Luke Scorziell: Like, pieces of information that can act on
147 00:18:14.720 ⇒ 00:18:17.590 Luke Scorziell: to make, like, better decisions. Is that kind of the…
148 00:18:17.590 ⇒ 00:18:21.860 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, I will say that the word we like to use is insights, because.
149 00:18:21.860 ⇒ 00:18:22.380 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah.
150 00:18:22.380 ⇒ 00:18:36.139 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, that’s kind of the end goal of a lot of things. The reason why I said I will stay away from dashboards is because there’s always this whole thing in data, where if people say, like, you’re building dashboards for people, it sounds very basic, because, like.
151 00:18:36.510 ⇒ 00:18:44.210 Demilade Agboola: dashboards are, like… dashboards are just the interface, right? Like, but in reality, what you want is…
152 00:18:44.280 ⇒ 00:18:51.300 Demilade Agboola: Sure, man, the only way you can get action is through insights. So, like, you know, you’re not just building dashboards, you need to be aware that, like.
153 00:18:51.330 ⇒ 00:19:05.980 Demilade Agboola: you’re driving your sites. And to be fair, there are some pretty useless dashboards that I have seen in my life, so those are the kind of dashboards. Like, people don’t use them. Like, you will build them, but, like, after, like, a month or two, like, no one really uses it, so…
154 00:19:06.200 ⇒ 00:19:15.009 Demilade Agboola: The goal is always to, like, drive insights and, like, action within the company, and build a culture where people are…
155 00:19:15.470 ⇒ 00:19:23.030 Demilade Agboola: relying on data for decision making. Like, they’re not just saying, hmm, this seems off. They’re like, okay, no, what’s the trend been over the last…
156 00:19:23.210 ⇒ 00:19:26.020 Luke Scorziell: 2 months, 4 months, 5 months, whatever.
157 00:19:26.020 ⇒ 00:19:36.169 Demilade Agboola: And then you can say, this feels off, or what was the trend last year? Or, you know, maybe you’re doing a month-over-month analysis relative to the previous year. So, like, for instance, we know
158 00:19:36.710 ⇒ 00:19:40.879 Demilade Agboola: Thank you for an e-com Black Friday, obviously your sales will go up.
159 00:19:41.090 ⇒ 00:19:51.980 Demilade Agboola: So, yeah, that’s cool, but, like, what was that like? Like, Black Friday last year as well? And are you actually growing as a business? Because if you did, 1 million in sales last year.
160 00:19:52.150 ⇒ 00:20:07.429 Demilade Agboola: But this year, you’re doing, like, 750K is still a huge jump from your month-to-month, which is $200K. That’s great in the real sense of it, but, like.
161 00:20:07.480 ⇒ 00:20:16.920 Demilade Agboola: in the sense of, like, month-to-month, no, you didn’t do as well as you did last year, and you need to kind of figure out why that was. What were your big sellers last year? There were not your big sellers this year, or, like.
162 00:20:17.080 ⇒ 00:20:26.110 Demilade Agboola: Is there a trend? Is your business really, like, a trendy business? Do you sell certain things that, like, were out of trend this year, and you were not in stock of things that were in trend this year?
163 00:20:26.240 ⇒ 00:20:28.869 Luke Scorziell: Like, you know, all that kind of stuff, so…
164 00:20:28.870 ⇒ 00:20:45.849 Demilade Agboola: Were things sold out? That’s also another problem, like, you didn’t have enough stock for things, so, like, people were just seeing nuts in stock, nuts in stock, not in stock, so they didn’t purchase. So we can try and, like, get an idea of, like, okay, you ran out of stock of these things, how quickly did you run out of stock? So if it was Black Friday.
165 00:20:45.850 ⇒ 00:20:48.929 Demilade Agboola: And you run out of stock of stuff by, like, 8 AM.
166 00:20:49.120 ⇒ 00:20:50.330 Demilade Agboola: then yes.
167 00:20:50.490 ⇒ 00:21:01.370 Demilade Agboola: If that was your best seller, or, like, the fastest selling thing you had, then yes, it makes sense why your sales could have been higher, but you didn’t get that, because you were out of stock really early.
168 00:21:01.500 ⇒ 00:21:04.350 Demilade Agboola: So, I’m just pulling off numbers and hypotheses.
169 00:21:04.350 ⇒ 00:21:04.990 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah.
170 00:21:04.990 ⇒ 00:21:21.389 Demilade Agboola: But, like, you get the general concept. We’re trying to help you get to that point where you’re able to say, okay, next Black Friday, this is our action plan. This is what we need to do. We just set up alerts for when things go out of stock, or when things are below a certain number, and maybe we need to, like.
171 00:21:21.970 ⇒ 00:21:31.049 Demilade Agboola: What we’ll do is we’ll need to, you know, have an emergency contact for certain things, so what, like, if it goes out of stock at this time, or if it’s below a certain number, say 20,
172 00:21:31.260 ⇒ 00:21:32.600 Demilade Agboola: pieces, right? Yeah.
173 00:21:32.700 ⇒ 00:21:46.199 Demilade Agboola: we’re gonna reach out to the supplier, and then we’ll have to put a later delivery date, but yes, we will still have stock of that item. Things like that. Like, you just want to put them in that seat where they’re not just always reacting.
174 00:21:47.000 ⇒ 00:21:52.149 Demilade Agboola: They all… they have the information at their hands to make those decisions, and they know how to utilize it.
175 00:21:52.530 ⇒ 00:21:59.100 Luke Scorziell: And you’re… you’re building, it sounds like, the data warehouse and the… I guess…
176 00:21:59.470 ⇒ 00:22:02.899 Luke Scorziell: Dashboards, which are the places where we get insights.
177 00:22:02.980 ⇒ 00:22:18.559 Luke Scorziell: But and then it sounds like you’re also helping them to interpret and create an action plan based on… so it’s not like you’re just dumping them, like, here’s… we built this all for you, here’s all your data, like, see you later. It’s more of, like.
178 00:22:18.640 ⇒ 00:22:24.070 Luke Scorziell: You’re kind of sitting alongside them, coming up with, like, a plan for how can we leverage this?
179 00:22:25.950 ⇒ 00:22:33.199 Demilade Agboola: Yes and no. I mean, yes, obviously, that’s the goal, but no, because in reality, different projects require different things of us, right?
180 00:22:33.200 ⇒ 00:22:33.570 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
181 00:22:33.570 ⇒ 00:22:36.090 Demilade Agboola: So they’re setting projects where,
182 00:22:37.080 ⇒ 00:22:53.270 Demilade Agboola: they have their analysts and their teams and all that stuff, and to be fair, the people on the team are generally, like, data-savvy people, so you don’t need to do so much education, you just… they just… in fact, sometimes they come with the requests, and they’re like, we need to see this.
183 00:22:53.270 ⇒ 00:23:03.060 Demilade Agboola: I’m flying blind in this regard, and I would like to be able to have some data to give me an idea of, like, our NCAC and the cost of acquisition of one customer, so that’s, like.
184 00:23:03.340 ⇒ 00:23:05.610 Demilade Agboola: Customer acquisition cost is crack, by the way.
185 00:23:05.910 ⇒ 00:23:06.690 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
186 00:23:06.690 ⇒ 00:23:12.450 Demilade Agboola: So, like, oh yeah, you’re a marketing person, my bad. It slipped my mind.
187 00:23:12.450 ⇒ 00:23:13.730 Luke Scorziell: I’m gonna over-explain it, it’s…
188 00:23:13.730 ⇒ 00:23:22.550 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, yeah, sometimes I realize that, like, I’m just giving acronyms, and, like, that might not hit, depending on the person, so I just… that’s what I find to explain.
189 00:23:22.760 ⇒ 00:23:26.320 Demilade Agboola: But yeah, like, you know, they’re flying blind because, like.
190 00:23:26.890 ⇒ 00:23:46.020 Demilade Agboola: we’re not putting, like, for our MCAC, we’re not putting in certain sources, and they count. So, like, influencers, for instance, is something we’ve had to add for Eden recently, because they’re spending money on influencers, but it’s not necessarily part of the marketing budget, because the regular marketing budgets that we’re using for NCAC calculation are, you know, the regular Google Ads and stuff.
191 00:23:46.080 ⇒ 00:23:59.539 Demilade Agboola: And so, like, we need… but that also factors into how people convert. Let’s get that in there and see what our NCAT looks like, and we don’t want to fly blind in that regard, and be like, well, it’s effective, or it’s not like… let’s actually know if it’s effective or not.
192 00:23:59.630 ⇒ 00:24:10.650 Demilade Agboola: So things like that, like, you can get certain requests where people already have an idea of how things work, they already have a hypothesis, and we’re just bringing it to life. Now, on the other hand, yes, we have set and we have products where
193 00:24:11.420 ⇒ 00:24:13.810 Demilade Agboola: Part of the projects is…
194 00:24:14.050 ⇒ 00:24:30.539 Demilade Agboola: data evangelism, right? Like, we’re out there trying to, like, let people understand, like, hey, you now have access to this data, so we will offer, like, trainings, or we will show them, like, what the data can do, or what dashboards can do, and…
195 00:24:30.860 ⇒ 00:24:36.890 Demilade Agboola: Which is why you kind of have to start from… if you’re starting with the clients, you kind of have to ask, like, what do you do?
196 00:24:38.190 ⇒ 00:24:38.610 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
197 00:24:38.610 ⇒ 00:24:40.090 Demilade Agboola: What decisions do you make?
198 00:24:40.450 ⇒ 00:24:52.539 Demilade Agboola: And what decision would you like some insights into to be able to make? Like, what insights would you like to have to be able to make that? So, if you are a marketing person, again, let’s use that as an example.
199 00:24:52.690 ⇒ 00:25:00.540 Demilade Agboola: you might go, oh, yeah, I have this data right now, these are decisions that I make, what campaign should we push money into? Yeah?
200 00:25:00.550 ⇒ 00:25:10.069 Demilade Agboola: But, like, to be fair, there are, like, two campaigns that I don’t see, right? So I don’t know if they’re as effective, or if I can make certain tweaks to make them more effective.
201 00:25:10.070 ⇒ 00:25:21.590 Demilade Agboola: I’m just doing the same old thing with them. And so we’re like, gotcha, bet. So we get that data, and we try and make it visible for you to be able to make those decisions, and go, like, oh, yeah, now I can make those decisions better, I can see if…
202 00:25:21.830 ⇒ 00:25:38.659 Demilade Agboola: my experimentation with certain things in the campaign yielded a larger number of people for the same amount of money used, or it yielded a way lower number, and I know to not ever do that again. Like, it’s those kind of things we’re trying to drive, I guess, and some people…
203 00:25:38.660 ⇒ 00:25:58.019 Demilade Agboola: know what they want, and people don’t. And in those cases, we might need to, like, engage them and be like, okay, you said you wanted this, you said you wanted visibility into this, but you want to make decisions around this, but, like, here’s a dashboard that allows you to see the impact of the things that are happening across the company or across the business, and then you can use that.
204 00:25:58.540 ⇒ 00:26:09.450 Demilade Agboola: And in those cases, we kind of check in on them and just be like, hey, Mike, how’s it going? Do you still need some, you know, like, help with that? And sometimes, sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. But the idea
205 00:26:09.780 ⇒ 00:26:16.519 Demilade Agboola: Obviously, the end goal is you don’t want to just work for months, give people stuff, and no one uses it. That would be very frustrating.
206 00:26:17.240 ⇒ 00:26:19.500 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, huh. So, okay.
207 00:26:19.740 ⇒ 00:26:22.149 Luke Scorziell: That’s interesting, because that’s… that’s funny, because…
208 00:26:24.520 ⇒ 00:26:33.340 Luke Scorziell: you know, I don’t typically think of myself as a data person, but now learning about what you’re saying and stuff, it’s like, you know, I could be someone that came to you and said, like, hey, I have
209 00:26:34.260 ⇒ 00:26:43.290 Luke Scorziell: these couple of clients, we’re running, like, Facebook ad campaigns for them, and we’re also doing… they’re spending this on this, and this on this, and, like.
210 00:26:43.560 ⇒ 00:26:50.549 Luke Scorziell: here’s the cost of their goods sold, here’s, like, I have a med spa that I’m working with, so it’s, like, for them, when we’re calculating, like.
211 00:26:50.810 ⇒ 00:26:54.119 Luke Scorziell: The return on ad spend.
212 00:26:54.560 ⇒ 00:26:59.220 Luke Scorziell: It’s… it can be kind of difficult, because… We don’t have…
213 00:27:00.010 ⇒ 00:27:05.029 Luke Scorziell: Like, we have to manually go and talk through, like, each lead that came in, and then,
214 00:27:05.300 ⇒ 00:27:08.769 Luke Scorziell: What service did they buy? How much did that cost?
215 00:27:08.910 ⇒ 00:27:12.680 Luke Scorziell: And then they have, like, information in…
216 00:27:13.070 ⇒ 00:27:18.700 Luke Scorziell: Constant Contact, which is like a, you know, email CRM software, and then,
217 00:27:19.050 ⇒ 00:27:29.009 Luke Scorziell: I’m setting up, like, high level for them, which is a different CRM that has more capabilities, but then they have a ton of stuff on Patient Now that tracks all of their,
218 00:27:29.420 ⇒ 00:27:34.540 Luke Scorziell: Their data, or, like, their customer purchases, and bookings, and their products, and, like.
219 00:27:35.110 ⇒ 00:27:43.519 Luke Scorziell: So it’s interesting, because for… yeah, I guess I wouldn’t have thought of myself as, like, being someone that could be… like, could come to y’all and be like, hey, I have all of this data.
220 00:27:43.780 ⇒ 00:27:50.670 Luke Scorziell: I don’t really know exactly what I would do with it, but I know that, like, it can be leveraged for,
221 00:27:51.280 ⇒ 00:28:00.269 Luke Scorziell: like, to… to… in ways that could help us make better decisions on, like, should we be advertising, like, that microneedling is the new patient special? Should we be…
222 00:28:00.670 ⇒ 00:28:04.010 Luke Scorziell: What is, like, the right price point that we should put it at?
223 00:28:04.190 ⇒ 00:28:08.360 Luke Scorziell: Who should, you know, like, how much money should we be putting into the…
224 00:28:08.470 ⇒ 00:28:11.170 Luke Scorziell: Campaign as a whole to get back,
225 00:28:11.340 ⇒ 00:28:17.210 Luke Scorziell: So, like, it’s… yeah, I think that was just a moment of clicking for me, because I think when I see…
226 00:28:17.520 ⇒ 00:28:18.370 Luke Scorziell: like…
227 00:28:19.600 ⇒ 00:28:27.050 Luke Scorziell: turn data into actual insights or whatever, like, I’m kind of just like, this just means, like, engineering speak,
228 00:28:27.050 ⇒ 00:28:31.030 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, buzzwords, but, like, yeah, we really do try our best to, like.
229 00:28:32.290 ⇒ 00:28:51.420 Demilade Agboola: like, all of that data to, like, insights, because, again, across the business, so, like, even in just, like, marketing, you can see how many sources… oh, there’s some data here, some data here, some data here. It’s all across the board, right? What we try and do is we try and centralize it, we try and get all of that data from different sources into one spot.
230 00:28:51.810 ⇒ 00:28:55.380 Demilade Agboola: get to interact with each other. So, like, in that case, we’re saying, oh.
231 00:28:56.010 ⇒ 00:29:13.599 Demilade Agboola: your ad spend doesn’t have to be just from one place, like, your ad spend can be, like, a combination of every single thing, and then we can keep track of the conversion, again, across every single platform, and so we can say, you had 100 orders yesterday, out of those 100, 50 were from Facebook ads.
232 00:29:13.830 ⇒ 00:29:17.399 Demilade Agboola: 10 were from, shot… I don’t know, like…
233 00:29:17.580 ⇒ 00:29:21.299 Demilade Agboola: I’m thinking influencers, right? 15 were from…
234 00:29:21.770 ⇒ 00:29:40.509 Demilade Agboola: maybe Google Ads, and, like, you can start to break it down a bit smaller, maybe another 10 were referrals, another 10 were just random people, like, just hopped on your site, you know, cool. Like, we can kind of, like, try our best, or some of our Google searches, for instance, yeah, someone Google searches, we can try our best to, like, put that all in one spot.
235 00:29:40.510 ⇒ 00:29:45.539 Demilade Agboola: And so now you can kind of see, oh, I’m not spending a lot of money on influencers.
236 00:29:45.670 ⇒ 00:29:49.200 Demilade Agboola: But, like, the little I spend converts really well.
237 00:29:49.360 ⇒ 00:29:54.429 Demilade Agboola: into purchases. I think I need to push more money into influencers. Or, like.
238 00:29:55.590 ⇒ 00:30:05.100 Demilade Agboola: Facebook might give me a lot of, you know, the highest number, half of my customers, but, like, in terms of how much I spend compared to other platforms.
239 00:30:05.100 ⇒ 00:30:17.420 Demilade Agboola: it’s not proportional, like, proportionally per customer, I’m spending, like, 3 times more than I would spend on the other platforms, right? So, if I feel like I should try increasing other platforms, maybe it would…
240 00:30:17.730 ⇒ 00:30:27.209 Demilade Agboola: I could get, like, a significant portion. So you might slowly start to remove, instead of, like, you know, just removing everything at once, obviously, that would be risky. But, like, you might say, okay, instead of spending
241 00:30:27.350 ⇒ 00:30:45.700 Demilade Agboola: all the amount of money I spend, how about I take out, you know, 20% and increase the budget across these two places? Or then, if you see how that converts, and then slowly, you can start to say, okay, I’ve reached the point where I realize that, like, I don’t need that much money on Facebook ads. I could actually spend way more money.
242 00:30:45.700 ⇒ 00:30:55.509 Demilade Agboola: across other places, and get, like, the same, if not higher, conversion rates, and that’s cheaper for me. So, like, it’s just stuff, and that’s just across, like, marketing.
243 00:30:55.530 ⇒ 00:31:06.820 Demilade Agboola: We also do things around revenue, like, financial numbers, so, like, you know, they would have QuickBooks, and they would have employee things, and all of that, and so we can help them, like, prepare their books really quickly.
244 00:31:06.920 ⇒ 00:31:13.360 Demilade Agboola: In some cases, so, like, it could be how many of our orders are going into different states.
245 00:31:13.700 ⇒ 00:31:23.860 Demilade Agboola: how much is the discount on each of the orders? Like, I literally had to pull something for Eden, like, to… this week, or last week, where it was per quarter for this year, 2025,
246 00:31:24.550 ⇒ 00:31:25.680 Demilade Agboola: by state.
247 00:31:26.260 ⇒ 00:31:45.169 Demilade Agboola: Actually, no. By month, but you also group into quarters, but, like, for every month, how many orders went to every state, so volume of orders per state, as well as, the total cost price of, like, the total sales price of everything that went into that state. Total discounts of everything that went into that state.
248 00:31:45.480 ⇒ 00:31:58.979 Demilade Agboola: So the refund of everything going to that state, and then the net sales. So that would be the gross sales minus the refunds minus the discounts, and that net sales. So we know the net sales per state.
249 00:31:59.270 ⇒ 00:32:10.110 Demilade Agboola: And, you know, like, things like that. Like, everyone wants numbers for something, right? Like, your role, no matter what it is, will be made better if you could see the numbers quite easily, so…
250 00:32:10.220 ⇒ 00:32:11.549 Demilade Agboola: That’s kind of what we do.
251 00:32:12.770 ⇒ 00:32:13.830 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, huh.
252 00:32:16.070 ⇒ 00:32:19.890 Luke Scorziell: It’s funny, or just fun, because each conversation, like, helps me understand
253 00:32:20.120 ⇒ 00:32:23.369 Luke Scorziell: Brainforge a little bit more, and a little bit more.
254 00:32:23.880 ⇒ 00:32:25.819 Luke Scorziell: And I guess, like, so with…
255 00:32:26.410 ⇒ 00:32:29.100 Luke Scorziell: Eden, were they a customer that already knew?
256 00:32:29.930 ⇒ 00:32:33.099 Luke Scorziell: Like, they came and kind of knew what they wanted, or,
257 00:32:33.960 ⇒ 00:32:41.250 Luke Scorziell: like, because I think a goal, too, is… Pushing more toward…
258 00:32:42.570 ⇒ 00:32:51.090 Luke Scorziell: like, Fortune 2000, Fortune 1000 clients who are bigger, maybe a little more, like, on the boring side, product-wise, but have
259 00:32:51.420 ⇒ 00:32:57.210 Luke Scorziell: you know, Are willing to spend more money to…
260 00:32:59.190 ⇒ 00:33:04.440 Luke Scorziell: to solve these problems, but they’re likely, probably, people that already know their problems, so I guess I’m curious, like.
261 00:33:04.990 ⇒ 00:33:13.290 Luke Scorziell: I don’t know, just about clients that you’re working with already that maybe are more informed, or might fit that, like, customer persona more.
262 00:33:14.760 ⇒ 00:33:19.429 Demilade Agboola: I will say, like, this is actually my first rodeo in consulting.
263 00:33:19.430 ⇒ 00:33:20.010 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
264 00:33:20.400 ⇒ 00:33:26.289 Demilade Agboola: I have consulted, with the company, New York-based consulting firm, called Data Culture.
265 00:33:26.600 ⇒ 00:33:30.199 Demilade Agboola: And we did have a unicorn client at a point, and…
266 00:33:31.990 ⇒ 00:33:36.200 Demilade Agboola: I mean, they didn’t know what they wanted, so it’s not always a hit, it’s not always…
267 00:33:36.200 ⇒ 00:33:36.840 Luke Scorziell: Alright.
268 00:33:36.840 ⇒ 00:33:41.150 Demilade Agboola: It’s not always a, like, oh… you know CrossFit, right?
269 00:33:41.560 ⇒ 00:33:42.250 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
270 00:33:42.250 ⇒ 00:33:44.890 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, we consulted across a lot of points, right? So…
271 00:33:44.900 ⇒ 00:33:54.680 Demilade Agboola: It’s not always a, oh, the more money or the more stable you are, the more you know what you want. Sometimes, you can be a big company and still just be all over the place.
272 00:33:54.680 ⇒ 00:34:06.869 Demilade Agboola: That in itself was something we had to even learn internally about handling such clients. So that’s… that’s on the side. But, like, beyond that, yeah, I will say, though, that when people are… a lot of startups.
273 00:34:08.050 ⇒ 00:34:13.410 Demilade Agboola: When they start off, When they start off, they’re just basically trying to make revenue.
274 00:34:13.530 ⇒ 00:34:26.659 Demilade Agboola: Right? They just make money. And so, they don’t really keep track of a lot of things, their data infrastructure is sharing all over the place. They’re just going marketing, marketing, marketing, sales, sales, sales, which, obviously, that makes a lot of sense.
275 00:34:26.810 ⇒ 00:34:43.400 Demilade Agboola: Yeah. But then they… they reach a point where it’s just like, okay, we have a mess of a system, right? Like, we… how do we know what’s going on if someone has to go through some Excel dashboard or, you know… like, it’s just all over the place. There’s no centralized access.
276 00:34:43.409 ⇒ 00:34:44.119 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
277 00:34:45.020 ⇒ 00:34:58.089 Demilade Agboola: And so that’s where we tend to come in and be like, yo, we can help. Like, we can help you build out your infrastructure, we can help you handle all these things, so now you can kind of rest easy and just get the visibility that you need across board. Cool.
278 00:34:58.390 ⇒ 00:35:05.230 Demilade Agboola: Those people, they tend not to necessarily know… like, they have pain points, obviously, so they know, like.
279 00:35:05.290 ⇒ 00:35:19.430 Demilade Agboola: I was frustrated because it took me one week to get this. I was frustrated because it took me, you know, two weeks to get this. That’s usually their pain point. Their pain points might be just, like, the ease of getting data, which… right?
280 00:35:19.720 ⇒ 00:35:25.060 Demilade Agboola: But it’s not necessarily strategic. It’s more… Like, just ease, like, friction.
281 00:35:25.600 ⇒ 00:35:26.220 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
282 00:35:26.390 ⇒ 00:35:32.589 Demilade Agboola: Well, what… what makes you stick to clients is when you come with strategy.
283 00:35:33.010 ⇒ 00:35:44.610 Demilade Agboola: Because the truth of the matter is, you can fix friction pretty easily. Like, most clients, like, most clients, I mean, the exceptional cases, like, but most clients in a 6-month
284 00:35:44.780 ⇒ 00:35:48.449 Demilade Agboola: work window. You can actually fix a lot of their friction.
285 00:35:48.660 ⇒ 00:35:53.789 Demilade Agboola: Like, maybe not every single thing, but, like, you can get the assistance really effective, right?
286 00:35:53.790 ⇒ 00:35:54.400 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
287 00:35:56.160 ⇒ 00:36:09.529 Demilade Agboola: the exceptional cases, strategy is what keeps you long-term. Strategy is where you’re like, okay, this is a roadmap on things to try, these are the experiments to try, this is what we think sticks, this is what… like, that’s what keeps you long-term, and that’s the…
288 00:36:09.530 ⇒ 00:36:21.409 Demilade Agboola: analysis part of… which is kind of, I think, what we’re trying to, like, also, by the way, get better, like, better people, and just, like, broaden the team. Because right now, our team is largely infrastructure-based.
289 00:36:21.630 ⇒ 00:36:35.409 Demilade Agboola: I mean, well, not now, right now, but, like, previously, right? Prior to this point. It was largely infrastructure-based, which is cool, like, again, it’s the first thing people see. Oh, now our jobs are running smoothly, we get our data when we need it.
290 00:36:35.440 ⇒ 00:36:46.940 Demilade Agboola: I’m giving, like, some clients, for instance, like, on Mother’s Day, they are seeing their data every, like, 30 minutes, because the floral company, Mother’s Day, is one of their largest sales days. You need to see that kind of thing. Again, infrastructure is what we do.
291 00:36:47.040 ⇒ 00:36:50.540 Demilade Agboola: Pretty cool. That helps a lot. That’s fine.
292 00:36:50.830 ⇒ 00:37:08.550 Demilade Agboola: But what keeps you long-term? Like, what keeps you, when people are like, oh, we need a data partner for, like, a year or something, is that not only can you do the infrastructure, you can also say, hey, here are your insights, these are the things you need to do, these are the things you need to avoid, or you create systems that allow them to see, like.
293 00:37:08.760 ⇒ 00:37:16.269 Demilade Agboola: Potential dangers as they’re happening, right? So now they’re like, oh, we do really need you.
294 00:37:16.460 ⇒ 00:37:25.809 Demilade Agboola: So yeah, I will say, I will say that, yes, obviously, the bigger the company, the more strategic your thinking tends to be, because
295 00:37:26.140 ⇒ 00:37:35.579 Demilade Agboola: They tend to have… tend to, you know, better infrastructure, so you need to be more strategic with how you present yourself and the ideas that you have.
296 00:37:35.850 ⇒ 00:37:39.969 Demilade Agboola: But it’s not always, like, a, you know, linear.
297 00:37:39.970 ⇒ 00:37:40.590 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
298 00:37:40.590 ⇒ 00:37:47.789 Demilade Agboola: Like, yeah, at some point, people just don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Just is what it is.
299 00:37:48.370 ⇒ 00:37:56.050 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, well, look, no, this is helpful, and I know, too, if you happen to hop off, you know, we’re over. But
300 00:37:57.040 ⇒ 00:37:58.150 Luke Scorziell: So…
301 00:38:02.500 ⇒ 00:38:09.610 Luke Scorziell: So, on the one hand, The larger companies, potentially, maybe, some of them have the infrastructure system set up.
302 00:38:10.060 ⇒ 00:38:14.620 Luke Scorziell: In which case, you would do…
303 00:38:15.050 ⇒ 00:38:30.989 Luke Scorziell: come in more as a strategy partner to help them come up with experiments and ways that they can improve over the next, like, 60, 90, 120 days, or whatever. On the other hand, some of these larger companies might not know anything, and they might have just gotten there because
304 00:38:31.850 ⇒ 00:38:37.429 Luke Scorziell: they just… like, John Booth, I don’t know if you’ve… like, the… they’re,
305 00:38:37.910 ⇒ 00:38:40.160 Luke Scorziell: Ukam had a sales call with them, and they were like.
306 00:38:40.800 ⇒ 00:38:47.139 Luke Scorziell: we just make so much money, it doesn’t even… we don’t even know which products are, like, most profitable, and
307 00:38:47.580 ⇒ 00:38:48.300 Luke Scorziell: And…
308 00:38:48.300 ⇒ 00:38:50.380 Demilade Agboola: Was that an actual conversation?
309 00:38:50.730 ⇒ 00:38:51.919 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
310 00:38:51.990 ⇒ 00:39:00.840 Demilade Agboola: Like, I’m… like, I’ve said this before, like, I said it earlier, like, it’s not, like, a linear… because it makes sense when you think about it as a hypothesis that, like, all the bigger companies
311 00:39:01.240 ⇒ 00:39:05.020 Demilade Agboola: should have your ducks in a row. But, like, honestly.
312 00:39:05.690 ⇒ 00:39:13.590 Demilade Agboola: you’ll be very surprised. Like, I have literally met people that, like… like, I have worked, like, big clients, and it’s just, like.
313 00:39:14.060 ⇒ 00:39:23.129 Demilade Agboola: You literally have no idea what’s going on here, and… so you come in on that sort of big project, and you’re actually doing infrastructure, because you’re like.
314 00:39:23.290 ⇒ 00:39:26.010 Demilade Agboola: You can’t see, you’re literally flying blind.
315 00:39:26.540 ⇒ 00:39:27.220 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
316 00:39:27.220 ⇒ 00:39:32.559 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, so, like, you’ll be surprised. Like, you really will be surprised. Or, like, even if they’re not fine.
317 00:39:32.670 ⇒ 00:39:34.460 Demilade Agboola: 100% blind, it’s like…
318 00:39:34.910 ⇒ 00:39:49.339 Demilade Agboola: there’s an entire aspect to stuff that you haven’t actually put into, like, again, like I said with the, like, we use the simple example of, like, you know, you could have Facebook ads in one place, or Google Ads, and then, you know, you have an entire outside of the business that you haven’t actually looked at, right?
319 00:39:49.930 ⇒ 00:39:54.529 Demilade Agboola: People are literally, like, people run businesses like that in some cases, like…
320 00:39:55.260 ⇒ 00:40:13.220 Demilade Agboola: what do you mean? You’re only seeing sales that happen on Shopify, but, like, you have other things that you sell on other places, and you might not necessarily see it as much, or, what are your Amazon sales looking like compared to, like, your Shopify sales, and your… like, all those, like, you start to go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, and, like, it’s like…
321 00:40:13.390 ⇒ 00:40:25.089 Demilade Agboola: you don’t have these numbers. These are numbers you should have as a business that is making in so much, like, millions of… hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Like, you should… you should know these things off the top of your head. But, like.
322 00:40:25.320 ⇒ 00:40:35.590 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, they don’t have that visibility. So you come in, do infrastructure, and then you can start to do strategy, because again, strategy only comes when you have the data, like, clearly available for you.
323 00:40:36.230 ⇒ 00:40:45.330 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, huh, interesting. And what are… are there, like, numbers in particular that you would be… or I don’t… obviously, there are millions of numbers that you could have, but, like.
324 00:40:45.540 ⇒ 00:40:46.529 Luke Scorziell: Is it, like…
325 00:40:47.510 ⇒ 00:40:52.970 Luke Scorziell: That’s an interesting content piece of, like, here are, like, 5 numbers that you should have if you’re an enterprise.
326 00:40:53.240 ⇒ 00:40:56.919 Luke Scorziell: You know, company, that you might not have, or something like that.
327 00:40:57.340 ⇒ 00:40:58.290 Luke Scorziell: Like that.
328 00:40:59.290 ⇒ 00:41:03.439 Demilade Agboola: I think the markers that, like, something is wrong, data-wise, is…
329 00:41:04.810 ⇒ 00:41:09.619 Demilade Agboola: I wouldn’t say markers in, like, exact numbers, per se, but, like, it’s probably things around…
330 00:41:10.300 ⇒ 00:41:19.939 Demilade Agboola: you need data, it takes you too long to get access to that data. That’s, like, one of the huge red flags, right? Like, I need certain numbers, and it’s taking me…
331 00:41:21.640 ⇒ 00:41:24.070 Demilade Agboola: two weeks to get those numbers, right? Like…
332 00:41:24.440 ⇒ 00:41:30.340 Demilade Agboola: So it means that you are restricted, and it’s a consistent thing. I mean, obviously, you don’t always have every single piece of data available, but, like.
333 00:41:30.460 ⇒ 00:41:35.060 Demilade Agboola: It’s a consistent pattern, like… Something’s wrong with your data infrastructure.
334 00:41:35.570 ⇒ 00:41:39.229 Demilade Agboola: Two would probably be stuff around.
335 00:41:40.250 ⇒ 00:41:43.499 Demilade Agboola: like… Core business metrics.
336 00:41:44.170 ⇒ 00:41:48.790 Demilade Agboola: are unknown, like, or, like, they are vaguely known, so…
337 00:41:51.070 ⇒ 00:41:56.049 Demilade Agboola: We’ve had people who, like, legitimately will, like…
338 00:41:56.350 ⇒ 00:42:03.760 Demilade Agboola: Not… like, they know what their revenue should look like, what their net numbers are like, but then there’s always the chance that it’s wrong.
339 00:42:04.200 ⇒ 00:42:08.329 Demilade Agboola: Right, so they’re not confident in those revenue numbers, so, like.
340 00:42:08.520 ⇒ 00:42:14.260 Demilade Agboola: if your core business metrics are stuff that you’re not confident in, then it’s a problem, right? Like…
341 00:42:14.400 ⇒ 00:42:18.770 Demilade Agboola: If you’re, like, if you’re saying, well, you know, we have to wait for it to, like.
342 00:42:19.220 ⇒ 00:42:29.780 Demilade Agboola: this, this, this, this, this, maybe we need it to settle after a couple of days before we know what the regular numbers are. Like, there’s a lot of caveats to, like, the numbers you’re given.
343 00:42:30.240 ⇒ 00:42:32.710 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, there is a problem.
344 00:42:32.890 ⇒ 00:42:42.749 Demilade Agboola: But, like, I can’t necessarily give, like, a set of numbers, because, like, Trillet Matter is every bit… like, I mean, obviously, the core numbers are, like, revenue and users and all of that, but, like.
345 00:42:45.000 ⇒ 00:42:51.520 Luke Scorziell: Well, it’s interesting what you’re describing, because it’s like, they literally said, I only know that we’re profitable because of the number in our bank account, I don’t know.
346 00:42:53.620 ⇒ 00:42:56.509 Luke Scorziell: Like, in reality. So,
347 00:42:56.740 ⇒ 00:43:00.940 Luke Scorziell: I can send you the quote, I sent it in this, in our chat, but it’s like.
348 00:43:01.460 ⇒ 00:43:09.930 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I think just, this is that I can… I can… I can pick your brain forever, so I, you know, I can schedule a longer time with you later.
349 00:43:10.310 ⇒ 00:43:15.349 Luke Scorziell: But… yeah, I think… This is helpful, and I think just knowing, like.
350 00:43:19.490 ⇒ 00:43:25.950 Luke Scorziell: Like, a lot of this is simpler, maybe, than it appears, which is just, like, how do you know that you’re making the right decision?
351 00:43:26.660 ⇒ 00:43:34.570 Luke Scorziell: And and that’s probably, like, a big question that we could also start to ask. And the way that you know is when your data’s organized and you have
352 00:43:34.740 ⇒ 00:43:39.020 Luke Scorziell: Like, strategies and experiments that you’re doing to, 2…
353 00:43:39.230 ⇒ 00:43:41.900 Luke Scorziell: Like, validate what you’re doing, so…
354 00:43:42.090 ⇒ 00:43:42.470 Demilade Agboola: Yeah.
355 00:43:42.470 ⇒ 00:43:44.229 Luke Scorziell: Dang. Okay.
356 00:43:44.230 ⇒ 00:43:47.719 Demilade Agboola: And also, like, also, like, I think a huge sign is, like, if…
357 00:43:48.560 ⇒ 00:43:56.830 Demilade Agboola: It’s a bit of a tricky one to word, but, like, effectively, if you can perform experiments on your data, and you’re confident about the results.
358 00:43:56.900 ⇒ 00:44:15.210 Demilade Agboola: like, then you have good data. Like, for instance, a good example would be, you’ve ever heard of, like, A and B testing for, like, websites and stuff, sometimes people will do two separate websites, or two random samples of people, to see which converts more, for instance, right? So maybe in one, you might have…
359 00:44:16.480 ⇒ 00:44:23.820 Demilade Agboola: So let’s say, like, you’re trying to have a fundraising for, like, a fundraising…
360 00:44:24.000 ⇒ 00:44:42.539 Demilade Agboola: page, whatever. Yeah. So you might have two different pictures, and you might put one on a certain site and one on the other, like, the same site, but, like, the same, like, people… you will create containers that people can visit differently. It’s the same site, same site. And you can monitor,
361 00:44:43.140 ⇒ 00:44:45.290 Demilade Agboola: And you can monitor the conversion.
362 00:44:45.710 ⇒ 00:44:56.220 Demilade Agboola: But the only way you can monitor that is if you have good systems in place. Like, think of any experiments you want to do in your business. If you don’t have good systems in place, you’re just wasting your time. Like…
363 00:44:56.430 ⇒ 00:44:57.080 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
364 00:44:57.370 ⇒ 00:45:14.840 Demilade Agboola: let’s try putting out more, of these products into this… into our thing. Let’s see if it sells. Let’s see if we can try a new flavor of ice cream, and see how well it sells, and whatever. If you’re… if you’re having questionable answers about that, like, oh, what’s the marketing on…
365 00:45:14.840 ⇒ 00:45:25.509 Demilade Agboola: this flavor of ice cream that we just put out, compared to the conversion that we get when we just put out a number of flavor of ice cream. If you cannot feel confident about your answers about that across multiple sources.
366 00:45:25.650 ⇒ 00:45:35.879 Demilade Agboola: yeah, then, you know, there’s something wrong somewhere. Like, if… I think the idea is just, basically, when you have good numbers, it allows you to play and experiment confidently.
367 00:45:36.910 ⇒ 00:45:37.390 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
368 00:45:37.390 ⇒ 00:45:47.410 Demilade Agboola: If you can’t confidently Think of an experiment, feeling confident that the numbers you’ll get truly reflect…
369 00:45:47.660 ⇒ 00:45:57.500 Demilade Agboola: your customers’ desires, or customers’ opinions, or customers’ whatever. Or… you can’t make business decisions that make you more money based off the experiments you have.
370 00:45:58.270 ⇒ 00:46:00.530 Demilade Agboola: Then there’s something probably wrong with your data somewhere.
371 00:46:00.840 ⇒ 00:46:02.459 Demilade Agboola: There’s an infrastructure somewhere.
372 00:46:02.710 ⇒ 00:46:13.509 Luke Scorziell: So, would that be a good marker of, like, a question of, like, if it was in a workshop or something like that, or, like, a first… it’s like, hey, how confident… or, like, think of the last decision that you made in your business.
373 00:46:13.630 ⇒ 00:46:18.849 Luke Scorziell: Like, how confident do you feel in that decision? And then, like, Kind of exploring, like.
374 00:46:18.980 ⇒ 00:46:23.149 Luke Scorziell: Why did you feel confident? Was it a gut feeling? Did you just have…
375 00:46:23.510 ⇒ 00:46:26.400 Luke Scorziell: Like, did you have data? What data did you act on?
376 00:46:27.190 ⇒ 00:46:27.750 Demilade Agboola: Here.
377 00:46:29.200 ⇒ 00:46:42.229 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, I feel a lot of people… and again, golfing can be, right? Because, you know, humans are great at spotting patterns subconsciously, and we… we literally are pattern-recognizing machines, but obviously, we are hella wrong sometimes with our.
378 00:46:42.230 ⇒ 00:46:44.969 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, and also, it’s hard to… it’s hard to.
379 00:46:46.060 ⇒ 00:46:48.280 Demilade Agboola: Justify a gut decision.
380 00:46:48.470 ⇒ 00:46:51.280 Luke Scorziell: With, you know, potentially millions of dollars.
381 00:46:51.540 ⇒ 00:46:56.100 Luke Scorziell: That you’re directing in ad spend, or in ops, like…
382 00:46:56.290 ⇒ 00:47:02.149 Luke Scorziell: moving around or trying out a new product, like, you can’t just go to your boss and be like, oh, I, you know, I think
383 00:47:02.650 ⇒ 00:47:10.039 Luke Scorziell: I just have a strong feeling about… and, like, you could be right, but having the dashboard or the numbers to say.
384 00:47:10.190 ⇒ 00:47:11.230 Luke Scorziell: Hey, look.
385 00:47:11.720 ⇒ 00:47:13.350 Luke Scorziell: Here’s,
386 00:47:14.190 ⇒ 00:47:29.510 Luke Scorziell: like, here’s the sales numbers from, like, X flavor of ice cream, and, you know, we trialed this flavor of ice cream, and it did pretty well, we want to kind of boost it up. Like, that’s… you know, I think that’s… you’re coming at that with a place of leverage.
387 00:47:29.680 ⇒ 00:47:38.589 Luke Scorziell: When you have numbers on your side. So that’s interesting, too, because maybe then lack of confidence is a pain point, or people don’t even realize that they don’t know.
388 00:47:38.870 ⇒ 00:47:40.320 Demilade Agboola: That they’re making.
389 00:47:40.450 ⇒ 00:47:42.509 Luke Scorziell: Like, they’re just making decisions because
390 00:47:43.520 ⇒ 00:47:45.699 Luke Scorziell: They always have, but they don’t.
391 00:47:46.030 ⇒ 00:47:46.950 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, likewise.
392 00:47:46.950 ⇒ 00:47:53.049 Luke Scorziell: could be simpler, easier, like… like, even with, John Boost, so they have custom syncs.
393 00:47:53.570 ⇒ 00:48:05.640 Luke Scorziell: So they sell, like, commercial-grade, steel countertops, basically. Okay. And, generally, It’s…
394 00:48:06.680 ⇒ 00:48:17.289 Luke Scorziell: You can just do, like, made… or just… you make one, you sell it, you make one, you sell it, you make one, you sell it, but then some people have custom orders where they’re, like, they want to put a sink in the middle of the countertop, or they want to have, like, special siding.
395 00:48:17.430 ⇒ 00:48:20.960 Luke Scorziell: And he was basically saying, like, my suspicion is that
396 00:48:21.580 ⇒ 00:48:26.430 Luke Scorziell: Those are not profitable for us, and end up losing money for us.
397 00:48:26.610 ⇒ 00:48:29.450 Luke Scorziell: But he doesn’t know that, because they don’t have the data on it.
398 00:48:29.720 ⇒ 00:48:45.419 Luke Scorziell: And so, for them, they’re trying to look to find, you know, I guess, what is the profitability of just the standard metal table that they can just sell and keep, like, selling without doing any custom work to, versus, like, at one point one time, they said, oh, we can do custom
399 00:48:45.540 ⇒ 00:48:52.199 Luke Scorziell: tabletops, and now that’s a… that’s a new… that’s a product stream that they have, but if they want to shut it down.
400 00:48:52.500 ⇒ 00:48:53.420 Luke Scorziell: you know.
401 00:48:53.550 ⇒ 00:49:00.060 Luke Scorziell: They don’t really know, like, maybe it would be more profitable for them to… to… to do that.
402 00:49:00.570 ⇒ 00:49:01.849 Luke Scorziell: But again, it’s like…
403 00:49:02.490 ⇒ 00:49:07.700 Luke Scorziell: Until they have the actual numbers to say, hey, for every one of these tables we sell, we lose.
404 00:49:07.830 ⇒ 00:49:09.280 Luke Scorziell: Like, $100.
405 00:49:10.840 ⇒ 00:49:13.540 Luke Scorziell: So we think we should stop… stop selling them.
406 00:49:14.250 ⇒ 00:49:19.060 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, like, again, like I said, which is why I said, like, experimentation, or the ability to, like.
407 00:49:19.290 ⇒ 00:49:29.950 Demilade Agboola: you know, makes certain decisions is really just based on data. Like, if you are not confident to say, hey, this is a loss-making venture, let’s get rid of it.
408 00:49:30.490 ⇒ 00:49:38.800 Demilade Agboola: then there’s something wrong somewhere in your data. If you’re not confident to say, hey, this is… this makes us a ton of money, we need to ramp up our marketing of it, or we need to, like,
409 00:49:39.230 ⇒ 00:49:42.699 Demilade Agboola: Try and move a lot of customers that buy this into this product.
410 00:49:42.940 ⇒ 00:49:46.660 Demilade Agboola: Because, you know, this potentially saves us more money.
411 00:49:46.730 ⇒ 00:50:00.529 Demilade Agboola: or makes us more money, because, like, the cost price or the margin is way higher than this. If you’re not talking in those terms, and you’re not, like, thinking strategically about how you want things to go, and you’re just saying, like, oh, I have the…
412 00:50:00.530 ⇒ 00:50:10.459 Demilade Agboola: like, I have a gut feeling, or, like, I strongly believe that. Like, again, he could be right, like, the guy that said, like, I have a feeling that it makes us, but we’re losing money on it. He could absolutely be right.
413 00:50:10.830 ⇒ 00:50:24.860 Demilade Agboola: But he could also be wrong, and that’s the… and that’s the problem with… that’s why confidence is the… is a huge indicator. If you feel, like, really confident, and you can justify your confidence, like, I mean, some people have confidence in their guts, which is fine, right?
414 00:50:24.860 ⇒ 00:50:31.340 Demilade Agboola: But you also need to be able to justify your confidence. If you can justify whatever confidence you feel in whatever space.
415 00:50:31.650 ⇒ 00:50:33.319 Demilade Agboola: And decision you need to make.
416 00:50:33.990 ⇒ 00:50:35.350 Demilade Agboola: with your data.
417 00:50:36.330 ⇒ 00:50:39.130 Demilade Agboola: all good. Like, your data is covered.
418 00:50:40.140 ⇒ 00:50:42.160 Luke Scorziell: Huh. Well, cause it’s… it’s…
419 00:50:42.760 ⇒ 00:50:55.060 Luke Scorziell: Because whether he’s right or wrong might actually not even be the problem, because then if he has the data, he might find they could raise the… like, maybe they see that customers are willing to pay twice as much money for the custom ones.
420 00:50:55.210 ⇒ 00:51:01.590 Luke Scorziell: And so then they see that their prices are wrong, and so then they could raise their prices, and then actually it turns into.
421 00:51:01.680 ⇒ 00:51:03.310 Demilade Agboola: And that positive.
422 00:51:03.310 ⇒ 00:51:07.570 Luke Scorziell: And then maybe they want to then sell more of those. So it’s like…
423 00:51:07.770 ⇒ 00:51:11.400 Luke Scorziell: His gut feeling might be they’re losing money on it right now, but he doesn’t know why.
424 00:51:11.950 ⇒ 00:51:14.740 Luke Scorziell: But until they have the data, then… so, okay, huh.
425 00:51:15.630 ⇒ 00:51:19.430 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, this is helpful. I think, like, a core thing that drives me in, kind of.
426 00:51:19.860 ⇒ 00:51:22.970 Luke Scorziell: Building the brand and the messaging and the marketing and stuff is just…
427 00:51:23.250 ⇒ 00:51:28.149 Luke Scorziell: How can we make it as simple as possible and make it speak to, like, real human pain points and…
428 00:51:28.380 ⇒ 00:51:32.740 Luke Scorziell: And, solutions. So I think, yeah, probably a huge thing from this conversation is just
429 00:51:32.920 ⇒ 00:51:36.859 Luke Scorziell: Like, do you have confidence in the last, like, 5 decisions that you made?
430 00:51:37.010 ⇒ 00:51:41.860 Luke Scorziell: They were the right decisions, right? So… Bang.
431 00:51:42.640 ⇒ 00:51:43.760 Demilade Agboola: No problem.
432 00:51:44.330 ⇒ 00:51:44.710 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
433 00:51:44.810 ⇒ 00:51:45.480 Demilade Agboola: Nope.
434 00:51:46.340 ⇒ 00:51:50.040 Luke Scorziell: I’ll… maybe I’ll circle back and pick your brain more on it.
435 00:51:50.040 ⇒ 00:51:52.340 Demilade Agboola: Oh, that’s fine. This is just my…
436 00:51:52.340 ⇒ 00:51:55.490 Luke Scorziell: We’re doing, like, a trial period, and then it seems like…
437 00:51:55.990 ⇒ 00:51:58.550 Luke Scorziell: We’ll maybe talk about it tomorrow.
438 00:51:59.130 ⇒ 00:52:06.429 Luke Scorziell: what… what things will look like going forward, so… Yeah, and if you have… if you ever have any questions for me, or, like, anything that you want to…
439 00:52:07.030 ⇒ 00:52:14.769 Luke Scorziell: you know, you’re… you’re like, hey, I saw this post and thought it was off, or I want… or I like this one, or… or here’s a story that I have from a client, like.
440 00:52:14.820 ⇒ 00:52:17.150 Demilade Agboola: Definitely always feel free to reach out, so…
441 00:52:17.930 ⇒ 00:52:22.909 Demilade Agboola: Okay, that, that sounds like… that’s good. Like, I’m available most times,
442 00:52:23.120 ⇒ 00:52:33.810 Demilade Agboola: But from, like, when I have meetings, obviously, but, like, just feel free to reach out to me, glad to be on board, like, glad to have you on board, and glad to help you out you will find necessary.
443 00:52:34.340 ⇒ 00:52:37.360 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, no, thank you. So… Alright.
444 00:52:37.960 ⇒ 00:52:38.510 Demilade Agboola: Alright, Ben.
445 00:52:38.510 ⇒ 00:52:39.289 Luke Scorziell: See you later.
446 00:52:39.290 ⇒ 00:52:40.569 Demilade Agboola: Alright, talk to you now. Bye.
447 00:52:40.770 ⇒ 00:52:41.350 Luke Scorziell: But…