Alter Everything Podcast

MaddieJ · ‎12-26-2022

How does the music industry collect and use data? We're joined by Charlie Torrible, Head of Data and Insight at Warner Records, to hear how Alteryx is used at one of the worlds largest music labels, and why Charlie is passionate about inclusion and psychological safety at work.

Panelists

Charlie Torrible - @TheTerrabull, LinkedIn
Doyin Sonibare - @doyinss, LinkedIn

Topics

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Transcript

Episode Transcription

MADDIE: 00:02	[music] Welcome to Alter Everything, a podcast about data science and analytics culture. As the year comes to a close, people all over the world are taking time to reflect. Maybe you had a big life milestone, surpassed your yearly reading goal, or ran a marathon. Now, I didn't do any of those things but it's fine because actually, my favourite thing to reflect on is my music listening habits for the year. So whether you got a Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay, or simply know your soundtrack of the year by heart, there's a lot of music data out there. But what kind of data is collected? How do folks in the music business use it to make decisions and how do those decisions play into what we ultimately listen to? For today's episode, you'll hear from Charlie Torrible, Head of Data and Insight for one of the world's leading music labels, Warner Records.
CHARLIE: 00:53	Hey, everyone. So yeah, my name is Charlie Torrible. I'm head of data and insight for Warner Records. I joined three years ago. I was introduced to Alteryx two and a half years ago. Credit Alteryx with my promotion. Go on, let's start the Alteryx high train straight away.
MADDIE: 01:13	Hosting the conversation with Charlie is my colleague, Doyin Sonibare, an enterprise account executive at Alteryx. Doyin is also a doctoral researcher at Brunel University, London, studying health inequalities and the experience of black sickle cell patients in the UK. She's passionate about DEI and B topics, is the events lead for the Women and Allies [inaudible] Network, and is an ambassador for the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Throughout the conversation, Charlie will share how analytics is a major player at Warner Records, how he, himself, got into the music industry, and how passionate he is about inclusion and psychological safety at work. Let's get started. [music]
DOYIN: 01:59	Okay, so before we get into it, I thought it'd be really fun to do a quick This or That game. So don't think about it too much.
CHARLIE: 02:05	Okay. Perfect for me.
DOYIN: 02:06	First answer that comes to your mind, just say it, okay?
CHARLIE: 02:09	Yes.
DOYIN: 02:10	All right. Here we go. Early bird or night owl?
CHARLIE: 02:13	Early bird.
DOYIN: 02:14	Pizza or Chinese.
CHARLIE: 02:16	Pizza.
DOYIN: 02:17	Introvert or extrovert?
CHARLIE: 02:19	I want to say both answers to each of these questions so far. That's not the game, is it?
DOYIN: 02:25	No, it's not. Pick one.
CHARLIE: 02:27	Extrovert with anxiety.
DOYIN: 02:31	Okay. Burna Boy or WizKid?
CHARLIE: 02:33	Burna.
DOYIN: 02:34	I agree with you on that one. Okay. Beer or wine?
CHARLIE: 02:36	Beer.
DOYIN: 02:38	LA or New York?
CHARLIE: 02:39	LA.
DOYIN: 02:41	Really?
CHARLIE: 02:41	No. But again, you're asking questions I want to go both sides.
DOYIN: 02:45	Okay. Okay. No. No. No.
CHARLIE: 02:45	So LA, but--
DOYIN: 02:48	You said LA, that's the answer I'm taking.
CHARLIE: 02:49	[crosstalk]--
DOYIN: 02:50	Okay. Football or rugby?
CHARLIE: 02:51	--exposition. Rugby.
DOYIN: 02:53	Yeah, you said your family, right?
CHARLIE: 02:54	We did.
DOYIN: 02:54	They [crosstalk]--
CHARLIE: 02:54	We went out for dinner yesterday.
DOYIN: 02:56	Yes, we did.
CHARLIE: 02:56	Behind the scenes.
DOYIN: 02:57	And it was great. We had Asian, even though he said he prefers pizza. But it's all good. Back to the game. Back to the game. Painting or photography?
CHARLIE: 03:05	Photography.
DOYIN: 03:07	Summer or winter?
CHARLIE: 03:08	Winter.
DOYIN: 03:09	David Guetta or Calvin Harris?
CHARLIE: 03:11	Guetta.
DOYIN: 03:12	I knew you were going to say that because he's on Warner Records. All right. Thanks, that was fun.
CHARLIE: 03:19	He's not actually on Warner Records, he's on Warner Music Group, but. Yeah.
DOYIN: 03:22	But you're still staying--
CHARLIE: 03:24	Loyal.
DOYIN: 03:25	--loyal to the--
CHARLIE: 03:25	Loyal. I want--
DOYIN: 03:26	--overarching--
CHARLIE: 03:27	Yeah. I'm going to send--
DOYIN: 03:28	[crosstalk].
CHARLIE: 03:28	--this to the execs of the company so they know.
DOYIN: 03:31	Then you're going to have--
CHARLIE: 03:31	And my [crosstalk].
DOYIN: 03:32	--another pay rise. But no, honestly, it's great to hear that you're from Warner Records and you've had a great career so far. I think it'll be really interesting to hear where your career started from and how you've gotten to where you are today.
CHARLIE: 03:48	Okay. Yeah. I'll do the short version. When I was a kid-- guitarist. Loved music. Very excited listening to records on the radio and always could imagine myself playing the guitar. Complete passion as early as I can remember. Picked up the guitar. Had a great time. Went to uni to do physics. It was either between music at uni or physics at uni, and then kind of flopped my music A-levels, so. Cruised through the maths and sciences so I was like, "Right, I can still love music but I'm going to go study physics." Degree in physics. Finished the degree and then tried to get into music and everyone was like, "Why did you do a physics degree? That was a terrible idea. You have no music industry experience. The key thing here you need is experience." And that was a long grind, eventually getting through the door, an internship. Unpaid in those days. Got fired from that four months in. I'm going to air all my dirty laundry here. This is going to be real talk for the rest of the show.
DOYIN: 04:57	Please do. It's a safe space.
CHARLIE: 05:00	Yeah. Did the internship then did another internship, and this second internship is where the real dots start getting joined. I'm at Warner Chappell. Music publisher. One of the majors. And I'm working in their legal and bus department. I get to tech out some really nerdy clauses and stuff and they were like, "You just go and do your thing on that stuff." And it was great. And the link, that I'll come back to later, is there is the-- there's an A&R in Warner Chappell-- and A&R stands for artist and repertoire, and they are the people in charge of bringing the deals in. There's an A&R who is having the most amazing string of hits and he's signing, I mean, Lianne La Havas, Royal Blood, Tom Odell, Michael Kiwanuka, London Grammar-- there's loads more but there was just immensely fast, amazing music. Bringing in amazing music. And I talked to him and the colleagues there like, "How do you this? What do you do?" And they're like, "Go get your own roster and if you get a good roster, then someone's going to employ you as an A&R because you can clearly hear music."
DOYIN: 06:14	And by roster, you mean--?
CHARLIE: 06:16	So find talent out there to represent. Go and find it yourself. Everyone has the means if they have the kind of time, which is a luxury in itself but, "Go and get your own roster of talent and then if your roster's good enough, a publisher like Warner Chappell or someone might take you on." So that begins my foray into artist management. Takes me nine months to sign my first client and I'm 23, I think, then. Or 24. I'm sorry, I said I'd do a short version of this, and this is [crosstalk]--
DOYIN: 06:52	It's okay. The long version's more interesting.
CHARLIE: 06:54	Okay. And sign the first client, and then the adventure starts there. And we split into two strands, the real paid work and the kind of make-believe management work on the side. After 18 months at Warner Chappell, I go to Polydor as an analyst. It's my first time working as an analyst in the industry. I think I got that job because I'd recently watched Moneyball and I just was talking about the film in the interview and that was the level everyone was at in 2013. So 2013, go into Polydor as an analyst. 18 months there. And I leave to be a consultant analyst, just shop my work around and focus on management full-time. It's going quite well. I've partnered up with a really good friend, and we're now signing some deals that seem to be working. We've managed to develop to a certain point. And then I spend two or three years focusing purely on that, the artist management and doing a bit of analytics consultancy. Lots of touring. Lots of making shit up as you go along. The final two steps are: take a year out of music and go and production-manage some amazing and bombastic science shows. Lots of explosions. Come back to music. Work in artist management again. And then spend two years then leave that. Management is hard work and I needed a break. Here is the callback. Luckily, I got a call from the person who is now the president of Warner Records, who had been one of the A&Rs when I was an intern at Warner Chappell and had been talking to and he said, "Go get your roster." And he'd heard that I was a good analytical manager and he was like, "What would you do if you came into Warner Records?" And I was like, "Phase one is data literacy and communication, and that once we can all share a language, then we can start cranking out some cool stuff that we can all apply." And I've been there three years, since.
DOYIN: 09:00	So it came full circle, essentially?
CHARLIE: 09:03	Yeah. And the music industry always does that. They all go full circle constantly, as long as you've kind of hopefully made a few good connections on the way up.
DOYIN: 09:14	And not burned any bridges along the way because it's a small, small world.
CHARLIE: 09:17	Yeah. Like I said, I managed to get fired on my first job, so I think I've definitely burned a few bridges but--
DOYIN: 09:25	But you built some too, right?
CHARLIE: 09:26	Yeah. Yeah. Building bridges.
DOYIN: 09:29	Yeah. I think you mentioned something interesting, which was, I guess, when your dreams of a rockstar, rockstardom if that's even the term, fell away, you decided to go into artist management. And then there was a point where you spoke about the switch into analytics. Can you talk a bit about that and what made you divert into analytics/data consultancy? Because there are loads of artist managers today that don't take that route.
CHARLIE: 09:57	Yeah. It's a lovely debate. It's a fun one for a fireside chat energy because you-- well, my rhetoric ends up stepping away from data or analytics as a kind of isolated thing. It's just vocabulary for describing a journey or an action or an event or something. So the idea that data and analytics, yeah, is kind of compartmentalised, is--
DOYIN: 10:34	Is wrong? Are you basically saying it's always been a part of your journey?
CHARLIE: 10:35	I'm not saying you're wrong. No, I'm not saying you're wrong.
DOYIN: 10:37	Oh, okay, good. Because I'm always right.
CHARLIE: 10:41	I think that's a consequence of slightly corporate thinking about it. But our president of Warner Records has a really lovely way of referencing it and his expertise as an A&R-- this is Joe Kentish. I'm paraphrasing, trying to quote his expertise at A&R-- within A&R is grounded in the fact his seen and helped to create thousands and thousands of songs. So he is an analyst within the context of his domain. Maybe he doesn't have certain technical tools but the transition that we're kind of focusing on is not that meaningful a change in the sense that the data was always there and--
DOYIN: 11:27	Was it that the data was always there and it always existed but nobody had tapped into it?
CHARLIE: 11:32	Yeah, to a manner of speaking. And providing structure to the conversation within the context of the creativity that we work within. Warner and the maturing kind of analytics marketplace, the way I think of it is-- it's all about the definition of success and how we move our creative partners on a journey from point A to a shared definition of success. It's a kind of formalisation perhaps, of a process that you always have the potential to do and it can be very numbers based or in a database or it can be very intuitive or expertise human-led. And it's all valid. Part of the joy and the excitement and the challenge is around pulling at all these strands and trying to tease them into a structured format, which is then scalable and criticisable in a kind of logical fashion.
DOYIN: 12:30	So essentially, solving business challenges in a creative way.
CHARLIE: 12:33	Ah, no that's--
DOYIN: 12:34	Did I summarise that well?
CHARLIE: 12:35	--so good.
DOYIN: 12:37	Okay. But you know what, we're going to talk about that a bit further on. But what I really wanted to get at is, I guess, you went from being an artist manager-- and by that, you were touring with artists. You were supporting them, perhaps getting them booking for gigs and all that good stuff.
CHARLIE: 12:54	Find their socks. Where did they put--
DOYIN: 12:56	It's so different--
CHARLIE: 12:56	--their socks? You've got to get their shoes on.
DOYIN: 12:57	--from what you do today.
CHARLIE: 12:59	Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DOYIN: 13:01	It is. You're not looking after an artist today.
CHARLIE: 13:04	No, indirectly.
DOYIN: 13:04	Well, you are but not in the same way.
CHARLIE: 13:06	Yeah, totally. I think it's good to-- sorry to any artist managers listening, just the socks comment. I don't want to be patronising. My point is it's a crazy job but you have to do-- there's all sorts of weird things you have to do to keep the wheels on the bus when push comes to shove. I think that is invaluable. And if I get a soapbox, which you're kind of giving me here bit, and I'm saying, "What makes a good analyst?" it's to know your domain. And the experiences that artist manager face, experiences in publishers and labels, has given me such close proximity to what the final task is and a understanding of how hard our colleagues have to work and how hard the artists are having to work and what it means to be creative in a commercial context and the wild, wild challenges that that brings up as a human. The emotional response to a lot of the challenges. That then totally frames how I try and communicate as an analyst and reprioritise, consistently, the audience perspective, so. The audience is always right, sort of thing. The customer is always right. And I think, to endeavour to create a good analytic resource or good analytical resources, you have to prioritise that in a big way.
DOYIN: 14:34	So all of that makes sense. But I guess the point that I'm trying to come back to is what made you decide, "Today I am not just going to be an artist manager, I am going to be an analyst. I'm going to look at where my artists fall upon the charts. I am going to dig into the data and see whether they're going to be number one next week"? What was the switch? The reason why I ask this question, right, is because I think there are a lot of people that are interested in careers in music. And there may be some young listeners who are interested in music but they don't want to be an artist. They don't want to be an artist manager. And I kind of want to use this platform as a way to get them to think about all the options available to them.
CHARLIE: 15:16	Love that. Okay.
DOYIN: 15:17	So it'll be really good if you could shed some light as to what advice you'd give a young person who's considering a career in music, that's not literally being the face, right, but behind the scenes, supporting the label as you do.
CHARLIE: 15:30	Yeah. I love that intention.
DOYIN: 15:33	Let's give them some insight.
CHARLIE: 15:34	Yeah. So number one, easier to get paid as an analyst than an artist manager, especially with the rise of tech companies and all the data that comes with that. A couple of things. There's an immense amount of work done behind the scenes. Whether you consider yourself mathematically strong or strong in a STEM subject or not, I would encourage at least an investigation into the analytical space because, number one, you have the tools available to you, such as Alteryx, to navigate lots of complicated technical thinking in a really easy and direct way. I'm running things way beyond my kind of skill grade thanks to Alteryx. So for those of you that feel a little bit sceptical about the availability of this path to you, I'd say go for it. There are people doing the work to make things easy for you and yeah, it's a lot more achievable than you think there.
DOYIN: 16:41	And sorry to cut you, but--
CHARLIE: 16:42	That's all right.
DOYIN: 16:43	--you did a physics degree, right?
CHARLIE: 16:44	Yeah.
DOYIN: 16:45	And you're really good at maths and science. So would they need to have a degree like that? Could they have any sort of background? Is that important in the music industry?
CHARLIE: 16:57	The priority situation for now, I think, is diversity of thought and diversity of approach to problems and diversity experience. And I didn't know this at the time when I was doing my physics degree-- analytics has become a domain within the music industry over the past few years. So I didn't kind of plan this or anything. I was lucky and I've been able to use the fact I had a physics degree to my advantage. So do you need to do a STEM-- so STEM is science, technology, engineering, maths. Do you need to do a STEM degree? Potentially helps in one sense, but absolutely not necessary. Like I say, Alteryx is providing products that will happily tackle those sorts of technical challenges. We've fairly recently, it's probably a year by now, employed a member of staff and the outstanding factor that swung it in their favour was the creativity that they dealt with the problem. So we set some problems for them to deal with in the interview process and theirs was very distinctly, "Oh, wow, I would never have thought to do it that way; that's really important to get in the room. They've communicated really well alongside it. Let's go." That's the agenda. And I appreciate that sort of creativity can take a certain type of confidence and few daunting-- and there's work to be done perhaps in outreach and making sure people are aware that they have that kind of innate ability and stuff. That's a thing to be tackled. But we're upskilling people into analytics spaces at the moment at Warner, who are explicitly not from a STEM background, but they bring unique takes and that's the priority.
DOYIN: 18:55	No, it makes sense. Earlier on, you just-- well, just now you touched upon diversity of thought. It's interesting because I'm very passionate about diversity, equality, inclusion, and belonging, and I'd really love to hear how you think DEI and B relates to work culture, especially from a perspective as an analyst.
CHARLIE: 19:18	Yeah. Absolutely. I think they are deeply entwined. And I'd be interested in your feedback on this, actually. Let me know whether you think the thinking's in the right direction.
DOYIN: 19:29	Sure.
CHARLIE: 19:29	Psychological safety is the number indicator of a high-performing team. Often the people at Alteryx are dealing with major record labels and all the other incredible tech companies you're working with. These are now just high-performing teams. And if we are looking to optimise our skill sets, psychological safety is foundational to the communication and high performance of the team and the ability to adapt, to react to insight. So a company has to go through quite significant changes if it's a legacy company now trying to sustain an analytical ecosystem. And so everyone in the room has to be ready to kind of reflect and communicate on that level. That just seems intrinsically tied to agendas of validating your peers. Being seen. Hearing people, effectively. It's about the foundation of success is [ran through?] democracy and honest communication. Quality communication is intrinsically related to a DEI agenda because it's about bringing your true selves into the space.
DOYIN: 20:48	Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry. I completely agree. So for me, it's all about authenticity and feeling like I can bring my whole self to the workplace, right? So when you speak about honesty and equality and how I'm communicating, how I'm being perceived, I'll only feel comfortable to do that if I am working in an environment where that's encouraged. Where the culture is positive, where I feel heard, where I feel people will respect whatever I bring to the table even if they don't necessarily agree with what I'm saying, so. I think that's where diversity of thought is important, I guess, within the music industry because your audience is varied. It's people from all kinds of walks of life. And so having a diverse team who can hopefully relate in some way to different people, I think you're more likely to bring out better music, be a better company, and hopefully one that talented people want to work for.
CHARLIE: 21:46	Yeah. Absolutely. And what we can end up finding is when we're on these journeys of instilling change in our environments, the response that you receive to providing new analytical solutions-- within an analytical role, you're often given the role of effecting change, so you are reporting some information to either support an action or change an action. Actionable insights. And the experience of communicating at scale and then being met, potentially, with people that don't necessarily absorb the information or you have miscommunicated in a way that makes the information unable to reach your intended audience. And then when you kind of step into the exercise of self-reflection and what is happening internally, for me, as a communicator and just a human in this network of other people and how can I reach them and how can I help them change their mind? And what resistances do I feel as a person when I'm either experiencing my own resistances to change? I think that's what I'm trying to tap into when I'm saying a kind of analytical progression goes hand in hand with the DEI agenda because we're having to go through fantastic periods of change and--
DOYIN: 23:21	And analyse it as we go along.
CHARLIE: 23:22	Analyse it. And the resistances that people experience. You're watching whole groups of people resist to a DEIB-- I haven't heard DEIB before so I'm interested in bringing belonging into my vocabulary.
DOYIN: 23:37	Well, you've already been discussing it, you just didn't mention it. When you spoke about honest and quality communication, right, that's what you said, yeah, well, you can't do that if don't feel like you belong. Like if I don't feel like I'm part of a group, I won't feel comfortable to voice my opinion in that group. It's the same kind of concepts.
CHARLIE: 23:57	And then when you are now in a position of leadership or [crosstalk]--
DOYIN: 24:02	Soon come.
CHARLIE: 24:03	Soon come.
DOYIN: 24:04	I'm just manifesting it.
CHARLIE: 24:05	Manifesting. But as a communicating leader-- I've seen you talking to the Queen. Everyone go google it. You're a communication leader. And as we communicate, we'll watch little groups of people either accept the communication or reject the communication. That's the analogy I'm trying to kind of tease out in this conversation between the spaces. It's like, "Okay, there I've got a win, I can double-down my resources and we can begin elevating and celebrating together." But I've got this group here that's not listening and now I have to go into reflective like, "Do I change?" But does that compromise my authenticity? I've got to take them on a journey somehow and how do I do that?
DOYIN: 24:53	Through compromise.
CHARLIE: 24:55	Sure. Teach me.
DOYIN: 24:55	I think everyone can be authentic, everyone can voice their opinion, but at the same time, everyone needs to be aligned. So you can't go off option A, you can't go off option B, but you can find the middle ground. And I think that's where analytics and data comes into play. Because you have the human side which is, "This is how I view this data," and then you have the logical side which is, "This is literally what the data is telling us." And then you've got people interpreting it in different ways. And you just have a discussion about it and you come to a common ground, right?
CHARLIE: 25:30	Absolutely. And I guess it's the mechanics of that discussion which is a fascinating point. I love exploring the psychology of it all and how it all--
DOYIN: 25:41	But that's what's needed to solve, I think, personally anyway, business challenges today. So we need the tools like Alteryx to help us unlock the data and the insights but then we need a diverse pool of thought to really interpret that data and make sure that whatever we implement, is relatable to a diverse audience.
CHARLIE: 26:02	Amen to that.
DOYIN: 26:03	I think that's where the two marry.
CHARLIE: 26:05	Yeah. And Alteryx is set up to democratise the data conversation. So phase one within our strategy is very much about the literacy and data confidence of everyone in the room.
DOYIN: 26:20	And hopefully, people like yourself can, I guess, continue to support other analysts in improving their data confidence, right? I mean, our organisation aims to do that with our tools. You aim to do that with your experience and the tools in your mentoring. And I think, just to wrap it all up, I think it's really great to see how far you've come from dreams of being a rockstar--
CHARLIE: 26:43	Still dreaming.
DOYIN: 26:45	--to kind of not doing so great in your A-Levels but using that detour to find yourself as the analyst and future music executive - I said it here first - that you're going to be. So thank you so much for sharing that. And I think it's really important as well, what you spoke around psychological safety, us feeling like we can be heard and we belong and that our opinion is at least heard and that we have a seat at the table to discuss some of these topics, right, because that's the only way we can hopefully find some solutions to some of the challenges that we face.
CHARLIE: 27:21	Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
DOYIN: 27:23	I've got one final question for you, Mr Charlie Torrible and that is what advice would you give to anybody that's listening today? Because the reason why I say that and before I go into it, don't give the stereotypical advice which is just, "Work hard." We know that. What I mean--
CHARLIE: 27:38	Oh, no. Protect yourself.
DOYIN: 27:40	What I mean--
CHARLIE: 27:40	Don't work too hard. I've done the working hard; it doesn't pay. Just protect yourself.
DOYIN: 27:45	Let me clarify that question. When I say advice, I mean you've obviously gone through a lot of hurdles but you still managed to stick to your career in music. You found a different way for yourself. You've created a path for yourself that perhaps you didn't know existed. So with that in mind, what advice would you give to anyone listening today?
CHARLIE: 28:06	If you can, get in a mindset where you enjoy the process of learning.
DOYIN: 28:12	That's good.
CHARLIE: 28:14	Because then you can hop and skip your way around anything, really, I think. That's the only thing. I never want to advocate for uni as a solution, as there's going to be so many ways to build up the skill sets. In my journey, I definitely look to my uni experience for being the space in which I really developed confidence in learning and also had things like all the societies. I went for election in various societies and started learning how to fail a bit as well.
DOYIN: 28:49	Really quickly, what uni did you go to?
CHARLIE: 28:50	Southampton.
DOYIN: 28:51	Okay. Shoutout, Southampton.
CHARLIE: 28:52	Big up, Southampton. Physoc. If anyone was in the physics society, whoop-whoop. And so I know what channel worked for me. Ah, man, this part breaks my heart a little bit sometimes because a lot of people get fucked up by their teachers. The learning has been kind of-- or the joy of it has been beaten out of them by the time you, say, got to 16. Hey, here's a confession. I couldn't remember how to code at all. I did a tiny bit of coding at uni. I had no coding when I went back to Warner. And most of job now, apart from everything picked up by Alteryx, most of it requires some fairly substantial coding fundamentals. I got in, I was like, "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, can code." And then within a couple of weeks, it was like-- I'd called up few friends, so like, "Someone needs to teach me how to code." And then that got me far enough for six months, and then luckily for me, Alteryx turns up and that sees me through the next two and a half years. But just because I knew if I got in the door, I'm good to learn this. And I'm not a blagger. I'm not talking about the salesman energy of being like, "Yeah, I can do this," it's like--
DOYIN: 30:10	Quick disclaimer. We're not encouraging people to lie in interviews, just [crosstalk]--
CHARLIE: 30:13	Oh, no. Should I take that back? [crosstalk]--
DOYIN: 30:16	No, no. We don't need to. I get it. It was a thing that you knew that you could learn. Just because you weren't good at coding when you were 16, doesn't mean that you're not going to be good at it today, right?
CHARLIE: 30:28	Exactly. But this has been foundational to, I think, most of my journey is when-- I quit music and became a production manager for science shows and we're touring the Middle East and we're touring the UK and some of Europe doing shows where we're blowing up hydrogen and things. And you're having to learn how to do risk assessments or tour managing other [artists?].
DOYIN: 30:52	You're always learning.
CHARLIE: 30:54	Yeah. And it's just being like, "You know what, I'm going to be okay because I know how to learn something." I say that with love and if anyone wants to talk about that, please reach out on LinkedIn or socials. But also, I'm aware there is quite a lot--
DOYIN: 31:12	That's Charlie Torrible, by the way, on LinkedIn.
CHARLIE: 31:14	Charlie Torrible, T-O-R-R-I-B-L-E.
DOYIN: 31:16	Horrible but with a T.
CHARLIE: 31:18	Exactly. Thank you so much. There is potentially quite a lot of privilege associated with that statement of like, "Just love learning."
DOYIN: 31:29	What? Sorry. I have to disagree. I don't think so. I think everybody has access to the internet. And I think learning is not confined to a classroom.
CHARLIE: 31:39	Absolutely.
DOYIN: 31:40	And so when you say, "Never stop learning," it's like, "Well, never stop going on YouTube. Never stop going on Google. Never stop listening to podcasts.
CHARLIE: 31:45	100%. Well, maybe if you've been on YouTube for eight hours, time to get off YouTube.
DOYIN: 31:50	Agreed. But you know what I mean? Within reason. I think the point you're making is never stop remembering that you don't have all the answers but you can go and seek them.
CHARLIE: 32:01	Thank you.
DOYIN: 32:02	[inaudible].
MADDIE: 32:07	Thanks for listening. For resources mentioned in today's episode, including guides for getting started with Alteryx, check out our show notes at community.alteryx.com/podcasts. Catch you next time. [music]
CHARLIE: 32:23	Ah, Doyin's the best. She kicks my ass constantly. But you know what--?
DOYIN: 32:31	You're going to get my fired.
CHARLIE: 32:34	No. No. Absolutely to my benefit. Full credit to Alteryx for getting someone so amazing on their team because--
DOYIN: 32:44	Oh, very sweet.
CHARLIE: 32:44	--I joke with the ass-kicking but she is there and make sure I'm focused and make sure that Alteryx are really, I don't know, [inaudible]. They're constantly turbo-charging me. So I don't get any time to soften into lazy mode, there's always something we can be improving. That's not a question, that's a monologue. And so now I'm going to think of a question for Doyin. What's your favourite thing about Inspire so far? Has there been either a good talk you've seen or a favourite moment, or? Yeah. Favourite thing of Alteryx Inspire so far?
DOYIN: 33:32	I think my favourite has been seeing my colleagues, friends, customers, partners thrive. I know that sounds very sort of generic but the reason why I say that is because I'm seeing people push themselves, whether it be speaking in public. Hosting on the stage. Demonstrating the progress they've had of Alteryx. Coming out for dinner and I guess, being more sociable if they're an introvert. I just see people evolving, and I think that's what Inspire's about, and so it's been really lovely to witness that and be a part of it.
CHARLIE: 34:10	Yeah. Heck, yeah. We're on the Alteryx 11, I need to totally support that and want to share some gratitude for-- Alteryx has been great. They've given me some speaking platforms and it's done wonders for my progression in that space as well, so. Yeah. It's amazing seeing-- it's exactly as you said, thrive. You can feel people sharing excitement and fun ideas, and everyone's lectures are really good. Really good. I've given presentations. It's not easy to give good, clear 30-minute-- you go on a journey. You go from A. You go from B. Multiple skills levels in the room. Yeah, each one I've been like, "Damn, that was well-designed."
DOYIN: 34:57	We've got some intelligent people but we've got some nice people as well. You know what I mean?
CHARLIE: 35:02	I love that. Thank you. How long have you been at Alteryx?
DOYIN: 35:05	I have been at Alteryx just over a year. Yeah. I started in October last year.
CHARLIE: 35:12	And what was your journey to Alteryx?
DOYIN: 35:14	As in prior to Alteryx?
CHARLIE: 35:15	Yeah.
DOYIN: 35:16	Okay. So prior to Alteryx, I worked at IBM. So I left school at 18, did a gap year at IBM. Went to university, but kept going back every summer. And then decided that I deserved to be fast-tracked because they were fast-tracking all the interns. So when I say interns, I mean placement students who gap year between second and third year of university. Even though I did a year before university, I had done every summer since. So I had actually done more time combined. So I put a case forward and they fast-tracked me into a graduate scheme. So I joined IBM. And from there, I just saw how they were using technology to answer some of the world's biggest problems and I was really intrigued. Never saw myself as a technical person. Still don't really feel like I am. But I like the fact that you can make a difference using technology. And I feel like it's going to be here forever and ever so we might as well embrace it.
CHARLIE: 36:15	Until the machines--
DOYIN: 36:17	Until the bitter end.
CHARLIE: 36:17	--uprise.
DOYIN: 36:18	Well, it's never up, it's just going to keep evolving, so.
CHARLIE: 36:20	Okay, that's good.
DOYIN: 36:21	And then did a few years there and decided that it was time for a change, came over to Alteryx, and I've really enjoyed it. It's been a fun ride. And hopefully, it will continue to be.
CHARLIE: 36:34	Yeah. Heck, yeah. And so you're our account exec.
DOYIN: 36:41	Yes, I am.
CHARLIE: 36:42	She's an amazing account exec. Like I said, just keeps us focused on progress and opening doors about all the new exciting things that we can do which I never even realised.
DOYIN: 36:55	I didn't pay him to say that, just so you know.
CHARLIE: 36:56	No, no, but this is--
DOYIN: 36:58	But it sounds like I did.
CHARLIE: 36:59	No, but this is your authentic energy. It's given me a lot, so I want to kind of give back. It's funny the tone. Everyone is quite fanatical here. The event is called Alteryx Inspire, but. And I'm becoming one of these people. And I'm a little bit like, "Have I joined a cult?"
DOYIN: 37:20	No, it's just good vibes.
CHARLIE: 37:22	It is good vibes. I know.
DOYIN: 37:23	A lot of high energy.
CHARLIE: 37:24	I can leave any time I want.
DOYIN: 37:26	Yes.
CHARLIE: 37:27	I can't leave.
DOYIN: 37:29	He's not chained or anything like that. Gosh.
CHARLIE: 37:32	There's drinks and refreshments provided. Oh, man. What are you most excited about in, I guess the Alteryx road map, maybe? That's not quite the right word. You're responsible for us developing and onboarding with the tool. What gets you excited about it from your side?
DOYIN: 37:56	About our products, or?
CHARLIE: 37:57	Yeah. I don't really know what this question is.
DOYIN: 38:01	I'm going to answer the question in the way that I think you're trying to say it--
CHARLIE: 38:03	Okay, let's do that.
DOYIN: 38:04	--which is what am I excited about within our portfolio?
CHARLIE: 38:08	Yeah.
DOYIN: 38:09	And I think, for me, what's super exciting is Auto Insights.
CHARLIE: 38:14	Oh, love it.
DOYIN: 38:15	Yes. No, but the reason why I love it is because I genuinely think it's a great product. And we had [Adam?] in the conference or Natalie, who manages Auto Insights, so. The reason why I think it's great is because I do think it actually solves a business challenge that a lot of customers have, which is they've got to share information in real-time to executives who may not understand all the mechanics that takes place within a dashboard, right? And sometimes you know there's information there but you don't know what you don't know. And I think it's really cool that--
CHARLIE: 38:51	Oh my God.
DOYIN: 38:51	--it highlights that. And I think it's great that it highlights that in plain English as well because we're not all techies and so I think sometimes simplicity is the superpower that's needed to just kind of get on with things and that's what Auto Insights does.
CHARLIE: 39:10	Love it. Smashed it.
DOYIN: 39:12	Thanks.
CHARLIE: 39:12	I'm going to go to the Auto Insights booth. I need to go check that out. Because I have been told multiple times, not just by Doyin, by multiple people, that the problems I am verbalising or the challenges I'm facing I want solutions for, can be fixed in that. So I need to get my head out the sand, go and check it out. Thanks for tuning in to Charlie's half of the podcast, guys.
DOYIN: 39:39	Thanks for having me, Charlie.
CHARLIE: 39:41	Anything you want to-- anything you want to share? What do we do at the end? What you having for dinner?
DOYIN: 39:48	What am I having for dinner?
CHARLIE: 39:49	Have you got fancy dinner booked in?
DOYIN: 39:50	I do. Yeah.
CHARLIE: 39:53	Am I invited? Not to this one.
DOYIN: 39:53	Maybe.
CHARLIE: 39:57	Where are we going? Everyone, I don't know when this goes out but it's Doyin's birthday on Saturday. Blow up her Twitter. Do you have Twitter?
DOYIN: 40:06	I do.
CHARLIE: 40:07	What is it?
DOYIN: 40:08	It's so boring, it's @doyinsonibare. It's very boring.
CHARLIE: 40:11	Okay. Fantastic. Surname spelt--
DOYIN: 40:13	S-O-N-I-B-A-R-E.
CHARLIE: 40:17	Amazing. Everyone go wish Doyin a happy birthday. Say thanks for being an amazing AE. And that's a wrap.
DOYIN: 40:25	And that's a wrap. Thank you.

MADDIE: 00:02 [music] Welcome to Alter Everything, a podcast about data science and analytics culture. As the year comes to a close, people all over the world are taking time to reflect. Maybe you had a big life milestone, surpassed your yearly reading goal, or ran a marathon. Now, I didn't do any of those things but it's fine because actually, my favourite thing to reflect on is my music listening habits for the year. So whether you got a Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay, or simply know your soundtrack of the year by heart, there's a lot of music data out there. But what kind of data is collected? How do folks in the music business use it to make decisions and how do those decisions play into what we ultimately listen to? For today's episode, you'll hear from Charlie Torrible, Head of Data and Insight for one of the world's leading music labels, Warner Records. CHARLIE: 00:53 Hey, everyone. So yeah, my name is Charlie Torrible. I'm head of data and insight for Warner Records. I joined three years ago. I was introduced to Alteryx two and a half years ago. Credit Alteryx with my promotion. Go on, let's start the Alteryx high train straight away. MADDIE: 01:13 Hosting the conversation with Charlie is my colleague, Doyin Sonibare, an enterprise account executive at Alteryx. Doyin is also a doctoral researcher at Brunel University, London, studying health inequalities and the experience of black sickle cell patients in the UK. She's passionate about DEI and B topics, is the events lead for the Women and Allies [inaudible] Network, and is an ambassador for the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Throughout the conversation, Charlie will share how analytics is a major player at Warner Records, how he, himself, got into the music industry, and how passionate he is about inclusion and psychological safety at work. Let's get started. [music] DOYIN: 01:59 Okay, so before we get into it, I thought it'd be really fun to do a quick This or That game. So don't think about it too much. CHARLIE: 02:05 Okay. Perfect for me. DOYIN: 02:06 First answer that comes to your mind, just say it, okay? CHARLIE: 02:09 Yes. DOYIN: 02:10 All right. Here we go. Early bird or night owl? CHARLIE: 02:13 Early bird. DOYIN: 02:14 Pizza or Chinese. CHARLIE: 02:16 Pizza. DOYIN: 02:17 Introvert or extrovert? CHARLIE: 02:19 I want to say both answers to each of these questions so far. That's not the game, is it? DOYIN: 02:25 No, it's not. Pick one. CHARLIE: 02:27 Extrovert with anxiety. DOYIN: 02:31 Okay. Burna Boy or WizKid? CHARLIE: 02:33 Burna. DOYIN: 02:34 I agree with you on that one. Okay. Beer or wine? CHARLIE: 02:36 Beer. DOYIN: 02:38 LA or New York? CHARLIE: 02:39 LA. DOYIN: 02:41 Really? CHARLIE: 02:41 No. But again, you're asking questions I want to go both sides. DOYIN: 02:45 Okay. Okay. No. No. No. CHARLIE: 02:45 So LA, but-- DOYIN: 02:48 You said LA, that's the answer I'm taking. CHARLIE: 02:49 [crosstalk]-- DOYIN: 02:50 Okay. Football or rugby? CHARLIE: 02:51 --exposition. Rugby. DOYIN: 02:53 Yeah, you said your family, right? CHARLIE: 02:54 We did. DOYIN: 02:54 They [crosstalk]-- CHARLIE: 02:54 We went out for dinner yesterday. DOYIN: 02:56 Yes, we did. CHARLIE: 02:56 Behind the scenes. DOYIN: 02:57 And it was great. We had Asian, even though he said he prefers pizza. But it's all good. Back to the game. Back to the game. Painting or photography? CHARLIE: 03:05 Photography. DOYIN: 03:07 Summer or winter? CHARLIE: 03:08 Winter. DOYIN: 03:09 David Guetta or Calvin Harris? CHARLIE: 03:11 Guetta. DOYIN: 03:12 I knew you were going to say that because he's on Warner Records. All right. Thanks, that was fun. CHARLIE: 03:19 He's not actually on Warner Records, he's on Warner Music Group, but. Yeah. DOYIN: 03:22 But you're still staying-- CHARLIE: 03:24 Loyal. DOYIN: 03:25 --loyal to the-- CHARLIE: 03:25 Loyal. I want-- DOYIN: 03:26 --overarching-- CHARLIE: 03:27 Yeah. I'm going to send-- DOYIN: 03:28 [crosstalk]. CHARLIE: 03:28 --this to the execs of the company so they know. DOYIN: 03:31 Then you're going to have-- CHARLIE: 03:31 And my [crosstalk]. DOYIN: 03:32 --another pay rise. But no, honestly, it's great to hear that you're from Warner Records and you've had a great career so far. I think it'll be really interesting to hear where your career started from and how you've gotten to where you are today. CHARLIE: 03:48 Okay. Yeah. I'll do the short version. When I was a kid-- guitarist. Loved music. Very excited listening to records on the radio and always could imagine myself playing the guitar. Complete passion as early as I can remember. Picked up the guitar. Had a great time. Went to uni to do physics. It was either between music at uni or physics at uni, and then kind of flopped my music A-levels, so. Cruised through the maths and sciences so I was like, "Right, I can still love music but I'm going to go study physics." Degree in physics. Finished the degree and then tried to get into music and everyone was like, "Why did you do a physics degree? That was a terrible idea. You have no music industry experience. The key thing here you need is experience." And that was a long grind, eventually getting through the door, an internship. Unpaid in those days. Got fired from that four months in. I'm going to air all my dirty laundry here. This is going to be real talk for the rest of the show. DOYIN: 04:57 Please do. It's a safe space. CHARLIE: 05:00 Yeah. Did the internship then did another internship, and this second internship is where the real dots start getting joined. I'm at Warner Chappell. Music publisher. One of the majors. And I'm working in their legal and bus department. I get to tech out some really nerdy clauses and stuff and they were like, "You just go and do your thing on that stuff." And it was great. And the link, that I'll come back to later, is there is the-- there's an A&R in Warner Chappell-- and A&R stands for artist and repertoire, and they are the people in charge of bringing the deals in. There's an A&R who is having the most amazing string of hits and he's signing, I mean, Lianne La Havas, Royal Blood, Tom Odell, Michael Kiwanuka, London Grammar-- there's loads more but there was just immensely fast, amazing music. Bringing in amazing music. And I talked to him and the colleagues there like, "How do you this? What do you do?" And they're like, "Go get your own roster and if you get a good roster, then someone's going to employ you as an A&R because you can clearly hear music." DOYIN: 06:14 And by roster, you mean--? CHARLIE: 06:16 So find talent out there to represent. Go and find it yourself. Everyone has the means if they have the kind of time, which is a luxury in itself but, "Go and get your own roster of talent and then if your roster's good enough, a publisher like Warner Chappell or someone might take you on." So that begins my foray into artist management. Takes me nine months to sign my first client and I'm 23, I think, then. Or 24. I'm sorry, I said I'd do a short version of this, and this is [crosstalk]-- DOYIN: 06:52 It's okay. The long version's more interesting. CHARLIE: 06:54 Okay. And sign the first client, and then the adventure starts there. And we split into two strands, the real paid work and the kind of make-believe management work on the side. After 18 months at Warner Chappell, I go to Polydor as an analyst. It's my first time working as an analyst in the industry. I think I got that job because I'd recently watched Moneyball and I just was talking about the film in the interview and that was the level everyone was at in 2013. So 2013, go into Polydor as an analyst. 18 months there. And I leave to be a consultant analyst, just shop my work around and focus on management full-time. It's going quite well. I've partnered up with a really good friend, and we're now signing some deals that seem to be working. We've managed to develop to a certain point. And then I spend two or three years focusing purely on that, the artist management and doing a bit of analytics consultancy. Lots of touring. Lots of making shit up as you go along. The final two steps are: take a year out of music and go and production-manage some amazing and bombastic science shows. Lots of explosions. Come back to music. Work in artist management again. And then spend two years then leave that. Management is hard work and I needed a break. Here is the callback. Luckily, I got a call from the person who is now the president of Warner Records, who had been one of the A&Rs when I was an intern at Warner Chappell and had been talking to and he said, "Go get your roster." And he'd heard that I was a good analytical manager and he was like, "What would you do if you came into Warner Records?" And I was like, "Phase one is data literacy and communication, and that once we can all share a language, then we can start cranking out some cool stuff that we can all apply." And I've been there three years, since. DOYIN: 09:00 So it came full circle, essentially? CHARLIE: 09:03 Yeah. And the music industry always does that. They all go full circle constantly, as long as you've kind of hopefully made a few good connections on the way up. DOYIN: 09:14 And not burned any bridges along the way because it's a small, small world. CHARLIE: 09:17 Yeah. Like I said, I managed to get fired on my first job, so I think I've definitely burned a few bridges but-- DOYIN: 09:25 But you built some too, right? CHARLIE: 09:26 Yeah. Yeah. Building bridges. DOYIN: 09:29 Yeah. I think you mentioned something interesting, which was, I guess, when your dreams of a rockstar, rockstardom if that's even the term, fell away, you decided to go into artist management. And then there was a point where you spoke about the switch into analytics. Can you talk a bit about that and what made you divert into analytics/data consultancy? Because there are loads of artist managers today that don't take that route. CHARLIE: 09:57 Yeah. It's a lovely debate. It's a fun one for a fireside chat energy because you-- well, my rhetoric ends up stepping away from data or analytics as a kind of isolated thing. It's just vocabulary for describing a journey or an action or an event or something. So the idea that data and analytics, yeah, is kind of compartmentalised, is-- DOYIN: 10:34 Is wrong? Are you basically saying it's always been a part of your journey? CHARLIE: 10:35 I'm not saying you're wrong. No, I'm not saying you're wrong. DOYIN: 10:37 Oh, okay, good. Because I'm always right. CHARLIE: 10:41 I think that's a consequence of slightly corporate thinking about it. But our president of Warner Records has a really lovely way of referencing it and his expertise as an A&R-- this is Joe Kentish. I'm paraphrasing, trying to quote his expertise at A&R-- within A&R is grounded in the fact his seen and helped to create thousands and thousands of songs. So he is an analyst within the context of his domain. Maybe he doesn't have certain technical tools but the transition that we're kind of focusing on is not that meaningful a change in the sense that the data was always there and-- DOYIN: 11:27 Was it that the data was always there and it always existed but nobody had tapped into it? CHARLIE: 11:32 Yeah, to a manner of speaking. And providing structure to the conversation within the context of the creativity that we work within. Warner and the maturing kind of analytics marketplace, the way I think of it is-- it's all about the definition of success and how we move our creative partners on a journey from point A to a shared definition of success. It's a kind of formalisation perhaps, of a process that you always have the potential to do and it can be very numbers based or in a database or it can be very intuitive or expertise human-led. And it's all valid. Part of the joy and the excitement and the challenge is around pulling at all these strands and trying to tease them into a structured format, which is then scalable and criticisable in a kind of logical fashion. DOYIN: 12:30 So essentially, solving business challenges in a creative way. CHARLIE: 12:33 Ah, no that's-- DOYIN: 12:34 Did I summarise that well? CHARLIE: 12:35 --so good. DOYIN: 12:37 Okay. But you know what, we're going to talk about that a bit further on. But what I really wanted to get at is, I guess, you went from being an artist manager-- and by that, you were touring with artists. You were supporting them, perhaps getting them booking for gigs and all that good stuff. CHARLIE: 12:54 Find their socks. Where did they put-- DOYIN: 12:56 It's so different-- CHARLIE: 12:56 --their socks? You've got to get their shoes on. DOYIN: 12:57 --from what you do today. CHARLIE: 12:59 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. DOYIN: 13:01 It is. You're not looking after an artist today. CHARLIE: 13:04 No, indirectly. DOYIN: 13:04 Well, you are but not in the same way. CHARLIE: 13:06 Yeah, totally. I think it's good to-- sorry to any artist managers listening, just the socks comment. I don't want to be patronising. My point is it's a crazy job but you have to do-- there's all sorts of weird things you have to do to keep the wheels on the bus when push comes to shove. I think that is invaluable. And if I get a soapbox, which you're kind of giving me here bit, and I'm saying, "What makes a good analyst?" it's to know your domain. And the experiences that artist manager face, experiences in publishers and labels, has given me such close proximity to what the final task is and a understanding of how hard our colleagues have to work and how hard the artists are having to work and what it means to be creative in a commercial context and the wild, wild challenges that that brings up as a human. The emotional response to a lot of the challenges. That then totally frames how I try and communicate as an analyst and reprioritise, consistently, the audience perspective, so. The audience is always right, sort of thing. The customer is always right. And I think, to endeavour to create a good analytic resource or good analytical resources, you have to prioritise that in a big way. DOYIN: 14:34 So all of that makes sense. But I guess the point that I'm trying to come back to is what made you decide, "Today I am not just going to be an artist manager, I am going to be an analyst. I'm going to look at where my artists fall upon the charts. I am going to dig into the data and see whether they're going to be number one next week"? What was the switch? The reason why I ask this question, right, is because I think there are a lot of people that are interested in careers in music. And there may be some young listeners who are interested in music but they don't want to be an artist. They don't want to be an artist manager. And I kind of want to use this platform as a way to get them to think about all the options available to them. CHARLIE: 15:16 Love that. Okay. DOYIN: 15:17 So it'll be really good if you could shed some light as to what advice you'd give a young person who's considering a career in music, that's not literally being the face, right, but behind the scenes, supporting the label as you do. CHARLIE: 15:30 Yeah. I love that intention. DOYIN: 15:33 Let's give them some insight. CHARLIE: 15:34 Yeah. So number one, easier to get paid as an analyst than an artist manager, especially with the rise of tech companies and all the data that comes with that. A couple of things. There's an immense amount of work done behind the scenes. Whether you consider yourself mathematically strong or strong in a STEM subject or not, I would encourage at least an investigation into the analytical space because, number one, you have the tools available to you, such as Alteryx, to navigate lots of complicated technical thinking in a really easy and direct way. I'm running things way beyond my kind of skill grade thanks to Alteryx. So for those of you that feel a little bit sceptical about the availability of this path to you, I'd say go for it. There are people doing the work to make things easy for you and yeah, it's a lot more achievable than you think there. DOYIN: 16:41 And sorry to cut you, but-- CHARLIE: 16:42 That's all right. DOYIN: 16:43 --you did a physics degree, right? CHARLIE: 16:44 Yeah. DOYIN: 16:45 And you're really good at maths and science. So would they need to have a degree like that? Could they have any sort of background? Is that important in the music industry? CHARLIE: 16:57 The priority situation for now, I think, is diversity of thought and diversity of approach to problems and diversity experience. And I didn't know this at the time when I was doing my physics degree-- analytics has become a domain within the music industry over the past few years. So I didn't kind of plan this or anything. I was lucky and I've been able to use the fact I had a physics degree to my advantage. So do you need to do a STEM-- so STEM is science, technology, engineering, maths. Do you need to do a STEM degree? Potentially helps in one sense, but absolutely not necessary. Like I say, Alteryx is providing products that will happily tackle those sorts of technical challenges. We've fairly recently, it's probably a year by now, employed a member of staff and the outstanding factor that swung it in their favour was the creativity that they dealt with the problem. So we set some problems for them to deal with in the interview process and theirs was very distinctly, "Oh, wow, I would never have thought to do it that way; that's really important to get in the room. They've communicated really well alongside it. Let's go." That's the agenda. And I appreciate that sort of creativity can take a certain type of confidence and few daunting-- and there's work to be done perhaps in outreach and making sure people are aware that they have that kind of innate ability and stuff. That's a thing to be tackled. But we're upskilling people into analytics spaces at the moment at Warner, who are explicitly not from a STEM background, but they bring unique takes and that's the priority. DOYIN: 18:55 No, it makes sense. Earlier on, you just-- well, just now you touched upon diversity of thought. It's interesting because I'm very passionate about diversity, equality, inclusion, and belonging, and I'd really love to hear how you think DEI and B relates to work culture, especially from a perspective as an analyst. CHARLIE: 19:18 Yeah. Absolutely. I think they are deeply entwined. And I'd be interested in your feedback on this, actually. Let me know whether you think the thinking's in the right direction. DOYIN: 19:29 Sure. CHARLIE: 19:29 Psychological safety is the number indicator of a high-performing team. Often the people at Alteryx are dealing with major record labels and all the other incredible tech companies you're working with. These are now just high-performing teams. And if we are looking to optimise our skill sets, psychological safety is foundational to the communication and high performance of the team and the ability to adapt, to react to insight. So a company has to go through quite significant changes if it's a legacy company now trying to sustain an analytical ecosystem. And so everyone in the room has to be ready to kind of reflect and communicate on that level. That just seems intrinsically tied to agendas of validating your peers. Being seen. Hearing people, effectively. It's about the foundation of success is [ran through?] democracy and honest communication. Quality communication is intrinsically related to a DEI agenda because it's about bringing your true selves into the space. DOYIN: 20:48 Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry. I completely agree. So for me, it's all about authenticity and feeling like I can bring my whole self to the workplace, right? So when you speak about honesty and equality and how I'm communicating, how I'm being perceived, I'll only feel comfortable to do that if I am working in an environment where that's encouraged. Where the culture is positive, where I feel heard, where I feel people will respect whatever I bring to the table even if they don't necessarily agree with what I'm saying, so. I think that's where diversity of thought is important, I guess, within the music industry because your audience is varied. It's people from all kinds of walks of life. And so having a diverse team who can hopefully relate in some way to different people, I think you're more likely to bring out better music, be a better company, and hopefully one that talented people want to work for. CHARLIE: 21:46 Yeah. Absolutely. And what we can end up finding is when we're on these journeys of instilling change in our environments, the response that you receive to providing new analytical solutions-- within an analytical role, you're often given the role of effecting change, so you are reporting some information to either support an action or change an action. Actionable insights. And the experience of communicating at scale and then being met, potentially, with people that don't necessarily absorb the information or you have miscommunicated in a way that makes the information unable to reach your intended audience. And then when you kind of step into the exercise of self-reflection and what is happening internally, for me, as a communicator and just a human in this network of other people and how can I reach them and how can I help them change their mind? And what resistances do I feel as a person when I'm either experiencing my own resistances to change? I think that's what I'm trying to tap into when I'm saying a kind of analytical progression goes hand in hand with the DEI agenda because we're having to go through fantastic periods of change and-- DOYIN: 23:21 And analyse it as we go along. CHARLIE: 23:22 Analyse it. And the resistances that people experience. You're watching whole groups of people resist to a DEIB-- I haven't heard DEIB before so I'm interested in bringing belonging into my vocabulary. DOYIN: 23:37 Well, you've already been discussing it, you just didn't mention it. When you spoke about honest and quality communication, right, that's what you said, yeah, well, you can't do that if don't feel like you belong. Like if I don't feel like I'm part of a group, I won't feel comfortable to voice my opinion in that group. It's the same kind of concepts. CHARLIE: 23:57 And then when you are now in a position of leadership or [crosstalk]-- DOYIN: 24:02 Soon come. CHARLIE: 24:03 Soon come. DOYIN: 24:04 I'm just manifesting it. CHARLIE: 24:05 Manifesting. But as a communicating leader-- I've seen you talking to the Queen. Everyone go google it. You're a communication leader. And as we communicate, we'll watch little groups of people either accept the communication or reject the communication. That's the analogy I'm trying to kind of tease out in this conversation between the spaces. It's like, "Okay, there I've got a win, I can double-down my resources and we can begin elevating and celebrating together." But I've got this group here that's not listening and now I have to go into reflective like, "Do I change?" But does that compromise my authenticity? I've got to take them on a journey somehow and how do I do that? DOYIN: 24:53 Through compromise. CHARLIE: 24:55 Sure. Teach me. DOYIN: 24:55 I think everyone can be authentic, everyone can voice their opinion, but at the same time, everyone needs to be aligned. So you can't go off option A, you can't go off option B, but you can find the middle ground. And I think that's where analytics and data comes into play. Because you have the human side which is, "This is how I view this data," and then you have the logical side which is, "This is literally what the data is telling us." And then you've got people interpreting it in different ways. And you just have a discussion about it and you come to a common ground, right? CHARLIE: 25:30 Absolutely. And I guess it's the mechanics of that discussion which is a fascinating point. I love exploring the psychology of it all and how it all-- DOYIN: 25:41 But that's what's needed to solve, I think, personally anyway, business challenges today. So we need the tools like Alteryx to help us unlock the data and the insights but then we need a diverse pool of thought to really interpret that data and make sure that whatever we implement, is relatable to a diverse audience. CHARLIE: 26:02 Amen to that. DOYIN: 26:03 I think that's where the two marry. CHARLIE: 26:05 Yeah. And Alteryx is set up to democratise the data conversation. So phase one within our strategy is very much about the literacy and data confidence of everyone in the room. DOYIN: 26:20 And hopefully, people like yourself can, I guess, continue to support other analysts in improving their data confidence, right? I mean, our organisation aims to do that with our tools. You aim to do that with your experience and the tools in your mentoring. And I think, just to wrap it all up, I think it's really great to see how far you've come from dreams of being a rockstar-- CHARLIE: 26:43 Still dreaming. DOYIN: 26:45 --to kind of not doing so great in your A-Levels but using that detour to find yourself as the analyst and future music executive - I said it here first - that you're going to be. So thank you so much for sharing that. And I think it's really important as well, what you spoke around psychological safety, us feeling like we can be heard and we belong and that our opinion is at least heard and that we have a seat at the table to discuss some of these topics, right, because that's the only way we can hopefully find some solutions to some of the challenges that we face. CHARLIE: 27:21 Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. DOYIN: 27:23 I've got one final question for you, Mr Charlie Torrible and that is what advice would you give to anybody that's listening today? Because the reason why I say that and before I go into it, don't give the stereotypical advice which is just, "Work hard." We know that. What I mean-- CHARLIE: 27:38 Oh, no. Protect yourself. DOYIN: 27:40 What I mean-- CHARLIE: 27:40 Don't work too hard. I've done the working hard; it doesn't pay. Just protect yourself. DOYIN: 27:45 Let me clarify that question. When I say advice, I mean you've obviously gone through a lot of hurdles but you still managed to stick to your career in music. You found a different way for yourself. You've created a path for yourself that perhaps you didn't know existed. So with that in mind, what advice would you give to anyone listening today? CHARLIE: 28:06 If you can, get in a mindset where you enjoy the process of learning. DOYIN: 28:12 That's good. CHARLIE: 28:14 Because then you can hop and skip your way around anything, really, I think. That's the only thing. I never want to advocate for uni as a solution, as there's going to be so many ways to build up the skill sets. In my journey, I definitely look to my uni experience for being the space in which I really developed confidence in learning and also had things like all the societies. I went for election in various societies and started learning how to fail a bit as well. DOYIN: 28:49 Really quickly, what uni did you go to? CHARLIE: 28:50 Southampton. DOYIN: 28:51 Okay. Shoutout, Southampton. CHARLIE: 28:52 Big up, Southampton. Physoc. If anyone was in the physics society, whoop-whoop. And so I know what channel worked for me. Ah, man, this part breaks my heart a little bit sometimes because a lot of people get fucked up by their teachers. The learning has been kind of-- or the joy of it has been beaten out of them by the time you, say, got to 16. Hey, here's a confession. I couldn't remember how to code at all. I did a tiny bit of coding at uni. I had no coding when I went back to Warner. And most of job now, apart from everything picked up by Alteryx, most of it requires some fairly substantial coding fundamentals. I got in, I was like, "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, can code." And then within a couple of weeks, it was like-- I'd called up few friends, so like, "Someone needs to teach me how to code." And then that got me far enough for six months, and then luckily for me, Alteryx turns up and that sees me through the next two and a half years. But just because I knew if I got in the door, I'm good to learn this. And I'm not a blagger. I'm not talking about the salesman energy of being like, "Yeah, I can do this," it's like-- DOYIN: 30:10 Quick disclaimer. We're not encouraging people to lie in interviews, just [crosstalk]-- CHARLIE: 30:13 Oh, no. Should I take that back? [crosstalk]-- DOYIN: 30:16 No, no. We don't need to. I get it. It was a thing that you knew that you could learn. Just because you weren't good at coding when you were 16, doesn't mean that you're not going to be good at it today, right? CHARLIE: 30:28 Exactly. But this has been foundational to, I think, most of my journey is when-- I quit music and became a production manager for science shows and we're touring the Middle East and we're touring the UK and some of Europe doing shows where we're blowing up hydrogen and things. And you're having to learn how to do risk assessments or tour managing other [artists?]. DOYIN: 30:52 You're always learning. CHARLIE: 30:54 Yeah. And it's just being like, "You know what, I'm going to be okay because I know how to learn something." I say that with love and if anyone wants to talk about that, please reach out on LinkedIn or socials. But also, I'm aware there is quite a lot-- DOYIN: 31:12 That's Charlie Torrible, by the way, on LinkedIn. CHARLIE: 31:14 Charlie Torrible, T-O-R-R-I-B-L-E. DOYIN: 31:16 Horrible but with a T. CHARLIE: 31:18 Exactly. Thank you so much. There is potentially quite a lot of privilege associated with that statement of like, "Just love learning." DOYIN: 31:29 What? Sorry. I have to disagree. I don't think so. I think everybody has access to the internet. And I think learning is not confined to a classroom. CHARLIE: 31:39 Absolutely. DOYIN: 31:40 And so when you say, "Never stop learning," it's like, "Well, never stop going on YouTube. Never stop going on Google. Never stop listening to podcasts. CHARLIE: 31:45 100%. Well, maybe if you've been on YouTube for eight hours, time to get off YouTube. DOYIN: 31:50 Agreed. But you know what I mean? Within reason. I think the point you're making is never stop remembering that you don't have all the answers but you can go and seek them. CHARLIE: 32:01 Thank you. DOYIN: 32:02 [inaudible]. MADDIE: 32:07 Thanks for listening. For resources mentioned in today's episode, including guides for getting started with Alteryx, check out our show notes at community.alteryx.com/podcasts. Catch you next time. [music] CHARLIE: 32:23 Ah, Doyin's the best. She kicks my ass constantly. But you know what--? DOYIN: 32:31 You're going to get my fired. CHARLIE: 32:34 No. No. Absolutely to my benefit. Full credit to Alteryx for getting someone so amazing on their team because-- DOYIN: 32:44 Oh, very sweet. CHARLIE: 32:44 --I joke with the ass-kicking but she is there and make sure I'm focused and make sure that Alteryx are really, I don't know, [inaudible]. They're constantly turbo-charging me. So I don't get any time to soften into lazy mode, there's always something we can be improving. That's not a question, that's a monologue. And so now I'm going to think of a question for Doyin. What's your favourite thing about Inspire so far? Has there been either a good talk you've seen or a favourite moment, or? Yeah. Favourite thing of Alteryx Inspire so far? DOYIN: 33:32 I think my favourite has been seeing my colleagues, friends, customers, partners thrive. I know that sounds very sort of generic but the reason why I say that is because I'm seeing people push themselves, whether it be speaking in public. Hosting on the stage. Demonstrating the progress they've had of Alteryx. Coming out for dinner and I guess, being more sociable if they're an introvert. I just see people evolving, and I think that's what Inspire's about, and so it's been really lovely to witness that and be a part of it. CHARLIE: 34:10 Yeah. Heck, yeah. We're on the Alteryx 11, I need to totally support that and want to share some gratitude for-- Alteryx has been great. They've given me some speaking platforms and it's done wonders for my progression in that space as well, so. Yeah. It's amazing seeing-- it's exactly as you said, thrive. You can feel people sharing excitement and fun ideas, and everyone's lectures are really good. Really good. I've given presentations. It's not easy to give good, clear 30-minute-- you go on a journey. You go from A. You go from B. Multiple skills levels in the room. Yeah, each one I've been like, "Damn, that was well-designed." DOYIN: 34:57 We've got some intelligent people but we've got some nice people as well. You know what I mean? CHARLIE: 35:02 I love that. Thank you. How long have you been at Alteryx? DOYIN: 35:05 I have been at Alteryx just over a year. Yeah. I started in October last year. CHARLIE: 35:12 And what was your journey to Alteryx? DOYIN: 35:14 As in prior to Alteryx? CHARLIE: 35:15 Yeah. DOYIN: 35:16 Okay. So prior to Alteryx, I worked at IBM. So I left school at 18, did a gap year at IBM. Went to university, but kept going back every summer. And then decided that I deserved to be fast-tracked because they were fast-tracking all the interns. So when I say interns, I mean placement students who gap year between second and third year of university. Even though I did a year before university, I had done every summer since. So I had actually done more time combined. So I put a case forward and they fast-tracked me into a graduate scheme. So I joined IBM. And from there, I just saw how they were using technology to answer some of the world's biggest problems and I was really intrigued. Never saw myself as a technical person. Still don't really feel like I am. But I like the fact that you can make a difference using technology. And I feel like it's going to be here forever and ever so we might as well embrace it. CHARLIE: 36:15 Until the machines-- DOYIN: 36:17 Until the bitter end. CHARLIE: 36:17 --uprise. DOYIN: 36:18 Well, it's never up, it's just going to keep evolving, so. CHARLIE: 36:20 Okay, that's good. DOYIN: 36:21 And then did a few years there and decided that it was time for a change, came over to Alteryx, and I've really enjoyed it. It's been a fun ride. And hopefully, it will continue to be. CHARLIE: 36:34 Yeah. Heck, yeah. And so you're our account exec. DOYIN: 36:41 Yes, I am. CHARLIE: 36:42 She's an amazing account exec. Like I said, just keeps us focused on progress and opening doors about all the new exciting things that we can do which I never even realised. DOYIN: 36:55 I didn't pay him to say that, just so you know. CHARLIE: 36:56 No, no, but this is-- DOYIN: 36:58 But it sounds like I did. CHARLIE: 36:59 No, but this is your authentic energy. It's given me a lot, so I want to kind of give back. It's funny the tone. Everyone is quite fanatical here. The event is called Alteryx Inspire, but. And I'm becoming one of these people. And I'm a little bit like, "Have I joined a cult?" DOYIN: 37:20 No, it's just good vibes. CHARLIE: 37:22 It is good vibes. I know. DOYIN: 37:23 A lot of high energy. CHARLIE: 37:24 I can leave any time I want. DOYIN: 37:26 Yes. CHARLIE: 37:27 I can't leave. DOYIN: 37:29 He's not chained or anything like that. Gosh. CHARLIE: 37:32 There's drinks and refreshments provided. Oh, man. What are you most excited about in, I guess the Alteryx road map, maybe? That's not quite the right word. You're responsible for us developing and onboarding with the tool. What gets you excited about it from your side? DOYIN: 37:56 About our products, or? CHARLIE: 37:57 Yeah. I don't really know what this question is. DOYIN: 38:01 I'm going to answer the question in the way that I think you're trying to say it-- CHARLIE: 38:03 Okay, let's do that. DOYIN: 38:04 --which is what am I excited about within our portfolio? CHARLIE: 38:08 Yeah. DOYIN: 38:09 And I think, for me, what's super exciting is Auto Insights. CHARLIE: 38:14 Oh, love it. DOYIN: 38:15 Yes. No, but the reason why I love it is because I genuinely think it's a great product. And we had [Adam?] in the conference or Natalie, who manages Auto Insights, so. The reason why I think it's great is because I do think it actually solves a business challenge that a lot of customers have, which is they've got to share information in real-time to executives who may not understand all the mechanics that takes place within a dashboard, right? And sometimes you know there's information there but you don't know what you don't know. And I think it's really cool that-- CHARLIE: 38:51 Oh my God. DOYIN: 38:51 --it highlights that. And I think it's great that it highlights that in plain English as well because we're not all techies and so I think sometimes simplicity is the superpower that's needed to just kind of get on with things and that's what Auto Insights does. CHARLIE: 39:10 Love it. Smashed it. DOYIN: 39:12 Thanks. CHARLIE: 39:12 I'm going to go to the Auto Insights booth. I need to go check that out. Because I have been told multiple times, not just by Doyin, by multiple people, that the problems I am verbalising or the challenges I'm facing I want solutions for, can be fixed in that. So I need to get my head out the sand, go and check it out. Thanks for tuning in to Charlie's half of the podcast, guys. DOYIN: 39:39 Thanks for having me, Charlie. CHARLIE: 39:41 Anything you want to-- anything you want to share? What do we do at the end? What you having for dinner? DOYIN: 39:48 What am I having for dinner? CHARLIE: 39:49 Have you got fancy dinner booked in? DOYIN: 39:50 I do. Yeah. CHARLIE: 39:53 Am I invited? Not to this one. DOYIN: 39:53 Maybe. CHARLIE: 39:57 Where are we going? Everyone, I don't know when this goes out but it's Doyin's birthday on Saturday. Blow up her Twitter. Do you have Twitter? DOYIN: 40:06 I do. CHARLIE: 40:07 What is it? DOYIN: 40:08 It's so boring, it's @doyinsonibare. It's very boring. CHARLIE: 40:11 Okay. Fantastic. Surname spelt-- DOYIN: 40:13 S-O-N-I-B-A-R-E. CHARLIE: 40:17 Amazing. Everyone go wish Doyin a happy birthday. Say thanks for being an amazing AE. And that's a wrap. DOYIN: 40:25 And that's a wrap. Thank you.

This episode was produced by Maddie Johannsen (@MaddieJ), and Mike Cusic (@mikecusic). Special thanks to @andyuttley for the theme music track, and @mikecusic for our album artwork.

Alter Everything Podcast

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122: Analytics at Warner Records

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This episode was produced by Maddie Johannsen (@MaddieJ), and Mike Cusic (@mikecusic). Special thanks to @andyuttley for the theme music track, and @mikecusic for our album artwork.