Knowing Your Numbers, with our Creative Roundtable

KNOWING YOUR NUMBERS: HOW METRICS CAN STRENGTHEN CREATIVITY

What if numbers aren't the enemy of creativity—but one of its greatest allies?

In this special YOUR WORLD OF CREATIVITY roundtable, host Mark Stinson sits down with Alisa Sparks, Andrea Carter, and Rei Vardi to explore why creative people need to become more comfortable with numbers—not just financial numbers, but also data, activity, customer behavior, performance, relationships, belonging, and impact.

Together, the panelists discuss how meaningful metrics can guide better decisions, sharpen intuition, reveal hidden opportunities, strengthen customer experiences, and help creative ideas grow.

MEET THE PANELISTS

• Alisa Sparks grew Linden Creek from a garage startup into a nationally recognized home staging franchise. With a background in finance, she uses numbers to guide creative decisions, optimize client ROI, and help franchise owners build sustainable businesses. linden-creek.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisasparkslc/
• Andrea Carter is an organizational scientist and researcher whose work measures belonging, trust, culture, and human performance. Her research challenges leaders to look beyond averages and uncover the hidden stories within the data. www.belongingfirst.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreadcarter/ (https://theconversation.com/the-price-of-belonging-is-inconvenience-are-we-still-willing-to-pay-it-270778) https://substack.com/@andreadcarter https://www.adler.edu/faculty-engagement/faculty-directory/carter-andrea-d/
• Rei Vardi is the founder of EON Rides, an electric car-sharing and rental platform connecting underutilized vehicles with drivers through a frictionless digital experience. He focuses heavily on customer retention as a key measure of whether the experience truly works. eonrides.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/reivardi/

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS Is Creativity Constrained by Numbers—or Guided?

Rei suggests that numbers don't limit creativity—they define the problem. Data might reveal that customer retention is falling, outreach is too low, or a process isn't working. Creativity comes into play when we ask: How do we solve it?

Alisa agrees. Her background in finance became a competitive advantage in the creative world of home staging because she learned to start with the numbers and then ask: How do we create? How do we solve? How do we build?

What Should Creative People Actually Measure?

The answer depends on what you're trying to improve:

• Alisa tracks activity, especially how many new relationships and meaningful connections are being developed each week.
• Rei watches customer retention because repeat business is one of the clearest signs that people genuinely value the experience.
• Andrea looks beneath averages to uncover gaps in belonging, participation, engagement, and performance.

As Andrea explains: "The average score is the story that the leaders want. The distribution is the story employees and customers are living."

The Courage to Look at the Numbers

Numbers don't always tell us what we want to hear. A campaign may underperform. A hire may not work out. A business model may need to change. An idea may not gain traction. But avoiding the numbers doesn't change reality.

Andrea encourages creative people to look directly at the metric they've been avoiding and treat it not as a verdict, but as the beginning of a conversation. Alisa adds that intuition can be useful as a hypothesis—but it still needs to be tested.

Scaling Creativity with Metrics

Measurement can help a creative idea travel. Andrea's research on belonging began with 3,508 participants in the mining industry and eventually expanded across manufacturing, healthcare, finance, government, and nonprofits, impacting more than 150,000 employees.

Her perspective: "Unmeasured creativity is something that keeps us small. Measured creativity is what becomes repeatable by others."

Metrics can turn a creative insight into a system, methodology, or infrastructure that others can use.

The "Human" Numbers Behind Relationships and Community

Not every meaningful number appears on a financial dashboard. Andrea challenges listeners to observe their next meeting, dinner party, or gathering and count:

• Who speaks?
• Who gets interrupted?
• Who receives credit?
• Who gets remembered?
• Who hasn't spoken at all?

Her insight is simple but powerful: "Counting makes you notice, which makes you kinder."

Alisa shares a similar lesson from her first home staging project. The home sold for $30,000 over asking, which initially looked like a great business case study. But when the homeowner explained what that additional money would mean for his family, the number became something more.

The numbers may show us how we're making an impact. People remind us why the impact matters.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

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