Turn 8-Hour Tasks into 1-Hour Wins with AI

00:00:06 Mark Smith
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that let's get on with the show. Welcome back to the Microsoft Innovation Podcast. Today, we're dialing in from Belgrade, Serbia, probably one of the furthest guests on the show, to meet someone who's turned spreadsheets into superpowers. Please welcome. Aleksandar, the founder of Outliers, an education platform that helped over 300,000 professionals work smarter, not harder. If you've ever wished Excel could do your job for you, well, our guess might be the closest thing from slashing 8 hour tasks down to one hour. With power query to teaching AI powered data analysis that actually drives decisions, that is, someone who doesn't just teach tools, he transforms how people think. He's also a three time Microsoft MVP and a leading voice in the future of data literacy, a great topic. Full links are in the show, notes Alexandra. Welcome to the show.

00:01:34 Aleksandar Grasic
Thank you so much. Thanks. Mark.

00:01:37 Mark Smith
I'm excited to have you on data literacy is something my wife and I have been talking about for months and the need for people to. Increase and you know we use a an arbitrary number of 30%. If everyone could increase their literacy by 30%. It would go a long way to to to increasing the skill level, especially as we move more and more into an AI world. Tell us about your experience of 1. You know, 300,000 people across your platforms. How did you get into tech? How did you create this tool and and and what's going on in the AI landscape for you at the moment?

00:02:20 Aleksandar Grasic
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for your invitation and it's great to to talk about all new. I can say trends about AI and everything else and yeah, on daily basis we discussed how we can use AI to leverage our. Daily work not to replace us, to boost our productivity. And this is main goal for me to talk about with people to use GPT. I copilot Gemini doesn't matter, but how we can use AI to leverage and boost our productivity, not not to think about that. Hey, AI will replace me and this is danger. For me, we have a both side to to discuss about that. But from our perspective I I want to. Discuss with more with people how we can use Excel and boost our productivity with copilot charge app and other tools, how we can use maybe PowerPoint not to spend the three hours to create presentation. Let's try copilot for example and.

00:03:33 Aleksandar Grasic
Do that for 30 minutes as draft version. This is the first version and after that I will do that everything to. To to to boost my productivity and finish presentation. By my experience, because I am expert in that field, not a I finish all presentation this that will will be boost my productivity to finish. Faster and I will give touch from my expertise to finish that presentation and check is everything good because as we know AI needs to, to, to. Checked.

00:04:17 Mark Smith
Interesting. It's interesting that you've obviously built a career around Excel and I think it was just last week I was listening to a video. Of Satya has been interviewed straight after his keynote address at build, which was two weeks ago, and in it he talked about Excel being the fundamental teacher of how to develop. You know, a lot of developers. Cut their teeth in Excel and kind of Excel I suppose in recent years I feel has been put to the sidelines a bit. What are you seeing around its use, its applications the you know doing some research here on on what you do 8 hours down to. One hour from. A productivity boost. That's phenomenal, right? That's that's. Umm for a lot of people that would totally change the way they work when you can create those type of efficiencies and what they're doing.

00:05:10 Aleksandar Grasic
Yeah, that that's very important. Why? Because. On daily basis, uh people use Excel on intuition. OK, yeah, we have some columns, some rows and the what? I need to learn about that. Let's open excel and start working and it's good when you have 10 columns and 10 rows. But when you have. 10,000 rows for example, and this is complicated and. For that you need to structure knowledge step by step. Like uh, recipes. When you want to create a cake for example, you need to recipes for for your cake and if you follow step step 123 you will be. Done job very well and also for Excel. If you have a structure and OK data cleaning. And create for example pivot table, create charts and create dashboard. This is much more easier and this is the first step and another another step is to use for example power query and power pivot in Excel. Usually from my experience people don't know about. Park vary. Power pivot and they repeat on daily basis data cleaning process and when I show them power query and power payout they talk themselves. How I live without without these tools and yeah this is very important for them and after that I. Encourage them to. Up. Go, go, go up with, for example, power BI. OK, Excel is good, but not for all scenarios. If you are better with and maybe can help you more about. Dashboards use power BI, not excel, because yeah, you can use. You can create dashboards in Excel, but you have 10 steps to create dashboard in Excel. But in Power BI you can use in three steps and I think. Discuss with people how they need to think about that, to explore everything and learn new things, how they can be productive and OK we have. For example, we have now copilot and charge PD for example, and we have a big problem because when we ask copilot our. Can you give me formulas? They give you formula without think is my data correct? Is my data data good organized? Is, is is this most optimal solution for my problem? No you want to form. Oh, this is a big formula for you. This will solve your problem and we need to to think about that and use use this tool to to scale everything with.

00:08:25 Mark Smith
Tell me about the 300,000 plus professionals and and how you've taught them to work smarter.

00:08:32 Aleksandar Grasic
Some kind. My story started from from from high school and uh I was uh part of computer and Excel competition. And later started started statistics and it on faculty of Economics. And this is start fall in love with data. And also I worked in mobile banking, telecom and teaching assistant at university and also I worked as data. Scientists in Statistical Office, Republic of Serbia and the last job before I becoming entrepreneur was at Black Rock and Fintech company and. I saw how many problems companies have with Excel and how much time they waste, and because of that I quit my job and started this journey with outliers, Outliers, Excel graphic and I created an educational platform. And started to share everything I think is useful for them. I think this is the reason why. This is useful for my followers because I have experience from different areas, from public companies, from public sector, from private sector, and I can find out what is be good for you and. Save your time and after that, uh, for 2021 to now, uh, we have cooperation for 500 companies and also find out different case studies and I can share with you. Exact solution for your problem because all my team have experience with that and I will create content useful for you and everything. Everything else. And I think because these these numbers is very important for me because for now. We share content only in Serbian and the yeah, this is important for us because this is for this region, Balkan region. 20 around 20 million people, 20 million people, but not using users of Excel and everything else but but this is, I think a small area from perspective and also we have people understand us. All over the world. Our language, but also very, very, very important for us because we shared some educational content and to to create community of these people is very important for us and for my team. And yeah, also we think about English version and we will find out that, yeah.

00:11:35 Mark Smith
This is amazing because when I saw those numbers, I was like, oh, you must have a a big worldwide audience and that's. But this is just within Serbia. In the Serbian language that you have done all.

00:11:48 Aleksandar Grasic
Yeah, but but in Balkan region we have Croatia, we have Bosnia, we have Montenegro and this is few countries.

00:11:59 Mark Smith
I've been to all these.

00:12:00 Aleksandar Grasic
Countries. Really. Yeah. Nice. Nice. What is your experience?

00:12:04 Mark Smith
Yeah, I realized when I looked on the map just before doing this that how close I got to you. I was only one country away. Muster is as close as to the border that I got. 

00:12:15 Aleksandar Grasic
Yeah. Awesome. Where? Where you you.

00:12:18 Mark Smith
I was. I lived for a month in Croatia.

00:12:21 Aleksandar Grasic
Ohh, nice. During the summer really.

00:12:25 Mark Smith
No, probably more the winter. Oh yeah.

00:12:28 Aleksandar Grasic
Off season. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Creation for for summer is great. A lot of place to spend the great time. And yeah. Yeah. For my recommendation also.

00:12:41 Mark Smith
So your so your product serves that entire region and this blows my mind because I honestly thought when I saw these numbers at this would be all English speaking. You're doing it in your your native language which is just highly commendable. I think it's amazing.

00:12:56 Aleksandar Grasic
Yeah. Yeah, because in this region we understand each other and when when I when I told you about 20 million people in whole Balkan region, not in Serbia is 7 million but in whole region. We have around 20 million people and also we have a lot of followers from all all over the world also understand our language from from this, from our region and. Yeah.

00:13:30 Mark Smith
This is amazing. So. So it's your company. How big are? How big have you grown it?

00:13:36 Aleksandar Grasic
Now in the team we have 1212 people in in team. Two people in sales, one people in finance, 11 in customer success as support students, and also e-mail marketing and the website developer and designer. And because from my experience for from a company. Please uhm, I find out I need to create a procedure and I need to find people specialize in each part. Create Department, Department for Finance, Department for sales, department for customer success. And I think this is this. This is very useful for me from my experience. Because I think I I need to start as soon as possible. Entrepreneurship. But my experience from different different companies very important. To me and my team, because now with that experience from companies, I am a better manager. I'm a better leader and I can better discuss with companies about education and everything they they need and. Yeah. If somebody think about that. Yeah, that experience from from big companies can be. Very useful for. You when you start your entrepreneurship you have experience and you have. Better way to to find out your your your your solution decision and everything else.

00:15:21 Mark Smith
So how tell me about your journey to becoming an MVP? How big is Microsoft in the region? What was that process for? You and how many other MVP's are in in the Baltic region?

00:15:33 Aleksandar Grasic
Yeah, yeah, that's that's a great question because. In in our in, in Serbia. For now, we we have only 10 MVP's and I am only one who specialize for Microsoft 36065. And yeah, this is this is useful and very, very interesting for us, but. I started everything about MVP. Uh creating content and sharing it to social and social media. And yeah, I was very passionate about that. I started first on Instagram and. I know I want to be MVP but know exact time when I want to start to to do that, but I didn't know a lot about that about MVP, how I can become MVP and one day in 2021 I saw on LinkedIn Post. Nicolich his MVP for data platform. He is mostly known for his job, his work with Power BI, and yeah, he had just renewed his MVP status. And I decided to message him and uh, ask more about how to uh, process works and yeah, Nicola was super helpful for me. He looked at my content and so hey, I think you already have a lot of great materials from past year and. It might be right time to to try to find out his his time to to present that to to Microsoft and. Uh. He asked me if I would like to recommend me, and of course I said yes and yeah, he submitted a recommendation and Microsoft review reviewed everything and after that they reach out and said, hey, Nicole, I recommend you and now we will look, look into your work and. I send details and uh, that's my my Microsoft. MVP Journey started for me in 2021. And the yeah, that that's very important for for for me because. For example, here in Belgrade team from Microsoft Word develop copilot in Microsoft Word. And this is my neighborhood and every time.

00:18:16 Mark Smith 
Hang on. Yeah, let me just clarify. So the Microsoft team that's developing the integration for copilot in Word is actually Serbian.

00:18:27 Aleksandar Grasic
Yeah, in Serbia, office. In Belgrade. In Belgrade. Office. Our team. In Microsoft Development Centre, uh develop copilot in Microsoft Word.

00:18:38 Mark Smith
Wow, this is so.

00:18:39 Aleksandar Grasic
Yeah. And we are very, we are very, very proud on our Microsoft Developers Centre because we have great people here, great developers and they have really, really good impact on Microsoft product also about Azure and other. Other other tools? And the yeah from last year, November last year we have, but I think officially from February this year we have Microsoft Garage 15th garage in whole over the world and 2nd in Europe. And this is very important. For us and few few few weeks ago, I was there and I have. Teaching lesson for Microsoft employees about Excel tips and tricks and copilot in Excel, and I discussed with them about that and this is this is very important for me. Why? Because I have a lot of communication with end user. And why I discussed with end use, but developers in Microsoft. They know how to develop that, but they don't have contact with end users and I'm some kind of bridge between end user and developers and I back to Microsoft and give them feedback. For example. This is useful. This is good. What? What do you think about that and this great discussion with with them? And they are here in, in Belgrade and on daily basis, where we can discuss about that. And this is very useful for for me, because we can discuss from one side and from another side I was in Redmond for first time in March this year. And also this is very important for me. Because. Also, we discuss, first of all, I met in person all MVP's. I I know from online world and yeah we discuss in person also I met the PM's for Excel for example and we discussed. About all features. Uh, for next 12 months and now we can test that. Find out. Is that how we can present that to our audience and everything else? And this is very useful for me because we are in, in source of all information and I think that that's very, very useful for me. For my audience and also for for Microsoft as our feedback.

00:21:29 Mark Smith
We had time, but I've just found this so inspiring. Listening to your story and to what you've achieved in your region, I. So many people I talk to always look at you know, how do we get into the English speaking world and and how do we, you know, they don't. They shy away from their own language and their own people. And what you've done is leaned into it, which I just find. Incredibly awesome, and I've loved hearing your story. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:21:57 Aleksandar Grasic
Thank you so much Mark, for your invitation. This is my first podcast. In English and my plan is to start my content in English and I'm very thankful for you for your invitation, because this is very inspire me to start my English content and your first station where I officially. Start with that like this podcast and thank you everything you done for for our community with your broadcast and sharing stories from all MVP's. Thank you so much.

00:22:37 Mark Smith
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application NVP, Mark Smith, otherwise known as the nz3635guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buy me a coffee.com/nz365guy. Thanks again and see you next time.