Hostages and Volunteers Both Love Booze, w/ Paul Boynton

For Thanksgiving week we think it's only appropriate to discuss the alcohol industry. For this, we welcome P3 principal consultant and alcohol industry veteran Paul Boynton. He and the crew discuss the tremendous amount of data that exists in the alcohol industry, hostages VS volunteers in training sessions, the culture at P3, and some great uncomfortable stories from Rob's days at Microsoft. Any great holiday get-together has to include a few laughs, and that we do. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 2:00 - P3 and The Human Element 5:25 - Are you a hostage or a volunteer? 9:15 - Paul's Power BI moment of clarity 14:30 - Power BI Training stories 22:15 - The Gateway Formula 25:50 - To Maintain or Not Maintain the Status Quo 29:55 - Company cultures, Rob's epic Bill Gates and other horror stories 45:35 - Let's talk about booze, data, Category Managers, planograms and the Wild West that the alcohol industry still is 55:25 - How analytics leaves the computer screen, and how the human element comes into play 59:05 - Alcohol pretty much sells itself, but it's a data goldmine 1:05:00 - The 3 top opportunities in the alcohol industry for applying data more effectively 1:11:30 - Transformation in the alcohol distribution world and new ideas that are very strange and kind of cool 1:18:40 - PI Charts, Dark Mode, Dropshadow...you either love them or hate them! Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Welcome friends to the first ever Thanksgiving week edition of Raw Data. And we have an appropriate guest for Thanksgiving week. Paul Boynton is one of the principal consultants here at P3 and he has a lot of experience with the alcohol industry. And we talk a lot about that industry. We talk about some of the unique ways in which it's structured, how it runs, what the opportunities are for applying data and Power BI for wins. But we don't only talk about booze in this episode. We also talk about things like how the mere existence of the Datesytd function made Paul bitterly angry when we first met. We talk about the differences between hostages and volunteers when it comes to being in a training class, and how every now and then a hostage turns into a volunteer. I forget how we got into this. I relay a couple of stories about some meetings that I had with executives back in the day at Microsoft that were relatively unpleasant, but at the same time treasured memories of mine. All that and more, he's a very funny guy. So let's get after it. Announcer (00:01:05): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:01:09): This is the Raw Data by P3 podcast with your host Rob Collie and your co-host Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro.com. Raw Data by P3 is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:01:27): Welcome to Raw Data. Paul Boynton. Yeah, now we're going to have some fun here. Not that we haven't had fun before, but we're definitely going to have fun today. You know that whole tagline, data with the human element? Announcer (00:01:41): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:01:42): Paul we just need you to drop your robotic nature just a little bit for us today. Can you do that for us? Can you be? Paul Boynton (00:01:48): I can put the wall down. Rob Collie (00:01:50): All right. All right. Well, I'm happy to hear that. So you're a consultant principal consultant here at P3. I know that ultimately it's your boss here sort of asking a question, but what's it like being a consultant P3? Be honest. Paul Boynton (00:02:04): Okay, I'll answer that with another question. How does it feel as a CEO for your employee to tell you they don't think of you as their boss? Rob Collie (00:02:13): That's great. Paul Boynton (00:02:14): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:02:15): I think that's great. I mean, because factually speaking I'm probably just not, you know? Paul Boynton (00:02:22): No, yeah definitely. I like to think of us as more than just a boss, employee for sure. Rob Collie (00:02:29): And I like to think of myself more as like a mascot, like a religious movement and I'm just part of it. Paul Boynton (00:02:36): You're just part of the mascot. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Who I quote in sight regularly in training and things like that. I get to borrow a lot of your credibility as mascot to make myself look cooler. Rob Collie (00:02:50): This is an appropriate use of me, yes. Paul Boynton (00:02:52): Say, "Hey folks, Rob says, 'People don't know what they want till they've seen what they asked for.'" And that just, saying it came from you all of a sudden makes it way cooler. Rob Collie (00:03:04): There's an authenticity about that. Some people would absolutely just say just to share the principle. I can't do that. If it comes from someone else, I am compelled to immediately before I even say it attribute it to someone one else. But I've been on calls with certain executives from Microsoft when we're talking to a customer or something like that. And the executive ...