Seven Years of Empowering Analytics in the Philippines
In January it will be seven years since I left Wells Fargo and moved to the Philippines to set up an analytics training company.
As year seven comes to a close, some reflection on how I got to where I am now would be beneficial to my strategic planning for the next seven plus years.
BPO Elite was my first venture and the idea was to train fresh graduates and young professionals to be analysts. It was a pretty successful first year in terms of developing a training approach to teaching the fundamentals of business analytics. Business wise we made a lot of missteps along the way that ended up dooming the business. But the training method was sound and I started to build up my credibility as an analytics experts in the Philippines.
Year One was all about validating that empowering people to be analysts was indeed something I could do successfully.
Year Two brought DMAIPH, Decision-Making, Analytics & Intelligence Philippines to life. Based on the business lessons learned from the shortcomings of BPO Elite I focused more on building an influencer network. Entering in to business deals where other people would market my trainings, freed me up to focus on meeting with influencers. The goal became to work within existing networks and expanding reach so that more and more people learned about the important of analytics with DMAI top of mind on how to train people to do it.
Year Two was the year I built the foundation that allowed me to become the top analytics training expert in the Philippines.
In 2014, I launched a separate business focused on the outsourcing of analytics and data heavy customer care solutions. For a large part of the year the analytics trainings took a back seat to setting up a team of 100 office and home-based staff for clients in the U.S. It wasn’t the reason why I moved to the Philippines, but the opportunity proved to be quite lucrative and allowed me to keep doing analytics trainings and speaking engagements without having to worry to much about that part of my business being profitable.
Year Three was all about doing what needed to be done to make a profit.
By 2015, the outsourcing business was running smoothly, and I was able to get back to doing a lot of partner trainings and public speaking engagements. I had the good fortune to now be one of the most sought-after public speakers on analytics in the region, speaking at schools, conferences, and tech event I was also able to start getting my message outside of Manila and being asked to do events across the country.
Year Four was the year where I my face (actually the credibility behind it) really started to sell.
2016 was a big year for DMAI. I published my first book, Putting Your Data to Work. My goal was to make a guidebook that Filipino professionals could use a both a companion to my trainings as well as a resource to convince decision-makers to invest in more training. I also upped my game with doing more public trainings and speaking at even bigger events. It was a very profitable and satisfying year.
Year Five was where I perfected training content and my public presentations. The book was really the lynchpin behind all that.
By 2017, I began calling what I do as more an advocacy than a business. I got involved in several large-scale analytics training initiatives not just in the Philippines, but across SE Asia. I helped found an association to further an analytics centric focus in the outsourcing industry and was even invited to give testimony before the Senate of the Philippines.
Year Six was where it all came together. I hit that sweet spot where I was really good at something I loved doing and I got well paid for it.
2018 could have easily been a redux of 2017. In fact, we started doing a lot of high paying in-house trainings, bigger and more successful public trainings and I was being invited to take part in all kinds of big picture initiatives across the region. But something changed. 2017 was the year where I had reached the mountain top. As I look back at 2018, I have accomplished everything I had set out to do back in 2012.
Year Seven is where I decided to make a change. I’m a mountain climber ready to take on a new summit to reach.
This coming year, I will be shifting a large percentage of my time from being in the Philippines to being in Florida.
Why Florida? Well, its where my mom’s family is from. I spent a lot of my youth there. It’s always been at the back of my mind to retire there and as 50 is just around the corner, I want to start planning for that.
I’m not done with the Philippines. Already have 5 trainings booked for the first quarter of 2019. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for my adopted home in the tropics.
At the same time, I am really looking forward to applying the lessons learned over the past 7 years and expanding my analytics advocacy to my new home. Will be laying some seeds the next several months and kick off my first trainings and speaking engagements in the Sunshine state early next year.
Let’s see where the next seven years of championing analytics takes me.
Dan Meyer heads Sonic Analytics, an analytics advocacy with offices in Manila, the San Francisco Bay Area and soon in Ocala, Florida. With over 20 years in Big Data, Dan is one of the most sought-after public speakers in Asia and has recently begun offering public training seminars in the United States.
Sonic Analytics(www.sonicanalytics.com) brings big data analytics solutions like business intelligence, business dashboards and data storytelling to small and medium sized organizations looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities. We also advocate the use of analytics for civic responsibility through training, consulting and education.
As citizens of this great democracy, we need to look at the data (analytics), plan a course of action (strategy) and share our data-driven viewpoints (presentation). This approach to a data savvy work force starts in school. So, we started an internship program to empower our youth to use Analytics, plan Strategy and Present their insights… ASP!
