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Must-Reads for business in an all-digital world

Must-reads for business in an all-digital world

Episode 175

There were a lot of books  covered on the podcast in 2023 – 44% of this year’s shows were with book authors. Combined with previous years’ book episodes, we have reached the 60-book mark on this podcast – you can sift through them all on our site by clicking on the “books” category on the right-hand menu. 

But I’ve had the chance to read books outside of these, and found even more I’d like to feature. I’m not saying all all biz books that come out are good.  To be honest – a decent portion of them are aren’t good at all. But since I set out once per year to make a special show, I felt it time to review some of the business books that shouldn’t slip by unnoticed. 

After you hear brief reviews of these 6 books, you’ll hopefully put one or two on your To-be-read pile.

Shownotes:

Friction, by Soon Yu 

“Sell The Way You Buy” by David Priemer

Impromptu :: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI

The Attention Merchants, by Tim Wu

The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur by John Jantsch 

The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

Chapters:

0:00 – Intro

02:08 – Friction, Soon Yu

08:40 – Sell the Way you Buy, David Priemer

17:12 – Impromptu, Reid Hoffman

24:52 – The Attention Merchants, Tim Wu

30:40 – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, John Jantsch

35:30 – The Coming Wave, Mustafa Suleyman

A few of the titles reviewed in this episode
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Developing sites that keep pace with customers’ needs, with Josh Garellek

Developing sites that keep pace with customers’ needs

Episode 174

The last podcast episode was a recap from a 3-part web event I took part in, called OnTap (link in notes). It’s a regular event put on by a premier web design agency, who  has helped me appreciate that There are websites and then there are websites.

Some give User Experience short shrift, slapping together generic templates that look 

Pretty, generic. Others use experts to make interfaces that are optimized for mobile and PC environments, and anticipate what users want and present their content in engaging ways. 

Some with so little security, they’re susceptible to cyber threats. Others invest heavily in cybersecurity – protecting not only themselves, but visitors as well. 

Some sites have clung to technology that’s become atrophied and prone to crashing. Others are kept up to date, and are upgradable as the company’s needs change. Some have a backend that craters when traffic spikes,while others keep humming because of their scalable infrastructure.

Some expect visitors will come back on their own initiative, others use email smartly to coax visitors back

Our guest is going to show us how to see the difference that well-developed websites can make. He knows how the value of our online presence can be unlocked to  produce experiences that lead to revenue.

Josh Garellek is co-founder & CEO of a full-service web development agency that’s spread across North America.

He grew up and started his studies in Montreal, then went on to study at New York’s Yeshiva University.

He did stints in the food service industry and e-commerce before starting  a game development studio, until he and a business partner teamed up, switching it into a web dev company called Arctic Leaf. He’s gone beyond this and started other ventures too. The drive to do all this, he’ll tell you, is probably  rooted in ADHD, or being a natural entrepreneur, or his chutzpah; probably all of these. But after knowing him for over a decade, for questions about what to do with your website, he is THE person to listen to. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist Period! 2.0 by Stoney deGeyter | Goodreads

Arctic Leaf’s OnTap: The Future of Data, Part 3

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GA4 and the future of data, with Jason Hackenberry

GA4 and the future of data, with Jason Hackenberry

Episode 173

Today, we’re talking about the future of data with Google Analytics 4.

It’s been about 6 months since we all had Universal Analytics. It’s good to talk to others who use GA4 to do their jobs, to compare notes. Although GA4 is here to stay, it still has gaps that need bridging.

That’s why I spoke with Jason Hackenberry, Head of Partnerships from web development agency Arctic Leaf. Prior to Arctic Leaf, he held Digital Marketing and operations roles at Weatherby and Save Khaki United, along with roles in Merchandising.

What you’ll hear is from a virtual event he and I did in December 2023, on topics including

  • How Google is migrating users of its free version differently from its 360 version
  • How to capitalize on the information provided by GA4
  • The data you actually need vs. what you THINK you need
  • Tips on finding insights, reporting, conversion tracking and data retention
  • New GA4 features that can help your lead generation or e-commerce website.
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Getting Good at Google Analytics, with Jill Quick

Getting Good at Google Analytics, with Jill Quick

Episode 172

GA4 is now our de facto analytics tool. Regardless of how familiar we were with the previous  tool, GA4 is here to stay so we may as well get good at using it. 

I’ve got just the person to make the transition relatively painless for us. 

Our guest’s love for analytics was a happy accident after she worked in marketing at a company with a sales director. They told the executive team that marketing’s budget would be put to better use hiring new salespeople. But beyond having a warm fuzzy feeling in one’s tummy, it wasn’t clear marketing’s impact could be articulated in the way that executives talked.

Not willing to watch her department disappear, she dug in and found the data that showed marketing was having an impact. She took the evidence to the next board meeting and her department was able to continue with its work.

She chose to go out on her own so she could empower marketers to do as she’d done. She now heads up The Colouring In Department, a consultancy that has completed close to 230 GA audits now, and has trained thousands of people on how to get good at their analytics. 

Joining from London England – here is Jill Quick

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Tools – David Vallejo – Event checker

Adobe analytics

Matomo analytics

Piwik pro

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Building AI out of Data, with Yash Gad

yash gad

Episode 171

AI won’t end up being one thing, it will be present in many little applications – hopefully that will help us in our marketing. But what kind of AIs do we want? Are we looking at the ingredients that go into them? 

Those are the kinds of questions innovations our guest considers as he makes AI models for healthcare and the retail marketing sectors.

Yash Gad is a data scientist, education advocate, and foodie. Founder and CEO of RingerSciences and Chief Data Scientist of Next Practices Group. He earned his PhD from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Computational Biology, Neuroscience &, Biophysics and received his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins. He joins me from Austin TX. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Yash’s company: https://www.ringersciences.com/about

Yash also founded a consultancy, here’s the Next Practices Group’s site and their social feed.

Yash on Twitter

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Boston Dynamics

Tesla