The path to a career in data analytics can be full of twists and turns. Along the way, you pick up tools like Excel, Python, Tableau, and R. What about learning how to use YouTube and growing an audience of 50,000+ from publishing videos about data analytics? I'm always fascinated by people who are able to combine the technical aspects of being a data analyst with other careers like science, art, and even wastewater treatment. Luke Barousse is a data analyst and YouTuber and we chatted about how he learned Excel, built a portfolio of his data work, and becoming a YouTuber.

From the U.S. Navy to Excel

Prior to joining the U.S. Navy, Luke took a C++ course as an undergrad and got a taste of coding. After joining the Navy and working in various roles, he didn't get a chance to utilize some of the coding skills he learned at university. Eventually he went to get his MBA and took an Excel course taught by Professor Elliot Bendoly (who also wrote the book Excel Basics to Blackbelt). Luke started seeing the potential of Excel as he dug into VBA and some of the coding capabilities in Excel.

In terms of content creation, Luke's day-to-day experience as a data analyst influences the videos he creates. The main reason he started getting into creating videos was because his colleagues wanted him to show them how to do things in Excel and other tools. Instead of teaching each of his colleagues one by one, he created videos to avoid the repetitive nature of teaching in person.

I realized that content creation is a way to automate teaching.

Using social media to share a Google Sheets template

For the class' capstone project, Luke built a meal prep Excel file. Even after the class was over, he took the meal prep Excel file tried to turn it into an application. He transferred it from Excel to Google Sheets and it started to gain some traction. He used Instagram and created content around meal prep and drew more attention to the Google Sheet template. Eventually he started using Python and Django to try and create an application since people were always messing up the formulas on the Google Sheet.

I find it interesting that Google Sheets template become the lowest common denominator when you need to create and share a simple tool, and are ok with it being rough around the edges. It may be too costly (and frankly overkill) to create a custom application with code with a Google Sheets template will suffice.

Realizing Excel is not the solution

Luke realized the Excel file Luke he created for his meal prep use case was going to be an issue because Excel is not the best medium to distribute his template (hence the move to Google Sheets). As Luke started using Excel more at work, he found his Excel files were constantly hitting row limits. His team worked with different suppliers and new data would get ingested every week into the Excel file. He also was building formula on top of formula and the result was an Excel file that took 2-3 minutes to load and was buggy with the cobbled together formulas. Luke details all this in this video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TBwY4VjLX8

Even after he left that group, his old teammates still asked him to update the Excel file since they didn't know how. In situations like this,