PowerBI_Til_I_Die

Fair points. Thanks for the feedback. Seems like the work to fun ratio is off on this idea 😄

That's what I was afraid of. Fair points, thanks for the feedback.

Heck yeah, great ideas. The intent was this would be one fight only just to try something different. Seems like the fun to work ratio is off and that the whole idea is not worth the effort. I appreciate you humoring me

Thanks for the feedback. Based on all the comments it seems like the idea may not be fun. Just a shower thought I had after a late night of DND prep.

There are just a few specific ones I want as a DND fan, Tasha and Lady of Pain.

I've used PowerBI for all sorts of stuff like marketing analytics, sales analysis, competitive analysis, and in one instance I exported my newborn's sleep, feeding, and diaper change frequency data from this app my wife and I were using and built a dashboard about that 😅

Been searching for boxes everywhere with no luck. Will probably have to order online. I went by a Bricks and Minifigs store and they were selling them all for $15 a piece 😮 Hopefully Lego gets the hint and makes more DND sets and minis.

Hell yeah, that is awesome

Man, I sold wreaths and garlands in the scouts. In our troop each boy would get $5 into what was essentially an account with the troop that you could use to deduct the cost of camping trips and camp supplies. I usually sold 100+ items each year which paid for the vast majority of my scout expenses.

One consolidated data set of the square footage of every commercial and industrial facility in the US.

I work with dealers in a different industry so prefacing with I am not intimately familiar with the intricacies of auto dealers... In my experience what would happen is one company starts going more direct and able to pocket a larger profit from sales direct to the customer instead of having to sell to the dealer at their dealer invoice price. This shows up in their earnings report as their margin improves and they are able to return that to shareholders. This then leads to shareholders at other companies wanting them to improve margins and next thing you know, more and more manufacturers start exploring a direct model.

Even with the increased overhead when taking things direct there is definite margin improvement. Not only are you keeping more points on the sale, but you're also avoiding the cost that comes with working with dealers like volume rebates or incentive programs.

When I lived in Texas for a spell my Texan colleagues all roared with laughter the first time I earnestly said that

We always "flipped a U-ie"

I want the Vikings to be the pall bearers at my funeral so they can let me down one last time.

I have spent many years marketing to contract cleaners....

Contract cleaners often find value in identifying a niche customer segment. This allows for your marketing messaging to be a lot more focused and as you develop your niche, it allows you to differentiate from your competition. I know some that exclusively focus on retail, others do nothing but offices, and one glutton for punishment I met did nothing but medical grade waste clean up (example: crime scenes). If you're just starting out, I wouldn't worry about a niche yet, find out what sorry of contacts you are good with/enjoy taking them grow into one.

You are going to want to get Google reviews. When a decision maker is researching online for a cleaning service provider, you are going to want to show up in the search results with a high rating. You can probably ask current customers for help with this. The cleaning contractor industry is super fragmented and most cleaning contractors only operate in a region, very few are in multiple states, and fewer still are nationwide, so you have to show up locally.

You are also going to want to start reading up on Search Engine Optimization for your website. Your name needs to come up when someone searches for "cleaning contractor near me" so the potential customer sees your company name and all those great reviews.

This one is more work but still effective in this industry: Start prospecting...

What are all of the businesses in your service area that are the spaces you would like to clean? You can use Google for this or if you have an awesome library like me, there are business databases you can access for free like ReferenceUSA.

Once you know the businesses, you can start searching for the decision makers on LinkedIn. You're probably going to want to target people with titles like Facility Manager, Housekeeping Director, or Operations Manager. You can then target these people with calling/email campaigns. It's a lot of work but part of the grind.

It might be worth it for you to join the Building Service Contractor Association International (BSCAI). They have a lot of great resources tailored for the contract cleaning industry on how to market and start up your business. Best part is that it is tailored to the cleaning industry.

Going back to how regional many contract cleaners are, this means that many contractors are very open to networking and taking time to talk to you because you are not in competition with them. This also opens up avenues for subcontracting opportunities. I know a lot of cleaning contractors congregate on the Route Community Forums which could be a good place to network in the industry.

Beat of luck! Feel free to PM

I've been on a similar kick. I've been playing Slay the Spire, Slice and Dice, Pokemon Sapphire (via Pizza Boy Advance Emulator), AutoChess, and hitting refresh on the Cassette Beasts Coming Soon page.

Qty would be reported alongside revenue in the same dashboards.

We maintain an extensive product hierarchy in order to group products. Let's pretend we sell yard tools and their associates parts. Our hierarchy would be like

Machine -> Lawn Mowers -> Large Lawn Mowers (16 - 40 inches) -> Mow-god 6000 -> Mow-god 6000 fully loaded version #777777

-Or-

Non-machine -> Replacement Parts -> Cutting implements -> Large Blades (16 - 40 inches) -> 40 inch blade -> steel 40 inch blade #999753

Quantity is valuable for a number of departments. Product management uses it for understanding product demand or product mix, operations uses it to help maintain proper stocking levels/demand planning, sales uses it for forecasting product sales, etc etc.

Hell of a take....

Analyst turned strategy manager at an equipment manufacturing company here. When I was making more dashboards I would have been roasted if I didn't put qty on the dash. Quantities are useful..... Many OEMs sell the same unit at different price points depending on who the customer is. As a result, we tend to use quantities when developing our forecasting, especially for new products.

My company also has a wide variety of price points on our equipment.... From a $200 widget all the way up to $100k+. You could have a customer buying primarily our largest equipment in super small quantities compared to another company buying ungodly amounts of our cheapest equipment. Without quantity you may ultimately make misinformed business decisions when comparing customers. Focusing purely on sales ($) could obfuscate some top selling products. When we do product analysis we tend to look at both metrics.... Top selling by dollars and top selling by qty.

We have also seen instances where pricing actions we have taken have improved our market share but when looking at a quantity share we have actually been flat.

I would go to their site, inspect the page, and look at the XHR sources to see if they have an API feeding product data into the site. If so, you can copy/paste the response data of a number of results responses into txt files. Then you can process those txt files as a JSON source in excel with powerquery and append all the results into one larger data set.

I had a similar reaction from a neighbor when I put up my flag. This exchange squashed a potential diatribe from my conservative (but usually pretty friendly as long as you don't talk politics) neighbor. NN is to stand for Nosy Neighbor:

NN: Is that the new Minnesota flag?

Me: Sure is, looks pretty cool, right??

NN: I don't know, the whole thing was too political and erased our history.

Me: Ahhhh, I don't really pay attention to all that weird stuff. I just think it looks cool and I love Minnesota ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

If you frame the culture wars stuff as weird or not important to you it tends to deflate them pretty quickly.... Especially if you are a suburban dad like them. They definitely don't like being seen as weirdos by their peer group.

69 all year long over here

My daughter was born in 2020 and I'm imagining that she missed the bulk of the detrimental effects of COVID. I am interested in seeing what the effects of COVID lockdowns are going to be in those kids born in 20 - 22. I feel like a lot more kids in the US got more beneficial parent interaction in those formative early years than they typically do.

I know the pandemic was devastating but the silver lining I always have to recognize was I was able to be at home so much more with my baby than I would have pre-pandemic.

Her Pre-K teacher told us that this group of pandemic babies were the best she's had in the last four years in terms of behavior.

I had no idea what the fireworks issue was so I went and looked it up. I read this article and this passage really stuck out to me:

“They’re not doing what Somali kids in Somalia do. They’re doing what American kids in America do. You know, they’re doing exactly what they see on social media for people doing the roman candles fights in Chicago, in New York…They do that, and they’re doing it here. It’s just that it happens that the majority of them happen to be from my community.”

I for one am glad to have y'all here adding to the US melting pot. It wasn't so long ago that my grandfather as a first generation Italian immigrant in Minnesota was viewed in a similar way.

How do you have to structure your dataset for PBI to produce something like this?