Raw Data By P3 Adaptive

It's the last episode of Raw Data for 2021!  Thank you to all of our awesome guests for taking the time to tell their stories, and thank you to everyone that listened to us and supported this fun little thing that we do! This week's episode is a bit of a fun departure, as we peel back the curtain and talk a bit with Luke Pirozzoli, producer of Raw Data and Operations Manager at P3 Adaptive!  A story not necessarily data-based, but certainly as winding and different a path as any! We have some great episodes already recorded to start 2022 with a bang!  Happy Holidays! Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello friends. This is going to be our last episode for calendar year 2021. We've looked at the data and the data's very clear. Podcast listenership falls off during the holidays. Rob Collie (00:00:12): So today I thought we'd do something just a little bit different, little bit shorter, little bit of a lighter weight episode relative to our nearly two hour marathons we usually do and we're going to take a little bit of a peak behind the curtain and the subject. Rob Collie (00:00:24): The guest of honor for today's show is going to be none other than our good friend, Luke Pirozzoli AKA Luke the producer. There's been a lot of talk on this show over the last year and a half about career paths, career arcs, career changes, accidental career changes, happy accidents usually. Rob Collie (00:00:44): We're going to continue that theme today because Luke has definitely gone through one heck of a career change in the last year and a half, or has he? Rob Collie (00:00:53): Also, in this episode, we do a little bit of a review, a little Power BI review of the written transcripts of all 50 plus episodes to date. We throw out some glamor statistics. Rob Collie (00:01:06): And as a particularly outlandish bonus, at the end of this episode, the very, very end, you can hear the I think 11 minute audio of the one time that I called into Luke's radio show years ago. It's a little embarrassing. It's pretty funny. We'll let it roll uncut once the trailing music goes down, definitely stick around for that. Rob Collie (00:01:26): So he's listening to me record this introduction right now. Now he knows what we're going to talk about. I hope he's ready for it. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:34): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Luke Pirozzoli (00:01:39): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast with your host Rob Collie and your co-host Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:02:02): Welcome to the show, Luke Pirozzoli? Pirozzoli? No, Luke, Pirozzoli, welcome to the show. It's a little bit ironic, isn't it? Because you're always here, aren't you? Luke Pirozzoli (00:02:16): I am indeed. Hey, Rob. Hey, Tom. Oh. Tom not here. Rob Collie (00:02:23): Not yet, anyway. Tom might be joining us midstream. So you're basically here for every minute that we're recording over the course of what was it? How many shows have we done now? Luke Pirozzoli (00:02:33): What was it? 57, 56. What did I say? Rob Collie (00:02:36): We're actually recording our 60th right now, aren't we? And I think it's got to be a little weird for you, being such a silent member of the booth for so many episodes. Rob Collie (00:02:46): When until what? Semi recently, a year, year and a half ago, you were an on-air personality that did a lot of talking all day long every day it seemed like. Until late summer of 2020, what had you been up to professionally? Luke Pirozzoli (00:03:06): For a great deal of my 20s and 30s, late 20s and 30s and even in my 40s, I was a radio producer in Southeast Florida. I think I've lived in five or six counties on the Southeast side of the state Broward-Palm Beach. Rob Collie (00:03:24): Look at you world traveler. Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (00:03:27): Yeah. Just Southeast Florida. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:03:30): It's like, there was that Johnny Cash song, I've Been Everywhere, man. But it's like your entire list is like cities in south. Like, there's a little corner of South Florida. Luke Pirozzoli (00:03:38): It's all me. I am Florida man. Yeah. I've worked for iHeartMedia, formally Clear Channel, formally something else. But when I started with the company in 2003, it was Clear Channel at the time. Luke Pirozzoli (00:03:55): And then it went to iHeartMedia and yeah. For 17 years, I was in FM Talk Radio, which is a fairly exclusive club. A lot of people do Talk Radio, a lot of successful Talk Radio, not a whole lot of FM Talk, certainly no FM Talk stations. And I was a member of that very elite crew. Rob Collie (00:04:19): Yeah. And you broke into radio sort of the old fashioned way right. Decades ago now you're just sort of like hanging around the radio studio. Is that right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:04:27): So I was working for Mosquito Control in Indian River County. I moved to Vero Beach out of "college." I went to Gainesville, UF. Go Gators! For eight years. I got a two year degree, very proud of my statement. Rob Collie (00:04:42): That's a 25% efficiency. Eight years, two year degree. Luke Pirozzoli (00:04:49): I had a lot of fun. It was a very average student because I didn't go to class very often, but I was an entomology major for a while until I ran into organic chemistry. And couldn't rattle... Rob Collie (00:05:03): That was the Boss Battle. That was the... Luke Pirozzoli (00:05:05): Yeah. Boss Battle that I failed. I ran out of quarters. Rob Collie (00:05:10): Just like, just grab the controller up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right. Luke Pirozzoli (00:05:13): I actually worked for the College of Entomology for quite some time. I had a fascination with insects. Rob Collie (00:05:20): Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (00:05:20): Morphology and biology of... But the chemistry of what I needed to kind of fulfill the major was not in my cards. Rob Collie (00:05:29): Think about all the different semi exotic backgrounds, educational backgrounds so many of our guests have had. We've had the marine biologist and the, what was it? Medieval archeologist. Luke Pirozzoli (00:05:41): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:05:41): An entomologist, the bug guy. That'll take the Pepsi Challenge with some of these other things. Right? I do remember there being a point in your life where you're like, "Oh my God, man. I'm going to go do this radio thing. This is awesome." Luke Pirozzoli (00:05:57): I just listened to this... I started flipping around the radio stations locally because that was before smartphones, and any kind of streaming services at all in 2000. That's when I moved to Vero and got that job. Yeah. County job was great job with great venues. I just wasn't happy. I was listening to this radio station that I found. This very dirty, very raw, very tawdry. And for a 27 year old me, I was like, "Oh, that's cool." I'd been familiar with Howard Stern and Bob and Tom, and like the Big Heavies. But these guys were local and I'm like, "Wow. Like these guys are right in the backyard. Like what?" And they're talking about these places that I wanted to go, like these bars and these clubs. And I'm like, "Yeah. Party me!" And my young self, I was single. Luke Pirozzoli (00:06:40): I was making decent money working for the county. And, again, listening to this radio station, I wanted be a part of it. It sounded fun. The personalities were very funny. The callers were great. No topic was off limits. Listening, it was just fun. And so there I am, hanging around the radio station bothering the operations manager for about a year and a half. Actually, there's something else in there. A big piece of the story that I should add. I won a flyaway contest with the show called the Love Doctors on at the time it was Real Talk 927. And they had another little station that they added, 1017. And so they were flipping around frequencies, but always the Love Doctors, they had been a heritage part of the radio community for like 30 years. And these guys were funny. They were really funny. And they gave away this, you hear that dog? Rob Collie (00:07:32): Yeah, that's fine. Luke Pirozzoli (00:07:34): They gave away this trip that I happened to win. And the air producer at the time, Dano. Rob Collie (00:07:40): Oh! Hey, Tom. Tom's jumping in now in midstream. He has no idea. He has no idea what we're talking about. Let's sum up. End of your podcast. I decided that we would feature Luke as our guest and we're getting Luke's bio, we're getting Luke's origin story, which is a bit different from others. We're right at the point where he's transitioning out of his, it was an eight year, two year degree in entomology, the study of insects. Luke Pirozzoli (00:08:10): Correct. Rob Collie (00:08:10): And he was working for the county in somewhere in South Florida, which is the only place that Luke is allowed to live. And he's listening to this alien voice that's speaking to him like God. It's these local radio DJs, these talk show DJs that are... They're local to him. What year is this, Luke? Luke Pirozzoli (00:08:29): 2000. I found, I moved to Vero and then found the Love Doctors. Rob Collie (00:08:34): Okay. So he's working in Mosquito Control for the county, which you wouldn't think would give him a lot of time for other ambitions and dreams, but it turns out it did. And so he's eyeing this radio job. Now you're caught up. You're digesting the story so far? Thomas LaRock (00:08:49): If you could bring me up the speed, remind me who's Luke again. Rob Collie (00:08:54): Yeah. He's the one that speaks 7% less than you on... Thomas LaRock (00:08:59): That's not possible. I'm only at 6.9%. Rob Collie (00:09:01): Oh yeah. I was rounding. Thomas LaRock (00:09:07): Luke. I kid Luke, because he knows I love him. And he's awesome. And I think this is a great idea. So backing up a little bit, I'm very interested to know more about his origin story, but also the two of you, the origin story, and also the idea that, Rob, you've managed to hire and then fire, I don't know how many friends of yours throughout your life. Rob Collie (00:09:29): Yeah. Luke does represent a suspension of my recently acquired rule of not hiring anybody that I knew beforehand. But yeah, when I first got into business like this, I think it's a reasonably common instinct. Oh, let's go get the band back together like in Blues Brothers, like we'll just go collect all these people. And it turns out that having a prior relationship is almost like a contraindication of future success working together. Thomas LaRock (00:09:53): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:09:54): It's not even just like random chance. Like I think it's actually harder because those relationships, I guess, bring with them a history and expectations that don't really fit the professional world. I'm not even saying like expectations of favoritism or anything like that. I just think it started off as a personal relationship. You know the saying, "Liquor before beer and ever fear. Beer before liquor and ever sicker." Rob Collie (00:10:17): I think it's cool to work together and become friends, but being friends and then working together is like kryptonite. In addition to not working out most of the time, you also almost inevitably torture a relationship along the way. I had gone cold turkey, I was clean. I was excited. I had gotten my P3 number of people that I had known before P3. People at P3 other than my wife, which, for obvious reasons that one stays. I had gotten that number down to zero. Ah, and then I was like, "Oh and oh. I think we might have to suspend the policy. Just for a moment." Luke Pirozzoli (00:10:53): You wanted to start a podcast. Rob Collie (00:10:54): That's right. Luke Pirozzoli (00:10:54): And we were talking about my radio experience. We're also going back to 2003 when I started at iHeartMedia. And that's where we were discussing before you came in Tom. Obviously the 28 year old me, and you talk about it, Rob, how your younger self wasn't ready to do the things that you're doing now. Neither was my younger self. I didn't have the skills that you needed. I might have had the... Maybe the personality that would fit. But little else, I would imagine at the time, yeah. I just loved the concept of being a radio guy. It's a local celebrity at... Again, this is the mid to late twenties me. Rob Collie (00:11:36): All right. So, Luke, at this point in your life, you're listening to this radio show and you're like, "Ah, I think I... This is awesome. Maybe I could even do this." I got to ask, were you like one of the regular callers at this point? Luke Pirozzoli (00:11:47): I was a very irregular caller in that I didn't think my life was interesting enough in compared to the other callers. I mean, they had... Again, we're talking pre Janet Jackson Super Bowl where the FCC got involved in media. And so this local show and this local station was ridiculously hot talk. It was hot talk. Like Howard Stern at his worst. These guys were doing the same stuff only on a local level and slipping under all the radar, for sure. The FCC radar. Rob Collie (00:12:20): It wasn't Bubba the Love Sponge, was it? Luke Pirozzoli (00:12:22): No, he's a Tampa guy. We were very aware of Bubba, because I worked in Morning Radio in Miami for a little bit of my career as well. That was probably the peak of my professional status, I guess, because Miami's a pretty big media market. And More Morning Radio was pretty big. Rob Collie (00:12:44): To show you how big Luke was at that time, I went down in, I think, 2017. Down to Fort Lauderdale to meet with a client. And I said, "Oh, why the heck not? Why not look up a couple of friends from down there that I haven't seen since early middle school?" That turned out to be mm, interesting. Right? That was an interesting thing. So these guys are hanging out in my hotel room. I haven't seen them in forever. These people were on the scene in my life at the same time Luke was, they overlapped. So these people knew Luke from back in the day. While I was talking to them, Luke even comes up in the conversation between the three of us talking about this guy that was this producer on this radio show in Miami. Rob Collie (00:13:29): And it just was a random thing that came up and they didn't even know that they were talking about the Luke that they knew from back in the day. They had no idea that that was the same guy, because when I vanished from the scene, they lost touch with each other. And they knew like half of Luke's life story at that point. They're like, "Oh my God, we knew this and this and this and this." Right? And they didn't even live in Miami. They lived in the Fort Lauderdale area. So it was pretty funny. Luke Pirozzoli (00:13:53): And that we were talking heritage radio stations or radio shows certainly in this show, the Love Doctors and the morning show that I was on. Paul and young Ron at the time. Now, it's just the Paul Castronovo Show. It was pretty cool to be a part of that kind of big time thing. I mean, all the biggest comics came through there. The biggest musicians, not that they would hang out with us, but it was just a big scene. Rob Collie (00:14:19): For example, like our celebrity number, Tom, is down to one for a lot of celebrities via Luke, right? Thomas LaRock (00:14:26): Oh, right. Rob Collie (00:14:27): Like our Sammy Hagar number. Right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:14:30): That's Sammy Hagar. John Cleese. Rob Collie (00:14:33): John Cleese. Luke Pirozzoli (00:14:34): And it's pronounced Cleese as from the man's mouth himself. Because you don't say cheese, you say cheese. Rob Collie (00:14:40): You don't say cheese. Luke Pirozzoli (00:14:42): You don't say Cleese, you say Cleese. That's exactly what he said. Oh, man. Yeah. So I was an irregular caller. They had a segment where it was like one liners at the end of their show called the Quickies. I was a master at that because it was hit and run stuff. I would write stuff during the course of the day. I would listen to the show. I would do callbacks to something that happened early. And I would just have... It was hit or miss, but when I made them laugh, that was, for me, that was like, "Ah, yeah. Great." And they were giving away this Jamaica trip for several listeners. They were going to do... They were going to broadcast from one of the resorts down there. And I was one of the lucky participants in that trip. And I got to know the producer, Dano, and the guys a little bit. Again, for about a year after that I was emailing the operations manager, just like, "Give me a job. Anything, whatever. I don't care. I'll quit my awesome job and work for you for nothing." This was my mindset at the time. Rob Collie (00:15:36): You're starting to sound like Jeff Sagarin. Constantly pestering the guy at USA Today. Luke Pirozzoli (00:15:41): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:15:42): That's awesome. Luke Pirozzoli (00:15:44): But it's persistence. When you see something you want, I don't give up easily, especially when it's so attainable. And I knew I had maybe a room to expand some skills that I know I didn't have. I'm like, "Okay, I can learn all this stuff. It's just computers. Right? Computer operated software. I can do that. It can't be that hard. Right? I know some of the people that are already doing it. It can't be that hard." Rob Collie (00:16:11): He's talking about the radio show now. He's not talking about Power BI and the... Luke Pirozzoli (00:16:15): No, not... No, no. Exactly. And I'm one of the few people at P3 Adaptive that does not have the data gene. Does not like... My Excel use is probably less than some of your children and grandchildren, some of you listening. Rob Collie (00:16:32): I want to point out that the data gene is not... Here's the thing. You might have it dormant and still just haven't encountered that kind of that Eureka moment where it lights up. Now, if you've been heavily exposed to data and spreadsheets and you just like are repulsed by them. Okay. No data gene for you. Luke Pirozzoli (00:16:53): Is there anything in the middle because I'm not repulsed. And I do... I'm curious by nature. So all the data that's... Everything is data. I know this, especially in the last year and a half. I've learned so much about things, especially in the business world or not even in business world, just the world. Rob Collie (00:17:08): I suppose maybe you can be heterozygous for the data gene. Thomas LaRock (00:17:13): Oh. Rob Collie (00:17:14): Whereas the most of us that like that "have" it, we're homozygous. Thomas LaRock (00:17:19): Okay. Luke Pirozzoli (00:17:20): So you're adding those two words to our Wordigami? Rob Collie (00:17:23): Wordigami. Yeah. That's right. Heterozygous and homo. Luke Pirozzoli (00:17:26): Please. Rob Collie (00:17:26): Cha ching, cha ching. Increment the counter. I was going to do a distinct count of words. Like actual unique words used on the podcast. Because we have it in our transcripts. Right? I don't have that ready yet, but we are going to have that. Oh, we could do that. Like the beginning of every episode with 7,112 distinct words in use. We've really used the English language folks all 7,000 words ago. Thomas LaRock (00:17:55): Oh, we have used it and abused it. Rob Collie (00:17:58): Ah, yeah. I wonder. I wonder how many... Thomas LaRock (00:17:59): Like sailors on shore leave. Rob Collie (00:18:01): Now, I... So just as a little preview here for everybody. I mean, I have this Power BI model with not all of our transcripts, because not all the transcripts are done. Some of the more recent shows the transcripts aren't ready yet. Yeah. I have 50 transcripts in this Power BI model. Every word. It's really fascinating. Thomas LaRock (00:18:17): That's post-production, you said? Rob Collie (00:18:18): As post-production. Yes, that's... Thomas LaRock (00:18:20): Because I want to know how much of my stuff's been left on the cutting room floor. Because I think you're keeping me down. Rob Collie (00:18:25): We will never know. Thomas LaRock (00:18:26): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:18:26): We're not going to provide you the denominator, Tom. Thomas LaRock (00:18:29): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:18:29): It's unknowable. We're not going to send off the Raw files for transcription. I mean, that would just be a waste. Luke Pirozzoli (00:18:36): It would be. Thomas LaRock (00:18:36): Well, that that's the stuff that's going to get us in trouble. Rob Collie (00:18:38): I don't know. I think though, it's likely that we cut me at a higher percentage than we cut you. Thomas LaRock (00:18:44): Oh, I'm sure. Rob Collie (00:18:45): Your percentage goes up in post-production I'm thinking. We need to get back to Luke's story. But let's just say there's been already kind of a running joke going on that started backstage and no one knows about it. Is that we've done an analysis of Tom's average mic time based on words spoken over the lifetime of the podcast and he's at 6.9%. 6.9% of the word spoken on this podcast. Now, by the way, this is not counting episodes that you weren't on. If you weren't able to make an episode, right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:19:19): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:19:19): We're not going to count that against your total. Our DAX takes that into account because we're serious. We're serious people here. Luke Pirozzoli (00:19:27): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:19:27): And yeah. And I actually had to scratch my head for a moment. Because I was very rusty at DAX. I was rustier at DAX than I realized when I was doing this. All right. So you persistently break in through the Jamaica thing. Next thing you know, you're in this damn near 20 year career, right, of radio taking you all over the expansive region known as South Florida. Luke Pirozzoli (00:19:49): Yeah. And I had been fired once. I've been laid off once and came back both times. Rob Collie (00:19:56): I thought you'd been fired and laid off a lot more than that. Those are rookie numbers. You need to pump up. You worked in radio. You've only... Only fired one time? Laid off one time? Luke Pirozzoli (00:20:06): For most radio people, that is the case because there is... It's funny. There's a saying, "you haven't made it in this business unless you've been fired at least three times." And there are people that move constantly. I was not willing to move away from my family to move across the country. I just wasn't... I wasn't down with that. Rob Collie (00:20:23): I see. I see. So you're saying you quit radio before you've been fired three times. Like you didn't have the tenacity to stick with it now, did you? Only 18 years of it? You quitter. Luke Pirozzoli (00:20:34): Yeah. I just... At some point, I was just like, "I can't... At this point, I can't do anything else. I can't. I've been doing this so long." Then I started getting worried. I'm getting older and I'm not... And radio really, terrestrial radio is not a up and coming business with a huge upside and a future. It really isn't. Rob Collie (00:20:55): That might be the first time terrestrial has made it onto the show. I don't know. We have to go to the record. Luke Pirozzoli (00:21:00): Cha ching. Rob Collie (00:21:00): Yeah. I don't know. Maybe. If it had before it came from Luke, right? Terrestrial, meaning not satellite radio. Luke Pirozzoli (00:21:08): Correct. Thomas LaRock (00:21:09): But isn't all radio technically terrestrial. That's its origin. Luke Pirozzoli (00:21:13): I can give you some email addresses where you can lodge your complaints, Tom, about what they call it. I'm sure they'll change it just to suit you. Rob Collie (00:21:21): I mean, when the radio waves are up in orbit, they're not terrestrial, but they have to come down here for us to hear them. Right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:21:28): And their origins... He's right. Their origins are all terrestrial. Unless, we're broadcasting from some source. Rob Collie (00:21:35): From the space station. Howard Stern coming at you from the ISS. Thomas LaRock (00:21:38): Oh my God. I can't imagine shacking up with him for like a month. Rob Collie (00:21:42): Oh yeah. Imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (00:21:44): They shot Shatner and Strayan into space. Right? She started the space... Rob Collie (00:21:50): All right. So there's all kinds of wacky things. At one point during your radio career, you won a local tournament, a satellite tournament, and went to the World Series of Poker. You were in the Main Event out in Vegas. Luke Pirozzoli (00:22:03): Yeah. Before that... Yes, I was. Before that... In 2011. Before that I had won a pretty decent cash in an online tournament before Black Friday where the feds shut down Full Tilt and PokerStars and all the other poker sites for operation of the US. And it was a $200 buy-in, I finished, I think, fifth. And it was $25,000 and I got all my checks. Yeah. And then not too long after that, they shut it down. And anybody that had money in Full Tilt or PokerStars kitty, they lost it. I don't even know if they still were able to get it back to this day. And yeah. So I won that 25K and then I did win that trip to Vegas and the $10,000 Main Event buy in and I got bumped out on day two. My pocket kings got cracked pre... Like we were all in preflop. I had kings, he had tens and he spiked the 10 on the flop and I didn't draw it on them. So that was the end of that Rob Collie (00:23:03): Yep. Ball game. Luke Pirozzoli (00:23:03): Yep. What are you going to do? I'll never forget it for the rest of my life. Rob Collie (00:23:08): You wake up in the middle of the night. "Tens! Tens!" Luke Pirozzoli (00:23:12): Yeah. Yeah. What are you do? I saw one hand. I mean, I know. I kind of geek out on poker because I played a lot, especially online because it was so easy to cram in numerous games. And one of the guys had... He flopped a full house and he was up against quads. The other guy had quads, flop quads. Rob Collie (00:23:31): I'm going to jump in here. When he says quads, he means someone had four of a kind. Luke Pirozzoli (00:23:35): Four of a kind. A very, very good poker hand. Full house is a damn good poker hand, not as good as quads. Yeah. And it was crazy. Obviously the guy with quads knew he had it, but the guy with the full house is like, "What does this guy have? He can't have quads. He can't have it." Oh, what a brutal beat. That's way worse than mine. Way worse. Rob Collie (00:23:55): Yeah. I want nothing to do with something like that. That sounds awful. Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (00:24:00): It was fun. But yeah, again, when I met my girlfriend and I live with her and her three kids. Now, my step kids essentially. They really are. I've adopted them as my very own. So I've kind of calmed down all my single guy lifestyle. Rob Collie (00:24:18): No more late night cash games with the local police union, like in Rounders. You're not hanging out with Worm anymore. Luke Pirozzoli (00:24:29): That's right. Rob Collie (00:24:29): You got KGB, you got to watch out for him. Luke Pirozzoli (00:24:32): That's right. John Malkovich. Rob Collie (00:24:33): So no, Tom. Oh no, no. No data gene for this guy, but oh, he's got to be in there calculating probabilities on hands and all that kind of stuff, which... Luke Pirozzoli (00:24:40): Fair enough. Rob Collie (00:24:41): Kind of gives me the willies. I want nothing to do with that kind of thinking when I'm just sitting at a table and it just... No. Uh-huh (affirmative). So you're right. I wanted to do a podcast. Didn't know what I was doing. And by the way, folks, if you've been listening for a while and you're like, "Ah, this podcast sounds really good. The people on the podcast sound really good." Well, that's because of Luke. The intro, the outro, all the editing, the quality control. And, Luke, when you're doing all the editing yourself, which we're... I mean, we've been working very hard. I've been just absolutely beating you to get you to stop doing this all on your own while telling you at the same time, "But don't compromise the quality." Luke Pirozzoli (00:25:25): Yeah. The ogres dilemma. Like what am I supposed to do? Rob Collie (00:25:26): Yeah. For a show that we record two hours of audio and it ends up being like an hour and 40 minutes when we publish it. How many hours on average have you been syncing into that two hours of audio to create a show? Luke Pirozzoli (00:25:41): Yeah, it takes about 12 to 15 hours per episode. And sometimes it's a lot less than an hour 40. I think it's closer to about an hour 20. I mean, data. I would say that it's closer to like an hour 20, hour 25 average time per episode. I know our Chase Hargis episode, our most recent one, was only 40 minutes. Rob Collie (00:26:00): Snackable, by Rob. Luke Pirozzoli (00:26:03): That's right. You should snack it. It's a great episode. Rob Collie (00:26:06): Yeah. That's how much effort, right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:26:07): Yeah. 12 to 15 hours. Rob Collie (00:26:07): 12 to 15 hours. Six to seven times the raw length of the audio. That level of perfectionism is much appreciated. I love it. And then I tell you, now we should do that, that same level of perfectionism, but in less time. Luke Pirozzoli (00:26:24): Yeah. Well, that's where the wonderful world of outsourcing that you've introduced me to. And there's a vast... Rob Collie (00:26:30): Oh, so wonderful. Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (00:26:32): Group of skilled people and some not so skilled that I'm finding out. Rob Collie (00:26:36): There's skill and reliability. Right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:26:39): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:26:39): And delegating something that you have... This is in general, when you take something very seriously. Like when it's almost like a matter of honor and principle to you that it be excellent. That's one of the hardest things in the world to effectively delegate. Luke Pirozzoli (00:26:52): Yeah. And that's the situation here. If I hear something that doesn't sound right, a raspy breath, some people have phlegm in their throat. Or there's a nose breathe or something I don't like the sound of something. I'll try and get it out. I'll at least try. If there's an um or an ah, or you know, or a like. We all do it. Very, very few people are able to speak without those words. And I get rid of them all. And it takes a long, long time. Rob Collie (00:27:26): Although way to go. Giving away a secret. We all sound so much smarter than we actually are after you take out all of our hesitation. Luke Pirozzoli (00:27:34): You sound as smart as you actually are. Every guest of... Every one of these folks are exceptional human beings. Rob Collie (00:27:42): Oh, I appreciate that. Luke Pirozzoli (00:27:43): That we got on this show. Rob Collie (00:27:43): Luke demonstrating the principle of sometimes you have to lie to tell the truth. Luke Pirozzoli (00:27:50): Even Tom. I feel that way about even Tom, I feel that way about him. High praise, sir. Rob Collie (00:27:53): Oh, 6.9% of that time. Luke Pirozzoli (00:27:57): Jigiddy. Rob Collie (00:28:01): Every 10th of a percent matters when you're down in that range. Right? Okay. So wanted to do a podcast knowing sort of that I know nothing. I call you up and say, "Maybe we do this part-time." And then I quickly started thinking, "No, let's get you on full-time." And you had to get to the point where to suspend the rule of hiring someone I know. And no one told me I had to have this rule. This was a rule that I learned the hard way and sort of implemented for myself. Instead of making it my decision, I had to meet Kellan. Kellan, what do you think? Right? Rob Collie (00:28:33): Because basically the question was, how long is it going to take him to produce an episode of the podcast? I mean, like we record for a couple hours, it'll take him what? Like 45 minutes to clean that up. I mean, he's not going to have that much to do. He's going to have room to do other things. Kellan got to know Luke and came back and said, "Oh yeah. We can use the hell out of this guy." And I'm like, "Really? Luke, you sure?" Luke Pirozzoli (00:29:00): Tom referenced something earlier about our relationship, Rob. We also haven't discussed that you are my oldest friend in the universe. This is how I describe it. My oldest friend in the universe. Third grade. We were seven years old. Rob Collie (00:29:14): Other than family, you're the person I have known the longest. That I still talk to. Yeah. Third grade, eight years old, Mrs. Lumbards class. Although, were we? I don't... Were we in the same third grade? Like homeroom? Luke Pirozzoli (00:29:31): I don't think so. Rob Collie (00:29:31): I had Lefkowitz for third grade. Luke Pirozzoli (00:29:35): Your memory is way better than mine for certain. I know that we were aware of each other and started conversing, but we didn't really start clicking until we were in the same class. Rob Collie (00:29:47): Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (00:29:48): I think that's when things just ramped up and then we started hanging out. Rob Collie (00:29:50): That's fourth grade. That was the Mrs. Wenig years. That's back when my brain was still like accurately recording memories. The writing head has sort of gotten a little bouncy on the disc in later years. And, Tom, we were programming together. Not because we wanted to, but we were told to. Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (00:30:12): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:30:12): Before Halloween, I saw a Tweet that it... It just busted me up, which was on this Halloween. I'm going to go as formerly known as gifted child. And I'm just going to wear my normal clothes and people are going to keep coming up to me and asking me, "What are you supposed to be?" And I'll reply, "I was supposed to be a lot of things." Thomas LaRock (00:30:40): I love that. Rob Collie (00:30:42): So Luke and I were in this gifted class together, and this was a very almost like hippies seventies leftover thing. Right? Like this idea that I don't know that they even use this word anymore. Or if they have things like that anymore. I don't... My kids I don't think were ever even tested for such a thing. Seems like this has gone extinct. I remember in like first grade walking through the library one day and there was suddenly, there was this giant inflatable bubble and there was a teacher and like five kids sitting inside of it. And I was like, "Holy cow, that's awesome. Why don't I get to sit in a bubble like that? I've got to go learned stupid..." Like I knew what I was about to have to go do was going to be really boring. Rob Collie (00:31:26): It wasn't going to be nearly as cool as sitting in this bubble. Right? And wouldn't you know it, I got tested a few weeks later. I was really resistant. My mom's said I had to go get tested. I'm like, "I don't want to take no stinking test. I don't want to go for a stinking test." But she could have just said, "Look, this is the test to see if they'll put you... If you get to go hang out in the plastic bubble." And I would've been like, "Aw, sweet." Next thing you know, a few months later I'm sitting in that bubble and all the other kids are walking by to go like study whatever boring thing they're about to do. Rob Collie (00:31:59): And I'm like, "Ah, suckers." I don't know that it had anything to do with actually developing me in any positive way. I think all it did was give me some sense of exceptionalism that was undeserved. This is probably why they retired this whole concept. But so like basically every day, maybe not every day, but we'd get pulled out of our respective home rooms. It shows you how much they cared about the curriculum being taught there. Like we just totally take you away from it. It doesn't matter. Luke Pirozzoli (00:32:28): You don't need it anyway. Rob Collie (00:32:31): It's so pointless anyway. Right? And they would send us off to this other classroom to like have fun. Like holy cow, what a great thing. So Luke and I met under sort of like the most positively influential circumstances. Right? How can you not be happy while you're off doing fun things? It was like that hour or two of the day was usually better than if you'd been allowed to stay home. Luke Pirozzoli (00:32:57): Yeah, definitely. And we also shared a love of role playing games, specifically Dungeons and Dragons at the time. And many, many others. Rob Collie (00:33:05): Luke introduced me to this. Seriously. Again, snapshot memory. I remember we're walking through this one hallway on the way to the cafeteria in Morrow Elementary. And you're like walking next to me going, "Hey, you ever play Dungeons and Dragons?" And I'm just ignoring you. I'm just flat out ignoring you. Luke Pirozzoli (00:33:23): Well, I've gotten used to that over the years. Rob Collie (00:33:25): I want nothing to do with it. I'm just like... But I'm not even turning around and answering your question. Like, that's how derisive I am. I'm like an eight year old blowing you off. But you, just like with the radio station, you kept persisting this Dungeons and Dragons thing. So I wasn't into it until... Luke Pirozzoli (00:33:46): Until I wore you down. Rob Collie (00:33:48): Yeah, that's right. Luke Pirozzoli (00:33:49): I just wore you down. Rob Collie (00:33:50): And boy, did I take to it? Oh my God. Luke Pirozzoli (00:33:53): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:33:54): I've actually played some Dungeons and Dragons with my kids. Like years ago. They really loved it. They were really into it up until about the time they got a hold of their smartphones. Luke Pirozzoli (00:34:05): Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Rob Collie (00:34:07): And the same thing with the Xbox. Dungeons and Dragons is a cool thing to do if you don't have an Xbox. Luke Pirozzoli (00:34:14): Like a game like Skyrim, or Skyrim, or whatever you call it, or Warcraft or any of the games that we're into now. It's like that in another dimension. It's another level of reality and the imagination has gone sadly. Rob Collie (00:34:27): Yeah. Yeah. So regular classrooms in this school that we were at, they might have had one computer in them, like one Apple or two, but probably none is my memory. I don't remember there being any, but in this gifted classroom, there were like 20. They had us programming, like an Apple BASIC. They had us programming in a thing called Logo, which is a turtle that you tell to move around the screen with a pen that can... You can tell the... You have like pen up and pen down commands. So it's kind of almost like Etch A Sketch that you program. Luke Pirozzoli (00:35:03): Too bad they didn't teach you Python. Rob Collie (00:35:07): Yeah. Yeah. I know that would've changed everything. Wouldn't it? I mean, yeah. You got to ease people into these things. So that was the origin story, but then eventually I moved away. Right? Then we kept in touch. We see each other in the summers, things like that. Luke Pirozzoli (00:35:19): Yep. My dad would, because he's too cheap to fly us. He would drive, he would come down from Tennessee and pick us up in South Florida and then he'd drop us back off at Rob's family's house. And I would hang with them for like a week or so. Rob Collie (00:35:32): Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (00:35:33): Yeah. And we always maintained touch. It was sporadic at certain periods of our lives, but we always managed to get together and we always managed to catch up throughout the years. And it's hard to do sometimes with some of your old friends and you're working at Microsoft. We had talked through those years. I didn't know. It was as eye opening and challenging and crazy as I'm learning, listening to every single one of these fantastic podcast offerings. Rob Collie (00:36:01): Yeah. Gifted class in third grade is where I learned to think I was special. Microsoft is where I learned to think I was not. Luke Pirozzoli (00:36:07): How about that? I knew you were also starting Power Pivot Pro at the time in 2013 and later turned into P3 Adaptive. I knew about it, but I didn't know how incredible the tools were. I didn't know how incredible the people were. Of course, I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew podcast editing and I know people. Rob Collie (00:36:30): It's a gateway drug. Luke Pirozzoli (00:36:31): Yeah. It is. It really is being in talk radio for all these years. Talking to all these people over time. I hope I've filled the holes that were required thus far. Rob Collie (00:36:41): Hey, Luke, can we cut that part out? Just kidding. Thomas LaRock (00:36:47): Yeah. Just kidding. No, we're going to leave the part where we talk about Luke filling holes. Rob Collie (00:36:51): Yeah. That's what he does, man. It doesn't matter what size, shape, whatever. He's in there. Luke Pirozzoli (00:36:55): That's right. That's right. Rob Collie (00:36:57): So as time has gone on Kellan has proven correct. Because you've been taking on more and more things. When he got to know you before we hired you, he was like, "Yeah. Okay. He's a podcast guy. Great. He's an audio guy. He's a producer. But he's also, he doesn't know it. He's also an operations guy and we're going to use him on the operations side of the house." And I'm like, "Oh yeah, I don't understand any of that operation stuff. That sounds great." That's the stuff you're really good at and I've proven to not be. So fantastic. It's all a mystery to me. Rob Collie (00:37:30): One of the general themes that I really, really like about our team is that most people come to work for us, they don't change what they're doing. Most of the people we hire are consultants. Most of them weren't consultants before, but they're at least Power BI wizards and they continued to be that afterwards. Right? Your arc is that you're now doing things that you've never done in your career. There's some things that you're working on now that two years ago, you'd probably have been like, "I'm going to be doing what?" Luke Pirozzoli (00:37:58): Yeah. Never heard of the tools, some of the software that we use, and the things that we use. It is just... It is. It's all new to me. And we talk about the imposter syndrome thing and I'm not a consultant in that space, but I'm still in... I have it. I've had it for a while and it predates me coming here. I'm sure of that, but yeah, definitely exposed to a whole new realm of tasks and things that I do. And including kind of retooling our security operations, the whole URL change that we did. Rob Collie (00:38:37): Yeah. You're a project manager on the switch from the powerpivotpro.com to p3adaptive.com. Luke Pirozzoli (00:38:44): Yeah. And, of course, I'll give Alex, our web dev, major props because he busted his hump to get that done. He did most of the heavy lifting. I just kind of made sure that we had everything under control. Rob Collie (00:38:56): Yeah. But technical project manager for two relatively massive... Hey, guess what? You're learning what IT is like. Right? It's thankless. I mean, when it goes right, no one notices. Luke Pirozzoli (00:39:13): Yeah. It's true. And in this incorporating something new and kind of rolling something new out, it's still not quite right yet. That's what's so great about the team. They're not able to do certain things, but they're not like, "Oh my God!" Nobody's panicking. Nobody's freaking out. Nobody's angry. They're just like, "Ah." And they know I kind of... The way I am. Everybody that sends me a message is my first priority. That's kind of how I operate. Rob Collie (00:39:42): Sounds like you're vulnerable to a denial of service attack. Everyone's listening to this now like, "Oh, I know what to do. I'll just send them a couple of emails." Luke Pirozzoli (00:39:52): Well, depends on who you are and you got to move the company. Rob Collie (00:39:54): It's Luke P at P3 Adaptive, folks. If you want to completely gum up the works, just send him an email and ask him to calculate the first 45 digits of Pi by hand in binary. Luke Pirozzoli (00:40:07): Yeah. I love hearing from new people. Rob Collie (00:40:10): Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I asked Kellan recently. I'm like, "I didn't have any reason to distrust you, Kellan, when you sort of screened and interviewed Luke. Now that you've kind of proven correct, Kellan. Like he's doing things that you thought he could do for us. And it's going really well. Like now, I'm actually interested. What was it that you saw?" And his answer was like, "I've been running into people like Luke, not frequently, but enough of them over the years that you just sort of know them when you see them." I'm like, "Okay. All right. Well, I mean, that still doesn't really answer my... But it satisfied my curiosity." Yeah. I just asked him that recently, by the way. But the one thing that is, I think, common... Rob Collie (00:40:50): Well, first of all, you mentioned imposter syndrome, which if no one's determining says this before, like imposter syndrome is an inevitability. All you need is integrity, and then to be in a relatively high performing environment. That's it. Integrity plus high performing environment and imposter syndrome is you should like mathematically, like do the algebra and out comes the imposter syndrome. But hey, like you said, you have been the face of rolling out Intune at our company. You should be hated, just absolutely despised. I'm going to roll out this thing that makes it sometimes impossible to log in. It's going to... It's really going to mess your shit up. Rob Collie (00:41:33): And if all goes well, all it will do is prevent something. We'll never have the problem. We'll never know that it saved us. Luke Pirozzoli (00:41:41): Yeah. And that's true. And so far it's been a great tool and kind of give credit to the freelancers that we hired. They were very good. Initially I had an individual that he was good, but he also he thought he could do it. And he couldn't because he had so much other stuff going on. Rob Collie (00:41:59): Yes. Luke Pirozzoli (00:42:00): And we needed something done rather quickly. And so I had to jump off of him, but I almost screwed myself because I waited too long to make the decision to move to another individual. Rob Collie (00:42:13): Oh, yeah. That's tough. Right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:42:14): Almost screwed us. Rob Collie (00:42:15): There's lessons... Right. There's lessons to that, right? That's the problem. That's why people are so hesitant to hire a data consulting firm. Luke Pirozzoli (00:42:23): That makes sense. Rob Collie (00:42:23): By the time they reach the point where they've realized that it's not working out, it's going to be too late. And people are sort of like pot committed at that too. You just sort of got to write it out and you got to write it out in a really, really awful, terrible self destructive way. And so yeah. Hiring a consulting firm, it's like you're inviting someone into your house and nine out of 10 chance. It's a vampire. Luke Pirozzoli (00:42:53): I would imagine there's a lot of research and maybe sometimes not so much. I'm sure it would surprise me how many companies make a decision like that to go with a consulting firm without really doing a heck of a lot of research. I would hope not, but I don't know. Rob Collie (00:43:10): Well, I mean, I don't know. It's not quite nine out of 10, but at least four out of five of the external vendors we've... Professional services, companies that we've outsourced things to have been a mistake. Right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:43:23): Yeah. I mean, how do you know that? You do your research and you talk to them and they don't deliver what they say they can deliver. It's like, what the hell happened? Rob Collie (00:43:34): We come in peace. Luke Pirozzoli (00:43:35): Yes. Rob Collie (00:43:35): P3 Adaptive. We are not here to drain your blood. Luke Pirozzoli (00:43:37): No doubt. Rob Collie (00:43:39): All right. So this "short" little episode is as usual running really long. We promised the people some stats. One of the things we do here. And when I say we, someone other than me, feeds every finished audio track, every audio recording of the show to a transcript service and they do a great job. The transcripts are really good. Luke Pirozzoli (00:44:03): Should I give them a plug? Rob Collie (00:44:04): Yeah. Who is the transcript service? Luke Pirozzoli (00:44:06): Rev.com. Rob Collie (00:44:07): Rev.com. All right. They do a great... This is the first time we've ever had, what resembles an ad in our podcast. And if you go there and you use the code "raw". You'll get a 0% discount. Luke Pirozzoli (00:44:23): They do a pretty good job and a great turnaround. Rob Collie (00:44:25): Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (00:44:26): And they... Well, I mean, and I'll say this, and I told their reps the same thing. Their automated service, meh. Their live humans, very good. Rob Collie (00:44:33): Yeah. It turns out humans still needed. Luke Pirozzoli (00:44:36): Yes, indeed. Rob Collie (00:44:37): I mean, especially a podcast like ours with all the weird phrases that get used and everything. All this insight, baseball sometimes. Luke Pirozzoli (00:44:43): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:44:44): Plus I'm a weirdo. So we have all these podcast transcripts, and guess what? They're in dot text format. Oh. So you know what we can do? We can feed them through Power Query and puree them and bring them into a Power BI model. And all of this has happened basically over the weekend. The idea came to me late in the week. I did need some help. Ed Hansberry on our team came up big for me a couple times. And then, of course, I'm really rusty at DAX. Mark Beetle had to catch a DAX mistake. I'm like, "I know something's wrong here, but where is it?" I feel like I'm one of the students in a class I used to teach. Rob Collie (00:45:19): Right? We're going to be publishing some of this. I think so watch the Raw Dat, Twitter account, watch my Rob Collie Twitter account, and watch the P3 Adaptive Twitter account while you're at it. We've got a family of accounts here. 53 of our shows have transcripts at the moment. And I think that's 53 out of 59, or 53 out of 58. We have a few that for various reasons, we haven't got transcribed, but in the 53 transcripts we have, again, let's do #meaninglessanalysis. Ready? A lot of Power BI. I was texting today with Dave Gainer. Dave gainer, who was on our podcast. He sent me a quote or a thought. I'm not sure if it was something he thought of or whether he's quoting something. Because he's always sending me quotes. Luke Pirozzoli (00:45:57): He's a quote guy. Rob Collie (00:45:58): Oh no, he read a good one. Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions. And I had just sent him a picture of the Wordigami word cloud for his episode. And I said, "Oh, perfect. Me subverting sophisticated industrial strength tools for the purpose of making Wordigami word cloud visuals is very much an example of that." Happiness is an expression of the soul and considered actions. There you go. Luke Pirozzoli (00:46:26): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:46:26): So this meaningless analysis is brought to you by happiness. Luke Pirozzoli (00:46:30): Aw. Rob Collie (00:46:31): And by the way, these analyses shouldn't be possible. Power BI is not designed to do this kind of thing. It's like a kryptonite task and it's a layup. Power BI just blows it out of the water. No problem at all. It's unreal. I'm like having trouble sleeping, because I'm thinking about, "Oh, I could add that feature to the model." I'm back, but I'm... Luke Pirozzoli (00:46:52): And that's typically how it goes, right? When you're building something, and this is coming from a person who does not do any of this, as we've covered. That's a typical kind of process where you start realizing things that it can do along the way as you're building something. Rob Collie (00:47:07): Yeah. You're peeling the onion of possibility. There you go. There's an original. Luke Pirozzoli (00:47:10): I like that. Rob Collie (00:47:10): There's an original quote. That was the first time ever. Luke Pirozzoli (00:47:13): Write it down. Rob Collie (00:47:14): Brand new sentence, as they say on Reddit. Okay. Luke Pirozzoli (00:47:17): And you also... By the way, you also did this, as you mentioned. You were thinking about it and over the weekend, like a two day period of work, and you and a couple of other members of the team that you had to tag in briefly. Rob Collie (00:47:28): Yeah. We're recording this particular segment of this show on a Sunday. It's going to go live in a couple of days. The entire Wordigami word cloud happened today. I was able to do that with no help. Luke Pirozzoli (00:47:41): That's amazing. And so another kind of uneducated question, why would this... You said early that it shouldn't be possible or it shouldn't be used for this or something along those lines. Rob Collie (00:47:53): At its DNA, Power BI is a numerical aggregation tool. You take rows of data that have digits in them and you're performing things like sums and averages. And then you get really fancy and you start doing filtered and trended versions of those same calculations. Just to give people an idea here. So in those 53 transcripts, there are 781,355 words. Luke Pirozzoli (00:48:17): That's almost a million. Rob Collie (00:48:18): Yeah. If you extrapolate that from the fact that we're missing a few episodes, transcript wise, we're well over 800,000 words spoken on the finished podcast. Now, of course, the cutting room floor probably has a couple hundred thousand words. Right? That got cut out of, for sure. Right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:48:34): No doubt. Rob Collie (00:48:34): So we've definitely spoken over a million words, but thanks to you, the audience has been spared that 200,000 word cruft. Luke Pirozzoli (00:48:43): They weren't ready for all of those words. Rob Collie (00:48:46): They weren't. And so many of them are like, blah, blah, blah. Like um's and ah's and stuff. Luke Pirozzoli (00:48:51): Sure. Rob Collie (00:48:52): So to do the kinds of analysis that you're about to hear, some of them is a little bit more straightforward. So for example, 321,000 of those 781,000ish words were spoken by me. If you're using Power or Query to count the number of words in a sentence, which is sort of how the original version of this model works, now you've just got a number and it's got a person's name next to it. And so it rolls up really easily, right? And so you can really quickly find out what my total is. And you can find out that I speak for 41.2% of the air time of the show. If you just base it off of word count, which is I'm sure a very, very, very good approximation of air time. Right? And I was concerned... Luke Pirozzoli (00:49:32): Oh yeah. Rob Collie (00:49:33): I was concerned when I was running these numbers that I was going to find out that I was like 65% of the air time, and I wasn't letting guests talk. But 41,2% and Tom at 6.9%. So even combined, the two hosts are under 50%. Luke Pirozzoli (00:49:47): A great number. Rob Collie (00:49:49): But the place where it gets tricky is when you start talking about word uniqueness, right? So these aren't sentences with numbers anymore. Right? It's like the actual words matter. So Hugh Millen is the champion in one sense, which is 109 of the words that he spoke on his podcast episode were and are completely unique words in the history of the show. No one else has ever used any of those 109 words before him or after him. And if he said it and I repeated it back to him, it wouldn't count. It wouldn't be one of the 109. Right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:50:22): Okay. Rob Collie (00:50:25): Like to do that analysis is nuts, right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:50:29): Like to think to do it or to actually do it? Rob Collie (00:50:33): I mean, okay. So on the one hand, I knew that Power BI could do it before I started. Luke Pirozzoli (00:50:36): Okay. That helps. Rob Collie (00:50:38): But like the fact that... It's just like every now and then you use the tool for a purpose that's so far outside of its original DNA. Its original origin story and it still just breezes through it. And you just sit there and it's just amazing. I haven't had this feeling for a while because I don't get to use the tools nearly as much as I used to. Luke Pirozzoli (00:50:57): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:50:57): You almost feel like you're inventing something, right? If you're working with a tool set that allows you to feel like you're inventing, that's pretty awesome. It's a real testament to just the incredible nature of the tool set. And it did not bog down. Rob Collie (00:51:12): Like if you think about it in a really dumb sense. If you have 800,000 words and you need to compare one word to all the other 800,000 words, but you need to do that for all of the words, you're constantly having to do 800,000 squared. Luke Pirozzoli (00:51:26): Ooh. Rob Collie (00:51:26): String comparisons, which would just melt your machine every time you click the filter. But the thing is just like, "No. No big deal. I got you." You make a click and it's like, "Yeah, lay up. Here you go." Luke Pirozzoli (00:51:37): Just handles it. Rob Collie (00:51:38): "Here's your new results." Right? Going into unique words. The reason for it was because of our now ongoing Wordigami joke. Like when someone says a word on the show, we're like, "Ooh, big word. Fancy." It's the first time we've ever heard the word on the show, Wordigami. We now have the technology, folks. We are going to, if you go look at our Twitter account. You're going to be seeing.... Already. We've already... Some of these have already been shared. We're going to be showing the Wordigami word clouds for words that were first used on a particular episode. Now, if they're used later, fine. That original episode still gets to claim they were the one that introduced it and their Wordigami word cloud will have that word in it. And the subsequent episode won't. So it gets harder and harder to score a Wordigami over time. Luke Pirozzoli (00:52:18): Yes, it does. And that's what... That was my question. It seems like the first episode or the first handful would have the distinct advantage. Rob Collie (00:52:24): Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (00:52:24): Hugh's episode, I think, was in the top, like the first 10 maybe. I don't remember. Rob Collie (00:52:28): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. So, even in the chart that I've shared privately behind the scenes with y'all, I filtered out the first few episodes. It just skews the entire chart. Someone gets to be the first person to use the word the. Luke Pirozzoli (00:52:38): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:52:40): Nope, that shouldn't count. But also to make the word cloud more interesting. This is where, again, where things get even crazier. I found a premium source of data that examine like a billion words of random sample of English language and ranks the top 60,000 root words. And I think the top 200 and something thousand words in terms of their usage within the English language. So when you see us posting these Wordigami's, the words that show up there... First of all, were never used on a previous episode. Secondly, the sizing of the word is determined by a very proprietary formula that blends the rarity of the word in the English language with the number of times it was used in the episode. So rarer words get a bigger representation in the word cloud than really common words. That just happened to be the first time it was used. Right? So like archeology, it looms large in Donald Farmer's Wordigami. Luke Pirozzoli (00:53:41): Yeah. That makes sense. That does make sense. Rob Collie (00:53:45): Yeah. Goblin, I think, was only maybe used once, but it's in there. It scores highly. So it's impressive. We might even do some blog post, something to talk about sort of how this was all put together. It's a neat little model. Luke Pirozzoli (00:54:00): The output is cool too. It's pretty. It's really cool. Rob Collie (00:54:03): That's what Power BI does, man. It makes the stuff pretty. Other thing I was going to share is that in terms of airtime, the guests who have consumed the most airtime. Here's the top five. Shishir Mehrotra, 76.2% of his episode was him speaking. Luke Pirozzoli (00:54:20): That blows my mind. Rob Collie (00:54:21): Yeah. John Hancock, 74.6. Chris Rae, 71.4. Jen Stirrup 66.0%. Chandoo 65.6%. So the top five are all founders or co-founders of their own business. Luke Pirozzoli (00:54:40): Ah. Rob Collie (00:54:40): Kind of interesting. Right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:54:41): Maybe more assertive individuals. Rob Collie (00:54:43): And It might be, you get used to it, right? You get used to talking if you found your own business, even if you don't want to, it's going to come for you, right? Luke Pirozzoli (00:54:50): Yeah. You can't avoid it. Right? Rob Collie (00:54:51): But also, in a way, the companies that they found are like ways of expressing an idea and a feeling that these people had. Expression sort of was there before even the company happened. And so it makes sense, I guess, in a lot of ways. Right? But it was neat to see that. That's not random. Luke Pirozzoli (00:55:10): That is a deep analysis, Rob. That's pretty good. Like I never would've thought that. Rob Collie (00:55:14): The next four are all, in terms of airtime, are all current or former Microsoft employees. Adam Saxton, Donald Farmer, Denny Lee, Chris Finlan, and Jeff Sagarin rounds out the top 10, which is amazing. That was a two guest episode. There were four people talking on that episode, two hosts, two guests, and he still pulled down 61.9% of the words in that episode. Rebounds. He's a rebounder. He's pulling down those words. It's Sunday evening, this is the holiday week addition. We should go spend some more time with our families. Luke, I appreciate you jumping in here for the final bit on a Sunday. And don't forget as the music trails off at the end of this episode, Rob calls the Love Doctors from what like 2018, maybe 2017. I think it was '18. Luke Pirozzoli (00:56:01): Yeah, that should be right in there. Rob Collie (00:56:01): I think it was 2018. Luke Pirozzoli (00:56:03): Yeah. What a great moment. Rob Collie (00:56:05): Yeah, it was really funny. Luke Pirozzoli (00:56:06): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Have a data day. Dano (00:56:20): As promised. Luke Pirozzoli (00:56:21): Yeah, my buddy's on. Dano (00:56:22): We welcome Luke's childhood friend, Rob, to Real Radio and welcome to the Love Doctors, Rob. What's up? Rob Collie (00:56:29): Howdy everybody. How are you? Dano (00:56:31): Howdy, Rob. Dr. Glenn (00:56:31): All right, Rob. Dano (00:56:32): Great to hear from you, man. And thank you for calling in. We were telling stories. I don't know if you've heard the story. I'll give you the in brief on this, Rob. There was a 16 year old girl who was debating back and forth nervously about jumping off a 60 foot tall bridge into some water below and her 19 year old friend wasn't having her indecision. So she pushed her off of that bridge. Well, that girl that... Rob Collie (00:56:54): Ah. Dano (00:56:54): Do you remember the story? Did you see the story? Rob Collie (00:56:56): I have seen this. Yeah. Dano (00:56:57): Okay. The girl that did the pushing, the 19 year old teenage girl was sentenced yesterday or Wednesday to two days in jail and 35 hours of work, community service. She's got to do some work involved with that, Rob. But I thought to myself, let's tell the worst things you've ever done to a best friend story. And wouldn't you know it, Luke was the first to pony up with the story. And my apologies. How is your site nowadays? Rob Collie (00:57:28): Oh, my site's okay. Because the eyeball is mercifully spared, but it's more the psyche. Dano (00:57:35): The mental scarring. Dr. Glenn (00:57:36): Oh, no. Dano (00:57:37): The mental scar you've carried all these years and night sweat, night terrors. I'm not making light of the PTSD out there by any means, but, I mean.... You need medication for what you did, Luke, to your friend. Luke Pirozzoli (00:57:50): We won't even get into the bed wedding, Rob. Rob Collie (00:57:52): You SOB. Dano (00:57:52): Oh man. Rob Collie (00:57:52): Really? Luke Pirozzoli (00:57:55): No! This is me apologizing, man. This is me apologizing. Dano (00:57:59): That's a hell of an apology. You just said the guy wet his bed. Dr. Glenn (00:58:03): He probably still does. Dano (00:58:05): Rob, did you get a physical scar on your face from it? Rob Collie (00:58:09): I was told this was going to be a healing. Dano (00:58:12): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:58:12): It's not piling on. Dano (00:58:15): We're not... No. No wellness around here. Announcer (00:58:18): I hear he's a bed wetter. Luke Pirozzoli (00:58:21): Seriously rather... That's a good question, Rob, that pencil that I threw at you now. So let's... Dano (00:58:27): Back up so you can rehash the story please, Luke. Luke Pirozzoli (00:58:30): And you can fill in the details as you remember them, Rob. We were at your house. We were kids, maybe 10, 11, 12 in there. And we played role playing games, including Dungeons and dragons. And we were arguing over something. Do you remember what we were arguing over? Rob Collie (00:58:45): Yeah. Doesn't surprise me that you've forgotten. Dano (00:58:54): Gee, what's he alluding to? Rob Collie (00:58:55): See the mind flayer had its back turned, and everybody knows that it doesn't get its dex bonus onto hit when it's got its back turned. And my Fort team on the D20 was more than sufficient to hit the mind flayer and interrupt the mind drain that it was casting on the cleric. Dano (00:59:13): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:59:14): You said it still kept its dex bonus. And that was just, it just kind of escalated from there, didn't it? Dano (00:59:20): Oh man. Luke Pirozzoli (00:59:21): Boy, that memory isn't imprinted on your brain at all. Jesus. Rob Collie (00:59:24): Yeah, not at all. Luke Pirozzoli (00:59:25): Now, it's coming back to me and there was a violent act perpetrated by you. The way that you had your... Rob sharpened... He took pride in the sharpening of his pencils. Like they were all even, they were all like needle sharp, and all did I was just fling one of the pencils towards, unfortunately, your head almost gouging out your eye in the process. Rob Collie (00:59:49): Yeah. I mean, the sharpness of those pencils might be a sign that maybe my problem started a little before. Rain Man obsession with those pencils. Dano (01:00:00): Oh, I'm with you. Rob Collie (01:00:02): Yeah. If I remember it, actually the lead of that pencil actually stuck just sort of beneath the surface skin. Luke Pirozzoli (01:00:10): It did. Rob Collie (01:00:10): To my eye. We were just like sitting there in shock, like, "Okay, that just happened." Dano (01:00:15): Were you horribly scarred? You could no longer get dates. Women would run screaming from you because you were so horribly disfigured. Dr. Glenn (01:00:22): Yeah. It looked like one of those gang tattoos with the tear drop. Rob Collie (01:00:25): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've been trying to figure out my whole adult life where it all kind of went wrong. The therapists have gone through all the obvious candidates. Like my parents divorce, the death of a pet. That kind of thing. That never led anywhere. It always comes back to this. It comes back to this crucial moment in my formation and I never got an apology, or more importantly for the justice of it all, an acknowledgement that the mind flayer really should have taken that mace to the back of the head. Luke Pirozzoli (01:01:02): It not about the injury. It's more about the game. That's how serious my friend Rob is about his gaming. Dano (01:01:07): Hey, once a nerd, always a nerd. Luke Pirozzoli (01:01:09): You're damn right. Dano (01:01:09): And you own it. Own it. Luke Pirozzoli (01:01:12): Yeah. Rob, I do want to take this time to... Dano (01:01:14): Hold on. I think we need the appropriate violins, if you don't mind. Or maybe Lonely Man, Jimmy. If you wouldn't mind, Lonely Man would be the perfect bet music is... Luke, why you looking trite over there, man? Good for you. Luke Pirozzoli (01:01:29): Well, this is a healing moment for all of us. Dano (01:01:30): I can hear it. I know Rob is in need of it. Rob Collie (01:01:33): If only I were there to see the look of contrition. Luke Pirozzoli (01:01:36): Oh, you can go to a realradio943.com and click on the Love Doctor's webcam and see my ugly mug right in your face. Dano (01:01:43): And you can see... Rob, you can see the remorse. Luke Pirozzoli (01:01:49): Sponsored by... Rob Collie (01:01:49): I'm going to have to get the recording of this. I'm not near a device at the moment. Dano (01:01:55): That's all right. It'll be on a podcast for you. Luke Pirozzoli (01:01:56): By the way, this apology on the webcam is sponsored by Tropical Auto Sales. Dano (01:02:00): Thank you, Tropical Auto Sales. Hey, even our apologies we get paid for. Luke Pirozzoli (01:02:04): That's right. Rob, I am so sorry that I almost destroyed your life. Dano (01:02:11): Yeah. Luke Pirozzoli (01:02:12): By throwing that pencil at your eye, I was really aiming for the other eye. Dano (01:02:20): Nice, Luke. Luke Pirozzoli (01:02:22): And I'm really sorry if after all this time... I didn't realize every time I moved my hand, you flinched. I mean, I know of the other psychological trauma that I've inflicted on you over the years. Nothing compares to this moment. And I just want to say that I'm truly sorry. I am really, truly sorry that I almost again destroyed you life. Dano (01:02:49): Blinded him, blinded him. Luke Pirozzoli (01:02:51): Blinded you. Dr. Glenn (01:02:52): The man... Dano (01:02:52): Oh, Rob, hang on, because yeah. I'll be honest with you. It wasn't enough for me, but yeah. Glen, what? Dr. Glenn (01:02:58): The man, Luke... The man probably has never picked up a pencil for the rest of his life since that day. Dano (01:03:05): Failed every Scantron test because of you. He's scared of them. Luke Pirozzoli (01:03:08): That's not true. Rob. My friend Rob is a genius. Dano (01:03:11): Yeah. He didn't... Luke Pirozzoli (01:03:12): Wait, just real quick. Dano (01:03:14): Think the answer. Go ahead. Luke Pirozzoli (01:03:15): What was your triple major, Rob? Rob Collie (01:03:17): Computer science, maths, and philosophy. Luke Pirozzoli (01:03:21): Triple major y'all. Dr. Glenn (01:03:22): Wow. Dano (01:03:22): Okay. Luke Pirozzoli (01:03:23): And he went to a very esteemed school. Rob Collie (01:03:26): My parents bought me in with... Dano (01:03:27): Good for you. Luke Pirozzoli (01:03:30): You can ask Dr. Dre. Rob Collie (01:03:32): Yeah. Dano (01:03:34): I don't know. Rob, I could hear the remorseful tone, but I don't think it's enough. What are you willing to do for Rob? What would you like Luke to do for you, Rob? Rob Collie (01:03:44): I think we need to replay that whole scenario. We need to relive it. They call it experiencing. It's a form of therapy. Dano (01:03:51): Okay. All right. So you need to recreate. Rob Collie (01:03:53): We need to reexperience that whole scenario in a safe place. Dano (01:03:57): Yeah. Okay. Rob Collie (01:03:58): Where I know that it's safe. Dano (01:03:59): All right. Rob Collie (01:04:00): We can arrange that at some point. I'm sure. But that's what needs to happen, I think. Luke Pirozzoli (01:04:05): So does that mean I have to prevent myself from throwing the pencil at you or I have to throw it at you again? Dano (01:04:09): No, I think you need to jam a pencil in your eye. Dr. Glenn (01:04:12): Oh, there's not going to to be a pencil anywhere near that game if Rob has his way. Dano (01:04:16): And a really sharp pencil. Rob Collie (01:04:19): Yeah. Like we're in a padded room with nothing. Luke Pirozzoli (01:04:25): Just think, Rob... Rob Collie (01:04:26): Some missiles. Luke Pirozzoli (01:04:26): How cool do people look with eye patches? Like you could have had a cool glass eye like Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York or worn an eye patch. Dano (01:04:33): Eye patches are cool, Rob. I'm sorry. Luke Pirozzoli (01:04:35): Like Representative Crenshaw. He looks cool as hell. Dano (01:04:37): He's kind of a badass just by the look. Does that make you feel better, Luke? When you tell him that? Luke Pirozzoli (01:04:42): Oh, he would've looked badass with a patch or a glass eye. Dano (01:04:45): And a fake eye. Does that make you feel better for what you did to this guy? Dr. Glenn (01:04:48): Yes. Luke Pirozzoli (01:04:50): I might gouge my own eye out just so I can have a patch. Dano (01:04:53): I think you need to. You know how they say fall on the sword. I think you need to put a pencil in your eye and just fall forward, stiff as a board, and let it hit the floor. Luke Pirozzoli (01:05:00): All right. We'll do it on Facebook Live. Dano (01:05:03): When we get around to it. Luke Pirozzoli (01:05:04): Yeah. Sometime. Dano (01:05:05): All right, Rob. My deepest and sincerest apologies for Luke's actions 25 years ago, 30 years ago. I'm sorry. Rob Collie (01:05:12): Well, it means so much coming from you. Dano (01:05:13): Thank you, Rob. Thank you so much. Dr. Glenn (01:05:15): Yeah, we have to apologize for our cohorts behavior, man. That's what it's come down to. Dano (01:05:20): I mean, right off the bat, Rob knows I would've been a better friend. Shame on you. Luke Pirozzoli (01:05:23): He's only been on the phone with you for nine minutes, and you're already a better friend. Dano (01:05:27): That's true. This is true. Dr. Glenn (01:05:29): Rob, call me anytime, man. We'll get together for beers. Rob Collie (01:05:33): What are you doing next Thursday? Dano (01:05:36): I'll be here for a while, but I'll have Luke drive me to our location. Rob Collie (01:05:40): Sounds great. Dano (01:05:41): Okay. He can dictate our entire conversation in sharp pencil. That's a beautiful thing. Rob Collie (01:05:48): Thank you so much for facilitating this intervention. Dano (01:05:51): Yeah. What we had here, Rob, is a moment of closure. Rob Collie (01:05:55): Yeah, it was touching. Dr. Glenn (01:05:57): It was. Rob Collie (01:05:57): I feel touched. Dano (01:05:57): I'm touched. Rob Collie (01:05:57): Do you feel touched? Dano (01:06:00): I do. I always feel touched. You should feel me at seven o'clock. Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:02): I'm touching myself right now, Rob. Dr. Glenn (01:06:03): People tell me I'm touched all the time. Dano (01:06:05): No, you definitely... He is definitely touched. Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:08): Explains a lot of my behavior. Dano (01:06:10): Rob, you can make a case study out of this guy. Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:14): Rob, it was good to hear from me again. I'll give you a buzz sometime over the next couple of days. Rob Collie (01:06:20): Sounds good, man. Dano (01:06:21): Take care, Rob. Thanks for the story. And again, I'm sorry. Dr. Glenn (01:06:24): God, we have to apologize for him. Dano (01:06:27): Awful. I bet... Yeah, what? Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:28): I thought that went well. Dr. Glenn (01:06:29): I think so too. Dano (01:06:29): Well, for you, maybe. Dr. Glenn (01:06:31): I hope he feels better. Dano (01:06:32): Yeah. He's still getting the night tremors. Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:34): I'm telling you that dude is a frigging genius. Dano (01:06:36): I don't doubt it. Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:37): I think he got like 1550 on his SATs. Yeah, it was ridiculous. Dano (01:06:43): What? Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:43): Yeah, it was... That guy is amazing. Rob Collie (01:06:44): Hey look, did you leave the part in about my amazing SAT scores? Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:47): Oh, oh, of course, I did. Rob Collie (01:06:49): That's my man. There's an achievement that means absolutely nothing

The data gene lurks everywhere, including deep in the heart of Texas High School Football!  Enter Coach Chase Hargis, Defensive coach of the Magnolia High School Football team in Texas and also a data guy, who asked P3 Adaptive to help with a very specific data problem...how to visualize football data so as to give an edge to his players?  The solution is CoverHawk and has introduced Power BI to an unusual audience in high school football players and coaches! References in this episode: CoverHawk-A Football Visualization Tool Charles Barkley on Analytics SPOILER ALERT: The results of the South Carroll High Dragons 6A D1 state semifinals game against Duncanville Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00): Hello friends. Today's guest is Coach Hargis. It's not his actual first name. We often talk about how the data gene lurks everywhere and today's conversation is just further proof of something that we already believe fervently anyway. Because of Coach Hargis this past fall in Texas High School Football, there's been nearly a 100 high school football players unknowingly using Power BI. So right now, pause this intro, pause this podcast, open up a browser and go to www.coverhawk.app. Go take a quick look around that homepage and I'll wait. Coverhawk is a 100% Power BI embedded site in public eye. You only have access to the homepage. So the real guts of it is behind the scenes, but it's truly an example of the versatility of Power BI. And it's actually really Power BI being used almost 100% in that visualization role. Rob Collie (00:56): And that's a role that most of us Power BI people tend to bristle at like when Power BI gets pigeonholed by some unknowing character as a visualization tool, we all know it's much, much more than that, but CoverHawk is almost the textbook case for the power of visualization. But it's as simple as this, thousands of data points produced by dozens and dozens of hours of film review by coaches. Before CoverHawk really didn't go anywhere. You really couldn't get any traction with these high school kids, with CoverHawk though, the adoption and uptake of all of this information, all of this data has become so much fun and so unconscious that they all now refer to it as the Hawk. So file this episode under the headings of unexpected places to find the data gene and unexpected applications of Power BI. I hope you enjoy it. We've certainly enjoyed our time working with Coach Hargis, looking forward to next season. So let's get into it. Announcer (01:54): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. Announcer (01:58): This is the raw data by P3 Adaptive podcast with your host, Rob Collie. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to www.p3adaptive.com. Raw data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (02:18): Welcome to the show Coach Hargis. Is that your first name coach? Is that actually your given first name that was under birth certificate. Coach Chase Hargis (02:24): A lot of people call me that, but no, my original name is Chase Hargis. Rob Collie (02:29): I liked seeing how everybody just greet each other as coach at the convention. Hey coach. Hey. Hi. How you doing coach? Hey coach. Everybody used exactly the same name. Coach Chase Hargis (02:37): You can't miss. Rob Collie (02:38): That'd be amazing for someone like me that has trouble remembering names. Just walk around, calling everybody the same thing. It'd be awesome. Coach Chase Hargis (02:46): Even if you don't coach, I still call you coach, just because it's just a habit. Rob Collie (02:50): Yeah, it just becomes muscle memory after a while. How about you tell us in your own words how you and I met. That'll bring us right into the thick of the data. Coach Chase Hargis (03:00): I was actually scrolling through some pictures today of how me and you met. I was looking for a scatter plot visual for my football kids on how to see where opposing quarterbacks are throwing the football. And I just was Googling all kinds of stuffs quarterback spray chart, quarterback scatter plot, 3D visual, this and that and the other. I actually had a couple of pictures saved on my phone. I stumbled across today, but I clicked on this one picture I believe it was your fantasy football deal and it took me to a webpage that said, if you would like further information type in your email address. And I unfortunately the go getter type and I'm not afraid for people to tell me no so I typed it in and away we went. Rob Collie (03:47): So you got on the phone with some people from our team and they were like trying to treat you as a potential normal business client. And that didn't really fit your budget, but let's go back just really briefly. So you're defensive coordinator, defensive coach at a high school in Texas. Yes? Coach Chase Hargis (04:04): Yes sir. I am the defensive coordinator at Magnolia high school in North Houston. Rob Collie (04:10): North Houston. Yes, indeed. And you're out on Google. You've got this thought in your head. There's got to be a better way to show these players on my team what to expect from the team we're going to play next week, right? Coach Chase Hargis (04:24): Yes, sir. Our season was over so I was just going forward looking for something that I could give my kids to help us do better. And I knew something had to be out there. I just didn't know how I was going to use it or get it to my kids. Rob Collie (04:37): You hear this Luke he's from Texas he keeps calling me sir. Totally not warranted. Don't do that. You're not going to be able to resist again. It's muscle memory. Coach Chase Hargis (04:48): That's right. Rob Collie (04:49): You'll end up calling me coach here in a moment. To the people who don't care about or really know anything about American Football. We hear a lot about the power of visualization in our line of work. There are professionals in the quote and quote data industry, this is their entire brand is visualization. That's how they define themselves as a visualization expert. And I can't think of an example, other than yours, that's better than what you've got in terms of the power of visualization. I know this because we've spent so much time working together on this. Your weekly workflow during a football season, you spend a lot of time watching film. It's not film anymore. It's all digital, but we still call it film because that's cool, right? Coach Chase Hargis (05:37): That's right. Rob Collie (05:37): So you watch film on your upcoming opponent. You watch a whole bunch of their games and you've got this, we'll call it an interface. But basically you've got this Excel like table that's plugged into the software where you're reviewing plays and you're manually coding in what happened on each play. So you're doing a lot of data entry. Coach Chase Hargis (05:59): A ton. Rob Collie (06:00): How many rows do you think, and I know it's different each week, because there's more film available on certain opponents than others. But how many plays will you watch on an opposing quarterback, opposing offense? Coach Chase Hargis (06:13): We just lost in the first round of the playoffs, but an average High School Football team in Texas runs about 50 to 60 plays of offense a game. So we had 10 games of this opponent, because this would be our 11th game. First round of the playoffs and our little platform records how much film you watch. And so I watched 16 hours of film that week from Sunday through Thursday. And yeah, I'm entering play calls and data for 55 plays a game times 10. Rob Collie (06:45): So you end up with between 500 and 600 rows at least for this past game entered into an Excel table. It not really Excel, but it looks like Excel and it's many columns wide. Coach Chase Hargis (06:57): As many as I want it to be. Rob Collie (06:59): You can't see it all at once, right? You got to scroll left and right even. Coach Chase Hargis (07:02): Absolutely. Rob Collie (07:03): Yeah. So people listening to this can understand 500 plus row spreadsheet with more columns than fit on your monitor. So then naturally you just turn around, right? And you give that table of data to your players in raw form and say, go study this. Coach Chase Hargis (07:19): Go get up. Rob Collie (07:20): Go ingest it. Coach Chase Hargis (07:22): Yeah. I wish it was that easy. Rob Collie (07:24): Which is not what you do. Coach Chase Hargis (07:25): No, sir. Rob Collie (07:26): For example, when you're watching a play, you're writing down coding into this table, whether it was a pass play or a run play, who they threw it to, how far they had to throw it, which area of the field they throw it to, all kinds of things like that, right? So that's why there's so many columns. There's so many things to encode from this data. And so by the time you're done with this 16 hours of film review, how much time do you think your players, the kids on your team, how much time do you think they have to study up on what you've done? Do they put in 16 hours? Coach Chase Hargis (08:00): Definitely not. No. We have to actually teach them how to watch film, believe it or not. Because they just want to throw on a game and watch the game. Like they're watching Monday Night Football or something. So we have to teach them how to watch it. But one of my linebackers, one of my little mini me on the field as I call him, he watched about five hours one week, I think was the most this season. So they've got a lot of other stuff going on. Rob Collie (08:23): Yeah, of course, they do. And a lot of life changes going on for them in high school. It's a busy time. So before you had the visualization that we built, what were you using to convey your opponents tendencies to your team? Coach Chase Hargis (08:40): The platform that we use that you talked about to watch film has a literal three by three grid of where a team is throwing the football. Rob Collie (08:50): Like a tic-tac toe visual. Coach Chase Hargis (08:51): Absolutely. Yeah. It's like, I don't know if my kids ever looked at that or got anything off those numbers, but yeah, it just was very vague. And I know where they're throwing the football by all the film I watch and what I call the plays and whatnot. But I was looking for something that could help them further understand where teams are trying to throw the football on us. Rob Collie (09:11): So what we have of course is a Power BI scatter plot. It's a 2D scatter plat with an image of a football field and we created something called CoverHawk using Power BI embedded. How many players on your team on an average week have been logging into www.coverhawk.app and unknowingly using a Power BI embedded solution to scout the opponent each week. Coach Chase Hargis (09:38): We had 36 players on our varsity defense this year and it better have been all 36 of them, but I got a feeling it was most of them. Rob Collie (09:46): Unlike the usual Power BI solution where there's calculations involved and there's cross referencing, the average business data model and DAX and formulas that go with it are performing a lot of digestion of the data before that data is fed to the visual canvas. But in our case, in this CoverHawk solution, we don't really do any calculation at all. It's more about just every single row gets displayed. I taught you how to take your exports from the film system. You're exporting to Excel, which by the way puts you in the same boat as everyone in business everywhere. Rob Collie (10:29): That's what they do. They've got some line of business system that they work with and they press Excel export and then their real work begins there. So you're exporting to Excel and importing that into your Power BI workbook, your PBIX file. And then you're publishing it to our P3 Adaptive Power BI tenant. But the players aren't logging into the P3 Adaptive Power BI tenant. They're logging into www.coverhawk.app or .app is the top level domain instead of.com. So CoverHawk is the name of the solution and they log in there. That's when we're using Power BI embedded. And do any of them know that it's Power BI? Coach Chase Hargis (11:13): Not at all? No. Rob Collie (11:14): Has anyone even asked you? Coach Chase Hargis (11:16): Grownups have asked me. Rob Collie (11:17): You haven't had any kids come up to you going, Hey, how'd you do this? Coach Chase Hargis (11:20): No couple of dads are interested. They've seen it. Rob Collie (11:24): Really. That's cool. Spoiler alert. I'm sure this is going to shock you. I did not play organized football at any level past like second grade flag. But if I had been on your team, I would've probably been asking you how you did this. Coach Chase Hargis (11:37): We're not at that level on our defense. Rob Collie (11:40): I actually think that's great. When technology is at its best, you really don't even notice it. You don't wonder about the why, you don't wonder about how the sausage was made. You're just like, this is good sausage. How much interaction have you gotten over their shoulder? Did you hold a training session to show them how to use it? How did you do all that? Coach Chase Hargis (11:58): So yeah, we started off with a training session. I mean, we have a film room which I'm sitting in right now and made them bring all their laptops and Chromebooks or whatever they had and Hey, we're going to go to www.coverhawk.app. Here's our login, and here we go. I'm going to show you guys everything you can do in it. And as far as that, when I haven't really looked over any shoulders, but they come up to me a lot at practice, even they'll tell me like, yeah, I saw he's throwing it right here a lot to this receiver that makes it worthwhile for me. It's like, yes, they are using it. Rob Collie (12:29): Has anyone even come up to you and said, I'm not getting it. Has anyone volunteered that they're struggling with it? Coach Chase Hargis (12:33): No. A couple of kids came up to me and said, I can't get back to the original. They wouldn't know how to reset their filters or whatever. That was one problem we ran into. They're like, I've gotten all the way down to three dots and I can't get back to the whole picture. So we had to go back over. There's a Reset Filters button to take you back to start and then you can dive in from there. Rob Collie (12:53): That's good. That's a really good question. That is a really good sign when someone is asking you a question like that. A, it shows that they're willing to be vulnerable, right? They're willing to show you that they can't figure something out. It also very clearly signals that they're using it and they're actually using it in an advanced way. We didn't mess around with this thing we allowed I don't know how many different kinds of interactive visuals. It's at least double digit places is in this report that you can click. Rob Collie (13:17): And I messed up even right there when you told me about that problem, the fact that I named it the Reset Filters button, is a mistake. That word filter doesn't appear anywhere else does it? As they're clicking around they're not thinking about that as filters. I am. So in CoverHawk V3, let's call this year's version V2. In V3 of CoverHawk Start Over would probably be a better label for that button. Clear All or something. I don't know, but the word filters shouldn't be in there. My fault, your high school Magnolia used CoverHawk this year made it to the state playoffs. Not all teams make the playoffs it's an achievement just to even be there, right? You're very disappointed that you lost in the first round as I'm I, but there is one other team in the state of Texas that is also using CoverHawk right now with your assistance and they are still in it. Coach Chase Hargis (14:10): It is my Alma mater, the Southlake Carroll Dragons. They are undefeated once again, and in the state semi-finals for the State Championship of Texas High School Football. So they are one of four teams remaining in their division. Rob Collie (14:23): And what division is this that they're in? There's different size schools, right? Coach Chase Hargis (14:28): Yeah. We go all the way up to 6A and there's a 6A division one, which is your bigger schools and a 6A division two. They are 6A division one. They are the biggest classification. Rob Collie (14:38): They're in the final four of the big leagues which would sound like it would mean a lot until you realize just how casual the State of Texas is about their High School Football. I mean, it's really not that big a deal. Coach Chase Hargis (14:49): Yeah. We don't care about it at all. Rob Collie (14:50): Yeah. It's not a religion or anything. Coach Chase Hargis (14:54): Nobody just watches 16 hours for no reason. Rob Collie (14:58): They don't make TV shows about it. Coach Chase Hargis (15:02): Movies... Rob Collie (15:03): Friday Night Lights was based in like what? Delaware? Coach Chase Hargis (15:06): That's right. Rhode Island Football. Rob Collie (15:08): I'm pretty sure it was Texas. So it's a pretty high intensity thing. So CoverHawk, power BI embedded is in the final four of division one 6A. Coach Chase Hargis (15:18): That's right. We are doing it. Rob Collie (15:21): End of podcast. Mike dropped. Walk off. Yeah. Southlake Carroll is a name that even I recognized from my high school years, because back when USA today used to rank, I guess they still probably do that rank. It's just one of the funniest things ever in my opinion, which is a national newspaper ranking high school football teams, like having a national ranking when there's so few common opponents probably not even playing the same rules necessarily everywhere. I've heard about them for a long time. This is a storied football team. You say it's your alma mater. So you played for them, didn't you? Coach Chase Hargis (15:52): I did. Coming up on 20 years ago. Rob Collie (15:55): So you have two levels of user now don't you? The players on your team and you have the players on Southlake Carroll, but they don't really talk to you I wouldn't think. Coach Chase Hargis (16:06): The players do not talk to me. Yes, sir. Rob Collie (16:09): That'd be a little too much, right? Coach Chase Hargis (16:10): Absolutely. Rob Collie (16:11): That second level that I'm talking about is you've got a coach or coaches at Southlake Carroll that you're supporting. Has that been a lot of fun? Coach Chase Hargis (16:19): It has because my good, good friend is their defensive coordinator. I mean, I was in his wedding and we lived together for four years and the guy that is running their spreadsheets for CoverHawk is my principal's son. And I actually helped get him the job at Southlake Carroll. So it has been a pleasure working with those guys. Rob Collie (16:38): I've told you numerous times how impressed I've been at your ability to keep your spreadsheet clean. There's nothing in this interface on this website called Huddle that does anything resembling data validation. So you can fat finger all kinds of garbage into that 500 row by 40 column absolute mess of a grid. And then of course, when you feed it into Power BI and a power query, heaven help you. The power query for that thing was almost a 100% written by me. So you get all these incredibly mysterious refresh errors and every now and then you've had to come back to me and ask me like, Hey, what's going on here? And I go track it down. And when I go track it down, I'm like, yeah, there's no way Coach Hargis could have tracked this down on his own. Rob Collie (17:25): I'm assuming that I'm only seeing the tip of the iceberg, that you are catching data quality issues, refresh issues that you have been diagnosing and fixing on your own without asking me, because you don't seem like the kind of person who asked me to help you until you've wasted eight hours of your own time trying to fix it yourself. Am I right? Coach Chase Hargis (17:43): You are right. I mean, until I'm about to pull my hair out is when I come to you, but I scour those things constantly looking for anything. And at least I know the kid that's working with him at Southlake so I can get onto him and like, gosh, you put this here and you're not supposed to put that there. Rob Collie (17:58): A future production version of CoverHawk would have much better data validation on the data entry side and or not just data validation. Because the problem is we don't control the Huddle website. The most convenient place to be entering the data is not one that we control. So we can't add data validation there. We can't catch them when they accidentally have the shift key down when they press one and they get an exclamation point, which happens to look awfully lot like a one when you're scanning that huge grid of numbers with your eyeballs, right? Coach Chase Hargis (18:31): Sure it does. Rob Collie (18:32): Or you've entered a code for a team that doesn't match the list of teams and the other table. In a environment that we controlled end to end, we could do much better, but we could also instead add a pre-checker, a tool that looks at your data before it gets ingested into Power BI and scans for these 10 and most frequent mistakes and identifying them specifically, that would be a really helpful thing to write, but we didn't have time to do that this year so we just made that you. Rob Collie (18:58): You really took to this and I have tried to explain, for example, the power query settings like that aim the folder to a different place, because I'll build this thing and it's pointing to a Rob folder on the Rob hard drive and then I send it to you and you've got to change it and point it to, I haven't even been nice to you. I haven't even done the thing where if it has the back slash at the end of the path, it won't double it up. But if it isn't there, I could have been nice and done that handling but no, I make you leave the back slash off or put it, I forget which you either have too few or many back slashes, right? Like it's a very sensitive thing that I've given you. We were just playing around at the time, like back... Coach Chase Hargis (19:37): That's right. Rob Collie (19:37): When it was the No Checkdown site, I didn't really worry about any of this stuff. So we went to this conference in, what was it July? Coach Chase Hargis (19:44): Mid-July. Rob Collie (19:46): Yeah, we did a booth. It's my first time being an exhibitor at a trade show, except for when I worked for Microsoft. And it's definitely the first time I've ever been to a trade show and spent any amount of time there that wasn't software. It's so funny. Like it was the same cafeteria lunch experience. Everything's the same, the way you walk into the trade show, it could be exposition hall, all of it's the same. It's just that most of the booths that you go to actually have physical things you can touch. There were racks of weights and remote control tackling dummies and most famously for me, these gigantic inflatable tunnels that you can buy for your team to run on out of at the beginning of the game. We were there a day early, right? During setup day and the tunnels were inflated. And so you didn't even really hardly knew me at all at that point and I'm handing you my phone saying, Hey, will you do me a favor and record me just running out of this tunnel. Coach Chase Hargis (20:48): That's right. We were about 25 minutes into person to person contact. Rob Collie (20:53): So I take my flip flops off and then I went back to my hotel and set it to the Rocky theme and put some slow mo in it to hide the fact that I was running so slowly. And yeah, it's a treasured keepsake for me now. But what were you thinking at that moment when this guy hands you his phone and said, come on, let's do this? Coach Chase Hargis (21:12): It was a great blow up. You couldn't miss the opportunity. It was one of the biggest I've ever seen. I thought, at least he's embracing what we're doing here and he's not just totally laughing the whole time. Rob Collie (21:21): No, I was immersed. I wish we could have had more time when it had like a real camera crew we could have gone around and filmed, nerd goes to the football conference type of skit where we go back we need to bring a crew. Coach Chase Hargis (21:34): It'd be a great documentary. Rob Collie (21:35): Three of us that went were me, you and Molly from here at P3. And at one point, Molly asked me when you weren't around, Rob, would you hire someone like Chase to work at P3? I'm like, heck yeah, totally. And so this comes back to this notion of the data gene. I think for most people listening, this just makes so much sense. Of course, you've got this big grid of data and of course you need a better visualization than the three by three ugly tells you nothing grid. Rob Collie (22:06): But I know better because the population of football coaches at any level, not just high school, but at any level who have come through our lead submission system, that population is one. It's you. You're the only one who has done that. And we didn't make any effort to advertise the old No Checkdown site. The one that you found before we created CoverHawk, we certainly didn't put keywords in there, like high school defensive coordinators. We weren't even thinking about it from the defensive side of the ball. So you found our visualization solution in spite of all of our efforts, as opposed to because of. I got to think you are working really hard to find this. Rob Collie (22:53): And then to follow that up again, I have tried to teach multiple people over the years, how to customize the settings in power query so that it can hydrate files from their hard drive instead. If it's a technical person I'm working with, they already know what they're doing. I don't have to tell them anything. I showed you once and you were off and running. I mean, you are the lowest maintenance data refreshing I have ever seen in this process. So yeah, you're one of those hybrids. You're up to your eyeballs in football, that's your subject matter. But you're thinking about it from a what's the better way perspective. How can we address this problem better? Which is real how most of the people who work at P3 started out. They're in Excel. They're discovering ways to solve problems and they're looking around the organization going, I can't believe we still do it this way. There's got to be something better. And then they find their way into Power BI and all of that. Rob Collie (23:46): That's just a long soliloquy saying, I think you're exceptional and I've really enjoyed crossing paths. We've enjoyed cooperating with you. One of the things that really struck me when we were at that conference was how I won't say that all of the high school coaches that I met, I wouldn't say that all of them were like this, but a large percentage of them really talked about themselves as educators even more than they talked about themselves as coaches. Wasn't about this obsession with football so much the thing that powers a lot of people in your profession that I met there is the improvement that they see in their team, in their individual players even over the course of a year or two, that developmental aspect. Was I getting an impression there that was correct? Coach Chase Hargis (24:32): Absolutely. I think a lot of guys that get into this profession, it's not that they were really good at football or played football at this college or anything like that. I mean, there is a lot of that, but I think there just invested in kids. And at the end of the day, I've got a bunch of friends in the business world that make a lot of money. And I obviously don't, they don't get why I'm doing what I'm doing. But at the end of the day, I get to play around with kids all day. And you guys are sitting in offices, dealing with grownups all day that don't care about you. So these kids look up to me and care about me. And at the end of the day, I get to mess around with them and help them get better at something they like doing and teach them a little something along the way. Rob Collie (25:08): Basically, infinitely small percentage of the players that come through your program are going to ultimately wind up in the pros, right? They're not going to go pro in football. Coach Chase Hargis (25:18): Absolutely not. Rob Collie (25:19): I'm sure that there are examples that have, so you're not directly preparing these kids for a career, not directly, but in hindsight, neither was my calculus teacher. Coach Chase Hargis (25:31): Mine either. Rob Collie (25:32): But overcoming adversity, learning to build new neural pathways. People don't really appreciate this I don't think most of the time. How much information processing goes into being an effective football player. It is insane. You're having in your team study. What was it? 500 to 600 data points. Coach Chase Hargis (25:50): Yeah. Rob Collie (25:51): I don't care how well visualized it is. The fact that this solution we've built needs to be interactive. You need to be able to see what they do on third down. You need to be able to see specifically how often they throw to this particular player and where. This is an enormous amount of data. And then these players have to go out there and in split second real time, diagnose things. This is an information processing game as old and as creaky as I am now in my middle age, if I could go out onto a football field, not an NFL football field, I'm talking about maybe like your football field, right? Rob Collie (26:30): If I could process information perfectly instantaneously, even a creaky body like mine would be an amazing asset on a football field, but my brain can't do that. My body can't do it and my brain can't do it. So I'm not close to being valuable on a football field, but I just think it is a really, really incredible how much data and information processing, whether you want call it data, whether you want to call it analytics it doesn't matter. Even the most old school football mentality still involves a tremendous amount of diagnosis, well, actually both sides of the ball. It's a tremendous amount of information processing, maybe more information processing in the game of American Football than any other sport. Coach Chase Hargis (27:12): Absolutely. Rob Collie (27:13): So you're a data instructor, man. You're an analytics decision support. You're a lot more closely related to the BI industry than when I even thought going into this. Coach Chase Hargis (27:22): I appreciate that, but you could call it what you want, but it's fun. I know that much. Did you see the Charles Barkley quote on analytics recently? Rob Collie (27:30): Charles Barkley, Charles Barkley on analytics. Here we go. Coach Chase Hargis (27:33): "They made it up because all these rich dudes who own these teams want to get their son-in-law a job. They are just stats, like yoga. Yoga's nothing but stretching. I tell people yoga's just stretching. They gave it a different name and now they can charge you for it." Rob Collie (27:48): He's acknowledging that it's important. Stretching is important while he's reserving his right to think of yoga as silly. And he's saying the same thing about analytics. Coach Chase Hargis (28:00): Says they're statistics, they just changed the name. We're going to charge you for analytics now, but they just raise the price. It's nothing but statistics and stats. Rob Collie (28:09): See, this is good. This is progress. So first of all, Barkley is an American treasure. I think he's a national treasure. So it's always pained me given how much I like the guy that he has always been so anti-analytics. Now in his evolution of his attitude towards analytics, it sounds like he's softening a little bit, right? He's gone from saying analytics is stupid, it's crap, it's useless to saying essentially we've always had it, right? It's always been valuable. Now it's just got a new name. He's very slowly trying to adjust himself to be on the side of its valuable without saying he's changed his mind. Very sneaky, sir, Charles, very sneaky, but we caught you. We see what you're doing. What I think it's really interesting is that there is no analytics and I hinted at this earlier. There's zero analytics in what we've done for CoverHawk. Coach Chase Hargis (29:02): I agree. Rob Collie (29:02): It is just turning the data that you've already collected into a form that is visually digestible. Coach Chase Hargis (29:10): Yes. Rob Collie (29:10): The only parts we start to tow the line of analytics is the fact that while there is a data model behind it, so you can click on the Just Show Me Third Down and the visual updates. There's a brain behind the scenes. It's able to reflect that and revisualize just that subset of the data. And there are some numerical quantities on the field or on the report that show the average or the total net or whatever for that collection of plays. As far as analytics go, this is really, really, really simple stuff, right? On the far other side of analytics would be some system that's predicting what play they're going to call next. Coach Chase Hargis (29:48): Yes. Rob Collie (29:49): We're not in that ballpark at all. So I think that if Barkley were a high school football coach today, just like he likes to talk about the son-in-law of the team owner. If Barkley had a son and he was in high school right now, you'd be damn sure Barkley be coaching that football team. Barkley would like CoverHawk. Coach Chase Hargis (30:08): He'd love it. Rob Collie (30:09): The sin I'm about to describe is one that I have committed many times and I think less frequently with experience, but more frequently at the beginning. Which is getting carried away with the math, getting carried away with the technology. When a nerd gets a hold of something like this, like me, I did this 15 years ago plus, there's this arrogance or hubris that you're going to find something that the coaches didn't know. And you might, you go find something like that and then you can show it to him and the coaches is like, this isn't helpful. There's another quote. I think it's Doc Rivers when he was skewing analytics. And I think rightly so, he was saying, my analytics team comes up to me and tells me, Hey, do you know that Rajon Rondo gets 20 miles an hour in the open floor when he is on a breakaway with a dribble? Rob Collie (30:56): And Doc's like, get out of my office with that. And I think correctly, because it doesn't change anything that Doc Rivers is going to do, but there's this person in his office who's trying to present it like it's the coolest thing ever and is really important. It's not, it doesn't change his decisions. Doesn't change his coaching decision. Doesn't change anything about how he operates the team. And so the analytics that first came to the NBA for instance, probably were a lot of times tone deaf, but there are other things. Rob Collie (31:26): One of our other podcast guests, Wayne Winston and his friend Jeff Sagarin almost 20 years ago, they were helping Mark Cuban's Dallas Mavericks optimize their lineups and it was working. And so when you say analytics, it covers a lot of ground. It includes all the bad and inexperienced practitioners. It includes all the places where something really not so helpful was tried and maybe even trumpeted as amazing, even though it wasn't. And then of course the really, really helpful things, the ones that are truly, truly helpful. Well, teams don't typically like to talk about those secrets. Did you ever use the word analytics with your players? Would that have gotten their attention? Would that have been helpful? Coach Chase Hargis (32:05): No, absolutely not. Like I said, I leave the football guys be in the football guys, but I'm fortunate enough that one of my assistants, my linebackers coach does love data as much or maybe more than I do. And we like to throw the word around analytics to make us seem really smart at times. Rob Collie (32:23): You got to have the right audience. Don't say it when Barkley is in the room, but yeah, it's an instructional tool. We have some decisions to make don't we? Coach Chase Hargis (32:31): Yeah. Rob Collie (32:32): We have to talk about whether to continue to invest in CoverHawk as a potential business. I mean, it's certainly been a positive experience so far. I think for everybody involved, it's paid for itself. It's paid its bills, right? It's certainly been good for us. Building a consumer grade high school student proof Power BI embedded solution has been a really good forcing factor for us in terms of upping our Power BI embedded game. And it's also set us up in a place where we can pretty quickly clone that and do all kinds of other interesting things with it for demonstration sites and things like that. So we're going to be reusing that tech. Coach Chase Hargis (33:16): Right. Rob Collie (33:18): But whether or not to attempt to scale it and get a 100 schools using it. And it's all about adoption. In your case, you were the coach, you were in charge. So we talk about hostages and volunteers when it comes to technology, your players, hostages, they didn't have a choice. Now they could have fought it, sounds like that didn't happen, but they weren't the ones offering the Google searches. Like, come on, coach we got to have a better way to do this. That wasn't how it went down. The Southlake Caroll story is very, very, very encouraging. However weird you might happen to be, you've got another big program using this. It's just killing me that y'all aren't just right down the road. I want to be in some of these meetings, just watching the breakdowns. I want to field questions from the players. I won't know thing one about what's actually going on football wise, but I like their adoption of it. Coach Chase Hargis (34:12): Yeah. We'll have to do it. Rob Collie (34:14): And so how do we get players and coaches to adopt something that wasn't their idea that they weren't looking for? Coach Chase Hargis (34:21): That's where you come in as the business side. But no, I think it would be really cool to get you in front of Southlake Caroll and for me to do it too, because I bet they've used it in ways that I don't know how to use it and vice versa. I think it'd be great to hear feedback from them. Rob Collie (34:35): So how awesome is it that they went to the finals last year, they went to the championship game and lost. They go to the finals this year and win, what's the only difference that we can point to? Coach Chase Hargis (34:43): Www.coverhawk.app. Rob Collie (34:47): CoverHawk. Coach Chase Hargis (34:47): The Hawk is what we've started calling it. Rob Collie (34:49): Really? Coach Chase Hargis (34:50): The Hawk is updated is the text that goes back and forth. Rob Collie (34:53): Oh my God, that is so cool. The Hawk is updated. It sounds like the eagle is landed or something. Coach Chase Hargis (34:59): The Hawk is updated. Rob Collie (35:03): Frog swim in winter. The Hawk is updated. I love it. Are there any other interesting or funny stories? Things that have happened in the course of this adventure. Coach Chase Hargis (35:15): So Southlake plays a team in their district is my buddies the head coach and he's an offensive guy. And so Southlake sent me the spreadsheets for this school that they were playing where my buddy is the head coach at. And so when I updated the Hawk, I screen shotted it on my phone and I texted it to him and I go, Hey, if you wanted to know where you're throwing the football, the last two weeks here it is. We had talked to him at the convention me and you. He came by the booth and was interested in it, but he looked at it and he goes, wow, we're pretty right-handed aren't we? I go, yeah, you're throwing it to the right a little too much. It was interesting for us to talk about it when he had no idea that we were even doing that with his team. Rob Collie (35:55): It's just fascinating. I would've expected, and I'm sure that there are layers and levels at which this impression is still true, but I would've expected a level of cutthroat competition amongst all these coaches in this community. That if it's there, it's like subterranean. It's hidden. When you're coming up on a game against high school X, high school X actually provides you with a lot of film from their games and you do the same for them. Coach Chase Hargis (36:29): That is correct. Rob Collie (36:31): You provide each other with film. That's not happening above the high school level. Coach Chase Hargis (36:36): No, it's not. I sent it to another coach too that was the head coach of a team in their district. And I go, Hey, here's where you're throwing the ball the last three games. He goes, what is that? I go, it's that CoverHawk thing I was telling you about this summer. He goes, if it's something I have to buy to beat Southlake I'll buy it. I was like, well, I can't guarantee that, but. Rob Collie (36:55): Well, coach, it's been a heck of a ride from that moment that you sent the email to P3 until now we've gone to a conference together, my only conference since COVID, which is pretty cool, got a future with a lot of possibility in it with just with your typical standard run of the mill Power BI embedded football visualization called CoverHawk. Coach Chase Hargis (37:14): That's right. Rob Collie (37:15): We'll be in touch behind the scenes, plotting our next move. But yeah, really appreciate you taking the time out of your day. Coach Chase Hargis (37:21): I appreciate it too. It was fun. Announcer (37:24): Thanks for listening to the raw data by P3 Adaptive podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to www.P3adaptive.com. Have a data day!

What's the first feeling that you get when you hear the word Sales or Salesperson?  We believe that most people do not get warm fuzzies when they hear those words! Carson Heady is Director, Health Solutions - U.S. Health & Life Sciences at Microsoft and shatters the negative stereotypes of the Salesperson.  He is about as human and helpful as any guest we've had on the show, and we're quite sure that his customers agree! His titles and achievements are amazing, and we were fortunate enough to be able to talk to him about a gamut of topics-from data use in healthcare, to the importance of transparency, the future of Microsoft, and all points in between! Here's Carson's Website: The Home of the “Birth of a Salesman” Series, by Carson V. Heady References in this Episode: Far Side King of the Salespersons White Men Can't Jump Water Scene (CONTENT WARNING!) The Shining-Scatman Is So Nice Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello friends. Today's guest is Carson Heady, Director of Health Solutions at Microsoft. There's a lot of exciting things going on where the healthcare space meets the Microsoft platform, especially the power platform and Azure. Rob Collie (00:00:13): And so of course, we talk about that a bit during the conversation. But he's also a bestselling author of books on sales, which led us down the human path in the conversation. Things like relationships and transparency, and the art of empathy and collaborative problem-solving. And all of these really being at the heart of this thing called sales that I think is very, very foreign and almost like anti-matter to the data crowd. Rob Collie (00:00:43): I know that I personally have always gotten way too hung up on the negative aspects of sales. There's something repulsive about talking people out of their money, isn't there? And there are certainly instances where sales does have that reputation for a reason. Rob Collie (00:01:01): But I think I learned something very, very powerful and important. It's one of those things that I think looking forward I'm going to be thinking about this conversation for a long time, which is that even the notion of calling it sales is defining it from the perspective of the supply. It's defining it through the lens of the people or organization that actually has something to sell. Rob Collie (00:01:22): But if you look at it instead from the perspective of the buyer, they need something. They need a service. They need a product. They need a solution to a problem, and they need someone to help them understand that it's possible and how much it's going to cost, and all of those sorts of things. They need someone to help them. Rob Collie (00:01:40): And I think if we had, from the beginning, not defined sales from that supply side perspective but instead had described it from the very beginning as customer empowerment or customer enablement. Rob Collie (00:01:52): And I know that a lot of places do try to rename sales to be something like that, and that's probably effective in some cases. But in other ways, like when they go out to hire, those same organizations, when they go out to hire people for customer enablement, what are they looking for? They're looking for sales professionals. Rob Collie (00:02:09): And so I think the word is just stuck. But for us, people who are more technically minded, who are more direct, hands-on problem solving sorts like me and like many of our listeners, I still think for us, it's a powerful concept to not think about sales from the outbound sense, not think about it from the supply side. Think about it from the demand side. Think about it in terms of the customer. What would they call it? Rob Collie (00:02:34): And when you look at it through that lens, and that was something that very much leaped out of my headphones when talking to Carson, suddenly it all just makes a lot more sense. So if the concept of sales has seemed foreign or alien or icky to you in the past, I think you'll find this conversation to be very valuable, interesting, and useful long-term. Rob Collie (00:02:54): With all that said, let's get into it. Computer Generated Voice (00:02:58): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Computer Generated Voice (00:03:02): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast. With your host, Rob Collie. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:03:23): Welcome to the show. Carson Heady, how are you this fine afternoon? Carson Heady (00:03:27): I'm great, Rob. Thanks for having me. How are you? Rob Collie (00:03:29): We're doing well here. Rob Collie (00:03:30): So Carson, let's start with today. What do you do at Microsoft? Carson Heady (00:03:33): Sure. Carson Heady (00:03:34): And at Microsoft, you never get too used to titles because they may change. Today, I'm a director for Microsoft's Health Solutions, which is basically med-device, MedTech, some of our ISV partners that dabble in the healthcare space. Carson Heady (00:03:48): I've got a team that supports nationwide customer organizations that fall in that space, and been with Microsoft seven and a half years. Exclusively in the healthcare organization for the last couple of years, and then prior to that, I've spent time in the small and mid-size. Rob Collie (00:04:02): I've just been fascinated, having worked at Microsoft on the engineering team for so many years, but then to go and go out into the wild and see how Microsoft actually meets the world. It's very, very different. And there's so much value created in the small and the SMB space by Microsoft tools, and at the same time, so little attention paid to it from an enterprise sales perspective. Because guess what? It's not enterprise. Rob Collie (00:04:27): So how did you even come into the role that you're in right now? I know that... You just mentioned the last couple of years in healthcare, was healthcare always a passion or an interest for you, or an area of extreme growth for Microsoft? It could be both, of course. Carson Heady (00:04:41): Yeah, Rob, very astute observation. It was one of those situations, I had the serendipitous good fortune of joining Microsoft the week after Satya Nadella became the CEO. Carson Heady (00:04:51): So to watch our transformation as a platform organization, I came into a brand new role at the time, I was brought in by a gentleman that I'd worked with at a previous organization. And had some success in that role and was pulled into the small and mid-size organization. Carson Heady (00:05:06): Now, in that business I had pretty much every industry vertical represented, and healthcare probably comprised 18% of the total account portfolio. There were some good wins and synergies within the healthcare space. And when I was saw one of my colleagues and then also a leader that I had worked for previously move into the healthcare business, and as the small and midsize organization continued to evolve into more of a digital model with more coverage, I made the move as a field seller into the healthcare space. Carson Heady (00:05:39): Predominantly supported providers and payers, I'd say probably a year plus in that space. And then just recently made the move into a leadership role in the health solutions, med-device, MedTech space. Carson Heady (00:05:51): So it's been an interesting journey, but mostly been gravitating toward leaders that I want to be aligned with in the business. And then also it's wonderful to be able to parlay your skills into a industry field that is so rewarding, one where I've been able to learn but also stay at the pulse of what matters to our healthcare organizations. Rob Collie (00:06:11): So are you not so much focused on providers and payers anymore, or is it just an expansion, like the Venn diagram also includes that now? Carson Heady (00:06:20): No, that's a great question. So our customers are prominent major organizations that fit into the medical device realm laboratory, laboratory, some of the pharma and life sciences organizations, and then also some of the partners that have built on our platform. Carson Heady (00:06:38): So it's fascinating because a lot of the conversations could be around supply chain, visibility, resilience, and most prominently, data. How are we leveraging data? How can data be utilized for these organizations to glean insights, better uncover commercialized models? There's a lot of really interesting implications. And mixed reality, that plays a lot in this space from a internal operations but also from a training perspective, and how they are engaging with their clients, who in many cases are the very healthcare providers, the hospitals that we were just talking about. Carson Heady (00:07:12): So different realm of the sphere but all obviously in the same ecosystem and speaking a similar language. Rob Collie (00:07:18): What are these vertical solutions that are being produced by Microsoft using the Microsoft platform? Like the combination of Azure and Teams and all that, is it Microsoft Health Solutions? Is that the right name? Speaker 4 (00:07:29): Sure. No, that's a great question, and it's very similar to our titles within healthcare. A lot of it is connected health experience, whether that's internal operations or patient experience. So there is a formal Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, a cloud for retail, a cloud for manufacturing. Speaker 4 (00:07:45): And to best answer your question, Rob, there is a... Basically a sphere that will show and chart out how all of these pieces are connected, whether it's data at the core of it. Interoperability is very important in the healthcare space where you or I, as a patient, we've got to be able to go into a healthcare provider and have access to all of our health records and have that experience be connected. Speaker 4 (00:08:08): So there's a lot of work that goes into that realm, but you nailed it. As your Teams, dynamics, whatever ERP systems some of these organizations are used, all of that is the connected element. And I think that's what sets Microsoft apart, frankly, is that connected platform experience. Speaker 4 (00:08:27): It's not Microsoft is the solution to everything anymore, it's how do we integrate with the solution? And in healthcare, a lot of these organizations are using their medical health records systems. We can now integrate with those. We can now host those in Azure. We can now glean insights from those and help them make better predictive decisions. So that's at the core of why we have a connected platform experience. Rob Collie (00:08:50): Yeah, the reality of the world I think is... And this has been a theme on this show with multiple guests, is that Microsoft's DNA as a platform company is very, very well positioned for where the world is right now. Rob Collie (00:09:03): There is no one stop shop solution to anything. We joke about best of breed, every organization claims with a sly grin that they have a best of breed, a mix of technology solutions and software that runs their business, which really just means the random collection of stuff that they happen to buy and get entrenched in over the years and through acquisition and all that. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Rob Collie (00:09:26): You end up with just this completely random and unique collection of line of business systems, and your entire business depends on the sum total of all of them. It was this really crazy dawning realization for me over the past few years when it came into focus that when it's done right, even business intelligence is a form of middleware. The old BI, which was frankly very, very poor, most of it, was all single silo reporting. Rob Collie (00:09:58): Here's the reports coming out of this SQL database and here's the reports coming out of this SQL database, which again, gives you all these completely disparate views of your business that like, oh, you need to integrate that into some sort of overall picture of how things are going. Well, use your brain. Just integrate that in your head, or more realistically, give it to the Excel people and make them do it. Rob Collie (00:10:18): So if you think of BI as read-only middleware and the rest of Microsoft's power platform and Azure, all of these things, it's not just read-only, you're not just reading data. You're very often passing and writing data between systems, that interoperability that you're talking about. And who is positioned to do a good job of this even on par with Microsoft? Rob Collie (00:10:41): We used to be cynical in a way, even if you work for some place too long you always invariably become a little bit cynical about it. And we used to always laugh about, oh yeah, Microsoft will give you the parts to the Porsche. You can assemble your own. Rob Collie (00:10:54): And we saw so many competitors delivering fully assembled Yugo's or whatever. the car wasn't as good. But you didn't have to build it. You didn't have to put it together. I think today's reality is is that everything needs customization, everything needs tweaking. Rob Collie (00:11:09): Everything needs to have a platform view because a 99% solution is just another version of zero. It needs to be 100. Carson Heady (00:11:17): I think you're spot on, and there's always different movers in the landscapes that we play in. I think it's fascinating too. And even in light of the pandemic, you've seen a lot of these different platforms that have become more and more prominent in how they've been utilized or more and more capabilities that have been introduced. And it forces us all to get better. Carson Heady (00:11:39): I think what I've seen mostly around Power BI as an example just over the last handful of years is the ability that I have to have the inputs and get back something that's going to be truly meaningful, but also the ability to leverage data as a diagnosis tool. Carson Heady (00:11:56): And it's amazing too working with clients. Being in healthcare, being able to see how they're leveraging the data. And in a pandemic, and being able to see in real-time some of these factors that are impacting patients, and some of these symptoms that are becoming more and more prominent as they discover them for the first time for the Coronavirus. Carson Heady (00:12:16): Or take it one step further, how can we build something meaningful with a customer and then commercialize that model? More and more in healthcare, I'm seeing a lot of these organizations enter into consortiums. Where can they share data in a meaningful way where they still retain the rights to their data, but they can call it together and then glean more meaningful and sometimes predictive insights around different things, like the effectiveness of a coronary stent? Carson Heady (00:12:43): I think these things are extremely powerful. And where Microsoft isn't always at the forefront of some of these things historically, we do a really good job of learning from our competitors. We do a very good job of catching up and then surpassing and bringing it all together. Carson Heady (00:13:00): To your earlier point about it being a platform, where else are you going to find a solution that brings it all together? I love that you touched on best in breed as well, because on paper thematically and aesthetically, that type of a format and approach makes sense to some degree. But where we enter into more and more of these discussions with decision-makers and influencers and executives in these organizations is in an environment like that to maintain, how cost-effective is it to maintain something of that ilk when you can have a platform that everything inherently fits together, talks to each other, and is easier to manage overall? Especially when all of those offerings are much more robust than they once were. Rob Collie (00:13:43): Okay, so the official name I was looking for before I think was the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. Carson Heady (00:13:48): You got it. Krissy Dyess (00:13:49): I actually had a question Carson, the thing that peaked my interest that... Tell me what mixed reality is in healthcare? Carson Heady (00:13:56): Love that question, Krissy. It's fascinating to me because I've been aware of HoloLens and some of the devices that Microsoft has released historically. Which there's a headset, you have the ability to look at the space in front of you. And the reason it's called mixed reality is because there will be something that I can interact with or envision or see that appears to be right in front of me. Carson Heady (00:14:19): Now, in the case of healthcare, there's a lot of practical applications for this. The one that I'm seeing a lot of is the ability to perform surgeries or do a mock surgery leveraging this headset. So being able to go out and look at the surgical format and different instruments and interact, it's basically a computer that is strapped to your head that gives you the vision that you are performing this operation so that you can do it from a practice perspective. Carson Heady (00:14:50): I've seen it leveraged from a training standpoint. Before joining healthcare I was working in the small and mid-size, and there was a moving company that I worked with at one point that was leveraging these to be able to beam in remotely into an environment and be able to see and do these remote surveys. Carson Heady (00:15:07): So there's a litany of different ways that these are leveraged, as opposed to full-on artificial reality, which gives me that full capability to strap on a headset and actually physically be in another space. Carson Heady (00:15:18): This is the same space that you're in but you're able to interact with others. You're able to do training, and you're able to do the things like even go out and look at a car part if I'm a manufacturer. And I go in and amplify it, blow it up, examine these things in a way that I would not be able to do otherwise. Rob Collie (00:15:37): Let's talk about sales. Before Microsoft, what's your origin story? How did you get into all this? Carson Heady (00:15:41): It's one of those things, I got into sales completely by happenstance. And I think that's common of a lot of sellers. There was no predetermined career path. I had the same conversations with my parents who were frustrated that I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself when I grew up. And sometimes I still don't, hence why I try to dabble in so many different things. Carson Heady (00:16:00): But in all seriousness, I started out trying to go into a customer service type role. Started with AT&T, I was on the phones and I believed that it was going to be more of a service style role. It was not. It was basically one call close selling. Carson Heady (00:16:15): At first it was businesses calling in asking something about their accounts, and then there was the expectation of upsell. And not long into my tenure there they changed our entire office into residential. So it got better. It was people calling in complaining about their phone bill and I had to turn around and upsell them. Carson Heady (00:16:31): So you can imagine that once you develop an ability or an acumen about being able to do that, I moved up in that department, and then jumped into a few different roles while I was at AT&T over about eight and a half years. Carson Heady (00:16:45): I was in sales, sales leadership, and then I ultimately ended up working in their advertising business for a little bit. So I've worked in a lot of sales and sales leadership environments, but completely not dependent on different industries. Carson Heady (00:16:57): So I subscribe to the belief that sales, if you develop a muscle around it, is a transferable skill. And I've been very fortunate to be successful in different industry verticals across my time at AT&T and Microsoft, but also a few smaller, much smaller organizations in the interim. Rob Collie (00:17:14): You said transferable. So you mean portable across industries, as opposed to transferable like, oh, I can teach you. I can teach you in an eye blink how to be good at sales. Carson Heady (00:17:26): I think there's an element of that. But for me, it's always been about people and process, understanding the people that I'm interacting with in that food chain, be it the customer, staying at the pulse of what matters to them, then also my colleagues or any resources that exist. And then process, we were talking earlier about [at-bats 00:17:45]. The one thing in sales is there's a lot of at-bats but you've got to have quality at-bats. Carson Heady (00:17:49): So understanding what is going to be the best method for reaching out to new prospects, or what's going to be the best method for follow up or continuing on through a sales cycle. I've been in one call close environments, I've been in two and three, four year sales cycles. So it's spending a lot of time in very different sales environments has given me a lot of valuable experience. And so I think with that comes some ability to teach. It's not as easy to transfer that ability because everybody comes with a different unique vantage point. Carson Heady (00:18:22): But I think that if you're good at sales, if you develop an acumen for that, you can translate that with practice. And obviously with a lot of effort you can transfer that into other industries. Rob Collie (00:18:34): I'm sure you've seen the Far Side cartoon, I forget the name of the character, but he's in a boat and he's sailing away from the Eskimos on their icebergs. And they're all sitting there with brand new refrigerators and freezers, and he's waving bye bye to them. And the caption is all hail King Jimmy, king of all sales people, it was something like that. Rob Collie (00:18:52): That scenario you described, that starting point or one of the starting points where people are calling to complain about their bill, and your organization's expectation of you is to turn that complaint into them subscribing to additional services. It's got to be one of the most difficult challenges ever. Like, no, we're going to feed you a steady stream of people who are angry. Carson Heady (00:19:14): Yes, but I don't believe... Just like Captain Kirk, I do not believe in the no-win scenario. I will find a way to succeed. And that's part of sales, frankly, is understanding the parameters and the playing field. We want to stick with some sports analogies too. Carson Heady (00:19:28): Like the at-bats, you've got to understand your playing field. And there's an element of it that is about sales excellence, but a lot of sales excellence is understanding the customer, what's the pulse of the customer, what are the resources at my disposal? And then how do I best operate with the parameters of maybe different buckets that get me paid, or whatever that looks like? Carson Heady (00:19:46): But part of it is developing a thick skin. The customer's not upset at you personally, they're upset at a situation. So let them vent, listen, and then ultimately try to arrive at a plan that is going to meet them where they are and align to what their stated goal is. Carson Heady (00:20:02): Now you ultimately are going to try to influence them to change their current behavior. But before you can do that, you have to make sure that they see a gap in what they're doing. Carson Heady (00:20:10): And again, that's in every selling environment. It's just some people cling to their current way of doing things more than others, and for different reasons. So we've got to uncover that why before we can even start to build a relationship that could lead to that change. Rob Collie (00:20:26): Listening to you talk it just occurred to me for the first time ever that I think one of my problems with... Or difficulties, a problem sounds like an objection. A difficulty that I've had is that sales is... Even the word sales, it is written from the perspective of the organization that has something to sell. Rob Collie (00:20:48): In other words, it's not written from the perspective of the person who has a problem to solve. And a lot of geeky, nerdy types, such as myself, sales is a very uncomfortable place. The idea that I'm supposed to go and talk someone else out of their money, it was just such a bad personality mismatch for me. Rob Collie (00:21:09): At the same time, it might sound contradictory but I don't think it will to you, I've loved evangelism. I've loved marketing, I've loved messaging. It's just when it gets onto that personal level, one on one, I just want to go back to the marketing message and then let them make up their minds. Rob Collie (00:21:26): Over the year as I've come to understand this, it's not sales, it's problem-solving. If the product you're selling isn't worth it, it doesn't have positive ROI, then you're a swindler. Rob Collie (00:21:40): But none of the stuff that we're working with is like that. The technology that you're responsible for selling and the services that we sell that go along with it are the most insanely positive ROI you're ever going to find. And so I had to get out of my own way in the way I think about this. And we're growing really quickly. We're hiring seemingly a new consultant every week, sometimes more than that. Rob Collie (00:22:04): And as part of our onboarding process, I meet with everybody one-on-one for an hour, hour and a half. It's one of the things I've been telling them is like, my transformation, my personal journey in terms of my relationship with sales is you're there to solve problems, and you're also there to not make your own service hard to consume. It's going to go out there in the world and it's going to do good things, don't get in the way. Don't passively block that. Rob Collie (00:22:29): I wish that there was another way we could describe sales. We could just change the name. And instead of describing it from the perspective of the seller, describe it from the perspective of the buyer. I would've had a very different feel for it from the very beginning, if it had been reversed in the way we described it. Carson Heady (00:22:43): Yeah, Rob, I think sometimes it has almost that four letter word type of connotation in your mind. But you said something really important that I think we need to double down on, which is evangelism. I look at my role as I'm being paid no matter where I work to be an evangelist of my brand. It's important that I believe in that brand to be able to do it right and to be able to do it with my whole heart. But the other thing too is I view my responsibility as being an advocate for my customer, because I need to understand the customers why and what their key milestones are so that I can go back to my organization and ultimately sell them on why they should care about my customer more than maybe they do on paper. Carson Heady (00:23:21): I also try to take a very counterintuitive approach to customers if commonly I get feedback that, "Hey, we already spend a lot of money with your company and we don't necessarily get as much value as we think we should." Or, "You're the biggest check we write," or, "Hey, we only hear from your team every few years when you want to renew us." Carson Heady (00:23:39): Guess what? I'm going to infuse that into the way that I reach out to customers, as in, "Hey, the reason I want to come to you today is because you're entitled to a lot of resources because of your investment with us. I want to make sure you're privy to that." Carson Heady (00:23:53): And then we get a baseline there and we optimize your investment first before we do anything. I want to build a foundation of transparency and trust. I also want to make sure I arm them with all of those resources that they're entitled to, but I understand their why, what's at the pulse of what matters to them. Carson Heady (00:24:07): And then if there's a way to align, great. But I try to look for ways that I can more inform as well. I've started webinar series, I've started newsletters. These are very passive forms of sales but it's a great way to stay top of mind. If something resonates, great. Let's have a conversation. Carson Heady (00:24:22): Because I think what a lot of sellers forget, deals happen as a result of relationships. That's it. And you're going to develop a relationship by showing first off that you care about what they care about. Carson Heady (00:24:33): Second, arming them with what they need to know about how to best leverage their relationship with my organization. And then lastly, just being there, making sure that you're actually showing up and that you're a part of the solution, like you said, as opposed to just coming in and trying to sell or get them to change their current way of doing things. Carson Heady (00:24:52): Because we have to minimize the risk factor. They're not going to have minimal risk in their mind until they actually have a trusted relationship with you, and you've earned that trusted advisor status. And I think that's the way sellers need to position themselves and think in order to be successful. Rob Collie (00:25:09): It might be the word of the year for me, calling it the word of the year would suggest that I'm actually going to learn everything I need to learn about it in a year. Which means it's probably more like the word of the decade for me, is validation. I'm not very good about this. I need to be much better, particularly in my home life. That's a skill that for some reason I've got a ways to go. Rob Collie (00:25:28): Twice here, just in the early going of our conversation, I've heard you talk about something that seems very much on that theme. When you're talking about the people who are calling and angry, giving them a forum to air their grievances and be heard. So there's that validation component there. And then you're talking about working this into your messaging, like your outreach process, because of the investment that you make. Rob Collie (00:25:50): You're preemptively validating, and I think it's a superpower. If validation of another person's, another human beings struggle comes naturally to you, you're going to move through the world at hyper speed, relative to the people who don't have this superpower. Rob Collie (00:26:10): Professionally, I'm way ahead of my personal life version on this particular superpower. The professional version of me is really good at this. The personal version has a long way to go. And I don't know how to really reconcile the two, but it seems like this is like a way of life for you. Carson Heady (00:26:29): It's so important to make sure that no matter what you're doing, that you think about all the...First off, what are the strengths and, like you said, the superpowers that I can bring to the table? How do I master flexing that muscle? And then how can I replicate that elsewhere? And invest in relationships? That's what's been the most key thing for me, is just investing in the relationships and showing up with the value. That could be me with my colleague. That could be me with any customer. Because at the end of the day, I hate that it has to be said, but we're all people. Carson Heady (00:27:04): If I think about how other people are probably showing up to customers, they have a process too, just like I have a process. I have a process that's designed to create relationships, create conversations, and see where that can go in a fruitful way for both parties. Carson Heady (00:27:19): But a lot of buyers have a process as well. They have the capability to research our company, they have the capability to research our sellers. And so I think if we can show up differently, then I would say probably the majority of other sellers show up, which is what you described earlier. Where I'm trying to show up, regurgitate every great thing that I deem about my company, that's not what's reaching and connecting with buyers truly. Carson Heady (00:27:42): So I feel like to your way of life comment, that's the right approach, because you have to live and breathe that authenticity in whatever you're doing, whether it's selling or just whether it's how you live your life. I'm of the same mindset even just in my personal life. I try to look at it the same way. I'm always trying to invest in relationships because we're so close to people in our personal life. I think that's what makes it challenging to have those relationships sometimes sing in the same way that the business ones do. Carson Heady (00:28:10): Because it's a little bit less personal, but I would agree with you wholeheartedly that it is, it's about a way of life. It's investing in people, and evolving, understanding what matters to people, staying at the pulse of what matters to them, and then adjusting your process accordingly. Rob Collie (00:28:24): There's a lot in there, the authenticity thing in particular. I'm going to do a quick side question here and I'm going to direct this question to Krissy. Rob Collie (00:28:31): You remember in the movie white men can't jump, when Rosie Perez says to Woody Harrelson, "I'm thirsty," and he gets up to get her a drink of water and she gets really angry at him. And he goes, "What do you mean?" He's just, "I don't want you to solve my problems, I just want you to validate my feeling of thirst." Carson Heady (00:28:50): That's the biggest mistake I make at home, because I'm always trying to solve problems. Krissy Dyess (00:28:56): I did not see the movie but I get where you're going. Rob Collie (00:28:59): As the lone female on this podcast. Krissy Dyess (00:29:01): I'm here to represent, yes. Rob Collie (00:29:02): You're here to represent the entire female population of earth. Krissy Dyess (00:29:07): I'm sorry all females, but I am here to represent. I'm doing my best, I'm doing my best. Rob Collie (00:29:12): If you say that you're thirsty at home and your husband goes to get you a glass of water, is that an A plus or a D minus performance? Krissy Dyess (00:29:23): Ah, this is such a tough question, because I don't really need anybody to get me a glass of water. But it would be nice and appreciated. It's like the opening door thing and how that's changed. And that's where I was thinking about this conversation, is, wow, technology has changed. When I'm hearing you talk it reminds me actually of a movie that I did recently see that I had never seen, which was surprising. The shining, have you all seen the shining? Rob Collie (00:29:51): No. Krissy Dyess (00:29:52): Okay, you should- Rob Collie (00:29:54): I know everything about it but I've never seen it. Krissy Dyess (00:29:56): And that's how I was too. I know the version from the Simpsons. I get the premise and I get the gist of it. And at Halloween we try to embrace all things Halloween with our family and our kids, and so we watched it. And after I watched that movie, there was a scene where the gentleman, he calls and he's worried about the family that's up there taking care of the property. And if they're going crazy and somebody's going to kill him. Krissy Dyess (00:30:20): And he calls up there and he says, "Can go check on them?" And he took it an extra step further. Not only did he check in, but then he followed up. And it was like this light bulb went off. I feel like we lost that. Just that general concern and connection. I feel the technology, while it's great, because I'm thinking about this for people that aren't particularly skilled and you can totally feed that all into a machine learning algorithm, prompting people on what they should say. And even picking body language and stuff like that. Krissy Dyess (00:30:53): I don't know if it's in the mixed reality with the avatar and we get the avatars expression, maybe that comes into play. The technology is great, but there is a part that is that human element. That is something that we at P3 deeply believe in with the Microsoft suite of tools, you can't just throw a technology and tools at things. But when you combine it with really that passion, that deep understanding, and you just do that little bit extra. It just makes such a big difference I think in terms of those relationships that you were talking about. Krissy Dyess (00:31:27): So anyways, I know I took that 100 places so I'm going to go back to the water thing. Okay? Rob Collie (00:31:32): Okay. Krissy Dyess (00:31:32): I'm going to tie it all back together, because here's something that happens. So my day is busy, sometimes I don't even have a chance to get a tea in the morning. And so oftentimes I go downstairs, I make a tea, and it's hot and I'm letting it steep. But then I hop up and I get on one meeting to the next meeting. Well, my husband, he picked up on it, because I come down at three o'clock and here I am drinking my tea, because I want to drink it. It's green tea and I want the good stuff in my body. Krissy Dyess (00:32:00): So he anyways brings me up my tea one morning. I come over and I'm like, "Oh, how sweet. He put a little actual rose on my desk." I don't know why. It was weird, but anyways. And I come over and I take a big drink, it's scolding hot and I burn my tongue. Krissy Dyess (00:32:15): So I don't know, sometimes you try to do something good like that. And in that case, it turned out really bad. But the next time then... There's more Rob, I know. There's more. Then next time he came up and he put it here, and he said, "Hey, just so you know, your tea is hot." Rob Collie (00:32:35): I have no familiarity whatsoever with this concept of trying to do something nice and having it backfire, no concept of it. Carson Heady (00:32:42): Never heard of that. Rob Collie (00:32:43): Never heard of it. Rob Collie (00:32:45): I'm always well intentioned, always well intentioned. If only there were bonus points giving out for intention, but I... Yes, I typically fall short. Krissy Dyess (00:32:56): It's the thought that counts. It's the thought that. And you take the data and you learn, okay, didn't go right. Next time I'll let her know, put the sticky on there, it's hot. Rob Collie (00:33:05): Hopefully we live to try another day. Krissy Dyess (00:33:07): This is true, this is all true. Rob Collie (00:33:09): Always improvement, the evolution of the process. Tea is hot. Carson Heady (00:33:13): It's like groundhog day, it's like today I might put too much creamer in her coffee. So tomorrow, I'm going to do my absolute best not to do that but then I'll probably mess up something else. And then we're all striving toward that one perfect day. Rob Collie (00:33:28): I think in an old Bill Simmons column someone calculated how long that character probably spent. Carson Heady (00:33:35): A thousand years or something. It was something crazy. Rob Collie (00:33:38): It was a really long time, that's how long he was trapped in that single day. It was a heck of an analysis. Rob Collie (00:33:43): Going back to these themes, these sort human themes. Carson, what are your thoughts... This is the biggest softball question of all time. Ready for this? Rob Collie (00:33:50): What are your thoughts on the concept of transparency when it comes to working with your own team, working with customers, I'm just going on a hunch here that this might be an important word for you. Carson Heady (00:34:02): Big time, love that you called out that word, Rob. I think from a transparency standpoint, ultimately when you're working with a customer you strive to have that relationship where you care about what looks like a win to each party. And that best happens when they understand your process as best they can. Carson Heady (00:34:18): I try to arm customers with as much as they need to know about what's a lever that I can pull on their behalf? How can you best arm me with information that I can take back to my company and say, "Look, this is why we need to invest at this organization." That's the type of level of relationship that I want to establish with every customer that I work with. That's how we best become advocates for them and evangelists of our own brand in turn. Carson Heady (00:34:43): Same thing with working with a team. When I'm working with somebody on my team, and I've been in leadership for the majority of my career, it's understanding what's their motivation, what's their why? But show them as much of the behind the curtain wizard of Oz stuff as you possibly can, they need to understand, how are these key processes going to work either for or against them? How can they best optimize their payout? Or arming me with the information that I need when we do quota setting exercises or getting them mastery of their role, but also getting them promoted or getting them wherever they want to go. Those are the types of things that are so critical, I have to be able to understand that so I can be a champion for my people. Carson Heady (00:35:24): And the best part of that is is showing them as much of the sausage making as they want to see, or that makes sense. I've got to be allegiant to my organization because again, that's what I'm paid to do. I can't just show and tell everything, that's not my job. But I do think it's important that the team and the individual contributor or the manager that's working for you, whatever it is, they know as much of the process as will be advantageous for them in making decisions around their job mastery and then also taking charge of their career. Rob Collie (00:35:55): When you understand the benefits of a transparent style it seems really obvious that this is the way to do it. At the same time, why does it seem so novel? Why does this feel like a cheat code as opposed to how everyone works? It just seems like it should be a hell of a lot more widespread than it is. Do you have any instincts on that? Why is transparency not the norm everywhere? Carson Heady (00:36:19): I think there's a variety of reasons. At the heart of it there's a conscious decision that comes into it. When I pull up my email every day I've got hundreds of emails, I've got fires that I've got to put out every day. But it's those decisions that you make about your non-negotiables every day. I'm going to etch out five things that I have to get done that day. Carson Heady (00:36:38): And it might be I see somebody struggling, so I'm going to carve out a conscious working session where we're going to work through whatever that issue looks like, or I'm going to validate and listen to what they have to say if they've got a legitimate beef or a legitimate barrier to success. We're going to sit there and we're going to sit in it. And it's uncomfortable sometimes, I think that's why it's not necessarily the default, is because there's elements of it that are maybe uncomfortable. Carson Heady (00:37:04): It also depends on what's the messaging and the treatment from above. How are my managers or my leaders conditioning me to be a leader? Am I getting the training that I need to be a good manager? Am I being trained and coached to put people at the heart of everything that I'm doing? So it's the big element of culture that fits into it as well. Carson Heady (00:37:21): So if you've got those factors working against you you're always going to be a product of your environment. That's the way of life. And I think if you're not trained or coached or conditioned to lead by putting people at the heart of it, and you don't consciously make the decision every day to go out and be transparent and put people at the heart of this, communicate with them consistently, be consistent with your message, it's really easy to get pulled in a lot of different directions. Carson Heady (00:37:48): We all have a lot of minutia going on. I've absolutely had managers in my career that have led blindly with data reactively, and just said, "Hey, you need to go sell more widgets, just go out and do it." Carson Heady (00:38:00): Well, that doesn't help me understand the why behind that process. And the more inclusive way of doing that and the more effective way of doing that is to work together to say, "Hey, we're not doing well at this widget. Let's sit down and understand why that is. What's the pushback we're getting from a customer as an example, maybe were some best practices. Who's doing well at this? How can we learn together and do this together?" Carson Heady (00:38:24): That's the key element that I think is lacking when you don't necessarily do that as a default. But I think it's product of environment, and it's also putting people at the heart. It isn't necessarily the default. And there's some discomfort sometimes that comes with that validation and sitting with the struggles with your team that are required to truly get you there, and to optimize that dynamic. Rob Collie (00:38:47): We've been playing the sports metaphor game, why stop now? So I remember watching... It was a boxing match, it might have been... It was some sort of fight where people were swinging fists at each other in a controlled setting. Rob Collie (00:38:58): There were gloves but they left them on for the fight. So it wasn't hockey. Okay, so we can rule out hockey. And after the fight, the winner, they're interviewing the winner, and I don't know a thing, one about boxing terminology or whatever. But I remember him saying, "Yeah, I just felt really confident the whole time and I felt really comfortable staying in the pocket." Rob Collie (00:39:17): And I'd never heard that phrase before, and I'm sure they use it all the time in fighting. And guess what, I'm not a fighter. My last amateur fight was probably I was eight years old. It was unsanctioned bout and I retired after that. But that whole concept of in the pocket, now we're really taking a Brene Brown turn in the conversation. Rob Collie (00:39:37): Listening to your answer, you hit on vulnerability. You want to be transparent, that exposes your neck, and it's uncomfortable to do that. And I think especially as youngsters we misunderstand, we have an inverted sense of strength and weakness. Vulnerability is weakness in the wild. Rob Collie (00:39:59): But in teams, in society and relationships, it takes all the strength in the world to be vulnerable and survive it. But all the value is there. Now we're going back to the fighting metaphor, which is less collaborative for obvious reasons. But that notion of staying in the pocket, in order to win he had to be within striking distance of his... Let's just say his goal and not the other guy's face that he's trying to pummel. Rob Collie (00:40:25): No, he needs to stay within range of his goal, but at the same time that puts him in danger. And he has to be comfortable with that. That doesn't just come naturally to most people. For me, myself, I don't know when that magnetic poll started to reverse for me and started to understand it differently. A lot of things that I thought were weakness were strength and vice versa. Rob Collie (00:40:47): I'm very grateful that that inversion has happened or maybe it's still happening for me. But yeah, vulnerability, most people don't like it. And so opacity rules the roost. Rob Collie (00:41:03): Okay, we can now rest assured that being transparent will keep us in the upper percentiles basically forever, because vulnerability is always... It's going to be something that's uncomfortable. There you go, durable business advantage. Carson Heady (00:41:18): I love it. Here's the key element, is I've been in sales for a long, long time, and it was always taught to me to never let them see a bleed and to be able to withstand anything. And that's just not reality. Don't get me wrong, you can be the strongest person there is and you can not let folks see a sweat, but your team isn't going to believe that you're a real role model. Carson Heady (00:41:44): We spend a lot of time here at Microsoft from a leadership standpoint talking about modeling the behavior, coaching the behavior, and ultimately caring about the people and they're plight. And if you act like you're bulletproof and put up this unrealistic facade you're not going to get... People aren't going to buy into you. It's just that simple. I think a lot of times about just tough conversations. Carson Heady (00:42:08): You talked about Brene Brown, one of the biggest takeaways that I had with dare to lead is that oftentimes when we have a tough conversation or we have the apprehension around having a tough conversation, it's not about them. It's about us. It's about our own discomfort. Carson Heady (00:42:21): When I have a tough conversation with somebody that I work with or a tough conversation with a customer, whatever it is, a lot of the angst that I take into that is about my own discomfort. Like, man, I don't feel like doing this, or man, I don't want to deliver this news. Or I'm just going to sidestep the confrontation because I don't want to feel uncomfortable. And we've got to own that. That's really helped me transform a lot, because I will tell you in my younger days as a leader, because I didn't know any better, I thought it was so important that my team never saw me make a mistake. Never saw me do anything that was... Showed the slightest hint of weakness or uncertainty, or whatever it was. And that's just not realistic. Carson Heady (00:43:00): Being able to tell somebody, "I don't know the answer but let's go find it together." Those are the types of things that help you become that trusted advisor, whether you're working with a customer or a colleague, because they know that they can go to you every time they have a conundrum of that ilk. You're going to become somebody that's going to be in the boat with them as opposed to somebody that is on a different plane. Rob Collie (00:43:22): You mentioned that when you're younger you were different about this. The lessons that we learn in middle school, they carry some momentum. I wasn't getting beaten up in the hallways by vulnerable people, that wasn't... The bullies didn't really advertise what was really going on with them. Even when we were younger, it speaks to, like you were saying earlier, this isn't critical mass. If you'd had role models that had taught a different... I think it was you that hinted on the... Not hinted at, you said directly, that the culture that you're immersed in is going to dictate a lot of your defaults. Rob Collie (00:43:54): If we grew up with and just lucked into really, really, really positive, early role models that bucked that trend, I think we... Most of us, well, I don't know, maybe I'm being too gracious, but I think a lot of us would happily take that more authentic route. Rob Collie (00:44:09): When I joined Microsoft in the 90s, an organization, if there ever there was one, an organization that was populated by people who were being stuffed in lockers in middle school, this was like the greatest concentration of bullies victims in the world at the time. And still to go... And certain teams were worse than others, the Windows team in the 90s was just vicious. They were so mean. The whole organization operated out of fear and intimidation and threatening, a lot of demeaning. It was just part of how they operated. Rob Collie (00:44:46): And I worked in the relatively calm and soft nerf-lined world of Office by comparison. But even in Office, there was a lot of abusive behavior there. I know that all of that has gotten much better over time, but this was my indoctrination. Rob Collie (00:45:03): Well, I had the opportunity at one point to change teams and take the better move for my career and join the Windows team. And I said, "Oh no, no way. I'm not going over there." It was brutal. Carson Heady (00:45:15): No, but I think on the flip side you hit on something that's crucial for us to double down on, which is I cut my teeth in a one call close environment, which was basically, like years ago before Microsoft, it was like a PG13 version of the Wolf of Wall Street every day. Carson Heady (00:45:29): But to be able to go through that and to understand it, and understand what worked and what didn't and now parlay that into my current environment, we're all a product of environment, but also experience. Carson Heady (00:45:41): You're able to learn from these things, what works, what didn't, what gave me meaningful connection and what didn't. I think it's key that we're able to hit on that and acknowledge it and evolve. I think that's crucial. And that's what over time, a new day dawned when I realized two things about sales. One, how important it was that it was a team sport, and two, how important it was that you focus on the relationship, not on the sale itself. And that's what changed my entire career. Rob Collie (00:46:08): And I'd heard that from others before, but so many things in my life, I can hear it, I can read it in a book, and I can nod and go, "Yeah, yeah. Obvious." But never really understand it. Until one day I live it, and then I go, "Oh, oh, okay. That's what they were talking about." Rob Collie (00:46:28): I think I get it now. This isn't the first time I've heard it, but it's probably one of the first few times I've heard it said so directly and have me actually understand what's being said, as opposed to just going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." Rob Collie (00:46:38): Some sentences you just can't disagree with. So you agree, but that doesn't mean that you actually get it. I think it's one of the most, if not all of the most valuable things I've learned in my life, are of that category. They don't sound like genius. They don't sound like innovation, but if you really lean into it, if you make that a guiding principle and not just one of many things that you believe to be true, it changes the way the world works. Rob Collie (00:47:04): Let's go back to that question I had earlier, which is on an average day in your professional life, what percentage of the time are you spending with fellow Microsoft employees versus with customers? Carson Heady (00:47:15): That's a good question. I strive for as much customer time as I can, but also leading a team there is a healthy balance of ensuring that I'm keeping up with team meetings, one on one meetings, coaching sessions, et cetera. Carson Heady (00:47:28): I'd probably say 20 to 30% is with customers. I do a lot of the prospecting with my team and I leverage the fact that I am in a position where I can be a support resource for customers. I like to be in the field with my team, even if it's virtual in this case a lot of times, because my team's all over the country. But I like to be with the customer, because it does two things for me, Rob. One, it helps me stay at the pulse of what matters in our industry so that I can articulate that when I go spend time with my team or work with other customers. Carson Heady (00:48:06): But the other thing it does too is it shows that I am there, I'm a part to that team supporting them. That is so critical, because we hit on that earlier. A lot of times, if customers feel like you're either not present or you only show up during certain compelling events, it gives them the opposite impression of what we're trying to create. Which is not just a culture of our team but a culture with customers. We want to be true collaborative partners. Carson Heady (00:48:30): And that word gets thrown around a lot. So what I believe that means is spending as much time as I can actually with the customers so that they see us as a actual partner and collaborator, and then looking proactively for things that we can do together as opposed to just things that we can do that involve my company. Krissy Dyess (00:48:48): I worked in a sales organization prior to coming to P3. I wasn't a sales person but I worked with the data and the analytics and the clients, and improving. And that culture of sales, everything that I've heard you describe here, and how that really prepares you as you move into leadership, talking about the inbox and you quickly scan through and you figure out your non-negotiables. And that's all sales coaching and sales training. And I just, I feel like there is so much strong leadership themes that I heard here today that are just really a skill that takes time to learn and have those mistakes and grow. Krissy Dyess (00:49:30): And I just... Gosh, I'm getting so inspired by just hearing this conversation, because I have a team that I manage and I work with customers. And do you have a coach that you work with on a regular basis, or do you have peers in your organization? How do you continue to be inspired and get energized? Because it is not easy when you're giving that energy to so many people and so many resources and you need some kind of mentor or inspiration, maybe it's Rob's podcast each week. I don't know. Rob Collie (00:50:02): Oh, I'm sure it is. Yeah, go ahead, Carson. We need a sound bite of you saying, "All I have ever known in life that was valuable I learned on the podcast that was started 18 months ago." Carson Heady (00:50:15): Krissy, that's a great question. At the end of it we all go out with the best of intentions I believe. And we've got our heads down, and when your heads down you can't look up and look around. And I think that's the key difference as a seller. It's so easy to get lost in my calendar, and so there's a lot of people that have been mentors for me over the years. But I didn't proactively go out and look for mentors when I was younger and earlier on in career, because I didn't really know to. Carson Heady (00:50:41): It wasn't until somebody invested in me in that way, that said, "Hey, you need some formal mentors." That was super eyeopening for me because I didn't know that I needed it until I got it. Carson Heady (00:50:51): And now it's such an important part of the puzzle for me. I'll give you an example, to be able to go out and look at my calendar for the day, how often you see that back to back to back to back to back day. Well, on some of the days when there are things that absolutely have to take priority, I've learned to go in and do the uncomfortable thing of looking at the day and saying, "What could move to tomorrow? Is this meeting mission critical for me today?" Carson Heady (00:51:15): And if it's not, then I've got to be able to convey to the person like, "Hey, I had a lot of stuff pop up today. I have to get X, Y, Z done. Is there any way we can push to tomorrow or next week?" Or whatever that looks like. And to be able to have those types of conversations. Carson Heady (00:51:29): When you get into that ability to either really have a discipline around your management of your day, those types of things can make all the difference in the world. Carson Heady (00:51:38): The other thing that I think is really critical is being challenged to replicate your strengths and superpowers broadly. We talk a lot at Microsoft about the impact that you're having and outcomes, tangible outcomes that you're driving. And so I typically try to coach my team to think about first off, mastery of role is important. Obviously hitting your number is an important element, but if you want to move up, develop a personal brand, you've got to transcend the game. Carson Heady (00:52:06): You've got to think about how can I take my strength and do it in a way that it drives outcomes for everyone. And so I really try to challenge my team to think very broadly about how can you take the things that you're passionate about or strong with and replicate these things broadly. And when I had that happen for me, from a mentor, that was one of the most impactful things that ever happened in my career. Because I started consciously thinking about it's bigger than just me. Carson Heady (00:52:36): How can I help other people do some of the things that I have been successful with? And guess what? What happens when you do that is you find people that have different gaps than you have, and they're strong in a certain area that I have a gap in. And so guess what? Now you've got a symbiotic relationship where we're both learning from each other. Carson Heady (00:52:53): Microsoft is like many companies, we're very much a relationships and resources organization. You got to understand the resources but you've got to really proactively go out and have relationships. Every meaningful role I've been pulled into in my entire career, except one, was because of relationships that I was able to form, people that wanted me to come work in their environment. Carson Heady (00:53:14): And guess what? The other one, the one that wasn't was because of something that was part of my personal brand, it was a book that I had written 10 years ago. Carson Heady (00:53:22): And the reason that my resume stood out was because I had that one unique nuance applying for a sales management role, I had written a book. And it made that stand out. Carson Heady (00:53:31): So think about the ways that you can stand out positively. What do you want your personal brand to say about you? What are the strengths that you want to parlay into success for other people? And how can you go out and proactively seek out people that are doing it better than you are? People that can challenge you to do it differently. Those are the things that are going to make all the difference in the world. Rob Collie (00:53:51): What's the name of the book? Carson Heady (00:53:52): 2010, I wrote a book called birth of a salesman. Sales books are out there and done so effectively that I didn't want to replicate what's already been out there. So I actually created a fictional protagonist and a story, a within a book. So it's a novel but this fictional character writes his own sales book. Carson Heady (00:54:09): And I now have four of them. The latest was a salesman on fire, and I did that one in 2020. It's been a really interesting journey. I obviously haven't sold enough to retire. I've been able to talk to people all over the world as a result, and it's been a very career-defining thing. Carson Heady (00:54:25): I always like to tell people the stuff that I've done is very easily replicatable, anybody could do the stuff that I've done. You just got to be willing to do the work. Rob Collie (00:54:33): When you said your first book was called birth of a salesman and then you said you'd written four. I was looking forward to the adolescence of a salesman, the full life-cycle. Carson Heady (00:54:44): As long as I don't do the death, but that's where I got the title, Arthur Miller. Rob Collie (00:54:48): Wow, that sounds really challenging. You had to write dialogue. Carson Heady (00:54:51): Yeah, I've never been good at that. You know what's funny though, Rob, is I've always been bad at writing dialogue. I tried to write a screenplay when I was in college, I took a script writing class. Carson Heady (00:55:00): And I actually forced myself in my third book to write almost nothing but dialogue intentionally to put myself in an uncomfortable spot to make myself better at it. Carson Heady (00:55:08): But yes, actually had to write dialogue. Rob Collie (00:55:11): That's just brutal. I've written two books, well three, one of them sold so few copies that we don't talk about that one. But the whole thing's basically written in my voice. And to try to write other people's voices and put quotation marks around them. Even some of my favorite authors, when you're reading their work you very quickly figure out if you're paying attention anyway, which character in the book the author wishes they were. They're imbuing this one character with the version of themselves, the most powerful version that they wish that they were. You can see them projecting their own fight club, alter ego into this story. Rob Collie (00:55:45): And I read a lot of Roger [inaudible 00:55:47] books growing up, a lot of the sci-fi. It doesn't matter what genre it is, there's always this one character in there that's the protagonist. It's always the same character over and over and over and over again. You just know it's who Roger [inaudible 00:56:01] wishes he was. Rob Collie (00:56:02): Oh man, writing an educational book, in some sense nominally a non-fiction work, while still having to fiction angle to juggle at the same time, that's degree of difficulty 10. Rob Collie (00:56:15): No. Can you imagine writing a Ax [inaudible 00:56:17] novel, Krissy? It's like this murder mystery with the calculate function. Krissy Dyess (00:56:24): I could see it capturing a lot of scenarios around people and their challenges, and the road that they go down of, oh, I'm going to solve it today. No, no, no, I'm going to walk away. No, I'll come back later. I could see there's a lot of that type of scenario. If it gets in the code nobody's going to really read all that. Rob Collie (00:56:39): It would just be like a bunch of jokes is all it would be. Krissy Dyess (00:56:43): I think there could be some stories in there, but I think if you're going to attract readers it's more around the relationships and the overcoming the challenge. And how did you solve it and what kind of scenario? I think there's a lot of people that could relate to some of that, like, oh, I found this really cool tool but then I got in there. And it was really cool but then it got hard. Krissy Dyess (00:57:03): But then I figured it out and it changed my life. I don't know. There could be some stories around that. And if you actually go into our Slack channel, we are just having conversations around this that maybe we should sell a subscription to our ask a friend. Krissy Dyess (00:57:14): So I don't know if you know about this Carson but we have Slack and we have a whole team of consultants, and we have a channel dedicated to just questions that people are having. It centralizes, people can jump in, whoever has availability. And there's a little bit of humor in there as well. You have to qualify the humor in that it is people that like [inaudible 00:57:36] and stuff like that. Krissy Dyess (00:57:37): So there's a little bit of I guess nerd humor in there, but- Rob Collie (00:57:41): Oh, a little? Krissy Dyess (00:57:41): A little bit. Rob Collie (00:57:43): Krissy's given away all kinds of secrets now. First of all, that we're a Slack org. Now we're also a Teams org Carson- Krissy Dyess (00:57:52): That's true, that's true. Rob Collie (00:57:54): Because we are a best of breed type of organization, which is really just code for, well, at one point in time we had someone working here that really thought we should try Slack. Krissy Dyess (00:58:02): Teams wasn't around back like it is today. Rob Collie (00:58:06): See, we've got an excuse. So- Krissy Dyess (00:58:10): There is an excuse, there is a very valid excuse. Even now there's so much development and things rolling out of Teams to address the remote experience. So to be fair, Teams was not what it was when we went the Slack path. Rob Collie (00:58:22): That's right. That's right. Carson Heady (00:58:22): That's what I love about the competitive landscape, it forces us and others to up their game when there's these capabilities, functionalities features that are available. Carson Heady (00:58:32): Look at when the pandemic began, and some of the tools that were being leveraged at the beginning of the pandemic for virtual conversations, virtual meetings. There are so many features and functionalities that have been added to these tools over the last 18 months. It advances the technology, it advances the experience. I think that's what it's all about. Carson Heady (00:58:52): So I welcome the competitive landscape because I think it makes everybody better. Rob Collie (00:58:56): Well Microsoft, if you ever come knocking, trying to convince us to switch to Teams full-time on an enterprise license, just remember we're going to be evaluating Teams versus Slack, primarily through the lens of your Giffy integration and your custom emoji support. Those better be robust or we're going nowhere. Carson Heady (00:59:21): It's good to know what matters most know what matters. Krissy Dyess (00:59:23): No, it matters. Yes. Rob Collie (00:59:25): We left the custom emoji permission wide open on our Slack, just the collection of those moves at incredibly high velocity these days. You've got to keep up. Rob Collie (00:59:38): The subtitle of our show here is data with a human element, and we have really leaned into that human element. And I like that. Rob Collie (00:59:45): With our remaining time though let's circle back to more of the tech side, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. Is this something that you, Carson, in the medical device relationships and all of that, is that particularly relevant in that space or is that mostly focused more on the provider side of things? Carson Heady (01:00:03): There are elements that are going to play across the spectrum from a healthcare standpoint, but a lot of it, Rob, is about the integration. So everybody's going to come to the table, whether it's a med device organization, medication management organization, a laboratory, pharma and life sciences, or a hospital, they're all going to come with a different inherent setup, different tools that they're leveraging today. Carson Heady (01:00:26): And I think the beauty of a cloud for health as an example is there's two real major components. One, where does it fit in from a data, data sources, data systems perspective, some of the tools that they have in place today. We've hit on a few of them today. How are they calling and portraying their data? What's their electronic medical record? Do they have Microsoft or a competitor for their ERP? A lot of them have a sales force, so do they have a CRM that they're leveraging? Carson Heady (01:00:56): And so looking at some of these inherent tools and what makes up the backbone of their organization, and then where does Microsoft plug and play into those? Carson Heady (01:01:06): And there's some obvious ones, ways that it can have a data repository and Azure as an example. And then it's very easy to run your machine learning and analytics on top of that and glean insights. That could be one actionable way to make it hum. Carson Heady (01:01:19): One of the other ones that could be different platforms that become a part of that solution. So we are currently signing partners to become part of Cloud for Health. We've made some acquisitions recently that add additional layers to Cloud for Health. Carson Heady (01:01:35): And personally, when I'm having conversations with a client, with a business decision-maker in one of these organizations, I'm always proactively looking at how could what they do or what they're endeavoring to do fit into this model? Because that's the beauty is it's still being fleshed out for how it can really add meaning for the healthcare ecosystem in this case. Carson Heady (01:01:55): So that's a great question, and I think the beauty is it can have some immediate impact for customers but it could also have some long term ramifications that open up ways that we could partner. Rob Collie (01:02:04): You started to hint at a couple of my follow- up questions actually there, which is awesome. It's perfect. Teeing it up. Rob Collie (01:02:10): So the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare at its most fundamental level consists of technologies that are already there. Robust, mature things like Azure and Teams and everything, but there's also... I'm assuming there's this layer of solution level glue and customization that's being built on top of and between these things that then turns it into the Cloud for Healthcare as opposed to just all these separate cloud solutions that you can get. Rob Collie (01:02:39): So where is that being engineered? Are there dedicated engineering teams that are working on this? Because that is a bit of a departure from the Microsoft that I've known, which is every now and then historically they've gotten into solution specific stuff. But those teams in the past anyway, they seem to be ahead of their time essentially. It was a good idea but just too soon, the market wasn't ready for it. Rob Collie (01:03:02): Are there teams now, engineering teams? If I was back on the engineering org, is that one of the places I could work, would be engineering specifically on the Cloud for Healthcare? Carson Heady (01:03:12): I think the key element is that it very much depends on what the customer is showing up with. I'll give you an example, like virtual health, that could mean a lot of things to a lot of different folks. And if I'm talking to a health provider, they're going to by default have some kind of posture of tools that they're leveraging for a virtual health experience. It may be with Microsoft, it may not be. But the other element is that we've got a lot of partners in our very robust partner ecosystem that have built solutions that sit on top of Teams, to your point. Carson Heady (01:03:43): And so it could be internal to Microsoft, where it's something that's been developed within Teams. I've seen many, many folks, technical specialists, engineering, that have developed some of these tools where it could be for internal collaboration at a health organization, these tools that are built within Teams, where I can very rapidly and in real-time see x-rays, and interact with other folks on that x-ray. Circle something on that x-ray, and that speeds up the amount of time that it takes to diagnose a patient. Carson Heady (01:04:14): On the flip side of that with the patient experience, somebody being admitted into the virtual waiting room. Being there, making sure that that information and that data is free-flowing and that the doctor or the nurse or whomever needs that data has access to that in real-time. Now we're talking to each other on a virtual screen. That apparatus is not necessarily solely dependent, relying on Teams. It could be a partner solution that's built on top of Teams. Carson Heady (01:04:41): So you're going to see a mix from internal Microsoft, customization and engineering, then you're also going to see some of the buildouts that our partners are doing. And the beauty of this is now we're more often than not looking for customers as partners. How can we reach out to customers that want to or can develop this IP? We can do something very meaningful there. Carson Heady (01:05:03): And then ultimately if it works out well we can go to market with these types of technologies also. So the game has completely changed. The landscape has changed, but it's very much geared toward meeting the customer where they are, and the patient. Rob Collie (01:05:18): What a fascinating concept. In college I worked for a subsidiary of a construction conglomerate, I basically was a computer guy for this company. And they were up to their eyeballs in Lotus Notes, Lotus notes ran the show and not very well. But it was pervasive. And the headquarters out in the Dallas, they were so up to their eyeballs in Lotus Notes that they'd actually started a subsidiary that was a Lotus Notes consulting org. That's how in on Lotus's Notes they were. Rob Collie (01:05:48): This idea that a customer, a Microsoft customer, like a healthcare provider, who would know better the needs of a line of business solution for a healthcare provider than a healthcare provider? Rob Collie (01:06:02): There's not some software company that comes along... And it's possible, but a software company's going to come along and start studying the problem, and they're going to nail the software but not understand the problem. And that's always the case. It's always the case, it's the requirements that are the tricky thing. Rob Collie (01:06:17): And what a fascinating idea. I love it, that something could be purpose built by a healthcare provider just to solve their own needs, but then could also become this unexpected revenue stream for them if they shared it. Rob Collie (01:06:32): Another example of this, I don't think I'm giving away any secrets when I say this, but NPC Universal has a system, it's called PARIS. Participation and residuals information system. And what this thing is, it is a rules engine that is capable of ingesting, not automatically but manually, can express the rules and clauses of any contract ever signed between the studio and someone that's a producer, director or actor, whatever, like production crew. Rob Collie (01:07:02): Can you imagine how complicated those contracts can get, that they're limited only by the creativity of the attorneys involved? However, no matter what contract you come up with, eventually it can be decompiled into a set of rules that go into the PARIS engine, that then calculates your royalty check every month or every quarter, or whatever. Rob Collie (01:07:23): And this thing is like the Whopper from war games, it's like one of the wonders of the world that this thing exists. Rob Collie (01:07:34): It's so effective that they just license it to other studios, so like other big move studios and TV studios, they're just like, "Ah, we give. We're going to license from our competitor the thing that calculates royalty checks." Rob Collie (01:07:48): I just think things that are grown really, really, really, really close to the actual problem tend to be... As long as they're well resourced, tend to be the best solutions. What's better than distance zero? That's the first time I've heard this about the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, the possibility that some of the solutions might spring from that source. Which is again, I just think it's about as good of a place you could find to get something like that. So that's really cool. Carson Heady (01:08:15): It's been fascinating to watch the transformation. Having joined a week after Satya became CEO, to watch the transformation of it becoming less and less about Microsoft being the solution to everything, but more how do we integrate with where the customer is and how do we grow and transform together? Not to mention watching the stock price go from $30 a share to $330 a share. It's been a fun ride. Rob Collie (01:08:40): So Carson, what are you most excited to see? What's next? Carson Heady (01:08:44): I took in Ignite, and some of the announcements that were made as part of Ignite. And seeing what's possible around the metaverse. And let's use Mesh as an example, how people can be in a shared space with an avatar or with some type of mixed reality, or we're collaborating on the same document. And we feel and appear like we're in the exact same space. Carson Heady (01:09:10): Those are the types of things that I think excite me most as a future of work. Look, as a seller for all of my career, don't get me wrong, I really enjoy and like being in-person with my team, with customers. But we've hit on something here where there's a lot of value around what hybrid work and remote work can bring. It's a reality that's not going anywhere. Carson Heady (01:09:32): So what I find fascinating is as we continue to look at how we're securing the hybrid workplace, how we're optimizing that remote workplace, those are the types of things that I'm most excited about. Rob Collie (01:09:44): Well, Carson, I know we've had this on the agenda for a long time to do this. I've really appreciated your time, not just your time but your perspective. I really do think that the stereotype around sales people is... I think it's earned in general, there are real people out there that embody the used car sales stereotype, and the people who are more slick than capable. And certainly not authentic. Rob Collie (01:10:09): But when it's done well, I don't think I've met really, really, really successful members of the species who fit that stereotype. The people who are successful at sales are much more authentic, problem-solving, let's both win human beings. Rob Collie (01:10:26): And it's nice to know. I think for anyone that's getting into sales, immediately you're hit with that stereotype subconsciously. And I can't be that person. And the answer is, good. Computer Generated Voice (01:10:39): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast. Computer Generated Voice (01:10:43): Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Computer Generated Voice (01:10:51): Have a data day!

Adam Harstad is one of the few guests that have been on with us twice!  And we could have him on 100 times and still not cover everything to discuss (or debate in many cases). This time around, we cover some pitfalls that data people fall into including cognitive bias and how people behave in the face of uncertainty, how these traps can be applied and avoided in life and in data, and we do throw in some Fantasy Football talk!  Adam is, after all, a key member of the Football Guys Forum! References in this episode: The Return of the Revenge of Dr. Blowhole Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Instinct Can Beat Analytical Thinking Calvin And Hobbes - Time Travel Homework The Revised Psychology of Human Misjudgment by Charlie Munger The Cube movie Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello, friends. Today, we have The Return of the Revenge of Adam Harstad. Now, it's a little bit of a dangerous game as a podcast host to deliberately bring on a guest that you know is going to repeatedly tell you politely, but repeatedly, that you're wrong. And that is definitely what Adam does. He is a very sharp, very intelligent, and very polite contrarian. The first time we had him on as a guest, he caught me completely off guard. This time, of course, I knew what to expect. We like to say that you don't sharpen one's edge using Nerf. You want to be pushed, you want to be tested, and he does not disappoint. So of course this time around, one of my secret, or not so secret, motivations was to beat him at his own game, even just once or twice. Rob Collie (00:00:50): But true to the philosophy, steel sharpens steel, and I did start to hold my own a little bit better near the end. He is of course, a football writer and analyst by trade, and we did talk about some football stuff. But really, even then, it's all about uncertainty. The entire conversation in one form or another comes down to, how do we behave ourselves rationally in the face of an uncertain future? And this is really something that's completely apart from analytics, because the vast majority of analytics and business intelligence does work on certainty and having confident and borderline omission mastery of the things that you know are happening. Rob Collie (00:01:32): When you lack that kind of certainty and confidence about the things that are already happening, naturally, that is a tremendous disadvantage, and filling that void makes all the difference in the world in terms of business and in the competitive world. Which is, of course, where P3 earns its keep, it's where we make our money, it's where we provide value. Even in the places where the analytics and BI industry get into things that are actually predictive, usually that prediction is at a very micro level, "Will this particular customer enjoy seeing this other piece of content? Is this particular customer a flight risk? Will we lose them in the next six months?" It's very micro. It's very narrowly bounded. Rob Collie (00:02:13): But so much of the human experience, so much of life is not like that. "Should I take that job in the other city or not? How should I invest my money? What go was into a good marriage?" Most of human life consists of making decisions like that in the face of an uncertain future. So in some sense, these sorts of things are squishy, they're not analytical in the strictest sense of the word. And at the same time, there is a chance, there is the opportunity to behave ourselves intelligently in this space. And I'm pretty sure that whenever we bring Adam on, that's the kind of thing we're going to be talking about. It is central to life. Rob Collie (00:02:51): And what could be better than speaking with someone very intelligent about something as important as life. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:03:00): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:03:04): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast, with your host, Rob Collie. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:03:25): Welcome back to the show Adam Harstad. So Adam, when you were first here, you told us that your family has a saying, "Harstads try new things." Adam Harstad (00:03:34): Yes they do. Rob Collie (00:03:35): Fortunately for us, that's not exclusive. You don't just do new things, you're willing to come back and do something that you've already done. There's different forms of this statement. And if something is new, does that mean that you necessarily have to try it? Adam Harstad (00:03:47): Well, I think you're overlooking the fact that you can never stand in the same stream twice. You can go back and you can go to the same river and you can stand in it, but the river's changed, it's a new river. Rob Collie (00:03:55): Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's it. End of episode. Deep thoughts by Adam Harstad. You're right, we're definitely not the same stream today. I'm glad that you decided to come back and stand in our stream, so to speak. You have kids, right? Is the timing right? Did you watch the TV show, The Penguins of Madagascar? Adam Harstad (00:04:15): I have not. I'm familiar with The Penguins, but we have not watched The Penguins. No. Rob Collie (00:04:19): There's a Penguins episode that's called The Return of the Revenge of Dr. Blowhole. They had this villain on multiple times on the show over time, and so they just go ahead and lean into the return of the revenge. It's a dolphin, porpoise played by Neil Patrick Harris. And The Return of the Revenge of Dr. Blowhole is one of the greatest and most genius things I've seen on any screen ever. It is worth looking up. We'll make sure that we link it. But anyways, this is the return of the revenge of Adam Harstad. Adam Harstad (00:04:50): I have an article that I do every year, at the same time every year called Revisiting Preseason Expectations. So the first time I did Revisiting Preseason Expectations, and then the second time I called it Revisiting Revisiting Preseason Expectations. I think we're at year nine, so it's Revisiting Revisiting Revisiting Revisiting Revisiting Revisiting Revisiting Revisiting Revisiting Preseason Expectations. Rob Collie (00:05:11): Have you ever wanted to like use like scientific notation or exponents or something to represent this? Adam Harstad (00:05:16): Not yet. Hopefully, Footballguys doesn't get sick of me. I'm there long enough that I get that urge. Rob Collie (00:05:22): It's coming. It's coming. So I really enjoyed our first conversation. I felt pushed. I've recovered since then, I'm back on my feet. So we bring you back on, have you push our brains a little bit? Are you down for that? Adam Harstad (00:05:35): Sure. Whatever. I'm willing to try new things. Rob Collie (00:05:37): That's right. That's the #credo. We talked a little bit in the intervening time over Twitter, direct messages, which are just the most substantive thing that can be exchanged between human beings. There are a couple things we talked about that we might be interested in getting into, and let's talk about common myths or fallacies or traps that people fall into. And as we bounce back and forth on Twitter, you got into talking about a number of behavioral economists. This sounds delicious. You mentioned that there's one person who underpins your entire fantasy football dealing with uncertainty. Who is the hero on the Mount Rushmore of Adam Harstad? Adam Harstad (00:06:22): Really, it's a story that has two main characters. And when I got into fantasy football writing, it was 2013, I believe, and a guy named Daniel Kahneman was really hot at the time. He'd done a couple TED Talks, he'd written a book up called Thinking Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist who was awarded the Nobel prize in economics, the only non economist to win it, I believe. And he was awarded this for his research on cognitive biases, which are all of these ways that we think we're behaving optimally, but there's these bugs in our mental operating system. Adam Harstad (00:06:57): And he and his colleague, Amos Tversky spent decades just meticulously cataloging all of the different bugs in our operating software that they could find. And I was really enchanted with this idea, this heuristics and biases program. And I thought, "This is something I can bring to fantasy football. It's something that I can write about and I can educate people on all of these biases, and we can all work together to overcome these biases and become like this Superman who has transcended our operating system limitations into like the platonic ideal fantasy football players." So that was where I started. Rob Collie (00:07:32): We would be making the world a truly better place there, right? Adam Harstad (00:07:35): Absolutely, absolutely. Rob Collie (00:07:35): Fantasy football would be like utopia. Adam Harstad (00:07:38): And the big him with that is that, really, it doesn't work. And Daniel Kahneman says it doesn't work in the introduction to his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, where he's detailing a lot of these. He says, "I don't have any illusions that this is going to help people overcome their biases. Because one of the biases I found is that you can't see your biases in yourself." It's called the bias blind spot. If I teach you about a bias, you're going to see it in everybody else and be convinced that it doesn't affect you at all. It's easy to spot in everybody else. Adam Harstad (00:08:06): And he said his goal with the book wasn't really to improve decision making so much as it was to improve the quality of our conversation about decision making, that his aim was mostly just to improve the quality of the conversation around the water cooler. Sometime around there, I'm not even really sure when, I discovered a guy named Gerd Gigerenzer and I didn't know this at the time, but- Rob Collie (00:08:26): Is that a real name? Adam Harstad (00:08:27): Yes. Gerd Gigerenzer. Gigerenzer seems like something that Gerd Gigerenzes, but I don't know what Gerd Gigerenzing is- Rob Collie (00:08:34): Or Renzes at giga scale. Adam Harstad (00:08:37): Maybe. Maybe. Anyway, he is a top-notch Gigerenzer, he can Gigerenze like nobody's business. So I stumbled upon him and I didn't know the backstory at the time. But apparently, Gerd Gigerenzer is the arch nemesis of Daniel Kahneman. It's Montagues and Capulets. There's this huge running feud between the behavioral economists who are all about nudges and heuristics and biases and how to make better decision making given the limitations of our software. Gigerenzer's position is that, "Look, you're calling these flaws in our operating system, but they're not really flaws so much. Sometimes they're adaptive, sometimes they're useful. And in a lot of cases, in cases of extreme uncertainty, a lot of times these heuristics, these simple rules of thumb will actually outperform stunningly complex models. They are investment strategies." Adam Harstad (00:09:26): And he's back tested all of these extremely complicated investment strategies about how to allocate your funds. And he finds that the strategy that performs best is one-over-n where if you want to invest in n different funds, you put one-nth of your money in each one, you just do it evenly. And it's very simple heuristic, and it's outperforming all these staggeringly complex. And typically, the more complex and uncertain a system is, the more simple rules of thumb can outreform staggeringly complex ones. Whereas the more limited a system is, the more complex you want your models to be. Adam Harstad (00:10:01): If you're modeling chess, you can have a very, very complicated model because there's an unfathomable number of different possible board states, but it's clearly known how you get from one to the other. The rules of the game are very well known. If you're modeling the stock market, you can't really have these super complex models because you've got a super complex model, and all of a sudden, somebody in a wet market somewhere in China catches a disease, and all of a sudden the entire world that you modeled no longer exists, you're operating in a completely different world that you never even imagined. Rob Collie (00:10:33): Yeah, they're in that market, they're like, "Hey, I'm going to grind up this bat and I'm going to snort it." Adam Harstad (00:10:40): I read an interview with Gerd Gigerenzer on the Harvard Business Review called Instinct Can Beat Analytic Thinking. I've probably linked to that more than anything else, and I revisit it every year and I go back over it. And it was really useful for me. First of all, because it gave me new knowledge. I didn't know that the simple rules of thumb could be so adaptive and so useful. And also because it gave me permission to be lazy, which is what I was always looking for. Because coming up with very complex models is complex, coming up with simple rules of thumb as much simpler. Adam Harstad (00:11:12): And it doesn't mean it's necessarily easy because you need safeguards. Anybody can come up with a simple rule, it's hard to come up with a simple rule that's actually good and useful. And you need to test it and you need to expose them to this level of investigation and curiosity. But at the end of the day, I write about fantasy football and I'm competing in a space with people who have very complex models. Like, CeeDee Lamb is a wide receiver, he gets drafted for the Dallas Cowboys and the of Dallas Cowboys already have two very good wide receivers and Amari Cooper and Michael Gallup. And people with complex models. Now, have to say, "How can I fit CeeDee Lamb into this offense? How am I going to distribute the ball among all of these different receivers? How are things going to work out? I don't see the path from here to there." Adam Harstad (00:11:56): My simple rule is, if a guy's good, he's going to get the ball. Very simple rule, tested. You can demonstrate it over years. And so then my question is, is CeeDee Lamb good? Yeah, I think he is. He's going to get the ball. Somebody asks me, "How is he going to get the ball when they have those other receivers there?" I don't know. But over time, I call it the Dr. Ian Malcolm hypothesis, and I always post a picture of like Jeff Goldberg shirtless from Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way." I don't know if the other guys on the team are going to get injured, I don't know if just the team's going to throw the ball a zillion times and the passing pie is going to expand. I don't know if somebody's going to get traded, somebody's going to get cut, but over time, good players get theirs. Adam Harstad (00:12:35): This is a simple rule of thumb that bears out over and over again. Rob Collie (00:12:39): It's so funny. I have such complicated feelings about this feud you're talking about. First of all, I tend to just love it when academics get like really, really, really upset at each other, because it's just so absurd. It's just like next level absurdity and I love some good absurdity. A couple of ivory tower Denisons screaming, insults at each other, but neither one of them dares come down out of the tower. At the same time though, this Gerd fellow, the Gigerenzer, the Renzer, as his friends call him, he seems almost like anti ivory tower. I've been on this whole arc in my life where growing up, I would've been on in my teens and 20s and maybe even into a little bit in my 30s, I would've been on team Kahneman. Rob Collie (00:13:23): Do other people want to pronounce that Kahneman ever? Because I've heard people talk about Kahneman, I'm just not sure if they're the same. Adam Harstad (00:13:28): Yeah. I have no idea how it's actually pronounced. So if I'm mispronouncing anybody's name and you happen to hear this, I apologize. I'm doing my best. Rob Collie (00:13:35): Well, and that's how it is. If you read a lot of things and you're not in the presence of other human beings to discuss these things verbally, pronunciation is actually really, really, really tricky. To be engaged in any intellectual affairs, especially increasingly in the remote world, is to have no idea how these things sound out loud. I have no idea. Adam Harstad (00:13:56): Yeah. I think to some extent, this tendency to mispronounce complicated words is probably a good sign of intellectual curiosity. It's somebody's reaches exceeding their grasp. Rob Collie (00:14:07): I've just been around a lot of people in my life who always seemed to know the proper pronunciation because they went to the right schools and all these sorts of things. I always felt like this blue collar hick in their presence when I would say something like, "I will not use that German word schadenfreude or whatever because I have no idea. Adam Harstad (00:14:23): You got it right, that was right on. Rob Collie (00:14:25): I'm still not going to confidently use it. Adam Harstad (00:14:26): If it makes you feel better, I think I was 20 when I learned that subtle, I thought there were two different words, subtle and sub-tle. And I thought that they both meant the same thing, until I was 20 and I realized, "Oh yeah, that's the same word." Rob Collie (00:14:40): I was playing a game of Trivial Pursuit when I was 12 against my parents. The answer that they gave to a question was something clue related, and they go, "Colonel Mustard." And I go, "No you're wrong, it's Colonal Mustard." I was so excited that they were wrong. Adam Harstad (00:15:03): Being wrong is not a big deal, being confidently wrong, that's when things start to get a little bit dicey. Rob Collie (00:15:07): Yeah. I was like, "In your face." It was brutal. I have another pet theory of mine, which is that assholes ruin everything. On the one hand, I've come around to almost like this post intellectualism. The idea that these formulas and all you do is stand out there at your chalkboard and do a Beautiful Mind things, and you predict what your neighbor is going to eat for dinner tomorrow night. That's a very comforting world view for nerds in particular. We might not grow up with the best social skills, we might not be the most popular, but we're like, "Fools. We know all. We have the formula." Rob Collie (00:15:48): And it turns out that that mindset runs rampant through tech. And it does not really reliably survive contact with the real world. It turns out that the real world is, if you want to talk about it in terms of math, what you've been hinting at, the real math behind all of this is so complicated that no human being could ever navigate it. If you wanted to have a truly mathematical model, it's beyond what we can do. Turns out that sometimes these simple heuristics absolutely outperform your illusion of certainty, your illusion of control. And so when I have come to this point in my life where I believe these sorts of things, I think I would be pretty firmly on team Gigerenzer in this feud. Rob Collie (00:16:30): At the same time, I'm aware of the fact that there's were people of multiple different mindsets who would seize on this and take the wrong conclusion from it. "Yeah. See, I told you analytics never worked. It doesn't even make sense to look at the data. Just use your gut." No, that's not right. Adam Harstad (00:16:48): I hesitate to say I'm really on team Gigerenzer. He's been more useful for me just because he justifies tendencies that I already had. I don't want to do all of that hard work when I can do something simple that gets me to the same place anyway. But I think a lot of the criticisms of him are very fair too. It's been said that he has zero constructive agenda, which is probably true. In that respect, I relate to him because I sit on the sidelines, throwing bombs. Other people do hard work and say, "Oh yeah. But you made this mistake here. And did you consider this?" And I'm not really contributing. I think it's an important role, but also I don't think it's the sort of role that endears you to anybody. Adam Harstad (00:17:25): I think at some point, he gets a little strident and he overstates his case and he's trying to find things that fit his argument rather than fitting his argument to reality. I enjoy both, and I am grateful for having read and encountered both. I definitely consider and incorporate insight from both. I just think as a practical matter, in terms of how I approach things, I tend to be more of a simple rules of thumb guy, that's more of my wheelhouse. Rob Collie (00:17:55): Yeah. And I guess even for me, I'm not really on, as you've described it, I'm not really on team Renzer either. It's the other mindset run amok that really bothers me. There's application of good thinking and good models. Clearly, I'm on that team. That's our business. But when it comes to predicting the future in particular, when it comes to predicting macro events of the future, I think that there's an academic tendency of hubris that these things re a lot more foolproof than the actually are. And that's where I think there needs to be someone like Gigerenzer running around calling that complacency. I think it's a useful role. Adam Harstad (00:18:39): I wonder too how much of that is selection bias though? From my experience in the fantasy football space, there are people who are very, very certain and there are people who are very, very uncertain. And if you are just casually exploring the space, you're much more likely to run into one of the people who are very, very certain because certainty sells. Their reach is bigger. It gives this false impression about how certain the typical person is in that space just because the most certain voices are the loudest. And I wonder if there's not something to that in academia too. The studies that you hear about say, "This definitely exists and it's awesome, and nobody's ever heard of it or thought of it ever before, and this will change how the world works." Adam Harstad (00:19:22): And the studies that you don't hear about are the ones that come out and say, "This might possibly have an effect, but it's a small effect. But on the margins, it might matter a little bit. And maybe we should be behaving slightly more in this manner just to account for the possibility of it." Rob Collie (00:19:37): I think it was Fineman, one of the Fineman father, son physicists, I think he explained why he never voted. And he said his two candidates example. You have one candidate for office that says, "This is a very complicated set of problems facing our country. Little sound-bity answers aren't going to do it. We actually have to work on this. We have to think about it. We have to get the right experts working on it in developing approaches for it and choosing and testing between those and all of that." Rob Collie (00:20:04): And then you got the other candidate that says, "No, I know exactly what we should do. Damn it, we should just do this, this really simple thing that everybody can understand." The public's going to vote for that second candidate every single time when we need the first candidate. He just said, "Nope, I'm out. I'm not playing." Adam Harstad (00:20:24): I'm actually glad you mentioned that because we were talking about not knowing how to pronounce things. And I have a couple good Fineman anecdotes and I've never actually heard his name said out loud. Rob Collie (00:20:32): You know what, don't take it from me. Adam Harstad (00:20:36): If we're mispronouncing it, we mispronounce it the same way. Rob Collie (00:20:39): It might be Fineman. I forget how it's spelled, to be perfectly honest, which is why... I might be adding a syllable in there just to do it. It might be just Fineman. Adam Harstad (00:20:47): Well, I come from the hobby that gave us Brett Favre, spelled F-A-V-R-E, but pronounced F-A-R-V. But he had another one of mine. He tells a story about how his dad taught him early on the difference between knowing something and knowing the name of something. That's actually one of Gigerenzer's critiques of the heuristics and biases program. So there's this cognitive bias called loss aversion that says, "If you have something and you lose it, that'll hurt twice as much as if you don't have it and you gain it that feels good." Losses hurt twice as much as gains. Adam Harstad (00:21:20): And it's one of the most robust and replicable findings in the field that there's certain situations where it can go away and there's some discussion about what it be causes it and what mitigates it and what the underlying mechanism is but that gets lost because they found this effect and they slapped the name loss aversion on it. And now people think they know it, but really, they just know the name that was given to it. You could call it whatever, you could call it extra feel bad losing this. You don't understand it, you've just observed an effect and given it a name, and that's different than having a model for why, why is it doing that? What purpose did this serve? What purpose does it not serve? Adam Harstad (00:21:59): That's one of the criticisms, is that there's a tendency to find a bias, name a bias, move on. Pretty soon, you wind up with a theory that explain everything and predicts nothing. Rob Collie (00:22:09): Yeah. This is rampant in the medical community. There's so many things running around that's just names. There's not even any attempt. Like chronic fatigue syndrome. "Oh yeah. It's basically like this lump dismissal of all those people that are always, always, always tired, always low energy. Something's clearly wrong with them, and we don't know what it is. But by slapping a name on it, chronic fatigue syndrome, now we can stop paying attention to it." And that's exactly how that was treated, and basically still to a large degree is. And there's so many things like this. Rob Collie (00:22:40): Like when we're in the course of trying to get something diagnosed for one of us or for one of our kids or whatever, and there's this moment where you start to smell it. You're like, "Oh, this diagnosis is one of those things where they gave a name to the thing they don't understand," as opposed to, "No, we actually found the cause." There are some diagnoses that are actually very mechanically specific, we understand what's going on here. There's a whole host of them that aren't. Adam Harstad (00:23:01): Right. I think the field knows it. And there'll be some cases where they'll say, "This diagnosis means this." It could be one of like three possible causes, and depending on the possible cause, you treat it differently. But yeah, that's basically all the DSM is, "These are names that we attach to symptoms and here are some things that might work or might not depending on what the cause is, but we don't know the cause just here are some names that we attach to symptoms." Rob Collie (00:23:24): The sinister part of it though is that, like you were saying earlier, being given something is sometimes an excuse to be lazy. These terms, they do tend to be a little bit of a dead end in the mystery. I've encountered two very, very, very, very different flavors of medical professionals in my life. There are the ones who are curious and the ones who are just there to apply the flow chart. Heaven help you if you're in the flow chart person's office and you fall off the flow chart. At that moment, they basically kind of make it your fault. I could really go off on some of these biases in the medical community. You really want your doctors to be intellectually curious, and a large percentage or not. Adam Harstad (00:24:09): I'd push back on, even limiting that to the medical community. I think if you look at every profession, there are probably some professions that lend themselves more to diagnosis by flow chart. I'd imagine plumber probably does better with flow charts because it's a very simple mechanical system whose causes and effects are very well understood. But fantasy football, there's a lot of flowchart thinking versus curiosity. And I think anything where uncertainty exists, where there's this fog of uncertainty around the edges, you're going to see that same dichotomy between the flowchart approach versus the detective Sherlock Holmes type approach. Rob Collie (00:24:44): Well, I'm going to push back a little bit on your pushback. Adam Harstad (00:24:46): Please do. Rob Collie (00:24:47): Not in a binary sense. I would say that on average, the average plumber I've encountered is a little bit more intellectually curious and willing to go off the edges of the flow chart than the average physician. And this is particularly funny when you consider the reputation that doctors very much want to have as being the smart ones. Relative to the expectations and the image that's projected, I think the medical industry might be the champion in this space. But again, you've got to consider the context and that's the thing that's particularly frustrating, especially when the stakes are that high, as something like your health. To me, it's probably the most egregious industry for this. Adam Harstad (00:25:25): It's definitely one, I think, where stakes are the highest. I think one of my big core beliefs is that people are people. You compare populations like Germans versus Americans, doctors versus plumbers. I think a lot of times, we like to categorize that, we talk about bugs in our faulty operating system. And one of these bugs is this burning desire to categorize that everything, and especially to affiliate ourselves with one group or another group. But I think at the end of the day, people are people. What's the famous old article about something like, who'd go Nazi? Adam Harstad (00:25:57): Where a writer was talking about, I'll go to cocktail parties and I'll think like if The Third Reich happened here, which of these people would go Nazi and which of these people will wouldn't. They're comparing like the same tendencies and thought. We in America think we're better because we did not go Nazi, but that's really because we weren't in that situation. I think if you put a group of people in a similar context, you're going to get similar results. In that respect, again, most of my pushback is just that I always feel uncomfortable isolating tendencies or habits to a certain subgroup when I really think that most of these flaws, most of these conditions are really endemic just to humanity and to the human condition. Rob Collie (00:26:38): You said people are people and I'm like, "Ah, damn it. I'm going to have that Depeche Mode song in my head the rest of the day. And I'm trying to flush it out, trying to flush it out. And then you came back to it and said it again, and now I'm done. Why is it, Adam, that you and I should get along so awfully? Adam Harstad (00:26:52): I don't know. I think the real question to hear is, why doesn't everybody get along awfully with me? Rob Collie (00:26:58): Oh, come on. I find you very pleasant. You don't agree ever a single thing that I ever say, but I know that now and I had you back anyway. Adam Harstad (00:27:08): It's like I said, I'm a bomb thrower, I have zero constructive agenda. I'm willing to own that. I don't know why anybody really gets along with me, but apparently people do. Rob Collie (00:27:19): I find you very thoughtful at the same time. Non-thoughtful bomb throwers, not a lot of use for them around my campfire. Gigerenzer serves a purpose. Adam Harstad (00:27:31): If that was not a verb, we could make that a verb. To gigerenze is to stand on the sideline throwing bombs. Rob Collie (00:27:37): See, I actually think Gigerenzer has a constructive purpose. I just think that for whatever reason, his personality prevents him from leaning into it. Adam Harstad (00:27:45): Anything can be useful. Even people without a constructive purpose can still be used to construct events, it's just what you choose to do with what's handed to you. Rob Collie (00:27:54): He checks runaway complacency, he checks runaway hubris. I think that's a very, very valuable thing, especially in academics, because a lot of times as an academic, you spend all of your time in that bubble, isolated from the actual reality. Even leaving Microsoft and going out into the real world felt like leaving the eco dome to me. I couldn't believe what it was actually like out there. We sat around all the time and talked back at Microsoft about how the world out there works, how we should build software. Now, things have changed at Microsoft. Rob Collie (00:28:32): Microsoft's increasingly, their software is instrumented, so they know exactly how it's being used at all times. But back then, we didn't have that benefit. So we had to build software. We had to tell the world the way it was going to operate. It was just so silly for a bunch of people in their mid-20s who'd never even smelled the real world. I got out into the wild out here, and I was like, "Whoa, I can't believe it." For example, Adam, this will be a really interesting thing for you. Back at Microsoft, I often had lots to do with data import functionality into various apps. So you're going to import some data from a different source into Excel, for instance. Rob Collie (00:29:10): Well, a really simple question. What order should you put that menu in? There's different kinds of data sources, there's databases, for instance, there's web pages, and then there's like XML files, but then there's also text files, like CSV files, comma separated value files, tab delimited files, and things like that. Well, we always put databases first because those were the best. Those were the best, most robust, most real data sources. Those are the professional data sources. So of course those go first. And the least professional data sources, the text files, would always go last. Rob Collie (00:29:48): Now, this error has been since corrected, but I get out into the real world and I see no, one's got a database that they're allowed access to, it's all text files, it's all exports. Everyone's exporting, exporting, exporting, exporting from all of these various systems and then dumping that data into their spreadsheets. And I was just sitting just laughing so hard. A decade of having this exactly wrong in the sequence. Nothing crystallizes the experience of inside the dome versus outside the dome quite it like that. It's like any environment. Rob Collie (00:30:23): When you're in academics and you have the academic incentives pushing on you at all times, the person who goes out there slumming on the street isn't going to get funding. They're not going to get their grants, they're not going to get published. But we need them, we need them out in the streets. We need them getting their hands dirty. Adam Harstad (00:30:37): I like how you anticipated my pushback there that I was going to say, "Is this an academia problem or is this a human problem?" Rob Collie (00:30:43): Yeah, I'm getting better. My stead Harstad armor and my reactive armor that moves around. I'm getting there. Adam Harstad (00:30:51): Yeah. I'll say, until this year, 100% of what we did was all just CSVs. Because it's the one thing everybody has. Everybody's got a different whatever, but no matter what you're using, you can get it in CSV. And now we got a fancy system where we can just copy and paste directly from a spreadsheet and dump it into our back end. Somebody built us a fancy projection uploader, and now we're living large. Rob Collie (00:31:12): Man, that's awesome. I want to see that, just out of curiosity. I've marveled a little bit, and for a long time actually, about the football guy's site and how interconnected everything is. In articles, a player's name is very often hyperlinked, and there's so much structure interplaying between all of these unstructured, paragraphs of texts are fundamentally unstructured. These are things that are not easy to do. You even have a master data problem. How many different ways can you spell D'Onta Foreman's name? At least three. With and without apostrophe. Do you have the apostrophe? Do you have a space instead of an apostrophe or do you just truncate the apostrophe and leave it out? Rob Collie (00:32:00): Now, somewhere, there needs to be a master universe of player IDs so that when someone's talking about D Onta Foreman, you can connect that with D'Onta Foreman, the different spellings. And even in my efforts, back when I was really heavy into all of this in the early 2000s, just consolidating all the information I was getting from various sources and aligning like player names, or hell, even just aligning team names- Adam Harstad (00:32:28): Yeah. Or the abbreviation, the team abbreviations. Rob Collie (00:32:31): Yeah. This is a problem that in our world is called master data management. Master data management tends to happen within a single enterprise. This system over here has this ID for a customer, but this other system over here has the same customer identified differently. In the football world, it's not within one enterprise, it's on the wild, wild internet. Adam Harstad (00:32:52): If you're curious, our CMS, it's pretty ancient at this point, our content management system, that's handling a lot of that on the backend. And I think getting that upgrade is one of our priorities. But we have to do a bunch of work rounds. You mentioned D'Onta Foreman. Any player with apostrophes in their name, you have to spell it without apostrophes, and then the CMS will recognize it and put apostrophes in and hyperlink it. But if you put the apostrophes in, CMS won't recognize it because the apostrophes break it. Rob Collie (00:33:17): Interesting. Adam Harstad (00:33:18): And then like juniors, Odell Beckham Jr, you just have to put Odell Beckham and then it will append the junior. But if you put the junior yourself, it'll come out as Odell Beckham Jr. Jr.. There's still some clutches there that we're working on bringing up to date. Rob Collie (00:33:33): That sounds like something that you would exploit. Pretty soon we'll be having the revisiting, the revisiting, the revisiting, the Odell Beckham Jr. Jr.. Adam Harstad (00:33:40): Yeah. I don't know. I was about to say I don't know how to get CMS to append more than one junior at a time. It might be something to look into. Rob Collie (00:33:47): SQL injection something. You'll figure it out. I think that's been, you mentioned it as being ancient, but that problem was, another way to say it is ahead of the curve. There was a solution in place for Footballguys for a very difficult problem a long time ago, and it showed. A data professional, I was always impressed with that. Adam Harstad (00:34:06): Well, I think you'll understand too. When I say that a lot of it is organizational philosophy. At Footballguys, and it's one of the reasons I really enjoy being at Footballguys, is everything we do always has a clear vision, we're trying to make the customers' life easier, are trying to help the customer. Which seems like a pretty basic thing, but a lot of businesses, especially fantasy businesses, start out in their purposes to show how smart they are. You'll write long articles, making low percentage calls, and then you can point back to them later and be like, "Look, I called this one. Nobody else was calling it." Adam Harstad (00:34:37): And it's about managing your own brand creating a name for yourself. Whereas Footballguys from the beginning has always been a very low ego company. It's about, "Is this going to help the customer? Is this not going to help the customer?" And so we'll do some things that are not really industry standard, we project kick and punt returners, which I think something like one or 2% of fantasy leagues actually use those projections, but for the leagues that use it, this is a very big value add, but there's other standard article types like the Sky's going to smash projections or in DFS daily fantasy sports. Adam Harstad (00:35:12): When that first came out, there were a lot of sites that are saying like, "We guarantee you, you're going to get a positive return or your money back." And we had a lot of conversations about, "We can't guarantee a positive return." Clearly they're hoping that they'll get more people get a positive return and not ask for a refund than get a negative return and ask for a refund. That's clearly the calculus there, but we had a lot of philosophical discussions about what happens if we're operating in a world where everybody was following it, our advice? It would be impossible for us to guarantee a positive return. I've worked for various organizations throughout my life and I'm sure you have as well and you know the difference between a really functional culture and ethos versus just a toxic or maybe not even toxic, but just not pointed in the right direction. Rob Collie (00:35:57): Even at Microsoft, I worked on so many different teams, that you might as well consider them different companies. There was some background similarity, of course, but there were some functional teams and there were some dysfunctional ones. You learn the difference. Adam Harstad (00:36:11): I've said that I think this is the first job I've ever had where I've never once gotten the impression that my boss wishes I was just a little bit more of a sociopath. And every other time I'll say something like, "Oh, hey, my kid's in a play, I want to go see it." And they'll be like, "Oh yeah, sure. Of course, family comes first, but you really need to see it. Do you really want to see it, because you could stay here and work?" And I never get that impression there, it's always like, "Absolutely family comes first, no qualifiers. I don't wish you loved your family less and loved your work more." Rob Collie (00:36:42): That's great. One of the things that our company is that I've felt a lot of pressure over the years. Some of it direct, but I think most of it just unconsciously like this devil sitting on my shoulder that says, "You really can't run a business and be humane. You're so naive, Rob." But we've leaned into it and said, "Okay, we're going to remain humane, we're going to be good people, we're going to do good human things." I'll get on all hands meetings and say, "Look, there's two standards that I try to hold myself to, it's be a good human and a good CEO." You have to do both and it's hard. It's hard to do both at the same time sometimes. Rob Collie (00:37:21): But what I've discovered is that it's not as hard as everyone would want you to believe, it's this paper wall that they painted to look like concrete, "You can't go through that wall, you just scratch it." It's like, "Really? That was it?" Now, of course, a big part of the problem them in the world, I think is the real power exists at great distance from the problem. Once a company, for instance, is publicly traded, now, it's just pure chasing return, your company as a security is only returning 10% annually, and this other one over here is returning 15% annually, what are you going to do about it? Rob Collie (00:37:59): And the CEO or whoever that pushes back and says, "No, we have a really good thing going here. We're doing really good things for the world and for our people," well, they get replaced because the shareholders are in charge. They don't want to hear about Adam Harstad's kids play. Being privately held, I think is a big, big, big part of being able to still do both. We've proven to be very successful. I think we still pretty clearly have a no sociopath rule. Adam Harstad (00:38:28): It's good. I have nothing against sociopaths. Sociopaths are people too, but- Rob Collie (00:38:32): People are people. Adam Harstad (00:38:33): Right. I don't want to give non-sociopaths the impression that I wish that they were sociopaths. Rob Collie (00:38:40): Let's not engage in absolutely base discrimination against sociopaths. They have feelings. Wait. Adam Harstad (00:38:48): Since this is the cognitive bias episode, supposedly. I think a lot of this goes down to hyperbolic discounting, which is basically the idea that we wait short term gains more than we wait long term gains. The closer something is to us, the more we wait it. And to some extent, the time discount is rational. I would rather have $100 today than $100 a year from now because I can take that money and invest it and there's expect deposit returns. Adam Harstad (00:39:16): But when you use a hyperbolic discounting system, it's characterized by things like preference reversals, where you'd make a trade today, and two days from now, you'd make the opposite side of that trade. It's not consistent over time. I get how hard it is to be ethical and to invest in the long term because you always see like, hey, there's these short term gains to be had, "Hey, if I overwork my team here, I'll get this extra productivity for the next two weeks." And you don't really look at, "Well, but then I'm going to lose productivity the two weeks after that as they recover from the burnout and as I give them a time to rest, or maybe I don't give them a time to rest and now I've got higher employee turnover and I've got to replace that." Adam Harstad (00:39:56): All you see are those short term gains staring you in the face and everything else is future use problem. Rob Collie (00:40:02): Yeah. And there's not a lot of thinking about future. Adam Harstad (00:40:04): You screw that guy. Rob Collie (00:40:06): Yeah. I seriously, Have you seen the Calvin and Hobbs homework time travel strip? Adam Harstad (00:40:11): Mm-mm (negative). Rob Collie (00:40:12): It seems like they're up your alley. They're sitting around, Calvin has to do his homework and he's really pissed off about it, so he goes, "Oh you know what, it's six o'clock right now, eight o'clock me is going to have the homework done. So let's just travel to eight o'clock and get the homework and come back." Right you are. So they build the time machine, they go to eight o'clock Calvin, and eight o'clock Calvin is sitting like, "I don't have the homework." He's like, "I'm supposed to already be done. Seven o'clock Calvin was supposed to do the homework. Rob Collie (00:40:43): So they both agree at that moment that seven o'clock Calvin is the real villain, and they jump in the time machine to go get seven o'clock Calvin. Awareness of these things isn't some panacea that solves them. I agree with that. But a lot of these things are by significant degrees retrainable. Really simple example, we talk about being good to your future self-in our training. In our training programs when we're instructing people on how to use Power BI, make this a very, very, very explicit theme, is that the original tool for analyzing this, for analyzing data just like standard spreadsheets and stuff, they're not 100% responsible for this, but they are fertile ground for you to learn the habit of neglecting future you. Rob Collie (00:41:29): And there are things in Power BI that might take an extra minute or two to set up than they would in a normal spreadsheet. And yet, from that point forward, the next time you need to do that thing, it's instantaneous payoff. You don't need to do any work whatsoever. You can retrain yourself to be a bit better to your future self as soon as you start to think of your future self as a construct, you just introduce that player into your mind space, into your game. I have seen it, I can change my own behavior in the present by going, "Oh, future me is going to be really pissed off." Eight O' Calvin is not going to understand the actions of six o'clock Calvin. Adam Harstad (00:42:12): Yeah. And I think, again, this is where I hesitate to call myself purely a Gigerenzer, because I think knowing these biases is useful, even if you can't stop yourself from having them, even if you can't even make yourself aware that you have them, you can build systems, you can build basically safety nets that automate a lot of behavior where this bias would normally kick in. And basically, just take the decision away from yourself too. Was it Odysseus who was going to sail past the sirens and he knew that everybody who heard the sirens cast himself into the sea? Adam Harstad (00:42:45): So he had his crew chain him to the mast so then they're sailing past the sirens, trying to cast himself in the sea, he can't because he's chained to the mast. And I think having that knowledge that anybody who hears the sirens cast himself into the sea is useful only if you're going to take that extra step and create that system that takes the decision, takes the agency away from you in situations where that's going to be a problem. Rob Collie (00:43:08): On our previous conversations, did I mention to you the Charlie Munger essay? Adam Harstad (00:43:13): You might have. Rob Collie (00:43:14): I think this would be an interesting one. You know how you send me links and I don't read them? It's time to reverse that, I'll send you a link and then you cannot read it. But I think actually you might, I don't know, I give you a lot of credit. You have a higher chance of reading the thing I send you. Adam Harstad (00:43:28): Always follow the links. The fun stuff always happens in the links. Rob Collie (00:43:31): Really? Adam Harstad (00:43:32): Life hack, always follow the links. Rob Collie (00:43:34): What if I attach a PDF instead of sending you a link? Adam Harstad (00:43:38): That's fine. Rob Collie (00:43:38): Okay. That'll work? So Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett's right hand man. He had this, I think it was originally like a college graduation speech or something, but it's an essay now. So it's about these sorts of biases and things like that. He's using it, for him, this isn't without agenda. He lives by these principles and by awareness of them and he uses it in his business all the time. And so this is a very actionable essay, even just the very, very, very first of these categories of misjudgment that he identify. It'd be pretty interesting, I think, to see if his categories, one to one align to things in these other guys work, Kahneman, or Kahneman or whatever, if basically Munger is rediscovering in parallel the same things or- Adam Harstad (00:44:32): He might not be rediscovering. I know the investment community is a big fan of the work of the behavioral economist, and they were one of the first communities to really embrace that probably because there were huge sums of money on the line for being right. Rob Collie (00:44:46): Rediscovering or parroting, whatever. I eagerly await your review of this. Adam Harstad (00:44:51): Sure. Fire away. Rob Collie (00:44:52): The very first one in this essay has had a lot to do with how we've constructed our company and it's just like this overwhelming power of incentives. He has a great way of saying, he is like, "I've always been like in the 90 plus percentile of my age cohort at all points in my life, in believing in the power of incentives. And yet, every year I discover something that shows me that even I wasn't in enough on my own thing, the thing that I believed the most." There's something I think that comes back to what you were saying earlier, was it the hyperbolic? Adam Harstad (00:45:25): Hyperbolic discounting. Hyperbolic discounting. Rob Collie (00:45:28): Even if you are the most calculating Machiavellian person in the world, if you take a long enough timeline, I think you end up coming back around to things that in certain lights might seem altruistic because what's really good for you long term, is that everyone around you is also happy. We did something that consulting firms don't usually do, we implemented very, very, very aggressive and valuable incentive plans for all of our consulting team in addition to the base salary. It's been phenomenal. There are certain adjustments we've made to that incentive program, like the way the formula is calculated, it's not subjective, it's 100% mathematical. Rob Collie (00:46:11): There's no human jet in how much the bonus check is each month. We made changes to that formula that have increased revenue that year, but we can look at it, we can look at the two different trajectories and go, "Yep. That was like a 30% difference in revenue. Just that one little tweak to the incentive program." I don't even remember all those other, I tend to digest nonfiction, I read like the first thing and go, "Okay, I'm going to go off and act on that." But even he and his essay emphasizes this as important as the rest of them combined. Rob Collie (00:46:42): Offline I'll send you this essay. We'll also link it, Luke. I'm sure we've linked it before on the podcast because it's one of my favorite things that I've read one 10th of, but it's pretty cool. Adam Harstad (00:46:51): I was about to say, better to read a 10th and understand it than read the whole thing and not. Rob Collie (00:46:56): Yeah, I completely agree. That's also part of our trainings too, is there's this line we draw in the training and say, "Look, everything above this line, up until this certain point in the training, we really, really, really need you to understand all of that really well. Everything after this, we don't want you to be scoring yourself because you'll tend to remember the things you didn't understand at disproportionate weight to the things that you did. Here's the line at which we really want you to hold yourself and ask us questions and hold yourself to a solid understanding. The rest of this, everyone's mileage is going to vary in terms of how much they understand in their first exposure to it, but that's okay." Rob Collie (00:47:32): Again, all these things learned from experience over the years, training people and talking to them later about how they felt about it and stuff. You learn, you adjust. Adam Harstad (00:47:41): Or you don't and you perish. Rob Collie (00:47:42): Yeah, we haven't done that yet. We've come close once, long time ago, and we learned a lot and changed a lot. Adam Harstad (00:47:50): There's this philosophy that people will look to successful companies and they'll try to draw lessons from those successful companies. They'll say, "Oh, Amazon does this. Amazon's worth billions of dollars. Let's do that because Amazon does it." And they're trying to learn lessons from companies that did not fail, which makes some plausible intuitive sense. If you don't want to fail, do what companies that didn't fail. But in reality, all you can say about Amazon is they didn't discover the thing that will definitely kill your company, so maybe let's look at some companies that did fail because they did discover that thing. Let's see what they did and let's make extra sure not to do that. Adam Harstad (00:48:27): And that's survivorship bias. The famous example is there were fighter planes in World War II and they were coming back and the general said like, "Oh, we can put a little bit extra armor on these fighter planes, but only a little bit, because otherwise they're too heavy and they won't fly right. So we're going to look at the planes that come back and we're going to look at where all the bullet holes are and we're going to put that extra armor right there." And a mathematician called Abraham Wald said, "No, this is a terrible idea. Put the armor where the bullet holes aren't because if a plane comes back and it's got bullet holes, a bunch of bullet holes on the wing, all you know is that a plane can survive being shot in the wing a bunch of times." Adam Harstad (00:49:02): "If a plane comes back and there's no bullet holes in the fuselage, this doesn't tell you that my planes are never getting hit in the fuselage, it tells you that the planes that are getting hit in the fuselage are aren't coming back." Rob Collie (00:49:12): Finally. Finally, Adam, I have you. These were not fighters, these were bombers. Adam Harstad (00:49:17): Bombers? Okay. Rob Collie (00:49:18): Yes. There we go. All right. Podcast adjourn forever. We're going to end on a high note. I know why this is fresh in your mind because there's a tweet recently that Twitter had the foresight to tell me that you would like to tweet, and it's a picture of exactly it's the bomber with the red dots all over it in certain areas. When you see that picture of where all the bullet holes are, the planes have come back with bullet holes here, if you just look at that diagram, it's like, "Oh my gosh, you know what, they never ever, ever hit the cockpit. And they never hit the engines. It's crazy. Can you believe that they never hit the cockpit or the engines?" Adam Harstad (00:50:03): Have you ever seen, I don't know if this is way out of left field, there's an old cult sci-fi movie called Cube and the basic idea is a bunch of people get dropped into this giant cube. It's made up a bunch of different rooms, it's like Rubik cube, but it's like 27 by 27. And some of the rooms are completely safe and some of the rooms are just absolute death traps. You step in the room and all of a sudden like the floor turns into lava or the air gets filled with poisonous gas. And I did a whole fantasy football article about that. It was Canadian, it's a cheesy Canadian sci-fi movie. Adam Harstad (00:50:37): And the idea is like, if you're going to go into the cube and you have this time to prepare, maybe you want to stand at the exit and interview people as they come out and be like, "What were the worst rooms you saw?" And you can gather all this data and you fill up your notebook and then you go into the cube and you have a choice between two rooms. And one of the rooms is like, everybody comes back, says, "Man, this room is a total hellscape, we barely got out with our lives." And the other room you look and there's no data in your book about it. You're like, oh, "Hey, yeah, I don't have anything about this room." Adam Harstad (00:51:03): Go into the first room, go into the hellscape, because all that means is that the people who went into that room never came out and told you about it. Rob Collie (00:51:11): Counterintuitive. But again, I'd heard that story about the bombers in World War II so many times, but I'd never seen the diagram. Adam Harstad (00:51:20): Oh, it's stark. I'm surprised it took a mathematician to point it out, because it's one of those things where once you see it, you can't unsee it, but also it hard to think about before I knew about this, I probably would've reached that same conclusion because people are people. Rob Collie (00:51:32): Yeah. It's the power of visualization. You've got all these different planes, all these different places with holes in them, but until you superimpose all of them on one plane, it doesn't just leap out at you like, "Look at the vulnerable spots. The engines, the cockpit, of course, it's not chance that there's no holes there." Adam Harstad (00:51:52): The lesson is, don't take marriage advice from people who are happily married, get marriage advice from people who are miserable in their marriage or whose marriages have failed. Don't get business advice from successful companies, get business advice from companies that went under and say, "Hey, what killed your company? Let's not do that." Take parenting advice from terrible parents not from good parents. It's the old Anna Karenina principle that every happy family is alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Rob Collie (00:52:19): This is one of my favorites as well, the only way to be happy is to avoid all of the myriad possible failures. And so that means if you avoided them all, that means that you're just like all the other happy families, you have a lot in common. But everyone else has this unique set, this unique combination of the things they didn't avoid. I feel bad doing this because we're just switching roles here, but obviously we're overstating this, failed companies are often failed because the leader had no self-awareness. Adam Harstad (00:52:48): They need some level of introspection. Rob Collie (00:52:50): And they wouldn't be able to tell you anything interesting, but they'll more than likely tell you it wasn't their fault. Adam Harstad (00:52:55): You don't necessarily have to listen to them, but if you get like a forensic anthropologist who's studying the ruins of their culture, they can probably figure out what went wrong. Rob Collie (00:53:06): I think I'd want to go look for the companies that almost failed and then didn't, that might be my favorite group to talk to. Those are hard to identify because most companies that almost fail don't like to talk about it. Let's do just a little bit of football talk. Adam Harstad (00:53:21): Sure. Rob Collie (00:53:21): And talk about my own biases and everything. I have what passes for a heuristic, which is, we don't know anything. What happens in an NFL season is fundamentally unknowable. Position yourself to take advantage of that fluctuation, swing for the fences and keep swinging. And I had so many opportunities this year to draft Cooper Kupp, and I knew things were changing. It should have been right in my heuristic wheelhouse, new quarterback, new capabilities could be an outlier situation. Take the Rams, take the Rams receivers. No, boring, says my priors. Boring, boring, boring Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp. Rob Collie (00:54:04): Those aren't world beaters, those are the singles in the baseball metaphor. They've always been singles, they're dependable, but I don't like the dependable singles. That's not how I construct my teams at all. Boomer bust. At this point, if we redrafted, there'd be people very, very rationally taking Cooper Kupp number one overall, which is just absolutely jaw dropping. It's like one of the best examples of we know nothing that I can come up with. And I didn't take him, not once. Adam Harstad (00:54:35): I'm in a unique place in the industry. I'm the only guy I know of who's doing this, although it's possible that other people are doing it and not advertising the fact, especially in DFS, where I think a lot of people try to keep their edge as a secret. But for Footballguys, I do a lot of work on player upside, because it's basically that idea that you're talking about, that the singles aren't really getting you that much closer to the win. If you're not first, you're last right, unless you're in a league that has graduated payout structures. But for the most part, everybody who's not first place, lost. Adam Harstad (00:55:05): So you want to take risks that have that disproportionate payout. And one of the things I consistently find is that in terms of upside, we really don't know who has asymmetric upside. Basically upside is a function of expectations. The higher we are on a player, the higher their upside is. And there are guys who we aren't as high and who have that disproportionate upside, and it's tempting to think that we can identify who they are in advance. You thought that, "Oh, Cooper Kupp clearly is not the guy with this upside." But we really can't. Adam Harstad (00:55:37): In terms of asymmetric upside, there are some indicators, having a high yards per touch average, yards per catcher, yards per carry, does tend to indicate a little bit more upside and weekly variance. Let me distinguish upside from variance. A lot of people say upside and what they mean is asymmetric upside, which means there's a higher ceiling, but there's not a lower floor. And when I talk about it, I try to be very careful to distinguish that really what I'm talking about is variance, that the guys who have a higher ceiling also have a lower floor and I'm very skeptical of claims to identify asymmetric upside. Adam Harstad (00:56:10): But even this symmetric upside, this variance, Cooper Kupp didn't really hit on any of them, he wasn't especially touchdown dependent before now. He doesn't have an especially high yards per reception average, he doesn't operate in an area of the field that tends to lend itself to disproportionate fantasy scoring. And people like you said, they don't really respect the amount of variance that there is just naturally that everybody has. Who has league winning upside? Everybody has league winning upside. We can try and distinguish this guy might have a tiny bit better chance of hitting that than this guy, but the variance is way larger than anybody wants to expect. Adam Harstad (00:56:47): One of my rules, I do one redraft league a year, which is where you draft your players every year, and it's against the other people on Footballguys staff. So these are fantasy experts who've been playing for decades and have a lot of experience and they're tested and they're proven, I don't do any of that. I'm team heuristics, I don't do player projections, I don't draft a lot of leagues, I don't have any edge. And so my strategy is always, I draft the guys that they don't like. If normally Cooper Kupp is going in the fifth round of drafts and he falls to me in the sixth round, sure, I'll take Cooper Kupp. Adam Harstad (00:57:20): I don't love Cooper Kupp, I don't hate Cooper Kupp, I'm just going to take whatever value falls to me. Then it just so happened that Cooper Kupp was one of the guys that fell to me and I'm just demolishing them all in that league. And of course, I trash talk nonstop about like, how does it feel to be beaten by the guy who drafts off of ADP? How much work did you guys put in the off season? This is my only league. My prep work was 30 minutes before the draft kicked off. How is this even possible? Rob Collie (00:57:46): I have this image of you painted up like William Wallace with your sword. You raised the sword to the sky and you say, "Gigerenzer." Adam Harstad (00:57:56): Yeah. I talk so much trash. It's funny, I tend to think that I'm relatively unassuming and people might not expect that of me, but fantasy football's supposed to be fun, dude. Why are you doing it? Rob Collie (00:58:06): Yeah. You need villains. Adam Harstad (00:58:07): Yeah. I view myself as a hero and everybody else is a villain. Their perspective on that might be different, but I think you need heroes. Rob Collie (00:58:14): I tend to view myself as a villain, it's fun. You want to take down the villain. We have a guy who's leading our league, our work league, our 14-team work league right now. He's undefeated, I don't think he's ever played before. And oh, he has taken the villain mantle. It was like it was made for him, he was like, "Oh, I put this on, oh, it fits so nice." He's doing really well. It's going to be a real shame when I beat him and knock him out of the playoffs. Adam Harstad (00:58:38): But see, that's my thing, that's why I view myself as a hero because it makes the league more fun for everyone. If you beat that guy, it's going to be so much more fun because he did all that trash talking. That's all I want. At the end of the year, all I want is a good story. Win, lose, whatever, I just want something that tells me that the time I spent on that was worthwhile, that I got something from that I will take with me going forward. Winning tends to be more fun, but as long as I get a good story, it was a successful year. Rob Collie (00:59:09): Yeah. I like the story, but I wait the story about equal to winning, it's not like 90/10, it's 50% story and 50% winning. Let's be clear. I still can't tell myself that, "Oh yeah. I'm just one of many in the running here." No, no, no. That's my trophy. Adam Harstad (00:59:26): You do know that fantasy football is about 50% skill and 50% luck though, right? Rob Collie (00:59:31): It is. Adam Harstad (00:59:31): Because when I win that's skill, and when I lose that's the luck. So that's 50/50. Rob Collie (00:59:35): Oh, I see. I see. It's about 50/50. It's like the chances of a hole in one are 50/50, either it goes in or it doesn't. It is like that. Adam Harstad (00:59:43): It's true. Rob Collie (00:59:44): There's a lot of things break down to 50/50. It's the magical heuristic. Uh, whatever, it's 50/50. I don't know, I just thought that the Kupp was probably and Cordarrelle Patterson. Journeyman, not even a single, he hasn't even been a dependable single ever, and now Atlanta's like, "Well, let's try using him. We don't have anybody else." Adam Harstad (01:00:09): Yeah. I don't fall in love with anybody, I just get whoever falls, and some of my coworkers will joke that I'm basically letting everybody else draft my team, which to some extent is true, I'm drafting the guys that they don't want. But the key thing here is I'm drafting the guys that they don't want at a discount. So basically, I'm letting them give me extra draft picks. I'll trade you my fifth rounder for your sixth rounder. That's what's happening when they let a fifth rounder fall to the sixth. Rob Collie (01:00:37): Well, so it's a combination of them and consensus, right? Adam Harstad (01:00:40): I'm going off ADP. Rob Collie (01:00:42): So you're like wisdom of the crowds against the other 11 people in your league who let those people slide? Adam Harstad (01:00:50): But I try to do an idealized version of ADP that's the sense of the market at this moment. If I'm in a league in Footballguys staff, quarterbacks always fall further than they do in more casual leagues. So I mentally adjust for that and I say, "Well, ADP says this is a good deal." But knowing the market that I'm actually in, really I would expect him to go later. But I'm basically just letting them give me, they're upgrading my draft picks, they're giving me a third rounder for my fourth round pick. They're giving a fourth rounder for my fifth round pick. Adam Harstad (01:01:21): And I don't think I am better at them at identifying who's going to hit and who's going to miss, but I think if you give me enough extra draft picks, I can probably beat you. Rob Collie (01:01:30): Just like Belichick, except he can't draft a receiver apparently. So the way to defeat you or to really handicap you to the greatest degree is to always give you the first pick. Adam Harstad (01:01:42): Yeah. When I'm drafting at the turn and when I'm in another league, this is one of those strategies that doesn't scale. Obviously, if you're in a league where everybody's following it, then your chances of winning are one in 12. At that point, everything's pure luck. But that's the nice thing about Footballguys League is everybody has an opinion. There's nobody who's on the fence about players, everybody has their list of guys that they like, so that there do tend to be big deviations between expected draft position and actual draft position, which means there's usually a lot of bargains for me to scoop up on the way back. Rob Collie (01:02:14): Someday all of us that engage in this game, this silly yet very addictive and enjoyable game, maybe we should be picking financial securities instead. Maybe we should bring this same game like, "I don't have any particular opinion about which of these software firms is going to dominate their market, but we're just going to do that one over end thing." Adam Harstad (01:02:34): Yeah, no, just dump it all on index funds. I say all the time that my approach to fantasy football is basically just, I dump everything into index funds, which- Rob Collie (01:02:42): That doesn't sound fun. Adam Harstad (01:02:43): Well, it's fun for me. The expected returns just as good and the fees are lower. You're going to spend 300 hours this off season grinding tape and coming to opinions and I'm going to spend 30 minutes before the draft just downloading the app and checking the player list. And we both have about the same expectation of success. Rob Collie (01:03:02): Okay. What we really need to do is create some fantasy league where we actually use real money and draft real stocks so that we can draft against each other. We need to be able to use that to harvest a method. We need use the market pricing, the ADP, the index fund against the people in our league who are making specific decisions. So we need to find a way that we can zero-summit like that and take our friends real money. That doesn't sound very good. Let's not do that. Adam Harstad (01:03:29): Just make it an auction. Let everybody else overpay. That's the key, don't fall in love with anything, just go where the value is. Rob Collie (01:03:36): Yeah. I agree. And take Cooper Kupp. Adam Harstad (01:03:40): Yeah. Who I did not love. He was there and it's the five, six turn and I'm looking at it and I'm like, "I guess, Cooper Kupp." But just to show how none of us knows anything, my next pick, after that, I was looking at wide receivers and I'm like, "I want another wide receiver here." And the sharp two guys on my board were Michael Thomas of the Saints and Deebo Samuel of 49ers. And I'm like, "I want a league winner, and I think that Michael Thomas can be a league winner." Deebo Samuel at this point he's a known commodity, there's no asymmetric upside there. And of course, Michael Thomas is not going to play it down this year, and Deebo Samuel is like a top 10 wide receiver. Rob Collie (01:04:14): Oh, I did have one question for you. A year is just long enough for memory to fade just the right amount, are we having more injuries to key players this year than usual? Adam Harstad (01:04:25): I don't think so. Rob Collie (01:04:27): You don't think so? God, it just seems like we are. And I think I say this every year though. We need like an overall variance score for a year. Adam Harstad (01:04:35): The only year I can think of that was especially bad for injuries was 2015, was a terrible year for running backs, just famously bad. It's sometimes referred to in the industry as the RV apocalypse, just because everybody got hurt, and then a lot of people drew lessons from that. They didn't view that as statistical noise, they viewed that as trend. And for years after that, a lot of people thought, "Oh, investing in running backs a fool's errand, look what happened in 2015." Rather than saying, "Okay, but what happened in 2014? What happened in 2013? What happened in 2012?" Rob Collie (01:05:11): It helped launch Zero RB. Adam Harstad (01:05:13): Which has been around for a long time. I have to say, it's started 20, 30 years ago, really. as long as fantasy football's been around and running backs have been as popular, it's been called do the opposite or upside down drafting, but that particular Zero RB article was the right piece in the right place at the right time, and it just captured the imagination and took off. Rob Collie (01:05:38): Well, next year, I'm switching to ADP contrarianism. Adam Harstad (01:05:42): Yeah. Draft ADP followers. That's what I call it. Rob Collie (01:05:44): All right. Well, that's it. Adam Harstad (01:05:46): I don't know if draft ADP followers is the best fantasy strategy. In fact, if you have 1,000 fantasy football strategies, I think it's very unlikely that this is the number one or the number two or the number three, but it is the strategy that I am most convinced is positive EV. If you drafted a million leagues using this strategy, I would guarantee you, on pain of death, that you would finish the year with a winning record. Rob Collie (01:06:11): Or your money back. Adam Harstad (01:06:12): Yeah. I don't give guarantees like that lightly, but it's a mathematical certainty provided two basic assumptions. The first assumption is that players drafted higher are better in expectation than players drafted lower, which seems trivially true. You can go through the effort of proving it, but it's true. And then the second assumption is that players who have higher variants in their ADP are just as good or better than players who have lower variants in their ADP. And that one's a little harder to prove, but I've looked at it enough to feel confident that probably that's the case. Adam Harstad (01:06:44): And if those two assumptions are true, I could walk through the mathematical proof that draft ADP followers is a plus EV strategy. And it's perfect for lazy people like me who want to do the minimum amount of work possible. Rob Collie (01:06:56): In your pro-football reference t-shirt. Pretty slick, pretty slick. Any just advice for a new habit that people can acquire and the way that they think about things that would be most impactful? Adam Harstad (01:07:07): One thing I work on a lot is it's tempting in society, and I think it might be a uniquely American pathology to view everything as a zero-sum competition, that my wins are necessarily somebody else's losses and somebody else's wins are necessarily my losses, that the pie is fixed and we're all fighting for the same pie and we want the biggest piece possible, and that has to come from somewhere else. It's very tempting and easy to see the world that way, when in reality, most of the time, unless you're in a situation like football where the rules are fixed and there's very little uncertainty. Adam Harstad (01:07:53): Football is definitely a zero-sum game, what's good for one team is bad for another, but in the real world where the possibilities are not so constrained, it's usually not zero sum. Fantasy football, we've been competing for attention, for audience, for market share. One way we could do that is we can trash other sites and we can say, "Oh, we're the best. We're better than these other people, we're going to steal market share from somewhere else." That's a zero-sum approach. And the other way to do that is say, "Hey, fantasy football is really fun, let's show everybody how fun fantasy football is. Let's let that market grow leaps and bounds, rising tide lifts all boats." And that's the non-zero-sum solution. Adam Harstad (01:08:31): And fantasy football over the last 20 years has experienced massive non-zero-sum growth where everybody's doing better today than they were 20 years ago. And in all areas of my life, I try to look at it through that lens. And sometimes it's conscious effort where it's very tempting to say, "I want to do something that's good for me," and it's going to come at the expense of someone else, where if I often reframe it and say, "I want to do something that's good for someone else." And often this will redouble to my benefit as well. That's not necessarily why I'm doing it, but the pie is not fixed. Rob Collie (01:09:04): Well, I'm super, super, super tempted to skewer you with your own sword and say, "Well, but Adam, people are people and this isn't just an American thing now, is it?" But I think you're right. Adam Harstad (01:09:14): Yeah. Well, everybody's a function of their context. And I think the context is uniquely American there. Rob Collie (01:09:20): So we need to change the Depeche Mode's song, People Are People, but context matters. Adam Harstad (01:09:25): Context always matters. Rob Collie (01:09:26): I will be rewriting the lyrics today. I won't sing it because I can't sing, but I'll definitely rewrite the lyrics. Adam, thank you so much. Really appreciate you coming, especially on such short notice. This was a hastily scheduled, urgently scheduled, and I appreciate your flexibility. Adam Harstad (01:09:40): Well, if there's one thing you should know, it's that I'm not going to prepare either way. Rob Collie (01:09:44): Well, you've come to the right place. Thanks man. Much appreciated. Have a good one. Adam Harstad (01:09:49): Awesome. Announcer (01:09:50): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Have a data day!

For our 50th episode a few weeks ago, we shared an episode that Rob recorded with his grandfather, Bob "Pop" Collie.  We had some content that didn't quite fit the vibe of the episode, and we just didn't feel right about keeping this amazing stuff to ourselves! It's a lot of Pop Collie's Navy stories of him being goofy, how he played football for a legendary college coach, and how a series of strange events led to him meeting his wife! References in this episode: Incredibles Cape Scene Good Will Hunting Wicked Smaht Scene

Mary Fealty (@Br0adtree on Twitter) is a prime example of the spirit of "Why not?" that we've been exploring as of late!  She is a Power BI early adopter (we like to call folks like Mary a Power BI OG!), and her experience and knowledge place her as a leader in the data solutions field.  Mary is an "Analytics Wildling," and we think her way of looking at things is a peek into what the future of BI is like. Check out what Mary does at BroadTree Solutions! Mary Fealty-Analytics Wildling References in this episode: Letterkenny - Do What You Love Needful Things - Weapons Scene The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny by William Strauss Pulp Fiction Deleted Scene - Beatles or Elvis? Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello friends. Today's guest is Mary Fealty, and oh my gosh, what a luminous human being she is. We had just a fantastic time. I in particular really enjoyed this conversation. Because along the way, it became so clear to me that Mary is such a kindred spirit to me. If you listened to the episode with my grandfather, Bob Pop Collie, you start to see where I think I got my personal spirit of, "Why not?" Rob Collie (00:00:32): In the course of this chat with Mary, is became very clear to me, that she was a fellow member of team, "Why not?" Of course, we got into her own personal why not origin story. There's a surprising twist in there, that I'll leave for the episode. Rob Collie (00:00:48): In the course of this conversation, I think we also coined a new term, "Analytics wildling." We discovered that term quite by accident, while introducing a potential new running feature for the show. We're tentatively and conservatively referring to this new feature as The Five Questions of Doom. Her answer to one of those five questions of doom was initially very disappointing, and I was also very disappointed in Tom's answer to the same question. I say disappointing in jest. But then it took a turn for the very much not disappointing. Rob Collie (00:01:23): For the debut of this new feature, I can't imagine anyone ever matching her answer to one of those five questions. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting her. I'm so glad we did this. I also think that no one really personifies the future of data better than her. We had an awesome time. I think that'll come through in the audio. I think you'll hear it for yourself, and let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:47): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:01:51): This is The Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast, with your host, Rob Collie, and your co-host, Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:02:15): Welcome to the show. Mary Fealty, how are you today? Mary Fealty (00:02:19): I am very, very well. Rob Collie (00:02:20): That's great. I've known you as a Twitter personality for a long time now. I know, it's a weird thing, this internet. The inter-tubes, or whatever we call them. But yeah, I've been following you for a long time. Figured, "Hey, let's reach out across the pond." Where are you located? Mary Fealty (00:02:38): I'm based in Northern Ireland. Rob Collie (00:02:41): It's become interesting, with the whole Brexit thing, right? Mary Fealty (00:02:44): Sure. Rob Collie (00:02:44): Once again, the whole Ireland, Northern Ireland thing is back in the news, thanks to Brexit. It's incredibly complicated. I've lost track of what's really going on. I really have no idea. But it's an interesting time, to say the least, over there, with supply chain, and all of that. Mary Fealty (00:03:01): Yes. There's a thing called protocol, and that would appear, I'm not much wiser than you. Politics and I are, particularly Northern Ireland politics, is something I steer away from. It's just better that way. Rob Collie (00:03:14): Yeah, I understand. Mary Fealty (00:03:14): But I have a brother who is a political pundit. I just rely on him for all information around what is actually happening, if I'm interested enough. On this occasion I'm not. Brexit happened, that was unfortunate. It's causing an awful lot of problems, and potentially major problems. But let's hope it never comes to that. Rob Collie (00:03:39): Leaving the gym today, we were talking to someone who said, "Yeah, I'm going to leave here, and I'm going to go try to find Diet Coke somewhere. I haven't been able to get Diet Coke. It's not on the shelves around here." It's like, "Oh man, what has the world come to?" Mary Fealty (00:03:52): I know. Rob Collie (00:03:52): You know? Luke, do you still drink diet coke by the gallon? Luke (00:03:56): I'm a Diet Pepsi guy. You might have seen me chugging on it. I've already had issues with trying to find it, but I always do. I think south Florida, we're just diet conscious, or whatever. I don't know. Rob Collie (00:04:06): Well, you're a priority, because you're the most dangerous, south Florida. Luke (00:04:11): Just the entire state? Rob Collie (00:04:13): We don't want a south Florida uprising. Thomas LaRock (00:04:15): South Florida Man. Rob Collie (00:04:16): We really don't want to be poking that bear. Indiana? Why not poke Indiana? What's Indiana going to do? Are you experiencing things like that over there, Mary? Just- Mary Fealty (00:04:28): No. Thankfully, we're not. There's a lot of stuff about it in the media, but in reality, no. Nothing yet. You get a lot of stuff now saying Christmas is going to be challenging. We'll get there, and we'll find out if that's true or not. But so far, honestly, we're no longer going in to the supermarkets to see what the stocks are like. Because of everything, we've gone online shopping. You're not necessarily going and seeing areas that might be- Rob Collie (00:04:55): Empty shelves. Mary Fealty (00:04:56): Yeah, so no. So far, so good. Rob Collie (00:05:01): All right, well that's reasonable to hear. It's reassuring. But apparently, it sounds like you have our Diet Coke. That's where it's all gone. Mary Fealty (00:05:10): Yeah, it could all be here. Rob Collie (00:05:12): All right. What do you do professionally these days? Mary Fealty (00:05:14): What I do is, I have my own company. It's Broadtree Solutions. It is a small company, of me. I provide small to medium businesses with data solutions that almost, we're probably at about 98% of the time, those solutions are using Power BI. I have a sizable amount of customers, where I provide probably simple, but highly effective solutions for them, around their data needs. Usually presented in Power BI in some fashion. Mary Fealty (00:05:53): It's not a particularly large business, and it will never be a particularly large business. I do what I love, which is, not everybody can say that. I absolutely love working with Power BI. The fact that people pay me to do it, value what they get at the end of it, just keeps me very happy. Rob Collie (00:06:12): Is the show Letterkenny available in Northern Ireland? Have you heard of Letterkenny? Mary Fealty (00:06:17): The place? Rob Collie (00:06:18): Well, okay. See, now of course it would be a recognizable name. It's about a fictional town in Canada. Mary Fealty (00:06:25): Right? Rob Collie (00:06:26): Where is the real Letterkenny? Mary Fealty (00:06:28): The real Letterkenny is in Donegal, which is above us here in Northern Ireland. But weirdly, it's part of the south. Think of Ireland, right? Rob Collie (00:06:35): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mary Fealty (00:06:36): You picture it sitting there, beside Britain. We're up at the top. But above us is Donegal, and Donegal is part of the south, if that makes sense. Letterkenny is the primary town of Donegal. Rob Collie (00:06:54): Okay, I get the tie in. There's a lot of Scotch-Irish, a lot of Irish descent in Canada. Mary Fealty (00:06:57): Absolutely, my partner's Canadian. Rob Collie (00:06:59): Oh yeah? Okay. Mary Fealty (00:07:00): Yeah yeah yeah. Rob Collie (00:07:01): The reference was, one of the repetitive sayings on the show is, "Do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." That's where you're at. Mary Fealty (00:07:13): That's where I'm at, yeah. Rob Collie (00:07:14): You said something really, I think worth magnifying, just a minute or so ago. Which was, "Simple, but very effective." You said this is just some of the stuff that you do, so it's not the entirety of it. But I completely get it. I completely get what you're saying. Another recurring theme on this show is, we're always talking about how the pundits of the data space, their job is to always talk about something in the future. Something far in the future. Rob Collie (00:07:42): I saw somebody the other day, who I respect. I forget who it was. Her theme these days is, "Beyond dashboards." In order to be in that punditry business, you have to be pushing that edge, right? Always. Mary Fealty (00:07:54): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:07:54): But the reality is that the next big thing in data isn't any of those things. The next big thing in data is having the basics done well, for the first time ever. Mary Fealty (00:08:04): Yes. Rob Collie (00:08:04): The vast majority of the current value yet to be realized is getting those things, the things that we would all want to consider to be table stakes, getting them done well for the first time ever is magical. When you say, "Simple, but very effective," inside my brain I'm just nodding. I'm like, "Oh yeah." Not that everything we do is simple either. But don't underestimate the impact of what we would consider simple for our clients. I got the spirit of what you were saying. You said it in three words, and I said it in 300, which is my usual thing. But I'm with you. Mary Fealty (00:08:45): Yeah, and you're right. Some of these things, behind the scenes, are not simple at all. Some of them are really challenging, which is part of the fun. But ultimately, what an SME is looking for, is not the enterprise stuff. They don't need that, and I don't provide that. That's absolutely fine, because it's overkill. It's way beyond anything that's within their remit, or their needs. That sums up what I do, in the simplest way. Rob Collie (00:09:14): This is always basically an impossible question to answer, but we make our best effort. What's a typical client look like for you? Mary Fealty (00:09:20): I do have a very, very common thread with the bulk of my customers. That is insurance. I have an awful lot of insurance brokers as my customers. The primary reason for that is, that's my background. Their data is, we talk the same language. As a result of that, then I'm able to work with them very closely. I understand their business, and I understand what it is they need very quickly. Because they don't have a huge amount of time to sit down with somebody. Mary Fealty (00:09:52): There's no such thing as requirements gathering. These guys, their focus isn't there. They just want something, and they want to be able to say to somebody, "This is what I need." Most people aren't going to be able to understand that need, unless you've got some experience, and I've got a huge wealth of experience there. That's what my most technical customer will look like. Mary Fealty (00:10:13): Outside of those, because that's bread and butter. That's everyday. Those customers come back for more. They have another need, and they have another requirement. I'll deliver on that. But then the stuff that comes along outside of that would be anything from, I've worked on pretty sizable projects. I've done really random things. I've pushed Power BI into areas that it never was really designed for. But because it's my go to, I can always figure out a way of making it do things that perhaps it wasn't designed for. Mary Fealty (00:10:49): Then other ones would be much bigger players. I get the opportunity occasionally to work on much bigger projects. I don't like long term projects. I don't have the attention span for a long term project. I like things to be fresh, and just get the job done. But I have done a few of them, and I've been very proud of what I've delivered. Rob Collie (00:11:13): Keeping things fresh is crucial. When it was still just me, years ago, I had an early client. I had all of this weight, this angel and devil on either shoulder, that were constantly talking to me. The devil on my shoulder represented the ghost of consultants past, who were always looking down on me, going, "Oh, you're doing it wrong. Tsk tsk." Rob Collie (00:11:39): There was this moment where a client needed, and this was back when we still just only had Power Pivot. There was a moment where my client was going to go and make the same modification to 50 different reports. Or I think it might have been a cube formula report, and there were thousands of cells that they needed to modify. But it was the same modification for each, and they were going to go do that with labor on their side. I was like, "Oh, no no no no no. Let me write you a macro." Rob Collie (00:12:02): I wrote the macro, and it was a great little macro. It did the job. At that moment, the devil popped up on my shoulder and said, "Now you've got them. You've got this macro. You can charge them almost anything you want, every time you run this macro. Because whatever you charge them for this, it's still going to be way better than them spending the 100 hours it would take them to go and do this on their own. You've created something of tremendous value here, Rob. Don't blow it. Whatever you do, Rob, don't give them the macro. Don't give them the macro," says the devil. Rob Collie (00:12:32): I ran it one time, billed them for running it, and then I gave them the macro. There was just no way that I wanted to be involved in running that thing for them. The altruism of being good to them was real, and the desire to monetize it was also real. But those things, I put those things in the back, and let them fight with each other. It was just like, "No way. I am not going to be so bored, as to run this macro for them." I'm talking about a click, and then a save. That was going to be so boring, and so tedious, that I wanted nothing to do with that. I did not want to be in that loop. Rob Collie (00:13:13): I ended up doing the right thing, and that's been basically our ethos ever since. It was this one time in our early history, we had this choice. Milk it, or no? It was like, "Oh man, milking it sucks. That is not fun," so we don't do that. So I get it, you want to be solving challenging problems, novel problems. When you get to the point where it's super duper labor intensive, you aren't really needed. Someone else can do all of that, once it becomes repetitive or whatever. I completely understand. Rob Collie (00:13:48): Insurance, that's your background. Can we dig into that a little bit? You weren't Broadtree Solutions from the beginning. Mary Fealty (00:13:54): No, no no no no. Gosh. Rob Collie (00:13:56): You did not emerge on the scene, with the logo and everything. Where were you before? How did you first come into contact with this stuff? Mary Fealty (00:14:05): Right, so we've got to go back. I worked in insurance, and have done, since probably about 19, is when I first got involved in the industry. Rob Collie (00:14:14): When you were 19 years old? Mary Fealty (00:14:15): Yeah, yeah. Then in the late '90s, I started working for this very large firm as their sales manager. I had a team of people who worked for me. This is really going back to the nitty gritty stuff- Rob Collie (00:14:30): I like it. That's what we do. Mary Fealty (00:14:30): But anyway, this is, is that okay- Rob Collie (00:14:32): The origin story. We want to go back to- Mary Fealty (00:14:33): Yeah, yeah. This is the origin- Rob Collie (00:14:35): ... the primordial ooze, as the Earth cooled. Mary Fealty (00:14:38): This is it, yeah. I had a team of staff who were earning a bonus. The method for calculating the bonus was really labor intensive. This is not a new story. This is an everybody story, I suppose. But that was irritating. My brother was about, and I happened to say to him, "This is a really intensive way of having to do stuff.". He says, "Oh, have you used Excel?" I was going, "I don't know what that is." He starts up his computer. He had one, I didn't. He showed me Excel, and I went, "Oh, right. Okay." Mary Fealty (00:15:10): He started talking to me about how you could use this to simplify things. I went, "Right, right. This is fascinating." I just was like, "Wow," and went back to the office. Obviously he wasn't there. Managed to speak to my boss, and say, "You've got to get me this program called Excel. You've got to get me it. It's critical. It's absolutely critical." He says, "You can have this, Lotus 123." I went, "No, no. I don't want that. I want Excel." Rob Collie (00:15:37): "No, not that one." Mary Fealty (00:15:37): Yeah, yeah. "I've seen it. I know what it can do." He agreed. He thought, "I'll shut her up," and managed to get me the software. That's insane, software, Excel. But yeah. I remember then, trying to figure out what it was that my brother showed me how to do. Rob Collie (00:15:55): Is this the same brother that's the political pundit? Mary Fealty (00:15:57): No, no. This is a different brother. This is- Rob Collie (00:15:58): Okay, I was going to say, I can't imagine them being the same. Mary Fealty (00:16:01): Oh gosh, no. They are not the same. They are not the same, no. This is the project manager guy who's, yeah, yeah. He fits the Excel knowledge. So I'm going, "How did he do all of that?" But you know what it's like. Rob Collie (00:16:12): I do. Mary Fealty (00:16:13): You start figuring it all out, and you go, "Oh, right, right, right." Really did involve VLOOKUPS from day one, which was done very pearly, but nonetheless, made it work. That was the beginning of it. I think that just blew my mind. I was able to enter just a bonus structure. That was part of it, because I wanted to change the bonus structure that existed, but I couldn't figure out how to sell this concept to my bosses, and managed to figure out, using Excel, how I was able to demonstrate, this was definitely worth a punt, of changing the bonus structure. Could be more costly, but could be way more beneficial, etc. The performance of the team changed dramatically. Rob Collie (00:16:52): Wow, this sounds really familiar. Mary Fealty (00:16:54): It was real. It was absolutely real. It was partly driven by the fact that there was greater motivation. But the ability to manage that, and measure it, and be able to provide people with daily updates on where they were. All of that stuff just made such an impact. But that was me hooked. Absolutely hooked on the power of data. Rob Collie (00:17:16): What a cool story. What a really, really, really cool story. Did you simulate the impact of the change? You'd run some scenarios, some examples? Mary Fealty (00:17:26): Yes, there was an element of that. There was a lot of the what ifs. "What if we do it this way?", and, "This is what it will cost," but this is the value. But probably in, I can't pretend that it would have been highly sophisticated. Rob Collie (00:17:39): It doesn't have to be. It's not Monte Carlo. Mary Fealty (00:17:42): Yeah, yeah. Rob Collie (00:17:43): It's not like we're introducing random variables to measure fluctuation in Six Sigma. Upper bound, lower bound. We call this war gaming at P3, behind the scenes in the back office. When we want to make a change like that. We build one of those simple, but still very, very effective spreadsheet models, and plug a bunch of different scenarios into it. Scenario is just a fancy way of saying changing a few cells, and writing down what comes out. Yeah, no Monte Carlo for us either. Rob Collie (00:18:14): We certainly don't run simulations that predict, "What's the possibility of a pandemic?" We're not Wall Street. In fact, even Wall Street isn't good at that. They claim to be, but they're not. Mary Fealty (00:18:25): Yeah, no. Rob Collie (00:18:25): Who could have predicted this? Mary Fealty (00:18:27): No one. Rob Collie (00:18:27): What a cool story. This is just another reference, I can't resist. Have you seen the movie Needful Things? Mary Fealty (00:18:33): No. Rob Collie (00:18:34): The devil comes to this New England town, and starts this progressive acceleration of getting people to fight with one another. The movie builds to a climax, and everyone's at each other's throats. The devil confides in the sheriff. He says something like, "But in the end, I always give them weapons." In the end, we always give you Excel. They always give you Excel, and that's when it gets real, doesn't it? Mary Fealty (00:18:59): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:19:00): I could see that gleam in your eye. Very specific. I could almost see you going through this process. Mary Fealty (00:19:05): Oh, I mean Excel, right? That was using it that way. Then my next Excel moment, it was a chap who would have come into the office to see us for whatever reasons. Anyway, we were sitting together, and he was a real Excel man. He showed me pivot tables. I just sat there going, "What is this magic you are doing in front of me?" That was fine. Mary Fealty (00:19:27): He left, and then I was going, "Right, what did he do, and how did he do it?" I think I must have spent about a week, trying to figure out how the hell he did what he did. This was back in the day, where you just couldn't Google things. You had to try and figure it out. Trying to do it from memory, going, "He definitely did this." But I did figure it out. Mary Fealty (00:19:48): That was another moment of just sheer, that was the first one, was just being able to use it, and use it effectively, and have it actually do something for me. Then the second one was just pivot tables in general. Just going, "These things are just absolutely mindbogglingly, crazily valuable. How can the world not know all about pivot tables?" Rob Collie (00:20:06): So VLOOKUP first, and then pivot tables? Mary Fealty (00:20:08): Yeah, I never was the biggest fan of VLOOKUP. Don't know why. Rob Collie (00:20:14): Well, the only people who are fans of VLOOKUP are the people who are on their first day of using it. It's just so much better than manually copying and pasting data- Mary Fealty (00:20:25): Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the alternative. The alternative to VLOOKUP, absolutely. Absolutely. Thomas LaRock (00:20:28): Yeah, the alternative, use a database. But that's okay. Rob Collie (00:20:31): Stop it. Just stop it. Let's stay realistic here. Mary Fealty (00:20:35): Yeah, that came later. That came later. Rob Collie (00:20:37): Yeah, of course. Of course. You know, it's a gateway drug. Mary Fealty (00:20:40): Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Rob Collie (00:20:41): I might want to revise my Max von Sydow as the devil statement. "But in the end, I always give them pivot tables." Maybe that's the real quote. Yeah, so you were learning pivot tables, without the benefit of Google. Mary Fealty (00:20:56): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:20:57): As a little bit of a self plug, you were also learning the old, old, old pivot table interface. Which was about as computer science intimidating as they could possibly have made it. Mary Fealty (00:21:07): That might explain why, yeah. Because it was not easy to learn. You think back and go, "Why?" But it wasn't. Rob Collie (00:21:13): All those objects that landed in the grid. It was this weird perversion of the grid. It was just so unnatural. It took me a long time, even working on the Excel team, to find my first real world application of pivot tables, and then figure it out. It was hard. Even working on the team, it was embarrassing. You couldn't go around and ask people, "What are pivot tables for?" You had to just bluff that you knew. Mary Fealty (00:21:41): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:21:41): Your first killer app was the bonus or commission structure? Mary Fealty (00:21:45): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:21:46): When it comes to knowing the insurance agency, is it primarily through that lens? Policies, and premiums, and all that kind of stuff? Mary Fealty (00:21:57): Very, very much of that nature, yeah. It's all about just, what numbers are we counting? I became quite obsessed. Not just about the numbers, but collating the data itself, and storing the data. Recognizing that it had value, even though I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Because you had to get it out of a system. It wasn't immediately available. You had to make a choice to go and get it. It was there. There was no database to go and query. You had to actually find a way to get it out of the system, and then start utilizing the data within. Mary Fealty (00:22:25): I was doing that, and then storing it externally. Well, Excel at first, and then. Because it was back in the 65,000 rows day, so I had to find an alternative. Then that was Access. Rob Collie (00:22:38): That used to be one of the five reasons why Access was valuable, was to work around the 65K row limit in Excel, for pivot tables. Because a pivot table cache could hold more than 65,000 records, but the sheet couldn't. Okay, where are you going to get the data from, if the sheet can't hold it, right? Mary Fealty (00:22:58): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:22:58): The million row expansion was one of many nails in the Access coffin. It was pretty funny. Then M, and power query, that Tom is very diligently learning. I'm just kidding. I still owe you my greatest hits training session there. Thomas LaRock (00:23:17): Yeah, I have to get to it. Rob Collie (00:23:18): Yeah, me too. Me too. It's not like I've ponied up to really push you. I just shame you on social media every now and then, and hope that that little low effort is sufficient. Rob Collie (00:23:28): Mary, going back to your first brush with Excel, and the commissions, and the bonuses, and all of that. One of the key elements of that success was that you did manage to get buy-in from your manager, right? Mary Fealty (00:23:41): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:23:41): Someone up the org chart had to buy into what you were doing. That's both buying into the idea itself, just in general. Buying into implementing the changes. But also, somewhere along the way, buying into your spreadsheet. We would like to take these things for granted, that people just see the inherent value in these things. However, that seems to be not the majority case. Rob Collie (00:24:10): Have you always been similarly successful in getting that kind of buy-in? Have you lived that charmed life? Or maybe you're just super, super skilled, and just a savvy political navigator, and we all need to take your class. Mary Fealty (00:24:31): Right. I think I have been reasonably successful getting buy-in. Not always, but often, because I've already thought about it. I'm not asking for something just for the sake of it. I've thought about it, and I truly believe that it's something, whatever that is. I'm able to put forward a persuasive enough argument. Mary Fealty (00:24:48): Maybe there are other things going my way as well, or have been other things going my way. But I think usually, I haven't had too many battles I can think of. Rob Collie (00:24:57): That's nice. Of the millions of people listening to this podcast, just kidding, of the millions of Excel people listening to this podcast, they're all crying out, "Why? Why can't that be me?" To what extent do you think building reputation of success has helped you in that regard? You pull off that first major change, with the commission structure. That probably earned you a lot of credibility within that circle, right? Mary Fealty (00:25:25): Sure, yeah. Rob Collie (00:25:26): Your second, third, and fourth act, all of those are likely to have people think, "Well, we pushed that button last time, and it worked really well. Let's push it again," you know? Mary Fealty (00:25:34): Yeah, yeah. Rob Collie (00:25:34): How often have you found yourself, and I'm asking, before you switched to being an independent consultant. Still back in the previous era. How often did you find yourself in a completely new room, where no one knew you? Mary Fealty (00:25:48): Well, actually not that often. I can't say that I was that person. I worked in that company that I joined, I stayed with them for 18 years. I was not the new person in the room very often. It was a superb company. I'm somebody who has to learn. I have to be always moving forward. There has to be some sort of puzzle. Not necessarily hugely complex stuff, that's just not who I am. But something interesting, something engaging, and that company provided that to me in spades. Mary Fealty (00:26:21): I got to work on all this insurance going online. Selling online. I got to be part of a brokerage in Northern Ireland, being the first people of that scale to go into that environment. We had to figure out how that was going to work. We had to work with developers to figure out how it was going to work. It wasn't that it was done before, because it wasn't. It was pretty new. I was very much a part of that, so yes. They're just examples of what happened during that timeframe. It was exciting, and I got to work on some seriously fun, I found them fun, projects. Rob Collie (00:27:00): Yeah, I would too. Mary Fealty (00:27:01): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:27:02): After 18 years of being there, I've got to ask, not at the very end, but as you approached your 18th year there. As you're walking down the halls, I can just imagine this aura of ones and zeroes. People are getting out of your way in the hallway like, "Okay, here comes the data ..." Did people develop any nicknames for you? Mary Fealty (00:27:27): Did I have any- Rob Collie (00:27:28): Like Data God, or Spreadsheet Master? Mary Fealty (00:27:31): I don't recall a particular nickname. I can't think of one. I mean, I was certainly known for my Excel knowledge. That was a given. Anybody who wanted to know anything, if they asked me, they could be, an hour later, they might be able to leave my sphere, and I would stop talking about it. Mary Fealty (00:27:48): But the other thing that happened to me there, in that company, which was just, wow. I really did have such an enjoyable time. There was me, working away, doing my thing. New management came in, and decided to bring in other people, into the MI team, which was now me running the MI for the company. They brought in one chap who was my first experience of working with a highly, highly educated chap. It was a physics PhD guy who joined. Rob Collie (00:28:19): That'll do it. Mary Fealty (00:28:19): It was. It was just, "Wow, this is exciting." This was really, really new, new, new. Just to work alongside somebody who had that brain par. I had to show him how to write SQL. Now, writing SQL literally probably took me about two years, before I could have thought, "Right, I'm pretty comfortable with what I'm doing." It was books upon books upon books of reading, and reading, and going, "I'm never going to get this. I'm never going to get this." It really was, I found it really hard. I think within six weeks, that guy was ahead of me. I was like, "What?" Rob Collie (00:29:05): SQL speaks to certain types, doesn't it? Mary Fealty (00:29:07): Yes, and I would say, "How are you able to do that? How can you do that?" But at the same time, it was fascinating. It was really, really fascinating to be working alongside somebody who was just so clever. It was a beautiful person as well. A really, really nice guy. By the time I left, he was one of three PhDs. It was like, "Right, I think my time here is done." I had no more, "What can I do in comparison, in terms of produce?" That was my time to walk away, and that's what I did. Rob Collie (00:29:45): Where does your path cross with Power Pivot? Mary Fealty (00:29:47): Oh, so right. As soon as I got out on my own, I got myself my own Excel, and it had the Power Pivot version. Or was it that I had to go to 2010? That was probably it- Rob Collie (00:29:59): You had to go to 2010, yeah. That sounds right. Mary Fealty (00:30:00): That was probably it. As soon as I left, that was it. I knew about Power Pivot. I wanted Power Pivot into the organization at the time. Going, "We need to get this thing." "What is it?" "I don't know, but I know it's really good." I spoke to some people going, "Are you using Power Pivot?" They went, "Yeah." I was going, "Is it as good as they say?" They went, "Yeah, yeah." I went, "Right, right. What the hell is it?" Mary Fealty (00:30:24): It's funny, I can't really remember the specific details. But that was my beginning of starting to get engaged with Power Pivot. Because one of the things I did do, I was trying to look back and figure out when I did certain things. I think the first thing I developed professionally, in Power Pivot was, 2012 would have been the first delivery of a Power Pivot solution. Rob Collie (00:30:50): Awesome. Mary Fealty (00:30:51): That was having to, before that, I'm not the quickest learner. Rob Collie (00:30:56): Neither am I. Mary Fealty (00:30:56): I'm so not. I really do have to just keep pushing, and keep pushing, and go, "I know the penny will drop. I know it will drop," and it doesn't drop fast. But once it drops, it sticks. It was your book, without question, was my absolute. That was my bible. I read it over and over again. I read the same things, certain paragraphs. Not that there were too many paragraphs, thank-you. Over and over again. Just going, "Right, you're going to get it. You're going to get it," and I did. I did. I can actually do this commercially. I can make this work. Rob Collie (00:31:30): Yeah. 2012 is when the first edition was published. Mary Fealty (00:31:34): There you go. I did do a check, and I'm pretty sure it was ... Do you know what? I'm going off to check that again. Rob Collie (00:31:39): We like precision. Mary Fealty (00:31:40): I actually did, yeah. That's the thing. It's- Rob Collie (00:31:43): Let's not mess around. Let's know the date. Mary Fealty (00:31:45): I knew 2012 felt a bit too early. Sorry, I've got to now look. Not nearly quite as good as I did two seconds ago. Rob Collie (00:31:53): Oh really? What- Mary Fealty (00:31:53): It was 2014. Rob Collie (00:31:54): Oh. Mary Fealty (00:31:54): 2014, so apologies. Rob Collie (00:31:54): Oh god. Thomas LaRock (00:31:57): Oh. Rob Collie (00:31:57): That still only puts you in the- Thomas LaRock (00:31:58): That's past the curve. Rob Collie (00:31:59): The first 0.01% of early adopters. Thomas LaRock (00:32:03): That's, yeah. That's not early adopters- Rob Collie (00:32:06): I mean, we- Thomas LaRock (00:32:06): She was way behind the curve. Rob Collie (00:32:08): Oh yeah, she lost a couple of zeros on her percentage- Mary Fealty (00:32:11): January. Rob Collie (00:32:11): Yeah. Mary Fealty (00:32:12): It was January. Rob Collie (00:32:13): Oh, January. Oh, well- Mary Fealty (00:32:15): January, that's important. That's important. Rob Collie (00:32:19): That is important, yeah. Yeah. I think that still absolutely qualifies you for OG status. Thomas LaRock (00:32:21): Oh, absolutely. Rob Collie (00:32:23): Yeah, I mean that's, the words Power BI hadn't even happened yet, I don't think. Mary Fealty (00:32:29): No, gosh. No no no no no. Thomas LaRock (00:32:31): No. Mary Fealty (00:32:31): There was no Designer. There was no Power View at that stage, I don't believe. Thomas LaRock (00:32:35): At that time, Power BI was called Tableau, I believe. Rob Collie (00:32:38): Oh, no. Mary Fealty (00:32:40): Oh, I had already tried Tableau, way back before that. I liked it. I liked Tableau- Rob Collie (00:32:45): Yeah, Tableau was like the beta release of Power BI. It wasn't fully functional yet. They were just missing some features. Okay, so you went solo before Power Pivot. A lot of people go solo, for example, Imke, who we talked to- Mary Fealty (00:33:07): Yeah yeah yeah. Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:33:09): Power Pivot and Power BI, that was her jumping off point. But you stepped out of the corporate world to go solo, armed only with traditional Excel. That's next level brave. How did you decide to do that? You mentioned that you were working with PhDs. It sounds like you had a little bit of imposter syndrome, or maybe you were just bored. Mary Fealty (00:33:32): Well yeah, right. There was a number of things. But 18 years with one place is a long time. I really had had this fantastic, really professionally, just a fantastic time. Working on so many different projects, and so many different things. Really, really, I suppose making a difference. That was a huge part of the buzz that I got from the actual work. Mary Fealty (00:33:56): Let's be realistic. When you've got three people now working alongside you, and you're their manager, and what they can produce is just, to you especially, when it's what you love, yet these guys, their game is just so high. Imposter syndrome became massive. It was like, "What value can I bring to the role?" I didn't feel like I could Mary Fealty (00:34:19): Then I thought, "Right, okay. If that's my reality," I needed to change my thought process, from this being a negative, to, "What could I do?" It was going, "Right, I think I'm going to have to leave." That was okay, because it was going, "Right, I have to leave. If I have to leave, how am I best to think about this in a positive fashion?" Mary Fealty (00:34:37): I had this little saying going on in my head, of just going, "If you always do what you've always done, you always get what you've always got." I was going, "Right." This was my little mantra to myself. Rob Collie (00:34:49): Did you write that for yourself? Or did you pick that up from somewhere? Mary Fealty (00:34:52): Of course I picked it up. Rob Collie (00:34:53): Come on, it's- Mary Fealty (00:34:53): Somebody said it, and I've just gone, "I love that." Rob Collie (00:34:56): Okay, but it sounds like the sort of thing that you could have come up with for yourself though. Mary Fealty (00:35:02): But it was. It was literally that. Of going, "Right, I've been here. I've done it. Now why not just step away, and just walk away, and see what happens? Because it can't be the same. At least life will be different." Rob Collie (00:35:13): We make GIFs for every guest. Mary Fealty (00:35:15): Okay. Rob Collie (00:35:16): How would you feel about your GIF featuring those words? That mantra? Mary Fealty (00:35:21): If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got? Rob Collie (00:35:24): Yeah. Mary Fealty (00:35:24): If you can get all those words in. Rob Collie (00:35:28): Oh, we can. We will take our graphic design team, and we will, we have one person. They won't quit until the job is done. Unless it's after working hours. Then of course they will stop. Mary Fealty (00:35:44): But yeah, that was the mantra that I just held onto. I went, "Right, okay. I'm going to do this then. I'm going to do that," and I hadn't a plan. I juts thought, "Well, it will be different." Rob Collie (00:35:53): Okay, so you'd heard of Power Pivot. In those early days, you were like Ken Puls, with this really strong intuition that it was going to be amazing. But not really knowing what for. Mary Fealty (00:36:05): I hadn't a clue, yeah. I just knew that there was something really important about Power Pivot. Rob Collie (00:36:12): So in that first thing you delivered, in 2014, do you remember what it was? Mary Fealty (00:36:17): Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a suite of reports. It was a little bit dashboard-y, ish, in Excel. A huge amount of pivot tables, obviously. Because it was all driven through Power Pivot. Just a series of different reports, that allowed my customer at the time, well, the same customer, I still have him. Just his ability to look at his data in a summarized fashion, that he wouldn't have had any opportunity to do before. Rob Collie (00:36:43): Do you remember what about that solution was possible with Power Pivot, that wasn't with just regular Excel? Mary Fealty (00:36:51): Oh, everything. It was the DAX. It was the DAX that totally and utterly changed everything. Just to be able to go in, I was really good with pivot tables, I believe. I was really comfortable doing the different calculations, etc, to make it work. But compared to in your book, about the fact that you write a measure once, and that's it. Rob Collie (00:37:14): That portability. Mary Fealty (00:37:16): That portability. Just going, "I've got that now. That's nailed. I never need to ever think about that again. That's formatted. I don't need to ever have to format that again." Being able to write specifics. The amount of measures this bloke ended up with was ridiculous. He no more needed them, but I couldn't stop. It was like, "Oh, I've got an excuse to write a new measure, that's going to measure something else independently." It was the DAX that was the thing. I just loved it. Mary Fealty (00:37:40): I just remember working inside, in Power Pivot, and watching the calculation just return back what I wanted it to return back. Then being able to filter it, and watch it change based on what was filtered. Going, "Oh, I'm really enjoying this," so yeah. Rob Collie (00:37:56): I can feel it. I can feel it, just in your voice. Thomas LaRock (00:37:58): Rob, a question for you. Because in my thought, listening to all this, I'm thinking, pivot table is the original low code functionality. There could have been something low code before that. But I'm not that old, I guess. In my mind though, it's the idea that, "I can just click a check box, and change how the data's being represented. I don't have to know or write code. I just have to understand, when I check this box, what then gets represented." That's so much easier for almost every human on the planet, than to sit there and think, "I have to write some piece of code." Thomas LaRock (00:38:37): Even for the folks that deal just in Python, all that stuff you want to do, it's another line of code. It's something else, or it's a summation of all these different functions that you put together, so it's just a one line thing. But it's still code you have to do, and have experience with. But with Excel and Power Pivot, it's just so easy. Rob Collie (00:38:55): Yeah. The whole Excel experience, and the Power BI experience, sits right on that border between no code, low code, and, "Okay, now we're doing real code." It's right there at that crossroads. Even the traditional pivot tables, they're like the end of a whole powertrain, to use an automobile metaphor. VLOOKUP is the transmission, and formulas are, let's call them low code, or well disguised code. Or, I don't know, whatever you want to ... But like you were talking about, with Python. Even if you want to change a filter, you've got to go change your code, right? Thomas LaRock (00:39:29): You've got to go change your code. Rob Collie (00:39:30): You've got to go change your code. Oh, you want to change your group by? What entities are you summarizing? Oh man, you've really got to go change your code. Nope, not in ... This is where, Jeffery Wang on a podcast, I was listening to him. He made this really strong distinction, between Power BI, and all the other BI tools. Which is, Power BI is a model-centric tool. Whereas all the other tools are report-centric. Rob Collie (00:39:53): The amount of code or whatever, the amount of work you have to put in to build a BI solution in these other tools, is linearly proportional to the number of reports you've got. Each report requires a significant amount of labor, because you've got to go build a very particular view for that very, blah blah blah. Whereas once you have the model, the reports are, you're going to spend more time formatting the reports than laying them out. Rob Collie (00:40:19): You've got time, because the bones of the report are done at the flick of a wrist. Now you have the time to get in there, and really obsess about, "Oh, look at the thing I can do with the bookmarks." That kind of stuff. It's a big difference, isn't it? I loved your answer. What was possible with Power Pivot in that first solution, versus regular Excel. You're just like, "Everything." Mary Fealty (00:40:39): I suppose it was also something new. It was like, "Oh, this is exciting. I like it. It's worth it," and I know it is. It is what I wanted it to be. I remember, say under these people, going, "Have you got Power Pivot?", and he says, "Yeah, yeah." Then going, "It really is this good." I understood their answer then, even though I didn't know what it was. It was like, "Yeah, it really is that good." Rob Collie (00:41:02): It turned out to be as advertised. Mary Fealty (00:41:04): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:41:05): Fast forwarding a little bit, I'm assuming that, maybe this assumption is invalid, that you've basically switched to Power BI, from Power Pivot? Mary Fealty (00:41:12): Oh, yeah yeah yeah. Rob Collie (00:41:13): How did your customers, how did your clients react to that switch? Mary Fealty (00:41:17): It was much easier to get new customers. Much easier. Rob Collie (00:41:19): Okay. I'm going to just naively ask you, why? Why was it easier to get new customers? Mary Fealty (00:41:25): Why? Because it wasn't Excel. Rob Collie (00:41:27): Yes. Mary Fealty (00:41:31): Excel, as complex as ... Not really complex. Not in an M-code kind of complex. The complexities within it, all the various tools that you were using, the end result is still in Excel. From a consumer's perspective, it devalued it. Rob Collie (00:41:48): Yeah, completely. Mary Fealty (00:41:48): Because it was Excel. Rob Collie (00:41:51): So much of our work, my first job outside of Microsoft, which was really just my first client, is the way I've come to think of them. Where I was nominally CTO. So much of what we did was hide that it was Excel. Mary Fealty (00:42:04): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:42:04): We went so far as to have a custom written version of the page, that suppressed we used Excel services, because we delivered over the web to subscribers. We were very sophisticated. But then we went through, and turned off all of the SharePoint chrome, in SharePoint, because we had to use SharePoint. We turned off everything that made it look like SharePoint, which means all of these extra noisy buttons and menus, and blah blah blah. Rob Collie (00:42:28): Even then, the web part for Excel services brought so much Excel baggage with it. So many commands, and the menu, and all these things. So we had to turn that off. But then, we needed some of those buttons. The reload button, which was really the, "Reset filters." We needed that button back. You could only get rid of the whole toolbar. We had to sniff the wire, and find out what commands were being sent by the client, back to the server, to get the reset, and introduce our own button. Rob Collie (00:43:01): Then of course, so many of the blog posts on my website back in that time, were about all these tricks you could do to make Excel itself not look like Excel. The obvious ones were always, turn off the headers, and turn off the grid lines. Mary Fealty (00:43:12): Yeah yeah yeah, did all of that. Rob Collie (00:43:14): You're not even in the game if you don't do that. When you spend so much of your time thinking about just hiding that it was Excel, which was not an option to you by the way, back then. Because running your own SharePoint server back then was something that you would wish on your enemies. It was hard to run those servers. That was a big part of our operation. You were having to send them files. You were having to send them spreadsheet files, right? That was your only way to give it to them. Yeah, totally devalued, right? Mary Fealty (00:43:42): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:43:42): "Why would we pay so much for Excel?" You just could never get around that. Mary Fealty (00:43:45): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:43:46): Do your customers use an instance of Power BI, that you administer? Or are they using their own tenants? Mary Fealty (00:43:54): No, I'm now at the position where I host my own embedded service, that they access it through my embedded area. Whether they have Power ... Which they don't. Very few of them would do. They just simply log onto mine. It's so much nicer. You think about what Power BI was like at the very beginning, and think of what it's like now. It's unbelievable, the change. You think, "Thank goodness for me." Anyway, "Thank goodness I don't have to learn it now." I learned it in that drip feed, where it just was simple changes, you don't really notice are happening. You can absorb them. Mary Fealty (00:44:34): It's almost now, if you go to the Power BI service, it's almost too noisy, I find, for my customers. Because they just need it to access a report, and therefore have invested into the embedded platform. It's worked out so nicely. It's just a nice, clean, simple way for them to get to their reports. Rob Collie (00:44:53): Okay, so let me get really clear here. We've used the word embedded a couple of times. Mary Fealty (00:44:57): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:44:58): I'm wondering if we're using the lower case E embedded, or capital E Embedded? Thomas LaRock (00:45:03): What's the difference? What do you mean? Rob Collie (00:45:05): All right, so when your customers log in, do they see the Power BI portal? No? Okay. Your website has done some custom work. You've done some custom work on your website, so that you suppress all of this noise, and all they see are their reports. You're actually using the Power BI embedded capability. The real embedding capability. Mary Fealty (00:45:29): Correct, yeah. There's the premium, which I'm not using, obviously. I'm not- Rob Collie (00:45:34): Once you have a certain number of clients, it would actually be pretty economical- Mary Fealty (00:45:37): Perhaps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But again, I don't need the complexity. I really don't. So I use, there's the Azure embedded, and I use it. Rob Collie (00:45:47): Awesome. Now did you do all of that embedding work on your website yourself? Mary Fealty (00:45:50): Right. My advice to anybody who might think about using this methodology, do not attempt to do it yourself, okay? If you would like to waste 18 months of your life, constantly trying to figure out how this works, and constantly failing, and constantly never really making it past step one, go for it. Thomas LaRock (00:46:12): Sign me up. Mary Fealty (00:46:14): Otherwise, yeah. Rob Collie (00:46:14): Yeah, "Sounds great." Mary Fealty (00:46:16): My advice to anybody who wants to go down this route is, get somebody, a developer to do it for you. Have them return back to you, a fully functioning, unbelievably gorgeous product, in less than a week. Compared to the 18 months you have wasted, trying to figure it out. Because you're thinking, "I'll learn how to do this. I learn how to do things. I can do this." No. Thomas LaRock (00:46:41): If I understand it, what you're saying is, if somebody wants to do this, they should seek professional help? Mary Fealty (00:46:46): Very much so. Get a developer. Thomas LaRock (00:46:50): Seek professional help, yeah. Mary Fealty (00:46:52): If they do it my way, you should probably seek professional help. Because they know what they're doing. It's all web, and they're phenomenal, so yeah. Rob Collie (00:47:00): Yeah, I was getting pretty excited though. We were talking about wasting 18 months of my life. I was really thinking, "Maybe, I bet I could stretch that to 24 months, easy." Thomas LaRock (00:47:06): You know, it's not often we get a chance to waste 18 months of our lifetime, just doing nothing, sitting around. Those opportunities don't just come up. Rob Collie (00:47:17): We've also built ourselves a couple of Power BI embedded portals. We have one for our experimental product, Cover Hawk. Which is currently only being used by American high school football coaches, to visualize football data. That is a 100% Power BI embedded service. Again, guess what? The people who built that at our company are web developers, who know what they're doing. Rob Collie (00:47:43): We run into a big, you probably even ran into this same situation, where there's this timeout. Where suddenly, an hour later, or 30 minutes later, all of your visuals turn into Xs. You're like, "Oh, well that's no good. Oh, we've got to renew that token? Okay." Right? Thomas LaRock (00:47:59): Oh, wow. Rob Collie (00:48:01): It's like, "Until you reach the point where your visuals are all turning into Xs, you haven't even gotten real yet." Mary Fealty (00:48:07): Right, right. Thomas LaRock (00:48:08): Wow. Rob Collie (00:48:10): It's the classic Microsoft, "We give you the parts to the Porsche," you know? "Now go assemble your Porsche. It's a kit." It's pretty complicated, I agree. But for people who know what they're doing, it's just a day's work. Mary Fealty (00:48:23): It's nice to just go right, "I never have to think about that again," or never have to try. But yeah, to me that works out so, so nicely. So nicely. It's a much nicer experience, and it's my brand as well. Rob Collie (00:48:36): Yeah, I agree. I'm actually, I want to say this the right way, that doesn't sound like backhanded praise. I am really, really, really impressed, that you identified that possibility, and followed up on it, and got it done. That's a high bar. I'm impressed. I respect that immensely. Because the quality of the experience, the quality of the user experience, is everything. Data people very often forget this. You did not, and you went to pretty great lengths. Rob Collie (00:49:08): I think a lot of people, even if they realized that this was possible, and the experience would be so much better, all you have to do is just start reading a little bit about it, and become super intimidated. I know that you hired it out, but at the same time, that intimidation can absolutely, I think, scare you off of even attempting it. Whether you're going to do it yourself, or otherwise. You had to persevere in that headwind. Mary Fealty (00:49:34): It just, it made sense. It just made sense to me. I wanted to try it, to be honest. I never know for sure how anything's going to pan out. But I just knew I wanted it. Because here's the thing about Azure, which I love. That you can experiment like hell. If it doesn't work, you can just go, "Okay. Kill it. Okay, I might have invested a lot of time, but it was my spare time. I could do that." Rob Collie (00:49:55): Yeah, why not? Mary Fealty (00:49:57): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:49:57): I see that in you so clearly, and I love that. We're not going to succeed in life by avoiding failure. That's not the move. That's not the operating system that gets us where we need to go. You've got to lean into the good possibilities. What are the best possible outcomes? Yeah, and there's failure along the way, getting to those things. Sometimes you never get there, sadly, right? But then, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and you go for that other outcome. I get multiple tries at this, you know? Mary Fealty (00:50:30): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rob Collie (00:50:31): I can see that you're wired similarly to me in that regard. Like, "Yeah, why not?" Mary Fealty (00:50:36): And it worked out so well. So much better than I even hoped for. Rob Collie (00:50:40): Where did you learn that spirit? Do you know where that came from? Just to give you an idea, we just had a podcast with my grandfather, of all people. I'm pretty sure that I got my spirit of, "Why not?", from my grandfathers. Both of them. Maybe a little bit from my mom. Definitely not from my dad. My dad's an avoid failure operating system guy. Mary Fealty (00:51:02): Right, okay. Okay. Rob Collie (00:51:06): Just an alternating generation thing. Me and his dad are on the same page, and there's this guy in the middle that's like, "Nah." Mary Fealty (00:51:15): Okay, so if I was to say, "Where did I get it from?", I would say, I would be quite certain that it would be from my mom. I never knew my grandparents. All four of them were no longer around when I came along. But my mom was a really awesome woman. In my mind anyway. Obviously everybody's mom is, or parents are. But I just thought my mom was especially awesome. Mary Fealty (00:51:37): She was just an amazing role model. She didn't get married until she was 39. Her and my dad, they both were very late people getting married. Kids came along in their 40s, and three of them came along. There was a big age gap, which was different, but she came from a different time. She lived through the war, as an adult. They both did, but she was a nurse. She experienced the whole ... Mary Fealty (00:52:04): When I even think about what she went through during the war, it was phenomenal. I'm sure my dad did as well, but we didn't talk about it. But she went through all these amazing experiences. Horrendous experiences, awful ones. That was just typical of her life. Her life was very rich. Not with money, but just a very rich life. I think she just was a very determined individual, and very foreword looking. Very positive. I think that a lot of her strengths, I got some of them. Rob Collie (00:52:35): There's an interesting parallel here, I think. Which is, because your parents were so late in life having children, and my grandparents were early in life having children. Then my parents were super early in life having children. What we're finding here, is that your parents and my grandparents were basically the same generation. Mary Fealty (00:52:53): Yeah, got it. Rob Collie (00:52:55): There's something about the generation in between. The Boomers I guess, right? That by comparison are so safety seeking. The sense of possibility that my grandfathers brought to the table, there's extra dimensions. They're just like, "Look, the world is wide open. Everything is made out of plastic. You can bend it, twist it. It's all going to bend to your will if you try." I don't see as much of that in their kids. I was just lucky, right? I just got a lot of exposure to these people, you know? Mary Fealty (00:53:27): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Rob Collie (00:53:30): It's pretty formative. It might be ultimately similar forces. Mary Fealty (00:53:34): Perhaps, yeah. Because I do think it was a lot to do with just how the world was, and how they had to make it work. It was really tough experiences way back, and that had to be overcome. All of that, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," is a truism if ever there was one. Rob Collie (00:53:52): There's a non-fiction book, which I haven't read, because that's what I do. I don't read non-fiction. Mary Fealty (00:53:55): Do you buy them? Rob Collie (00:53:56): I buy them sometimes. But it turns out, just putting them on the shelf, they don't just leak into you. It's weird. Thomas LaRock (00:54:01): I have so many on my Kindle, all these unread books. I buy books constantly, and they just ... Mary Fealty (00:54:07): Oh, it's wicked. Rob Collie (00:54:08): Yeah, your Kindle is now physically heavier, with all the information in it. You're just completely unimproved by it. It's so weird, isn't it? I love buying books for other people. It's like, "Oh, great. Now they can go do the work." Thomas LaRock (00:54:21): "Report back to me." Rob Collie (00:54:23): There's a book called The Fourth Turning, and it lays out this theory of generational cycles. There's a joke that goes with this. It isn't part of the book, but it might as well summarize the whole thing. Which is, "What makes strong people? Hard times make strong people. Strong people make good times. Good times make not strong people. Not strong people make hard times." That's essentially the cycle that they lay out in this book. Rob Collie (00:54:56): Now of course, it's become this doom and gloom, apocalyptic thing. There's some very unpopular personalities in American political culture, who have really seized on this. But it's hard to argue with it. We're coming to that crescendo again, and it's basically every fourth generation. But in your case we skipped one, right? Mary Fealty (00:55:18): We definitely did. We definitely did, yeah. No, my mom was born in 1920. Thomas LaRock (00:55:24): Wow. Rob Collie (00:55:24): So in your family, we'd call it the third turning. We wouldn't call it the fourth. There's one less turning. Mary Fealty (00:55:31): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:55:31): I've never really asked anyone else on this show that particular question, because there's something about the way you look at things, that just really jumped out at me. Again, that, "Why not?", thing, right? I'm like, "Oh, here we go. Kindred spirit. Where does this come from?" Turns out, same sort of place it came from for me. Mary Fealty (00:55:52): Do you find, do you have plans? Have you got a plan ahead, of whenever you're going by, doing something? Mine's plan-less. It's just go. It's just go. Rob Collie (00:55:59): Yeah, sort of caricature this, in the way that my grandfather and my father both approached home improvement projects. My dad helped me hang a cabinet on a wall one time. The way I could describe it, he was like, "Okay. We need to do it like this." He's like, "What do you think is ... Oh no, that's not going to work, because of this and that." He's in this paralysis for 45 minutes, just trying to plan this out. We end up with this over-engineered solution, that if a nuke hit half a mile away, the whole house would be gone, but those cabinets would somehow still be suspended in space. Rob Collie (00:56:40): The basketball goal that we had put in, in our driveway, had a cubic meter of concrete poured by a truck as the base. Then he also had the metal pole filled with concrete, to make it even more durable. But, this is really important now folks, he also put a layer of sand in the pole, that straddled the boundary of the ground. Because if someone was ever going to come along with a welding torch, and want to cut this pole out, they wouldn't be able to pull that off if there was concrete there. Holy cow, right? Rob Collie (00:57:13): Whereas my grandfather, I was putting in a closet for my mom. He and I were at my mom's house. We were laying down the plates, the two by fours that were going to form the base of the wall. It was going to straddle the carpet. It was going to go from tile to carpet, because that's where we were putting this. Rob Collie (00:57:30): I'm like, "So we're going to rip this carpet up, right?" He was like, "Nah." We just start driving these nails straight through the two by fours, through the carpet, and into the concrete slab. The way he gets a project started, he just goes in and starts demoing. Thomas LaRock (00:57:46): That's awesome. Rob Collie (00:57:47): I'm definitely more like my grandfather than my father. Thomas LaRock (00:57:50): That's a time saver right there. "We're going to pull up this carpet." "Nah." Rob Collie (00:57:54): Well, there's also a motivational component to it. It's like Cortez burning the ships in the harbor. Thomas LaRock (00:58:01): Oh, yeah. Rob Collie (00:58:01): Telling everybody, "Look, we're not going back unless we succeed well enough here, that we'll have the resources to build more ships." That's a gangster move there, right? That was something else. Once you start knocking out a wall, you're committed. So yeah, I think that's also, Mary, we're twins. Mary Fealty (00:58:28): Wow. Rob Collie (00:58:28): It's important, it turns out every now and then, you get involved in a project that's more than you can handle, right? This company is an example of that. I got committed. I got out into the deep water. Fortunately, there were other people with me at that time that knew how to build that ship. You almost have to have a little bit of naivety about how hard something's going to be, in order to attempt it. If I'd really known how hard it was going to be to build this company, if I could have had perfect knowledge of how hard it was going to be, maybe I wouldn't have done it. Thomas LaRock (00:58:56): Yeah, you would have done it. Mary Fealty (00:58:58): Yeah, you would have still done it. But you don't need that much foresight. It's part of the fun, isn't it, of it? Rob Collie (00:59:04): It is. But there are people listening to this right now, who are just absolutely horrified. Their hands are getting clammy, listening to the way that we talk about things. Like, "No, you have to know what you're doing." Mary Fealty (00:59:14): And where you're going. Rob Collie (00:59:15): There's another personality type that is out there, and it's common. We should be aware of its existence. It's foreign, but it's valuable. Mary Fealty (00:59:24): Yeah, absolutely. Rob Collie (00:59:24): Those people tend to be really, really, really useful for doing things that people like you and I are not capable of doing. It does take all kinds. Especially when you decide to go and do something crazy, like scale the company, instead of being one person. Which, I guess I could have stayed there, right? Who knows? It doesn't sound like you have any ambitions of scaling. Mary Fealty (00:59:47): Really and truly, yeah. Rob Collie (00:59:48): You're in that Letterkenny zone. Mary Fealty (00:59:50): Yeah, I'm in my sweet spot. Yeah, absolutely. I think I maybe had grand designs in my head, possibly. But never for a large company. Just certain things. But over time I've gone, "No, this really suits me." Rob Collie (01:00:06): Well, having a custom branded Power BI embedded portal built, that's pretty, once you've done it, now you know that it wasn't as hard as it seemed. But not many people have had that done for them. Not many people have done it, and still, not many people have hired it out either. It's very uncommon. Not a lot of one person shops out there, with Power BI embedded going on. Mary Fealty (01:00:30): Perhaps, but it's definitely worth investigating, and pursuing. Rob Collie (01:00:35): Oh, yeah. There's no way, this Cover Hawk thing for high school coaches and players, no way can we put the full Power BI portal in front of these people. No way, right? Mary Fealty (01:00:47): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:00:48): They would reject it, and rightfully so, right? There's no judgment here. They should reject it. They need an appliance, you know? Thomas LaRock (01:00:55): Right. Mary Fealty (01:00:55): Just need something that does it, and does what they need it to do, and nothing else. Everything else is just distraction. Rob Collie (01:01:02): Yeah, I completely agree. Okay, so here's the new experimental segment, okay? Mary Fealty (01:01:08): Okay. Thomas LaRock (01:01:08): Okay. Rob Collie (01:01:08): All right. Mary, this is perfect. The person with the spirit of, "Why not?" You're here for this. Okay, the next two words are going to surprise you. Quentin Tarantino has a theory, that you can only like The Beatles or Elvis. Maybe you don't like either of them, but you can not like both. No one likes both. This is even originally in the Pulp Fiction movie, but they cut the scene where she's asking John Travolta which one he is. But later on she says, "An Elvis man will love it, this restaurant," so there's a little vestige of it still in the movie. Rob Collie (01:01:44): Okay, we've got five questions for you like this. You are allowed to pass on one of them. Here we go. We're going to steal Quentin Tarantino's question, Elvis or Beatles? Mary Fealty (01:01:55): I'm going to go Beatles. Rob Collie (01:01:56): Beatles. Thomas LaRock (01:01:57): But the thing is, she could say both. Mary Fealty (01:01:58): Oh, I know. So hard. Rob Collie (01:02:02): You want to tell Tarantino that he's wrong? Thomas LaRock (01:02:03): I will. I'll tell him he's wrong. Rob Collie (01:02:05): Yeah? I bet, yeah, that would actually be fun, wouldn't it? Thomas LaRock (01:02:09): He is wrong. Rob Collie (01:02:09): I'd love to argue with him about anything. That would be fun. It doesn't matter, pick something. I'll take the opposite side just for the heck of it. All right, so Beatles over Elvis? Mary Fealty (01:02:19): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:02:20): Okay. Any color commentary to go with that? Mary Fealty (01:02:22): Right, so here's the deal. I would have, way back, probably have much more easily gone Elvis. But I've really gained a huge appreciation for The Beatles over time. Their music just is like, "Wow." Maybe it's nostalgia, I don't know. But I just get a real buzz out of hearing The Beatles. Rob Collie (01:02:40): There's a spiritual depth to some of, not all of the Beatles, right? Octopus' Garden isn't what we're talking about. There's actually, by the way, a subgenre of this, which is Lennon vs McCartney, which gets really interesting. I end up Lennon. Mary Fealty (01:02:59): Yeah, I would probably be Lennon. Rob Collie (01:03:01): In this game. Again, the spiritual depth. McCartney was much better at the pop stuff. The depth came from Lennon. Apparently there's a branch to this question. Are you also on team Lennon, Mary? Mary Fealty (01:03:13): Yes, I am. Rob Collie (01:03:14): Okay. Mary Fealty (01:03:14): I am, funny enough. Yeah. Rob Collie (01:03:15): Okay. All right, so that's question one. Question two, creamy peanut butter, or crunchy peanut butter? Mary Fealty (01:03:21): Oh, crunchy. Rob Collie (01:03:22): Crunchy, okay. Look at that confidence. That's not a both. I'm a creamy peanut butter guy myself. My wife is team crunchy. All right, Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones? Thomas LaRock (01:03:33): Neither. Mary Fealty (01:03:34): Thank-you for that. Here, do you want to know something interesting? Rob Collie (01:03:37): Sure. Yeah, that's what these questions are about, really. Mary Fealty (01:03:39): Okay. I was in Game of Thrones. Rob Collie (01:03:41): What? Okay, no one's ever going to do as well on this question as you. Thomas LaRock (01:03:53): Yes. Rob Collie (01:03:55): All right, go on. Mary Fealty (01:03:57): This is one of the things that I did when I first left, started up on my own. You know what it's like when you're starting up. You're not exactly busy all of the time. I signed up to become an extra. I thought, "I'll do that. That sounds like fun." It was the second gig I got, was being an extra on Game of Thrones. It was season five. Rob Collie (01:04:20): All right, I'm looking this up. Season five. Mary Fealty (01:04:22): It was, "Winter's coming, winter came." That season, which I thought was super cool. Even though I didn't really watch it. I spent three weeks as a wildling. Rob Collie (01:04:31): Three weeks as a wilding? Mary Fealty (01:04:33): On the set of Game of Thrones. Thomas LaRock (01:04:34): Oh my god. Rob Collie (01:04:37): Oh my god, this is the most amazing thing. Do you have screenshots? Come on. Mary Fealty (01:04:40): I do, but I have to find them. Rob Collie (01:04:42): All right, well send them over. From the perspective of the traditional BI people, you were a wildling. Right? They were trying to keep your Power BI kind at bay, and they built this gigantic wall, and we just went around it. Mary Fealty (01:05:01): No, it was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. Rob Collie (01:05:04): Wow, that is so cool. You were doing that off and on for three weeks? Mary Fealty (01:05:09): Every Monday to Friday, for three weeks. It was a three week gig. I mean, there was never, ever a time I could have done it since. But I was able to do it then, of going, "Stuff it, I'm doing that." Rob Collie (01:05:19): You still don't have a preference in Game of Thrones versus Lord of the Rings? Mary Fealty (01:05:24): No, I don't like either. Rob Collie (01:05:25): You don't like either? Tom, you don't like either of them? Thomas LaRock (01:05:28): I don't. Rob Collie (01:05:28): I was feeling such commonality, and now it's all evaporated. Thomas LaRock (01:05:32): I've watched the Lord of the Rings, the recent trilogy, and eh. But I- Rob Collie (01:05:38): Oh, no. The Hobbit trilogy was terrible. Thomas LaRock (01:05:40): Okay, so I will just say that I have never watched one episode of Game of Thrones, a complete episode at all. I think history will show that I was correct. Rob Collie (01:05:50): No, you were wrong. For a while there, it was the best thing I have seen on any screen ever. Now, it doesn't mean that it held up at the end. It did come apart very poorly. But for a while there, there was nothing better on any screen, that I'd ever seen. It was something else. Now of course, all these amazing arcs that were being developed, were completely wasted. It was just the worst. It was just- Thomas LaRock (01:06:15): There you go. Rob Collie (01:06:17): These people should never work again, is my opinion. But season five was very strong. Mary Fealty (01:06:23): Yeah? Thomas LaRock (01:06:23): I'm good. Rob Collie (01:06:24): The Two Towers is actually one of the best movies ever made, in my opinion. It's not just fan service. There's something really, really powerful going on there, in a Lennon sense. It's not a McCartney movie, this is a Lennon movie. There are moments where I actually have tears well up in my eyes while watching The Two Towers. That doesn't happen in Fellowship of the Ring, or Return of the King. But The Two Towers is epic. Rob Collie (01:06:46): All right, so we've lost respect for our guest, and our co-host. Thomas LaRock (01:06:50): I'm sorry, you've lost respect for me? That would imply you had respect for me. Rob Collie (01:06:53): All right, all right. We're going to give you all a chance here. Star Trek or Star Wars? Mary Fealty (01:06:58): Oh. Thomas LaRock (01:06:58): Could you narrow down which Star Trek you're talking about? Rob Collie (01:07:01): It doesn't matter. Mary Fealty (01:07:02): No, no, totally. Easy, easy, easy. All the slate, Star Trek. Rob Collie (01:07:05): Okay. The final question, Apple or Android? Mary Fealty (01:07:08): Oh, Android. Rob Collie (01:07:10): Android, and why? Mary Fealty (01:07:11): I liked Apple, I did like Apple. But- Rob Collie (01:07:14): Mm-hmm (affirmative), when did they lose you? Mary Fealty (01:07:15): I don't know. Just, when their phones and devices lost their power too fast, in my opinion. Rob Collie (01:07:24): The battery. Mary Fealty (01:07:24): Yeah. I just thought that was not a good consumer choice on their part. That's the real reason. I just didn't, and I thought, "Nope." Rob Collie (01:07:32): Yeah, Apple's this weird juxtaposition, of the most friendly and elegant human factors, considerations. There's something about their stuff that's really happy. While at the same time, so brutally upgrade driven, and capture, and make you pay a premium for things that you really shouldn't have to pay a premium for. It's hard to square the two, isn't it? You wish that those two parts of the company could become uncoupled. Rob Collie (01:08:03): I was reading the other day about Apple's fight with the EU, over USB-C chargers, versus their Lightning cable. Apple has now bought themselves two years in this process, this legal process. You know what they're going to do? What I was reading, was that they're just going to take all the ports off, and sell a proprietary magnetic wireless charger. You can't make them put a port in, but if they have a port, the EU can ... Rob Collie (01:08:29): The EU is becoming sort of the international version of California. With the United States, California forces corporations to make products at certain standards, that the rest of the 49 states don't. As a result, companies, it's more economical for them just to make everything to the California standard. Californians are a little bit more sensitive to things like this, it turns out. Rob Collie (01:08:50): The EU, we're rooting for you. Get the USB-C port. Make Apple play ball. We're all dying here. Do you know how many cables I have? I would love to charge my iPhone with USB-C, but apparently that's never going to happen, because they're going to take all of the ports off. Mary Fealty (01:09:12): It makes me think, when they were offered the choice of, "Press the button for the macro, or give them the macro," they chose, "Press the button." Rob Collie (01:09:21): Oh yeah, totally. That's the evil side of Apple. There is a legitimately human focused part to that company, and then there's also this, "No, we'll keep making these really expensive devices." It's just, ugh. Thomas LaRock (01:09:34): They're a hardware company, masquerading as a software company. Rob Collie (01:09:40): That's right. Thomas LaRock (01:09:40): Their operating system is a horrible, at times, user experience. For example, when the first phone came out, I couldn't attach a photo to an email. I had to go into my photos, and then say, "Send this as an email." I couldn't just say, "Hey, let me attach something." The idea of attaching something to an email was a foreign concept in the year 2008, to the folks in Cupertino? It's just this idea that, when it comes to the usability of their OS, they're in their own world. Rob Collie (01:10:07): That's a rare miss for a company like them. Thomas LaRock (01:10:10): It is, right? But they're in their own world. Because you know what? "The next phone, that we know you'll buy, you'll be able to attach something." Right? That's how they do it. "The next phone, guess what? You don't have a headphone in this phone anymore. You're going to have to go buy something different." Rob Collie (01:10:26): Yeah. "This is an adaptor that cost us a penny. But we'll sell it to you in a very slick package, for-" Thomas LaRock (01:10:35): It's that abuse of the customer that has led to an entity like the EU to say, "We're tired of you abusing us, and so if you want to sell into this market, you're going to have to do what we want." I'm totally onboard with it. I'm like, "That's great." Rob Collie (01:10:47): Agreed. Agreed. It's such a complicated universe these days, right? Apple is at the same time leading the charge against data tracking by advertisers, which, okay, somehow this must align with their world plans for domination and everything. But okay, I'm in. I loved having all of my apps recently prompt me, "Do you want to allow tracking across apps?" They just beg you, they say, "Oh, this allows us ..." They try to scare the hell out of you. "If you don't turn this on, you're going to suffer." I'm like, "No I'm not." Thomas LaRock (01:11:17): Yeah, right? Rob Collie (01:11:20): I'm like, "No tracking. No tracking. No tracking. No tracking," over and over again. Anyway, what was it? The enemy of the enemy of the enemy of the enemy of my friend is my friend? Or, I don't know. Thomas LaRock (01:11:30): Still your enemy. Rob Collie (01:11:32): Yeah, maybe. It's all enemies. Thomas LaRock (01:11:35): All the way down. Rob Collie (01:11:37): Yeah. Go EU, get them. Apple's going to win. They're just going to say they're going to take their ball and go home. "No ports for you." To, "The EU is why we can't have nice things." Thomas LaRock (01:11:49): Or is it ... She's not even in the EU, so- Mary Fealty (01:11:56): I know, exactly. We're out, remember? Although I don't know, I'm not sure. Are we out, in Northern Ireland? So many- Rob Collie (01:11:58): Yeah, I know. It's very strange. Mary Fealty (01:12:01): Maybe? Yeah, who knows? Who knows? Thomas LaRock (01:12:02): You could drive across town though, and you'd be back in the EU. Mary Fealty (01:12:08): Yeah, yeah. Rob Collie (01:12:08): All right, well anything else we should talk about, that we didn't get to? Mary Fealty (01:12:11): The only other thing of note, that I would say to go, how would I position myself, as somebody who's really, in my opinion, a ridiculously small player in this game? The fact that I am here tonight, in my case, is just bonkers in my head. But it's just, "How the hell is this even happening?" But here it is. Rob Collie (01:12:28): You mean this podcast? Mary Fealty (01:12:30): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thomas LaRock (01:12:30): I think she does. Yeah, no. Mary Fealty (01:12:32): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:12:32): Oh, no. No one's ever belonged on this podcast more than you. This has been amazing. Mary Fealty (01:12:38): The other thing then, it's something I'm really, really proud of, within this whole Power BI world, is that I was the first female speaker at the London Power BI Group. That, to me, now I wasn't the first speaker, I was the 12th, I think, speaker. But I was the first female speaker at the London Power BI Group, which is one of the largest in the world. I've never spoken before, until then. Rob Collie (01:13:01): Wow, that's cool. Mary Fealty (01:13:03): I thought so. I thought so. Rob Collie (01:13:05): Mary, holy cow am I glad we did this. This has been amazing. Another, "Why not?", soul. Oh my gosh, basically raised by the same generation. Mary Fealty (01:13:16): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:13:17): Really cool. First and only Game of Thrones star. An analytics wildling. Thomas LaRock (01:13:25): Oh, that's awesome. Rob Collie (01:13:29): Yeah, that might have to be your GIF. Are you okay with that being- Thomas LaRock (01:13:33): Yeah, that has to be your GIF. Mary Fealty (01:13:33): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rob Collie (01:13:36): Yeah. I don't know if the mantra is compatible with the wildling meme. We'll figure it out. But we're going to go wildling. Thomas LaRock (01:13:45): Get a picture of her logo that has the tree, and then the wildling coming around it. Rob Collie (01:13:52): Yeah. Mary Fealty (01:13:52): Very good, very good. Rob Collie (01:13:53): This is just one of those things. I was just looking through Twitter like, "Who would be interesting to talk to?" Wow, what a ringer you are. Such a great conversation. Thank-you so much. Mary Fealty (01:14:02): Oh, thank-you. Thank-you. Honestly, as I said at the beginning, when you asked, it would be an honor. It really, really has. It's been an incredible honor. Rob Collie (01:14:11): Well to whatever extent you experience imposter syndrome, let me tell you, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that to yourself. You're the real deal. No reason to put disclaimers on anything that you do. Oh my gosh. It's what it's all about. You are the world of data. The future of data is people like you. Everyone else that claims it's something else, it's like, "No, they've got an angle." They've got a reason to push that agenda. No, this is the real deal here. What a great conversation. I'm going to go bounce off the walls the rest of the day. Announcer (01:14:45): Thanks for listening to The Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Have a data day

We've been quite busy not only here at Raw Data, but business at P3 Adaptive has been booming!  So much so, that we've had to add our 4th Director of Client Services to the team to keep up with our ever increasing business.  His name is Angel Abundez, and his journey has zigzagged him across both Rob and Tom's paths in the past (and maybe yours as well along the way) and has led him here today, sitting down and sharing his story with us! References in this episode: Far Side By Gary Larson - Free Range Chicken Far Side By Gary Larson - Competition in Nature Guru's Guide To SQL Server by Ken Henderson Bill Hicks on Marketing(WARNING EXPLICIT CONTENT) Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello friends. Today's guest is Angel Abundez. I've known Angel for over a decade now, but just recently, four months ago, he joined the team here at P3, as our fourth director of client services. When Angel and I first crossed paths, he was that rare person who was already established in the traditional BI industry, who when was exposed to the radical thinking that was going on in something like power pivot, rather than feeling threatened by it or rejecting it, he actually leaned forward. He was very interested in what was going on there. That kind of open-mindedness, that sense of possibility, well, it's rare, it's valuable. And while he and I have been aware of each other for a very long time, he still stayed mostly in that traditional industry for the intervening time. But through those years, he, of course, retained that sense of wonder and that courage. Rob Collie (00:00:52): And so when the time was right, it made total sense for us to bring him on board as part of our team, both for the reasons that we were similar and also for the reasons that our experiences and our paths have been very different. Our president, Kaelin, was very deliberate when bringing on our fourth director that we wanted to go outside of our own echo chamber, that we wanted to cross pollinate. And so Angel was the move, was the one we wanted. It was really fortunate that he was available and we were very gratified that, that interest was mutual. Now, ever since he's joined, I've been waiting to ask him this question, how is it different? What's it like to step between these two worlds? But I've been giving him some time. I wanted to make sure that we got a good answer. So here we are. We're four months in. I can't wait any longer. I waited four months for it. I've now made you wait two minutes for it. That's enough. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:48): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Announcer (00:01:53): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast, with your hosts, Rob Collie and your cohost Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:02:16): I've never had to pronounce your last name out loud. Angel Abundez (00:02:19): Okay. Rob Collie (00:02:19): It's always been in my head, which is a safe place. Without you saying it, I'm going to give it my best shot. Angel Abundez (00:02:26): Go for it. Rob Collie (00:02:26): All right. We'll see. Abundez. Angel Abundez (00:02:29): Yeah. Abundez. Rob Collie (00:02:29): How's that? Angel Abundez (00:02:32): Abundez. [crosstalk 00:02:32]. Rob Collie (00:02:33): Abundez. All right. [crosstalk 00:02:33]. But by the way, in my head, it's always been Abundez, right? But that's really unconscious, right? But then I think about saying it out loud. I'm like, that's not it. [inaudible 00:02:50] the angle-sized first name, right? Your name isn't Angel either, right? Is Armhill or Anhill. Angel Abundez (00:02:56): It's been that way since 3rd grade. Rob Collie (00:02:58): There's no way you could get through life without having that pureed. Angel Abundez (00:03:01): I had the option, and the 3rd grade teacher asked, "Do you want to be called Anhill or do you want to be called Angel?" And I did not like how she pronounced the first one. And that was when I transitioned. Then I was like, all of a sudden I had a new name. It was like I had a new identity. I'm in the 3rd grade, brand new school too. So that was blossoming for me. I was like, "Oh, Angel. Cool." Rob Collie (00:03:25): I had been Bobby growing up as a kid. My whole family called me Bobby. The kids that I met on my street all called me Bobby. But then my mom registered me for school as Robert. I was Robert at school and Bobby at home. Luke knew me as Robert. Thomas LaRock (00:03:42): I was damn so confused. Rob Collie (00:03:44): And these worlds weren't far away from each other, right? Luke lived two streets over from the world where I was Bobby and he'd come visit and it would be really confusing. Thomas LaRock (00:03:56): Now he's Rob and I'm all messed up. Angel Abundez (00:03:58): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:03:58): But it's not quite the same, right? Angel Abundez (00:04:02): I think in a lot of ways it is. Yeah. You were one thing coming in and you're total different... Looks like, "Who's Robert?" All his friends [crosstalk 00:04:13] like, "Hey, did you meet Robert? He's so cool.", "Who's Robert?" Thomas LaRock (00:04:16): [crosstalk 00:04:16]. Rob Collie (00:04:19): "That guy? Oh, and he is not cool." Angel Abundez (00:04:23): That's right. Rob Collie (00:04:24): It's an early morning recording session for you. Not so much for us East Coasters, but we're still armed with coffee. Do you drink coffee? Angel Abundez (00:04:31): Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:04:32): Okay. I love that look on your face, where you're like that doesn't translate to the audio podcasts, but, oh yeah, of course I do. "I savvy the beam," [inaudible 00:04:42] that look said. Angel Abundez (00:04:43): Oh, yeah. My father-in-law likes to say I keep Starbucks in business. Rob Collie (00:04:47): Yeah. We have a policy at our house now, which is, we're only allowed to go to Starbucks on weekends. It's like a governor on the motor. Otherwise things just get out of hand. It's home coffee on the weekdays. Angel Abundez (00:05:04): Yeah. I have this machine that grinds the beans and then brews the coffee immediately afterwards. Oh, it's so good. So when my brother-in-law comes over, sister-in-law, or whoever, they're like, "Oh, that's great coffee." I'm like, "Thank you, Cuisinart machine." Rob Collie (00:05:19): Yeah. We also now have one of those machines. It's like the much more expensive and more ecologically responsible Keurig. You don't have these plastic cartridges, but if you don't want the plastic cartridges, you've got to pay like five times as much for the machine. Those machines are amazing, aren't they? They remind me of the machines at Abbott Labs. The machines that Abbott Labs makes for blood testing, they're almost like the Lunar Lander in terms of like all the devices that are inside these pipettes and this conveyor belt, and then there's this and then that. It's crazy what's going on inside those blood testing machines. Angel do you know Tom? Angel Abundez (00:05:57): I do know Tom. We hadn't officially met until the business analytics conference, Tom, long time ago in Chicago. Thomas LaRock (00:06:04): Yep. Angel Abundez (00:06:04): And I was going to be a blogger who was going to blog out this interview with Tom. I had some questions and stuff. Never wrote the blog. I talked a good blogging game, but I never could achieve the same level of blogging as is obviously you Rob and like some of the others in the community, but... Rob Collie (00:06:20): Well, you had half of the journalism game down, right? You talked your way into the interview. Angel Abundez (00:06:25): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:06:26): And you're like, "Nah. I've had that life experience. I'm not going to share it. I'm just going to..." Angel Abundez (00:06:32): It's nerve wracking to write about someone else. You don't want to write anything bad, but... Rob Collie (00:06:37): You want to tell the truth. And after meeting Tom, you're in a really tough spot, right? Angel Abundez (00:06:43): Well, I second guess myself too, too much. That's the other problem. When you do that, you never get anything done. So I apologize, Tom. Never sent out that blog or whatever, but- Thomas LaRock (00:06:54): Yeah. Apology not accepted. I'm still waiting for it. Rob Collie (00:06:58): Yeah. I said, he's still [inaudible 00:06:58]. He's like, "I'd forgotten about this," but now you reopened that wound. Thomas LaRock (00:07:02): Yeah. I took the time. There was no payoff for me. Angel Abundez (00:07:09): That's right. Rob Collie (00:07:10): Okay. So Angel, you and I crossed paths long time ago. When did we meet up for the first time? Angel Abundez (00:07:16): It was back in 2010 or 2011 in Tampa. Jose Chinchilla was hosting SQL Saturday. This is intelligence edition. Rob Collie (00:07:26): That's right. Yeah. Angel Abundez (00:07:27): He had the speaker dinner at this great burger place. I don't remember the name, but I happened to sit across from you. Your back was against some brick wall, I think. Rob Collie (00:07:37): Mafia style. Angel Abundez (00:07:38): Yeah. And mafia style. Exactly. Rob Collie (00:07:40): Yeah. And no one's going to sneak up and [crosstalk 00:07:42]. Angel Abundez (00:07:43): And I think we just hit it off. I think we just talked about work and talked about your background in Excel. This was before I even knew about Power Pivot. I had no idea what Power Pivot was. And then went to your session and you had a great football demo thing. I just was so intrigued by the tool. And later on, you wrote the book and it was so funny. Your book just sounded like your voice coming out through the pages and I could still remember you talking about, "You want to keep your lookup tables at the top and your data tables at the bottom." And many years later in Microsoft MTCs, where I'm doing training on Power BI, I still use that same thing. You got to put your dimensions on the top and your fact tables on the bottom. Rob Collie (00:08:30): This is where I'm really remembered for, is yeah, you put these up high and put these down low and there you go. That's the Kali PhD. Angel Abundez (00:08:39): Well, it was brilliant. It was definitely brilliant. One of our guys said, he put on Twitter yesterday, "Where do you like to put your measures in Power BI? Do you like to put them in a measure table or do you like to put them in other tables?" And I said, "I think you put them where a user intuitively goes, because if they know where to go to perform a certain function, then they're that much more productive," and your tip is one of those things, I think. It's like, okay, if you do it this way, then that alleviates the questions about how should I do this and how should I do that? Rob Collie (00:09:12): We should back up really quick. You're one of our four directors here at P3. I want to establish what you're doing today and then we can dive into the origin story. So one of our currently four directors, that's a number that grows over time. And you're the only one of our directors that was an external hire. We hired you from the outside world, straight into the director job, whereas our other directors all came up originally through the principal consultant job here. And this ties together really neatly, I think, with the story of how we met and all that kind of stuff, because you were already a practicing card carrying member of the business intelligence industry before all of this. And most people who had been already into BI before being exposed to Power Pivot, especially Power Pivot, right? This Excel based version, most of the BI professionals circa 2010 or hell, even like 2015, most of them, their immune systems rejected this new stuff, at least initially. Rob Collie (00:10:20): And it's easy to understand why. It had all the trappings of, first of all, the Excel based thing, right? That's an immediate turnoff for the established BI crowd, right? The ivory tower crowd. Mm-mm (negative). No. No peons. Uh-uh (negative). No. There's no staircase on the ivory tower. No, it's not open to the public. But also just like, if you... the wrong way, it was very threatening. My experience with meeting established BI professionals in that era, the way it would go is, I would explain what I was about and what I was doing and then we would fight. Rob Collie (00:10:56): Once I got the story out, what I believed and what I think was happening, right? That was just laying the groundwork for the battle to come. And so, on the rare occasion that I crossed paths with someone, again, from that established BI world, that lit up and leaned forward and goes, "Really? Wow." That stands out. I mean a lot. And so, all these years later to have you become part of our team, this is just so gratifying. So cool. And I'm so happy that we had the opportunity to work together, and not just be members of the community that knew each other and liked each other. It's been a really cool arc, long story, right? Like a decade. Angel Abundez (00:11:33): Yeah. I think the other thing that drew me to your session was the fact that you said you didn't know SQL. And I was like, "How is someone doing BI?" Right? Because, Tom, I'm sure you would attest to this, that SQL was our lifeline. It was like how we got the data and everything. But you said you had developed these models and then what I saw what you built with Power Pivot I was like, "Holy smokes, man. I can't even do that that fast with SQL. I've got to think about it." So yeah, and I agree I feel very lucky that what you and our president, Kaelin, built over this period of time, it's just like the right time now to come in. And after so many years of having grinded and worked really hard and everything, it's like our organization has so many talented folks that are like where we were 10 years ago, right? Just sitting across from each other, batting ideas around, and these guys now, they have no idea what we had to put up with, right? Rob Collie (00:12:30): Oh, kids these days. Angel Abundez (00:12:32): Yeah. Exactly. But how they're flourishing now is pretty amazing. Rob Collie (00:12:37): Yeah. So Angel, how did you get involved in data in the first place? I'm pretty sure you weren't like a middle-school kid going, "Oh, I can't wait to get into SQL." Angel Abundez (00:12:46): No, it was by chance. When I took my first internship while I was in college, I helped the electrical engineers of this company review parts that they were putting on printed circuit boards. And as I reviewed them, there was a developer there who developed an application where I would go in and add the specifications of the part, I'd put in notes about the part, and once it made it into that database, that application, it was like official. It was the official database of all the parts that they would use on their printed circuit boards. And I was just fascinated by what he was building, and what I was contributing to, and seeing the growth of it, and all these electrical engineers were using it. And then I took that to my next job a little bit and started up an Access database of all things, right? Access, and tried to do the same thing, because I was again, working in printed circuit board design and then got out of that industry into industrial controls for a company that did wastewater controls and saw a lot of repetition of what they were doing, like the repetition of what the printed circuit board engineers were doing. And I was like, "Hey, we could do a database." Angel Abundez (00:14:01): So again, cracked open Access. And at that point I was trying to figure out how to input all their instrumentation and create PDFs of these specs that we'd have to submit to the different districts to approve all the instrumentation or whatever. So it was at that point that one of the project managers grabbed me and said, "Hey, you know SQL, right?" And I was like, "Yeah." And I'm like, "What do you need?" And he's like, "Well, we have this time sheet report and it keeps breaking. Can you come in and just try to fix it." I go, "Yeah. Sure." And that was my first foray into SQL server reporting services. And it didn't take me long to fix it. I think I might've fixed it in a day. Angel Abundez (00:14:45): They were like, "Oh. Wow, okay. We have some more reports. Why don't you put down what you're doing, come over, sit over here, and help us fix these reports?" And that's where just all bets were off. I was often to SQL server and SQL server reporting services, helping them with their forecasting, and that's also where I got really involved with their systems. We were trying to stand up project server and their finance backend at that time was dynamics, and trying to marry those two. I was like the glue for finance to like, "Hey, what's going on with these projects?" And I'd be like, "Here's what's going on?" And they're like, "Okay. Great. Thank you." So then they could recognize revenue and we'd go back and forth some months. Angel Abundez (00:15:29): And that was also actually where I found out that the world of finance was very gray. Up until that point, being an engineer, everything was black or white, everything was like, it works or it doesn't work, it fits or it doesn't fit. Darn it, I got to start all over again, right? With finance, oh no. It's like, "Oh, this looks wrong. I'll just do a journal entry. We'll just journal entry this and journal entry that." And I'm like, "Holy smokes dude. I think I need to go get a MBA or something because, is this legal?" Rob Collie (00:16:01): Yeah. Or get clean, right? Like go take a shower or something, right? Angel Abundez (00:16:05): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:16:06): But that's like half of the accounting subreddit on Reddit, is just like laughing about the things that they're being asked to do, like recategorize this as that and whatever, like the semi shady stuff. There was a moment there in that story where you're like, there's this moment, almost like sets you free in SQL and you're like, "Oh wow," right? It reminded me of this old Far Side cartoon and I think there's like a chicken laying on a beach somewhere with sunglasses on. And he's got his hands behind his back of his head, and he's holding Coke and he's talking to all the people on the beach and he goes, "And then they made me a free range chicken, and man, I never looked back." Angel Abundez (00:16:48): Exactly. I really got into it, man. I bought books. That was before I knew about the SQL server community. So that was my next big revelation, but got really deep into books. I actually bought Ken Henderson. I don't know if you guys know this author. He wrote something called the Guru's Guide to SQL Server. And just with chapter one, I was just like, "Oh." Then chapter two, "Oh." Things I never would have known just looking around on the internet. But yeah, I think the big connection I made there with reports that I think all of our people have made this connection intuitively is when you show the data and make it easy for other people and how they react, then initial reaction where they're like, "Oh, I want more." Or like, "Can you do this? Can you do that?" And it's like, it builds and builds and builds. It's addictive. Rob Collie (00:17:46): Tom has this phrase he likes to use, data janitor. In some sense, he halfway, proudly identifies as having come up as one of those while at the same time, no one went to school to do that. And this has never really fit for me. Even though the Excel's person's day to day existence is pre Power BI, is very labor-intensive. It is like working in the salt mines, right? The output of the typical Excel report is so much closer to the ultimate business value than the things that you're typically doing in SQL, at least in the early days. So your story about, yeah, we just had all this data about these circuit boards, right? And it was just like, it's just a mess, and how to keep it clean, and how to keep it in a good state, and then turn into some PDFs and all of that. Rob Collie (00:18:34): As you were telling that story, I'm going, "Oh, right. That's what Tom means by data janitor." It's those sorts of humble beginnings in the SQL world, whereas the humble beginnings for an Excel person is like putting together something that immediately is handed to like the CFO to use to make some sort of strategic decision, right? Again, the nature of the work itself has a similar texture. Angel Abundez (00:18:57): It does. Rob Collie (00:18:58): But at the same time, it wasn't just keeping data clean. The Excel people that are really close to the decisions, and at the same time are viewed about as favorably as your average DBA, right? They're just not valued even though they're critical in the same way that DBAs are critical and never really get any credit except when things go wrong. This is where Tom, our worlds really did intersect. Angel Abundez (00:19:21): So it's a term I actually saw a buck word to use once. You have to put it in a job description, like you're registering for a conference or something. He just put down data janitor. I'm like, "Oh, that's perfect. That really does explain a lot." Anyway, I remember I tweeted once the exact phrase, nobody goes to school to become a data janitor. And a few minutes later, Rob, just simply tweets back, and yet here we are. I'm like, yeah. And I got nothing. I got no response after that. I'm like, "Yeah. That's right. Here we are. Now what?" Thomas LaRock (00:19:58): I like how you said, "We only get the credit when something goes wrong." That's not really credit, that's actually... I consider it to be blame. But yes, [crosstalk 00:20:06]. But we all have that gateway, we all have that entry, but I wanted to comment earlier about how... When Angel was working and he's building something and then they saw the value that he could actually do something with this data that has value, it's that thing. I don't understand why we don't have money at the end of the month. And he's the guy that goes, "Well, let me add up the income versus the expenses." And it's like this, "Whoa, how did you do that?" And he hands that to somebody, and when you're the administrator of it, you're just the curator. You're the guy that works in the museum and makes sure everything is there for somebody else to use, and you're not really involved, and you don't get to open up anybody's eyes, except for that rare case when you recover their data that they've screwed up somehow, right? Thomas LaRock (00:20:53): So you're really can be removed from those moments of, "Oh, that revelation of, oh my God, this data," and what I can do with it now. As an administrator, you just don't get to see that, you don't get to work with it, and over time you just sit around like, "What am I doing here? I'm just a data janitor. I don't really have any value." But you do, you just don't understand what the value really is because there's no feedback loop for you, because you're manager. I may have had more than one manager look at me and go, "I don't even know what you do around here." Rob Collie (00:21:20): That's big difference for the Excel flunky, is that they get to see firsthand how their output is being used. And so, they start to develop this real wisdom about how the whole business works, and about where the bodies are buried, and where things are dumb, and where things are stupid. And yet still, at least nine times out of 10, no one listens to them. You're just trapped, watching everything go wrong that you know could be better and no one cares. Angel Abundez (00:21:49): Or you find yourself in this repeated pattern of you're producing the Excel files every month or every week, right? And it's just on, and on, and on. There is a lot of overlap, but I also think it's important for the DBAs and the ETL engineers, the people that do the backend stuff, they need to realize the value that they're contributing to. One of the places where I was really lucky to work and I was on this big team, there were so many people that performed each function. There was the DBA, there was the ETL engineer, there was a QA engineer. There was like 12 of us. And at the end of the day, all we wanted to do was add a new filter to a report. It was a Cognos report and we just needed to add a filter. So it was like all of this backend stuff that we had to do just to add that filter, right? And it seems like a little bit. Angel Abundez (00:22:43): I remember putting up a slide and showing our team, "We added this, but you guys don't understand how hard that filter took." But you need that. You like to call it Rob, you need that compass, right? You need to reel everybody in and go, "Well, that little filter now allows so-and-so to do so-and-so, or this team to do that, or we can do tons of new things." So I think that messaging is the responsibility of whoever's leading the team, right? Because I can remember not doing that and feeling very lost on another project, worked, I don't know, weeks, and we were tackling some very technical problems and challenges and everything. And I sat back and I go, "What are we doing? We're supposed to be writing new dashboards, but we're so entrenched in the versions of SQL server and column store index or no column store index and all these technical things inside..." Angel Abundez (00:23:38): I was like, "This is crazy," right? So then that's when I started getting into agile and realized if I laid out my features, what is it that we're trying to build this dashboard, or this report, or whatever, how do we get there? And once I did that, then I came back the next day and told everybody, "Look, we need to finish the testing you're doing, the development you're doing on that other piece or whatever because we got to get back to what we were here for." So it's a double-edged sword, I think, knowing the value and then getting so entrenched with the details that you forget what the value that you were working on was, right? Trying to pull yourself back to that. Rob Collie (00:24:17): Yeah. Working backwards from the desired result, whenever you can, proves to be just so much more effective than working forward from the architecture. Working from the top down is the way to build when you can pull it off. The BI industry was bottom up forever. It was plumbing then faucet. And if you can go faucet, then plumbing, you end up getting a much better result and you end up getting there much faster. But the old tools, pre Power BI, pre Power Pivot, pre DAX, pre Emo, that kind of stuff. The old tools were really only capable of supporting a waterfall bottom up plumbing then faucets, sort of philosophy. The world didn't choose to go plumbing first, just arbitrarily. It's because the software was built to drive them that way. The new tools support the other way and still industries are very slow to change. So how long have you now been with P3? Angel Abundez (00:25:16): It's four months. Rob Collie (00:25:17): I've been saving this question for four months. What's it like? Right? So I'm sure that to a certain extent in your previous job, you were already beginning to apply some differences, agile and all that kind of stuff. I can paint this dramatic picture, right? Of, oh, you've been working in the old world all this time and now you've come to try this new model and I want to know the difference, right? That's an overly dramatic picture because even the old world of BI has been changing, and I definitely get the impression that, again, because 11 years ago we were sitting across the table and you're going, "Interesting." Rob Collie (00:25:55): That means that you definitely weren't staying in the traditional group completely in any way, but still though, the question I've been saving to ask you, and we talk about, and of course record it, is what's it been like making this transition from, anyway, by degrees, a more traditional environment to our environment here at P3? And even if we weren't doing a podcast about this, I'd be basically beating your door down now and say, "Okay, let's talk. What's it been like?" Angel Abundez (00:26:23): The people are definitely different. The way we hire, the way we put our consultants through what we call the diabolical test, and the way we interview them, it's like, we're picking a certain breed of person, right? First of all. So one thing that really impressed me when I into this role, because when I got in, I immediately had six principal consultants reporting to me and got to know them, got to talk to each one of them. And then more importantly for me, I wanted them to crack open their work. And as I was looking at all their work, I was like, "Holy moly, this is really good stuff." Angel Abundez (00:27:03): And some of the ways that they were describing their projects, or their clients, or the process, or whatever it was that they were working on, just blew me away. They really not only understood it, but could spin it in ways that only professionals in Power BI could do. So I remember Ryan Bergstrom, our senior director, asked me, "Angel, I wonder what you would say. Working where you've worked, would you hire these people?" And I said, "Hell yeah. I love our team." And so that's, I think the first thing, because it starts with people, right? Rob Collie (00:27:36): Can I jump in just for a moment here? Angel Abundez (00:27:37): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:27:38): So knowing them now, the answer to that question is, "Oh my gosh, yes, we should have been willing to hire them," right? "In our previous environment." But they probably would have missed your radar. Angel Abundez (00:27:48): Totally. Rob Collie (00:27:49): And why is that? Why would they have missed your radar in the prior role? Angel Abundez (00:27:54): In prior roles, we placed a lot of importance on backend knowledge of databases, backend knowledge of ANSI SQL. We were looking for architects basically, architects or ETL engineers, because that was primarily the bread and butter of the consulting worlds that I came from. Whereas opposed to here, we do have some sense of data engineers, but they're not data engineers, they're analytics engineers. They're the kind of breed that wants to understand the data because they know how to make it do things, how to look a certain way, or how to play with it and create ideas. Our clients don't all come to us because they want reports, our clients come to us because they want ideas. They're interested in our opinion with what they've got. I would have probably dismissed a lot of the people that are on our team because they didn't have that backend experience. Rob Collie (00:28:51): Yeah. Our people don't identify. Some of them do, some of them have those bonafides for sure. But most of our consultants would never identify... again, to use the metaphor, they would never identify as plumbing experts, they're faucet people. And it turns out... And this is the really gratifying thing for me. You're looking at their work, you're looking at the architecture of the models that they're building and the DAX in there and all that and going, "Oh my gosh, look at this plumbing expertise, look at this," right? They didn't identify as that, but they can rocket in the service of making those faucets, right? And Bergstrom Ryan did tell me that story that you just told about hiring, right? He told me that some number of weeks ago and I just deemed. Angel Abundez (00:29:39): It's so cool. Rob Collie (00:29:40): Yeah. Angel Abundez (00:29:41): It makes my job as a director so much easier. I don't have to explain the value that they have to look for or create said demos. They're doing it on their own. Now, where the backend piece does help, obviously, as I've seen a lot of patterns, so trying to parallel those patterns to what they're trying to accomplish sometimes with their data has helped. And I still like to pick from my experiences back in the days, applying Kimball principles to data warehousing and stuff like that. I like to think about those things sometimes because those guys were the experts back when data warehousing was really taking off in the '90s and the 2000s. Angel Abundez (00:30:22): Nowadays, it's like, everybody just does it intuitively. They don't call it a fact table, they don't call it a dimension. Maybe they call it a data table and a lookup table or whatever. But they're applying these principles intuitively and it's amazing to me. I'm like, "It's got to evolve," right? I mean now, with so many things in the cloud and so many tools on top of not just Power BI, but things that are coming out with CIN apps and Databricks, it's getting a lot easier to do these backend things. And Tom, you were talking about this earlier about AutoML. There's going to come a time where machine learning is just going to be in everybody's back pocket and they can bring it to the forefront and then start adding value with that stuff. Thomas LaRock (00:31:05): I'm a strong advocate that we should let the machines do the tasks that they're best at and let humans do the tasks that they're best at. And right now, the way I see the AutoML stuff evolving, is that there's still quite a bit of human intervention necessary for the thought process. "Is this data valid? Is it free from bias? Did these results make sense? Things of that nature. That expertise has got to be around for another five years or more, right? I mean, that's a decent career path for anybody to head down to have that experience and what you were just saying, fact tables, just coming naturally. It makes me think of that first BAC where we met apparently. Rob Collie (00:31:44): There's no written record of you having met by the way- Thomas LaRock (00:31:47): But it was Dr. Lovett, right? Yeah, he gave that brilliant keynote. And one of the takeaways was there's a dearth of people in the world that can analyze data properly. And I would go further and say, not just analyze it, but organize it. So what you're talking about are natural skills for people now, is because people are getting used to what the shape of the data should look like if they want to be able to use it for something, which I don't think people had or was as common 10 years ago. I agree with you there, because I don't think a lot of people understood why there was a fact table, dementia table, stuff like... [inaudible 00:32:22], get it all. And nowadays, it's just natural. Like, I need this and I need a lookup table or a reference... And they're getting better at how they should be organizing their data. I think that's becoming a little more common. But as far as the machine learning stuff, the data science-y stuff, we're still going to need some humans to really fact check what the machines are spitting out. Angel Abundez (00:32:42): Yeah. I think it's come up more and more. Things like text analytics, I would have dismissed the whole text analytics and semantic analyzing maybe four or five years ago because I was still too busy trying to figure out how much money are you making and trying to figure out cost savings and optimizations. But today with these data lakes and these tons of ways that we can store the data, now people got data, now people want these new answers. And that's what I'm talking about more is like, to your point, it's going to take a human to try to figure out, well, how am I going to tell my bosses that the customers are giving us positive feedback," right? Quote, unquote, or negative feedback, or what products do they like, quote unquote, or don't like, quote unquote, right? And I'm like, "We have the tools now," and it's tools that we can spin up and spin down just when we need them. Angel Abundez (00:33:37): So it's a really interesting and fun time right now. But honestly, that's another part to the role that I came into, that I fully, was willing to accept, is that I'm not going to be the guy that's going to write the machine learning [income 00:33:51]. I'm not going to be the guy that's going to write the Python, but I want to help guide that process to these people that are eager, and fast, and smart to do. That's one of the big changes. Now, in my career, having come to P3 and being a director, is that I'm not going to do the development, I'm not going to write the code, but I want to see my people do it and absolutely get 100% of the credit for it. So being able to come to a place where I can let that part go has been a little bit hard, I'll admit. Angel Abundez (00:34:22): I still go a little bit crazy when I can't help a client battle a DAX problem or come up with some report. So I get to do a little bit, but it's just enough because I have eight now, but soon to be nine principal consultants on my team that I have to look out for them. I have to make sure each one of them is successful. And I can't do that if I'm busy crunching on some client problem or whatever. So it's going to be a growth process for me here. I fully recognize that. It's a little scary, but it's also fun. It's been fun. Rob Collie (00:34:54): Well, it's not just that we really like you, that we decided to try to bring you in, right? It was also a deliberate effort on our part to cross pollinate. We knew that what we've been doing for the past 5, 6, 7 years, we know that it's very effective, we know that it's working. We don't have any self doubt anymore about our business model and all that kind of stuff, right? But at the same time, there is a risk of being in your own echo chamber and missing some things. It's not that the things that you're doing are bad, it's just that you might be missing some other good stuff, right? And so, we'd reached the point where it made a lot of sense for us to crack that door open, right? And so, I've really valued and appreciated that as our relationships with clients mature and as technology evolves around us. Rob Collie (00:35:40): I mean Power BI itself, even though it's famous for having these monthly updates, where it's like all the pace of innovation, really Power BI isn't really changing that much. It's still doing the same things that it was always doing before. It's just like you get like these extra sprinkles on that Sunday. And some of those sprinkles are tasty, but it's still doing the same thing, whilst the ecosystem around it, that's the place where things are changing super fast. It's not Power BI itself, it's the adjacent technologies. And we're getting increasingly into those because there are at certain places where they bring tremendous value to the overall solution and the overall data culture, even, right? At our clients. And having that, cross-pollination, that exposure, even in these short four months that you've been with us, has already been a real asset to the team. So I'm really glad that we took that chance, but I'm even happier that you did. It is a big change. It's a bigger change for you than it has been for us, even though it has been a big change for us. Angel Abundez (00:36:41): I'm still trying to figure out what the next two years is going to look like, but I'm excited. I mean the same kind of things that I've had in all the consulting companies that I've worked at, I have here, which is, you were talking about the chicken that... it felt like free reign all of a sudden. I still feel like that. I still feel like I can spin up a synapse workspace if I want. I can start plugging away at Python to figure out this text analytics problem that somebody posted on our Slack channel. But see, the other thing that as a director that I'm also looking for are ways to help our consultants grow. So for instance, if somebody hasn't seen Power BI report server, I can also spin that up, somebody who's never connected to analysis services cube, I can also spin that up. Angel Abundez (00:37:30): So there's things that I'd like to learn that I know are like future, not just my future, but all of our consultant's future, but also things that I've seen in the past, right? With the clients that I've seen, that I'm very fortunate. That's one thing that I did want to say on this, is that the consultant companies, where I worked, I'm very fortunate to have worked with those teams and having worked with the clients that I worked on, because it brought me to this point where now seeing what I've seen, now I can come and talk about those stories, right? Angel Abundez (00:38:02): We all have these stories that we can talk about, but it helps to know like, "Oh yeah, this big client approached it this way," or, "This little client didn't do it that way because they don't have the resources. So they did it this way," right? So all of these experiences are helping me now to guide our team, guide our people, to make decisions and try to formulate solutions, but there's still a lot to learn, there's still tons and tons of new technologies coming up, and we just got to stay on top of it. Rob Collie (00:38:34): You really brought home with some good coach speak at the end there. Like, yeah, we just got to go out there and execute one play at a time and on to Philadelphia. Angel Abundez (00:38:46): That's right. Rob Collie (00:38:48): I'm wondering how much it would cost us to license the use of that free range chicken cartoon from Gary Larson in our recruiting. Now hiring free range chickens. Angel Abundez (00:39:00): Yeah. That's another thing that I was really excited about when I came to P3, was the marketing. Obviously having a podcast is awesome. It gives people a sense of who we are, and the type of people that we partner with, and that we're friends with, and that we've worked with. I think towards the tail end of where I was at with design mine, I got exposed to marketing departments and got to see how marketing departments work. And that really fascinates me. And I think if I had a pivot that I would do sometime in my career, it might be something to do in marketing, because I think it's so much fun. Yeah. Tom's shaking his head like, no, Rob Collie (00:39:38): How dare you, Tom? This is how my career has taken this turn. And Angel, when you're saying, you've got to see how marketing departments work, I'm like, "Oh really? Can you come tell me?" Thomas LaRock (00:39:49): Forget it. And marketing's full. There's no jobs available- Angel Abundez (00:39:52): Marketing's full. Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:39:53): Go somewhere else. Angel Abundez (00:39:54): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:39:56): No, it's not so much that I want to try to be a marketer. I can't. I had a job at a consulting place where all I was expected to do was come in, show the shiny tools and go, and I hated that. I'm not a sales guy. But it's just the data piece, Tom. It's the data piece. They have a lot of data and it's like, they're barely doing anything with it. Thomas LaRock (00:40:18): I agree. For most part, my experiences, they have way more data than they know what to do with or what they can do with. However, I also know what they don't know. And I know that quite often companies have a team for marketing analytics and they are actively trying to go through the data to figure things out. So where you described, like when you're showing something shiny, that's more like a sales engineering type thing. And the marketing aspect can be fascinating, the idea of A/B testing, trying to drive engagement. The downside to the marketing is when you put out materials and you've chosen words that you think are just fine but somebody comes back and they nitpick and they go, "No, your product said it would do X and it doesn't do that at all." And you're like, "Well, no, it does.", "Well, it doesn't do X the way I want to do, so you're lying." Thomas LaRock (00:41:05): And you're like, "But I'm sorry for the confusion. I didn't intentionally lie in my materials." Or when somebody yells at you for your choice of Google Adwords, and you're like, "But that's how Google works. I have no control over this. Do you want me to not advertise?" So there's some pain points with the marketing. I really enjoy, as I call it, I'm an advocate. I'm an advocate for solar winds products. And so, the winds in general. So I love the advocacy in a lot of different ways because I'm not just an advocate for solar winds, but I'm advocate for our customers back into the product team to help make better products for our customers and for future customers. So that's the aspect of marketing that I followed into, which I really do enjoy more than not. I don't enjoy when there are times at other companies where I've seen people come across and they say, "Our product does this thing, so I'm just going to go off and say, it does this thing better than anybody else." Thomas LaRock (00:42:00): And you're like, "Actually, it doesn't. It doesn't even do the thing you think it does. Please don't print that." You're knowingly lying at this point. "Yeah, but I need downloads. I need eyeballs. My metrics are clicks and page views, and I don't care how I get them." And that's the side of marketing that I don't enjoy seeing or participating in. But yes, the data is fabulous and fascinating and you could spend all day trying to figure out that one targeted segment that can drive engagement and give the numbers. And yes, it is all there for you. So Rob, you should put him in charge of marketing. Use me as a reference Angel. Use me as a reference. Rob Collie (00:42:41): I had a colleague here at P3 who never really believed in anything we were doing. And so it's no surprise that eventually he left. But at one point, as I was getting excited about marketing, and basically every time I would try to get excited about something, he tried to tell me that I was wrong. And so, as I was getting exited about marketing... I said, something like, "I think marketing is fun. It's going to be fun." And he looked to me and said, "If you're doing it right, it's never fun." You touched on a couple things there, Tom, that definitely are fun, right? Messaging, advocacy. If you view digital marketing, as I have come to view it as a way to use the technology to scale out a human interaction with the world, if you look at it that way, right? Like, there's an important message, there's an important conversation to be had, and you can't reach everybody face to face, right? So how do you take that truth? Rob Collie (00:43:38): This is actually a really important point. A lot of marketing, I think, is marketing a commoditized product or service and trying to get the customer to choose you over one of your completely indistinguishable competitors. There's no real basis for choosing one over the other. It's going to be about the same, but you try to convince them that it isn't the same. We have the luxury of not being like that. We have a real truth to share if we are truly different, truly better. Okay. So now you view the technology as, "Okay, how do we scale that out?" Right? "How do we use technology as a lever to get that message out?" And it's going to help everybody that hears it that eventually comes to work with us and it's going to help us do it because it's going to grow our business, right? Rob Collie (00:44:19): In 2009, 2010, when I left Microsoft, what I discovered over the next few years, was that I really liked messaging. I really liked advocacy, and I never had known that about myself, a skill that I really hadn't had much use for when I worked at Microsoft, a latent talent. And so I still really am into that part, right? The messaging, that human truth, very much into that. I'm also really into the data. There's something really cool about splicing together in a Power BI model, all of the data that you get from Adwords with all the data that's in our CRM, and it's in our accounting system and all of that, calculating longterm value of advertising spend is a beautiful Power BI problem. I'm like Power BI is made for this. Rob Collie (00:45:06): Over the years, I keep waiting for the part where if you're doing it right, it's not fun. Because even though, we always disagreed about everything, like I always took his opinion seriously, that's why it always hurts so much, right? I was like, "Oh man, he must be right." So I guess we finally found the part that isn't all that much fun, which is really fine tuning ad copy to match up with landing page copy so that the Google algorithm rewards you appropriately. There's a point at which you take one message, one truth, but then you have to factor that true message into 60 different sub flavors to match up with all these very specific situations. It's still not the worst work. It's not the least fun thing in the world. Rob Collie (00:45:52): Maybe there was something else that was not fun about marketing that he was talking about, that I'm still yet to encounter, because like everything I do, I don't follow a handbook. It's not even necessarily so much at a disdain for the way things have been done before. It's just that I just can't work that way. I can't go read the book, even if I wanted to and do it that way. It's like, let's just dive in. If I don't dive in, I'm not ever going to get engaged. I'm just going to sit back and read books and never do anything. I know that about myself. I need to jump in. And so that's how we've been doing things and it's been working so far. Like I said, Angel, if you've seen how these things actually work, I'm intensely interested. Angel Abundez (00:46:30): I don't know what it is about spending little bits and it starting to grow your business. But I can remember when I did meet you Tom, and went out to that business analytics conference, my talk that I gave out there was something I called the subscription economy. And this was before Spotify, before Disney+, before Paramount Plus, before all of these subscription services, right? I can remember putting pictures in that slide deck about me being a paper boy and going around house to house and asking for their money for their newspaper, right? That was the beginning of subscriptions, right? Going around, getting people's newspapers. And I had just happened to work for a company that had a subscription service and developed a model around it, a data warehouse, and figured out how to analyze their subscriptions. And they were looking for basic things like how many new customers did we get? How many renewals? How many cancellations? Angel Abundez (00:47:27): And their customers were paying like a hundred bucks a month to get specialized healthcare. So it's the same kind of concept, but then it's the opposite. You're not spending, you're getting, right? You're receiving the revenue, a hundred bucks from this person, a hundred bucks from that person, and it's so amazing to me, like, me and my family, we pay the 15 bucks a month for a family plan for Spotify, we pay for iCloud, and we have a bunch of subscription services, just like I think other parents do, and it's amazing to me how those just all add up. It's something about how many little things can add up to these huge things. That's what I think is fascinating about it, but I totally understand. Angel Abundez (00:48:07): I wouldn't like that evil side of marketing either, and I think probably you get that with bigger teams, maybe, because the smaller teams I've worked with, they're crunching on the numbers, trying to figure out, like you said, Rob, the messaging and trying to figure out all that hard work. But I guess I have the fun part at the end of the month where I see, okay, how much did you spend and how much did we get back on that spend. That's the part that I'm like, "Whoa, man, we spent this and we got that. Wow, that's awesome." Rob Collie (00:48:36): So half the money you spend in marketing, you're wasting, right? You go into it just knowing, because you're going to try something and it may not work. So you try to minimize that as best as you can. You mentioned it's a larger team. It doesn't have to be a very large team for marketing to be painful, it's if marketing has a subservient role to sales. If the sales team has more power in the company and the sales team doesn't make their number, I think because they can't do sales, it's because marketing's not doing their job. And that's the dynamic that happens more often than not, is that marketing gets pressure because somebody says, "We need downloads. We get more downloads if you send more emails.", "But the people don't want these emails from us anymore. They're unsubscribing.", "Well, find more people to send emails to. It's just a numbers game. Get on the phone, do this other stuff." That's demand gen and that's tough. Angel Abundez (00:49:27): Now that's actually something else we should talk about, Rob. The way we do sales is very different. That's a big difference from the places I've worked [inaudible 00:49:37]. Sales is typically done by salespeople, or a sales department, or business development directors. or whatever, right? At P3, everybody sells, everybody, but we don't think of it like that, but we are. Thomas LaRock (00:49:49): But the real thing that's missing from all these people, what you have to understand is the product or service should sell itself. All the salesman should do is to facilitate the conversation between the person and their wallet, how much are you willing to spend? You already know it has value. This product or service is amazing. You already know. I don't have to do anything. I'm just going to help you set up the transaction. And when sales and marketing and product all work together in harmony, then there's no pressure. You have numbers you want to hit, but it's not if you don't hit the number you're gone, and you guys have that service. The nature of your sales and marketing is so much different, and probably a beautiful and wonderful experience for everyone. Rob Collie (00:50:29): Tom, the way that people you've been describing when you started that sentence, I was anticipating how it was going to end. You were saying like, "You know what these people are missing?" I'm ready to jump and go, "Yeah. A soul. They're missing a soul. That's all they're missing." Angel Abundez (00:50:47): Tom, what I'm learning here, and I'm learning a ton here, is that conversation that you're facilitating, there are certain questions that you can ask that are better than, "Tell me about your pain points." I can't tell you how many times I've heard that question. "Tell me about your pain points." We're learning how to ask really good questions and letting the clients talk, not us talk, right? And also the other lesson I've come to learn here, which is super important is, don't start telling people what you think they need, "Oh, you need a training. You need a jumpstart. You need a whatever." It's like, no. Don't talk about that. Let the client talk, let them tell you what their problems are, what they're experiencing, what the lack of something is, what they think they need, all these things, and there's still a lot that I have to learn, but it's not to be a good sales guy. Angel Abundez (00:51:37): It's again, the way we do it and the way we intend to do it is, really just to get in to the client and really dig deep into the, what is their real problem and what is it that they could probably use the most value on, right? What is not the best solution? I don't want to call it that because there's never one solution, but we try to pick the best one that they're going to get the best bang for their buck. And in my career, I've been really lucky. I've done some projects where years later I get calls back, "Hey, you know that application you built, we're trying to move it over to whatever," some new application or something. "We need to talk to you about so-and-so." And I'm like, "You're still using that?" So that part is gratifying that something that as a consultant that you build, obviously that makes its way into many years later, they're still using it. Angel Abundez (00:52:32): And that's what I like to coach my team on is, don't build something for yourself or for the client, build it for the people that are going to come after you because people change roles, people change companies. Whatever you build, just make sure it can withstand the test of time. We like to use buzzwords like scalable and make sure it's scalable, well, make sure it's reliable. It's like, I say, no, just make it outlast you. Whatever you do, whatever you set up, whatever documentation you write, just make it so that it outlasts you and that you know you're doing the right thing. Rob Collie (00:53:05): Angel, I'm so glad that you brought up that there's a difference in, quote unquote, sales process, because I wouldn't have thought about that to bring it up. But yeah, this part is something that people probably heard me say before, but that whole rewinding in this conversation, like the technology of yesterday... and by the way, yesterday was very long. Yesterday, had a long run, right? So the technology of yesterday was built as a plumbing first architecture. That has so many rippling implications for the entire industry, the way that everything worked. And skipping ahead a little bit, one of the implications of all of that, the technology being built that way, was that all projects are big projects. There are no little projects, there are no fast projects. Everything is going to be glacially slow and gigantic. Rob Collie (00:53:52): Then another implication of that though, is that anyone that signs the contract for one of those big projects is putting some degree of their career on the line when they're signing up for this project. If you're the client and you're the person at the client who's ultimately responsible for making the decision to hire this consulting firm to execute this project, you're staking some of your reputation, and maybe ultimately your employment at that company on whether or not this thing is going to be a success, it's a big spend, right? Rob Collie (00:54:28): And so that just changes everything about the entire human equation. It creates like some Stockholm syndrome between the client and the consultant, and it requires a very different process. But by the way, there is some tremendous safety in that model for the consulting firm. It's very predictable. Once that contract is signed, you know that you're going to have a whole team of people employed and utilized for a long time. And the dirty little secret is that when it doesn't work out properly, right? Which it never does, you're going to get a change order and it's going to continue because you've got them. But when you change your business model, like we have, and that initial engagement is low risk, changes the entire dynamic of everything. Now, there's just like, if you can just bring the authenticity and say, "Look, results will speak for themselves," and you don't need like the dedicated swanky account executive, who by the way, also makes things so much more expensive, you've got to pay for that. It's just overhead. Rob Collie (00:55:38): So I'm glad that you brought that up. Because it is. It has to be a huge difference. Now, I have been sitting on a number of thoughts here that I want to spit out in rapid fire. First of all, second far side reference. There's another far side cartoon, the competition in nature, where the native Americans are taking like a cowboy to bury them in the sand so the ants can eat them, and the different ant hives are putting up all these marquee signs saying, "Come [bury 00:56:03] here. Your cowboy's here." You ever seen that? I mean- Angel Abundez (00:56:07): I have never seen that. Rob Collie (00:56:08): You just know that Gary Larson is actually like a really nice warm person with just a sick sense of humor, and those are my people. I like those people. And then I also mentioned on the podcast before that there's an old Bill Hicks skit where he asked the audience, "Does anybody in here work in marketing?" And he goes, "Oh yeah, you do? Yeah, kill yourself." I think it comes back to this whole soulless thing, right? There's no difference between those two anthills in the Gary Larson cartoon. So all you have is glitzy sparkle to advertise why your ants will do a better job of gruesomely disposing of your foe. No, there's no difference. Tom, you said that half of the spend is wasted and you just don't know which half. Well now, actually you do know, right? It's worse. It's 90%. Thomas LaRock (00:57:00): You don't know until after the fact. Rob Collie (00:57:03): Right. Of course not. But it used to be that you would never even know after the fact, right? There was no attribution, nothing. You just couldn't stop advertising on the Super Bowl because maybe that would just tragically disrupt your sales. But you might suspect that it makes no difference at all, but you don't want to be the one to take that risk because if sales plummet you're out of a job. Thomas LaRock (00:57:22): You're right. And I haven't seen pets.com advertise the Super Bowl in the wild now. Rob Collie (00:57:27): You're right. Thomas LaRock (00:57:28): Once they stopped, that was it. That was the end for them. Rob Collie (00:57:30): So a while ago, Tom, we were collectively trying to figure out the pronunciation of the word dearth. By the way, there's so many words that I've only read and I've never been around other human beings using them out loud, and you don't hear them in movies. So I don't actually know how to pronounce a lot of really smart words. Is it appreciate prescient, prescient? I have no idea. Angel Abundez (00:57:49): [inaudible 00:57:49]. Thomas LaRock (00:57:50): Prescient. It's prescient. Just go with prescient. Rob Collie (00:57:53): I don't know about that. You're saying? Really? Thomas LaRock (00:57:54): Yeah. No. Trust me. It's going to sound so smart. Rob Collie (00:57:58): Is it niche? Is it niche? Is it niche, niche? Thomas LaRock (00:58:00): It is niche- Rob Collie (00:58:01): Seriously, niche? Are you sure it's not niche? Thomas LaRock (00:58:05): You can say niche and people... Here's the thing. If you say niche and somebody corrects you, you know that they're an asshole, so... Rob Collie (00:58:12): It's true. Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:58:14): And then you can say niche, but niche is the correct pronunciation. Rob Collie (00:58:18): There is an old joke, which is like, "Excuse me, can you tell me where the library is at?" And they say, "No, I can't," because you ended that sentence with a preposition. And then you go, "Oh, I'm sorry. Where's the library at asshole?" Angel Abundez (00:58:35): "Oh, it's over there. You just take a left down one block. There you go." Rob Collie (00:58:38): Anyway, at one point in the conversation, when we were sounding out the word dearth or whatever, right? A new character was born in my mind, Darth Vader. We need to figure out Darth Vader's backstory and how to work him into a story about data. Thomas LaRock (00:58:51): I think it should be Darth Data, not Vader, Data. Rob Collie (00:58:56): I don't know. I'll think about this. The Vader's important, but you're right. Darth Data, if you just gave this character the right shaped helmet. Thomas LaRock (00:59:03): Helmet? He's getting a spreadsheet for a head. What are you talking about? Rob Collie (00:59:07): So you're like... Now we've lost all metaphor. You've got to tie in somehow. Thomas LaRock (00:59:11): His helmet will be the Power BI bars. So it'll be spiked on one side like a vanilla ice thing. Rob Collie (00:59:19): It's just two bar charts, right? That are just stacked back to back. Okay. All right. I can get behind this. Thomas LaRock (00:59:25): His visor is just a sparkline. Rob Collie (00:59:26): Oh, okay. Now you're talking- Thomas LaRock (00:59:29): See, I work in marketing. Rob Collie (00:59:31): Oh, yeah. So what else should we do? Angel Abundez (00:59:34): I was going to suggest, we talk about the collaboration piece. P3 is the first company where I worked that's US-wide. I've worked at another consulting company where they were also US-wide but my region was the West Coast. So I was primarily trying to build the BI practice here in Northern California. So where I've come from, I didn't have a lot of managerial coaching, I guess, if you will. So where I came from, we had this notion of one-on-ones, which I dreaded really, because I thought to myself, like, "What's the use of them?" But it wasn't until Kaelin told me that we really need to make our people feel like they're part of our company, that clicked, because as a consultant, working for multiple clients, or even working on with one big client for a while, you can feel like you're in a silo. You can feel like all of a sudden, "Oh, I work for solar winds. I don't work for my company. I've been working with Tom for eight months or whatever." Angel Abundez (01:00:38): You never want people to feel like that. They work for P3, they work for us. And that's our culture, I feel like, is very much like we care about all people we hire. We fully recognize people they may come and go, they want to do different things or whatever, but at least while they're here, we want them to be able to say they enjoy their work here, right? They enjoy the people they work with, and that's the part I think we do a really good job of too. And it's a lot of my responsibility as a director to be sure that I make our consultants, even though they're everywhere... I've got consultants in Las Vegas, and New York, and Texas, and Kansas. Angel Abundez (01:01:16): So it's a challenge because we're all remote, but I think we really break down barriers by being authentic. I think all of our directors, that's the one thing that we're over ourselves, we don't have big egos or anything like that, we're authentic with people. And that's important because I think that's how you gain trust basically. I was talking to the executive coach that I'm working with. I meet with her once a month, and one of the things that she helped illuminate to me is that you can't ask somebody to do something for you if they don't trust you, right? Because I was asking her, "I don't want to be ever a mean manager. I don't want to be that kind of manager, like, 'Hey, I need you to do this for me right now.' But there are times where I'm going to need to do that, right? I'm going to need to say, 'Hey, we've got to put in the weekend or, 'Hey, you got to finish this up. I know you want to finish this other thing, but we've got to do this other thing.'" Angel Abundez (01:02:05): And so that whole trust thing really only comes from being authentic with someone. So my one-on-ones now are completely different than what they were when I first got here. At first, it was about, "Crack open your report. Let me see your report. What are you using? What are you connecting to?" And it was all very technical. Now, my one-on-ones are more talking about somebody found a dog in a river. Now, they have that dog. It's their dog, talking about somebody else's, you just got over COVID. That's still a very big part of our reality, right? And when that hit, I took care of it. I was like, "You, get well, get better. I'll put in your time off. Don't worry about it." So I think that's a very important part of the P3 culture here, is it helps nurture a lot of other things, collaboration, trust with each other, asking questions, not working in silos, that kind of thing. Rob Collie (01:02:59): That's really gratifying to hear as well. I am, admittedly now, somewhat removed from a lot of the reality you were just describing, to hear you talk about it at the end of your first four months, right? Honestly, it feels like you've been here a lot longer than that, in a good way. Not like, "Oh, man, you've only been here four months. Man, I can't.... Oh, really?" Angel Abundez (01:03:21): It's weird. I feel like I'm just starting. There's so much to learn here. Rob Collie (01:03:26): I would've guessed like eight months. Time is just such a funny thing. I would have guessed eight months. When you said four, I'm like, really? Angel Abundez (01:03:32): Yeah. It goes by fast. Rob Collie (01:03:34): That's crazy. Angel Abundez (01:03:35): It goes by fast. Rob Collie (01:03:37): Well, Angel, I'm so glad we got to do this. Of course, I'm even happier that you're here. Having known you for so long, I'm so glad that you're part of the team and we did our four month waiting period before we got you on the podcast, and that expired. So this has been great. Angel Abundez (01:03:51): Yeah. Super excited that you picked me and that I'm here at P3 and doing my thing here. Rob Collie (01:03:57): We didn't pick you, you chose us. I'm just kidding. It's both, right? That's how it works. Angel Abundez (01:04:02): That's right. Rob Collie (01:04:03): Thanks again, sir. Angel Abundez (01:04:03): Thank you guys. Announcer (01:04:04): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Have a data day!

This is the 50th Episode of Raw Data!  Thank you to our wonderful guests that have made this podcast so enjoyable.  We also would not be doing this show if it wasn't for you, the listener.  We thank you so very much for your support!  We sought to talk with and about the humans that make the data world go around, and we feel that's exactly what we're doing! For this episode, we wanted to do something a bit different.  Our guest is a very special human-Bob "Pop" Collie is Rob's 96 year old grandfather on his father's side.  Rob credits Pop Collie for so many things, like teaching him the power of "Why Not?"  That spirit of "Why Not?" has molded and shaped not only Rob's philosophy, but it's also a huge part of the philosophy of P3 Adaptive.  When someone tells us something is not possible, we ask...."why not?"  And make it possible!

If it wasn't for Rob's interaction with Dave Gainer during his time at Microsoft, there's no doubt that Rob's life and career path would have been vastly different, and very likely not in a good way!  Dave currently is Vice President of Product for Microsoft Office, but he's ALWAYS been a great leader of people.  As you listen to this conversation, you'll quickly realize why Dave is in the position of leadership that he's in.  He's QUITE good at it, and he shares his story and his approach towards being a leader. References in this episode: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari The Borg from Star Trek Ken Puhls on Raw Data Lori Rodriguez on Raw Data Kellan Danielson on Raw Data Mark Cuban/Wayne Winston Tweet The Sphinx from Mystery Men Tom's Blog Post-Where Have All The Good Managers Gone? Dick Winters - Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs Of Major Dick Winters Episode Timeline: 2:30 - Dave turns the tables and asks us some questions and the unconventional story of Dave Gainer 25:30 - Dave and Rob's paths cross (and Rob learns some vital lessons), the importance of storytelling to bring humans together, and what makes a good leader 45:30 - Dave's leadership principles and guidelines and how he formed them, the influence that Dave has had on Rob (and many others), 1:10:30 - A good leader can come from anywhere (ala Ratatouille) and the role of fate in life and career 1:29:30 - Dave swears he isn't a radical (we think he is), Dick Winters from Band of Brothers has some rules Dave emulates, incentives and remote workers Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello friends. Today's guest is Dave Gainer. Dave is a VP at Microsoft in the Office division, and ultimately some products that you very much care about are things that are in his purview. Things like Excel, for instance. But in this interview, we really don't talk about any of that. What we talk about instead is leadership and mentoring, and specifically the impact that he had on me in my career. The reason that we focused on that, is that in my experience Dave has some very, very clear and refreshing views on what it is to be a leader, what it is to be a manager. The reason I know that is because I worked for him, he was my manager at a very, very crucial, informative juncture in my own career. Rob Collie (00:00:47): Now, of course, I've learned a lot of valuable lessons, a lot of valuable things from a very large number of people in my career, and yet I don't think I've learned as much from any one person as I have from Dave. In my long journey of growing into who I am today, becoming comfortable my own skin, becoming competent and learning to leverage my own strengths, I just don't think anyone's had nearly as much influence on me as Dave did back in the early 2000s. There are actually a number of us walking around today, alumni from that era, who say very similar things about this individual. Rob Collie (00:01:23): Here's maybe the coolest part, the habits that make him so impactful, so successful, so valuable, are actually accessible. Meaning I think they are easier to emulate than you might expect. As I learned to emulate some of these habits of his, that became a tremendous inflection point in my life and in my career. I suspect that you will take away at least one, but probably multiple new habits just from listening to this conversation. What does it take to be a good manager, a good leader? Let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:59): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. Announcer (00:02:04): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast with your host Rob Collie and your co-host Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive, is data with the human element. Dave Gainer (00:02:28): Do you want me to do the welcome? Rob Collie (00:02:29): Oh yeah. Dave Gainer (00:02:31): Hey Rob, welcome to your podcast. Can I see something to start out? Rob Collie (00:02:35): Sure. Dave Gainer (00:02:36): Okay. I do a lot of walking. I go out for a lot of walks at night, go on runs. I've gone up to Canada a few times to help my folks, and you know that requires like 40 hours of driving either way, because I don't want to take a plane with COVID. I get a lot of time to listen to podcasts and audio books and stuff. I probably follow 30 podcasts, but I listen to all of yours and it's probably one of the top two in rotation just because you guys do such a phenomenal job with it. I just want to say welcome to your podcast. You guys do a fantastic job. Rob Collie (00:03:05): Wow. That is awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much. Best intro ever. We're just going to have to have you as a regular. Thomas LaRock (00:03:14): No, I think we're just going to replay that every podcast. Rob Collie (00:03:18): He's our hype. Thomas LaRock (00:03:20): Yeah, hype man. Rob Collie (00:03:20): Not our hype man. It's like the whole hype department. Well, Dave, that is a hell of an introduction. What do you do these days Dave? Dave Gainer (00:03:29): I think we refer to it these days more and more as the head of product for a portfolio of applications that are associated with Office. Some of them you get with Office. That'd be things like Excel, Microsoft Forms, which you may have bumped into. There's a thing called Microsoft Planner, which is a simple project management tool. You can think of it like as a [inaudible 00:03:48] board. And then a lot of the extensibility bits and pieces of Office. If you're going to write code behind Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, that's my team. Dave Gainer (00:03:56): We also run developer portals and help with the developer program and run the store that you'd go get applications out of. And then I also am responsible for Microsoft Project and Microsoft Visio, which are interesting because they're Office like things, but they're sold on their own. Unlike Excel, which is just really a feature of Office 365, they are standalone many businesses. And so I'm responsible for that. I have a bunch of people that run those things like Brian, who you talked to recently, that report to me. My job is to work with an engineering and design peer to manage that group of things. Rob Collie (00:04:31): You're in charge of things, a lot of things actually, that people listen to this show care about. Microsoft is very interesting topic to a lot of people, but guess what? That's not what we're going to be talking about today. We're not going to really be talking about Microsoft. What we'll be talking about is you, Dave, where you came from, how you came to be who you are and what it is that I think makes you different and valuable. Also our relationship over the years. Spoiler alert, you've had a lot to do with my development as a professional. I want to set that context up front. This isn't going to be an inside dive into what it's like to be an executive at Microsoft. We'll leave that for someone else on some other day. Dave Gainer (00:05:13): Hey Rob, hey Thomas, I have a few questions for you guys before we get rolling on this thing. Thomas, I listen to all these podcasts, you get involved, I think I, I missed the podcast that explains how you got involved and how you came to join Rob and hang out with people every day and talk to them. What's that all about? Thomas LaRock (00:05:29): I honestly have no idea. Rob one day he sent me a text. "Do you want to do a podcast?" Of course my answer was yes, because I had nothing going on except this pandemic. I needed to get out and tell to people. I've known Rob since he accosted me in New Orleans back in 2010. He and I share a data gene, we might be half brothers, I'm not sure. But he thought it'd be great for me to come and hang out and talk data. I try to bring a slightly different perspective to the conversations because when Rob talks with a lot of the folks that he's intersected in his life, it's from one particular viewpoint of data. My viewpoint of data is a little bit more on the administration side so there's some intersect for us. But every now and then when I hear a conversation going one way, I'm like, yeah, but you guys forgot about XYZ. This is why there's additional friction in a certain area. I'd like to pretend I have some value. Rob Collie (00:06:30): Well, you're also pretending that we talk about data on this show. What we really do is talk about being people who happen to occasionally work with data, is a lot more about the human side and so- Thomas LaRock (00:06:39): Correct. Rob Collie (00:06:40): You do bring a different perspective because it turns out you're a different flavor of human. Dave Gainer (00:06:44): Hey, speaking of the human part, so this is something Rob, I wanted to ask you before we get going. Your podcast is data with a human element, but data can't have a human element because data's at best a mathematical construct. What are you really trying to say about that? Is it about the human beings behind the data? Explain to the listeners. Rob Collie (00:07:01): Yeah. The strange realization that I had about the BI industry and it's not strange in hindsight, at the time it certainly was, is that I was seeing this amazing difference in the way that Power Pivot and later Power BI worked in the workplace. It just did magical things relative to all of this heavyweight technology that we'd had for a very long time. It was very difficult to explain. Why is this new technology so much better than the old technology? You look at it and you go, it's not like it's really that much more advanced. It's not like suddenly the brain inside the computer. The software brain just became an order of magnitude or several orders of magnitude, more intelligent. It wasn't like that at all. It turned out to just be that the new software fit the people better. Rob Collie (00:07:51): That's all it did. It allowed people to work in the way that people actually need to work. The software met the people where they were, rather than forcing the people to meet the software. This is really the difference between the Power BI engine and its data modeling concepts and its DAX formula language, versus the MDX multidimensional model that, Dave, you and I were working on the first time that you and I were really work together. You could argue that the multidimensional one in many ways was more advanced than this new one. The end memory stuff is pretty hot and the compression's really hot and all of that, that's like sci-fi coolness. But really the things in the end that make the difference is just that it's about the people. Rob Collie (00:08:35): And so you used to harp on me all the time about, if you can't explain something so simply you don't understand it well enough. I wasn't particularly good at that at the beginning, working with you, but I use that all the time. Everything is about the people and everything can be explained simply. If you're not focused on the people and you're not explaining it simply, then you don't actually understand what's going on. And so I think the stories of how people in this space come to contact data, how do they end up working on it, why do they end up working in data as compared to everybody else? What is the data gene, but what do you do with it? Why is it valuable? How does it play out in the human plane? Because in the end if no human being benefits from this stuff, then it's not worth anything. And so I find the human side of all of this to be far more interesting to talk about. Rob Collie (00:09:26): Plus a podcast doesn't really fit technical anyway, let's talk about how to write a really well-constructed summarized function. Like, eh, no, that needs to be a video. That video won't be starring me because I don't like the summarize function very much and it's just, it doesn't really speak to me like it speaks to some other people. But if you work in data we want this show to be relevant to you. But we also want it to be interesting and also valuable. I think the most valuable is in the human plane not the tech plane. The software is never the star. Power BI is not the star of any engagement that our company's involved in. It's the people associated with all this that end up kicking ass as a result of changing the tool set to one that actually fits the way that they work. Dave Gainer (00:10:15): Like I said, I love this podcast. I listen to it all the time and I don't listen to it because of the software. You get a lot of people in here that have really good stories. I think more than anything, it's just Rob hanging out with humans, doing what humans do that. That's so powerful. Rob Collie (00:10:27): I appreciate that. Without going into a tremendous amount of detail up front, let me just say that my interaction with Dave Gainer, many years ago now, represents a pretty significant inflection point in my career. He had a lot of impact on me and for the better, let's be clear. Let's not leave the vector unsigned. You're a leader, that is definitely a part of your job description. It was 15, 20 years ago, it certainly is today. I have this thesis that leaders don't have to be flashy. You don't have to be the Steve Jobs type. I just think that there's so much that you have to offer. You're a software professional today. You work in the data corner. You're not typically working on the consumer side of things. You're up to your eyeballs in the data side of the world, but that's not your background really? Is it? Dave Gainer (00:11:22): No, it's not really my background at all. I was probably 24 or 25 before I saw a spreadsheet, for real. Yeah, if you go way back, I feel like at some level there's probably been like some gravitational pull pulling me in a product like Excel together over time. But it wasn't something that happened in a very linear fashion. I actually grew up in a smaller city in Northern Canada. I was like a lot of us where the first thing I bumped into by way of computer was some Apple II that my buddy who had a prof for a dad at the local university brought home. We went and looked at it and said, "What's it do?" We found the word processor and that got boring after about 15 minutes, so then we found some really bad video games and learned to program basic. Dave Gainer (00:12:01): I played around with PCs in high school, we got a few Commodore 64s. I spent one Christmas holiday programming a Blackjack simulation. But going to get a formal education in computers, just wasn't a thing that dawn on me. I think even at that time, I'm old enough where what you're taught if you went to get a degree at university was mainframes and many computers, so it wasn't going to happen anyway. I wanted to be a journalist. I loved reading. I loved history. I loved all these things. I went to school and I spent six years at university, five years was because I just liked taking courses. I took a year off to go run a bar and restaurant in a mountain resort, which was it's own education. Dave Gainer (00:12:36): And so I ended up getting degree, I think in history and English, but I have enough credits for a degree in anthropology too, because I love studying people and systems. I guess that makes sense for a journalist. I went and got a job as a journalist and did that for a year and boy did it suck. I was going to be like Ernest Hemingway. I was going to go write truth and beauty. It was going to be amazing. I got this job on this magazine. You can think of this like Time Magazine, but for Western Canada. A lot of local politics and oil and stuff like that. What I discovered, it was the weirdest thing, is that a newsroom full of my coworkers that are all people like me, young and out of school, and every day the managing editor come in and tell us what to write. "We're going to write a story on and this is what we're going to say." Dave Gainer (00:13:15): It was, even back in those days, heavy arterial slant based on the politics, the guy that owned the magazine. And so after about 12 months of that, I thought, well, this isn't what I thought it was. Plus the problem with being in the news industry back then is, you had to have set printed copy and that had to happen at 7:00 AM on Saturday morning so they could print all weekend to put out on Monday. I tended to work from noon till midnight, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. That meant if you wanted to go out for a date or drink beer with your buddies, impossible. It's like double whammy. I did what anyone would do with five years of education and experience running a bar and that, I quit and went and drove a bus in the Rocky Mountains. Dave Gainer (00:13:52): My parents. My parents are awesome and they're a big part of my story too. They said, "Do you have a plan?" I said no and they let me go off to the mountains. Eventually I add up in an MBA in Toronto. This is how carefully I planned my career. I had a buddy who was going to school there in an MBA. He said, "You should come on out." I had a brother that live there and he's like, "You can stay in my basement." And so I went off to school, got an MBA degree and as luck would have it, got a job at Accenture, it was called Andersen Consulting at the time. That was a great job. It was a good way to break into industry. They taught me a lot of things, how to be a really good manager, how to do hiring, how to break down a work plan, how to represent your stuff in front of people. It was great. I worked there for a lot of years, became a manager and then ran into another problem, which is cool company. You got to do lots of fun things. There was a point in my life where I had an apartment in Vancouver, BC, an apartment in San Jose and an apartment in Munich. It sounds super glamorous, but it's this other problem if you're on the road 260 days a year, you never see anyone. You still can't get a date. I had that in common with the journalists. I quit that and ended up at Microsoft because I wanted to be around interesting technical problems and people trying to do great things, but I didn't want to travel anymore. That was the path. There's funny things that we can talk about as we talk today that I pluck from all of those experiences. Because it turns out you learn a lot running a bar, you learn a lot driving a tour bus. A lot of that is surprisingly applicable in a corporate software job. Thomas LaRock (00:15:14): I need to know, how did driving a tour bus help you with your position at Microsoft today? Dave Gainer (00:15:22): Couple things. The variant of the job I had was great, because the company I worked for, they had this whole business model of, normally when you put a tour through the Canadian Rockies, that's why I was working, [inaudible 00:15:33] all these beautiful places for anyone that's ever been there. You have a driver on the bus and then you have someone that sits there and knows all the geography and natural history and flora and fauna and animals and does the entertaining and educating. We're going to make ourselves money because we're only going to have one of those, so the driver's going to do both of those things. It was great. My dad grew up in that area, so I knew a lot about it anyway. Dave Gainer (00:15:53): And so on one hand it's a great job. You have no boss. You spend six days puttering from place to place. You stay in the same nice hotels with the people you're taking around. They're all on holidays. They're super happy. But you have to learn how to communicate with a wide range of people, tell stories, be entertaining, keep attention, read the room, read the vibe. I would say from perspective of communications inside the context of companies or customers, it was wonderful practice for the 12 months I did that. Yeah, you're basically on the mic eight hours a day, making sure that it's all working and what you're trying to say. Dave Gainer (00:16:23): And so I think in some funny way that helped me become a better, storyteller's the word you hear a lot these days in the computer industry, but just able to go in and grab some people. Some days it would be a bunch of Australians that were all rowdy and just wanting to laugh. And then you'd get the bus full of British folks that were super cerebral and wanted to know like the details of the geography. You had to figure out how to meet people where they are, keep them focused and make them happy. Rob Collie (00:16:46): All the while conducting the conversation with them in the rear view mirror, while not driving the bus off of some thousand meter cliff [inaudible 00:16:54]. Dave Gainer (00:16:55): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:16:56): Just [inaudible 00:16:57] degree of difficulty. Dave Gainer (00:16:59): I did scrape up my fair share buses, but it was all very unexciting things. I'd pull up in front of the hotel and not notice a rock that I was supposed to go around quite as much and then I'd crunch in the side of the bus. Rob Collie (00:17:09): One time rented an RV and they told us, this is 95% of the damage to these RVs, is people pulling out of a gas station don't realize that the back end of it when they turn right is going to swing out to the left and smash into the island. Dave, did you know that my two job offers that I got down to out of college were Accenture and Microsoft? Dave Gainer (00:17:33): No, I don't think I did know that. Rob Collie (00:17:33): It was still Andersen at the time. Subconsciously I'm like, nah, Dave's got that covered. I'll meet him in a few years and he'll bring that with him and I'll just go get started at Microsoft. Dave Gainer (00:17:45): But clearly we're going to meet one way or another. Rob Collie (00:17:46): Apparently. Because Excel was pulling us both. I had no idea. Do you know that I one time, Dave, told a manager at Microsoft before we met that I would, for example, I would never go to work on something like Excel? I just was so derisive about it. Like, no, that's so beneath me, I would never go work on something like Excel, and Excel is sitting over there in the corner like this giant attract of gravity going, we will see young Skywalker. You're orbiting in, you just have no idea. Yeah. Okay. The programming of the Blackjack simulator, that's a flag, right? That you were doing that even while you were thinking, I'm going to go be a journalist. Nothing that sophisticated in my middle school or elementary school years for sure Dave Gainer (00:18:34): That was high school. Honestly I look back at those days and think, boy, life could have gone in all sorts of different directions because I remember bringing that thing home and wasn't like anyone instructed it, and I just figured it out. I watch my kids today, they're at the age I am and the programming they've learned to do. It really is, I think there's moments in your life when your brain's just ready for these things, and then it takes off. I don't even know why 21. I didn't really play 21 beyond what any normal teenage kid at the time did. Rob Collie (00:19:00): It just seemed like attractable problem to program. Dave Gainer (00:19:03): Yep. It's funny. I remember my first spreadsheet experience. And so I head to off to Toronto, which at the time was in the middle of a real estate boom and rent was really expensive. And so I needed money. When I got to MBA school, they were looking for someone to be the proctor of the computing lab, the MBA computing lab. I thought that's a pretty fancy title. It basically amount to sitting in the computing lab, answering questions for all the people that didn't know how to use computers particularly well. But I remember the first day I went in and thought, okay, I know how to use Word perfect. I had heard about Harvard Graphics. So I loaded up, played with it a bit and figured it out. And then I opened up Lotus 1-2-3. Dave Gainer (00:19:38): I'd never seen a spreadsheet before. I saw this grid and I swear, for 10 minutes I tried to find something useful to do with this application. I couldn't, so I just closed [inaudible 00:19:47]. I said, I guess if something comes up there I'll have to just wing it. That was my first moment with a spreadsheet. Now, of course in MBA school they eventually make you do things like build income statements and balance sheets and value derivatives. I got pretty darn good at it. But at the beginning, I still remember that, here's an app and it was just not apparent what to do with it. Everything else had a metaphor that was human understandable. We knew what a slide was if you'd ever taken a camera and used it, you knew the piece of paper was. But just empty rows and columns, what are you going to do with that? Rob Collie (00:20:15): I remember AppleWorks for the Apple II. It had a word processor, a spreadsheet and a database. I had the same experience. I could never figure out what the spreadsheet and the database were good for. It's just like AppleWorks. That's that thing that comes with the word processor and there's a other two things that no one uses. My dad one time asked me, came home and said, look, "Son, at work we've sent a bunch of change orders out to a bunch of different contractors over time, and for each change order, we have the list of contractors we sent to, but we don't have a list of, by contractor, which change orders they received. It's just, we're not organized that way." He's like, "If I gave you the list of all these things, the way that we have it, could you give it back to me the other way?" Rob Collie (00:21:02): Instinctively, I said, "Yeah. That's got to be what the other parts of AppleWorks are for." I still couldn't figure it out. Eventually I had to go back to him in shame and say, "I can't help you." Imagine how easy that would be today, that same problem. What I tell people is that sooner or later in their business career, in any career, any office career, you are going to cross paths with a spreadsheet. You're going to cross paths with Excel. Most people bounce off in terror. They bounce off of the Excel collision. But one out of 15 sticks. You were being forced to stick because you were in an MBA school, but most people's real collision with spreadsheets happens not in in a classroom, not when they're a student, it happens when they're in some other job. Do you recall like any of your emotional reaction to it? Dave Gainer (00:21:54): I can't say I honestly sat around MBA computing lab saying I love this application, but I think as far as the homework we had to do, that was the one that was borderline pleasurable. Yeah, we'd have to write papers. That's fine. But working with it was fun. I once read somewhere might have been Joel on Software, Joel Spolsky. He was actually an Excel program manager many, many, many, many years ago, like on the Excel 95 release or something. He wrote a pretty interesting blog post once saying at some point something sparked in his head about spreadsheets and that they were just like a very generic data structure. They were grids organized into a pad of grids. That was a light bulb for him because he joined Excel thinking this is for accountants to do accounting work. He left saying, this is really just a generic data structure where anything is possible. He was making a bigger point about some other app he was building, but that's the piece of that stuck with me. Dave Gainer (00:22:44): That was the thing I enjoyed about it. When I was younger I was pretty into creative stuff. I'd spend as much time drawing and painting as I did goofing around with technology. I haven't done that in 150 years probably since I got into high school. But I think Excel, I enjoy in part, this is a spreadsheet point, certainly Excel because I'm responsible for it. Because it allows you to be very expressive and solve problems and model things. I remember once the Excel team did a big piece of user research, they do these things called baselines where they go talk to 200 different people. Again, to get back to my university degrees, it's a very ethnographic thing where you go when you study people and how they work with technologies. Dave Gainer (00:23:22): The funny thing that they came back with was, 50% of people, and these numbers aren't perfectly right, but it's about a half and half split, find Excel intimidating, but they understand it's a professional tool. The other 50% find it very creative, a very creative tool. And so that caught a lot of people off guard because like what? No, that's Adobe Photoshop or something like that. But the point that landed with me is, once you figure out what this grid is about and a bit of how to use it, it really is just a canvas upon which to scratch or you can put together mathematical models, mechanical models. It really is a creative tool. I think that's the part of spreadsheeting whether it was back in the MBA days with Lotus 1-2-3 or with Excel, that sticks to this day. I think there's part of that, which is as soon as people get over some skills gap, then they fall into this other category of, yeah, this is a canvas that I'm going to use to do my work, it's not a challenging tool that I find difficult. Rob Collie (00:24:14): Obviously, I'm completely on side for this. It's a blank canvas with a little bit of structure and a whole lot of capability. There's a point at which you knew let's say six people, knew them really well, after a while futures were anonymously handed one of their spreadsheets and you're asked, "Who did this?" You're going to know who did it. You can look at it and go, oh, that's a Rob. Look at that. Oh, there's that little flourish there with the... I see that. Look at that offset or whatever. It's not just about personal style, there's this thing that you're bringing into existence. The world gets something new that never existed before after you sit down and do it. And so sometimes it's just like, you just can't help but smile after you've created this thing. You've seen our wheel of inquisition, right? Dave Gainer (00:24:59): I've heard you describe it. Rob Collie (00:25:00): Dave, it's got realistic physics. Realistic and yet still predictable. Dave Gainer (00:25:06): Well, if something's worth doing Rob, it's worth doing well. Rob Collie (00:25:09): It's worth doing well, that's right. We're burying the lead a little bit here in a really cheesy way. It's about what I learned from you. One of my earliest memories of you was before I ever worked for you. I had been at this point in my career, I had been in a transitional phase in terms of the types of interview questions I've been asking. Now at that point, there had been a long tradition at Microsoft predating us that there were a lot of brain teases being asked in interviews back then. In fact, there were websites, when I interviewed at Microsoft, there were websites that helped you scout the Microsoft interviews ahead of time with their particular brain teasers and things like that. And so if you were clever, you found your own brain teasers to fit in with this. Rob Collie (00:25:52): And so I had some of my own brain teas that I asked people that I'm pretty sure weren't on these websites. But over time I'd started to get the impression that maybe these weren't the best gauge of whether someone could actually do the job. I'd started to ask a different question that I had seen some other people asking and I really like this other style, but again, there were still so many people and very influential people sometimes, not always but sometimes, that were still doing the brain teaser style. And so I had flipped a coin on this interview loop and I had gone with a brain teaser question. And so I walk into your office, I'm prepared to tell you about this person's performance on the brain teaser. I didn't know what I was about to walk into, which was, I started to explain the brain teaser question. It was very clear, you made it pretty clear that first of all, you didn't really think this was a good judge of whether this person could do the job. Rob Collie (00:26:40): I was crushed, because, A, I was already on this path to changing my ways, and to be called out on something that I had secretly already been debating myself, it felt like I wasn't I wasn't even getting full credit for who I was. You and I didn't know each other at all at this point, really. It also took the wind out of my sails a little bit because I was prepared to really break down this person's performance on the brain teaser. I went ahead and did that. Dave Gainer (00:27:09): I'm at a disadvantage here because you have this memory that is special. It's amazing. You can pull things out that are long past any recollection I have. I'm like, I don't know, maybe that happened, maybe it didn't. I have no recollection. The same can pull movie lines out of the 10 million movies you've seen and I can't even remember one. Rob Collie (00:27:28): I don't want people to get the impression that I have some amazing memory. What I really have is a snapshot memory. There's certain moments in life where this snapshot goes off. My overall recall is relatively poor, but I do have this really intense snapshot memory. I mean, that hurt. That interaction was painful. It made an impression. Dave Gainer (00:27:54): Okay. Let's try this one. Do you remember when I swung down to your office, you were on the first floor in building 17, I was on the second floor. You're off on the XML gang, I was Mr. Excel person. I came down to try to suggest to you that maybe the thing you're putting in the Excel product should probably pick up a few of the design patterns in Excel, so it was less of a alien foreign thing. Do you remember that discussion? Rob Collie (00:28:18): No, I have no recollection of that whatsoever. No, counselor. No. I mean, I honestly don't which I think is telling. Dave Gainer (00:28:28): I guess maybe what we're discovering is, you and I remember different snapshots. Rob Collie (00:28:31): That's right. Dave Gainer (00:28:32): Because that was one where I sat down and I was very calmly saying, here's my reasoning and we're trying to build this thing and whatever the reasoning was to say, let's make this more like Excel and less like something you want living in Excel. You looked at me and said something along the lines of, look, you're not going to change my mind so I think we're wasting our time here. Do you want to keep talking or not? Thomas LaRock (00:28:52): That sounds like Rob. Rob Collie (00:28:53): That does sound like me, yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:28:54): That tracks. Rob Collie (00:28:55): I mean, yeah, let's just cut to the chase. Actually, I really had... Let's be fair. We're talking about a much younger... Rob Collie (00:29:03): Let's be fair, we're talking about a much younger version. Dave Gainer (00:29:04): Oh yeah, and that was a funny one, because I remember walking back upstairs thinking, okay, I'm going to need a different strategy on this guy. You make a good point too, which is like, we've all changed a ton. The interview thing, if we had that same interaction today, it would be wildly different. Rob Collie (00:29:17): In the end I came around to seeing things your way, and I'm a much better professional and probably even better person because of it. It's just that at the time, I was still in the camp of like, oh, you don't understand this is too advanced for you or it's like, oh, he doesn't get XML or whatever. Like no, Dave kind of gets everything, he gets the people, and the burden of proof is on you to explain why the technology is going to help the people. I kind of had it backwards, I'd like to tell people that I'm a recovering software engineer. You're never fully cured, but you try to make amends, you try to redeem yourself over time. In hindsight, these questions, these brain teasers, a lot of had been very, very, very good tests as to whether or not someone was a good algorithmic programmer. But the job you and I were doing, it had become very widespread at the company really wasn't programming at all. Rob Collie (00:30:13): Were these questions, good questions for the job that we did? I think in the final analysis, we all decided that they weren't, that these other questions were or better. To this day, this is really, really, really strong and powerful lesson for me, and it wasn't just that I learned it from you. I learned it from my own experience as well throughout all of this was that when you're interviewing, you have to do the work, as an interviewer, you have to construct an interview question or a set of interview questions that simulate the actual job that people are going to have to do. There's no point being fancy about it, and trying to divine it from all kinds of other little clever things around the edges. Just go straight at the thing that they actually have to do, and design a good test for that. That has been one of the crucial ingredients in our company today is our interview process, our screening process. Rob Collie (00:31:09): It very much derives from this philosophy that I was already kind of working on when you and I had that fateful encounter, but it was a real sharp turning point that day. I'm grateful for that, because it steered me in a different direction. By the time I ended up reporting to you, I think I'd already sort of worked those demons out. Thomas LaRock (00:31:28): You guys are walking around one thing that you haven't gotten to yet. And what's the origin story with you two? How'd you come to work together, and how's Rob end up reporting to you Dave? Rob Collie (00:31:37): Is pretty much accident, right? Dave Gainer (00:31:40): Yeah. It's like everything just stuff happens, and it ends up. Rob and I both ended up at Microsoft through very different route. Rob you're hired right out of university, right? Rob Collie (00:31:50): That's right, yeah. Dave Gainer (00:31:51): Sorry, I'm being Canadian again. You're hired at college. Rob Collie (00:31:55): Yeah, I translated. Dave Gainer (00:31:55): Yeah. But they are universities. So like maybe at some other part of this podcast, you can explain why there are universities, but you go to college, I've never bothered to figure that out. Anyway, I came in a much more secure to route. We ended up just sort of working in the same group, and over time the kind of things we're working on intersected, and at some point. What I don't remember is if you join the team, maybe you're a lead and they stop building the product you're working on, put you on the Excel team as a lead or something like that. Rob Collie (00:32:20): So you'd been in charge of the SharePoint less control in the same release where I was in charge of that beautiful XML integration into Excel, that just feels so natural and everyone uses it. And yeah. Okay. And so for some reason, the powers that be were really impressed with your work and not so impressed with mine, and so they put you in charge of Excel. I had no ambition or hope, I wasn't expecting to be in charge of Excel, so that's more just a joke. But it puts you in charge of Excel, and then for some reason, and this boggles my mind to this day, given my performance up until that point, everyone came to me and said, "Hey, we want you to be in charge of the BI features as a lead, not as a group program manager, which is what you are." But they wanted me to lead the BI features, and looking back, I'm like, why would they have picked that version of me? I can understand picking today's version of me, or even a version of me three or four years later. Rob Collie (00:33:17): But that version of me, I feel like there just weren't enough bodies around or something, like I was way too raw. Do you remember any of this? Dave Gainer (00:33:26): Yeah. Well, I remember being pulled off of that SharePoint effort a bit early because they wanted somebody to go. At the time our boss had gone and signed up with analysis services folks and said, Excel should do more in the BI space. So I got plucked off early and got told, go think about this and try and figure out how the Excel match will be made. And so I whiled away on that for like six months, and some point we hired Alan Faulting, and I don't know if you joined us before or after that? Rob Collie (00:33:53): I hired Alan. Dave Gainer (00:33:54): Okay. Rob Collie (00:33:54): I interviewed people for a long time for that job and was actually reaching the point of frustration where I'm like, "Maybe I'm holding my bar too high, I need somebody, maybe I need to lower my standards." And that at that moment, Alan walked in the door and like, oh yeah, this is why we hold our standards high is because of Alan. Dave Gainer (00:34:15): Another thing I want to say Rob, besides the fact that you have an exceptionally well done podcast is, how to totally impressed I am at what you have gone and done post your career at Microsoft, and I sort of told you this briefly in a text a couple months ago. Holy smokes, it's one thing to have a job and do all the things you did at Microsoft, then you ended up participating in some pretty important stuff, but then you went and built a company from scratch that's big and amazing and forward leaning. That's amazing, I'm super impressed, you'd done a tremendous job. So nice work on the podcast, but really nice work, building a thing from scratch, because I don't think that's easy and I don't think most of us could do that. I look at that and say, boy, I'm not sure I would have the moral fortitude to even give that a whirl. I can get at some things, but I'm not sure I'd be good enough at a bunch of things to do that, so nice work. Rob Collie (00:35:01): Well, thank you. It turns out that even I wasn't good enough to do that. You probably listened to the Callen episode, it's one of the things I now tell new hires is to remind them that a single human being in the woods is wolf food, we're just like the most helpless thing on the planet. You get five of us together and you sharpen some sticks, and suddenly the wooly mammoth goes extinct. We are such a collaborative virus, the whole rugged individualism thing or all that no, that's all myth. It's always team, it's always how well you work with others, and it's who you have on your team. I feel fortunate I stayed in the zone long enough to find people that helped me figure it out. Dave Gainer (00:35:49): Have you ever read Sapiens? Rob Collie (00:35:51): I've read half of Sapiens, which is about my batting average for any non-fiction book, by the way. It like 50% is the new 100% for me when it comes to non-fiction books. Dave Gainer (00:36:01): Yeah, somewhere in the first couple chapters, part of the point he makes is sort of the point you're making, which is, there's a chapter where he talks about why are humans different from many other species? And it was the ability to organize themselves around stories, like that was the unique thing. And so, I think you could extend your metaphor there are around like wolf food and packs of five to say it's really about storytelling. I think that you might even think about this one as a work thing, because I was anticipating, maybe Rob will ask me some of the things that I think have helped me be good at this role when I started out as an English student and what does English students do? Well, they read complex of literature, it's funny. I had a prof that used to say, "There's fiction and there's literature, and you shouldn't mistake the two." I'll leave it to the podcast listener to figure that one out. Dave Gainer (00:36:47): And they try and figure out what that means and wrap their head around complex ideas, and then you have to write papers that sort of take them and simplify them and make your own point. It's about communication, taking in complexity and making it simple, and also storytelling. Not in the way of the kind of stuff that you might see on a YouTube video, but it's about rallying people around ideas. I think that's actually been super important in my time at Microsoft in the sense that a lot of I end up doing is reframing things for people, and how you talk about it. And so I think there's something there that goes beyond just five people in the woods getting together, or I think it's how they relate to each other, and the stories they tell. I bet if you do some thinking about you as a leader, even though it's memes and movie quotes and very different, because I tend to be much more dry and dusty about these things. Dave Gainer (00:37:31): But I bet there's an aspect to that, which is how does Rob pull things together or maybe see that outing some of the other people in your company, I don't know. Rob Collie (00:37:38): Storyteller is honestly that's how I was raised, both of my grandfathers were slash are consummate storytellers, those formative years, I grew up with that. Here's a movie quote for you, and get shorty John Travolta's character goes out to LA, he's a mafia soldier. A little bit later in the movies, like he tell someone I'm in the movie business now. And they're like, "You've been here five minutes, you've been a mobster your whole life." He goes, "Yeah, but I was never that into it." And that's kind of how I feel in some ways about my software career. I was struggling, dog paddling a bit for those first gosh, like five years at Microsoft, which is kind of when you and I intersected. I had no idea what my place was, again, I wasn't really into it. I kind of knew that I wasn't really into it, and I was trying to fake it all the time. I learned a whole new way of looking at the world and way of looking at the job, by working with you. Rob Collie (00:38:39): Also imposter syndrome, another one of these really big themes that it's true at our company, it's true on this podcast, we're talking about all the time. Through your eyes I got to slowly see that some of the people that I thought were heroes or the people to emulate actually were doing a lot of harm. Even though, they were really smart. Most of them were smarter than I was and ever will be, they weren't modulating their behavior properly, they weren't being disciplined enough. And so I kind of reinvented myself on your watch, and I didn't expect that. I thought I was going to change you, it shows you how stupid and naive I was like, you're the most stubborn person I've ever met. Dave Gainer (00:39:19): My wife would concur with it, I'm one of the most stubborn people you've ever met. I think one of the most important things I do when I come into the job every day is help the people around me develop and have more impact, it's not all managing. I think this is a place where if you came and work for me now, it would be very, very different experience, since I've grown up a lot as a leader too. But a lot of it is coaching, skill forming, asking questions because that's how you get more out of your folks. At the end of the day, I've been given a bunch of people to go make customers more successful, that's sort of the core of my job. And so a big part of it is how do we put those people in the right conditions, how do we build the right culture and how do we get out of their capabilities. That involves making sure they're getting self- actualization, and learning and doing things that are interesting. Rob Collie (00:40:03): I'm sitting here realizing yet again, first of all, how fortunate I was into crossing paths with you, but also like kind of like everyone deserves this fair shake. Looking back at our interactions before we worked together, I look back and go, "Really?" You had plenty of data on me, things that I look back on and go, oh man, those are not smart things that I was doing. It's very clear to me, I wasn't demonstrating the kind of excellence that I wish I was. But for you to see through that and go, ah, look at the raw material there. I don't think most people can do that, I don't think most people are capable of separating those two things. You've got all of this surface level signal that sort of dominates the field, it dominates the field of vision. I'm positive people were referring to me as a bozo, like behind the scenes, and you saw something different and we're patient and helped me develop. That is not management, that's leadership, that's development. Rob Collie (00:41:01): That's being a good human and holy cow, we need more of that. How do you go about getting to know the people on your team and adapting your approach? Even back then, the two thousands, I noticed you handling people on your team, it was like, you were a different manager for each of us. You did absolutely fit and morph how you handled people, do you have a methodology there? Or how do you go about all that? Dave Gainer (00:41:29): No, I don't have a methodology, that's kind of a funny word even bring up in the context. Rob Collie (00:41:33): You're Mr. Methodology. Dave Gainer (00:41:35): I'm going to open the webpage and look at instruction at five dash seven to see how to like deal Rob Collie. Rob Collie (00:41:40): Okay. Philosophy approach. Dave Gainer (00:41:42): Well, so it goes back, like again, what is our job as leaders? We're given this pool of assets that in the case of software, as some combination of existing brand and customers, but people. And so your job's to get the most out of those assets you can, for the benefit of the customer. I don't know this is something I was ever formally educated on, or again, if I have is lost in the missed the time. This is a discussion I have with a lot of people that work in our teams that are managers, which is, we're all individuals, we are trying to create an environment here where everybody can be their authentic selves at work. I think all it is, is saying like, boy, if I can meet Rob, where he is, as opposed to like asking Rob to snap, to my style and needs and personalities, A, we're going to do better in our communication interaction relationship. And Rob will feel like Rob can be Rob and that he's understood, and certainly a discussion I have with managers of my team from time to time. Dave Gainer (00:42:39): Go figure out the people on the team, spend time to try and understand them and what kind of communication style they have, what they're interested in all those things. And then the more that you can sort of adapt how you work with them to their world view and style, the better it'll be overall. I think it's just the philosophy I've always had. Rob Collie (00:42:59): You're a methodical person. What you just explained is essentially a very analytical way of looking at things, but without all of the coldness that usually goes with the word analytical. What truly matters? Dave Gainer (00:43:14): Yeah. I'm not analytical at all, I'm extremely intuitive. I know you're very analytical, because you come from a math and logic and philosophy background. Rob Collie (00:43:23): No, I'm also very intuitive, I'm not nearly the left brain thinker that I thought I was. I got through high school science and math based on raw intuition alone, and then when things started to get really dicey, like in Diffy Q and stuff like that, it turned out and I just didn't speak to me. Calculus one in high school, okay, that was kind of the limits of where intuition can take you. But I pressed blue on the personality test, the analytical, like I put that hat on when I came to work quite a bit. Dave Gainer (00:43:51): I pressed green on that thing, and so no one knows what these colors mean, the point being I'm centered in relationships. Some of this is just go put yourself in the position of that other person and then say, how would I like the world to unfold? And that's sort of my coaching to people is, just sit down in their chair. Because there's people that are going to show up and say, I'm all about the work. So I'm going to sit down and we're going to start the meeting, and it's going to be a whatever you're working on, feature, performance business case. And then you have people on the flip side that want to have relationships and understand those things, and if you can take people and say, think about how you would want to be treated in this interaction, then flip that around. And as leader, that's probably not a bad way to approach things of. Rob Collie (00:44:30): All the people I've with in my entire career, I've never worked with someone with as many clear principles as you. You have these guidelines, rules, you have so many of them. The word methodology or philosophy or whatever, I know it's difficult when you're just talking about what it's like to be you. You've always been you, a morphing and evolving version of yourself. But from the outside, I think it's a lot more striking as some of the things that make you different. Here are a few that I remember, ready for this? You've mentioned a bunch already, think about how your people would like to be treated and treat them that way. We could go through and put bullet points in like 11 of the things that you've said so far, tack them up on the whiteboard is like pearls of wisdom according to Dave. You're not trying to write a book, this is just how you operate. From back in the day when I worked for you, you had all kinds of things. So here's an example, make the easy thing easy to do. If there's a more complicated thing to in the software, they can climb the learning curve for that. But don't pollute the easy thing with the complicated thing, which of course, computer scientists only want to do it the other way, they want the "elegance". So for example, we were doing the conditional formatting dialogue, and it had been like a rules engine dialogue for years, and we were going to make that even more complicated. And you said, "Well, what about just selecting some cells and slapping a data bar format on that? Can't we just have like a button on the ribbon that does that, and then still have this rules dialogue." That was kind of groundbreaking for me, I took that principle with me. You had other ones, like if you have to decide between two features for the product, as far as you can tell, they're completely equal in value. Pick the one that's more visual, the one that lends itself to screenshots better. Because it's easier for people to see on the back of the box or whatever what the value of it is. Rob Collie (00:46:29): You had other principles, like let's not spread ourselves so thin and build 80% of a zillion different features, let's build cohesive features around common themes where when we're done, we can look at it and we can say, we're proud of it. There's even a test, like a validation for it at the end. I had never encountered someone at Microsoft really even since who's like that, now I've tried to be like that. I think people who work with me, if they're listening to this, they go, oh, that's where he got it. I'm doing this all the time, but all the time for me is like 20% the rate at which you do it. Whatever we want to call it, that's something that to me is very different about you, and different in a very valuable and positive way. Dave Gainer (00:47:21): Well, I appreciate the comments, I wrote down a few things as you're talking. One of my principles, and I don't have a pithy way of saying this is, everyone's an individual so like figure that out. And so you're saying the computer scientists did this, you're drawing this distinction. I've met probably in my life now thousands of computer scientists that were not like that, that were sort of super customer focused, I don't try and stratify the world. It sounds like there's computer scientists and then there's us, and I don't really see it like that. You know what I mean? Rob Collie (00:47:47): Just to clarify, I mean the person that identifies as a computer scientist, before they identify as a human, before they identify as a professional that's building software, those people exist. I kind of came from that factory, I was a little bit defective. It wasn't 100% with me, but that's kind of where I'd come from, originally. Dave Gainer (00:48:09): Some of this might just be hard wiring. I think even before I started go to university, I always just loved quotations. Maybe it's my version of like movies for you. Rob Collie (00:48:17): It is. Dave Gainer (00:48:18): If you go look at my bookshelf, I used to go buy books like Oxford's book of parables, and Oxford's book of quotations and I'd read it. I found a book the other day that I had university where I'd write down interesting quotations, since then move that to a doc where I've got all these things written down. And so I think there's just a part of my way, that's how my brain organizes things. I'd say to other things, I went through life learning from other people. There was this partner, the consulting company I started out with, he was awesome. This is back when PCs were just emerging, and you still did projections with actual overheads as opposed to PowerPoint plugged into things. But he had this binder, and we'd have these project reviews where we'd be like some giant project and we'd see how it's going. This binder was just full of slides that would have a picture, and a sentence on it, and he'd literally pull these things out and slap them up on the overhead at the right time. Dave Gainer (00:49:05): He'd throw it up, and it would say, "When you're in a hole, stop digging." That was his way of just getting the 50 people that were working on this project to sort of stop and say, okay, something's not going right, and you're thrashing and you're not really dealing with that, so how about we just press pause. So there's role models, and I think a lot of these things just developed over time is again, you see things and my philosophy is treat everything as a new situation and evaluate it for what it is. Maybe to tie these things together, so how do you motivate people to things differently? Well, you reframe it for them. I think a lot of these things is just reframing it in ways that hopefully are simple, and because they're simple or self evident that you can motivate some people to move in a different direction. This's another question I get is like, I want to become a manager someday or I'm a manager and I want to get better at it. Dave Gainer (00:49:49): A big part of my thing is then work for a lot of people, and pay very close attention to what they do. Because we all do things that are really, really good, and then we all do things that are less good me included. If you sort of make a study of that, you can pluck the pieces that are laudable and try and reemphasize the pieces that are less laudable, and that's going to develop you a ton. Rob Collie (00:50:10): That's something else that I trace back to sort of that era in my life is where it begins, is thinking of myself as the Borg from Star Trek, going from environment to environment, manager to manager, colleagues, coworkers, et cetera, and trying to harvest the best habits of the people around me, and add them to my repertoire. If in the end, you're just sort of like this collection of all the best things you've been exposed to, plus a little bit of your own secret sauce. And that's not a bad place to end up, that can be a very powerful thing, and it's worked very well for me. Of those principles, there's one that I use pretty frequently still. I don't think this is one that would've risen to the concept of principle for you, but there was a conversation, basically the gist of it was someone on the team was talking about, we could do it that way. We could solve that problem, we could make that feature work the way that you wanted it to, but it'd just be really, really, really complicated, be a lot of work. You said, again, snapshot moment. Rob Collie (00:51:11): You said something like, "Well, let me, let me tell you how this works. Customers trade us money for us to solve problems for them, we don't get to make our problems their problems, that's not how this relationship works." Do you remember saying that? Is that something you say frequently or was that a one off that I snapshotted have been parroting ever since? Dave Gainer (00:51:33): I don't know if I use that phrase a bunch, I read something a while ago that's sort of similar. I think it was off Twitter or something like this, but the comment was, the easiest companies to disrupt to the ones that put the needs of their strategy ahead of their needs of their customers. And so I don't say that to people that I think it's just a good way to frame, we've got to organize these things around customer success, not around what's personally valuable to us. In my role now, I'm trying to get a bunch of smart, creative people organized around making customers successful. We really try and actually use data for that. When you and I were PMs back in the day, we were hired to make could bunch of decisions in the absence of information. But when I was hired at the company, one of the very first things I always did is we did a bunch of customer research, because we needed to sort of understand how customers were using the product was working on. Dave Gainer (00:52:21): And so what did we do? We wrote out a bunch of questions, we typed them up, and then we printed off 10,000 copies and paid someone to put 10,000 copies in envelopes, and sent them out to the world, and we got about a thousand of them back. The internet was just sort of a thing that was coming along, and so that was the state of the art on how you collected information. So if that's the best information you have, you have to go find people like Rob and Dave that can take very complete information and try and figure things out, and design some things and ship them, and hope it works out. You've talked about you ship things, then you get feedback five years from now. Like that's not at all what we do anymore, and my joke is, it used to be our job was to try and figure out things because we had no information, now our job is not to do that. Dave Gainer (00:53:03): Because between the customer systems we've set up, the telemetry we have about what happens in the product, the way we build software, all that uncertainty is taken away. And you have real time feedback, and you know if what you're trying to do is succeeding. And so, it's less about evaluating features at my level and saying, hey, we have to go take the product its direction. Can you people spend a bunch of time in customers and figure out what we need to do and then start building some stuff, iterating, experimenting, and learning and get there. You had a podcast with Ken our MVP friend, I love all the podcasts, but there was part of that I felt really good about, because he talked about how customer focus the Excel team had become. It's not just the Excel team, it's sort of the way we do things these days. Which is, it starts with a customer it's focused on the customer, we collect data, we build these features, we get them out in early rings of validation, we watch very carefully what's happening. Dave Gainer (00:53:56): Quite often, our designs were not right and we pull them back in, change them or address them, we tweak them. Part of the exit criteria is people are successfully using it to do things they could not do before, the worlds just so different. I don't really have that anymore, partly because I play a different role in the company. I'm not doing those sort of things, but partly just because of the way we do things in software development these days doesn't even lend themselves to those sort of discussions as much. Rob Collie (00:54:19): Well, that's certainly better. But what's funny is that I think I'm very fortunate though that I worked at my Microsoft in the era of incomplete information, because most of the world isn't like that, most of the world doesn't have instrumentation. The software world, yes. Okay, great. Everything's gone instrumented in the software, but so much of the world, the information is always incomplete. Dave Gainer (00:54:42): Yap. Rob Collie (00:54:43): The training I got at Microsoft, like it was just crazy, like the pace we had had to move. You're making double digit decisions every day on how the product behaves, and those decisions largely stick and you don't have time to go commission a research project. The ability to extrapolate from principles and incomplete information and move fast has been a real credit it to me in the outside world, even as you're getting instrumented internally and not needing those skills as much. The bootcamp that I got in that 15 years that I was there has been incredibly valuable, outside the wire. Going back to that customers trade us money to solve problems, that is essentially the whole mission here at P3. I didn't know how broken the BI consulting industry was until I saw that it could be better. When I was goofing around with Power Pivot back in 2010, I didn't expect it to be that good. And then as I was using it, I'm like, just to write a blog, I was just trying to write a blog, I wasn't trying to discover the next great thing. Rob Collie (00:55:53): When I went, "Oh my God, look at all of the things that are broken in BI, and this fixes them," just down the line, the BI consulting industry has for years, forever, made all of the problems with their business model. All the problems with the software, all of it, has just always made it the customer's problem. The customer pays dearly for all of that. Our dangerous little idea here, you mentioned things, you weren't sure that they were going to work. You weren't even sure if you could solve the problem, even in a computing manner. We weren't really 100% sure we could do it, but we were sure that we were going to find out. We were stubborn about, can we take all those problems, solve them internally, insulate the customer from those problems, and deliver the best possible experience for the customer. Rob Collie (00:56:43): We have another set internally, which is it's really one that's mostly me, when I say we, which is just constantly saying the sports team that just won the super bowl, they're, "Nobody believes in us, nobody gave us a chance." Because we have had to absorb a lot of doubt, sometimes internal doubt. We've had people on the team over the years that turned out they didn't really believe in what we were doing, they just kept waiting for us to switch to the more traditional business model. Then those people aren't here anymore, I mean, they eventually voted with their feet. We've reached the point there's not really much limit to how we can scale, that's a crazy thing to say. As a professional services firm, we are not really sure that there's a max size for us and boy, what a gratifying process that has been. Again, in some small part, it traces back to you saying, "Oh no, no. Let me explain to you how this works." Dave Gainer (00:57:40): It's such a funny thing, because when you say that, I'm like, okay, you and I had this interaction at a time where it all made sense. But I can also imagine someone listening to this, like how is that insightful at all? It's this funny thing of course that's why companies exist. You guys have also had to iterate, adjust, react to feedback, try things, they don't work you back up, you try other things. I feel like in some sense, if I get again ... Dave Gainer (00:58:03): ... back up, you try other things. I feel like in some sense, if I yet again, philosophical on you, same process, different thing. You're trying to build a company, but you're trying to build a company that's very customer centered at its heart and iterating your way there and being very clear about what the measurements are and what success looks like, right? Rob Collie (00:58:17): That's true. We're much more on the monthly cadence than the multi-year cadence. We don't have an official monthly milestone of where we remake the company every month or something like that, but there's been a lot of trial and error and refinement and evolution. And looking back on it, it's one of the most gratifying things that you can do is to operate that way and grow that way, as opposed to the old, every three years, we'd make a huge guess and an incomplete effort at that at the way things should be. Rob Collie (00:58:49): So those principles of yours, the things that you say that we use to guide things, now those were sentences that no one would ever disagree with them, right? There's an art to this, which is, people might hear that sentence and go, "Well, that's just dumb. That's just the simplest thing ever. I can't imagine that being all that effective or useful", right? But that's the thing. That is it. That is exactly the spirit of it that I learned, which is, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of things that you can say about how you should be going about your business that all sound right. And maybe they all are right. And none of them sound like genius or rocket science, right? But knowing which ones of those simple statements are actually really important to follow and which are the ones that you can not pay attention to, is a tremendously important art. Rob Collie (00:59:44): Nothing in the end needs to sound like it was super smart, and yet the smart is figuring out which of those things needs the bold button pressed. And again, this is something I have tried to emulate everywhere I have gone since then. Something else I'm "[borging 00:02:05]" from you. If there's value in this for you, it's just hearing a deeply observational person. I am an observational human being, right? I studied you under a microscope all those years, whether you knew it or not. Dave Gainer (01:00:16): I didn't realize I was studied that carefully. Rob Collie (01:00:19): It really was good news for me that I didn't really have a choice but to take you seriously. I mean, you are my manager, right? So you can't succeed if you and your manager aren't aligned on at least some important core principles. And if every idea, every plan that you have for things that you are going to do in the product, if they have to go through a certain person for approval, well, you better get good at communicating with and anticipating what that person is going to... what their reactions are going to be. The thing I wanted to highlight though, is that the principles that you fall in, in your business, if you're doing it right, they never sound like obscure, mystical genius. That's not how it is. If you're looking for that, you're looking in the wrong place. You need to find the simple things that you can all get behind and you can't pick everything. Rob Collie (01:01:10): It's a prioritization between those things that you can use to guide yourself. We also had a really bad habit back in the day of, whenever we were talking about features and capabilities, we would always formulate it as a yes, no question. Should we add this to the product? And by formulating it as yes, no, we were already baking in friction and failure, because by the time something got to the point where we were asking that question, it was a good enough idea that the answer was probably yes. Rob Collie (01:01:41): As simple as it sounds, you broke me and I think a lot of other people like me, of that habit and got us much more into the, "No, no, no, no, no. Not yes, no. We get so many things to do and we have to rank them against each other". And that's the question, is it more valuable than this other thing? Not, yes no. Very, very, very simple. Again, you have no idea to what degree that has successfully impacted in a positive direction everything I've done since then. I describe to people a lot of times like, "Hey, you know what? I'm really just a gainer franchise". Dave Gainer (01:02:21): I don't know if franchise is the right word. You're going to have to come up with another word. Rob Collie (01:02:26): All right. Dave Gainer (01:02:26): Because I was your manager, so I'm willing to- Rob Collie (01:02:28): Affiliate. Dave Gainer (01:02:28): I'm willing to accept that I have some responsibility for how you developed as a person. When we spent time together, I couldn't do a podcast like this. I don't think I could have gone and built the business you built, and so like, sorry, but it's more complex than that. Rob Collie (01:02:41): How about this? I was your student. I think that's a good way to put it. In the same way that Mark Cuban was Wayne Winston's student. Like, I don't think Mark Cuban is a Wayne Winston franchise, but he was a student. Dave Gainer (01:02:57): Oh, I didn't realize that was the tie. Rob Collie (01:02:59): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (01:02:59): Oh, yeah. Dave Gainer (01:03:00): Okay, interesting. Did I miss that? Because I listened to that podcast. Did you guys talk about that or is... I don't remember that. Rob Collie (01:03:05): Now that came out in Twitter after the fact when Tom tagged Mark. Dave Gainer (01:03:09): Oh, okay. Rob Collie (01:03:10): So apparently Mark sneaked into Wayne's class when he wasn't allowed to be there yet. Freshmen weren't allowed in his class, but Wayne let him stay. That left an impression, I think. Okay. So I didn't know at the time we crossed paths, that I needed the type of input that I was going to get from you. Your style of looking at the world and the way that you mentor people and the way that you try to get people to sort of align their thinking and help them be effective, it was the first and maybe the last time that I've encountered someone with your style, and it made a profound impact on me. And again, I didn't expect it. I just thought, "Hey, this is going to be another stop on my tour of managers that I have to listen to". Rob Collie (01:03:57): Yeah, I was young. So if I can try to characterize it for people who are listening, which is awkward, because I'm talking about someone who we're interviewing at the same time, but there was never anything that masqueraded as advanced or magical or some super intelligent thing, right? And there was a lot of that in my career up until that point. I had experienced a lot of the other kind of deliberately mystical type of leadership. All that faded away working with you and it came down to a bunch of really simple ideas and simple sentences that, if you take them out of context, no one would think they were all that valuable. You'd be like, "Well, like of course". Almost everything I learned from you, if I just tell people one of those things, they go, "Yeah, duh. Of course it's like that", right? Rob Collie (01:04:54): But then I go, "Yeah, that's not the thing though. What's really important here is that this principle, if you follow it, it really makes a difference. It's one of those simple things that everyone's going to agree with when they hear it, and yet no one lives by it", right? And when you go about picking these things and living by them and acting according to them, it changes your entire life. It's crazy. That's got to be a little awkward to hear you summarized to you. "It's not for you, Dave. I'm summarizing it for the audience". Okay? So it's all good. Dave Gainer (01:05:31): Well, one thing I used to say to you all the time was, "Perception's a reality". So you can summarize me however you want, because it's your perception. Rob Collie (01:05:38): Okay. Hold on. I just said to everybody that there wasn't any mystical shit and then you come out with perceptions of reality. It's like, "Oh God". You're like the Sphinx from Mystery Men suddenly. Come on, try to stay on brand, Dave. Dave Gainer (01:05:55): Sorry about that, Rob. It's definitely a lot easier to say things than do them. Every company in the world will say, "We need to be customer focused or be customer obsessed". There's a very wide range of actual realities with all those companies saying the same thing, and so I think one thing that's always been important is be clear about what you're doing as a group, as a team and in individual, and then go really focus in doing that. Articulation and principles have to be the same as outcomes and it's very easy for that kind of stuff not to happen. Dave Gainer (01:06:28): My time at Accenture, they had lots of wonderful training programs. One of their lines was, "Think straight, talk straight", right? Like go look at things, see them for what they are, sort it out, write a course of action and then do that. No drama, no fuss, no muss, and I think some of that probably rubbed off on me anyway. Some of that probably fit in with the worldview I already had. And I think a lot of the interactions you and I had when we were working together were very much in that matter of speaking, right? Rob Collie (01:06:53): Yeah. Oh absolutely. Even some of my most crushing defeats. Yeah, anyway. We don't have to go into that. It's such a hard thing to summarize. You gave me a guide, a how-to, a kit, but it wasn't a kit that I of followed to turn into all of those things that I had struggled with. It was a kit to go and be like an authentic version of myself with very grounded principles and not worrying about trying to act the part. I had been trying to act the part of a Microsoft software engineneer, and it turns out that's kind of silly because that's a million different people. There isn't such a thing, right? First go be the best version of yourself is probably a good place to start, and I wasn't doing that. Dave Gainer (01:07:47): Certainly the most satisfying things I do when I manage or lead people, and I also think it's an important aspect of leadership, is helping people grow and self-actualize. And everybody's different and everybody has some different set of skills and experiences and behaviors and background that they bring forward. And I think the more we can create environments that they can just be that person and that they can have sort of the confidence to do it, the results for them, whoever their customers are, whatever company they're working for, are going to be that much better. And so I have historically spent lots of time on that, working with people. To me, that's every bit as important as, "Hey, let's talk about the product strategy", or, "Let's talk about the latest competitive move", or what have you, right? Because I'm not going to do everything. I'm just a person. Dave Gainer (01:08:35): There's a bunch of people I work with on my team and the more that they can be amazing at what they are and who they are and what they do, that's where the leverage comes in. And you know this now, right? Because you're in charge of a company and it's big and you were saying, "This thing could scale endlessly". The real problem to getting to scale is getting a bunch of human beings that are sort of effective, and there's one playbook, which is hire herds of young people out of university and send them to 12 or 16 weeks of training so they all sort of become the same. The army bootcamp model. Dave Gainer (01:09:03): Or the other model is just help people embrace who they are and their talents. And I think that if you and I had done this podcast 10 years ago, I don't even know if I had the self-awareness to be talking about it like this. Another thing that I found is I've become much more cognizant about what I'm doing. I think a lot of it I was doing anyway, but the whole philosophy behind it and the intentionality of it is much more now so than it was back when you were a manager and I was your boss and we were just figuring things out together. Rob Collie (01:09:28): That's astounding because I think that younger version of you is the most intentional person I've ever known. So you're like, "Oh yeah, I was really amateur back then. I've really gotten intentional now". Like, "Ooh, I need to come do an executive internship or something, I think, just to check this out. I got to see what this looks like". Dave Gainer (01:09:48): Well, I think this is where your background comes into it, right? Part of this is DNA, I think. And part of it just your background and other influences. Like our family has a share of characters like any family, but I got super lucky. I have two amazing parents and they did the most important things right. They let me pursue the things that were interesting, but they always had my back, right? It was sort of this, "We trust you, we respect, but we let you explore". But the other thing is, they were just incredibly good role models. They're honest to a fault, they're both super hard working. They sort of taught us, "Do the right thing, even if it sucks", and I think that's a big part of some of these themes. Rob Collie (01:10:24): Did you listen to the episode we did with Lori Rodriguez, who at the time was with Gartner? Dave Gainer (01:10:30): I'm about a third of the way through that one. Rob Collie (01:10:31): That was a long one because she and I just took off. I think Tom had to go at some point. We ran for like another hour. We talk about the movie Ratatouille and there's this tension in the movie Ratatouille, between the chef that inspired the rat in the first place to cook. And the chef was famous for saying, "Anyone can cook". And then there's this critic, this food critic, very snobby food critic, who plays the villain for like nine tenths of the movie, and he thinks this is just preposterous, right? Anyone can cook. That's just silly. There's clearly a difference between good cooks and bad cooks, right? And in the end, without you ever expecting it, they resolve this tension with a modified version, which is, "A chef can come from anywhere". I'm going to spin this, right? A leader can come from anywhere. Rob Collie (01:11:24): I don't think everyone's a good leader, right? Like we can look around and see plenty of bad leaders, right? Or people that you can't imagine ever being a good leader. We have the ability to differentiate between good leaders and bad leaders, right? There's clearly a difference, but their origin stories... You shouldn't expect the origin stories of good leaders to be somehow homogeneous. There's two or three different themes I'm sort of messing around with in my head for this interview. One of them is again, look at your background. Rob Collie (01:11:55): Like mine, it's very, really funny. We just talked about how intentional you are, but as a youngster, it was more like wandering the earth, like Caine from Kung Fu, right? I'm the same way. I didn't go to grad school because there weren't any checks in my checkbook when I got to the front of the line to take the test, and I'm like, "Well, okay. Well, must be getting a job then". Dave Gainer (01:12:19): Are you serious about that? Rob Collie (01:12:20): I am totally serious about that. I got to the front of the line. I'm like, "Well, there's that Florida Auburn game on today. I clearly was meant to be there instead". So I chalked it up to fate. I didn't want to take that test anyway. That test sucked. Dave Gainer (01:12:34): That is awesome. As different as we are, and we're pretty different in a lot of ways, I think we share that similarity. Because the reason I ended up in an MBA school, as opposed to doing like a master's degree in History, is I didn't get around to finishing the application for the history degree on time so I just never mailed it in. Rob Collie (01:12:48): Yeah. I mean, it is kind of a test of whether you really care, right? Like, did you really want it? You can't even fill out the application. Same with me, right? I couldn't be bothered to register for this exam or whatever. The GRE or whatever. Thomas LaRock (01:13:03): G [inaudible 01:13:03]. Rob Collie (01:13:03): I couldn't register for it in advance. I had to do the walk-in and I get to the front and I don't have any checks. I'm like, "Mm, whatever. No big deal". So there went my promising career in operations research that I didn't even understand what that meant. It just seemed like it was a good fit for all the stuff I'd been studying and enjoying at the time. So never got to find out what OR really is about. There you go. There's the path not taken. Hey, you and I played hockey together. There's another thing we did together. We ended up on hockey teams together. If I describe two things to you that they will sound mathematically identical. To the really logical, left brainy analysis, they will sound identical. When you're going to shoot and try to score a goal in hockey, you can try to aim the puck around the goalie, right? You can try to aim the puck in a way that it avoids the goalie, or you could aim the puck in a way that tries to hit the open net. Now these are, in some sense, identical statements, but in practice, there are all the difference in the world. You have to shoot for the net. You have to shoot for the open net. The reason I'm using this metaphor is that everyone brings their own quote, unquote, strengths and weaknesses, to the table. You can talk about mitigating your weaknesses, or you can talk about leveraging your strengths. Rob Collie (01:14:17): What I have found is that leaning into your strengths, you can't ignore your weaknesses. You got to work on those, but you can't go through life just trying to be the absence of these downsides that you might bring. The old saying, "You go to war with the army you've got". Dave Gainer (01:14:30): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:14:31): Today, you lean into the strengths of the people that you have, right? Rather than trying to homogenize them all with a bootcamp, right? Dave Gainer (01:14:41): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:14:41): But when you end up with the smaller teams that run for years and years, like at Microsoft, you have the opportunity to do it the other way. Dave Gainer (01:14:48): Oh, totally. And I think probably when you and I worked together... I don't know if we ever explained that. There was a moment in time where I became the person responsible for... like the Head of Product for Excel, and Rob was a manager on the team, and that was the first time. We'd sort of bumped into each other in the hallway, but I think that was the first time it ever dawned on me that I was now in a job so big, I couldn't actually pay attention to all the details. Dave Gainer (01:15:11): That was probably the first point in my mind that was formalized is, "Boy, I need a lot of clever people and we need to make sure they have structure and direction, but it's up to them to be great". I can't go waiting and spend time with Rob and everyone on Rob's team and then we'd had another need-lead named Charlie. And it was too many of them. Too many ideas flying around. And so that's part of where I really figured out my job is to help make sure Rob's being as great as he can, because that's actually what's going to make the product great and give the customers what they need. And that's about me growing and supporting Rob. Rob Collie (01:15:44): Was that your first time being a manager of managers or had you had previous experience with that? Dave Gainer (01:15:50): I had been a manager of managers at Accenture and then when I joined Microsoft, I went back to just being an individual contributor. And I think because I had management experience, it was easier to head back up the hierarchy, but it's just a different job. At Accenture, your job's to make sure everything's perfect, so you do spend your days... Or at least many years ago when I was there, a large of it was waiting through all the details in a product like Microsoft Project or something like that, to make sure everything was perfect. But it was just a very, very different world. Rob Collie (01:16:15): You say that that was the time when you realized that you couldn't track all the details. It's funny though, I remember, boy, did you want to. You had an amazing capacity and hunger to keep track of as much as you could. It was impressive. One of the jokes used to be, you always had an opinion. You could weigh in on almost anything, right? And you did. You were much more interested in the details of how that product worked than most, if not all the managers I had before or after. And yet at the same time, I understand... And I'm not saying you were wrong, that you didn't have to delegate. You did absolutely, but you were pretty good about establishing a framework. Did I ever tell you that in the end, a tremendous amount of the development that I got out of working with you, I got it while you weren't even around? Rob Collie (01:17:07): After a while, I could sit down and start role playing what you were going to say and I'd be like, "Okay, so I could just go through the process". Like I had this idea of how the product should work and I would sort of have my rough draft in my head. I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to go pitch this to Dave. What's he going to say? Oh, he's going to say that this is, oh, this, this and this. Dammit.", right? And so those thoughts wouldn't enter my head until I went through the process of switching around mentally and sitting in your chair and saying, "What's Dave going to say? What was Dave Gainer going to say?". There's this sort of exploit in the AI world where, if you've got an algorithm that is highly tuned for something but it's got a published API, you can use that published API and feed it a whole bunch of input and use it to train your own clone of that API, right? Of the AI behind the scenes, right? Rob Collie (01:18:02): I kind of think that's what I did, is that I used the Dave API to train this other part of my brain that apparently had been used for Minesweeper or something up until that point. These were uninitialized neurons. I had more capacity. And so I end up carrying this miniature Dave around with me and the funniest part is that I'm sure every now and then, you would say something and I'd go, "That's not what Dave would say at all". I do vaguely remember cases like going, "Oh, come on. That is so not you. That's not... You're supposed to say X, Y, Z". Dave Gainer (01:18:47): We talked at some point about principles, right? And the use of principles to guide things. I think part of why I was big on that and I remain big on that is, how do you motivate a bunch of human beings in some common direction without telling them what to do, right? Principles are a super effective technique for doing that. Part of it is how do I get Rob, and I don't know how many people you had working for you. Let's say four, and then Charlie and his five and [Cordell 01:19:10] and his three. That's a lot of people. So how do you get them thinking the same way without telling them what to do? Because I'm very much against that. Dave Gainer (01:19:18): You lay out principles that are either rallying points or logical tests or the kind of things to consider. And then your job gets simpler and they have to talk to you less, and I think that's a win-win. And then serious thing, you have a better memory than me. So I don't remember the kind of details I drilled on probably nearly as much as you do, but even there what I would say, and I still tell people this, how do you choose what you spend your time on, Dave? You have a lot of things going on. My boss recently asked me, how do you prioritize your time? And he sort of expected I would go down by product, like the most important product first and the second most. And I was like, "No, no, no, no, no. You need to figure out enough of what's going on in your world and then build a heat map". I'm a very visual person, so even inside my head, when I look at stuff in my world, some of it's red, some it's green, some of it's orange. Dave Gainer (01:20:05): And then you go spend the time on the place where it's red, because the green stuff's going fine, and me injecting myself there is only going to mess it up. And so I think the story I'm going to make up retroactively, and you might say, "Well, that's not true", is that part of the technique is go figure out enough detail to know, "This is fine", or, "No, there's smoke here". In which case you, as a leader, want to spend time there. And if it's fine, then completely back off and let people do great work because you hire these people to do great work, and in general, they do. Do you see that in your world? You got a pretty big company these days? Rob Collie (01:20:37): Well, yeah. Five years ago it was really clear to me that this was something I got working with you. This is a skill that I had developed working with you, that I did not have before and it is indispensable. We've both admitted to being very intuitive thinkers, and intuition is the type of thinking that doesn't happen in words. It's almost impossible to transmit an intuition across people. It might be an amazing insight, but it is the opposite of verbal. And I had gone through my whole life being what I thought was very effective, with that style of thinking without of course realizing that's what I was, right? Rob Collie (01:21:20): I had no idea that that was the kind of thinking I did, because it was all I ever knew. And running into you, you kept... You bastard. You just kept insisting that I transmit my reasons for thinking something through the air, to your ears, right? I was really flustered at the beginning. I'm like, "No, that's not how this works". You see, I know what the right thing is and you're like, "Why?", and I'm like, "Ah". I was at a loss, right? And I was talking about, I would role play Dave in my head. Well, of course it was a lot easier for me to role play you when you were transmitting these principles. You were taking the time to digest your intuitions and put them into little tiny digestible, transmittable... You were translating them from Dave intuitive speak into English that could go from brain to brain and trigger a similar sort of thinking on the other side. Rob Collie (01:22:26): It turns out, that's a lot of work if you've never done it. And you weren't mean about it, but you were not going to let me get away with saying, "Trust me". That wasn't going to work. You did trust me. It wasn't like that, but if you wanted to know why I couldn't look at you and go, "Oh, it's just... Just trust me", right? And so in the course of those few years, I learned to sort of retroactively inspect my own intuition, backtrack along that thought process, and extract the words out of it, turn it into a sentence. It's almost like being a historian for your own thought process and summarizing it and then be able to transmit it across. And I take this for granted now. It is so second nature. It's effortless now, and it's just this conversation that reminds me, that in my mid to late twenties, this was anything but effortless. Rob Collie (01:23:28): In fact it was alien. I couldn't do it at all. It's like not being able to stay on your feet on ice skates versus playing hockey. I couldn't even keep my balance at this particular skill, and I do this all the time. We're having some discussion about how we should operate or whatever. Whatever business issue we're discussing or new service or whatever that we're discussing at our company, I still have the same intuitive thought process. It's still the same things, right? Dave Gainer (01:23:58): Yep. Rob Collie (01:23:59): But I can now transmit. I can transmit why, and by transmitting why, you actually help other people, first of all, get on the same page with you. You might even be wrong. Your intuition might actually be wrong, and if you can transmit your reasons clearly, you can help figure out whether or not you're wrong. Whereas if you can't transmit and you're in charge, oh my gosh, you're just always going to do what you think. You're going to win all ties. I would actually say it's the most important thing that I developed working with you by far and the second place isn't even close. Dave Gainer (01:24:36): And it's funny, we're clearly wired the same way. Companies have you do these psychological profiles like Myers Briggs and Insights and stuff to help you understand yourself and understand those around you, and I remember in one of those, probably the Insights one, there's some text that describes you. A line that I read that I thought that's perfect, which was, "Dave will often experience thoughts much more intensely than he can describe them in words", right?. I remember thinking how weird it is they figured that out about me based on whatever questionnaire I'd done and how true that was, right? Because I'll sit in these meetings and think, "Bam! I have this thing in my head and I just can't get it out in time". I have a very slow-twitch brain and I've had to train all my managers. Quite often when we come back to 30 minutes after a meeting and discussion with what I actually think about it, because I just can't do it in the real time. Dave Gainer (01:25:22): You think about, "Okay, where did I get that from? Why was I there before you?". I don't really know the answer because it wasn't like if he went and found Dave in high school, he was like this, but I think a lot of where I got this from was writing a lot of English and History papers, which I find hard to this day. I find writing incredibly challenging, even though I have a whole degree in it, but it's sort of this training of read complex stuff, summarise it, get it in explainable principles, and then communicate it. And practice, practice, practice. Dave Gainer (01:25:49): So when I did that for four years and wrote I don't how many, like 50 papers, I emerged the other side, having trained my brain to some degree to say, "Here's how I take a thing and communicate it to others in a way that's summarized enough that they can understand what I'm doing". And so it's another example of, "Huh, what makes a good leader?". Well, I don't know. Any background can be drawn upon. Leadership isn't a course you take. It's not a degree at school. It's also probably very circumstantial, like that one just happens to be good for the kind of work we do. Rob Collie (01:26:16): When you said Dave often experiences thoughts, and what was it? More powerfully than he can put into words or whatever, right? I'm just nodding vigorously here. That's absolutely me, right? And it was so frustrating for so long to be on an island with those thoughts and no ability to communicate. No ability to share them. No ability to even, heck, get validation or invalidation. Gosh, that's where you found me. You know the slow-twitch brain thing? I often describe my brain as a very, very, very unsophisticated engine, right? It'd be like a 1960s- Dave Gainer (01:26:51): 426 Hemi. Rob Collie (01:26:52): Yeah. 426 Hemi, right? It's got a lot of displacement. It's not high tech, it's not optimized. None of that. It's just brawn. I had before- Rob Collie (01:27:03): None of that. It's just brawn. I had before crossing paths with you. One thing I had learned as a technique, a coping mechanism at work was to, in a meeting, I would say, Hey. I'm not sure about this. I do need some time to think about it. It won't be long. I'll circle back with you right? I won't be able to say all the things I need to say in response to what's happening in the meeting. I can't do it in real time but I do reserve some space to think about it and come back to you quickly. And before I discovered that trick, I just got steamrolled all the time right? Because if I couldn't get my thoughts out, the meeting would end and a conclusion would be drawn and it wouldn't benefit from what I had to contribute. Dave Gainer (01:27:44): And then you can invert that and say okay. Now Rob, you're a leader, Dave's a leader. What do you do with that information? This is why I'm such a believer of figuring out what people's authentic resting place is and making sure you understand them, making sure it's okay for them to be that and that they can plug into the system in the way that makes sense for them right? Because imagine if all your managers said, Rob. I understand how your brain works and I have these discussions with you. You would've been much more unleashed and comfortable earlier in your career. You wouldn't have had to figure it out yourself. And so I'm a really big believer in trying to spend time talking to people that work for you about not work or customers or all those things, and that stuff will always be there but about these sort of things. Dave Gainer (01:28:33): What's the most effective way for Rob to participate in the collective work. This group of however many people are working on a product or project or trying to do. Because bringing that to the forefront and talking about it, legitimizes work styles, puts that person in a place where they can be much more effective. And this is an example when I say I'm a different human being than I was 10 or 15 years ago when we worked together. I stumbled through this with you but now it's much more of an active thing I manage right? Thomas LaRock (01:28:59): This is a great conversation that I think we could probably spend hours and days talking about development of people and managers. It reminded me, I have this blog post from 11 years ago, which is essentially, Where Have All The Good Managers Gone. Because you often only hear about how, I can't find talent. I can't find the people I need. I can't find a good DBA. I can't find the people... If I could only find that Power BI Expert then we'd really be doing something. And the point in the post is really, the problem is, there's no leadership. And I don't know if you guys have seen the Netflix series, The Movies That Made Us. They're in their second season. We've binged three or four or last night but one was just Jurassic Park. And you guys are talking about these managers and there's this great story. Thomas LaRock (01:29:51): Industrial Light and Magic have to make the dinosaurs. And it's 1995. You might be familiar. The levels of technology that existed in 1995. There's this guy at ILM who's like, "I think I can make a dinosaur look real computer animated." And the manager at ILM is like, "Don't you dare spend your time on that. We got a guy doing the stop motion and he's going to take care of all the dinosaur stuff for us. You are not to spend one moment of time on this." And so here to me, there's a manager, he's not encouraging his... He's like, "I'm here to execute orders. And the orders are stop motion." That's what Jurassic Park will look like. Done." So this guy's like, "Yeah. Well, F you. Because I think I can do it. I'm just going to working on it anyway." Thomas LaRock (01:30:40): And he's so great. If you watch this, I don't want to spoil it but he's like, "I've been suspended from ILM three times in my career and I proudly put that on my resume." He goes to work and he does it. And as the executive producer's coming through on a tour one day, he makes sure that he has the skeleton. There's no skin or whatever. It's just the computer animated thing just going across the screen in a loop. And she walks in and she's like, " What the hell is that?" And he's like, "Well, it's a dinosaur." And she's like, "This is amazing." Spielberg is there. And he goes... His mind's blown. He's like, "This is amazing." They turn to the manager and they're like, "Why didn't you tell us we had this?" And the guy's like, "Yeah. That's something we've been working on. And you'll like what we have there." Thomas LaRock (01:31:26): Meanwhile, he's looking at that guy like, "I can't believe you just did this to me." And as the words that were used, "this is political suicide. How dare you do what I told you not to do like this?" Meanwhile, Spielberg was like this movie's going to be amazing because now out we don't have to use that stupid stop motion stuff anymore. Rob Collie (01:31:43): It would've looked like Sinbad. Thomas LaRock (01:31:45): And so the idea of whether a person is a good leader, a manager and all that, everything that Dave's been talking about. I would say Dave is part of this minority when it comes to leadership and management and he's a blessing and I'm glad that Rob, you got to intersect with Dave during your time. I keep seeing other examples of where, for some reason, people rise to these levels but they're not really invested in making their people better. And I don't understand that because when you do, you make everything better for everybody. Not just you and them but your customers, the products. In this case, the movie. Jurassic park would've never been the same if not for this guy going, "yeah. I think I can make it look like a dinosaur that can walk." Although I have no idea how dinosaurs walk, that was another thing. He's like, "I've never seen a dinosaur walk. What does that look like?" Rob Collie (01:32:35): Tom is what I would call a rabid advocate for humanity. That's something that he brings with intensity pretty much to everything. It's absolutely a credit to you. But if you're listening, you almost now get in the picture that Dave Gainer is a radical. Which is actually the exact opposite. I'll give you an example. He had this radical idea Dave. Rather than sitting around and coming up with just things we should put into the product, why don't we go and look at the data that we have. Data. There's that word right? Look at the data that we have about places where we're getting support calls. What are the top 10 things that generate support calls? And we go look at the list like and we're like this is a really boring list. Says Rob, right? Rob Collie (01:33:22): Says untrained pre Dave, Rob, at the beginning of this process goes, "well, that's no fun at all. We're going to make printing better." Really? We're going to make printing better? And he was like, "Yeah. We're going to make printing better because that's what people are doing." And I remember saying, okay. That's great. Fine. But I want nothing to do with that because that's... But here's the thing, by the time that feature set was done, the improvements to printing in that particular release, I was able to look at it and go, you know what? That actually was a very interesting problem. Rob Collie (01:33:57): It was a very interesting problem and a very gratifying problem. And so I'm picking on myself at the beginning of that release. Really just to set up the punchline that at the end, that simplicity of doing the thing that actually was going to affect a lot of people and improve what they do was actually in a way, it was its own version of radical. There's this moment in Fight Club where Edward Norton says, "You know what? It all started to make a little bit of sense in the end." Something about letting that which does not matter truly slide and focusing on the things that do. Dave Gainer (01:34:32): Yeah. I don't know. Radical and Dave Gainer are not things that have been used together before this podcast. Thomas LaRock (01:34:37): They should be. Rob Collie (01:34:38): It's a quiet radicalism. It's a conformist radicalism. Dave Gainer (01:34:42): Here's how I'm going to prove this. That it's not radical. We're going to talk about the U.S. Army. And so there's this miniseries, Band of Brothers right? Rob Collie (01:34:50): Yeah. Dave Gainer (01:34:50): Many people have probably seen that. Turns out it's true. You might have read the book that it was based off and that's actually what happened. And the guy in charge of that, one of the main characters was Dick Winters. And at some point someone gives me a photocopy of a book he wrote where in the last page, is his 10 principles of leadership right? And so here we are, this is someone that was a paratrooper, the most elite or I guess one of the most elite things in the military, he went and fought his way across Europe, tough guy right? These are his leadership principles. Some of them sound more military than others. I'm looking at them right now because I actually have them taped up on my door. Dave Gainer (01:35:22): One is, lead from the front. Say, follow me. Lead from the way. There's one about staying in top physical shape. But then here let's talk about number four. Develop your team. If you know your people, you're fair in setting realistic goals and expectations and you lead by example, you will develop teamwork right? U.S. Military. And this isn't their formal doctrine but this is clearly so someone that's been successful. Number five, I love because this is one of these ones where I read it and said, yeah. That's my philosophy around how I work as a leader. Put into words, delegate responsibility to your subordinates and let them do their jobs. You can't do a good job if you don't have a chance to use your imagination and creativity. And so what I would say is, I don't think it's radical. I think it's what we're supposed to do as leaders. Dave Gainer (01:36:01): My job is to provide framing, direction, clarity of objectives, talk about resource allocation and then let talented people do their thing. And I need to have enough connective tissue. And this goes back to the principles that Rob and I talked about. But boy, if I can have Rob Collie working on how to make something better in my product as opposed to me because he's going to go do it full time and bring the full weight of his imagination. And if Rob's surrounded by some other talented people in product and design and whether our disciplines are involved, this be like 100 times better than what I'm going to do. And that's just like a fact. Dave Gainer (01:36:32): This is why this is my philosophy. Like number six, Rob, you'll enjoy this one. Anticipate problems and prepare to overcome obstacles. You and I talked about, I worry about everything. You were pruning the tree right? There's another good one. Seven, don't worry about who receives any credit. Never let power or authority go to your head. Number eight, take a moment of self-reflection. Look at yourself in the mirror every night and ask you if you did your best work. Rob Collie (01:36:57): Can I stop for a second? Dave Gainer (01:36:58): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:36:58): That last one. Never worry about the credit, power, et cetera. Dave Gainer (01:37:01): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:37:02): I run into a lot of people who think that leadership is about getting your orders followed. Leadership is the act of being listened to. Because I think that's a lot of people's initial impressions of it. If you're going to be in a leadership position, the first thing you need to do is get over that concept of it. Because it's toxic, and its self-defeating, it is not going to help you. It is a very common default for sure. Thomas LaRock (01:37:30): Look at that. Rob Collie (01:37:31): I have a list of paradoxical commandments of leadership. When Dave may mentioned... This is a little more formal military but it's just so funny because when you started saying those, I'm like, I wonder if there's overlap on these. But these are things like, the good you will do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. I've had this posted I don't know how many years now. It's just so funny he mentioned that he had something posted there. Dave Gainer (01:37:54): Does it say the best plan is often to do nothing? I'm just kidding. Rob Collie (01:38:01): No. It doesn't. Thomas LaRock (01:38:01): Does it say until you master your fear, your fear will be your master? Rob Collie (01:38:04): No. Thomas LaRock (01:38:05): Something like that. Which is another line from Mystery Men by the way. Dave, there is a positive connotation to the word radical. Let's say you're not radical. Being a member of your team was not being radical. However, it absolutely did feel revolutionary. There's a lot of positive connotations to these words that I experienced working in this system. Working in this mindset. You're not doing something crazy. There's no crazy there right? It's just doing things that make sense. And that oftentimes when it's galvanized and energetic and organized, takes on a lot of that feel that gets people excited. And I didn't expect that right? I didn't expect overhauling the printing experience to feel that way. I agree that radical and Dave Gainer don't belong in the same sentence really but there's other part of it. There's certain portions, they're certain flavors that are mixed in there in that word. Some of them absolutely do. It was really cool. Dave Gainer (01:39:11): Let me take a crack at this. It's funny. I've had a lot of bosses at all the companies I've worked in and gotten my own set of feedback and they let me know how they think I'm doing and that sort of thing. But I think one thing, and we talked about this. Stop and think about what's going on. Think about it for what it is. And from the perspective as a bunch of the stakeholders. When we're working on software, I really try and push the people that are using our stuff to be the starting point for that stakeholder analysis. What I try and bring to my PR set when I'm working is just a healthy point of view that considers things broadly and prevents us from developing group thing or taking off in a particular direction. Some of my bosses over the years have commented that's really helpful. Dave Gainer (01:39:50): You help us see things for what they are. And it's like an intentional place I spend energy and put focus. It's part of just who I am. But I've been acknowledged enough for it by bosses here and at Accenture and other places. That is something I continue to try and figure out how to bring to the table and make it more interesting over time. It's not radical in the sense. That word could connote but it's more like. You don't be afraid to step back and try and look at what's really going on here or bring other information to the table and ask us if we all have the same goals, are the assumptions right? Is this really the reality we're facing? It's funny. An earlier time in my career. This is probably around when you and I worked together Rob. One of the things I was working on right? Dave Gainer (01:40:35): We we're all continually trying to develop our skills is, I could see these things coming that were probably going to be not great for some chunk of the organization and I try and sound an alarm bell. And quite often, I didn't communicate it in a way that was very effective so everyone ignored it. And there was a guy that used to call me Cassandra. And so for anyone that is into Greek myths, Cassandra was someone who had this curse and the curse was they could see the future but no one would listen to them. I can talk to Rob and Charlie and my team fine but what's going on I can't influence these other people. And so I actually spent a bunch of time saying, boy I can see this thing but I can't communicate it so I got to get better at that. And that was another journey in trying figure out their shoes, what their framer referencer was, what their Valuing system was. Dave Gainer (01:41:19): A lot of it comes back to trying to figure out what other people are being evaluated on. They're being evaluated on something different than you're being evaluated on. It's going to be hard to influence them. And so I do think a lot of this again is less radical and more just like really trying to bottom out on things and then find ways to motivate other people to do something about it to the extent you think that matters. Number nine, I'm going to pause here because I really like number nine and we never got there because we got into being radical. But this is another one I believe. And part of the reason I brought this hymn up is partly to say well, if this stuff can come from a story decorated U.S. Military officer, it can't be radical. But also just like how sensible it was up to me but at the same time you don't see it everywhere. Dave Gainer (01:42:02): True satisfaction comes from getting the job done. The key to successful leader's to earn respect. Not because of rank in position but because you're a leader of character. And so that's another one that as I've become more senior, I think about more and frankly it terrifies me because the bigger your team is, the less you can spend time with them personally but at the end of the day yeah. You want to make sure that you're enrolling these people not because they have to work for you but because there's something bigger than that going on. And that's something that I think I still struggle with to this day because it's a hard thing to scale. Rob Collie (01:42:34): I think that is a reflection of just human wiring right? It's the age old problem. We're wired for village size cooperation, but we've unlocked this cheat code as like Sapiens talks about. We've unlocked this cheat code of collaborating at phenomenal scale. Just absolutely phenomenal scale. You end up cooperating with people that you don't know. Or your actions are impacting people. It's fundamentally the problem that human society is struggling with now. The incentives are all wrong right? You can constantly externalize the negative consequences of your actions to people that you don't have to sympathize with. Rob Collie (01:43:14): I know that's not what you're saying Dave but when you organize at that scale, that deep human authenticity, how do you broadcast that? How do you scale that past a certain number? If you figure it out, you will be the only person on the planet who know knows. I just don't think anyone truly knows how to do that. Look at some of the really successful business leaders of today. They might as well be actors in terms of what they're showing the world right? It's a very carefully curated public image that is being displayed, not just to the world but to their rank and file. We don't know these people personally, it's really hard to do that. Good luck. Dave Gainer (01:44:02): This is something that you must have to struggle with because you've grown a company and it continues to grow and you onboard people and you and Kellan are the formal leaders. You've got to figure out how to project and enroll right? And it's the same challenge to anyone in the position of formal authority has. Rob Collie (01:44:17): It's true that I do have this problem but I don't really answer to anyone. This is still very much my company right? And so all the places where the official handbook of business says don't do X, we can still do those things. There need to be some sort of guard rails in a larger organization. And we have them here too of course. It's just that we have more leeway. And I think we can retain that leeway for quite some time. We can continue to grow for quite a while with exactly that same leeway. Who knows what the future holds. But I don't see any short term changes when... Again, we're not tens of thousands of people yet. And we're hiring people every week. Rob Collie (01:44:58): Every week I get another invite. I got one just before this recording. Another new hire that I get to meet. And it's fantastic. It's the coolest thing, meeting all of these amazing people and guess what? They don't all come from a homogenized set of background stories. Shocking right? Amazing people with such incredibly diverse backgrounds. And another thing, a lot of it, very unintentional. A lot of bouncing around and then even actually discovering that data is their thing. Almost no one at our company, myself included, set out to be a data professional. None of us. I don't think there's any of us that did. Dave Gainer (01:45:41): Certainly not me. Rob Collie (01:45:43): Hey. Well, you were programming Black Jack while Luke and I were programming animations of sneezing with snot going across the screen. In stop motion quality right? Thomas LaRock (01:45:56): There you go. Rob Collie (01:45:58): It's like digital stop motion. Dave Gainer (01:46:02): Wonderful. Okay. There's one more thing I wanted to actually ask you both before this is all over. Thomas LaRock (01:46:08): Okay. Rob Collie (01:46:08): Okay. Dave Gainer (01:46:09): Process right? I came from Accenture. They trained you to do things in a very repeatable fashion. And then I got to Microsoft and I got to manage people like Rob and one of the things I tried to train Rob and run the team on was very repeatable fashion. And I think that was one of the things where you saw it differently at the time. And I've heard you say recently, "I'll characterize you like, hey. This stuff turns out to be pretty important." I'd just love to like hear a little about that journey. I felt like when you and I parted ways and you went off to the next phases of your career, we still didn't see eye to eye. Rob Collie (01:46:41): Well, it goes back to a couple of things we talked about. Number one, what is it? The zebra doesn't change it's stripes. And you go to war with the armor that you've got. I would say that my transformation on this axis is half complete. Not a 100% complete. And half complete is probably where the story is going to end. It's like what I said about the printing story. Thinking about it ahead of time as like, the printing, it's going to be so boring. And then in hindsight, having this tremendous appreciation for it. I think that's where I'm in a similar place with the value of process. Now, Kellan's not here right? He's not on this recording. The sum total of my change here is that I have come to greatly appreciate and recognize the value and the necessity of having good processes. Rob Collie (01:47:41): I still haven't developed whatever it is. The capability, interest, whatever you want to call it, attention span. I have no idea right? To personally be good at implementing that. That's still not a strength of mine but thankfully it is a strength of others and they're in the right positions at this company. I weigh in and I have input for sure. One example though of a place where I actually have something I've come to believe with like religious fervor, I read this article, this essay or speech. We've mentioned it on the show before but it was by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's right hand man. It's a long article. It's really aerody. It's crazy how this guy thinks but the first thing he talks about is the one that he really presses the bold button on and says, you could ignore the rest of this and just pay attention to this. Which is, if you get the incentives right in an organization, basically things are going to go well. If you don't get the incentives right, forget it. Almost nothing you do is going to matter. Rob Collie (01:48:50): And I was fascinated by this. And so consciously at this company, we made a decision to lean into this and I think it just had a lot to do with our ability to stay like in the Sapiens sense right? Organized not only at scale but at remote scale. We don't have a centralized office. We find the most talented people wherever they happen to be. We don't call our shot on geography, we don't make people move. We set the bar high enough and by keeping the geography filter essentially unspecified, we get the best of the best right? But we never get that face to face in office contact. Rob Collie (01:49:31): It's even harder to organize it's scale remotely. The places where I have contributed actually like passionate investment, have been around this, Kellan and I are equals in this. Trying to get the incentives at this company designed in a way that they're applied objectively and continuously. And that align the best interests of the company like of me, of Kellan and the individual employees. That is not the sum total of our process. We have a lot of processes but the one place where I actually have felt like I've been really active, is that one. But yeah. It's the strengths of the team right? Dave Gainer (01:50:12): You're right. That's a place where I spend a lot of time because we have big orgs that have to work together. And part of it is if there's some shared notion of success, everything works 10 times easier. And so putting tons of energy, you know that with whoever is leading the org on the other side, that's I think one of the best things I can do to help the people that will then have to go do the work. But the other thing and we wont to have time to get into this today. You could have another like whole podcast on this, which is, surrounding yourself by people that are different than yourself, right? This is another lesson I believe strongly, which is go find people that don't think like you. Dave Gainer (01:50:44): One of the things I always loved about having Rob on my team is you came and challenged my way of thinking just because you did and who you are and where you're coming from right? And I find that incredibly valuable because you get different perspectives if you have people that have different skills, backgrounds, belief systems, value systems. And the more you have of that then the more you're going to get super thoughtful dialogue that creates a better hole and so you and Kellan is just a nice example of, go find someone that's not Rob and put him on the team and then empower him to do what he does incredibly well. And everybody's better off. I guess we can save that for another podcast to go in too deeply. Rob Collie (01:51:20): That sounds like we get to bring you back. Dave Gainer (01:51:22): I don't know Rob. Rob Collie (01:51:25): Since you've enjoyed this so much it's like, I'm already cuing up the next episode. Dave Gainer (01:51:29): Exactly. Thomas LaRock (01:51:30): It was that good. Rob Collie (01:51:31): Dave, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Even more so man. There's a number of us like this, you have a number of alumni. I just sincerely appreciate what you did for me. Whatever metaphor we want to use. A number of us huddle from time to time and go, and I don't know how we ever pay it back. We could never pay you back for the things that you did for us. We just do that whole pay it forward to other people. Wish there were more like you. Dave Gainer (01:51:58): That's very kind. Plenty for me to think about coming out of this. Speaker 3 (01:52:00): Thanks for listening to The Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to www.p3adaptive.com. Have a data day!

Imke Feldmann is among the first few to have recognized the incredible value and potential of this thing called Power Pivot in Excel (which was the precursor to Power BI).  And did she ever run with it, launching quite the successful solo consultancy and training service!  She exemplifies the helpful nature of the data community through her blog, The BIccountant, where she shares her amazing Microsoft BI tool knowledge. Her background is in Finance and Accounting, but you'll quickly realize she knows a great deal more than just Finance and Accounting! Contact Imke: The BIccountant Imke's Twitter References in this Episode: Imke's Github MS Power BI Idea - Customizable Ribbon - Please Upvote :) MS Power BI Idea - Speed Up PQ By Breaking Refresh Chain - Please Upvote :) Episode Timeline: 3:00 - The value of outsourcing certain business functions, Imke's path to Power BI starts with Rob's blog, a multi-dimensional cube discussion breaks out! 19:45 - One of Power BI's strengths is collaboration, Imke LOVES her some Power Query and M and loves DAX not so much 33:45 - Imke has a BRILLIANT idea about how to improve Power Query and some other improvements that we'd like to see in PQ 52:30 -  Rob's VS code experience, how COVID has affected the consulting business, Staying solo vs growing a company and how Imke determines which clients she takes on Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello friends. Today's guest is Imke Feldmann. We've been working for a long time, nearly a year to arrange the schedules to get her on the show, and I'm so glad that we finally managed to do it. For a moment, imagine that it's 2010, 2011, that era. During that timeframe, I felt not quite alone, but a member of a very slowly growing and small community of people who had glimpsed what Power Pivot could do. And for those of you who don't know what Power Pivot is, and that was the version of Power BI, the first version that was embedded only in Excel. And at the time, the way the community grew, we'll use a metaphor for this. Imagine that the community was a map of the world and the map is all dark, but slowly, you'd see these little dim lights lighting up like one over here in the UK, one in the Southwest corner of the United States, very faintly. Rob Collie (00:00:51): And these would be people who were just becoming aware of this thing, this Power Pivot thing, and you'd watch them. They'd sort of show up on the radar, very tentatively at first kind of dipping their toe, and then that light would get brighter, and brighter, and brighter over time, as they really leaned in, and they learned more and more, and they became more adept at it. And this was the way things went for a long time. And then in 2011, out of nowhere in Germany on the map, this light comes on at full intensity, brightly declaring itself as super talented and powerful. And that was what it felt like to come across Imke Feldmann. Rob Collie (00:01:27): Like all of our guests, there's a little bit of that accidental path in her career, but also a tremendous sense of being deliberate. When this stuff crossed her radar, she appreciated it immediately. And I didn't know this until this conversation, but she quit her corporate job in 2013, the same year that I founded P3 as a real company, and became a freelancer. So for eight plus years, she has been a full time Power BI professional. There truly aren't that many people who can say that in the world. Our conversation predictably wandered. At one point, we got pretty deep into the notion of M and Power Query and it's screaming need for more buttons on its ribbon. And Imke has some fantastic ideas on how they should be addressing that. Rob Collie (00:02:14): We also, of course, naturally talked about the differences between remaining a solo freelancer as she has, in contrast to the path that I chose, which is scaling up a consulting practice business. Along the way we reprised the old and completely pointless debate of DAX versus M, I even try to get Tom hooked on M as his new obsession. We'll see how well that goes. Most importantly though, it was just a tremendous pleasure to finally get to talk to Imke at length for the first time after all these years, we literally crossed paths 10 years ago. So it was a conversation 10 years in the making compress down to an hour and change. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did, so let's get into it. Announcer (00:02:56): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Announcer (00:03:00): This is The Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast, with your host Rod Collie, and your cohost Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:03:24): Welcome to the show Imke Feldmann. How are you today? Imke Feldmann (00:03:27): Thank you, Rob. Great. It's a great day here over in Germany. Rob Collie (00:03:30): We have been talking about doing this for the better part of a year. So I'm glad that we're landing the guest, Imke is here. I really appreciate you doing this. So why don't we start with the basics. What are you up to these days? What do you do for a living? Imke Feldmann (00:03:48): I have people building great Power BI solutions these days. Rob Collie (00:03:55): Ah, yes. Imke Feldmann (00:03:55): That's how I fill my days. Rob Collie (00:03:58): I hear that that's a good business. Imke Feldmann (00:03:58): Yeah, it is. Rob Collie (00:04:03): So, and your website is? Imke Feldmann (00:04:06): Thebiaccountant.com. Rob Collie (00:04:07): Is that what you are on Twitter as well? Imke Feldmann (00:04:08): Yes. That's also my Twitter handle theBIccountant without an A in the middle. I just replaced the A from accountant with a BI. Rob Collie (00:04:17): There you go. Imke Feldmann (00:04:18): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:04:18): That's right. So that means that I'm going to make a tremendous leap here, wait till you see these powers of observation and deduction. You must have an accounting background? Imke Feldmann (00:04:29): I do, yes. Rob Collie (00:04:30): See you look at that. That's why I make the money. Okay, let's start there, was accounting your first career out of school? Imke Feldmann (00:04:39): Yes. I went to university and studied some economics or business stuff there, they'll know it's translated into English. And then I worked as a business controller. After that, I took over a job to lead a bookkeeping departments or to work with an area where the numbers came from basically. And then after that, I worked as the finance director, where I was responsible for a whole bunch of areas, controlling bookkeeping, IT, HR, and production. So that was quite a job with a broad range of responsibilities. Rob Collie (00:05:18): So you mentioned, kind of slipped IT into that list, right? Imke Feldmann (00:05:23): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:05:23): There's all these things in that list of responsibilities that all seemed they belong together, right? Bookkeeping, accounting, control or finance, IT. We've run into this before, with actually a number of people, that a lot of times the accounting or finance function in a company kind of wins the job of IT by default. Imke Feldmann (00:05:45): Yeah. It seems quite common in Germany, at least I would say. Rob Collie (00:05:48): I get multiple examples, but one that I can absolutely point to is Trevor Hardy from the Canadian Football League, he is in accounting, accounting and finance. And just by default, well, that's close to computers. Imke Feldmann (00:06:00): Yes. Rob Collie (00:06:01): And so it just kind of pulls the IT function in. Now is that true at really large organizations in Germany or is it a mid market thing? Imke Feldmann (00:06:09): No I would say a mid market thing. Rob Collie (00:06:12): That's true here too. So when there isn't an IT org yet it ends up being, oftentimes it falls to the finance and accounting function. Hey, that's familiar. It's kind of funny when you think about it, but it's familiar. And isn't finance itself pretty different from accounting? How much of a leap is that? What was that transition like for you taking over the finance function as well? We tend to talk about these things, at least in the US, is like almost like completely separate functions at times. Imke Feldmann (00:06:43): It depends, but at least it had something to do with my former education, which wasn't the case with IT. So, I mean, of course on a certain management level, you are responsible for things that you're not necessarily familiar with in detail. You just have to manage the people that know the details and do the jobs for you. So that was not too big an issue I must admit. Rob Collie (00:07:10): My first job out of school was Microsoft, an organization of that size, I was hyper specialized in terms of what I did. At this company at P, we are nowhere near that scale, and there's a lot more of that multiple hat wearing. I've definitely been getting used to that over the last decade, the first decade plus of my career, not so much. Imke Feldmann (00:07:31): Yeah. That's interesting because I basically went completely the other way around. I see myself now as working as a technical specialist and as a freelancer, I don't have to manage any employees anymore. Rob Collie (00:07:47): Well, so now you wear all the hats? Imke Feldmann (00:07:49): Yes. In a certain way, yes. Rob Collie (00:07:51): Okay. There's no HR department necessarily, right, so it's just you. But marketing, sales, delivery, everything. Imke Feldmann (00:08:01): Yep, that's true. Yep. And when I first started, I tried to do everything by myself, but the test changed as well. So in the past I started to outsource more things, but to external companies, not internal staff. Rob Collie (00:08:17): So you're talking about outsourcing certain functions in your current business, is that correct? Imke Feldmann (00:08:22): Yes, yes. Rob Collie (00:08:22): So it's interesting, right? Even that comes with tremendous risk when you delegate a certain function to an outside party whose incentives and interests they are never going to be 100% aligned with yours. Even we have been taken for a ride multiple times by third-party consulting firms that we've hired to perform certain functions for us. Imke Feldmann (00:08:46): Oh, no I don't outsource and your services that I directly provide to my clients. Rob Collie (00:08:49): Oh, no, no. Imke Feldmann (00:08:50): No. Rob Collie (00:08:50): No, we don't either. But I'm saying for example, our Salesforce implementation for instance- Imke Feldmann (00:08:56): Okay, mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:08:57): ... Has been a tremendous money sink for us over the years. Where we're at is good, but the ROI on that spend has been pretty poor. It's really easy to throw a bunch of money at that and it just grinds and grinds and grinds. And so this contrast that I'm getting around to is really important because that's not what it's like to be a good Power BI consultant, right? You're not that kind of risk for your clients. But if you go out and hire out some sort of IT related services for example, like Salesforce development, we're exposed to that same sort of drag you out into the deep water and drown you business model, that's not how we operate. I'm pretty sure that's not how you operate either. And so anyway, when you start talking about outsourcing, I just thought, oh, we should probably talk about that. Have you outsourced anything for your own sort of back office? Imke Feldmann (00:09:52): Back office stuff, yeah. My blog, WordPress stuff, or computer stuff in the background. So security [inaudible 00:09:59] the stuff and things like that, things that are not my core, I hire consultants to help me out with things that I would formally Google, spend hours Googling with. Rob Collie (00:10:09): Yes. Imke Feldmann (00:10:10): Now I just hire consultants to do that. Or for example, for Power Automate, this is something that I wanted to learn and I saw the big potential for clients. And there I also did private training basically, or coaching, or how you called it, hire specialists. Rob Collie (00:10:27): To kind of getting you going? Imke Feldmann (00:10:29): Exactly, exactly. Rob Collie (00:10:30): And those things that you've outsourced for your back office, have there been any that felt like what I described you end up deep in the spend and deepen the project going, "What's going on here?" Imke Feldmann (00:10:41): I'm usually looking for freelancers on that. And I made quiet good experiences with it, I must say. Rob Collie (00:10:49): Well done. Well done. All right. So let's rewind a bit, we'll get to the point where you're in charge of the finance department, which of course includes IT. Imke Feldmann (00:10:58): Not necessarily so. I felt quite sad for the guys who I had to manage because I said, "Well, I'm really sorry, but you will hear a lot of questions from me, especially at the beginning of our journey," because I had to learn so much in order to be a good manager for them. So that was quite different situation compared to the management roles in finance that I had before, because there I had the impression that I knew something, but IT was basically blank. Rob Collie (00:11:30): I would imagine that that experience turned out to be very important, the good cross pollination, the exposure to the IT function and sort of like seeing it from their side of the table, how valuable is that turned out to be for your career? Imke Feldmann (00:11:45): I think it was a good learning and really interesting experience for me just to feel comfortable with saying that I have no clue and ask the people how things work and just feel relaxed about not being the expert in a certain area and just be open to ask, to get a general understanding of things. Rob Collie (00:12:09): That's definitely the way to do it, is to be honest and transparent and ask all the questions you need to do. It's easier said than done. I think a lot of people feel the need to bluff in those sorts of situations. And that usually comes back to haunt them, not always. Imke Feldmann (00:12:25): No, that's true. Rob Collie (00:12:27): Some people do get away with it, which is a little sad. So at what point did you discover Power BI? Imke Feldmann (00:12:35): I didn't discover Power BI, I discovered Power Pivot, for your blog of course. Rob Collie (00:12:41): Oh, really? Imke Feldmann (00:12:43): Yes, yes, yes, yes. I think it was in, must be 2011, something like that. Rob Collie (00:12:50): Early, yeah. Imke Feldmann (00:12:51): Yeah. Quite early. When I was building a multidimensional cube with a freelancer for our finance department, then I was just searching a bit what is possible, how we should approach this and things like that. So we started with multi-dimensional cube because that was something where I could find literature about and also find experts who could have me building that. But when doing so, I really liked the whole experience and it was a really excellent project that I liked very much. And so I just searched around in the internet and tried to find out what's going on in that area. And this is where I discovered your blog. Rob Collie (00:13:35): I have no idea. First of all, I had no idea that my old blog was where you first crossed paths with this. Imke Feldmann (00:13:42): I think [inaudible 00:13:43]. Rob Collie (00:13:44): And secondly, I had no idea that it was that early. I mean, I remember when you showed up on the radar, Scott [inaudible 00:13:51] had discovered your blog and said, "Hey, Rob, have you seen this? Have you seen what she is doing? She is amazing." That wasn't 2011, that was a little bit later. I don't remember when but... Imke Feldmann (00:14:06): No, I think we've met first. I think we met on the Mr. XR Forum on some crazy stuff I did there. I cannot even remember what that was, but I started blogging in 2015 and we definitely met before. Rob Collie (00:14:21): That's what it was. It was the forums. And Scott was the one that had stumbled upon what you were doing there and brought my attention to it. I was like, whoa. It was like... Imke Feldmann (00:14:34): That last really some crazy stuff. I think I was moving data models from one Excel file to another or something like that. Some crazy stuff with [inaudible 00:14:43] and so on. Rob Collie (00:14:44): You obviously remember a better than I do. But I just remember being jaw dropped, blown away, impressed, by what you were doing. And the thing is the world of Power Pivot interest at that point in time still seems so small. The community still seems so small that for you to emerge on our radar fully formed, already blowing our minds, that was the first thing we ever heard from you. That was a real outlier because usually the way the curve of awareness went with other members of the community is that like, you'd see something modest from them. And you'd sorta like witnessed their upward trajectory as they developed. Of course, you've continued to improve and learn and all of that since then. But as far as our experience of it, it was you just showed up already at the graduate level, just like where did she come from? So cool. So you said that you enjoyed the multi-dimensional cube project? Imke Feldmann (00:15:43): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. I don't know MDX, but I totally enjoyed the project. So being able to build a reporting solution for my own company, basically then for the company I worked for, and doing it live with a consultant with a freelancer on my hand, discussing how things should look like and just seeing the thing form before my eyes and grow. And this was just such an enjoyable experience for me. Rob Collie (00:16:11): So the thing that's striking about that for me is, there's no doubt that the multi-dimensional product from Microsoft was a valuable product. It did good things. But I never have heard someone say that they really enjoyed the implementation process as a client, right? Imke Feldmann (00:16:31): Okay. Rob Collie (00:16:31): You had a freelancer doing the work. So something you said there really jumped out at me, it was, sort of like doing the project live. So the way that this worked traditionally, at least in the US, is the consultant would interview you about your requirements and write a big long requirements document and then disappear and go build a whole bunch of stuff and come back and show it to you, and it's completely not what anyone expected. It's almost like you're on completely different planets. Obviously, if you'd had that experience, you would not be saying that you enjoyed it. So there had to be something different about the way that you and that freelancer interacted. Do you remember what the workflow was like? Imke Feldmann (00:17:16): What we did is that we often met together and just looked at where we're at and what the next steps should be. And we definitely had specific targets in mind. So there were some reports that I had defined as a target, and around these reports I was aware that we needed something that a proper data model, because I also knew that I wanted to have some sort of a general set up that could be carried from Excel as well. So I knew about cube functions, and I knew that on one hand I needed these reports that had formerly been within our ERP system. Also, I wanted them to be in a separate solution that was under my control and independent from the ERP system. And on the other hand, I wanted some more. So I wanted the flexibility to be able to vary this data and for certain other purposes in the controlling department as well. So basically being able to do ad hoc analysis on it. Imke Feldmann (00:18:23): And we met often and I showed a certain interest in how the table logic was created. So I knew that the MDX was over my head at the time, but I showed a very strong interest in which table are created, how they relate to each other, and that was quite unusual. At least this is what the [inaudible 00:18:47] the freelancer told me. Rob Collie (00:18:49): I bet. Imke Feldmann (00:18:50): He said that he doesn't see that very often that clients showed this sort of interest. Rob Collie (00:18:56): Did he say, "Yeah. You really seem to be having fun with this. Most of my clients don't enjoy this." You said that you met very often, so were there times where he was writing MDX while you were in the room? Imke Feldmann (00:19:10): Sometimes yes, because I said, "Well, can we switch this a bit or make some changes?" And sometimes he said, "Well, I can try adjust now." Because he came over for one day or half a day, and then we spoke things through and defined further things. And if we were finishing early, he would just stay and do some coding there. But apart from that, he would work from home and do the big stuff. Rob Collie (00:19:37): OLAP originally it stands for online analytical processing, where online meant not batch, right? It meant you could ask a question and get the answer while you were still sitting there. Imke Feldmann (00:19:51): Okay. Oh, really? Rob Collie (00:19:53): That's what online meant. Imke Feldmann (00:19:54): It's interesting. Rob Collie (00:19:56): It basically meant almost like real time. It's a cousin of real time, that's what online meant at that point, as opposed to offline where you write a query and submit it and come back next week right? So that's what the online and OLAP comes from. Imke Feldmann (00:20:12): Oh, interesting. Rob Collie (00:20:13): We would pick a different terminology of OLAP were it invented today. So something interesting about, it sounds like your experience, and I did not anticipate drilling into your experience with multi-dimensional on this conversation, but I think it's really important is that at least some portion of that project that you sponsored and implemented with the freelancer, at least some portion of the work was similarly performed online. Meaning the two of you were sort of in real time communication as things evolved. And the old model and the vast majority of multidimensional solutions that have ever been built in the world, the MDX powered solutions, were built and an offline model, where the majority of the communication supposedly takes place in the form of a requirements document. Rob Collie (00:21:05): And that was a deeply, deeply, deeply flawed approach to the problem, that just doesn't actually work. So I guess it's not surprising to me that the one time I've ever heard someone say they really enjoyed that multi-dimensional project, that at least a portion of that multidimensional project was sort of almost like real-time collaboratively performed rather than completely asynchronous, right? I guess we want to be really geeky, we could say it was a synchronous model of communication as opposed to an asynchronous one. And Power BI really facilitates that kind of interaction. Imke Feldmann (00:21:41): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:21:42): The reason why the MDX multi-dimensional model worked the way it did, or there was two reasons, one is a legitimate one on one of them is more cynical. So the legitimate reason is, is that it required reprocessing of the cube for every change, it's just too slow, right? The stakeholder, the business stakeholder doesn't typically have the time or the patience to sit there while the code's being written, because it's so long between even just implementing a formula change sometimes would be, well, we need to wait an hour. And so the attention span of the business person can't be held for good reason there, right? And so that sort of drove it into an asynchronous model. Rob Collie (00:22:23): The other reason is, is that that is asynchronous model turned out to be a really good business model for the consultants, because the fact that it didn't work meant that every project lasted forever. And so that's the cynical reason. But Power BI is not long delays. You change the measure formula, or you add an extra relationship, or heck even bringing in a new table, just a brand new table, bring it in, it wasn't even in the model, now it's in the model. End to end that can sometimes be measured in minutes or even seconds. And so you can retain engaged collaborative interest. Now it's not like you're always doing that, right? There's still room for offline asynchronous work in our business, but really critical portions of it can be performed the other way. And I think that makes a huge difference. Imke Feldmann (00:23:13): Yep. And that's what I like about it. So it's so great to be able to have, as a consultant, to perform really relatively large tasks without any further involvement of other people. Which, I mean, honestly, I don't call myself a team worker, not because I don't love other people also, but teamwork means you have to communicate with other people, make sure that they know what you're working on. So there are so many interfaces that have to be maintained if you're working with other people. And so I really laugh the way I work currently being able to deliver full solutions as a one woman show consultant. That is really a pleasure for me. That's really my preferred way of work, I must say. Because I can really focus on the things that have to be done and I'm able to deliver value in a relatively short time for the clients. Rob Collie (00:24:14): That's a really interesting concept. There are certain kinds of problems in which collaboration, a team collaboration is absolutely necessary. The magic of collaboration sometimes can beat problems that no individual could ever beat. At the same time though, there's this other dynamic, right, where having a team working on a problem is actually a real liability because the communication complexity between the people becomes the majority of the work. Here's a really hyper simplified example. There used to be sort of a three-person committee, if you will, that was running our company P3, me and two other people. Imke Feldmann (00:24:57): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:24:58): And so all leadership decisions were essentially handled at that level. Well, things change, people move on, right? And so we went from a three person committee to a two person committee. We didn't anticipate the two of us who stayed, right? We did not anticipate how much simpler that was going to make things. We thought, just do the math, right, it's going to be like, well, it's one less person to get on the same page. So it's going to be a one-third reduction in complexity. It was actually double that because we went from having three pairs of communication, right, the triangle has three sides, to a line that only has one side, right? So there was only one linkage that needed to be maintained as opposed to three geometrically, combinatorially, whatever we're going to say, right? It just became- Imke Feldmann (00:25:45): Exponential. Rob Collie (00:25:45): ... Exponetially simpler. And so for problems that can be soloed, you have this amazing savings in efficiency, in clarity, even, right? Imke Feldmann (00:25:59): Yup. Rob Collie (00:25:59): There's just so many advantages when you can execute as one person, then there's the other examples like our company at our size now, even ignoring the number of consultants that we need to do our business, just the back office alone, we need the difference in skills. We need the difference in talents and interests and everything. We simply could not exist without that kind of collaboration. However, when our consultants were working with a client, usually it's essentially a one-on-one type of thing, right? We don't typically put teams of consultants on the same project. We might have multiple consultants working for the same client and they might be building something that's somehow integrated, but it's still very similar, I think to your model, when you actually watch sort of the work being done, there's this amazing savings and complexities. Imke Feldmann (00:26:50): Yup, that's true. Of course I have a network in the background. So when big problems arise where I need brain input, of course, I have a network, but it's not a former company. Rob Collie (00:27:02): And that's how we work too, right? We have all kinds of internal Slack channels. For some reason we adopted Slack years ago before Teams was really a thing. So Slack is sort of like our internal social network. There's a lot of discussion of problems, and solutions, and a lot of knowledge sharing, and people helping each other out behind the scenes in that same way. Again, we do bring multiple consultants into particularly large projects, but it's not like there's three people working together on the same formula. In Power BI, the things that you do in ETL, the things that you do in power query are intimately interrelated with the data model and the decks that you need to create. And imagine parceling that out to three different people. You have one formula writer, one data modeler, one ETL specialist, you would never ever get anywhere in that kind of approach. Imke Feldmann (00:28:00): Not necessarily. I mean, the tax people are the person responsible for the data model. He could write down his requirements. He could define the tables basically. And then someone could try to get the data from the sources. But of course, then you get some feedback that the data isn't there or that the model has to be shaped in a different way. So it has two sides to it. But that's interesting to see that you have the same experience, that Power BI models or solutions of a certain size that can very well be handled by one person alone. And that really brings speed, and flexibility, and agility to the whole development process I think. Rob Collie (00:28:41): You communicate with yourself at what's above giga? Peta, petabit? you communicate with yourself at petabit speed and you communicate with others through a noisy 2,400 baud modem that's constantly breaking up. It's amazing what that can do for you sometimes. So there comes a point in your journey where you decide to go freelance. Imke Feldmann (00:29:07): Yup. Rob Collie (00:29:08): That's a courageous leap. When did that happen and what led you to that conclusion? Imke Feldmann (00:29:13): I made the decision in 2012 already to do that. Rob Collie (00:29:19): Wow. Imke Feldmann (00:29:20): And I just saw the light. I just saw the light in Power Pivot and then Power Query came along and I saw what Microsoft was after. And as I said, I enjoyed the building of the cube, getting my hands dirty, reading about the technologies behind it and so on. And this was what I felt passionate about. And I also had the idea that I needed some break from company politics. And so I just thought, well, I give it a try. And if it doesn't work, I can find a job after that or find a company where I work for at any time after that. So I just tried it and it worked. Rob Collie (00:30:05): So you decided in 2012, did you make the break in 2012 as well? Imke Feldmann (00:30:12): I prepared it, and then I just in 2013, I started solo. Rob Collie (00:30:18): Okay. 2013 is also when we formally formed our company. For 2010-2013, it was a blog. I had other jobs. I had other clients essentially, but I wasn't really hanging out the shingle so to speak, as you know, we're not an actual business really until 2013. And I guess it's not much accident that we both kind of did the same thing about the same time, it's that demand was finally sufficient I think in 2013 to support going solo. In 2012, there weren't enough clients to even support one consultant. And so, oh, that's great. And I think you really liked Power Query too, does M speak to you? Imke Feldmann (00:31:02): Yes. Yes. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:31:03): It does, doesn't it? Imke Feldmann (00:31:04): I really prefer Power Query or M over DAX, I must admit. It has been much more liable to me than DAX. Rob Collie (00:31:15): Oh, and I liked you so much before you said that. I'm team DAX all the way. Imke Feldmann (00:31:23): I know. I know. I know. I mean, of course I love to use DAX as well, but I really feel very, very strong about Power Query. And I mean, I had such a great journey with it. I mean, it was really [inaudible 00:31:35] work for me personally, that I did with it. And it was just a great journey to understand how things work. I mean, this has been the first coding language for me that I really learned. And it was just a great journey to learn all the things and starting to blog about it. And of course, I started basically helping people in the forum, that's where I basically built my knowledge about it, solving other people's problems. And this was just a great journey. And Polar Query has always been good to me than DAX. Rob Collie (00:32:14): This is really cool, right? So you fell in love with Power Pivot, so DAX and data model, right? There was no Power Query. Imke Feldmann (00:32:21): Mm-hmm (affirmative)-, that's true. Rob Collie (00:32:23): Okay. And because we had no Power Query, there were many, many, many things you couldn't do in Power Pivot unless your data source was a database. Imke Feldmann (00:32:30): Yup. Rob Collie (00:32:31): Because you needed views created that gave you the right shape tables, right? If your original data source didn't have a lookup table, a dimension table, you had to make one. And how are you going to make one without Power Query? It gets crazy, right? At least unbelievable. So try to mentally travel back for a moment to the point in time where you're willing to, and not just, it doesn't sound like you were just willing to, you were eager to go solo to become a freelancer, right, with just DAX and data modeling. And then after that, this thing comes along that you light up when you talk about. You didn't have this thing that you love, but you were already in, that doesn't happen very often. Imke Feldmann (00:33:18): It could be that loved DAX at the beginning, but it just started to disappoint me at sometimes. Rob Collie (00:33:29): Oh, okay. Thomas LaRock (00:33:29): It disappoints everyone. Rob Collie (00:33:29): I'm just devastated. Imke Feldmann (00:33:35): No, I mean, it's amazing what DAX can do, but I mean, we all know it looks easy at the beginning, but then you can really get trapped in certain situations. Rob Collie (00:33:46): Yeah. I described these two things is like the length and width of a rectangle, Power Query and DAX. Take your pick, which one's the width, which one's the length? I don't care. And then we ask which one is more responsible for the area of the rectangle, right? Neither. You can double the length of either of them and it doubles the area of the rectangle. So it's really ironic that I'm so sort of firmly on team DAX for a number of reasons. Number one, is that I'm really not actually that good at it compared to the people who've come along since. Like my book, for instance, I think, I look at it as this is the 100 and maybe the 200 level course at university, maybe the first in the second course, maybe, but it's definitely not the third course. The thing that you take in your third or fourth year of university, that's not covered in my book in terms of DAX. Rob Collie (00:34:44): And basically every one of the consultants at our company is better at DAX than I am. And that's great. That's really good. And the other thing that's ironic about my love of DAX over M, is if these two were in conflict, which they aren't. Imke Feldmann (00:35:00): No they are. Rob Collie (00:35:02): Is that I actually was trying for years to get a Power Query like project started on the Excel team. I knew how much time was being chewed up in the world just transforming data, not analyzing it even, just getting things ready for analysis. It's just ungodly amounts of time. And so I was obsessed with end-user ETL. When I was on the Excel team, it was like a running joke, someone would mention in a meeting, "Well, that's kind of like ETL," and other people would go, "Oh no, no, don't say that in front of Rob, he's going to get started and he won't shut up about it for the next 30 minutes." On the podcast with the Power Query team, I told them I'm really glad that no one ever agreed to fund my project on the Excel team because now that I see what Power Query is like I grossly underestimated how much work needed to go into something like that. And I'm glad that Microsoft isn't saddled with some old and completely inadequate solution to the Power Query space, because now that I've seen what the real thing looks like, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we would've never been able to pull that off." Rob Collie (00:36:14): So the thing that I was most obsessed with is the thing that now that it's actually been built, for some reason, I just find M to be, I don't know, there's like a reverse gravity there that pushes me away. Imke Feldmann (00:36:26): What I actually would like to see is that there's less need to use M in the Power Query product. So first, the only thing I was dreaming about was finally to have a function library that can easily be shipped from then, or that you can download from internet or wherever, where you can use additional functions in your M code. So this was the first thing that I was really passionate about and thought that we should have such a thing in Power Query to be able to make more cool things, or group steps together. But now what I really think we should actually have and see in Power Query is the ability to build our own ribbons and to the query editor. Rob Collie (00:37:13): Yes. Imke Feldmann (00:37:13): Like we have in an Excel. So this is something that in my eyes would really bring a big push to the product and actually would make so much sense for the people who start using these products. I mean the whole Power platform can have so many benefits for finance department, all departments, but I mean, I'm passionate about finance departments. But have you counted how many low-code languages are in there, if you include Power Apps and Power Automate and all these things? Rob Collie (00:37:50): Low-code. Imke Feldmann (00:37:50): And honestly, in order to come up with any solution that makes sense in a business environment, I would say in all of these solutions, there is no way around the code at the end. I mean, you get quite far with clicky, clicky, but I haven't seen solutions where you get around the languages. And now imagine the typical finance people who really they know the Excel formulas and some of them might know VBA as well. And now their server uses new low-code, no-code word, and just get your head around about five or six new languages that you all have to know and learn in order to get something useful and so on. So I think that's just not feasible for people who have real jobs in the business to learn all that. Rob Collie (00:38:42): Well, that's what you're here for, right? That's what your business is for and that's what P3 is for. Imke Feldmann (00:38:48): We get them started and the products are great. And if there are people in the companies who have a drive to learn things and take the time they get their heads around it, but it could be easier. It could be easier with things like that, where we could provide additional user interfaces and just make it even easier for people to build great solutions for them or adapt solutions that consultants had build initially, but to maintain them by themselves and make adjustments to them if needed. Rob Collie (00:39:19): So [inaudible 00:39:20] has an old joke where he says, when he's doing a presentation or something, he says, "That's a good question. And I define good question as a question I know the answer to, right." And then he says, "But then a great question is a question that is covered by the very next slide." So there's a similar parallel joke to make here, which is that, that idea you just talked about with the ribbons and everything, right? So if I said, it's a smart idea, what I would mean is, again, this is a joke, right? I would mean that that's an idea that I agree with and have kind of already had. But if I say it's a brilliant idea- Imke Feldmann (00:39:55): Okay. Rob Collie (00:39:56): ... Then it's an even better version of an idea that I've already had that has never occurred to me. Your idea is a brilliant idea. Imke Feldmann (00:40:02): Okay. Rob Collie (00:40:06): It goes beyond. So I have been advocating privately behind the scenes with the Power Query team forever telling them that they need about three or four more ribbon tabs. There's just way too many commonly encountered problems for which you can imagine there being a button for, and there's no button. Imke Feldmann (00:40:28): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:40:29): And it's like, I don't understand. I used to be on teams like that, but I don't understand why they haven't gotten to this. Because it seems so low hanging fruit. They've already built the engine, they've built the language, right? The language can already handle this, but you actually had two brilliant ideas in there that had never occurred to me. First of all, I'm used to the idea that the community can't contribute libraries of functions, they can't do that for DAX. Imke Feldmann (00:40:57): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:40:58): That's not even like engineering possible for DAX. And the reason for it is, is that the DAX engine is so heavily optimized in so many ways that there'd be no way to plug in some new function that's unpredictable in terms of what it needs to do. All of these things, they're all inherently interrelated and they make changes in the storage and the query engine to make this function work better and vice versa, because it has to take advantage of the index compression scheme and all of that kind of stuff. It's actually not possible, is the wrong word, but it's actually orders of magnitude more difficult, if not impossible to allow DAX to have UDF, user-defined function type of feature. Rob Collie (00:41:42): I don't think Power Query is like that though. Maybe naively, because again, I'm not on the internals team on the Power Query side. But it does seem like a UDF capability is at least much more feasible- Imke Feldmann (00:41:53): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:41:54): ... For Power Query, which does execute row by row essentially. Other languages have this, right? One of the reasons that R is so popular is not that R is so awesome, is that R has tremendous libraries of commonly solved problems that you can just go grab off the internet or off the shelf and plug into your solution. Imke Feldmann (00:42:14): I have my own library I've created. You can go to my GitHub and you'll see 50, 60 custom M functions. You can package them in a record and [inaudible 00:42:24] them as a library and your M code, or you could even connect live to them and run them with an execute statement. But this is too difficult, although it's just a couple of clicks, but it's too difficult or at least intimidating for the beginners, who really Power Query beginners who start with the products, I think there's so much potential to make their life easier. And that's not through some coding stuff, or I know this function, I know that function, that's really can only come in my eyes through user interface with buttons. Rob Collie (00:42:59): Yeah, I agree. And just as importantly for me, is that I might actually come around and be like, just as much team Power Query as team DAX. Honestly, my frustration is just the M language and just my total lack of desire to learn it. [crosstalk 00:43:16]. It is what it really comes down to. It's not about M, it's not about Power Query, it's about me. Whereas again, I know the need that it fills is massively important. So it's not that I think it's a bad mission, I think it's like the mission in a lot of ways. I was obsessed with it long before I ever crossed paths with business intelligence, I was obsessed with data transformation, end user data transformation. It's just a problem that's about as ubiquitous as it gets. So let's make it happen. We agree, the two of us, that's it, right? It's like we need to go provide a unified front. Imke Feldmann (00:43:52): I think that that's an idea in the idea forum, I might send the link that you can maybe post. Rob Collie (00:43:56): We want that thing up, voted to the moon. I'll even go figure out what my sign in is on the ideas side. Imke Feldmann (00:44:08): Oh, good luck with it. Rob Collie (00:44:09): Which is absolutely impossible. I have no idea which of the 14 counts. And then I'll try to create a new one and it'll go, "Nah, you're not allowed to. We know it's you, but we won't tell you who it is, what your email address is." So I completely agree. So there's so many problems. I always struggle to produce the list. It's like I need to be writing down the list of things that are crucial, but here's an example. Remove duplicates, but control which duplicate you keep. That's a problem that can't be solved in the GUI today. Imke Feldmann (00:44:48): And you need the intimidating type of buffer that you have to write by hand around it, which is just pain. Rob Collie (00:44:56): Remove dups and don't care which one you keep. Okay, fine. That's a great simple button. There should be an advanced section that allows you to specify, oh, but before you keep the dups, sort by this column or sort in the following manner. Imke Feldmann (00:45:10): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:45:10): And then keep the first one of each group. It's easy for us to say outside the team, but apparently that is a, we just make a joke, right? That's apparently a Manhattan project level of software to add that extra button. Anyway, we'll get that. Thomas LaRock (00:45:27): That doesn't make sense to me though. I'm fascinated by all of your conversation and you guys are a hundred miles away from me in a lot of this stuff, but I could listen to it all day. But no, the fact that Excel can't do the remove duplicates, except for like the first of each one of something, that's a simple group by. In my head, I sit there and go that's easily solvable because Excel and DAX does such great stuff that I would never want to do in TSQL, how the hell do we stumble across a thing that's been solved by straight up SQL language that somehow can't get into an Excel? Rob Collie (00:46:01): Well, let's explain the problem very clearly and see if we're on the same page as to what the problem is, but either way it'll be valuable. So let's say you have a whole bunch of orders, a table full of orders. That is a really wide Franken table. It's got things like customer ID, customer address, customer phone number, but also what product they ordered, and how much of it, and how much it cost. Okay, and a date, a date of the order. All right. And you've been given this table because the people that are responsible for this system, they think that what you want is a report and not a data source. And this is incredibly common. Okay. So you need to extract a customer's dimension or lookup table out of this. You need to create a customer's table so that you can build a good star schema model. Okay. And Power Query is right there to help you. Power Query will help you invent a customer's look up table where one wasn't provided, and that's awesome. Rob Collie (00:46:58): Okay. So you say, okay, see customer ID this column. I want to remove duplicates based on that column. Okay, great. But now it's just that the order that the data came in from the report file or the database or whatever that will determine which duplicate is kept. What you really want to do of course is take the most recent customer order of each customer ID because they've probably moved. They may have changed phone numbers, whatever, right? You want their most recent contact information. You don't want their contact information for 15 years ago. And the M language allows you to solve this problem essentially sort by date, and then keep the most recent, but only if you get into the code manually, and as Imke points out, it's not even if you go into the code, the things that you would want to do, if you do a sort, you can add a sort step to the Power Query with the buttons, with the GUI, and then you do the remove duplicates and it ignores the source. Imke Feldmann (00:47:59): Yes. Rob Collie (00:48:02): The GUI almost tries to tell you that it's impossible, but if you know about table dot buffer. Imke Feldmann (00:48:07): So the question is why do we have a sort command in Power Query when it doesn't give the sort order? I mean, that is the question to ask. But that's how it is. Rob Collie (00:48:16): It sorts the results. It sorts the results, it just doesn't sort for the intermediate steps. Imke Feldmann (00:48:20): Why? No, that's quite technical. But would just be great if such a common task could be done with buttons that is reliable at the end. I fully agree. Rob Collie (00:48:35): So Tom, I think this one's really just an example of, again, I truly think that M and Power Query, just like DAX and data modeling, the Power BI data modeling, both of these things belong in the software hall of fame of all time. It is amazing, Power Query, M, is just ridiculously amazing. It's one of the best things ever invented. Remember this is someone who's associated with being a critic of it. Imke Feldmann (00:49:04): Yeah, you're making progress, it's great to see. Rob Collie (00:49:07): And yet I'm telling you that it's one of the top five things ever invented probably. And I think there's a certain tendency when you've done something that amazing to lose track of the last mile. I think it's more of a human thing. Imke Feldmann (00:49:19): Maybe, but I mean, what I see is that they are investing quite a lot in data flows, which makes a lot of sense as well in my eyes. Rob Collie (00:49:27): All that really does though, as far as you and I are concerned, Imke, is it makes it even more important that they solve this problem. Because it's now exposed in two different usage scenarios. Imke Feldmann (00:49:37): Yeah, you're right. Rob Collie (00:49:39): And I want my data flow to be able to control which duplicates are kept too. So that's what I'm saying. There's all these big sort of infrastructural technical challenges that do tend to draw resources. And it's not a neglect thing. Imke Feldmann (00:49:54): No, no. Rob Collie (00:49:54): It isn't like a willful failure or anything like that, I don't want to paint that kind of negative of a picture. Imke Feldmann (00:49:59): No. Rob Collie (00:50:00): It's just that out here in reality, the inability to do, even if we just identified the top 10 things like this, addressing those top 10 things with GUI, with buttons, what have I think in the world, maybe even a bigger impact than the entire data flows project, right? Because you would expand the footprint of human beings that are advocates of this stuff and then you go build data flows. You don't have to think of it as either or, right? They should do both. It's just that I think it's hard to appreciate the impact of those 10 buttons when you're on the software team. It's easier to appreciate the impact of data flows, which is massive. I don't mean to denigrate that. I think it's crazy good. It's just that this other thing is of a similar magnitude in terms of benefit, but it's harder to appreciate when you're on the software team. It's easier to appreciate when you're out here in the trenches, living it every single day. And every time I run into a problem like this, I have to put my hand up and say to my own team, I have to say, " Help." Thomas LaRock (00:51:02): So a casual observation I have is that you wish for there to exist one tool that will handle all of your data janitorial needs. And that tool doesn't necessarily exist because life is dirty, so is your data and you're never going to anticipate everything possible. Now, should that sorting functionality exist in that duplicates, the scenario gave me? Yeah, probably. But there's always going to be something next. And that's why I go to you and I say, the thing that you've described to me is you need your data to be tidy so that it can be consumed and used by a lot of these features that we've talked about today. And in order to get to tidy data, there's no necessarily one tool. Thomas LaRock (00:51:48): You're a big fan of the ETL, Rob. You know that, hey, maybe I need to take the source data and run it through some Python scripts, or some M, or something first before it goes to this next thing. And that's the reality that we really have. What you're wishing for is the one tool, the one button to rule it all. And that's going to take a while before that ever comes around. Rob Collie (00:52:09): The thing is though, is that M is ridiculously complete. Imke Feldmann (00:52:14): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:52:15): You can do anything with it. And it's a language that's optimized for data transformation. So I know you can do anything with C++ too, right? But this is a data crunching, data transformation, specialized language that is really complete. And its UI is woefully under serving the capabilities of the engine. And so I suppose we could imagine and deliberately design a data transformation scenario that maybe M couldn't do it. Imke Feldmann (00:52:45): No. Rob Collie (00:52:46): I think that'd be a very difficult challenge considering how good M is. Imke Feldmann (00:52:49): I think in terms of logic, M can do anything, but in terms of performance, there is some room for improvements. So because there's a streaming semantic running in the background, and as long as the stream runs through all the steps, if you have complex queries, this can really slow things down. And currently there is no button or command in the M language to cut the stream and say, well, stop it here and buffer what you have calculated until here, and then continue from there. So if you have really complex stuff that would benefit from an intermediate buffer, then you can store that in an Azure blob or CSV, or whatever. Specifically if you're working with data flows, you can create some automatic processes that would enable this kind of buffering. Imke Feldmann (00:53:45): And then you will see that the speed of the whole process that can really increase dramatically because in some situations, the speed in M drops exponentially. And these are occasions where a buffer would really helped things, but we don't have it yet in the engine of Power Query. So this was what really be something else that would be fairly beneficial if we wouldn't have to make these work-arounds through things. Rob Collie (00:54:14): Tom, that just occurred to me, I can't believe this is the first time that this thought has crossed my mind. But I think that you might fall into an abyss of love with M. Thomas LaRock (00:54:28): Well, I'm a huge James Bond fan, but... Rob Collie (00:54:30): Oh, no. I think you would really, really just dig it. Thomas LaRock (00:54:38): I don't think I have time to take on a new relationship at this point. I'm still with Python and R, so I mean, I don't know. I'm not going to disagree, I'm just, please don't start a new addiction for me. Rob Collie (00:54:51): Think of the content though, that you could produce over time. The M versus SQL versus Python treatises. Thomas LaRock (00:54:59): Cookbook. Rob Collie (00:55:00): You were made for this mission Tom. Thomas LaRock (00:55:03): Okay. So we'll have to talk later about it. You can sweet talk me. You know I've let you sweet talk me into any [inaudible 00:55:08]. Rob Collie (00:55:08): That's right, that's right. Come on, Tom. Get into M, you know that thing that I have nothing but praise for, that I just love to death, you need to do that. Thomas LaRock (00:55:18): For you. That's what you want to do, is you want to learn it but [inaudible 00:55:21] through me. Rob Collie (00:55:22): Oh, that wouldn't work. I would be, "Oh yeah, well this is still M." Thomas LaRock (00:55:29): You're going to be like, "Tom, where's your latest blog post on M so I can read it and hate upon it even more?" Rob Collie (00:55:37): No, I would not read. Just as the first step. Thomas LaRock (00:55:42): I'm going to read it, but not leave a comment about how much I hate it. Rob Collie (00:55:45): Let's go back to talking about how we did a bunch of big fat Fisher-Price buttons for me to mash my thumbs in the UI. That's what I need. Thomas LaRock (00:55:54): You know what? I'll do that. I'll open up VS code and I'll just build this one big button, it's Rob's button. Rob Collie (00:56:00): Hey, you won't believe this, but I recently installed VS code. Thomas LaRock (00:56:03): I don't believe it, why? Rob Collie (00:56:05): Well, because I needed to edit, not even write, because I'm not capable of it. I needed to edit an interface, add on customization for World of Warcraft. And the only purpose of this World of Warcraft add on interface modification was to allow me to drop snarky comments into a particular channel of the conversation based on the button that I press. I needed a menu of snarky comments to drop at particular points in time. It's hard to type them out all the time, right? So it's just like, now here we go. I dropped one of those. I dropped one of those. Thomas LaRock (00:56:37): We got to get you a real job or something. You got way too much time on your hands. Rob Collie (00:56:42): That was my number one contribution to the World of Warcraft Guild. For a couple of months, there was the snarky rogue chat. Thomas LaRock (00:56:48): You know that is on brand. Rob Collie (00:56:56): It prefixed every comment in the chat with a prefix, you came from rogue chat 9,000. So that people who aren't on the joke were like, "Why is this guy, he's usually very quiet, become so obnoxious. Look at the things he's saying." Anyway. So VS code. And that also involved GitHub. Because my friend who wrote the stub, the shell of this add on for me is a vice president at GitHub. So of course he puts the code in GitHub and points me to it and then points me to VS code, and I'm like, "Oh, you're making me work now? Okay. But you wrote the shell for me, so okay. All right. I'll play ball." So it doesn't sound like you regret your decision to go solo. Imke Feldmann (00:57:40): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:57:41): You're not looking to go back to corporate life. Imke Feldmann (00:57:43): Absolutely not. Rob Collie (00:57:44): Not missing that. So what can you tell us about the last year or two? What impact, if any, did COVID have on your business? Imke Feldmann (00:57:52): Business has grown especially the last year. So people needed more reports than ever and solutions. So it really, I don't know whether it was COVID effect or just the fact that Power BI is growing and growing. Rob Collie (00:58:07): I'm sure it's both. So the dynamic we saw during 2020. So 2020 would be the, if you're going to have a year that was negatively impacted by COVID, it would have been 2020. And what we saw in 2020 was that we were definitely not acquiring new clients. We weren't making new relationships at nearly the rate we had been people weren't taking risks on meeting a new BI firm. That wasn't something that there was as much appetite for as there had been. However, amongst the clients where we already had a good relationship, we'd already been working with them for a while, their needs for data work expanded as a result of COVID because it did, it created all kinds of new problems and it invalidated so many existing blueprints of tribal knowledge of how we run the business. When reality changes, you need new maps, you need new campuses. Rob Collie (00:59:04): And so on net, we ended up our overall business still grew modestly over the course of 2020, year over year compared to 2019. But then when the new clients started to become viable again, people started looking, we're interested in making new relationships, 2021 has been a very, very strong year of growth, not moderate, really kind of crazy. How do you keep up with increased demand as a one person shop? Imke Feldmann (00:59:35): Saying no. Rob Collie (00:59:36): You have to make your peace with saying no. At one point in my history, I faced sort of the same thing and I decided not to say no, and instead decided to grow the company. That brought an enormous amount of risk and stress- Imke Feldmann (00:59:55): I can imagine. Rob Collie (00:59:55): ... Into my life that I did not anticipate its magnitude. I'm sure I anticipated it, but I didn't anticipate the magnitude of it. I'm very grateful that I'd made that decision though, because where we are today is incredible. That's a rocky transition. So today everything runs like clockwork basically. We have a lot of growth ahead of us that seems almost like it's just going to happen, we're just going to keep growing for a long time. But we had to set the table we had to build our organism as a company into a very different form than what it had been when it was just me. And that molting process it was very painful. I don't pretend that the scaling decision is the right decision, it's very much a personal one. I've certainly lived that. If the version of me that made the decision to scale the company knew everything that was coming, it would have been a much harder decision to make. You kind of have to have a little bit of naive optimism even to make that leap. Imke Feldmann (01:00:57): I can imagine that once you get these things figured out and with the dynamic that the product has, that has a good chance to get it going into a very successful business, I believe. Rob Collie (01:01:10): Well, with your profile and with the growing demand for these sorts of services, the percentage of no that you have to say is just going to keep going up. Imke Feldmann (01:01:20): Yeah. But I made my decision and that's just fine. Rob Collie (01:01:25): I'm very supportive of that decision. I don't have any criticism of it, again, especially knowing what I know now. But if there's going to be come a point where you're going to be saying yes 1% of the time, and the answer to that is ultimately, well, you just raise your rates, which is also very difficult to do. In the end, it's almost like an auction for your services. You need to run yourself like Google. There's a 40 hour block of Imke time coming up for availability. We'll just put it on eBay. Imke Feldmann (01:01:59): I mean, it's just nice to be able to choose with whom you work with. That's just nice. And I earned enough money, so that's fine. So I'm happy with that. Rob Collie (01:02:12): How do you choose who you work with? Is it mostly based on industry? Is it mostly based on job function that you're helping? Or is it more about the specific people? There's all kinds of things that could... Let's say if I came to your website today, I filled out your contact form, what are the things that I could say in that contact for a message that would lead you to say no, versus leads you to say maybe? Imke Feldmann (01:02:37): What I really like to do is to work with finance directors. So basically not people exactly like me, but I like to see that the managers approached me and they have an interest in the product itself and also therefore an interest to push it into their departments. So this is for me, a very, very good starting point because it's an area I'm familiar with. I know that there's enough critical support to get the decisions that have to be made and maybe also push IT to help with certain things. This is really one of my favorite set ups, I would say. Rob Collie (01:03:19): Yeah, we do a lot of work with finance departments as well. How long does sort of your average relationship run with a client? How long do you end up working with the same organization on average? Imke Feldmann (01:03:31): That's hard to say, that's really completely different. It can be the initial five days kickoff where we set up a PNL statement connect all the finance data and they go along with that. And basically, never hear again, or just occasionally hear again, "Can you help me with this problem or that problem?" And it could also be going on for years, basically with breaks in between of course, but some customers, they come every now and then when they want to expand things. Now I have a customer that I'm working on some hours or even days ever week since over a year by now. Rob Collie (01:04:15): That sounds similar to my experience as a freelancer, when it was just me, less similar to our business today, a little bit less. I mean, I think it's still more similar than not. It's just that the dial has moved a little bit. Imke Feldmann (01:04:32): So how long are your engagements then, usually? Rob Collie (01:04:35): Most of our engagements are, if we start out doing kind of that kickoff you're talking about, we started like a project with people, that tends to not be the end. We don't typically have people just immediately vanish after that because that's usually the point at which, I mean, they've got something working already, very often after the first week or so of working with a client, they've usually got some really amazing things built already at that point. But at the same time, that's really just at the beginning of the appetite. Usually there are things that are not done even in that initial solution that even if they could figure it out for themselves, which sometimes they could, once they've seen what the possibilities are like, I'm sure you see this too. This dynamic I'm going to describe is one that you're familiar with. Imke Feldmann (01:05:20): Of course. Rob Collie (01:05:21): It's not about our business. It's about the technology and sort of how it meets the people. Someone comes to us and they're almost by definition, if they're going to hire us, they're in on the idea of Power BI, they're in on the idea of the Power platform. But after the first week of working with us, they're three times as in, they're just so much more in than they even imagined they could be. Because now they could see like, "Okay, this is real. We made all of that progress in that amount of time. And the ROI on getting the magical stuff up and running sooner is better to press the gas pedal and get there faster, even if you could muddle your way through it." Saving the cost of us helping them isn't a good trade-off for them. Imke Feldmann (01:06:08): Yup, that's true. Rob Collie (01:06:11): And that was a hard thing for me to get my head around when I was a solo practitioner, when I was a freelancer. I was almost trying to not bill hours. I was like, "Now you can do this for yourself." I was telling clients that they needed to do things for themselves that they didn't want to do for themselves. Thomas LaRock (01:06:29): Right. Rob Collie (01:06:29): They're like, "No, we actually want you to." And so another luxury that I had as a freelancer that we've had to grow out of as a company, I'm really interested to hear what your thoughts are about this. So when I was a freelancer and I had more demand for my services than I had time, and I did live in that world for a while, I had the luxury of not putting myself fully on their side of the table, meaning they manage the project. If there was a need for something, I wasn't going to do anything unless I was directly asked for it, which is what you want from a consultant, you don't want a consultant going off and doing all kinds of crazy work. Imke Feldmann (01:07:08): Exactly. Rob Collie (01:07:10): But there's a stronger version of this [inaudible 01:07:11] is that I wouldn't even suggest anything beyond what they had asked me for. And it wasn't that I had all kinds of ideas and I was withholding them, I just wasn't doing that. I viewed myself as a service that they came to with their demands and I would fulfill their demands and then they would leave and they would come back when they needed me, that's how I sort of defined my role. And what we've learned over time is that that's actually a disservice to the client to not help them sort of expand their picture of what's possible. We've even had clients who started out working with me in the Rob a LA carte model where I was just like a one-way interface, you came to me and then I do work, right? Rob Collie (01:07:53): And as a company, we've had clients that started off in that mode with me and then transitioned to other people. And again like that cultural practice kind of got inherited to the company in the early stages of our existence. And we've had clients, early clients, who've been with us for years, come back to us later and say, "Hey, it would have been better for us if you'd been a little bit more proactive in terms of suggesting how we could improve our operation in general." And we've heard that signal and we've transitioned, we've absolutely transformed, but we are no longer the Rob style. This is the lesson that we learned years ago and we've gone through the learning curve and the process of getting better about being better advisors. Imke Feldmann (01:08:33): What do you mean by that? What do your clients need in terms of suggestions or improvements? Their basic finance processes? Rob Collie (01:08:41): I'll answer that with an example. And it will be a halfway factual example that came from our history, but also I'll sort of halfway fictionalize it to make it easier to understand. Imke Feldmann (01:08:53): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (01:08:53): This is a very truthy example. So let's say we were building dashboards reports for a particular company for a long time. And we knew that the way these dashboards, these reports were being used, was to inform people on particular decisions that they need to make, of course, right? But we know, because we've been part of their culture and their team for so long, we know what that looks like. We know that the person who's using this report, that role, then turns around and goes to this other system, this other line of business system and make certain adjustments, okay. This client came back to us and said, "Hey, it would have been great if two years earlier than when it came up, you had suggested that we start doing some sort of Power Apps integration here, or Power Automate, Flow, whatever, right, to make the action taking portion of that process less clumsy." Now we never asked you P3 if there was anything you could do there, okay? Imke Feldmann (01:09:55): Yes. Rob Collie (01:09:56): "But eventually we discovered on our own that that was a possibility and we formed the goal to do it." This is an example from like 2016, right? So this conversation happened like five years ago, but it's still like three years into the history of the company, right? And they said, "Look, if you had your eyes a little bit wider open, and I'd been okay with this suggestion," in other words, in some ways we are so, especially back then, we were so obsessed with this idea of being the good guys, right? But we're still like this. We don't do any work for a client that's not good for the client. We don't suggest projects that will build revenue just to build revenue. I think most consulting firms very much still do. So this still makes people like us and yourself different, right? Rob Collie (01:10:42): We were so obsessed with that principle that we wouldn't even suggest things to the client that we're amazing for them. And so we have learned our lesson there. We're not pushy, it's not like a used car sales dealership or whatever, but we're much more conscious of the entire ecosystem that's going on at the clients, the bigger picture. And just because a client hasn't formed an idea and asked us if we could do it, that's not the signal, right? We should have our eyes open and be at least open people's eyes to possibilities that would make things genuinely better for them, whether they choose to do it or not, whether they choose to use us to help them do it or not, doesn't matter, we've become better advisors over the years. Imke Feldmann (01:11:28): I understand what you mean. That's one reason why I prefer to work with finance directors or people in that area because I can ask them these questions and can speak openly with them, and they sit on the budget and they can then decide if they want to move in that direction or not. And certainly Flow is a product that's helped me a lot in these additional aspects in the past. So these Power Automate things are really a great addition in them for many finance tasks. Rob Collie (01:12:00): I think that's a really crucial difference. When you're working with finance directors, you have legitimately walked in their shoes. And so there's an authenticity there when you say, "Hey, I would seriously consider paying some attention to this other portion of your workflow that we could improve." Whereas I had been a software engineer when I was solo, right? I had never been anything. Software engineers weren't hiring me, right? Imke Feldmann (01:12:30): Sometimes that's just enough to ask the question, " Just have you considered this or that? Or there are other options as well." And then, I mean, can be a difficult field, but diplomacy is needed and it helps if you know the client for some time just to develop a feeling if they are open to suggestions for improvement, let's say like that. But that makes sense. Rob Collie (01:12:56): It's probably easy to imagine being a little bit less proactive with suggesting or expanding the possibilities with a client who doesn't come from an industry you're familiar with, right? So my... You don't need any advice you're doing great. But so my advice to you, if there was such a thing that was necessary, it would be that even outside of your industries of comfort, the lesson that we've learned is that you should be still using basically all of your faculties, just like you would be. It turns out that the nature of problems, the patterns that exist, they span industries. And a versatile brain such as yours really is just as valuable making suggestions outside of your industry of origin as within it. And that was a lesson that we, as an organization, have had to learn. Rob Collie (01:13:46): And our consultants have a lot more relevant industry experience than I ever did. Because again, I still don't think we've been hired to help a software engineering organization manage their software product methodology. Maybe we have, I wouldn't know, but still we work with lots of industries that maybe the first time we've ever worked for that industry. And we discover that boy, there's all kinds of things we've done for other industries that ended up being relevant anyway. And it's the nature of the thinker, is I think quite a bit more important even than specific industry experience. I think the industry experience is actually more valuable in just sort of selling. People, I think really overestimate the value of industry experience when helping a particular industry with their data and they underestimate the quality of the thinker that's helping them. And we have just amazing thinkers on our team, and Imke, you clearly are as well. But anyway, you got a good thing going, you don't need to... I'm not saying that you need to change everything you're doing, of course not, you're killing it. Imke Feldmann (01:14:49): Let's speak in two or three years, if that's still the thing I want to do. But for the moment, I couldn't be more happy with how the business runs. Rob Collie (01:14:58): You're just an amazing story, an amazing person. And I'm glad that we got to do this, we got to spend this time together. It's been a long time coming. Imke Feldmann (01:15:06): No it's great to finally talk with you. I mean, we've crossed paths a couple of times before, but never had the chance to chat a bit. So it was a really enjoyable experience. Rob Collie (01:15:19): One of the OG Power Pivot crew. Imke Feldmann (01:15:21): These were the days. Rob Collie (01:15:23): I'm just delighted at your arc. Imke Feldmann (01:15:26): Thanks. Thanks Tom as well, nice to meet you. Announcer (01:15:28): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast. Let the experts at P3 adaptive help your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Have a data day!