I have another inspiring power bi story for you meet John a Kimura fellow
Microsoft MVP and friend who left his full-time job as a financial analyst and
built his online training business Excel campus comm it all started with John
wanting to give back to the community and now 40,000 people every day learn
from him to his website YouTube channel and online courses make sure you wash
through the end as John shares how an introvert who took the slow turtle
approach can still achieve great success if they learn this one key lesson
stories like John that get me excited stories from real people just like you
and me using power bi to make a real impact these are the power bi pioneers
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let's hear it from John hey John how you doing great thank you for having me
excited Oh indeed I'm so excited to have you here I followed you online so your
main presence is on Excel campus comm is that right that's correct
Excel campus comm awesome and you're on YouTube as well my fellow youtuber yeah
fellow youtuber YouTube channels also excel campus Oh perfect alright so tell
me the story of excel campus how did it come about ah I started a long time ago
just kind of a hobby at that point sharing some of the things that I was
doing in Excel a few add-ins that I created and also VBA type projects so I
just started a site to kind of share some things I've been creating and also
kind of give back to the community that I had learned from cuz I'd really
learned so much from just Google searches back then for sure in all the
forums that people were you know posting in it's really a place where I probably
gained most of my knowledge with Excel yeah that's great and and where where is
Excel campus right now so right now it's not a part-time thing anymore yeah tell
me a little bit about where it is right now yeah now it is my full-time business
my full-time job is Excel campus so it has grown a lot over the last eight
years or so especially over the last two years it's really taken off we've seen a
lot of growth from the YouTube channel and also from the blog as well full-time
job and and of course we have courses and I also sell some of the add-ins that
I've developed on Excel that's how I originally got started
start selling some of those add-ins that I created for Excel and they kind of
into doing online courses as well that's great give me a give me a sense of the
scale and whichever number pops at you or it's gonna be relevant like visitors
you get or something like that how many people are you are you touching right
reaching with this yeah and I just look at that actually and we're reaching on
the weekdays almost 40,000 people a day visit either the YouTube channel or the
website so oh my it's kind of hard to even fathom that number but it really
shows how many people are searching for help with these tools nah nest excel you
know power bi as well yeah that shows and I and I have like a very very small
piece of that they have high when it comes to search I mean I you know I
don't have that much content so it really goes to show just how many people
are using these tools yeah and also need help with it man that's brilliant you
said and started on this with the intent of giving back talk about that right I
mean 40,000 people and so of course you know we've all heard that where
somebody's listening in like oh my gosh I only got a hundred visitors but
imagine hundred people in the room man is gonna be pretty crowded if it's not a
huge room but imagine 40,000 that's a you must figure doing so that's great
man I'm really glad to you and of course that took time do you know it's been
eight years of doing this and so it definitely takes time to get there -
yeah yeah that's great so so I'll say when I first met you I
mean you're you're so unassuming very approachable and and that's great but I
would have almost I don't know if you categorize yourself do you think of
yourself as introverted extroverted swear on that scale would you put
yourself oh definitely introverted yeah about it Wow so if I have kind of
struggled with that myself and I hear others kind of say this oh I can't do
this because I'm ABC right they feel something in too
when you were just starting out or maybe little bit before that if somebody had
shown you this glimpse would you have kind of believe that or what you've said
no it doesn't sound like me I definitely would not have believed it I think I
even still have some my old videos up on YouTube from like the very first ones I
did and you know those are probably embarrassing now but it's it's we all
have that way and it took me time this is it wasn't natural for me to I wanted
to do something like it especially I'm just like getting on camera like it's
not something I would have thought out of years ago that I'd be doing and I'm
doing for a living so for me personally it took time to kind of break out of
that she'll and really enjoy it that's that's great
and and of course I mean the way I see it I mean the way you come across as
person you come across in your blog and certainly video it's very transparent
you come across the same way and I think that's the key you're not gonna turn
into this gregarious showman suddenly and you don't need to you can succeed
just by kind of being yourself and yeah that's very evident with your example
yeah I think so and I think part of it is in the nice part of it is you get
pretty instant feedback with even just creating a video and going back and
listening to yourself or watching yourself and you can
critique yourself and and improve very quickly which is what I try and do it
and still takes time to improve but I do try and interject a little more energy
and you know the videos and all that stuff now versus when I started it was I
was just trying to put all the stuff yeah you can always you know kind of
things we can do differently but yeah you can still be you and and that's what
I enjoy about your content so tell me a little bit more about the journey about
the transition so you did take a long time and I'm sure there were a lot of
lessons learned along the way is there are there any key kind of insights that
stand out or key turning points in that process in that novel journey yeah I
think there are definitely a few one was the shift in the products I was offering
in terms of you know making this a full-time job for me of course before
that I worked full-time at a day job and then did this Excel campus is
yeah I do want to hear hear that but can you tell me a little bit more about the
day job that you had what were you doing oh sure yeah so I always had jobs mostly
Financial Analysts doing corporate finance type work also accounting I'm
sorry budgeting forecasting even accounting stuff and my specialty within
that was systems automation or process automation so I really enjoyed of course
when creating VBA solutions but also dashboard type solutions you know a lot
of more automated systems where when in the corporate world we're dealing with a
lot of different data sources you know and though it matter bringing all that
together uh-huh in a way that makes sense
automating all that today yeah analyze the data and presented yeah that's what
that's where I'm really focused and was most excited about those roles was doing
the creative for not in automation and and in a way you're still helping that
audience right I mean you're still now you're solving it not just for a single
team you're working with now you're solving it kind of for everybody right
through you through your courses through the add-ins
can you give me a few more examples of that kind of the gauchos are the
problems that this audience struggles with and let's stake in the finance now
of course you broaden your audience to much bigger than that but if you stay in
that finance realm so combining multiple data sources what were some of the other
things that you remember certainly the weight way back when you were still kind
of had that full-time job yeah a lot of it is doing the same repetitive tasks
over and over again you know some creating everything in finance is
deadline-driven so you're either on a monthly close to
quarterly close you're publishing numbers know everything is Ted line
driven so that means you have to get all these things done between you know in a
certain amount of time and so that is probably a very big problem or pain
point yeah for most Excel users is they might not know the best tools that are
available to them even within Excel that can make that job faster a simple
example is a pivot table and as we know if they do tables really the underlying
feature of power bi and these bigger cool
it all comes down to the simplicity of what the PivotTable can do
I don't know that tool that you might spend hours writing formulas to create
the same result without really you know knowing that there's a faster way out
there those types of issues I entered the biggest one just the time-consuming
work that can be done in Excel when you don't know faster way done this really
anyone's fault 7 yeah yeah yeah that's great so so man you've been doing this
long after 2000 I think 2009 I was I was experimenting with what was project
Gemini back then I wrote my first tax measure but of course and so do 2009 is
when you started Excel campus you'd been using Excel much for the back I think
yeah and you've seen the whole journey you've seen the arrival of power pivot
and power query and power bi what's your take on on all this I mean yeah how do
you see it well I love the tools and I love the evolution of these tools and
how quickly they're changing now you know they're being updated monthly and
especially the power bi and you can power query and being improved by
Microsoft and there's full support there which is just awesome and I also love to
see people starting to use these tools and just explore them and find them for
the first time I know when people see what power query can do for the first
time even the unfitted feature is you know something that's wheezed to write
macros for and those macros are easy it's not an easy task to solve
especially as your data gets more complex right though simple things like
that can save so much time and then when you look at that and how you can then
that's just one small piece of a fully automated process right with bringing
data and power query maybe from multiple sources and binding it and creating
those relationships with power pivot you know it's all done in power bi too but I
to get back to your question I think it's amazing that we now have these
tools available to us yeah I definitely help more people learn about them
because I think you know the user adoption is still relatively low and
it's just don't know about it yet yes I would say yeah that part sometimes
frustrates me when I think about what small sliver off everybody using Excel
who can benefit from it I mean let alone the guys who like doing simple
stuff and they shouldn't care about it but if you take the bar publishing
benefit from it how small sliver of that knows about it and but but having said
that I mean I heard that in your tone I love and I'm watching that reaction when
you're able to show it to somebody for the first time like this is what power
query power pivot Barbie I can do and see their eyes go wide yeah you know
gosh you know I love that so yeah that's that's that's great so so I kind of
sidetracked you but let's get back on that journey so you talking about so to
me again kind of the key points key turning points key lessons in that
journey from working full time starting Excel campus and being here now were you
helping thousands of people every day yeah yeah sure so of course the growth
of time that wasn't like an overnight lesson I don't think but one of those
again one of the turning points was just offering forces online courses like I
realized of course I saw other people in our industry doing that but I also
realized that people there using Excel want to learn these techniques before
that I've been developing add-ins which would just yet solve the problem with
the click of a button in a lot of sense you know or just make tasks easier
they still do and they're still very popular and people use them but I think
people also want to learn more about how to implement these things maybe build
their own add-ins that I have a course that teaches that and and really learn
this so they can customize it to what they need because the thing with Excel
and power bi is that every single person that uses it is using it in a different
capacity they have different data they have different results they need
different outputs different KPIs sometimes are therefore they want to
learn how they can use it for themselves and also maintain it you know so I think
that was a big turning point for me it was realizing that I could be more of a
teacher versus a developer yeah well I'm sure a lot of people out there are glad
you know you came of that and you made that switch so let me end things on on
maybe a personal note so I've been I'm new to this journey I left my job in
Microsoft it's done 14 but really being in my own business for about the past
two years and I want to ask you if besides so there's I'm sure in
there's a lot you learn about the business about running the business you
talk about the switch to courses but sometimes you learn something about
yourself as well is there something that comes to mind ah yes and first of all
congratulations on that jump for you I know that's a big deal it's going
through it myself I say congratulations to you I think you know a lot of it is
really having faith in yourself that it is possible to do this and take on a new
venture in your life especially you know no matter what it is it might be a new
business it might just be a new job that you want to try a new career path yeah
I've seen that even with some of my students they've just taken a bit of
that leave to do something that's way you know kind of above theirs what
they're doing now or their skill set now and a lot of it's just having the faith
and confidence to do that you know I think I said that
might be kind of a generalization but I think really it's one of the biggest
drivers that can help with any level of success is really just believing in
yourself and and maybe having people around you that also believe in you too
I think that's that's another big one as well yeah that's great so I'm gonna push
you a little bit more than that so when you look back and like oh you know I
believe in myself was it something external that change an
event that happened I mean often we wait for that right like oh when I get this
promotion then I'm gonna be good enough or when I hit this much and revenue is
something like that or whatever a number of subscribers right I mean we have some
measure in her mind often we keep chasing that was it an event for you and
like oh oh yeah you know look this happened I must be good enough or was it
not was it interim um probably both I'm trying to think some of it was my wife
okay and she pushed me that support that I was talking about for you know a lot
of dead you transition there was her pushing me to go for it because I
honestly the ITO to get real personal we were she was pregnant at the time that I
did quit my job and started work on Excel campus full time so it's very
scary to leave a job with benefits it's last at that time they you know
that stayed in our life but she was fully supportive of it so it definitely
helps to have support so I think that was one major thing and I am a bit of
the tortoise in the sense that it took me longer than it might take others you
for example you know you you just went for it I feel
whereas I kind of slowly an addition and made sure there was a safety net there
looking back on and I don't think I would do it that way you know or going
forward I might make decisions differently but again that just goes
back to that that faith and confidence to know that that will be there yeah
that's true man hey thank you so much for sharing your keys to success and
sharing everything about yourself oh thank you man it was great having you
here yeah thank you for having me I appreciate it
believe in yourself it's simple but not easy that's what makes John a pioneer if
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