Earnings Season - 24 - Survey Says! w/ @BlueDotInsights' Larren Peart (@MannishWaata)

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

This week on Earnings Season @HDanhai & @RTRowe talk with @BlueDotInsights' Larren Peart (@MannishWaata). He details his entrepreneurial start (selling sweeties while in school), tells hi...s journey and delves into the data expertise that BlueDot Insights holds. Larren also speaks on grit and its importance to being a successful entrepreneur and gives an authentic view into the reality of running a startup. He also explains Blue Dot Communa, the product that pays you for your opinion. Come for the gems, leave with insights...📝 Enjoy! Contact Us Here 👉🏾 Earnings@everymickle.com Follow us on Twitter here 👉🏾 www.twitter.com/Earnings_Season All other Links, Notes and Shoutouts are below...👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾 BlueDot Insights - https://bluedotinsights.com/ BlueDot Communa - http://bit.ly/36hUNtI Larren's Data Thread (The Weed to Weave Survey) - http://bit.ly/2RIvOKM Shout Outs @BlueDotInsights' Larren Peart (@MannishWaata), Doug Halsall, @msgillyj, @ZacharyHarding, @Kfc_Jamaica ★ Support this podcast ★

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi guys, welcome to another episode of Earnings Season. I'm Randy Rowe at R2Rowe. And I'm Danae at H-Danae. And this is Earnings Season, you know I love every week, right? You know, because some weeks we have just Danae and I trying to drop those gems, talking stocks, talking investments, sometimes we're're talking hosting anything that comes to us and you know other weeks we have a guest with us this week we have a guest laren period one of the dot himself yeah mr blue dot himself i always try to give people the right intro so well i know it's phil so i love them to choose mr ceo could you introduce yourself please yeah Thanks for having me Randy and Danai. So yeah, I'm Laren Peart and I'm the CEO of Glue.Insights. We are an insights agency. We get insights from basic
Starting point is 00:00:54 traditional research and non-traditional research as well as data analytics from data mining, neuroscience, behavioral science, everything. Yeah, making some fancy so i should tell you a lot more listeners regular regular regular people so people immediately the surveys but better than everybody else faster quicker with tech with tech targeted very targeted stuff um i don't want to say the wrong thing and I don't want to print because I know Leroy and you got a lot of time and it's supposed to be your latest products that you have coming. But in essence, people, you're the guy who can tell you what most people in Jamaica are going to do. And also you listen to this right now, so you'll be seeing and in the show notes, obviously,
Starting point is 00:01:39 a huge set of data, which by now I'm sure has excited people. We were recording this before he has done all his interviews. I know there's some political data in there so I don't want to screw up anything that might be said in the future or not said in the future but if you grew up here in politics, which means being in Jamaica, you know the importance of polls. You know the importance of getting the people's reactions and things and what people do and if you know in business where we are today you realize the importance of knowing where you're customizing consumer is very very and something that we spoke about even on the episode
Starting point is 00:02:15 with jillian mr jillian we spoke about i don't know if we made it so we might have edited it or we were talking about the right information yeah man straight information line tell me something the people want to write off the back a quick gem you know the average income of the average american no no yeah no one does right but the things that we can find out yeah yeah well you guys if you want to know this data line can definitely do it for you blue dot let me say properly blue dot insights blue dot insights yeah it can do it for you um and Dot Insights can do it for you. And that's really why we've always had them people from way back in the day, Carl Stone and those guys. This is the younger generation bringing it up to us.
Starting point is 00:02:55 So they're not coming, although they do still do the paper sometimes, you also have phones and everything. Alright. Yeah. So that's who Lion is. Reginald and I have known Lion. How long have we known each other now? Couple years, three years, maybe seven, alright. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's who Lion is. We're trying to have no line. We're learning how long we know each other though. Couple years, few years, maybe seven, eight. Seven, eight years. So 2020. Yeah. It might be a couple years as well. Yeah, a couple years as well. Um I like to start uh saying to the Lion off here. We start,
Starting point is 00:03:21 we get the we get the we get the the questions that everybody want to alter the way very quickly and we get to the real meat of the matter. Alright. So Lion, I'm not going to say to the lion out here, we start, we get the questions that everybody wants to alter the way very quickly and we get to the real meat of the matter. So lion, I'm not going to beat around the bush, we always address the elephant in the room. Lion is CEO of one of the companies out there. How do I say this right? They are a portfolio company. He's the CEO of a portfolio company of a listed venture capital company on the Jamaica South
Starting point is 00:03:42 Exchange. Correct. SSLVC, right now we're talking about. And without going into any heavy drama, you would have known SSLVC if you knew anything about the stock market and you would have known that Blue Dot was there. But what some people might not have known is that Blue Dot is its own company and actually predates SSLVC. Yes, yes. So Blue Dot really is an entity that was there before and is still there now.
Starting point is 00:04:05 So I thought it was a great time to talk to Lyon and have him tell us about Blue Dot and touch anything that we can get out of the way very quickly. We know. So I would say Lyon, I know there was back and forth in terms of how we SSLVC and Blue Dot and ownership and working things out. We really are now at the point of recording this point where you guys know how in terms of sslbc there's a new ceo yes zachary harding is not hiding now the ceo of the group um they have appointed a ceo for the vc um effectively zachary is ceo for the vc as well okay um but anthony dunn is the ceo and they've added a very fantastic board and i'm very optimistic for
Starting point is 00:04:45 what's happening now in the field okay i like that i like that so anything what did happen is also the way i know we're having we're handling business yeah yeah and i mean yeah i mean if you you would know that the the stock has gained in the past week i think like prepared people let me see if it's actually accurate. SSLVC, where are we? As of today, we're recording this. We're recording this the end of the first week of January. SSLVC share price is actually...
Starting point is 00:05:14 I think it's like at $1.30 something. $1.00. Yeah, I think it closed at $1.00... Mmm. Mmm, $1.00 change, $1.31. Yeah. Yeah, and it has a dollar thirty one cents. Yeah. Yeah. And if I see lower lows than that.
Starting point is 00:05:28 It took a beating after the heart. Yeah. Yes. Yes. All right. It did. It went all the way down to a dollar. It's actually up thirty percent more now.
Starting point is 00:05:36 I think I'm quite optimistic about the change. Yeah. I think so too. I'm in an optimistic mood this year. Can I mention other companies? I mentioned other companies. I told Tyrone, eventually I take a stake in a company. And I did take a stake. And I'm other companies? I mentioned other companies. I told Tyrone eventually I take a stake in a company and I did take a stake and I'm up
Starting point is 00:05:48 in some profit a little bit and I think SSLVC, who knows maybe after this interview it will be so good we'll decide to take a stake in there it's at an attractive price depending on how we look at it so things out of the way we can talk about blew that really blew that insight and the change. So I don't talk about, I guess, blow that insight and the change.
Starting point is 00:06:07 So I don't talk about a lot of my life before doing any of this. But what some people would know is that I actually spent a lot of time in data insights. A little time in data insights. Enough to learn how important it is and how hard it is to find in Jamaica. And so people can do it very quickly and get the data out there is our people can do that are exceedingly valuable and a company that can do that is exceedingly valuable as companies go and lion has won right now so which one you want to touch first company are the latest results that i know you have which i'm excited about too. No, I'll talk about you know Blue Dot. I kind of give a back story to that. Yeah, tell us a story about that. How you started, when you started, so on and so forth.
Starting point is 00:06:53 Yeah, so well a little bit about me. I'm from Obeah. Grew up in Montego Bay, went to Monroe um you know city set up on a hill and left there pretty early left there at 15 and when i got home my parents and i um you know we i also weren't getting along but because i went to boarding school i thought i was a man so so know, under the rule system of my dad, I was like, no, I need to leave this place and get to Kingston. So, yeah. So, um, yeah, so I moved out at 16, almost 17, moved to Kingston. Um, yeah, started working for a company, um, and I worked there for 13 years. And you want to say them or you don't want to say them? Um, it was AIS, Advanced Integrated Systems.
Starting point is 00:07:45 So I used to work for Doug Halsall, who still to this day is one of my mentors. And I consider that to be my university. So I never went to UA or any university for that matter, for financial reasons. We're in the same boat with that. Yeah. But it turns out you can still be good, right? Yeah, you know what I mean? Give thanks. I used to be insecure about not having a degree and I'm not anymore.
Starting point is 00:08:13 No one knows better. No one knows better and we're doing okay. That's something, bro. Too insecure about having a degree. Yeah, that's actually so funny how that works. For a long time, I i wonder what the hell i used to i remember i used to tell a brother and say yo i feel like i have a company with cxc people if i look at my job yeah but now i'm like yo everybody's competing no matter where you get in school is what you can do yeah like i'm sure yeah yeah and i mean now we have like two phds on staff and two phd pendants so that's yeah yeah so so anyway i was working at ais and i know i
Starting point is 00:08:49 don't want to stop that because people know him on twitter yeah because he's put in a lot of work yeah yeah man definitely one of the wisest people that i know um for sure and you know he taught me a lot of you know a lot of any innovation or spirit that i have to him all right um but yeah you know i worked there for 13 years i was kind of like his underling um his second eventually um and i just decided that you know if i worked or so I thought if I worked half as hard for myself as I did for him, then I could make it, you know, I mean, little did I know, you know, I'm tempted almost every week to ask him back for a job, you know, because this entrepreneurship thing is rough.
Starting point is 00:09:42 Why? You only glitz at Instagram. Yeah. You only glitz at Instagram. this entrepreneurship thing rough why yeah instagram yeah yeah yeah and that's that's a problem with us entrepreneurs we glamorize it too much i think you know not not many of us really tell you know all of the rollercoaster and emotional rollercoaster yeah yeah yeah man we glamorize it too much man it's you know way to the region here no yeah yeah yeah but what it take to get there you know yeah I know it's rough man um so so yeah I I left I the reason why I left though is I I through him through dogs you know teachings on mentorship, you know, I wanted to become an entrepreneur.
Starting point is 00:10:28 I always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I mean, I used to sell lollipop and them things in school and I had a little sound system in my bed. And, you know, put on pads and them something there. Chopper phone? Yeah. No! No! No, sir! We are definitely, we are not editing, but there is no trouble for home business I'm sure. Um, I think I'm too loud man. Probably, probably man. It wasn't around back then. Yeah, not at all. It was a different time.
Starting point is 00:10:57 It was a different time. Um, but yeah, so, um, what, what spurred me to resign though was, so I used to bust my ass, not having a degree there, I had to bust my ass to maintain my position, right? And I was hiring people with master's degrees and whatnot. And in the last year, and that was 2013, you know, when you're in a nine to five, the one thing you look forward to is your bonus, right? Every year. Yeah, like you work hard to get your bonus and as a manager i was expecting like four weeks bonus because i was there for so long anyways long story short i got one week's bonus and it completely shattered me and i was extremely demotivated all right um and at the time i was reading 48 laws of power and one of the laws says um despise a free lunch that's one and two if you're dying at a man's table you'll forever be beholden to him something like that um and i promised myself that another christmas was not
Starting point is 00:12:00 going to catch me um looking for a bonus looking for Yeah. So I made up my mind that December to quit. But fear and everything that involves fear and actually leaving your job. I didn't actually quit until the September. So nine months later. Nine months. It took me nine months. I know the way. I know the way. Yeah. It took me nine months no i know that i know that yeah it took me nine months to hand in the resignation and you know i'll never forget you know from the from i printed the the resignation i just started bawling all right um fear yeah it was fear and it was daunting because i only had two months saved up but like it took the nine months to save up the two months worth of
Starting point is 00:12:46 and it's not like it's just rent it was just two months rent alone yeah yeah yeah so um so i was like literally bawling and i walked upstairs and handed the letter to his daughter um who's the ceo or my immediate boss i think it was um and and she started Ballin2 because I literally grew up in the company. I spent 13, almost 14 years there. We're like family, you know, but you know, they understood. And yeah, I left. And then at that time, a couple of months before that, I met Kimala from the lab
Starting point is 00:13:32 yeah i i'd met kimala and you know i told her that you know i wanted to go into this research thing um because i'd seen an opportunity to marry to marry i.t with research because at the time, surveys were still being conducted with pen and paper. Yeah, we were off-roading the sun. Yeah, man. Yeah. So, also the lab being a creative agency, they have the clients who I want. So, they have the marketing managers and those people who do campaigns or then who then require market research. So exactly. So Kimala and I found a partnership. So a lot of people don't know. I mean, it's not hasn't been public knowledge, but Kimala was
Starting point is 00:14:16 or is a co-founder of Blue Dot. Right. Actually, something that most people do. It's very weird. How many? Yeah. Yeah. She is so very, very well she must she must do you yeah man so so kimono um became a co-founder of blue dots and um yeah and that's how blue
Starting point is 00:14:38 dot started um but the emphasis was always to do something different and think outside the box But the emphasis was always to do something different and think outside the box. I know a lot of people don't like that terminology, but to think differently, to be disruptive. And that's what we did. So we were and still are doing or providing real-time insights and real-time results via the technology that we use. real-time insights and real-time results via the technology that we use. And, you know, that led to a lot of competitive advantage for us in the space. And that is what has allowed us to start to grow in the way that we've been growing. I want to insert myself in line. So I can do a little bit of selling to spell it out just for you.
Starting point is 00:15:25 In other words, a concurrent from around the line, who that gets the data quicker. I won't say cheaper, but I will say quicker, fast. And that's very important in a corporate game. Accurately. Deeper. Deeper. Yes. Because sometimes I think that people don't know insert it.
Starting point is 00:15:42 Just because you ask a man what I'm like, doesn't mean his answer is actually true. Exactly. So finding out what they actually like, I know you need something where you ask people around a political question. Yeah man, so we're heavily invested in this space that's called consumer neuroscience, right? And consumer neuroscience is the marriage of neuromarketing and neuroscience essentially built on the premise that 90 of all decisions are made subconsciously and the problem with traditional marketing and traditional research is that you it tends to only target the logical or the rational side of the brain for decision making. So that 10%. So like price as an example.
Starting point is 00:16:27 So a lot of marketing campaigns are done around pricing, but not the actual emotions, which is what people actually purchase from, and context. That's true. So we use that neuroscience technology to measure the body's biometric and physiological response to stimuli or activities that they're being presented with. Kind of like a lie detector. People are very aspirational and when you ask explicit
Starting point is 00:16:57 questions, so on a scale of 1 to 10, are you health conscious? I would tell you yes, but I eat fast food very frequently. So we do a lot of these implicit studies that allow us to dig deeper into subconscious behavior and subconscious motivations. I get you. You're right. You're joking about it. Y'all just admit it Alright I order some KFC And it's on the way here Cause the KFC reach And I'll be straight up with you
Starting point is 00:17:30 I don't give a damn About the rat I know Like it's bad It's terrible We should clean I'm not going to make Any excuses for them
Starting point is 00:17:37 But I'm also not going To stop eating KFC Yeah And if you ask me I'm health conscious You eat fried foods Not very much You're right
Starting point is 00:17:44 Yeah Why eat KFC? You okay? Yeah. Yeah. No. Big up KFC. KFC is in a whole different category. Completely. Completely. I ate KFC when I stopped eating meat. Did you know?
Starting point is 00:17:56 And bacon. Anyway, different podcast, different story. It's like people that said I'm doing pork with a meat hum at Christmas time. Yeah. Or bacon. Yeah. Bacon is important. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I guess I'd say that our mission at Blue Dot is to negate the need as much as possible for a lot of the traditional gut decisions that we make.
Starting point is 00:18:31 We're accustomed to making gut decisions and decisions based on instinct as business owners and just generally we are democratizing that so to speak by making it more affordable to affordable to make these data driven decisions and just to be more conscious of insights and data. So in other words, it's less your IP list will sell and more the data shows that this is what it's actually selling. Yeah man, for sure. A bit of a feel for demand. Yeah. I wanted to bring up some of your tweets for the latest survey so people here is knowing of this survey that he saw which i was excited about i mean i see things from i captured the place it's like it go from weave to weed yeah yeah man um and you actually showed an example of one of the insight how you can capture some of the insights from it because you're saying
Starting point is 00:19:21 i think one of the things that people across all classes said that they'd like yeah the dude was the weave yeah yeah yeah but that could have been their girlfriends had requested that for christmas straight customer demand yeah yeah yeah it's it's interesting you know one one of the things that i love about you know being in this space is that we do so many surveys for so many companies and sectors that we I literally have a pulse on the nation and what people are seeing in every single category so we do surveys for fast food chains, alcohol, tobacco, fast food chains, alcohol, tobacco, banking and finance and the amount of data that we get from that is extremely interesting to see to be able to see what people are thinking and what they you know how they act and that type of stuff is very interesting. Of course you know people hear data
Starting point is 00:20:22 they don't want to see any I know a lot of your data is on the nda and it's for clients but do you have data that is shareable other than the things you have shared do you have like maybe let's say blue dot level data that everybody could access yeah and so one of the things that that we that we're going to be doing this year and you know the general public will see it is is one just more of an awareness of the benefits of data. There's been a lot of fear mongering in the media around data and privacy etc. And so we're going to be taking a position on that and being very vocal about the fact that data is once used properly will benefit us tremendously
Starting point is 00:21:08 and as a nation and as a country and I will I mean I think I think just has an example if we just know where most people work and live let alone put a help for the traffic management and knowing the right times to do the road work yeah even though it might seem silly someone might say why would you do the stairs there and treat the road to do the next where you put the roads how much traffic on the phone and do whatever it does make sense exactly what product is better to develop at what time right yeah do i do i need to should I import more weave in October, November? Because I know December is coming up. People say, yo, that's obvious.
Starting point is 00:21:49 But you know, something might be good when it's obvious after you hear it. Yeah. Everybody can say it's obvious after they hear it. There's very few that can say it before and you are able to pull that out. Yeah. And we're doing a lot of those studies now. I can't speak about it because it's public knowledge that you know is entering the island and we did a study for them where we told them exactly where to put their stores based on geospatial analytics um so that is um traffic data so how
Starting point is 00:22:18 many cars drive past these locations what's the foot traffic what is the crime in the area what's the mean income in the area? The profile of the people in the areas who drives past there? And a whole bunch of other data that we know we we we give them and proximity to what they might be of interest. And so if they were interested in school children as clients, we can tell them how many schools are within a five mile radius. That type of stuff, that type of data we're giving to these companies who want to make
Starting point is 00:22:51 better decisions. And a lot of companies, I think right now there's some marketing manager or some CEO who realize that, wow, it's not like they have to up the marketing budget. Or maybe they should, they're listening to the employees. But maybe it's the same budget or maybe you should, don't listen to me, listen to your employees but maybe it's the same budget but just targeted yeah you help people to move from the shotgun approach to the sniper approach, you're targeted. I like that. Information is key so you know the point in managing information across the board. But yeah that's a great idea. Another thing I saw earlier in 2019 you launched was your what's it called your insight i saw the insights
Starting point is 00:23:28 yeah come you know so so we in in north america and in europe etc you don't have people going out with pen and paper even tablets to collect data right um because you have these what they call panels these online panels that have a pre-profiled database of respondents that they can just push surveys out to. So we launched the first one in the card and it's called Blue.Communo. And what we've done is we've segmented and profiled every single member on the database. So if you, Randy, you wanted to target or to do a survey or to get feedback from women between the ages of 25 to 35 who don't drive, who have children.
Starting point is 00:24:17 No, no, no. Who do drive, who don't have children. And jobs. And jobs. Have jobs. Who drink who don't have children, and jobs, have jobs, who drink, don't smoke, with pink toenails, we'd be able to segment the database
Starting point is 00:24:32 and send a survey to that specific person. And you get the results 5-3 to 5-6 You get to chop it down and see what these people do quickly. And that's the thing, speed too. And it's speed. So what normally takes
Starting point is 00:24:49 six to eight weeks for a survey to be completed, traditionally, we're doing that in hours. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So there. Yeah. And so our clients are getting dashboards, real time dashboards.
Starting point is 00:25:01 So from the minute the first survey comes in, they get a URL and they can see the results in real time and that you know that links to a lot of transparency for us which is very important and I spent a little time talking about that so there's a lot of there's a lot of bad press or there's been a lot of negative PR around one polling and pollsters and the whole research space on a whole because some of our competitors, especially in the last couple of election results, would have appeared to skew the data based on who you know who was contracted who contracted them um and and truthfully the only reason why we got into this political space is for that reason which is is is because we're actually losing clients because they were like well this man came out and do this and you know we don't
Starting point is 00:26:06 believe in research anymore and we're actually losing clients because of that so our foray into politics was spurred by that and i mean i'll say it i i don't like being in the space at all in i can understand yeah it's not something that i enjoy i didn't want to do it there's just too too many variables too much too many personalities too many people that are too passionate about politics yeah yeah but um we're we know we're very good at what we do um and we entered into the political space because of that um so we're very transparent with with how we go about doing the polls. So tomorrow or tomorrow when we go on Nationwide, I'll be taking the time to explain how we went about collecting the data.
Starting point is 00:26:56 We have, for example, you can hear it. Yeah, this is the people. It's all right. We have GPS information for every single result. Really? Yes. Wow. So if somebody was supposed to be in North Central St. Catherine and the GPS picks them
Starting point is 00:27:13 up in Montego Bay or somewhere then that is flagged, right? We randomly record audio from the service. So just as an FYI, we've had instances where we've had bad interviewers who were schizophrenic who would have changed their voice and responded as an interview as a respondent right so you wouldn't know unless you check it exactly exactly um and there's a whole bunch of other quality controls that we put in place. So I'll be speaking a lot about that. And one of the things that we'll be doing throughout this election process is I'll be
Starting point is 00:27:50 making the data available for anyone to review. Where? Open? Open. I like that because people don't like it. That's the one thing people, no site can pick. If it's open, this is how we did it. If it's right, it's right, it's wrong, wrong, but this is how it. Yeah, and when we make the dashboard live, we can't change the results after, right? So even if
Starting point is 00:28:11 the one party commissions me to do a study, that's my one mandate that we have to make the results available in real time as much as possible. Maybe there might be some sensitive questions that we might hide but you know it is important for us that the public trusts and believes in the method and the data that is being presented to them yeah yeah i like that i like that boy happy for it it's the it's the it's a model of we no longer i'm not owning the data i'm just owning how it was collected and yeah the data is the data right until you like it oh what's the reception being to that's all i think so far it's been great you know our clients love it um because we do the same thing for our corporate clients right there you know um there's this famous marketing guy who asked this question back probably in the 50s i think you know
Starting point is 00:29:06 like what business are you really in and one of our clients actually said to me you know that you know lauren you know what you guys provide me is is confidence and you know confidence that the decisions that i make are accurate and data driven you know and so that's the business that we're actually in we're in the business of confidence, you know? Strong. You know that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:31 But I didn't say 50% of the marketing budget is wasted. The problem is knowing which 50%. Yeah. So that has you know where your best bet is on which 50 is the best bet. I like that. And of course, corporate clients like that. We have, we and I speak as if I'm a corporate client who would have less of a vested interest in a certain result. We want to hear this is good, but we also want to hear if it's bad. We don't want to trash the guy who brought it just because I don't
Starting point is 00:29:58 like what he said. Yeah, you don't shoot the messenger in this case. I really like, however, though, I don't know if you can be said, I remember you did do a bit. Your hooray was during the... The East Portland by-election. Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You heard that one right? No, most, most, you're the one who got most man. How many people get it wrong? Yeah man, so we got that right and actually the most accurate in terms of the margin. Yes, yes, yeah, even more important to note from that was that we use neuroscience to do that prediction.
Starting point is 00:30:34 So we didn't do the traditional polling. The results that are going on on the issue tomorrow were done traditionally. What we did with the neuroscience is we did what was called an implicit reaction timing test. How it works, if you follow me, is what we want to do is measure subconscious associations and what your subconscious biases are. As an example, when I was eight years old, Pepsi gave me a yo-yo. Because of that, I'm forever loyal to Pepsi. When you do these traditional types of studies, you never know what those biases are. And they creep into the study and it can skew it, right?
Starting point is 00:31:15 So what we did in East Portland was called an implicit reaction timing test. How it works as an example is if I said, you know, deny to slap my right hand as quickly as possible, if I said Coca-Cola is sweet, if subconsciously you think that Coca-Cola is sweet, you're going to hit my right hand really quickly. But if you have to think about it, there's going to be a delay. So we measure down to the microsecond or the millisecond what your reaction is at your core implicitly. And based on that, we know if you have a subconscious leaning to that attribute.
Starting point is 00:31:54 And that's what we did in East Portland. Wow. So it worked. You got it right. Yeah. Because as you can imagine, in the 2016 general elections in the u.s only about less only about two percent of the polls actually got it right yeah because it was so polarizing and people were afraid to say who they're going to vote for yeah right um nobody wants to support a bad guy but he
Starting point is 00:32:17 got the bad guy in captions right exactly so and and that's and that's why we use that that ipt test right and it was very interesting um you know we we were in east portland for a couple days and you know we really proved that this methodology worked because you have the staunch well you know what we call tetes right who are explicitly stating this dame say forhal and Marivaz or Damien Crawford But when we checked what their subconscious was saying, it was the complete opposite And that margin thing is major. Because that was a very close election Yeah, it was close It was a very close election. But you can get that and have the closest margin is...
Starting point is 00:33:03 Precision Yeah, it's precision It's a a whole go on the next election. I'll tell you in a couple of months. We're actually, our data team actually are running models as we speak based on historical data and some other data that we plugged into our model that we built that will help us to predict. That's fine. Well, then big up your team because I know you had a good a good thing i don't know tell us what you think yeah so we were at around 10 employees now um we have excluding
Starting point is 00:33:34 myself so we have um like i said we have data scientists data analysts we have statisticians actuarial scientists we have an anthropologist on the team now because we you know we're going a little deeper um we've we have a consultant behavioral psychologist um who helps us to again dig deeper into psyche and the psychographic profiling because you know traditionally when when you said to a marketer a marketing manager you know, traditionally when you set to a marketer, a marketing manager, you know, your core customer is, you know, 25 years old or 25 to 35 years old, male and some other demographics, you and I are completely different even though we're in the same age group, right? And marketing has to shift to where you're targeting the individual and their
Starting point is 00:34:26 And marketing has to shift to where you're targeting the individual and their individual preferences. And that is what we're doing. You know, I don't want to say Cambridge Analytical. You know, that's a bad word, but where we can target ethically. Yeah, so you don't have to do it unethically yeah the side of cambridge analytical where i don't know again the side of the reese the deep research game where you are able you don't have to use the powers of evil pretty much yeah you can use them for good and there's a lot of good order in jamaica yeah right for us to step up right yeah i like i like i like that i want want to show the team what I was hoping.
Starting point is 00:35:05 I had a friend, I didn't know she worked here. By the way, she still consults with you here, Shev. Oh yeah, yeah. Shev is our acting CIO. Chief Insights Officer at the moment. Extremely bright. Sharp. Sharp.
Starting point is 00:35:18 Sharp. Sharp. Big up Shev. I can't have a telephone fixer or not fixer. Big up Shev nonetheless. Shev, big up Shev. Yeah man, you know, the success of your company heavily depends on the team that you have. Yes.
Starting point is 00:35:30 Heavily. It's heavily dependent on that. And we have a good team. We have a good team. And I'm very grateful for that. Of course, we have our moments, but... Yeah, everybody has their moments. It's not worth it though, the moments. But the team is, at the end of the day is who are the team producers exactly and the feedback has been with the results
Starting point is 00:35:50 so many people have seen them in good i know you've done this new survey we can talk about that this new survey is there a specific reason you did it or it's just um it's it's a it's a snapshot that i want to do every every three months every quarter of the serving um you know come on every quarter and tell us because we're always interested you had some good stuff in there about oh god i mean then i was looking at it you know i remember since i'm banking uh money just generally i remember the 40k question because i already had said you were asking the questions. Yes, right. So a lot of those questions came from Twitter. I had asked you guys what you wanted to find out. And so a lot of the questions came from Twitter.
Starting point is 00:36:33 And there's more that I'll share over the week. I just didn't want to overwhelm everybody. Yeah, I understand. But yeah, that's part of a snapshot. But it's one is to is to give people information you know like jamaica and the caribbean on a whole who have a chronic lack of access to data chronic chronic lack of access to data and you one of the most influential drivers of the economy if companies can make better decisions they have better performance that's just
Starting point is 00:37:14 point blank end of the day yeah yeah the scale or something like this yeah the scale or something like this is right yeah what i think that can become yeah all right i don't think you know having done something in the marketing field you know you know it's almost accepted that you used to accept back in the day you could say something about jamaica you could jamaica the product right and you could base it on you could you're a jamaican and you could base it on oh us in the us i studied from 2000 yeah young people they're still being done all the time because all you have so you're moving it out whatever you're working with you're working with that we might not be anything at all right we're absolutely nothing like that we've we've proven that several times but it's what we've been working on the whole day
Starting point is 00:38:06 everybody knows that different demographic, different mindset in people, but then we come up with that It's all that was available So you put in this stuff online? Meaning how do you do it through your Twitter stream? Guys you should follow, how much you follow original? I'm trying to put your link up I'm at about 500 now
Starting point is 00:38:22 I think I don't know No almost 550, 550 Guys if you if you're listening, don't follow him At Manish Water Tell people what that means Manish Water, you see it in the show notes Manish M-A-N-I-S-H-W-A-A-T-A I just really like goated soup That's it
Starting point is 00:38:39 There's nothing else behind this That's good, you grabbed that name early. That's good. You know what? You never found yourself at CEO of Blue Dot. I really like that. We're not doing that. You have a personality there.
Starting point is 00:38:51 But Twitter, what do you like on Twitter so far? It's interesting. I'm primarily introverted or innately introverted so being so twitter forces it to be expressive yeah i've never heard of it yeah it forces to be expressive but it's very hard like it takes me minutes to yeah to compose a tweet yeah and then you have to worry about it and then take more minutes to wear it yeah and then worry about why is there going to be backlash from this time yeah and you know the funny thing is you never know what the backlash is right yeah
Starting point is 00:39:30 yeah some you you i'm talking about this pen yeah and somebody says so you don't care about the children right yeah what i just want is a pain no i'm sorry i'm sorry it's also not enough online anymore you shouldn't be yes yeah First of all, Twitter is be perfect. Yeah. Oh man, Twitter is stressful man. But also you see the benefits. I have seen it. It's a tool.
Starting point is 00:39:53 Do you guys mind it? Yeah man. Pay attention to what's said or spoken. Yeah, we do that for clients. So we're in on the social media analytics, social media listening. Oh, that's strong um we do one of the cool things that we do with social media listening is we can geofence locations so um we tested it at champs last year where we geofenced the stadium and we're able to read messages that came out of the stadium and gives you sentiment just from that geographic space
Starting point is 00:40:24 obviously from publicly available profiles yes from that geographic space. Oh, never think about that. Yeah, damn. Obviously from publicly available profiles. Yeah, of course, of course, of course. But even that is enough. Because like, you're not able to look at champs where nobody else is able to look at them. And tell things, you know, if the KC people are really, really happy,
Starting point is 00:40:41 barman them happy, or the rest of us too. Just from the corporate client side, or what are people talking about? Are you talking about the grey skinned, the bunting and the mascot or whatever he is? From on, you know, who which performed it, they like the best. That type of. Major, major insights. People you have not, do not miss this opportunity. Listen to it and you're wondering, if you're wondering if you need to talk to Blue Dot
Starting point is 00:41:03 right now, yo, give him a call. And say he is you know what you're wondering yes call him before you come back to us yeah that's what i think right yeah yeah yeah no man we're doing yeah um we're really doing some some really really cool things at blue dots um you know we've gone into the ai space now um one of the products that we're launching next week we're calling it blue dot shelfy so traditionally when our clients in a distribution space who distribute products who have merchandisers etc they go out and they physically record how many items are on our shelf etc etc we've just finished developing a
Starting point is 00:41:47 solution that they just need to take one picture of the shelf and the AI uses image recognition to capture every single item that's on the shelf so we can tell how many can be from which company which SKU what's the price etc and then we give our clients a distribution map, what they call planogram compliance, which is the competitor taking up more face into our product lines on the shelf than you are and are you compliant with the trade design. The merchandise is actually strong for retail. Strong for retail.
Starting point is 00:42:22 Yeah. Yeah. It's serious for retail. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah The strong for retail The strong for retail The serious for retail The serious for retail Tell the people what you're thinking I'm thinking about Fantaan They launched a new location
Starting point is 00:42:34 Heavy retail Brands can really gauge the take-up there Fantaan themselves can really gauge the take-up and bring out the relative to the commissioning here Nana and I went through it together. Like we just tried to do a walkthrough of the store. And one of the very first things we noticed, because I always say the same in terms of data, you don't see enter through swing gates. And I immediately said I wanted to have counters in
Starting point is 00:42:56 there to count how many people are coming in. Yeah. And you know, just that sort of thing. Yeah. Which is where we're going in the future. In five years if you're not doing this, you have a lot of business. Yeah. And we're just trying to be ahead of the curve you know that's all yeah but what's happening before it happened and I'm playing for you yeah Buddha is specific for it's really for investors so if you can start market and like you want to you want to make decisions on stocks, then I think
Starting point is 00:43:28 Google, what they can get out for investors. Yeah. Give me a sample of what's happening so I can make a decision for information in certain ways. For sure. For sure. Bloomberg, something like that coming from Google, that could be very strong for us. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:43:44 So, our challenge now is very strong. Yeah, so like you know what our challenge now is just resources you know like there's a lot of studies that I want to do so I mentioned on Twitter that I really really wanted our study on badminton and we are going to do it I've you know gathering the social scientists now to do it but yeah we're going to do a study on badmine and on badmine and the effects that badmine has on the economy but it's just defining you know like what is badmine you know and and so but yeah there's many things that we can do we have so much opportunity now to just make data more accessible and to allow anybody to make better decisions with data and that's that's really what our mission is i don't people laugh
Starting point is 00:44:36 with the badmines you know let me say differently we always don't play things when they come from because if you you can read a scientific journal about a study done to show localized effect of envy between people in Scotland and you'd say oh this is interesting and then come Jamaica and tell you about it but in Jamaica we say bad man and you laugh at it but it's the same thing because it must, we're human beings so it's there and it definitely affects people and it has an effect on what you actually do maybe a bad man in the neighborhood you buy you have to buy a new car because they buy a new car how many people show that trait yeah so that's one of the things actually trying to figure out so there's no real word in the English language for bad mind right there's no one word but you
Starting point is 00:45:18 have jealousy envy grudge right what we've defined so far is is bad mind is has has an active component to it so yeah so so it's not bad mind until you act on your act on it ah okay yeah otherwise it's just grudge or envy or jealousy yeah but anyways that's that's just like one thing that we want to do what's the effect of the road work on productivity you know that type of stuff is important yeah yeah yeah but what there's no like and we learn something again the other day around music where we're using or EEG devices that measure brain activity to to a hit song. So we're measuring your brain's response to the music from that. And we've gotten some very interesting data from that so far. I think we'll eventually be able to create a formula for what makes a hit song
Starting point is 00:46:22 based on brain activity that we've studied um again using neuroscience yeah well imagine i have this one i want the both of them so i need to do that yeah man we will we'll set the formula so if if it is stimulating your brain at this level what based on the index that we create then it's not going to be a hit song and we have some good data on that so far I like that you're showing very quickly to real people a real effect of what you can get from data. Yeah, you know, like I said,
Starting point is 00:47:13 if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. One of the things we really want to get into is health, is helping the health sector with the data that they have. You know, when I was at AISIS, AIS processes over 100,000 health insurance claims every day. And I've been telling the story of late that when I realized the power of data was when I'd be in the server room at the company and I'd be seeing flu medications being dispensed frequently, let's say in Ocho Rios. Right? And I would know based on historical data to call my dad and say,
Starting point is 00:47:50 Pops, stock up on vitamin C and start taking some flu meds because I knew that the flu was going to get to my baby in two weeks. Wow. And by for sure, two weeks or less guaranteed, it would start to happen right and that's the first time I realized that yo this data thing is strong yeah he never listened to me and he would end up catching the flu of course Where were you when TP was going wrong? Haha, didn't even go that far with that
Starting point is 00:48:20 I told you so, yo TP Yeah yeah yeah Guys so we had a smog right there so if it as usual you know where I told this was, yo Yeah, yeah Guys, we had a small break there So if as usual, you know where you are So I think the KFC actually reached out To be honest And I interrupted a story just now that Larry and I were having
Starting point is 00:48:36 So they were talking about just opportunities locally With the local market in terms of Stocks, because this is still a Finance podcast and opportunities That can happen so i like to tell you a story and if we need more context no i was i was just saying um it's not stock related but the other day i was driving to ocherius and you know um i got a speeding ticket and i was thinking to myself that the the in terms of resources the police don't need to be on the toll road because
Starting point is 00:49:04 they know the time that you enter the toll booth that's don't need to be on the toll road because they know the time that you enter the tool booth and they know when you exit the tool booth if you get to the next toll booth in a time shorter than you're supposed to get there yeah then they send you a ticket yeah you know the average speed right um so just send your ticket in your mail and that those police resources could be put elsewhere i don't want them to do that of course because yeah yeah but it's it's just simple like there's so much data in jamaica right now so many government agencies have data that they're just not utilizing yeah that could bring about so much more efficiency in the public setup. To touch on that question I asked at the jump, where it said if you know what the average
Starting point is 00:49:48 salary is. So we do know, right? Right. But we know X amount of money you can pay PAYE. Are you paying the taxes? Exactly. The government must know how much you're paying taxes on, but nobody has just put that in Excel and put that out there.
Starting point is 00:50:02 Yeah, you just need to reverse calculate the percentage. Yeah, so what about we get that kind of data? On the finance side though, looking on the same study stuff, I remember you had stuff in there saying, there was like one person said that most Jamaicans wouldn't be able to find 40,000 people in the event of an emergency. Wow. Which is not even enough for if you have a serious medical emergency That can't do anything Yeah, no, yeah, geez No
Starting point is 00:50:28 No That cannot, that's two x-rays Yeah Yeah I can't even Yo, I tell the story When I was young, I used to have asthma attacks, right? Up till maybe my early twenties
Starting point is 00:50:41 And I remember going to, I won't say the name of the hospital It's a popular hospital in Kingston Going there late one night And I feel like I remember going to, I won't say the name of the hospital, it's a popular hospital in Kingston. Going there late one night and feel like I'm going to die. And I never forget I sit down and the guy actually sit down in a wheelchair and they wheeled me around and the doctor saw me and he was like and the guy said, oh yeah I'm ready, I'm ready, good. So the guy turned back, wheels me down the hall, wheeled me to the left into the billing as if i've been short i'm gonna pay and then they treated me yeah imagine if you never have a month to get paid i had to pay before yeah man that's that's crazy mike one of my closest
Starting point is 00:51:16 friends died from an asthma attack yeah i mean it's a serious thing yeah yeah i can't imagine i didn't want to expect yeah i thought he came into the treatment room yeah right to the middle should i put nebulizer first and then sort that out yeah yeah he wanted i want him they said i can get nebulized early if if i'd shown that i had insurance so they know what i'm covered wow wow Wow. I was like, wow. So it's my leave of wallet. You get a joke. Yeah, like John Q moment. No.
Starting point is 00:51:50 But yeah, it's awesome seeing where data can hit and it's awesome noticing the change in things. You had mentioned a point, there's another point in the survey about banking. Yeah. That you're saying disruption, it's time for some disruption disruption i know the industry across the board is being disrupted now what was the actual question i don't want to quote it wrong um yeah i don't remember you don't remember no that's fine it's a whole other question to ask then i look at it right now i'm sure that question again came from twitter somebody had us to, had asked me to find out, it was very specific to the services. So online, non-traditional bank that doesn't have a brick
Starting point is 00:52:33 and mortar presence, something like that. Would that be? Yeah. The question was, would you consider banking with an exclusive online bank as your primary bank, no physical address or offices, if it meant getting lower fees and better offerings than traditional banks. And the results, only 27% said no. It would depend on other factors such as 10% and 62% said yes. Immediately, yes. 1, 2, 3, good.
Starting point is 00:53:02 Guys, again, another break. kfc sorry they got kfc jamaica um i'm not sure we just mentioned the results from oh yeah about the the banking oh yes correct yeah so people really really really want to have innovation done. Dan, just in case you want us to repeat that question, we'll repeat exactly what the question was and the results. And it was speaking about... Exactly. The question was, would you consider banking with an exclusively online bank as your primary bank, no physical address or offices, if it meant getting lower fees on better offerings than traditional banks? No was 27%.
Starting point is 00:53:45 It would depend on other factors was 10%. And 62% said yes. That's major. Majority. Yeah. The moment somebody do that, I'm stealing. More than 6 out of 10 people want a better banking experience. First person to offer it is going to eat.
Starting point is 00:54:02 But it's funny because a lot of the bad banking experience is marked down by everybody has a banking experience no matter which bank i might have a bad experience yeah it's like where do i turn the one one is i think all the banks know it and all the banks are trying to fix that experience oh definitely very very very quickly it's the tech push that they're doing everybody trying to fix it but so there are problems yeah so we'll see how that goes. Going back to the experience, Larry, I know you said at the start, you know, earlier at the start I was saying everybody talks about the good part of being an entrepreneur. Yeah. Well that's actually the good part of the intro coming. Tell me some of the rough parts, tell me some of the bad parts, tell me some of the the hash parts um it's well for one i'm i'm not in a traditional space
Starting point is 00:54:48 right um and so we just turned five a couple weeks ago um and the first couple years five years yeah so yeah so we have five thanks um yeah so we just turned five, but you know, a lot of our clients still don't understand the value of data, right? And the purpose of it. They know they have it, but one, they don't know what to do with it. They don't know the value of it. They don't know the insights that you can get from it, right? And it's hard to sell it now, but it was much harder in the first couple of years, as you
Starting point is 00:55:24 can imagine. But luckily for us now, we have companies that are sending their staff to conferences overseas and they're hearing about it. You have managers now who would have gone to school and been exposed or have worked overseas and know what the usefulness of a dashboard in tableau or power bi that type of stuff so um so initially it was a hard sell you know in 2016 or 17 i think we got the award from the dbj for top exporter because we were collecting most of our revenue outside of jamaica oh that's amazing that's the major you're selling a service while being here yeah right that's the future yeah yeah yeah but no that has switched so at the time around 60 70 percent of revenue was coming from overseas clients no it's it's flipped um luckily um that's
Starting point is 00:56:19 good for the local clients yes yeah always talking what i can or can't say but as i would know especially the companies that are here that have an overseas presence or from multinationals that are here they have no they're not they know exactly the power of the data and they move quickly yeah they can't compete with us for example a nestle or craft if you're not using the data correct you have to be at the data and they know the importance of it. Yeah. Yeah. But just general challenges, you know, like grit. Grit is so important as an entrepreneur and being able to just take the punches and move on and like just don't quit. Don't be a quitter.
Starting point is 00:56:59 Push through. Push through. I understand that. I remember seeing that tweet from you so something where you're just saying that you you're happy to be in a space where you you you don't have to worry about payroll right yeah i know i know what i i know about that feeling yeah man yeah no no man every every month when you make payroll is a blessing trust me you know and what what happened to us is that cash flow is such a big problem for us because all of our clients are corporate and you know some of these corporate clients who have six to nine today payment terms yeah um so we've been waiting for for cash for six to the night yeah two three months
Starting point is 00:57:38 but you still have staff to pay and whatnot i mean we've corrected that situation now with like communal where we have quick turnaround cash flow which is one of the reasons why we implemented communal but yeah man i mean like you you don't know stress until you have to worry you have to start in your head formulating um what you're going to tell your employees you know who have mortgages to pay and whatnot you know in in the early days i'd put it on ig as well. I've sold things, pawned my car, done everything just to meet payroll. Imagine that. Imagine you pawn your car. And the funny thing is we talk about it all the time. Nobody knows how lonely that job is. You say man, come in 11 o'clock. You need no work. But then from 8.30 you have no idea. You don't get to go home i see you you are there always in your
Starting point is 00:58:26 mind yeah and and the worst part about it i think for me is that you can't really complain because you chose this yes you know you chose this is is you you you chose this and who you're going to complain to yeah i've been having that conversation myself recently nobody cares yeah that is nobody cares everybody in the world nobody cares nobody cares nobody cares but on the flip side i've that conversation with myself recently. Nobody cares. Yeah. Nobody cares. Everybody has their own troubles. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody cares.
Starting point is 00:58:49 But on the flip side, I've been having these little like gratitude moments, right? Like I'd walk into my office and I see we have conference room tables and cheers and TVs on the wall and like staff and people here working. And, you know, I'm grateful that I'm that I have now have this you know that I can I can contribute to these people's livelihood and
Starting point is 00:59:12 you know and I'm grateful for that and then you know like the other day I was in the kitchen in our little kitchen at the office and mixing a cup of Milo and I remember I also had a moment there like I probably shed some tears I think because I remember at my previous job when I was at AIS the office attendant reported me to the financial controller because I was having like eight cups of Milo they just alter just brokenness right you know um yeah but it was yeah the music called me fosco always had a box of fosco in the draw but then you can't sit up on the podcast yeah uh but you know like and then you just have these moments of gratitude that just make it like bring things full circle and you just like appreciate it yeah yeah yeah i like that you don't need to say make
Starting point is 01:00:09 it you just say oh yeah it's just the little things like and and and i just enjoying the moments you get a contract you get that email from my client i said yo lauren you know thank you to the blue that team you know you really helped us to pull this through like just things like that you know yeah yeah yeah that one i'm proud i'm proud everybody's silenced i'm proud i know there's a holy mark coming i'm proud to see and that's good that's good yeah i should tell people just in case we sound different we're actually recording this at the blue dot offices yeah so major if it's somebody's my fault sorry but yeah like give us the one moment he had on the weekend i said
Starting point is 01:00:46 okay i miss it so if it's somebody's my fault i'm sorry guys i'm playing the the i'm playing all the tech today um i hope it sounds good though and i'm really happy to hear it that's the battle tell us some of the good stuff the battle of relating to the yeah yeah no no the good stuff is is the impact that we're. All right. We really have made an impact for in corporate Jamaica. And like I realize every day I wear my blue shirt I'm branded that we've really built a very good brand. A lot of people don't even know what we do,
Starting point is 01:01:19 but they just feel like we're doing something cool and then we like just big me up and stuff. So that's gratifying as well. know i built a really really good brand um but we've yeah we've been we've been making an impact a lot um a lot of campaigns that you would have seen out we would have tested there's a lot of you know i walked down the supermarket uh and i see products that we've helped to develop through our eye tracking so we have eye tracking technology that we use for clients who are product testing or or
Starting point is 01:01:51 when they're changing the labels where we can tell which label has the highest of what we call findability and seeability on our shelf so we literally can walk down a supermarket aisle or in any space and tell what people are looking at what they're seeing what they're not seeing etc where they look first where they look first that sort of thing think about it in a wholesale one of the things that back in my whole corporate days i know one of the biggest problems is i was jamaican wholesales are crowded just by default but if you think from a marketing perspective there's 17 posters on the wall 16 of them are your competitors all of them sell biscuits and you sell biscuits too. What the hell are you going to put on your poster?
Starting point is 01:02:26 Where are you going to put your poster so that somebody will see it first? Exactly. Major thing. Exactly. We did some work with a fast food chain the other day that we told them where to move, put their higher margin many items based on where people were looking at. So if the number eight, as an example, has the highest margin, but people are looking where the number one is, then you need to put the number eight as an example has the highest margin but people are looking where the number one is then you need to put them on the eight where the number
Starting point is 01:02:49 one is yeah yeah yeah yeah so wow so i mean no okay um so but you know things like that i see the impact and i'm sure soon they'll tell them they'll tell me that their sales increase and the company knows does better they hire more people they want more branches and that's you know and it's not all just very very no yeah because you do i don't even think it's so common because communa allows me or anybody listening right oh yes yeah so i should yeah yeah right right so communa is again the first online panel in the caribbean but why we did it so 97 of the registered smes in jamaica are or the rest of companies in jamaica sorry are smes now research is only done by the large corpus because it's generally expensive the average research projects cost anywhere between
Starting point is 01:03:45 1.5 million dollars to 4 million dollars which leaves out the mom and pop shops the little shops that that still need to make decisions but are relying on goods yeah so we've brought the cost of research now through communal to a hundred thousand dollars word yeah so wow right so our target if i have a computer don't worry okay yeah wow so our target yeah oh wow okay okay okay okay i mean i know it must be wow i mean and of course there is scales and rates for that right but you if you if you wanted to find out as an example which logo people like which is an important decision you know send it to us we send it out you get the results in minutes um and and you give make a data driven decision and it's not based on gut you know you typically send it out in a local edeka whatsapp group with your family and say which
Starting point is 01:04:40 one do you like you know what you want here buy it say mommy love everything exactly exactly exactly so communa is extremely important um in in that regard so we want to target the smes with that and you know all of this is about a cultural change that we're trying to to to make which is why i'm you know going out on twitter now and sharing the data and whatnot um and making the data more accessible because i want jamaica culturally to to one understand the value of data and shift our whole thinking and our psyche to being more data driven in our decision making completely i agree with you we have you know incorporate as he says gut and everybody know everybody don't say the truth is incorporate, as you say, it's gut. And everybody knows, everybody knows,
Starting point is 01:05:25 the truth is... I need to be careful in what I say. The truth is oftentimes people often think that the data is there. There's a common thing we say. You can make the data say anything you want. That's like telling me that I can paint a picture using... I can use my colors and paint any picture I want. And that's true. But if the question is, show me an accurate representation of that bottle.
Starting point is 01:05:53 I can also use these colors and show you an accurate representation of the bottle, right? Just because you can do something bad with the data doesn't mean you should throw data out here. Yeah. And we, I think we're moving away from a space where we used to ask the data to say what we would like to hear to know a space where it lets us see what the data says and then move from it and there's still people saying, boy you can take anything you want from that and I think those people will either have to shift quickly or will be shifted out of business quickly They're going to get disrupted very quickly
Starting point is 01:06:23 There's no question about it, This show is a good example of that. Yeah, we get raided numbers of something that we do just on our own here. Yeah, and I saw the thing about, I was moving on a gut. Right? You know what I stopped moving on a gut and started doing? Put something out there for us and try to get the test. It never worked.
Starting point is 01:06:40 But anyway, if you have Communaut, I do it. 100 grand, that's fine. That's fine. Yeah, but also on the flip side of Communo, it benefits me if I'm a survey respondent. Oh, yeah, sorry. Right. So, so there's an earning opportunity. So we've paid out since our launch a couple of months ago,
Starting point is 01:06:56 almost $2 million to the survey takers. Oh, word. So just by completing the survey. Just by completing the survey. Yeah, you get you get paid. How I sign up for that come in at blue.insights.com again just one more time so so you can go straight to blue.com or communa.blue.insights.com and just sign up. And then you'll get surveys. You fill them out.
Starting point is 01:07:25 Be honest with your answers and you get paid. Boom. And you know what you got, guys. I mean, it's in the show notes. I'll put the link in the show notes for you to hear. When you say get paid,
Starting point is 01:07:33 people want to really get paid. What do you get paid? Credit? What do you get paid? No, no. So it's a point system. You get the points and then you can redeem the points
Starting point is 01:07:39 at your choosing. Well, after 1,200 points, you can let them pile up. I see people have 10 000 points you know like they're just then probably birthday coming up they'll probably redeem it at that point and we do a bank transfer you get the cash in your account straight to my bank account straight to your bank account for answering text on my phone yeah i mean yeah the thing is you give your opinion for every day for free on twitter and instagram why not get paid for it yeah yeah wow yeah blue dot community.com yeah yeah go there right now guys and like i said
Starting point is 01:08:10 follow line on twitter can't see you are best than toes oh we've opened numbers quick and fast i'll show you numbers by the time i'm here it is uh blue.community.com i do have to convince business people this is days i said the business people that's the same thing i sell business people i don't try to hurt nobody i don't try to push somebody i said listen do it before your competitor yeah and the competitors are working i haven't also learned local every day the man fly go on overseas anything you can talk about overseas i know you spent some time in the central and south america well that was that was related to the the poland because we were still we're the only company that used neuroscience to predict an election ever region ever no in the world in the world
Starting point is 01:08:50 leave the podcast with those start with that start with that that's a big deal bro you are the only one using it for election polling in the world unless unless i'm not googling right but I'm good, I'm trusting you I'm going with my gut on this one Yeah so we went to Colombia I went to speak at a conference there And right now we have Like we have Literally every Caribbean island
Starting point is 01:09:18 A couple Latin American, Central American Governments Opposition parties Who have asked us to come in. Wow. I won't ask you to name names, I understand that. But I'm happy to hear that it's happening and they're flying you out, yeah? Yeah. But they're flying the profits back in. A Jamaican company is the first to do this and we're absolutely used to the work. Yeah. Strong money left.
Starting point is 01:09:41 Yeah. You imagine if you didn't say, time I finish a degree? I use myself that all the time. Yeah, I do. I'm happy I don't say any work yeah entrepreneurship is not for everybody and you know like like I said we tend to glamorize it too much and make it look like some higher calling and blah blah blah um it's not you really have to be crazy and i work hard and i go yeah you just in the face i'm not yeah i'm learning i just recently um muted email notifications on my phone because i was literally getting anxiety or panic attacks That's a real thing Whenever I hear the sound because I just don't know what it is
Starting point is 01:10:31 And it interrupts everything and it's designed to interrupt everything So it's kind of like you're setting yourself up for a bad time So it doesn't blink, it doesn't make a sound It should respond when I touch it Yeah Literally, I can see it. Someone will get dangerous. Also, five years in business is not a lie. How you go?
Starting point is 01:10:50 According to the US surveys, most businesses fail. Fail within the first three years. Yeah. Yeah. You got more than half over that. You made it, man. You made it. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:10:57 We're here. So next thing. So tell the people in the morning when you're listing on the socket. So here's the thing. Of course, listing. on a soccer team so um so here's the thing um of course listing like any any entrepreneur wants to have some sort of exit you know you start a company you do well you get some traction then you get funding which we got so we got some funding um and then the next thing is you have some sort of exit by either ipo or somebody buys you out so that's always on the horizon for us um but what i found
Starting point is 01:11:26 though is that hunting the next investment or hunting an ipo takes up a lot of your time and and a lot of your focus heavily it's a different world yeah it's a different world and and i don't want to get bogged down with that right now what i will say though is that we are because there's i need to i want to grow the company to a certain to a certain amount you know i think um if all goes well we'll probably hit i'm going in for over 200 million in revenue this year right oh yeah and i think we can get there you know um there With everything that's happening So at that point in time
Starting point is 01:12:07 I'll make a decision And if that's right for us then we'll do it But In the meantime though We've put in everything in place To do it So the corporate governance We're looking at that now
Starting point is 01:12:22 Our tax compliance is being sorted out Our whole deal with the tax situation. Everything, systems, processes are being put in place now in anticipation for that. That's the one you said, tax. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. You're handling business.
Starting point is 01:12:39 You're handling business, yeah. So yeah, we, you know, but you do tend to get too focused on that and not growing the business i want to grow the business grow the revenue make sure these clients are happy focus on the clients number one make sure the staff happy and then we can we can see what happens no i know i want to buy it so when you're listening sir that's how it's like it's such a trick question when I ask people that, you know you want here, right? But you're also so funny, I don't really want them to be heavy on it because the best listings, I believe, are listings that don't need to. When you act from a position of want.
Starting point is 01:13:19 You look at the company, so why they listing? You don't need to give me this company to be honest. Yeah. And that is the most secure place to list from. From yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'm happy about the journey that's happening. And you're sharing the good and the bad. That's the reality of it.
Starting point is 01:13:34 It's not all IG and quotes. Yeah. Yeah, I make it a point. Well, on my IG, well now I'm on Twitter now, so I'll do it there, but I share the bad on IG as much as I can without making it look like we're running a party shop and, you know, making people feel that I'm depressed or something. People always go for that.
Starting point is 01:13:52 Yeah. Yeah. Careful with that on Twitter. It's better you share it because there's no need. Yeah. Careful with that on Twitter. Yeah. Well, you know, law number one in the 48 laws of power is always a list that's necessary.
Starting point is 01:14:04 100% agreement. Yeah So 100% agreement. Yeah, yeah. 100% agreement. Yeah. But yeah, the IPO, hopefully, if it does happen early next year. Were. Yeah. If I hit my targets, if I hit my targets, if the clients happy, the staff happy. You'll start looking at it. We'll start looking at it.
Starting point is 01:14:23 And, you know, if we can you know of course guarantee shareholder value um you know within a couple months we will start aggressively seek our caribbean expansion um you're not staying just locally going overseas yeah yeah right right so we're already doing work work in the Caribbean. We just don't have presence, you know, so there's physical presence. Physical presence. Yeah, we have a partnership in Barbados that, you know, they resell our services there. But yeah, it's right now I'm extremely optimistic for what our potential is going forward and it's, it's.
Starting point is 01:15:02 So I think the problem is that ETSLM won't buy a guy. going forward and it's it's true the money coming in yeah mad head on them shoulders we want to give the people a line, tell them something because you tell them the good stuff, I like that you're going to tell them the reality of, you know, and I am going to try and sort out some future episodes for myself because if you're
Starting point is 01:15:20 pushing this thing every quarter in terms of your data, yeah come in, you have a seat every quarter in terms of your data yeah yeah yeah I see the recorder come tell us what you found this this three months about the general public yeah they try to put some more money in their people to say yeah be beyond be one of those people who can't find a father and you give into an emergency because we will be tracking it right so you know every quarter things change things change um hopefully you know we will see some change in the perceptions of people and what the reality is and then we'll be able to make
Starting point is 01:15:50 some comparisons and draw some correlations at the end of the year all right well is there anything you can tell us that is not ahead of time but people hearing this after they've heard you on on the interview nationwide so anything you can't say are you still going with it um no it will it will come out nationwide. But it is nationwide, sir. I know. I'm not going to get the thing. So if there's anything you can tell me that I can say then or if you want to hold it, I don't want to press you.
Starting point is 01:16:15 Because I'm not going to say it. So they will hear it. I mean, there is going to be an interesting election here, right? The JLP, they are in a good position from a national perspective generally but the pnp can as long as they get the things they together they can make make ground because there's still um you know that economic question about um if they were if they feel the same if their institution has improved in the past year we yeah it looks good but that can be dangerous company need to be able to obviously see that yeah we're we're in a
Starting point is 01:17:01 bubble in Kingston here you know well our circle. In our Twitter universe. Midtown to uptown. We're not Jamaica. When you go out into the streets and go into the communities the reality is completely different from ours. Because we're making some money off of stocks and all your friends are doing the same thing
Starting point is 01:17:20 you're in a bubble. In the bubble of your close immediate. No, you're 100% So what is all reality is not the reality of jamaica you know investing we know yeah yeah there might be i think the jc of it said openly that they have about roughly 200 000 active accounts 200 000 accounts i don't think the 200 000 i had a little bit to find out exactly so yeah it was less than 10 percent yeah still level and not it's a bad I don't think the 200,000 are accurate and we're 2.1 million to the future so you get me Less than 10% Yeah, still have bubble and not that it's a bad thing because thankfully people are growing the bubble and we're happy about that
Starting point is 01:17:52 But still, you have to know that what your reality is not everybody's reality, what my reality is not everybody's reality So I like that, I like that so learn every three months please People if you don't hear me in three months, add him on Twitter and ask him. Yeah man, ask him and we'll go on. Yeah, I like that. Really, really good. I'm not going to make it go too long. I really like this. Usually people, long episodes, it's a nice short episode.
Starting point is 01:18:13 Thank you so very much. Yeah man, thanks for the opportunity. No problem. Thanks for the opportunity sir. One I know we're almost leaving. I never asked in the hard questions. Oh yes, yes sir. We have, we'll call it the earning season gauntlet.
Starting point is 01:18:23 Okay. Everybody has to tell us. One stock. One stock, they pick for one year. But you, I'll tell you, you can't sell yourself easily. Yeah. So, I would, one stock I'd go with two. Yeah, what? Oh, straight up, let's go. Yeah, so definitely the lab. The lab, big up Kimalab. And definitely i create because because what they're doing is training the future workforce yeah man big up tyrone yeah so big up big up time so
Starting point is 01:18:52 definitely i create definitely the lab yeah yeah you know i own that company i want a piece of a company i create oh wow yeah i'm really excited about the lab. I'm really excited about what Tyrone can do. Because I like to see that back. I like this way of coming with. And he's a real entrepreneur. Like don't sleep on a real entrepreneur. Oh gee, people remember my episode. People who don't know this, go back and listen. I think it was episode 10 maybe. Yeah, Tyrone, Tyrone, Tyrone has always been that way same I mean same Tyrone every time yeah I like that same line I know same lines I like that you see people come
Starting point is 01:19:35 on out here and say it's a line not that I'm not saying I'm not I'm not big up line also big up big up Kimala of course and I'm really happy that you're doing this. Blue Dot, don't forget guys, Blue Dot Insights. That's the name of the company. Yeah, Blue Dot Insights on all platforms. Everything. Everything. Okay, and Blue Dot Communal.com, show notes are there. Manish Wattah on Twitter. Yeah, and IG.
Starting point is 01:19:58 And IG, you want people to follow you on IG? Sure, why not? Oh, that's cool. I didn't use it anymore really Hardly Too much but I like that So thank you very much Lion Thanks man Looking forward to hearing from you in two to three months Yeah man
Starting point is 01:20:11 Something good Definitely can be before the election so we know what's up Yeah man For sure Um, as you say Lab and iCreate Yeah man Boy, did man get it right again
Starting point is 01:20:20 Yeah In one year I'm getting it right again man Thank you very much Guys this has been Earning Season I'm Randy Rowe At RT Rowe And I'm Danai
Starting point is 01:20:29 At H Danai Yeah Big up Hope you guys enjoyed it See you next week Alright guys Peace out Thank you.

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