Know Your Numbers: How Data and Communication Bring Freedom to a Small Business
Entrepreneurship · From Student of the Game
Know Your Numbers: How Data and Communication Bring Freedom to a Small Business
Most small business owners spend their days working in the business. The barber cuts hair all day. The health coach is on the phone all day. On this episode of Student of the Game, Brad Noll invites his Director of Operations, Anthony Paino, to talk about what it looks like to work on the business instead.
Anthony's background is, in his words, eclectic. He studied theology at Asbury University and served as an associate and senior pastor for close to 15 years. He then worked as a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch, and along the way coached high school basketball at three Fort Wayne schools. The common thread, he says, is that working with people has been his passion from day one.
Jordan Looking for His Pippen
The two connected through one of Brad's posts: Jordan looking for my Pippen. Anthony, who always loved connecting people in his network, reached out to help Brad find the right person. The more they talked, the more Anthony thought, "I think I might be Pippen."
Brad is quick to say neither of them is claiming to be Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen. The point of the analogy is what made those Bulls teams special: the triangle offense, the people Phil Jackson put around Jordan, and the way they did things differently. Anthony adds that the Bulls won with centers who were not big names but were the perfect fit for their role. It is not just the right people, he says, but the right positions for those people.
On the Noll Team, that starts with core values: serve others, earn everything, grow constantly, win together, and always represent. Then come job descriptions. Brad's job is deepening relationships and bringing opportunities to the team. Agents generate referrals, list homes, show homes, and negotiate deals. Anthony's job is to build the workflows and processes that turn the vision into a plan. Brad learned the idea from the book Traction: every visionary needs an integrator, or big ideas stay dreams.
“I want to make sure I'm that little bit of foil in the back of the ring that helps the whole team shine brighter.”
Anthony Paino
Build the Roadmap From Where You Really Are
Anthony thinks of planning like a GPS. First, accept reality about your starting point, which can be hard for some people to admit. Then name the destination. When he first met with Brad, his question was simple: what do you want this business to become?
That morning, road construction gave Anthony four route options to the office. The fastest one might not be the best if you need gas along the way. Business is the same. "There is no clear-cut path in life," he says. His job is to map the best route and keep checking for detours, times to pause, and times to speed up.
The Fundamentals: Data and Seasonality
Anthony's two fundamentals are data and communication. He and Brad often reference Moneyball, and Anthony sees himself as the Peter Brand type who nerds out on statistics, looking for patterns that only show up in a large enough set of numbers. One example: some months, people are noticeably more receptive to hearing from the team than others, so energy is better spent where it lands.
Brad stops to underline the lesson for every business owner. A t-shirt shop has youth sports, summer camps, and back to school. Landscaping has its seasons. Real estate follows life events like job transfers, graduations, and empty nesting. "Understand your data and understand what time of year is the most impactful when it's about reaching out to your clients," Brad says.
For people who resist tracking, Anthony points to his financial advising days, when small subscriptions nobody used added up to thousands of dollars a year once they were found. Data works the same way in a business. Here is the practical advice from the conversation:
- Set aside about 30 minutes a day to track the activities that matter in your industry.
- Find the seasons when your customers are most receptive, and plan your outreach around them.
- Track what matters. Brad jokes that counting houses with red doors does not help anyone.
- Hold short meetings with the small groups who need the information, instead of one long meeting for everyone.
- Reframe the tasks you resist. Anthony once relabeled a play so a player who disliked one position thrived in it all season.
- Treat time blocking like a spending plan: you choose where your hours go.
Brad, a self-described recovering free spirit, learned this by going through his phone's call log each morning to count the people he talked to. Since salespeople have more days without a sale than with one, tracking showed him he had won the day and let him be present with his family.
Practice: Capacity and Pipeline Trackers
True pros fall in love with practice, Brad says, and much of the team's practice happens out of sight. The capacity tracker shows how close each agent is to a full load. Someone at 78 percent can take a new listing. Someone at 120 percent should not take on a new buyer, because that client would not get the attention the team expects. Brad compares it to playing tired late in a college game and refusing to look at the bench.
The pipeline scorecard, adapted from one shared by Brad's friend Mike Gandolfo and adjusted for Fort Wayne's seasonality, gives every agent a custom goal. Active, potential, pending, and closed deals carry different weights, and agents aim to reach set percentages of their pipeline by the end of each quarter. Brad likens it to the media timeouts in college basketball: win the next four minutes.
Anthony says the biggest change has been moving people from fear and panic to a sense of urgency. He quotes Dr. Bob Rotella's Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect, where the last of ten keys to a strong mindset is to find someone who believes in you. Brad and his wife, Lindsay, share a related belief: people need to be celebrated, not tolerated.
What Does Winning Look Like for a Director of Operations?
For Anthony, winning starts with not changing the culture Brad built. He hopes Brad never has to fully recover from being a free spirit. He sees himself as the foil behind a diamond that makes it shine brighter, helping each person on the team stand out with the right data in a busy market. He points to the Miami Heat's surprising finals run as proof of what a culture of belief can do.
Brad closes with three lessons: data helps overcome fear and feelings, practice is what pros get paid for, and relationships win. When Brad asks for virtual flowers, Anthony thanks his two grandfathers, a high school basketball coach and a pastor, his wife for supporting his career change, and Brad for helping him believe in himself.
▶ Listen to the full episode
Behind the Scenes with Anthony Paino: Gain Freedom in Your Business by Knowing Your Numbers, on Student of the Game.
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