Analyzing & Visualizing Data Through Dashboards So Past Performance Can inform Your Future Strategy with Founder & Managing Partner of Pineapple Consulting Firm with Jack Tompkins on Episode #0236

Jack Thompkins [0:00]
Hi, this is Jack Thompkins from Pineapple Consulting Firm, and you’re listening to EA Interviews.

Intro [0:04]
EA interviews, Episode 236 inspiration, transformation success stories and the imperfect action round seven days a week. Join Mario Fachini for today’s Expert Authority Effect Interview.

Mario Fachini [0:18]
I am super excited for today’s episode because I’m a geek, and I like numbers and I can handle spreadsheets. I’d rather be in front of the camera than 12 hours looking at them. However, some of the funnest things to do that I’ve done with EA Interviews is my master spreadsheet that spills into my team. And they get different things and you can connect it but if you don’t measure your numbers, you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know where you’re going to be. Try driving your car without the gas gauge. And without the speedometer. How confident are you no matter if you have a junk car or a brand new Rolls Royce or Ferrari? How far are you going? How fast are you going to get there? Are you gonna just be like this is nuts. I have no desire to even turn the thing on. Why would you do your business any different? If you’re not measuring the metrics, you’re lost, you’re basically driving blindfolded and you don’t know how much gas is left. That is why I’m excited to have Jack Thompkins on the show. Because when I saw that he helps people specialize in not just the data, but visualizing it. Well, this is a match made in heaven, and we’re going to bring them up. After we think the sponsor.

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Mario Fachini [1:48]
Here he is. Ladies and gentlemen, Jack Thompkins. Jack, how you feeling today?

Jack Thompkins [1:52]
I’m doing great Mario, how are you? Thanks for having me.

Mario Fachini [1:55]
Oh, I’m excited to dive in. I’m feeling great. Because like I was saying, is that a preamble, the intro? Whatever you want to call it? What literally when I saw what you did, I was like, absolutely, absolutely. Because so many people are just kind of doing stuff out there. And maybe they have a team of people that doesn’t form. But if they don’t understand the importance of the numbers, then being able to visualize that. I mean, literally, I feel like you’re driving the car blind. So why would you say it’s so important?

Jack Thompkins [2:29]
I think you hit the nail on the head there. And so that the end goal of what I do is often called the dashboard. And the car example is the perfect one because that is your car dashboard, right? It’s got your speedometer, it’s got your fuel, it’s got your RPM, it’s got all the good stuff there. Without it, you can get where you’re going kind of but you’re going to hit a lot of speed bumps along the way. So yeah, it’s a great analogy. So I’m actually going to steal that. Thank you.

Mario Fachini [2:54]
Oh, feel free. I’ll give you another one. Because one of my favorite comedians is Chris Rock, he’s like, I’m not gonna say exactly what he says. But he’s like, you can drive a car with your foot if you want to, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. I’m like, that is a true inaccurate statement, sir.

Jack Thompkins [3:09]
Yeah, it’s exactly right. Yep. Just like running a business.

Mario Fachini [3:13]
So we have all these spreadsheets, we have all these data inputs, we have all kinds of information, there’s no shortage of it, what do you do specifically to visualize it and make it manageable for people? And basically fun, because I kind of like visual stuff.

Jack Thompkins [3:30]
Right.Who doesn’t? I think there’s a number out there, I think it’s like 65% of people are visual learners. And I think it’s a bit low, because he threw a big red X on the screen, everyone is going to understand that whatever that is, is not going well. So basically, what I do is kind of take your boring looking black and white plain paper reports, whether it’s accounting or marketing or operational data, I throw in the charts and graphs and throw some indicators on it and stuff and put it into that nice dashboard. So if you’re not financially savvy, if you don’t want to spend time looking at it, whatever the case is, you can spend five minutes looking at it and get the full depth of your entire business.

Mario Fachini [4:14]
What brought you into doing it? How come you wanted to start this business?

Jack Thompkins [4:20]
So I’ve always been kind of a nerd. I say kind of pretty incorrectly. I’ve always been very much a nerd. And I’ve always had an entrepreneurial bug too. So I was in the corporate world for a while, did the whole like generic leadership development program and was very good, good people. And I was an analyst in a couple different capacities. And then I realized that I graduated from the program and it was time to pick your job right yet. What are you gonna do for the next three to five years? I was like, holy crap. I don’t know about that. So I kind of matched up Alright, well, I’m a pretty good analyst for this giant corporation. I bet small businesses needed to. So it was sort of this passion of mine, diving into things like Excel and playing with the numbers. And helping people, because the small business owner needs that same resource that the big business has. But they don’t have access to it. So I figured, why not give it a shot? And it’s been pretty fun so far.

Mario Fachini [5:21]
For the small businesses that you’re working with, what would you say majority, over 80% of them need the most help with?

Jack Thompkins [5:31]
It’s a good question. I would say the number one thing is just being able to see their numbers easily. So I say that because there’s a couple different scenarios they work with. One is it takes them too long to see the numbers. One is they don’t know what their numbers are at all. And you know, a couple other ones, but it’s all if they can easily see their numbers, it makes a world of difference. And it’s not going to take them five hours to dive through it. If it’s a quick little process. And I again, I say see, meaning you see visuals, not just numbers on a piece of paper, you see the charts and graphs, it makes everything sink in a whole lot easier. And again, to those who aren’t necessarily financially savvy, or they’re just the widget maker, whatever it is. Anybody can look at a graph and get the picture.

Mario Fachini [6:23]
So bar graph or pie graph, which one do you think tastes better?

Jack Thompkins [6:30]
Depends on the data. Honestly, I think a bar graph is more widely used. There’s a place for pie graphs. But if I had to pick one, I’d go with a bar graph.

Mario Fachini [6:43]
Really was that?

Jack Thompkins [6:45]
Good, I think you can show a whole lot of things with it. One of the things, especially in business is showing the trend. So a simple example, revenue over 12 months, if you see that bar graph, makes a whole lot of sense. Pie graph would be tough. Pie graph is great in the example of where’s my revenue coming from?

Mario Fachini [7:05]
Yes.

Jack Thompkins [7:05]
And it’s a good snapshot in time, you’ve got four or five different sources, put them into a pie graph, it’s a really nice visual tourism percent on it to give them the actual number. And it’s a strong combo together is really probably the best answer.

Mario Fachini [7:20]
Okay. Yeah, I love the percentage and profit margin ratios. And when you can just look at it and it’s like, here’s the sources. Here’s the margin, you know, but I do see your point when you’re going, Okay, let’s annualize this over 12 months. Yeah, that would be kind of a mess in the pie. I think it’s because the visual of the circle, I don’t know, I’d lean towards the pie myself. But talking about the annualizing the financials, yeah, it would be better bar graphs. So do you find what you have found since people…. You’re talking about all the spreadsheets and the data and all of this, do you find that once people use your service? And you can visualize that forum? There, they start spending more time doing it?

Jack Thompkins [8:12]
Yes, and No. Yes, in the sense that they are actually excited. And I think you mentioned early on the call here that they might actually have some fun doing it. And I do find that a lot. Because there’s, there’s always some interactions, you can pick a different date, you can pick a different scenario, all that fun stuff. And it is kind of fun to play around and see all the graphs change. It’s kind of like you have the power, you know, it’s really fun for a business owner just to go in there and play. So I see them spending more time on that. I don’t see them spending time in the boring stuff, which is obviously great. Which is the whole back end, getting the data ready and doing that whole process, obviously a great thing to be spending less time there. But yeah, they have a whole lot of fun just playing around with the switches and selections and whatnot.

Mario Fachini [9:03]
Okay. And I know the goal isn’t to get lost in it, like what the spreadsheet you can get lost. And it’s like, it might take you an hour to figure out something that you should be taking five or 10 minutes to do.

Jack Thompkins [9:16]
Right.

Mario Fachini [9:16]
But I was thinking people would want to be, the easier it is to look at I mean anything, the more you’re drawn into it that I would think the more you are wanting to go oh, like you said, let’s see how it changes,let’s see what’s going on here. Anything that’s more visual for me, it’s gonna get at least some extra time. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna just drop everything and just get lost in it. But I, in my own personal experience, it was like, I don’t care, this looks boring too. Okay, you at least got my intention.

Jack Thompkins [9:50]
Right, exactly.

Mario Fachini [9:51]
So do you have a lot of people who, that’s their issue too, they’re not even like and I’m thinking back over a decade ago before like my early days. As a business, I’m way better now with all this stuff, obviously, I’d like to think so. But do you find that some people you’re able to take them from? They have no desire to look at it to know they’re interested, or were they all interested in before? And now they can digest it and make more sense of it whether they’re spending more time or not?

Jack Thompkins [10:22]
Oh, it’s definitely option one there. There’s some folks who are in, they just fly by the seat of their pants, and they trust their gut.

Mario Fachini [10:28]
They know it, they don’t care.

Jack Thompkins [10:30]
Right, exactly. But then you make it easy for them to see it. And it’s, it’s sort of that slower adoption phase. Whereas okay, like, I’m not completely sure what I should do here, maybe I’ll check the dashboard. And then it’s like, okay, the dashboard helped me a lot. You’ll check it regularly, and then it sort of snowballs, and they check it every day.

Mario Fachini [10:50]
Okay, so what would you say are the top three things that someone should be looking for in their company, when you’re going through the financials,

Jack Thompkins [11:00]
When they’re going through the financials? Number one is kind of very basic, I would say, make sure that you are actually going through the financials. And maybe tag teaming that for a joint number one is to make sure that’s an easy process. Because, as I mentioned, if it takes a while, you’re not going to want to do it. But as you’re going through, I would say one thing that’s gonna be pretty common across every industry, every business is really a top and bottom line. And that is a very, very generic easy answer. But at the end of the day, that’s what pays the bills. I think, yeah, I want to say every business that I’ve worked with, has one of their KPIs or key performance indicators. It is always revenue or profit, and oftentimes both. So that’s something you just got to stay on top of.

Mario Fachini [11:55]
Are there any other KPIs that you found interesting? Is there like three, four or five main ones? Are those the top two always?

Jack Thompkins [12:04]
Those are definitely the top two. I’ve seen a few that are, oftentimes use a restaurant as an example, there’s a certain expense that they want to monitor. So in restaurants, it’s often labor. And I think that’s true in a lot of different industries. But there’s always that one big expense they got to keep an eye on.

Mario Fachini [12:26]
Have you ever seen them do it with the cost of meat or cheese or any of the food?

Jack Thompkins [12:32]
Yeah, it gets groped up into the cost of goods sold. But then there’s always a spike out of okay, we got the total number is the meat driving errors, the cheese driving that kind of thing. And oftentimes, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, that probably means that people are buying more meat and or cheese.

Mario Fachini [12:52]
So when you’re looking at the KPIs, and I’m glad you mentioned that, for anyone who doesn’t know the key performance indicator, how long do you traditionally track them for? And how long should someone be tracking them for?

Jack Thompkins [13:05]
Track it for… Have the data for as long of a time period as it can, it’s always nice to look back to a different time period, because you might have had a one and three year event happen. And all of a sudden it happened again, you want to see what it was back three years ago, I would say the most common comparisons I see are month over month, meaning February compared to January, or year over year, meaning February of this year, compared to February of last year. Both of those present pretty good gauges on how your company is growing. And you could roll that up to the quarter level two or whatever makes the most sense. But month over month and year over year, pretty easy to look at, are pretty easy to do rather and pretty impactful. So it’s that sort of upper right quadrant process to do.

Mario Fachini [13:59]
Okay, let’s talk about your clients. You don’t need to name them if you’re under NDA or anything like that. But you’re welcome to tell me about the biggest transformation you were ever able to give someone who came to you, they probably weren’t even doing anything they didn’t want to look at it was boring to them. And now they’re in love with looking at all the stuff they previously weren’t.

Jack Thompkins [14:25]
Yeah, I knew this question was coming. I took some time thinking about last night. And I think I landed on a pretty fun fact. He was extra fun for me. It was one of my first ones really. It was sort of when I was starting out and just feeling out the business. And it was just a local Insurance agency sort of down the road mom and pop shop and literally It’s a family run shop which is awesome. Love helping them and their whole thing was just let’s get out there and sell right because of the insurance agent. There’s a certain commission on each policy and it’s not super black and white, it’s not that black and white rather. But at the end of day sales is probably the main focus. So keeping an eye on the financials was sort of the secondary thing that they would do every quarter. And so every quarter, the owner of the agency would go in, and it literally took them over a day, he said, so call it at least eight hours. And you would get this Excel file that pretty much every single day of the year had its own sheet. And he would go and he would manually copy and paste everything into this, like a scratch work summary that just kind of got everything on the same page. And you couldn’t really tell if it was good or bad, it just all ended up in the same spot. So who’d spend eight hours getting to these unsatisfying results? So he and I were just chatting. And it was an Excel, I knew I loved excel. Okay, can you do anything about this? Now, it’s like, oh, absolutely 110%. So I build in this little tool. And now all he does is he puts the data in, he presses a button. And he has two full-fledged dashboards that break it out by month, by quarter by company, by carrier and all this other good stuff. So he can see completely the ins and outs of his entire financial business. And it takes about 10 minutes as compared to the eight painstaking hours that it used to.

Mario Fachini [16:24]
That is huge.

Jack Thompkins [16:25]
Yeah, it’s very…

Mario Fachini [16:27]
8 hours versus 10 minutes.

Jack Thompkins [16:29]
It’s a no brainer.

Mario Fachini [16:31]
No, all right. You said you built him this dashboard? Are you able to do this inside of Excel? Or do you bring the data into a different system that allows you to customize it more, but you’re still pulling the data from Excel?

Jack Thompkins [16:45]
It’s typically within Excel, actually.

Mario Fachini [16:47]
Okay.

Jack Thompkins [16:48]
Yeah, the number two spot is going into tableau. Which of you or the listeners have not heard of, it’s a data visualization tool. Competitor or like Microsoft Power BI and or click or other things like that. It’s basically just automated data visualization. I do a lot of Excel, though, because it is very universal.

Mario Fachini [17:08]
No kidding. Tell me more about that. I’ve never heard of it. And no one well, that would make sense if I’ve never heard of it, no one’s ever mentioned it to me.

Jack Thompkins [17:19]
That tracks, yeah.

Mario Fachini [17:19]
But I also have no idea how to do this in Excel. I mean, I know how to set up a spreadsheet, but as much as I can now tolerate it. Let’s say that. It was never my forte. But I do appreciate it and respect it. Tell me about this other software.

Jack Thompkins [17:40]
Yeah. So Tableau is sort of that. Some people call it Excel on steroids. Kind of a misnomer. There’s a whole bunch of different functionality. And some of it is better. And some of it’s worse, a lot of it is better, though. And the goal of Tableau is to have a very user friendly, very interactive dashboard. So it’s something that you can literally just go to a website, it’s it’s just it’s as if you are just simply going to a website that’s customized with your brand colors and everything you go to you click around, you can hover over everything, and it gives you this full report or whatever you want. You can click in different timeframes or different scenarios. One of the big things about it or two of the big things about it, I guess, one is that it can take data from anywhere. So Excel is…

Mario Fachini [18:32]
Is it pulling it in through an API?

Jack Thompkins [18:35]
Most of the time, yeah,

Mario Fachini [18:36]
Okay.

Jack Thompkins [18:37]
Yeah. So it can take data through that API, pretty much from anywhere. I haven’t tested them all out. But a common one that I use is through QuickBooks, the nice easy connection, and it’s automatically updated. So my joke slash story is, when I was in the corporate world, we used to look at this specific set of numbers once a month, because it took people about two hours to update. I was a hero, because I built something that was similar to that eight hour story, I built something that you just dump it in, it takes 10 minutes to update. So we looked at it weekly. And then we were introduced to Tableau and that updates the data automatically at 3am. while you’re sleeping. It was like two or three times a week or something like that. I can be the best analyst in the world, but I can’t compare to updating while people are sleeping. So that’s a huge benefit of tableau.

Mario Fachini [19:31]
Yeah, just having an automatic like that.

Jack Thompkins [19:33]
Right. Exactly.

Mario Fachini [19:35]
Wow.

Jack Thompkins [19:36]
Yeah, that’s pretty neat. There’s a whole lot of good functionality in it. I would say there’s definitely specific use cases where it makes sense. There’s a whole lot of specific use cases that Excel makes sense instead or in addition to honestly.

Mario Fachini [19:50]
Alright, let’s throw a little bit of fun in here. Let’s talk about Google Sheets.

Jack Thompkins [19:55]
Okay, let’s do it.

Mario Fachini [19:56]
What are the pros and cons of Google Sheets versus Tableau to Microsoft Excel.

Jack Thompkins [20:03]
So Google Sheets is honestly, for your everyday type of thing, I think they’ve done a pretty good job. I could never replace it through Excel. It’s a different animal than tableau. But Google Sheets, I mean, they have a whole lot of functionality in there, you can probably get 70, 80% of excels functionality within Google Sheets. Obviously, it’s free, super easy to share, huge pros there. Some of the cons, it gets a little slow if you’re dealing with a decent amount of data. Charts and graphs are a bit more difficult than there. I don’t think I can make a dashboard and Google Sheets, although I will try if somebody wants me to.

Mario Fachini [20:45]
I wasn’t even thinking about that. But now you got me. So I have a spreadsheet, the master one I was telling you about for the show, and I had 150 columns wide. When I started, it’s now over 200 with every single data point you can think of. And now with the show being over 200 episodes, it was a lot when I was launching and it was in 10 or 20. And now it’s like,

Jack Thompkins [21:13]
Right.

Mario Fachini [21:14]
So when you were mentioning making charts and stuff, I’m like, I wonder what we could do like how much more we could visually color coded them all because again, visual. But I’m what if you saw the data that was in there, I am curious as to what you wouldn’t be able to pull off even if we had to export it into something else. And I’m sure you know that there’s other CEOs listening, yet they probably have 40 years of data with 10s of 1000s of customers, or clients or whatever the case is hundreds of 1000s. And it’s like, how do you take that? And just go, hey, let’s start here to visualize it. Let’s do this, instead of just yet another column? Do you get into anything on the infographic side or is it all within the charts and graphs that the software’s able to do?

Jack Thompkins [22:06]
It’s more of the latter there. So it’s typically within what the software is. I would say there’s a limit, there’s kind of talk about the rows of data and the columns of data and stuff. There’s a limit to each one, right? So Google Sheets, it’s gonna stop being super helpful. I don’t have a great number for you, but faster than Excel. Okay. And then, for anybody who’s worked in a corporation with 1000s of rows of data, hundreds of 1000s of rows, Excel stops being helpful, and starts crashing a lot in that several 100,000 row, or depending on how many columns you have. Tableau being the third tier, I have yet to see it falter on any amount of data, which is kind of like it might take an extra 5, 10 seconds, but it keeps going and it goes too strong. And it’s been millions and millions and millions of rows. So there’s different thresholds each.

Mario Fachini [23:07]
So you have some clients that literally have millions and millions of rows.

Jack Thompkins [23:11]
I have one right now, back in my corporate days, I had a whole lot of different data sets that were millions and millions of rows.

Mario Fachini [23:19]
Yeah, it can handle that.

Jack Thompkins [23:23]
Yeah, tableau, it’s one of the things that it’s built for.

Mario Fachini [23:28]
Wow. Okay.

Jack Thompkins [23:29]
Yeah. And I think…

Mario Fachini [23:31]
I still think about what I have for the EA interviews, production is still a lot, but I can’t even imagine like, yeah, I’ve done 191,570 interviews, like and then have 200 columns on each one, like, I even have a column for what color tie I’m wearing. So that way they’re not you know, all yellow, all blue. I alternate them.

Jack Thompkins [23:54]
Yeah, I commend you. That’s good data collection.

Mario Fachini [23:58]
What’s another on transfer time? People are like, oh, I like the show this and that. Yeah. Well, you know, how many hard drives do I go through for 4k? I record the show in 4k and stream it in HD. Few video files that you know, and then it’s chopped up? And then you know, how long does it take to send the team? How long does it take to get back per release schedule? There’s like 15 steps for every episode. So…

Jack Thompkins [24:20]
Yeah. Oh, I bet. Yeah. Is that this is a very high quality production. I will give you credit while we’re on the air here.

Mario Fachini [24:26]
Well, I do appreciate that. But yeah, I just thought that was a lot of datum. 10s of 1000s. Hundreds of 1000s.

Jack Thompkins [24:33]
Yeah, I mean it is. So I’ll go in the complete opposite direction. where that is an enormous amount of data and the millions and millions of rows is typically reserved for at least the middle market companies, if not the large corporations.

Mario Fachini [24:47]
I’m thinking of a healthcare company where you have a million customers and they have like an insurance, health care insurance or car company or you know what I mean, where their customers are the state of Michigan, the state of North Carolina, the whole US.

Jack Thompkins [25:05]
Yes, that’s exactly right. Yep. That’s funny. You mentioned insurance though. That was my corporate life. I was in the insurance world. And it was, you know, a specific policy for a specific person ,that was in an industry, that also was in a sub industry, that was in a specific state, that was from a specific sales rep and all these different criteria. It’s just, the more you pack in there. It starts to make a bit more sense why it is millions and millions of rows.

Mario Fachini [25:33]
So you’re not using Google Sheets at that point.

Jack Thompkins [25:37]
You’re just barely breached it. Yes.

Mario Fachini [25:40]
Okay. Well, I have something fun. I get to ask you now, I mean, this whole thing’s been fun. But this is the Wheel of Whatever.

Jack Thompkins [25:51]
Okay.

Mario Fachini [25:52]
So do you know the question I’m gonna ask you?

Jack Thompkins [25:55]
I don’t.

Mario Fachini [25:56]
You know why?

Jack Thompkins [25:58]
Because it’s the wheel of whatever.

Mario Fachini [25:59]
Bingo. And that’s all I put on the show flow. So here we go. Hold on. Still working on the stand, man, I’m killing it today.

Jack Thompkins [26:09]
That looks great. Yeah.

Mario Fachini [26:10]
Sometimes it doesn’t spin so well.

Jack Thompkins [26:12]
Wow. That’s a wheel of fortune level spin. Right there.

Mario Fachini [26:15]
Cool. That worked. So my question for you is, who is a company you would love to work with that you haven’t yet?

Jack Thompkins [26:25]
Companies that I would love to work with that have not yet? That is a good question. I think I would like to work with, like a cool restaurant chain. Like, I’m in the south. So Chick-fil-A is the core restaurant chain down here. So I’ll use that as an example, I guess. Kind of, I mean, for one, because Chick-fil-A is awesome. or insert your favorite restaurant chain here. And maybe even chain even just a couple locations of good local food. From a data perspective, that’s so much fun. And everybody loves restaurants, everyone loves going to eat and drink. I think it would be so cool to play with that data and help a restaurant, stay in business, especially if I like them. And just get in the weeds of that data. I think that’d be a blast.

Mario Fachini [27:24]
Excellent. And they are a good restaurant. But yeah, that would be a good one. I hope you can. And if I ever have the CEO on the show, I will definitely tell them about you and to check out this episode.

Jack Thompkins [27:36]
Perfect. Thank you.

Mario Fachini [27:38]
CEO of Chick-fil-A you happen to know him or you’re already listening or watching. I’d like to invite you on. There we go.

Jack Thompkins [27:45]
There it is perfect. Yeah, it’s a bit outside my small business niche. But hey, they’re a big proponent of small businesses. I think so. Oh, work out.

Mario Fachini [27:53]
All right, we’re gonna thank our sponsor, and come back with the Imperfect Action.

Sponsor – Free Business Book Publishing Course [27:57]
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Mario Fachini [29:28]
And we are back with the Imperfect Action Round. Jack, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Jack Thompkins [29:33]
I am let’s go for Mario.

Mario Fachini [29:35]
All right. 60 second answers. First one is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Jack Thompkins [29:43]
Fastest path to the profits is really taking a look at the numbers. I say that obviously very biased. But if your gut is guiding you, that’s fantastic. The numbers will probably support it. And that might even allow you to maximize profits or maximize revenue or what you’re going for. So, go for the numbers and talk to you.

Mario Fachini [30:04]
Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem your prospects are making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Jack Thompkins [30:11]
Yeah, it’s a good question. It’s simply not really looking at the numbers. I mean, I don’t want to say the same answer for two, but it’s very similar, where it’s, there’s a lot of folks that have a whole lot of data could be marketing could be starting to QuickBooks or something like that. Something like revenue source, that’s a common one. And there’s not diving into where all their revenue and where all their profits are coming from. And if you can get a hold on that, and then get into the numbers and start maximizing that it can unlock just awesome, awesome benefits for your company.

Mario Fachini [30:49]
Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Jack Thompkins [30:56]
Well, if they’re bringing me on, it’s a use the crap out of me, I’m pretty cheap. And a lot of folks have me on retainer. And I offer all sorts of analytics and different views and stuff. And if you have me or somebody like me, or any sort of analyst, even in house, let them let them run, let them go for it and have them come up with some creative things. And there’s always some good stuff in the numbers. The more you can lead into that, especially with me, I’d say the better off you’re going to be.

Mario Fachini [31:28]
Because you’re going to be seeing stuff that it’s not even on my radar, I don’t even know exists. Like when you’re talking about the charts like Google Sheets do that. I’ve been using it for years, I have no clue, right? I know how to make a row and color code, and it’s worked. But…

Jack Thompkins [31:42]
There you go.

Mario Fachini [31:44]
It’s actually one thing I look for when I’m bringing people on the team. And for anyone listening. I wholeheartedly support this 100%. Because the whole reason you’re trusting someone on your team is because that’s their area of expertise.

Jack Thompkins [31:58]
Right.

Mario Fachini [31:58]
I have mine. It’s not generally what I hire people for? Or if it is, they’re a lot better at it, and I don’t have the time for it. So I love going. Alright, what do I not even know about that we should be doing? Oh, something changed with x, y, z last month in the industry data data suite implemented?

Jack Thompkins [32:19]
Yep, that’s exactly right.

Mario Fachini [32:21]
I would have never known. I’m very thankful for that. So I’m glad you brought that up. Because I think too many people don’t want to say it because it’s like, I don’t want to irritate the person I’m working for. But really, it should be a partnership. Don’t you know what I mean? But at the same point, it’s also like, I have no clue. I’m not trying to be everything to everyone. Just let me talk on camera and talk to people, make phone calls, book appointments, and do sales and the rest, like, I know how to do it. I don’t have time, I don’t want to do it. So like, right? Only I can host the show.

Jack Thompkins [32:55]
Exactly.

Mario Fachini [32:56]
And I can bring in business for everyone, the less I need to think about all of it. Hey, here’s more work.

Jack Thompkins [33:03]
That’s a win win win all across the board.

Mario Fachini [33:05]
I remember hiring people in college, I was sitting next to him. I loved what I was doing with the graphics and animation and all this stuff. And I even told the teacher there. Everyone was going like, where are you getting all these clients from? I’m like, it’s not rocket science. I mean, for me, it wasn’t. There was one time I told the teacher, I go, you know, I’m doing actual client work, right? He’s like, yeah, I go, I don’t have time for homework and this, can I just use the client work as homework. He’s like, Yeah, go for it. I know, it’s the same where it was exactly the same stuff. But everyone had these portfolios of all this great work. And I’m like, I have no clue how you did that. Here’s my thing over here. Like an animation sequence. And it was cool. I was proud of myself. But I’m like, no.

Jack Thompkins [33:52]
Yeah.

Mario Fachini [33:53]
But here’s five new clients.

Jack Thompkins [33:56]
Right. There you go. Stick to your strengths. There’s the moral.

Mario Fachini [33:59]
Absolutely. So what books would you recommend to an expert authority world that have made a big impact on your life?

Jack Thompkins [34:09]
There’s a couple. One is a book that’s called Show Me The Numbers. And it’s, it’s by a guy named Stephen Few. And it’s sort of here’s how to display numbers. And that sounds like a very basic concept. But continuing with the whole theme of my business and the show, of course, sort of steps to take to implement this in your business. How to actually visualize numbers I think it’s a great start. Again, it’s yes, show me the numbers by Stephen Few is his number one.

Mario Fachini [34:46]
Excellent. Never heard of that one before, but I appreciate your very recommending it.

Jack Thompkins [34:51]
Sure. Happy to recommend.

Mario Fachini [34:54]
Alright, where would you like people to learn more?

Jack Thompkins [34:58]
I’d say my website is gonna be the easiest place. Always feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. But my website is pineappleCF as in consulting firm.com. So again, if you’re listening on fast forward pineappleCF as in consulting firm.com

Mario Fachini [35:18]
Alright, well, I’ve enjoyed this. Thank you so much for sharing Jack.

Jack Thompkins [35:22]
Thanks for having me, Mario. It’s Yeah, this has been a blast. Thanks so much.

Mario Fachini [35:26]
Alright, expert authority world. We have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. God bless.

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www.EAInterviews.com [36:08]
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