The Power Transformation Podcast
The Power Transformation Podcast hosted by Alethea Felton, celebrates the resilience, determination, and hope of entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and visionaries who have conquered adversity and various challenges to create meaningful lives.
With her own inspiring journey of living with autoimmune disease since birth (and now thriving), overcoming severe stuttering, and more, Alethea's authenticity adds depth to intimate conversations with her guests who have overcome extraordinary obstacles.
Alethea's heart-centered, introspective, and engaging style elevates this podcast into a movement that inspires listeners to embrace their inner strength, cultivate empowerment, and rise wiser, stronger, and more courageous to achieve their next level of success.
The Power Transformation Podcast
113. How Global Travel Fueled Data-Driven Business Success with Luke Komiskey
In this inspiring episode we explore the remarkable journey of Luke Komiskey, a global traveler and visionary entrepreneur who turned his passion for adventure and data into a thriving business. Luke shares how his quest to visit more countries than his age shaped his decision-making, personal growth, and the launch of his company, Data Drive, which simplifies complex data for organizational success. With reflections on AI, peer learning, and embracing change, Luke offers actionable insights for integrating data-driven strategies into business and life. Prepare to be inspired to embrace resilience, find your purpose, and embark on your own extraordinary adventure.
Connect with Luke:
Episode 113's Affirmation:
I make time to travel and to rest so that I fuel my creativity.
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What if your biggest setback is actually your greatest setup for success? Welcome to the Power Transformation Podcast, where I, your host, alethea Felton, the Resilience Architect, have inspiring stories and real conversations with people just like you, those who are determined to rise above and thrive beyond life's challenges. Here we celebrate the courage and hope that it takes to reclaim your power, rewrite your story and step into the life that you were destined to live For. Now is the time to create your power transformation. Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to the first edition of the Power Transformation Podcast for 2025. I am your host, alethea Felton, and I am so glad that you have joined us today. Thank you for those of you who have been with me since the very beginning. I am grateful for you and I am excited for those of you who may be brand new to the show. I am so thrilled to have you here and I look forward to such an amazing year for the Power Transformation podcast.
Alethea Felton:We kicked off season three last week and this is so fun for me to interview Luke Komiskey as the first episode for 2025 because of the fact that at the beginning of the year, many people think about how they want this year to be different in comparison to the prior year.
Alethea Felton:And Luke his story of transformation, in terms of how he even created his company, is one that I think is inspiring, because if you have been looking to get out there and to see more of the world, whether it's locally or globally, luke's story will certainly give you that idea or spark that flame inside of you to do so.
Alethea Felton:Life is short and that may sound like a cliche, but Luke is proof to take life on and live it beyond the fullest. So we're going to jump right into his interview and before we do that, I'm going to say an affirmation so that you can speak those things into existence, speak them as if they already are, so that things can happen, come to pass in your life. I'll say the affirmation once and you repeat it I make time to travel and to rest so that I fuel my creativity. Oh, this is going to be a fabulous interview today because I have Luke Komiskey, who is a global traveler, and so much more, and you heard from that intro that Luke has done so much, and the reason why I bring up global travels is Luke. I want to welcome you first to the Power Transformation Podcast. Welcome.
Luke Komiskey:Thanks for having me.
Alethea Felton:Of course and I brought up those travels because I always like to start with a fun icebreaker question so that we can get to know you more so, thinking about your global travels, and of course, you'll talk more about that but what is one quirky or unusual or just different souvenir that you got from one of those countries that still makes you smile?
Luke Komiskey:Great question. There's a lot of them that come to mind, but the one that's like sitting right in front of me in my desk is I've got a. I spent a spring break in Egypt once upon a time and I've got this like cool little like scarab beetle. It looks, it looks really cool, uh, but I think, more than anything, uh, for me, it always brings a smile to my face because I remember, uh, traveling to Egypt was just a totally different experience for that phase in my life and uh, uh, it was just a really difficult country to travel, and so all those memories I made during that trip and getting to a marketplace to like, buy that Scarab Beetle, just brings back a lot of memories. So it's a fun souvenir that I always keep in front of me and it reminds me of the good travel days.
Alethea Felton:That is a wonderful story and it's interesting you would bring up Scarab Beetle, because when I think of that I think back to a movie. I think it was from the early 2000s the Mummy, and when they went into the.
Luke Komiskey:That's how everyone knows them.
Alethea Felton:And all of those Scarab Beetles are everywhere. That's what I think about when. I think of that, but that's really, really cool. So, lukeke, here's a billion dollar question for you, but who is luke kamiski?
Luke Komiskey:that's a deep question. Uh well, I think the probably the best way to like answer that. So luke is um, I mean, originally just out of the Midwest America in Wisconsin, a good upbringing there that has gone through a variety of travels and adventures throughout life. But I have a big technical background. I've always really enjoyed working within mathematics and computer science and doing all that stuff working within mathematics and computer science and doing all that stuff.
Luke Komiskey:But a big part of who I am as a person, as how I've evolved, is a really passion for adventure and make in trying to live a great story as a mantra that comes to my, my mind all the time, and so with that I think every phase of my life, I think it just I think of it as interesting chapters in a in a broader journey. A big part of my life is to always travel to more countries than my age. That's a big life KPI that I have and yeah, I try to do everything in these various chapters of life, from college to traveling to now parenthood and even chapters of entrepreneurship is how can I get experiences so that I can look back at my life and say that it was a life well lived and I tried my darndest through the whole thing. So that's me in a nutshell.
Alethea Felton:Yeah, I love something that you said and I've never heard anyone say this before, but I think this is so powerful is that you want to travel to more countries than your age. Oh my gosh, what a goal to have. I've never considered that before, but I may have to actually take that one and go back and think about all of the places that I've been, but that's definitely a goal worth having.
Luke Komiskey:Wow, yeah, I like it because it keeps a good pacing on everything. So I know if I'm like ahead or behind on that, and it's not one of those things where, especially for travel, it's such an important passion of mine and everyone can find their own thing. But I think a lot of times when it comes to travel, people tend to wait until the later chapters of their lives to go do that. And what I like about that you know, country is greater than your age is that you have to keep pace with it. So you got to keep up with it it.
Alethea Felton:So you got to keep up with it and from what your our podcast screening. If I'm recalling correctly and correct me if I'm wrong at the time of when we we first met, I think you had traveled to 28 countries. Is it more now, or?
Luke Komiskey:is it 28? During during my big quarter-life retirement trip. We'll call it 2016. That's right.
Alethea Felton:That was 28. Yes, Okay, so as of now, as of 2024, August of 2024, I know that this episode will be launched in the fall but as of August 2024, how many countries have you traveled to? Yeah, I'm at 37 right now. Oh, that is, oh, my gosh. That is so inspiring. So let's go ahead and dive deep into this, because I mentioned the 28 countries, and so let me just preface it by this Luke, you actually had the audacity and I say that in a positive way the audacity to take a significant risk at a point in your life by quitting your job and traveling the world with your wife before you founded your company Data Drive. So my first in-depth question for you is, Luke, how did that experience of exploring 28 countries at that time, how did it shape your mindset as an entrepreneur? But also, what lessons key lessons did you bring back that influenced how you actually built Data Drive?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, great question. I mean there's a lot of business and life lessons I've learned out of that trip. I think part of that story is just understanding who I was as a person prior to doing that trip. I'm a very type A schedule oriented, driven individual and I, you know, I'm one of those people that after I left college I would have that checklist of all the life milestones of moving up the corporate ladder and everything and going on this trip especially with my wife who has, you know, very different kind of methodology in life, a little bit more easygoing, go with the flow going on a trip where we started out with one way tickets to Tokyo with only the clothes on our backs for a very planful guy, that that is a really hard leap to make and I was incredibly uncomfortable I would call it probably for the first 90 days of that trip because so much of what we were doing is like we didn't really have a plan, we didn't have expectations for what we needed to do in a certain city or where we needed to be. It was just more of like how we felt in that moment and that that whole process of just kind of uh um, being willing to kind of jump into the unknown and set zero expectations, and it's really easy to exceed them when you have none. I think that whole process of it I think one kind of opened my eyes a little bit more towards, you know, going with the flow in life. And also, just when I think about entrepreneurship, a lot of it is just jumping into the unknown and trying to build things and it's not going to be perfect, but it's progress. And I think I would have had a really hard time really making that full leap of jumping out of the you know, the traditional corporate America path of, uh, you know, leaving a steady job and moving into the unknown of, with unsteady paychecks and unknown next projects. I would have had a hard time making that leap if I didn't have 11 and a half months of practice in 2016 of living that type of life.
Luke Komiskey:Um, and then, more than just kind of the, the uh, lack of a schedule and structure about what we were doing, I think the other biggest thing that I took away from that trip is just the value of perspective and, uh, how other cultures in the world are actually living, and I think specifically back to we spent over a little over four months in Southeast Asia and the level of, um, I guess economic prosperity or the level of wealth in that space is like just as it compares or can contrast so much with American culture.
Luke Komiskey:And for me what I saw was that a lot of very, very community oriented, family oriented cultures, um, having fun, happiness, uh, joy, in an environment where I think, like as an American, you look through that it was like, well, they don't have that nice of a house, they don't have a nice car, um, and I think for me, I think that just completely changed the perspective of like what, what are we put on this earth to do? And what actually drives happiness in the world isn't a lot of the material stuff that we tend to surround ourselves in the cultures that you know I grew up in. And I think that's helped change my perspective of what I want to accomplish in life and where I want to achieve.
Alethea Felton:That was such a loaded answer and I do appreciate that actually. That was such a loaded answer and I do appreciate that actually, because you were very clear and explicit in sharing with us, almost in a sense, the how of what's brought you here, and I really value that, because sometimes people can see entrepreneurs, even within our own entrepreneurial community, and they see the success or what they perceive to be it, but really don't know that backstory of it. So, in thinking about this whole concept, you're a data guy, you're a data guru and I'm a nerd I'm not calling you one, but I'm a nerd and I love data, analytics, things of that nature. So take us back briefly a little bit more. Were you always, even growing up as a kid? Were you very analytical? Were you data driven? Where did this passion for data stem?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, yeah. I mean in a lot of ways, like I mentioned, growing up in my Wisconsin upbringing and going to college like I'd always been naturally drawn towards mathematics and just like working with numbers. There was a lot of even just like. If I even think about the entrepreneurial side of it too is I was like I was a country kid who lived out in the middle of nowhere, wisconsin.
Luke Komiskey:So, I had the hour and a half bus ride into school, which meant that I also had an hour and a half bus ride home after school, and at the back of the bus, that's where I would have my own little enterprise of you know, selling gobstoppers for a nickel per gobstopper, Right. And so for me, like I've always had this fascination around, just like small business and like how can I, like you know, create new opportunities? And I would come up with really like cool pricing combos of like buy six gobstoppers for a quarter, like all of these like cool little numbers things that I was working through.
Alethea Felton:Deals.
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, deals. And I think for me, like I didn't quite know that I was going to get into a career in data analytics until I got to kind of get into college where, like I knew I loved working with numbers but I didn't know how, like how that would fit into a broader career path. And once I got into computer science, like I knew that, like you know, programming and solving puzzles, that was super interesting. What I loved about data analytics is like it was great for me to go to college during the time when data analytics was starting to become this very like trendy industry that people wanted to go into.
Luke Komiskey:I think what's actually drawn me into data analytics is like it's actually been a perfect balance of the puzzles that come with working with numbers and there's always like a right answer you can get to and the cool technologies you can use to get there. But the other side of that coin is that with data analytics you've got an opportunity to work with other entrepreneurs, other business leaders, and help try to break down how they think about their organization, how they make their gut decisions, what makes them tick, and try to put that into a programmatic language or at least try to turn their intuition into something that can be driven by things that they may just know in their gut, but things that others can make decisions on that actually, the data is telling them. So I've really enjoyed data analytics and just kind of consulting in the space in general. It's that perfect balance for me for being able to like work with leaders, solve puzzles and then like bring that together to like create really cool aha moments of like look at this puzzle that I helped solve for you.
Alethea Felton:That's been always in your way and, you know, help elevate their organization or help their business do what they need to do know help elevate their organization or help their business do what they need to do, and I just like how you show up, I like your presence. Even when we first met, you know you're very self-assured and confident and not in a cocky, arrogant way, and that's what I like is that you have a certain level of energy that will attract people to you and draw. But also you, you know what the heck you're talking about. I mean, sometimes people blah, blah, blah at the mouth and really aren't saying anything.
Alethea Felton:But, as I share with you, although I've been in entrepreneurship for quite a while, this was my first full year as a full-timer, because for 20 years I had a career as a public school educator, in leadership roles mainly, where we dug through data. Everything was data-driven, data-driven, data-driven. And so when you started to make this shift to creating data drive, I want you to think about how you left the security of a stable job to travel and later start a business, and that requires a certain level of resilience and trust in your abilities and, from my perspective, you show up clearly as to who you are created to be in this time of your life. So what internal or even external factors help you, luke, to navigate those uncertainties in that period and how do you apply that resilience in your company and in your business ventures today?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, well, it's a big question and a lot of days I feel like a duck where I'm very calm on the surface but I'm paddling like hell underneath. So I don't know if I quite have it figured out, but I appreciate the kind words and I think a lot of a lot. I think what helps me a lot is, first of all, I'm I'm somebody who loves to like tinker in things and love how things like foundationally work. So you know, having having just the background in, like how what makes all this stuff work behind the scenes, it gives me the confidence to show up and a lot of what my role is when it comes to selling the services that I do is just educating people, showing people what's even possible, right Cause I think so many times within data analytics it's like we're speaking two completely different languages and bringing people along on that journey. So I enjoy that and, I think, the support system around me when it comes to entrepreneurship.
Luke Komiskey:I mean first I got to call out a very supportive wife that took me on this global adventure. I mean in many ways it was a mutual decision, but like it was scary for me to jump off that, that this normal life path that I had planned for myself and I owe a lot to that adventurous spirit coming from her and driving that and then for her to also have the um trust in me when we got back of 11 and a half months of basically being unemployed to. You know, give me that space to test out this dream of entrepreneurship, that foundational piece. You know, if you don't have that type of support structure especially in the early days where it gets awfully quiet after you announce you're starting a business and the realities of like, you have to, like you know, find, find some business to keep this going yes, sir, it's good to have a little bit of that support system in place. And then, yeah, I guess, as I, as I like, move through this journey, I think probably the biggest helpful piece is just a peer network.
Luke Komiskey:I'm part of a group called entrepreneurs organization, or EO.
Luke Komiskey:But more specifically than that, like, I've got a group of fellow entrepreneurs eight of them that I meet with on a monthly basis and they have completely different businesses than I do. But I think, more than anything, it's the type of peer learning and sharing and I think there's just a lot of unique challenges that entrepreneurs go through. There's definite high highs and low, lows that non-entrepreneurs may never have to really think about or experience and it's not necessarily common practice to show up to a dinner party and complain about these types of things and I think creating that space almost acts as a form of informal therapy that helps kind of give me the confidence and resilience to work through the ups and downs, because, yeah, I still, eight and a half years into this, I've still experienced all the feelings of the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. That doesn't go away. But your ability to kind of fight through of like, what is your North Star of like? Why are you doing what you're doing? That's what keeps me going and that's why I love doing what I do.
Alethea Felton:That is all of the truth, and I'm glad that you spoke your truth in it, because for entrepreneurship I say often it's as if we're flying a plane that is still being built, so it can still fly and it's good to go. We have a great engine in it, but we're still tweaking it. We're still making it work. That's how I've always seen this journey, and you certainly have taken wings and flown. When it comes to data drive, it's grown significantly under your leadership. So share with us exactly what data drive is. You serve over 150 organizations worldwide, but tell us what is data drive exactly and put it in layman's terms, because while entrepreneurs listen to this everyday, regular people do too. So what exactly is it? What's its mission, purpose, et cetera, and what were some key challenges that you experienced to even grow your company and how did you overcome them while maintaining your North Star?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, yeah, fantastic questions. So Data Drive at its core is we provide a service called Manage Analytic Services. In layman's terms, what that means is we help organizations that have a lot of data in various applications that they've needed to grow their business or help support their organization, but have no idea how to bring that all together to make more data informed decisions. And so either they're your, your users need to be more informed about the decisions that they're making in the organization. They need to make faster decisions. What we provide behind the scenes is the data warehouse if you've heard of that but, like data warehouse reporting platform, we provide dashboards, insights that go directly to whether internal or external users to help inform the decisions that they're making.
Luke Komiskey:The challenge that most small, mid-sized organizations have is that to build these types of things in a normal approach, you would have to go out and hire, manage, retain a bunch of specialized data skill sets. People think data is somewhat complex, but a simple topic to understand. Right, we need dashboards and reports, but there's an entire specialized team I kind of think it is like this Mission Impossible team behind the scenes of data engineers and business analysts and report developers. There's a lot of nuanced skill sets that even one person who claims themselves to be a data professional, they don't have all the skill sets to pull off an end-to-end reporting platform. There's a lot that goes into it, and so what we provide organizations is that fractional data team so that they can get data informed decisions without necessarily having to go out and do the traditional hiring path that could be expensive and risky and all that things.
Alethea Felton:Oh, wow. So, in terms of your contracts with organizations, do you make pitches to companies? Do they come to you? How do you get your clientele?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, a lot of it is inbound leads of organizations that are, you know, probably doing some kind of searches around. Like you know, how do I get better reporting? Or how do I, you know, get some kind of insights out to my either my internal teams or my external customers? We can help with both. A very real example, too, is an industry that we do particularly well in, and one that you know well, is school districts. So for school districts, if you think about it, they've got a lot of different data systems that they need to run right. They've got grades, attendance, state assessment scores all this data that goes into helping understand how a student, an individual student or an entire district at large are actually doing entire district at large are actually doing For them, like they have.
Luke Komiskey:The challenge of district staff is trying to think about the long-term goals that they're setting as a district of like, where are we going as a district? Are we achieving all the goals that we've set with the state and all these other important stakeholders that are in our ecosystem? But then, even more tactically, you think about a teacher that's about to go into a classroom with 20 individuals. There's a lot of unique approaches you might take to a class if you knew that five of them were doing you know. You know quite poorly in the subject you're about to teach, but how do you get that information to them really quickly? And that these are the types of challenges that people start coming into, where it's like if I had some kind of ready made dashboards or reporting or some sort of push notification where I could tell people to treat a situation differently than we could lead people to treat a situation differently, then we could lead to overall, like better student outcomes or for for-profit organizations it's like you know better efficiency, more profits.
Alethea Felton:Out of curiosity, just real quick. How? How did you even know there was a need for this? Because you're spot on with what you're doing, but you didn't have experience as a teacher or anything like that. How did you even know schools had a need?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, I mean I think in general across all these industries that I've worked with, is everyone has a need for more information or at least more like insights to help create a better decision. So, no, no industry is like a stranger to that whole concept. Yeah, fortunate enough to have early conversations with school districts where you know they started to kind of share a little bit more of those experiences. And you know I'm very I have a lot more experience in the kind of the for-profit enterprise type space. So early on in my career, before I started DataDrive, I did a lot of consulting with bigger organizations and for them they have data teams, right, they have 50 people working on this challenge, but they still have fundamentally the same challenges of getting information to the frontline workers. I think now as I've moved into more of the DataDrive growth, we work with a lot of industries but school districts early on were one of them that just kind of popped up and it's like it's the same problems of we need to inform our frontline workers, lack of a better term teachers and you know how do we get that information in front of them. I think what I really personally get passion and joy out of is, unlike a lot of these like for-profit B2B enterprises working with schools just has a whole new element of really like our mission of of helping to fuel a better informed society.
Luke Komiskey:As a guy that has, you know, I'm two weeks away from my oldest becoming a kindergarten, so, like this is very important parenting milestone. I have a. I have a newfound vested interest to make sure that like our education system is, is is working for everyone and I. What I love about this space in particular is that there's no like competitive advantage that people are trying to get is that it's only to our benefit of our entire education system to get this type of information out to all of our teachers to help everyone figure out how we can educate our future of our nation better. And that's just a really cool. Part of an unexpected twist in this journey of Data Drive is we can actually provide value to build a cool business but on top of that, to achieve a bigger, higher purpose than what we've company or a school district, and you help them to change their data, transform it into actionable insights.
Alethea Felton:Give us an example. You don't have to name the actual company, but could you take us to a success story of where you've seen this happen?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, of any kind.
Alethea Felton:Uh, more data-informed decision uh, yeah, yeah, there's a there's a lot to pick from.
Luke Komiskey:I mean, one of one of my favorite examples just because, like, I think everyone can appreciate it is uh, we've worked closely with a uh pizza franchise that uh, that uh, uh, you know, has a lot of like pizza deliveries They've got in dining stores. During COVID, a lot of that whole business got upheaval because you've got to figure out how to get pizzas to people who are hanging out of their houses specifically, and so a lot of the analytics we were building for that type of organization is. You can start out with some really basic things around talking about sales, performance, profitability, like what kind of discounts and bundling should we provide on this. But then you can think a little bit more tactically about delivery logistics. How many delivery drivers should we have to staff on any given day of the week? And does weather play a factor into that? Especially being in Minnesota, if we know that a giant snowstorm is coming, does that mean we should have more or less drivers, because does that mean people are more likely to stay in or less likely to order a pizza?
Luke Komiskey:These are like very tactical examples, but it's kind of fun how, like such a simple thing about like sales and profitability can turn into how do we bundle our pricing differently, how do we staff our operation differently. And then we even started getting into like customer loyalty. So start measuring. If we roll out customer loyalty, can we prove that there is actually like higher average order values from loyal customers and are we making good ROI on sending those type of like bundled discounts out to our most loyal members? Does that actually drive incremental revenue for us? And this is like the fun part of what I get to do, right, like it starts with such a simple problem and then like it's almost like I get to kind of join as a chief data officer within these businesses to like help understand what are, what are some other cool elements we're not even thinking about and bring in external data sources, like when events are happening or when weather's going to hit, to like totally unlock a whole, totally new vision of what that organization can do.
Alethea Felton:Wow. So you're really thinking about the longer term outcomes for these companies and I think that's so, so vital, because even what you do with your company, luke, I can even see how what you do to serve these organizations can also apply into a person's own life. And so let's kind of step outside of the box here, just kind of a fun, different kind of question, but thinking about practical steps. What are some practical steps that, say, a listener or viewer of this episode can even start to make data-driven decisions in their own lives or business? So let's talk data here. What is something tangible that a person can do in their everyday life to be more data-driven?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, just everyday personal lives, I think. I mean, I think the big trend right now and it's really cool. We've got more than enough technology, devices, wearables, around, uh like how health biometrics are doing Um, and I I I'm going to forget the name of like this whole like study, but you can I think there's some really cool ways now that we've got more data points about how our bodies are performing at any given point, whether heart rate, blood pressure, whatever, Um, and that's a really like interesting and like even a personal example for me is like a lot of what you know, as I've moved into parenthood and become like just less active than I did pre parenthood, is how do I start measuring of like water intake or number of steps in a given day and how does that actually impact, like how I either like feel internally as like a quantitative measure or actually be able to measure against, like blood pressure, heart rate, all that things, um, and those are like just very real examples of. You've got a lot of data points available to you. If you're buying an apple watch, like, why wouldn't you try to use this data to like help improve yourself for your own longevity?
Luke Komiskey:Um, and yeah, it's just like. That's just like scratching the surface of some of those data points that you're collecting You're not even not even realizing, and that's just kind of like. If you take that micro example, it's like a small example of the bigger data explosion that we're dealing with is like everything is being, is monitorable now Everything, everything can be measured. So that is just like your watch is only the small piece of like a much bigger thing of what you could be measuring with smart devices in your own personal life.
Alethea Felton:Exactly, and I'm glad you actually said that, because the listeners of this podcast are diverse in ages, diverse in which country they live in, from their backgrounds, and the reason I said that is in my experience.
Alethea Felton:I've come across a lot of people over the years where just the thought of data can scare them or they feel intimidated or think it's so complex when oftentimes people aren't even aware of how we use data every day of our lives. And so thank you for giving that practical example, because it shows listeners and viewers. You too, live in a very data-driven world and we don't even think about how we're incorporating it. And so when I think about this journey that you've been on, Luke, is that your journey to me epitomizes the importance of experiences as well as personal growth. And so when you're talking about your life shifts now being a father and business owner and all of this how in the world do you as a person, Luke, balance the demands of running a rapidly growing company with the need for your own personal development, as well as maintaining a sense of adventure and thrill in your life? How are you doing that?
Luke Komiskey:How are you doing that Very carefully? Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is it's obviously the balance of just expectations of what you know you're capable of and that you have time to do, and just the realities of that. Life is about going with the flow, and this is something I just I think I have to constantly just balance with myself internally is we can make our best plans of like what we hope to accomplish in a given week, month, and I'd highly encourage, if you don't already just I even have my own like personal plan of three-year targets, one-year goals. I think about my life in terms of like 90-day increments. That's been incredibly beneficial. Just to know that. That, just just just to know that not every day, but like every quarter, I can look back and like am I doing the right things that are leading me towards the things that I want to get to?
Luke Komiskey:And I think too often I didn't do this early enough in life and I can't stress this enough.
Luke Komiskey:For people it's like it's. It's a great way to if you want to live a life by design. You can't flip a turn, flip a switch and just magically happens, but you can make little incremental progress, the small things you do every day. I think that in itself allows me to give myself grace when I don't have time to do everything in a given day, but to also create the, a vision you can actually get excited about of of like the things you want to accomplish, like you know, doing things like travel, getting involved in sports, like like I like to do, um, giving cool experiences to my, to my kids. Uh, those are all things that are just on my life plan and I know I can't get it all done today, but it gives me more of a macro view of how how can I schedule at least, you know, half an hour this week to help move that big 90 day target a little bit closer to the finish line an hour this week to help move that big 90-day target a little bit closer to the finish line.
Alethea Felton:Yeah, oh, I really like that and I've heard of setting, of course, short-term and long-term goals and of course I even do that. But I like that 90-day increment type of a plan because it gives you three months and I do like how it's broken into quarters and I actually may try that for myself. I like that tidbit. And so, as a man who's transitioned from working in a traditional corporate environment to becoming an entrepreneur, speak directly to a listener or viewer who may feel confined in their current role and are considering Luke taking a similar leap. What would you say to them?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, yeah, I mean one. I would say take the time and write down what you're hoping to find, what is actually going to bring you joy in your life. I think the one thing I always stress with people who are thinking about jumping into entrepreneurship is just be clear about that. You're jumping into something with excitement and not running away from something from fear. Yes.
Alethea Felton:Say that again, luke. Please Literally say it again.
Luke Komiskey:Say that again, luke, please Literally say it again. Feel stuck in their situation, that they think about these like epic entrepreneur leaps of. I can just burn all the bridges and walk out the door, and life is going to fundamentally change, and I would argue that a better way to think about these changes is taking those small steps today. What are, what are things that you can do potentially in the evenings or when you have free time to like? Start putting down those little baby steps towards that 90 day goal, towards the one year target of what you're trying to get to.
Luke Komiskey:Entrepreneurship doesn't need to be this grand global adventure. Come back and start a business. It sounds really cool on a podcast like this, but there are ways you can create that level of excitement at a much more micro level. And yeah, that would that would be the big thing that I would. I would want people to think about is be very planful about where you want to go in life, and entrepreneurship doesn't need to be for everyone, but it sure is a heck of a ride if you're interested in jumping on the ride.
Alethea Felton:That's right and that was so powerful and true what you said. Because I even had someone to say to me recently and they meant no harm by it, but they're somebody that I used to work with. They're burnt out, exhausted. And they said something to me about girl you left just in time and because da, da, da da. And I had to pause them and I said wait a minute, wait a minute. I said I left education when I was on top. I loved my career. I was not at the point where I wanted to quit. I didn't want to leave because I was disgruntled. It was nothing like that. I left when I was still happy. So I had to let them know that I didn't take this leap because I was running away from it or I hated it. It was just time in my life to make this shift and pivot and transition and I think that is so key is to make sure that this is what you really want and that the timing is right. Now I'm going to take a shift here and I'm going to say two letters and you might chuckle, you might not, but I'm going to say AI.
Alethea Felton:Ai, right now is a hot topic. I have been doing my part to educate people on AI, because what I'm seeing and it may be different in your world what I'm seeing is, on the one hand, entrepreneurs like us who are saying AI has its benefits right. And then other people who are just so anti-AI AI is horrible, ai is bad who are just so anti-AI AI is horrible, ai is bad, right. So what I'm going to ask you, luke, is this is when it comes to artificial intelligence or AI, you've actually, in your work, mentioned before the use of AI-enabled data sets enabled datasets. So how do you foresee AI and automation affecting the future of data-driven decision-making in both education as well as other industries? So do you also think organizations and people in general should be prepped for those changes? You can answer it any way that you want to, but talk about AI.
Luke Komiskey:Yeah for sure. So I've been one to embrace all things AI. I think when, especially when the chat GPT really just like hit the main stage and it felt like everyone and their mother was in chat GPT every day, just like testing out new things, like I was right there with it every night, I was staying up late trying to write children's books and blog posts and, uh, recipe books, just just trying to figure out how does this thing work. I think it's fascinating now because, you know, I don't know how long it's been a year and a half, two years since that initial hype, um, and I think, as of like, as of the time we're doing this conversation, we're we're really hitting this like uh trough of disillusionment, of uh, everyone kind of talked about all these big ai investments and then there's just the realities of like, well, maybe this like technology isn't what we totally thought it was going to be, or like there's some use cases for it, but sometimes it still lacks the creativity or the ability to like uh, you know, make creative decisions along the way. So it is fascinating.
Luke Komiskey:Right now we're kind of going through this like re restructuring I kind of speak for the data industry of large, of there's a bunch of uh marketing around features that came out, and then there's just the realities of like those features aren't totally working. At at at the way that the marketing language made it sound. Um, I think for me, like in the data industry, we we always go through these like big phases of of trendy new terms that people may or may not have heard of. Right, like we talked about big data and like data lakes, uh, and ai kind of joins this next wave of things that people on the front end are excited about, like we won't need dashboards, we won't need reports, because AI is just going to tell us the answer.
Luke Komiskey:But fundamentally, behind the scenes, what the problem still is is that we are making more data than we've ever had before and that data doesn't actually like speak to itself very nicely.
Luke Komiskey:That's why people like our organization exists is to help build the pipelines that help create a trusted foundation so that AI can actually confidently go back and provide insights or answers off of that. The one thing that is missing so much in this journey of AI right now is AI will confidently lie to you over the data set that it is given, and that has always been the challenge for any time a cool technology has shown up for end users is that nobody can trust the data behind the scenes. It's just that now we've got even more of a black box that will confidently tell you this is the answer, without any of the human nuance of yeah, maybe that's slightly wrong, because the way we input that data wasn't totally right, and that is like the challenge and the training that I'm having to do in evangelism in the industry is. Ai is great. It has its use cases. We still got a lot of work to do in the data industry.
Alethea Felton:Yeah, that was well, perfectly, perfectly said, and thank you for that, because I, too, embrace AI, but I don't depend solely on it, of course, and I remind people that it's still people who create AI, so it's still human beings who are programming it, who are creating it, things of that nature. And as we start to come to a close, I could talk to you for hours. I think this has been so insightful, but just some kind of wrap-up questions here is if you could look back on your career as well as your entrepreneurial journey thus far, luke. Share with us a particular moment or decision that you consider pivotal to your success, and what can the audience listening and watching learn from your experience in terms of making decisions that align with their long-term goals and life's happiness?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, I mean the big one for me anytime somebody asks me this question. The big one for me is, of course, that quarter-life retirement that me and my wife did in 2016. From more than just the level of traveling to cool places and experiencing the ultimate marriage test of hanging out with your spouse 24 seven, I think for me, the one takeaway that people can can take from that is it's okay to give yourself a break and take some time to just reflect on where you're going in life. I think before that trip, I didn't even really give myself the space to. You know. Just, I got through all the all the milestones, right, we got through, got through college and got the first job and, uh it, it honestly took me, I felt, like at least 30 days of just a corporate detox to get the type of perspective that helped me align with where I wanted to go in life.
Luke Komiskey:I think it helped. It helped me align around what are my values, what do I want to go in life? I think it helped. It helped me align around what are my values, what do I want to accomplish? We all have a very limited time here. How can we all go out and like live a great story is the mantra that really like came up during that trip for me, um and I again, it doesn't need to be an Epic world trip like that, but that's like. One takeaway I can recommend for people is like give yourself space to like just think and critically introspective view on what are you doing and is it making you happy because you have full control over that? Uh, you just need to start taking the steps towards that exactly, luke.
Alethea Felton:I also appreciate the fact you and your wife made this leap even prior to it being popular, and what I mean by that is that I have noticed that since the pandemic, where they had to be face to face at all times. So I'm glad you all had the experience and really got to enjoy each other as a couple prior to having children and things of that nature, and I'm so glad that you have a wife that you do, who has stood by your side, been there, and that you truly appreciate all she has done for you. I am big on marriage and family. Although I'm not married, my parents have been for nearly 47 years and I really enjoy seeing true partnerships. But if a company or organization wants to partner with you or want to learn more about what you do, who you are and how you can best serve them, how could someone contact you, give us all of that information?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, for sure. So I hang out a lot on LinkedIn. You can find me. At the ending of the URL will be my last name, Comiskey, but look up Luke Comiskey on LinkedIn, I'm sure you'll find me probably the only one. And then our website is gogodatadrivecom and you can feel free to learn a little bit more about what we do and fill out the contact form and you'll be talking to me.
Alethea Felton:And do you have any upcoming projects, happening, events, etc. What are you working on now?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, I mean lots of things. Things were in the middle of right before school season starts, when we do a lot of our implementations for to set school districts up for success. So that that's the what we're heads down doing nowadays. But, yeah, I travel around to a handful of conferences related to education and whatnot, but yeah, mostly, mostly nowadays, it's hanging out at the home office and helping support a global team, do what we do best and drive data-driven decisions every guest that I've ever interviewed so far is that theme of resilience despite challenges and adversity, and you really took that leap of faith in creating this business of being adventurous and traveling the world.
Alethea Felton:So, as a closing question, how do you, luke, cultivate resilience within your team at Data Drive, especially when you face setbacks and challenges? And also, what practical tip could you give to our listeners and viewers to implement resilience in their own teams and personal lives so that they can build a culture of resilience?
Luke Komiskey:Yeah, yeah, fantastic question.
Luke Komiskey:So one of our core values, of our organization that I think really resonates with this is own the outcome, and it really gets around that what we do is not going to be necessarily perfect the first time we implement it, that there's always things that we learn as we go into people's organizations very specific to our business and the only thing that we really talk about as a team is that, regardless of how we show up for others, our goal in this is to support organizations and creating better decisions, but part of that is owning the outcome of whatever we create.
Luke Komiskey:So own the outcome could be owning the mistakes that we put into it and making it right. It could just be understanding that everyone's going to go through different seasons in their business and seasons in their life and, yeah, there's going to be ebbs and flows to everything that we experience. I think in today's economy, we're kind of experiencing that right now. We need resilience more than anything, and I think the one thing I'll harp on for people is perspective. There's going to be ebbs and flows and how you show up in the most trying times will only make you stronger on the upswing.
Alethea Felton:Wow. Thank you so much, luke. I do know that you are going to go even farther than you are now, and it has truly been an honor having this conversation with you, and I continue to hope and pray nothing but the best for you and your family as well, and thank you so much for being a valued guest here on the Power Transformation Podcast.
Luke Komiskey:Thank you so much for your thoughtful questions today. It's a really fun conversation.
Alethea Felton:Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Power Transformation Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe, leave a five-star rating and write a review. It helps us inspire even more listeners. And don't keep it to yourself. Share it with someone who could use a little power in their transformation. Until next time, keep bouncing back, keep rising and be good to yourself and to others.
