Measure What Matters with Neil Callanan

Aicila: [00:00:00] Welcome to Business as Unusual. I'm here today with Neil Callanan. Neil helps mission-driven companies prove that activism doesn't just inspire its sells. by measuring how campaigns move culture through commerce, therefore fuel real world change. For over 15 years, he has shown leaders how to tie their values to a measurable ROI. Which it reflects the business's unusual focus on building businesses with profit models that include both people and the planet. really excited to have you here today. Welcome to the show.

Neil: Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Aicila: So let's dive in.

I used to work in the nonprofit sector and I feel like there's this question of how you make values measurable, right? So do you have a, a way that you can talk about that, that you think is helpful to people?

Neil: Yeah, I mean, I think it's very, um, nuanced and it depends on what your objectives are, what your structure is. So I, you know, I think most businesses and [00:01:00] or nonprofits fall into one of two camps, right? One is either purpose is their primary, right? So if you're a nonprofit and your goal is purely purpose driven then, there's a, a measurement framework that goes along there.

And then if you are a for-profit business who, you know, has values as a big part of what you do at the core of, of who you are there's sort of a, a slightly different bent. And I think most businesses fall into, to one of those two things that we generally talk to. And I think ultimately it's mostly having clarity on who who you're serving and, and what you're serving with the information that you're trying to measure. Right? And so in the nonprofit space, a lot of times it's really thinking hard about, um, not only are you measuring the impact that you're having in the world, but are you turning that measurement into

you know, something that you can articulate to your stakeholders, to your donors, to the people who are involved. And doing so in a way that is tangible, um, but also entertaining and storytelling [00:02:00] driven, I think is, is is kind of the challenge, across the board. And so, you know, I think what we see a lot is that nonprofits specifically are often not the best at measuring success and they're often not the best at um you know, articulating what they are setting out to do and, and how successful they are being at doing so. Um, and so, you know, thinking about a, a framework that allows them to, to really focus in their energy is, is kind of where we, we try to help. Right. So, um, on the nonprofit side, it could be anything from, you know, if you are trying to, um impact the planet and your charter as an organization is to reduce greenhouse emissions. Then we wanna find ways to measure that impact. And, you know, that could be in the, the literal, right? It could be in the number of trees planted. It could be in the you know, amount of carbon that's been captured, that kind of thing.

But it could also be in tandem about how [00:03:00] effectively you're getting your message out to the world, right? Because if education is a big part of what you are trying to do, then that should be super measurable. And you know, we believe that those two things can live in tandem. And in that way it's sort of similar to a for-profit business where they may be talking about their values and their causes, but they also have to sell some stuff right. And I think on the non-profit side, it's kind of similar when it's like, yeah, we need to raise the amount of money and that can be the goal and need or have the number of trees planted. And that can be the goal. But also typically education is a big part of what these organizations are trying to do is, is communicate what, what they believe.

Aicila: Right. Well, and it's the difference between, right, that quantitative and the qualitative problem, like the, you know, if there's a fire, it's very easy. We need to put a hundred people in a house or get them fed. I mean, if it's a systemic issue. We have, you know, massive homeless problem and poverty in our city, that requires a lot more complexity, and that's where I think people can get fuzzy on it.

Because they're like, well, what are you doing? You're like, why did these things. And like, how does that attach to what, you know, [00:04:00] the fact that our downtown is dirty or whatever, you know? And so I think that being able to identify ways to make it more concrete for people can be really effective in helping them to understand how, so, how they can participate.

Right?

Neil: Yeah, and I would say that universally, people often measure too many things. And so my instinct, um, across the board is to strip that down to, I know I'd love it to be less, three or less, that you are focused in on. And they don't always have to be purely as tangible um, dollars raised or whatever right. It can be. That you understand that education is big part of your charter, or there's a feelings way that you try to quantify, sort of like, you know, if we go back to your example, well, well, maybe it's about foot traffic downtown or way, maybe it's about reviews from tourists, so their general level of safety when they come downtown or whatever, right?

Like there's, there's a ton of ways to I think, measure these,

Aicila: Hmm.

Neil: these different pieces. [00:05:00] But it's important that you pick just a couple to measure. 'cause otherwise what happens is you say there's almost always some metric that says you're doing a great job. And I think the challenge is making sure that you avoid the tendency to sort of be drawn to that one thing.

Aicila: Mm-hmm.

Neil: if you have 10 metrics that you're saying are key to your organization, chances are one of them's up, right? And then you don't really know what you're doing. 'cause if nine are down and one is up, but you're focused in on the one that's up. And it's really hard to tell if you're being effective with the content, with the messaging, with the campaigns, with the fundraising, whatever it might be.

Aicila: Right. Well, and

Neil: Well, and

Aicila: another point that you talked about. I really. We have too many dashboards to kind of support that. But also, I guess the question is, and maybe this is sort of what you do, is then how do you identify those two or three metrics that actually speak to your purpose or, and or to your profit and your ability to continue to deliver on that purpose.

Neil: Yeah. Well, I think the first [00:06:00] thing, we almost always start our projects with our workshop and generally workshops primarily because I think it's important that you bring stakeholders from different facets of the organization or the business together. Typically, honestly, if you can get more, people, the more people involved in those early days workshops, the better.

And when I say the more people, what I mean is more representation, right? So like, I don't actually need you to have 50 people in a meeting. But I do think it's important to have leadership, but also some of the people who are maybe doing the work in the trenches. And so they can all kind of come to an agreement.

And the the main reason that I think it's really important that that happens is that what you're gonna do in that workshop is decide what you care about and decide what you're not gonna care about. And you all have to be aligned on that because then that sort of future proofs you from going back to those vanity metrics that we were talking about before.

You know, if we said, ah, we don't actually care about how many email subscribers we have, or Facebook fans we have, or how many, um, people [00:07:00] recommended us for this thing? Um. Well, if you all agree to that and say that and we put it in, you know, put it on paper and we, we nail it down. Then you resist the temptation to come back six months later and go, look how successful this thing was.

Look how many new email subscribers we had. Well, that wasn't what was, wasn't our goal. And we all said that wasn't the goal. But if you don't get the people who are gonna be involved in the long term involved in that decision making process, I think it's a real misstep. And it's hard to get that alignment towards what your goal is gonna be.

And, and, and honestly, the specifics, I'm aware that I'm contradicting a lot of myself by saying the specifics don't matter, right? Like, it's mostly important that you agree on something. And that you all work towards that thing. And if you work towards that thing, I think it's just drastically increases the chances that you'll have success.

And we've seen things as simple as, you know, maybe the, the brand is really focused in on something like [00:08:00] sales, right? Like an e-commerce thing? Um,

Aicila: have like a specific story that you can share that would kind of illustrate this?

Neil: Sure, yeah. Um, we work with a, with an outdoor, um, an outdoor brand. And they do some kind of sell like high-end outdoor gear, you know, fence, backpacks, whatever. And we started working with them, you know, what they were trying to do is quantify the things that were not just pure sales, right? Like just the dollars and revenue driven through their website.

'cause that's pretty easy to quantify. I mean, I would easy maybe an an oversimplification, but you know, today's technology allows you to pretty clearly identify. How much website revenue is being driven and from what sources and maybe in what campaigns are driving that specific revenue. But what they were trying to get a handle on was what is really enhancing people's relationship with their brand.

And a lot of these brands we talked to kind of live in the they [00:09:00] aspire to be in the Patagonia model of do goodery, right? Sell good stuff, sell a lot of it, but also be doing a lot for the planet along the way. And being committed to that, um, kind of thing. And so for this brand, what they decided was, you know, they sort of, the bulk of their sales came through equipment, right?

This high-end stuff, right? Like a $700 sleeping bag or a, you know, a tent that costs a thousand bucks. Um. But what they wanted to do is then take all the products that were not used in the, um, execution of an adventure. Right? Like a, it wasn't a piece of gear, it wasn't a thing to do it, you know, it's kind of branded materials, right?

Wallets and bumper stickers and you know, all the things that are like. Nothing to do with actually going out and camping in the wild. And so they, we basically bucketed all of those into a series of, um, what we were just calling brand affinity purchases that allow them to say, okay, did we sell more stuff?

That's super important, but are we [00:10:00] also seeing a decent share of just pure, we didn't even actually care how much money was generated from the t-shirts that had their name on, on their logo on it. More of like, how many net individuals purchased a thing. So rather than looking at the revenue driven by the t-shirts that they sold, they just wanna say how many individuals went and said, I'm such a big fan of this company, that I wanna wear their name

Aicila: Hmm.

Neil: on my shirt, or my wallet, or my bumper sticker.

Aicila: Yeah. And I could see that it would communicate a very different thing to the team too.

Neil: Yeah. 'cause you couldn't, they, they're not mutually exclusive. They typically cap together, but it also allows them to see, well, what's their best case scenario for a purchase? Well, it might be, yes, somebody buys the a thousand dollars tent, but we would really love if they bought the $15 t-shirt to go along with it at the same time.

And seeing if they could change their user behaviors or seeing if they could change the user flows on the website to allow for that to happen. Um, it sort of makes it, once you decide that those two things are goals that are gonna live together, you can come up with strategies to, to execute those goals.

Right? They can. They, they can both actually happen at the same [00:11:00] time.

Aicila: Yeah.

Neil: You just have to know that you wanna do both for it to take place, you know?

Aicila: Mm-hmm. No, that makes a lot of sense. And what is, um, how do I wanna ask this? What's so-called business wisdom that you're done hearing? You just wanna hear that ever again?

Neil: Hmm. Um.

Aicila: Or what's a common business tip you think does more harm than good?

Neil: I would say that.

Strategy and planning are overrated.

Aicila: Okay.

Neil: And that I say that as a company who oftentimes gets paid to help develop plans and strategies. Um, [00:12:00] and I think that's just because, especially in today's world where it's not like, you know, if you take it through a marketing lens, yes, it was really important in 1965 to make sure your Volkswagen ad.

Was perfect and pithy and designed to hit the page of the New York Times very effectively, and then you were gonna commit to a six month run and then that was how it was gonna work, and then you'd take those results and try to learn something from it. We just get the information so much faster now that.

Sometimes I feel like plans and strategies prevent people from actually looking at the information that they have coming in, right? If you're seeing signals that are saying that's not working, you can actually see those signals very quickly. Now, you don't need to wait six months, and so if you spend six months coming up with a strategy, you are incent.

To spend the next six months looking for why that's working really, really well.

Aicila: Hmm.

Neil: And um, that can be on a fundraising side, that can be on a marketing campaign, that can be on a product launch. [00:13:00] Um, I think the information's there for us to move quicker and because of that, strategies need to be designed and plans need to be designed to factor in the incoming information and change very rapidly and.

Aicila: Hmm.

Neil: So a really big, long like McKinsey 75 page plan for how somebody should do a thing. I just don't think it's that valuable anymore. Um, because if the more you paid to get it, the more time you spent developing it, the more stakeholders you've talked to, the more you know, you just end up with so many things that lead you to the sunk cost.

And then you might find out that actually people hated that. Message or that thing, or it wasn't working and

Aicila: Yeah.

Neil: you know you can change quicker.

Aicila: Yeah. Being nimble, especially now, and in adjusting to how the, the information comes. That sounds really wise. What

Neil: What advice would you give

Aicila: self.[00:14:00]

Neil: You are not as smart as you think you are and the other people around you aren't as dumb as you think you are as you are. Right. Like, you know, I always sort of, especially early days in my career, I really like, thought that the, um, cleverness of an idea or the, um, you know, the uniqueness of something we're, we're kind of the most important thing. And I would say that, um, you know, over time you sort of learn that ideas are just ideas.

And there's a lot of 'em. And a lot of 'em are good, but they how good they're matters sort of very little. And I think in the beginning I was really, um, sold on this idea that I could come up with a big, bold idea, whether it was a campaign creative or a, you [00:15:00] know, big picture, a big thing. And that that would mean it would be successful and, and I think the success is not really much tied to how good or bad an idea is or how smart or not smart somebody is who's trying to do that.

I think it's a lot in the operations and the process and the commitment to doing the thing and the showing up and you know, like the people with the best ideas also have to show up and do what they say they're gonna do and be grown ass adults. And I think.

Aicila: Yep.

Neil: The, the ability to have a good idea doesn't, you know, over overtake that at all.

Aicila: Yeah, right. I, uh, what is it? Uh, used to say to my kids when they were younger, uh, dream a goal without a plan is just a wish, which goes against your whole planning thing, but it's more like, if you don't take actions, then all it is is a wish. It's like, magically, could this happen in my life?

Neil: Yeah. And I don't think that the [00:16:00] mm. Yeah, I wanna make sure I'm clear. I actually think plans are very important. I just don't think it matters what the plan is. I think it's important that you have a plan to do a thing. And I think you just gotta have a plan to execute it. And that you commit to a plan or a strategy is important.

But that the idea that there is a perfect one is a fallacy, right? It's more like. I believe I will have a better chance of this succeeding if I take these five steps. So I'm gonna take these five steps, not my plan is so perfect. I've spent so much time thinking about my plan. I know my, I, here's all the evidence it's gonna work that I'm unwilling to see when, it's clearly not going the way that I think I should.

Um, and so I think a lot of times creativity, um, tries to overcompensate for a lack of like just a commitment to the follow through. And a commitment to the follow through is I think, much more important than how good or bad an idea is. And if you go look at marketing messages or [00:17:00] nonprofit campaigns, it's like you could see it like the ones that are successful are not always the ones who you're like, man, I wish I came up with that idea, but like something's working.

They're doing it a lot, right? It's working for them in some way. And it's probably in the execution rather than in the pure creativity of the thing.

Aicila: Yeah, they're getting it done.

What's

What's something?

about in your business?

Neil: Well, we, you know, loose grip, um, the agency is like 17 years old now. Um, grasp, which is our sort of measurement framework for values, activism, nonprofit brands. Um, it's something we only really launched like a year ago. We've, we've been playing that space for a long time in the work that we do, but sort of accidentally more than intentionally.

And so I'm really excited about the launch of GRASP entirely, which is sort of a framework for measurement. And it's a process where we take folks through a, like I said before, a workshop to develop a framework and then figure out a plan to make sure all the tracking and the data is in [00:18:00] place to, to execute on that.

And we're really excited about the kinds of companies that we get to work with in that space, right? So we wanna not only be tied to helping people sell more stuff, but also having a positive impact on society or the planet or the people. And I think this work is pretty exciting 'cause it gives us a chance to do that and help them, you know, continue to

evangelize for that, both internally with their stakeholders or their board or their donors, and externally with, you know, customers and sponsors and all the things.

Aicila: Yeah, that's fantastic. For folks that are listening, how do they learn more, follow you, get in touch.

Neil: Sure, well, our, framework and some information about it, a couple case studies is@graspyourimpact.com and, you can find me on LinkedIn at. Neil, NEIL, Callan, A-N-C-A-L-A-N-A-N, And our agency is Lou Grip, L-O-O-S-E-G-R-I-P. Um, you can find us all over the place talking [00:19:00] about marketing measurements and digital marketing and all the things.

And we're always happy to just learn more about what people are doing and, um, get a chance to, to connect with folks, especially those who are trying to have a positive impact on the planet.

Aicila: Cool. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for talking to me today.

Neil: Sure. Thanks for having me.

Aicila: All right.

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