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Word Cloud from our intro video.
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Full Transcription
Contessa Louise Cooper
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to our very first official adis edition. See here I go again, edition of the data cast with the neurodivergent data. witches. I am Contessa Louise Cooper, and I am a data witch.
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
And I'm Dr. Kimberly Douglass. And I am a data witch. And thank you for being here.
Contessa Louise Cooper
We are very excited. And today we're talking about relationships. And I know you might be thinking, Wait a minute, what does data have to do with relationships? And let me tell you something Kimberly says this more eloquently than I do. So I will let her explain this concept.
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
So this comes from my experience in working in academic, academia and just loving data in general. So when you look at a picture, this shows, for example, who you're connected with on Facebook, and who they're connected with and who they're connected with. What you see are a bunch of data points that tell you about relationships. They show you like Kevin Bacon, what is it six degrees of separation? Yeah. So that's all about data that that has to do with the data points, and how close you are to knowing that person. So when we think of data, and we think what we call data visualization, seeing how all these data points come together, it's more than just numbers. It's more than just a picture. It really is telling us about how people relate to each other. So it tells us all kinds of things like who's buying what, how people are connecting on tik tok. And if you're connected on tik tok, how do those same people connect on Facebook? So data is all about relationships. In fact, data really has no value. If it doesn't, if you can't see the relationship that is trying to explain
Contessa Louise Cooper
Oh, that is good data really doesn't have What did you say? A
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
perfect. Yeah, if you just have a bunch of data points, right? Basically what you have a look at it like this. So one of my favorite forms of art is impressionist painting. And the thing I love about impressionist painting is that feels like the pictures always there, even when it's not there. And impressionist painting is about strokes, right? It's not about taking a pencil and drawing, you know, drawing an outline, whatever. It's about strokes, intentional strokes. And you get a stroke here, stroke here, and maybe you draw on a field, and you get a stroke here and a stroke here, and a stroke here and a stroke here. And those are like data points to me. And eventually, you put all the right strokes and with all the right shades, and all the right colors, a picture starts to come into view. So it's like all these data points to show you what the relationship is in the picture. And you can't really see the picture unless you have a frame, right? So the meaning behind the picture. And then you all you have the individual data points, like the individual strokes.
Contessa Louise Cooper
That reminds me of, I don't even know what the style of art is called. But the more that you kind of narrow into it, the more that you can see that the big picture is made up of tiny, little African gallery that's called
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
Yes, and it looks very pixelated. Like when you're paying out with a pan in it's like each each one is a story. So if taking your analogy if we were to zoom in, so let's say So Contessa has people who follow her on Facebook, and contests it is what we call a known. So around this node, we have people you are node. Around this node, we have people who follow contest, but they're also connected to other people. And when you zoom out contested looks like a just a bunch of nodes that are connected to each other through a variety of people. But then when you zoom in and you see content there you see the people who talk To her more regularly, regularly on Facebook, on Tick tock, follow her on other social media. And so basically what we're talking about are pictures within a picture. And this is, you know, one of the reasons we want to talk with neurodivergent people who serve neurodivergent adults and neurodivergent people in general, like looking and really understanding what those pictures mean. So one of the things that contestant have been talking about words that and how, if you were to walk around, round with the recorder all day long, and you were to record everything that you see it in every piece of copy that you put out, in every email that you sent, and every correspondence and everything you put on your website, what it does is it creates a profile of how you talk to your community. And we can go back, and we get that we have this recorder. And we can take the words that you use and put it in a in a software, the simple software like something like Wordle and create a word cloud. And the word cloud shows us based on the size of the word which words you use most often. And we did we did it for our sales contest actually did it for us. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Contessa Louise Cooper
I did. And so we have on our newsletter page, we have an intro video that we did. And I went and I took all the words from my intro video, and I put it into a word cloud just to see what our most used words were. And I was surprised by one of them because one of them was my name, which let me know that Kimberly really loves saying my name.
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
Yes. That's exactly what the exact same actually was like, that's interesting that I say your name that often that it shows up as one of the dominant words in the conversation.
Contessa Louise Cooper
Yes, I was completely surprised by that. But other words was data, which I was glad because that was the purpose of re video, Facebook, looking at numbers, witches, and neurodivergent was smaller than I thought it would.
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
That's interesting,
Contessa Louise Cooper
Isn't it, though? And so our key audience are individuals who are either neurodivergent? Or who works with individuals or neurodivergent. If they listen to our video, will they feel like they're being included?
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
That's a good question. Actually. You pitch to me, or you set me up for a really good stitch on Tick tock, I love it, where you were asking me to talk about connections to words. And my response to that really great setup is that words show connection words, tell us who we're actually speaking to, we may intend to include a certain audience. And we may say, you know, pride ourselves on talking to an audience, and we market ourselves this way. But when we sit down, and we do just a basic analysis of basic workflow, which takes like, once you have all the words, it's a copy and paste. So it's a very simple straightforward process, once you have the words, and have a transcript or something like that, well, when you stop and you look at the words that you're actually using, it tells you who your audience, audiences don't just pop up, you construct your audience, you say to certain individuals, you I'm speaking this way. Because I really want to be heard by you. And it is important to me to be heard by you. And the only reverse if you're using a lot of jargon, for example, then you mean, whether you mean to exclude people or not, then that is the impact that you have. So for example, My background is in academia, and I had to learn how to speak on social media. Because my language tends to be very precise. And I don't mean that as a, like a bragging kind of thing, or that that is the ideal state right on social media that the conversation is different. And so what was what that meant was that I was missing people that I really intended to talk to. Because instead of saying phenomena, you don't have to say things and stuff. And that was uncomfortable to me. But if I am going To truly serve my audience, I have to use words that they can actually hear if they can't hear me, then I may as well I'm basically doing a hot.
Contessa Louise Cooper
Exactly, exactly. It's like, I tell people when they come on social media, do not speak at all. Right? You're right, nobody wants to be spoken. Right want to feel like they're part of the conversation, they want to feel like that you really get to know who they are, and what their needs are. And so many of us are really missing it. Yet, with the data, you don't even know that you're missing it. Because you can look at your analytics, your analytics don't tell you, if you are connecting with your audiences, right? So we have to get beyond clicking on our dashboard and looking at the graphs, and tick tock or Facebook or whatever, because it's not telling the whole story. It's only telling part of the story. And I think what a lot of marketers are missing is the fact that we can tell them how to reach out and, you know, try to grab all these people and be noticed, but are you really reaching the audience that you want? Because what happens is they tell you to change your audience. Because these are the people who are listening to your message and reality. That's not the direction we should be going in. We should say stop. Let me rephrase, let me reword. Let me show up in a different way. So I can reach the people that I am called to reach. And that's not happening right now.
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
Yeah, so two things that that, that, that you words so inspired to thoughts, number one, when I first started in business, so going back to the idea that data shows relationships. And so in this case, we're talking about words, converting words into data, right? What my language showed me was how fearful that was of my audience. Because I know when I get nervous, either I get really country or I get really perspex. from the south, western seaboard rise, and you go to what's familiar, and what is familiar to me, is my Southern Guang, and what is also familiar for me, as a trained academic, and also a person who just loves words, is these very precise words, because I can put some emotional distance between me and other people when I use those types of words. So that's the first part in the second part, which is describe what you just said, is, yes, so the analytics, and that's the thing, right? So you always have to have context when you talk about data. And you have to really be clear about what they can tell you what is what what what does the bones tell you? What capacity do they have to tell a story, because depending on how you frame them, they can tell you one story to tell you another story. So when you're looking at the words that you're using, also look at the way your audience is responding, right? Because that's going to tell you their reaction, so I can move on Tick tock, and I see the the do an analysis of the comments to my videos. And I can tell you if people are picking up what I'm putting down or not, or if something is totally missing, or sometimes it's the number of comments, but then sometimes it's not even the length of the comment, because sometimes people just vibing so hard with it, where it's like yes, exactly, that it tells me that that connection has been established. It's so crazy. I was just saying to my husband yesterday, it is amazing to me how the simplest videos that I create, where it's like some stupid loop. This one I just put up recently is more popular than videos I spend so much time on. And it's probably a total of 20 words in the video. But those 20 words somehow really resonated with people where somebody literally said, I have this on a loop. And that lets me know that I made a connection there in a way that maybe other videos are not connected with them. Now there's a whole other story about Tick Tock and how their algorithm works but won't get into that today but two things Number one, using words to determine distance between you and the people you're trying to reach. And number two, listening to their responses, because their responses are just as much part of the picture as what I put out initially.
Contessa Louise Cooper
And we also have to think about being true to yourself, because I cackled when you said that when you get nervous, you go back to your roots, which is country ish, which led to me and my mind, right? thinks that that's really the true. You. Yeah, yeah. Right. And you put on this other persona, because you were taught through society. Yes, yes. This is the way you should be showing up when your doctor Kimberly does. Right, right. Right, exactly. What I noticed is that when you and I get together, you go back to just being Kimberly, we giggle we laugh, you go country, and all of that, which I think is great. And wonderful that because of our relationship, you feel like that you can do those type of things. And so a lot of times we get lost, and this is the way that we're supposed to show up, right? And these are the words that we're supposed to use because this is the way that we're supposed to show up. And that's because we really haven't sat down to figure out who we are as a person and who we are in business and we're not showing up fully and appropriately to attract the audience's that we want.
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
And so and thus we have the data wiches is you know, it's so funny because, um, clubhouse So you and I, the clubhouse, we probably did what about five or six different panels together? Yes. And it's really interesting how that was an opportunity for those of you know, for everybody else, clubhouse is a podcast type app, where you you go in, you set up panels, you have conversations, it's all audio is really interesting, because I can see changes in my language through that experience. Because each week, I got to test out different things like okay, let me stick my toe in this. Okay, oh, that's a little warm. But let me back up. Well, let me stick my toe in this and, and so it would be interesting to go back and listen to the language that I use during that period, in pretty much like in bits of the business for about two years. And I think they're probably distinct periods of language that I used. So it was a combination. And again, this is a really good lesson for people starting out in business, everything doesn't come to fully formed from the very beginning. It is a growth process. So it's a combination of comfort, plus guidance that I was getting at the time. My determining how close or distant I want it to be for my audience. My risk reward calculation in general, like how safety to feel to show up in certain ways, and not other ways. And you know it this may not sound like something's part of the conversation about data. But it is that is exactly a conversation about data. Because the word count and the word context do matter so much.
Contessa Louise Cooper
And it's important that you test to see I mean, in marketing to call A/B testing, like what language do people relate to more? What style? Do people relate to more? And am I comfortable showing up in this way. And so it's very important for you to test things out and sometimes you can test it out on different platforms, right? You can test it out on different accounts. You can test it when you're you know, being a guest on somebody else's platform to see what people are relating and reacting to pending on what it is you're saying and your purpose. If your purpose is I want to stir some shit up. I think he's language in order to start some shit up. But you are just saying words just to be saying it, you're not trying to cause an action to me, then why the hell are you even speaking?
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
Exactly. I was just thinking, you made me think of something like with the clubhouse. And I wonder if part of that has to do with it being audio only. So then that's another thing for people to think about. As you are developing your profile, your persona of who you are through your language, then then look at, it's really important to consider the platform itself and the effect that the platform itself has on how you present in the area. And I want to go back to what you were saying about the AV testing. So when I first started out in business, so right now, I'm somewhere in between being a consultant for neurodivergent adults who are developing their businesses, and trying to take over the world. So what what that really looks like is I'm growing, purposely growing a community where neurodivergent people can interact as a community, but also, it provides support for business nerd neurodivergent, serving businesses, and businesses owned by neurodivergent people. But when I started out, I coached parents of children who are neurodivergent. And I had a lot, and this is this is where the numbers are really helpful, is showing, you know how connected you really are to the conversation. Um, I had a lot of mixed feelings about the work I was doing, I thought the work was valuable. But it is, the work that I do now still carries an emotional load. And this is what I'm signing up for. But the emotional load working because you're not just working with children, right, you're working with their proxy. And so really, what it is about is helping children, you have to convince their parents that what you're doing is going to help them. And understandably so because I've been I've been in that position. But there was an emotional distance that I want to, because fundamentally, most people want to help with like the IEP, and this the Individualized Education Program, system that for K 12. And I fundamentally think is garbage. And I know people are doing this work. And it's important that they do this work. But what I know from having a black male child in Plato, is that when it starts out a certain way, and they show you that they have no intention, or really taking care of your child's needs, there is only going to become more of that. Because regardless of a specific teacher, or specific, the system is set up to do that to make neuro divergence, ADHD, autism, bipolar, in black children is set up to really create a negative situation. And so I understood this. And quite frankly, there are a lot of parents where my advice, really to them was to take your child out of school, and homeschool them. But I did not feel comfortable saying that to them, because I don't know what the resources are. And also, what it does require is for you to really change your thinking about things. And I wasn't prepared to tell them to do that. So my language back then, is probably it probably sounds a lot more hesitant or lukewarm than it sounds now. And that is a direct indication or, you know, it shows a clear picture of what my relationship was to the people that I thought I was serving.
Contessa Louise Cooper
That is very interesting to me because I did a lot of work as a behavioral therapist. That's working directly. You think that you're working with the kids, you're not, you're there to retrain the parents to think and to behave differently. They don't understand this and so when I would come up with suggestions and plans for things to do that involved them changing. I got a lot of Resistance, because really all they wanted was an overpriced babysitter. You deal with the problem, I don't want to do anything. And then what happens when I'm not there? Right? The problem is still there because the parents aren't going to change. And we could talk about this forever to get back. So my words, then were very direct point, you need to do this right now, if you want this to happen. And that came from years of being a behavioral therapist, I wasn't like that when I first started, right? All I had confidence and what I could do and the changes that I could make, and so my language change to say that that's, it's funny, because when you don't see yourself as an expert in your field, when you don't acknowledge the fact that you have knowledge that you have something of value to give. You sound hesitant. You sound unsure of himself, you sound like you're second guessing, because many of us out here, especially those of us who are neurodivergent, we don't believe that we qualify. Yes. In order to being an expert.
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
It shows up with language.
Contessa Louise Cooper
And we need to start wrapping this up.
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So words matter? Where? Yeah,
Contessa Louise Cooper
oh, my gosh, this just, I just have so many ideas from this to spring up on things, as we talk about our behaviors. And we talk about our different personas and how they show up in words. And with me having aspd and n being neurodivergent. What does that mean, with the words that we use it, I'm so excited about things that are going to come from it.
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
And I just really encourage people to, not to over screw over examine, not to over examine the words or, or, you know, just just becomes so wrapped up and trying to say the right things and do the right things. Because there's always something different that you can do, you can always, you know, but they matter. Like they really, really cliche is true, it matters. It matters and, you know, really showing who you're talking to, like, you know, who do you care is listening. If If x group of people cannot hear you? What does that do to your business? What does it do for you as a developer, or racing to do so is not. So you can look at things like your Facebook metrics, or Tick Tock metrics, you can look at sales. But if you really want to think about how things are going long term, and what the long game is, look at the words that you're using in the short term, and how you're using them, put a frame around it, and it shows you where you're headed, what you're targeting. And it shows that who you who you'll be able to connect with in the future? Absolutely. Ah,thank you so much for this. What I want to say is like, you know, this is going to be posted in our newsletter, and all the information about how to connect with us, all the information about what services we provide, will be in that text. Because we don't want to waste precious time saying here, I believe all of you can find that information. But I cannot wait until our very next episode. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on any of the goods that we have. Yeah. Any last words Dr. Kimberly?
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
I will try to make them short and crisp. And no, this is a I'm really looking forward to this data cast. And we for this episode, we have a clubhouse panel coming up this Wednesday. And so we're going to talk a little bit just move the conversation even further where we're talking about data. So please join us there if you're able to join us. This is this is going to be an interesting ride in Contessa and I've been revving up to do this for some while in in some shape, form or fashion. But this is really good. We're going to take you along a ride. We're going to do through data or things about Data, Data gonna really make a difference in your business and also in your life and give you different ways of understanding yourself and understanding your business simply by looking at numbers. So this isn't a math show. We're not doing math, but we're talking about the meaning the value of data in your business and also in your personal life.
Contessa Louise Cooper
Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Kimberly. Again, my name is Contessa Louise Cooper, and I cannot wait to speak to you next time. Bye now.
Dr. Kimberly Douglass
Take care