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Transcribed by Claire Blanke Enkosky
I was initially motivated to start Earthsense back in late 2006.
Earthsense is an applied marketing company.
What we do is we gather information
and then we make it very actionable for end users.
And I was motivated to do this because I looked out in the space
and realized that nobody was combining the data in a way
that would make it most efficient and it was very frustrating.
So I thought that I could do better and that’s basically why I started the company.
And when I spoke with Amy Hebard, who’s my partner
about this situation the two of us realized very quickly that
if we looked out into the space, and especially the new space of green
which was just starting to peak at that point,
it was just starting to bubble at that time, in consciousness.
We realized that in the world of the environment and green consumers,
you can’t use traditional demographic data to find people,
[be] cause green knows no age, sex, ethnicity; it knows nothing about it.
It’s more attitudinal and an awareness of where you live and
what you have access to and so I went,
“Aha! We have a solution for a problem that’s just going to get bigger and greater.”
And that’s why we founded Earthsense, to really make sense of the world around us.
And not just for the environment but the environment seemed like this was a good one.
But it’s not like we were tree-huggers looking to solve the world.
We’re more analysts and data folks looking to take our techniques
and to apply them to problems.
In kind of a backwards way, the things and the people that motivated me most
were the people that didn’t believe what we could do, that we could pull this off.
When you ask- when I think about the things that made me keep going
versus the things that maybe strengthen my conviction,
there are luminaries in this industry, in the market research industry, who are part of our team.
We’ve just been so fortunate that we’ve been introduced
and supported by people that in a previous life I never would have met but because
I’m in a position that I’m running a company, right, and that I basically took the initiative
and the money from my own pocket, basically, they know I’m serious.
The idols I have are the people whose brains put things together that I don't see.
Traditional market researchers interview people and look at the results
within a set of the actual analysis…
What we’re working on and working towards is the concept that you take a respondent
and you don’t just look at the respondent in light of...
(and I’m not even talking individuals- groups of respondents)
Don’t look at them in terms of just their age, income,
sex, race and what you ask in the questionnaire.
Enhance that questionnaire with a lot of data of what we call "exographics,"
which are things that are basically what surrounds the community.
As a market researcher you’d say, “There’s a lot of opportunity here in Delaware...”
because you’d only see one part of the picture.
So what we’re trying to do is take all that ancillary data
and not only help understand and tighten up where an opportunity might be
but help explain why that opportunity exists.
So if you wanted to, say, I always use pizza as an example, or snow-blowers.
I work for a company, that’s a good one, I work for a company, and they would use a system to
describe people- a neighborhood system- people would buy snow-blowers
and when they would model this data into maps they would show
that people in the southern part of the United States had very similar characteristics
to the ones in the northern part of the United States.
But you’d have to use your brain to think ‘There’s no snow down there
so I don’t think they’d be buying snow-blowers.’
Well weather is important, land use.
You start looking at all those different variables and suddenly it makes sense.
We’re building this huge database called the Living Lab.
And the Living Lab is going to allow us to append that information
to any type of survey we do.
So if we want to study, you know, why people there have Diabetes,
for example, it may be that they’re in areas where there are more X, Y, and Z,
But now all these things are being built into the system so
it’s much easier to get the data out
and I’m not as concerned about privacy issues because we don’t look at indiviaduals
Sources for innovation and the types of information tools that I used to grow,
to build in a sense, to grow it, to bring this to fruition.
I used everything at my fingertips.
LinkedIn is one, the professional network...
LinkedIn, I think the day it came out, or the day after I read about it, I was one.
But to me, Facebook seemed like, you know, it just seemed not professional…
So Twitter I’ve been on. Yeah, the professional.
But now, with Facebook, but what’s so cool about it is that as it’s matured,
through the years, the site can be used- I’m now connecting to colleagues of mine,
old colleagues, old classmates from former years that actually are great for business
plus on a very personal level. So I can pick up the phone
and ask them about business just as I know about what’s going on in their lives.
And they can do the same to me.
So this little group has grown in a way I wouldn’t do on LinkedIn.
I show my other side. In terms of blogs, I’ve read other people’s blogs.
Several of them, Joel Makower is one, a gentleman who writes one, Greenbiz.com.
I write a little bit, certainly not as much as I should.
When it comes to sites that I might use, I’m thinking,
there’s a tool that used to be called E-Library, E-Research and it’s over time,
again, one of those first subscriber things, it’s now called Highbeam.
And Highbeam aggregates data you can search
through hundreds of magazines for like two hundred bucks a year.
I use that, I use the JJHill Library which is a great resources out in Minneapolis
which is a great resource for business owners.
The other thing that’s so cool is
I actually ran a website that had demographic data on it that was part of my other business.
So people would buy reports from me from this system.
And I’d constantly get calls from people who wanted some more information
so I learned a lot because I sort of put myself out there.
Plus, I got a call one day from a guy who said,
“Oh” - he called and I gave him some free information and he said,
“Oh, you should really join this Association of independent Information professionals.”
He said, “They could really use your help.”
So I joined them and basically they’re a bunch of crazy ex-corporate librarians.
They’re all independent, they don’t want to work, and they’re wonderful.
So you want to talk about having a cool resource.
We have a listserv, so if you wanna know something, these people aim to please.
As do I, they’re on it.
So you ask a question and everybody’s like “Ooh! Let me see if I can help you.”
So, the connection, it was well worth it.
I did not use my library and I’ll tell you why.
Because I escaped to my library to get a little peace and quiet when I was writing now and then.
But I’ve worked from home for so long that I know how to cut out distractions
and I’m fairly technical so I can pretty much find anything I want on my own machine, yeah.
Although I think the library is a phenomenal resource.
I should say, yes, it’s an online-
it’s actually is a physical place in Minneapolis.
It’s the JHill, it’s either the JJHill or JHill library.
Hill library research is what I keep thinking of it.
And it’s a subscription only site.
And what’s so cool about that group, is if you have a question, and you want
- and you don’t mind paying a little extra they’ll do your research for you.
Which is pretty great, too.
I was subscribing to JJ, the Hill Library,
the Hill research library, and, which is about, like six hundred dollars a year.
And again, it’s another one of those stupid things that most small businesses don’t do that
but I really do value information.
And when we started the business, I really wanted to learn a lot so there were two things I did.
I had one of the AIIP, the Information Professionals,
I met somebody there who was just loving what we did. We got along so well.
She did some researches, surveys, or searches I should say,
through Dialog and Lexis-Nexis and all those tools.
But I had the JJHill library which most professionals consider kind of a less than professional tool”
And using JJHill; I never would have found this article,
you don’t just find it to the web. You have to subscribe to an information source
and you have to be willing to read what you search on.
Some people on our team really thrive on routine
and being able to improve their efficiencies within a set of constraints.
And that is just not my bag. It’s not at all. I have to do the unexpected.
I have to have a problem that really frustrates me to tears at time
in order to feel the sunshine and the relief on the other end.
CC by Yan Huang �