The Revolutionary Impact of Data Analytics with Shawn Egan

This is Making Better Decisions. I’m your host, Ryan Sullivan. Decisions are where rubber meets the road for organizations. Each week, we’ll be learning from people who are on the front lines of turning raw data into better outcomes for their organizations. This show is sponsored by Canopy Analytic, helping companies make better decisions using data.

Ryan: on the category management team at the Boston Beer Company as the space assortments and systems lead, please welcome Sean Egan.

Shawn: Ryan. Hey, everybody. Thanks for having me out today.

Ryan: Yeah, I am, uh, I’m super pumped to get you on here. Um, yeah. I think that, you know, you like me were a pretty early adopter of some of this modern data stuff, so I’m excited to kind of dive right in and, and kind of ask you our, our, our big kind of springboard question, which is what is one thing you wish more people [00:01:00] knew about using data to make better decisions?

Shawn: Yeah, you know, I think there’s a couple answers there, and it depends on, you know, who the Who the person that you’re talking about is, right? Like if it’s the, the audience, if you will, uh, who you’re serving as someone, you know, often in, in our business of using data, uh, you know, you’re serving a sales audience or a leadership audience.

Shawn: So from that perspective, I would say the one thing I wish, uh, that audience had more of is good, good questions, right? Like asking the right questions about data. So often we get. requests that are, you know, specific to like, Hey, I just, I need this piece of data or I need this. And they don’t necessarily start with the problem we’re trying to solve.

Shawn: Um, which makes it a lot more difficult to provide good results. And the reality is oftentimes, you know, you may provide that, but there was a much better solution available if you just had the right question from that. You [00:02:00] know, stakeholder. I think on the other side of things, in our seat, right, uh, the people that are utilizing the data to help people influence or make, you know, organizational decisions.

Shawn: Uh, I, I think the answer there is, A little more knowledge of the business, right? Like being able to understand how the realities of the world work versus just the numbers and the data all too often. I think people that work with information and data are really good at that, or they’re good at technology,

or they’re good at, you know, a specific code language, and yet they may not have as much.

Shawn: with what’s happening in the stores or in the actual business itself. You know, from, from my industry, it’s very much the stores, right? It’s retailers, businesses, it’s wholesalers, warehouses. Um, and there is a very stark difference between those, those two types of audiences. So those are the two answers I would give for that.

Shawn: Um,

Ryan: Yeah. [00:03:00] Yeah. I love those both. I mean, I’ve thought a lot about, you know, I want to circle back to the first point you made cause there’s a lot of meat there, but I’ve thought a lot about like, what is the right way to engineer a team, right? Cause you’re right. Like you have, you’re going to have people that are like in the day to day nitty gritty, that’s their subject area.

Ryan: And then you’re going to have other people. You know, kind of like us who were like a little bit more on the like tech nerd data spectrum. And I, I’ve always struggled with like, okay, like how much do I want to enforce like one to be the other in like some, you know, what’s the right balance there, you know?

Ryan: And I, I, I gotta be honest, I haven’t really found. Like a perfect prescription. The thing that I, I have found is that like, when you meet people that are like a good fit for one of those roles, like either being like on the [00:04:00] business side that interfaces with the tech or vice versa, you just kind of know it, right.

Ryan: There’s just like people that kind of have that gene that like can kind of see they like the translator gene, if you will. And they just kind of like get it. Um, you know, so it’s one of the things that. You know, has interested me over time that it’s something, you know, maybe, maybe down the road, I’ll be able to be more prescriptive about it, but it really just comes down to like finding those right people.

Shawn: Yeah, man, it’s been a, uh, ever since I got into this, this world of, of information, uh, it’s been, it took me a long time to figure it out and I’m not, not pounding my chest here at all, but I feel like from my kind of upbringing in CPG, it was all, it was purely sales, right? I worked, I worked I worked with Coca Cola, I worked with a startup, a little startup called Glasso, which ended up being Uh, vitamin, vitamin water was one of our key brands.

Shawn: It was sold to Coca Cola. So it was back to Coke. Um, all of that experience eventually landed me a sales job [00:05:00] at Boston Beer Company. And through a few years of doing that, I just kind of got lucky and got involved with our category management team and, uh, really figured out pretty quickly that I loved working with information and using it to influence, uh, decisions.

Shawn: Right. So, uh, what, what me and some of my, my coworkers that. Think the same way here, kind of call them unicorns, right? Cause the unicorn is an elusive animal, fantastical animal, right? And, uh, to find people that have the right balance of business experience and some sort of curiosity or knowledge, um, and technology and data is really rare.

Shawn: And so to your point, I don’t think there’s a perfect formula or like, you know, uh, a personality exam you could give to somebody to figure it out. Cause. You know, if you looked at my PI, um, other than being really high D, which is high attention to detail, like all my other stuff is like pure [00:06:00] sales, right?

Shawn: Uh, so to profile someone that way, that equation you’re talking about, I don’t know if that’s necessarily possible. It’s just finding. Finding those unicorns, you know, um, we really try to, you know, in category management in CPG, it’s very much a balance of that. Um, cause you have to get out and influence.

Shawn: You have to work with different levels of customers, whether it’s internal stakeholders or, you know, retailers or wholesalers, and got to be able to, you know, Put together the information, figure it out. So you have to have a certain level of technical aptitude, but then you have to have a certain level of, of, uh, understanding of the business that’s going to put you in that sales seat, right?

Shawn: Like be able to influence what you’ve put together or influence with what you’ve put together. So it is, it’s, uh, it’s tough, man. And it goes South pretty quick when you get the balance wrong, uh, in, in my industry.

Ryan: of the things that I think is funny, like I, I liked how you brought up personality tests. Like [00:07:00] I’ve been, you know, part of multiple consulting teams where we’ve gotten those personality tests done and you kind of think that there will be like a big, you know, trend in one direction. And it’s, it’s kind of been really surprising to me how, how diverse personality type wise the consulting teams I’ve been a member of have been.

Ryan: Um, You know, like if you do the same thing with entrepreneurs, right. It’s all like, everybody’s in one corner of the room, right. Or like, you know, like there are certain things where it’s like, nah, it’s like, we can tell what makes people do this, but you know, I can tell for sure one thing that it’s not like one way.

Ryan: To make sure that we don’t have success. And that is, you know, we were, we were talking about this the other day. Like if I decided that I was going to build a new business and I was going to have it all run on paper, right. We’re going to like keep paper records and we’re going to do everything. But then we, we’ve got like a couple.

Ryan: Guys, you know, girls over on a team over here. [00:08:00] And, um, you know, there are computer people. So like anything computer related, they take care of that. We like, just like, we give them like lots and lots of paper and they like, just put that in terms of, you know, and then anytime I have a computer request, I like, I just call them up and I’m like, Hey, I don’t know how to connect to the printer.

Ryan: You know, I, in fact, like, can you just like, you just do the whole thing and just give it back to me as paper.

Shawn: Yeah.

Ryan: You know, like anybody that hears that as like, well, of course that won’t work. Right. But then sometimes I definitely see people like organizationally, whether they realize that that’s what they’re building or not, they’re building that as their data infrastructure.

Ryan: Right. And it’s like, we have this, like, you know, only these people understand data, you know, like there has to be some sort of blend. And like, it’s, you know, the same thing, right? Like people that aren’t, you know, fully utilizing tech are going to get surpassed by people that are. You know, at least in the longterm, right?

Ryan: Like people can have like amazing ability, but like over a long period of time, it’s just impossible to compete with the efficiency,

Shawn: Yeah.

Ryan: but

Shawn: [00:09:00] I think you, from that first question that you’d asked, you know, uh, talking about things I wish people, you know, knew more about with, with data. And I said, asking the right questions was a big one for the stakeholder audience. Um, you know, you don’t have to know if you’re, if you’re on that side, you’re not so technically savvy.

Shawn: You’re not someone that works with data a ton, but you do use data to influence decisions. You know, all you have to know is what is possible or what the right questions are. And then have a good team around you. And the sky’s the limit at that point. Um, I think the, on the other side, like I mentioned earlier, I think the, over the last 10 years, right, there’s been so many different things that have come to the market in terms of, you know, reporting layers, technology.

Shawn: You know, the explosion of predictive technologies, all that stuff, um, in that audience, that’s in that realm, you know, developing the right [00:10:00] business rhythms of spending time with the stakeholders. Cause not everybody can be that unicorn, right. But everybody can take the right amount of time. And ask the right questions back to that first audience, um, to avoid becoming, you know, the, the name or the email behind a computer that’s just pushing databases and, you know, reports out.

Shawn: So, you know, I, that’s, I don’t want to use that cliche term because I, I kind of, it’s kind of cringey, but you know, the art of the possible is like a big part of both sides of those audiences, in my opinion,

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. That’s, uh, I’m really glad that you brought that up and that you connected that back to the question that I, I, yeah, I wanted to get back there anyways around, like, what are some of the right questions and it’s, I agree with you, right? Like, it’s not necessarily like, Hey, like, Oh, I have some executive and they just like, you know, like sometimes there’s this like, Oh, the dumb executives.

Ryan: And it’s like, nah, that’s not really been my take. You know what I mean? Like, usually people are pretty [00:11:00] smart, right? It’s like these technologies and like the capabilities that they have, have just like moved forward so fast that like, unless you’re someone that like makes that your area of expertise, like you’re just not going to know what’s out there.

Ryan: Like there are lots of folks that I talk to and they’re like, Hey, we have this report in Excel. And it’s like really tiresome to keep manually repeating. And so and so told me that you can like make it. So it’s just like, it just. Stays live. I’m like, definitely, we can definitely do that. Yeah. We’ll like figure out what the steps are that you’re doing, like pull everything together and we can

just automate those and you know, we’ll make some new visuals and we’ll put it out in the front.

Ryan: And they’re like, great. I’m like, all right. So like, show it to me, right? Like, what are you guys looking for in the future? Right. And they’re like, okay, so we want like this grid with a scroll bar, like just like a big rectangle, one page with the, and then we’ll, we’ll export that to Excel. I’m like, okay, cool.

Ryan: [00:12:00] We can, we can build that. However, let me just show you some other things, right? And the thing that always gets them, right? Like you open up one of these tools that has like cross filtering, right? Like I use Power BI or like Tableau or like lots of these tools do this now, but like, you know, you can like show them like a bar chart next to a pie chart and you click one of them and the other one filters and they’re like, you know, like just the idea that I can go in and interrogate a report instead of just like print it or export it, like even that right there is a huge example of like, Hey, this is a thing you can ask for now.

Shawn: yeah, it’s the so when, when you mentioned Power BI, when Power BI hit the scene, um, you know, I was pretty and our team was pretty into Power Pivot as well, and we figured out what we could do with Power BI, um, rather than, you know, just try to explain it to people. One of the things that at the time I was a category manager.

Shawn: Actually, I’m going to sidebar real quick. I believe you’re looking at my LinkedIn. I, you remind me, I [00:13:00] need to update my LinkedIn. I’m actually in a slightly different role now. I’m still with the category team, but I have branched off instead of leading the category managers, I actually lead A more technical team that supports them.

Shawn: Um, it’s a team that I actually, uh, built when I was leading the category team and someone left and I took that over about, uh, gosh, about eight months ago. So, um, anyway, sidebar for all those that are listening and looking at my LinkedIn, I do need to update it. Um,

Ryan: Yeah, we can, we can cut that. I’ll rerecord it. So I want to intro you, right?

Shawn: Yeah, it’s no problem at all. But back, back when that software was really just hitting the market, um, and I realized what we could do with it, you know, I would go into, uh, you know, a call with a buyer and I would have my, you know, my PowerPoint with the things I was trying to accomplish or

whatever. And I started bringing along a copy of Power BI Desktop on my machine.

Shawn: And one of my favorite things to do was just kind of say, [00:14:00] Hey, you, you were talking about this thing that was giving you a hard time or this, this question that you had, um, as we were in between slides or something, let’s, let’s see if we can answer that question right now and fire that thing up. And to your point, the, the sort of, uh, You know, the, the mind bender of like cross filtering visuals at the time, gosh, this was like 10 years ago now or something like that was, it is, it’s like, and that, interestingly enough, enough of those moments happened to where, um, certain audiences would see things like that.

Shawn: And they’d be like, I want that, I want that for my business. And we actually inherited a lot of situations that we got our hands on data because of, of those moments. which was just phenomenal at the time. Now everybody’s kind of caught up to that speed now. I mean, you mentioned Tableau as well.

Shawn: Everybody’s reporting with either Power BI or Tableau or something that’s built in house that does the same kind of [00:15:00] thing. Um, you know, along the lines of that journey, You know, now it’s not, can you, you know, build a reporting layer and like go wow somebody with some cool features or some great, you know, code it’s really now it’s, are you, are you making actionable things happen from your data?

Shawn: So I think, you know, I’ve been reading a lot of articles, uh, about kind of what’s, what’s coming around the corner. And, you know, as I thought about that first question and I answered it. I think that’s going to be the difference maker is the connection to the business or on the stakeholder side, the ability to know what’s out there and, and be really, really good at that.

Shawn: Cause everything else, like you’re going to find experts, you’re going to find people that are really good salespeople, really good, you know, at crushing databases and turning them into awesome reports. But. Is that report creating action? That’s going to be, that’s the next five years is like, who can get really, really good at that?

Shawn: Um, that’s the difference [00:16:00] maker, right? And it’s goes from that grid you were talking about to, okay, cool grid, bro. But what are you doing with it? You know, one of my favorite moments in working with people is, you know, a lot of times I’ll start from the end. You know, they’ll come to me with a problem.

Shawn: We’ll identify what they’re trying to solve and I’ll say, okay, how were you doing this before you came to me? And they’ll pull up like, like you said, like a spreadsheet or a grid of some sort. Um, and they’ll say, well, this is, this is what I did to kind of get to what I thought the answer was. And that’s one of my favorite things.

Shawn: Cause you can kind of. Back into the answer, but also back into a much cooler solution that can create more action right from what you’re looking at, instead of having to go to Excel, make another chart, you know, it’s like figure out the way to. Turned it into action. I think that was, you know, one of your experiences, um, when we first met was one of the mantras was like, you know, [00:17:00] what was it saying?

Shawn: It was like, uh, da take data and turn it into information and then take action and turn it into action.

Shawn: everybody can build a really cool report, but what is it telling you?

Ryan: Yeah. I love the story there. Like I had similar experiences where. You know, I think prior to this revolution, and I think you’re right. I do think you accurately assess that like a good chunk of the market has caught up. Like there are people at most companies that are doing something like what we do and hopefully they’re using some modern tool to get there.

Ryan: There are a lot of people that are still hacking it out. And Excel pretty manually and that, you know, I want to save those people. But, um, when it comes to the, you know, the rubber actually meeting the road, I think you’re right. Like that’s definitely a place where the market is like, there’s, there’s room for differentiation there. And [00:18:00] I remember, you know, this is way, way back in the day before I was even a consultant, I worked at a phone company and. We had been building some like really, really cool stuff. It was like the first place that I found out about these tools. Like there were a couple guys that were there before me that were using this kind of stuff. And I was just like, I called one of them up and I was like, I need to get more than a million rows into Excel.

Ryan: Can you like, I, they told me to call you. Do you know how to do that? And they were like, Oh, yeah. Welcome. And so like that started the journey for me. I started hanging out with these guys and I got like really good at all that stuff. And I really enjoyed it. But I went into one of these meetings. And at this point it was like, it was just like, kind of like a skunk works unit.

Ryan: Like there were like four or five of us. We were like all on different teams and we would all just like hang out and like build crazy stuff together. And we were like secretly helping each other with our projects to try and like move it forward just cause we like loved doing it.

Shawn: Yeah.

Ryan: And so then I get like called into some meeting.

Ryan: So and so is [00:19:00] like, Hey, we like heard that you know something about product data. And I’m like, yeah, sure. What’s the question. And they like ask, you know, some executive that I would not otherwise be talking to, like ask me the question. And I’m like, exactly what you said. Like, sure. Let’s see if we can answer that now.

Ryan: And I just like shared my screen and like pulled something up. And they were like, like, it’s that concept of, You know, before that, so, and you know, the executive asked the same question, you know, Alice, can you have your team look into this portion of it? Bob, can you have your team look

Shawn: Yeah. Let’s double click into that.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. And so like Alice and Bob go off and their teams do stuff. And then like, they come back with the answers a week later and they’re like, Hmm. That’s interesting. Like, I wonder if this is the reason, right? So you’re like, it’s like two or three meeting iterations before you actually get to like a meaningful answer to the question, as opposed to like, now you can answer those questions in the meetings instead of

Shawn: And that, that moment is so critical. That moment of like, again, to go back to the [00:20:00] first thing, like when you ask that right question, if you are able to get an answer, you’ve got an inspired moment and action can come from that inspiration. Whereas you wait three meetings. And maybe something else has come up or maybe you’ve had a bad day or, you know, maybe there’s a new shiny object.

Shawn: You know, there’s, there’s a bandaid put on the question from three meetings ago and that’s good enough. Right? So that moment is very important. That moment of inspiration, if it’s coupled with really good insight can make decisions quickly and can sometimes be like the best decisions that you make. Um, I’m not saying like you should rush to decisions, but I am saying that moment of inspiration is where a lot of like really good ideas come from.

Shawn: And if you

Ryan: 100%. If you have all the, the information that’s necessary to make a good decision and it’s clearly laid out, then it’s not really a rush, is it? Right? Like you, your, your point’s totally right. Like if we’ve done our job, making sure that everything’s there [00:21:00] and like the right decision for a situation is super clear, you know, I just think of like the number of hours and the number of people that sit on or in those meetings.

Ryan: And it’s just like, Hey, imagine like cutting that and like,

Shawn: yeah.

Ryan: but for everybody, like how much more efficient does a An organization get when like the, you know, hours of meetings per person gets cut to 10 percent of what it was like, probably pretty good. You know, um, that’s really cool. You know, one of the other things that I kind of wanted to dig in with you, because like you’ve been to this rodeo a couple of times now, you know, is all right, let’s say I’m a business person that’s interested in data and Or vice versa, right?

Ryan: And one of these like, you know, data nerds that’s like interested in business. And we, I think we talked about how, like, [00:22:00] there is like a gene for the person that has like the drive to learn about the other side, but like what suggestions or recommendations do you have for a person like that to try and bridge the gap?

Ryan: And then if. You have the time to get to it. What advice do you have for decision makers on how to find those people?

Shawn: Yeah. All right. So I guess I’d start on the side of the, the technical crew. Cause I didn’t come from that, that world. I didn’t come from business intelligence or it. The first thing I would say is please be patient with the, with the people on the business side, because. They are, they are not always up to speed on, on all the possibilities.

Shawn: Right. So that’s one thing I would say, but for the, that group of folks, one of the things I experienced personally, um, and if any of them are, you know, end up listening to this, they’ll, they’ll know who I’m talking about, but, um, they, having, having the lens of like, Hey, this person’s really [00:23:00] motivated.

‘re, they’re sharp enough. and they know the business ultimately will save the technical side, the IT side, the BI side, save them time and energy, right? Um, the idea of concierge BI is it’s a time suck for people that are building those things because the business is so nimble now in most cases, you can’t constantly be building.

Shawn: So giving someone on the business side that’s apt and curious The things they need to do it on their own is, is part of the magic of self service, right? It’s magic in a lot of ways. So, um, being able to spot those people and look through it as, uh, through the lens of like, Hey, this actually could save us time,

Ryan: Hmm.

Shawn: that wasn’t there through, you know, labor savings, time savings, and also, you know, them closing the deal, right.

Shawn: And feeling more of an ownership of that, uh, is, it can be very lucrative. I will say from that [00:24:00] experience that I had, um, not only working with the data, but using the data to influence it, you know, basically all in the same capsule, uh, you, you know, your insights inside now. So you can be very convicted about what you’re talking about.

Shawn: And like when questions come out about. You know, Oh, you know, where’d you get that piece of data or like what else about the information you don’t have to say, Oh, I had to call somebody else. Or I got to schedule another meeting. You actually know it because you put it together and that, that tech technology or enablement of technology and data is really critical to that.

Shawn: So finding those people and acknowledging them and giving them the leeway and the patients to kind of do their thing, as well as the tools they need to get there can be a huge time saver. Um, the other piece. I would say, and I’ve never really sat in a pure technology seat or a BI seat, but, um, the folks that I’ve worked with that have been most successful in this kind of arena have been the ones that [00:25:00] are willing to make the time to interact and ask questions, not just.

Shawn: Scope, you know, for an hour. And then everything else is an email. Like you actually speak with, with the stakeholders and ask the right questions and push back too. Like you were saying, yeah, we can do the grid, uh, but you know what else we could do? Like, check this out, we thought of this. What if we did ask those questions back?

Shawn: And a lot more can get done, um, from the business side of it, uh, how to identify, right? That was the question. How to, how to business. For those types of individuals, gosh, that’s a tough one, man. I would say a lot of times it comes from people who are, um, really talented in what, what they’re doing already.

Shawn: So we’ll just use sales as the example. So that’s kind of where I, where I was rooted. Um, you know, I, I had some experiences where I was, I was pretty good at what I was [00:26:00] doing in sales. And I think the moment for me was a particular, um, convenience buyer. Was like, man, you seem to have a good handle on a lot of this stuff.

Shawn: Like, why don’t you get involved in my process more? And he actually gave me, this was before a lot of these BI tools that we were softly referencing even existed. It was like pre PowerPivot. Um, he just gave me a huge flat file and was like, this is all my data from the last year, store item level, and I want you to hawk over the guys that are drawing my fighting games.

Shawn: Like, I want you to make sure they’re making good decisions. I didn’t know what the heck I was dealing with. So I had to call people to be like, Hey, You know, what do I do with this? Cause it was such a, it was a decent volume of data. And, you know, I knew a little bit about Excel, but that was the moment where someone took the time to be like, Hey, check this out, check out pivot tables, right, check, check out what you can do with this [00:27:00] and that kind of evolved into like, okay, let’s store that in like an access database or something so you can have a larger volume and then you can do your pivot tables and that, that was a little bit of what I was talking about in the first answer, which was the patients and like ask the right question. From there. Um, with the experience I had, like that was really the start of all of this for me. It was, you know, that one experience of working with a huge chunk of data from a flat file and turning it into something. That I could go impact a business that was actually really important to my, call it my book at the time.

Shawn: Um, that springboarded me into a higher level sales job and springboarded me into category management eventually. And, you know, here I am years later, you know, doing a lot more of the technical side of things and working with very large data sets. So,

Ryan: Yeah.

Shawn: I know those people that are really good at what they do, but more importantly, avoid, avoid those who are complacent and look for people who are highly curious.

Shawn: And, you know, it’s not just a curiosity of like, [00:28:00] well, how do we get this done? But like, how do I learn how to do this? Like the people that go, I want to do that for myself. I want, I want that faster than

Ryan: Yeah.

Shawn: X department can produce, you know, it’s almost like an antsy curiosity, you know, you want to find these

Ryan: that says there has to be a better way.

Shawn: Yeah, totally. And, and again, I don’t think there’s like a, there’s not like a, an inventory or a form you can fill out to determine that you just have to find the right people. I had a manager once who was, it was right around the time that, that initial story I was telling about the, the convenience buyer kind of throwing up a bunch of data on me and then just being like, go do this.

Shawn: My manager was like, Hey, it’s, this kind of feels like category management. Like, Have you thought about that as a career path? And I was like, no, not really. I just want to sell, sell boxes, right? I just want to sell beer. But being the type of person that I was, there was some training that was available, um, [00:29:00] through, through my company.

Shawn: And I was like, well, let’s just do it just in case. Let’s, let’s see what this is about. Maybe it’ll help me with this customer. It’ll enable me to sell more boxes. Right. And so I did that and it eventually got to the point where I was doing it with other customers as well. Figured out a few tricks, like, Hey, I can be.

Shawn: Not just your salesman. I can be your consultant for the category as a salesperson. And that just, it timing wise worked out really well. Cause we had a, one of our category leads had left our business. energizer or something. Um, and on their way out, they were like, Hey, this guy over here, he’s into this stuff.

Shawn: And when they came to me to say, you know, what, what would you think about this job? I was prepared with, you know, Hey, I did these four courses and I got this certification and I’m not a category manager, but I’ve done some of the homework and I know I work with data. So they were like, it’s your job, get in there.

Ryan: Yeah,

Shawn: It was one of the better, she’s one of [00:30:00] my good friends to this day and like she’s very, very much responsible for where I am. Um, but it wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been like, hey, wait a minute, this kind of looks like, like a path, you know? She spotted, she spotted the, the anti curiosity and she was like, go, go this way a little bit, you

Ryan: 100%. Yeah. I mean, I think you were also at least for, you know, this kind of like modern swath of tools. You were definitely an early adopter and Yeah, yeah. Things that I like whenever I get one of those, like kind of known early adopters on is to kind of ask them the story a little bit of like, Hey, how’d that happen?

Ryan: So like, it’s really cool that that organically happened. You know, like my, I just kind of stumbled into it. I’ve told the story on another pod, but you know, it’s just, I really like how you, you called out the kind of common thread in a lot of those, those data folks really is just kind of that, like, like, this isn’t really good enough.

Ryan: Like, [00:31:00] I bet I could do this faster. Like, there’s gotta be a better way. There’s gotta be another way. Like, how much manual work? Like, nah, you know, like, so that, that mentality, I, I think I agree with is like, yeah. the best litmus test. And it’s not like something, you know, you can like throw on a form and like expect to get good answers.

Ryan: Like you got to observe somebody like just not stomaching the status quo, right? Like not just being like, man, it was good enough.

Shawn: Yeah, there’s a, there was, I don’t remember, I think it, I think it may be a Simon Sinek, uh, talk at some point I heard. It was kind of, the theme was like, procrastinate with a purpose. Um, and I adopted that, I don’t know, about eight years ago. I started kind of trying to, and the theme is like, it gets down to the, you’d use the word repetition or like, you know, is there a better way?

Shawn: An old theme that I took away from this, um, TED talk that he did was like, don’t do [00:32:00] anything today that doesn’t make you better tomorrow. Right. So like in our lens, does copying and pasting from one sheet to another and hitting refresh on a pivot table make you better? No, it gets the job done for whoever you’re getting that information for.

Shawn: Or maybe it’s a, for a presentation you have to deliver, but it’s really not making you any better. So at the point that you referenced where this, the self service kind of explosion happened or started to kind of burn a little, I guess, is a better way to say it. It was, it was, it was painful, man. It was like, okay.

Shawn: Power Query existed at the time. So it was like that silly Power Pivot, you know, import thing. And it was, it was like, wait, if I use that, I can connect to things and I don’t have to copy and paste. This is like a small example, but you learn that. And then when Power Query came out, it was like, wow, I hate repetition.

Shawn: I hate, like, why would I do something like this over and over again when I could just program something to do it for me and having that. [00:33:00] Okay, I’ll take the time today. It may take me four hours today, but over the long term, right? I’m going to find more time to make time for myself to do more development to do more things So I guess to tie it back to the question we’re working on It’s like look for people that are like they hate rep they hate repetition.

Shawn: They hate they hate complacency You know, the people that want, want to find that next thing, that’s, that’s who you look for.

Ryan: Yeah, I remember when, you know, when we met, I was doing, you know, most of my consulting work was doing training. So I was like to twice a week, like all over the country and the world, just like training squads of people on how to use this stuff. And, you know, I had this mantra of kind of just a different wording of exactly what you just said, just like buy five minutes of your life back at a time. You know, but the wrinkle is, is that like when you buy the five minutes back, Because it’s automated. It’s not five minutes. [00:34:00] Once I’m not trading five minutes for five minutes, I’m trading five minutes for five minutes a day. And, you know, every once in a while, I’d get one of these people who is like kind of already a wizard. Right. And, you know, it’d be like, You know, I’d show them how to do it. And they’d be like, yeah, I can, I can actually probably do that a little faster, like the way I’m doing it. Right. And like, sometimes they’d be doing that to show off, but like most of the time, it was like this genuine curiosity. Like, like, is this way really better?

Ryan: Like, are you selling me snake oil? And so then I’d be like, Okay, cool. Like let’s walk through this, right? So like on the initial setup of something new, it takes us about the same amount of time. Maybe you beat me. Maybe I beat you. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. It’s the second time because the second time I’m going to click refresh I’m going to be done

Shawn: Yeah. Or a script is going to refresh it for you or something. Yeah, for sure.

Ryan: You

Shawn: Yeah. Got the compacting [00:35:00] of time. Right.

Ryan: that’s exactly it. Yeah. Really well said, really, really well said. Um, you know, I, I honestly could, could keep going on this all day, but I actually want to give everybody the opportunity to get to know you a little bit, tell, tell us a little bit about, you know, Just a little on your background, right?

Ryan: You don’t have to throw out your social or anything, but like, you know, like just, uh, you know, also, what do you like doing outside of work? What do you do for fun? You know, get it, get everybody to know Sean a bit.

Shawn: All right, cool. Yeah. Um, so, uh, if you want to look me up, I’m on LinkedIn. I’ve been at the Boston Beer Company. I’m actually celebrating my 15th year this year.

Ryan: That’s a big deal. That’s a lot of beer.

Shawn: Yeah. Funny, we, we, when we celebrate these anniversaries, we kind of quantify it in, and I haven’t done the math yet, but it’s basically two cases a month for my entire career is our free beer allocation.

Shawn: So. A lot of, a lot of beers, uh, [00:36:00] a lot of beers for that, that run. Um, had some experience, like I mentioned before, in other CPGs, uh, worked with, with, uh, Glasso before Boston Beer. And that was really cool. Cause it was at the time a startup and then sold for ridiculous amount of money. Actually, I think at the time it was the largest deal in beverage history.

Shawn: Um, when Coca Cola bought Glasso.

Ryan: I remember that dude. Everybody drank vitamin water. Everything

Shawn: Yeah, dude, right here, man. I still,

Ryan: that’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

Shawn: Um,

Ryan: Awesome.

Shawn: yeah, that was an amazing experience. I kind of got to, uh, learn a lot about how the distributor world worked. Um, launched brands. I basically

worked on three States in the Southeast. Um, we launched about 45 wholesalers in a matter of like two years.

Shawn: Uh, it was insane. I was with Coca Cola, uh, North America was what it was called at the time. And I was, uh, in the fountain [00:37:00] business. So I was selling, selling, uh, on premise is what we call it, right? So restaurants and bars, I was selling them fountain drinks and working with them is really like a, a street level kind of sales job.

Shawn: And interestingly enough, before all that, the first job I had out of college. Was in the, uh, financial industry. I’ve worked for, uh, now, uh, shuttered, uh, Bear Stearns and I was a middle markets, um, equity and bond trader, uh, here in Atlanta. And that was also a really interesting experience, but, um, won’t bore you with all those details, but that’s kind of my, my career history.

Shawn: I went to Wittenberg university in Ohio. And, uh, played lacrosse there, which I’m still a huge lacrosse guy. I played lacrosse growing up, grew up in New Jersey, um, and then moved down to Georgia for a couple of years in high school and, and then ended up going to Ohio, to Wittenberg in Springfield, Ohio to play lacrosse there.

Shawn: It’s a little division three school in the NCAC. And, um, I guess that kind of brings me to, to [00:38:00] like, uh, skip a bunch of years. I’m a father of two now. Just turned three last week. Um, I’ve got, uh, Thank you. Thank you. Um, got a little girl who’s 13, um, and a little boy who’s nine. And, um, my little girl is, we’ve had a little bit of a different experience with her.

Shawn: She has cerebral palsy, so she’s in a wheelchair. And so, um, that’s given me a whole different perspective on lots of different things, uh, in her 13 years of, you know, being, being on this earth. And my son is nine and he’s just, he’s typically developing. So we got, you know, that experience as well. Um, along with my, my wife, Heidi, and, uh, I was kind of trying to draw this all back to lacrosse.

Shawn: My son is, um, now, uh, playing lacrosse himself and I spent a lot of time doing that, like a lot of, I coached his U11 team, I’ve coached his U9 teams. Uh, it’s funny too, cause I think I can tie this back to our larger conversation. I. When I was coming out of college, [00:39:00] um, NCAA athlete, you know, it was, it was like, I’m a player, not a coach, uh, not a coach.

Shawn: I actually tried a little bit of coaching right when I got out of college and I was like, it was awful. I couldn’t do it. Right. I was too much still in that

moment of like, I don’t know the best way to describe it, but I was, I was too much of that player. And now I’m a little older and I actually have a self interest of my son being, you know, a part of some, um, You know, I really learned a lot more about what, what that is.

Shawn: I think that’s transferred to work a good bit too. It’s helped expand my patience. It’s given me a different lens on things. And I love, you know, I spent a lot of time on that. Like, uh, just a ton, uh, he plays, uh, rec lacrosse. So like the, you know, the town we live in, he plays for that. And then he also plays on a club team as well, which is super fun.

Shawn: Cause I’d actually don’t have to coach that and I can let perfect. Um, and what was saying, but, you know, um, [00:40:00] That’s just a lot of my time right now. And I’m trying to like really cling on to that. Cause I think I’ve only got a couple more years of being able to do that before he’s, you know, off in other programs.

Shawn: And like, there’s no such thing as dad coaches anymore. So,

Ryan: yeah,

Shawn: really trying to make the most of that. Um, when

Ryan: I love it.

Shawn: Yeah, when I’m not doing that stuff, I, uh, living, I do live in the South, live outside of Atlanta, and, um, I love to hunt. I have a buddy, a really close friend of mine that has a timber farm, and we do all kinds of hunting out there, like deer hunting, duck hunting, and really getting out in nature is such a shift in gears from, you know,

Ryan: Yeah, being in the cave of the computer all day. Yeah,

Shawn: like just getting out in the woods and you know, there’s a lot of times you get out there and you don’t, you don’t see anything, you don’t have a good hunt, but like just being out in the woods and, you know, in nature, it’s not so cheesy, but it’s just, that’s another really satisfying thing for me is like just getting outside, you know?

Ryan: I’m [00:41:00] with you. I’m a, I’m a, a big golfer, at least for the past couple of years. And I play it. My dad was big into it. I played a lot when I was a kid and like, you know, some days I’ll come home. I try to play in the morning

before work. My wife will be like, Hey, how’d you play? And I’m like, Terrible. She’s like, you seem like really happy for playing terrible.

Ryan: I was like, yeah, it was like, nice out. You know, like, it’s just like, who cares? You know, got out, got some sunshine before the work day. I actually, I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this, but I also was a lacrosse player. I played from like, uh, you know, U9 or U10, local U stuff all the way up through high school.

Ryan: Um, I was not good enough to play in college. So I just kind of, unfortunately, you know, hung up the cleats, but I was, uh, I was a goalie for most of that time. So I was a glutton for punishment, man. I loved, you know, getting pelted with hard rubber balls, you know, 120 miles an hour.

Shawn: That’s funny. That’s, I don’t think we have talked about that. That’s, that’s all [00:42:00] goalie. I actually read an article the other day about, And it was like, the whole thing was like, how do you teach a goalie not to flinch? And there’s some great advice in that article. I won’t get all into that, but like part of the article was like, there’s some people you can teach it.

Shawn: Most of them you can’t. You either got it or you don’t.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think, like, as far as the, like, the reflexes and, like, the willingness to stand in front of, like, a full tilt shot, like, I had that in spades. Like, I was good there. Um, I think I was just, like, too young and immature to realize that, like, if you want to get, Unbelievably good at like throwing clearing passes or like, what, like, you just have to like invest more time and just like play on wall ball.

Ryan: And like, just like the same thing. Right. I was like too young to realize that like being good at something takes practice and discipline.

Shawn: Yeah. Also, dude, this goes right back to what we were talking about. Lacrosse especially. Golf is [00:43:00] the same way too. I play a little bit of golf myself. I’ve had some health issues earlier this year, so I haven’t been playing as much this spring. Plus, lacrosse has been taking up a lot of the time, but one of the things I teach the boys all the time is like, don’t come to practice to learn how to throw and catch, right?

Shawn: That, you do that at home. Because you come here to learn your team, learn the game, learn the plays. You know, learn all the stuff that makes the game awesome. It’s a lot like that kind of theory I was talking about earlier, like don’t do anything today that doesn’t make you better tomorrow. And that’s what

I’ve, it took me years with my son, like at least three years to get him to love practicing on his own.

Shawn: And he’s finally doing it this year and he’s gotten so much better. So like I look at myself when I was nine. I grew up in New Jersey. So I played like you from like second or third grade or something like that.

Ryan: Yep.

Shawn: I look at him at the same age that I am, and I didn’t know all this, you know, I just was out there playing.

Shawn: My dad wasn’t involved in lacrosse. He was involved in my life, but he wasn’t involved in. Look, I didn’t know anything about it. So I had [00:44:00] nobody telling me this stuff and I’ve been able to coach him to that point. And Oh my God, I’m like looking at him. I’m like, he’s 30 years past me and he’s not like, he’s so good.

Shawn: I’m like, Holy cow. And it’s because I took that learning in college, college is where I really figured it out for myself. Where it was like, kind of learn to love that time alone. Like that, like against the wall or shooting on cage by yourself or what it working out, like whatever it is, like the way I’ve had to describe it to my son is like, there’s going to be a moment where you do something in a game or a practice that you couldn’t do before, and it’s going to be because of the work you put in over the last two weeks. And it’s going to go off for you and then you’re going to fall in love with it. And it was like, I wanted to like tell them how to do it, but it was like, dude, I just gave up. I was like, you’re just gonna have to figure it out. But I’m telling you, if you don’t have reps outside of practice, you’re not going to figure it out.

Shawn: And [00:45:00] so, you know, that it’s something for all these, these boys that I coach, like, that’s something I try to instill in them. It’s like. Yeah, lacrosse is about being on the field and being with your team, but it’s, it’s, again, like golf. You gotta work on your own. So when you get out on the track, you can, you can do things, you

Ryan: You want to know what’s funny, you know, like as you, as you kind of tied that back, I can’t like imagine a better tie back than that. Right. It’s like, those are the exact types of people that we were talking about, right? Like that constant, like, there’s gotta be a better way. How can I improve this?

the same mentality. Right. And like that, Like same thing with mean golf or, you know, lacrosse, like whatever it is. It’s just like, it’s that mentality thing. And this is just like an outlet for it.

Shawn: Yeah. You know, it’s funny at, at, you got different types of people, I’m sure you’ve run across these folks, like the love recognition, they like pop public recognition. My, my boss and I talk about this sometimes and, and I’m not really one to, I don’t really care about like, the award or like the [00:46:00] be, you know, being on stage like Sean did this.

Shawn: Like, that’s not really what I’m into. The reward for me is like when, when I’ve done something, uh, you know, with a project or with a problem that we’re trying to solve. And like, you see that person’s face on the other side of the screen or in the meeting and they go, right. Like the jaw drops a little bit from the work that you did.

Shawn: That’s, that’s what I need. Like, I don’t need, you know, money’s awesome. Don’t get me wrong. Like financial, but I think that’s almost like good enough of those jaw drop moments and that stuff organically happens. And. Yeah, that’s, that’s for me. It’s kind of like what I was telling my son, like that moment you do something like, Pin a top left corner on the run while you’re dodging.

Shawn: And you’re going to go, man, that’s because I practiced like five hours last week on my own, on shooting on the run, you know, the light goes off and you’re like, yeah, like it’s a better feeling than any award can give you, you know? Cause you figured it out. You did it yourself.

Ryan: I [00:47:00] love it. I absolutely love it. All right, man. Well, that’s about all the time that we have. I can’t. Thank you enough for coming on. It was so cool to get, to hear from someone who has been like, number one, like a, a business first, like found the values of this tool, like early adopter story, which is like really similar, uh, to mine as well.

Ryan: It was really, really cool. But also I think over that time, you’ve gotten just so much experience and knowledge and like figured out so many of the ways that things can go right and wrong that like your shares were just so full of wisdom. Um, I really, you know, can’t thank you enough for, for coming on and sharing that with everybody.

Shawn: Well, I, I’m, uh, humbled by your invitation and I, like I was saying the other day, this is the first podcast I’ve ever done. So I hope everybody enjoyed

it. And, uh, yeah, really, really appreciate the reconnection, man. It’s good to, good to talk to you and good to get on the show, man. I really appreciate it.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely, man. We [00:48:00] couldn’t be more pumped to have you. I also want to thank the audience. If you laughed or learned something, um, please make sure to tell somebody else, subscribe to the podcast, give us a review, hopefully a good one. Um, it really, really makes all the difference for us. And, uh, thank you again, Sean, for coming on.

Ryan: Absolutely awesome job today, man. And this has been another exciting episode of the Making Better Decisions podcast. Thanks for joining.

That’s a wrap for today’s episode of making better decisions for show notes and more visit, making better decisions dot live a special thank you to our sponsor canopy analytic canopy. Analytic is a boutique consultancy focused on business intelligence and data engineering. They help companies make better decisions using data for more information, visit canopy analytic.

com. There’s a better way. Let’s find it together and make better decisions. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll catch you next [00:49:00] week.