How Much Time do you REALLY Have?

Would you change anything if you, literally, knew when your time is up? Seems we each have an explicit biological clock embedded in our DNA.

This article talks about how researchers found that your Epigenetic clock can calculate biological age and predict your lifespan.

“Some individuals who fill their lives with fitness and healthy habits die younger than peers who live a much less healthy life. New research into the epigenetics of aging sheds some fresh light on the perplexing phenomenon of premature aging.”

It’s based on this research paper.

I thought this was super interesting.

Loads of implications:

  • Would you retire earlier or later based on your biological age?
  • Surely, this is going to have a tremendous effect on the Insurance industry.
    • I wonder how long until the industry adopts this as common practice to set your premiums.
  • Now that we know the marker (or measure), can we work to improve or manipulate it. (this is all over my head, I don’t even know if that’s a valid question)

Smart People are Flip-Floppers

I’m insecure. I have a small fear of commitment. When I make a decision, I’m always wondering if it was the best decision. What’re the unknown unknowns?

Bezos believes that “the smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved”

I’m not saying I’m amongst the smartest or smart at all. But this did give me solace, in that, at least I know I might be thinking along the same lines as smart folk.

I’m always curious: Is there a better way?

In the book “Thinking in Bets”, Poker pro Annie Duke says that when it comes to decision-making, decide as if you are betting all of your money on your choice. Don’t take shortcuts based on your biases; seek contrarian opinions and experienced counsel. Talk with folks who have had similar experiences and expertise who can critique your choices and illuminate your blindspots.

I’ll talk to anybody and everybody about anything.

You can always learn something from someone.

And you know what? You’ll probably disagree and hate me for saying this, but Recruiters and Sales folk are amongst the best to speak with because they speak to the most people. So, they often have a good perspective (as long as you understand their bias, you can really learn a lot).

Rise of the Chief Data Officer (CDO)

Image shows number of CXOs in USA for companies with >1000 employees. In other words, only ~5% have a Chief Data Officer (CDO). Yet, how many are undergoing “Digital Transformations” and/or trying to become “Data-Driven” and/or trying to leverage AI (which depends on (good) data)?

I believe that the CDO role is a huge gap at corporations and it presents a huge business opportunity; not to mention a probable necessity going forward in order to, just simply, compete.

If you segment just “Retailers”: CEO = 497 | CMO = 154 | CDO = 8

This means in Retail, only 1.61% of large retailers have a CDO!

My advice: Hire a CDO.

Here’s the ROI: We all know data is siloed. But instead of breaking silos, I see LOBs duplicating data across the org to suit their needs; thereby creating bigger silos. That’s a lot of duplicated expense and effort, as indiv LOBs protect their budget and interests.

Example, one company recently spoke with, Marketing and Analytics use Adobe Analytics. But Data Science chooses to use raw web logs.

A CDO can put the people, processes, and tech in place to streamline data across the org.

N.B. All #’s are from LinkedIn Sales Navigator, so probably not exact, but good enough for % analysis. Also, I included “Chief Analytics Officer” in the CDO category.

Makes “Hew” say Hmm

Life After Death? (if you can afford it)

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/ultra-wealthy-elitists-are-having-their-brains-frozen-so-that-they-can-come-back-to-life-100s-of-years-in-the-future

I suppose when you have millions of dollars at your time of death, there is no harm in spending $100K for a lottery ticket to be brought back to life one day.

This is a genius business model. In some regards, I think Evil Genius, but then again, who’s getting hurt? There is no con. But the current owners of the company, whom profit from this venture today, take $100K, put you in cold storage, and head to the beach? No worries about customer service or a customer complaining about bad service!

Does this fee include the revival surgery process?

Let’s say this technology does come to fruition in 50 years or 100 years. You’ve already given away your estate. You’re no longer ultra-wealthy. Are your (potentially ungrateful) great grandkids, who never knew you, going to take care of you?

 

Really Japan?

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-24/explosion-sex-dolls-threatens-japanese-race-extinction

Japanese are so interesting. They insist on preserving their strong culture with very strict immigration policies.They’re already one of the oldest populations in the world. Their birth rates have plummeted. And now the men are preferring sex dolls over the real deal?

 

Good Premise, but Dangerous Means?

https://www.manhattanda.org/tomorrow-d-a-vance-ends-prosecution-of-marijuana-possession-and-smoking-cases/

I am all for legalization of Marijuana. It’s long overdue. I don’t know the exact stats, but I’m sure that there are far too many folks currently incarcerated or blackballed with a criminal record because of minor marijuana charges.

But I don’t believe that a DA’s office should be allowed to do this. This is one man, single-handedly, changing the law, isn’t it? Doesn’t that set a dangerous precedence? Why doesn’t this go through the municipal or state government?

Data Wrangling is Career Strangling

Data wrangling is a necessary process when working with big data; most data, in reality. This opinion piece is not to diminish its importance. Nor, is this to be confused with Data Engineering. But I will argue that data wrangling is career strangling, in that it is holding you back in your career progression. Let me explain…

Firstly, let’s agree that the whole basis of big data is to whittle it down to little data, that we call “Insights”. The point of any data analysis is to identify a trend or anomaly. The point of a machine learning model is to find a set of defined patterns or assign a probability.

Observe any Data Scientist or Analyst presentation and the only pieces that get talked about are the Insights and the model. Zero time is spent explaining how the data was wrangled, despite that being 60-80% of the effort.

I am making the argument that data wrangling is low-level, tedious work that is wasted when an expensive resource such as a Data Scientist or Data Engineer or Analyst decides to take this on.

The best consultants know that:

You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour

The more time you spend on lower value work, the more you diminish your value.

And if you’re an Analyst / Data Scientist spending a greater portion of your time wrangling data, that’s much less time that you’re spending to understand the data, that’s much less time you’re spending to analyze the data, that’s much less time to you’re spending on delivering business value from the data.

When it comes to big data, I believe that folks are starting to realize that robust software engineering practices need to be put in place to ensure quality of the data pipeline and #datagovernance. …Cue the Data Engineer.

In today’s episode (Aug 14) of the Digital Analytics Power Hour (a wonderful podcast, btw), there was a great discussion about raw data and data virtualization. I didn’t feel that there was any consensus, so I’ll throw in my 2 cents.

A company must adopt a tool or process to virtualize the raw data for the Data Scientists and Analysts. Drawing from software principles, the solution — built in-house or purchased — must be robust, scalable, extendable, and re-usable.

This will save an immense amount of time (and headache).

For example, when working with raw clickstream data, you have billions of atomic events. In most cases, identity resolution is required over a specified period of time. If every Data Scientist or Analyst is starting with the raw data, I guarantee that each will resolve the identity in a different manner (different “code”). This leads to multiple, inconsistent “truths”. The Analysts / Data Scientists should only work from a consistent, consolidated schema for the vast majority of cases.

So, when I say “Data wrangling is career strangling”, it’s because you’re devoting too much time to work with a lower-assigned value.

[Tangential annecdote: I use Salesforce a lot in my work. If I’m to be diligent, the data entry could be up to 4 hrs a week. I hired a VA  on my own dime  to handle this. This allows me to spend more time on higher value (and quite frankly, more fun) tasks. I value my time]

In the end, businesses are results-oriented. If you can produce more positive business results in a shorter time frame, then your career trajectory will move up-and-to-the-right at an accelerated pace.

And it’s a compounding factor. Those that produce results are provided more opportunities. The sooner you produce results, the sooner those opportunities present themselves.

Focus on value delivered.

The faster you iterate, the faster you grow.

Why you should Build your CDP

Customer Data Platform (CDP). The more I read and learn about CDPs, the more I am convinced that most, large companies should have one. The CDP hype is real. BUT (I like big BUTs and I cannot lie), I’m a huge advocate for BUILD (Vs. Buy), in this case. I would not go with a CDP SaaS vendor.

Of course, there is always exception to the rule and, as with anything in technology fitting, it depends. But I would strongly consider to build in-house, by default.

This is a shift from my norm. I’ve always been on the vendor-side of things, in favor of the business case to BUY solutions. But, I see this as so strategic and core to a company, that it’s worth the investment to build it. There are tools on the market today to make this process feasible and achievable (more on that later).

When Caesars Entertainment declared bankruptcy a few years back, “The most valuable of the individual assets being fought over by creditors is the data collected over the last 17 years through the company’s Total Rewards loyalty program”. I’m going to argue that that is their CDP. This is a good write-up about it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/05/18/when-big-data-becomes-your-most-valuable-asset/#117b5a741eef

When you build a CDP, you are building an incredibly valuable asset.

Value is built through asset ownership, not renting.

Taken from this article (https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/data-management/what-is-a-customer-data-platform-and-what-are-the-benefits/), the CDP has three primary functions:

  1. They pull in customer data from the disparate data systems of your choice
  2. They match, merge and cleanse this data into a unified record for each customer
  3. They make these records visible to your other marketing tools to ensure the consistent treatment of customers

I’m going to add #4, from this Gartner blog (https://blogs.gartner.com/martin-kihn/what-is-this-thing-we-call-a-cdp/):

4. It is owned and operated by marketers

I like the way the author opened the article:

A new technology appears, seemingly from the ether, and promises to change our lives. Customer data integration, labeling and storage problems will disappear. Identities will merge. You’ll be able to find new audiences until your ribs squeak and deliver them to any execution system in the barn.

Oh, and it will scale, rarely fail and enable (yes) true one-to-one marketing.

The name of this magic machine is … CRM. It was 1998. Companies piled in, dropping $3.5 billion a year on apps and databases alone – consulting fees not included – and yet, by 2001, 50% of CRM projects “failed.”

The same thing happened, on a lesser scale, during the great marketing automation boom of the 2000s. And it’s happening again.

So, the CDP is supposed to accomplish what the CRM cannot do and what the DMP does not do. But we cannot forget Primary Function #4: It is owned and operated by Marketers.

If you thought the relationship between Sales and Marketing was challenging, it pales in comparison between the diatribe between Marketing and IT; hence, the rise of Marketing Technology teams? I wrote a post about this recently and highlighted this article by on chiefmartec by Scott Brinker, written in 2009 (the classics never die) .

Let’s be honest, these are massive projects; however, the potential value is huge. It’s no surprise that there are over 60 vendors in just a few short years, with a few of them pivoting to adopt this acronym as their primary identity. This is a project you only want to do once.

Do you want to be vendor-locked?

Many CMOs may not even live to reap the full benefits of their investment, given that the median tenure-ship of a CMO is 31 months (according to this source )

You have a CRM.

You have a DMP.

You have a Marketing Automation platform.

You have an EDW and possibly a Data Lake.

You have an enterprise BI solution.

Do you really need a CDP vendor?

(And I’ll double down on that question, if you’ve already implemented a SaaS Customer Journey solution, which most CDPs can/should be able to provide)

The one case where I’d fold quickly on the CDP vendor case is Datorama, if and only if, you’re already full stack Salesforce —negotiate hard at renewal time! 🙂

Here’s the kicker, the most expensive (and important) component of the CDP is your 1st-party behavioral data. The storage, but mainly the processing, of your digital analytics clickstream to match, merge, and cleanse this data into a unified record for each customer. That’s a lot of data! And you’re likely already storing it somewhere.

And if you’re a brand conglomerate, do you have a CDP per brand or do you aggregate or can you have both? I think you should have both, but this would be cost prohibitive (or hugely wasteful) with a SaaS vendor.

I’m going to circle back to Primary Function #4 because this a big reason folks choose a CDP vendor. …“My IT is backlogged; they can’t deliver in my required timeline; I want control”. All very likely true.

If I put my CMO hat on, I would find a consultant to architect the system. If done properly, this system would be a silo-buster and could help democratize A LOT of data throughout the org (see post on Data Silos here). Data/BI Analysts will go to town. Data Science can reap huge time savings. Many internal projects can spawn from a CDP; E.g., Marketing attribution. Endless possibilities, really.

Now, that then brings up the question of “Who’s budget?”. Ah, the joy of politics.

I will argue that the CMO should take this initiative on. They are the first and primary use-case. If I’m correct, that this will benefit multiple orgs, then that’s a big win for the CMO. That’s a CMO with enterprise-wide vision. That’s a future CEO.

In terms of time, there are many tools on the market that can be used to dramatically accelerate this project. In fact, I’ll put it out there, that with the right tools, this can be accomplished within several months.

If IT can’t handle it, I would consider starting with a consulting firm that can operate as a managed service, knowing that I can bring the resources in-house later, if that makes sense. This would be hosted in a virtual private cloud (and hopefully a solution would be flexible enough to not lock me into any one cloud vendor, either).

To conclude, if you don’t have a CDP project going, you’d be remiss if you didn’t get one going as soon as possible. But look inward first.

Quora: What small thing can each individual do every day to help shrink the wealth gap?

https://www.quora.com/What-small-thing-can-each-individual-do-every-day-to-help-shrink-the-wealth-gap/answer/Kerry-Hew

Figure out ways to own strong, appreciating, assets.

If you don’t own any assets and you just earn your salary and save your money. You strive for a certain percentage raise per year. Well, so does your boss and bosses boss and so on. They make more than you, so as time goes on, their dollar value increases faster than yours and the gap grows in perpetuity.

Another thing you can do, and many may not want to hear this — and I hate to get political — but perhaps something would be to get involved with politics and embrace capitalism. True Capitalism, that is.

To make myself clear, we do NOT have proper capitalism today. If we had true capitalism, the banks would have been allowed to fail and go bankrupt in 2008 during the GFC. Yes, it would have hurt, but we would have come out the other side stronger, with smarter institutions (in my opinion). Iceland was the model to follow.

But with true capitalism and limited regulations, it would provide more opportunity for the little guys to start their own companies, create more competition, and bridge the gap.

[Gee, for a self-proclaimed independent, I sure sound Republican, huh? To be clear, Establishment Republicans today aren’t real Republicans. And we definitely need some regulations in place and some social services. But enough of that political jibjab.]

Business ownership is the ONLY way to close the gap. If you have more businesses, it’s more competition, each business makes a little less money, and the gap closes. And again, the way to create more businesses is to remove as many barriers as possible to start new businesses. Case in point, look at what Amazon AWS service has done for the software industry. Million-Dollar, even billion-dollar businesses have started with an Amazon account and a credit card.

And to be clear, buying shares or acquiring equity in a business is a form of business ownership. I’ll even posit here that real estate is a form of business (it’s an asset, anyway).

 

Time to Start Paying Attention to Bitcoin again?

Bitcoin news has been quiet for a while, huh?

Now could be a time to start sneaking in (do it, NOT to make money, but to EDUCATE yourself).

Last year, May 5, 2017, I wrote this blog post. At that time, Bitcoin (BTC) was $1545 and Ethereum (ETH) was $95. Even after the insane run up and subsequent crash, today’s prices are BTC = ~$8100 and ETH = $466.

BTC has shown nice price support and has shot out of a Head-and-Shoulder chart pattern. H&S is a typical pattern found at major turning points (according to classical chartist, Peter Brandt).

ETH is forming an Ascending Triangle pattern. I love this pattern because it provides a nice risk-reward setup. Buy up to $480, sell if it drops below ~$450.

Look, I’ve written this from a trade/investment perspective, but going back to my article, “The best thing you can do is educate yourself”.  

Open a Coinbase acct, buy $10 worth, get your own wallet, and move the coins around.

See what it feels like to hold digital currency. It’s a little scary, if I’m honest, but I’ve learned a lot and it’s tempered my excitement about decentralized cryptos for the masses (at least for western civilization).

If you really want to roll the dice, look at 0x coin. 🙂

An Example of Poor Email Marketing

[LinkedIn Post]

Dear Email Marketers,

How about using a bit more creativity (or even effort) in engaging with your audience?

Let me provide some suggestions and I’d love to hear more from others in comments.

First, I’m sorry to call out The Venetian® I The Palazzo®, Resort Hotel & Casino I Las Vegas Sands Corp.; I really like the property and it is the premier large conference center (maybe in all of the US). But it’s a good example.

I stayed at The Venetian for a couple days during the Adobe Summit conference. For starters, they should know this and my purpose (i.e., persona = business traveler).

Ever since that stay, I get an email once every 2-5 days with an “Up to 25% rates” offer and “Book Now” CTA. Different image. Sometimes a highlight of a restaurant or other amenity.

I can probably unsubscribe and consider my “research” done.  I know what they’re going to send; it’s predictable and just clutter.

Consider that not every email needs to have an offer. Vegas has so much to do; why not highlight other things to do that may catch my attention?

Maybe give a voice to employees and expose the personalities. What does “Concierge Joe” recommend? It would be a better experience if I read about his recommendations and then later engaged with him upon my visit.

It goes without saying, Machine Learning can help tremendously with relevancy for email marketing. Connect to share ideas on this and more.

Ideas from others?

Why IT and Marketing are Diametrically Opposed [commentary]

[LinkedIn Post]

When Business and IT clash, it’s the customer who loses. Everyday you stagnate, you put your customers at risk. When you keep your data siloed, it’s your customer’s experience that suffers.

Amazon has over 500K employees and they are foster a culture with  “Day 1” mentality; a mantra meant to convey that the company will never stop being a start-up.

Has any company in history disrupted as many individual companies and distinct industries as Amazon?

I’ve been on the vendor side for over 12 years now, selling technology into various businesses. Business wants to be nimble and move fast. IT is often opposed and it’s not their fault, necessarily.

It’s a classic scenario.

This old article by Scott Brinker absolutely nails it on the head.

I believe these opposing goals has helped fuel the rise of SaaS, as businesses could by-pass IT. But with Data being such a huge asset (and security risk), the pendulum is swinging back a bit. Business must work with IT.

“We’re a big company, we move slowly”

Okay, but who suffers? YOUR CUSTOMER.

 

Last I checked Amazon is a big company too.

They put their customer first.

It’s always Day 1 at Amazon.