You know the folks who were selected this is really celebrating everybody right this is celebrating all of us because really we are all connected now we may may or may not feel that way but um we are i mean frankly thinking that you're alone uh in this world is like thinking imagine if a cell in her body thought that it was alone you know that would be weird no you're.
Not alone you're part of this bigger structure and the same way we're not alone we're not disconnected we're all connected at some level on this earth as part of this humanity so celebrating ourselves is like celebrating others and celebrating others is the same as celebrating us so that's what we are here for today so again we're gonna we're gonna use them and uh meet some of these people hear some of the stories.
But i'm sure their stories are gonna echo something your own past or something in your own heart so yeah here are the amazing folks which uh i'm again happy to be serving as part of the learn power bi scholarship program against the beta i just sent them an email a few days ago saying hey guys expect this to be a little bit rough around the edges uh you know what i i'm gonna put myself in a corner here there we go all right so um.
But yeah i'm excited about what we get to create together with this group and if the learn power bi program is any indication i mean that started off with a handful of people and now it's grown to a thousand plus we don't really know right what's going to happen with the learn power bi scholarship but i'm excited to be walking on this road i'm excited to have this opportunity to impact these lives because you've probably heard me say this that my goal isn't to teach anybody power bi my goal is to change their lives right.
And carl was i think the so we we i spoke to each and every person of this group before we kind of officially kick-started the group and carl was the last person i spoke to he's based out of philippines and you know certainly family came up quite a bit in his discussion uh i think at one point i asked him like what's the most important thing and i think he said his wife so no surprise that he sent this.
Photograph this is the one that he chose to share um so yeah certainly kind of steeped in family values he's he has he has his uh background in accounting i believe he'd worked in uh uh quite a few different places but uh travel agency and and yeah he's always been around excel accounting there's no surprise and yeah now he's looking for kind of his next big adventure uh and and yeah so we're going to be.
Exploring that with that in this program but at one point i asked him about his biggest strengths and carl is a very humble guy i would say right so yeah i mean you know he's very kind of yeah down key he's not like gung-ho and talking about himself that's not carl um so yeah he very casually talked about oh yeah i mean hard working and he said two other things and again very.
You know almost self-deprecating right almost like yeah you know yeah just like everybody you know i work hard just like everybody so i uh called them out on that and i said well i don't know i mean yeah sure everybody thinks they work hard right but you brought this up as the first thing maybe this is important to you in some way and um tell me a story tell me a story which relates to any of these things like the three qualities you mentioned.
And the story he told me was this so carl mentioned that how he's five feet three inches tall now he's uh an eager basketball player he had mentioned that earlier and basketball is quite popular in philippines and he plays as part of a team and well 5'3 he is not at all height for basketball and of course that's almost a disadvantage but what carl wanted to make sure was that he was not letting his teammates down that when they passed the ball to him.
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Because of his height but he he overcame that by showing up for practice at 3 am when everybody else showed up at 6. now when he shared that story with me frankly i sat there stunned for a minute and i just i just went quiet because it's such a powerful story and the funny thing is that i think.Right i mean i don't think carl realizes that what's in him and what he's capable of and again right i mean this is not just called story this is a lot of us or many of us right i mean we don't see our own greatness there's this great quote that i love which talks not about we're not our biggest fear um oh god i'm gonna have to build it up but but you know what we our biggest fear is not that.
We're weak and you know we're incapable our biggest fear is that we're super powerful right that we don't realize that you know we're what we're capable of and that's kind of what i heard in god's story right so again i mean when he was mentioning his his qualities was like yeah i work hard right but then then he drops a story on me and i'm like whoa dude mind blown right i mean this is crazy this is insane and and again we are on one thing as we.
Are in another i mean if god brings that spirit to basketball do you think he's going to bring a different spirit to work to power bi no he's not we are in one thing as we're in another so yeah that was carl's story and um yeah and again i'm excited folks that what would we create together all right let's move on talk about the next amazing person monsie and i love this photograph too because this is this thread.
Is a key thread in her story and i'm sure monsie has more stories of uh um which impacted her life and shaped her life but one of the key stories that she shared with me and which i find most powerful and i'm going to share with you today as well on monsieur's behalf is about her going to ireland now she talked to me about how from a very early age she had a dream she had this goal of going abroad going outside of mexico to a different country and spending time there and she was very.
Focused on this in fact to a point where she uh so she she worked in i think the finance group and she talked about that that's where she crossed paths with power bi and she talked about her excitement when she first kind of encountered the tool she saw the possibility of what you know what it could do and she worked with that too for a while and of course she had been around reporting and analysis longer than that but again her dream was calling so she.
She had this dream of going abroad and she had actually been working up i think she worked for like seven years and she was saving money for this trip saving money to be able to center stuff abroad and she chose to do that by pursuing a higher education program and of course she looked at different places and she picked ireland and if you think about it right i mean so folks i come from india and um uh for me.
I would say you know at least the language barrier wasn't that much when i moved to us because well that's one advantage of being ruled by the british for 400 years everybody you know had to learn english and we still do even though the british have left right so uh but for monsei the language barrier was there which can be huge but of course i've gone through all the other stuff man you land in a new country and it's and it's all those small things like i remember the first time i i i made a joke.
Here that people laughed at and i was like whoa i'm an american now you know i mean i don't know it's obviously i'm trying to be funny but uh but yeah i mean i i didn't get the humor i mean i wouldn't get their jokes they wouldn't get mine and it was just very different again it's a small things that gets you which remind you again and again that you're an alien um uh now of course i've been here long enough and it's um i've stayed i've been longer here in u.s now than all my years.
Growing up in india so things have changed but i remember that transition can be hard the first year was really hard so yeah
It's no easy thing but of course it's an adventure as well and that's what monsieur was seeking so yeah she she spent her time there she completed her degree she talked about working as a waitress there just so she could support herself um through education uh paid attention right and um she talked about how scenic and beautiful it was and it was such an adventure and now she's back in mexico.And um yeah you're gonna hear this team in one other student as well where they went out but then came back because there was a connection maybe destiny you can call it they're meant to serve the people around you right so um so she's back but um i mean think about it right i mean she's she's young all right i mean you know at age i'm at i can definitely call it young so uh that's what i said to monty that imagine.
What you have done at such a young age you had this big dream which seemed unachievable right i mean in fact i'm sure there were times when she questioned her dream don't we all do right i mean who am i to dream that right i mean look at me look around me i mean nobody else has done it who am i to dream that big how dare i we question our dreams hey man that's part of it that happens to all of us right that's you know so i always say that there's a price to.
Success which most people are not willing to pay and the price to success is your fear and self-doubt that's the currency you need to pay in so i'm sure there was a lot of fear and self-doubt as monster thought about this dream but she made it true and again you are in one thing as you are in another you are in one thing as you're in another i mean if you can give birth to a dream right cradle it in your arms and and make it come true.
Right what's to stop you from the next dream and the next big dream and the next big dream it's nothing right we are the ones who prison ourselves who stop ourselves so that's monster's story and this is a duo so it's like you know funny how we counted i mean we wanted to give so we wanted this is a beta so we wanted to keep it a small group and we wanted to.
Select five five members for the scholarship but this one is a double and this one is a fascinating story i mean wow this is like or well yeah maybe a learned power bi or barbie love story in some ways so i haven't spoken to pavel actually yet i will i'm looking forward to that so i spoke to olga and um olga um.
Oh god where do i start with the story so um yeah so um olga is an english teacher in belarus now she has a deep background she was actually uh studying world economics and she was so focused and dedicated to it that she um she got her undergrad degree she got her postgraduate or graduate degree and then she was pursuing her phd and she actually spent seven years.
Working on her thesis she unfortunately had to give that up to stop that because of health issues and if not for the health issues she would have gotten a phd in economics which is pretty freaking awesome right um and then of course uh uh well so certainly she didn't get a thesis but i'm not sure at the uh phd level or maybe earlier well that's where they met each other and i think they've been together for 13 years now.
They have uh twins seven year old daughters which sounds that sounds awesome right and um and yeah an old guy is now kind of teaching english so of course i was kind of curious like hey what's the power bi connection well that comes from powell again who was wasn't on the call i was talking to olga but she talked about how pavel has been a consultant and has been helping companies with this stuff and of course power bi how he has ramped up in power bi in the past few.
Years and his enthusiasm about power bi has rubbed off on olga and she talked about how she attended maybe a i think a power bi user group and she she witnessed the really the power of power bi right that she so whoever the presenter was they were talking about power bi and his capabilities and she was big well paying some attention to the speaker but she was also watching the folks in the audience and she was watching the reaction and.
He's like wow so these were managers from all over different places and directors and so forth and they were all like you know that that wide-eyed look and like wow that's possible so uh so yeah so olga and pablo kind of uh that got ogre excited about that now of course folks uh what we uh you know what we talk about is sometimes uh i hear a lot from people where they say that i'll be but i'm not a techie or i'm not.
A developer and uh and and it just you know they feel like that that's going to hold them back that's going to be a disadvantage but you've probably heard me say this line before your strengths are your weaknesses your weaknesses are your strengths right so just just let's just stay there for a bit um think about the technologists the smart people right the developers the id folks what have they given us i mean.
They have given us a broken system they've given us a bi system which doesn't belong to the business right business intelligence no longer belongs to the business they are outcasts i mean business users have to go with a begging bulldo id give me a report and you know maybe they get it in three months or maybe they don't right that's a broken system i'm not saying that's everywhere but many places almost all the companies that i've worked for now we have an opportunity to change but guess what the change is not going to come come from the technologist.
It's going to come from all of us all of us the business users because business intelligence belongs to the business that's the right home for business intelligence so again you might be thinking that it's a weakness that right then i'm not a techie i'm not a developer but i think that's going to be your strength and of course that's what i said to olga is that yep i mean never don't discount right your what you already have so sometimes people feel like they're.
Starting from zero and they think of themselves as yup i'm starting out i'm a beginner and i'm a rookie but what you're doing is you're throwing away all of your experiences your professional experiences and your life experiences so of course for olga the discussion we had was that look i mean you know with economics you went all the way to almost getting a psd that's pretty phenomenal and economics is so much about data so.
You've been around data you're going to be comfortable around data no doubt about that and of course now with power bi you can kind of you know who knows what you can bring to that community to how you can serve the companies and individuals who are in that field so we're excited about that but the one thing that was loud and clear about olga i think we were talking about kind of our strengths was that she just doesn't give up right she said hey i always finish what i start and she actually talked.
About her heartbreak how hard it was to make that decision when she quit the phd program she said that's the only thing that i've ever quit in my life and it was the hardest decision that i took and only she was forced to do that because of health reasons otherwise she wouldn't have but in spite of having those health issues you know i mean she wanted to do it and that's why it was a hard decision so again folks we are in one thing as we are in another if that's a spirit that olga carries.
Within her that's going to serve her anywhere she goes i mean whatever she touches means could be power bi could be something else robert so robert is based out of kenya and it's uncanny the number of connections we had so um for one uh i think we're talking about like interests outside of work and uh robert mentioned hiking uh not.
I i would say that maybe that's not surprising i mean kenya of course that's one place i've always wanted to go it's uh i've seen photos i've heard stories uh so yeah but but yeah that's a connection of course folks who know me i have this crazy gold this year to hike uh an elevation gain of 100 000 feet and i've been hiking pretty much every week and not just that um robert had actually studied in india and that was an interesting connection he talked about the university in pune where he had gone.
And so forth but uh but now robert is back in kenya because he has a connection there and again i said the same thing about monsieur so folks uh um yeah i mean i think i think you all have a destiny i think we have a destiny to the lives we're gonna impact and if you're not doing that then yeah maybe you're not serving your purpose in life right so so i think it's a picasso's code hopefully i can get it right but um um.
Uh oh god the the first line is that and the goal of life is to figure out your per purpose um oh i'm i'm not gonna get it right but but it's something about that once you find your mission then yeah you gotta kind of serve others so robert talked about that and and folks and again i mean success is relative right so so robert came back and he's like a sales.
Analyst and a company there and he has a long way to go and i'm sure he's going to achieve greater heights but what's what i loved about robert was that he talked about others he talked about helping others he talked about how he felt that he was incredibly lucky he said so when he came back to his hometown and he looked around and and others that he had gone to school with they were in a very different circumstance many of them and he kind of asked that question like.
Why am i different right i mean why did i get to go here get an education and then go on to get a job and and so forth right i can provide for myself or my family whereas others didn't and the unfortunate truth in this world is that it sometimes is a game of chance and of course warren buffett um i think calls it the womb lottery right and he and i think in his book he talks about how if he was born in china he wouldn't be.
The warren buffett we know right i mean uh yeah i mean circumstances could have been like i think his real line is uh if he was born to a poor peasant or farmer in china then you know i mean he wouldn't have gone on to become what he is now so yeah it is a game of chance but but that's where robert talked about he said that well yeah i got lucky but now i get to help others and how can i change their lives now robert challenged one perspective.
That i've held for a while and you've heard me say this where i've almost poo-pooed the the skill and learning power bi and you know i mean not really but but i have questioned it and i've said well what uses learning power bi because i've seen people get really good at power bi but not be able to make an impact not be able to create a good life a good income a good career for themselves i have seen that and that that's true right so so of course we've been working.
With people at kind of higher levels again my goal is not to teach people power bi my goal is to change their lives and i'm not saying power bi like isn't needed don't learn power bi but i know that that isn't enough and again i mean sometimes different perspectives can both be valid and and robert passionately talked about this idea of skill and how skill is more valuable than anything else and he said abby i mean if you had an option like you know the blue pill and the red build from the matrix i'm like oh you're here.
You can have the skill and here you have i don't know ten thousand dollars or some amount of money and he said it's i would always go for the skill no matter the amount of money and and i kind of get it frankly i don't fully get it again i mean our perspectives or world view or mindset or belief whatever you want to call it right is are really kind of shaped by by our past that's not the only thing i mean you get a choice as well you can choose to shape your mindset but that's a big part and i haven't had robert's experiences.
But but he definitely spoke very passionately about it and he said if you give somebody a skill it's kind of like you know you teach them to fish you catch a fish for them or you should teach them the fish right i think that's what he was talking about he decided to fish and they can feed themselves for a lifetime and again he's not just looking for himself like he's not just looking to skip up himself he's looking outwards and say how can i help others.
All right folks so that brings us to samuel so samuel is based out of nigeria and uh yeah kind of you know you're gonna hear the echoes of the same thing and and uh yeah so samuel actually has been working as an independent consultant he's the one who asked by the way on the last stock bar we had a question about um working on upwork you know so he's been working there successfully and um boy he's into python he's into.
