Kirill: This is episode number 361 with Analytics Expert, John David Ariansen.
Kirill: Welcome to the SuperDataScience Podcast. My name is Kirill Eremenko, Data Science Coach and Lifestyle Entrepreneur. And each week we bring you inspiring people and ideas to help you build your successful career in data science. Thanks for being here today and now let’s make the complex simple.
Kirill: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience Podcast everybody. Super pumped to have you back here on the show and also super excited for the episode you’re about to hear. We had a fantastic chat with John David and what you need to know about John David is that he is an analytics expert who set up a consulting agency of his own.
Kirill: And in this podcast you will hear plenty of ideas and tips on how to set up your own analytics consulting agency. How to become a freelancer in the space or even how to get a job. A lot of these tips are going to be applicable to getting a job in the space of analytics or data science. And specifically, what are we going to be talking about? Well, we’ll talk about innovative ways to get a job or a consulting gig. And some of the methods that John David has used might sound extremely out of the box and I found them very exciting so can’t wait for you to hear those. We’ll talk about being a big fish in a little pond and what that means. We’ll talk about sales and networking iterations in your own career and in your own projects.
Kirill: COVID-19 and how to network during times of the coronavirus and why it’s necessary and useful for absolutely everybody to learn data visualization. And by the way, John David is in the space of analytics, so we’re going to be talking mostly about the visualization. But at the same time I think that these things are applicable to everybody doing data science. Whether you are a machine learning guru and you are focused predominantly on coding, or you are in the space of analytics, or are you getting through the space of data science, visualization is a very powerful tool. So you’ll hear quite a few things about that here as well. So that is all we are going to be talking about today, I can’t wait for you to check out this episode. So without further ado, let’s dive straight into it and I bring to you analytics expert, John David Ariansen.
Kirill: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast everybody. Super fun to have you on the show. Today’s guest is John David Ariansen who is calling in from North Carolina. John David how are you going?
John David: I’m doing really well. How are you?
Kirill: Very good as well. What’s the name of the city again where you are?
John David: I’m in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Kirill: Greensboro. Okay, great. And how’s things going with all the lockdowns? So you mentioned you walk to your dad’s office, you are breaking the law walking around.
John David: Well, so it’s not illegal to walk around right now, but my coworking space that I usually work out of is completely shut down. We’re pretty much on lockdown, no gatherings of more than 10 people. Fortunately, I think North Carolina isn’t being hit nearly as bad as some of the other states, but also too I mean, Greensboro has only got 300,000 people in the city. I think the major metros are just getting just completely rammed by this coronavirus.
Kirill: Yeah. And the interesting thing is that the situation is changing so fast that I don’t even know and nobody knows what it’s going to be like when this episode goes live. So today just for everybody’s information it’s 6th April, Monday 6th April we’re recording this. This is going to go live in a few weeks from now, maybe like a month and the world will be so different by then.
John David: Right. I mean, hopefully New York has hit its peak. I heard that the deaths are down the past three days in a row but I mean it’s pretty terrifying. Hopefully we’re doing a good job of flattening the curve so to speak.
Kirill: Yeah, that’s right. How long do you think this will last for?
John David: Well I mean, we have a shutdown or lockdown order until the end of this month but who knows. I mean, I think what I’ve been hearing is that it may come back in a second wave that’s not as bad, but there are all these science teams actually working on some type of a cure or a immunity. So maybe there will be the second time that comes around, there’ll be some safeguards in place that’ll dampen the spread even more.
Kirill: Yeah I agree. It’s an unprecedented situation where so many researchers worldwide are working, probably millions of researchers are working on the same problem and are sharing data transparently and helping, collaborating across borders. And putting aside any kind of recognition and who’s going to do it first, who’s going to get all the credit that’s not important anymore. It’s just people are here to solve this problem. While it’s such a drastically difficult time, at the same time it’s really nice to see the collaboration that’s going on in the science space and without a doubt there will be a cure. And moreover, if the next one, the next pandemic hits and there will be a next pandemic, we’ll be prepared right?
John David: Right.
Kirill: We will know how to react.
John David: What I think is interesting is what is this going to have in terms of an effect on how work cultures function? So I think a lot of organizations are realizing, well maybe a positive coming out of this would be that “Hey, working remotely isn’t as scary as we thought it was. In fact our organization didn’t completely crumble when we weren’t allowed to have our employees in the office.”
Kirill: That’s right.
John David: Because that’s the question I get pretty often on my podcast, is how do I land a remote job? And I’m hoping that maybe this will be a boon to even more remote work.
Kirill: Yeah, hopefully. There’s been a lot of industries that have been historically upholstered from education to… For instance courts, like how do you hold a court remotely? Very difficult. I don’t think that’s a common practice in any country or was a common practice. A lot of office work as you said. So definitely when you’re put in a situation where there’s no other way, you’re going to find ways and moreover, this is not a week long lockdown. If this continues for months, then people are just going to get into the whole habits of just doing things more online. But what impact do you think that has on the social element? We even hear this social distancing concept. Do you think that people off to this will be more reluctance to network and connect with each other and meet each other up for coffee or dinner and things that?
John David: I think initially yes, people are going to be kind of hesitant. Although, I mean at the same time people are probably so thirsty right now for human contact and socializing that they might just run out of their apartment and out of isolation and into the pub or something.
Kirill: True. Interesting. How’s your work going speaking of working remotely? Because you have a consulting agency in the space of business intelligence and analytics. How’s that going?
John David: Right. Yeah. So I run Silvertone Analytics, which I’ve been running that for about three years now. I did lose one of my clients recently, well I shouldn’t say I didn’t lose them… They do onsite sales training, so every single one of their lines of businesses completely on pause right now. So I had a call with them about two weeks ago and we have quite a bit more work in terms of my consulting engagement with them. And they were talking about it in terms of well in the fall when we get back to this not we’re done where we’re just going to stop this consulting engagement.
Kirill: Gotcha. How many clients do you have in total right now?
John David: Let me see. I have four clients right now.
Kirill: That’s including that company or not?
John David: No, that’s not including that company.
Kirill: Okay, gotcha. And so what is it that you do for your clients?
John David: So that’s a really good question. It breaks down into three main things that I do on the consulting side. So of course I teach as well, in fact we’re collaborating on a course that’s coming up soon.
Kirill: Yay. Exciting, Power Bi. And we’ve already done a course, right? You’ve done a course of SuperDataScience on Tableau?
John David: Yeah. So that’s what I was going to start off by backing up a little bit. When I first finished my MBA, I started consulting as a Tableau specialist. And I was nothing but data visualization and nothing but specifically Tableau data visualization. And what I realized is I’m in Greensboro, North Carolina and most of the work I was getting was through I was giving public talks around here and just networking and meeting people that way. I realized that being a Tableau specialist was kind of a small market.
John David: So then I started branching out into Power BI and that’s Power BI and Tableau, that’s a significantly larger market. But then I realized just doing data visualization is not a huge market in and into itself so I started branding myself as an analytics expert. And really what I do it’s three core things. I help with data governance. So if the data isn’t being governed properly, you can’t even do data visualization. It’s just if you have bad data that’s telling you the wrong thing, then visualizing it isn’t going to lead to an actionable insight.
Kirill: Yeah. It might only lead you to an actual insight that might be a very poor insight or a very bad action.
John David: Right. So I realized that what are the bottlenecks that are getting me more and more clients or more work? And data governance was probably the number one thing. Especially… So my clients range anywhere from 150 million in revenue all the way down to 500,000. I try not to take on as many of the smaller clients because it’s harder to have a big impact on one of those smaller organizations. I do do quite a bit of philanthropic work too. I’m a board member through Triad Local First, which is a nonprofit here in Greensboro that supports localism. But it’s really hard to make a living working with smaller clients. So the first thing is data governance. The next thing is I help once the data is at least being talked about we then move on to defining key metrics.
John David: And then once we sit down with the executive team and usually I get brought in one department. It seems my wheelhouse has kind of been sales and marketing, building data visualizations that help improve sales teams, how they spend their time and then also marketing. Where are your leads coming in? Where are your sales coming from? And then doubling down on the things that are working. So once we define those KPIs, we then move into the third step which is implementing an analytics infrastructure and that’s where Tableau or Power BI comes in. So I haven’t abandoned them, it’s just I’m doing a whole lot more. It’s almost like I’m an advisor to CFOs, CMOs, COOs of… Sitting down with them and helping them learn about analytics and how they can improve their decision making process.
Kirill: Okay. Gotcha. So I want to understand a bit better, you finished your MBA and instead of joining a company you decided to start consulting. What was that decision directed by?
John David: So I have a problem with authority. So I got my MBA with a concentration in analytics and I thought pivoting into the analytics space that I wanted to go and work for one of these bigger companies. And I had two internships in a $12 billion company and it was just… That six months it was a mess. It was I didn’t do well in a very rigid hierarchical corporate structure.
Kirill: This was during your MBA they provided you with internships?
John David: They didn’t provide it, I went out and found it. I mean, between year one and year two you have to get an internship because there’s a summer course where they teach you how to be effective in the workplace. And you check in with your teacher and then your manager also gives you feedback. But yeah, so I tried kind of going the traditional route and it just was not for me. And then to back up even further, before I went back to get my MBA I did sales for about three years. So I was a 100% commission in the insurance space and I developed quite a bit of sales skills and kind of realize that things were kind of negotiable.
John David: You can sell people and just because an opportunity isn’t on the table right now, that doesn’t mean that if you’re smart and you’re creative, that you can’t put a third option on the table. And to illustrate this, so I did two internships with that $12 billion company and it wasn’t really a good fit. So I got a little bit creative with my final internship coming into the last semester of my MBA. And what I did was… And I don’t know, I haven’t heard another story this in the analytics space specifically in terms of internships, but I applied for an internship that was designed for a sophomore or a junior in undergrad.
John David: And what I did was I showed up to that interview and this is what they were looking for. They were looking for someone to pull manufacturing data and then build some very basic Excel charts and graphs. To understand how are we doing in terms of is there seasonality in our sales? How’s our in stock percentage keeping up? Are we holding onto excess amount of inventory? So I showed up to that interview with an alternate proposal. And maybe that’s just my sales skills and my kind of entrepreneurial spirit coming, but I told them, “Hey this is a three month internship. I can automate this entire process for you using Tableau.”
John David: And they paid me the same that they would sophomore or junior but in a three month period I scaled up their analytics capabilities by 12 times. So they had 12 assortments. They were looking for just one assortment to be analyzed and I sat down with the president of the company and I said, “Hey, what are you looking for in terms of your assortment analysis?” And he kind of mapped it all out. And I was like, “Well, we can build an automated infrastructure around this. So let me understand the data that you pull out of the system and then I’ll build a Tableau infrastructure where all you need to do is just click a mouse to get the insight that you need.”
Kirill: And what did he say? It’s impossible?
John David: Well he knew that I was an MBA student and that it was a little bit strange that I was applying for such a basic internship. No, I mean he bought it. He was like, “Wow this sounds exactly what I want.” And I’m still managing that system three years later.
Kirill: Wow. So they’re still your client?
John David: They are, yeah.
Kirill: Wonderful. Very cool.
Kirill: Hey everybody. Hope you’re enjoying this amazing episode. This is a quick announcement and we’ll get right back to it. We are hiring at SuperDataScience. With the recent pandemic and the coronavirus we all know how a lot of people have lost their jobs and their source of income. So hopefully this will be a breath of fresh air for some people out there. We are a 100% remote team, we all work online. We’re continuing to grow and I’ve just literally just published 10 new positions at SuperDataScience which might be suitable to you. And even if they’re not suitable to you, check them out there at superdatascince.com/careers.
Kirill: Check them out and send them to somebody you know who may have been displaced by this pandemic and all the lock downs. Who may have lost their job and source of income, you could change their life. We are creating opportunities for people to do their best work, to contribute to create amazing products and create amazing experiences for people studying data science. So here are some of the positions that have just been released. VP of Marketing, Product Designer, General Manager, VP of Sales, Junior Media Creator, Sales Representative, B2B Event Sales Representative, Event Marketer, B2B Sales Representative and Marketing Strategist. And those are just some of the initial positions that we have available right now.
Kirill: More will come soon so keep an eye out at superdatascince.com/careers. Maybe we’ll even post a data scientist position in the near future. But even if none of these are relevant to you specifically, if you know somebody who’s in marketing or in sales or who’s a great general manager. Or who’s great at creating amazing products in education and learning experiences or who’s great at running events or somebody who is amazing at creating animated videos. If you know any of these people, any people with the right talents and skills, please send them this link. Superdatascince.com/careers this could change their life or career, especially in these difficult times. Thank you very much for your help and let’s get right back to it.
Kirill: So that’s how you got your first client, very interesting story. Creative way… I call these guerrilla tactics, nobody does that. Nobody uses a low level internship application to get your foot in the door and then blow their minds away on the interview. And then also leave a lot of poor sophomore graduates or students out of an opportunity-
John David: I guess that wasn’t very kind of me.
Kirill: But it’s just your approach, right? At the end of the day, you delivered value to the company that’s the goal, right? You create more value than they wanted and that’s why you got the whole gig. How’d you get your second client?
John David: How did I get my second client? Actually, this is another really interesting story. I started posting on Reddit so there’s-
Kirill: What did you start posting?
John David: Just looking for Tableau work. I just posted on r/forhire and granted this was three years ago, this may be a super saturated niche now. In fact, I think that Upwork has come a long way in terms of actually being able to find freelance work. But yeah, I posted on there and it turns out there was a guy in Winston-Salem, which is about 30 minutes away from Greensboro, who he does web development and he wanted to start adding in marketing analytics as a product offering. So then we naturally partnered unfortunately that didn’t really pan out that well.
John David: But it kind of showed me that, “Hey, there’s a market here.” That they’re specifically in Greensboro and I think you’ll see this with a lot of smaller cities, is that you can be a big fish in a little pond. If you go to London or New York or San Francisco there’s a bunch of data analysts but I’m the only analytic shop in town in Greensboro. I mean I do have a few competitors, but they do a full product offering and analytics is just one part of it. But I’m the only person who is doing analytics driven management consulting in Greensboro.
Kirill: Gotcha. So you’re saying that everybody listening should move to Greensboro and set up there?
John David: Well all I’m saying is you’re a little too late for that because I got my footing here.
Kirill: I love it. Okay, so that shows there’s a market and so what’d you do from there?
John David: For about two months I worked out of my apartment and I got super lonely. So then I decided to look around and to try to find a coworking space. And it turns out that there is a really sweet coworking space right off of Elm Street, which is the main drag in downtown Greensboro. And then I just started working out of there and that was amazing to me in that I met so many other entrepreneurs who then could connect me to other entrepreneurs and it was just kind of just a network effect. I made a name for myself as the analytics guy that I would get brought up in conversations somewhat organically.
Kirill: Gotcha. And so from-
John David: But from there I actually met my first business partner that really, really worked out and his name is Gary Fly. And what his business was at the time is he was a fractional CEO, so he would come in kind of like you know how-
Kirill: Like a CEO for hire.
John David: Right. Well almost the model was how you buy a beat up house and flip it?
Kirill: Uh-huh (affirmative).
John David: He would do kind of the same thing for organizations. So one of the ways that he kind of saw that he could have some longer term income is if we could implement an analytic system and then leave that behind. Because then that might open up more sales opportunities also kind of a longer term revenue model for him too. And he was a vector force, so once I met him then all of a sudden I met so many other business owners. And that was kind of the beginning of my agency really starting to get some traction.
Kirill: Interesting. Okay. Gotcha. So basically not sitting in one place, moving around, posting, going to places, meeting people. Through networking you got your second, third, fourth clients.
John David: Correct. Yeah.
Kirill: Exciting times, man. Exciting story. And what I was interested in as well in a couple of times during this what you’ve already described, you sat down with the CEO, the director of a company, the board of executives or the executive team and so on. If you don’t mind me asking you are pretty young, how old are you?
John David: 31.
Kirill: 31? Right. So when you walk in and there’s a board of executives sitting there like a seasoned executive who’s being around for 20, 30 years. You and I we were born when they were already starting their work, how do you feel and do you ever get a pushback because of your age?
John David: I actually don’t come into that too often. And the reason why is I’m sure you have some parents that are a bit older, do you ever have them ask you about your computer or how to fix something?
Kirill: Yeah they do. Yeah.
John David: So they kind of see me as like the new, the person with the ideas in the room. And they realized that if… Well it kind of depends though. There are some executives I’ve run into who are very close minded and it’s like, “This is my fiefdom. I’m running this with an iron fist and you can’t come in.” Those aren’t the executives I want to work with. I want to work with executives who are open minded and also looking into the future because these are the companies that are actually going to adapt and change and be around for a long time.
Kirill: Gotcha. Okay. That’s really cool. So that mindset, I like that mindset and it helps get over that original fear that some people might have that, “Oh, well I’m too young to be advising companies. I have to be in the workforce. I have to be part of a company.” No, that didn’t work for you and you thought to yourself, “Oh well, I’m going to be a consultant now.” Very good.
John David: Yeah. I did have some struggle though in terms of sometimes Gary would sell projects that I didn’t know how to actually implement.
Kirill: Oh, wow. Gary is quite ambitious. Did he talk to you first? Or it’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to sell this. By the way, John David here’s another one.”
John David: I mean, I would be in the room but he’s a seasoned entrepreneur and I mean apparently that’s somewhat common in the entrepreneur space of “I’m going to sell a product and I’ve got to figure 20% of it out before I actually launch it”. I was very, very much uncomfortable with that. I will say this though, for how uncomfortable I’ve been over the past three years I look back on it and it’s like man, I just ran through walls for three years. Just upping my skill and my knowledge base and learning about how to actually implement a lot of these things.
John David: Some mental models of like what does a CFO want to learn from their data? Or what is a CMO looking for? And then I’m starting to actually develop my own body of work kind of. Like these are the product, the service offerings that I’ve developed through my own knowledge. Back in my MBA courses I did have case studies that I learned from, but I mean that’s not really a great way of learning. The best way to learn is to take on projects and have problems pop up and then solve them yourself because that’s such a deep way of learning.
Kirill: Yeah. Like in a case study it’s nice, it showcases some things to you but it lacks the real component. Usually in the case study data is already polished up for you or there’s a certain set of steps that if you take you’ll be successful. And even if you don’t figure it out on your own, they’ll tell you, right? They’ll give you the answer. But in the real world, you don’t even know if there is that set of steps.
John David: Right. Are you familiar with the Naval Ravikant?
Kirill: Of course, yeah.
John David: So did you listen to his-
Kirill: Joe Rogan podcast?
John David: I did listen to that but then-
Kirill: That was the best podcast I’ve ever heard.
John David: And I’m not sure if he mentioned this concept in that podcast, I’ll listen to it. Well I know for sure that it’s in I Will Teach You To Be Rich Podcasts, his podcast.
Kirill: Wait Naval Ravikant is the founder of AngelList.
John David: Yes.
Kirill: I Will Teach You To Be Rich that’s Ramit Sethi.
John David: Okay. Maybe it’s not, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, it’s like I will teach you to be wealthy.
Kirill: Oh yeah. He’s got his own podcast, like mini series.
John David: Right.
Kirill: Yeah, I’ve heard that one. Some part of it actually.
John David: Why that’s relevant is he mentiones this concept called specific knowledge. And specific knowledge is where you solved a problem on your own and then now you have that visceral experience of completely being dumbfounded by it, doing some research, doing some work on it and then solving it yourself. That just kind of roots itself in your subconscious. And it also speaks volume because you can say, “Oh yeah, I’ve worked on this before and this is how I solve the problem. And even furthermore, here’s the economic impact of solving that problem.”
Kirill: Economic impact on the company or on you?
John David: Well on the company. You can say-
Kirill: Oh, you demonstrate the tangible results to your next prospective customer.
John David: Right. Yeah you can say, “Look we identified a problem in the supply chain and it means that you’re holding onto $150,000 worth of excess inventory all winter long.” They’re going to know what that means. There going to go, “Oh, if I had $150,000, I can invest it in this.”
Kirill: Yeah. And I can pay for this service that you’re going to provide and still have extra.
John David: Right.
Kirill: Nice man. Nice. Naval Ravikant is so good. I love that that mini series about wealth creation. He’s like… What is this critical quote that we can’t solve… Before we solve many of the world’s problems let’s first help everybody understand how to become wealthy and then there’ll be much more relaxed, I’m paraphrasing of course, about all these other problems. Because if you have a financial stress in your life the last thing you’re going to be thinking about is like how do I reduce pollution? Or how do I become more environmentally conscious? You’re struggling to survive. You got to put food on the table for your family.
Kirill: And yeah, so he gave some really cool examples about that. And wealth creation was the other thing that I learned from him, is that wealth creation is not a zero sum game, right? It’s not chess or status. Status is zero sum game. If you’re a number one in something and I’m number seven, for me to become number one you’re going to have to become number two or even lower. Whereas with wealth, you and I we meet up, we go away, we create something of value, we come back together, we exchange it now both of us have more wealth in that sense. And that’s a very interesting concept he brought up.
John David: Yeah. And I think also too, that’s something that’s really relevant to your audience is scale. He talks about scaling productivity. So if we go back to my internship example, what I really provided that president of that company was I gave him analytics at scale. So instead of doing ad hoc hiring an intern that’s a junior in undergrad to do this one line review, they now have a system that updates from their perspective automatically every two weeks. I have to do a little bit on the backend unfortunately because they’re using a legacy system that I can’t hook into with an API. But from their perspective they have all the data curated in a way that they can quickly identify the key metrics for them.
Kirill: Okay. Gotcha. But so what did that do for you?
John David: It really hammered home the concept of systems thinking versus ad hoc. And this is not really something that I was taught in school of building a system and really cultivating a system versus going off and solving individual problems that are novel each time. So I’ve kind of developed a framework, I mean I walked you through the three main things that I do. I’ve seen that pattern establish, doesn’t matter if I’m working with an erectile dysfunction company, a waste disposal company or a manufacturing company, those same three steps apply across the board.
Kirill: Data governance, KPIs and analytics infrastructure.
John David: Right. That’s kind of the space that I occupy. ”
Kirill: “I occupy” nice, I love it. Okay. Gotcha. So do you work with companies locally in Greensboro or do you work online with companies as well?
John David: I would say probably 80% of my clients are local. I do have one longterm client that works down in Texas and they’re actually doing BI in the gas and oil space. So I help them with their visualizations to kind of getting that taken care of.
Kirill: Nice. Okay. Very cool. Yeah, that’s very interesting. Let’s talk a bit about your podcast, right? So on the flip side, you’re moonlighting doing this podcast about how to get a job in data science. Well, first of all congrats on launching that this year which is very exciting. How’s that been going?
John David: It’s been going great. I mean, it’s funny because I see that I operate under this umbrella of analytics and getting more traction on this podcast means that I can reach out to more and more established people in the analytics space. And I can also interview clients of mine and talk through some of the problems they’ve had with analytics and how they think about it. I see it kind of as a tide rises all ships. So this is just further kind of cementing me as an expert. It’s kind of adding some legitimacy to me.
Kirill: Gotcha. But what do you discuss there? How to get a job in data science right? So it’s a bit different to, “All right, let’s talk about analytics or let’s talk about common customer problems in data science.” Why did you decide to specifically help people get jobs in data science?
John David: Well, kind of where I see my consulting agency moving towards is once we build out an analytics infrastructure, they’re not going to pay me the extremely high rate that I charge as part of their overhead. They’re seeing me as a very defined specific project. So what has started happening is they’re now looking to me to place full time analysts to actually run the systems that I build. And that plus getting back to HQ one of the people I met there who’s working out of there as well is-
Kirill: What’s HQ?
John David: HQ Greensboro, my co-working space.
Kirill: Oh that’s the co-working.
John David: Yeah. One of the people that I met there is Elizabeth Illig and she is the career service person for Wake Forest Masters of Analytics. And we got to talk in and I was telling her about I want to get a podcast up and running and she was saying we could potentially partner. Because she’s got all these frameworks of the students that she’s worked with all their success stories, and then she’s also kind of developed her own approach which breaks down in five steps. So we structured the first five months of the podcast to follow kind of the five steps of getting an analytics job. So the first step is discovery, and that’s kind of researching the job market and identifying, getting back to Naval’s, your specific knowledge, what are you good at. And where does that fit into the areas of the analytics market that are growing.
John David: Then once you kind of pick a direction and carve out an area where you think you could kind of thrive in the analytics space, you then build skills. And that’s a lot of the courses that I teach are data visualization focused. But if you decide that you don’t want to be a data visualization specialist, you could start finding other courses. And I’ve interviewed quite a few people who build online courses and also one person who advises on building out data analytics and data science boot camps for universities. So that was just an interview packed full knowledge. Then after skill building, you have networking, which we talked about that a little bit earlier. How do you network during COVID-19? And we’re actually releasing an episode tomorrow, which is April 7th on networking when you’re in lockdown.
John David: Then after networking it’s personal branding, which is building a portfolio, getting your LinkedIn page up to snuff and then also building out a resume. And then finally the last month is interviewing. So we talk through strategies of how to talk about yourself. Which I mean that’s really where I’m pretty good in terms of explaining myself and then framing things up. There is this one book I read called, I think it’s called Sell Anything. I may be getting that book title wrong but it talks about how to frame up deals and an interview is essentially that, you’re the commodity that’s being bought. How do you frame yourself up so that you look as positive as you possibly can to the interviewee.
Kirill: You mean the interviewer?
John David: Interviewer, yeah. You’re the interviewee.
Kirill: Okay. Very cool. That’s a noble thing to do. So podcast, series of episodes. By the way, I just checked it out. I keep getting the name wrong. It’s actually called How to Get an Analytics Job, not a job in data science.
John David: Yeah, Right.
Kirill: Speaking of that, let’s define this. We identify this as an interesting topic for this podcast for us to chat about. Analytics versus data science, what’s the difference?
John David: I have my opinions on this and I almost hesitate to broadcast them out there because I feel like I’ve had people who are hardcore coders and mathematicians being like you’re not a data scientist.
Kirill: But opinions are opinions, right? So with a caveat these are our opinions, let’s dive into it. Nobody’s going to get lynched for their opinions here.
John David: So the way it works in my agency is I see myself as an analytics expert and that’s kind of where data bumps into the business world. I do have data scientists who are kind of more math focus that solve very specific problems and they use Python and other coding languages.
Kirill: People you outsource some work to?
John David: Correct. So yeah, that’s kind of where I see the differentiation. And there’s not really a standard that I’ve seen of someone really nailing it down of what’s the difference between analytics and data science? It seems like kind of a permeable membrane, people are somewhat mixed in between there.
Kirill: Well here’s what I think. I think data science is… And again as you I’ve heard very different opinions, very reputable people even on this podcast have said that analytics is not part of data science, data science is specifically coding. My opinion is data science, very broad analytics is a sub segment of data science. So you have the whole machine learning side of data science, you have visualization, analytics. For me even presentation of results. So in my view you can be a data scientist who does absolutely zero coding, zero business intelligence, zero Tableau, whatever else, visualization.
Kirill: But you are very good specifically at explaining complex insights and findings to a business audience, to people who are going to be making those business decisions. That’s all you do. You’re like an analytics or data science, insights, visualization, whatever translator. That’s all you do for your job. You go around talking to executives, explaining and putting this into understandable slides or presentations, whatever else. That’s also a data scientist in my view because you are in that whole ecosystem of getting from data to actions.
John David: Interesting. Yeah. I would say that I kind of sit further to that end of the spectrum in that I’m kind of yeah, like an interpreter. Like I-
Kirill: But you also create the insights, right? You use BI to great insights. You just don’t use machine learning or deep learning and all those sophisticated, complex things which is totally fine. Somebody else would, but I think you combined a few of those roles.
John David: Yeah. Well, I mean Power BI and Tableau it’s essentially point and click with a little bit of coding sprinkled in there. So yeah, it’s almost like maybe I have a little bit of imposter syndrome saying I’m a data scientist because my data scientist that I outsource projects to has a master’s degree in applied mathematics. And I’m like, “Wow, you’re in a completely different…” Well, and what’s interesting though is he’s amazing at math, but he doesn’t have the sales skills and the business acumen that I have. So I see that there’s a great opportunity for partnership there.
Kirill: Yeah, that’s exactly it. There’s an interesting book, what it this called? The End of Jobs by I think it’s Taylor Pearson. And I think he actually quotes a book in there called The Fourth Economy and what this reminded me all of is that… Well, let’s say after the agricultural, after the industrial revolution we moved into an economy of time where the nine to five was introduced. Which was originally nine to seven or something that but then they cut it down to nine to five. Where the amount of time you spent on the conveyor belt producing stuff was directly proportionate to the amount of stuff you produce. Then we moved on in somewhere around the eighties, nineties to an economy of education, right?
Kirill: Where no longer nine to five was as important because now you can do a lot of work in a shorter period of time just through your education, through your ideas, through your thinking, just thinking process. And people with degrees were very, very valuable. It was if you can get a PhD in your company or you are a person with a master’s degree, that was really cool. And the higher your degree, the more you were getting paid. But then in the late 2000s, start of 2010s we moved away from that. We’re actually now in an economy of entrepreneurship an economy of ideas where we see this across the board. That no matter what kind of degree you have, no matter how much education you have, your salary is not really linked to that.
Kirill: There are law firms that require just somebody doing admin work, a clerk to have a master’s degree in law because there are so many degrees out there. So now we’re in an age of entrepreneurship. Where it’s about the people that are making the most impact or the people that are driving the most change are people who put together teams or put together other people including themselves, working on concepts. Like what you described, it’s really hard to be somebody who’s very good at mathematics and machine learning and all that kind of stuff, the complex or the coding side of data science. And at the same time be good at business intelligence and analytics and at the same time also be good at a presentation and at the same time be good at selling and marketing.
Kirill: All of these components, very hard for one person to combine and you’re probably going to drop the ball somewhere. So at the end of the day, it’s about understanding what your strengths are and finding the right people with complementing skills and attributes that together you can as you said, create a partnership. And put together a offering that will help clients and that will meet their needs and that will make a massive impact for people or businesses or industries.
John David: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I mean, it is interesting, you only have a finite amount of time and energy and it’s on you to choose where you invest that.
Kirill: That’s true.
John David: And it’s what I see as a huge opportunity. So we actually interviewed this guy by the name of Ken G who is a data scientist in the sports analytics space. And something he was saying that’s popping up crazy right now is that… I think I’m remembering this correctly, they’ve loosened the sports betting laws and what’s happened in that industry is that a data scientist will create an algorithm or a piece of technology that is extremely valuable and then that spins off into its own company. And I think that’s really fascinating and that’s kind of where you have that skill that you’ve cultivated and you developed and then the opportunity comes to you. Because you are uniquely gifted based on how you spent your time and energy over the past few years, 10 years, however long. To be able to be the person to kind of benefit from that specific opportunity.
Kirill: Very interesting. And do you think that’s just in sports betting or in any industry people can come across situations like that?
John David: Oh, I mean, I’m seeing it myself. I’ve had multiple startup opportunities come my way because someone will come up with an idea and then there’ll be like, “We need someone to run the analytics,” and they’ll come to me. I mean recently I had one that kind of flopped, but I’ve got a new opportunity that’s just fallen on my lap because I’m the analytics guy in Greensboro. And this guy has come up with a really… I mean if this startup that has kind of fallen in my lap pops, it’s going to pop huge. And it’s on the data governance side for retailers. I can’t really talk about it too much because I’m under NDA, but it has something to do with tracking data for retailers. And he’s looking to me to design the analytics infrastructure behind it and then that’s going to scale up.
Kirill: Awesome.
John David: So yeah. So it’s really interesting to see how you build something and you have no idea what opportunities are going to come your way. Kind of my partnership with you guys.
Kirill: Yeah, true. How did that come about by the way?
John David: This is a good story I think actually. So about a year and a half into my business, I just could not land a new client. No matter how hard I would prospect, it just wasn’t happening. So what I did with that free time was I started YouTube-ing and I just started making videos on analytics. And then about that time, maybe six months after, I just started doing that. And while I was building these YouTube videos, I was getting better at recording, being on camera, getting the lighting right just kind of incrementally getting better at it. A new Tableau, the desktop specialist certification came out and I was one of the first…
John David: Like within a week or two of it releasing, I took it and then made a review on it on my YouTube channel and that got picked up by the YouTube algorithm. And now all of a sudden I have a YouTube channel that’s just getting a steady stream of views. And then I decided to then make a course on the desktop specialist certification and I’m still making a decent amount of money from that now, because that was almost a year and a half ago. And I think someone from your team found that course and then said, “Hey, You’ve got really good audio, you seem to be an expert in this space. Let’s partner on another Tableau course.”
Kirill: And that’s when you did the Tableau for marketing course?
John David: Correct.
Kirill: Gotcha. Now we’ve got some Power BI exciting courses coming up.
John David: Right, yeah. We’re doing the exact same thing on the Power BI side.
Kirill: Nice. Very cool man. Yeah. Okay. Well the six months seems to be a magic number for me as well. Once I decided to long time ago leave my job at Deloitte and find a job that would allow me back in the industry and also allow me more free time to work on my business. About the same time, maybe a bit less than six months I was just posting on LinkedIn, just posting stuff and then opportunities started coming to me. So I guess a takeaway here for people listening is if you have a goal in mind, if you want to do something just start doing it. You’re never going to be perfect right away, you’re going to get incrementally better.
Kirill: Like for instance, our head of video editing in our… We have a team called Epic Media. In our Epic Media team, he’s just started posting YouTube videos about how to do color correction and green screen and so on. And he posted his first video and it’s already great but I know with time he’ll definitely get better and better and better. It’s about stepping over that first barrier of fear and once you started doing it you get better. You get into the process and before you know it just as you’re getting into it and getting excited about it, that’s when the opportunities are going to start coming your way. So yeah that’s been a takeaway for me, have you noticed that in your life in other areas as well?
John David: Oh yeah. I don’t know if it was Joe Rogan who said this or where I picked this up, but was it… It was a famous martial artist from the 1960s or seventies that said, “I don’t fear the man who knows 10,000 different strikes. I fear the man who knows one strike, but has done it 10,000 times.” So it’s an iterative process. And the thing about having that iterations of either taking on projects or doing videos is that you start to uncover these incremental little adjustments. That when you get enough of those together, it just all of a sudden pops and then you’ve got something that is just on a whole another level.
Kirill: Yeah, beautiful. Love it. To wrap things up slowly let’s talk a bit about actionable advice, right? So we’re talking about a lot of cool things on this podcast and what people can do and what you’ve done, what I’ve done. What would your three key takeaways be for people listening if they want to start, get a job in data science? Or even more so in this day and age again, we don’t know what the world will look when this goes live.
Kirill: But assuming the lockdowns are still in place, it’s quite hard to get a job because you’re stuck at home. Maybe people want to build a freelance career in data science, maybe they want to start a consulting company in data science remotely or things like that so what would your advise be? The top three tips you can share with people who are in a position like that that? Who either want to get a job in data science or sorry, analytics in analytics or who wants to start consulting companies in that space?
John David: I think the first place that you should start is actually building up a portfolio. And this is kind of like that analogy I was talking about practicing that strike 10,000 times. Just start building something and work on problems that you find interesting because you’re going to put a lot more time and energy into solving that. And we actually interviewed this guy by the name of Michael Galarnyk on our podcast and his analytics blog is getting about 260,000 hits a month and he now has more opportunity coming to him than he could ever take on.
John David: So I mean, he’s kind of already established himself and is already behind the bell curve in terms of he’s got his blog working for him now and it’s generating a lot of traction. But he was saying that if you want to get an analytics job or a data science job, just get out there and now is the perfect time to do that in the digital space. Because if you’re working from home or unfortunately if you got laid off, you now have this time where you can start to dedicate to your own personal projects.
Kirill: Gotcha. Great idea, great advice. Build a portfolio.
John David: And I mean to take that even a step further, which may be point two is you may want to start thinking in terms of a content calendar. What we did with our podcast which I can parallel to someone getting into data science or analytics space is we wrote down all the topics that we know in depth and can really talk to. And then what we did is we prioritize the ones that… Well I’m doing keyword research, I’m using TubeBuddy but we’re finding the where we have some expertise and where there’s a big gap in knowledge. So on YouTube if there’s no videos on… Actually this is a perfect example. There’s not very many YouTube videos on how to build a data science or analytics portfolio. And over the past few weeks I interviewed someone who has built a successful line and I plan on actually going step by step of how to build out a Tableau public portfolio because that’s where people are getting jobs now.
Kirill: True. Very true. Gottcha, content calendar. For you it’s understandable for your podcast, what does it mean for people listening?
John David: It just gives them some priority on what projects to tackle first. And I think that’s a huge de-motivator. Like if they have six different projects they want to work on, they may never start on it because they’re just overwhelmed because there’s so much work to do. It can give you a little bit of priority on what to focus on first and then get that out there, publish it, maybe post it on Reddit or LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn seems to be a great tool now and-
Kirill: Yeah, exactly. You don’t even need to have a website, just post on LinkedIn.
John David: Right. How do you create a data science portfolio? Have you done that specifically?
Kirill: No, actually. No, I don’t have a data science portfolio. I have a Tableau public repository but that’s mostly for courses stuff. I think people would do it on… You can either do it… I see what you mean. LinkedIn is just more posts, but what’s his name? Randy Lau did that on LinkedIn. He posted everything he was learning, he was just posting them as articles on LinkedIn, I think he has 11 of them and that was very powerful for him. I know you can do something like that on GitHub and of course Tableau, you could go on Medium.
Kirill: I’ve seen people do it on medium.com which you can even customize, make it look your own blog it doesn’t matter that it’s on Medium. Just the thing is that for some people this creating a website, WordPress, whatever else is a barrier, it’s another excuse not to do it. So that’s why I always recommend just do it somewhere where there’s minimal barriers to entry. And then once you get traction then you can expand into your own website, then you’ll even be more excited to do it.
John David: Yeah. Actually now that I’m thinking about it from my interview with Michael Galarnyk. He said you could even do a screen capture and just show your model working or show the analysis and then embed it in a LinkedIn article that you publish. So I mean there are definitely ways that you can get yourself out there, but I think that’s how you network in a time of the coronavirus is you put together content. And the key to effective content traction is consistency. I mean, it’s got to be quality and consistent, but if you have those two things running in tandem then all of a sudden who knows where you might end up.
Kirill: Gotcha. And to your point about a content calendar, it not only it gives you that you could be lost or not knowing where to start here if you have like seven ideas you want to work on. Like do a image detection for your cat and then track your I don’t know, how you walk around the apartment while you are in quarantine or whatever else and visualize and work on all those things. You don’t know where to start? Well a content calendar will help you start as you mentioned, but also having a content calendar… For instance, the second thing in your content calendar will let that the first thing isn’t an open ended project.
Kirill: You don’t have the whole year to work on that. You only have three weeks and after that you got to get onto the second thing and it will push you. And I’ve noticed this with people that if they just say I’m going to work on this one project procrastination and other reasons why you’re not getting to it can make that drag out for months. But if you have five projects lined up and you only have three weeks for this one, then two weeks for that one, then a month for the next one that’s going really get you going and push you especially once you get closer to that deadline.
John David: I mean, I can actually add to that. If you can, pick up some freelance clients. You want to talk about a motivator, because I still struggle sometimes with… I’m very externally motivated, which I do not like about myself. I don’t like to be late but if I set a deadline for myself sometimes I’ll skimp on it. So partnering with Elizabeth on this podcast, I have to have an episode ready every Tuesday or else I’ve let her down. So if you are struggling for motivation then maybe a good idea for you to pick up a freelance client, because if you don’t get that project done you don’t get paid and I think that’s a great motivator for you.
Kirill: Easy to say, but where do you pick up this freelance client?
John David: So, yeah. I was supposed to say it’s easier for me because this is what I do all day long, I’ve built my life around working with new clients. I would say Upwork is a somewhat solid way of getting new clients. I have picked up some clients from Upwork and they actually introduced a new feature where people looking for work can now toggle between U.S based contractors and those all around the world. And that’s helped out somewhat because a couple of years ago when I first tried Upwork people in very low income countries were just coming in with offers that were like a third or half. So if you’re in the U.S I would say Upwork is a decent way and now that coronavirus has hit us, I think more and more people are looking to pick up work from online sources.
John David: And you can also look around just your community where you’re at. We didn’t really talk about this too much but I joined the board of directors for a local nonprofit about two years ago. And I’m the treasurer and I run data visualization showing the impact of the nonprofit. That has led to quite a bit of work in terms of just meeting people kind of from a position of power. I’m the board of director and I’m also the treasurer and I run the data visualization. So kind of stacking those three together, people are like, “Oh wow, this guy’s legit. And if I have some analytics work or maybe there’s a project that he could help me with.” That that helped quite a bit.
Kirill: Gotcha. Okay. Very useful. All right, so we talked about three things so far. Build a portfolio… Two things, build a portfolio, a content calendar. What’s your third and final piece of advise?
John
David: So this is where I’m biased. I think you should learn about data visualization. And I was kind of thinking about this while you were talking just now. Because some of your audience is way into the numbers and coding and that kind of stuff and that’s great. But if you’re doing all that work and it’s heavy lifting but you’re not showing any results, then I think that that’s a major weakness or flaw in kind of how you’re operating in that space. I think you should be able to show the insights that you’re using. And I mean correct me if I’m wrong, there is data visualization capabilities within Python and R and all the coding languages.
Kirill: Yeah.
John David: So learning about the art of storytelling through data I think that will help you longterm negotiate your value as a data scientist or an analyst because you’re going to show the outcome.
Kirill: I see it as a easy win in the sense that you’re already doing the heavy lifting, you’re already doing all this work. But in order to get even better at machine learning or even better at deep learning or Python or R or whatever you’re using, you’re going to need to invest I don’t know, weeks, months of learning, of upskilling to get that. It’s kind of like Roger Federer where he’s already really good at tennis. For him to get a fraction, a 1% improvement at tennis he would have to practice and train for probably three or four months in a row nonstop.
Kirill: Whereas if Roger Federer where to go and get good at, I don’t know, driving a formula one car probably he’s at level zero. I don’t know, maybe he does that on the weekends, but assuming that he’s at level zero for him to gain a huge improvement, he only needs to practice for a week. The problem here is that driving a formula one car has nothing to do with tennis. But in terms of data science, if you’re really good at the machine learning and other aspects of it like the coding side of things, to get even better you’re going to have to spend a months of training practice where you’re going to get 1% improvement.
Kirill: Whereas if you add the visualization component, which maybe your very raw at, you’ve played around with it but do you’ve kind of gone with the basic charts and so on. To improve that by a 100% you’re going to need to spend two or three weeks tops and then all of a sudden you’ve gotten this massive improvement. Which in the eyes of people you’re working with is equally as important, is equally important as the coding side of things because it helps them understand that input. So you can add a huge increment to your skillset by spending less time if you focus on this other component of data science that probably you may have been neglecting up until now.
John David: Yeah. I mean and also too, I think a lot of your listeners probably like to think about languages like coding languages. I would say data visualization is its own language into itself. Showing the impact of an underlying data source it has its own art and science to it. So if you can start to learn about the basics of that, then all of a sudden your analytics becomes a sales tool. So usually what I start with in my consulting agency is we start with a bottom of the funnel sales dashboard. And this opens up a whole lot of opportunity and trends that these CEOs, CMOs have never seen before. And then that leads to more projects because they’re like, “Oh wow. This category is selling extremely high, what does my marketing look for this?”
John David: And then we go in and we can drill down and it’s hard to explain. I’ve been working on this concept for a while now of analytics as a sales tool. And I think that the best way that you can kind of upsell yourself is by creating visualizations that well number one, they visualize the underlying trend, but they also do it in a way that really moves someone. So that they can like, “Wow, this is a huge opportunity,” it gets them excited. And then all of a sudden their mind starts to turn and they’re like, “Wow.” And this actually happened to me the end of last year. I did a sales dashboard and they’re like, “Well, can you look at our survey data? We need to make sure that the product that’s selling really well as a high feedback rating. And if it doesn’t have a good feedback rating, what are the aspects of this product that aren’t doing well?”
Kirill: Sorry I missed, where there was the wow components in that one?
John David: Well, I mean, so they’re understanding that you can start to uncover these insights on multiple… So I started with the sales dashboard and then they realized that there was so much insight that they were just leaving on the table that they want now want me to go through every one of their six departments. So now I’m looking at customer data, I’m looking at their marketing data, I’m looking at their sales data. I mean, every single one of their departments now they want a dashboard for that to visualize these key trends that they’ve never really kept their eye on before.
Kirill: Gotcha, okay. Yeah. It’s important, important to wow people because at the end of the day people take action based on emotion, not logic. They rationalize their actions later with logic.
John David: Right. Yeah, that’s true.
Kirill: Yeah, that’s a important components. Try wowing somebody with code it’s another coder probably.
John David: Right.
Kirill: Yeah. Whereas visuals that’s the language everybody understands. Anyway, we’ve come to an end. It’s been fantastic John David, amazing, amazing podcast. Tell us where can our listeners find you? What’s the best places to get in touch and follow you, your career and anything that you put out there?
John David: Okay. So follow me on LinkedIn. So my name is John David Ariansen. That’s Ariansen. That’s kind of the hub where I post a lot of things, but you can also look up How to Get an Analytics Job. And we’re on Buzzsprout which is a podcasting platform and we’re also on YouTube. So we do actually have a video podcast where me and Elizabeth we’ll talk through specific topics on the YouTube channel and then we also interview analytics experts as well.
Kirill: So is every episode a video episode?
John David: So the first five or six have no video, maybe the first 10 don’t have any video, but now we’re starting to add video on top of it.
Kirill: Okay, gotcha. Fantastic. Oh, by the way do you have a website?
John David: You can look up silvertoneanalytics.com that’s my consulting agency’s website.
Kirill: Fantastic. Okay, well that’s the places where to find John David, make sure to check out his podcast also on iTunes. Sounds quite interesting, sounds very interesting How to get a job in analytics. And before I let you go, one more question for you today what’s a book you can recommend to our listeners?
John David: So I think the most relevant book and granted I do have that data visualization bias here is a book called Storytelling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer. And this book just goes through in depth how you can take kind of a gnarly huge data set and then put a pretty face on it that kind of wows people. And that’s like you were saying earlier, that’s where you influence. So Storytelling with Data is my recommendation.
Kirill: Fantastic. Awesome. Well thanks so much John David for coming on the show. Really enjoyed our chat and good luck with the agency, with the courses. I know you publish some courses through LinkedIn, which is very exciting as well, and helping people with the podcast as well. So yeah, look forward to chatting in the future.
John David: All right. Yeah, thanks.
Kirill: So there you have it everybody, super pumped about this episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and got your key takeaways from here. My favorite part was that quote that John David shared that “I’m not afraid…” Or from some martial artist that “I’m not afraid of a person who knows 1000 different moves or 10,000 different moves. But I’m afraid, I’m more afraid of a person who has done one move 10,000 different times.” And that talks about iterations, iterations, iterations in your career, in your passions. If you found something that you love do it many times and get better at it and then opportunities will come your way.
Kirill: And of course, lots of other exciting parts to this podcast. Lots of great ideas and tips and hopefully if you’re looking to set up a consulting agency or analytics agency or become a freelancer in the space or even get a job, then you picked up some useful tips from here. Make sure to follow John David, check out his podcast. Once again, it’s called How To Get an Analytics Job. Of course we’ll mention or we’ll include all of the links to items mentioned in this episode in the show notes. As usual show notes are available at www.superdatascience.com/361, www.superdatascience.com/361 and that is also how you share this episode.
Kirill: If you know somebody who’s in the space of analytics or who is building a freelance or freelance data science career or is starting an agency or has started an agency or is looking to get a job in this space or needs to learn visualization. They may have been focused really heavily on other parts of data science, but need to learn visualization send them this episode, just send them the link www.superdatascience.com/361. And on that note, thank you so much for being here today, really appreciate you and your time. Hope we delivered a great episode for you once again, and I look forward to seeing you back here next time. Until then, happy analyzing.
