What's up YouTube? Today we're talking to Karen Wickery, one of Silicon Valley's best super connectors who you don't even know of. We're going to talk about her book on how to advance your career even if you're an introvert, what to do at an event, and how to use social media to build that network. Stay tuned. Karen, thank you so much for joining us today, and I'd love for you to introduce yourself to our audience and tell them how you became such a super networker. So, hi everybody. My name is Karen Wickery. I'm a long time resident of San Francisco, a long time, I don't know, inhabitant of Silicon Valley, and I didn't set out to be a big networker. I am an introvert by nature. I do a lot of my connecting with people online, as I say, behind the safety of my screen, and I, you know, over the years people would turn to me and say, hey, you seem to know everybody, or can you make an introduction for me, or you know, that kind of thing. And part of that reason, and part of the reason I wrote the book is I've been in a very fluid job market that Bay Area and Tech are very fluid, and it's the norm that people move around and change jobs. I think the thing I've done is simply keep in touch with people as we've all moved into different roles and different jobs. And that turns out to be really a wonderful way to have a network simply by keeping it sort of an active touch with people and catching up occasionally with them. And that's the basis of the book. I think for a lot of people, they also need to understand that Silicon Valley, that area, and the way the job market is working is a little bit ahead of the curve. All the data and research is now pointing that people are not going to be staying in their jobs for very long, and their careers are going to be changing. And so this idea and these skills are, as we've been saying all through the month, is for everybody, everyone needs to understand that this is going to, you know, the risk that it takes being involved in the job market is solely going to be relying how comfortable you are with your network. No, that's exactly right. I should say Silicon Valley has had this kind of career fluidity, shall we say, for a long time. But it is not alone in that everywhere I go, everything I read tells me, and people are probably already experiencing this, nobody stays in a job for 20, 30 years. They may not even stay in the same field. And in addition, we have, you know, geographical moves that can happen over time, and just different, you know, new roles and new kinds of jobs and careers are opening up fairly frequently now. So for all of these reasons, it just pays to make connections as you go along, and then, as I say, stay in touch with them over time, because this much bigger network, it's bigger than your friends and family. You do know lots of people. It's just a matter of feeling comfortable in having some little bit of social lubrication, shall we say, with people. So that when you do want to be in touch about a specific new opportunity, introduction, that new lead, something like that, it's okay to be in touch, because essentially, we're all doing it with each other all the time. It's very much a give and get situation as opposed to a single transaction where you're desperate, and the other person is someone you are afraid to ask. That's why people hate networking. Yeah, and I think for a lot of our audience who's introverted like you, introverted like me, the idea that you could be a master networker and still be introverted is a little counterintuitive. What are some of the misconceptions that go along with introversion and networking? Well, part of it is this idea that networking is somehow you're in a hotel ballroom with 200 strangers, and you have to somehow come home with 100 business cards or something like that. That's a networking event. And I would say, don't do that if you don't want to do that. If you have to go to a conference, that's a different thing, which we can talk about. But for the most part, building a network is really simply paying attention to who you enjoy, who you've enjoyed working with, who you have fond memories of, who you like as a team member now, and you just stay in touch intermittently with them. And I find that people are happy to help each other, happy and flattered, to be honest, to be called on to say, could I introduce my friend to you because they have this question about your company or whatever it is? People want to help each other. So it's really just not coming on cold with, I'm desperate. I have a need. I'm not asking anything about you. I just want my thing, right? That's the image that networking has that's so bad. You know, something you said there, and all these different components for all these different companies all end up at some point being collaborative. And you mentioning about how important was of remembering the people that you worked really well with and that you got along with so that you can talk to them and these other times when trying to find something or transitioning. How important is AJ and I both grew up in families where our dad worked on assembly lines. So you're just you're focused. You're just dealing with your stuff. You're handling your day and your area. And you may talk to the guys at the lunch room, but that's about it. And that certainly is why some of those guys I think could develop a mentality that would allow them to last 30 years in a factory. But in today's climate, that collaborative, cooperative spirit and skills are going to need to be cultivated and developed in order for you to be a good employee and somebody that people want to work with or collaborate with. I was going to say that's actually, you know, in some companies, people will say, we don't want just the superstar, right? We need people who can collaborate with other people. So in a way that soft skills are kind of more important than ever. And the reason you may remember someone and if somebody asked down the line, and by the way, sometimes this is a back channel, someone will text me or send me a note and just say, Hey, do you know so and so? Because, you know, we're looking at them for some role or just considering whether we should reach out or something like that. And that is, you know, a kind of a thing that was not done before. I'm not giving a referral. The person may not know about this connection I have with somebody else. And the basis of my answer is essentially a great, you know, a great person, lots of energy, loves to be helpful. I'm not even talking about the skills for the job. I'm just saying this is based on my experience with this person. Now, I might have worked with them and I could speak to that. But people are asking, like, is this a good person? You know, is this someone we want to have on our team or that we want to have, you know, around us? And that's where this idea of being collaborative and helpful. And I should add, this is not being you have to be like out in front.  It is not that it's, I mean, I just always, I mean, I've been this way by nature, I think, but I want to kind of get to know the other people and what they're doing. And I want to be helpful if I can. I think most people are kind of like that. And so that's a key skill now, as you say. And think about how important that is to the office culture and the productivity. Exactly. If we have one person who's poisoning the well, so to speak, now we have a full office of people who don't want to go in, whose, whose days are now turning into drudgery when they are supposed to be happy productive workers who are doing the things that they love to be doing if they're, if they're doing their careers. And that person has now contaminated those, those areas. And that's right. Every person on that team is incredibly important. We certainly know what that looks like in sports. So and I think the key distinction here that you made is so important is like, these are just one to one little interactions here. You know, I think, yes, exactly. People get so focused on, I need to meet everyone in the room and I have to have this vast network and that vast network will come over time if you focus on great one-on-one interactions. That's exactly right. So there's a quote I found that I have been using. It's in my book and it's basically this. Networking is more like farming than it is like hunting. And I would add if you're not a farmer, you might think of it as gardening, right? So gardening or farming, they're continuous a little bit every day.  But that's an ongoing thing. Whereas let's say hunting is kind of a one transaction, right?  It's not like this. So what you're saying is exactly right. The idea that, you know, suddenly a network springs up. I would say you know more people than you think you know, but I'd also say it is a matter of cultivation over time to feel like, well, who can I really trust with, you know, like a confidential thing I've got going on at work or, you know, problematic boss or something new I'm thinking about. And you're going to pull among the people in your network, not necessarily that smaller group of friends and family. Right. We made that distinction earlier this month too. And I think the important thing with all of this is to understand no matter where you are in your career, great conversations can start building that network. And I think a lot of people get so focused on, well, I don't have anything to add. I just got out of college. This is my first job. How can I add what someone like Karen adds to a network? It's like, well, actually just being helpful, being a great listener, being supportive are all things that you don't need a college degree for. You don't need a vast amount of experience for. But those little one-on-one interactions, they parlay throughout your career into that network that you hope to have. That's right. And I would also add, I've talked to groups of college students and grad students both, and they've gotten that very question, you know, I don't have anything. I'm not offering anything. And I think, you know what, you're offering your curiosity and your interest. You may be asking really sharp questions. And someone's going to remember that they may act right away. But in any case, that's a gift you're giving to that other person who's, you know, the supposed expert. You may surprise yourself and hoping the other person is open to that conversation. They may be surprised too. I'd also add to that, youthful exuberance. Like we, all companies could use a healthy shot of excitement in the arm and fresh blood. And I know what that's like for AJ and I. We've been doing this for 13 years. When some of the young kids come to help out or intern or work with us, we're excited because they're excited to get in the door. And it fires us up.  It only has the desired effect on us. Yeah, I would say, and actually, I think it's, it seems like it might be an age thing. And I get you because I also get energized by, you know, curious, sharp young people. But in a way, it's not about age. There's a book that has been very popular in Silicon Valley for a few years now called Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck, right? So this, anybody can have a growth mindset. I mean, this is, this is not about age. It is sort of like, are you open and curious to new ideas and new people and, you know, new thinking? Or do you have a fixed mindset? Right. And so that's, that's really the key. And that's why I think the right kind of like good, authentic connecting with other people is a mark of an open mind of a growth mindset. And do you think there are some strengths that introverts bring to networking that maybe extroverts don't have? I do. Actually, one of the key ones we've mentioned a little bit in passing has to do with listening. So even as a kid, without without any labels on it, I remember, I would just make a game, you know, someone would say to me, how are you, what's new with you?  And then I gauge in that few minutes, what do I want to share and how much? Now that's just me, maybe that's some kind of self protection thing, I don't know. But the process is, no, I'm listening to you. I want to listen to you. I want to hear you first. And I would say introverts typically do not want to be out front, as I mentioned. And so the idea of, let me ask you the questions and hear from you that has a good effect in a different way, which is that person feels listened to and heard and flattered somewhat in that process. And you get more information in order to figure out how much you want to reveal, and also which way maybe the conversation goes based on that. I think that's a fantastic skill for making connections. And how to help that person. Yeah, a lot of times in these situations, they're going to volunteer information that, oh, I didn't realize they were into this, or I didn't realize they were traveling here, I've been to a great restaurant there. You know, these are all little bits of information that we have talked away. And if we give someone else a spotlight, we can now offer up some value that we didn't even go into the interaction thinking we had to get. Exactly, exactly. And when it comes to listening, obviously, I think a lot of us like to think we're good listeners, like to think, oh, I caught everything, but it's easy to get distracted by thinking about things elsewhere. What have you done to hone your listening skills as a networker? You know, I'm not sure it was a conscious thing so much, but I know, and we've all been here, we get caught out when we're not really listening, but we're waiting for our turn to talk. I mean, that's happened to me. And so, then I think, okay, I don't want to do that. I don't want to be like that. So let me kind of double down and just zero in here on what you're saying. And it doesn't take, now, you have to have the conditions for a good conversation. If it's a noisy coffee bar, and you know, you can't really hear that well, maybe that's not the place to have that sort of get to know you kind of conversation.  It could be a concentrated period of time, but it needs to be, I'm really, I'm all here. So occasionally, I have to remind myself, I'm all here. And we all know that unpleasant feeling when, you know, you're not really listening and then someone asks you a question and you have to kind of, yeah, well, I think, you know, love through that's not good. No, that's not going to advance your cause. Certainly not grow your network. Yeah. And obviously during your career, the advance in technology and these tools we now have to our advantage, you mentioned at the top of the interview that, you know, you do a lot of networking behind the screen now. And, you know, 20, 30 years ago, that was impossible. Right.  And a lot of times it works against you and creates some depression, but there are also great tools for staying connected and allowing this network to grow like that garden. Yes. How do you use these tools in your life to manage your network? Well, I would say, I mean, and I hope this resonates for people, you know, it's old fashioned in a certain way, but email is kind of the only kind of interoperable network we all share. So in terms of being introduced to someone, for example, or following up with someone who you're not connected to on LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook, that's about as easy as it gets. You just send a note. The person doesn't have to answer it in real time. You can explain what you're looking for, what question is, or can we make a date to get together in person, something like that. So that has a continuing place in the process. But I would also say now, because we actually know, we know of, we generally know more people than any time in history, just because of working with people and the people we meet, you know, along the way. So having LinkedIn obviously was designed for sort of professional and career networking. And it works, I think, fine. And it has some guardrails and people seem to understand how to use it. It's handy. So when you meet someone at a conference, the most common thing is either can I send you an email or can we connect on LinkedIn? That's great because then you can kind of start that. But then after you've met, this is when keeping in touch matters most, then it's, are we both on Twitter? And we follow each other on Twitter, we both on LinkedIn, etc., Instagram, whatever it is, then that can be a channel with that person. If that's something you both tacitly agreed to, then it's just, hey, I thought of you yesterday when I saw the news about your company or your team or the pop culture reference, whatever it is, it's sort of like, I know you like that. I know you're in that. I know you did that. Just want to say great, you know, and just, hey, that doesn't require a response or much of a response. It's not a request for help. It's really just, hey, I'm thinking of you, essentially. And so it's never been easier to do that and do that on a regular basis with a wide variety of people. Maybe you're work colleagues, former work colleagues, whatever it is. That's how I keep in touch with people, is all those ways.  So I'm seeing things and I'm kind of passing them along with the direct message to this one or that one and just saying, did you see this? Do you believe this?  That's a sort of moment of a touch point that someone might send me an emoji back. Like, we're in touch. It's when we need to be actually in touch in, you know, real time, we've had an encounter. It's not like we're, we've been out of touch, we've been in touch, and now we're going to be more in touch. So that's, that's how those tools kind of make it easy. You have to be comfortable using them, of course, and you have to use the ones you and your contact are comfortable using. You don't want to make people sign up for a new account. I'll see you on TikTok, you know. But, you know, we all find our ways through this. And it makes it very easy then to just have that kind of light touch with people.  This is something that you're doing on a daily basis. This is part of your routine to manage that garden, so to speak. Yeah, exactly. And not the same people every day. It's more, you know, and by the way, you know, we're also living in an age because we are connected through, even if it's only LinkedIn or, you know, past email or whatever it is, it's really okay to kind of drop in out of the blue and just say, hey, I've been thinking about you or we haven't, I talked to people or I've been in touch with people or people reach out to me. We might not have even seen each other for five years or worked together for 10 years. But it kind of doesn't matter because there's that sense of we're all out there doing our thing. You know, we're all, we're all in the ether somewhere. And so assuming there's some degree of affection and fondness between people, even if it was just a professional relationship, suddenly you should just say, hey, I've been thinking about you because this, you know, because now I'm interested in your line of work. Now I'm, you know, the thing that we used to talk about, it's so much more true now. And I really, I'd love to talk to you about it or catch up with you. Or I see you're at a certain company I'm interested in.  Yeah. And I think that the beauty of listening online is that people are offering up on their LinkedIn, they're writing articles, they're posting stuff, the things that they're interested in, they're walking billboards. You can see exactly what they're interested in. So if they wrote a medium post about something and you read a news article that's related to that topic, yeah, that loose touch is valuable to them. Oh, okay. He read my medium. Oh, great. He was thinking of me. Right. And even, you know, the LinkedIn will say like so and so, you're connected to, like has a new job, right? Even that's great. I would say, don't just rely on the LinkedIn canned language to send your congratulations. And I sometimes will just send a note note to say, awesome, good for you. But sometimes I'll also, if I know the person somewhat well, I might not say it on LinkedIn, but I might send an email and just say, hey, I saw the news. That's great. I really love to hear what's going on with you or what you think about it. And they know you've seen that news because they posted it, right? So it's, again, a little bit flattering, but also like, oh, you're aware of what's happening. And that's a sign of interest. We talk about that here, the same thing. And for me, I like to revert to the method of communication that we've been engaged in previously. So some of the times it's texting, it's like I see something on LinkedIn and I'll text them, hey, congratulations. You know, same thing with Facebook birthdays and all of that. Like, obviously, everyone is posting the same thing. They see that on LinkedIn. It's nice to have that little extra personal touch, catch something on Instagram, then text or even phone call on those important moments. And these little things you can do habitually, not the same people every day. And that's how you're pruning that garden. Now, you talk about this place, the third place. Johnny and I love this concept. We talk with all of our students about it here, how important it is to have that place outside of home and outside of work where you can express yourself. You could be part of the community and engage in it. And it's interesting now because online, these platforms have created that third place for a lot of us. That's right. Or a bunch of third places, right? Because there are fan communities that I have no part of, but I know they exist. I know they're a third place. Or even eSports or Twitch or things like that can also serve that purpose. But I would also say even the larger, like I say, I'm big on Twitter. So I know when I, I mean, I look at Twitter to say, what are we all talking about now? Like what's on our minds collectively, right? And I'll see. I ensure I say things. I'll tweet things that then other people I know will also, a little subset of us is exchanging. But that's where we do it. Yeah, it's a very interesting phenomenon. It's important for those of us who don't understand this idea is to identify your own third place where you can feel comfortable sharing. And we've built a little online community on Facebook for fans of the show at our challenge. And yeah, on there, we have people from all over the world who are interested in growing their social skills, personal development. And, you know, maybe their friends and family aren't interested in it. So they congregate online, they post some videos, they're connecting with each other. And now they're even meeting in person because they found this third place. And I think the internet has sort of provided so many opportunities to find your own third place. You're really doing yourself a disservice if you're not engaging in these little communities and creating opportunities socially online outside of, you know, where you are at work and where you are at home, which a lot of us refer to. Yep, that's absolutely right. And by the way, you don't just need one third place, right? I mean, I think we're used to this idea now that there's an incredible community of people who are, for example, cancer patients, right, and they're sharing their experiences in clinical trials and all that stuff. It's fantastic because that didn't use to happen, right? The early days of AOL, they had chat rooms, right? And one of the big categories for chat rooms from those days was the gay and lesbian community, who'd also been active in use net groups. But it's like these kind of places you meet people through either forced or lifestyle interest groups, that's some force by saying like an illness, for example, or even grief. You know, all of these things are kinds of third places that reflect a bunch of things in our lives. And I think it's fantastic that they all exist. And obviously with these platforms, there's a lot of concern around your online brand and not putting too much online. And of course, we now know that recruiters are less likely to place you in a job and point you in the right direction. If they can't find you online, so your online brand matters. But for those of us who feel a little overwhelmed with all these platforms and are concerned about our privacy, what are some of the tips that you have to make sure that you're developing a good online brand that's going to help you build your network and help you professionally, but not maybe oversharing and creating a position that a company wouldn't want to hire you. Well, I mean, for this purpose, if you do nothing else, I do think LinkedIn has value for a couple reasons. One is, as you say, I mean, recruiters live there. And it's not just for jobs. It's also sort of, I think for a lot of us, it's a kind of de facto directory. If you say to me, do you know so-and-so? I immediately am going to look them up online then. And do I know them? Do I have some connections then? Because so many people are on there. So I would say if your interest is basically professional development, do have a profile on LinkedIn, have a photo. Even if you've been in the same job, take a little time to describe different elements of the job. And I talk a lot about the thing they call a summary, which is at the top of your kind of chronology. That's where you can kind of paint a bigger picture of what you really want to do, what your aspiration is, or what you're kind of the total package, what you're done for. And the reason that's valuable is, again, for all these kinds of connections, even if you love your job, people want people who might speak or be a panelist or write an article or be a board member or all that kind of stuff. But in addition, just sort of being part of that community or having some expertise about something that someone else might turn to. So I'd say that LinkedIn is a minimum. And then from there, it's really kind of your personal style. But these things don't all have to hook together in a unified brand. I was saying to someone earlier today, you know, my Instagram is really all like kind of architectural details when I travel. I mean, I like looking at old buildings and I like taking pictures of little parts of those buildings. It's really mostly that it's not connected to anything. It doesn't have any bearing on things. Now, it's safe if someone finds it, they're not going to see this crazy side of me. So I guess I have thought about it a little bit. But I would say, you know, be cognizant always of what you're posting in there because certainly it will get found and looked at unless you have, you know, some alias setup that you that you can use. But really, I mean, we sometimes forget it really is our choice what we post. I know parents who post a lot of their kid stuff on Instagram, for example. And I know others who do not do that, or they don't say ever their kids nates, right, or maybe show their faces. But, you know, it's sort of people have to figure this out for themselves. I think at a minimum, it's important to have something up on these platforms. And I think it is important to look at it from the lens of, if a recruiter was staring at this, if my potential boss was staring at this, and there were two candidates in the room, and it came down to my social media, do I want to be known as the person who was partying in Meakinos or who was running around, right, you know, those sorts of things probably want to stay off there because these tools are being utilized. You can't deny that these are part of the job search now. And it's important to craft that. Yeah, with all of these tools that we talked about online, of course, they've helped networking, they've helped us stay in touch with each other. But of course, when it comes to meeting in person, especially going to these conferences, going to these events where you're a little introverted, you know, you're going to be forced to meet a lot of people, and you may not also feel like you're that far along in your career yet. And you want to talk to the speakers, you want to make an impact. What is your advice there, specifically on conferences? Because I know we got a lot of questions from our audience. Right. And so I think a couple of things.  So let's just not have that super high bar there. If it's a smaller workshop, you know, you may have a more comfort level with a little bit of small talk with people. But I would say a couple of things. One is, you're not going to do your whole networking transaction at the conference, right? You're going to make some additional contact that's kind of friendly and kind of interesting for five, 10 minutes. And then you follow up after. So you might be waiting in line together for coffee. You might be waiting for a speaker and just sitting next to each other. The small talk there should be a little bit, should be related to the conference, the event. And try not to ask yes, no questions. Basically, you know, how did you, how did you find yourself wanting to come to this conference? What are you hoping to get out of it? Is there a speaker you're looking forward to today? Is this a field you're in? You know, if you can read a badge easily, not awkwardly, that's great, because that gives you a little more intel to go on. But it's basically, you want to draw them out a little bit and oh, you know, I'm interested in, oh, I know about your company, because they've been doing, you know, something I'm interested in. Could we follow up? Could I follow up with you after? Could we exchange contact info or may I, you know, link to you or whatever, whatever is appropriate in that setting? And then do follow up, you know, wait a day or two. And then say, if I was glad we met, here's something I've been reading or here's a thing I wrote or, you know, whatever it is, I'd like to talk to you more about it or just stay in touch about it. You've made that contact. Yeah. And I think there are certainly strategic areas too to help those of us who are introverts get into those conversations.  And just standing in line next to the speaker, you're going to be inundated with people who are waiting to talk to the speaker, introduce themselves. And it's a great opportunity to have a quick conversation, ask them what they want to share with the speaker. That's a trick that I've learned from one of my mentors is being by the speaker has that halo effect too. It's like, oh, maybe AJ knows the speaker. Even if you don't, same with where the refreshments are or where the badges are handed out, right? When people are first coming in, they're going to be a little nervous. They're looking around, putting their badge on. Who do I know here? And these are where the conversation is happening. That's right. And I also love the tip that you gave that it's important to, even if you're an introvert and you're overwhelmed by this, to give yourself some time to recharge too. Oh, absolutely. A lot of times we go to these events, we're like, okay, I have to hit it so hard and I have to meet everyone. And when you're worn out, other people can know that they're going to see you're not listening, you're not engaged and it's going to harm your network if you're forcing it. Yeah, that's right. I mean, there's no advantage to just sort of going to the nth degree to the last mile when you're really spent. There are times I know I've kind of done it up here. I need to take a walk outside for a minute if it's a multi-day thing or I'm going to sit out one session. I would say one other thing, though, about the break areas and the common areas. If your goal really is to sort of meet some new people or make some specific connections, keep your face out of your phone during those breaks so that you look like I'm open to conversations around me. I'm making eye contact. People legitimately have a need to check their email and whatnot. That's fine. But don't do that the whole time so that you've come away saying, no, I didn't meet anybody. Well, no one's not going to bother somebody with their faces in their phone. Yeah, and a lot of us use it as a self-comforting safety behavior.  I have to grab out my phone and do something. But we don't realize that you're basically sending a signal to the rest of the room, but don't bother that person. They're engaged in something. So being open to conversation is great advice. Now, you mentioned something that we talked a lot about this month, which is the follow-up. And as someone who goes to a lot of events, I find that this is where 90 plus percent of people screw it up. You have a great conversation with them. They're like, oh, I'm going to reach out. I'm going to follow up and you think something's going to happen and then they don't follow up. And that's the crucial part in all of this. It's great if you exchange LinkedIn's. It's great if you got a little bit of face time. But if you're not following up and doing those loose touch moments and making sure that the other person knows, hey, I'm here to be helpful and supportive, well, you're not really networking. Yeah. No, that's exactly right. And the follow-up is where it just takes more than one conversation to make a new friend.  And so if there's a reason to say, oh, you're going to be at that thing next month, I'm going to be there too. Or did you know about I'm going to send you a note because I know about another event like this. And let's follow up about that. That's the way that along with offers to help in a kind of general sense, it really is all about that follow-up. Because otherwise it just, oh yeah, I'm not really in touch with anybody. And I'm the one who says, well, I am in touch with them because I'm having these little intermittent moments of being connected. So I can tell you where they're working now. I just know because this is what I do online. But it happens not in the moment at a conference. And now I would, I'd love to know at this point with your reputation, I'm sure there are a lot of people who are trying to get in your inbox, trying to get on your LinkedIn, what are the things that people do, strangers do that just annoy you when they're trying to network with you so that our audience can avoid these things? Right. Well, one is the obvious, the sort of presumptive sell. And frankly, I think this happens most often on LinkedIn, where there are people who have services to sell and they want to be a coach or they want to be an agent or they want to, whatever it is. So they have no connection with you. And they write basically through the mail function that you can read somebody you're not connected to. And it'll be like, you don't know what my business is or what I'm interested in, and you're just sending this. So that's just a cold call. So that's not good. I would say it doesn't happen to me super often. I was just mentioning this and I was laughing because we just got one on Instagram yesterday. And the first line was, oh, I see you're burning up the podcast as well.  And the next one is, do you guys ever have guests? It's like nice try. Yeah, I'll tell you an interesting one. I've gotten out twice. So because of this book, I got recently, this was email, I believe, to my website account. And it was basically a PR firm that does PR for authors. Okay, that's legit. I could see somebody, somebody did a little homework. It was a can note. But I thought, you know, that's okay. But then I look at their website. And it is, this company is so behind the time. And so they're not, they're not linked on social. They're not, I mean, listen, maybe they do great work, but I couldn't find their clients. I couldn't find, you know, their own presence online. They had like circa 2000 website. So I didn't even bother. And I got the same can note a second time. And I'm sort of tempted to write back and say, you know, here's some, here's a critique, but then I think I don't know if I want to get into a dialogue. But it is, that's essentially a cold call to, and I would say to people who maybe are in that business, like, you better have your, your best game on, you know, when you're, when you're doing that kind of pitch, maybe you do reach people that way.  The other thing I'd add on LinkedIn in particular is if you want to be connected to someone, say something about why don't just use the LinkedIn message, right, which is just, I'd like to be connected to your network or whatever it is. Tell me why. I mean, maybe I would say yes to somebody I knew nothing about it had no connection to, but I need to know a little more than just, you know, someone is someone playing a numbers game. I don't know. So I, as a result, I don't act on, you know, a lot of requests that come in that are just kind of random, but I can't, I can't see what the connection is. I don't, I don't decline them. I just kind of sit in purgatory. Yeah. It's a good way to put it. And you talk about the importance of the double opt-in and when making introductions, how important it is to get the other person's consent. Can you walk our audience through that? Because I think that's another big no-no that people are doing. Yeah. I think if you think of yourself as a recipient of one of these kind of, I didn't opt in for this notes, that's kind of a surprise. And you, even if it's a friend of yours, you're like, well, what's the connection here? Like, I'm super busy right now. I can't do this. Or, you know, you don't want someone promising something for you. So I always, always, always, somebody will meet with me often. They're new to town or they, you know, they have a specific question. And I'll get excited when I talk to them. And I'll make note of three or four people, maybe, and I'll say, listen, I'm going to write to these people. I'd like a little bit from you, like a little paragraph about specifically what you're doing or what you're interested in. Send me that. I'm going to send that to each of these people with a little note from me about how we met and that I, you know, I think you're interesting. I think this is a good question. If you don't mind, only when they say, yes, this person I'm asking the favor of, do I then say, okay. And then I put, I send the next note to the two of them introducing them and saying, you know, my contact is kindly agreed to talk to you about this. Take it away, but, you know, enjoy. Right. Being respectful with other people's time and you hit the nail on the head when someone's making promises on your behalf, it puts you in an awkward position because now you have to say no, which makes you look bad to some people. And or the flip side, you're forced to do something that you wouldn't have done in the first place. Even, I mean, I do have friends who will say, listen, anyone you want to introduce to me, it's fine. Go right ahead. I still will ask because it might be, maybe they're jammed for a month with a deadline, you know, and they just can't, they would like to, but they can't feel right now or whatever it is. I still want to kind of clear, you know, say, Hey, you won't hear from this person for a month. Yeah. Context is key, right? Context is key. Giving people who are busy, especially as we talked to start, how fluid things are. It's like, yeah, you met this person at a conference a year ago, they could be working in a different company now, doing something completely different. They didn't have time to update their LinkedIn. And if you're just forwarding them, Hey, I found this person, deal with it. Yeah, you're actually harming your network. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, think and put yourself in that position. And I bet you won't want to do it anymore. Yeah. We love to give our listeners a challenge at the end of each episode so they can start applying exactly what they've learned from the show. Do you have a challenge that you'd like to share with our audience to help them grow their network? Yeah, I would say make a short list of three to five people you're not in touch with now. You'd like to know better. You used to work with whatever it is, but part of it is you like, you have a good sense of them, right? And reach out to them in some fashion, whatever your connection mechanism may be, whatever channels you use, just to say, Hey, I've been thinking about you and I would love to catch up when it's convenient. If these are local people, you can make a coffee date. If you know them better, maybe it can be a meal, but I always keep it light initially with coffee because that could be 20 minutes. All right. But anyway, try that. And it's like, you send out the outreach to three to five people. Maybe you do three a week. Maybe you do three every two weeks. You're planting, you're ongoing. And then some will say yes, some will say yes for next month, but keep doing that every, every week at whatever your comfort level is. And then over time, you're going to be caught up with more people.  And I just wanted to add to that as well. I know when that happens on my end when people reach out to me and say, Hey, I haven't heard from you in a while. I've been thinking about you. I want to catch up and allow it. It makes me feel good. So, you know, bright people say with all this technology, we tend to feel more and more isolated. So when people actually reach out, reach out, contact, I was like, Ah, people do care. People are thinking about me. No, exactly. And it is a nice feeling.  Yeah. And it's a net positive. Even if they're busy, that warm feeling about you, the fact that you were thinking about them, it's cumulative. It compounds over time. And everything that we talked about here, the more you can create these habits. And we've even talked about creating space on your calendar instead of farting around on social media, create space on calendar to actually use it to your advantage, use the tools like we talked about today. Thank you so much for joining us. The book actually drops today. We're so excited. Where can our audience find more about this fantastic book? So my website does have book information. It's just my name, Karen, wickery.com, K-A-R-E-N-W-I-C-K-R-E. And I'm also on Twitter at Kbox K-V-O-X. Thank you so much for joining us. We love these tips and we love that. An introvert like us has actually cracked the code to networking. Same here. God forbid we should have her meet in person. This has been great. Well, you're going to be getting a LinkedIn connection from me. One of those generic ones. I could take that. Now come on, write a note. Thank you for the tips. It was awesome having you. Thank you. Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks a lot, you guys.


Hello, hello everybody and welcome to another Deepbrown Consulting webinar. Happy New Year to everybody. This is January 2019 and this is our Power BI and Excel webinar, basically our Data Analytics webinar and I'm your host David Brown. So today we're going to talk about Data Analytics Power BI, of course, best features for 2018. So January to December 2018, so many changes, so many updates, so many improvements have happened in Power BI and for those that use Power BI a lot, you will know that there's always a regular monthly update and the monthly updates comes with lots of goodies, right? And there's Power BI Desktop, which is free to download and that's what most people use and you can publish on Power BI.com. It's all about Power BI. So if you haven't joined our Pog group, that's our Power BI user group in Lagos, Nigeria, please do. That's our Power BI user group. Please join that and also you can join our Meetup group. Lots of you are joining us from our Meetup group. So that's great. Let's get started. So my name is David Brown. I'm the founder and managing partner of Deepbrown Consulting. I'm also a consultant to the World Bank and also a Microsoft MVP on Data Analytics. I've worked with Excel for almost like 22 years, worked with Power BI since it was launched, from the day it was launched.  I do a lot of stuff on finance, modeling, evaluation, and then of course reporting with Power BI. I also record content and develop materials and courses on Office Training Hub, e-learning courses, and I speak at various international events and expositions. I'm also a chartered accountant, chartered management, and chartered tax practitioner. I'm also a member of the CFA Institute, CFA Nigeria. And so I'm a finance, basically an analyst, right? That likes a lot of data. So that's what I do. Right. So for us today, we're just going to talk about the top 10 Power BI updates in 2018. When I say top 10, really it's just the 10 that we picked. There's so many excellent stuff. I mean, hundreds of stuff. So if you ask me in another day, it'll be a different top 10, but this is the top 10 we managed to put together for you guys. So and then we talk about three cool 2018 custom visuals. We just have a quick look at some nice interesting custom visuals for 2018. Right. So should we get started? So how often do you guys follow Power BI updates? Yeah, how often do you follow updates on Power BI? That's the only poll I'm going to ask you today. So I'll display the answer once it's done. So I've put up the poll for you guys. How often do you follow Power BI updates? 100% so far. Maybe more people are involved.  I think it's Amanda now that does it in Power BI in Microsoft. So Amanda does updates every month, just puts a nice short video to kind of explain all the nice, wonderful things they've added. And then of course, there's a blog that she writes to give you all the updates on Power BI. So do you religiously watch that every month? Do you go and read the blog every month? So you have to tell, are you sure you do that? You read the blog every month. So I'm very impressed. There's a real good Power BI bunch here. So that's 86% of us do that. So okay, so I'm ending the poll. Right. So about 86% of us. Oh, no, I don't follow. I'm reading the wrong thing. No one I don't follow is 86%. I was surprised. And some months, 14% some months every month, nobody does. That's what I thought nobody follows every month updates. I advise you do. You go to YouTube, type Power BI as the search Power BI and check the updates. And what we do here at the Brown Consulting is every month to a try and kind of catch up on one or two very nice things we like in the updates. And we'll talk about it. So so let's go. So here we're just trying to do an overview of all the updates in 2018. It's going to be interesting. Right. So the first thing I'll talk about in the top 10 Power BI updates in 2018, let's see what's the first thing I'm going to highlight. First thing is PDF connector, PDF connector, not to show what month it was brought in, but this is really, really cool. So let me get my demo machine on so that we could get ready. Let's see. Before you can use the PDF connector, you must ensure that you switch it on right now is in beta form.  So you see this PDF, you see beta, that means it's been tested currently and it's not generally available. So you guys will may not see this in your your Power BI desktop. So so make sure you see this, you need to come to file, then you go to sorry. So you need to come to file.  Right. So go to options and settings and options.  You go to preview features. And then you would now take all these beta stuff. So like for example, get data from PDF, you make sure you take it and see some new ones here. We have modeling view, you have view filter of experience, enable Q&A. So these are all the things in beta. So click OK. So all these things now available to you have enabled one or more preview features that require restarting Microsoft Power BI desktop. These changes will take effect after you restart. So obviously some of those features down there needs to restart. I'm not going to do that. So let's quickly get our data. So I'm going to go to data, go to more. Let's connect to PDF. So I connect to PDF here and I say connect. So once we say connect to PDF, preview connector, the PDF connector is still under development. Please try it out and give us feedback. Of course, that's cool. So click continue. And then I've already navigated to where I want this. So navigator to this is the PDF file I showed you. So I double click it and let's have a look at what happens. Right. So double click it. Now these are the two tables. If you remember the PDF file that I showed you, there are two tables. So it's, I don't know, it's like magic, right? What it does is it identifies, let me open the PDF so you see it. It just went and connected to this PDF file and identified that there were two tables. So it's looking for tables. It's just going around looking for tables and it recognizes that this is a table and this is a table. And that's what it showed you here, that this is table and this table. So we just select these two tables. You see this table? You can see what it pulled out. And then this table, let's select the two, right? And then we can edit the query. So we select the two tables, edit the query. Your screen is coming up. Okay, so the query is in another section. Let me just bring it in for you. So this is, this is the query. All right. I did a demo copy. I shouldn't be using demo copy. Okay. I'm using the copy anyway. So this is the table. And what we can do is we could rename the table. This first one was by volume. And this one was by value. So I could just say report by volume. Oh, enter. And I think the only cleaning up we need to do here is just remove the null. And then this one is report by value. And then I can just remove the null. Right. So it's okay. And that's really it. So we can load this. Now, if you're doing this in Excel, you just, I can load it into Excel. But here, just close and apply. Close and apply and bring it in. So that's cool. So give this feature a thumbs up if you think you like it. What do you give this feature? One over 10. And give that in the chat. What would you give this feature? So this feature, here you see we have our data. And here you can see your report by value, all the data and report by volume. If you want to take it to Excel, you can copy it and take it to Excel. But really, we're good in Power BI. You have PDF connector web scraping. Web scraping. Now, what's that? What's web scraping? So web scraping is just a bit similar to this PDF connector. It's that you will just go online to any website and then try and pull out data from that website. So the same way that is pulling out data from PDF, it wants to just pull out data from a website. So let's see what websites should we go to. Let me let me just take a website here and show you. So this is our website. This D Brown Consulting website. Okay, so this is our website. So I want to scrape some information from here. Let me even go to the stock exchange as well. Let's see. Since we're talking about the stock exchange, let me put up the Nigerian stock exchange. So you can see the Nigerian stock exchange. You can see tables and stuff, all sorts of tables there. You could just connect and connect to that file. You just connect and let's Power BI do its thing and try and connect to the website itself and pull data that you can see in tables. Anything that looks like a table, it can pull the data out. Okay, so here we're going to scrape from a website. So how do we do that? We get data and then you go to web. So get data from the web. You can see we just go to web with the data. Okay, so what websites should we use? Let me copy our own website. I'll just copy our URL. So I'll just go copy our own URL. Let's get data this time from our website. So it is type out the URL for the website you want to analyze, right? And then you click okay. So it's going to go to that webpage and try and pull some information from that webpage. And let's see how we can scrape that webpage and try and see setting things from that webpage. Just connect to the webpage. It's fine. So you can see it's the Power BI's query editor. So Power Query in Power BI is trying to pull information from our website so that we're connecting to the Debran Consulting website and it has eventually it has. So now look at this. If I click documents, documents really doesn't tell us anything. It's just a whole gibberish. So what you need to do is not click this, right? We're not going to click this. What you say is add table using example right there at the bottom. So when you are scraping from a website, you're actually just trying to pull information from a website, lots of different things on our website. Say add table using example. So what that does is, let me show you our website. If you look at our website, right, at the bottom we have we provide for course delivery options, blah, blah, blah. Now this is in a table form. So you can actually, if I highlight this, let me just highlight, it's kind of structured like a table. So Power BI will recognize this and you can pull this information out because it's structured as a table. So you need a table in your website for it to now pull the information out. So you can look at some of us here, pictures of some of us, Debran Consulting. If you look at my name here, this is kind of structured like a table. So it's possible to pull this information out. Anything that's structured like a table is possible to pull that information out, right? So let's see how we do that. So add table by example, it's doing that, it's bringing, giving me a file like an example. Great, it's here. Navigation to a web page was cancelled. What can you try, retype the address? Okay, now it's back. And imagine that. So what we want to do, if you look at the web page, let's scroll, let's scroll, let's scroll down. So you can do this for any websites, as long as there's a table, something like a table, there are all this table information. But right now, let's say I want to pull out our names. So I want to pull out the name, I want to pull out the, maybe the position, and then I want to pull out maybe just an overview of the person, name, position and overview or a profile. So this column one is going to be the names, I'll pull out the names. Then we have column two, is going to be the position. And then we're going to have column three, where we want to pull out the profile. Yeah, or short profile, right? Oops, sorry, name, position, and then short profile. So here, you click, if I click in this space here, it'll kind of bring out a list of things that I could put in there, just double click in there. So I'm looking for my name, David, let me just type David. So you can see my name here, see name, click. Then I come into position, and double click there, position, I know this principle something, so principle, that's the principle, the principle, the brand consultant. So that's this, see, that's the position, if you look up here, that's there. So click, okay. Oops, sorry, I supposed to double click, principle double click. Come on, let me just do the, and then the profile is a proven, let's say proven, there we go. Okay. Now, if you click on the second one, we need more examples. So let's say princess, princess, right? Then you can see once I come to the next one, it's kind of found to other people, right? It's like filling by example, just like flash fill in Excel. So princess, I would say sales and marketing. Okay, okay, I'm supposed to double click it. Then here we can say princess has overseen double click.  Tosin, financial director, so let's do that financial director, let me double click. So come down here, double click show, executive director. So that's how it now fills out, oops, sorry, I supposed to double click. That's how it now fills out the rest and stuff from example. So that's how you kind of build out from an example, and then it automatically, anytime you update this on the website, it's just updates in Excel, I mean in Power BI, in Excel. So that's how it works. And that's how you pull out a custom table, and then you edit it and load it into Power BI, right? So that's it, that's scraping website. So what's the next, so what's the next one, what's the next trick? So that, yeah, someone is asking, so it's going to scrape data from that particular page. So that particular page you want to scrape data from, then you can go and scrape data from another page, you can scrape data separate from various pages, bring all the queries in, and then you can now do, if you want, you can now do a merge query, you can do a merge query and stuff like that. So once you scrape from one, you can obviously scrape from many more. So that's how good, that's how cool it is. Right. So that's scraping, please explore it is very cool. It takes a while to set up, but once you've done it, you've automated. The next thing we're going to talk about is Fuzzy Match. Fuzzy Match is like VLOOKUP without the, without a really unique reference. Fuzzy lookup, Fuzzy Match. Let me show you a table. I show you a table that doesn't have, has a kind of strange, strange looking thing that VLOOKUP can work on. So if you look at the table on the screen, you would see that, okay, I have transactions, I have a customer name, I have transaction amount, ID, customer name and location. So what I want to see is I want to have transaction date, customer name and then transaction amount. I also want location here. So this Ahmed or lower is to be, here is a lower Ahmed. It's not the same. VLOOKUP can work here, but there's something called Fuzzy Lookup we're going to use now. So I'm going to close this and we're going to open it in Power BI. I just close it here. I won't save. Right. And then in Power BI itself, we're going to go and look for data. So I'm going to data, I'm going to go to Excel, get data from Excel. I'm going to Fuzzy data. So that Fuzzy data table. So we're going there to see if we can get data and see if we can do this Fuzzy lookup. Right. So what we want to do is bring in that those two files. So we're bringing in what's it called customer, customer and then transactions. Right. We're bringing in these two files. So I'm also bringing these two files here. Okay. Okay. So we have these two files. And if you look at it, we have customers ID, customer name, location, transaction, transaction date, customer name, transaction amount. Right. So I can start with these transactions. And all we want to do is merge these two queries. Right. So how do we merge? You come to the top right here and you say merge queries. Let's merge queries as a new one. So we're going to create a new query. And in this new query, I want to take transactions and then I want to take customers. So if you see the query, I want to have, I want to compare customers here and against customers here. So you have just highlighted customers here. And then I've highlighted customers down here. Now, unfortunately, if you look at the bottom, it's very small. I'll read it to you. The selection has matched zero out of the first 13 rows. That means it can match anything. So what you need to do is come to this use Fuzzy match to perform the merge. So if I click on tick, use Fuzzy match, it's now some magic. It's already analyzed it and said, oh, this Ahmed or yellow is kind of similar to yellow Ahmed. And now it has 13 out of 13 just matched everything. Right. So that's what this fuzzy match, you can click on this fuzzy match options. And you see ignore case match by combining text parts, maximum number of matches of match options. This is the advanced. If you really want to go deep into fuzzy match, you could go read about this advanced form. But right now it's work for us is matched everything we can say, okay, and now we have a merge query. See this merge query, which I can call a fuzzy fuzzy match. Right. So it's not a fuzzy match. And with this fuzzy match, now I have the transaction data. I have the customer name. I have the transaction amount. And then I have a table here, which I can expand this table is from the other table. I can expand it. And then I can say, do you know what, I just want location. I don't want anything else just location. And then my location comes in. And now I have my expanded merge tables just like if you look up, and this is permanent, this is automatic for life. So anytime I data in Excel updates, this updates automatically. Cool. Let's go to our next trick. What do you think about this trick vote for it? How good is it? How good is this trick? So someone is asking if you can do this with Excel, the thing with Excel, right, is that the power query in Excel depends on the version of Excel you have, right. If you have the latest, latest, latest Excel, maybe it's in Office 365. That is Excel for Office 365 and the latest version. Yes, you can do this in Excel because the power query there will be updated fully, right. But you some have Excel 2013 and they've installed power query add-on. Some have Excel 2016 and is installed power query add-on. So Excel 2016 is just what you had in Excel 2016. All the updates are newly there. If you have Office 365, yes, you get full updates. Now Excel 2019 is out. And even 2019 doesn't have some things, right. Because if you want the full stuff in Excel, what you should do is watch our next webinar on financial modeling because our next webinar on financial modeling is going to talk all about these various versions of Excel and it's going to give you the most gangster version of Excel you must have. That is the one that has everything. So check out that. It starts at 11 o'clock today. Go to dbrownconsulting.net. Click on webinar and register for that financial modeling webinar starting at 11 today. All right. So next thing we see is M IntelliSense. So what's M IntelliSense? What does that mean? Let's check it out. So for those that know Power Query, the language of Power Query is M. That's the language of Power Query. Power Query uses a language called M. For you to see how that language works, you need to go to let's go to View and then we'll go to Advanced Editor. So if you go to Advanced Editor, that's where you see the query. So this is the query, for example. This is the last query. Let's in. Now Power Query is a case sensitive language. So this source, for example, you must make sure it's a letter. So if you want to continue here, for example, I put a comma, I type table. Once I type table, right, you'll see that all the different tables come on table. All the commands or all the functions for table comes out. Table dot add column, table dot add index column, table dot buffer. All these, I can just take my mouse up and down and then tab, right? And then it types it all out. So this is, this is IntelliSense. It's just like Excel when you type a function and it gives you help on that function, right? So this is a super, super tool. M IntelliSense. Just helping you write your M code easy more easily. All right. So I don't need this console. So the next thing we did is we want to do a report. So let me close my query. Let me apply and close. Okay. So all those queries that I did, I was in Power Query in Power BI. It's just applying those queries. So next thing we're going to do is talk about distribution. So when we say distribution, one thing when you're analyzing data is you need to know how the data is distributed. That is something more like standard deviation. Standard deviation is simply you have a standard and maybe your standard is your budget, right? How, how has everything deviated from your budget? That's all standard deviation is. And really that's key to statistics. So how is your data distributed? You measure that standard deviation, but I don't need to do all these maths. It's just click, click, click in Power BI, right? So just see how it's done in Power BI. Let's pick a report. So let's show you a report. Let me pick something. So look at this report. We have revenue by region. We have revenue by month. So when you want to do a distribution, you have your, your value, which is revenue. And then you have a category, which is, let's say, here's region. So if I come to this table in Power BI, all I need to do is right click it and then come to analyze. When you go to analyze, you see find where this distribution is different. So click. Then what is doing right now is insights. It's doing a little AI stuff. It's going in through and just looking for insights. Yes. So it's analyzing right now. It's going to come up. Just wait for a few seconds and guess what? This is the distribution. What is this analysis? So this even explains stuff to you. See how individual filter values impact the distribution. The original distribution is shown in gray and is compared to the selected filter. Okay. So the original distribution is shown in gray and it's compared to the selected filter. So that's just an explanation for you. Cool. Yes, we got it. Now look at it. The original distribution is shown in gray and then this selected filters, we have revenue for this is model code. So it's slicing your data by model code and showing you that code, the model, model 5001P has the most distribution. So to see. So comparing proportions, you can remove not comparing proportions, but of course we need to compare proportions. So scroll down. This is by line of business ID. These are the IDs for line of business. The original distribution is gray and then this is the other distribution. So it just gives you insights. Insights that you may not know. So if you have a very complex model, the insights are really interesting. And if you like any insight, let's say we like this guy. So you like this insight, I can change it to the other things if you like. And I like it. I keep a plus there. And when I press that plus there, you can see it has entered into our report. So if I come and click into our report, see, it's now in our report. It's part of our report. Look at that. So that's how you basically take Power BI and let it do a distribution analysis and then tell you more insights about your data. I could click on this, for example, and do the same thing. Analyze. Analyze, explain the difference, right? It does the same analysis. It's very powerful. Very, very powerful. But key thing for you is you have to have your data already distributed. So this is a time series. This one is broken down by time series. So you could see something like a waterfall chart, a waterfall chart starting here in 2010 and ending here in 2011. How nice is this insight? So this insight says, okay, we started at 7.8 billion, then keyboards, laptops, computers. So these are the various products until we now got to 2011. And this is what we have 11 billion from 7.8 billion to 11 billion, right? What another insight? Let's see another insight. See another insight. So it's really, really cool, really cool. So this is one insight. Scroll down. Another insight, another insight, another insight. And once you see these insights, you can now ask yourself, what's all these insights about? And then it's telling you a story about your data. And that story is what you can now go and use in your next meeting to analyze your data.  So you just click on this plus sign here and add it to your report. And look at it. It's adding to our report. It's coming in now. It's still giving a little bit more time. It will come in. So that's it. That's, I think, is a cool one. Add column from example. Add column from example. How many of us here use what they call Flash Fill in Excel? So they have an equivalent now in Power BI of Flash Fill. So let me show you how that works. So let's go back to our demo. Click on the demo. Okay, so demo, share. Right. So let me go to page two. So how does Flash Fill in Excel work? Well, let me go to get data again. This time, let me get data. Let me edit. Let me just edit a query. Let me edit a query that currently exists. Let's edit it. Let me see what query I can edit. Now all this data file was not correct for some reason. My source, I have to change my source to, okay. Anyway, I need to get data. Let me just get data directly. Okay, let me just change my source. So browse, browse, browse, browse, browse, browse, browse, browse. Data analytics, Excel, data, Excel dump, click, click, okay. It's going to update my data. For some reason, the updates didn't work. So I'm just updating the data. So my data is updated. This is my clean data. Oops, sorry. Data is updated. Binary, rename, column. The data has changed. So I'm going to close this. I'm going to open a file that I saved, a backup file I saved. Or do you know what? Let me just use another query. Let's use this one. So let's use this query. So if I use this query, let me fill by example here. So this is, if you zoom here, see if I can zoom. Transaction, which one is easier to look at? So here is a query. I'm going to come and insert a column here. So add column. So under, to do that flash fill, you go to column from example and save from selection. Say column from example. Under add column, you say column from example and save from selection. Once you save from selection, it's going to do something like this. Create a column here. So see these names. Okay, let me see these locations. I want locations by just two letter locations. So I will actually, I'm supposed to highlight the column first. Let me cancel. Let me highlight this column and they say from selection, right? So now I'm going to just type, inside here, I'm just going to type LA for Lagos, right? And then here, I'm going to type AB for Abuja. And once I just type those two, you will see that it's already filled everything out. It's just filled everything out. So when I click okay, and this first character, so I'm just going to call this state short name or something, short name. Yeah, state short name. When I click okay, what it has done is a bit like Excel is gone and right written like a code. So you see the code here, you can see it well by table dot add column, expand customer state short name is the name, each text dot start location two. Now if you know Excel very well, you know that this is left is a function in Excel called left. And the number of things is extracting from the left is two. So this is the equivalent in Power BI, but it's flash fill. That's the same idea as flash fill. Really cool. This one a lot. It helps you understand M code as well. So you learn M a lot with this new cool tool. So add columns was next. And the next one that was really cool as well is buttons and bookmarks, having buttons and bookmarks. That's another one, buttons and bookmarks. So let me close, let me come back to Power BI. So yeah, we have bookmarks bookmarks. I think I'm not sure bookmarks were added in 2018. I think more like 2017, one of the last things in 2017, bookmarks are really, really cool. What do they what do I mean by bookmarks? If I go to view under view, you see certain things you can see selection pain, sink slices are so a very nice feature. And you have bookmark pain.  So this bookmark pain, you're bookmarking something. So what people do most lines is bookmark a focus view. So for example, I want, maybe I want to focus on this particular report. I don't supposed to be focused want to focus on this report. So this button here is called focus mode. Well, many people don't know about it, right? So many people don't know you can click on this and then it kind of gives you a focus only on that visual. And then you can click on go back to your report. So to help people that don't know this, we're going to create our own button and just say focus, right? So how do we create our own button? We go to home, under home, right in the middle, we have buttons, buttons here. So if I click on the drop down for button, you see that you can have a button left arrow, right arrow, this left arrow just means go back to one report and then right arrow means go to the next report, reset. Well, just resetting your current reports for removing all the filters back, forward information, help Q&A. But then this is the key one bookmark. Now if you click on blank, that means you can just decide which one of these you use, right? So even let me click on blank, let me click on blank. And what happens is I've created this small button that doesn't make sense right now. This is just on his own, right? This button and it's blank. So let's now populate it, right? Let's populate it. But before we do that, we obviously have to have created a bookmark. But let me just show you what this button does. So this button, you can see the button text is off. Let's put it on. I'm going to put it on. And under this button text to the right, I'm going to say focus or expand. Let me just say expand. I think that's easier to understand, expand. So I'm just writing expand there. I'm going to increase the font size maybe to expand. Or say click to expand. Maybe I could say click to expand or something like that. Right? So that's my button. So my button is useless on its own because I want to tie it to a bookmark. So I have to create a bookmark first. So I click on this and I'm going to add a bookmark. So I'm going to click on this focus mode, right? And then I'm going to add a bookmark. So this bookmark, I'll call it, let me rename it, to rename it expand or let me just call it rev for region. Let's just say rev for region, right? Revenue for region. Revenue for region. I say add. Right. So if I go back, now, when I click on this, it's highlighting it. Can you see that? So the bookmark is working here, but we don't want our users to keep going to bookmark. They don't know that. So we're going to click on this, our visual here. So this, this box, click on this box, that is the button. And then we go visualizations for the button and then we're going to make it work. So this is the button is on. Let's go to the action. So I'm going to the action. I'm putting the action on the action on for the button to the right. Then you see the type of action you want is bookmark. That's the action. We have back bookmark and Q&A. We want bookmark. And under bookmark, you've seen none. So we now pick the new bookmark we just did revenue for region. And then you have tooltips. Tooltips here are very cool, but we'll talk about tooltips later. Check it out. You can tooltips means once someone hovers over this, they could see some things. You can see some nice information there. But so right now we've created this bookmark and the bookmark is now clickable. If I click, it's going to expand, hold my control and click, it expands, go back. If I publish this as a dashboard, you don't need to hold control, but right now to click, you need to hold control and click. And then it comes here. Perfect. So if you, that kind of designer, you know how to design some really wonderful reports, click, click, click, click, click. Everybody sees all sorts of wonderful stuff. So it's very powerful, very, very powerful. If you build reports, we have top end Q&A, top end Q&A. So for the Q&A, top end Q&A just means Q&A has just gotten even more, even better, much, much better again than before. We could just type, let's see if I double click in here, I could just type something in the Q&A. You know, when you double click, the canvas is just Q&A comes up. Another way to get Q&A is you come to home, and then you see, ask a question. That's what Q&A is. Ask a question. And then we could type something as simple as what are the top five regions? What are the top five, actually top five regions? Right away, you can see top five regions come out. Just, it just popped out, right? Let's say buy revenue, right? Just buy revenue, enter. And here we are. These are the top five regions by revenue. Let me say top three, maybe. See? Double click. The top three regions. There you have it. These are the top three regions. So Q&A is wonderful. Just type and that's it. Another thing they added, if I look at this report, and maybe I don't like this color, for example, now in the visualization, you can search because sometimes the formatting in the visualization is so difficult to get. So you could type color in here, and color is the American spelling for color. Yeah, type color and everything about color comes out. Then you pick the one you don't like and then change it to another color. Change it. So you don't need to kind of struggle to search for what kind of commands you need. Maybe I want the font size to change, I'll just type font. Then here I have the font size, the font family and the font size, and I can increase my fonts, reduce my fonts, anything I'd like, right? Or size, I could type size. So this is cool. Whenever you're using formatting, just use the search. It's much easier. The last trick is copy and paste between Power BI desktop files. This is a very cool thing they added in 2018. Copy and paste within desktop files. So what you do is you open another Power BI desktop file, and then you can easily copy and paste between the two. So if I like this report, but I'd already created another Power BI report in another Power BI desktop file, I can just copy and paste them, right? I can copy and paste them. So I'm just creating another report, opening another report, and all you need to do, you like this report, copy the report and paste, and that's it. You just click, click. So you just click like this, click and click, Ctrl C and Ctrl V, just like you know in Excel, right? Ctrl C, Ctrl V, and you're ready. You're ready to roll. So let me close this one. Okay, this is a bit slow, guys. Don't save. So it's quite slow. Okay, let's open, open, let's just open something. Let me open this report here. I'm just opening my Power BI report. Okay, it's opening. It's taking a while. It's pulling all the data in and pulling the connections in and stuff, updating all the tables and reports and refreshing. So I like this report a lot, so I copy this report, and I want to go to another Power BI report and paste it in there. Okay, it's opening. It's taking a while, taking quite a while to open. Sorry about that, guys. Slow for some reason today. Okay, you know what? It's too, too slow for us. We'll, you'll have to take my word for it, guys. That works. Okay. It's too slow, too slow. All right, so it's just way too slow for us. So let's, let's move on. So let's move on. It's the copy and paste Power BI desktop files. So just make sure both files are open. The two Power BI files are open. And then you just copy from one ticket to the other and it moves all with its data model and everything. Same, similar data model and just updates. So we're supposed to also show you three cool 2018 custom visuals. We'll do custom visual, do lots of custom visuals for the next webinar for February. So we'll add these two, these there. These were some nice custom visuals we wanted to talk about. And this was your Power BI features, best features for 2018, PDF connector, web scraping, fuzzy match lookup, M IntelliSense distribution factor insights, didn't get some insights on distribution. Add column from example, which is the same as Flash Fill in Excel, Buttons and bookmarks, top end reporting using Q&A. Just type your question in words and it just comes out with a report. Search the format controls. So instead of looking for your formatting, just type into the search. You want to do something on color, type color. You want to do something on font size, type font size. That's just it. And then copy and paste between Power BI files. So that's what the last one that we tried to show you, but the files are not opening. But that's it. So those are our top 10 for 2018, 2019 promises to be really, really cool. There are lots of new features coming in. And we have a Power BI training that we're going to do for you guys. And there's a live meetup coming up this year as well. So before the end of March, we want to have a live meetup. You just come to a location and we do a live meetup. So that's going to happen. So please just stay tuned. And you tell you all about it. So we stay tuned, kind of join our newsletter. And we tell you all about that. So that was it. And about the sponsors, the bronze consulting sponsors, these webinars, we do training, consulting and payroll. You could reach us on the brown consulting.net, or you could do our online courses on office training hub.com. So that's office training hub.com. And you're going to get a free Power BI course coming soon on office training hub.com. And so very full, nice, detailed Power BI courses to lend Power BI. Right. So thank you very much. And these are some of our affiliates, Microsoft, ATD, and Financial Modeling Institute. If you like financial modeling, join us on the next webinar, which is starting in like an hour's time, where we're going to talk a lot about Excel and the new features in Excel. So I was David Brown, and I'm from D Brown Consulting and managing partner with D Brown Consulting, and also an Excel and Power BI kind of fan, and also a Microsoft MVP. Thanks a lot for joining me. And we'll see you next month on our Excel and Power BI webinar series. Thank you, guys. Bye-bye.


Now we're going to move on and check in on how bond markets are trading. Jonathan Sheridan from big securities is with us this afternoon. Jonathan, very good to see you there. Tell us how the bond market is trading a lot, obviously, happening around the globe in Italy and New Zealand. Have we seen much movement in the bond market? Good afternoon, Leanne. Yes, you're right. Look, there are a couple of big data points out on Friday night, in particular the non-farm payrolls in the States. And then, as you mentioned, we've had the Australian, sorry, Austrian election and the Italian referendum come through this morning as well as you were just talking about John Key's resignation. So a lot of things happening globally, I think, to be honest, the most important was probably the non-farm payrolls for bond markets at least, showing that whilst the headline number was strong, some of the underlying components were not so strong, in particular the wage growth just coming out in the sort of low to mid-twos on an annualised basis. So that resulted in the US Treasury market being pretty well bid and we saw 10-year yields down by about five or six points, which has just carried through into our market today. Do you get the feeling the post-Trump sell-off is a little overdone? How are you adjusting your exposures? Yeah, I do actually. I think that that's the case. There was a pretty big knee-jerk reaction, as no doubt you will have talked about over the last two or three weeks. We saw government-bond-yield sell-off fairly rapidly, although that was only actually a relatively small drop in capital price, showing that bonds are still a resilient asset class. But I think that, you know, given the difficulties that there will be translating, you know, potential policies into actual policies and then to actual job creation and the inflation and wage pressure that may well come with that, I think the knee-jerk reaction has been too much. And so we've been just doing some sectoral rotation, given the Commodities Rally, and there's lots of commentary out of investment banks that coal in particular might have seen atop. And so we're just selling things like the BHP 2025 coal hybrids and moving into, for example, subordinated debt from QBE. All right, fantastic. Jonathan, we'll leave it there. But I do appreciate you joining us. Thank you. Thanks, Leanne. Jonathan Sheridan there. Now, a quick final thought from...