Blake Reichenbach on Marketing, Curiosity, and the Love of Books
In this episode, the Frank and Andy are joined by special guest Blake Reichenbach, a product manager at HubSpot and the owner of Howdy Curiosity, an online nonfiction bookstore and learning community. The conversation dives into the intersection of data, AI, and the love of books, as they discuss the next steps in managing and mitigating the hallucination part of AI technology, the importance of human interaction with AI tools, and finding the right balance in user experience. Blake shares his insights on integrating AI into HubSpot’s platform, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach, and the pitfalls of solely relying on generative AI tools in marketing.
Stay tuned as they also touch on personal matters, career transitions, and the rapid evolution of technology. This episode is packed with valuable insights and engaging conversations – you won’t want to miss it!
Show Notes
00:00 HubSpot is a leading CRM platform.
05:44 New AI features for CMS and websites.
09:33 Gen AI tools need to prioritize meaningful data.
11:34 Summary: Suggesting blending human and AI for success.
15:34 ML models need precise training on nuanced datasets.
17:13 Content marketing: human connection, AI balance, user experience.
21:24 Approach content marketing like a multi-bandit test.
26:56 Selling nonfiction books online and sharing recommendations.
27:54 Rapid tech evolution creating excitement and challenges.
30:56 Balancing work and entrepreneurship for personal growth.
35:24 Thanks Frank, Andy, and Blake for amazing show.
Speaker Bio
Blake Reichenbach is a proud employee of HubSpot, a leading customer relationship management platform for scaling companies. With a focus on the CMS aspect of the platform, Blake is passionate about helping businesses with their front office needs, including marketing, sales, service, and data operations. With a bias towards HubSpot, Blake believes in the product and the company, and recommends it highly for businesses looking to streamline their operations.
Transcript
In this 350 2nd episode of data driven, Frank
Speaker:and Andy speak with Blake Reichenbach. Blake is a
Speaker:product manager at HubSpot, focusing on the Content AI platform,
Speaker:and is the owner of Howdy Curiosity, an online nonfiction
Speaker:bookstore and learning community. Stay tuned for a
Speaker:delightful conversation on data, AI, and the love of
Speaker:books.
Speaker:Hello, and welcome to Data Driven. The podcast where we explore the emergent fields
Speaker:of artificial intelligence, data science, and, of course, data engineering,
Speaker:Which is really the underpinning that makes it all possible. And to that
Speaker:end, I have my very favoritest, data engineer in the world,
Speaker:Andy Leonard. How are you doing, Andy? I
Speaker:am unlike both of you, I have not yet had COVID,
Speaker:but I and I'm doing well. But it's in it's It's in our
Speaker:house. We have a a home member here who has tested
Speaker:positive. So we're all walking on eggshells,
Speaker:over here. And, but I am doing well. I love
Speaker:the, you know, the data engineering part. I really love Frank's
Speaker:article that it was written way back last year. It's So
Speaker:2023 about roadies about roadies versus the
Speaker:rock stars, and he calls weed data engineers the, roadies.
Speaker:And, yeah, doing well. Frank, I got to present last
Speaker:night in person In person. Richmond Richmond, Virginia,
Speaker:Not not Kentucky. Which is a good segue to our guest It is. Who
Speaker:is in Richmond. Andy and I met in Richmond. We organized the Richmond code camp,
Speaker:although that was Richmond, Virginia. We are here today with Blake
Speaker:Reichenbach, who is a project manager
Speaker:product manager, sorry, at HubSpot Focusing on the Content
Speaker:AI platform, and I love to know more about HubSpot in general. One
Speaker:of the podcasters that I follow and and admire is John Lee Dumas, and I
Speaker:know he has with HubSpot. But welcome to the show,
Speaker:Blake. As we were talking in the virtual green room, you're recovering from
Speaker:COVID. I had COVID flu strain a, Sinus infection then
Speaker:followed up with this week. You're such an overachiever, Frank. I have to do
Speaker:it all day. I just have to do it all day. I know. He's putting
Speaker:he's putting my COVID to shame. I Should've got out and gotten back into something
Speaker:else before joining so that I could keep up. I have 3 kids, also
Speaker:known as bioweapon incubators. So
Speaker:Fair. Fair. My my only kid is, you know, won't
Speaker:be visible on the podcast, Yes, of course. But he's the, large bulldog sitting
Speaker:behind me, and thankfully, he doesn't tend to break too many germs into the
Speaker:house. That's awesome. That is That's awesome.
Speaker:So so tell us about HubSpot and and what it is you do there.
Speaker:What is HubSpot exactly? It's one of those things that's on I have a board
Speaker:of things I'm supposed to look at. And HubSpot is is is on the list,
Speaker:but with everything going on, I haven't had a chance to.
Speaker:Yeah. Well, if that's like your Kanban board of Software to dig into. I would
Speaker:definitely recommend moving that up in your backlog to dig in HubSpot.
Speaker:I'm clearly biased as a HubSpot employee, but It is a really cool company and
Speaker:a really cool product. So we're a leading customer relationship
Speaker:management platform or CRM platform for scaling companies.
Speaker:Our platform includes a bit of everything that a business
Speaker:needs for their front office. So we have marketing, we have sales, we have
Speaker:Service, we have data operations, and we have the part of the
Speaker:platform that I live in, which is our CMS. And
Speaker:All of these different hubs as we call them or or product lines,
Speaker:exist around that central CRM. We try and make
Speaker:everything as, you know, fittingly for this this podcast, as
Speaker:data driven for our customers as possible so that they have these
Speaker:Integrated systems across their different business pillars, so that
Speaker:things can stay in sync and aligned, and, you
Speaker:know, staying true to The data that they
Speaker:have about their customers to make the most informed decisions possible.
Speaker:As far as what I do at HubSpot, I've been with
Speaker:the company for, I'm going into my 7th year
Speaker:now, which I guess by, like, SaaS industry standards makes
Speaker:me a grandfather. But
Speaker:I for the last about, two and a
Speaker:half years or so, I've been a product manager. I
Speaker:started out in our product security organization. My focus is
Speaker:really on, you know, maturing our content abuse
Speaker:and fraud detection systems. And then I moved over more
Speaker:recently into our content AI platform. So
Speaker:thinking about this really exciting emerging world of
Speaker:AI and generative AI and how that's reshaping
Speaker:or informing the way that content marketers work and figuring
Speaker:out what solutions are going to have a
Speaker:meaningful impact for content marketers.
Speaker:Interesting. I would imagine AI and generative
Speaker:AI is probably very much on your radar.
Speaker:Oh, yeah. Has that been I don't think I've Sorry. Go
Speaker:ahead. I was gonna say I don't think I've had a conversation in the last
Speaker:6 months that has not included something about generative
Speaker:AI Or, you know, machine learning or chat
Speaker:GPT or Sam Altman. It's very, very
Speaker:central to, you know, what I'm working on and where my focus is.
Speaker:Interesting. So so how disruptive has it been for your
Speaker:your business? I mean, so is it I guess it's fair to say that that
Speaker:that HubSpot is a CRM, right? And
Speaker:how do people use AI? Like, how is
Speaker:AI integrated into your platform? Yeah.
Speaker:So we have, quite a bit
Speaker:of of new AI features that we've rolled out Over the
Speaker:last year or so, you know, I
Speaker:I again, my my focus is really within the CMS So what I'm most
Speaker:familiar with is within our our tools for managing content,
Speaker:building websites. And we've rolled out quite a few,
Speaker:different AI and ML assistance, within
Speaker:our feat our feature set. A lot of those are still, you
Speaker:know, in beta and have to be opted into, But, you know, introducing
Speaker:different, generative AI models to help marketers
Speaker:just streamline their efficiencies. So doing things like
Speaker:Generating meta descriptions for their pages or rewriting
Speaker:content, you know, pretty what I think in the market is
Speaker:becoming standard for generative AI tasks, has
Speaker:really been our our starting point there. You know, I think
Speaker:we as a company have been,
Speaker:Looking at AI, you know, longer than it's been this, like,
Speaker:flashpoint in public conversation. Coming from the security background,
Speaker:one of my first Big projects and product security was in, you
Speaker:know, maturing our abuse detection systems and figuring out, you know, how can
Speaker:we leverage LLMs? How can we leverage machine learning models
Speaker:To improve our precision and make sure that fewer, you
Speaker:know, fraudulent pieces of content slipped through the cracks.
Speaker:And then once, you know, ChatGPT became, like, the
Speaker:tech topic of the day, you know, that's where,
Speaker:HubSpot along with a lot of other folks in, in the same space started saying,
Speaker:okay, cool. How can we pull these features in app to,
Speaker:You know, give our customers new new tools to use, new things to play around
Speaker:with, and better ways to improve their own efficiencies.
Speaker:Interesting. And and you're in the since you're in that
Speaker:marketing space, like, the and and and I would imagine
Speaker:It's a very data heavy world anyway. Right? Like, it's a very it's
Speaker:you already start off with a bias towards being data driven. Yes. I said the
Speaker:name of my own show. But but, I mean, like and I think that,
Speaker:you know, I'm just fascinated by marketing.
Speaker:Right. Like, marketing is my new fascination for 2024,
Speaker:because I realized in some ways, I'm good at it. In some ways, I'm horrible
Speaker:at it. Actually, Really got awfully horrible at it.
Speaker:So, but it's funny because as I look into it more,
Speaker:I've reached out to people to kinda help, and they're like, oh, no. You gotta
Speaker:separate the data. I'm like, this is a lot of data analysis. This is this
Speaker:is my jam. Like, I I should be better at this.
Speaker:Yeah. You know, good marketing is data driven. I think
Speaker:that, you know, in marketing, especially content
Speaker:marketing, It's often seen like as much an alchemy as it
Speaker:is a science, where on the one hand, you have some marketers who
Speaker:are, like, Data obsessed. You know, they will only write
Speaker:a blog post if they have estimated search volumes and,
Speaker:like, you know, customer persona data. And Then you have other
Speaker:marketers who are kind of like, let's crank things out and see what sticks.
Speaker:And I think that's a really kind of interesting intersection
Speaker:with generative AI Because a lot of, you know,
Speaker:early generative AI tools for marketers, and I'm not going to name
Speaker:specific companies. I don't wanna start any kind of, you know, your flame or there,
Speaker:but A lot of of GenAI tools have kind of just been like
Speaker:a a churn and burn factory where they're cranking
Speaker:out a lot of mediocrity really fast. And, you
Speaker:know, you kind of see if you if you look at performance graphs of
Speaker:companies that have gone this route of just, like, Cranking out
Speaker:generative articles without, you know, human in the loop processes.
Speaker:Like, you'll see their web traffic and their conversions kinda going up, up,
Speaker:up, up, up, up, hit a cliff, Boom. Drop. Right. And, you know,
Speaker:there's not that long term ROI. There's not that,
Speaker:meaningful customer connection that lets The brand really build upon
Speaker:itself. And so I think that where we're at as an industry now is
Speaker:this really cool place where The marketers, but
Speaker:also the Gen AI tools that are winning or going to win
Speaker:long term are the ones that are able to incorporate data in a
Speaker:meaningful way. And the products that are able to,
Speaker:present generative AI functionality In a
Speaker:way that is intuitive and that prioritizes UX,
Speaker:which frankly has not been a big emphasis in the Gen AI
Speaker:industry, for the last Dear, I think a lot of companies are rushing to get
Speaker:to market and really focusing on, like, what can the Gen AI do
Speaker:and not how do customers use it? So that's where,
Speaker:you know, things are super exciting for me right now is we're at
Speaker:this place of combining generative AI
Speaker:with Customer data with user data and
Speaker:also figuring out what's the right balance of having humans
Speaker:in the loop To make sure that brands are able to have that content that's
Speaker:really unique and that is special for their brand
Speaker:and that lets them build relationships with Customers who
Speaker:are probably pretty skeptical, frankly, of of
Speaker:generative AI on the whole. Well, I love that
Speaker:phrase, humans in the loop. And,
Speaker:usually, when I like a phrase that a guest says, I'll say I'm stealing
Speaker:that, but we're recording this on the 12th January
Speaker:2024. So I will put it in quotes
Speaker:and I will credit you, for that.
Speaker:Well, I've I've stolen that from another A number of other
Speaker:articles, so I can't take total credit for it. But if it's the first time
Speaker:you've heard it yeah. If it's the first time you've heard it, you can attribute
Speaker:that to Blake Reichenbach of Richmond, Kentucky? There we go. I'll I'll
Speaker:do that, and I'll throw in a just, you know, a footnote that says Blake
Speaker:says he heard this elsewhere So that you're covered as well. We wanna be
Speaker:above board here on data driven. I I just wanna do that.
Speaker:But I one of the reasons that phrase strikes me
Speaker:Is that the successes that I've seen, you were
Speaker:mentioning the the successes going up and up and up. I have seen
Speaker:humans in the loop, You know, for those those types of
Speaker:of, solutions. And what it this is
Speaker:just my simple Bonneville, Virginia, You know, mind the
Speaker:way that I think about things, but it it appeals to me
Speaker:as, a little bit like the old mechanical
Speaker:Turk type thing Where in that,
Speaker:you've got a person doing what people do best, and you got
Speaker:LLMs doing what it really does best. And I mean, on both
Speaker:counts. They outshine the other.
Speaker:Saw an interesting tweet not long ago that said, all
Speaker:LLM hallucinate. And it's just the answers that you
Speaker:get that you like, you know, that help you or accelerate
Speaker:you are, You know, are are the ones that are just finding
Speaker:the next phrase or nailing the topic closest to them, whatever,
Speaker:though the next word. And and they just are they're doing all all the
Speaker:time that's happening. It's just some of the times the closest word is, you know,
Speaker:half an inch away. Other times, it's half a mile. And
Speaker:so their hallucination is what they do. And I found that was an
Speaker:interesting take, on that, but that's
Speaker:where the human In the loop, the person, you know, do they
Speaker:they the person in the box in the mechanical turk, that's when they
Speaker:shine because they can look at this and go, well, that no. That's
Speaker:not right. You know, we can't we can't send that forward.
Speaker:So don't really have a question. I just was, very intrigued
Speaker:by That phrase, that turn of phrase. And again, if I
Speaker:use that, I'll make sure, Blake Reichen, Reichenbach
Speaker:from, yeah, from Richmond, Kentucky. I'm making sure I've
Speaker:got it written down. I was making sure I was gonna say Richmond, Virginia. It's
Speaker:such a I almost said Richmond, Virginia, and I almost didn't. I was like, was
Speaker:it Reichenbach? I didn't wanna I didn't
Speaker:wanna call you the, name of the guitar the really cool guitar
Speaker:manufacturer, Which is sounds close. The old
Speaker:Rickenbockers. Oh. But which would be a compliment. Now I
Speaker:don't know if it'd be a compliment or not. I like Rickenbockers. To me, it
Speaker:would be, but to you, I'd be saying your name wrong. So Then break it
Speaker:at this part out. Just just just pull thing out. I have a lot of
Speaker:experience with people saying my name wrong. Yeah. That I say your name
Speaker:wrong. Oh, everybody says my name wrong. Even technically, even I say it
Speaker:wrong. I got 2 first names. So, you know There you
Speaker:go. I I spent this past summer in Switzerland,
Speaker:which is where my family's originally from. And So technically, I've learned that I
Speaker:am also saying my name wrong. But,
Speaker:you know, I I have lived in Central Kentucky, almost
Speaker:my entire life. You know, foothills of the Appalachians.
Speaker:And so, I I have heard pretty much
Speaker:Any variation of the combination of letters in my name, I've
Speaker:I've heard it. Even even my own father often says our
Speaker:last name is Rickenback. Which that's
Speaker:A little bit further off base than Reichenbach. No. Not at
Speaker:all. That that is in earnest. Yes. Gotcha. Well,
Speaker:it's a little I'm I'm sorry. I wandered off. This is my job on the
Speaker:podcast. That's what we were doing. We were doing. True. But,
Speaker:What do you see as kind of the next step in and it's kind of
Speaker:2 things in it, but we'll focus on the, the hallucination
Speaker:part of it. And I think that's maybe part of the driver for when
Speaker:you, you know, you were describing it goes up and up and up and falls.
Speaker:I think that may be part of what's defining the fall. So what do you
Speaker:think the next step is to maybe manage that or mitigate
Speaker:it? Yeah. So, you know, I think
Speaker:the Sort of first element in
Speaker:that equation is something that I I think guests on this podcast
Speaker:have talked about before, which is like having, smaller, more
Speaker:precise models. They're trained on more nuanced datasets.
Speaker:Right? One of the really powerful things About, an
Speaker:LLM like chat g p t or or one of
Speaker:OpenAI's models is that they are, pretty
Speaker:solid generalist. Right? And they have this really wide swath of
Speaker:training data, but the sort of double edged sword
Speaker:there is Oftentimes, they're looking at such a
Speaker:huge dataset that the lines
Speaker:start to blur between entities, between topics. And
Speaker:so that sort of predictive language capacity to
Speaker:understand what should come next gets a little bit diffused.
Speaker:Yeah. Right. So I think that as we see more
Speaker:industry specific or topical specific,
Speaker:or even like, I think Data training
Speaker:sets that are honed in on a specific
Speaker:brand's voice and their own, like, you know,
Speaker:existing corpus Of, of published data. That's
Speaker:where I think we'll see some pretty big improvements in the
Speaker:quality of these gen AI outputs. Yeah. But The
Speaker:other part of the equation and what I'm really excited
Speaker:about and really interested in is figuring out what that right
Speaker:balances between giving autonomy to generative
Speaker:AI tools and having humans guide those gen AI tools.
Speaker:Right. Gotcha. Because Ultimately, I
Speaker:think we're still in a phase of, you know, speaking about the content
Speaker:marketing industry specifically. I think we're still in a phase
Speaker:where People want to connect with people and
Speaker:for, you know, brands to be able to demonstrate their own,
Speaker:expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. You know, that's
Speaker:still really critical for building those relationships as a
Speaker:business to your customers. And so I think that
Speaker:What's going to be a big improvement when it comes
Speaker:to incorporating GenAI into these processes is figuring
Speaker:out that right balance Of saying, here's what I'm willing to offload to
Speaker:an l l m versus here is what, you know, explicitly
Speaker:requires human intervention or human guidance or human
Speaker:prompting. And what makes that equation
Speaker:really complicated, like, talking through that in theory, it sounds
Speaker:pretty straightforward. But then as a product manager, what I'm
Speaker:always thinking about is, like, how does the customer experience that?
Speaker:So how does the average user Who's, you know, maybe not coming
Speaker:from a data science background or an AI background or a software
Speaker:background. How are they going to interact with these products?
Speaker:You know, are they going to feel like you're giving them a worksheet and
Speaker:they have homework and they're saying, what the heck is this? Or are they going
Speaker:to feel like, I'm losing control. This is, you know, a
Speaker:runaway train and I'm overwhelmed. Right?
Speaker:There's a a really fine Balance to be struck
Speaker:there. But I also think it's it's an
Speaker:important balance to work toward, and I think it's really important for Companies
Speaker:building generative AI tools, myself included as a, you know, PM at
Speaker:HubSpot Sure. To pursue that right balance and to,
Speaker:you know, figure out how users interact with the
Speaker:with these tools in a way that gives them a sense of control
Speaker:And that lets their own expertise shine through while also helping
Speaker:them work more efficiently. I I love that,
Speaker:Juxtaposition, if you will. And I I see it, you know,
Speaker:it there's the human, driven part of this, And
Speaker:then there's this other, vector. See what I did there?
Speaker:Where you're you're using the data to inform the human And
Speaker:both those lines keep shifting and the intersections also
Speaker:shift along. Well, it's more than that, but that is a great,
Speaker:a way to look at it, kind of a, you know, a a 50,000 foot
Speaker:view, and those lines will continue to shift like you
Speaker:said. The autonomy part, I totally
Speaker:agree. I think that's you that is a hard call.
Speaker:And I you know, like, from what you just said, I gather that
Speaker:The answer may be, several different spots, you know,
Speaker:kinda like, less interactive,
Speaker:Medium interactivity, more interactive depending
Speaker:on the the users, just
Speaker:acceptance dealing with that. Some people may not have an
Speaker:issue with doing the worksheet or answering the quiz,
Speaker:questions, the survey questions so that you can gauge. And that, in my
Speaker:opinion, will put them higher on that interactive scale.
Speaker:You know, they may be more tolerant. I don't know if that's the right word,
Speaker:of the, of AI. But then you got old cooch like
Speaker:me, you know, that see see all of these questions that have that
Speaker:reaction like, Come on. I got things to do. Just answer the question.
Speaker:So interesting. Exactly.
Speaker:Interesting stuff. It is interesting stuff, and I'm always fascinated by
Speaker:content marketing, and how how
Speaker:the success, like, what you said was very true. Like, there are people that
Speaker:The either it tends to be bifurcated. Right? Like, you have people who do
Speaker:just will just spew out stuff and not think about the data, and there's
Speaker:people who will, Like you said, like, unless I'm guaranteed x number of this, I'm
Speaker:not gonna write a post about that. And I think that the sanity there's
Speaker:probably some kind of distribution of effectiveness That probably
Speaker:skews towards the middle, whether it's towards one side or the other. I think that's
Speaker:up for debate, but, clearly, it's not the outliers.
Speaker:Yeah. You know, speaking speaking as a, former
Speaker:freelance content marketer. So rather than, like, as a a PM in the space, but
Speaker:just as someone who Loves content marketing, and the
Speaker:the sort of science and orchestration of content marketing. I think
Speaker:that treating your content marketing sort of like a multi bandit
Speaker:test Is the best way to approach it so that, like,
Speaker:you're investing, let's say, like, 70 to 80% of your
Speaker:efforts Into these marketing initiatives where you have
Speaker:really strong data to indicate that it's going to be successful.
Speaker:And, you know, you can say, Like, based on past performance
Speaker:or Google Analytics data or heat map data
Speaker:that this is likely to resonate with your audience. And then reserving that
Speaker:other, you know, 30 to 20%.
Speaker:I hope I said 70 to 80% earlier or my math is gonna be way
Speaker:off. Okay. Great. No. You nailed it.
Speaker:You know, reserving Perfect. You
Speaker:know, with that other, you know, 20 to 30% of your marketing
Speaker:efforts, doing some experimentation and seeing what sticks. You
Speaker:know? I I think that, having room within your
Speaker:marketing strategy to say, okay, I'm gonna make a really
Speaker:opinionated post on LinkedIn about this topic And just see what my
Speaker:audience's reaction is. Or I'm gonna record a,
Speaker:you know, TikTok Even though the majority of our audience
Speaker:is on this other platform just to see, like, how does
Speaker:it perform, what aspects work, And use that as a
Speaker:way to continuously collect new data about, you
Speaker:know, what does actually resonate with your audience, What segments of your
Speaker:audience may you be missing, and are there emerging audiences that you haven't
Speaker:considered yet that may still be a good fit for your product or service?
Speaker:That's a good point. That's fascinating. Yeah. Try and balance all of those.
Speaker:Goodness. Yeah. You mentioned the, The multi armed bandit program
Speaker:problem, and you basically just described explore versus exploit,
Speaker:like, very well. Right? And it it it applies to more things than just slot
Speaker:machines. So so for those wondering what the heck we're
Speaker:talking about, there's this problem in typically
Speaker:reinforcement learning, Where it's the explore versus exploit.
Speaker:It's also known as, the multi armed bandit
Speaker:problem, where you basically given a simulated bank of slot machines,
Speaker:How do you maximize your winnings? Is that a good way to describe
Speaker:it, Blake? Yeah. I think so. Cool. I've done a
Speaker:number of presentations on it, and I've had a lot of fun with it. Even
Speaker:in Vegas, I think I actually presented in Vegas.
Speaker:Ironic. Alright. So now, well, let's switch to
Speaker:the pre, done questions. This is a great interview.
Speaker:Absolutely. Definitely would love to know more about that, but, we
Speaker:wanna be respectful of everybody's time. So here's the first question.
Speaker:How did you find your way into data? Did you find the Data Life or
Speaker:did the Data Life find you? The Data
Speaker:Life certainly found me. I did not go looking for it.
Speaker:So my educational background, my degrees are actually in English and
Speaker:sociology. And when I started working at HubSpot, I
Speaker:So that company seems pretty cool. I'm gonna work there as a gap year before
Speaker:I go do my PhD in American literature. Clearly, that
Speaker:is not how things played out. Ended up Falling in love with the
Speaker:product and the sort of SaaS ecosystem.
Speaker:And along the way, I realized that to,
Speaker:Meaningfully invest in growing our product and growing my own career, I
Speaker:had to become much more data informed and data conscious. So I
Speaker:am Squeezing every drop out of that single stats
Speaker:class I took in undergrad that I can. And thankfully, I've I've been
Speaker:able to work with some really, really, really brilliant Data
Speaker:scientists who have been more than willing to say,
Speaker:Blake, what you're proposing is statistically impossible and stupid. Let me
Speaker:educate you on how this actually works, to, you know, flesh out
Speaker:my own skill set and familiarity. Very cool.
Speaker:I love having those people around that'll just say, hey, wait. No.
Speaker:I have some of those around me as well. Frank's one of them. So,
Speaker:what what would you say, Blake, is the the favorite part of your current
Speaker:job? So
Speaker:my gut reaction was making flowcharts. I love a nice
Speaker:flowchart. I love, you know, diagramming out customer problems,
Speaker:but, to take that 1 step deeper,
Speaker:I think that for me what I love most
Speaker:is Being able to explore
Speaker:really complex problem spaces where there's not
Speaker:a single right answer And being able to
Speaker:be in a position of influence to say, okay, based on this
Speaker:abundance of choices and abundance of options for how we go, Here's
Speaker:how I think we should approach solving for our customer, and here's how we can
Speaker:measure whether or not we're successful at doing that. Gotcha.
Speaker:You are such a geek, loving flowcharts. Just
Speaker:say. I I am. I I fully embrace being a
Speaker:geek. I love a nice flowchart, and my coffee cup this morning even
Speaker:said as, oh, this calls for a spreadsheet. So
Speaker:it's he gets very on brand. I love that. I love
Speaker:that. That is awesome. So we have a couple of complete the
Speaker:sentences questions. When I'm not working, I enjoy blank.
Speaker:Reading and selling books. So, last year, I
Speaker:started up, a bit of a side hustle selling nonfiction
Speaker:books. I've got a website, howdycuriosity.com.
Speaker:I, you know, I I spend so much time reading
Speaker:nonfiction, especially in the, entrepreneurial
Speaker:and marketing and strategy spaces and recommending those
Speaker:books to people. So I decided, you know, maybe If I'm spending so much
Speaker:time doing this, maybe I can make a couple of dollars off of it. So
Speaker:got an online nonfiction bookstore now and that is, like, My
Speaker:favorite when I'm not product managing, I'm fulfilling book
Speaker:orders, looking up new books, writing about new books, and
Speaker:having a field day there. That's cool. You could do some
Speaker:data science on that on your own market. I could.
Speaker:So our 2nd complete to sentence is, I think the coolest thing in
Speaker:technology today is blank. So
Speaker:I Simultaneously, the coolest and in some ways, the
Speaker:scariest is, how rapidly things are
Speaker:changing and evolving. You know, over the last couple of years, we've
Speaker:seen just like a couple of, like, flashes in the pan, on the technology
Speaker:landscape where people have said, like, Oh, this is the next big thing. Web
Speaker:3, the next big thing. NFT is the next big thing. But I
Speaker:think we are actually at the point where we're encountering the next Big thing, which
Speaker:is all the different ways that ML and AI
Speaker:are influencing, you know, numerous
Speaker:industries. And I think that's really exciting,
Speaker:especially to be kind of right in the midst of
Speaker:that, To be able to, you know, chart these waters and figure out how
Speaker:these tools work together, how we can use them to,
Speaker:improve people's lives and hopefully not just, like, make their
Speaker:jobs redundant. Yeah. That I think is is is really cool
Speaker:and really exciting. Very cool. And our 3rd and
Speaker:final complete the sentence, I look forward to the day when I can
Speaker:use technology to blank.
Speaker:Oh, let's see.
Speaker:I look forward to the day when I can use Technology
Speaker:to, create a dashboard that
Speaker:lets me automate all the side projects that I have running.
Speaker:I am a perpetual tinkerer and doer. I'm
Speaker:always building something new. And as a result, I have a A
Speaker:ton of spreadsheets and notion spaces and Google Docs
Speaker:and everything else just floating through the ether. I have an
Speaker:Eisenhower matrix on the whiteboard behind me. I have a poster note Kanban
Speaker:board on the wall behind me, and I would, you know,
Speaker:Love to have, like, a a smart board or something where I
Speaker:can take all of these different projects that I'm constantly
Speaker:Throwing ideas down for, you know, everything from home improvements to
Speaker:side hustles to day job stuff, and
Speaker:and Create a better sense of organization than having Post it notes
Speaker:and docs everywhere. That's a good product
Speaker:idea. I like it. I like it. Yeah.
Speaker:So we asked our guests, to share something different
Speaker:about themselves, but we remind our guests also
Speaker:because we're all geeks and wise acres That, to
Speaker:remember, it's a family show. We wanna keep our clean rating. So
Speaker:we have to throw that out, you know, just just as a
Speaker:condition. Sorry. Well, I was going to
Speaker:talk about my love of profanity. That's No. That as a joke.
Speaker:That is a joke. No. You know, I I
Speaker:think something, different about myself,
Speaker:would probably go back To what I just mentioned about being
Speaker:a a chronic tinkerer and a chronic experimenter and doer.
Speaker:I I read a book, Many, many moons ago called the
Speaker:10% entrepreneur. And there was so much about it
Speaker:that I, didn't particularly
Speaker:like, But there was also quite a bit about it that I did. And part
Speaker:of what really stuck with me was this idea or I guess
Speaker:this question of, like, What would it look like to allocate 10% of your time
Speaker:and resources to, you know, entrepreneurial endeavors
Speaker:or, you know, Anything that kind of scratches that itch of
Speaker:wanting to do something more. And so, you know, through
Speaker:my own side project, out of curiosity, And
Speaker:through, the numerous other projects I'm always
Speaker:in, you know, in the process of juggling.
Speaker:I've I've really leaned into that 10% entrepreneur approach
Speaker:and it it is so fun. It's often a
Speaker:time sink and a money sink more than it is, you know, a
Speaker:a a revenue channel, but I just I love it. I love trying
Speaker:new things. I love learning new things, and I love, forcing
Speaker:myself to stretch my skill set beyond where it's currently
Speaker:at. Very cool. And I I love that, and I'm hoping that
Speaker:the transcription will pick up how to curiosity.com. I love
Speaker:that, you know, you're not Just throwing that in out of nowhere. It's
Speaker:definitely a passion, and it shows up and it keeps showing
Speaker:up. So and I would I I just I was trying to think
Speaker:of some clever way to say how much Ifranksworld.com that
Speaker:that way the way you're working it in. I'm just
Speaker:Sorry. That's funny. Picking on you a little, Blake, but it's
Speaker:I saw you laugh. So if you're not if you're not watching the video, and
Speaker:I don't think We'll have the video available if you're just listening. Blake
Speaker:laughed at that, so you should too.
Speaker:And you mentioned a book which kinda leads into Frank's next
Speaker:point, I think. Yeah. So Audible is a
Speaker:sponsor of the show. We we love Audible. Thoughts
Speaker:and prayers go out to the folks who were laid off in Audible this week,
Speaker:but, they are still a sponsor of the show, and hopefully, our
Speaker:domain works to go to the date driven book .com. Can you recommend any good
Speaker:audiobooks or books other than what you've already mentioned?
Speaker:Yeah. Absolutely. So I think,
Speaker:for me, the litmus test of a good audio book
Speaker:Yes. I listen to it and get so excited about it that I
Speaker:go and buy a print copy immediately.
Speaker:And, recently I did that with 2 different books
Speaker:on Audible. The first being The Long
Speaker:Game by Dory Clark, and the 2nd being Deep
Speaker:Work by Cal Newport. Interesting. Interesting. That is a
Speaker:mark of a great book where you listen to it, and you're like, I have
Speaker:to have this on paper. You know, there's something about as a book lover, I
Speaker:think you can appreciate, you know, there's something about dead trees,
Speaker:that just makes something magical.
Speaker:Totally agree. The Go ahead, Frank. No. Plus, you
Speaker:can listen and not get distracted by notifications. So Exactly. You
Speaker:know, It's a big issue for me. Sorry, Andy. I
Speaker:cut you off. That that's okay. Go ahead. Oh, no. That was
Speaker:it. Oh, so where, sorry. Where can people
Speaker:learn more about you, Blake? And, you
Speaker:you've already mentioned your side hustle. And I'm gonna check that
Speaker:out because I'm a I'm a book geek too. So where can people learn more
Speaker:about you and and all of the things you're involved in? Yeah.
Speaker:So you've queued me up to name drop my side hustle for, like, what, a
Speaker:4th or 5th time? Exactly. Right. I'll get close to the
Speaker:microphone. That's Howdy. Curiosity.comhowdycuriosity.com.
Speaker:See, I mispronounced it earlier. I thought it was how to,
Speaker:And it's how d. And as a Combination of
Speaker:of COVID science COVID sinuses, excuse Me and,
Speaker:southernism of just kind of dropping vowels.
Speaker:I'm not sure you can relate.
Speaker:That, my my business's website is probably
Speaker:the best place, and then folks are also always welcome to connect with me on
Speaker:LinkedIn. I love connecting with, you know, other folks in
Speaker:the industry, especially the data science
Speaker:industry. You all are some of my Favorite flavor of nerds. I say
Speaker:that with love. So, yeah, either my my business
Speaker:website or LinkedIn. Cool. Awesome. And we'll let the nice
Speaker:British lady finish the show. Thanks, Frank,
Speaker:Andy, and, of course, Blake for an outstanding
Speaker:show. Alright, you lovely lot. You've somehow
Speaker:endured another episode of our delightful ramblings, and for that,
Speaker:we're eternally grateful. We've got a tiny,
Speaker:almost insignificant request. You know where this is going, don't
Speaker:you? Pop over to Itunes, Stitcher, or your
Speaker:podcast platform of choice. It's just a click
Speaker:away. Even an advanced AI could do it.
Speaker:We need those shiny stars and charming reviews.
Speaker:Why? Well, it appeases the almighty
Speaker:algorithms, elevates our status in the digital realm, and brings
Speaker:more unsuspecting listeners into our fold. More
Speaker:ears, More joy, and frankly, the world could do with a bit of
Speaker:that right now. So unleash your inner critic,
Speaker:rate, review, and help us conquer the podcast universe.
Speaker:Go on. Make an AI proud.
About the author, Frank
Frank La Vigne is a software engineer and UX geek who saw the light about Data Science at an internal Microsoft Data Science Summit in 2016. Now, he wants to share his passion for the Data Arts with the world.
He blogs regularly at FranksWorld.com and has a YouTube channel called Frank's World TV. (www.FranksWorld.TV). Frank has extensive experience in web and application development. He is also an expert in mobile and tablet engineering. You can find him on Twitter at @tableteer.