What it takes to be an (almost) perfect insights professional

Ryan Barry:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to this special summertime mid-summer classic edition of Inside Insights, a podcast brought to you by Zappi. My name is Ryan. Hi. And I'm joined as always by my co-host Patricia Montesdeoca and my friend, fellow Rhode Islander, Kelsey Sullivan. Ladies, what's crack-a-lacking?

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Dude. How's it going? I can't believe it's August already.

Ryan:

It's August.

Patricia:

Un-fricking-believable.

Ryan:

I'm not going to lie to you. I have mixed feelings about it being August.

Patricia:

Yeah.

Ryan:

Because this summer has been wonderful. I'm not even going to complain about how hot it's been. It's been real hot. Anybody who says the planet's not getting warmer, go outside, dude. It's hot.

Patricia:

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Ryan:

And I love fall, but I don't want the summer to end. I've been on the water a lot. I've been hanging out. A lot of barbecues. And work's been busy and fun all at the same time. So yeah, a little bittersweet. Usually I'm ready for fall by now, but not this summer. I'm ready for summer to continue.

Patricia:

Oh, I'm not ready for it. I'm not ready for it at all. It's been really cool. The weather here has been weird because I mean, global warming has made the tropics rainier, right? 

So we have a couple of hours of absolute intense heat during the day and then almost every afternoon, the most wicked thunderstorm you've ever seen. I mean, it's just like ... The plants are crazy. The plants here are like Jurassic Park plants. They're crazy huge. But it's been amazing and I've been enjoying it. My son's been home all summer and so I'm working and I'm getting him to work. So it's been great. It's been a great summer.

Ryan:

I don't know about you two, and all of you listening, but I love a good thunderstorm.

Patricia:

Yeah.

Ryan:

Patricia, I don't know if you've been in New England this summer, but we haven't had any rain in weeks. Last night, oh boy, did we have rain. And my wife, Jill, and I went out on our front steps and we drank a glass of wine and we watched the rain, and it was very romantic and very relaxing until one of the kids came and ruined it. But it reminded me of how much I enjoy sitting in the rain. 

So anyways. Thank you rain for coming last night. My grass is now a different shade of brown than it was yesterday. Ooh boy. We got some hay out front this summer. It's the new thing I'm bringing in. But we're very excited for this special episode. Have we ever done a special episode before like this? This is our first special?

Patricia:

Last summer, we did the summary of the previous season that was all the things that we learned that were similar across all of our amazing guests.

Ryan:

That's right. Okay.

Patricia:

It was really well received, so it's what we're doing this year. This summer we're bringing them something special. Right, Kelsey?

Kelsey:

Yup.

Ryan:

We're running it back. We're running back the special. The ladies had this idea because, as you probably noticed if you've been listening, I'm personally very fascinated, as is the rest of my colleagues here, about the from-to that people that are responsible for customer insights are going through as data becomes more of a commodity, as technology becomes the tool that we use our jobs. 

And so you'll notice every episode I'm asking, "What are you looking for in people? What's the ideal insights person?" Patricia's done a really good job of codifying these insights across three distinct characteristics from all of our work so far in Inside Insights.

So today we're going to talk about everything we've heard from all of our amazing guests around what it means to be an ideal insights partner, translation, an insights manager, an insights director, somebody who's responsible day-to-day for delivering insights to a category or a brand. What it means to be an insights leader, a leader of insights partners, and what it means to be an ideal insights partner. I almost said vendor. For those of you who like to call us vendors, we don't sell hot dogs, but you can still call us vendors as long as you're writing the big checks, baby.

Patricia:

We give hot dogs. Exactly. If you're writing…

Ryan:

….a big check. Yeah. We love purchase orders. If you have a big check, we'll take it and we'll deliver a shit ton of value on the other side. But we're going to talk about all three of these. And I'm really excited for the conversation.

Ryan:

Let's start with one of the unsung heroes of the story, the insights manager, the insights partner. Patricia, what does an ideal insights partner need to look like and do today to be successful?

Patricia:

This topic, I've been in the insights industry for longer than many of our coworkers have been alive. Right? And I find that it's been morphing slightly. Every decade you see just a slight change. Right now, I'm pleased to announce and pleased to share that it's gone back down to the essence, which is what makes me happy. There are four elements that were very, very prevalent with all of our interviewees and all of our participants in the podcast this season. 

So let's start with number one, a curiosity junkie. I love that term. Somebody who's growth minded, who always wants to learn and with a desire to discover an experiment and develop new skills in themselves, somebody who learns from their mistakes and shares this learning selflessly with others. Self-motivated, problem solver driven to action, but thinking about action, not just running into action. Whether it's inside the box or outside the box. So that first one is summarized as a curiosity junkie, which I absolutely love because it just says it all in that one word, right?

The second one that's really important for an ideal, almost ideal insights partner is someone with a high risk tolerance right now, somebody who has got to be comfortable with ambiguity and adaptable, but not wishy washy. We don't want anybody who's just a yes man. Somebody who goes, "Yeah, sure. Whatever." Right? No, that's not adaptability. That's just wishy washy. 

We want somebody who's comfortable, who's agile in their thinking, who can see the way out, the best way out, no matter how things roll out to them, right? Somebody who's comfortable with evolving themselves and with situations that evolve, because what we've realized and what all of our guests have realized is, life is too fast paced, and so we need somebody you can think with it, who can go with it, capable of driving transformation and managing that change. So that's number two, which I love, right. I guess I'm a little biased having been the customer transformation person, definitely biased on that one.

The third one in the perfect, the almost ideal right, is business oriented. Now this one you might almost forget to say it because it's so logical, but at the end of the day, this number three has got to be the largest shift that I've seen in the last decade or two. It's all about business orientation, not just for insights orientation, not just what concepts are better, as in what is this going to do for the business? How are we going to make these results be able to be applied so that the business can grow? Savvy about the brand that they're working with, the strategies, the category, the whole entire thing, and comfortable and knowledgeable. So they can leverage technology and data to work for the business, not just produce a number top of mind or a purchase interest number, we need to know what that number is going to do for the business and how to apply it. So that number three is like the absolute core of the evolution of the insights partner within a company or within any sort of relationship that has insights as well.

And number four, strong enough emotional IQ to understand how decisions really get made. I still remember early, early in my career, we did a test with Gatorade and two numbers came up that were very close for the next flavor to be launched: grape and some citrus. And so the team really wanted one versus the other. But the truth of the matter is we didn't have to rely on the data. We had two options. And so we were able to go to make the decision with other elements. We didn't have to be 100%. We started with the data and then we went to the business. What does the business look like? And I was able to, at that time, be able to say these two results came in equal, but because of the portfolio, because of the results, because of what our partners and our competition are doing, I think we should launch this so that we're in a better competitive stance in the market. So how decisions are made and why they're made is really important.

To summarize those four points, people with a spark of a four year old's magical thinking, curious, creative, believe anything is possible combined with the pragmatism and heroics of a seven year old because they know the barriers and still believe everything is possible.

Ryan:

Shout out to Tony Costella.

Patricia:

Yes, I loved it. I loved listening to it and reading it all over again and kind of reminding myself of where the journey we've been on as an industry and where we're going.

Ryan:

I love it. So what's interesting to me is your first two. Adaptable, but also firm, not a yes person and curious, I would argue are table stakes for any career track.

Patricia:

Yes. Absolutely.

Ryan:

The world moves too quickly to be anything other than a learner and an unlearner. And that requires you to be curious and say, why are we doing it this way, but no, seriously, but why, but no seriously, but why, but then also I get it. We got to make money, so we gotta move. And so is it perfect? Maybe I don't have all the right information, but I need to go. And I think those are great to me because I don't care if you're an accountant or a marketing person or whatever, you need to have those things. And that is harder in more technical roles, like insights where I have a lot of empathy for people, Patricia, probably that you came up with in the insights industry that were there to protect the company from fucking up.

And that's unnatural now to say, "You know what, let's take risk, let's fail and learn," when you probably would've spent a 20 year career learning about perfect statistical design and perfect answers and helping the business avoid catastrophic decision making. And I'm sure you've been around the table for some of those, "This is what your job is," moments. And it's interesting to me because what's understood in what you say is that the technical knowhow of insights is table stakes. Whether that's because the systems are doing it for you or you have somebody doing those systems for you, I think that's really interesting.

There's one add that I would say, based on business oriented, risk tolerant, and curiosity junkie, and also high EQ, you have to be able to enable decision making. And I think a lot of that comes through curating and synthesizing multiple viewpoints, whether that be your customer's viewpoints or the politics you're navigating, "Okay, the board wants this, the CEO wants this, the CMO wants this. The customer wants this. I'm the objective person in the room. How can I connect them all so that we can make a decision that's not mired in consensus?" As you both know, I believe consensus in business is regression to the mean. We don't want consensus. So there's an interesting tension there. All right. Let's pick the next…

Patricia:

Before you leave that, there's one that wasn't given by our guests this season, but that I find too big not to bring up. You said it really well when you said navigating the politics kind of knowing what happens if. Now I don't think learning methodology and statistics has any space here because when I've hired people, I know that I can teach them a methodology. I can't teach them to be curious.

Ryan:

Good point.

Patricia:

But understanding how to handle your partners that say limit yourself. You're just a researcher, the EQ part of that and being able to handle those politics, I'm really glad you brought it up because that's all part of the EQ. It's not written here and is not said here, but knowing how to manage that and knowing how to be able to weave it in a really nice way and teach your partners to be better partners. That's also very important.

Ryan:

I love that. I love that. All right. So I have this woman that I follow on Instagram. She's the CEO of Barstow Sports. And she wrote what I'm about to share with you about women getting ahead in the workplace. But I think it translates to some of this. Can I read her quote to you?

Patricia:

Yeah.

Ryan:

"Think and act equal. Don't take any shit. Have a sense of humor. Be confident in your ability." And this is the part that I think is true. And you ladies know this more than me, sad, but true. "Work harder than everybody else," I think that's probably fair. I've never walked a day in a lady's shoes, but I imagine that's a thing, right? For any successful woman, you've had to overcome a lot of things.

I think with insights people, you can resonate with that because, well, you're the insights person. We'll tell you when you're ready. No, I'm not the insights person. I'm the shepherd of the customer, baby. And that's why you need me in the room. And that's really important.

Patricia:

I'm your translator, dude. You need me, you need me.

Ryan:

Yeah, exactly.

Patricia:

I know what the consumers are saying, because you're going to forget and I'm going to interpret. So yeah, you need your simultaneous interpreter on the table. Always, thank you very much.

Ryan:

Bang.

Patricia:

Bang.

Ryan:

All right. Let's talk about persona two.

Ryan: 

Insights leader, who equally, by the way, all three of y'all, insights leaders, insights people, insight suppliers, your jobs are hard. Big responsibility, insights leader, Patricia, talk to me. What makes an almost ideal insights leader. Although I have to ask you, where did the almost ideal come from before you go?

Patricia:

Nothing's perfect. And so since we go to the first one where it's always evolving, always transforming, always growing growth mindset, you can't be perfect and always be growing. So it has to be almost ideal.

Ryan:

I like it. Thank you for that. Everybody's always under construction.

Patricia:

Yeah. I mean, that's the best part. That's the absolute best part.

Ryan:

It is. Yeah. So I gave our town hall speech last week because I always do town halls every six months and I was reflecting and part of this message was to myself, but it was for the rest of our staff. You have to enjoy the ride. The destination you get there oftentimes and you find it's natural human nature to say what's next? Fuck, the ride's fun. As long as you stop and smell the roses sometimes. Anyways, I won't get too sappy. Today's my eighth year anniversary at Zappi though. And I could tell you I'm enjoying the ride, baby. 

Patricia:

I've been speaking at university classes, MBAs and stuff like that. And many times I got asked about my favorite job, my favorite this, my favorite that or how's it going? And how do you feel being independent now? 

But I have to say that I'm frigging blessed. Absolutely frigging blessed because I got to keep the best of all worlds as I went along right now. My number one customers right now are people from all of my past. My Zappi past, my Colgate past, even Quaker. I mean, they're all there. It's all coming back up like it was yesterday and it's been so much fun. And if anybody ever says to you that stuff about not burning bridges, that's bullshit. Oh God, it's not bullshit because our industry is small. The industry is small. Our world is small. There's so few clicks between us and anybody else. And it's been nice to be sitting in a meeting and say, "This is your consultant." And they're like, "Oh my God, Patricia, I can't believe that's you. It feels so good.

Ryan:

That's special.

Patricia:

And yes, very special.

Ryan:

All right. The almost ideal insights leader, Patricia, tell us about that.

Patricia:

Before I even start, just the three points. It's really important. Being a leader of people who are as savvy and as flexible as insights professionals are supposed to be is a task in and of itself, right? I mean, they have to know all the things that the insights person does and then let go of their Legos, right? It's so important that the insights leader let go of their Legos. 

So the first thing that an almost perfect, or almost ideal insights leader needs to do, is be able to lead the team to transform data into insights, lead the team to make that transformation and help the company and the team use the insights to enable better decisions, right? This is the person who's being able to, the orchestra leader, the one that's going to be able to help their team do these things, right? Generate actions that drive sustainable and scalable growth across all the business. So that they're not just making sure that the methodologies, right, but they're making sure that the method methodology is longstanding, can be done with time and can be applied long term. It makes sense today and tomorrow, right?

Number two, people who listen to others. Now, just like you said earlier, this one applies for all careers, right? You have to be somebody who makes others feel heard, whether it's your team of insights people or your business partners, but that leader needs to be able to interpret needs. If I said earlier that the insights professional is the translator or the interpreter of consumers, the insights leader is the translator and interpreter of teams. They translate and interpret what the marketing team, what the management team, what the sales team needs. And then they make sure that there's a bridge between the insights team inside the company and all of the commercial stakeholders of the insight. So that's what they do. They establish real connections and they make sure to help deliver on promises made.

The third for this very important role is insights leaders are professionals who don't go for consensus. Now, I mean, I know you well enough to know that consensus is like an average, a super average, right? But this is number three for this one. It's a very important one. And you can't ever forget it. You look for common denominators, not the lowest common denominator, but the most important common denominators, right? In every single exchange they look for the core. Now I know you've heard me say gazillion times, the seven levels of why, but the only way for you to know what people really need is to go to the seven levels of why so that you can look for the common denominator, but not least, just the common essence, right? The human truth, so that they can understand the big unknowns. Even just understanding the question is what's important.

Now in summary, right? Being a good researcher is important, but an insights leader is no longer the key factor for that success in the insights methodology. Leaders trust their teams to deliver against the methodologies and the insights, but they focus on delivering leadership so that the team has somebody pushing for them, opening ways for them and breaking the ice for them. They must learn to delegate up, down and sideways, ask for help, divide and conquer.

Ryan:

So the first thing you said, so I've been in market research my whole career, and I wouldn't call myself a researcher, right. I've always been a commercial person and now I'm managing a business. It's so hard to know a job inside and out and then give your Legos up.

Patricia:

It is.

Ryan:

So, for me, when I first started managing sales teams, I remember it being really hard to just shut up and let them do their job, because that was the domain in which I knew. Now I'm responsible for an engineering team as an example, I don't know shit about what they do. So I'm a lot more curious and I ask a lot of questions and it's different. So, and your point resonates because so many insights leaders get promoted to be VPs because they were great insights managers. And that does not mean they're a good leader. So for those of you who are like, "Shit, is that me?" It might be, have you moved more to coaching, enabling, and transforming as Patricia said, or are you still doing. Because if you're doing, you're not leading.

That doesn't mean that you don't have a pulse on the people and their work because that comes with Patricia's third point, listening. If you listen to the reality, then you can drive bold decision making to the future state and transform without consensus because you're listening, you're able to triangulate a lot of viewpoints, you know what the business needs to do. And then you can sort of get there. 

And it's funny because some of the best insights leaders I know and I'm specifically thinking about right now, Michelle Gansle and Steph Gans. Steph Gans is not an insights guy. Period. He runs the second largest insights budget on the planet. Why? He listens, he understands marketing brand building, what PepsiCo's trying to do and is able to lead his business. Michelle is a great example, and we interviewed Michelle last season. Michelle is a great example of somebody who was the technical practitioner who unlearned those skills. And I vividly remember pawing on her when we were first trying to get Zappi off the ground. And she's like, "Yeah, you got to sell to my team. They make the decisions on what we do." And that's a huge from-to. Her job was to bring in innovation and let the teams decide what was going to stick. And I think that's really useful.

Patricia:

Absolutely. And if you're asking yourself, you said you started off with, if you, if this is you and you're asking yourself, that's good news. The good news is that the fact that you're asking yourself is a very positive thing.

Ryan:

Great point.

Patricia:

Fair enough.

Ryan:

Great point. And it's hard. I can empathize with crossing that chasm from player to coach. It's a difficult thing to do. And I have to tell anybody who's going through it in any element of your career, you're going to have to learn new muscles and know when to let your other ones come out. That's why I think there's a huge, huge societal problem with people's self worth, being tied to being the boss. First of all, being in charge, most of the time is fricking hard. You get no thanks. Most of the complaints, most of the problem. So it takes a certain type of lunatic to want to do it. I happen to be one of those people, but that's bullshit that you can't have a lucrative career and just be an individual contributor who does incredible things. I think that's absolutely BS. So I love this.

Insights leaders, you have to recognize that your job is to enable the change, to recruit the talent, to diversify the streams in your organization that get access to insights so that your team can get out the weeds. It's a really hard job. And by the way, there's a lot of people hiring for VPs of insights, who aren't looking for traditional VPs of insights. Think about that for a minute. I have many friends that are chief insights, officers, CMOs that are like, "Hey, do you know anybody? Who's a VP of insights." And if you quote usual suspects from usual companies like, "Nah, nah I want somebody who thinks differently, who thinks systems, who thinks scale, who thinks connectivity, who understands marketing, who understands transformation." 

And so for those of you in group one insights manager, think about those skills that Patricia read. And if your track is to lead insights functions, start building them now. Because it's an interesting time to be an insights leader.

Patricia:

Absolutely.

Ryan:

Let the good times roll. Shall we talk about the vendors?

Patricia:

Supplier? I like to say supplier.

Ryan:

A younger version of me used to get so freaking triggered by the term vendor, but I genuinely just, I just want everybody who's listening to know if you are ever with me and you call me a vendor, just know that in my subconscious I've said this to you. I don't sell fucking hot dogs, but anyways, if you want a hot dog, I probably will make you a cheeseburger because they're better. But you can come over to my house and I'll cook for you. Patricia.

Patricia:

I can vouch for Ryan's cheeseburgers, because they're really good.

Ryan:

Yeah. Your boy can throw down in the kitchen.

Patricia:

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Ryan:

I can throw down in the kitchen. That's one of my skills in life. All right. So.

Patricia:

All right. An almost ideal supplier partner. I'll use supplier partners so that everybody's covered there. Because again, just four little spots, four very simple little things, right? They need to feel enough ownership ... I'm going to be speaking from the point of view of the actual customer, right? I am the Coke, the Pepsi, the whoever, right. That supplier partner needs to feel enough ownership of my business, so they can co-create with me and give me space, but also feel the heat that I'm feeling. And they need to be able to feel that heat enough so that it's important for them to grow my business, not just sell to me, but help me grow my business. That's like first and foremost, for any supplier partner, that's essential.

Number two, they've got to be willing to take on challenges with me. Sometimes we know the answers and sometimes we don't. And so when you know the answers are great, all of them, but when you don't know the answers, let's start thinking about making up the answers. You got to be comfortable with a blank canvas and not just rely on you doing it this way. It's not a copy paste. It's not a stamp. I mean, even Zappi, that's an automated platform, has room for automation to be personalized for each customer. That's what's important. And it requires a high level of thinking, not just a copy paste, not a rubber stamp.

Number three, they need to be transparent with me. I need to be able to trust them. I need to be able to know that they're telling me what's up for real, what they can and cannot do or should not do for real. I want to be able to trust them. I can't be second guessing them, but I've always told them the day when I was on the customer side, I always used to say the day I feel, I can't trust you. That's the end of our relationship. Goodbye. I need to be able to know that I can see inside the machinery anytime.

And number four, people who reinvest in their own business, that there's a saying in Spanish…in Spanish, it's alliteration and a play on words. But those who have a shop attend the shop. It's like, go tend to your shop. So that's what they're saying in the fourth one. And I really like this one because it doesn't speak to what they're doing for me in the short term, it speaks to what they could do for me in the middle of the long term. It's all about reinvesting your own business. I'm investing in mine, but you are reinvesting your business. You drive your own innovation. You look for better solutions for me, you evolve the industry so that I can rely on the fact that you are working on it and I don't have to work on it. I thought those were so clean, so encompassing. I love them.

Ryan:

I do too. And I would probably even summarize it further. If you're a supplier, be clear at what you're good at, be clear at what you're not good at. Get better at that every day. And this is the thing that suppliers do that kills this whole thing. And you said it, but I'm going to say it a little more bluntly, New England guy and all. A little blunt. Your customer doesn't want you to be a yes man or a yes woman. They want you to bring energy. They want you to challenge their status quo. They want you to bring perspective. The quid pro quo is you can't do that without the context. You need your partner on the customer side to give you the context of their goals, their people, their process, their politics.

I say this to our staff all the time we created Zappi because the industry let it happen. It's our job to make customers successful, not their job to figure out how to become successful. And sometimes that means, "Hey, you're thinking about this wrong. Let me explain it to you. Let me help you think about it differently." And look guys and gals, there's going to be some people that you deal with that aren't going to be receptive to that. That's okay. They're dealing with their own thing. That's not on you, but I'm telling you now. And there's there's by the way, there's evidence to back up what I'm saying. Gartner studied thousands and thousands of B2B buyers. And the decisions they made are not about if they like you, or if you do great service, those are table stakes. They don't even have to like you, frankly, it's those who bring a fresh, unique perspective and a clear path forward that win.

Patricia:

Yep, absolutely.

Ryan:

But our industry, particularly as technology and thinking become more and more fragmented strategic consultancy versus technology. Everybody who's trying to be everything to everybody is going to be nothing to everybody. You have to think about what you're actually amazing at and double down at that. And that means saying no to stuff and connecting and a good friend of mine, Priscilla McKinney, she does a lot of marketing advisory services for market research companies. And she speaks a lot about how collaboration is king. And I think in the modern research ecosystem, that could not be more true. So Patricia owns a boutique agency. We are a technology company. Guess what? We do business together because some of our parts bring more value to our customers. It makes a lot of sense.

Patricia:

I'm finding that these things, I mean, when I was going through all the material for, from the seasons and we've looked at so many amazing insights leaders and insights professionals, both of them, and we even had a few insights partners. So it was nice to see such a broad scope. Now that I'm in my new role, it's such a hybrid because sometimes they want an extendable arm. "Oh shit. I've got a shortage on my team. I just need help. Could you help me here?" "Sure." Which means I just need you to help me.

The other one is, "Could you help me work through this problem?" And I find that I have to make sure that I know what question they're asking me and where they need the help so that I don't get tangled because I've been a doer and I've been a leader. So I want to make sure to give them what they're asking for at that precise instant. And sometimes they are so grateful. They're like, "I know that you can probably do this whole thing yourself, but right now I just need this and the next project, I need you to run it." 

And so I have customers now that some days they just need me to hold their hand and to do simple things. And sometimes they need me to just pull them. So it's important for insights professionals of all sorts, no matter which one of these three roles you are, to know that you're there to help the person that needs your help at that time. And that takes a very large piece of EQ. And I'm enjoying flexing those muscles and growing those muscles in this way now.

Ryan:

Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. You're right. It's a tough gig.

Ryan:

All right. So this is a perfect midsummer classic, because we are launching season 5 coming to you in September. So if you're just tuning in for the first time, hit subscribe, go back to season 1, season 1, 2, 3, and four are fire. That is a millennial term for they're great and full of value for you. 

The truth is season 5 is going to be a bit different, but with the same essence. We want to give you interviews and conversations that are going to give you tangible value you can bring to work the next day. A lot of what we want to do in season 5 is give you the perspective of the creator, the perspective of the marketer, the perspective of the CMO. 

And so we're going to be talking to chief insights officers, CMOs consultants, academic, studying marketing, and trying to help you bridge that gap between what insights needs to do to create marketing that grows business. At the end of the day, the companies, we all do business to support, we can say all the fluffy things we want about purpose. They're there to return a dividend for their shareholders and their employees. And so how do we help create things that people love so that they buy more?

Our first episode of season 5, Kelsey, you mind if I drop a little teaser, little off script?

Kelsey:

Go for it.

Ryan:

Our first episode of season 5 is with Mark Ritson. If you don't know who Mark Ritson is, you should find out quickly, he's an absolute legend. I won't lie. I've already recorded the episode and it's going to be two episodes because it has so much amazing content that we had to split it into two. 

I have been, one of my professional development areas has been, working on cursing less. I will tell you the interview with Mark brought me back three years in time. We dropped a whole lot of F bombs, but I'm not even sorry about it, because it was great. And you're going to learn a lot about the basics of marketing and where insights can play.

And it was interesting, as I listened to Mark, I fancy myself a marketeer and I was thinking as he was talking to me, how few people, the academic or technical sides of marketing, you have instincts, right? And you feel your way through this, but marketing isn't about creating pretty things. It's about growing business. And so season 5 is going to start off with a bang. And I'm very excited, ladies. We have so many great guests coming up.

I would ask you folks to send us people to interview, but I have to be honest with you. We have more interviews than we have time in season 5. So we're already on season 6, because we have so many amazing friends that we want to share stories with. 

Thank you for listening. Patricia, thank you for summarizing all the crazy on all the episodes. Insights VPs and leaders, insights managers and directors, and insight suppliers. It's time to elevate your game. It's time to be empathetic. It's time to learn and be curious so that you can have the empathy to connect with people so that you can grow the businesses you support. We're here to help you. If any of us can give you any advice or connect you with somebody, please hit us up in the meantime. We're out. We'll be back in September. Thanks ladies. Thanks everybody.

Patricia:

Bye.