Hey there!

Welcome back to another edition of The Automated Growth Blueprint.

I'm Travis Steffen, and in my quest to build a fully-automated, 7-figure, one-person business, I’ve found that I’ve spent a good chunk of time each week analyzing data and analytics.

While I don’t think I will ever want to be completely out of the loop on data analysis, I realized I wanted a substantial shortcut.

In other words, I wanted data - and, if possible, data analysis - sent TO me rather than me having to go fish for it.

In my head, I envisioned something that delivers data and data analysis to me daily, weekly, and monthly, along with data analysis and recommendations.

I also wanted the ability to chat with the tool to get quick answers as I would to a data analyst on my team.

As a quick disclaimer, I have NOT found any third-party tools that satisfy 100% of my craving… but I found one that’s useful and does SOME of what I’ve described above.

That’s a start… and maybe the next step will be to extend it and/or build my own.

The tool I’m using is called Narrative BI, and I’m going to walk you through the brief process of setting it up.

(I am not at all affiliated with Narrative BI. If I’m ever affiliated with something I walk you through, there will be a disclaimer somewhere within that newsletter issue.)

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Step 1: Sign up

First things first, sign up for a free account with Narrative.bi.

Once you have, it’s pretty intuitive. Just follow their brief on-screen instructions, and you’ll have things squared away.

If you use Google Analytics at all, it should be relatively quick.

You can also integrate with Google Ads and Facebook Ads, which I haven’t done yet, but I will as soon as I flip those on.

Step 2: Wait a day or two

It will take at least 24-48 hours for some of the platform's real value to start to emerge. Their system needs a little time to crawl your data.

In the meantime…

Step 3: Integrate with Slack

Your first step here is to create a channel where your Slack updates from Narrative BI will go.

I just created one called #[COMPANY NAME]-narrativebi, which worked fine. (I’m using it for a few sites now, including one that’s brand new.)

From there, head into your Account Settings within Narrative BI, and click on Workspace Settings.

Slack is at the very bottom, but above it are a few helpful sections where you can set your frequency of new reports.

For now, I’ve selected basically every option - but this is up to you.

Slack is all the way down at the bottom. The view you see above took place AFTER I successfully integrated with one of my sites (TravisSteffen.com).

However, I created an account a few days ago with one of my newer sites, and here is an example of the first “daily report” I received.

Step 4: Upgrade for GPT Insights

As you can see in the prior screenshot, I’ve also upgraded for $90/month to unlock the GPT-powered insights, as this was part of what I mentioned I was craving.

Their GPT Insights feature loops in GPT-4 to provide an analysis and recommendations along with your reports.

After all, seeing what’s happening is pretty worthless if you don’t do anything about what’s happening - and for the busy entrepreneur, sometimes shortcuts like these can spark faster action.

Here’s an example of one of many ways Narrative BI provides these AI-driven insights for one of my newer sites:

Obviously you’ll see a lot of other visualizations and recaps in their newsfeed-style dashboard, some of which can be useful.

Here’s an example from TravisSteffen.com:

Step 5: Try out the hashtag filters

Looking for something specific? At the top of your Overview, you can select a hashtag or two to drill in a bit more.

Candidly, I’m not 100% sure why Narrative BI chose to use hashtags to filter their visualizations rather than just normal words… but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t negatively impact the experience in any real way.

Can I talk to the data conversationally like a few brand new tools are (very poorly) doing?

No, you can’t - BUT a good chunk of what I was craving has officially been satisfied!

I’ll likely look to extend the functionality here down the road by building something of my own (assuming nobody else does), and I’ll update you when that time comes.

→ Today's action steps: Take Narrative.bi for a spin. If you’re feeling it, try out the $90/mo upgrade to unlock GPT-4-powered insights to see if you get value from them. I believe you get a 7-day trial.

That’s all for today.

Stay hungry.

- Travis Steffen

If you have an idea for something you’d like to see in this newsletter, follow me on social media and let me know.

If you’re hungry for more, you can…

1. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter where I share bite-sized nuggets about starting, growing, and selling companies every single day.
2. DM me directly via social media with a specific question, and I can explore it for a future newsletter.

PS - I have four 100% free guides that are about to go live on TravisSteffen.com that will walk you through how I think about starting new companies (I’ve started dozens), growing any company systematically (I’ve helped hundreds of founders do this), raising venture capital (companies I’ve grown have raised nearly $100m), and selling your company (I’ve sold 8 so far).

Stay tuned…