Yesterday evening, I sat in our backyard, sipping homemade lemonade and sketching out my weekly creative endeavor (why). Between sips and furtive glances upwards, I hoped to catch a glimpse of NEOWISE. But alas, I forgot to pray to the weather gods in the morning.
Disappointed, I packed up to head inside. As if by a stroke of fate, my phone buzzed. You know, this story would be more dramatic if my disappointment was telepathically transmitted to my friends. Tongue in cheek, I apologize if I got your hopes up. But, it was merely the influx of messages after my timed “Do Not Disturb” mode switched off. Yet one of these blips came from a good ol’ swim team pal into our group chat. Lo and behold – an HD cross section in time of the exact comet.
I propped my cell above my head, positioned just north of the horizon. And unable to hold my smile back, I stuck around for a while longer.
So what?
You’re probably wondering: How the hell does yesterday’s smile have to do with “You will be what you eat, you are what you excrete”. As the title of the post so kindly suggests. Trust me it does. Admittedly, probably not the greatest of blog post titles, but, hey, it rhymes. Which might be the lamest excuse you’ve heard this month. But I digress.
You will be what put in your body. You are already what comes out of your body. Literally. Well, I’m sure my cousins who are molecular cell biologists will point out some (or many) of the nuances I missed. But we don’t have to count the cards.
The same is true for your personality. You build your personality based on the inputs in your life from when you’re younger. Your personality is subsequently evidenced by what you say and do.
And, I can say the same for education, biases, and so on. For the purpose of this post, I’d like to underscore one other – relationship-building. Or as most others understand it, networking. But I have a mild allergic reaction to that nomination.
Leading vs Lagging Indicators
Before I dive into why I smiled and effectively, what I try to do to make friends, colleagues and acquaintances smile too, let’s freeze frame. This transition may seem jarring, like a bad cup of cappuccino, but this will contextualize what I share later.
I want to take it from a growth/product perspective. Specifically, the dichotomy between leading and lagging indicators. By definition:
- A leading indicator is a predictive measurement.
- A lagging indicator is an output measurement.
Here are some examples:
| Leading Indicators | Lagging Indicators |
| Putting on your safety belt when driving | Car accidents every year |
| Checking the food expiration date before you buy | # of food poisoning incidents in the ER |
| The shops people visit in shopping outlets | The clothes people put into the laundry |
| (For consumer apps) # of actions/session # of invites (or referrals) per user Acceptance rate (for invites) Day 2 users (after downloading app on the first day) | (For consumer apps) NPS score (“How likely would you recommend this product to your friend?”) Feedback surveys DAU/MAU |
| (For one of my social experiments to measure engagement) # of times people check their phone/watch per half-hour | (For one of my social experiments to measure engagement) Feedback surveys “How distraught would you be if we no longer invited you to a future event?” |
Some common measurement pitfalls
After talking with hundreds of founders, there are fallacies where many founders tend to:
- Not measure leading indicators.
- Over-index on either measuring leading or lagging indicators. You’ve gotta measure both inputs and outputs.
- Not segment measurements by demographic/cohort. Consider location, age, cohort, consumer habits (i.e. spending habits), just to name a few.
- For instance, for food delivery, measure per city (amongst other parameters).
- For marketplaces, measure demand and supply separately. Don’t confound the variables.
- Track weekly cohorts. How do users who downloaded your app in Week 1 of PA launch use your app? Week 2? Week 3?
- Which acquisition strategies proved to be the most useful (if you’re A/B testing multiple channels over X weeks)?
- Focus only on tracking absolute numbers, not comparative deltas (day over day, week over week, etc.).
Some might seem obvious in hindsight, but quite a few founders tend to overlook these nuances when they’re in the throes. To their credit, sometimes you forget to consider the whole battlefield when you’re stuck in the trenches. That’s why it helps to have advisors, investors, and even your customers check your blind side.
So what… part 2? For relationship-building?
Coming back after our interlude, when relationship-building, acquisition for me is, arguably, much easier than engaging and retaining your friends. Though making friends has its own set of challenges, over the years, by virtue of hoping to overcome my own introversion, I’m fortunate enough to have been inspired by so many people and more to come. The harder part, for me, was and is staying in touch, to a reasonable degree, with everyone, or as many as I can.
Over-indexing on lagging indicators
Most personal customer relationship management (CRM) tools, as do social media, focus on lagging indicators, like:
- Birthdays,
- Career updates (new and promotions),
- New content posts,
- Press releases and/or @mentions,
- And life updates (i.e. babies, marriage, etc.).
You might be familiar with many, if not all of these, either through push notifications or when you log onto your favorite social network. While these are great methods to keep in touch (and I know I regress to these sometimes), they notify you postmortem. And that means you’re going to get drowned out by the activity and congratulations of everyone else in that individual’s social circles. The wider and the more active they are in their respective circles, the more that’ll be true.
Though I use these as means to keep in touch from time to time, these push notifications are largely a way for me to recall who I haven’t caught up with in a while.
To play my own devil’s advocate, there are exceptions, like, but not limited to:
- A friend gets a new position as an investing partner at a VC fund (or becomes an active angel investor). He/she is usually looking for deal flow then, as well as honing his/her investment thesis.
- A friend moves to a new city and is looking for friends or things to do/places to visit.
Inspired by leading indicators
The whole goal of leading indicators is to predict. A preemptive, proactive approach to assessing situations.
By the same methodology, I spent at least 20 minutes every day reconnecting with friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. 10 minutes in the morning. 10 minutes in the evening. In each of the 10 minutes, I reach out to 3-4 people to reconnect, with a message, along the lines of:
“I came across this [insert relevant content] recently and thought you might be interested…”
Because I spend an ample time online and offline reading and watching, I come across a good handful of interesting content every week. Likewise, my friends also send me interesting pieces, video, or audio. Both of which I pass along to people I think would be elated to have access to the content. And usually 8 out of 10 times, assuming we haven’t chatted in over 3 months, it sparks a conversation. I also aim for time slots where comparatively, their communication channels aren’t saturated with others. As some investors put it, you have to be “allergic to competition”. And although it shouldn’t be as complex as sending a cold email, you are in a market fighting for the scarcity of attention. Aka you’re competing for it.
The competition for attention isn’t always against other people, but it could also be new and continuing projects. At least in reaching out proactively, you’re more likely to catch the person in a less saturated time than reactively touching base after a push notification.
Wrapping back
My former swim teammate knew what I loved – nerding out about what’s out there in the cosmos. And he sent me what caught his eye and will definitely catch mine, when I needed it most. Though timing is always hardest to gauge, the practice of sharing content that your friends, mentors, colleagues, or acquaintances will most likely like builds rapport. It shows:
- They are important enough in your life that you remember what they like (and they dislike).
- Act on your memory to enrich their lives.
I have a disclaimer
As a disclaimer, I will say that if you don’t know what X person likes, don’t send them random content. It can get spammy and annoying really fast. Much like the “targeted” ads we find as we browse the internet. Even if pertinent to the individual, I wouldn’t send any more than 2-3 content referrals at any point in time to them. Why?
- “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” – Herbert A. Simon
- Be considerate of the individual’s bandwidth. Everyone only has 24 hours in a day. 7 days a week. 365 days in a year. And more likely than not, they are already preoccupied with other priorities in their life. And taking a look at what you sent means stealing time from another priority.
- It’s still spammy. Even with the best of intentions.
- The only exception is if the individual is openly sourcing inbound content updates.
- And there’s an exception to that exception. Consider the individual’s priorities. Do they really mean it? How likely are they to act on your recommendation? What is their track record for taking your recs?
- For example, when a person asks for book recommendations, is it a proactive or reactive question? Are they actively punching through a book a week? Or are they just asking to fill the conversation space?
- The only exception is if the individual is openly sourcing inbound content updates.
In closing
As with everything I use, nothing is foolproof. Neither is anything I say designed to be prescriptive. But they’ve become my regular practices because they have served me proportionally well in getting me to where I am today over the years.
And just like with startups and products, measure inputs and outputs. Proactively and reactively. What works? And what doesn’t? Tailor your recommendations and approach to each person. At the end of the day, you are your own best CRM tool. Compared to what’s on the market now, you have the neural plasticity to find the best approach and current CRM or AI models have yet to eclipse that facet our lives.
As is the theme with everything I do, give before taking. Hopefully, in the process, you have as much fun as my swimming pal and I have.
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash
#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost). Who knows? The possibilities are endless.
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