Ep. 125 | Learning from Politics: How Momentum Impacts Your Business with Mike Berland of Decode M

This week Mike Berland, Founder and CEO of research, data, and analytics firm Decode M as well as author of the new book MAXIMUM MOMENTUM: How to Get It, How to Keep It joins Allison Hartsoe in the Accelerator. Mike and Allison discuss the 5 drivers of momentum, it’s influence on elections, and how momentum can impact the growth trajectory of a business.

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Allison Hartsoe: 00:00 This is the Customer Equity Accelerator. If you are a marketing executive who wants to deliver bottom-line impact by identifying and connecting with revenue-generating customers, then this is the show for you. I’m your host, Allison Hartsoe, CEO of Ambition Data. Every other week I bring you the leaders behind the customer-centric revolution who share their expert advice. Are you ready to accelerate? Then let’s go! Welcome everyone. Today’s show is about momentum, and the man who quantified the formula behind it to help me discuss this topic is Mike Berland. Mike is the founder and CEO of research data and analytics from decode M, and he’s written a new book, which I highly recommend called maximum momentum, how to get it and how to keep it. Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Berland: 00:55 Well, thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Allison Hartsoe: 00:57 Now. I know you didn’t figure out the physics formula behind momentum, but could you tell us a little bit about what you mean by momentum as it relates to companies and politicians and the things you talk about in your book?

Mike Berland: 01:09 Well, momentum was discovered by sir Isaac Newton. So we can go all the way back several hundred years where momentum equals mass times velocity. And so what we’ve done is everybody has been talking about momentum as an emotional, I have momentum, I’ve lost momentum, and it’s always been like this gut feeling. And what we wanted to do in a brand is quantified and say, it doesn’t have to be a gut. Then in businesses quantify it as this sort of science of speed. And like, we can do it for your brand. So momentum is your mass. How big is your awareness, and what your velocity? How big is it sort of moving? What’s the engagement, and how are people discussing it?

Allison Hartsoe: 01:51 So now some people would say, Oh, that sounds like a trend. Or that sounds like a fad. What is the difference between momentum and a trend and a fad?

Mike Berland: 02:00 Well, it might be a trend and a fad. So to momentum requires continuous transformation. You have to keep going to level. So a fad is something that starts to move and quickly loses momentum and stops. Momentum is the science of motion. So a trend could be something that has momentum and gets absorbed by society. So it doesn’t actually go away like Fanny packs. They went away, spinner things went away, but plant-based meat is no longer like a fad. It’s just if you want an impossible burger, you can get one. And so, but to momentum is continuous transformation, and you always wonder what’s next.

Allison Hartsoe: 02:41 And so there’s this concept of invention or reinvention that goes along with true momentum.

Mike Berland: 02:47 Yeah. And that’s the trickiest part of momentum is that you always have to transform to get to the next level. You have to keep your velocity going. If you achieve a high mass with no velocity, you’ll have a big brand, or you have a big just sitting there and not moving forward. And we know how that feels. That feels like stagnation. That’s when you start to lose customers because you’re not doing something new and interesting to attract people. And so that’s the biggest risk. All mass no velocity is the death zone.

Allison Hartsoe: 03:20 I think that’s a perfect time to talk about politics. And I know this is an area near and dear to your heart, and we’re not going to go into. This is not a political show. We’re not going to talk about who’s right who’s wrong or anything like that. But I think what’s very interesting is when you apply the concept in your book of momentum to political candidates. So right now, as we’re recording, we’re very close to the election. President Trump was diagnosed with coronavirus last week. He spent the weekend in the hospital, and then earlier this week, he returned to the white house. And then last night we had the VP debate. So could you start by unpacking a little bit about the way Trump uses momentum? And then if you feel like you can bring that into the VP debate, it’d be interesting to segue there too.

Mike Berland: 04:07 Sure. Let’s do a little theoretical discussion. Politics is all about having momentum at the right time. So you need to maximize your momentum on election day. Like if you peak too early and we can look at Hillary Clinton in 2016 or any other campaign where they have momentum, but they’re sort of going down by election day, they will lose. And so how this is all about continuously moving and building your campaigns. So on election day, you’re at the top. So that’s really important. And that’s where my basis for momentum comes from. But in politics, I understood that you had to keep your momentum going. As soon as you stop the races over, the candidates lost. Why is that important for now? Donald Trump as a candidate his biggest asset is he’s been a master momentum, and we’re going to discuss my analytics, not my ideology, but whether you discuss them or not, he’s used social media and other channels to continuously have momentum because you are constantly transforming almost frustrating people in politics because he moves on to so many different things, constant transformation, how he’s moving to a different issue.

Mike Berland: 05:20 What happened with his COVID is the master momentum couldn’t control one of his transformations. Do you lost control? Here he is. He’s putting everything out. He couldn’t control when he got COVID, and you saw that it completely threw him off. And since then,

Allison Hartsoe: 05:38 He wasn’t happy.

Mike Berland: 05:39 But if you’ve gotten sick, how many times have you had like a major party and the day before you come down with the worst cold ever. And you’re like, Oh my God, I’ve lost. You’ve lost control because when you’re sick or when your body’s not working, no matter what your mind wants to do. And so he, in all of this on Thursday and Friday, he got diagnosed with COVID, and momentum doesn’t have a moral compass. Like you can try to control it, and the momentum masters do, but he lost control of his momentum. He wanted to go one way, attacking Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and whatever he was doing.

Mike Berland: 06:16 And his body went another way. And he ended up in Walter Reed. Do you know how frustrating that is for momentum master? Like you want to be on a campaign trail doing rallies in Wisconsin, and you’re in a hospital bed taking oxygen. So now your momentum’s gone the other way. So let’s play this out a little further. You’re in the hospital, you’re having to take the, whatever the therapeutics are. And it sounded like he had the best therapeutics, but you can’t stop that momentum. Your body’s going through the process. And so he’s had a week of truly erratic behavior as he’s tried to take control of the momentum of himself. And he has been struggling, and people have been responding strangely.

Allison Hartsoe: 07:00 Yes. And I think you also talk about in his control of momentum. One of the things he does is villainize the news and villainize other populations. Can you talk a little bit about the components of momentum? And I don’t know if I’m saying this, right? Maybe it’s not a component, but maybe the things that a momentum master has to do in order to control momentum.

Mike Berland: 07:25 And this is bigger than Trump, obviously, but we’ll stay with the example because I think it works. There are five drivers of momentum that we talk about in the book. We talk about disruption. We talk about innovation. We talk about polarization. We talk about sticky issues, and we talk about social impact. And so you have these levers that you can use at any time to drive the innovation. So disruption is really undermining the status quo, flipping things around innovation is what are you going to do differently? Polarization is getting people to sort of choose why me, right? Stickiness, as you want to be part of it and social impact, how are you helping society? And so a momentum master, a brand, a person, whatever, knows these five levers and has to sort of understand what is the impact going to be? Are you disrupting the status quo? Are you innovating something totally different way? Are you trying to get people to polarize? Why me not them. We saw that last night in the debate between Hence and Paris. Are you trying to create FOMO with stickiness? You’ll want to be part of something, or are you helping society? And so those elements all come together in anything that you’re working on to drive your momentum, and you can give me any topic, and we can go through the five drivers.

Allison Hartsoe: 08:48 Okay. So let’s take what Trump does specifically because, like him or not, he is a master of momentum. What does he specifically do? And each of these pieces to control his momentum?

Mike Berland: 09:01 Right? Well, I mean, he’s constantly using disruption and polarization to get people and divide people. You’re with me. You’re against me. And that’s what you talk about the demonization. You talk about his ideas. He’s always dividing people along ideas, along concepts, along ideology. What have you? And so those are the two issues that he does really well. Innovation is really are his policies. And like I said, it’s my analytics and not my ideology. His policies might not be for everyone, but if you’re into his innovations, they work well for you. The way that he’s handled your law and order of the way that he’s handled foreign policy, the way that he’s handled trade, like the one that they talked about last night, which neither candidate would touch, but his innovation on the trade war with China, which again, I’m not judging the policy, but it was dramatically different than the past three administrations who have used China as a trading power. And now we also got a trade war with them.

Allison Hartsoe: 10:07 So there’s the disruption and the polarization, and then you can’t stop there because that would just give you a pop. You have to keep innovating and give something new after that disruption.

Mike Berland: 10:18 He does it all day long to find out which one is going to be sticky.

Allison Hartsoe: 10:22 I noticed he does this. Like he floats topics. He’ll just put something out there and see how it resonates. And it would be ridiculous. And you go, Oh my gosh. And then he’ll kind of float it again and see how it works.

Mike Berland: 10:33 Look what he did, again I just want to keep putting caveats because I don’t want people to think I’m a huge Trumper that’s not my point, but the stimulus bill first he’s against it, not going to support it. And two hours later, he was like, wow, maybe I’d support parts of it. And he’s trying to disrupt and control the situation because he knows where people say. And so then I will support parts of it, but it won’t support others until he’s continuously making it about himself. And then using that to keep his momentum moving forward, which again goes back to why the COVID problem is so disruptive for him because he couldn’t control his COVID. And really, what it amounted to was a lost opportunity because while he couldn’t have control his COVID, he could’ve control how he talked about it and what he learned from it and how it made him much more understanding of the millions of people who have been affected by it and tragic loss of life.

Mike Berland: 11:28 And instead, he was very erratic about dismissive. He was dismissive. The word I like to use is erratic. He was all over. Like he was getting the best doctors. I got this because now I understand it too. Don’t take it so seriously. It’s not so bad. And all of those answers don’t resonate with us because we wouldn’t have wished it upon you. So we don’t thank God that you got it. No matter what we think, we didn’t want you to get this. Two, we’re not convinced that it made you understand all the afflicted families because you would understand what it feels like to lose someone or to have someone in the hospital. And so, and they said, don’t let it take over your life. And if we had a choice of it taking over our life or not, we would all choose not to have COVID take over our lives.

Mike Berland: 12:15 So as a momentum master, he was unusually tone-deaf in a nonpartisan way. So like, if I wear this mask, right, I put it on, okay, I get that. You’re imposing your will on me. And I’m not going to wear a mask even if you tell me. Like I get it. I don’t agree with it. I think you’re putting a lot of people at risk, but I get that that can be a personal freedom. And some people are just opposed to that. Then I’m like, stay at home and don’t worry. We don’t need you to wear your mask. But what Trump is like getting COVID wasn’t a choice. He wouldn’t have chosen it. It hurt him and it hurt like 15 people around him and the joint chiefs of staff and all those advisers. So that was not a choice. That was a tragedy.

Allison Hartsoe: 12:57 Is that an example of him mishandling a sticky issue where he could have gained more momentum by helping people understand how they could impact society and be part of it.

Mike Berland: 13:09 Allison, you become a little cynical now are you ready to become a political consultant? But yes, you’re exactly right. And let’s again be very empathic to the people who, yes, COVID the ultimate sticky issue. What the one thing that unites us Democrats or Republicans is we all don’t want to get COVID, and it is a sticky issue, and you’re a hundred percent, right. You could have used that sticky issue to understand and to relate to people. And instead, he used it as a wedge and it doesn’t make sense.

Allison Hartsoe: 13:37 Great. And one thing I want to pick up on with the sticky issue concept is in politics as probably with business too, is the sticky issue, the important slogan or brand or the thing somebody thinks about when they think about you, is that an important connection?

Mike Berland: 13:54 It’s what makes a brand, something that you can’t live without. It’s that emotional that just makes me want to have it that makes it for them. We all know that brands connect with people. We don’t always know why, but this stickiness is that FOMO of, if I don’t have this brand, it will be missing something. I want to be part of this.

Allison Hartsoe: 14:13 Yeah. Okay. Do you want to move into the business side of it? But before we do, I want to particularly call out something that I heard from the pundents after the VP debate last night, and it had to do with Kamala Harris. And what they were saying was in a debate situation, there were times where she could have done things a little differently, or she could have handled an issue in a slightly different way, which getting back to momentum and disruption and polarization gives me the question of are women able to use disruption and polarization as well as men are particularly a black woman like Kamala Harris?

Mike Berland: 14:54 Again, you are quickly becoming a momentum master. There are gender and race issues that have to do with momentum and stereotyping, which we’ve been dealing with systemic racism, as well as gender issues of social norms. Absolutely. Senator Harris hold back a couple of times when she was getting blown over by Pence. When she was talking, there were a couple of times where she could have been stronger that a gender stereotype, she would have actually fall into a trap. And I thought she handled it incredibly well.

Allison Hartsoe: 15:27 I’m just going to label that trap because I am not sure you will, but I’m going to call it the angry black woman trap.

Mike Berland: 15:32 Yes. And I’m not sure that it’s limited to women or to black people, but there is that trap, and I worked for Hillary Clinton for 16 years. We used to laugh that the most reported fact about Hillary Clinton was her hairstyle.

Allison Hartsoe: 15:49 Well and her clothes.

Mike Berland: 15:49 The second most reported fact was what pants suit she was wearing.

Allison Hartsoe: 15:53 I know, I hated this.

Mike Berland: 15:53 And the third one, was she bits? Like those are the three issues that she had to deal with constantly. And like, there was no man in the world who had to deal with those three issues.

Allison Hartsoe: 16:02 Yeah. Right. So is that what we were seeing was her walking that line where she’s not scary, mommy, and she’s not being too nice. And she’s still just like very carefully navigating this line.

Mike Berland: 16:16 Yeah. Well, I was like, no reporter talked about her hair yesterday. That is like such progress. Like finally, they were listening to her substance, and let’s give my pencil credit. She is unusually gracious and steady. In fact, he was even a little lower energy than he usually is. And Senator Harris was full of energy last night. So I thought she handled herself incredibly well. She clearly had more to say, and she was just, I thought, stylistically very, very steady and confident and secure. I’m the biggest stage that she’s ever been in her life.

Allison Hartsoe: 16:51 That’s awesome. Do you want to reach out and make a call about who you think has the momentum to win?

Mike Berland: 16:57 Right now, Biden has momentum. I mean, this has been the most erratic week for President Trump. Well, in June and July were tough months from as well, but it’s been a very erratic week for him. And I think that we’re going to see President Trump take a little bit of control. Like we need our president to be steady at the wheel. At the end of the day, whether you like him or you don’t like him, he is our president. And we do not want him to be anything but confident and steady and leading our country. And I think we’ll see him take steps to re-establish that. And we have tremendous empathy for any individual who has COVID, and he could have had our sympathy and our understanding. And somehow, we trampled that and made us feel unconfident in him. And that was unfortunate, and I actually feel a little bit sorry. Maybe I’m not allowed to feel sorry, but I’m going to feel sorry. He’s 74 years old, and he had COVID. He was on oxygen. That must’ve been an awful moment for anybody.

Allison Hartsoe: 17:52 Yes. For anyone agreed. But what I’m noticing you call out here is also the pacing. Like you talk about June and July, and that seems like a lifetime ago, whether it’s politics or whether it’s business, is there a certain pacing to how fast you have to keep moving or reinventing in order to maintain momentum? Or is it dependent on your industry or other things?

Mike Berland: 18:15 I’ll give you the analogy, you know, like when you go to a great party, and the party’s sorta build, and you know, when it’s building, and there are some people that stay a little too late and the party’s winding down 8and there’s are some people that leave a little early in the party was still kind of rocking, but they leave in, like, I’ve had enough, you have to leave the party half an hour early because you maintain momentum. You saw this in the book. If you let momentum get to the apex, you will have a tough time getting it back. You will have to leave when your momentum is still going up and then do the transformation even if you have to take a step back to go forward. And that’s the toughest part, because in business when your sales are rocking and you’re doing so well, you’re like, why would I stop this?

Mike Berland: 19:00 And I’m like because it’s going to stop on its own and then you’re going to have nothing. We’ll give you an example. I will not name a client because I don’t want to get in trouble. We have a client who we’re talking to, and they have their in-home exercise business, and their sales are still rocking. But we see in our momentum factors that people working out from home is actually going down because they’re looking forward to going to gyms, but their sales are still high. And we’re like, you need to do the transformation now because the trends are changing. They still want to keep selling their home gym stuff. And we’re like, okay, this will catch up to you. And then you’re going to be off-trend. And so you have to always look at the momentum forces that are happening and anticipate where it’s going to go, rather than letting it go there.

Allison Hartsoe: 19:45 Is fashion a good example of that, where it just seems like they’re always kind of one step ahead, always leading a little bit.

Mike Berland: 19:52 Fashion and entertainment are both one czar gets it, move on to something else. Like you’ve got to keep moving forward because it requires continuous Travis. We have a great client who’s we used to say you have to lead 12 to 18 months in the future. That’s no longer possible, but you do have to lead three to six months. And so they’re doing transformation’s now there six months ahead. So they know where it’s going, and you have to be ready and be ready for that

Allison Hartsoe: 20:19 I oftentimes would use this phrase that internet time is twice reality time. So something that happens on the internet six months is really a year on the internet. Is that the same ratio that you’re talking about? Where it’s three to six months in the future. So it might be measured as three months ahead, but it really feels more like we’ve gone six months.

Mike Berland: 20:40 Oh my God. I’m living in February. I’m in February, March. That’s one of the reasons why, like all my perspectives, I’m not thinking about November, December. Everything is like, what’s happening first quarter. What’s it going to be like? What is going to be the issues that we’re dealing with? Hundred percent you’ve got to be way out there because if you’re going to have momentum, you’re going to lead that transformation. That’s the key. When you have momentum, you’re not responding. You’re leading. And then people come with you, and I’ll give you another example. If you see something very small, something that has momentum and it’s very small, and you say, well, I’m not quite sure you’re going to miss it because when it gets bigger, that means everybody knows, and you’ve lost your competitive advantage. You need to be looking for those small disruptions, innovations, sticky issues, and jump on them and lead it.

Allison Hartsoe: 21:29 I understand. And in our space, sometimes that’s about AI and machine learning. And you see the hype curve come out from the research companies. That seems like something small that starts small and fairly quickly. Everybody jumps on it and gets very hypey. At the point that it’s hypey, should you be jumping off, or should you just be riding it?

Mike Berland: 21:46 You should be working on your next thing. Yeah. And riding it to its logical conclusion but are already beyond the next thing.

Allison Hartsoe: 21:53 Got it. Is there a good example in business, like a named example that you can share that’s more like a case study where you can say here’s how this company started and where maybe they lost momentum and take us through a good example like that?

Mike Berland: 22:07 The best examples of companies that are sort of riding that momentum curve, like understanding, really comes in three ways. It comes in entertainment of companies that are sort of leading that. I think that we can see it with different brands. I think that I love this trend of plant-based foods. And I think what impossible burger had done and how they read that trend was fantastic because they understood that it wasn’t about a lifestyle choice or a vegan or not vegan, but they were just people who wanted to transform their whole diet system. And they sort of moved forward and made it taste good. Now the question is, where are they going to go from this now? Like, now there’s the question of our carbon emissions and what have you. So what will be the next thing? CBD has been one of those great transformations.

Mike Berland: 22:54 It’s like, okay, they took an ingredient. They build it into products, but where are they going to go next with it will become an issue. And so what we see is the continual transformations. Like I’m going to give you an obvious example. Like the best momentum example is Apple. Like the iPhone one, two, three, four, the deck at this point has become obvious. Like, why are we looking forward to the iPhone 12? Like makes no sense at all. And they kept continuous. But I think that those are the obvious answers. I think we need to look at these. The reason I like impossible burger is because it’s picking up lifestyle trends and where they’re going to go. I like brands that are sort of reinventing themselves through collaboration. And so those are the ones that we have to be the most aware of. Like I have a client now who I’m fascinated where they go, which is Airbnb, which was a simple idea of home-sharing that then turned into a big phenomenon, completely disrupted by COVID. And now they’ve turned it into something so radically different, and they’ve stayed to their values of inclusivity and bringing people together. But now they represent the future of travel. So they didn’t hold on to their old ideas. They’ve actually moved forward.

Allison Hartsoe: 24:07 And can you talk more specifically about that? I’m not sure everybody understands that Airbnb might not just be staying in someone else’s home,

Mike Berland: 24:14 In a post COVID world. I don’t want to stay at a hotel to a thousand other people. So the forces are, I want to have control of my environment. I want to be certain of who’s been there before. Who’s been there after what’s the cleaning bid. I don’t want people coming into my room. I want to help the local economy. So that’s the social impact. I might not eat out as much as I do, so I want to have some other amenities. And so it started off as a way for people to share their homes, to make a little extra money. And now it’s sort of transformed into a whole new way to travel and to have control, and it sort of meets today’s needs. And so the idea of large lobbies, like, are you going to go to the lobby bar at a big hotel anytime soon, are you going to take an elevator with 17 people? Do you remember how packed we used to get in those elevators? When you’re doing that next time?

Allison Hartsoe: 25:06 Oh yeah. You make a good point there because you don’t even think about it until you put the COVID lens on it.

Mike Berland: 25:13 Yeah, but the COVID len is on everything.

Allison Hartsoe: 25:13 Yes, absolutely. Can you talk a little more about how you measure momentum?

Mike Berland: 25:18 We’re going to have to geek out a little bit. So we’re measuring momentum using basically social media analytics. We’re using all sorts of data sources to understand conversations. Our hypothesis. Is that anything that happens, happens online and happened in a conversation. And so we measure mass by the awareness and sort of the level of how many followers a brand has, what have you. And then we measure velocity by looking at the sentiment of the conversation, how, what is the engagement likes and shares? And then what is the sort of polarization? How are what’s the emotionality of the conversation? Are they debating it? And so we have the mass, which is obvious and kind of easy. And then the velocity, which is two proprietary algorithms that we use to understand it. And the secret of momentum, which Isaac Newton would have told you is the velocity is the speed in which something’s moving. The bigger the mass, the more velocity that’s required.

Allison Hartsoe: 26:16 So that sentiment and I immediately wondered if somehow you factor in or out troll farms.

Mike Berland: 26:23 It’s interesting, troll farms are such an issue. And we factored them out. Like once we see an update that are the same, our algorithm actually just knocks them out, and I’ll throw this back on you. It seems like toll farms are becoming a little bit more under control and more obvious. They’re more obvious. And it seems like the social media companies themselves have algorithms that are getting rid of them. I mean, this is not my area of expertise, but it seems like Twitter and Facebook, and Google have just been held accountable for not letting the troll farm. That’s been part of the public outcry over the last four years that these have been. They should be able to protect them.

Allison Hartsoe: 27:00 I think there’s another trend there as well, and I have experienced this myself. Normally when friends will share information that I don’t agree with, I just kind of let it go, and I wouldn’t really talk about it, but now I am feeling more like I have to step up. Like there’s a responsibility when somebody shares information that is just bat shit crazy. I’ll immediately send the no. That’s actually not true. And I’ll try to correct. So it’s not just that the trolls are maybe under control by the social media companies. I’m seeing more people also trying to control the spread. And it’s not whether you agree or not agree, but it’s stuff that’s like way out there where you just say that is patently false. We can have a good debate, but we shouldn’t be debating things that aren’t actually true.

Mike Berland: 27:50 Well, I avoid every confrontational conversation because they just don’t stop. So I give you credit for like, take you to that. I find that if I disagree with someone, it can just go into this long conversation of them just going. So I think it’s great that you’re standing up for it. It’s an unusual time where especially now, people have such strong views, and they’re willing to share them. There’s no anonymity anymore. Like it used to be like, I don’t want to say this publicly. I didn’t want this associated with me. Now. Everybody wants to get their opinion out, and we feel compelled to set the record straight.

Allison Hartsoe: 28:30 Okay. Well, speaking of the facts, let’s say that I’m convinced about momentum and I really think it’s a great thing for my brand or my politician or myself personally. What should I do first? How should I start using what, you know?

Mike Berland: 28:47 For personal momentum or for business momentum?

Allison Hartsoe: 28:49 Well, let’s say business momentum since that’s really the focus of our show.

Mike Berland: 28:53 For business momentum, the first you need to do is an assessment. What is the state of your business, understanding your mass and your velocity and using any sort of metrics, but look at those five drivers, where are we on disruption, innovation, polarization, sticky issues and social impact. And if you can’t write a little sentence next to them, or if you have a weakness, you better understand why and you don’t have to pull all five levers. Would you better be pulling one or two? And that’s the most important point. Even in my own business, if we’re not pulling disruption or innovation, I’m like, what’s going on guys. And then what’s our social impact going to be. So you have to go through those and be self-critical to understand how to drive them.

Allison Hartsoe: 29:37 That makes sense.

Mike Berland: 29:38 It’s the hardest exercise. And you make a lot of excuses of why you’re not doing it.

Allison Hartsoe: 29:42 Is there anything else you should do? And that be okay, so you assess yourself, and then you start making a plan behind those levers?

Mike Berland: 29:48 Yeah, well, that’s what we do with our clients is we absolutely then start making a plan of what it’s going to be, which driver are you weakest in and then why? Understanding your weak driver is critically important.

Allison Hartsoe: 30:01 So that you can fix it.

Mike Berland: 30:02 So you can fix it so you can address it. And what you’ll find is that the one that your weakness in is usually the one that’s holding you back. And so polarization is really an engagement metric. I do have people that are strongly in favor of you and passionate and driving you once your polarization goes down, people always think it’s a negative metric, but those were clients who desperately want to be with you and want to be with your product.

Allison Hartsoe: 30:29 Mike, this has been a very fascinating conversation. So again, Mike Berland and his company is Decode M. Mike, where can they get your book? Is it just Amazon?

Mike Berland: 30:38 Well, Allison, this is one of the tragedies. All the local bookstores are gone.

Allison Hartsoe: 30:43 That’s true.

Mike Berland: 30:44 Is that the saddest thing ever?

Allison Hartsoe: 30:46 It is. I love bookstores.

Mike Berland: 30:47 Go find one. I’m going to cry a little bit like all the small businesses that bookstores were barely holding on, and now they’re gone. They couldn’t survive. So it’s Amazon.

Allison Hartsoe: 30:57 Okay, so to get your book. They don’t go to the local bookstore.

Mike Berland: 31:00 Amazon, that’s it? Even Barnes and Noble is almost gone. The Amazon survives.

Allison Hartsoe: 31:04 And the book is maximum momentum, getting how to get it and how to keep it. So, Mike, thank you for joining us today. As always, links to everything we discussed are at ambitiondata.com/podcast, including a link to Mike’s book, which again, I highly recommend anything else you’d like to add Mike?

Mike Berland: 31:23 No. I just appreciate you taking the time. And I think understanding how to drive momentum into everything that you do. It leads to tremendous fulfillment.

Allison Hartsoe: 31:33 That’s perfect. Remember everyone, when you use your data effectively, you can build customer equity. It is not magic. It’s just a very specific journey that you can follow to get results. See you next time on the customer equity accelerator.