INBOX INSIGHTS: Risk Averse Leadership, Data in Motion (2026-01-14) - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

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INBOX INSIGHTS: Risk Averse Leadership, Data in Motion (2026-01-14)

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Dealing with Risk-Averse Leadership

I know many of you are trying to grow your business right now, but it feels like you’re shouting into a hurricane. You’re trying to convince clients to buy your services, but everyone is anxious, distracted, or just completely overwhelmed. It’s your job to put them at ease, but you’re not always sure how to do that without sounding like a pushy salesperson.

I get it. I struggle with high-functioning anxiety myself, and I know that when I’m overwhelmed, the last thing I want is someone trying to “close” me. I want someone to help me find the floor.

If you want to move an anxious leader from “paralyzed” to “partnership,” you have to stop thinking about the transaction and start thinking about the relationship. Here is how you lead with patience.

1. Validate the Reality

When someone is anxious, they aren’t looking for the most innovative solution; they’re looking for the safest one. The first thing you need to do is tell them: “You’re not crazy for feeling this way.”

Acknowledge that the landscape is moving too fast. Acknowledge that they’ve probably been burned by “experts” before. When you validate their stress, you aren’t just being nice—you’re letting them know that you see them as a human being, not just a lead in your pipeline.

2. Give Them the “Exit” Strategy

This sounds counterintuitive, but the fastest way to get a “Yes” is to give them permission to say “No.”

Anxiety comes from a feeling of being trapped. If a prospect feels like they’re being backed into a corner, they will bolt. I make it a point to say, “My goal isn’t to sign you today. My goal is to see if we’re the right fit to solve this. If we aren’t, I’ll tell you, and you can walk away with no hard feelings.”

When you remove the pressure, you create the space for them to actually breathe. You aren’t “losing control” of the sale; you’re building a foundation of trust.

3. Exercise Radical Patience

We all feel the pressure to hit our numbers. I get it—trust me, I’m a CEO, I look at the data every day. But that pressure is a trap. If you push an anxious leader before they are ready, you don’t just lose the sale—you risk losing the person forever.

Think of it like gardening. You can’t scream at a seed to grow faster; you have to make sure the soil is right and the water is there.

A “No” right now is often a “Not yet.” If you stay in their corner without being pushy, you’re the first person they’ll call when the budget opens up or the timing is right.
Grace leads to referrals. Even if they don’t hire you, you can still make a great impression. If you helped them feel calm and clear during a tough time, they’ll share that. They might tell others, “I couldn’t hire them yet, but you should definitely talk to them. They really listen._”_
Disclaimer: If they say “no” and you get the sense that it’s a real “no,” respect it.

4. Transparency over “Polished” Pitches

Anxious people have a sixth sense for “bullshit.” If you gloss over a risk or pretend a complex project is “easy,” their internal alarm bells will go off.

Be the person who says, “This part is going to be a bit of a headache, and here is exactly how we’re going to manage it.” When you are honest about the obstacles, they trust that you are being honest about the results. Trust isn’t about being perfect; it’s about being predictable and reliable.

Your customers don’t need a hero; they need a guide. If you push too hard, you’re just another source of stress in an already loud world. But if you exercise patience, provide a “No-Fly Zone,” and focus on the human on the other side of the call, you aren’t just selling a service—you’re building an ecosystem of trust.

The takeaway: A bridge built on trust can carry a lot more weight than one built on a high-pressure sales tactic.

The next step: In your next meeting, stop trying to convince them why you’re great. Instead, ask: “What would ‘success’ look like for you right now that would actually let you sleep through the night?” and then just… listen.

How are you putting your team members at ease? Reply to this email or join the conversation in our Free Slack community, Analytics for Marketers!

– Katie Robbert, CEO

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In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss analyzing survey data using generative artificial intelligence tools.

You will discover how to use new AI functions embedded in spreadsheets to code hundreds of open-ended survey responses instantly. You’ll learn the exact prompts needed to perform complex topic clustering and sentiment analysis without writing any custom software. You will understand why establishing a calibrated, known good dataset is essential before trusting any automated qualitative data analysis. You’ll find out the overwhelming trend in digital marketing content that will shape future strategies for growing your business. Watch now to revolutionize how you transform raw feedback into powerful strategy!

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This week let’s talk about data in motion versus data at rest and how it applies to generative AI. These two terms refer to the state the data is in when we’re using it. Data at rest is data sitting someplace in storage, like a database. data in motion is data in transit, like streaming data.

As a simple example, imagine a movie you want to watch on Netflix. If you’re not currently watching the movie, the movie file just sits on a server somewhere at Netflix and is at rest. Once you queue up the movie and start watching it, Netflix is streaming that data to you, and that is data in motion.

Here’s how this applies to AI. When you are using a tool like ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude and you are having an active conversation back and forth with the AI, that is effectively data in motion. You are streaming data back and forth in conversation to the AI.

When you build software with coding languages like Python and you are having the script operate language models on your database, picking up a record, applying data to it, and putting the data back, that is effectively using AI with data at rest, especially if you’re working with it in batches.

Why do you need to know this? Partly because working with data in motion is significantly more complex than working with data at rest. When data is in motion, there is a lot more focus on things like latency and security to make sure the data is not being intercepted and that it gets to its destination in a timely manner. No one wants to watch a Netflix film that is stuttering and buffering.

That requirement for speed also means that when you’re using generative AI in real time, like having a conversation with it in a voice application, it has to use a faster, dumber model. No one wants to wait 15 seconds for the machine to think about something and return a response. So AI toolmakers have made voice models that are fast and interactive like a natural conversation, but at the expense of accuracy. Real-time voice models are much more likely to hallucinate because they have to get information and turn it back into audio very, very quickly.

The second reason you need to know this is because data in motion is significantly more expensive to work with than data at rest. Many AI providers have options for streaming, meaning the AI models working on data as it comes in, or in batches – and the pricing to work with batch APIs is often half the cost of streaming APIs. If you’re willing to wait a few minutes to get a result, you can get substantial cost savings when you’re embedding AI in your applications.

As more and more people embed AI into every facet of their business and technology this year, understanding the difference between data in motion and data at rest could mean the difference between medium-sized bills and extra large bills when it comes to working with AI.

Almost every AI course is the same, conceptually. They show you how to prompt, how to set things up – the cooking equivalents of how to use a blender or how to cook a dish. These are foundation skills, and while they’re good and important, you know what’s missing from all of them? How to run a restaurant successfully. That’s the big miss. We’re so focused on the how that we completely lose sight of the why and the what.

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