Okay, this might sound a little out there, but stick with me because I think it’s something worth getting excited about, especially if you’re newer to all this.
I’ve been on a project the last few weeks that’s kind of rewired how I think about my whole online business.
I want to share it because I think it’s where things are headed for all of us, and the earlier you start thinking this way, the better positioned you’ll be when the easier tools catch up.
Here’s the basic problem we all have.
Our data lives in a million different places. My Pinterest stats are on Pinterest. My Facebook page numbers are on Facebook. My email list, the names, the open rates, who clicked what, that’s over in Kit (or whatever email provider you use). My affiliate clicks are on whatever dashboard each program gives me. And on, and on.
Every time I want to figure something out, like “what kind of content actually drives my email signups?”, I have to log into four different sites, eyeball the numbers, and try to hold it all in my head at once.
It’s exhausting, and honestly, I miss a lot.
So I did something about it.
Most of these platforms have something called an API, which is just a fancy word for “a way to grab your own data out of a platform.”
I started pulling my own data out of each place: my Pinterest pins, my Facebook posts, my full email list with all the engagement info, and putting it all into one big organized spot that I control (on a self-hosted Hetzner server running the open-source code of NocoDB if we want to get technical).
That alone made things easier.
But here’s where it gets fun.
I then connected it all to AI, (Claude or ChatGPT, either one) directly to all that data. Now when I want to know something, I just ask.
“Which of my Pinterest pins in the last 90 days dropped (or increased) significantly in outbound clicks?”
“What do my best email campaigns all have in common?”
“What’s actually moving the needle for the FB posts that are performing?”
Pretty cool honestly.
Obviously, setting this up isn’t something that is immediate, and it took me a few weeks to map all of this out and get everything connected.
But I do think this is the direction everything is moving, and within the next year or two it’s going to get a whole lot easier for the rest of us.
Easier tools. Done for you services. Buttons instead of code.
What I want you to start doing now is thinking about your data differently.
Don’t just look at numbers when a platform happens to show them to you. Start a little list of questions you wish you could ask about your business, the ones the platforms never quite answer.
Because soon, you’re going to be able to ask them. And the folks who already know what questions they want to ask are the ones who are going to win when this lands in our laps.
Exciting times ahead!
