Businesses are great…ha…maybe not always. But let me try to explain why I love them.
I’ve always been into business. Learning about inspirational entrepreneurs and the businesses that made them. There is something interesting about business. Taking an idea and turning it into a product then a business. Why do certain businesses fail and some succeed? What is that secret sauce and how do I replicate it? I don’t know if there is a secret sauce, but this is my answer to what the secret sauce is to a successful business. There are many like it, but this one is mine. There seems to be some kind of mixture of ingredients to make a winning formula. It seems to have something to do with the entrepreneur themselves, their ability to execute, and the product being sold…mixed with some luck. Whether that be true or not, the real secret ingredient is competing. It is about being in the arena. Like they say, you need to be in it to win it. And in business when you get past corporate, meetings, and buzzwords — I mean the real kind of business where you build something, offer it to someone, and it makes their life better. Yeah, technically business is “activity undertaken for profit,” but to me, it’s more than that.
Think about it — movies are a business, but they’ve created some great memories. Charlie opening the chocolate bar to find that golden ticket. Dorothy tapping her heels three times and getting to go home. Not only are great theatrical scenes but I picked these scenes in particulate because what they represent. Believing in something and succeeding. Debbie Reynolds said it best that all you must do is think of something you want and let yourself have it. That’s what drives ideas, people, and innovation. Thinking about other ways business and dreaming has sparked revolutions in medicine with MRI machines and technology with smartphones? That’s the power of business: it turns ideas into real-world impact.
And yet, for some reason, “business” gets a bad rap. People think it’s all about greed or shady deals. Yes, that is going to happen. However, that’s bad money. The empty money. The satisfaction isn’t in the money itself. It is in the process of product creation and delivering something that you can be proud of and that makes a difference in the world. That’s at least what I want to strive for. But I see it differently. Business is about respect, relationships, quality, trust before money. A great business solves problems. It helps people. Whether you're selling cakes or cloud software, the best businesses make life easier in some way. And when they do it well? They stand out.
It’s not easy, though. If it was, everyone would do it. But when you get it right — when the right product hits the right person at the right time — it’s perfect.
At the end of the day, business is about people. Steve Carrell said it best, there is nothing more personal than business. Business is about trust and your reputation is on the line when working with people. Making sure you are delivering a product you can be proud of and always be listening. Always be listening and learning from the client and the situation. You can have the best product in the world, but without people, it’s useless. That connection — listening, adapting, improving — that’s what it’s all about.
That’s why I love business intelligence. It’s not just charts and numbers. It’s about helping people make better decisions. It's about giving leaders the tools they need to see what’s going on and act on it.
Case Example: Sales & Revenue Dashboard
Let me give you a real example.
I was working with a telecom company — around 200 employees — and they were seeing a drop in sales and revenue. They had a hunch some regions were struggling, but nobody really knew why. Was it the product? Customer service? The economy? They had data… but it was all over the place. Google Sheets, Salesforce, CSVs — nothing centralized, nothing clear.
So that’s where I came in.
The goal was to figure out what was going wrong and help their product managers and sales directors have the right conversations with their teams. I started by pulling together all their sales and revenue data and built a Power BI dashboard that gave them a real-time view of what was happening.
Here’s what we found:
Sales were down in both the East and West regions — their two biggest revenue drivers.
Certain products had completely dropped off.
After doing some research, we realized these product declines weren’t unique to them — the entire industry was moving away from those services.
But then we noticed something weird: Internet sales in the East had dropped by 50%, while the West stayed consistent. The industry itself was strong — so why the dip?
Turns out, the East was seeing new competitors pop up with aggressive offers. We met with the regional sales team and confirmed this was the case. That insight helped the company adjust their strategy fast — and that’s what good business intelligence is all about.
We didn’t stop there either. We used the same dashboard to highlight top-performing regions and had conversations with the salespeople who were crushing it. What were they doing differently? How could we apply that elsewhere?
That dashboard helped the business:
Track sales and revenue in real time
Spot top and bottom performing products
Understand regional trends
Make informed decisions faster
And just as important — it made people’s lives easier.
What I Learned
Building that dashboard wasn’t about making the prettiest charts or writing the fanciest code. It was about thinking about the stakeholder. What do they need? What’s the one insight that can help them make a better decision?
Sometimes that means obsessing over details like colors and layout. But other times, it means scrapping the polish and shipping something that works now. Because if it doesn’t solve a real problem, it’s just noise.
That’s what I love about this work. It’s not just data — it’s people, ideas, and solving real problems. Business can be beautiful when it’s done right. And every now and then, you get to be a part of making that happen.
