Meeting Title: CSO Client Presentation Dry Run Date: 2026-01-07 Meeting participants: Zoran Selinger, Luke Scorziell, Uttam Kumaran, Amber Lin, Demilade Agboola, Greg Stoutenburg
WEBVTT
1 00:01:05.150 ⇒ 00:01:06.809 Luke Scorziell: Hey, Zoran, how’s it going?
2 00:01:07.330 ⇒ 00:01:09.290 Luke Scorziell: I think you’re muted. Yeah, good, good.
3 00:01:09.640 ⇒ 00:01:16.269 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, just saw your messages. Okay, let me know when you need something there.
4 00:01:16.380 ⇒ 00:01:26.419 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I will. I think what we’re gonna do is design the one sheet first, or the one-page sheet first, and then, we’ll throw it over to you to then take a look at it, just so it’s…
5 00:01:26.580 ⇒ 00:01:28.420 Luke Scorziell: A little less back and forth for everyone.
6 00:01:28.580 ⇒ 00:01:29.620 Zoran Selinger: Okay, okay.
7 00:01:30.150 ⇒ 00:01:30.770 Luke Scorziell: Oh.
8 00:01:33.640 ⇒ 00:01:35.060 Luke Scorziell: Still snowing over there?
9 00:01:36.250 ⇒ 00:01:45.449 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah, we got some, some more today. No, it’s good, it’s good. We love it. I was taking the kids in the morning hours.
10 00:01:45.700 ⇒ 00:01:49.830 Zoran Selinger: To, a little bit of a hill, so we had some…
11 00:01:49.830 ⇒ 00:01:50.500 Luke Scorziell: Nice.
12 00:01:50.730 ⇒ 00:01:51.350 Zoran Selinger: No.
13 00:01:51.930 ⇒ 00:02:03.300 Zoran Selinger: we had some fun, so it’s great, finally, finally. Like, my son’s 7, he haven’t experienced snow properly here, and that was… was normal here.
14 00:02:04.040 ⇒ 00:02:04.550 Luke Scorziell: Huh.
15 00:02:04.550 ⇒ 00:02:13.320 Zoran Selinger: It would be… the whole winter would be snowy. And now, over the last 10, it’s basically not… no snow.
16 00:02:14.060 ⇒ 00:02:15.530 Zoran Selinger: Really? Wow. Huh.
17 00:02:15.870 ⇒ 00:02:18.319 Luke Scorziell: How many kids do you have? You have your son, and then…
18 00:02:18.780 ⇒ 00:02:20.120 Zoran Selinger: And a daughter, yeah.
19 00:02:20.530 ⇒ 00:02:21.779 Luke Scorziell: Oh, wow, okay.
20 00:02:22.060 ⇒ 00:02:22.970 Luke Scorziell: Bye.
21 00:02:23.080 ⇒ 00:02:25.109 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, less than a year and a half.
22 00:02:25.470 ⇒ 00:02:28.229 Zoran Selinger: Separated from one another.
23 00:02:29.240 ⇒ 00:02:29.570 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
24 00:02:29.570 ⇒ 00:02:33.399 Zoran Selinger: He’s 7, just started school.
25 00:02:33.840 ⇒ 00:02:35.640 Zoran Selinger: Here, we start school at 7.
26 00:02:35.790 ⇒ 00:02:39.369 Zoran Selinger: And Sara is only a year behind.
27 00:02:40.550 ⇒ 00:02:45.629 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I… yeah, I grew up in the mountains. We would get snow.
28 00:02:45.760 ⇒ 00:02:49.119 Luke Scorziell: And the storms were definitely bigger when I was a kid than they are now.
29 00:02:49.630 ⇒ 00:02:51.790 Luke Scorziell: So… Sell that.
30 00:03:00.790 ⇒ 00:03:02.130 Uttam Kumaran: How’s the day going, guys?
31 00:03:05.180 ⇒ 00:03:06.010 Amber Lin: Pretty good.
32 00:03:06.840 ⇒ 00:03:07.390 Amber Lin: Allergy.
33 00:03:08.130 ⇒ 00:03:09.130 Luke Scorziell: Going the wall.
34 00:03:10.410 ⇒ 00:03:13.259 Zoran Selinger: I was… as I was working today, I was…
35 00:03:13.480 ⇒ 00:03:21.000 Zoran Selinger: I was kind of updating my daily update, as I was working, so I think that’s the way I’m gonna do it.
36 00:03:21.170 ⇒ 00:03:23.300 Zoran Selinger: It really works well.
37 00:03:23.300 ⇒ 00:03:24.200 Uttam Kumaran: slides.
38 00:03:24.910 ⇒ 00:03:30.249 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, slides and… no, no, so the daily update is just a textual update.
39 00:03:30.370 ⇒ 00:03:31.010 Zoran Selinger: So I’m gonna.
40 00:03:31.010 ⇒ 00:03:32.029 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, okay.
41 00:03:32.030 ⇒ 00:03:49.229 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, I’m going to be sending it, usually kind of around now. Cool. So that’s already done by the time I finish all the starts. And slides I plan for tomorrow, because we have that, we have that meeting. I have the Gantt ready, though. I’m gonna have a few…
42 00:03:49.230 ⇒ 00:03:57.460 Uttam Kumaran: The big… the main thing I was telling about the slides is, like, I care less… I mean, like, the design is one thing, but, like, we can all discuss, like.
43 00:03:57.790 ⇒ 00:03:59.610 Uttam Kumaran: For example, if…
44 00:03:59.910 ⇒ 00:04:18.119 Uttam Kumaran: just because you’re part of a bigger deck doesn’t mean you have to only do, like, two, three. It’s more about, like, how do you convey all the information? And then also, again, you’re in an interesting spot because you’re fueling Robert, but also, I don’t know, like, maybe Robert invites you to that meeting, and you present your portion, right? So I don’t know…
45 00:04:18.470 ⇒ 00:04:24.050 Uttam Kumaran: like, I would… that’s what I would vote for, I don’t know. He owns the client, so it’s his dynamic, but…
46 00:04:24.160 ⇒ 00:04:27.689 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t… I doubt he would be, like, super opposed to that.
47 00:04:27.810 ⇒ 00:04:30.219 Uttam Kumaran: But this is where, like.
48 00:04:30.560 ⇒ 00:04:34.160 Uttam Kumaran: I just want to make sure your stuff is getting just a…
49 00:04:34.280 ⇒ 00:04:43.249 Uttam Kumaran: the same amount of importance, you know? So that’s why, if you need help thinking through, like, okay, I usually only present, like, 2 or 3 slides, like, what else can I put in here?
50 00:04:43.400 ⇒ 00:04:46.409 Uttam Kumaran: You know, I’m happy to talk through that.
51 00:04:46.410 ⇒ 00:04:46.960 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
52 00:04:49.100 ⇒ 00:04:51.200 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.
53 00:04:54.460 ⇒ 00:05:05.760 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I mean, tomorrow we have, you know, presentations with… with Element, with, ABC,
54 00:05:07.000 ⇒ 00:05:13.790 Uttam Kumaran: And… I’m gonna be moving our call with Lilo, so I’m gonna… I mean, I’m gonna be working on…
55 00:05:13.940 ⇒ 00:05:16.269 Uttam Kumaran: The deck for.
56 00:05:16.750 ⇒ 00:05:18.380 Greg Stoutenburg: JBC, Amber…
57 00:05:18.570 ⇒ 00:05:20.249 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, I guess, like.
58 00:05:20.500 ⇒ 00:05:23.539 Uttam Kumaran: I wanted to also use this meeting just to check in
59 00:05:23.710 ⇒ 00:05:32.950 Uttam Kumaran: with everybody, you know, I wanted to just kind of see if everybody’s… I know, Greg, there’s a meeting with README, I know, Demi, there’s a…
60 00:05:33.140 ⇒ 00:05:39.550 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if we ended up booking the call with, default.
61 00:05:39.720 ⇒ 00:05:40.470 Demilade Agboola: So there’s no…
62 00:05:40.470 ⇒ 00:05:41.190 Uttam Kumaran: weekly call.
63 00:05:41.580 ⇒ 00:05:45.360 Demilade Agboola: we haven’t yet booked a weekly call, so I have a working session with them.
64 00:05:45.470 ⇒ 00:05:50.619 Demilade Agboola: But I’m thinking weekly calls, we can make the Tuesday call that we did weekly.
65 00:05:50.940 ⇒ 00:05:59.310 Demilade Agboola: Therefore, it will just be, like, kind of how we did an update on what we’ve done so far, and what we look to do. We can just make it weekly and just continue in that light.
66 00:05:59.790 ⇒ 00:06:05.410 Demilade Agboola: Oh, sorry, that was from… that was from Magic Spoon. I would book a weekly call with default.
67 00:06:06.180 ⇒ 00:06:14.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I used to do them on Thursdays. I think I may have… I think I… canceled.
68 00:06:14.520 ⇒ 00:06:21.060 Uttam Kumaran: I think I canceled it, but it was… it was… I can, I can even just hand… yeah, I can reschedule it, basically, and hand it to you, but…
69 00:06:21.990 ⇒ 00:06:23.360 Demilade Agboola: That’s… that’s a good thing.
70 00:06:25.420 ⇒ 00:06:26.519 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let me do that.
71 00:06:34.100 ⇒ 00:06:50.189 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I mean, any other, like, any other questions, or, like, what do you… what do we… how do we feel like is the best use of this time? I mean, I can have people work on their decks, like, I don’t know, Zoran, if you even… if you were planning on working, I can help you work on yours.
72 00:06:50.240 ⇒ 00:06:54.200 Uttam Kumaran: Demi, if you wanted to work on one for default, I can help you work on yours.
73 00:06:54.440 ⇒ 00:06:59.869 Uttam Kumaran: Like, yeah, or Amber, if you’re gonna work on the ABC one, we can work on that together.
74 00:07:01.510 ⇒ 00:07:05.149 Demilade Agboola: I think my question around the decks was just how…
75 00:07:05.630 ⇒ 00:07:10.269 Demilade Agboola: How much is retrospective within the decks, and how much is forward-facing within the decks?
76 00:07:10.900 ⇒ 00:07:13.740 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so let me show you an example.
77 00:07:14.140 ⇒ 00:07:16.970 Uttam Kumaran: of the ones that we’re doing for Element, which…
78 00:07:17.190 ⇒ 00:07:20.490 Uttam Kumaran: These guys are real sticklers, so…
79 00:07:20.720 ⇒ 00:07:23.450 Uttam Kumaran: This is a good example of, like, us going, like.
80 00:07:24.520 ⇒ 00:07:27.470 Uttam Kumaran: Really above and beyond, I feel.
81 00:07:27.910 ⇒ 00:07:32.080 Uttam Kumaran: But I’ll show you guys this one, and…
82 00:07:33.250 ⇒ 00:07:38.830 Uttam Kumaran: So, typically, I like to start with… like…
83 00:07:40.590 ⇒ 00:07:44.979 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I really like to start with a slide like this.
84 00:07:45.130 ⇒ 00:07:47.390 Uttam Kumaran: Which just, like, tells everyone, like.
85 00:07:48.110 ⇒ 00:07:52.760 Uttam Kumaran: What we’re doing, and, like, really aligns people to, like, what are our core objectives.
86 00:07:52.870 ⇒ 00:07:55.979 Uttam Kumaran: So if you take default, for example, that may be…
87 00:07:56.100 ⇒ 00:08:06.929 Uttam Kumaran: you know, measure, like, the revenue side of the business, that maybe Mustafa has a workflow around, like, the enrichment vendors that may be established.
88 00:08:07.190 ⇒ 00:08:19.270 Uttam Kumaran: you know, reporting across the organization, so it’s just a good thing. Again, like, if… think… always think about the fact that if… if the client was gonna, like, basically screenshot this and send it.
89 00:08:19.460 ⇒ 00:08:23.870 Uttam Kumaran: that, like, Each slide basically speaks for itself.
90 00:08:24.020 ⇒ 00:08:27.460 Uttam Kumaran: And so, in this situation, you know,
91 00:08:27.920 ⇒ 00:08:33.400 Uttam Kumaran: we ran, like, 2 weeks… we did, like… the first 2 weeks, we didn’t do decks, because we were just getting started.
92 00:08:33.419 ⇒ 00:08:53.049 Uttam Kumaran: And then she called me and was, like, got super mad, like, we weren’t doing any decks. I was like, we just started. So, we put together decks. But this was one, like, this was, like, the first… this was the first deck that we did, probably two weeks into the… into the client starting. So, I started off by basically just sharing, like.
93 00:08:53.130 ⇒ 00:08:58.910 Uttam Kumaran: the agenda, like, we’re gonna go through the Gantt, high level, like.
94 00:08:59.100 ⇒ 00:09:04.700 Uttam Kumaran: if you were to basically just, like, say, what did Brainforge get done this week? This is the slide.
95 00:09:04.930 ⇒ 00:09:11.270 Uttam Kumaran: So usually, I like to have this, just in case someone happens to open this, or they screenshot or something.
96 00:09:13.000 ⇒ 00:09:23.600 Uttam Kumaran: I kind of go into Gantt chart review. Usually it’s either a slide like this, or what I did today was, like, you could just do a title… you could do a title layout like this.
97 00:09:23.870 ⇒ 00:09:26.550 Uttam Kumaran: And then just put Gantt chart, and then open it up.
98 00:09:26.690 ⇒ 00:09:28.339 Uttam Kumaran: The image is kind of, like…
99 00:09:28.900 ⇒ 00:09:31.040 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, not super important.
100 00:09:31.550 ⇒ 00:09:46.699 Uttam Kumaran: This is another way to sort of, like, just continue to share, like, what our wins are. So this is something Awesha and I worked on, is just putting exactly, like, what are all the wins that we did, and so this was about 2 weeks’ worth, so we did have, like, quite a bit of stuff.
101 00:09:46.780 ⇒ 00:09:55.260 Uttam Kumaran: But we did a bunch of discovery calls, we started our documentation, we finished, like, two different memos, and then we also, like.
102 00:09:55.410 ⇒ 00:10:03.519 Uttam Kumaran: sort of lock down what our sources are for Phase 1. Again, like, very screenshottable slide, very much something that
103 00:10:03.740 ⇒ 00:10:07.079 Uttam Kumaran: Our stakeholder can go present to other people, but also just, like.
104 00:10:07.150 ⇒ 00:10:24.279 Uttam Kumaran: also helps us, like, give ourselves a lot of credit for a lot of things. If we were to not do a slide like this, we may skip over a lot of the great things we do and just go all into discussion. So, kind of talk through these. I talk about, like.
105 00:10:24.530 ⇒ 00:10:29.970 Uttam Kumaran: One of the key work streams for this client are a lot of these discovery calls, where we’re meeting everybody in the company.
106 00:10:30.140 ⇒ 00:10:37.919 Uttam Kumaran: So in this situation, I highlighted, what are the discovery calls that we did, and, like, what were some of the key outcomes.
107 00:10:38.320 ⇒ 00:10:40.420 Uttam Kumaran: We then talked into, like.
108 00:10:40.530 ⇒ 00:10:51.229 Uttam Kumaran: our data platform documentation, so this is an easy one. For every client, we put together, a data platform documentation, so this is…
109 00:10:51.550 ⇒ 00:10:56.500 Uttam Kumaran: Like, this is our template for this.
110 00:10:57.100 ⇒ 00:11:00.189 Uttam Kumaran: So, for every client, we basically create a copy of this.
111 00:11:00.320 ⇒ 00:11:06.149 Uttam Kumaran: This has, like, a bunch of great stuff on how we’re gonna build out the platform for folks.
112 00:11:06.280 ⇒ 00:11:25.269 Uttam Kumaran: So, that’s an easy one for me to be like, we set this up for you, you know? So what does it have, why it matters? We then, one of our deliverables was this ETL assessment memo. So, that was, like, probably, like, 4 or 5 pages. I just… we just summarized, like, what it was and, like, what the next steps are.
113 00:11:25.370 ⇒ 00:11:40.490 Uttam Kumaran: So, basically, every slide, again, it’s like, what do we do? What do we find? What are the next steps? That way, it’s like, okay, once we start talking about this, we stop talking about it, it’s like case closed. So there’s never a confusion about, like, what we’re… what we’re doing next.
114 00:11:40.700 ⇒ 00:11:43.450 Uttam Kumaran: This next section was,
115 00:11:43.710 ⇒ 00:11:48.650 Uttam Kumaran: It was Awish was going through what he found in this Emerson data source.
116 00:11:48.760 ⇒ 00:11:52.820 Uttam Kumaran: in this situation, probably what I would have done is,
117 00:11:53.890 ⇒ 00:12:06.080 Uttam Kumaran: probably started with this slide first, did a little bit more of, like, rehashing what is Emerson, like, why does Element have it, and then kind of go into this. This is a little bit probably too technical for, like, this deck.
118 00:12:06.210 ⇒ 00:12:18.849 Uttam Kumaran: But again, it’s sort of a judgment call by you. We then went into, like, what we found in the data source, so this is all Awisha’s work. He looked at, like, okay, we found all these things about Element, things like that.
119 00:12:20.520 ⇒ 00:12:24.410 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so… this was… This was great.
120 00:12:25.690 ⇒ 00:12:31.710 Uttam Kumaran: we walk through, like, GitHub, how GitHub is gonna work for dbt and things like that.
121 00:12:32.070 ⇒ 00:12:40.590 Uttam Kumaran: And then we ended with, like, what’s coming up in the upcoming week. So, like, what are we trying to do this week? What’s coming up? And then also, I usually like to talk about this month.
122 00:12:40.780 ⇒ 00:12:43.380 Uttam Kumaran: Especially if it’s in the first 2 weeks of the month.
123 00:12:43.410 ⇒ 00:13:02.329 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, okay, what… kind of give them some rounding. Look, for all of our clients, one of the goals I stated for the engagement planners is to get 3-month or roadmaps. So, at any moment, there should be no question, like, what’s going on this month and where we should be heading. So far, we haven’t been as good about this, so some of this, like, kind of floats, but…
124 00:13:02.390 ⇒ 00:13:06.269 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t… we don’t… there’s no need for, kind of, this to float.
125 00:13:06.600 ⇒ 00:13:16.629 Uttam Kumaran: And then to show you, like, another part of this, so this is our… this is the next meeting we had. I walked through our North Star, I walked through what we did that week.
126 00:13:16.890 ⇒ 00:13:19.039 Uttam Kumaran: I walked through, like.
127 00:13:19.200 ⇒ 00:13:37.280 Uttam Kumaran: the Gantt chart, talked about, like, what we did, and then actually, Robert ran this. He… we did an overview of what we learned when we met with these folks. These are great because, this was, like, mostly AI and some brainpower, and a lot of this is actually not, like.
128 00:13:37.560 ⇒ 00:13:40.969 Uttam Kumaran: At no point in that meeting do we read, like, most of this.
129 00:13:41.220 ⇒ 00:13:42.460 Uttam Kumaran: Like.
130 00:13:42.480 ⇒ 00:14:02.010 Uttam Kumaran: you shouldn’t put up a slide and basically, like, read anything. Most of it is just to say, like, here’s a slide about what we learned. The take… here’s, like, the main takeaway. What do you think? And as someone… as the client is listening to you and reading this, they’re gonna, like, kind of, like, process the whole thing.
131 00:14:02.040 ⇒ 00:14:10.790 Uttam Kumaran: So, if I was to spend 20 minutes, like, reading line by line, it’s, like, kind of useless. So instead, what we said is, like, look, Robert’s like, overall.
132 00:14:11.190 ⇒ 00:14:27.439 Uttam Kumaran: Wholesale team is drowning in manual processing. They have… they have 10,000 plus partners, there’s still only 2 people, there’s a lot of manual data entry, they have no clue about which are their top, you know, wholesale partners and how they should continue to invest in them.
133 00:14:27.570 ⇒ 00:14:30.079 Uttam Kumaran: And so we have to solve that as a data team.
134 00:14:30.780 ⇒ 00:14:45.920 Uttam Kumaran: wrap. That was it, right? And then we talk. And then as we talk, whatever, blah blah blah, that’s a great conversation. We talk about what we learned from them, we’re teaching them what we learn, we’re showing how our reporting process is gonna solve. We did a very similar thing for
135 00:14:45.960 ⇒ 00:14:53.699 Uttam Kumaran: partnerships. So we said, cool, you guys scaled a lot, there’s all this data, blah blah blah. This is really just trying to show our depth.
136 00:14:53.830 ⇒ 00:14:57.750 Uttam Kumaran: Not really something that, again, we’re, like, gonna go detail by detail through.
137 00:14:58.810 ⇒ 00:15:07.589 Uttam Kumaran: Again, this was another example of, like, they asked me, hey, we want to kind of create this, like, KPI metrics dictionary. We had, like, an uglier version of this,
138 00:15:07.920 ⇒ 00:15:14.699 Uttam Kumaran: So I went and just created a better-looking version of this, and now this lives as something that everybody can go use.
139 00:15:14.960 ⇒ 00:15:18.460 Uttam Kumaran: I think, Demi, I sent this to you before, but, like.
140 00:15:18.660 ⇒ 00:15:22.499 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of clients are like, I want to have a clear,
141 00:15:22.730 ⇒ 00:15:41.199 Uttam Kumaran: spreadsheet of all of our core metrics and the definitions, the priority, who owns it, so this is the template for that. The lovely thing is, like, many companies do this… like, many companies, you don’t do this, like, 10 times and iterate. Most people do this in, like, an ugly-looking spreadsheet. We do this, like, all the time, so…
142 00:15:41.270 ⇒ 00:15:54.069 Uttam Kumaran: this is an easy thing for us to copy-paste, fill out, and it’s, like, actually, like, it basically deserves its own slide. So, as you can see here, these are the things that, as a consultancy, because we do this for multiple people, we benefit at scale.
143 00:15:54.070 ⇒ 00:16:09.190 Uttam Kumaran: Where we can copy-paste this, fill this out, and now it’s, like, it’s a pretty major deliverable, actually. But I wouldn’t be worried that you’re like, oh, this only took, like, half an hour to do. It’s actually… that’s why they work with us, is because it only takes half an hour to do, because we do this stuff all the time.
144 00:16:09.770 ⇒ 00:16:16.710 Uttam Kumaran: So we walked through the benefits of a KPI dictionary, I walked through our experience in standardizing metrics.
145 00:16:16.880 ⇒ 00:16:32.240 Uttam Kumaran: The next thing we talked about, is basically I wanted to continue to drive to tell them, like, what Brainforge is gonna do versus what they’re gonna do. They’re a little bit new to, like, standardize… standardizing a data platform and things like that, so…
146 00:16:32.430 ⇒ 00:16:47.199 Uttam Kumaran: I wanted to share them that, like, hey, we’re a partnership, like, you guys have to do these things, like, we’re… we’re external, and these are the things that we’re gonna… we’re gonna also do. You know, and a big thing was this, like, we’re gonna prepare y’all to… to go win.
147 00:16:48.320 ⇒ 00:16:55.069 Uttam Kumaran: We then kind of walk through, like, hey, we finalized our ETL tool, here’s the next steps on the ETL side.
148 00:16:55.410 ⇒ 00:16:59.579 Uttam Kumaran: We final… we kind of submitted this, like, data warehouse memo.
149 00:17:01.480 ⇒ 00:17:04.329 Uttam Kumaran: we need… we decided to select Snowflake.
150 00:17:04.760 ⇒ 00:17:07.619 Uttam Kumaran: So a lot of this is just highlighting the things that we did that week.
151 00:17:10.390 ⇒ 00:17:17.729 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think another one that’s… that’s honestly, like, I always love to, share is,
152 00:17:18.780 ⇒ 00:17:24.489 Uttam Kumaran: Insomnia slide is, like, Amber’s, insomnia stuff.
153 00:17:25.900 ⇒ 00:17:32.470 Uttam Kumaran: I think this is awesome, I think this stuff is awesome. So, these are… these are slides that we presented directly to, like.
154 00:17:33.140 ⇒ 00:17:40.599 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if Robert ended up presenting this, like, CMO, CEO, but I guess more of what I’m trying to share here is this is more of, like, an analytics workstream.
155 00:17:40.960 ⇒ 00:17:48.839 Uttam Kumaran: For Element, it’s all set up, like, we’re setting up dbt, setting up stuff, so most of what I’m talking about is, like, what I’m learning about them.
156 00:17:48.950 ⇒ 00:17:56.050 Uttam Kumaran: This is actually more about analysis. So we talk… of course, we always lead… we try to always lead with, like, an agenda.
157 00:17:56.450 ⇒ 00:18:02.589 Uttam Kumaran: We try to lead with, like, a one slide of, like, what we won this week, and then we can go further in.
158 00:18:02.900 ⇒ 00:18:05.629 Uttam Kumaran: I would say, if part of any deck, like.
159 00:18:05.850 ⇒ 00:18:09.330 Uttam Kumaran: These are, I would try to really make non-negotiable.
160 00:18:09.650 ⇒ 00:18:13.379 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna allow you to start your meeting really hot.
161 00:18:13.610 ⇒ 00:18:23.760 Uttam Kumaran: And not only start with agenda, which most people who work in corporate America never do, so that’s a big win for us. This takes 90 seconds. This takes, like, 9 seconds to do.
162 00:18:23.820 ⇒ 00:18:35.149 Uttam Kumaran: Even if you don’t send this out ahead of time, just, like, put an agenda. And then weekly overview, this is, like, again, you start off with the wins, so it puts us up on a pedestal.
163 00:18:35.280 ⇒ 00:18:47.129 Uttam Kumaran: Because depending on what’s coming up next, you don’t want to lead with the bad news, right? So, we then go through key wins. This was a good, you know, example of, like, here’s an analysis that we’re going to do.
164 00:18:47.520 ⇒ 00:18:57.029 Uttam Kumaran: Pay attention to, like, the way things are highlighted. Like, we highlighted, like, what is the key question? We made a purple insomnia color purple. This is the hex… actual hex color.
165 00:18:57.210 ⇒ 00:19:04.869 Uttam Kumaran: We kind of outlined, like, what are the things that we’re gonna be looking at, and what are the next steps. So, this was great.
166 00:19:05.110 ⇒ 00:19:10.410 Uttam Kumaran: We also talked about, like, how we overhauled their daily impact scorecard.
167 00:19:10.540 ⇒ 00:19:18.179 Uttam Kumaran: I think also, Amber, like, some of your stuff… Is in, like, other… Pacific DEX, right?
168 00:19:18.360 ⇒ 00:19:27.039 Amber Lin: Yeah, this is a high-level summary, so each of these, should link out to, their own analysis deck.
169 00:19:27.470 ⇒ 00:19:30.000 Uttam Kumaran: What’s a good, like, analysis one to share, folks?
170 00:19:30.000 ⇒ 00:19:34.939 Amber Lin: If you go back to the slide, I can point you to one. It will have the link.
171 00:19:37.790 ⇒ 00:19:38.980 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, sorry.
172 00:19:41.760 ⇒ 00:19:57.819 Amber Lin: Let’s go to… Let’s see, maybe slide 6? No, analysis… Who else is… 3, that one, maybe.
173 00:19:58.310 ⇒ 00:19:59.750 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think they’re linked.
174 00:19:59.750 ⇒ 00:20:02.779 Amber Lin: Should be in the speaker notes section.
175 00:20:02.780 ⇒ 00:20:04.479 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice, okay.
176 00:20:04.480 ⇒ 00:20:04.930 Amber Lin: Yeah.
177 00:20:04.930 ⇒ 00:20:07.649 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let’s find a good one. Yeah, this one. Nice.
178 00:20:07.880 ⇒ 00:20:10.690 Amber Lin: That one’s Robert’s, the first one that we did.
179 00:20:11.750 ⇒ 00:20:14.509 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay, I want to pull… I’ll pull up one that you did.
180 00:20:15.850 ⇒ 00:20:18.159 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ll go with… is this one that you did?
181 00:20:18.520 ⇒ 00:20:19.110 Amber Lin: Yeah.
182 00:20:19.620 ⇒ 00:20:20.380 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great.
183 00:20:22.640 ⇒ 00:20:41.590 Uttam Kumaran: So, I love… I love this one. I… and in… like, for a couple reasons, like, I… I’m not a data analyst, but this is ultimately, like, the type of work that, on the data engineering side and the modeling side, we try to push, and we try to support. And so, I… I love this. Like, we start the meeting with
184 00:20:41.880 ⇒ 00:20:48.570 Uttam Kumaran: how can we optimize the mix and frequency of our email campaigns? Like, okay, here’s what we’re doing, people. Like, you… we didn’t start with, like, this.
185 00:20:48.930 ⇒ 00:20:53.100 Uttam Kumaran: We didn’t start with, like, anything extraneous, we just started with that, framing the problem.
186 00:20:53.250 ⇒ 00:20:58.480 Uttam Kumaran: And then Amber goes into things. So another thing that Robert will also
187 00:20:58.720 ⇒ 00:21:04.140 Uttam Kumaran: you know, kind of hammer home, and I think this is in our… It’s in our slide deck.
188 00:21:04.480 ⇒ 00:21:14.729 Uttam Kumaran: like… Guidelines, which this is also really… Super good notion to, take a look at.
189 00:21:14.890 ⇒ 00:21:19.380 Uttam Kumaran: is, like, Start with a driving question, end with a recap.
190 00:21:20.050 ⇒ 00:21:23.790 Uttam Kumaran: Like, sort of, like, how to format analysis slides.
191 00:21:24.050 ⇒ 00:21:31.780 Uttam Kumaran: I think these are really, really great. There’s… there’s a lot of specifics on how to do these, but really, from… from my lens, what’s,
192 00:21:31.940 ⇒ 00:21:41.460 Uttam Kumaran: What’s awesome here is that, this, again, is completely screenshotable. If someone in the meeting’s like, oh my god, I didn’t know this.
193 00:21:41.600 ⇒ 00:21:56.689 Uttam Kumaran: they screenshot this, they don’t have to send any information about this. The inside is in the title. Email revenue per recipient Trails Industry Benchmark of 16 cents in the food and beverage category for 24-25.
194 00:21:57.200 ⇒ 00:21:58.050 Uttam Kumaran: Alright.
195 00:21:58.290 ⇒ 00:22:15.060 Uttam Kumaran: Great. And then, of course, like, we have the slide, and what Amber is talking through is how we found this, and, like, any insights about it, right? And so these slides kind of continue in this way. Enhanced campaign segmentation, and so one of our… one of our things that we did is, like.
196 00:22:15.250 ⇒ 00:22:21.129 Uttam Kumaran: they had… yeah, actually, I’m just literally gonna explain this slide. They had a lot of campaigns that were categorized as other.
197 00:22:21.520 ⇒ 00:22:37.019 Uttam Kumaran: Right? This is something classic we see in data, is, like, shitty segmentation. We reclassified them, and now we actually cut the unknown classifications by half, and now we can open up new categories for, you know, campaigns.
198 00:22:37.360 ⇒ 00:22:49.519 Uttam Kumaran: Amber does a great job of, like, putting some methodology. I would say our level of clients, often are not looking for this, but these are, like, these are the ways that we really stand out.
199 00:22:49.560 ⇒ 00:22:58.940 Uttam Kumaran: things like call-outs, things like having this here. As you can see, this isn’t, like, a beautiful work of art slide, but it is super dense, and it stands alone.
200 00:22:58.990 ⇒ 00:23:03.230 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And that’s, like, kind of, like, when we talk about analysis-related slides, we want to do.
201 00:23:03.860 ⇒ 00:23:17.529 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, these are kind of, like, the things, and at the end of it, we talk about recommendations. And so, for the analysis and strategy team, this is super, super key. And I even think, in my world, a lot of my slides end with, like, a what’s next, or what do we do?
202 00:23:17.750 ⇒ 00:23:19.010 Uttam Kumaran: And so…
203 00:23:19.230 ⇒ 00:23:25.460 Uttam Kumaran: our job on the strategy side is, say, double down on B2B, increase your frequency, keep your volume up.
204 00:23:25.570 ⇒ 00:23:31.079 Uttam Kumaran: and monitor your campaign mix, which I don’t think they were doing all of those, or none of those.
205 00:23:31.440 ⇒ 00:23:37.369 Uttam Kumaran: And… and that’s exactly it. And then… and then stuff gets put into the appendix, just in case we need it.
206 00:23:38.650 ⇒ 00:23:45.660 Uttam Kumaran: So these are, you know, these are kind of examples of decks that I’ve, you know, done really well.
207 00:23:47.440 ⇒ 00:23:56.669 Uttam Kumaran: part of this is, like, really owning the narrative. If you come to a meeting with nothing in your hand, there is a risk that the client drives it, and you’re not prepared.
208 00:23:56.850 ⇒ 00:24:10.350 Uttam Kumaran: And if you’re not prepared, it may go one way, it may go another. And so, if you keep a slide format, and you’re talking about all the items, for the most part, people just want to know that we’re prepared, that we’re on top of it, and we’re thinking on their behalf. So the slides convey that, right?
209 00:24:10.600 ⇒ 00:24:22.609 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not doing slides at, like, 100 slides, I’m talking, like, 2 hours, like, most of our stuff, I think, is, like, 5 to 10 slides. This is pretty dense, because this was, like, 2 or 3 weeks of analysis.
210 00:24:24.190 ⇒ 00:24:33.090 Uttam Kumaran: But I’m… but, like, all of these are, like, really nuggets that they need to take home and really drive. But most of our weekly slides are just, like, what did we do this week?
211 00:24:33.490 ⇒ 00:24:38.449 Uttam Kumaran: Any of those items that we need to further discuss? What’s our plan next week?
212 00:24:39.410 ⇒ 00:24:42.640 Uttam Kumaran: everything’s on track, you know? That’s, like, really it.
213 00:24:42.860 ⇒ 00:24:58.539 Uttam Kumaran: There have been times where everything has been on track, we’re still doing a great job, but we don’t convey that effectively, and the client gets worried. And so part of the reason why I’m saying send a message every day is not really because, like.
214 00:24:59.250 ⇒ 00:25:07.019 Uttam Kumaran: If we don’t send a message every day, client doesn’t think we’re working, but if we’re charging them tens of thousands of dollars.
215 00:25:07.180 ⇒ 00:25:25.129 Uttam Kumaran: like, if someone is charging Brainforce tens of thousands of dollars, I’m gonna be like, what are we up to every day, probably? And that’s me defending our money, right? And so, think about it, think about it that way. Yes, it’s like a corporation, yes, it’s, like, not that person’s money, but ultimately, like.
216 00:25:25.130 ⇒ 00:25:35.499 Uttam Kumaran: sending a message every day is a great way to just, like, cut through that, right? It’s super easy. What’s not easy is, like, not talking to them for a week, coming back in a week.
217 00:25:35.760 ⇒ 00:25:38.879 Uttam Kumaran: presenting something, they’re like, this is not at all what I wanted.
218 00:25:39.040 ⇒ 00:25:55.110 Uttam Kumaran: And we’ve done that plenty of times. And so, it’s, like, really brutal. So instead, it’s like, just say something every day, and, like, keep the camaraderie high. Nothing you present should come as a surprise, you know, for the most part.
219 00:25:55.160 ⇒ 00:26:03.949 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I think some of these analyses end up, like, the output is a meeting where we discuss, but the fact that we were doing this analysis.
220 00:26:04.150 ⇒ 00:26:14.769 Uttam Kumaran: kind of, like, probably the findings that we found. I’m sure Amber and them maybe shared a little bit about it. So even in my element deck, nothing that I presented is, like.
221 00:26:14.990 ⇒ 00:26:19.599 Uttam Kumaran: things that were a surprise or anything. It’s like, I’m finding ways to fit that in every day.
222 00:26:20.110 ⇒ 00:26:23.360 Uttam Kumaran: Any questions?
223 00:26:24.370 ⇒ 00:26:25.420 Uttam Kumaran: Or thoughts?
224 00:26:32.030 ⇒ 00:26:35.210 Luke Scorziell: So are these kind of weekly update decks going for every client?
225 00:26:36.340 ⇒ 00:26:36.970 Uttam Kumaran: Correct.
226 00:26:39.230 ⇒ 00:26:40.230 Luke Scorziell: That’s great.
227 00:26:43.600 ⇒ 00:26:49.799 Uttam Kumaran: Not very common for, IT service companies to put this much effort.
228 00:26:51.340 ⇒ 00:26:56.639 Luke Scorziell: Well, this is kind of when I was talking about, like, the case studies, libraries example, like, stuff that we can use in content, and
229 00:26:56.990 ⇒ 00:27:02.010 Luke Scorziell: I’m just listening fly on the wall, so I don’t have to take over, but this is, like, really, really valuable for.
230 00:27:02.500 ⇒ 00:27:07.989 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, I think you should… I think you should… You should go have,
231 00:27:08.400 ⇒ 00:27:14.010 Uttam Kumaran: AI create a fake version of this, and just say, this is the type of stuff you can expect if you become our client.
232 00:27:14.210 ⇒ 00:27:32.239 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, this is where, like, some… if you’re coming from the engineering side, especially internal engineering, you may not be privy to, like, decks and, like, this type of… this medium of communication. It’s not very common in technical consulting. It’s more common in management consulting.
233 00:27:33.130 ⇒ 00:27:39.579 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, who cares? Like, it’s not that our work is any less important. In fact.
234 00:27:40.000 ⇒ 00:27:43.219 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want us relegated as just technical consultants.
235 00:27:43.330 ⇒ 00:27:49.870 Uttam Kumaran: Right? We’re partners to them. We part… we happen to do data and AI work, but it doesn’t mean, like, we can’t share that.
236 00:27:50.240 ⇒ 00:27:56.329 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of our work doesn’t happen to be visual, but you can see some of the ways that I got around that in the element deck.
237 00:27:56.620 ⇒ 00:28:02.350 Uttam Kumaran: I’m trying to think if there’s any other, like, decks that,
238 00:28:03.400 ⇒ 00:28:08.020 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll have to think about a couple others that maybe were more…
239 00:28:08.130 ⇒ 00:28:16.309 Uttam Kumaran: engineering heavy, but once we get to analysis, it’s beautiful. Like, we put some of this stuff together, it’s great. Like, this is all people… the people eat this stuff up.
240 00:28:18.960 ⇒ 00:28:25.610 Uttam Kumaran: And so when I’m presenting, like, data models or things like that, for the most part, we open Snowflake, we’re showing things.
241 00:28:25.790 ⇒ 00:28:29.749 Uttam Kumaran: But it also depends on your audience, like, slides for technical people.
242 00:28:30.320 ⇒ 00:28:35.650 Uttam Kumaran: They are more interested in, like, you sharing your screen going into codebase.
243 00:28:35.820 ⇒ 00:28:40.639 Uttam Kumaran: For business people, the moment you open up VS Code, you’re, like, dead. You’re, like, DOA.
244 00:28:40.760 ⇒ 00:28:51.189 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, really, really avoid that. You will find yourself in a meeting where someone on your team does that. Just cancel the screen share. Like, be like, oh, we’re not doing that.
245 00:28:51.450 ⇒ 00:28:57.740 Uttam Kumaran: Because you will lose everybody, and whatever you’re about to say from that point on is, like, people are on Slack.
246 00:28:58.300 ⇒ 00:29:02.180 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s, like, there are some of these gotchas that you’ll find.
247 00:29:02.790 ⇒ 00:29:10.899 Uttam Kumaran: you just have to understand the vibe of the meeting, too. Like, you know, they think it’s all sort of that, but… and who your client is. Like, I told Greg.
248 00:29:11.030 ⇒ 00:29:15.670 Uttam Kumaran: for default and for Hydra, these guys are, like, Series A,
249 00:29:15.980 ⇒ 00:29:19.350 Uttam Kumaran: Series B, like, high-growth startups.
250 00:29:19.610 ⇒ 00:29:27.769 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and so they’re… yes, I think the decks are good, but probably, like, a 3-5 thing deck.
251 00:29:28.270 ⇒ 00:29:35.700 Uttam Kumaran: Insomnia, CES, these guys are, like, multi-hundred million dollar, like, kind of, like, dinosaur big companies.
252 00:29:37.090 ⇒ 00:29:53.140 Uttam Kumaran: they need us to kind of go slow and, like, explain everything, you know? And so you do have to… we have to morph to the client. It’s like, it’s not one size fits all. What… what I hope to do is give you every tool in the toolbox, whether you need decks.
253 00:29:53.240 ⇒ 00:30:00.250 Uttam Kumaran: Spreadsheets, like, whatever you need, I want to make sure that we have versions of that available.
254 00:30:00.650 ⇒ 00:30:05.690 Uttam Kumaran: Your job in the first 2 weeks of working with a client is to find out, like, what it is.
255 00:30:05.880 ⇒ 00:30:17.239 Uttam Kumaran: I’m telling you the minimum that has worked after doing this for, like, 30 clients and messing up, like, most of them is a weekly meeting, trying to send a message a day.
256 00:30:17.380 ⇒ 00:30:21.219 Uttam Kumaran: And putting a deck together. If you do that, there’s, like.
257 00:30:21.790 ⇒ 00:30:27.969 Uttam Kumaran: There’s… there’s a… like, out of all the things you could do, and of course, in addition to just doing the work.
258 00:30:28.220 ⇒ 00:30:33.539 Uttam Kumaran: all the things you could do if you do those things, like, were most likely to continue. But…
259 00:30:33.700 ⇒ 00:30:44.759 Uttam Kumaran: you have to play around, it’s your client, so I’m not, like, I’m just telling you what’s worked for me. What I’ve found, that if you don’t do those things, and you don’t substitute other activities.
260 00:30:45.250 ⇒ 00:30:48.450 Uttam Kumaran: You’re probably gonna mess up, you know?
261 00:30:48.940 ⇒ 00:30:53.200 Uttam Kumaran: Or they’re gonna… they’re gonna say, hey, I’m not getting enough, let’s talk every day.
262 00:30:53.770 ⇒ 00:30:55.619 Uttam Kumaran: Then you’re in a jam.
263 00:30:55.740 ⇒ 00:30:59.320 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and you don’t wanna… you don’t… just don’t want to let it get there, so…
264 00:31:08.400 ⇒ 00:31:09.400 Uttam Kumaran: What else?
265 00:31:13.250 ⇒ 00:31:29.920 Greg Stoutenburg: to go back to a question that you asked, before showing some of these examples, personally, I think that as we’re all taking on this role together, that a review and feedback on what we plan to present, what we have presented, things like that would be really valuable.
266 00:31:30.050 ⇒ 00:31:46.279 Greg Stoutenburg: I guess for two reasons. One is just because, you know, when you’re… if you’re working in a silo and you haven’t got any feedback, it can be valuable. And then, the other being that since we’re, you know, since a goal is to try to have these roles more standardized, that’ll help us, I think, kind of converge
267 00:31:46.280 ⇒ 00:31:50.850 Greg Stoutenburg: on whatever the Common Core is supposed to be, and make sure they’re operating in similar ways.
268 00:31:52.120 ⇒ 00:31:58.039 Greg Stoutenburg: So, yes. Yes to that question before, about what we want to do. Feedback, discussion, I think that’s great.
269 00:31:58.760 ⇒ 00:32:01.689 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and so one thing I’m gonna keep pushing is, like.
270 00:32:01.850 ⇒ 00:32:04.030 Uttam Kumaran: Try to do these ahead of time.
271 00:32:04.620 ⇒ 00:32:11.310 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, do we still put these together, like, an hour before? Yes. That’s just because, like, this is the nature. We’re growing.
272 00:32:11.450 ⇒ 00:32:18.519 Uttam Kumaran: But do your best to put it together the day before if you can, because you’ll get feedback, and it’ll… it’ll move it from, like,
273 00:32:18.970 ⇒ 00:32:20.559 Uttam Kumaran: From, like, a B to an A.
274 00:32:22.180 ⇒ 00:32:40.749 Uttam Kumaran: And the A is what… is what’s gonna move us to… to grow. So, like, try to get feedback. I also, like, I’m gonna keep giving feedback, but at some point, like, it’ll be y’all sort of reviewing your own stuff. But you’re totally right, like, if you don’t give feedback, your consequence is you’re gonna get… you’re gonna get shredded in a call.
275 00:32:41.000 ⇒ 00:32:45.460 Uttam Kumaran: Like Demi, we almost went into that Magic Spoon call without stuff on spins.
276 00:32:45.640 ⇒ 00:32:49.880 Uttam Kumaran: we would have got shredded, bro, like, if I… if we didn’t do that, right? So…
277 00:32:50.030 ⇒ 00:32:56.290 Uttam Kumaran: That’s situations where, like… I wanted to just know what we were presenting a day before. Of course, like.
278 00:32:56.390 ⇒ 00:33:00.210 Uttam Kumaran: it’s just this Monday, we just started this stuff, but, like…
279 00:33:00.420 ⇒ 00:33:13.439 Uttam Kumaran: that’s… that’s how these things will happen, and… and yes, you will get stomped on in a meeting here and there, like, I can’t… I can’t prevent that from happening, but your job is to have built up enough trust before.
280 00:33:13.620 ⇒ 00:33:17.019 Uttam Kumaran: To show them that you’ll take the feedback constructively and improve.
281 00:33:17.330 ⇒ 00:33:23.059 Uttam Kumaran: If you come into a meeting, and every time they say something, we don’t do it, or we don’t display information correctly.
282 00:33:24.400 ⇒ 00:33:30.050 Uttam Kumaran: You know, they’re just gonna lose trust. And it’s also small things, like the reason why our decks are, like.
283 00:33:30.090 ⇒ 00:33:49.649 Uttam Kumaran: have a design and have a theme, and we’re not just using the default Google Slides. It’s like a decision. Like, we paid… the company paid… our company paid money to make this a reality, because these are the small things that separate us from any other data consultancy. These are the things that put us in the field of the companies that are, like.
284 00:33:49.780 ⇒ 00:34:03.689 Uttam Kumaran: 10 times bigger than us in consulting, because, you know, and so all of our stuff needs to feel like that for us to go charge those prices. And so, these are the small things that, like, I don’t think… until I started working with designers, I didn’t really…
285 00:34:03.850 ⇒ 00:34:09.230 Uttam Kumaran: Get the appreciation for, but it helps to round out the fact that we’re very serious.
286 00:34:09.770 ⇒ 00:34:15.670 Uttam Kumaran: And so try to use the templates, try to get as much feedback as possible.
287 00:34:15.800 ⇒ 00:34:18.050 Uttam Kumaran: I think would be really, really helpful.
288 00:34:18.199 ⇒ 00:34:22.749 Uttam Kumaran: You know, I, in particular, I asked Clarence to try to run, like.
289 00:34:23.170 ⇒ 00:34:33.629 Uttam Kumaran: three different workshops, which was how to create a great, like, SOW, how to create a great client deck, and then how to create a great executive-facing memo.
290 00:34:34.060 ⇒ 00:34:47.310 Uttam Kumaran: Clarence, has a background, like, in pretty senior at Ernst & Young, so I don’t have a… neither me nor Robert have a background in consulting, so there… he will show you what, like.
291 00:34:47.420 ⇒ 00:34:48.659 Uttam Kumaran: Peak is?
292 00:34:48.830 ⇒ 00:34:55.409 Uttam Kumaran: I will probably show you what, like, the minimum is, and our… my minimum is sort of getting… going up over time.
293 00:34:55.719 ⇒ 00:35:02.699 Uttam Kumaran: you guys will find out what you can do. Ultimately, getting the work done is better than having a perfect deck.
294 00:35:02.930 ⇒ 00:35:10.980 Uttam Kumaran: Because at the end of the day, you can have 10 decks, but if you’re not doing the thing, then it doesn’t really matter.
295 00:35:12.400 ⇒ 00:35:24.330 Uttam Kumaran: But I do want to show you guys, like, what great looks like and how to think about these. We have examples of SOWs, examples of executive-facing memos.
296 00:35:24.470 ⇒ 00:35:28.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, you’re just gonna find that a lot of this is presentation, and
297 00:35:28.530 ⇒ 00:35:33.250 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, setting the narrative when you explain this to people.
298 00:35:43.040 ⇒ 00:35:44.170 Uttam Kumaran: What else?
299 00:35:44.590 ⇒ 00:35:46.240 Uttam Kumaran: So I’ll… I mean, I could…
300 00:35:46.370 ⇒ 00:35:52.019 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna… I’m gonna be working on my decks, and I can send them in here as soon as they’re…
301 00:35:52.380 ⇒ 00:35:59.550 Uttam Kumaran: They’re ready for you guys to review. We’re also putting together a Google Drive for, like, past decks.
302 00:35:59.670 ⇒ 00:36:01.849 Uttam Kumaran: So everybody can look through a lot of those.
303 00:36:03.990 ⇒ 00:36:16.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I’m certainly interested in giving feedback to y’all on how you guys are doing things. But again, like, I think it’s always helpful to try to go to a client meeting with.
304 00:36:16.720 ⇒ 00:36:20.500 Demilade Agboola: either an agenda or some notes pre-prepared. It really, like.
305 00:36:21.110 ⇒ 00:36:23.809 Uttam Kumaran: It really, really will make the difference.
306 00:36:24.120 ⇒ 00:36:31.800 Uttam Kumaran: You can wing it, and we… we did wing it for a long time, but it’s not… it’s… it’s very stressful.
307 00:36:32.200 ⇒ 00:36:36.859 Uttam Kumaran: And as we’re working for larger clients.
308 00:36:37.180 ⇒ 00:36:43.010 Uttam Kumaran: You’ll find that actually the larger clients expect a lot less
309 00:36:43.140 ⇒ 00:36:53.849 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s kind of, like, I think as we’re going, we’re… we’re winning because we move faster, but these are the things that continue just to set us, like, so far apart from any other technical consultancy.
310 00:36:53.970 ⇒ 00:36:59.510 Uttam Kumaran: These are the types of things that, like, a Bain or a BCG, they type… they try to do things like this, so…
311 00:36:59.780 ⇒ 00:37:05.020 Uttam Kumaran: I would like us to rhyme with them. Like, I like those… I like those names, you know?
312 00:37:05.830 ⇒ 00:37:07.000 Uttam Kumaran: Oh.
313 00:37:09.980 ⇒ 00:37:13.789 Demilade Agboola: Given the fact that we all have, like, different times
314 00:37:14.140 ⇒ 00:37:16.689 Demilade Agboola: That we’ll meet with clients throughout the week.
315 00:37:17.110 ⇒ 00:37:23.830 Demilade Agboola: Are we still gonna keep the same Wednesday slot? And if so…
316 00:37:25.200 ⇒ 00:37:31.889 Demilade Agboola: Or would they be, like, a feedback plus a preparation, slot, basically?
317 00:37:32.500 ⇒ 00:37:40.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, I mean, what, like, for the most part, I’ve tried to stack as many of my clients on Thursday or Friday.
318 00:37:40.930 ⇒ 00:37:48.189 Uttam Kumaran: Just because, like, we tend to operate almost on, like, a weekly sprint.
319 00:37:48.280 ⇒ 00:38:07.480 Uttam Kumaran: And so, it gives us a few days to kind of get stuff done, get prepared. I think this week, because we just came back from break, we had Magic Spoons on Tuesday, and we had some stuff on, like, Monday or Tuesday. I will separate, though, like, just a general client meeting from, like, one of these, like, weekly reviews. Like, a general client meeting…
320 00:38:08.130 ⇒ 00:38:22.529 Uttam Kumaran: I would say the best thing you can do is at least just have an agenda prepared going into it, but you don’t… I wouldn’t say you need to have a deck for a lot of that, but I like to put these meetings on Thursday or Friday, and so if it is Thursday or Friday, I do think
321 00:38:22.850 ⇒ 00:38:32.170 Uttam Kumaran: at least coming to Wednesday, and talking about it, and being like, hey, I haven’t done it yet, but here’s my, like, agenda, is a great way to leverage this meeting.
322 00:38:32.280 ⇒ 00:38:37.699 Uttam Kumaran: You know, because I’ll at least be able to tell you, hey, here’s, like, probably 2 more slides that you should add.
323 00:38:37.830 ⇒ 00:38:56.960 Uttam Kumaran: To kind of… to kind of, like, beef this up a bit more. And then some… and as you get better, and as we start to get better, like, AI solutions to help you build these decks, hopefully by Wednesdays, we do have a lot of these ready. And again, all of us are gonna get more support, so we’re gonna… we’re gonna start more… the teams are gonna get bigger and bigger, so hopefully, like.
324 00:38:57.080 ⇒ 00:39:00.739 Uttam Kumaran: We start, you know, generating these as we go throughout the week.
325 00:39:02.370 ⇒ 00:39:15.499 Uttam Kumaran: You know, versus just, like, right before the meeting. So I would like this to just be a place where we talk about the upcoming presentations. We talk about, like, if people… if anyone’s nervous about anything, if anyone needs help putting stuff together.
326 00:39:15.630 ⇒ 00:39:22.149 Uttam Kumaran: Or we can just continue to do, like, I can live review, I can review the ones that we’ve done in the past.
327 00:39:22.470 ⇒ 00:39:25.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
328 00:39:30.920 ⇒ 00:39:33.180 Demilade Agboola: Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
329 00:39:36.610 ⇒ 00:39:45.130 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I’m gonna… I already… I created it, but I didn’t fill it out yet. For these meetings, I’m gonna… I’m just gonna create a Notion, like a running Notion doc.
330 00:39:45.550 ⇒ 00:39:55.709 Uttam Kumaran: So in case there’s things that I can answer beforehand, we can all just put in notes. That way, I can just make sure to get to every topic. I do want to try to run some of those, like, workshops.
331 00:39:55.870 ⇒ 00:39:59.029 Uttam Kumaran: But again, like, I’m trying to give you guys all the…
332 00:39:59.480 ⇒ 00:40:02.139 Uttam Kumaran: The help and the resources possible.
333 00:40:03.810 ⇒ 00:40:04.650 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah.
334 00:40:11.080 ⇒ 00:40:12.139 Uttam Kumaran: What else?
335 00:40:12.140 ⇒ 00:40:15.469 Demilade Agboola: When are you going to share the drive that has all the decks?
336 00:40:16.120 ⇒ 00:40:21.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I will send it to you, so that… and then we’re gonna…
337 00:40:21.750 ⇒ 00:40:25.130 Uttam Kumaran: We just, like, created it, and so I’ll make sure that,
338 00:40:26.930 ⇒ 00:40:29.170 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll make sure that everything gets in there.
339 00:40:39.330 ⇒ 00:40:42.170 Uttam Kumaran: So, tell me if you can… if you guys can see this.
340 00:40:53.190 ⇒ 00:40:58.429 Uttam Kumaran: There’s… I don’t think there’s anything in there yet, so I’m gonna… I’ll start to move… I’ll start to move some stuff in there.
341 00:41:31.590 ⇒ 00:41:32.310 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
342 00:41:34.520 ⇒ 00:41:35.680 Uttam Kumaran: Anything else?
343 00:41:44.310 ⇒ 00:42:02.159 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, so I’m just, I’m gonna work on, on the slides tomorrow. I’m gonna send it, send it to you if you, if you have time to, to drop a few comments. Perfect. That meeting is pretty early, for, for you tomorrow, but if, if you have any time earlier in the day.
344 00:42:02.260 ⇒ 00:42:04.009 Zoran Selinger: Gonna be good, yeah, yeah.
345 00:42:04.010 ⇒ 00:42:04.450 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
346 00:42:04.450 ⇒ 00:42:07.799 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, so I’m gonna have that ready by the time you wake up.
347 00:42:08.180 ⇒ 00:42:09.289 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, great.
348 00:42:11.000 ⇒ 00:42:17.999 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and we’ll find… we’ll find, again, like, you’ll find that a lot of times it’s… it’s just the format and being able to write it, like.
349 00:42:18.150 ⇒ 00:42:21.730 Uttam Kumaran: Write the wins, write what’s coming up, write the takeaway.
350 00:42:22.140 ⇒ 00:42:27.810 Uttam Kumaran: Because otherwise it’s just talking about the work we do, which is always fine, no problem, you know, so…
351 00:42:33.380 ⇒ 00:42:34.150 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
352 00:42:34.420 ⇒ 00:42:41.949 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so, Demi, I’ll, maybe I’ll put, I’ll put us in the Slack channel with Caitlin, so you can arrive at what,
353 00:42:42.500 ⇒ 00:42:44.339 Uttam Kumaran: Timing for the default meeting.
354 00:42:44.630 ⇒ 00:42:49.389 Uttam Kumaran: I think I said I was gonna do that earlier this week, I didn’t do it yet, but… because I don’t think we have a…
355 00:42:49.960 ⇒ 00:42:53.800 Uttam Kumaran: A weekly call anymore, so, yeah.
356 00:42:57.830 ⇒ 00:42:59.050 Uttam Kumaran: You’re on mute.
357 00:43:01.400 ⇒ 00:43:06.739 Demilade Agboola: My bad. I’ll be looking out for that, and I’ll sync with her, just so we can get an idea of when we’re gonna meet.
358 00:43:07.260 ⇒ 00:43:08.020 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
359 00:43:10.450 ⇒ 00:43:10.950 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh.
360 00:43:11.180 ⇒ 00:43:18.500 Greg Stoutenburg: Question to you, UTom, about, default. So, Timmy and I talked today about the work streams that they’re interested in.
361 00:43:18.720 ⇒ 00:43:20.779 Greg Stoutenburg: Should I pitch these as part of the same?
362 00:43:21.110 ⇒ 00:43:25.999 Greg Stoutenburg: SOU, or… Are we kind of handling them separately?
363 00:43:26.500 ⇒ 00:43:29.789 Uttam Kumaran: Which, what do you mean?
364 00:43:30.420 ⇒ 00:43:41.070 Greg Stoutenburg: So, Debbie’s working on all this, like, revenue analytics and things like that, and then they’ve also got interest in amplitude and experience and things like that. Should I just put it all in the same document, or…
365 00:43:41.790 ⇒ 00:43:45.479 Uttam Kumaran: I would split it up. Yeah, I would split it up.
366 00:43:45.680 ⇒ 00:43:46.430 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
367 00:43:46.430 ⇒ 00:43:47.060 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
368 00:43:47.840 ⇒ 00:43:53.750 Uttam Kumaran: So this is where what we’re gonna find is that for clients, we may have multiple work streams.
369 00:43:53.950 ⇒ 00:43:56.040 Uttam Kumaran: And so I think we’re gonna figure out…
370 00:43:56.510 ⇒ 00:44:00.989 Uttam Kumaran: are we gonna do multiple meetings? Are we gonna do, like, what Eden is doing, where…
371 00:44:01.120 ⇒ 00:44:17.099 Uttam Kumaran: there’s just one master deck, and we’re doing 3 or 4 work streams. Some… in some clients, we’re gonna have 3 or 4 different stakeholders. And so, yes, we’re working for one company, but we almost will be separate. For default, it will… it will most likely be Caitlin, so maybe it’s, like.
372 00:44:17.270 ⇒ 00:44:33.460 Uttam Kumaran: we work on a deck together, and we present it together. But again, it’s… we’re gonna… we’re gonna figure it out, but I would keep… I would keep it separate. They’re already familiar with, the existing workstream, we’re already kind of going there. Although, Demolati, I think you and Mustafa are working on the roadmap anyways.
373 00:44:33.550 ⇒ 00:44:41.180 Uttam Kumaran: So, whenever we meet, we’ll… you can present that. So, kind of, like, part of this is, as you guys can see, like, not every client
374 00:44:41.480 ⇒ 00:44:58.219 Uttam Kumaran: we’re matching the expectations we put into that doc, mainly because there’s a few of us running, like, every client. So part of this is just getting every client to the baseline. Gants, decks, schedules, tickets, like, clarity on, like, a roadmap.
375 00:44:58.330 ⇒ 00:45:17.079 Uttam Kumaran: Then comes the fun of, like, okay, what else can we do for you? Or, like, can we accelerate this timeline? Or, hey, we’ve done this for 3 people, and we can wrap this all up and sell it again. So that’s… that’s… that’s the sort of thing. I think over time, this crew will… we’ll figure out, like, when we walk into a new client.
376 00:45:17.190 ⇒ 00:45:35.779 Uttam Kumaran: Does it roughly take us, like, two weeks to kind of get to that point? And in that sense, what I can try to do on the sales side is say, like, hey, for every client, we need a two-week, like, warm-up period, right? So that will bake… I’ll bake that into the way we sell to say, like, we always start with this two weeks, here’s, like, here’s what you can expect from us.
377 00:45:36.320 ⇒ 00:45:40.909 Uttam Kumaran: And then the more clarity we have on what they get, the more we can price.
378 00:45:41.040 ⇒ 00:45:47.619 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah, I think this is why I’m really glad that more people now are getting into the client presentation aspects.
379 00:45:47.820 ⇒ 00:45:58.560 Uttam Kumaran: Because you guys will start to see, like, okay, every week we have to get to this milestone, like, how do we arrange the earlier part of the week versus the later part of the week?
380 00:45:58.700 ⇒ 00:46:08.670 Uttam Kumaran: Or even just say, like, hey, for some clients, we don’t need to do weekly, we can do it every two weeks, like… but right… so far, it’s just Robert and I were the only ones discussing, so…
381 00:46:09.080 ⇒ 00:46:24.810 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, look, I’m just gonna do every week and just keep going as far as we can. Now that we have a lot of people, we can debate, like, what are the… what are structures for different people that work best, so… Nothing that we’ve done is set in stone, it is just what…
382 00:46:24.860 ⇒ 00:46:35.880 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve known to have worked to this point. We will start to work with clients that are… that are bigger, that are slower, that are more sophisticated, like, so things will have to evolve, but…
383 00:46:36.260 ⇒ 00:46:36.950 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
384 00:46:40.450 ⇒ 00:46:41.230 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
385 00:46:41.810 ⇒ 00:46:46.720 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so as soon as I’m done with my decks, I’ll… I’ll send,
386 00:46:46.960 ⇒ 00:46:52.839 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll send them into Slack for you guys to kind of leave me some comments, and then, yeah, we can go from there.
387 00:46:54.140 ⇒ 00:46:58.019 Luke Scorziell: Tom, could you also loop me in on whatever.
388 00:46:58.410 ⇒ 00:46:59.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
389 00:46:59.410 ⇒ 00:46:59.940 Luke Scorziell: However, these are.
390 00:46:59.940 ⇒ 00:47:01.870 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll just add you to this, yeah, yeah.
391 00:47:02.350 ⇒ 00:47:09.989 Luke Scorziell: Because I think, yeah, I mean, I’ll give some more thought to it, but, like, just knowing what’s happening weekly in the company, on which clients, and
392 00:47:10.520 ⇒ 00:47:16.329 Luke Scorziell: like, hearing the stories is… would be a pretty, like… I mean, it’s like a super easy win, too, on, like.
393 00:47:16.450 ⇒ 00:47:18.690 Luke Scorziell: a LinkedIn post that we could put up.
394 00:47:18.690 ⇒ 00:47:27.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, this is the crew that’s really just delivering all the work that we end up doing for a client and, like, wrapping it up, right? And so…
395 00:47:27.380 ⇒ 00:47:35.590 Uttam Kumaran: this is something that consultants don’t really do well, oftentimes, you know? So, yeah, I feel like there’s definitely something here that we can…
396 00:47:35.860 ⇒ 00:47:38.819 Uttam Kumaran: Mark it outwardly about how we think about this.
397 00:47:39.630 ⇒ 00:47:41.249 Uttam Kumaran: You know, yeah.
398 00:47:41.880 ⇒ 00:47:44.609 Greg Stoutenburg: You, Tom, on that thought, do we have a channel that’s, like.
399 00:47:45.230 ⇒ 00:47:53.649 Greg Stoutenburg: client wins, or something like that, because I could see… I could see there being value in anything from, this client was so impressed, they renewed for so much money and brain.
400 00:47:53.650 ⇒ 00:47:55.770 Uttam Kumaran: I usually just send it in…
401 00:47:56.020 ⇒ 00:47:58.439 Uttam Kumaran: I usually just send in the team channel.
402 00:47:58.670 ⇒ 00:48:01.010 Uttam Kumaran: Wait, I thought about creating a wins channel…
403 00:48:01.210 ⇒ 00:48:06.079 Uttam Kumaran: But then I was like, it’s gonna be the same amount of people. It’s gonna be everybody, so it’s gonna be everybody. Yeah.
404 00:48:06.080 ⇒ 00:48:22.610 Greg Stoutenburg: No, I guess that makes sense. I guess I was thinking of something like, you know, here’s a… or Luke could use something like, here’s this, one of our CSOs had this client meeting, and this interaction happened, and that just showed how we’re so perceptive to clients. There’s just so many ways this kind of thing could go.
405 00:48:23.310 ⇒ 00:48:24.370 Greg Stoutenburg: more what I was thinking about.
406 00:48:25.210 ⇒ 00:48:28.169 Luke Scorziell: I mean, I think, like, as much as those…
407 00:48:28.660 ⇒ 00:48:37.770 Luke Scorziell: stories could get out from the meetings that they’re happening in, like, the better, because obviously, like, you know, personally, when I’m working with a client or something, and I haven’t experienced
408 00:48:37.880 ⇒ 00:48:43.910 Luke Scorziell: then I can go write about it, because I firsthand was there, and I felt the emotions and whatnot, but obviously as, like, a third party to…
409 00:48:44.010 ⇒ 00:48:44.600 Luke Scorziell: all of the.
410 00:48:44.600 ⇒ 00:48:45.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
411 00:48:45.080 ⇒ 00:48:49.110 Luke Scorziell: like, I kind of need internal reporting, but yeah, I mean, stuff that’s, like.
412 00:48:49.870 ⇒ 00:48:52.860 Luke Scorziell: Because right now, we’re trying to target,
413 00:48:52.990 ⇒ 00:48:55.260 Luke Scorziell: You know, buyers that are a little bit…
414 00:48:55.780 ⇒ 00:49:04.800 Luke Scorziell: Or maybe not right right now, but we’re wanting to go after more, like, enterprise buyers who have, like, their job on the line, they have, like, pressure to…
415 00:49:04.990 ⇒ 00:49:07.949 Luke Scorziell: Actually have, like, very accurate reporting, and…
416 00:49:08.160 ⇒ 00:49:16.810 Luke Scorziell: As much as we can start getting, like, those stories coming out of the clients that we’re working with now, and saying, like, one of our, you know, this stakeholder came to us and said, like.
417 00:49:17.070 ⇒ 00:49:20.799 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, this is the best thing ever. No, this is a good, this is a good example of this. We can start posting it, yeah.
418 00:49:21.370 ⇒ 00:49:23.509 Uttam Kumaran: Demi and Awash worked on Hydra.
419 00:49:23.850 ⇒ 00:49:29.440 Uttam Kumaran: And she was like, We work with a bunch of other agencies on the paid media side, and, like.
420 00:49:29.730 ⇒ 00:49:34.339 Uttam Kumaran: They suck, and your work compared… they suck compared to you, and your work is way harder.
421 00:49:36.000 ⇒ 00:49:40.099 Uttam Kumaran: So I just usually, I just fire it in here, usually, if I can.
422 00:49:40.550 ⇒ 00:49:41.740 Uttam Kumaran: You’ll see, like.
423 00:49:42.030 ⇒ 00:49:49.149 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, it’s… it’s been a… we just kind of took a break for, like, 2 weeks, but there’s… there’s, like… if you scroll up here, you’ll see,
424 00:49:49.920 ⇒ 00:49:52.409 Uttam Kumaran: You’ll see some, but we can keep doing it, yeah.
425 00:49:52.690 ⇒ 00:49:58.970 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I send… Stuff when we get a new client, and then…
426 00:49:59.860 ⇒ 00:50:04.330 Uttam Kumaran: I sent a note about, like, when I was meeting with the CEO of ABC, and…
427 00:50:04.820 ⇒ 00:50:09.440 Uttam Kumaran: Like, team helped me put together the deck, and that really went super, super well.
428 00:50:11.450 ⇒ 00:50:12.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
429 00:50:14.630 ⇒ 00:50:20.139 Luke Scorziell: I mean, if we could put it in a channel, or make it somehow, like, if we use the flash tags or something.
430 00:50:20.430 ⇒ 00:50:21.070 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah.
431 00:50:21.070 ⇒ 00:50:23.190 Luke Scorziell: I could also just give it to Ryan to, like.
432 00:50:23.360 ⇒ 00:50:26.330 Luke Scorziell: run through AI and come up with posts.
433 00:50:27.280 ⇒ 00:50:30.439 Luke Scorziell: So… But this is awesome. I’m like…
434 00:50:30.620 ⇒ 00:50:34.000 Luke Scorziell: That’s kind of what I’ve been looking for a little bit.
435 00:50:34.560 ⇒ 00:50:40.480 Uttam Kumaran: We can do a channel, I don’t mind if you guys vote for that, and let’s just do that, I don’t care, it’s just gonna be the same people, so…
436 00:50:54.140 ⇒ 00:50:57.129 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Alright, thanks guys, I’ll talk to you in Slack then.
437 00:50:59.170 ⇒ 00:51:00.210 Greg Stoutenburg: So, see ya.
438 00:51:00.210 ⇒ 00:51:00.780 Demilade Agboola: Bye.