#366: How To Visualize Yourself Doing Jamaican Accents w/ Jack Tompkins of Pineapple Consulting Firm
Jack Tompkins, aka "Pineapple Jack", is a Business Analyst, Consultant, Entrepreneur and Owner of Pineapple Consulting Firm based out of Charlotte, NC. He and his team help small businesses become more data-driven by creating KPI (Key Performance Indicator) dashboards with visual representations of their performance along with analytical support to fully tell the story of their business.
Website: https://www.pineapplecf.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-tompkins/
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pineapple, connecticut, business, people, data, reporting, strip club, data visualization, pretty, funnel, dashboard, client, listening, shit, tampa, swinger, big, talk, podcast, kid
SPEAKERS
Law Smith, Eric Readinger, Pineapple Jack Tompkins
Law Smith 00:00
sweat equity podcast, entrepreneurial advice with real raw dog talk. No no nothing. Okay, we're going we're Rado raw dog in the soundboard and this
Eric Readinger 00:14
people say you shouldn't give attention to these situations.
Law Smith 00:19
Some people okay, Mike any producer notes and the intro listen to us on iTunes Apple podcast Spotify This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Drag and drop female or female drag and drop Website Builder content management system. They do email marketing, they have a bunch of integrations now including Google Search Console, Google Analytics, all the pixel tracking stuff you want to do and their own email system, which I think you can get started for free on their Squarespace easily my favorite content management system fuck WordPress buck, we leave. Oh, fuckwits Yeah. Oh, my dick Juba. Yeah, if you're not making a website, if a non e commerce website you can do e Commerce on Squarespace. Yeah. But anything that's not ecommerce, you should be going over Squarespace. Hit the link in the description of this episode. For a little discount. Holler if you hear me who loves you, we do it looking you up. That's right. We got pineapple Jack Tompkins from the pineapple consulting firm talking data for small businesses swing and how to start it, how to use it. How to get to the next level. Let's get it going. Hana data about my sweat equity?
01:45
Sweat equity. Sweat equity. Hey, what's happening?
Law Smith 02:08
We see that you will see a book that's near and dear to our hearts right there. Oh, already? Which one? The traction book.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 02:17
I was not ready yet.
Law Smith 02:20
I also have a pile of business books I haven't read yet.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 02:25
Really just for show? Well,
Law Smith 02:27
my kids are starting to average in that book in my life. Oh, I was what was the other scaling book? We were talking about scaling up. Okay. Yeah, I read both of those kinds of the same time I can. A little confused. I thought that was the one we were reading really hit home for you, huh? Well, scaling up is a great book. But it was like, like a textbook. It was. Yeah, it felt like a college textbook after a while. Like, really, this is really good information. But if I'm not being quizzed on this, I don't know. Why don't we? Why don't we put the book talk aside and let you do your plugs. Where can people find you? You know, if you want to do the elevator pitch of your company that also welcome.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 03:10
Sure. No huge plugs, but websites, the big one, pineapple cf.com. Examples waist contact me all stuff and their elevator pitch. My short version is just helping small businesses be more data driven. And that's that's the whole goal from simple Excel tools to automated web based dashboards. everything in between.
Law Smith 03:31
We're kind of nerd excited.
03:33
Oh, you're talking my language, buddy. We did that all day to day.
Law Smith 03:37
We've been all in this. I mean, for the last few years it's been reporting has been a big chunk of frustration in time. Before we'll we'll table that for a second. I want to hear about your life. What's What's your story? Where'd you grow up? What your parents do? When do you have your first kiss?
Eric Readinger 04:00
Never asked him
Law Smith 04:01
to scripted. Yeah, as scripted as me not preparing and improv. In my it's my favorite kind of script. Yeah. Yeah. What's your what's your where'd you grew up?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 04:14
Yeah. So I grew up in Connecticut, which is not very exciting. I I used to do some recruiting for the old corporation that I worked for. And the biggest draw we had was, hey, like, come work in Connecticut. So you can leave to go to New York and Boston on the weekends. And that was our whole big thing. Connecticut. So
04:30
that's not as close to stuff. Yeah, exactly.
Law Smith 04:33
I've heard Connecticut is one of the weirder states in the country, because it is a lot of people like that. And then there's like, you got a couple towns cities,
Eric Readinger 04:43
right? Women's Basketball.
Law Smith 04:45
Ooh. Yeah. Sweet.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 04:49
Yeah. He's watching
Law Smith 04:51
Hartford the whale when they didn't have the whalers. They did. Yeah,
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 04:57
yeah, the Carolina hurricane now and I'm actually in shock. Out of North Carolina now I moved down here.
Law Smith 05:02
Yeah. So yeah, take us from Connecticut to where you are now.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 05:06
So Connecticut actually went to UConn as well Queen City now. Born raised, went to school worked all in Connecticut. Corporate stuff, didn't like Connecticut eventually figured that out. After 25 years was like, alright, that's that's enough for me. And then moved down to Charlotte, more for fun than for anything, had one friend down here. That Alright, screw it. Let's give it a shot. And been down here for about three and a half years. Absolutely love it. run my business full time for two years of that shell. It's a great small business environment. So it's been it's been fantastic. So you're
Law Smith 05:45
you're pretty young kid. You're not kid pretty young.
Eric Readinger 05:48
You could say that. You're old now.
Law Smith 05:50
I've just turned 38. Yeah. It doesn't feel good. How old are you? Well, I mean, I'm trying to figure out trying to deduce this. Hi. Asking
Eric Readinger 06:00
directly. Yeah.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 06:02
It's a bold deduction strategy. I'm 28.
Law Smith 06:05
Yeah, no, it's great. That's I think that's when I started my company. Maybe a little bit later, but, but that's a good time to do it. So grew up in Connecticut, family, parents, siblings, anything. We want to get to know you. It'll help tell the story of everything else.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 06:25
Perfect. No, I like it. Yeah, Dad, both parents retired dad was a pilot mom was a teacher. Few to pass these mostly special ed. Brother was in the Marines recently got out of that now working with a marine buddy and kind of a startup as well, actually. He's three years older, so when we overlapped both in high school and college, he went to UConn as well for a year at a time. So it was kind of cool in college because I immediately had a beer hookup my freshman year, which was fun. Nice. But then he left so I had to make my own.
Eric Readinger 07:00
Yeah, make your own beer or make your own hookup? No. Oh, that would
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 07:03
have been cooler. But make me out connections.
Law Smith 07:07
Yeah, so I can now get kind of that that pilot vibe, the military ish pilot kind of thing going on? Yeah. Is that something
Eric Readinger 07:15
was it was your dad a military pilot though? He was not. Next i You're a bad listener? I
Law Smith 07:22
said with a comma. I would say no, you didn't. You
07:25
didn't say pilot,
Law Smith 07:26
I guess? Yeah. Was brother. Yeah. Okay. I'm actively listening. Yeah, still. And how dare you wear a Tampa Bay Lightning shirt.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 07:37
Thanks, man. I was oh, I was gonna say I respect that. I especially after. I mean, they've had a hell of a run. Are you guys in Florida?
Law Smith 07:47
But we're in Tampa. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah. Nice. Next to New Haven, Connecticut, the index? City of America. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a little fun fact that got pulled out of my out. The closest demographics of the United States is New Haven, technically, but it's such a small town that you use Tampa. That's why all the franchises tried to do they start here a lot of the time as test test grounds. Wow, as close as you're gonna get to the population demo.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 08:15
Gotcha. That's interesting. I did not know that is kind of a fun fact. And that's about the fun fact about Connecticut.
Law Smith 08:23
New Haven where Gail is I think, yeah, it's women's
08:27
basketball and young
Eric Readinger 08:30
women
Law Smith 08:31
playing basket and you drive through to get from New York to Boston close to exactly. Yeah, so is that was it a no man's land? Was Connecticut growing up there? Is that just kind of you probably don't know it growing up wherever you are. You know, a lot of a lot of my friends were like, we didn't know we were poor. We just ate sugar sandwiches kind of thing. Like,
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 08:52
right? Yeah, just kind of was what it was like. Also, sugar sandwich sounds pretty good. I did have a roommate in college who had his sandwich was bread. Mayo. Hot Sauce bread. I hate who those why tweet psychopath?
Law Smith 09:05
Yeah. Because he's gonna leave it out. That's for sure. Like, just that hot. Manet's. That was my and one nickname hot man.
Eric Readinger 09:16
Because he's not finishing that sandwich. You're probably right, right. That's so great. But he's,
Law Smith 09:21
you don't want to date he's gonna offer you one every now and again. Be like, Dude, I told you. That's disgusting. So yeah, you guys are still BFFs
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 09:30
Oh, God, no. He's actually a decent dude. He's not like in prison for killing anybody, which is shocking given his eating habits. Okay, but he's a decent we don't talk very much but he's an alright
Law Smith 09:41
guy. Okay, that's the qualifier for alright guys. He's not present. Alright, so you have you always had an interest in Data Statistics, analytics. It's always been a passion of yours.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 09:55
Math has always been my thing. Yeah, yeah. total nerd from the start on it been wearing full time glasses since fifth grade. I was like I just want to lean into it.
Law Smith 10:07
math isn't everything I tell like I say even people think it's not creative you can be creative with it but we want a bunch of people maths side
Eric Readinger 10:17
I thought you said math isn't everything and I was like it kind of it you know math
Law Smith 10:20
is everything no okay, we're I mean do you remember when I was going cuckoo in our old office I was like I want some data visualization posters on the wall and shit because I thought that I want to Sankey chart you know that is no it should Sankey the running back. No, it's It's one of those flowcharts that that's for the one Tennessee Titans or Washington Huskies fan. But Sankey chart is that they have it in Google Analytics when you're looking at the flow of of converting. You
Eric Readinger 10:54
know, you didn't do a very good job describing it you just described where it's at.
Law Smith 10:58
It's just like a flowchart man just fucking proved everybody. I knew what a Sankey chart was okay, sorry, my
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 11:04
bad. It's almost funny code. Yes. Which is why
Law Smith 11:07
I'm all up in that. So mathlete love, love of data, anything outside of school that you're just passionate about growing up where you like yeah, I rotisserie baseball league all that stuff. I used that as well. I mean, it is
Eric Readinger 11:26
a statistics record law of defending champion you talk about Nergi nobody good this year, but
Law Smith 11:33
I still I still got still got a lot of ways to go. But fantasy sports is just a stats game. Exactly. And baseball is the best one of it. Exactly. Because you have a larger sample size a lot to work with. You know, you literally
Eric Readinger 11:47
don't have to pay attention to baseball for just look at Box Scores. Right? I mean, if you go crazy with the Analytics,
Law Smith 11:54
you can get an eye second screen the rays games, but that's about it. For baseball. I don't really watch highlights or any of that stuff. But never do you can just kind of take that. I have had a Jamaican statistics teacher so you take the stand but a deviation.
12:11
All that deviation
Law Smith 12:13
is so funny. No one thought it was funny. An Auburn which is like the Middle East Alabama. There's a Jamaican Jamaican just think of that. Have you heard of a Jamaican here? Well, yeah, I was like, how did you? I've never heard of Jamaican talk. anything close to math?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 12:32
Ever. Right? Yeah. What was his very I agree.
Law Smith 12:35
Now he sound like Chet Hanks. But so were you. Did you have like passions outside of school in this kind of area? Where is it? What is the thing where you found yourself just poring over things online? To look? I don't know. I'm trying to I'm trying to build the story of you here.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 12:56
I didn't have I didn't have a lot outside of like school related stuff. That was data like I'm a huge baseball fan. I'm a diehard Yankees fan. Oh, I gotta go and now Yeah, so the fun one guys. Well,
Law Smith 13:09
you know some guests don't get to go all the way that's fine.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 13:13
I I watched pretty much every single game and if I can't watch it, I'm listening to it or tracking on my phone.
Eric Readinger 13:19
Oh God, John Sterling. Please tell me on a bomb from shoot me in the head with you say one more word. Oh, now. Oh, he sucks.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 13:28
He's he's getting towards the end. I'm not gonna lie. Sure. Hope so.
Law Smith 13:33
Don't all announcers kind of sound? No, no, he's the worst.
Eric Readinger 13:35
Easiest cheese deck of all cheeses.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 13:39
I've always liked him. But again, we're like, what I grew up with. So like, I never listened to Vin Scully or any of the other guys but Vince,
Law Smith 13:46
Vince was the best Yeah.
13:50
He's fantastic musical voice
Law Smith 13:51
the best is when they start getting older. stop giving a shit as much so they'll say like kind of a wild thing in the middle of just nothing. Yeah, because they don't care. They're ready for a beer. Oh man style. I'm sure Vin Scully got to Yeah, and Michaels is right there
Eric Readinger 14:06
like veiled racism.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 14:08
Michaels Yeah.
Eric Readinger 14:11
Yeah, just like racist comparisons of players like so he's just saying that because they look like you
Law Smith 14:16
should be proud you got probably racist announcer head but yeah, but exactly. Why are transitive
Eric Readinger 14:22
start work? Let's are listening.
Law Smith 14:25
So So you started you started pineapple consulting firm. Now we have a very important question about about your brand. Why why pineapple and you got anybody watching a video there's a couple of pineapples carefully placed in front of the paint. The the curtain you put up to pay
Eric Readinger 14:50
American Psycho before
Law Smith 14:52
Yeah. For a nice clean way to write a ransom note on it later.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 14:58
With a mayo sandwich is going to Come on, right?
Law Smith 15:02
So pineapples why pineapple?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 15:04
So, a couple big things once a like I was talking about moving down to the south move down to Charlotte, North Carolina. Southern hospitality is very much thing it was not in Connecticut. We had New England I hate everybody thing. So I really wanted to embrace the southern hospitality pineapple symbol that the only thing has always been a symbol for me is for like vacation. So my goal is to help clients enough so they can actually take a vacation and go have a pina colada on the beach out of a pineapple. So together kind of went towards a pineapple and it has taken on a life of its own. And honestly, there's a fair amount of people that know me as just pineapple Jack and don't even know my last name. That's a
Law Smith 15:47
that's a sick, Nick. That's
Eric Readinger 15:48
pretty cool. Yeah. Okay, you want to tell them or? Well, we
Law Smith 15:53
were I know, from a previous client that had a pineapple on his logo, that it means their real estate company means welcome now. Yes, because we're so mature. The first thing we both thought independently,
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 16:07
which is swinging?
16:08
Yes, yes. Okay, good.
Eric Readinger 16:09
You're aware that goodness, yes. Because someone's
Law Smith 16:11
had to send it to you. Because like, all the time, I can feel like a crusty old man via pineapple.
Eric Readinger 16:18
It'll be pretty branding the flamingos in no time. Yeah, you should
Law Smith 16:21
just lay into it and then act like you don't know any of it. Just keep putting all the symbolism on there.
Eric Readinger 16:26
Sure. Him having an open house? Come on by.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 16:28
Right. Exactly. Yeah. Pay attention to the soccer,
16:32
hospitality.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 16:34
So it's the upside down pineapple is the swinger not the right side up. There's a small distinction there depends on perspective,
Law Smith 16:41
right? That's a good point where you're looking at when you're looking at data depends on your bias. You can make it happen anywhere. So if you had anybody been creepy and be like, Are you part of the lifestyle?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 16:53
I had one guy, different podcasts that was on. He made the same comment. He goes I forget the name of it, honestly. But he goes out like Did you know that's also signed for swingers is like in the pre show? And I was like, yeah, like I've heard it, but it's the upside down and find out because ah, that's what I've been doing wrong. Like he's like, actively trying to swing Oh, but he was doing it wrong because it's pineapples are right side up. So he goes all right. And what do you think? Do you get good success with that? I was like, I haven't tried it. I'm not not a swinger myself. But you do you?
Eric Readinger 17:28
Did he have a female to bring to the table? Or was it just some
Law Smith 17:32
apparently you have to pay like 10 times the amount or something like so what the deal is, I've only heard this from other comedians is a you know, like, you pay a certain amount if you go single, because you don't want to do fast. So they have to make IVIG so high, that if you're coming solo, like
Eric Readinger 17:52
you're thinking of an orgy, no, no. Sounds order. Are you paying Who are you paying sounds
Law Smith 17:58
orgy? Yes, yes. But the swingers parties can they can overlap. If we're doing a Venn diagram, or data visualization chart, there is something in the middle. So right now, you know, I love this stuff. Because I don't read very well I like I like pictures. And you know, that tells story anyway, apparently, like the overlap is like an orgy is like it's kind of a free for all, then you have a swinger party, which is like a key party. Okay, right. So they could still both be in a place to meet up I'm
Eric Readinger 18:33
just saying why is there money being exchanged? Because
Law Smith 18:35
to swing you would need a partner to bring you need to bring a chick with you as a partner. So then they're like, but the people who host these things are like, well, there are some guys that you know, I guess it don't have that the table they don't have that person so they pay they have to pay like hundreds of bucks to get in.
Eric Readinger 18:58
You can be talking complete bullshit right now. I
Law Smith 19:00
just told you. I only know this through comedians talking about oh, comedians told you this. Well, I didn't research it. I'm not in the lifestyle like you used to be.
19:12
We don't have to get into that. Let's not get into that.
Law Smith 19:15
Well, you know, that's a that's a previous eras let people's minds
Eric Readinger 19:19
wander well,
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 19:22
to dive into later, right.
Law Smith 19:24
So, yeah, that's real. And then they have like, ambrosia salad and like a buffet and shit. Right? I was like, I don't know what's gross are eating that. Like, unless there's, if there's like a sterno you know, like that kind of style like a sterno flame under like,
Eric Readinger 19:40
no, there shouldn't be any food or there's I agree,
Law Smith 19:43
but you know that one guy sitting out you know, or you get get pretty wiped out from all the relations I guess. I mean, Gatorade Sure. Liquid IV Yeah.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 19:55
So not going there to eat salad like, really sound you know? Yeah, food off.
Law Smith 20:00
She was gonna say what's grosser, the strip club buffet or that buffet? This is the stuff we talked about on the show. I don't know if you ever listened beforehand.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 20:08
The tough question,
Eric Readinger 20:11
you know, right and there's a lot of factors at play here.
Law Smith 20:14
Like low pineapple Jack, you don't know but you may not know Tampa is kind of like strip club city. So
Eric Readinger 20:21
strip club capital of the world. We got more strip clubs than we do churches.
Law Smith 20:25
Technically Portland has more per capita like per square mile. I lost a bet on that. But Portland smaller and not in Florida. And so so we got all that stuff out of our system. Pretty much I got it out my high school I was like, Yeah,
Eric Readinger 20:42
my bachelor party was stupid, right? You're like, this
Law Smith 20:44
is boring. This bum. bums me out if I have to go to one. Yeah. Because you're just like,
Eric Readinger 20:50
your friends be creepy. Yeah. And then like,
Law Smith 20:53
yeah, and then like
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 20:54
high school graduation in Tampa. It's like, all right.
Law Smith 20:57
I went my first strip club. I was 14. Seven C's had everybody races and like umbrellas on I couldn't look more at a cast on my arm. I couldn't look more like a kid.
Eric Readinger 21:12
I'm bros. Got 14 in a strip club. How'd
21:15
that go?
Law Smith 21:16
Well, it was one of the first jokes I told on stage that it was very hard. Very hard. It was very to messin the when I we put Swisher Sweets in so that we looked older in where we're smoking Swisher Sweets. Oh, which, which definitely makes you look pretty extinguished.
Eric Readinger 21:39
Look at him Old Lady cigarettes.
Law Smith 21:40
I watched it with my buddy was 15 or 16. And I was the kid that had to buy beer for everybody because you're kind of ugly looking dude. I was like, kind of like a awkward look in high school kid.
Eric Readinger 21:52
Yeah. So I had the head of a 21 year old. Yeah, I
Law Smith 21:56
had like the same shit going on now but as a high schooler, so it was like, you kind of grow into it a little bit. You know when you get older sometimes. But yeah. And then first thing I saw right as I got in pregnant lady in the shower. Wow, I was like, I don't really this is for me. This and then, do you tip for two? That was one of the first jokes said All right. Back to you pineapple Jack.
22:24
I just got it.
Law Smith 22:25
Yep. Pretty clever. Pretty good. Yeah,
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 22:30
I mean, fortunately, wisdom is some of the funniest. Yeah,
Law Smith 22:33
and then that thing where you have to like, not talk about what your friends did in there and like, take that shit to the grave. I don't like doing that either. Like your friend.
22:40
Yeah. It's always tough. We prefer to talk about it on a podcast. Your friend is
Law Smith 22:44
like usually, your friend wants to tell you a secret about cheating on his girlfriend. I'm like, Dude, I don't want to know. Don't tell me any of this shit. I don't want no, I don't want to know it. I like your girlfriend.
22:56
We're having dinner. This we go on BetterHelp
Law Smith 22:57
whatever. I don't know, go talk to someone else. But I don't want to have to pretend like it. Oh, no, you know?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 23:02
Yeah. No, there's no winning there. Yeah,
Law Smith 23:05
this is how these interviews go. By the way. We're just
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 23:09
Yeah. Works for me. First time
Law Smith 23:11
in a strip club. What age would you got?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 23:15
I I was, I think college or post college? So I was I mean, in Tampa standards. I'm like, 100.
Law Smith 23:23
Well, yeah, we are you were not advanced in many things here. But
23:29
that the 11th grade level? Yeah, I remember
Law Smith 23:33
going to New Orleans in college with a bunch of people. They were like, Let's go to strip clubs. I was just like, I'm so bored. Like, I know, like, this is like, it bums me out. And they're like, yeah, yeah, going bananas, which is the only funny thing going on, like then losing their shit today. Yeah.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 23:51
Yeah, it's never been a super like, like I get it like, Is it fun to be there to an extent, but it gets pretty boring pretty quickly. Yeah,
Law Smith 24:01
well, let's let's delve into a little data visualization, data driven decisions. data driven decisions was like the key phrase 10 years ago, I feel like in marketing, but what do you feel the biggest issues with reporting are and I'm speaking in reporting, since I'm sure you have other other uses, uses Yeah. For for that for data visualization. But since we're all up in reporting, and I assume that's a lot of what you're dealing with, right? Yeah, very much. So what do you what do you find the biggest issue is, I was trying to look up a few things earlier today, like the kind of like, I've never really looked up. You know, we never really asked, Why are we making this report? You and I tried to break this down when we're revamping reporting like yeah, I'm always like, give it give that snapshot on the first page and then all the details behind it that they can look at. It needs to be like a doctor's vital. A chart, you know, how do you see like, what are you working with, I guess is most important?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 25:07
Yeah. So small businesses anywhere from, I have a few solopreneurs. I've got 250 employees and everybody in between sweet spots, like 30 to 40 employees. But most of the stuff I do reporting wise is very much actually that exact example. It's doing the health check. Right? So page one, give me all the high level metrics, boom, boom, boom, Okay, this one's good, bad. Good, good, good. Let's focus on the bad one. We go to page two, dive in see what's actually happening in the business.
Eric Readinger 25:37
Three going into all of their all their numbers, you're getting their finances, you're getting into their whatever it is they do, and their KPIs and all that.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 25:45
Pretty much. Yeah, it's whatever the client wants,
Law Smith 25:48
like the health of the business kind of checkup.
25:50
Exactly. holistic approach.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 25:52
Yep. Yeah. Most people start financial, obviously. But then most people go into like marketing operations of the biggest next to
Law Smith 26:01
what, what is the thing? We're there? What is it usual? Issue someone's come in with you coming to you with? And then when you're presenting this, here's how to, here's how, here's the are you delivering the report? Are they like, Wow, you really opened my eyes. Because this was just a mess earlier, I'd have to assume I think the biggest problem I have with data visualization is using the wrong data or to having too much and not being able to trim it down.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 26:31
Yeah, I think that's pretty fair.
Law Smith 26:36
We're not knowing how to parse it out, maybe,
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 26:38
yeah, there's so I guess maybe two parts of that one, people come to me because they're like, alright, we know there's a bunch of good stuff in here. But we don't know how to get to it. It's somewhere in there, we just don't have the resources to do it. And so I come in, take the data from point A to point B, make the pretty picture, which is the dashboard out of it, and then they get it. This is the number we're looking for. This is so helpful. We thought this may have been happening, this is kind of an eye opener, talking about two different parts of the dashboard there. So there's a lot of just cleaning it up and making it well making it visual at the end of the day, which is my favorite part back to like math isn't everything, you have to be pretty, like creative to actually make a dashboard visually appealing.
Law Smith 27:20
Yeah, I find a lot of them are very engineer looking. And don't really all about the data. Well, I'm like, Come on, man, this looks like Windows 95. You know, like,
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 27:32
like, write it.
Law Smith 27:33
I'm not a huge, I'm not big on like, this needs to be aesthetically pleasing for the creative side. And it's on the it's on the ability to the reception that you need to take, you're taking a complex amount of stuff, and pushing it into a diamond kind of thing.
Eric Readinger 27:50
And it's for somebody who's not entirely familiar with what it is you're showing them. So they have 1000 different line items and everything jumping out at you. It's intimidating. You just turn off.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 28:02
Yeah, it's boring as hell. And boring on, right. Non numbers, people are my favorite clients. Because they don't want all that detail. They just want something that looks good. And it's easy to understand. And those are the best kind dashboards hands down.
Law Smith 28:16
Yeah, I used to go what are your top three KPIs? For what you think that that so you could check something? If I make a report for you, that you can check in? No, you're on point, right? So it's like, right, we have x amount of leads in our business development funnel, okay, if we're here, we have this amount at, you know, average price of whatever they're gonna bring in. And then, okay, got that one. The next one is like your profit margin, you know, making sure you know, it's different for everybody depends. It shouldn't be for at least like a lot of service businesses. But
Eric Readinger 28:49
yeah, so I gotta know, I'm sorry to get into the weeds. But when we feel like data, just gathering data, how are you getting it to a point of automation, when you're, I'm sure you're dealing with all kinds of different clients who use all kinds of different software was then as all kinds of stupid reporting. So I just really curious, do you have your own data funnel? How do you How are you doing it?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 29:25
I do not have anything proprietary.
Law Smith 29:27
That's the next stage, isn't it? Yeah,
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 29:30
that is that's where pineapple really
Eric Readinger 29:32
hold me up. Because I got 1000 things that I will tell you that you need to do. Yeah,
Law Smith 29:36
we can give you a lot of insight through the lens of like, just talking shit and going why is this this one? Yeah,
Eric Readinger 29:43
no, but that's why that's because we're in users. Yeah, it gets to a point where it's like, you're telling me I can't do this. I have to put this into a spreadsheet myself. Are you kidding me? Like, you know, come on, right.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 29:55
Yeah, nobody wants to do that. If that's the case, you're never going to end up using the data because it's too much of a hassle but I mean, there's a lot of different automation that's out there like Zapier, everybody knows that. There's a lot of different versions of that out there. And that gets you 90% of the way to automating 80% of different software out there. So
Law Smith 30:11
here's the tip I've made. I'm making a report for a client right now. And the thing I'm making for this client, I'm making them like, Okay, here's a calendar invite reminder for yourself to check Zapier because sometimes those those, those automations, disconnect, and you don't know, it's good send you an update sometimes, or it can get missed an update, usually the culprit, right? And so I'm like, Yeah, we're an update on Yeah, the app side on one of the two apps that it's connecting up date, and then this app doesn't work. So I was like, once a week, just go through most of the time, you're just gonna go, Okay, this is fine. But it's worth doing because that will FIFA? Fuck you.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 30:55
100%. Yeah. And one thing
Eric Readinger 30:57
I just said, and just a side note that I just set up was Google Analytics alerts. Yep. For traffic flatlines and stuff like that. I mean, I actually don't know if you'll be able to do it in Google Analytics for because it's, I couldn't figure it out in four. But the old version, it's still there. You should be doing that. Make sure your website is still up and running. It'll send you an email. It's easy. Yeah,
Law Smith 31:24
make things work for you. And that automation way too. Yeah. Like anything. Anything that can get triggered? That's a fire alarm. Yeah, you need to have that set up. I had it for clients with a WordPress, a WordPress plugin, if the site was down, because there was something with like, hosting issues,
Eric Readinger 31:45
I got a crazy setup, form fills or flatlining if there's like anything, because that's basically checking to see if automations are working.
Law Smith 31:53
It's working for my friend. Dude, that's that's huge. Because that's where you want to get to you don't need it sucks when you're in that position, want
Eric Readinger 32:01
to be playing catch up on something like that, you'd rather just get ahead of it. And you're looking at every entity
Law Smith 32:05
individually, which defeats the purpose of you know, having these aggregated systems, right. There's no health check at that point. Can we talk shit about tapclicks? tapclicks. Yeah, yeah, there
32:19
are a database data funnel, their company
Law Smith 32:22
we used to use, or an agency and then tried to use them again, recently, and it was just a fucking nightmare. And it was like, I tell
Eric Readinger 32:32
you right now a feedback request. For ullamco. Yeah. Yeah. So they got all zeros,
Law Smith 32:38
right? Yeah. And the product, it worked worse than when we used it in 2017. What was crazy, but for those listening out there that don't call pineapple Jack, that or stuff like psuedo s wy do is a cheap way to get kind of marketing reporting, mostly analytics reporting, Tableau, which is expensive, but I think they have a cheaper version now. Business intelligence, tougher to do on Microsoft, you really have to have someone that knows that app, back and forth to really make it worth your while for the big boys. Trying to think of the other ones have used Google Data
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 33:15
Studio is pretty good.
Eric Readinger 33:16
That's right. Yeah, that's what I've been jamming.
Law Smith 33:19
I gotta give kudos, Eric, he made one for this podcast. Oh, he made a dashboard for the show, which we,
Eric Readinger 33:27
we've had an uptick in downloads for some random reason. And I was like, alright, let's check this out. See what the and I did five years worth of download data.
Law Smith 33:36
So the data driven decision, right, we're going to look at why did this jump recently, because we haven't really been doing anything that much different. And if we can figure that out, then we'll do we'll try to milk that for all it's worth
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 33:50
that. Yes. I mean, a swingers and strip clubs could be the secret.
Law Smith 33:55
I want to I want truckers. We have a trucker audience apparently, that's the big podcast listener. Yeah.
Eric Readinger 34:02
But with the lowest budget talk, I want you back on there. I want that
Law Smith 34:05
deca, like high school business kids group. You've heard of that? No, they do, like, big like, conventions to like pitch business ideas and debate. It's real business dorky stuff. But we get them young, like, like a legacy brand had that
Eric Readinger 34:21
are second to last job. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You don't remember DACA into the program. DNA? He was He said not that specifically. But yeah, similar.
Law Smith 34:35
What? Okay, well, I want to make sure we, we talked about, it's tough to do data visualization in a podcast interview format, because, you know, we could do a share screen stuff, but most people listen on audio. And you know, we don't have to get into how cool it was that I pulled out Sankey chart that I knew about. We don't, we don't need to, we don't need to do all If so what I guess what can you tell us like kind of a success story of someone coming to you? Because like we get on marketing side, like clients hate marketing, that's why they hire someone outside of the company to help them, but they hate it. It can. It's overwhelming. However, they feel like like tasted music or sense of humor. They think they have a grasp on it, when they might not like everybody has a great taste in music. No one thinks they're tasting music sucks. And everybody has a sense of humor funny, but as comedy snobs over here, we dissect someone's real sense humor. You know, they're like, I love Bill involved. You're like, Oh, boy. So what? What is like a good kind of success story that's come to you. What are these people? They don't like numbers. You're the number guy. You're like the wolf and Pulp Fiction. For them. You're coming back fixing stuff. Yeah, that's I'm okay with that. Something I used to say about myself when I was
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 36:10
just a lot of worse comparisons in Pulp Fiction. So I appreciate that.
Law Smith 36:13
Well, the wolf is the band Harvey Keitel, he comes in fixes everything and leaves, right, an accurate NSX. Yeah, so what's a good story.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 36:23
So I'll stick with our, with our newfound audience of truckers, I have a ha have a few transportation type companies. So one guy, he's got a bunch of different data all over the place a lot of small businesses do. And it would take him so long and wouldn't even have a number on it. But it would take him so long to put everything together and make sense out of it, that he wouldn't do it. Because it just it would take them a week, if he actually like sat down, did everything. So he could kind of figure out, like relatively easily how many stops he had in a specific day. And how many packages he delivered to business model very easily drive truck to house drop off package, go to the next house. So he had no real insight into the majority of what was going on in his business. saw the bottom line was like, Alright, I guess we're making money, that's cool. Getting down to an efficient level of getting the data. So now he has a weekly report, I pull for him half automated, but he can see 100% of his business in outs, how many stops you make a day, what driver was the most efficient, what route was the most profitable, and everything in between. And before it was like, when something would come up, putting out fires with a blindfold on. And now it's pretty much pull up my dashboard, health check. Next layer, check, boom, done on on with the rest of the week. And he runs his business entirely through that dashboard now
Law Smith 37:48
nice. Yeah. I assume in this, like reporting so important for any anybody trying to scale. Like, even if you're going from very little to little, or you know, like, because you can't keep your eyes on everything, right? You need these, you need the there's too many things going on, especially digitally, that you can't be on top of everything. And then what people do is just avoid it like the client when he came to you, right? Because he was just like, well, this number is good. That's the Prophet. We're gonna
Eric Readinger 38:21
just like, generally speaking, anytime you're gonna make an investment, like, you know, software out there, that's fucking expensive. Check out that reporting section. See what what's up with that? Make sure that part of it is on lockdown. Because, I mean, there's stuff that I use that it's useless things for the PDF. What am I supposed to do? Yes.
Law Smith 38:43
Yeah. And like logistics. Like you're saying I had a bathroom client porta Potti client. Yeah. And they, they started really looking into the data of the routes, and they got more efficient with it. And like, just by cleaning up all that stuff. And they know they needed to do it for three years. And it took them that long to be like, alright, we really got to step this up. Because now we have so many assets and trucks and like if people now and all this stuff, and it made them so much more efficient once they figured out the best route to pick up or drop off or clean them all that kind of stuff and like improve their profit margin and like 30% something absurd.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 39:26
Oh, absolutely. I believe it I mean, you save an hour a week on something like that, or porta Potti upper route or something an immediate 30% impact
Law Smith 39:33
and then you get gas prices in the mix. Now what's variable you're you'll have to keep your eye on If you've run into company like that. You know, all that stuff has to come into play to make more data driven decisions.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 39:47
Absolutely.
Law Smith 39:48
All right. You got anything.
Eric Readinger 39:50
Okay, got all the info I need. Well, the dashboards you
Law Smith 39:54
may get random. You may get a random email from Erica or if we get stuck on something for sure. Yeah, cuz Look, that's the other part. It's hard to find someone who knows what they're actually doing with this shit. Right? There's a lot of recording companies, but there's a lot of business development people that you'll talk to. And then you tap click, and then you get in there and they don't know, even their product. But I'm always like, I was trying to take it outside of whatever software and go, What am I trying to get out of this? Yep. Mostly in marketing, I just want a funnel, I just want a visual funnel. I want to see every stage. And then I can be able to illustrate here's, here's your click through rate sucks. So we got to figure out, you know, a better creative or campaign, like be able to go here's, here's the break in your funnel right here. You know,
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 40:41
it's a big piece of here's the action we're going to take because of this data. Exactly. One thing,
Law Smith 40:46
right, right. Yeah. And in marketing, it can be as easy as that if I can figure out and make this reporting funnel, right. We asked everybody that comes on the pod the first time this question before we bounce is what advice would you give your 13 year old self?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 41:07
13 year old self? You're in
Law Smith 41:08
Connecticut. Not in strip clubs yet?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 41:12
Not in strip clubs yet know.
Law Smith 41:14
Your dad's like, I'm flying out pretty soon.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 41:17
Yeah, see in two weeks kid later. Honestly, so I I liked a lot of different, like subjects in school and stuff and thought I wanted to be a teacher that I wanted to work with kids, which now I laugh at, like your mom is right, exactly. Yeah. She's crazy.
Law Smith 41:37
She's listening. Now, Eric. I knew that retained it.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 41:42
She taught military pilots. Active listening throughout the entire episode very well, duh. I would say lean into the stuff that I like. I kind of like no pun intended being like a jack of all trades and liking a bunch of different stuff. But the end of the day, doing something that I love now, which is the stuff that I do. It's all analytics and data visualization stuff. Obviously, I didn't know that at 13. But lean into the stuff that you like, because there's the better you are in that one funnel, or that one silo, the more marketable you can be, in my opinion.
Law Smith 42:18
Yeah, yeah. A lot of people need like, I was talking to someone and I think I was talking to my knees, I was like, Get get a specialty get a skill, you gotta get good at something. I wish I had something like that right out of college. Instead of being that kind of jack of all trades. I was like, Well, I have a business degree. And it I wrote business plans for businesses that's like MBA level stuff, but it didn't matter. Because I didn't have that one thing. I could be like, well, I can do this, you know, and struggle to like, work my way up, you know, a normal day job. So yeah, that you don't think doing those other things may have helped you kind of push you towards this thing over time, or
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 43:01
I do think it helped. And like there's definitely something about being well rounded. Because a lot of what I do now, even just in like talking with friends, too, it's taking the nerd speak, that is the data world and translating it to the business speak. So everybody's kind of on the same page. So there's nothing to say. Don't touch the other subjects and don't pay attention to them. Or don't invest any time in them. But pick the specialty. Play five sports be great at one. Have fun with the rest kind of thing.
Law Smith 43:29
Yeah. Yeah.
43:31
Very wise.
Law Smith 43:32
All right. Anything else you got for us? Before we depart?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 43:36
Now, you guys are curious. What is your 13 year old advice?
Law Smith 43:41
No one's no one's throwing it back on it. I don't think
Eric Readinger 43:44
mine is to tell law to not ask that question. I don't really like the question.
Law Smith 43:49
I didn't know he didn't like the question until we say it every
Eric Readinger 43:51
time. Yeah, but
Law Smith 43:53
you say you don't like a lot of stuff. I just breeze on by that. Exactly. Well, I mean, what do you what question would you prefer? Well, I'll
Eric Readinger 44:03
come up with one so 30 new one every time 13 year
Law Smith 44:06
old self is probably it's got to be something with like, radio noise or don't worry about all this shit all around. You just focus on what you're wanting to do. It seems to be the most common answer we have on here. That maybe masturbate a little bit less,
44:27
you know? Oh, as I can say more. Now now.
Law Smith 44:29
I was definitely varsity at that. I got a letterman jacket. Right.
Eric Readinger 44:36
leaning up against the wall ruined it.
Law Smith 44:38
Yeah. Then it stuck together on the inside.
Eric Readinger 44:41
Why are you why are you trying to one up my stolen? Because we're refund
Law Smith 44:45
bro. We're doing we're doing tags man.
Eric Readinger 44:49
Nick DiPaolo bits over.
Law Smith 44:52
Hey, man. What do you got?
Eric Readinger 44:55
What my my advice I just say, Hey, you're 13 you Got this little forehead and walk away? Okay, I'd say I'm you and you got this and that's it.
Law Smith 45:05
And then you're totally fuck the rest of your life like what?
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 45:08
Oh 100%
Law Smith 45:09
I think I saw myself in my own head. I think I saw myself. You can ask it a lot earlier.
45:14
Right?
Law Smith 45:17
All right. Well, this has been a good meandering interview. Thanks for coming on, man.
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 45:21
I appreciate you having me guys.
Law Smith 45:23
Thank you. Pineapple Jack, you hit him Jack at pineapple cf.com Or you can call it 980-477-5078. All righty. Appreciate it
Pineapple Jack Tompkins 45:36
man. Thanks again guys. Appreciate it. See ya.
