Meet Candie Perkins

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Candie Perkins. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Candie, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

My work ethic was instilled in me from a young age, both from my incredibly-hard working father, and my commitment to athletics as a four-sport athlete in high school.

My dad was a farmer that was up at the crack of dawn everyday, never taking a day off and working until the sun set. He also ran a small business – a gas station / convenience store / car wash at the gateway to Bryce Canyon in Panguitch, Utah.

When I was younger, he was very intentional about instilling the value of hard work and never quitting. The work ethic that he modeled to me was all that I knew – so it was the one that I adopted from a young age. I started working at our family’s business at 11 years old, working the cash register, helping customers, and stocking grocery shelves. By the time I was in high school, I was playing four different sports competitively, arriving at the gym at 5am for dance practice, sometimes not going home until after my 7pm basketball game. This work ethic has been a driving force in my life, and was only recalibrated when I had children and it became necessary to balance life and work in a much different way than I had done before.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m the CEO and Co-Founder at Datafy, an analytics and ad-tech firm that’s creating new ways to optimize data and technology to help communities and retailers execute smarter marketing and drive growth. I lead an incredible team of data scientists, software engineers, digital advertisers, and tourism and retail experts. Together, we were the first-to-market in creating a full-circle solution that expertly incorporates advertising, attribution and analytics all under one roof.

We started out primarily as a geolocation and analytics company; in the last three years, we’ve incorporated several additional big data sets, become industry-leading internal software developers, and brought ad-tech and advertising capabilities in-house. At our inception, we focused primarily on companies within the travel and tourism space – but what I’m most excited about this year is how that scope is expanding to new verticals.

In 2025, we’re going to be showing our innovation around some of the new big data sets that we’ve been working with, paired with data that we’ve been working with for years (like credit card, geolocation data and transportation data) and start solving challenges for other industries and verticals like retail, attractions, and economic development.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Three qualities / skills / area of knowledge that were impactful in your journey:

-Adapt the mindset of a life-long learner: I take a lot of pride in identifying as a life-long learner. I’ve always had a strong desire to seek out new information and dive into my understanding of how things work. I never want to stop growing my knowledge and expanding my capabilities.

-Say yes to opportunities that scare you… But know when to say no, too: Having the courage to say yes to opportunities that scare me has been a key element to my success… But knowing when to say no has been just as important to my story. I’m an entrepreneur and a CEO, but I’m also a wife and a mother to four children. Developing boundaries, learning to say no, and delegating when necessary has been critical to managing time, stress, and maintaining the work / life balance necessary to really show up for the people that mean the most to me.

-Make people a priority: I always say that the most important IP that a company can have is its people. I believe in placing an oversized importance on hiring the right people, and then taking care of them. We do it because it’s the right thing to do – but the reality is that it’s good business practice, too. I regularly ask myself: Are the people around me thriving? I believe that a thriving team is one of the best ways for a leader to track and understand how well he or she is doing at their job.

Advice to folks early in their journey:

-Define your purpose: Developing and maintaining a strong sense of purpose is so important in the early days of any career. It’s important to keep asking yourself: What do I want to achieve? And why does it matter? Challenges will always continue to arise, but maintaining your strong sense of purpose will help weather the challenges and stay true to what you’re working towards.

-Be willing to listen and observe: Being willing to observe and listen means taking feedback wholeheartedly from clients and employees – doing so has helped me create a more approachable environment for employees, and has been a critical part of making Datafy’s products so powerful and well received – because meeting the needs of clients is a lot easier when you’re genuinely eager to listen to what those needs are.

-Embrace change: Everything shifts so quickly right now – in the technology arena, but also in the world in general. Proactively embracing change – or even seeking it out – is the only way to experience long-term success. Those who do not will be left behind by those that are willing and able to adapt.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

I was fortunate enough to spend a good part of my career working with some of the best and brightest leadership gurus in the industry: Will Marre, Stephen M.R. Covey and Greg Link from CoveyLink, the team behind The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The book remains one of my all-time favorite books to re-read and to recommend to others – and not just because I got to work on it. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is full of tangible advice for people to put to use in their professional and personal lives, and each habit has something useful to offer the reader – but the one that always spoke to me the most was Habit #5: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” It touches on how important it is to be willing to consider new perspectives and to think critically about your understanding of how things work. It has undoubtedly impacted the way that I prioritize observation and listening as a critical professional skill, and I believe can be a powerful asset for anyone who wants to take a more holistic approach to leadership.

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