How Excel Competitions Transform Data Professionals into Experts Using Power Query and VBA

This week we have another special episode. This is part two of interviews I did while attending the Financial Modeling World cup in Las Vegas.

We are witnessing championship on Microsoft Excel. Yes, it does exist.

I also wanted to network and meet other Excel MVPs. Two in the row right here that I'm with. I talked about the budget versus actuals report and why that's my favorite report, especially in a finance and accounting function, because it shows you where the company you thought was going to go, where it actually went, and all the variances that you can put a story to.

I'm an Excel slash data consultant. I mean, technically I do stochastic modeling as well. I have autism. It's one of my biggest special interests is Excel.

It's just super exciting. Learning a lot, experiencing a lot, interacting a lot, networking. It's really like a full 360 of just experience.

What a great episode. Start competing in the Excel Esports in the Financial Modeling World Cup. It's a great way to level up your Excel skills. Have some fun.

Who's going to win? It's the Excel World Championship. Who's going to spreadsheet?

Welcome to Financial Modeler's Corner where we discuss the art and science of financial modeling with your host, Paul Barnhurst. Financial Modeler's Corner is sponsored by Financial Modeling Institute. Welcome to Financial Modeler's Corner. This week we have another special episode. This is part two of interviews I did while attending the Financial Modeling World cup in Las Vegas. Amazing event. Come join me next year. Come compete. Get better at modeling. Get better at Excel. All right, so in this episode we have a great lineup. We have Josh Aronoff, Excel MVP, Microsoft MVP. David14, Microsoft MVP. I have both of them together, going to be chatting back and forth, asking a lot of great questions. What they presented on what they like. David will tell us how he created the case for the final on World of Warcraft and how fun that was for him. Josh will tell us about his presentation he did, what he enjoyed about the event. So we're going to go ahead and have that clip first. Then we will have a clip by Jack Kennedy, then Amber Johnson and then I'll go ahead and wrap up at the end. But before we do that, I want to encourage you if you haven't to to listen to episode one. If you have great second, I want to roll for about 45 seconds or so. The song that was created per part of this event, the song was by Giles Nell. If you can get depreciation of this playing in the arena and how much Fun we had. It's a. It's kind of a cheesy song. He uses the term. The best keyboard cappers in the land. Some other fun stuff that only Excel nerds would appreciate. We're going to go ahead and roll that clip.

It's the battle of the titans. The best keyboard tappers in the land. They've all been training for this moment. Who's getting stuck in the function sand? It's the X World Championship. Who's going to win? It's the XL World Championship. Who's going to spreadsheet.

Hope you enjoyed that clip. Now we're going to go ahead and roll the first clip with Josh and David. Hope you enjoy this interview. So I have here with me David, the piggy bank accountant, 14, and Josh, your CFO guy. That is right, Aronoff. All right. You know, we could have you guys come on the stage next year in the finals with those nicknames.

Yeah.

So anyone who doesn't know, we're talking about. We're here at what? Why don't you tell our audience what we're at?

We're here at the Microsoft Excel World Championship in Las Vegas, Nevada, and we are actually witnessing a championship on Microsoft Excel. Yes, it does exist.

Yes. And they do nicknames as they come down the tunnel for all the contestants. So last year, that last minute, they asked them all to come up with nicknames. And some of them like, I need to change my nickname. Like, it was bad because they had no time to think about it. All of a sudden you're going, in 10 seconds, give us your nickname. It's like, I don't know who this. And they're all running down the tunnel. It was pretty funny. All right, Josh, why are you here? Tell us why you came to this event.

A number of reasons. First, I had to see with my own eyes to believe that there's an Excel competition out there. Yes, it does exist. I also wanted to network and meet other Excel MVPs. Two in the row right here that I'm with. And I had a talk that I gave yesterday, which was also a lot of fun.

What'd you talk about?

I talked about the budget versus actuals report and why that's my favorite report, especially in a finance and accounting function, because it shows you where the company you thought was going to go, where it actually went, and all the variances that you can put a story to.

All right, David, what'd you talk about? I know you talked.

Yeah. So, yeah, I was here for many reasons. The first one was to Drink, Right. Yeah, to drink. Gamble. Gamble and smoke cigarettes. I don't. I don't. I don't smoke. That's a joke. That's a joke. But we're in Vegas, you know, it's a party. Party city. I was about to say party room. That's a party room. All right. So I was here to actually. They asked me to co author the finals case. So the case where people go into Excel and actually do some calculation in Excel.

And how is that again? They do what? Calculations. I like that.

That's good.

Calculations. It's actually calculations on the. Yeah, so they do calculations in Microsoft Excel and actually has a theme, and they asked me to actually write the case this year. And the theme is World of Warcraft and a video game I played all of my life. Right.

How many hours?

20,000.

20,000. Are you impressed, Josh?

Just a little bit.

How many hours have you spent on video games?

A little less than 20,000.

Yeah, I bet. Yeah. I'm a little less to. I'm not sure. If we combine the two of us, we could even get to 20.

It's impressive, and I would love to be exaggerating, but I'm not. You know, it's in my DNA. It's who I am, and that's it. And.

Hey. Right? Didn't we just talk about that?

Yeah, you do you. That's really important. They asked me to do that and then when. And they also asked me to be the mc. And I speak French in life, and I don't know what the MC is. I thought it was a rapper. So I was like, you don't want.

You to be MC Hammer?

Yeah, they don't want to me to be. To hear me rap, you know? So. Yeah, so I did the MC for the active cell conference because it's only. It's not only a. A championship, it's a conference. That's why Josh spoke. And then someone got sick, and then they asked me to speak as well. I spoke about Copilot in Excel, which is the content that I do.

How many days of training was there?

The days of training.

How many days of training do people get Here you have. The event is like two, three days of training, I guess.

Two and a half days, to be exact.

Fourteen hours, to be fair.

Did you guys have a kind of a favorite presentation or moment from the training, like something you learned? You're like, wow, I didn't know that. I know you both loved each other's. You can't choose your own. You can't choose each other. So, David, what was your favorite.

Lots of great speaker, I think. Yeah, One of my favorite, Jan Schnur. Ayan Schnorr. Let's say the first Ayan Schnorr. Really great guy, lots of experience. He sold his business in training for me. That was really inspiring. He's a cool guy from Canada. Canada.

Shout out. As he is the sponsor of my podcast.

Oh.

Financial Modeler's Corner by fmi. Take the exam. I highly recommend it. So I'm glad you mentioned him. What was it about his presentation that you really. That resonated with you?

Yeah, so it was all about all kind of tips and excels, how to analyze your financial models. Lots of. Of things I didn't even know, like control backslash. And I just like, you know, like, that's gonna sound humble, but reals recognize reels, like in. I just felt like the guy knew what he was talking about. It felt good, you know?

Yeah, it's very clear he knows his stuff.

Yeah, exactly.

Level of detail.

Yeah. Talking about CFA exams and stu.

So, yeah, he loves teaching. And funny story about him, if you ever ask him. So first time I ever interviewed him, he said college was really hard for him. So he deliberately tried to be super engaging in his training because he slept through most of college because he didn't feel any of his professors were engaging. So if you check it out, you should listen to it. It's really interesting. And frankly, I slept through most of college, so I can relate to that one. All right, what was your favorite one, Josh?

There were a few that I really liked. Andrew led us off, and he is the three times world champion. So just hearing about how he structures his Excel files and a lot of the things that he said, I was like, oh, I do that as well. And like, I never really asked anyone or learned that from anywhere formally. So just hearing that, like, naturally, the things that he thinks are best practices are things that I'm doing. Like, that was very validating. I think Giles gave a hilarious speech. I really enjoyed that one. And his video at the end also was really nice.

Yes. Microsoft shared that on their LinkedIn channel today.

Oh, it did.

So just so our audience knows, why don't you tell him what he did? What's the video?

He created this video about him becoming an mvp and he hired like a full production studio and, like musicians and cast and literally made a whole music video out of it. And you would think when you look at it that he spent like tens of thousands of dollars. Super duty. And it was so professional. I was just like, how did you do that? It was hilarious.

Yeah. And I actually know he spent a very good amount. His sister owns a dance studio, so that helped, but. And did you hear his AI Booth.

Brother in law also was the one who made the song?

Yeah. And did you hear. You see, have you heard his AI Financial modeling World cup video? That's when he. So he created a. So he has a violin. He's a musician. He played violin. He considered being a professional musician, I think piano as well. And so he used AI and wrote all the words and created a song for the competition. And then Microsoft kind of picked it up, and they've shared it in the arena.

Amazing.

So fun story. All right, so let's see. I gotta have a little fun with the two of you. So you both have done my rapid fire.

Yeah.

But before we get to rapid fire, we're gonna do a question I didn't get to ask you guys earlier. Josh, I know you have a horror story. You've seen a few financial models. What's the worst model you've ever seen? No names. Protect the innocent.

Can I name myself?

You can. Chris Riley did. He told me about one where he had to take a picture from one model, record the number, and enter it in another model he built early in his career.

So I had a really bad model when I was first starting out. I was fortunate enough to be in the situation where my boss kind of, like, pushed me into the deep ends, and I didn't have a crazy amount of monitoring around me. And when I submitted the model to the client, they were just about to raise capital, which is very common in the industry that I'm in. And the investors replied back saying, hey, are you sure it makes sense to spend your entire marketing budget next month? And when I open the file, I realized that, like, you know, they spent like $5,000 a month, and it was like $300,000 next month, like, some crazy thing that, like, you would think the most amateur person would be able to identify. And we, unfortunately have lost the contract after that. My boss was very nice that he recognized, like, hey, I get it.

You're.

You're still kind of starting out. But we eventually did win back the contract, and I won back their hearts, so it doesn't have a happy ending.

And I'm guessing going forward, the marketing budget was never 300,000 in one month unless they really grew a lot.

I dream of having a business one day that can spend $300,000 on marketing at one month.

Don't we? All right. David, what's your story?

I think it's. It's not me. I'm going to put the blame on someone else, but I had an employee at some point, and we had this huge Excel file, lots of pivot tables, was feeding the board of Director Deck, you know, all the presentation. And at some point, I just got into the Excel file in the Dashboard tab, which, you know, every pivot tables were there, and there were some lines that were just missing. So it's not like the pivot tables was not like, full. It was the beginning of the pivot table, empty lines, and then the end of the pivot table. So I'm not sure what happened with this file, but I know sometimes when we opened this file we had a pop up, so saying, hey, some pivot tables are overlapping or something like that. And I think my employee just clicked on. Okay. And she didn't realize, you know, like this Excel was actually telling us. So that was probably our worst Excel mess, I would say.

Nice. All right, we're going to do rapid fire. Then we'll have one more question and then we'll get back to the event. So we're going to go. We're going to go round robin here. We'll start with David. Go, Josh. And we'll just work through each of them.

Okay.

So you both give an answer. We'll see where you're different versus the same. No, it depends. You can elaborate at the end. So. All right, at the very end of the round, we're going to go all the way through, and then we'll let you each elaborate on one or two. All right, so you ready, David? We're going to start with you. Circular references, yes or no? No. Josh. No. VBA and models, David?

Nope.

Josh? No. External workbook links.

Nope.

Oh, dynamic arrays.

Yes, very much so.

Fully dynamic models?

No.

I recommend I'm not cool enough to know how to do that.

Okay. David, is the three statement model the most important thing for an FP and a professional?

Nope.

Josh.

I'm gonna say yes, and Paul's gonna kill me, but I still think my.

All right to have that one because I knew we'd get disagreement. All right. Should financial modelers learn power query?

Yes, without a doubt. Yeah.

All right, now we're going to switch it up and go to Josh first. Power bi.

I'm actually not too familiar. I hear good things, but I don't know if it's really necessary.

David.

Necessary for financial model. Is that the question?

Yeah. Should financial modeling Power Bi. Do they need to know It. What's your thoughts?

No, they can go with Tableau.

Python and Excel.

I wouldn't say necessary, but definitely useful.

I would totally agree with useful.

Yes, in the current era. Yes, for the next five years, but maybe not in the past five years.

All right, will AI ever build the model for us?

Yes, I think it's already there.

All right, so you think it's already there?

Well, I was using ChatGPT and I was creating a video and I asked it, I had my actual data and I asked it to create a budget out of the actual data that was believable. And it actually sends back a file with four different tabs for each department with a very relevant structure and all the information I want. It still needed some tweaks, but I was amazed I was able to even like send me a file.

Yeah, I've had to do some files for budgets and ask to give the assumptions. So it's definitely at a very basic level. Is there? I think the more complex you get into, the harder it's going to be and you still need human judgment. Like I'm not going to trust all its assumptions. I mean, so. All right, our financial models, the number one corporate decision making tool. David?

No.

Yes.

Yes. Why do you say no?

Because I think dashboards can be better.

All right, why do you say yes?

To me, a financial model should really include a dashboard, but a dashboard doesn't necessarily include a financial model. And I just feel what's great about financial models is you can not only understand where the future can be with the company based off of certain levers, but you could also understand the past. You could do what if analysis. You can zoom out, you could zoom in. That to me, is what makes a great financial model.

All right, so next question is, which one of you is the most famous mvp? He pointed at himself and you pointed at him. Well done. Thank you.

But it doesn't matter, right? It's just we're friends.

Exactly, Exactly. All right, pointing him. I'm off camera. So they would get like you're pointing at. See, I got this figured out. All right, if somebody wants to get better at financial modeling, what advice would you give them? David?

I would say that to pick an influencer and to follow this influencer that you actually like because there are many of them. But follow one that you like and then learning. Yeah, follow Josh and learning from this person. One or two only person you know, not, not 25 different. I think focus on one person, learn from this person. And why I'm saying that is myself Since I started doing content creation on Excel, I got so much better because I look at the competition and, you know, it's not competition at the end. It's friends, you know? So, yeah, focus on one influencer and go.

All right, what's your advice, Josh?

I would say focus on two things. One is capabilities, and then two is efficiency. So capabilities really just understand, like, everything that you could do in Excel. Just go through Excel's ribbon. That's where 98% of the functionality can be found. Really get familiar with all those different functions. Power Query and Power Pivot. In terms of efficiency, my favorite thing is using keyboard shortcuts, especially if you're in client services. When you're on the call with a client, they don't really have a second of patience for you as they're talking. You should be able to just use your keyboard to just make their vision come to life.

All right, I love it. So let's see. We'll start with David on this one. What's your favorite lookup function?

Xlookup.

Xlookup. Why?

Because I was Vlookup before and, you know, not being able to put the data on the left of your unique ID reference, it just kills me. And xlookup, it's going to left or the right, horizontally, vertically. It's just so good if error, like, nested in there, like.

All right, Josh.

Xlookup is great, but my personal favorite is Index Match. I'm old school. You don't have to worry about version compatibility. I also like using each of those functions independently. An index function is also just, like, so simple to understand with the syntax. It really just requires three inputs. Your data, which could be an entire table, like David was saying, in two directions, the X axis and the Y axis. And you just use your maths to replace the X axis and Y axis. So Index Match is definitely my go to.

So when I favorite. Going back to your favorite presentation today from in from our nice friend from Canada from fmi, he will say, when people say index match, he goes, oh, are they married? Is that one formula? Because, like, I can use a Vlookup in a match because everybody's like, well, you can't make it dynamic for your number. Vlookup. He's like, sure you can. You're doing it with index. It's the exact same thing.

But can you make Vlookup math?

You can do two directions. If you choose to use the choose columns or some other things, you can.

Make it with Vlookup. You're saying you nested. Choose columns.

Well, you could. You can make vlookup. Yeah, because what you can do is in your Vlookup, your value, you can make that dynamic so it looks up what column it's in. There's some ways you can do that. And also it's harder.

And row.

But you, you can. You can do the row. Well, what you could do is you could make it so it doesn't have to be in the first column for your lookup. And you can do the row. But yeah, the two way. But yeah, there's. With look up. I think you could do a two way. But we're total nerds. All right, now everybody's gonna be like, all right, I'm done. What are these idiots talking about? No, pretty much true. You got to keep it interesting. All right, either of you have a good Excel joke for us? A good non Excel joke. Come on, we need one joke before we finish.

My English level is not good.

Sue Pretzels were walking down the street and one was assaulted.

Nice. I got it, dad joke. Well done. All right, so, Josh, if people want to know more about you and the amazing work you do, where should they go?

You could check me out@your cfoguy.com I also have an Excel add in modelwiz.com. you could actually get that for free or just hit me up on LinkedIn or my YouTube channel. Your CFO guy.

And David, since we talked about this last time and I haven't covered it here, I'm going to get just you for a minute. You built the case for tonight. What was that like? Give me a minute about the case.

That was actually insane because I played World of Warcraft my whole life and.

20,000 hours.

Yeah, 20,000 hours. And I actually got into a call with Microsoft asking me, you know, they saw the boxes behind me and they were like, oh, we could do the case on World of Warcraft. And then we started doing the case. We actually got the input from Blizzard Entertainment, which was a dream for me. Got on a call with Iron as I keynote. I have issue with his last name, which was a dream for me. I saw him on YouTube every time announcing the new expansion of the game, and I just could not believe it. I actually snapped a picture of him without saying, like, on zoom call, like I marry.

Telling me about that. Snuck in a picture. Well done.

Yeah, he's probably going to sue me and I won't be able to pay because I'm poor. So. So, yeah, that's. That. That.

Well, you'll Be rich soon.

But I made it with Andrew as well, which is the founder. Sorry. Of the FMWC Financial Modeling World Cup. I could not do it without him.

He helped me a lot.

I was more of the guy that came in with the context but also an understanding of what you can do and can't do in Excel. And he made all of the solution and everything. I could probably not even solve the case, to be honest with you, because this is next level. Very hard.

Yeah, I couldn't either. So you're on the same boat.

So that was super cool experience. I'm grateful for that. This is insight.

All right, who's winning tonight? Where's your money?

I'm not really familiar with who. Who's competing and.

All right, David, do you know who's competing? You gotta guess a little bit.

I think I, I know, I know dam and I know Andrew and I, I think Andrew is nailing it for like three years in a row now. He's like the, you know, when, when the big, you know, the LA Kings, when they win the, the cut the Stanley cup like three, three years in a row or the Tampa Bay, you know, and I think he's the, he's the Tampa, Tampa Bay guy is a. I don't know if he's from there. I don't think so. You know, he's the Aki, the real, the real player. He's the Sidney Crosby of Excel, I think.

And yeah, perfect. Well, we'll call it there. But you can follow both these guys on LinkedIn, YouTube. We got Piggy Bank Accountant, we got your CFO guy, both MVPs, both amazing guys. So thank you for some time. Appreciate it. All right, let's go watch an event. All right. FP and a guy here. And as you know, I am very passionate about financial modeling and the Financial Modeling Institute's mission. I have been a huge fan of the FMI for years and I was super excited when they decided to sponsor the Financial Modelers Corner. I recently completed the Advanced Financial Modeler certification and loved the entire experience. It was top notch from start to finish. I am a better modeler today for having completed the certification. I strongly believe every modeler needs to demonstrate they are a qualified financial modeler. And one of the best ways to do that is through the FMI's program earning the accreditation will demonstrate to your current and future employers that you are serious about financial modeling. What are you waiting for? Visit www.fminstitute.com podcast and use code PODCAST to save 15% when you enroll in an accreditation today. All right, I'm super excited for this next interview. It's about a 10 minute interview with Jacqueline Kennedy, or Jack, as many of us call her. I've met her two years in a row now at the Financial Modeling World cup. And as we got talking, she shared a little bit about how she loves Excel and also a little bit about herself. She was vulnerable, admitting that being in front of the camera is hard. She doesn't mind being behind the camera. She talked about how she has autism and one of the things she's always been fascinated with and she kind of obsesses on is Excel. And I loved her vulnerability, especially because I have a daughter who has autism and I can relate to some of those challenges, obsessions, opportunities and the whole. I think it's wonderful. I love people that are blessed with the way they think and the, you know, things that come with autism. And Jacqueline is fabulous. Love this interview. We had a fun background. We talked about a number of different things. We were in the arena at the time. I hope you enjoy and appreciate this interview with Jack Kennedy, one of the participants at the Financial Modeling World Cup.

Incorporate all of these characters into a case design.

So have you built the case?

I have. I should be wearing my case design team shirt. I've got four.

All right, well, let's start by telling people who you are.

I am Jack Kennedy.

Jack Tennody. All right.

I am mid level competitor at best and a complete exo. George.

So you love Google Sheets. Did that what you said? Yeah.

Yeah, totally. Not even sure I know how to open Google Sheets.

And you're going to hear a lot of noise out there because there's the competition going on live. What, what do we have going on right now?

Tell our eyes.

At the moment, we're in the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge individual finals and we've. We're having a knockout every five minutes. So we've probably just about you or just lost someone else in that.

Yep. So what happens? So for those who don't know is every five minutes they eliminate someone from the competition till they have the winner. So this is the College World Championship finals going on right now and it's being televised on espn. I'm here with one of the competitors, Jack Kennedy. Where are you from?

I'm from the uk.

From the uk. We will hold it against you. It's okay. Other side of the pond. I've heard it's a good place.

I mean, it's. It's all right.

Yeah. It does its own. I mean, we got our own Independence. So we're good. All right. So what do you do for work?

I am an actuarial consultant. Contractor looking for work right now. If you want someone special, she's here.

I'll keep that in mind next time I need someone to talk about actuarials for my podcasts.

Yes, I'm an Excel slash data consultant. I mean, technically I do stochastic modeling as well, but I try to avoid that and just go straight for the data wherever I can.

All right, so what is it you love about Excel? Why such an Excel nerd? You're self proclaimed.

Yeah. For one, I have autism and it's one of my biggest special interests is Exile. It's just super exciting. There's so much that you can do.

So has that kind of always been your life interest? My daughter's autistic, so I can relate and I know. So just for our audience. Yeah. Jackman. Autism. Some people will have something that they're passionate about like their whole life and others will get fixated on different things and it will rotate all the time. My daughter is rotating, so I'm.

I think I'm a jack of all trades.

All right, got it.

I have lots of hyper focus interests that rotate, but there's probably two interests that I've had throughout my life that are consistent and I just keep doing. So is this Excel?

Is it hard for you to be on camera like this? You mentioned when I asked people, he said, hey, I'll go outside my comfort zone and do this.

I like being behind the camera, but I'm also realizing I'm never in front of the camera.

Sure. You like being the one talking to others, not the one.

Yeah, yeah. I think it is a bit difficult. It's a bit. But it's nice to get to talk about Excel. That's the thing. Once you start talking about the thing you're passionate about, it's just the most exciting thing and you can just keep going.

Tell me about the worst model you've ever seen. I know you have a horror story about talking competition.

Well, pretty much every competition.

Yeah. Is going to be the model I built yesterday.

Yeah. So there was one client that we went to. They were generally. I'm the only kind of Excel specialist that they only take one of us in at a time for data. Excel, that type thing, there was three of us in the same place and they wanted this final reporting spreadsheet to be a bit easier to update. So it was in days before Power Query. So they also wanted to upload the data we had to do the VBA to manually import all the data back in those days. But we also wrote a script to trace back on the spreadsheet all the linked workbooks and then go into the linked workbooks and trace back what they were linked to. We got easily over a thousand workbooks, maybe up to 3,000. It was a lot. And then we spent three months picking apart the web of intellect robots.

Why anyone would ever think that's a good idea. As we talked about earlier, I told you the one where I had a guy that I interviewed where he had 50 and went seven deep. And I thought that was absolutely horrible. I'm like, never. I'm sitting there trying to picture a thousand. And what I want to do right now is projectile vomit all over the carpet right here as I think about that, because that is just disgusting.

I feel like at least 7 or 800 of them were obsolete and had been forgotten about.

Oh, I'm. I'm sure there's no way they were refreshing a thousand of those every month.

No, absolutely.

It's kind of like if anyone's got in the name manager, you see a bunch of ref errors.

Yes. Right.

And there's 10,000 lines in there. And you're just like, all right, I just got to go delete a bunch of them. So. All right. Favorite thing about Excel, I'm going to.

Go with Power Query. It would have been VBA at one point in my life, but she gets.

A thumbs up from me. You see that right there? Thumbs up.

Power Query is just mind blowing. It's game changing in.

So, all right, so I tell you what Oz said when we were having the Power Query discussion. So we're talking about Power Query. And I told him how someone on the podcast one time said angels came down and there were puppies and other things in. Oz goes, yeah, Power Query is my Jesus, you know, or something. Talking about Big Jesus. It was John Ann Kapora.

Yeah.

And he's next to him. And John Ann Kapora goes, okay, well, you know, we're making religious themes. He goes, I guess then. Ken, Pulse is my Jesus.

What's up? The university last year I said, what a great one.

So, yeah, you get it. It's fun. All right. We're gonna do this little rapid fire game. Just a couple questions. Yes or no? No, it depends. And then you can elaborate on one or two.

Yeah.

So when building. Not competition. Building financial models. A model. Yeah. In real world. Real world applications, should you use circular references? Vba. Yes. Yeah, you can elaborate on that. One. We'll go there. Dynamic arrays.

Yeah.

What about fully dynamic models? Should you be trying to build them 100% dynamic?

I'm going to go with yes. If you can convince people, if you can get there.

Yeah, it's okay. We found it. We get a little bit of everything on that 1. Will AI build the models for us in the future?

No.

Will Excel ever die?

Never.

Second favorite spreadsheet.

Ooh.

She doesn't even have one. I wanted to see if you'd say Google sheets. I was just putting you on the spot. All right, if someone wants to get better at Excel modeling, what's your advice for them?

Just, I mean, if it's from a work perspective, get out there and try and do as many different things as possible. I think I mentioned this to you earlier.

Yeah.

The. The best learning I ever got was going from one role into another into another, where I got to do different things and learn different aspects of Excel. So I've gone with learning, vba, power, query, everything. Just gradually over the years.

All right. And why should someone compete in this competition?

Every time I speak to someone and say, you should rain take part. You enjoy Exile, they're like, I don't know. I just don't. You know, I don't think I'm up for it. Maybe I'll try it. And they. They're a bit washy, but. And a lot of people don't want to take part because they think they're not good enough. But I'm having a time in my life. I'm definitely not good enough.

You're all good bee use up.

Right? F. But for me, what I've learned in the last two years. I've spent 24 years working in Excel, and I consider myself a little bit of an expert, but I've trebled the knowledge I had two years ago by just doing this, by just being in this community and constantly learning.

So tell anyone listening to this podcast if you want to get better at Excel. All about practice. Yes. And if you enjoy it, do the competition. If you don't, find other ways to practice. The key is spending the time. Yes. And the competition is a fun way to spend the time.

Find ways of finding things to do. So if it is competition, if it is work, whatever it is. Finding different aspects.

Yep. All right, so someone wants to learn more about you, maybe get in touch with you after watching this. What's the best way to do that?

Well, I'm on LinkedIn. That's probably the main way I communicate with other extra people and I also do a little bit on YouTube. I've been posting OA robot videos, like little plugs.

If the hat is OA robot, you don't know about it.

Check it out.

Yeah, so I've been posting some of those videos on YouTube, and I'm on TikTok as well. I get maybe 300 views. So let's make it 301 and.

All right, perfect. Should we go see how the competition's going?

Let's find out.

All right, thank you. Next up, we have Amber Johnson, or she likes to call herself Sparkly Boots. She sat behind me during the training, and we had a lot of great opportunities to chat. We had lunch together. We did an interview live at the event, so you'll hear people talking in the background as we chatted with her. But first, before I even get to her interview, I want to share a fun story. Many of you have seen this on LinkedIn. She had a shirt that said EBITDA Earnings Before Interest therapy, depression, and anxiety. Talking about kind of her experience the first time she had to build a model for evaluation for ebitda. She comes from an engineering background and had to get into modeling, but it's a really fun story. We tell it during the interview. She shares some of her favorite experiences and speakers from the event, and we'll go ahead and roll that now. Hope you enjoy that interview as much as I enjoyed interviewing her.

Let's do it.

Fun time. So tell me your name.

I'm Amber Johnson.

Amber Johnson. All right, so what are you doing here at this Excel event?

Learning a lot, experiencing a lot, interacting a lot, networking. It's really like the full, full 360. That was just experience. Being able to be in a room with all the other data islands. Really exhilarated.

All right, so tell the audience about the shirt you were wearing yesterday.

Ebitda Earnings before depression therapy, anxiety.

I think that's what was the eye Earnings before. Was it interest therapy, depression and anxiety. Nice. And how did you come up with that? Because we know that's not the real definition of ebitda, but it's not far off.

Yeah, the. The real how I ended up getting that sweatshirt was I was creating our financial models, and my background in engineering definitely didn't prepare me for that, but I was preparing the financial models for our investors and many long nights. And my. My co worker kind of realized how depressed, anxious, and in need of therapy I was, so he found that sweatshirt and gifted it to me after we closed on our investment.

Nice. So you're engineer by train yes. What type of industrial engineer? Yes. All right. And so how did you get into financial modeling?

Well, traditionally I really not much into financial modeling. I'm definitely in the more Microsoft Excel World Championships. Yeah, world side of the world, I think as I, you know, list to Ian. Ian Schnorr. Talk about Financial Modeling Institute. I do want to get into financial modeling, but yeah, I just love Tiki T Techy and Excel and most of my industrial engineering background from Western. They taught us how to do all of our forecasting and analysis in Excel because they knew that that was going to be accessible and available at every company that we worked for. So Dutch of it started in college and then as I kind of learned the more intricate background of how to be able to bring in data sources and automate the reporting at Anheuser Busch, I was able to like really speed that up and then the love just grew from there.

So how do you like competing?

I like competing against myself because I'm not here to beat anybody. But I like being able to see like last year I was in the 50th percentile and this year I was in the 33rd percentile. So it's nice to see that my skills are kind of improving and being able to do the, the, the competition and then be able to watch the pros do it afterwards, the live Stream on Go YouTube. Being able to be in the chat with the camaraderie and the, you know, excitement of a timed challenge. Super exciting. And then being able to see the thing that they're using, like especially all the lambdas and lets and dynamic arrays. Then I write them down and then I learn a T. So it's really nice in that way.

All right, so would you recommend this for some, someone if they want to get better at Excel?

Oh, 10 out of 10. There's, I mean, even people that present data, work with data, even if it's not Excel specifically. There's so many other parts of this conference that are focused in the soft skills of working with data, working with people with data that I think are immeasurably helped. But yeah, there, I mean, even if you have like 1% interest in data generally, I would come to it anyway because the people in the room are so, so hysterically fun. Like just getting to talk to the stories of how people got where they are is worth the money by itself.

Favorite training so far. I would imagine it was probably the Excel jokes that were told was the waiting for last chance. Right.

The finance bro really killed it. That was really excellent. I'M going to say Josh Aronoff, with his presentation on how to build the financial models was so sharp. His presentation style was so clear, and he was able to really effectively communicate a lot of information in a very short amount of time. And even building that financial model live is crazy wicked. So that was probably number one. But I attended last year, and so my close second is Ian Schnorrick with the vetting the Excel sheets, because those basic skills are so effective and infinitely useful for myself and also getting other people's Excels. But.

So I'll put a plug in for in. Absolutely love them. FMI that is the sponsor of this podcast. So take the afm. I did it earlier this year. As I tell in, I had no choice. It was in the contract. I, I, I planned on taking it before, and so at least this time they didn't charge me because Covid happened and I never ended up taking it.

Yeah, I definitely am interested in taking it because now that I see so many that are taking it and how widely recognized it is, I'm like, oh, I love a good certification.

You got a good Excel joke for us to be on the spot.

I think the real Excel joke this week was my lack of being able to read the Excel questions on the exam.

Oh. I figure might have to look at some FP and a nerd falling asleep during the competition. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

I think the hardest part about Excel, you didn't ask, but the hard part. Hardest part about Excel competitions is reading. And I'm so glad that even Andrew Nye and so many of the other competitors also commiserated on the ability to read under pressure.

They have their remnants.

Yeah.

All right, so who's gonna win tonight?

I think I hope that Liana Garish comes out the of on top.

Nice. I like it.

I hope. Women for women. Let's do it.

All right, let's see. One other fun question. I'm trying to think of a good curveball. Worst model you've ever seen you've had to work on. Doesn't have to be a financial model. The worst thing you've seen in Excel. I'm sure you've seen some horror stories.

It's not, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna call it the worst because they pay me a lot of money, but I definitely saw the most opportunity with some forecasting models where all of their sales data was on individual tabs of June sales, July sales, August sales.

I hate when I see that.

Hundreds of tabs, and then each month they would copy 30 Excel sheets over into a new folder and then restart the process. And the poor demand planner was more of a data janitor than a data analyst. And so that's my part about being able to go in and do some consulting work.

And so what I'll say, folks, if you're doing that, learn Power Query.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's great because you do not put all your data on individual sheets. Use tables, use Power Query. Save yourself a lot of time and headache in the long run. All right, Any last thoughts? Anything you like to add? What do you like to do in your personal tile? Come on. I'm sure it's not just Excel. You have a life.

I do have a life. I've been reading a lot lately. Any of my acotar girlies pop off? I've also been watching a lot of Netflix and I've been trying to. I've got like a monthly challenge series where I try something new every month. And so I recently, like, learned how to swim. I'm starting to learn Korean. I grew microgreens. So that's what I would suggest anyone is, is to really try one new thing a month and you'll be so far ahead of where you were the month, the the year previous, and you'll have so many more new hobbies. So, like, that's the thing of, like, talking about hobbies and what I do in my free time. It's like I've collected 12 new things this year. So it's like, what don't I do in my free time?

Nice. Love it. Well, thank you for joining us, Amber. If anyone wants to get in touch with you, is LinkedIn the best way to do that?

LinkedIn is great. The best way to find me is Amber Johnson. Peachy with peachy profitability. Because Amber Johnson, there's like.

Are you saying it's hall many?

Yeah.

That's crazy.

It's like I'm Jane Doe. It's. Yeah. My parents didn't really put any extra spice.

It's kind of like the Joseph Smith or. Yeah. John Smith or all those type of. Yeah. Words.

Yeah. They really just stopped at the Amber John. So they're like, you know what? Good enough. We don't.

Yeah. The first name pretty common for you. Last name at least is unique.

But my social on Instagram, it is peachy propped up and then am Jamber on Instagram as well. So either way, you'll find me.

Perfect. Well, thank you. Appreciate a few minutes. That's a wrap. What a great episode. I love doing two episodes this year on the Financial Modeling World Cup. If you want to listen to last year's episode, I did two there as well. Interviewed many of the college students. Great interview with Oz and John Ankora that I think you'll love. So check those out if you want. I hope you join me in Vegas next year. Start competing in the Excel Esports in the Financial Modeling World Cup. It's a great way to level up your Excel skills. Have some fun. If you have any questions about it, let me know. Hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. And we'll probably close with a little bit of music from the Financial Modeling World Cup. Giles Epic song. And remember Excel on the Road. If you want to see the road trip the Oz and Giles and I did, check out Giles Mel's Excel on the Road. Thanks again for joining me.

They've seen Andrew do it all before. They just know. They're so sure. But Dim is here to even the score. It's the Excel World Championship who is going to win? It's the Excel World Championship who's going in the spreadsheet bin.

Financial Modeler's Corner was brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. This year I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler Certificate certification and it made me a better financial modeler. What are you waiting for? Visit fmi@www.fminstitute.com podcast and use code podcast to save 15% when you enroll in one of the accreditations today.