Growing Lean

From Web Analytics to AI Mastery: A Journey with Jim Stern into Growing Your Business with Precision Execution

• Ethan Halfhide

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Embark on a digital odyssey with Jim Stern, digital analytics virtuoso, as he narrates his pioneering journey from the web's nascent days to the cusp of AI's generative frontier. Glean insights from Jim's storied career, tracing the arc from basic log file analysis to the Marketing Analytics Summit's inception, and behold the vista of analytics' progression to machine learning and AI marvels. Revisit the communal spirit that united early internet data whisperers and discover the present-day parallels with the generative AI buzz. Whether a veteran digital analyst or a curious novice, this episode promises to connect the dots across time, technology, and community.

Strategizing for growth isn't just a buzzword; it's a craft—and we're revealing the blueprint to triple your business revenue by 2026. Together with Jim, we dissect the essence of goal-setting, demonstrating how to distill lofty ambitions into achievable, short-term objectives. Hear our three-month action plan, from research to rollout, designed to spark emotional clarity and prevent the paralysis of overwhelm. As AI continues to reshape the business landscape, we investigate its potential to amplify, not replace, human efforts, ensuring that your growth trajectory is as human as it is algorithmic.

As we sift through the sands of time, distinguishing traditional AI from its generative counterpart becomes key. The conversation veers into the transformative power harnessable by businesses today, positioning generative AI as a strategic co-pilot for innovation and complex problem-solving. Yet, we caution against the trap of AI's penchant for redundancy, advocating for its role as a catalyst in the creative process. Wrapping up, Jim leaves us with a potent maxim: It's the precision of execution, not just the spark of innovation, that carves the path to enduring success. Join us for an episode that's as much a masterclass in digital analytics as it is a guide to thriving in business through execution.

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Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, welcome back to the growing Lean podcast sponsored by Lean Discovery Group, an award-winning software and app development firm based out of Virginia. This is your host, dylan Burke, also known as Dege, and I'm happy to be here today with Jim Stern, author, consultant and founder of the Marketing Analytics Summit. Welcome, jim.

Speaker 2:

Thanks very much, dege. My pleasure and an honor to be here. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

The pleasure is all mine. I'm excited to interview you. Well, you say that now we'll see how it goes. Well, let's see, let's see. So how did you first get started in your industry and can you tell us about the history and background of the business?

Speaker 2:

So my industry is digital analytics measuring the success of all of your digital marketing. How did I get into it? Well, I tripped over the internet in 1993 and thought, oh, this is going to change things. And started doing public speaking and writing books about how to do marketing online marketing, advertising, customer service, email and in about 2000, I realized that it wasn't just my opinion that mattered. We could measure whether or not your website really sucked. So I became interested in web analytics, started the Marketing Analytics Summit in 2002. It was called the E-Metrics Summit. Back then, the audience created the Digital Analytics Association, and so I've been focused on all of that ever since.

Speaker 2:

Now analytics started out with hey, we have log files and there must be some value in that data. And then we started getting better technology. Oh, and then it wasn't just website, it was email and social and search and and and, so digital analytics. And then analytics got very sophisticated and I had to learn about machine learning or AI. So that was my 12th book is the artificial intelligence in marketing practical applications. But that was 2017. So that was just machine learning. Now, of course, everybody's excited about generative AI and, yes, that will be my next book.

Speaker 2:

I got into the industry by being I'm something of a performer and an educator and I love running workshops and doing public speaking, so that was so much fun. When the conference that I was really focused on getting my clients from speaking was called Internet World, the founder of that sold it to a company that then went bankrupt, so that conference just disappeared overnight Like, oh well, I guess I'll start my own. So if I had to say what's my industry? I produce business conferences for a living, but my stock in trade is consulting on how do you do digital analytics really well and how do you, how do you maintain customer relationships really well and how do you do business transformation from digital transformation to AI transformation and now generative AI transformation. That's my history in a nutshell, if you will.

Speaker 1:

Okay, amazing, amazing. I love that. And before we dive any deeper there, I want to. I'm just curious and excuse my ignorance, but can you tell me what it was like in the early 2000s, with the internet coming along and all of that? I'm sure that, like, were there a lot of people who you could target to do the analytics, for them to do digital marketing? No, I'm super curious about that. That's why I'm asking.

Speaker 2:

Well, so my first event was in 2002, is going to be in 2001. But there was this, this thing that happened on September 11th that everybody said, yeah, no, we're kind of don't want to get on airplanes for a while. So it was in 2002. I had 50 people show up at my conference in Santa Barbara. 30 of them were vendors, one of them were consultants and 10 of them were actually people who were actually doing the work for brands who might need to buy those tools and those services.

Speaker 2:

The audience was absolutely thrilled the day, the minute we started, that, oh, these people know what I do for a living and nobody else in my company does. And it's like in the in the mid 1990s, the, every company had one webmaster oh, you run that internet thing, isn't that adorable. And then it grew into a whole team. Well, in 2000, it was one analyst and now, of course, it's teams of people. It takes a village to do analytics. But back then, oh, these are my people, this is my tribe, and it was very exciting. And those people who came to that conference and have been coming for the last 22 years have were the core of the industry and have grown to be chief analytics officers, chief executive officers, directors of data science and have remained well connected ever since literally community. So the exciting part was we were inventing it as we went along.

Speaker 2:

And if you look at all of the excitements around generative AI today, it's, it's, it's a repeat. So in 1995, we were all excited about what this internet could do and what it could be when it grew up. And in 2000, we were all excited about, oh, what analytics can do. And today everybody's thrilled about, wow, generative AI is so unique, it's so new and it's like, oh, this feels like. I've been there. I've heard this, this music before, I've played this game. It's fun. Every conversation is a new business model. We are inventing it as we go along. That's, that's why I stuck with it. It's just so you learn something new every single day.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure. I'm like super excited about what's going on at the moment and a bit nervous and a bit excited and a bit scared for the next like 10 years. Yes, because I think we're at such a pivotal point in human and technological evolution that the speed of evolution is just going to skyrocket. And yes, like all the change that's happened in my lifetime 26 years we're going to I reckon we're going to see that that same level of change in the next five years, and it's quite a terrifying thought.

Speaker 2:

The rate of change is increasing.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, exactly, but it's exciting and I'm staying positive. Yeah, and yeah, what have been the biggest challenges for you? Let's talk like early days in the business. What were the biggest challenges then? Getting your business up and running and, yeah, really establishing yourself in the industry.

Speaker 2:

Explaining to people what my vision was In 1994 and 95, when I'm doing seminars on marketing on the internet. I did a five city tour in 1995. I had the last one was in Silicon Valley, was in San Jose, and there's a couple hundred people in the room said how many people have an email address? And half the hands went up how many people have seen the worldwide web? And about 15 or 20 hands went up like okay, let me explain, and it's important for you understand what the internet is so that you can understand the rest of what I'm about to tell you.

Speaker 2:

Let me describe the difference between making a phone call, which is point to point, or packet switching, which is how the internet works. This is what a packet is. This is. This is why it was created. This is how it works. Everybody's going. Why are you bothering me with this? Because it's now whole marketing instead of push marketing. It's a whole different world. Let's dive in. The tough part is getting that breakthrough. It's so generative AI. Let me explain what a large language model actually does technically, so that you don't use it for the wrong thing. I've always gravitated toward being the professional explainer. I love being able to take something that is exciting but complex, and turning it into business language, a business owner can say, oh okay, I get it, now I can use it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, 100 percent. I keep coming back to the fact that you've been around since the 90s. I'm old, yes, it's not a shot at your age, it's a shot at my age, because you started before I was even born. It's really interesting to me. But, with that being said, how did you adapt to all the changes that have happened in not only technology, but just the global economy, like the crash of 2007, 2008, the pandemic? How have you adapted, as a business owner, to those changes?

Speaker 2:

One of the benefits of age is that you see something coming and you go okay, I've seen this before. When I first started doing conferences if I had had hair I would have said I tore my hair out, but it just drove me crazy because there were so many things that would go wrong and it was constant juggle. I finally teamed up with a business partner 18 years ago who said look, jim, there are 427 things that can go wrong in a conference and 75 of them will. Once you've dealt with them a couple of times, you go okay, that's what happened again. Oh, the AV guy showed up drunk. Yeah, I've been there before. Oh, the set fell over onto the audience. Yeah, I've seen that happen. The keynote speaker didn't show up. Oh, yeah, okay, we know how to deal with that. It's frightening and life is frightening and business is frightening. Oh, here's the great recession of 2008 and the housing crunch. Well, okay, how do we address the audience? Well, before you were looking at your data because it's interesting. Now you're looking at your data because it's going to keep you alive. So you have to come to this conference, you have to read this book. You need me to come in and do a workshop for you, because it's tough times it's like, okay, so I can survive that one.

Speaker 2:

But change, I think it's a character trait. I have always gravitated toward change. My first job out of school was selling Apple IIe computers out of a retail store. Let me explain to you what a computer is. Then I sold business computers to companies that had never owned one before. This is how you can trust your file cabinets full of paper to this weird little box with a screen. It'll be okay, trust me.

Speaker 2:

So when change comes along. I wrote my web metrics book and it came out in 2002. Then the conference took over and I didn't write another book until it was time to write social media metrics, because that was so different that we have to figure out how to do that. Then change was okay, fine. Then suddenly, oh, machine learning okay, now it's time for another book. Now, oh, big change, generative AI yeah, here we go again. So I think the way I've survived is embracing change. I enjoy it. I have studied change management so I can help companies figure out how do you bring generative AI capabilities into the company. Here is a formal plan that you have to accomplish before you can start getting wildly creative, which is the fun part.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I love that answer. I've never had that answer. I think that's awesome. It's an amazing great to have be able to adapt to change. I know I didn't adapt too well when the pandemic hit. It was just such a big shock. I was in real estate at the time, which isn't very much an in-person job where you have to visit people, go to houses, and so we just completely shut down. I think it was for two months. There was nothing to do. I was stuck at home, but I was still living with my dad. It was just us, I go. It was such a crazy time and I was just shocked. I didn't know what to do, so I was just stuck at home.

Speaker 2:

Real estate business took a hit Producing business conferences. I'm afraid COVID was not kind to us.

Speaker 2:

We did virtual events and people went. It was a curve. First it was this is weird, and then it was okay, this is normal. And then you know what? I'll just watch YouTube videos. Why are you having this event online? I don't get it. So some people figured out how to do that. Well, in my industry, there were a couple of organizations that said, yeah, we're going to step up and do these online Measure Summit. I mean, if you're a digital analyst, you've probably heard of Measure Summit All online, lots of education, hundreds of speakers Amazing. It's not my jam. My predilection is let's meet in person, let's have a conversation, let's eat lunch together, let's go to the lobby bar with a group of people and have a spirited conversation about the topics of our choice. That's why I do it. The speakers yeah, they're good, they're interesting, but it's the getting together and doing things with other people. That's the fun part. So I'm very glad that at my conference, the Marketing Analytics Summit, attendance for 2023 was higher than it was in 2019. So we've recovered from COVID sort of.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. That's really awesome. I am seeing now that some industries are coming back stronger than they were. I think people are just flooding back Once they realize it's safe. People are just flooding back and they're ready to get going again. But that's great. You told me that you use a foolproof planning process that companies of any size can use. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Speaker 2:

It's so straightforward. A friend of mine wrote a book called Scale at Speed and one of the chapters is about doing this planning. And it's so straightforward and it's so brute force, logical that it's amazing that everybody doesn't already do it. So you identify the end of two years from now. It's January of 2026. Where do you want to be? Well, I want to have tripled my revenue. I want to double my customer size. I want to have built my team up to be like okay, but pick a very specific goal. All right, triple my revenue, okay, good, in order to have three times as much revenue come in.

Speaker 2:

What needs to be in place in January of 2026? Oh, well, I'll need this many more salespeople. I need this more many people producing. I'll need oh, if I have that many more people. I'm going to need managers. I'm going to need a human resource person. I'm going to need oh, my God, it's just overwhelming. It's like no, it's not, because that's two years from now. What else will you need in place? Well, I'll need to have a marketing revamped. I'll need to have an advisory council and I'll need that. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's like, okay, great, that's the vision. Now, what do you need to have in place one year from today in order to get you to that place two years from now. Oh well, I'll need these things.

Speaker 2:

Okay, let's back off all the way to in the next three months. What are the five things you need to change or put in place Like five things only in the next three months? Well, we got to get our billing better, we got to fix our website, we've got to pop, pop, pop pop. And when you've mapped these out order by quarter for the next two years, it's an overwhelming number of things. It's like, oh my God, how am I possibly? It's like, no, you've only got five things that you're going to do in the next three months. Month one oh, and these five things you give each one to an individual. Each person on your growth team has one thing they're responsible for above and beyond their day job those five people are working in over the next three months.

Speaker 2:

First month is research Read books, go on the internet, ask, chat, ept, ask your friends in your family, do your research, just find out how other people are doing it. The second month prototype build the thing or the process or the wireframe for the website, whatever it is. And the third month is rollout. So I'm going to do my research, build a prototype which is a lot of working with the rest of the company to how this prototype is going to work. And then the last month is roll it out and at the end of three months you've changed five business processes. You've implemented different ways of doing things, different tools that you're going to use, different. You've changed how the business works.

Speaker 2:

At the end of a year you've changed 20 things and that has set you up. So that year two wow, you can really rock and roll and hit that goal. It is brute force simplistic to say, but when you sit down to do it, okay, we're going to spend a whole day in a workshop. We're going to brainstorm here's the goal, what we need in place, what has to happen now. It's heavy lifting, it's serious thought. It's like close the business down for the day so you can focus on what is my goal and, by God, that is the North Star and what are all the things we need in place to make it happen.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. It's actually funny that you laid it out like that, as in breaking down the timeline, because I recently had a goal setting session with my coach or mentor, whatever you want to call it and I was like yeah, I want to do this by the end of the year. I want to do this by two years time. And she was like, okay, that's great, but what do you need to do in the next six months to set you up for that? And then I was like okay, I need to do this. And she was like okay, what do you need to do in the next three months to get to those six months? And then we got down to one month and two weeks and one week, and it's super helpful to do that, especially for me.

Speaker 1:

I'm like extremely ADHD, so when I see a lot of things, my brain just shuts down and I can't do any of them. So when I break it down into smaller tasks, it makes it a lot easier to understand, and I think that's the same for business owners. And it's like you need to like obviously, you need to focus on the bigger picture, but you need to break it down into what you need to do today. That'll set you up for your week goals and what will those week goals set you up for your month goals and etc. Etc.

Speaker 2:

I found it to be emotionally reassuring. I've got, I've got 35 things, big things I need to do. No, no, no, you have five, only five, and today you're only going to work on one of them. But all these other things, no, you're actually not going to think about those at all, because none of that can happen until you do this one thing. It's like, okay, now I can focus.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, exactly, and it's a super great way of thinking and it's great. It's crazy that you brought that up like the day after I had the session with my coach. That's awesome. I love that. I'll just check the time, jim, but we are running out, but I do want to chat to you a little bit more. I want to hear your thoughts on AI and how you think it can assist businesses. I want to hear your thoughts on that, like, where do you think it's going to? I don't want to say replace humans, but help humans and speed up processes. So what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2:

First of all, ai. I divide up into two groups. There's traditional AI, which is machine learning which I wrote about in 2017, which is deterministic. This is statistics. This is if you'd have this input, you get that output, and if you're doing work that might be scrutinized by regulatory committees, that's important that you can reproduce. Why did you ensure this person and not that person? Here's the algorithm, here's the data, here's how it works, good. Then there's generative AI non-deterministic.

Speaker 2:

You can ask it the same question five times. You will get five different answers. So businesses will get value out of it if they understand. It is not a database. It's not a search engine. It's not a calculator. It's not an encyclopedia.

Speaker 2:

We have always used computers for memory and calculation. This is a different animal. This is a cognitive aid. This is a brainstorming tool. This is a critical thinking support mechanism. Don't ask it for answers. Ask it for its opinion. Ask it to be your strategic advisor. Let me break that down to absolute tactical.

Speaker 2:

There's something in chat, gpt that's called custom instructions. You can say every time I ask you a question, keep this stuff in mind, one of the custom instructions that I've given. It is every time I give you a prompt, I want you to ask me three questions that will help you execute the prompt. And then, when I answer those questions, ask me three more questions and repeat until I use the word done. So I have asked it to help me ask it questions and sometimes I forget that I've done that and it's like do this thing?

Speaker 2:

It's like, well, wait a minute, I have a few questions for you, just like a good consultant would do. And I go, oh, that's right, I'm supposed to. Well, wait, those are really good questions. I hadn't thought about that. Well, here's the answer to this, here's the answer to that. That one doesn't matter. And then it asked me three more questions like, oh, okay, well, this, this, this and this. Then ask me three more. It's like, okay, I'm bored, I need the answer. Done, execute. If companies realize that it's this different kind of cognitive tool and not a deterministic thing. It is a mentor, it is a consultant, it is a brainstorming sidekick buddy who knows more about things and has read more business books and understands humans better than ever. But if you think you're going to use this generative AI thing to create something that you can copy and paste, you're fooling yourself. It's not going to. It's not going to help you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure. I've even noticed that myself. I remember when it first came out I was like super excited making LinkedIn posts, all that type of thing, and then I just started like reading other people's LinkedIn posts that were AI generated and it just got so repetitive and so boring and I was like I can't do this anymore, because that's what it's designed to do.

Speaker 2:

It's designed to give you the most vanilla thing, because a large language model statistically figures out what the next word should be. The most likely next word is vanilla.

Speaker 1:

Exactly exactly. So now I've stopped using it to write copy for me. I do use it to like scroll check and grammar check and that type of thing, but it's more for ideas and if I have a calculation or something that I don't want to go on a calculator, sometimes I just play around and have fun with it and see what, how far I can push it, and that's really cool as well.

Speaker 2:

Another example is now, I'm not a graphic artist. I don't play one on TV. So I have fun with those tools, but I don't use them. Graphic artists say forget using it for output, use it for ideas. I want a horse on the moon that's playing bridge. It's like, oh that's. I see that picture, but that's not really what I meant, what I was thinking I wanted. Now I know better. It's a cognitive tool.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, exactly. And, jim, look, I'd love to continue chatting about this, but we are quite a bit over our deadline. But, before we go, what is the? What is a piece of advice that you'd like to give other business owners looking to succeed?

Speaker 2:

Everything is execution. I, you know, I started out life saying I'm an ideas guy and everybody I told that to said nobody cares, ideas are free. Getting stuff done is where the money is.

Speaker 1:

I love that and I someone actually told me that as well. It's not about what you do, it's about how you do it, and you don't need to be innovative, you just need to do it better. You just didn't get it out the door. Exactly, exactly. Well, thanks, jim. Thanks so much for your insights. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Speaker 2:

What's the best way for?

Speaker 1:

what's the best way for our listeners to reach out to Jim Stern, if you've got any offers for them or if they're looking to just follow you?

Speaker 2:

LinkedIn is the best. My email address is available everywhere on the internet. My domain name is targetingcom.

Speaker 1:

Amazing Thanks. So much, jim, thank you.