There are some people you meet and you instantly know that they're leading a bigger life and I'm not talking about
Money or cars or anything? I'm talking about living a life. That isn't just about them.
Noah Basket is one of those people. Noah is an independent Power BI consultant and also helps
struggling communities in his day job. In this episode
you'll find out how it is possible to combine your dreams and passion with what you do.
How to make a great living while living a great life.
At the end of this video Noah also shares the pros and cons of being an independent Power BI consultant.
It's stories, like Noah 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. if this video inspires you in any way
please leave a comment and let Noah know and make sure to subscribe and click the bell
so you are notified whenever I go live to help you in your Power BI journey.
Let's hear it from noah in you can also connect with him using the link in the description
Hey, Noah, so good to have you on how are you doing today?
Absolutely, so yeah, I checked out your site
Why is bi da co and the tagline is certainly very intriguing but not a surprise to me
So it's that data to drive social impact now
of course every time you've spoken and and everything I know about you this thread is kind of interval in throughout your life about
community about helping others
Tell me a bit about the kind of work that you do and also why is it so important to you? Yeah, sure
Well, so I have I've worked in the nonprofit sector for most of my professional life
got involved early in my life working with
young people from
from pretty tough neighborhoods
Walking alongside them doing mentoring work helping them be successful
in education and then
ended up doing a lot of work with
Young people actually went to college
And helping them try to be successful and actually attaining that degree in bringing it back home
So I have really enjoyed
this work of
basically serve in working with
underrepresented underserved groups in communities and neighbors and really do believe that that
lots of different kinds of people can make an impact
Kind of on this in the social world that we live in particularly for
people that need extra support or have been
Oftentimes dealt not the best dekha ends of their life. So that's that's kind of been
My work is is trying to trying to leverage social impact in a number of different ways
In several different communities and so right now I actually I work full-time at a rescue mission here in Tacoma, Washington
and so we're working with
Men women and children and they're experiencing homelessness. So I'm pretty tough times for a number of circumstances and our goal is to
To walk alongside them out of homelessness into into, you know, a thriving existence. Yeah
so yeah, you know power bi has been one way to
Continue to do that work
That's amazing. I definitely want to ask you more about that
but for for this one
I was wondering do you when you look back was there a specific experience a specific trigger?
What pulled you into this to begin with and I don't know when it started for you. Was it?
After you started working or back in school tell me a bit about that
Yeah, so I you know, I wasn't a computer science guy or anything like that in school. I studied history in college
But I was I was running a scholarship program actually here in Tacoma
and
We were one of the things we were doing is just trying to track how we were doing recruiting kids to the scholarship program
Doing a better job of keeping track of our metrics related to how students were being retained in school
and how are they're succeeding and I had I had a colleague in the work who was it did have a computer science background and
He introduced me to this fun little tool called our bi back in 2007 and I kind of yeah
So I kind of got into it. I read your book pretty early on in that and
And just kind of got really interested in the world of data and using data to you know
and Allies impacts drive impact
And just have a better sense of you know, what actual difference you're making on the on the ground, you know
So it's all through that scholarship program and just trying again do our work better that I got really drawn into this power bi
universe
That's that's beautiful
Hey, yeah
You can't you can't manage or not like to see you can't manage what you can't measure but what I like to say
You can't grow which you can't measure because yeah, I want to grow stuff right whatever fun
I'm really curious about your approach with power bi and
You use it as like the Trojan horse or is it the battering ram, right?
So do you like not mention it and just talk about you know, hey
We'll focus on business improvement and leadership in this and oh, by the way
We're gonna leverage and amazing to a power bi so you kind of kind of slip it in
Or do you kind of lead with that?
so guys
You know power bi is amazing and it's gonna turn your looks like I don't know which which approach do you usually find yourself taking?
Yeah for you know for power bi
Evangelist. It's always easy to kind of put the tool first I think because I love it
You know, I think yeah, I've found so much use with power bi it's so flexible. I keep learning new things every day
But you know my experience
Has been you know, you leave with the issues of people or face and you leave with you get the pain points
What are the challenges in front of you?
What do you actually want to be able to do with your data?
And then it is the oh and by the way, you know
Here's some ways that we can use this incredibly flexible powerful tool to try to get at that
and I you know, it's I
Like that a lot. I like that approach a lot more
We talk a lot about this in the kind of the social impact world around
All you have is a hammer, you know, every the whole world is full of a bunch of nails, right?
And so you don't want to I think that's the temptation again
start with the issues at play start with
You know the outcome in mine and then by the way
There's a tool that just is really good at a lot of different things love that. I mean, I've
Also founded the hard way
So I was within Microsoft which definitely had the culture of kind of leading with
technology, and I learned the hard way working with different clients that
Know I mean it's it's it's just a tool it's a means to an end and you got that. That's great
I mean, I think you're right and there's been I feel like there was one client
I was working with where you know
He wanted to work with power bi and so but part of the thing you learn and just asking some questions is
You know, he he just had some fancy graphs that he wanted and he didn't recognize sort of some of the capabilities
And some of the things that would be really helpful to him as a business manager
I didn't even think about so it's helping to also it's an even even when you're talking about the technology helping done covered
Oh, that's that's brilliant
I'm gonna ask you more about that because sometimes I have experience and I'm sure you have too where you go in with even
Like a power bi project, but you realize that their problems are bigger than that
I mean, you know sometimes process something else. I want to talk to you about that
but before that what I want to ask you is now you did mention that your focus has been into
Nonprofit that that's what you have worked with
but now of course with your consulting business you
You're so I remember when you said these words to me and I found them so beautiful and you talked about
bridging the divide and
Why do we see these things as two separate worlds like nonprofit for-profit
And I think a little bit of that is changing
There are brands have been around for a while like TOMS shoes, which are hey where we're gonna make money
But we also want to help the world. So it's it's kind of getting closer. So
The word one word. I've heard it's caused driven and I like that I I know in my organization
I'm probably having it have have any impact to
tell me a bit about that and
Do you think power bi can somehow?
Make that
you know get that closer to reality can help with that with that cause
Yeah, yeah, we have talked a lot about that
That is so artificial, right especially when we are talking alternately about a tax structure, you know at the end of day
That's all that divides it not costing the for-profit
Yeah, those I love I love the cause driven
Language avi, you know the language that I'm just using and trying to describe
My scope is social impact and yeah, you know businesses are very capable of making a social impact
yeah, you know, you know one of the the ski company that I'm working with they really have a high value of
Ecological sustainability and design and everything that they're doing
So that's I think that's I'm just discovering
that's a little bit of my niche and I do think you're right and a lot of those boundaries are being erased and
recognizing it, especially if if you're ultimately
About impact. Mm-hm, you know identifying what kind of impact you want to have in this world that's positive
Well, then, you know the strength the organizational structure is really secondary, right? Yeah
You know, so sometimes sometimes the impact is going to have its work best with the for-profit. Sometimes a non-profit
I'm interested in working with all of that. I just strengthened with people the kind of impact. That's that's that's gosh
That's really beautiful. And perfect. That was great suit. I want to bring it back to the topic that we touched upon
But I want to to dive a little deeper with me
Which is we talked about how sometimes we go in with power bi and of course you've worked with organizations at a higher level
Like strategy leadership and things like that. Yeah
So so I want to ask you most likely with the help of bar bi
What kind of so sometimes I start I bar B I call power bi the flashlight
Because a lot of companies they don't really know what's going on in the organization. Once you turn on the flashlight like oh really?
That's what's gonna say uncovers a lot of stuff
And again, some of it is data focus something you can fix in the data. Sometimes it's way beyond that
I'm just really curious what kind of issues you found at that higher level maybe with leadership position
Which these companies are missing and I remember one of my fellow entrepreneur described this to me
and he said avi trying to understand how you
Doing how your company is doing is trying to read the label on the wine bottle while being inside the wall bar wine bar
right
So that's where somebody like you kind of an expert consultant you work with a lot of companies being there done that
You can come in and tell you that yeah, did you realize you're doing this? So I'm just curious what kind of
Usual stuff do you see where people often go wrong companies often go wrong, you know, this is a really interesting
Well, I mean obviously something like baseline, you know
Just looking at revenue numbers year to year and not looking at anything else can just cover up a whole lot of problems
So I'm thinking about one company in particular
we were looking at their data and this was
this is a company coming out with a bit of a slump and sort of read up, you know, and
Look at the data and you kind of look at your sort of
customer count
Unique customer count, you know graphed against that data
You can see that the customer count was going way down
Even when even when?
you know annual revenue was going up and what that so basically the annual revenue was masking the fact that
This business was losing a lot of customers and that by the way, it lagged a couple of years
But the revenue was coming down to because they had a much smaller group. So that's just a good example even of looking historically
Yes terrific a so I certainly have experienced that to work where bar bi is is
Pretty amazing where it can uncover and give you that next level of detail
And I agree with you that oftentimes organizations are just missing that next level of detail and actionability and Barbie
I certainly that's where it shines you can show you the next level of detail show you where you need to take action
Yeah, so so for the last question
I wanted to kind of bring it home and bring it to you and what I want to ask you is that I've often
kind of
Debated this question. So I was a full-time employee for a long time
last company I was at with was Microsoft and then I left that and
You know run my own company independent consulting training now
Sometimes I feel like it's very different and and certainly it is different because what it enables me to do
It's it's totally different
But at the same time it's it's a it's it's not like the magic one
It's not like all consultants are happy
Right, and and yeah
So if somebody's looking for for unhappiness money this that you can find that being an employee versus being a consultant
but what I want to ask you is so I really think that it comes down to what you make it mean for you and
What's you how you build your life? So I want to ask you about that that
what does
Consulting feel to you. What does it mean to you? What kind of life?
Doesn't let you create. Why why are you stepping into this? It's a good question
I'm still in the discovery phase of that question. I think I'll be just doing is still so new for me
and you know the piece that drew me originally that I continue to really be drawn to a consulting is just I
Think you know the description of not being able to see the outside of a label is a great one
I love and I love working with the diversity of organizations. Yeah to
You know to really step into their shoes
For a little bit and really yeah
Yeah, personally just be able to be exposed to a lot of different kind of businesses. I have to necessarily pick. I really enjoy that
but I think you know, I think the things I'm really
Discovering is there's certainly a lot of flexibility in consulting but it's also you know
it's it's on you to we're managing your schedule and
to hold yourself accountable
And that works for you that works pretty well for me. You know, I'm a hard worker and I think I've intrinsically motivated
Yeah, so I'm finding that that suits me really well
But again, I'm kind of still discovering what my rhythms are and you know, what works best for me
how do I not overburden myself or
You know figure out how to leave the work at home
even when I'm working from home a lot of the time so it's totally written about
Love that
Hey
Thanks for being so candid about that and in the rest of the interview and yeah that really quickly
one of the lines that I use is what I say is that
So I worked close to two decades in one big company on the other
when I left it and
discovered this life I
now I look back and it feels like I was always in the back seat of the car being driven around and
Now I have this Jaime moved my hands
For better or worse right? I mean you can yeah, there's some white-knuckle moments for sure, but
So Noah, I just want to thank you for your time this was really incredible
I thank you for sharing all your insight about working in your organization and making impact around you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you
Best way to help yourself is to help others
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