#302: It Was a Dark and Stormy Insight...

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Analytics Power Hour, Episode #302: "It Was a Dark and Stormy Insight..."
Date: July 21, 2026
Hosts: Tim Wilson, Mo Kiss, Michael Helbling (briefly), Val Kroll (absent), Julie Hoyer (not present)
Guest: Aleyah Harris (Strategic Storytelling Advisor, Evolution Collective)

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Episode Overview

This episode delves deeply into the intersection of data analysis and storytelling. Hosts Tim Wilson and Mo Kiss, joined by guest Aleyah Harris, explore how analysts can go beyond just reporting numbers to actually influencing decisions and driving change through compelling narratives. Drawing from her experience as a speaker, CEO, and storytelling advisor, Aleyah shares actionable frameworks, anecdotes, and mindset shifts for transforming data presentations from sterile fact dumps to memorable stories with business impact.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Data Alone Isn't Enough

Tim Wilson introduces the core theme, riffing on Poe’s "The Raven," lamenting the lack of impact from pure data:

"Just the facts...is not only not effective, I think it's uniquely ineffective when it comes to actually getting somebody to make a decision and drive change." [04:00]

Aleyah Harris explains that stories are hardwired into how humans process and retain information:

"Stories are how our brains work. You can give me 10 bullet points of data...I might remember one bullet point of data, but I will always remember the story." [04:27]

The Stevie Wonder Story

Aleyah recalls a pivotal experience cooking for Stevie Wonder, who, despite being non-sighted, collaborates joyfully on music:

"He never put limitations on himself...I asked myself, where have I been letting excuses hold me back?" [07:00]

She uses this as a metaphor for business transformation and how stories inspire action—something analysts aim for.

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2. The Power and Structure of Storytelling

Aleyah and the hosts discuss the mechanics of narrative comprehension:

• Story vs. data: Stories use familiar structures (e.g., hero's journey) that create expectation and hold attention.

"If someone is telling you something in...a recognizable story structure, you're hooked." [10:17]

• Story frameworks shape behavior: Understanding narrative frameworks enables analysts to control the messaging and guide decision-making.

"You control the story structure. You control the narrative around certain data so you get the end result you’re looking for." [12:20]

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3. Integrating Data into Narrative

Mo Kiss raises a common analyst concern:

"How do you think data people weave the data into the story successfully?" [15:41]

Aleyah reframes the question:

"The question is not how do I weave data into story, but how do I create a story from this data? What is it trying to tell me?" [16:37]

Key recommendations:

• Go beyond the numbers—understand business context, goals, and implications.
• Ask proactive questions so your analysis aligns with organizational priorities, not just technical accuracy.

Aleyah's fruit vendor analogy illustrates this:

"We're not a fruit seller; we're a fruit packager. Ranking for apples, oranges, plums doesn't make us any money." [19:54]

Tim Wilson adds:

"There’s a belief that if you pulverize the data enough, something will emerge...But sometimes, the reality is just that things are steady and that's the story." [21:38]

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4. From Storyteller to Story Author

Aleyah articulates the value of curiosity and ongoing dialogue:

"You’re not just the storyteller. You’re the story author, which makes you a more valuable employee...You're my partner." [24:45]

Asking better questions and anticipating what decision-makers need leads to more strategic, impactful analysis.

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5. The Art of Delivery—Owning the Room

Mo draws out tips for analysts nervous about presenting:

"It’s not just what you say, but how you say it...how did you develop that skill?" [27:33]

Aleyah’s advice:

• Framework first: Story structure does the heavy lifting, even for introverts or monotone speakers.
• Clarity breeds confidence: Know why you're speaking, what makes this message timely/important, and what difference you’ll make.

"People feel insecure with speaking because there’s a lack of clarity, which masquerades as a lack of confidence." [29:42]

• Authenticity matters: Present in a style true to yourself, not as a copy of an energetic keynoter.
• Body language: Be conscious of your posture and gestures, as they convey as much as words.

"The actual way to showcase your intelligence is to make the dumbest person in the room understand the most complicated thing you do." [53:15]

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6. Making Storytelling Practical for Analysts

Mo asks for actionable steps for those preparing an upcoming presentation:

"How do I sit down...and craft that story?" [40:43]

Aleyah’s practical checklist:

• Identify your controlling idea: Why are you presenting? What's your point of view?
• Use a simple story structure:
  • Beginning (setup): Here’s what the data shows.
  • Middle (challenge/insight): But there’s a problem or something unexpected.
  • End (recommendation/lesson): Here’s what we learn, and what to do next.

Example:

"If data looks great because of an outlier client, say so, and recommend where to really focus marketing dollars based on the true picture." [41:10]

Recommends taking every opportunity to practice—in an elevator pitch, in speaking with colleagues, and by speaking out loud before building slides.

Tim notes:

"If the analyst can't answer why they're speaking, except 'it's a weekly meeting,' that's a warning sign—you’re just reporting, not telling a story." [45:57]

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7. Building a Storytelling Mindset

• Storytelling becomes easier and faster with practice and use of repeatable frameworks.
• The goal: shape meetings and analysis around questions and impact, not rote reporting.

"You are training your business partners that you're just there to crank out as much volume as possible—and they're bored. They can't use it." [36:46] "Stories are just as logical as numbers—so use frameworks to make them repeatable and predictable." [38:10]

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8. Overcoming Common Analyst Excuses

The group discusses excuses analysts make for not embracing narrative:

• “My job is just to pull the numbers.”
• “Having a point of view is risky because someone might disagree.”

Aleyah rebuts:

"If I go for an analysis and just get a bunch of numbers—like, do I have diabetes or not? ...Finish it. Tell me the thing." [48:01]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Aleyah Harris: “What is the story your data is actually telling? Make what is obvious to you, obvious to other people.” [17:52]
• Tim Wilson: “Just the facts is uniquely ineffective.” [04:00]
• Aleyah Harris: “You become the story author, not just the storyteller.” [24:45]
• Mo Kiss: “You have to bring it up to a different altitude because they don’t have the subject matter expertise.” [54:10]
• Aleyah Harris: “If it’s not helping someone participate in their own transformation, stop tinkering.” [51:06]
• On frameworks: Aleyah: “Frameworks are how you make stories as predictable, repeatable, reliable as any technical process.” [38:10]
• On simplification: “The smartest people are the ones who make things sound simplest.” [53:15]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 04:00: Why facts alone fail to drive change; the necessity of narrative.
• 07:00: Aleyah’s Stevie Wonder story—how narrative enables transformation.
• 10:17: Structure and expectations—why stories hook the audience.
• 16:37: Reframing: “Don’t weave data into story, build your story from the data.”
• 19:54: Analogy—ranking for the wrong thing (fruit vendor story).
• 27:33: Developing presentation skills: enthusiasm, style, and clarity.
• 41:10: Hands-on framework for building an analyst’s narrative.
• 45:57: The risk of purposeless reporting and anchoring to “why.”
• 48:01: Diagnostic reporting done wrong—tell me the upshot.
• 51:06: Automation vs. value—don’t scale what isn’t working.
• 53:15: The “dumbest in the room” rule for communication clarity.

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Additional Resources (Last Calls)

• Aleyah Harris recommends Heal Your Body by Louise Hay for becoming aware of how your physical state impacts communication confidence. [55:00]
• Mo Kiss shares a personal story about her son learning the meaning of "matriarchal," and plugs the TED Talk “You’re Contagious” by Vanessa Van Edwards for more on the power of body language in presentations. [61:57]
• Tim Wilson highlights The Pudding’s deep dive on similes in literature as an example of playfully exploring language patterns—and the unexpected humanity such explorations can reveal. [63:18]

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Tone & Style

The episode is marked by lively banter, humor, self-deprecation, and an insistently practical approach. Aleyah is energetic, candid, and direct; Tim is self-aware and prone to “rants”; Mo is empathetic and often seeks practical “how-tos.” The overall message: the power of story isn’t just in inspiration but in enabling real business impact—something any analyst can and should strive for, one presentation at a time.

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Bottom Line Takeaways:
Don’t let your data “speak for itself.” Take ownership of the narrative. Strive for clarity, curiosity, and connection to business purpose. Use frameworks to make the process natural. And—finish it: always tell the full story, not just the numbers.

Transcript

[Aleyah Harris]

Foreign. Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. Analytics topics covered conversationally and sometimes with explicit language.

[Tim Wilson]

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. This is episode number 302. I'm Tim Wilson and I thought I would kick things off with the start of a poem by Edgar the Analyst Poe. Once upon a midnight dreary, While I pondered, weak and weary, over many a deck and query heaped upon the office floor, While our business partners, barely waking, kept on nodding, kept on faking interest in the point I'm making Till they wandered out the door, cried I. Surely truth and data should compel them to the core, but. But these are just facts and nothing more. Okay, if you're nervous that I'm going to do a raven length recitation, have no fear, we'll leave it at a single stanza. What we're going to chat about today though, is that pesky reality that while data and its analysis is valuable and is our bread and butter, the data alone is rarely enough to drive positive behavioral change. We need to be compelling to alter the beliefs of our business partners in order to motivate change. And that requires a lot more than just the results of our analyses. For that discussion, I'm joined for this episode by my co host or by my co host. My co host, Mo Kiss Mo. Are you pronouncing any words funnily like I am today?

[Mo Kiss]

Oh, you know, well, to be fair, I'm not starting off with a poem with a dramatic reading. So, you know, I feel like my job's a lot easier today.

[Tim Wilson]

I also had a dog that we're dog sitting walking underfoot throughout all of that. So, you know, if I held it together, good for me.

[Mo Kiss]

Excellent.

[Tim Wilson]

We were also going to be joined by Val Kroll. She unfortunately is under the weather at the last minute. Wetter oh, this is not going to be good if we're going to talk about diction and using appropriate words. So what we thought we'd do was get a professional who actually doesn't butcher the English language at a moment's notice like I am doing so far. So we recruited a guest for this discussion after we saw her totally own. I mean like dominate own the room at Marketing Analytics Summit earlier this year out in Santa Barbara. Aleyah Harris is a strategic storytelling advisor for leaders and organizations. She wears many hats at the Evolution Collective, including both CEO and program developer and lead trainer for Spark the Stage Signature, where she builds your keynote so you leave with a finished presentation, a professional speaker platform, and skills to own the stage. She sets a high bar for how she owns the stage, she's a best selling author and a TEDx speaker. And today she is our guest. Welcome to the show, Aleya.

[Aleyah Harris]

Thank you so much for having me. I mean I really love Speaking Analytics Summit, but I think I might have loved that poem maybe just a little bit more.

[Tim Wilson]

So that was one where there was an AI assist, but then I had to do a heavy edit. So I did practice my dramatic reading a couple of times. So.

[Aleyah Harris]

And you could. It showed it was quite. And then I also would like to lower expectations for all of your losers. I make no guarantees that I will say all of my words properly either, so just in case that was required.

[Tim Wilson]

Well, I started by setting the bar pretty low, so. Well, we're thrilled to have you.

[Aleyah Harris]

Thank you for having me.

[Tim Wilson]

Well, so when we saw you speak, one of the things you really hammered on pretty hard is something that I think we all sort of know, but then as analysts we like to ignore. That's that just the facts, like just delivering the data is not only is it not effective, I think it's uniquely ineffective when it comes to actually getting somebody to make a decision and drive change. So if that's a fair way for me to put words in your mouth, can you maybe talk about that a little bit? Like why are stories so critical when it comes to delivering information in a business context?

[Aleyah Harris]

You put words into my mouth beautifully and wonderfully. I'm here for all of that. So the reason why it's important is because stories are how our brains work. They function in story. You can give me 10 bullet points of data, but you could tell me a story and I might remember one bullet point of data, but I will always remember the story. I tell this story, which is a true story about how I in not I say, a former life, but then I'm also very woo. So I think sometimes people mean like I meant like you know, back in like the 1800s when my name was Melissa. Like no, I mean like earlier on in my career I was a private chef. I was a private chef for lots of celebrities and one of them was Stevie Wonder. And one of my steps favorite moments was we were in Utah because he was singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir of which I had a front row seat to their rehearsal concert. It's an amazing thing but I remember the night before we are all a bunch of us were in his hotel suite. I was sitting on his bed and he was like doodling up a song on his phone and I started like doodling it with him and I Was like, oh, my God, am I making a song with Stevie Wonder? Is that. Is that. Don't worry, it's not on anybody's record. I asked if we were gonna, like, get this out into the world. He promptly laughed at me. But then the more that I really honed in this situation, I mean, he was adding in lyrics and beats and melody, and we were like, just doodling up a song. And I took me a second to remember that this man is not sighted, right? Like, I was looking at him, doing everything he's doing, thinking it's all normal, talking to him, engaging with him like I would a sighted person, but he isn't one. Like, take a pause for a second, be like, wait a minute. She never put limitations on himself. Yes. I mean, we have the Grammy Awards, the fact that he's like a musical genius, blah, blah, blah, blah. But one of the main moments that I remember about him, about him reaching out possibilities, was us making this song with him doing all this stuff on his phone as a non sighted human. And the question I asked myself was, where have I been letting excuses hold me back? I have all of the resources, all of the things that I can do with myself. He has a severe impediment compared to a lot of other people. And yet this man is a household name across the world. What could I be overcoming that I've been letting keep me small? And it was in that moment that I decided that I actually didn't want to be part of Stevie Wonder's entourage. I didn't want to cook anymore. I wanted to be an entrepreneur and not be part of someone else's entourage, but develop one on my own, right? But it was that moment. Now I sat and I told you the story. Your listeners here have heard this story. Instead of telling you a story about how overcoming obstacles and watching someone else do it, inspired me to overcome those obstacles, inspired me to overcome those obstacles and become a business owner. I could have given you a bunch of data. Around 50% of people that have obstacles to overcome do it in these step ways. Step 1, 2, 3. 25% of this X percent of this. If we have this large demographic percentage of this. Or I could tell you my Stevie Wonder story. Which one do you think is more compelling? Which one do you think is going to inspire more people? The story or the bullet pointed list of data? What do you think will actually inspire people to participate in their own transformation? Which is what I'm in the business of doing and which, Spoiler alert. All analysts are in the business of Doing. That's why you're analyzing things in the first place. Because you're trying to make something happen. You're trying to illustrate, hey, something's going on. There's connections that need to be made here, and there's things that need to be done because of these connections. That's my story.

[Tim Wilson]

Not to over index to that story, but that the world of like overcoming obstacle. Like, you. You sort of had a. I don't know if you could fully plot like a hero's journey sort of story out of it. But is there a part of it too, that even as you're telling the story, I was finding myself saying, well, I know where we ended, because you're not doing that anymore. So I'm kind of listening because it's got a narrative form. I have no idea if this is right or not. I know it's going somewhere. Okay? Because it's a narrative, I know it's going somewhere. So I kind of have to be on the edge of my seat because I kind of know. Whereas if I'm looking at a chart or I'm getting the weekly readout, there's this kind of nature of like. And then there's going to be another slide and then there's going to be more data where you clearly, with a story, you are on a progression to somewhere, which makes it easier for the audience to pay attention.

[Aleyah Harris]

Stories. Unless you're like Uncle Bob at Thanksgiving, which I talk about all the time. And I had an Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob wasn't actually the problem. Uncle Bill was the actual problem. Uncle Bob was fine. I have Uncle Bob and Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill was a real long winded one. Anyways, I digress about my uncles. Unless you're that person at Thanksgiving or insert holiday dinner here, where you're just like, oh, my God, you're talking about absolutely nothing. This isn't a story. This is word vomit. You know that if someone is telling you something in what you said was the magic words, a recognizable story structure, you're hooked. So when people say story is important, they think words are more important than numbers. That's what they hear, that it's words that are important and words are important. But it's not just words. It's words put in a certain sequence, in a certain framework, in a storytelling framework, because that's how our brains work. So, yes, you knew there was going to be a payoff because I intentionally was telling it in a storytelling framework. You knew, oh, this is familiar. This feels like a movie. I have seen a book I have read she, unless she's like really bad at what she does, is not going to leave me hanging and just being like, yeah, so what were we talking about? I just wanted to tell you that, like, I thought, like, pajamas are cool. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you knew I was going somewhere with this because I used something that your brain recognized, which meant that you were paying more attention. You were. You were also the details of the story just in case they were important later, which is what you want people to do with your data. What do you need them to understand, know, and believe about this data that you're weaving into a story because it's important for them to use it to make decisions with later. So you've entered into my very geeky favorite territory of storytelling frameworks, because stories all exist in a framework. Good stories. The most popular one that we deal with is the Hero's Journey, like what you mentioned. Spot on. There are lots of other types of frameworks, and each framework allows you to elicit a different type of response and help people to behave in a different way. That you get to this sounds a little manipulative, but work with me. You get to control, because you are controlling the story structure. You control the story structure. You understand the certain beliefs that people have and they hold as they walk through the world. Which means that you can control the messages and the narrative. You give around certain data so that you get the end result that you're looking for.

[Michael]

Tim, here's a common measurement problem. The tracking event you care about does not always have the user information you need, right?

[Tim Wilson]

Someone identifies themselves once, maybe with an email or phone number, but later events may come through with missing or incomplete data.

[Michael]

And that's what Stapenricher is designed to help with. It's a state power up that securely stores selected user data from incoming requests and uses it to enrich future events when information is missing.

[Tim Wilson]

So instead of every event standing alone, Enricher can help connect activity across sessions, devices, and even online and offline touch points.

[Michael]

Exactly. That means better event match quality, stronger attribution, and a clearer view of the full customer journey.

[Tim Wilson]

And importantly, Enricher is built with privacy and consent in mind, including settings that align enrichment cookies with your site's marketing consent, preferences.

[Michael]

And teams can even upload historical data from tools like Shopify, Klaviyo, CRM exports, or offline customer lists.

[Tim Wilson]

So if your measurement has gaps, Stape Enricher can help fill them responsibly.

[Michael]

Use the link in the podcast description and check out Stape enricher Today, Michael

[Tim Wilson]

Askwise Prism version 3.0 is here, and it officially turns the analyst into the admin.

[Aleyah Harris]

Ooh.

[Michael]

I have always wanted power. Not delete the database power. More like stop asking me which revenue number is real power.

[Tim Wilson]

Exactly. With Asky AI, prison becomes a real workspace platform. You manage the data, control the context, and empower users wherever they work.

[Michael]

So I'm not just answering questions. I'm curating intelligence.

[Tim Wilson]

Yes. The new memory portal is mission control for what your agents know about your business.

[Michael]

Meaning I can search the memory, endorse what's right, reject what's wrong, and tune it in plain English.

[Aleyah Harris]

Yep.

[Tim Wilson]

Importance, trust and decay scores adjust automatically.

[Michael]

Ooh, decay scores. Finally, a polite way to say this metric definition has gone bad in the fridge.

[Tim Wilson]

And context notes are now refreshable. Upload playbooks, call transcripts, glossaries, business rules, then refresh them instantly or on a schedule.

[Michael]

I like that. So no more stale context haunting every analysis like a ghost with a spreadsheet.

[Tim Wilson]

Go to Ask Y AI and join the waitlist and use the code APH to get up at the top of that list. That's ask the letter Y AI with code aph.

[Mo Kiss]

Can I dig into that a little bit? Because from a. I suppose I'm just going to talk about the problem out loud and then we can kind of have a bit of a discussion about it. One of the things that I observe with data people is that they think the data should speak for itself. Right. But what we're discussing here is really that the narrative in the story is the more important component. But how do you think data people then weave the data into the story successfully? Because obviously, that's the specialized skill that we bring to the table. That's the information that folks don't have. And they might not remember all of the data points. You want them to remember the story, but how do they pull those things together?

[Tim Wilson]

Well, I'd also say they're expected to bring the data. A lot of times they're dealing with the norms of the organization. If they showed up and went, no data, compelling story, that feels super, super risky. So, yeah, there's. I'll add. That's my. My addendum to your question.

[Aleyah Harris]

I. I love your question. And it is definitely how data people think. And it is a fundamentally flawed question in its structure. And I'm very glad you asked it this way, because this is how it's asked all the time. How do I weave data into story? What you really need to ask yourself is how Do I create a story from this data? What is the data trying to tell me? What am I not only extrapolating, but how do I use the key numbers and the key points along the journey of what people need to do in order to use this data? So when you're thinking of a perspective, let's say you have a dashboard, you have website analytics in front of you, or you have any data set, really, and you guys have actually the hard job because you have to know all of the technical part. And you're like, great. I just spent a longer than necessary, exorbitant amount of time pulling together this data, making sure it's clean, making sure it's correct, making sure it's usable data. And now I got to explain it to you, which is where I think some of this data should speak for itself comes from. Because I'm done. I am now done with this. Now, shouldn't this be your job? When actually, no, it's not. You put a bow on your work by saying, okay, let me take a deep breath. I now have this information. What. What am I going to do with this? If I have this information? How am I using this to make business decisions? How should somebody use this to make business decision? If I have SEO metrics, I have a bunch of, you know, these are just hot keywords. These are how people are finding you. This is the search. This is the. What does this really say? Well, it's saying, this is the problem. This is the solution. This is where we are in the journey. This is where we're trying to go. The challenge with a lot of data people is you are the smartest person in the room. I said it. I'm going to keep saying it. I said it in the conference. I'm going to say it again. You're like, well, isn't it obvious? Isn't it obvious what this says? No, ma', am, it's not. Sheila. It's not obvious to someone who is not you. So you need to make what is obvious to you obvious to other people. And the way that you do that is by busting out of your silo and asking questions that might even seem unrelated to your data, like, what are our business goals? What are you trying to do with the website? Like, what. What are our larger marketing initiatives for this next year? Right? Where? What are we struggling with as a company? And then you look at the data and you're like, okay, I got it. So, like, this happened to me where I do not pretend to be an analyst nor to Play 1 on TV. So let's get this real clear before this next story, okay? But I. I know enough to make me dangerous. And I was. I got from my SEO person a. A very nice dashboard of which he didn' do what I said. And he just sent me a bunch of keywords and numbers and rankings and all of this stuff. And I looked at it and I said, no wonder why all of our marketing is going nowhere. We're doing he. Because he goes, you're doing great. You're ranking really well for. I'm not going to use actual keywords. I don't want to out the company for apples and oranges and plums. That's awesome. You're a fruit seller, right? You want to be ranking for apples, oranges, and plums. This is great. To which I replied to him the equivalent of, well, we're actually not like a fruit seller in that we don't want to be known as a fruit seller. We're actually like a fruit packager. Like, we sell the fruit packaging like the bowls, not the fruit. So ranking for apples and oranges and plums might sound great. Like, we're the number one person that when you Google apples, you're gonna find that doesn't make us any money. So you then, as the SEO person, need to be able to look at data because you know that we actually want to be ranked for the bulls, not the apples. And it'd be like, oh, I understand our marketing objectives. I understand our business objectives. I actually know that this data is bad, says bad things. Even though we're. We're number one. Page one, the SERP is banging, our name is everywhere for the wrong thing. Our content strategy was wrong and bad and all over the place. And wouldn't it have been nice for my SEO person to know that before they came to me, who was the CMO so excited about their data?

[Tim Wilson]

I mean, I think you're hitting on some, like, very fundamental things. I think there is. There are times where it's, I have this data. I have been told to crunch this data. I'm the expert on this data, therefore, I need to crunch the data until I find something that I can slap a label of a story onto. And I will claim hard that there is a lot of data that is just showing things are going as they expected. That's a massive issue with the industry writ large. There's a belief that if you pulverize the data enough, something will emerge. I think analysts wind up in this spot saying, well, I got to do a deliverable. Then they Start slapping what story can I tell? But their story winds up being, oh, look, you're ranking for this irrelevant fruit. You're ranking for fruit when that's not what you're selling. But that pairs with the flip side, really asking, not even starting with the data, I would think it's not start with the data and what stories is telling me. It's starting with what. What is the real problem I'm trying to solve or what is the real idea that I'm trying to validate to me that. And then I may go to the data, but then I've got kind of the kernel of a story because I'm trying to, I kind of know at the front kind of what a couple of alternate endings. The ending is either go spend more money there or spend less money there or whatever it is. I've kind of outline some possible endings to the story. Then I'm using the data or the experiment or the research, whatever it is. I think, I mean, I just feel like analysts find themselves saying they sort of paint themselves into a corner. And then they say, well, I don't know, I don't have a story to tell. And it's like, well, yeah, because you kind of painted yourself into a corner to start with. That got triggered on a few fronts.

[Aleyah Harris]

I didn't know analysts were so judgy.

[Tim Wilson]

I'm pretty judgy. Let's not paint too broadly.

[Aleyah Harris]

I say that, I say that in the way like you're judging your story as your data as bad as it telling like a bad or unnecessary story. Just tell this, just tell the story. Like, tell me what the story actually is and allow it to be. Tell me what then you are now what does that make you as an analyst more curious about? Okay, everything's going like how it's supposed to. Is this the direction that we want to take it for the next five, ten years? Tell me now. CMO this direct. This is what you, you told me you wanted to know. We were ranking for these things, we're ranking for those things. It's all good. I can leave it at that. Or I could. Yeah, we're ranking for these things. And what does that mean? Often analysts are supposed to be the source of truth. And I would have loved it and love it more when I'm working a fractional basis as a cmo. If analysts ask me more questions, that, I mean, I guess depends on the personality of whoever you working for. Right. But if the analysts that I have had had been like, great, here's the information. It's what we. This is ranking here. This is what this is saying. This is a story that is telling the story that we are the best in the market, we are the worst in the market. We're ranking high for these keywords. The money that you wanted to spend on additional whatever you can spend. Great. I would love then the next thing to be like, now tell me this is great for right now. What about next quarter? Like, is this what we're still trying to do? Because then I can start monitoring this in place and then use your freaking brain. Do the analysis. This is how you get to do the analysis that you want to do. By asking me the questions in advance and not being so reactionary. So then not. You're not just the storyteller. You then become the story author, which makes you a more valuable employee for me as a marketing lead, because you're now my partner. You're the person who is asking. Because I might know what I'm doing, but I might not know what I need to be looking at to know in advance what the signals are to tell me if this. I should be moving in this direction. If. If I'm moving in a certain direction. The early signs that it's working or not working. You know that. So ask me the question. So you can know what to monitor, you can know what to measure. So you're not coming back to me every month saying, looks great. Because I've had that too. It's annoying.

[Tim Wilson]

I might have tried to start an entire consultancy based on the premise that you need to do more talking and interrogating of the ideas of the people in the company before you jumped into the data. So my heart is singing because you just sort of put on another hat of the CMO hat. I think analysts. There's this wiring of listening for a data poll and wanting to get out of the room as fast as possible. You start to say, well, I kind of think our SEO. And they're like, great, I can go pull an SEO report. As opposed to stopping and saying, I don't think you really give two shits about your SEO. What are you really trying to do? You're trying to do X and Y and Z. I think that the CMOs and the other business partners, they try to meet the analysts where they are by using their terminology, and the analysts mishear that as being overly prescriptive. Okay, I'm off on a rant.

[Mo Kiss]

Can I pivot things a little bit?

[Aleyah Harris]

That's okay. I'm right there with you.

[Mo Kiss]

You just said something, Tim, that I want to dig into. They want to get out of the room as quickly as possible. And Aleyah, one of the things that I just really observed, both watching you present and talking to you now, is this absolutely infectious enthusiasm. And just like Tim said in the intro, right? Like you own the stage. And I suppose one of the things I'd love to get into is like, yes, the story is important, but it's also how you tell it, especially if it's like, in a presentation format. So how did you develop that skill? I'm someone who didn't used to do public speaking. I was petrified of public speaking. I had to really put in a lot of energy and learn how to do it. And I feel like maybe we had a similar tact where I just took all my nervous energy and tried to channel it into enthusiasm. But I do feel like there are so many folks who. It is such a daunting thing. And if you tell the story in a really average way, people probably still won't listen. Right. They might remember a bit of it, but it's like so much of why you're persuasive is how you tell it. So can you share your tips and tricks on that part?

[Aleyah Harris]

Well, well, first, that is true, but the framework, once you learn the actual storytelling frameworks, it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Even if you have a monotone voice, even if you're not super energetic, the framework does a lot of heavy lifting. So when I work with people and I help them put together their keynotes and I help them get on stage and feel confident on stage, I always ask them to create videos and we critique them and their delivery. And the very next thing I say is, and don't try to be me, because if you have a great gregarious personality, then great. Like, I am like this all the time. I don't. This is not like how I am on stage, how I am on the body. I'm like this all the time. It's a lot. I know, but. But it's up to how I am on stage because that's how I am in life. I don't want an introvert who is normally a much more serious, put together individual to try to then emulate my style. They're going to be awkward and everyone's going to feel awkward in the audience. That's not going to work. I want them to use a storytelling structure and then find their voice. A lot of times people feel insecure with speaking because there's a lack of clarity and a lack of clarity, causes and or masquerades as a lack of confidence. And there's more that you need to be clear on than you think that you do. It's not just, what am I going to say? Like, what are my bullet points? What's my message? Like, that's very important. But you need. The more data points you can be clear on how to. I couldn't help myself, the better. So, yes, what is your message? Are you crystal clear? But why are you delivering that message? Why are you standing in that room right now? Why are you the only person that can deliver that message right now to these human beings? Why do you deserve to be listened to? Why is that message at this time going to cause someone else to participate in their own transformation? Those are the types of things you get clear on. And so it doesn't matter whether you are a jokester, doesn't matter if you're serious, doesn't matter if you have some other personality type. If you are clear on why on the whys, you're clear on the what. Which most people actually are a lot clearer on the what than they give themselves credit for. Right? Like, you know what you're going to say. That's actually the easiest part. It's the whys that they need to work out. And then once you do that, then you get clear on what do I do with my hands. Right, Your physical body in space, how do I want to show up? If I show up with my hands like this, or standing like this, how will I be perceived? Okay, if I show up still me, but I hold my hands out, how am I perceived? And you start then becoming curious about how bodies look in space. Like, you walk down the street and you see someone with their hands on their hips, what do you think that they're feeling? You walk down, you see someone, like, waving their hands, flailing in the air, what do you think that they're feeling? Right? And you start understanding, oh, I'm actually clear on the story that bodies send. So now I'm clear how to hold myself in space. And now I'm clear on why I'm there. I'm clear on what I'm saying. And most importantly, I am clear that. And this is true again, no matter what what you're talking about, I am clear that in this moment, at this time, I will make a difference in someone else's life with what comes out of my mouth. I will pause it, period. Not trying to, like, gas you up. It's just kind of like it is what it is. We can get metaphysical about it if you want to. Just believe me. Trust me, this is not that long of a podcast. You will make a difference in someone's life with whatever's coming out of your mouth right now. So don't worry about you being effective or not worry about the other stuff and getting clear on how you will be the most effective you can possibly be on that stage with whatever time that you are given. And everything else will work itself out. It's amazing. As I work through these things with people, with my clients, the clearer we are, the more confident they get. In the beginning of my program, I don't talk at all about, like, how your rates should be when you try to speak. I don't talk about speaking goals. I'm talking about nothing. There's no goal setting until the end. And I one time had a client ask me or give me feedback like, well, that seems a little backwards. Like, I'm used to, you know, doing goal setting at the beginning. And it would have been really nice to have my goal set in the beginning. And I said, I get that. I'm type A too. But if I asked you in the beginning when you were unclear about who you were, why you were there, if you had value, if your stories mattered, if you matter, and you were having like an existential crisis that you didn't even know you were having, and I asked you how much you should charge to be on that stage, you would have said I should pay them to let me have the honor of opening my mouth. Now you're sitting here asking me if you should start off at 5 or $10,000 to charge to allow them to earn the right to listen to your wisdom, all because you got a lot clearer on those things that I was talking about.

[Tim Wilson]

So that is you. And just that that framing is kind of around the like, public speaking keynote, audience sharing information. I assume that clients come out of that and it fundamentally changes the way that they even in a conference room with five people, or even potentially even on a zoom call, how they put together it scales up and down when presenting. If I'm just an analyst and I'm just delivering this to the marketing team, it's not a public conference keynote. But I guess two questions. All this still absolutely applies. I'm 100% sure. But how do we get over the hurdle of saying, but this is just one presentation. I can't invest the time and the effort to turn this into a proper story. I don't have the capacity. I have thoughts on what I think the answer is to that. But I'd love to hear what you think.

[Aleyah Harris]

First of all, you're like, I'm so sure. I'm like, are you, though? You don't sound sure. People think that storytelling takes a really long time, and that's actually very much not true. Because of what I was talking about before. Frameworks. Once you know the framework, you start thinking, talking, acting in story without even realizing it. So it's more about an investment. You have a great question. Does this apply to me? I have a better question. Can you afford to not invest in other people understanding what the hell you're talking about?

[Tim Wilson]

Well, that tends to be my. When people are like, I'm too busy. I just have to get stuff out the door. And it's like, well, how's that working out for you? You're training your. You're training your business partners that you're just there to crank out as much volume as possible and they're bored. They don't know what to do with it. They can't use it. And trying to. But I think the other thing you're hitting on there is that, yeah, probably the first time, you gotta find the time to do a better job. And it's not gonna be perfect, but it will be better. And by the time you've done it, I love the way you framed it as saying. You get to where you just see it and think in those modes. In that, that mode, it totally makes sense that it then becomes easier because you're not trying to make a bunch of slides and then go back through the slides and rearrange the slides and figure out what else you should add and not take something away because you're kind of. You have the story. And then I assume it's then pretty quick to then say, okay, now I just gotta articulate, give the visual backup to it.

[Aleyah Harris]

When you're tweaking and retweaking and tweaking, tweaking, and then you do the tweaks for the tweak, tweak, tweakity, tweak, which is like the tweak dance that everybody does. That means that something fundamentally is wrong. That means that fundamentally you are insecure about the structure of the way you're going to present this information.

[Tim Wilson]

You don't know what or why.

[Aleyah Harris]

Yeah, you don't know what, you don't know why, you don't know how. You don't know nothing. All you know is you got some numbers that somebody asked you to tell them about and you have no idea how to do that just how numbers work in a very logical way. Stories are the same. People often view them as like opposites. Like words and numbers, you know, require different parts of your brain. And like, what's easier? Trying to like be a number person and then transform yourself into a word person? Or is it trying to make repeatable, predictable processes out of the way that words work? I think we should do this, the second one, and that's by using structures and frameworks that are repeatable. You know, they've worked and it's not like, oh yeah, they work like this is the new 2026 TikTok trend. No, they work for eons, like millennia, right? We've been using the same frameworks to communicate effectively with each other. And so once you realize that, you're like, oh yeah, I can use a story framework because it doesn't sound so like, woo, woo. That's what marketing, like the marketers do like, no, it's how an effective leader communicates. And then if you're money motivated, like I am thinking about it this way. If you want people to understand you as a strategic thinker, if you want people to understand you as a true people data and information leader, you should use story. Because strategy is just the ability to put a bunch of random stuff together in a framework and make it work. How are we getting from point A to point B? Oh my God. Doesn't that sound like once upon a time all the way to the end? End.

[Mo Kiss]

So tell me if you were a data person and you're listening, like, I feel like you're going to have a lot of folks nodding along to everything you're saying, but like, let's say tomorrow.

[Aleyah Harris]

I sure hope so. And if you're not, rewind it. Listen again. Email me if you have questions because if you're not nodding, I've missed you. And we're trying to bring everyone along on this journey. Do continue Mo.

[Mo Kiss]

I love that. I love that though. So tomorrow you're sitting down at your desk or today you've listened to the episode and you're like, okay, but practically, how do I do this? Right? Like, how do I sit down? I've got a, you know, a presentation I'm doing next week for some stakeholders on analysis of how people are using a particular product on our site. Like, what, what do you recommend they do as they're sitting there thinking through how to craft that story?

[Aleyah Harris]

Okay. If it's for real tomorrow, we ain't got a lot of time.

[Tim Wilson]

I'm gonna give you the short, short version well, they're sitting down tomorrow. The presentation's not for a week, too.

[Aleyah Harris]

Yeah. Okay. Okay. There we go. There we go. There we go. There we go. I would recommend you start simple. Still. What's the beginning, middle, and end of the. Of how the information should be used? Because you're not telling a story. Just let me back up. When you're telling a story, you can tell a flat story that no one cares about, which I don't recommend. I don't recommend. You're like. You like, say, this morning I woke up, I did my skincare, and then I got dressed and I left the house. The end. Like, what? Like, that's not even. Like, it doesn't have the elements. I mean, technically has a beginning. I woke up and I said the end. But there's no purpose to the story. We're thinking more. When we think of stories, more like Aesop's Fables kind of situation where there's some lesson to be gleaned and there's a reason why you're telling a story. So the first thing you have to sit down and figure out is, why the heck am I talking? Why am I open? Besides the fact that, like, this is a weekly meeting and, like, I'm supposed to be here every week, like, why am I really talking? That is what I call your controlling idea. What is the subject that you're talking about and what is your point of view? Because I can talk about like, oh, this, you know, is a dashboard. And this means our product is selling well. Great. What is your point of view based on the brain that is sitting between your two ears. That is the controlling idea of your story. Then you say, okay, I have the point of view. Like, this product is selling well based on the data that I see that I'm reporting this month. However, my point of view is actually, it's our dog. It's our worst seller. We're having a blip month because we. I know we had this major client come in and it's skewing the data. So it shows, like, this is our best product ever. But really, if you. If you remove this outlier, this is actually our worst product. And as opposed to the recommendation of pumping more marketing dollars into this product, I actually think that we should explore either sunsetting it or repositioning it. That's my point of view. How do I know that? Because I looked at the data. Then you're like, okay, I have my controlling idea. A simple story structure is what is the problem? What do we learn from this problem? And how does that relate to the broader context? So the problem is, if I was going to tell the same story, well, you start kind of like in your ordinary world or whatever is going on normally, right? So the normal thing is that I'm happening is like, here I am. Here's the data. Here's what it. Here's. It's saying this product is going gangbusters. But the problem is we're not looking at the full set of data. And the problem is our own success that we have this great client. But my concern is that we don't have a reputable, predictable way of bringing in more whale clients like this one who are going to regularly buy this product. So the data is skewed. So what we can learn is the data is skewed. We need to get, you know, underneath this data to see what it really is telling us and actually learn what our highest selling top three, whatever the thing is that we're supposed to be doing here is so that we can put our marketing dollars in a place that matters. Either making a reputable process for landing more whale clients that we're going to buy more of this thing, or putting more money behind the other top three who are regularly performing well. Because I know that our company's goal is, in fact, to sell and to go into the direction where we're selling more and more and more of this product. My recommendation is that we, in fact, focus our marketing dollars and efforts on expanding this product line to get more clients to buy it, whatever it is. That's how I would love if analysts came.

[Tim Wilson]

To me, that was like a. That wound up being like a detailed scenario. But I kind of latched on to your why am I. Why am I being asked to. Why am I telling the story? Why am I presenting like. And if it's. If My answer. If the analyst can't answer the question other than saying, well, it's the weekly meeting and I could see it, it's like, well, next week you're kind of screwed. But maybe this is encouraging you for the next time to actually go ask more questions so that you can. Like if. If you can't. That may be really uncomfortable for an analyst to say. I don't know. It's just because I've been told to give the campaign readout and I don't, and it's. And it's too late. I could be like, well, then you better look ahead for the next one and kind of lay the. Lay the groundwork a little more effectively with the questions you're Asking.

[Aleyah Harris]

I mean, doesn't that give you a sense of purpose? Like, for me, it drives me back poopity doop crazy to have my thought that my job was just crunching numbers, floating around in a vacuum. Like, when you understand how what you do on a daily basis impacts everyone that you work with by putting money in the company's coffers or not, doesn't that feels. That would feel much more fulfilling to me. I would get more joy out of my work if I knew that.

[Tim Wilson]

I think it should. My cynical rant number, like, four. I think analysts let themselves get. They tell themselves the story. That. That's just. My job is just to pull the numbers and just to present them, and then they tell themselves the story. This won't be. If I come with a point of view. Well, somebody may disagree with that, and then I'm going to have to have a conversation with them. And it may be that my point of view is actually wrong. And it's scary. And it's like, no, no, no. I just want to pull the numbers and let my business partners interpret it.

[Aleyah Harris]

So I'm very. This probably is snarky, and I get it. Like, you're speaking for everyone else out there. But, like, when I hear just the word analyst, that means that you're going to, like, analyze something and tell me. Like, if I go for an analysis, I'm assuming you're going to tell me the thing and tell me what's going on. You might not know how to fix it, right? You might not have all of the bells and whistles in your toolbox to know how to fix it. But, like, if I go for a lab result and, like, it. It just gives me all of, like, the blood count, like, new numbers. I'm like, so, like, do I have diabetes or not?

[Tim Wilson]

Like, that's a great analogy. Like, if somebody goes in, you're like, sure, my chart notified me, but I actually want to talk to the person who can actually tell me how I should feel and what I should do. But case in point, because, like, the

[Aleyah Harris]

doctor is gonna say, like, okay, yes, you do have diabetes. Here's your treatment plan. Blah, blah, blah. I'm not expecting someone giving me an analysis of the. Of the results to do all that. But, I mean, I need you to, like, as my husband says, I'm always like, finish it. Like, finish. Like. Like, tell me the full. The thing.

[Tim Wilson]

Well, and it. And this is. Let's see if I can tell it generically, because it was at the conference where we saw you, and there was a session that made my blood boil where. What.

[Aleyah Harris]

He's about to spill some tea, y'. All generic tea. But it's still tea. It'll be generic.

[Tim Wilson]

Somebody would have had to be there. You know, Jim Stern will be. I wonder which one he was talking about because there's so much around AI and somebody really stood up and proudly demonstrated how he had managed to set up. Set up all these agents so that he could now take his weekly reports to all his clients. And I won't say what the reports were about. He was kind of a consultant, and he could just automate it and it would just, like, spit the report out itself. And it's the classic. I feel like we're starting to. People are starting to realize. I like to think I was saying it pretty early, that people were putting volume over value. And what he had done, he'd taken what he wasn't doing well, which this process he had that generated. It's like that SEO report you were describing earlier. And he said, aha, guess what I can do? I can do that faster and longer. And I'm like, that's not actually helpful. Like, there's no way.

[Aleyah Harris]

It's not.

[Tim Wilson]

And I think he got excited because the side of him, like, the tinkering and getting to, like, build it, like, sure, I like to see bang out code and have it generate stuff, but that we tell ourselves a story that. Oh, this I could even give it that. It has to have a narrative form, and it will generate a beginning and a middle and an end. And it's not useful.

[Aleyah Harris]

No. Does it do what I said in the very beginning? Is it helping someone or something as a company participate in their own transformation. If it's not doing that, stop tinkering.

[Tim Wilson]

But analysts will tell themselves. They'll tell themselves that it is. And then on the other side of

[Aleyah Harris]

them, y' all lie to yourselves a lot. As my people.

[Tim Wilson]

Other side of their mouth, they will complain about how my. My business partners don't know what they're doing. Yeah. So I don't think I was realizing this was going to be so much of me ranting. Can I ask. I had more time for that.

[Aleyah Harris]

I'm actually here for it, Tim. I'm here for all of the rants. I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. To continue.

[Tim Wilson]

Listeners know that I'm not going to be the one who's, you know, positive about anything in a. Optimistic. But as you were. Because as you kind of worked through that scenario and you kind of just made up kind of a silly one. On the fly. How do you feel? I have occasionally said I'm going to walk away. I've looked at the data. I'm tempted to start trying to make slides and make charts. But if I walk away, I've got to drive somewhere. Can I just out loud, not walking down the street, waving my hands where people look at me funny. But can I just talk through what I think the story is and just keep talking through it? How do I tell this story in five minutes and keep doing that and iterating until I feel like I've found what it is? My actual point of view is away from the computer. Have you, Tim?

[Mo Kiss]

I feel like I do that with analysts a lot, where I'll be like, hey, you've written this summary up. I don't know what it's saying. I want you to pretend you're in the elevator with our coo. You've got two minutes from ground floor to seven. Why should he care about this? Tell me in your own words. And it's like when people say it out loud and they practice that story, I do feel like it gets clearer much faster.

[Tim Wilson]

And you're like, and that doesn't match your deck at all.

[Mo Kiss]

It doesn't often match what they've written

[Aleyah Harris]

down as people put in the deck, the things that they should be saying, the things that feel very smart. Analyst y But the smartest people are the ones who can make things sound the simplest. And the actual way to showcase your intelligence is to make the dumbest person in the room understand the most complicated thing you do. So not saying that in this example, the CEO or whoever is the dumbest person in the room. However, when it comes to data, they're probably not as great as you are.

[Mo Kiss]

Well, it's.

[Aleyah Harris]

How are we doing that?

[Mo Kiss]

They probably don't have the depth of understanding because they're across so many things. Right? So it's like you have to bring it up to a different altitude because they don't have the same subject matter, expertise, and depth of the particular topic that you're discussing.

[Tim Wilson]

Wow, that is a great note saying that executives are stupid. No, that's not what we said.

[Aleyah Harris]

And that's where we're landing.

[Tim Wilson]

But we are running short on time. I feel like I need to go write down a few notes immediately following this because a few little light bulbs have gone on for specific mindsets and tactics and ways to think about this topic. So thank you. We could talk for another hour and

[Mo Kiss]

a half,

[Tim Wilson]

but it is time for us to move to a wrap. And the Last thing we like to do on the show before we close out is go around and share a last call, something that might be of interest to our users. And Aleyah, you're our guest. Do you have a last call you'd like to share?

[Aleyah Harris]

I don't know if this will be of interest to your users or not, and it's seemingly unrelated, but work with me for a second. Okay. We've talked a lot about storytelling. We've talked a lot about words and making data and words play well together. We did touch a little, teeny, teeny, teeny tiny bit on your body. And how. When you understand how to hold your body in space, you can more confidently tell a story. When I work with analysts, not with a lot of analysts. No matter how intelligent the words are that are coming out of their mouths, a lot of the times their body is saying the thing that you just said. Tim, please get me the hell out of this room. How fast can I get the hell out of this room? I don't even know why I have to be here. This damn weekly meeting could have been an email. I would have felt much more comfortable that way. Okay, so there is lots of somatic work out there, but one of the books, I actually have it on my desk that seems, again, unrelated. And it's. How many pages is this thing? It's not even. You don't even really read the whole thing. The whole thing is 80 pages. And it's a book by Lise Hay called heal your body. And it's more of a reference than, like, let me read every page and it'll go through. And it talks about different things that you could have be dealing with the root cause of where and how it gets stuck in your body. And a mantra to release it, to make sure that expectations are clear. Saying a mantra is not going to cure an incurable disease here. Like, that's not where we're at. But I'm giving you a starting place to think about your words yourself, your purpose a little bit differently. Like, so, for example, like, let's say, oh, I feel like I've flipped this over. Like how people sometimes read the Bible. You flip it open and see whatever page is open. And like, that's what God wants to scare me. Today, apparently I opened up to see, it says cough. And it says, if you have a strong cough, it could mean you have a desire to bark at the world. See me, listen to me. Now, you could read that and say, that's a bunch of poop. A de doops. I disagree or you can at least give a second where you're like, is there any truth to that that you don't have to tell anybody else? If there is or not, I don't know. I'm not there with you. You listen to me.

[Mo Kiss]

We.

[Aleyah Harris]

This is not a live conversation. This is asynchronous. Then next to that, it says, I am noticed and appreciated in the most positive ways. I am loved. Now I have a family member who has a chronic cough. Not chronic sickness, not long Covid. Just always kind of coughing, always clearing their throats. This person also is the person who. I don't know why they do this, but they always are. Walk like, if we're walking in a group, they walk behind us. They like, would prefer to not be seen. They're like chronically, like, almost like debilitatingly introverted at times. And then when I read this, and I didn't plan this, but this is what I opened up to and it says a desire to bark at the world. See me, listen to me. That makes sense to me. There's a kernel of truth in that. And even if it were just a kernel and you said to yourself, if you are a person with this cough situation every single morning or you said it before every meeting to yourself, I am noticed and appreciated in the most positive ways. I am loved. Do you think there's a chance that you might show up with that story a little bit differently in the room that you enter? Is there just a little chance? There's a little chance. Isn't it worth taking to understand how your body could stop telling on you so that you really could own the power that your intelligence provides you with? So that's what I have for you. It's a very little book, very cheap on Amazon. Louise Hay heal your body.

[Tim Wilson]

That sounds way more productive than having a little cartoon flippy chart like the Dilbert comics. This is like, wow, you're actually gonna learn something.

[Aleyah Harris]

Don't hate on Dilbert. Dilbert is funny.

[Mo Kiss]

I am not a wah wah person, but there's something about that hit which is not the. Do I believe this or do I not believe this? It's like, how do I take a kernel of this thing that might help give me a different mindset for the day? And that was. Yeah, I really appreciate that.

[Aleyah Harris]

I'm so glad.

[Tim Wilson]

And Mo, what is your last call?

[Aleyah Harris]

And by the way, I'm sorry, before you go, I think that it's hilarious that in the US it's woo woo, but in Australia it's Wawa. So Now I kind of want to know what other countries call it.

[Mo Kiss]

I probably. I probably just fucked it up. Like, let's be real. Like, that's the most likely outcome.

[Aleyah Harris]

It's.

[Tim Wilson]

How you going? It's. No. It somehow has, like, four syllables in it. No, no, no.

[Aleyah Harris]

Or.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mo Kiss]

Okay. I have a weird one. I was walking to school with my son yesterday, holding hands. It's just really cute. We're still at that age. He likes to do that. And I was telling him all about his nana. Well, my nana. Sorry. And who she was as a person. And I was like, oh, Nana was a matriarch. And I was like, do you know what that means? And he goes, yes. A matriarch is when there's a leader of the group and the leader is a woman. And I, like, nearly fell over myself.

[Aleyah Harris]

And I was like, you are amazing, everybody. Right, Mo?

[Mo Kiss]

I was like, wow, where did you learn that? And he's like, well, elephants and lemur families are both matriarchal families. And I'm like, shut the front door, kid. Like, this is the best thing you've ever said. And it was like a zoo show on ABC iView, which is our national broadcaster, where he had learned all of this. And it just. Yeah. The reason I share this little story is because, I don't know those little moments with kids where you can have a really amazing positive influence or maybe you just underestimate the way they're learning. I don't know. It's really been the highlight of my week, and I often talk about academic stuff, and I wanted to share that. However, I do have a twofer, because during the course of this show,

[Aleyah Harris]

I

[Mo Kiss]

kept thinking about a TED Talk, which is. Is Vanessa Van Edwards, you're contagious. And she talks about when you're presenting and, like, you put your arms behind your back and, like, what that does to, like, how people perceive you. So if you were really interested in what Aleyah had to say, that would be a really good TED Talk to go check out. Anyway, sorry, Tim, that was so long.

[Aleyah Harris]

In addition to my TED Talk, feel free to look up mine as well. Thanks so much.

[Mo Kiss]

Absolutely.

[Aleyah Harris]

I gotta get a shameless plug in there. Mo, come on.

[Mo Kiss]

Totally, totally.

[Tim Wilson]

And Mo, like, it sounds like it was somewhere down under. There was a nice kind of. There's some good TV programming. We're shutting down, any sort of. That kind of messaging and education. Education over here in North America. So that's. Just rub it in. Rub it in our face that you still have that sort of thing.

[Mo Kiss]

I'm a real shit human. I didn't shout out Aleya. I'm, like, talking about how great our TV is. I'm really on a roll today.

[Aleyah Harris]

It's all right. There is not much more you could do for an American to make us feel worse than we already do.

[Michael]

Yeah,

[Aleyah Harris]

Sorry. Over to you, Tim. So, Tim, what's yours?

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah, I was gonna say Mo. You're gonna ask me what my last call was?

[Mo Kiss]

Yeah, what's your last call?

[Tim Wilson]

Jeez. That's what I was counting on Val to be here for. So I've dipped into this well a few times over the years because it is still always just a fun site. But the pudding had a pudding cool. Had a whole deep dive analysis on similes. It's called Comparisons As Predictable as the Sunrise. An analysis of 200,000 similes from popular fiction. And it kind of struck me because as we're talking about LLMs and AI and all this stuff, and all it can do with unstructured data, which is often text data. And this was actually literally going in. In to a bunch of text and pulling out the similes. And it makes the point that a simile is kind of an identifiable form because it's something as blank as whatever. And as the pudding does, it's got visualizations, it's got hilarious anecdotes. At the very end, it's got just a random. This will be like Aleyah flipping open the book and reading a random thing. It's got a whole bunch of random similes like a. As welcome as hemorrhoids at a rodeo or as clear as a novel by Virginia Woolf. As funny as a guided tour through Dachau. So it's kind of like. And those are real things from literature.

[Aleyah Harris]

Oh, my gosh, this is funny. I had to get as comfortable as a trout on a marble slab, as graceful as a lobster playing soccer. This is awesome. We know what I'm doing. Instead of watching anime until my kid comes home, this is what I will be doing. Thank you so much, Tim.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah, you're welcome. It made me feel good that it

[Aleyah Harris]

was like, welcome as a pork chop in a synagogue.

[Mo Kiss]

Oh, could I. Sorry. Her tone, as friendly as a bucket full of shit. I am like, how did I land on that one?

[Tim Wilson]

That's good. It brought joy. And those were humans. I'm sure AI could be asked to come up with these wacky things, but those were from real human written stuff. And, yeah, I got to the end, I was like, now what's at the end? And I'm like, well, now I can't stop reading these.

[Aleyah Harris]

Oh, my God. I'm sending this to 50 people right now. I cannot help it.

[Tim Wilson]

All right, so that was a lot of fun. So, Aleyah, thank you again for coming on the show. This has been a wonderful discussion.

[Aleyah Harris]

I would love to. I've loved being here. Sorry I had a blip because I was still reading the article that you just talked about. I'm sorry. I'm back now. I'm back and I'm focused. I'm as focused as a dog chasing a bone. Like, I'm focusing.

[Tim Wilson]

All right, if you. I've at this point, I think all our listeners have dropped off to go track down that put article, so they're not listening anymore. But if you are still listening, we would love to get a review or rating on whatever platform you listen on. If you would like to get a sticker to slap on your laptop or a mug or a water bottle, you can go to analyticshour IO and we'll send you a sticker. Love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn on the measure slack. Reach out to Aleyah on LinkedIn as well. If you want to learn more, you can always email us at contactnalyticshour IO and for whether you are realizing right now that you have a presentation next week and there is no story, or whether you're like, no, I know what the story is. And it came to me while I was listening to this episode. No matter what you're doing for myself for mo, keep analyzing.

[Aleyah Harris]

Thanks for listening. Let's keep the conversation going with your comments, suggestions and questions on Twitter at analyticshour on the web at analyticshour IO our LinkedIn group and the measured chat Slack Group. Music for the podcast by Josh Grohurst

[Tim Wilson]

oh, smart guys wanted to fit in, so they made up a term called analytics. Analytics don't work.

[Aleyah Harris]

Do the analytics say go for it no matter who's going for it. So if you and I were on the field, the analytics say, go for it. It's the stupidest, laziest, lamest thing I've ever heard. For reasoning in competition.

[Tim Wilson]

Rock, flag, and we don't sell fruit.