Comfort, right? That's kaleidoscopes and cigars. - Very colorful. - Yes, yes, made by Mikio, a kaleidoscope maker in Japan. - So how's Vienna treating you? - Great, great. Um, traveling by horse, there's no better way. When you get a chance, we need to roll back to the days of riding a horse - Uber horse. That should be - An Uber horse. We got Uber Comfort, Uber Black, Uber Caballo. Yes, that's what's next. Um, but yeah, but the thing is I, I've had.
Some good food here in Vienna, and I like the cozy streets. Um, it's very walkable. Las Vegas is not so walkable, but all of the articles that I read about cigar lounges in Vienna, I discovered that they're old, that there's an indoor smoking ban in 2019 that was enacted. So there's no indoor smoke. Lots of cigar shops, but I'm glad to be here. And let me tell you this, because we're here to answer uncomfortable questions. I want to share. When you invited me to come here, this was the first time when I've been invited.
Somewhere where I could afford to do it. I've been invited and, you know, I was broke, you know, I was, you know, go to Amsterdam and putting stuff on credit cards, and this was the first time where I was able to decide if I want to do it or not, and money wasn't a limiting factor. So this is special. - Well it's special to us too. - Yeah. - And we're going to get into that because I put up a form so that people could send in their questions,.
And a lot of you did. Thank you so much. And one common question was how do you become a Microsoft MVP? Maybe you can expand on that. But before, maybe some people don't know what a Microsoft MVP is. If you can just tell us a little bit about that. - There are so many ways of answering that, but why I like being an Excel MVP is because we get to work directly with the engineers that make Excel, and we get to partner with them to make the best tool that it can be. And we get some inside NDA knowledge about things that are stalled,.
To show skill with Excel, but as MVPs, we're expected to be part of the community, and every year that we're evaluated, we are evaluated on how much community activities we've done. And some people are bitter about that aspect of it. They'll say, "I'll never be an MVP, I've got the skill, but I don't do all kinds of free stuff." Well, I don't see it as free stuff. I see it as me genuinely wanting to help people get the most from their data,.
Not so much the mastery of Excel, because there are people out there that rely on what we do with Excel, and they just want things to go right. And so when I'm committed to the community, it's about empowering this force of people to help make data and Excel the best it can be. - Yeah, it's true. And there are people who can't afford to have to buy courses, you know, that's why I like doing YouTube videos. And with YouTube, like, you.
Can do, you know, whatever topic you feel like sharing. It's not, it doesn't have to be in a special structure. You can make it entertaining. You're free, you can be creative with those videos. And yep, I think that's what we enjoy doing as well. - Yes. - The other question that's related is what personality is MVP life for, and what career paths do usually MVPs have? So let's start with the personality. So do you think MVP life is for.
A specific personality type? - I'm going to draw from something that Ken Puls said that I identified with, and we haven't done any study on this, but he said a lot of us MVPs were in situations in real life where there was a lot of loose stuff, bad reports, things dropping in cracks, and we decided, okay, I guess I'm going to be the one to tighten this stuff up. And when he said that, yeah, that was my start. I was, I would get, okay,.
Oz, every Monday, you're going to get this report, and you've got to do this stuff with it. And then I would get calls from people saying, "why, you messed up again?" Well, I was just following these instructions. Oh, the instructions are old, the business rules have changed, the reports don't reflect the changes in the business rules. So okay, stop sending me this report. I'm going to deal with a data dump and figure this out myself. And it calls for a whole lot of Excel skill that I didn't immediately have. Obviously, Ken Puls has been through his version of that. - Mm-hmm. - So yeah, I have thought about.
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Excel MVPs as these rogues that delve into stuff that we weren't supposed to. Or, um,
That's not our job. I heard that a lot, that's not your job. Well, I want this person who called me up and said, this is the third time I've called you about this stuff. I don't want there to be a fourth time. And we're very different from the maybe Windows MVPs, or, uh, you know, database or Azure folks, because that's careers for them. We are.Among the fortunate few who can make a career out of just Excel, a tool. And so I feel like, yeah, there are a lot of us rogues versus people who wind up in database, and that is their world. - That's interesting what Ken said, because when I think back myself, for me, it was like, I needed to solve problems. I needed to get data over from another system, it was an old system to a new system, and Excel was the best translator. It's what I.
Used as a mapping table, basically, with, you know, programming some VBA logic. But I had to figure it out. And I think it has to be the personality type. It has to be someone who is willing to figure things out, who doesn't just say, it can't be done in Excel, - Right! - Excel is not for that. It's not a mapping table. It has to be someone who says, no, there is a possibility, and I'm going to look and find it. So that self-drive, that has.
To be, that has to be there. - Amen. Yes, yes. And that's a deeper layer to what I, via Ken Puls, was saying. That's a deeper, you got to be the one that says, I can figure this out. And I developed a three-day process for one thing that I had to do. It started out, it was handed to me as, we're going to send you this report, and then based on the report, you send out these certificates and pens. And then the calls would come, why did you send me this again? Why didn't you send me this one? And that's where I started to dig.
And probe. And one thing that I've encouraged all analysts, whether they use Excel or whatever they do, is they got to give a damn about the people who have to deal with the consequences. I would add, giving a damn. - Yeah, totally. - Yeah, it's not just about Excel trickery, because those people who are calling up complaining, they aren't sending the certificate back and saying, "hey, you, you just filtered and sorted and dragged sales around, and, um, no, we.
Want you to do more fancy tricks." They don't care. - Yeah, you mentioned before that you are lucky now to be in this situation that you can come visit me. So can you tell us a bit more about your background and how it started and how you ended up doing what you're doing now? Doing LinkedIn Learning courses, great YouTube channel, being a Microsoft MVP? - Wow, there, there's so much there. Um, and some of it is, uh, spending six years in the.
Navy, getting out of the military, and not knowing how civilian life worked. And, um, I went to college, and still, you know, I wasn't really in civilian society until I was in my early thirties, and stuff were weird. So it's hard finding a job, even though I got my college degree. And eventually, I'm a veteran with a college degree, no experience with anything other than navigating a submarine, and, uh, wound up in a customer service job..
I hated that job. I, I really, really cared about the customers. I didn't like the unnecessary suffering behind our bad data, our obsolete reports. I stood up against my supervisor, my director, and solved a lot of problems, and found out many years later that when a new director came in, one of his, uh, directives was to fire me. But he saw that I was actually helping and trying to help. I was not there to be belligerent. I got a reputation for.
Probing and digging, and that's what got me some, uh, promotions. I got to see different parts of the company, and I didn't have that much Excel skill. It was more just, just reputation of, "Oz will probe and dig," and when the numbers look funny, I will get up off my ass and probe and dig. Wow, those, you're taking me back. And so yeah, there again, eventually there was the layoff, and then I started freelancing,.
And I liked that. I liked being exposed to different problems, 'cause one thing I didn't like about having a regular job was once I
Fixed the process, I owned it. That's not how I work. And I've got ADHD, like formally diagnosed. I'm not using it like some casual forgetfulness or distraction, but true diagnosed ADHD. I need some level of chaos, Excel, and dealing with messy data feed that chaos. Being in a regular job is too much routine, and so I liked having different projects. Today,.I'm working with an insurance agent and his part-time assistant over here. I'm working with a nonprofit over here, um, a marijuana dispensary in Washington state. A lot of the needs were similar, a lot were different. They all had different starting points. I worked with a company that made food containers, and so we're dealing with, like, okay, a 6x6 Ziploc bag, a 12x9 Ziploc bag, a 5x5 clamshell. It's beautiful. I loved it. Um, and.
So fortunately, I've been able to build that up into a career. The blog, the YouTube channel, and then LinkedIn called me. - So when you started freelancing, did you start your YouTube channel already? Was it a thing that you thought, I'm going to do freelancing and I'm going to build a YouTube channel, or did that come later? - That came later. There was a layoff. I'm trying to figure out what to do. I thought about maybe getting a, um, project management certification, a risk management certification or something, but Excel kept coming back to.
Me. I figured I want to freelance, so I need a web presence. And so I started a blog, posting about Excel functions, features, new features, and then people like Mr. Excel, Bill Jelen, I was on his radar. He knew who I was. I had made a couple of videos for friends. They needed help with something, and I might make some three-minute video and set it to unpublished on YouTube and send the link to my friend. And after a few of those, I saw that I like.
Making video, but I've got this blog. I've been doing the blog a long time, but then after a while, the more I blogged, the more I found myself dealing with CSS and HTML, and that is not what I wanted to do. And maybe a four-hour blog post, half of that was going on the forums asking questions about HTML. But when I did video, I'm not dealing with the code behind the video editing software. I'm making videos. So when it takes me 15 hours to edit a video, that's my choice, my creative decisions, and not me fighting with.
The software. - Was it through your YouTube videos that you became an MVP? So do you think it was because of your YouTube videos that you became an MVP? - No, partly. Um, it was my general presence in forums, on LinkedIn, my blog, because I had been blogging a long time. Um, and the videos came later, but the blog and the forums, that counts as community activity. My channel was still pretty young and pretty small when I was nominated to be.
An MVP. - Yeah, actually, mine too, because I, I had started doing like weekly YouTube videos, but it was still small, but I was very active on Quora. That was like my main contribution was Quora. And you know, when people ask me like, how do I become an expert in Excel, I'm like, go and answer questions, you know, go to Quora, go to Microsoft Community forums and answer questions, because honestly, that's how I got better, was trying to come up with the answers. - Mhmm, yeah. And I think that as, and see, the MVP decision committee,.
That's deep in the woods behind the black curtain, they don't tell us what the criteria are. - Yeah. - What's enough and is our criteria weighted differently? We don't know, but I have a suspicion that they look for us to plant our flag somehow, and I cut through nonsense. I'm not the best at Excel, but my role in forums, I will go on a forum and somebody's asked a question and there's already several solutions by the time I get there, but I would.
Do things like hold on a second, because of the way the person asked this question, all of this VBA code that you just posted might work, but that person is not going to be responsible for it, they won't be able to tweak it or nothing. And here is my long crazy formula that will work. Yeah, lots of debates, lots of cutting through nonsense. I feel like that's been my role. And sometimes I will introduce myself, here, here, I got to be the uncle.
Again. Your parents are giving you VBA code, which I know you don't know anything to do with, but I'm the estranged uncle who's going to call up and say, ah, don't listen to them, here, this, this is what you need to do, right? - Yeah, I think I like that approach. You know, there are so many different ways to solve a problem in Excel, and sometimes some people feel very strongly about the way it should be solved. You know, some people.
Say, "No, no, no, this is the best way, use this way." But you know, I feel like the best way is the way that the person is actually going to use. - Yes. - You know, the way that they understand and they're comfortable with. - Right! - VBA might work, but it can break and then they have no idea what to do with it. - Right? - But a formula like that or a formula that needs maybe 10 helper columns, - Helper columns! - might be a lot better for them, right? Because they can follow, they can understand what's happening. - Yep, and um, also is the context,.
And we can say things like "don't hardcode values," okay? And somebody may say, "Okay, here is this complicated formula that's future-proofed if your data changes, if you add a column or remove a column, the formula will adjust." But my context and need needs are this is a one-time thing and I'm going to paste this into an email and send it off and delete the whole workbook. - Yeah, pretend it never happened. - Yep, and go ahead and use hardcoded values..
Go ahead and do things the nasty manual way if you have to. Uncle Oz is saying that's fine because of that context. - Yeah, don't be embarrassed, it's all good. We do it, we do it all the time. Next question is, what if this wouldn't have worked out for you? Do you have plan B for your life and what was it? What if you couldn't live from all of your Excel skills? What would you have done or did you have a plan B if this didn't work? - Get some tattoos and drop out of society? - Hmm, you have some tattoos. - Yeah I do,.
So I'm halfway, right? Got one foot in society and one foot out, right? No. - What about making kaleidoscope? - Kaleidoscopes, that's been a new thing. I don't think I'd want to make kaleidoscopes, but I do look at being some kind of a patron or support of the Kaleidoscope Community. But for me, I don't know because going into uncomfortable territory. I had a therapist who kept telling.
Me I need to get a job, and then he says, "But I've accepted now, if you were going to be good at this, you would have been good a long time ago, but you're damn determined to make it work." And it took a long time. I don't know what my plan B was. There were moments where I thought about getting a job. I'm sitting up here with $200 in the bank and I just paid my rent and now I've got a month to pull everything together to then.
Go through this again next month. That's hard and scary. But I never became somebody else's burden. I never had to call a friend or family member and say, "Yeah, I need $2,000." I think that might have been the point where I might have gone to get a job, but I don't know. I've never been good with office politics. It's, I struggle with that in the Navy. There are the rules that are stated and then there's what actually happens, and I constantly found.
Myself in this gap, looking difficult, belligerent, and that's so uncomfortable. Yes, clients, they can talk about me amongst themselves, decide to end a project and not tell me why, but that's different from being at a job and you getting called into somebody's office and saying, "We're officially putting you on report," or whatever, toward a firing,.
Or having HR show up at the desk and say, "Come with us," or just having somebody say, "Oh, you didn't know about that, you know, something weird that was going on in the office." I'm bad with that stuff. - Yeah, office politics is something I couldn't deal with either. You know, it's, you just feel like you want to do your job, you want to do something good for the company, and then you have to deal with what does IT department allow in, you.
Know, are you allowed to do this or not, and who has the right to make these changes? It just becomes, you know, it's just it, you stop loving what you actually like to do and you start to have to deal with this stuff. And I find it interesting what you said earlier that, you know, you had this manager who then realized your potential, that you were actually trying to do good. Yeah, managers like that, they make a big difference. - Yes, they do..
- You know, like the other one before might have thought like, you know, "Oz is just annoying, he's always questioning this stuff, he's always doing this," they see it as annoying, whereas the other one saw it as help, you know, Oz is trying to help, and that really makes a difference. - It does, it does. And you just reminded me of a retail job that I was fired from. Walked in one day, was giving my two weeks notice, and a few years later, I ran across one of the managers, and I asked him, "What was that about?" "You asked too many questions, and the owner was cooking.
The books." There again was me trying to understand and be genuine and want to help, and I didn't know I was butting up against illegal activities. - So, how did that go? - It was hard. I wound up homeless for several months, like literally, because the two weeks' notice, my last day on the job was the same day that the lease on my apartment ended, and I had two roommates, and they decided they wanted to live on their own, and I couldn't keep that apartment and afford it with no job, and suddenly I've got.
No job that a potential landlord can call and confirm, and so I put my stuff in a storage unit and just walked out into the streets, and yeah. - That must have been difficult. I mean, difficult is an understatement. - Right! It's finding out things like, yeah, there's the cold in Chicago and the snow and the slush, but also things like,.
"We need your address in order to cash this check." "I got a PO box." "Nope, we need a street address." And then, do I tell this person, "Look, I'm homeless, give me a break?" Now we're getting into my pride, and I don't want to give this person the honor of knowing my situation. Take the check back and go somewhere else and figure out how to cash it, but you know. - So how did you turn things around? - My brother finally convinced me to move to California.
And stay with him for a while, and I'm really appreciative of that. And that was hard, but I got to a point where, like, I was applying for jobs and I eventually realized that even if somebody called me right now and said, "Hey, we want you to start Monday," I wasn't in a position to do that. I would show up in clothes that I'd been wearing for, you know, four or five days and a backpack and all my stuff in the storage unit, so I got.
To a place hang myself and I, I, I had a room in the YMCA, and I remember grabbing this sprinkler pipe and, like, and making sure that when it was time that it wouldn't just break down, and, and, and you know, then I got to figure out another way, and I didn't want to go to California, I, I like Chicago, so it's either the sprinkler pipe or California. Went to California. 15 months, temp jobs, save money, and eventually get back to Chicago, and it was a slow grind coming.
Up out of that hole, but I eventually did. - Oh Oz! I'm sorry to hear this. - Wow! - How long was this before you became an MVP, you started your YouTube channel, how long? - That was like 99, and yeah, I got back to Chicago, and near the end of 99, wound up, you know, with this customer service job, and then things slowly, slowly, slowly, yeah, I was bitter, so bitter, there was a point where, um, yeah, I had some friends in the.
90s and, um, this is in Chicago and left to go to California to get everything together when I come back, we were glad to get together, but then after a while they stopped returning my phone calls, stopped hanging out with me, and then one time I called one of my friends and she accidentally picked up the phone, um, "You know, you've changed, you've gotten so bitter," and I felt like, ah, I know I'm bitter, I don't even like me right now, but.
Nothing has turned. I'm a veteran, I got my college degree, I haven't had kids out of wedlock, I don't have a drug problem, all this stuff about being a minority and all this stuff is supposed to help, being a veteran is supposed to help, and nothing was going right, and I couldn't figure out why, um, but then I started playing the bass, being in a band, I felt like I mattered, they needed the bass, if I couldn't make a rehearsal or something, that they had a problem, and so I mattered. I made it to rehearsals, and that turned my bitterness around. - Wow, what a, what a story, um, I'm really happy that you're.
Sharing this with us because I mean, I know a lot of people go through difficult times and it really helps when you can just listen to someone else's story and see how they turned it around for themselves. - Yeah. - So I hope this story can resonate with you guys. One question before we change the tone and back, let's s to one one question is how many times are you confronted with discrimination regards to gender, diversity, ethnicity, and.
