Will you marry me? Oh, I know... this is... you added this on purpose. Ummm, I mean they're older people with longer journeys. And it was probably coming from the
nose but you still didn't realize it. Okay, I need to do some more blotting. Hi
friends! Great to have you here. I've never done a video like this. It's the first
Q & A on the channel to celebrate the 1 million subscriber milestone. I'm really grateful
for this, I didn't think it will come so soon. So, I asked you what you wanted to know about me
and 550 of you sent in your questions. There were work questions, personal questions, strange
questions. It's going to be a bit of a longer video. I've added timestamps below this video, so that
you can jump to a specific question if you want. Let's jump in with the first question. Which
country are you from? I'm from Iran. We moved to Austria when I was around 10-11 years old and
then, I went to school here . Uhm, I moved to Canada to do my studies. I worked there for a bit, and
then I moved back to Austria. That's where I am now. How old are you? 43. Next, where did
you go to school? I'm 43. Am I not 43? I just had my birthday. Okay, that's from my husband,
asking how old I am, but yeah. Okay, it's just because I look so young. So, where
did you go to school? So, okay, if we start with my primary school, I went to school in Tehran. Then,
from middle school high school, I went to school in Austria. It was an international school, so
that's where I get my accent from, I guess, because people say I have a weird accent. They don't know
where I'm from. Uhm, I'm from an international school. I have an international accent, that's probably
where it's from. Then after that, I went to Canada to study and yeah, that's basically my schools.
What did you want to become when you were a kid? I wanted to be an astronaut and work for NASA. How do you see your channel's future? So, right now, I reached the goals that I ever... actually, I
went beyond the goals that I set for this channel. So, I guess it's time to re-evaluate where
this channel is going. So, that's something that you're goingt to see if you stick around. Do you have free time and if so, what do
you like to do that isn't work related? Oh, I know this is...you added this on purpose. Okay, do you have free time and if so what
do you like to do that isn't work related? That is a very difficult one to answer. I can
say, oh cooking but I don't really like cooking. Workout, I don't really like it I
just do it because I have to do it. Uhm, walking to get some air. Gardening, yes,
so I've started a few years back to to like plant some things I can
eat some, plants that are eatable. Plants that I like to eat because
I'm not a fan of like flowers or you know, if they just look nice but have no
purpose. So, I like plants that have a purpose. So, okay, coming back to what's not work related.
Okay, you see, it's really difficult for me to find something because I can say I like to
read, but the things that I read are work related, but I really enjoy it, so I don't
find it work related. Even though someone who sees me read that is like, "Oh, you're working."
I'm not, I'm just enjoying my time, so...[laughter] I see, I see a difference in your voice in
latest videos as compared to 2-3 year old videos. Current voice seems to be coming...[laughter]
I love this...current voice seems to be coming more from the nose, is it due to mic upgrade or
your voice has changed? Okay, so in the old days, 2-3 years ago, I would say my voice
was coming from a well because it was like, I don't know, with the setup, it was an old
microphone, so it was like coming from so far somewhere. And it was probably coming from the
nose but you still didn't realize it. Because... because this is one of the most common comments
I have about my voice. Some say it's a nice voice, and a lot say it comes from the nose. It's
just how my voice is. I probably should do some type of voice training to make it come from here
and not here. But well, I do have a nose problem. I probably have to get it fixed. That one side is
always blocked, maybe that's...that's what it is. But yeah, I mean we did upgrade our microphones, and I know a lot of people say that we have [mouth clicks], this type of sounds, which we try to get rid of, but
yeah, we're working on that. You know, audio is a lot harder to get right than...than I assumed. Were you
a good student? what did you study in university? Oh, okay, I have to laugh at this one because my
husband always makes fun of me because I was too good of a student in school. I always wanted
to get A's and I always pretty much got A's in university. I graduated with a medal of academic
achievement which my husband always makes fun of, and what I studied was Economics. So, I majored
in Economics and I did my Master's in Economics. Can you please share your career journey? Okay,
so my career, it's a long journey because I'm 43. We cut that out. Okay, um there are older
people with longer journeys. [Laughter] I started off as an economist. I was working for a
non-profit organization in Canada, in Ottawa. There we did research for different publications,
we also did research for the Bank of Canada. I found the whole research side of things a bit
boring, so I decided to switch. And I also wanted to move back to Austria because I went to school in
Austria. So, I moved back, and then I started to work as a consultant. It was like an in-house consultant
for a big company. Where we had to do different improvement projects, so we had like waste
reduction improvement projects, a lot of like process improvement projects. That's when I
learned VBA, because I wanted to implement a lot of like VBA solutions for the branches that we were
consulting. Then after doing that for a few years, no, actually I just did that, I think, for a
year or a year and a half, and then I made myself independent, and I was doing that. I was
doing VBA solutions as an independent contractor. Then, I got an offer to go back to another
department or another branch of this company to roll out a Hyperion Solution. And Hyperion
then later got bought by Oracle. And this was a great opportunity because they weren't looking
for someone as a contractor, they were looking for someone as an employee, and I decided I want
to go back and I want to learn about Hyperion and about Oracle. In total, I'd say it was over
10 years, but in the middle, I switched between departments. I was always in the...officially, in the
finance department, but I was the connection to IT. It was kind of like an in-between role, because we
were building up a system for finance, so we had to know the finance side and we had to know the IT
side. I was actually responsible for a lot of the the rules of the Hyperion system, which is based,
which at the time, was based on VBA. Then, I also worked for a few years in the IT department, where
I did business warehouse projects. And then after all this, I decided I want to make myself
independent and I want to do consulting. I want to do Oracle consulting and Excel. And
then, in the end, I ended up just doing Excel consultancy. I did the Oracle part and doing
training on this Hyperion system for a year, and then I stopped that and I concentrated
on Excel. Do you work for Microsoft? I don't work for Microsoft. Uhm, I know it looks like I work
for Microsoft because I have a lot of Microsoft related videos on the channel, but the reason
that I have all these videos is because I worked with Microsoft productsm, you know, most of my life,
especially Excel. So, I started the channel as an Excel channel, and then slowly we went into the
other products that I was using and I felt like I want to share my knowledge and do videos on
that. So, I don't work for Microsoft, I'm just an MVP, which is Most Valuable Professional. It's a title that Microsoft gives people who contribute a lot to the community, who
share their knowledge, and help the community. Is there anything you don't know about Excel? Yes, a lot. There's a lot I don't
know. I mean, anytime I watch another person's channel, so for
example, Mike Girvin on "Excel is Fun," so when I'm watching his channel, and he's covering
something really obvious that I know for sure, I find something that I didn't know in there.
You know, he might use some shortcut, he might do something, and I'll be like, "Oh, I didn't know
that." So, I always...every day I learned something new. Why did you want to create this channel in the
first place? Was it hard at first? So, remember I said that I made myself independent, I was a
consultant at first, and then I started doing trainings and I did a lot of Excel trainings as
well. And here, I live in Austria, so the language is German, and I prefer to teach in English. And
because I wanted to reach a bigger audience, I decided to create an online course. And this was
something that I was planning to also give to my students here, when I was doing a training, right?
So, it was kind of like the add-on that I could provide, um, to the students. I would give them free
access to the course, so that, you know, they can revisit all the material later on. So, first, there was
the course, and then because I decided I want to, you know, market the course, I will put some of
these videos on YouTube. And I also wanted a place to host my videos, so I can link to them easily
and embed them in my website, right? So, that was YouTube. And then, I realized that there is this
whole community that is interested in Excel and is interested in education who hangs out on YouTube.
So, I decided that I want to do separate videos for YouTube, and you know, just you know, share
my knowledge and get better at Excel, and get better at doing videos. Was it hard at first? Yes,
it was hard. The hardest part was when I thought that talking to a camera, recording a screencast
is the same as teaching someone in person. I never thought that they are completely different
and that it's really difficult to do screencasts and talk to a camera. Do you only do the tutorials
on YouTube or do you do consulting as well? So, I do tutorials on YouTube. I have online courses that
we sell on our website and some other platforms, and I did consulting for a long time, I stopped the consulting last year, completely. So, it was
slowly like I stopped, I only kept a few clients for the past, I don't know, 2-3 years
and then slowly, I completely stopped that side of the business. So now, it's online
training, um, online courses, online tutorials. How many people work with you on the channel?
So, when I started it was just me, then there was another person who helped me out part-time. Now,
currently, when I'm filming this, like we have two other people behind the camera here, um, so we are
three people that are working on the channel, and we just hired two other people who are going
to help me create tutorials for you. How much prep goes in making a video? Do you talk from a
script? Okay, how much prep goes into a video? A lot. Far too much than people realize or far too much
than I realized before I started to make a video. So, there is a lot of research that's done, there
is the script writing, so you do need some type of script to, you know, to have an idea what you're
going to say or what you're going to show, then if it's an Excel tutorial, there is preparing the
worksheet. Then, there's the filming part, and then the editing part, and...and even when you're done
with the video, once you upload it, you have to do all the search, you know, with the description, the
tag, the...the title. What would work? What doesn't work? What's the thumbnail? So, there is a lot of
preparation. Sometimes, you know, it can take a week to make a video. Do you talk from a script?
When I do headshots, I usually have a script. When I do screencasts, I don't use the script. But
right now, I don't have a script. Were you ever tempted to give up on your YouTube channel? How do you motivate yourself to keep going? Until now, no. I was never tempted to give up my YouTube
channel. I was tempted to make less videos at some point, because it was overwhelming, like with
the courses that I was making, to do the one video a week. So, there was a time that, um, that I wanted
to maybe skip a week and so on. But I felt like I can't because if I skip one week, then I might
skip two weeks, right? So, it's like working out, if you skip your workouts, then it's just hard to
get back. So yeah, but I wasn't really tempted to to give up on the channel. I enjoy it, I enjoy our
community, I enjoy making videos, and I'm going to keep doing that. How do you motivate yourself
to keep going? I just do it, I don't know. I just... we have a schedule, I like to sti...[laughter] I like
to stick to my schedule, and I just do it. There are always new topics to talk about, there's
always new things, um you know, new topics to cover. How do you decide what topics to cover? It's based
on different things. So, if something new comes out from, let's say, from Excel. So, they release
something new. I, you know, do some examples with this and...and then, I try to cover it as
soon as possible. Sometimes it takes longer because, you know, I want to test things out. I, you
know, try different approaches and I don't want to quickly just make any type of video about
it. So, it might take longer than, you know, other people in their channels. And so, one is when new
stuff come out, then it's, you know, what problems do people generally have, and we try to make videos
on that. We get a lot of questions at the beginning. It was actually all question based ,so any question
I had in my classroom trainings, I would try to make a video out of later on. It's also topics that
I'm interested in. So, I did some videos on Power Automate, Power Apps on the channel. Then. obviously, your suggestions and your comments on the videos because, you know, we do go through the comments.
I try to read all the comments, I know I can't answer them all, but when we come across a question that we think can be answered better in a video, we post a video about that. How do you prepare
yourself to release a certain video or training course? Okay, so it's a completely different
approach releasing a video and a training course. So, I'm just going to go with the video because the training course, to explain that, it needs a course. So, let's just
stick to the video. So, the preparation, well in terms of, I guess, I kind of answer that because
that's, you know, the research. First...first step is research, um, next step is, you know, to prepare the
workbook, the script, or you know, whatever is needed. And... and actually when I do the recording, I do a
dry run. So I just, you know, do it without recording the whole process, and then I do the recording.
And sometimes I have to record like 10 times to get it right, but obviously, I mean,
it's edited a lot so they're, you know, the video itself, the raw video, could be like
20 minutes and the end result is 10 minutes. Are you going to create online classes for
Power Automation, Power Apps and Power BI? Yes, but one thing at a time. So, the current
course that I'm working on is a DAX course. That's core for Power Pivot and also for Power BI.
So, after that, I would like to create a course on Power BI and Power Automate. Power Apps is
something that I would love to get to know more but that requires a lot more of my time.
So, it's something that I would love to do but later. Do you think Excel is still worth learning
with tools such as Tableau and Power BI out there? Yes, definitely because with Power BI and with
Tableau, I mean, these are reporting tools but they're just one option that you have. Sometimes
you want to slice and dice the data in a different way that, you know, you can't just easily do in
Power BI report ,and you can use Excel for that. And then, even the bigger systems like, you know,
SAP or Oracle, they all have add-ins for Excel where you can bring in your data, and analyze
it as you need. What is the one Excel feature that you use daily? The one Excel feature daily,
ooh, that's a difficult one. So, I mean, it really depends on what I do. What I use a lot also for
our own internal reporting is Power Query. Pivot tables is something I use a lot as well. How do
you manage a work-life balance with regular and sustainable content creation production? Work-life
balance. So, that word is a bit weird for me because, I don't know if they have to be...well, they are
balanced but one might be more than the other, so in my world, it's balanced, even though, I probably
work a lot more than some other people I know. So, they might think I'm a workaholic but I think
my work life is super balanced. Sustainable content creation production is because we plan. We plan
things. If we didn't plan things, we'll just be all stressed out. So, we do plan our content, we do
create things in advance, and we do schedule things, so we can go on a holiday. So, for example, last week
I was away for an entire week, and probably no one realized, because you know our YouTube content was already scheduled, and went live as it usually does. How much money does your YouTube channel
generate and is it sufficient to live comfortably? Okay, so right now, where we are, you know, at this
level, yes, you can live comfortably with it. It's enough for us to, you know, to support our team,
to support what we have. But, when I started it, I think even after like a year that I started it,
my income was like 70 cents or so. I don't know if it was 70 cents in the year or in the month. I
think the first year was probably in the year, then it was like 70 cents a month. I was really
excited that I was getting paid at all for that. If I also want to be a successful person
like you, what do I have to do in my life? If you define success that you want to be, you know,
happy and do something that you love, the answer is you should do something that you love. So, I was, you
know, you can be very successful, but be in, you know, have a job that you don't like. But then, are you
successful or are you not successful? You know, people might see you as successful, but you don't
see yourself as successful. So, I think it's if you find something that you really like to do, then
you're successful. Will you marry me? [Laughter] Yes, if I wasn't married already. Um, I
am married, and I'm happily married for... I think it's 13 years. Is it? Do you have children? What is their reaction
to your online fame? I have two children. I have a 13-year-old son and an 8-year-old
daughter. Their reaction to my online fame, well, my son is excited to get, you know,
when we got, for example, the 100,000 plate from YouTube, he's really excited
about that. He's really excited to get the gold one, hopefully soon. But otherwise, there's
no real reaction. They don't really care about my online fame. I don't even see it as an
online fame. How did you receive the cut on the right side of your nose? You've noticed!
Okay, so I was one year, I think, I was one year or less than a year, um well, I don't know, I
was told I was one year or less than a year. And then, I fell, um apparently, I was standing on
a bench in the kitchen, and then I fell and then my nose was like stuck there. That's where my...
probably where my wonderful voice comes from. So, yeah, and then I did a... there was a surgery, no,
yeah no, they stitched it back together. But then, because, you know, I was just learning to walk, I
fell on my nose again and everything came off, and then they had to redo that whole process. So
then, it stayed with me. Are you a cat or dog person? Definitely, a cat person. How many push-ups can you
do? Okay, I'm going to lie and say six. At some point, I could do six. I haven't done push-ups for a while
now. Okay, so let's just go with three. [Laughter] What are your favorite Netflix TV shows? Okay, I'm
not sure if I can say the ones I'm watching. Some of them are too embarrassing to even say publicly.
The ones that I really really liked: Breaking Bad, Stranger Things. These are like my top top
favorite ones. What sport do you follow, if you are into sports? No, I don't really follow
any sports, and I'm not really into sports. I do sports because I have to, but I'm not really into
it. What would you like to share with us? What type of foods do you eat and what types you don't
eat? I eat pretty much everything, I'm not picky. I'm the type of person if it looks disgusting and
it smells horrible, I'll be like "Can I try that? I want to see how that tastes." Do you still enjoy
what you're doing as much as when you started? Yes. Yes, I love it. It's just that there
are days that I hate it, but in general, I love it. Otherwise I wouldn't, you know, continue
to do it I guess. Final question, knowing what you know now, what is one advice you will give to
aspiring online educational content creators that are just starting out? My one advice is if
you want to do this, you just have to do it. Because there's a lot of things that, you know, you try to
get right, so you do...you take a lot of courses to see how to do it, then you watch a lot of YouTube
videos to see how do you do your setup. You know, there's a lot of like research that you can spend
your time doing instead of actually doing it, so I would suggest that you just really take out your
microphone, you do an example, and you just start by recording one single lecture. And maybe, you upload
it to YouTube, and then just see if you enjoy that process, and if you like it and it's something
that you want to continue doing, then you spent more time trying to figure things out. But, a lot
of people stop and that was why it took me also a lot longer to get started. Well, it took me a year
because I was spending a year doing research and I wanted to get it right. But then, when I came to
do it, I realized that, you know, you just...you learn best by doing. That's it! That was the last question.
So, I hope I answered most of your questions and it was great to have you here. If you watched
until now, congratulations, you made it! Thank you for being here, thank you for
watching. I'm going to see you in the next video.
