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- [00:00]
A
I think you have to have a dream and you have to have a vision and you have to have a purpose. And you are trying to get somewhere and you may not. Like, even today, I don't know exactly where I'm going. I'm like, I might do something really random, but I know I want to try. I know I want to. So the narrative propels you. The narrative is what you tell yourself. It's what you tell your family, it's what you tell others. It's what you dream about. It's what you feel yourself. It is your vision. Welcome back to Underlined. This is part of the Work podcast. I'm here with Suhan. In these episodes, we tackle a quote and we discuss what it means to me, what we think about it, and what its application is to the modern work. So. So Suhan's going to kick us off.
- [00:54]
B
So the question that this quote covers, here are the questions. When do stories matter most and when do facts take over? How division and measurement trade places over time? And it's one of the. It's one of my favorite quotes by favorite authors. But the important part here is it's something that lasts forever, which is storytelling. And eventually storytelling needs to kind of measure up to the facts. And then the quote is narrative driving numbers early in the life cycle and numbers driving narrative later. And it's from the book called Narrative and Numbers by Professor Aswathamotorin, also known as Dean of Valuation, because he talks about this in terms of corporate lifecycle.
- [01:33]
A
Okay.
- [01:33]
B
But I also think this matters a lot in your personal life, too. But kind of starting off with you as someone who has built a company from a story, essentially two numbers and then going back and forth, when did it switch over? And how do, how does that work? Because it seems like it quietly switches over. Like Amazon was different. It was a storytelling company, then became numbers company later. And I know markets also matter into the cheap capital, all these, et cetera. But when you're building a business like barstool or even food52, how does that play into everything?
- [02:05]
A
So I, I love this quote. I think this is. I think it's super interesting. And I think that this is. It's funny. I'll give you an example of a conversation I had today that was super narrative in numbers, which is, I think there are people in companies and places, organizations, governments, whatever. There's people who think about numbers and there's people who think in narratives. I think in narratives. I like numbers, but I like narratives better. I think the narrative is important because the narrative is the vision. The narrative is another way of saying the dream or the hope and the aspiration and the. This is what we're trying to achieve or this is what our principles are and where we're trying to go. And it's a statement of future. It's a statement of purpose. And narrative is really important because narrative is what fuels you in the beginning when you don't have that much else to work with and when it is just a dream and how much sweat you're willing to put into it and how hard you're willing to grind to get it. And I think narrative is the most important thing to fuel people and to propel them and to put context and couch ambition like it's narrative really, really, really, really matters. Numbers, if they don't map to the narrative, can kill a narrative in a heartbeat, right? And then they also build narratives of their own. And ultimately it's the numbers which change the narrative, because the numbers take on a narrative of their own. And the narrative that the numbers represent can become at odds with that original narrative. Or, you know, so if you look at, like, you take music, right? Like, I love Dave Matthews Band, and everybody loved Dave Matthews Band best when it was like, in Virginia, in a bar in, you know, with like, bad acoustics but great passion, and it was kind of underground and it was a college band and. And then Dave Matthews became big when I was in college, and it was like, it's stadiums, it's arenas. And then everyone was like, oh, but it was so much better when it was. And what they're saying is it was better when it was a narrative, it was better when it was a dream, it was better when it was original. And now Dave Matthews is like, commercial success, big stadiums, guys in their 40s smoking pot. It's like a totally different narrative of what it is now. So narratives change over time. But I do think narrative is really important. I don't think people believe your narrative, though, if the numbers don't back it up. I think the numbers people, people who think in numbers struggle sometimes, because if you can't make a narrative out of your numbers, no one will believe them. So, like today, I'll give you an example. Today we had a big meeting with a super senior executive at another company. And I had wanted to have a pre meeting with this person prior to them coming to see us in person because I wanted to create context for what they were about to see. So the context is numbers, right? So it's, hey, this is the history of this company, this is how we got here. These are what the financials look like. This is what our product mix is. These are the changes we've made. And it was me, the executive from the other company, two finance people from our company, and telling a narrative about, hey, there's this beloved brand and it means something, and the community and where it came from and what it stands for. And there is also a narrative of all the change we've made inside of the company and all the things we're trying to do. And the executive jumps off the call and then the bean counter people are like, well, you were kind of off on this point. And you, you know, you weren't right on that point. And, well, we could explain it by virtue of, like, how you calculate this number or that number, this. And I'm like, who cares? And there is an importance to being accurate, and there is an importance to being consistent and obviously being truthful. But if you're not able to make someone feel something bigger from something, it's very hard to get people to act or be motivated by you on something. So I do think in the early stages of anything, or in a transformative stage of anything, you have to set the vision, which is the narrative, and then you have to watch the numbers so closely because if the numbers don't add up, it's not working, it's fake, it's a false narrative. You know, like, I think I looked at, like, a great example is when we looked at the home tour stuff. Like, I don't know the home tours. Like, I don't know. They don't have, like, a great narrative at this company. We don't talk about them much. I talk about them a lot when I talk externally from this company. But then Suhan and I looked at the numbers on YouTube and we're like, holy shit. This video series is doing 10 20x what every other video series is doing. Like, holy shit. That creates its own narrative of, like, wow, what should we do around home tours? They're outperforming everything else we're doing. So in a lot of ways, numbers fuel the trajectory of the narrative. The speed of the narrative, the height of the narrative, the pace of the narrative, the breadth of a narrative. And I like that because I think they. The two things should go back and back and forth.
- [07:43]
B
When do you know to stick to the narrative versus numbers? Because, like, meaning, how long do you give it? So I'll give you an example, like, just kind of frame this for everyone out there. Amazon had a lot of narrative in the beginning, and they didn't necessarily have numbers to back it outside of growth. They had a lot of growth, but they weren't profitable. And that was a big issue. Theranos, it was a different story. Like, they had a great narrative. Facts didn't necessarily back it in the end. Same thing with Sam Bangman, Freed and all these other things. But you could argue in that point, maybe the numbers, the switch over to focusing on numbers came a little too late. That's why may have failed. Maybe now you can make these type of thoughts, but as a leader or as someone who's thinking about this, when should you say, all right, enough with the narrative. We need to get into the numbers. Or do you say, just let this story run for a little longer?
- [08:33]
A
You never let go of a narrative. I think you don't. If you let go of a narrative, it's like, then what are we doing here? Like, it's just a collection of pieces and parts. I do think, like, in the case of Theranos or in the case of. Oh, my God. What was the. What was the Freed company? What was Sam Brankman Fried? What was the name of that company? Oh, my God. Crypto. Wait, ftx. There you go. Ftx. Okay. Those were frauds. That's a. That's a. That's trying to deceive people. Yeah. So that's. That's its own type of narrative which lands you in jail or wherever you go from there. But I don't think you ever abandon the narrative. But I do think you have to check the narrative with the numbers always and intuitively. And, you know, there's a lot of different ways to capture numbers, but in the reality, it's a simple question of is this working or not, or what effect is this, Is this having? What is the impact of. Of the work we're putting into a story, and is it transpiring or not? Like, I remember when I worked in music, we had this startup, we were selling like a big fucking dream, big dream about new type of social network, artists connecting with fans. And it just wasn't working. And the numbers didn't match the narrative. The narrative was awesome, but the numbers didn't match the narrative. And what the numbers showed was that the value proposition that the narrative purported to have was not actually a value proposition like it. It actually wasn't working. And so I think you always need to be in touch with the numbers, because in business, anyways, your narrative is trying to get you to a new place or become something new. Like a lot of the times, like, you know, corporate speak or corporate jargon or where people lose interest or trust is when there's this narrative. But, like, the real of the business just isn't there. You know, like, you look at, like, how much is said about Penn national right now. Like, look at the Penn national talking a big game about their partnership with ESPN and what the future of sports betting is going to look like. And, you know, Barstool was part of that narrative, and there was a whole narrative around Barstool and what Barstool is going to do for Penn and what Barstool and Penn were going to do for gaming and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then when you look at the market share, the market share is the real story of, like, what's driving the market share, what's driving the share price? Like, and in that regard, you know, this is what press lives for, which is. Then there's all sorts of narratives about the narrative, and those narratives are based on the numbers.
- [11:17]
B
How would you kind of distill that down to an individual level?
- [11:23]
A
I think you have to have a dream and you have to have a vision and you have to have a purpose. And you are trying to get somewhere. And you may not, like, even today, I don't know exactly where I'm going. I'm like, I might do something really random, but I know I want to try. I know I want to. So the narrative propels you. The narrative is what you tell yourself. It's what you tell your family, it's what you tell others. It's what you dream about. Like, it's what you fuel yourself. It is your vision. And, you know, then you got to be like, all right, well, is this like, if your vision is to save a lot of money and go fly fishing in New Zealand for a year and you're not saving any money and you're having to work more and more, then, like, the numbers aren't supporting your narrative, which means that your behavior isn't mapping to your vision. And I think that's a. You can be a big company, you can be Amazon, you can be a small company like Food52 and Schoolhouse. You can be a person. And it's always about checking those things against one another.
- [12:28]
B
I think that's an unbelievable place to pin it.
- [12:30]
A
All right, so do I get to say the quote now or. You can say it, Suhan.
- [12:35]
B
No, no, no, you can say it.
- [12:35]
A
You can say the quote.
- [12:36]
B
This is your favorite quote so far.
- [12:37]
A
So I think it is my favorite quote so far. Narrative driving numbers early in the life cycle and numbers driving narrative later. That's from the book Narrative in Numbers by Oswath Demodrian.
- [12:50]
B
Yep.
- [12:51]
A
Who is a professor of doom. Or is. What was the thing you said?
- [12:55]
B
Dean of Valuation.
- [12:57]
A
Same thing. This is the work podcast. This is underlined. Thank you, Suhan.
- [13:09]
B
Thank you.
- [13:10]
A
And you can find us wherever you find podcasts. You can find us on Substack. You can find all of our other other types of episodes. We do net Net. We're doing a special what she said. We we're doing conversations. We're doing all sorts of stuff around here. You can follow Work Like a Girl or be part of it in our Slack. And you can follow me on Instagram or TikTok @Erica. Or at Erica. Underlined.