People make data far too complicated.
Data is a collection of numbers, text, audio, video and other information that is gathered together for reference or analysis. Let's focus on the numbers.
A business is full of numbers.
Invoices, likes on posts, inventory – it's all there. Your business is made up of a huge amount of numbers.
These numbers are telling you things.
These numbers are telling you things about your customers. They tell you when they usually buy, what they're worth, who they are, and what they think.
These numbers are telling you things about your own business:
how your business is performing,
where the bottlenecks are, and
what you should do to solve this or that issue.
Read your business numbers and they will tell you how to improve your business!
It might seem crazy, but it's true!
You need to start learning data. It's the art and science of talking to your business by reading numbers.
Here's what you need to know (and ignore everything else).
When you start learning how to talk with your business, you need to be aware of a few myths and mistakes.
Myths & Mistakes
Let me be clear: data is not information and neither it is insights.
Data is the actual numbers. Like the list all your receipts from the previous month.
Information is transformed data. It is transformed into the values you want to know. For example, from the receipts you can get the average income per time of day during the week.
Insight is your understanding of the information.
You reviewed the information from the tickets. You learned that you can relax at the beach on Tuesday afternoons because no one is buying then. However, you should never ever be closed on Thursday mornings because all your big customers buy during that timeslot.
This is last one is useful, isn't it?
The insight is useful to you, not the data. Unfortunately, you have the data, you have to work to get the insight.
So your business knows, with the tickets. You have to learn how to read your business numbers and extract the insight.
“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” – Carly Fiorina
Is Data dead?
I'm sure many of you have heard of AI, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and so on.
Just in passing, right?
This is the current trend.
Once you know what you're doing, AI is an invaluable tool for getting to your business insights faster.
The computer will calculate for you and provide you with general insights. You need to determine whether this is beneficial for you and your business. And take action based on your insights.
You must first learn what you are doing.
Otherwise you’ll do what I have done, and lose 10K.
You know the stakes.
Now get started!
Start learning how to talk with your company with these actionable tips. Here's how I would get started:
Step 1: Learn Critical Thinking
You must stop believing everything you see. Don't be fooled by every chart you see.
We must learn to ask questions. Download my free template to learn what critical thinking is and how to practise.
Step 2: Learn Visualisation
You need to learn how to read graphs and plots, what's in them, and – most importantly – what's not in them.
Learn to hear what's not been said. Always ask!
Step 3: Use the Dashboards already Provided
Learn how to use the automatic dashboards on your platforms, what you can find and build, how to connect the dots!
That's it!
Ignore the rest of the noise around you.
This is all you need to know to take the first step to talk to your business.
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