Focus group

You good? I'm good.

We're just here, you know, with our focus group.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, if you think about it, our listeners and viewers are our focus group, you know? All right, give me a hands up if you like Marissa Garza.

like marissa

what are you doing

okay all right i'm pretty like i Give a hand up.

Just

We are bringing you her conversation with Dan Pfeiffer from Pod Save America.

They talked about how Sarah got into conducting these focus groups, how we do them, what political professionals take away from these in general.

I think it's a great conversation, especially if you're new to the show, new to what we do around here.

And she'll be back with a regular episode next week.

Yes.

All right, Sarah, welcome to the club and congratulations on your new book.

Let's start with the most basic of things, because your work is driven by focus groups, your podcast is about focus groups.

What you have found in these focus groups is going to undergird much of the conversation we're going to have tonight.

But it's why I, you know, I'm such a big believer, um, in not just relying on the numbers.

It's why I think the qual and the focus groups are so important.

And actually, I, you know, I believe in the, the Bezos maxim that when, you know, the quant and the qual disagree, and, and-

Just talk us through.

Yeah

... that you're sat around.

And if foc- if polling can tell us what people think, focus groups usually tell us why-

Why

This is a qualitative because we're looking at the experience of program directors.

These were semi-structured focus groups.

These were EMS program directors.

There was, I want to ask you a little bit about how you recruited because there's a great description of it, but I'm not sure, you know, exactly if someone was out there thinking about doing their, you know, a thesis or a dissertation, a little bit of research, how they would get this.

But so there were focus groups of EMT and paramedic program directors, and there was a targeted recruitment.

And you mentioned a national certification database.

Yes.

So, uh, we use a lot of those, uh, you know, the NSAMSO regions to look at, uh, so you can kind of cross compare and see if you get the representative sample, that kind of thing.

You know, that means, OK, let's go see, explore, ask.

And like Focus Groups, we do meetings, we do interviews, you know, to understand what is the thing that we need to do.

And as I told you before, you know, I am a professional in education, but first I am a Zapotec.

So one thing that I really like to keep in and say is we don't want to go in another place or another community with this flag saying that we know, you know, it's much better if we never having that, you know.

yeah

yeah so let's uh we're gonna hop into the break get into our focus group and break down the uh film get into spoilers coming up after this all right welcome back from break we're in our focus group segment breaking down the plot from here on out we will be spoiling the film we're gonna throw it to andy to cover the big bang here uh does it sizzle or fizzle uh andy you have something you want to say about the opening of this film

Yeah, well, the two kind of plots hit me in this scene.

One was the B plot with Mr. Blakey, the kid who loses his arm.

And there's a lot of really insightful pieces, uh, that you can learn about the business.

The opportunity, as you kind of stated, is we get into a place where it's how do you take that information and, and learn from it like it's the largest focus group in the world? 'Cause it is.

Uh-

Mm.

But what were they saying in those reviews? How frequently did things like, "Our wait time is unacceptable," or, "I, I really love this staff member.

I really didn't like this staff member.

Um, I really loved the process when I bought a car, but the c- process when I was servicing my car, uh, I need to have these things," or, "I really wish pickup and delivery was an option." All of those things are just little signals that are coming in, and those signals are so valuable for those that are willing to listen, right? So if you think about the free focus group that's out there, um, and for the dealers that work with us, our average is, you know, greater than 500 reviews per year.

You think about a focus group of 500 customers telling you what to do, that's extremely valuable.