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Humanizing Data (and Strengthening Sales) with Tanisha Tate Woodson · Aggressively Human: For experts choosing expansion over extraction.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this episode of Aggressively Human,
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: where data looks like it should be black and white, but very rarely is.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So my name is Jessica Lackey.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm Megcasebolt.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And today we are on with Tanisha Woodson,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: who is a researcher and helps document impact for organizations.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Tanisha, welcome to the show.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited to be here.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So full context, Tanisha and I have been working together for some time.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And when I saw what Tanisha was doing related to data and community,
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, that's Aggressively Human right there.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, all right, we got it.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Even though some of the work you do isn't like applicable
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: to our service provider audience,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: how you think about the work
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: and how you've structured your work is incredibly valuable.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So Tanisha, tell co-host Meg and everybody else, because I know you, but Meg does not.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So tell Meg what you do and the short version of how you got into doing it.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I am Tanisha Tate-Woodson and I run Woodson Insights Research and Evaluation.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: We are a research and evaluation firm that works with nonprofits,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: government agencies,
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: and funders to help them humanize data and to help organizations use data to tell
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: the illustrative impact of the work that they're doing.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been doing research for many, many years.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: First started off like lab-based research,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: biological sciences,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: and then realized that the impact that we really need to capture lives with people
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: and that we really need to talk to people and amplify their stories
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: and use their stories as data to help change and shift the world that we live in,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: hopefully one day.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: I love this,
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: like the storytelling as data,
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: like I came up from a nonprofit background,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: so I'm very much like, oh,
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: if you write a grant, yes, you have to say, here's where the money is going to go.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Here's how we're going to prove that there's a difference happening.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have...
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: The logic models and the inputs and the outputs and all that different sort
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: of like monitoring and evaluation stuff.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: the storytelling is just as much of a qualitative data point of yes,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: mentoring this child helped with this or yes,
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: providing a school lunch program, you know, helps kids grow.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: In the classroom to be able to focus and like those are not always things
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: that are easy to measure what the impact is and the stories have to be part of that.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you are speaking my love language because usually I get kind of like forced
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: into like a forced relationship with nonprofits through their funders.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: Their funders are coming to us like we need to know the impact of our giving.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: They force us into having this marriage with these nonprofits who are not ready for us.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: And they're like, I don't even know what data is.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: It feels like a compliance regimen.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't even know where to start.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: And oftentimes these organizations do not have that logic model,
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: do not have that strategic plan assessed out and all of those things.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: So we are coming in on the ground level,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: trying to help them tell their story because they're so used to doing the work.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: They are not always used to stepping away from the work and figuring out the impact
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: of all of the things that they've been doing.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I love that you are kind of really understanding that.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the development side of things,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: even like when you're talking to fundraisers,
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: they're like, well,
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: we'll just tell the stories,
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: but you need to have the qualitative and quantitative data.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that way you can say to people, yes, look, the impact is something that we can achieve.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Track and measure and showcase progress.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this is worth investing in.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that you can get so caught up in the programming side and saying like,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: but the stakeholders and the kids and community members, look,
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: obviously they're being supported by this,
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: but you actually have to have like something underneath that to say yes.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And here's what the numbers say.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so we come in because there's a relationship that's being built between
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: a nonprofit and a funder, but they're speaking two different languages.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: The funder wants to see hard numbers.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: The people on the ground doing the work, they hear the stories, they feel the emotions.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: They want to tell the story from that angle.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so we come in to marry those two things together so that we're singing that song together.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so they're able to tell their impact.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: And we're turning some of those narratives into stories because a lot
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: of times people stop at the numbers and think that That's what data is.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: And plus, my family thinks that's too about what I do.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: When I mentioned that I do research and data,
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: they're like, oh, so you're sitting with spreadsheets all day.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, no, actually observations is data.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Actually talking to you is data.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: All of those things are built so that we are humanizing data
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: so it doesn't feel like something that is so abstract and distant from you,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: but something that you can really hold and make it so tangible.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: The hurdle that we're trying to get over now when it comes
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: to nonprofits is helping them turn those things that they're feeling
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: and experiencing into some quantifiable bars or into some measurable metrics.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: So for instance, like building trust with community is huge.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: In order to do the work that you're doing, people have to trust you and believe in you.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you measure trust?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And those type of things is now what we're doing is trying to turn all
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: of those metrics, all of those feelings together.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: Into something that could be measurable so that we're communicating that to
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: the funders and to other people to back to the community as well.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I came up, you know, now I'm in marketing.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do a lot of marketing analytics and data and looking at the spreadsheets.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, it's what are the words that people are using?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: How are we?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Connecting with people through our word choices.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: So even when you're talking about,
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: what is the most spreadsheet,
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: nerdy things that we can be doing, the point of them is still connection.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: The point of them is still empathy.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yes.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of that gets lost a lot of times when people are thinking about numbers.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that there's a lot of emotion that comes with data that people hold
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: that I don't think they realize until they're forced into these unions
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: where they have to be like, oh, my God, I don't know what you're asking.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Do I have the right things?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then they start to really freeze up.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're having to peel back those layers and those emotions to sit with people
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: and walk them through that journey together.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then in the end,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: they come out with something that they're excited about that they could showcase.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's a one pager that you can easily share.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's the easier background information that you could easily plug
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: into your grant applications now.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Now you're able to really tell the story with real meaning and with some measurement too.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: So even with some precision.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: So this is going to be a bit of a meta episode in the sense of like,
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I want, as you're hearing, you've heard me and Meg talk about premise.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard me and Meg talk about method.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard us talk about like,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: positioning and stakeholder,
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know, kind of being clear in our stakeholders' minds.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is kind of like,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to walk through some of the work that Wire Research does.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: From a lens of like premise, method,
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: methodology,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: because this is again, like,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: how we do data,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: but also how we show our, you know, our potential customers, how we do our work.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Tanisha,
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: tell us about how,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: one of the things when we started working together was you're like,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: sometimes data is done to communities
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: and actually measuring like measurement Has been happening to them versus happening
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: with communities.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So tell us more about like your approach and some of the distinctions
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: about your philosophy around community engagement and research.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: So when I,
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mentioned this before that I started off in my research journey,
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: just thinking of like science,
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: you know, research being in the lab and things like that.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: Cause I was going to be a doctor.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: I was already set out.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna, you know, work in the clinical setting.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then I had a really great experience during one summer looking at an autopsy
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: and I passed out.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was like, OK, maybe it was just I didn't eat before, but I'm going to do this.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then so I tried it again and I was like, OK, let me just go and see like a delivery.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I passed out again.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I don't think this is for me.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so I shifted to really think about like, what else is there?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's when my world kind of opened up to the social sciences and to research
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: and understanding how communities exist,
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: and how do they live and how do they live healthy in the spaces.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: But then when I got into the weeds of it,
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: I realized that I don't want to be another person that comes
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: from these ivory tower universities that want to study people and understand
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: who they are, how they're living.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to work alongside them.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was first trained using CBPR, which is Community Based Participatory Research.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it's these principles that say that you are working alongside your community
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: and They are helping you understand what some of the solutions are because
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: the people who live in these problems, they know what the solutions are.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: They just don't have access to the resources to change things.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then from there,
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: my career kind of like stemmed into wanting to understand this from an equity lens.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: So not only do we ask them what they want, but bring them into the decision-making process.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: Ask them like, what are the questions we want to explore?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: Who should we be asking?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: What should we do with this information?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it's really making sure that we're grounding the work Into the context of which people live.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the main premise of what I wanted to do all of my research around is not,
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to come into these communities.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to study these problems and then go and publish this great paper
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: about all of the harms that have been happening to these communities.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to work close to them.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Even so,
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: when I get requests now from different government agencies because they want to do
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: a strategic plan, but they want to hear from Black Oregonians.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a really a big topic.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, we want to know what they think about X, Y, and Z.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so my job is to go out and to recruit folks and get them to take surveys,
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: get them to be part of focus groups.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: But now my whole thing for those clients that come to us is that You have to have
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: a follow through plan.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: So like,
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: not only do you take this research and you're extracting,
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: you're extracting these people data.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: You have to give them back something.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: You got to tell them what decision did you make from this?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you wanting to know these stories?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: Because what we hear a lot of times doing community-based work is
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: that we already told such and such this five months ago,
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: and we don't know what did they do with this information.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: We never heard back from them.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: So why are we going to tell you this again today?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we make those promises to the community,
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: we got to make sure that our clients are promising us that follow through,
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: which is important for us.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: What is this data being used to make decisions about?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Who is collecting this?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I live in Rochester,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: New York,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: and we have huge University of Rochester Research Studies Medical Center going
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: on all the time.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And my firstborn was born in Saratoga Springs, so it was just like a little bit woo-woo.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then my second one was born in Rochester where they were like, so,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like every time I went in, they were like, so, we're doing a research study.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are you willing to...
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Also get the 3D ultrasound.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that way we can check the length of your cervix to measure this.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like everything was measured.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Everything was part of a research study.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And they kept trying to be like,
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: well, this is a longitudinal study and you signed up for the first part.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: So now you have to come back again and again and again and again.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And by the time I hit like the five years on a longitudinal study during COVID,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, what is this for?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: I love research.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, sure, send me the surveys.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'll fill out the surveys.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: But why?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Who is gathering this data?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: What decisions are being made?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you're going to pay for my parking for me to come in and take a day off with my kid?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: To what purpose?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: To what end?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: You want me to write down every bit of food that I eat for 24 hours and try
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: to recall it over a phone call with somebody I've never met?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and we're all products of like,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: we've seen things come forth because there's been well studied, well resourced.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's why we get to better version, better models.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: But that transparency part is not really clear in terms of like, what are you doing?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you And just think about the suspicion that you kind of hold
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: a little bit like, okay, what are you doing?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: I can kind of see the benefits.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: I understand research.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, what is this really going, what's going to happen to this?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: But we see even more of that suspicion when you think about Black communities.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you think about historically, all the harms that have been done.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we read the stories about the Tuskegee syphilis study.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: We know about how Henrietta lac cells were stolen.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: And now that led to stem cell developments that Their family cannot even benefit
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: from all of the benefits that come from that.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: So when you think about those harms,
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: when you ask people of color, they're like, hey, do you want to be a researcher?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, wait, we've seen what's been done to people before us.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: We're really leery about that.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so now there's a label that is like, they're hard to reach.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: They're hard to connect with and those type of things.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: But it's like,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: are they really hard to reach or have they been harmed
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: and now they're being protected?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And we see that a lot in Oregon because Oregon has this rich history.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Portland have a rich history of being...
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: A white exclusive state,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: even that it was documented in county charters that,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: you know, you cannot be here for long.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: And even there was these lash laws that exist right up until the early 1900s that
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: if you were a person of color and you was in the state for more than six months,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: you'll get so many lashes for every so many months that you was here beyond
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: that time limit and things like that.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: So when you think about the historical trauma that people So, yeah.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right, and don't just get the data to be able to say,
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: and we interviewed the 10% representative population of Black Oregon.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who cares if you're not going to do anything with it,
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: or you're not going to tell people what you're doing with it.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we don't want to be another checkbox for you.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: We want to know if you actually care.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this intention of really wanting to work with the populations
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: that you serve seems like it would be table stakes, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, we are...
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Researchers, we are nonprofits, we care about equity.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really on the mission and with a lot of my clients to be like,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: if this doesn't change something about your method,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: how you do it,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: or if someone would look at your website and be like,
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: well, yeah, I could say exactly the same thing here.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking at a nonprofit strategy website and they're like,
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: equity, collaboration, you know, trust.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I'm like, OK, I don't actually this is not.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: No one disagrees with this, right?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is not,
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know, like,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well,
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I choose Firm A versus Firm B,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: except for Firm A has relationships in the Charlotte area and Firm B does not.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So how does this premise change actually how you do the work?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how does it change how you set it up, how you structure it, who you take on as clients?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is like, it goes from being
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: A stated value on a website to actually baked into your process.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that is a really good point of like, okay, this sounds good.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: These values are great.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Who would disagree with them?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: But how does it actually show up?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: And luckily for me, I got like an excellent business coach earlier this year.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: So now I was able to codify my processes and think about this strategically.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: And it's really helped me make this argument and talk to clients in a way of like,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: there needs to be accountability.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I think traditionally,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: when people do research, they go into communities, they understand this thing.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then at the end, they give a report to the client.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then that's the end.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know if the client actually reads it.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: It goes on a shelf.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: We don't even know if they use it.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so I recognized that very early on in my process and I was like, I have to shift this.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: So now my relationships with clients do not end with a report.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: It ends with a strategy session that comes two to three weeks after I have given you the report.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Because I want you to have read the report,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: and then we're going to come into a room together,
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: and I'm not going to necessarily quiz you,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: but now we're going to think strategically about what did you read?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: What is a so what?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: What are we going to do about what we saw in this data?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's the promise that I give to communities, too.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like,
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: we're not just going to produce another report that's going to sit on a shelf again.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: What we're going to do is make sure that we're having conversations with our clients
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: and to be able to hold them accountable.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: And what it does is it brings community and it brings those clients
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: a little bit closer together because now community know who to hold accountable
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: when it comes to these type of things.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's a built-in promise.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: So when you sign up for WIRE, you're not signing up to get like, okay, we need a report.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: We need a presentation deck.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: No, we're going to also give you those things.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And we're going to also have a two to three hour sense making session where we talk
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: about what is the meaning of these things and what do you plan to do about it?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: God, I love that the implementation.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the integration of the research into the action plan.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: When Jessica asked this question, I was thinking three times this week already.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: I do a lot of website copy review, and I've had people say, should I put this in my core values?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, sure.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: But also,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: what's the point of having core values on your website where you just make a list
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: of things, like you said, that you would disagree with?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: What the core values should do is point out what the case studies and the blog posts
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: and the research and the customer testimonials are all telling the story of.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the core values is just a word.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have anything to back that up,
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: to integrate,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: to support, then it's just a list of words that you could have picked up.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: My core value is integrity.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Who says so?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Who says that you're working in integrity except for you?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if you claim, you know what?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: I also claim I'm the best singer in the world.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't mean that it's true.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: It just means that I like to hear myself sing.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have any proof.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so to take the proof of the research and to say, Not just, here's the report.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Look, you can send this to your donors.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can get more funding so you can keep doing whatever the hell you want
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: that maybe we can still prove.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: how are you going to take this research and change and have more impact
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: and adjust your way of doing things?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: So important.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: I love that you're mentioning that because we have to make sure that there's a
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: through line when we talk about when we make a promise to the community that one,
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: we're going to be different.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: We're not like those other research firms that came before us
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: and ask you your opinion, but we have to make sure to reach.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad that we talked about these things.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: Three driving like new levers that you want to activate in your strap plan.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: How is it going?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: and now the community also have language to say like, hey,
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: they decided that they're what's going to do these campaigns or this type
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: of integration next.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: Where is it?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now they can hold people accountable.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: And now they have the tools now to really hold people in positions of power more accountable.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I love it.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: So how does that change?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: The clients you take on and how you kick off the engagement, right?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because if someone comes to you and says,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to check the box compliance exercise,
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would imagine they're not your client.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: They're not our client.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there was a day in my life before...
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Eight months ago where I'll be like, OK, I need that type of client.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: I need everyone.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: But this having these when you live in your values and not just articulate them on
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: a website,
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: but actually embody those values,
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: it helps you realize when you need to close the door on an opportunity or
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: when you need to open one.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so now what it's doing, it is.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: We have to we state these things in our proposal when we write them with our clients.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then in our kickoff meeting,
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: we make sure that they understand our through process,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: like to the end through sense making.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: And this is what you're agreeing to.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you're agreeing to not only have a report that's going to go back to your board,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: but there needs to be an artifact that goes back to community and that they make
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: that commitment with us.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: At the beginning of our engagement.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that's part of our working together that we do because it's also the promise
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: that we tell communities when we go out into those spaces.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: So that people who come through that they just like, oh, I just want to report in seven weeks.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: I just want you to be able to analyze this data.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: We already ran our own survey.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: We just want you to tell us what it is.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's not who we're working with anymore.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: We want somebody from the beginning Through the end,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: that they are geared towards not just the status quo,
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: but changing things of which we how we operate and how we move throughout life.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so it helped us and it helped us cultivate a community of people that like,
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: okay, so we do know that the health department is really thinking about this.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: We do know that library services is really want to do this.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: We do know that public safety.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so now we have A central base of clients that are really focused on these things.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: And now we could create a hub around those folks now, too.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: So it's been really,
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: really important to kind of think about our entry and exit points for folks.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: So in addition to having a process that you work through that is geared
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: in your point of view and your premise, right?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have sense making.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: They have to know about it up front.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: That has to be baked into the scope, into the price.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: You also have talked about these four dimensions that are from data to dialogue.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: A framework,
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to quote from the document,
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: a framework for understanding the dimensions that guide every wire engagement.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: You had the research rigor, the methodology and methodological.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God, did I say that right?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: The methodological.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what's the word?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, methodological.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a long one.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Research rigor, the methodological integrity of the work.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: You had cultural responsiveness.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: You had client capacity, the educational and empowerment outcomes of the partnership.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then you had community accountability, whether the work serves the people it's about.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I would imagine that those are four pillars that undergird your whole process,
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: but they can be tweaked based on the needs of the client.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just like hire me for culturally responsive Research and evaluation,
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: but you have a philosophy about how that's done,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: not just with process, but like what's included.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: And those dimensions helps us figure out where the client is when we first start our engagement.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because usually people have lofty goals and not the capacity to really support the work.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: And our work is deeply collaborative.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: So that means that sometimes you're going to help us with some recruitment.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: You're going to help us broker some relationships with some community partners
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: that are going to get us into certain spaces.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so what we really want to articulate for them is that Even though you do,
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: because there's a huge myth in the field that when you're close to the communities,
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: when you're doing community engagement work, it's no longer rigorous.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not true.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's more rigorous because now we are embedding community perspectives into their work.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: We're not only embedding them into the work,
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: but we're also articulating the cultural relevance of the work that we're doing.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so we want to make sure that we're balancing all of those things together
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: when we're engaging our clients.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the things that we want to do,
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: we kind of assess their current capacity for being able to be a part of this.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: So we do a stakeholder analysis when we first engage with clients.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: We want to know Who are all of the people that's going to touch this project
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: at any point,
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: whether those are people that's going to inform what we want to know,
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: are going to help us engage with the who we want to know,
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: and are those are people that want to know what happens at the end of this,
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: whether it's your board that wants a report,
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: whether it's a community want a presentation.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we kind of want to understand the lay of the land and that full scope.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: That full capacity of folks and who are all involved and what is their level of engagement.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then what we want to do is we want to make sure that they understand our process
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: from beginning to end so they understand the rigor that's behind it.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: How we collect data,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: how we enter fields,
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: how we exit fields,
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: all of that is part of how we articulate the rigorness of our data and our methods.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: But what's central to our work and what's so important,
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: what's the reasons that really drive me into this work is making sure
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: that it's culturally responsive.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: Are people telling the stories in a way in which they want to be told?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: So for instance, if you want to hear from students, do students want to take a survey?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: Do students communicate through arts, through videos, through other types of media?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: But they also do it in very short and fragmented ways.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: So like,
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: don't think that you're going to get some youth into like a focus group session
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: for 30 minutes and you're just going to sit and talk to them.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: No, make it interactive.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Make it put together some like pictures or put together some phrases
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: and have them have to complete the phrases and things like that.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: So we think about the culturally responsive methods is also thinking about
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: who you want to hear from and how do they want their stories to be told.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: So, yes, when I'm talking to the elders in communities, I can...
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Create space for 60 minutes because, yes,
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: we're going to sit there and we're going to talk for a long time,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: probably over a meal and do other things.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: But when we're talking about other people,
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: let's think about the ways in which they want to tell stories.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: And we use a lot of creative art.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: We use photo voice,
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: which is a way for people to capture image in a community
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: that represents whatever theme that we're talking about.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And they could put a short caption to that.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: We also have them create different videos and we're able to use those in different
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: in our presentations or into like art galleries that we do after that.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think when you have all of these dimensions together,
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: it helps articulate the community accountability part because now people are able
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: to put faces next to organizations.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: They know who to call.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: They know what happened because they are able to follow the stories as well.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what's really important.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: I am obsessed with like how differently you're collecting information
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: and gathering it based on the expectations of different generations and age groups.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: But there's also a part of me that's like, oh, don't ask me to make any video.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Don't ask me to like,
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: just sit down with me and have a meal,
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: which means that I now fit into the elder population,
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: according to the way that you just described this.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you know what?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I will embrace my elder millennial status and be like, no, man, buy me a meal.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Ask me questions.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Let me talk about myself.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Don't make me take short form video.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: I can't handle that.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: So real.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: And there's something that I used to talk about is like research karma.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: Cause like, please do not send me a text message survey.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to do it because like I pick up my phone,
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: I start doing this, a kid go off or something happens and I never go back to it.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: But if you call me and we could quickly do this over 10 to 15 minutes,
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: you could get everything you need to know.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: Cause I'm just going to plug in my air pot and we're just going to go ahead and talk.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine then that like that might some cases like if there's less capacity for
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: the client or it's a different style of capturing data
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: than necessarily something that's super numeric that would change one of the dials,
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: which is kind of that like research rigor slash like,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know, it's just not to say it's like less rigorous, but it's it's different.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would imagine that it's that like the outcomes are not the same.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it does change some of the dials for them.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a learning that happens on both of our parts.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: For instance,
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: I have this one project where we are trying to understand the root causes
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: of homelessness that's happening in these two counties in Oregon that has
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: a very high rate of homelessness.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so...
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: We wanted to make sure that we are in a space
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: where they feel like they are being seen and heard.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: So we partnered up with community centers, and that's where we're hosting our focus groups.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: But it's not a traditional focus group.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's built off of the board game of chutes and ladders.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Where people kind of think about their journey of their life through that up
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: and down of like the shoots or the things that set you back.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: The ladders are the things that help you go forward.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: And ultimately you want to get to your hundred square.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so when you ask people to tell their story through that creative framework,
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: it's a little bit easier than just sitting around
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: and doing this question answering back and forth.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Now they're able to walk around and pretend like they're a piece in a board game.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: They're talking about all of the things and they're using post-it notes to think
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: about all the things that set me back.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: What are the things that helped me forward?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: And they're putting together the timeline of their life and they're doing it with dignity.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we talk about cultural responsiveness,
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: we're talking about How do people tell their stories with pride, with dignity?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: So you got to think about how do people want to tell their stories?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not probably through your traditional lens,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: it's through a way that makes them feel seen and heard and proud.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right, storytelling that isn't victimizing,
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: that isn't martyrdom,
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: that isn't,
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: here's how I would tell it at like,
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: An AA meeting where I talk about hitting rock bottom.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like it doesn't always have to be like,
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: even when we talk about marketing copy where it's like, oh,
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: and then I got kicked out of my house and I had to live on my sister's couch
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: and that's when I started my business and now I'm a multimillionaire.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like it doesn't always have to be rags to riches in order for it to be like a great,
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: powerful narrative.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you're absolutely right.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: Having those stories in the way that people want to tell their stories with so much pride.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it opened people up because it's like they first come in, they don't know what to expect.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: All they know is that they're going to get fed and they're going to get a stipend for this.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: But then when you say like, hey,
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: we're going to move around to the ability that you're to the extent
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: that you are able to.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: And we're going to do this game and we're going to use these fidgeties to keep you moving.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, okay, they open up, they let's guard it.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now they're able to open up.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when you get that rigorous,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: that better quality data,
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: when people are able to open up and build trust with you immediately with
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: that coming into the room.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I wonder if there's a level of like, oh, I got stuck on that shoot too.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had that slide that took me from like 80 to 20.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: That happened.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: You start to see the commonality of what's happening across things like,
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: oh, that happened to you too?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like people are telling stories of how like They they enjoy living.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're in Oregon.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: People are enjoying living outside.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: They don't want to be, you know, house community.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: But then they talk about how,
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: the cops come by and they slash your tents or they like throw your stuff out
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: or they come with these dumpsters and people are saying like,
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: yeah, what did you do there?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's that sharing that happens, that resource and that collaboration.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a little bit of community that's being built in those spaces, too.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're not just building community with your clients,
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: but you've got a special project going on behind the scenes to build more community.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: You want to tell everyone what you're working on?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: We are actively building this Black Data Pulse new Black panel of Oregonians.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: So as I mentioned earlier,
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: we are always getting these requests from different entities of like they want
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: to reach this hard to reach community, a quote unquote, these Black Oregonians.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so we decided instead of continuing to use Huge chunks of time,
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: huge parts of people budgets to do this recruitment.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: Let's already have this panel in place.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so what we've been doing is showing up at community events, community fairs this summer.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: Recruiting people to become a part of our panel so that we're ready to go.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: So that when clients come to us, we're ready to lend our feedback, our support.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so what we've been doing over
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: the past few weeks is just been hosting focus groups with community members.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: And they are helping us build this product as we're growing it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: And we're asking them, well, what is motivating you to be a part of the community?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: And what we're hearing is that Oh,
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: when we get an opportunity to let city council know what we're thinking or
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: to let city government know what we're thinking.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we want to make sure that they hear from us.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're getting those things about what is motivating people to be a part of this.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we're no longer making assumptions.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: We're asking them directly.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then we're also asking them, well,
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: what do you want to see from clients now that be a part of these that come to you
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: as part of this panel to be a part of this?
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: And we're hearing the things about accountability.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: But they're also articulating like what that looks like for them.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: How do they want people to show up?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: So we're developing this new panel that we're going to be able to use so
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: that we could field surveys.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: People could come to us to field focus groups.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: But we're also creating alongside of this a hub of articles and things
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: that are talking about Black Oregonians.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: So for instance,
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: if you did a survey six months ago about Climate change or climate resiliency,
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: it would now exist in our hub so that we are no longer asking people
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: the same questions that they've been asked already.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: They just go to the hub.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: They see all these articles that already been talked about with education or
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: whether it's with safety or transportation.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: They go to the hub.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: People contribute articles to the hub.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: And now we know where to get.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: So it doesn't just exist in these clients and on their shelves, buried away under dust.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now they're existing in these, um, Electronic files so that people could easily access that.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we're creating and launching in real time right now.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: So exciting news.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And how is all of this impacting you and your business?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've got a strong as hell premise.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've been like, you know, we're behind the scenes.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: I get to see the behind the scenes of the business,
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: but like you've got you've got a method,
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: you've got a process, you've been you've been working hard.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Your tail off to like codify and structure things behind the scenes.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're like, Oh, the relationships and the authority that I've built.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God I did.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: We are in a, a period of figuring out growth right now and scaling.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: So the next thing is up on Jessica's list to help me get my mind around.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's like building our teams because what we're learning,
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: um, Part of the work that I do is that I do this client work.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm building some creative, cool things on the side.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I also teach other practitioners on how to be culturally responsive
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: and equitable evaluators.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so now I have a pipeline to individuals that already understand
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: and embody these principles and now want places where they could like actually live
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: through these principles and the work that we're doing.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm thinking about what are ways to expand my team To building more people so
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: that we could do more of this work in incredible spaces and with more clients
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: and things like that.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah,
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: so things have been exciting because we've been on our speaking authority loop,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: like tour train,
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: where we've been doing a lot of different conferences this year,
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: more than we have done in previous years.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think we doubled our numbers from last year.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: Where we're talking more about what does it mean to really be a part of research?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: How do you do this in a culturally responsive way?
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: And how do you reach Black communities?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about that more.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then now what we're doing is we're expanding our team because now we're taking
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: on more client work locally in Oregon, but also nationally too.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're thinking about ways to grow strategically in a way
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: that will be sustainable over time.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I get to see the behind the scenes of it all,
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: but what is the impact it's having in your community?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because,
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: you've been talking about doing a lot of things locally with,
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was from Portland, so I kind of know how somewhat disconnected the services were.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was an interesting time for the Portland area.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: So how does this work impact?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: How does your work impacting like the community you're a part of?
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know what?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I'm becoming more rooted into the community.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas, as you mentioned, Portland is a weird scene.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like it has a silos.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: It has this like community effects here.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: But I've been able to have the privilege of starting
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: to really get myself deeply rooted into communities by being more connected to
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: the nonprofit scenes here that service these communities and the families
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: that I want to be a part of.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so now I feel like people are I'm more approachable.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: People are talking to me about their data stuff.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't feel like this is this weird black box that I exist in.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because I used to be like, oh, when people ask me what to do, I was like, I just do research.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to shy away.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: But now I'm able to have more conversation with folks about the work that they're doing.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm able to talk to people about the stories that they want to tell about
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: the incredible work that they're doing with their nonprofits.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm able to gain entree into space that I felt like was more so closed doors
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: or spaces that I wasn't a part of,
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: which has been really incredible because I've been partnering with some foundations
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: that have been able to put me in contact with a cohort
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: of their nonprofit organizations.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so now I've been able to, they see me as a...
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: As an expert in the field,
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: but they also see me as an approachable person,
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: whereas like data doesn't have to be so scary.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: it doesn't have to look like as it's going to be an audit or rubric to show like
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: if you are or not doing your work.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: But now they're able to have conversations with me and I really been enjoying that.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: And just being out in communities,
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: like there's a couple of festivals that happened this summer.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: There's one that's called Good in the Hood,
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: where like all of these vendors come out from like health vendors,
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: food vendors and the like.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: I had a little bit of candy and toys to bring kids in that really brought in their parents.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're able to talk about data and people connect to research and data in different ways.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: And seeing the connections that happen in real time when I'm talking to folks is so incredible.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it's helping us shape How we talk about data,
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: how we talk about research with our communities as well.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: So it's been, it's been a fun journey and I feel like I'm getting more planted.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: it's been 13 years and it's weird to say this because now I'm starting to feel like,
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: okay, Portland is starting to feel like home.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm starting to get like more connected to communities that I really care about.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad you shared that because I feel like so often it feels like we have
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: to like Go out and find the new clients where we have to create
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: the marketing strategy so they can find us.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: And like I'm in search, so I am, you know, I'm guilty of that messaging.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: But what you're doing is networking,
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: it's referrals,
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: it's community engagement,
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: and therefore you don't need to be as reliant on some of those like Expensive,
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: time-consuming marketing strategies of like, I'm going to run Facebook ads.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need that,
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: hopefully,
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: because you have both returning clients who are like,
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: oh, you showed us this and now we want to continue to grow it.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: You have your referral partners, it sounds like, from the foundation.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: If they're seeing, oh,
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Tanisha's team did a really great job with this nonprofit that we're funding today,
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: Can we introduce her to these other nonprofits that we're funding so we can continue
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: to have this ability to get the behind the scenes impact targeted and tracking?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're also talking to the community members
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: and building out these focus groups in the panel so that way you don't have to
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: the recruitment all the time.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like it feels like the flywheel is really starting to turn without it needing to be all like.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: Online and reinventing everything.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: And a big driver of how we've been connecting,
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: how I've been growing my business up until this point has been all based off
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: of relationships and referrals and really making sure
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: that people are like connecting with us on a human level first.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then we're getting into this business relationship or working together.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of this has been really built on the backs
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: of having some deeply connected relationships with communities as well as
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: with clients.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I know a lot of government and nonprofit work is RFP driven.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Are you still submitting RFPs or like,
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious how that process is working in tandem with the relationships and
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: the method in the process?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we are still going after RFPs, but we're being very...
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Clear about whether it's a good fit for us or not.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: one of the things that's really driving us is that when it comes to RFPs,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: we know we have a strong competitive advantage when it's something that's local.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: So when it's something, whether that's our county base or a statewide base.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: We know that we have a competitive edge in those spaces.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then now that we have our process and our flow kind of like codified
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: of how we do our work, it's easy for us to kind of respond to these calls now.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it's easy for us to assess out like, okay,
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: this is a budget and a timeline that does not work for us and how we operate,
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: or this is one that looks more suitable.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: So now we're not going after like,
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: Five RFPs a month,
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: but we're going after that one or two that looks like it's a strong fit.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that's just helped our win rate a lot this year.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: We are about a 50% win rate,
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: which I think is great because we were not going after RFPs before because we heard
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: the language about how the win rates are usually like less than 20%,
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: usually like less than 15%.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: And oftentimes it's a huge time suck.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's a huge time suck.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: But now thanks to AI,
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: it helps us be able to like codify our process in a way and easily articulate that
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: into a proposal that we could then go after and really strengthen and work even more
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: with improving.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you said something really interesting there,
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: which is that you're using AI to adjust the way that you're describing your process
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: so that you're answering the questions from the RFP,
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: but you're not writing the proposal with AI.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're not like, okay, AI,
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: and I think that probably, like,
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: not only is that going to increase your win rate and your win rate's going to go up
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: when you're going quality over quantity and really, like,
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: investing time in these things,
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: but I wouldn't be surprised if there are other people out there who are,
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: like, just taking the RFP and then just saying to an AI gen, like, Yeah.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yes.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it helps you when you have like,
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: when you're more of that solo entrepreneur and that growing team where you just have
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: a bunch of subs to be able to,
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: create opportunities for folks,
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: but also not take up so much of your individual time.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that we're The way that AI is going,
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think people are conflating AI with like machine learning.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've been using more of machine learning.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like for instance, just think about if you're training a new team member.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: So you taught them your process,
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: you taught them what you want They have the boilerplates for the different aspects
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: of the proposal.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: You basically trained a junior you.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how we use AI in our business,
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: more so as a machine learning engine as opposed to like,
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: hey, this is an RFP out there.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: Create a proposal for us.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: And based off of what you know, no, that's not going to win you anything.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Did you create an RFP skill?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: I knew it.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't talked to you since that happened.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like, I bet she did.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I had to in order to like,
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: it's a skill that tells you based off of who you are,
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: based off of what you want to go after.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: So you really got to know yourself before you think you go,
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: you know, you got to feed those things to AI.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it helps.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: It helps us assess out like, is this a good, is this a pass or no pass for us?
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the beginning entry point.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then from there, then you do your own reading of it.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so does AI.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then we start moving through that proposal together strategically.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: So yes, we built a skill so that it helps us become Way more efficient with it.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it helps us think about our red flags.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: I told them in the beginning, all of my red flags.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: And it reminds me,
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: it says,
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: Tanisha, remember you said that you wasn't going to go after something like this.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh yeah, you're right.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: So imagine like a little buddy on your shoulder telling you like, ah, don't go there.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: See, I have a little meg on my shoulder who's like, Jessica, you said this.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember you said this?
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: My, my, my little,
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: um, AI red flag is I put in there, you're not allowed to use the word genuine.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Really, like you're just not allowed to use them.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so it'll write me something and then I'll be like, look at all these words I didn't use.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's sort of like creams and brags.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, look, I worked around it.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like saying in my honest opinion instead of saying honestly doesn't
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: fix the problem.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: But it is nice that it's holding you accountable to your own goals.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you said something really important there too,
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: which is like,
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: I had to know myself in order to build the structure and the boundaries so
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: that it could continue to hold me accountable.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that's so important and probably a misstep when I see
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: so many other people using AI is like, is this really your voice?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: Is this you?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: Is this who you are?
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: Or is this something that somebody told you that you were?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because it feels like a departure.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not,
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm meeting a different representative when I see you in person compared to
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: when I see your AI, you know, image of who you said you are.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's really important to have some alignment.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, A different question, then we'll wrap.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Tanisha, was I like what you expected to see from me when I showed up in Portland?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because Tanisha and I got to meet at my Portland meetup, my book tour.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: She was there.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I have to meet up with my people.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: And Tanisha was one of them.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you are exactly who you are.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: I was so excited.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, my God.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: I am so glad that you came our way and just hang out.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it really shows the network that you have built because everybody
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: that was there was super cool.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: I got so many good contacts.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: I got so many people I want to connect with and follow up with.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: I met so many cool people.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: One of the coolest, I want to say right quick, was a person who ran a podcast studio.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a recording studio, but their business cards was a tarot card.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: That is so Mary Williams.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like that is Mary Williams in a nutshell.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the Yeti studio.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then she has all the tarot card.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that tarot card spoke life to me.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, you are really representing who you are.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: And she told me the story about it.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I love when people personality shows up in different ways.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that was the same case for you, Jessica.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, your personalities came to life.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like,
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: this is exactly who I see online,
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: who I see in a book, and it's who you are every day.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, oh my God, through and through, loved it.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: Loved it.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way,
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: should you ever want to build a podcast or some other thing,
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Mary Williams is currently booking talent.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: I love her because she was like, well,
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: people need to be trained before they go out there and actually think
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: that they're starting stuff.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, yeah,
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: let's talk about that training before like I even think about dream of idea of doing
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: a podcast.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah,
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: she's on my list of people to follow up with,
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: but it's been Your network is so incredible.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, oh, just to get a glimpse of that and to be in a room was so good.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: It was just such a chill time.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: I enjoyed it.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: So Tanisha,
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: if people want to learn more about you,
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: want to connect with you or just want to be like,
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: hey, you're in Oregon and I'd love to reach out.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: How can they find out more about you?
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they could easily visit our website, which is www.woodsoninsights.com.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: Or they could always email me as well at Tanisha at WoodsonInsights.com as well.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: And all of our contact information is on our website.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have any Insta or channels just yet.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's the next phase of my work with Jessica.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is the wrong podcast for you to come in and get a pep talk about getting on social media.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're just the wrong people.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you want that pep talk, we have other podcasts we can send you to.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: Marketing is somewhere in my cars where I'm going to have
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: to do more marketing pushes, I think, eventually.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're doing just fine.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you're going to the networking,
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: you're meeting new people in your town,
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: you're getting referrals, you're getting partnerships.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be on Instagram.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, good.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: I can keep my personal
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: life at the end.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to share that with...
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, good.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: Also, I realized right after I said Yeti when I was talking about Mary Williams
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: that I meant Sasquatch.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: And in my brain, as like a Northeasterner, Yeti and Sasquatch, very similar.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I bet Pacific Northwesterners are like,
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: no, there's a big difference between Yeti and Sasquatch.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: How dare you?
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: How dare you?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody wants to explain to me offline the difference between a Yeti and
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: a Sasquatch, I'm here for it.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't have to go there on this call.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure Mary will tell me too.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so speaking of animals...
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: We'll close with what are Aggressively Human.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we always do a what's Aggressively Human in your world right now.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to transition to animals because I got a book recommendation.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's called whale hunting, how to land big sales and transform your company.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't sell big sales.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't sell B2B like big enterprise B2B, but like some of my clients do.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm always like, you know, on the lookout for people saying good things about sales books.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know that there is
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: Roll in an Inuit whale hunting team where you have to sew the mouth shut of
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: the whale once it's captured because otherwise it'll get water and sink.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: Things that I did not know.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't figured out what the analogy is yet.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't gotten to that part of the book.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: And like what the analogy is, is like big corporate sales.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: But they have a harpoonist whose job is to do targeted outreach once
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: the scouts have said the whale is here.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: So like,
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: it's like the scouts see the signals,
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: in advance of when the,
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know, the harpoonist has to know exactly when and how to strike.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, again, not relevant to my business.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm like,
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm already like 100 pages into the book,
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: because like half of it is stories about like how to do whale hunting.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like,
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make this required reading for everyone that does B2B sales,
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: even if you do big B2B sales, because I'm like, this is fascinating.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway,
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: it sort of reminds me of
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: where I was like, I need I know nothing about motorcycle maintenance.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I still very much enjoyed this book.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I thought I was gonna learn about B2B sales.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, I'm also learning about The art of whale hunting.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: Harpooning, specifically.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: I love this for you.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Meg, what is your Aggressively Human?
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we'll transition to something aquatic, because apparently that's where we're going today.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: My little one,
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: who is about to turn nine,
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: he'll be nine by the time this episode goes live, just joined the swim team.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: So my big kid has been on the swim team for, now this will be his third year.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: My little one had to work his way up, so he's been in private one-to-one lessons for a year.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now he's at the point where he can do the 25 repeats.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: He can go in the lane with the other kids.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: He's doing the whole thing.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: So he'll probably swim in his first meet in October, which we're very excited about.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're not in it for speed,
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: but we kind of went like,
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: what's a really good sport where you can be on a team,
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: but if you don't have a good individual performance,
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: you're not going to set anyone else back.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that he's going to start that up very soon.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's been going to practices all summer.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: And oh my gosh, I didn't know the first practice.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know if he could make it.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: The second practice, he got out of the pool.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, mom, I'm so tired.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: I go, so you don't want to go to the game center at the Y?
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, no, I'm fine.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fine.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then he finished playing Super Smash Bros.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: We set a timer for 10 minutes and he finished playing Super Smash Bros.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, okay, so now can you carry me to the car though?
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, no.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we're negotiating the exhaustion of hour-long swim practices in my house.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: Have you got roped into being a judge yet?
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I want to be a judge.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: I might be a timer.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: My mom did that.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do an Odyssey of the Mind judging, but I don't know that I want to be a swimming judging.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to like,
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to have to learn the strokes well enough to be like, oh,
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: disqualified because your arms didn't come up on your breaststroke the right way.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not, I don't know enough about the sport.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Sort of like when I became the manager of the soccer team and I was like,
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know what the field positions are.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to create the signup sheet for the snacks.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's the only job that I can do here.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, but now that both the kids are on the team together, I'm like, okay, I can volunteer now.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that'll be my fall.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, my mom.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: But at least I don't have to be outside.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, get used to the smell of chlorine all in your clothes and hair and stuff.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: Good times.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Ben said to me this morning that I smelled like chlorine and it was
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: because I just took the big kid to his – yesterday the big kid had his –
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: because they're not at the same time.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: Why would they use them for a big time?
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they have different, you know, conflicts.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: So today I'll take the little one to his swim practice.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: But yesterday I took the big kid and I was just sitting in the pool area for an hour and a half.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: So Ben was like, oh, cool, you smell like chlorine and you didn't even get wet.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, awesome.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: But better chlorine than BO.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, all the time.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take that.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: Tanisha, what about you?
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: What's Aggressively Human in your world right now?
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm going to go on the same theme around aquatics.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm also going to share about my oldest.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: I have an eight-year-old son that has recently fell in love with fishing.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_02: But
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: not harpooning.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: So much so, I just enrolled him into this summer camp.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's called Trackers, where they do fishing, boating, and foraging.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so he's outside all day, which is his love language.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm loving that he's loving the water and so much being outside that he wanted
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: to buy a drone.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: So this summer, over the past couple of weeks, we've been buying drones and testing them out.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I love, I see the scientists in him coming out, and I'm like, ooh.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I see the qualitative research in him coming out because he's been buying these drawings.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_02: She was like, I didn't like this.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_02: He's going on Amazon, writing reviews for it, telling people...
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_02: What he likes and don't likes about it, like in taking pictures.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like,
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: come on,
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: researcher, put those qualitative pieces in there, put those observations in there.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I love seeing him come to life and using this to like,
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_02: while he's sitting out waiting for,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: his line to catch,
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_02: he's like flying his drone and staying outside and just being so active.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just loving every moment of it.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I love this little junior scientist in training too, so.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like building the critical thinking skills while also being critical
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: of bad machinery that you're buying from Amazon.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: I love all of it.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: All of it.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: With that, Tanisha, thank you so much for being here.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: Meg, as always, a wonderful pleasure.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: And next week, we'll be back with yet another Aggressively Human episode.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you stuck away all the way through the end, make sure to give us a rating and review.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: Read them all.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: Go check out Tanisha's work.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back next week.