How to Get an Analytics Job
Welcome to How to Get an Analytics Job, the podcast where you build the foundation for your dream career in analytics. The goal of this podcast is to tackle the shortcomings of modern education in the analytics space by giving you advice from those actively practicing the art and science of working with data.
Our guests have included data professionals from Google, Amazon, Home Depot, PlayStation, Nordstrom and Truist (just to name a few) spanning roles from entry level, to senior, manager, VP and even a few CEOs. This has enabled us to keep a close feel for the pulse of the analytics space.
How to Get an Analytics Job
Navigating Data Careers: Mental Health, Networking, and Personal Branding with Bethany Lyons
Curious about the myriad career paths in data analytics and their impact on mental health? Join us for an enriching conversation with seasoned data professional Bethany Lyons. From her initial foray into pure math studies to securing a role at Tableau, Bethany shares her insightful journey and the diverse roles she’s held. Gain a deep understanding of her work on Tableau's LOD calculations and the pivotal role of networking and SEO in career advancement.
Building social capital is paramount for long-term success, and we discuss this vital concept extensively. Discover practical strategies for maintaining and growing your professional network, and learn the potential benefits of recording conversations and starting a podcast for broader engagement. We also delve into the utilization of AI tools to transcribe and repurpose content, along with the advantages of blending short sound bites with long-form material to captivate and nurture your audience.
What does it take to build a personal brand as an expert in your field? We explore the influencer playbook, focusing on content-driven influencers like Leah Tarrin and Anthony Pieri, and the strategic posting on LinkedIn to promote meaningful topics such as mental health. Bethany offers valuable insights on crafting educational content and its impact on job prospects, emphasizing the importance of balancing monetization with the preservation of social capital for enduring professional relationships. Join us to uncover these and more strategies for building a successful career in data analytics.
So it should be higher quality.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Look, lola, no barking. Thank you, hello and welcome back to the podcast. So we're not having any students on this one. We're actually recording this on a Sunday afternoon. I guess it's Sunday evening over in London.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we're going to be talking with Bethany Lyons, who, I mean you're a seasoned data professional at this point, so you've actually worked for Tableau.
Speaker 2:That's a nice way of saying I'm old, I'll take it Well, I mean.
Speaker 1:so how?
Speaker 2:long have you been working in data for? Since 2013. So yeah, about 11 years, gotcha. Yeah, I started out at Tableau. Tableau was my first job out of university, gotcha, I joined it before anyone knew it was going to be a thing.
Speaker 1:You've only been working in data three years longer than me, so we're both quite seasoned professionals. At this point, I would say yeah but I actually had a sales career before this though, so I think I'm, I think I might be older than you at this point 1988. Okay, I'm 89. So you got one year on me, yeah, but yeah. So just why don't you intro yourself, kind of give us like the origin story of your narrative arc, of what have you been up to within the analytics?
Speaker 2:space Sure, I guess. So I was born on. No, I'm kidding, it was a cold winter day. Pardon me.
Speaker 1:I said it was a cold winter day.
Speaker 2:No, I'm just kidding. So my background originally was I studied pure math in college and then realized I needed to do something that could get me a job and that is not pure math. So then I did a master's in operational research and that was actually how I landed my job at Tableau was because the same like one of the alumni of my program was the very first consultant at Tableau in Europe, and so he came recruiting in our pool of of grads. And that's when I realized like the the value of the network that you get with such a degree is like amazing. It's like the alumni network is super powerful.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, he came recruiting and was telling me about this thing called Tableau and I was like visualization software sounds great. Like I'd spent all of my summer just building graphs in Excel, so I felt like the product really resonated with me like right out the gates. And then, yeah, I started out in like pre-sales at Tableau, so that would be like helping customers do technical evaluations of the product and make sure it fits their needs. Then I did like some partnership stuff. So I built out a lot of our partner network in Europe, which is pretty cool because, like those companies are still going strong today, and then I moved on to like working with our largest enterprise accounts and then moved into product management. So I don't know if you guys are familiar with Tableau, but like I, I worked on stuff like LOD, calculations and relationships.
Speaker 1:Those are tricky. That's tricky to explain. Level of detail.
Speaker 2:Level of detail. Calcs yeah, there's. There's a blog out in the ether like top 15 LOD expressions. It has like millions of views. I wrote that in like 2015.
Speaker 1:Ooh wow, who was the Tableau local user group leader for like a few years?
Speaker 2:I'm amazed we haven't met before this, you what I'm amazed we haven't met before this at a conference or something.
Speaker 1:Well, so I have been pretty local to North Carolina. I met Christopher Scott who runs the RallyTug Do you know him? To North Carolina. I met Christopher Scott who runs the?
Speaker 1:Rally Tug. Do you know him? No, it's funny because he actually just sent me a message. He wants me to talk about my experience in the job market this year. Oh cool, it is bad right now.
Speaker 1:Like you know, I shut down my career services training program because, like, our placement rate dropped below 90% and I was like I feel bad taking money, I feel unethical, or ethically gray at least, taking money from people who don't have a job. So I was like I'm just gonna get get out of that space. Um, but yeah, so he, because you one thing that I'm teaching my students in the classroom and I don't even think they realize we're doing this with like search engine optimization for their profile. So my students are the classroom and I don't even think they realize we're doing this with like search engine optimization for their profile. So my students are actively getting recruited once they get their first job or actually, I mean I had one that was like, oh yeah, I got extremely lucky.
Speaker 1:A company reached out to me that's local because they found me on LinkedIn. It's like, well, I mean, we, it's not lucky if you like you. Kind of built, build the right mouse trap. Well, I mean, we, it's not lucky if you like you kind of built, build the right mouth strap. You know, yes, we go into like keyword optimization. Um, they get to. They get a project with a consulting company my company on there and it really helps position them, I think, separate from 99 of the grads you know because it's greensboro college.
Speaker 1:It's tiny, and it's Greensboro College. It's tiny and it's not a prestige brand, it's not Harvard or anything like that. But you know, I was asking somebody this are you familiar with Maven Analytics?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I was me and John Paul had like a little catch up meeting earlier this week and I was asking him. I was like is there another analytics professor that like has a brand out on LinkedIn? And maybe the data professor? But I think he's like more on the data engineering side. I think he's over in like Southeast Asia, but most professors just kind of live quietly.
Speaker 2:Quiet lives behind the screen, yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, those networks are very, very um powerful though that sounds like you got played in your grad school yes, that like that was.
Speaker 2:I was very lucky with the, the network that I got out of grad school. Um, so, like totally, I I'm trying to think I've got one job in my life through recruiters and all other jobs have been through like network and the one job that I got through recruiters did not go well and the other three were like great, yeah, well see that's.
Speaker 1:that's something that the reason I started my own consulting agency is that I had two terrible back-to-back internships when I was fresh out of my MBA program. Uh, actually, no, I. It was a required internship during the summer of me, so I worked full time for three months at a company and, um, in hindsight, I just had really bad managers.
Speaker 1:Like the the, the, the way I like to describe the guy, and it's funny because he reached out to me. He might even hear this. I'm not naming names or anything, but he kind of came off like Patrick Bateman a little bit. He was trying to corporate play. He made me as uncomfortable in the interview process as possible and tried to put me on the spot.
Speaker 1:It's like oh, that's a red flag right there and then and then the next guy um, he english was his second language and he had a stutter. I couldn't understand what he said at all. So he, we had our first meeting. I did not none, I caught none of what he was saying. And then I I came back and I was like, is this what you want? He's like this is the level of the. This, this level of work, is what I would expect from a high school or where I'm from, which, like I'm realizing that's the horse. Like I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've heard another story that bad from an intern. Like you have lower expectations and and then, like I just didn't have the social intelligence to navigate that situation. And also, too, like I was very much in a scarcity mindset because the MBA program that I went through didn't have as robust of a network it sounds like yours. So I was like I felt just lucky to be there to where now interviewing this year I've had two companies reach out to me specifically to hire me, but then I had three other cold companies that I applied for, so I had five companies that were on the table. So then I'm like much more abundance mindset and also, too, I feel a little bit weird talking about money and finances, but I think it ties into. One of the topics we're going to talk about later is mental health. I can live off my passive revenue streams, so like I don't even need to work right now. It's more like I'm doing this because I spent a quarter of the year last year on a beach in Mexico and I got super depressed.
Speaker 1:You know, like you think you're not a dream right, yeah, yeah, like I'm 35, I don't feel like I'm, you know, in my twilight years like where I just want to like lay around. So I'm like it was cool for like seven days or five days, but then it's like I felt like you feel? Unproductive. Yeah, I felt like that movie Groundhog Day, where it was just like the same thing over and, over and over again. There was no like stimulation from the environment. You know, I was like a, I was like a monkey in the zoo. You know like.
Speaker 1:OK like I was just bored out of my mind, but yeah, so now I'm working at the Fresh Market, which is a high-end grocery store that started in Greensboro and they've got 165 stores now, so it's a pretty big business. But it's also cool because it's like we can talk about bananas and how much they cost and it's like, okay, but we're doing, you know, 50 million in sales of that and you're seeing it at scale, so it's really cool.
Speaker 2:Hey, I just want to make a comment on what point you made about like prestige of the network and whatever. I don't want to. I don't want to come across like I just had a prestigious network and then it just happened Like that's something I worked very actively to build. So so this week, if I look at my calendar of what I have going on in the evenings, I have like two meetings in the evenings, like every night from monday to thursday this week.
Speaker 2:So I'm meeting with eight people okay and for no reason other than they contacted me and were like let's chat, and I was like that sounds like a great idea, let's do it, why not? And and're like let's chat and I was like that sounds like a great idea, let's do it, why not? And so, like, building network is something that I it's like. I do it like a form of exercise, it's, you know, just, it's a muscle that you have to build.
Speaker 1:Okay, two things.
Speaker 2:First of all, I wasn't implying that you, it was your network. No, it's fine.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to clarify for the listeners. But two, I've got a challenge for you, yeah why don't you record those episode? Why don't you record those and start a podcast?
Speaker 1:oh, because I like, maybe, but I think, well, because think about what we've done just now. Like we had our off air where we got to kind of talk and like name names and be like this is what I'm seeing in the industry, and then we we jump on the podcast and it's like, okay, we're. There's a certain level of like I'm not going. I don't want to stir up a bunch of drama. You know, I'm not like in the youtube reactionary space, where that's that's how I get clicks, um, but I'm sure that there are a lot of things you're learning from these people that that are worth you know because you?
Speaker 1:because think about the leverage you get from a podcast. This, this podcast gets about a thousand downloads every episode I post right and then some of them I post them on my, the podcasting, all the platforms there, but then also on YouTube, and then some of the YouTube videos are getting like tens of thousands of views, so like it's basically, it's going to add fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just had this conversation with one of my former business partners who his his whole thing is. He's a fractional CEO and he his goal is to have 150 coffee chats a year.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm like it is funny because you saw the, the, the Google duck that was labeled the Internet Sensation Playbook. He came to me and was like I want to do what you're doing with building the brand. You know, taking the conversations I'm having and distilling them down, because now we've got well, okay, we're going to're gonna jump, but because I was gonna end the podcast on ai, but like now I've got ai tools, that I I've got 210 episodes. I can go in and transcribe all of them in ai and then turn them into articles, I can turn them into sound bites. So then it's like I've got like a whole content mill. That is not because I I don't think generative ai is to the point where you can say make a post for me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:That's definitely not. I would never put my name to anything written by Right.
Speaker 1:But AI is amazing at curating.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:Because it's like reading. Right. Synthesizing, so like it can get me 95 percent of the way there to where I could write an article in five minutes and I could post. Do you do that at all? This is a question that I was actually talking about with him. Should we write LinkedIn articles? Does anybody read them?
Speaker 2:I don't do it, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't, it's just something I don't do. Like I, um, I find that, like the stuff that gets the like, traction is inversely proportional to length. So like, yeah, you want to, you want to, I go for like high volume, like short sound bites, and then, like some of them, go viral.
Speaker 1:Well, okay.
Speaker 2:Long blogs and like well, you know that kind of stuff is it's. We're just in an age where people want to consume like really dense content. That's my perspective on it.
Speaker 1:Okay, my perspective is that that is true and the opposite is true.
Speaker 2:You're sounding like Rory Sutherland. Now Go on.
Speaker 1:We're getting into dialectics here, which is what I learned in PBT therapy. I think it's like a U-shaped distribution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like what you could do, like a layer of sophistication could be, and this has been my experience. So, like I had a meetup on thursday. Like my intern came into town and I just posted on linkedin. People showed up. I've never met before but they had listened to me talk for 200 hours, like in their car while they're working out, because, right, but you, you can have those long-form content where people get to know you. They get to like yeah, I mean what my opinions now have changed quite a bit.
Speaker 1:When I started this podcast four or five years ago, I'm a lot, you know, like a lot of my assumptions were wrong. But, that being said, like people actually like seeing that evolution, I think, and then they also will be like yeah, in episode 23, around 30 minutes in, you said this I think you're right, but you haven't considered this variable, which is crazy to think about. But, that being said, it's like you can have that long form content but then the short sound bites and snippets, you get them into the funnel and then you nurture that through the long form stuff. Yeah, I mean that's more, that's more like a marketing funnel.
Speaker 1:It is, but like I don't know, I mean it could be something valuable for you. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think it probably is. I think I haven't figured out what I'm marketing yet. Well, what are the topics?
Speaker 1:you're talking about in these networking?
Speaker 2:I know, At the moment I have this deep held conviction that the most valuable asset you can build is your social capital.
Speaker 1:Your network is your network.
Speaker 2:Pardon me.
Speaker 1:What's the saying?
Speaker 2:Here's the sound bite your network is your network. It's a little.
Speaker 1:Gary V-esque, it's not really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know. I'm like I need to invest in social capital it. I don't know like I'm like I need to invest in social capital, but I don't know what I'm going to spend it on. And it's like when I was a kid I I was like I know that I need to save money, but I don't know what I'm going to spend it on.
Speaker 2:So I would like I spent all my teen years like working at dairy queen, saving up money yeah, yeah, and I'm like, just, I was like, I'm somebody who's just like bank, put, put, put something in the bank for a rainy day Like I don't know, and that ended up paying off, like I was able to get through university with no dad, and so on Good for you.
Speaker 2:I was about to say I'm still, I don't live in America, though, so it's different, like our fees aren't the same in Canada or in the UK. But, yeah, like I have that same mindset as I did when I was a kid. Just now, I'm like no the thing, this bank is social capital and I haven't figured out what I'm going to spend it on, but I do believe that, like, the future of entrepreneurship is content creators and people who can build an audience are like the next CEOs, because it's and I did work for like my last job was for an early stage startup and we built I was the chief product officer.
Speaker 2:We built like Excel for big data. It was an awesome product. But at the end of the day I was like, oh, we built a product but we haven't built a distribution channel and like, what good is a product that nobody knows about? You need to have that distribution channel first and then build the product that your audience wants, rather than building a product than trying to find an audience for it. So I think that's like the value in building up.
Speaker 1:So you're the distribution.
Speaker 2:It's like, yes, I'm like I'm building a distribution channel for something that I don't yet know what it's going to be, but like I'm. My background is like I didn't yeah, I kind of talked about Tableau, but then yeah, I've spent the last five years in product management and building products and I've realized that if you want to do anything useful in products, you need to know how to build distribution channels as well. So it's actually being a content person is. Is the new like yeah, being like a yeah, being being somebody who builds and distributes content is the new way to like found companies, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I mean, you could keep it vague, like what's interesting is, like the how to get an analytics job title of this podcast. Right, it's such a wide umbrella because we could talk about resumes, we could talk about LinkedIn, we could talk about interviewing and we could talk about, you know, getting the job we talked about. Now, like there's so many topics that, because what's coming to mind and you, you can completely throw this in the trash if you want, but like what? If you called it like data culture or something like that called what data culture the like the podcast, the theoretical podcast, oh the theoretical podcast that you're convincing me to start.
Speaker 2:Yes, if, if I do, you'll be my first guest um yeah yeah, I mean that that's.
Speaker 1:That is. An interesting thought, though, of the future is because I was thinking about this as it relates to AI, and it's like AI is going to going to affect white collar jobs more so than blue collar jobs, like what is going to keep me buoyant in my career, moving forward, and I think it's the relationships.
Speaker 2:Totally. Yeah, it's the network and like because also, ai is one of the things that is making getting a job the traditional way so hard, because now everybody has these tools help you tweak your resume so that you can stand out, and it's like, yeah, but everybody else is doing that and so it just moves the baseline. It's like the baseline is now you have to use the AI tool.
Speaker 1:But, like it's not helping you stand out.
Speaker 2:It's helping you not get left behind Right, and so actually if you want to stand out, you have to like get a move around the process and figure out, like how do I get a?
Speaker 1:job without submitting a CV. Okay, well, this is a perfect segue into the next topic I wanted to ask you about, which is LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what's going on with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's going on?
Speaker 1:Dumpster fire.
Speaker 2:Pardon me.
Speaker 1:So LinkedIn seems like a dumpster fire right now.
Speaker 2:I like see, I don't see the dumpster fire because I've like highly curated my feed. Yeah, I like I only like like really high quality content, so my feed is like super high quality, and so the dumpster fire isn't so visible to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's more so like I see a lot of like really low IQ posts from people that are like oh, like the big influencers, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's like I don't know. I have mixed feelings because you know, some of them have been on the podcast and it's like I don't want to disparage them. What seems to happen is that it's almost like a playbook, in that they get, they create a following while they're getting their job, then they get their job and they get more of a following and then they quit their job and become an influencer.
Speaker 2:And then they tell everyone you should become an influencer. I think the influencers that you should ignore are the ones that are like at just they don't have. They don't have anything to talk about except being an influencer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like circular logic it is circular logic.
Speaker 2:It's like I know you don't actually want your 100,000 followers to become an influencer, because then they'll drown you out.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like I like following people who are influencers because they have something to say. Like Leah Tarrin in like product-led growth, or like Anthony Pieri in like product marketing, or, like you know, they're influencers with content and something, an opinion about something.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, so can I ask? I mean and you probably don't know this off the top of your head but how much engagement are they getting on average, would you say?
Speaker 2:The people that I've just mentioned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like the, because what I've noticed is that it seems like the people who like so. Are you familiar with Solomon Kahn?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I just joined his mentorship program, and what's crazy is that-.
Speaker 2:I signed up as well. Oh, we're going to be in it together. Nice, I think so. That's so funny Well he's one of the most high quality people I think like-.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's funny because I have double the amount of followers than he does. And I think like, yeah, and it's funny because I have double the amount of followers than he does. Yeah, and I have no business. Why would you listen to me? He was like the vp of nielsen and and he's, you know, got this like pedigree and like he's also super humble and nice. Like it's a part of this, I'm published on linkedin so I have like probably 15 to 20,000 people take my courses a month. So, like you know, that leads to them just like following me to learn more about, you know, tools and analytics and stuff like that. But so there's like kind of a structural thing in my favor, but like I think that, like most, most people getting a job don't even know what to look for.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Because, like they don't, they don't it's too sophisticated for to resonate with them Because they're. Because, like, what I'm seeing is like here are the top three things that you should do to get a job. That's going to get 500 engagements versus, like a very nuanced story from Solomon about how he blew up his first internship and it led to a leadership position.
Speaker 2:That's getting a hundred engagements.
Speaker 1:And it's funny because it's like I don't know, I mean, is that going to level out in time? Like, because they like stay in that lane of like entry level people, they, they, they like stay in that lane of like entry-level people, um, but it's like they're, every year or day that goes by, they're getting more and more irrelevant because they aren't close to that process.
Speaker 2:They're close to that process totally right yeah, they'll get replaced by somebody else who has the same playbook yeah, and then I love that we're having this conversation because I have I have wondered before like why does solomon can not have like 50 000 followers?
Speaker 1:I find him so interesting, like everything he puts out is like super high quality it's funny because, like the conversation that I had with gary the fractional ceo, like that internet sensation playbook is going to go after the solomons of the world, like we're potentially going to monetize that. Because, like I have a student I think it was actually in the last podcast episode who I think it's funny because I think he's the smartest student I've had so far. He's smarter than I am, but he's like young and you know just not I don't want to say naive, he's a little unpolished, he's a senior in college now and he studied the Instagram algorithm to build up like a meme account.
Speaker 1:So, he has an interest in that. And what I just pitched him on is like I'm just leaving sponsorship money on the table for the podcast. And it's funny because, like those of you who are listening to this, I'm sorry if we money on the table for the podcast. And it's funny because, like those of you who are listening to this, I'm sorry if we're going to start incorporating ads, but the caveat being, we can study our, our, monitor our monetization through that and we can pull it on the podcast and say, hey, here's like what.
Speaker 1:What Craig has told me is that you need to have like a hashtag and you need to post consistently on that topic on a day. So like I think I want to branch out into talking about mental health, because there's an a men's health mental, like a mental health crisis for men that, for whatever reason, I don't hear very much good advice about that. And there's not, there's not really, like you know, there's no, mr Rogers, there's no good role model, I feel like for many. So like maybe that's a little presumptuous and like I'm delusional and like maybe I can be that role model maybe not for everybody, but for people in the analytics space.
Speaker 1:But like hashtag mental health Monday and having that over and over again.
Speaker 1:The algorithm on linkedin is going to recognize that. Yeah, and it's going to. Um, if I keep it in that series and let's say I do it for six months on mondays I have a post about that it's going to like it's going to probably get some decent, and then it's. The theory is that it's going to exponentially get more traction and then people will go back and then they'll be promoted. The other hashtags because it's going to exponentially get more traction and then people will go back and then they'll be promoted. The other hashtags because it's like you got to think about the game that's being played. Linkedin's intention is to get eyeballs on the site and if I'm creating, like craig was saying that there's like a, there's a tier of users on there that are like like Elon Musk on Twitter, of course he's going to elevate his own, his own posts, but it's also in the best interest of the company to elevate certain people because you know they get, they get traction in the algorithm and they built an audience.
Speaker 2:So it's almost like a real effect.
Speaker 1:Right, it's funny because this is. I feel like we're going a little bit down a rabbit hole about LinkedIn. Because I'm not sure it is funny because in my career services program I turned like two or three of my students into influencers. And it's funny because I think some of them are actually getting sponsorship deals now and on top of working in analytics job.
Speaker 2:It's amazing.
Speaker 1:But it's funny because it's like it's all play and I think understanding how the algorithm works is, I mean, how to get an analytics job. Analytics is a part of business, so it's like within kind of the pale of what I want to talk about on this podcast. But really, realistically, those my the people listening to this are they don't need to become influencers, they just need to optimize their linkedin. So they need to get the right keywords, they need to get a project on there. Uh, preferably like what we did is um, craig came on the podcast last week and he's interested in potentially getting into the banking sector. So, um, the one of the v at Citibank has been following me for years and I was like oh, I got a student that wants to get into the banking sector. Do you want to come in? You guys can network for a little bit. We can do an interview question, give him feedback from your perspective on that, and then also a portfolio review. We recorded that portfolio review and he put it in his project section within his LinkedIn profile.
Speaker 1:So actually, let me pull that up that's brilliant right, yeah, and it's funny because, um, I don't know I.
Speaker 2:I think another thing that's really good for getting a job is putting out tutorials on like when you learn something, just make a recording of it and throw it out in a post.
Speaker 1:Right, like that goes a long way.
Speaker 2:It starts building your brand as like an expert, or like at least a person who can learn and teach others as like an expert, or like at least a person who can learn and teach others.
Speaker 1:Well, because you know what's funny is that. I mean what? What's the basic like hiring process? For most companies it's it's three phases, right? It's phone screening, behavioral, technical interview. If you have a video of you explaining a project, that is, functionally speaking, the same as a phone screening.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so here's. Actually just took this picture of Craig yesterday. I got my lights in there. I think it looks short, but if you come down you can see he's added. Marketing analyst project manager for my company. He had an internship with this construction company, um, and then under his where is it so projects he I guess he hasn't uploaded the video of him presenting his project to the vp, but this is what we worked in class last semester okay actually no, this is.
Speaker 1:This is from two semesters ago. This is from last semester. So when you think about all the experience he has and he's currently a junior, he's about to be a senior in like 15 days when the semester starts.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so, like what we did in my capstone course, is I connected with the executive director of this. It's called cancer culture and they like raise awareness, for I think it's breast cancer mainly yeah, we did a whole social listening project and it's like that's he's got multiple stories he can pull out of that yeah, but I think to this point on the hiring process.
Speaker 2:so I get a lot of people reaching out to me being like, hey, do you know, like an entry level analyst to go is like there's going to be like this CV, like apply online with your resume process that continues for a while but like nobody's actually using it. It's just like candidates like automate, like automating the submission of their CV to like 100 companies, and then the hiring managers get so many that they're just like I don't even want to read these. I'm going to just go ping somebody that I know who has a big network of analysts and ask them to like make me a recommendation and then they're going to go with that instead of like any of the stuff that came inbound. So like. That's why I say like yeah, like your resume is important, but like, instead of optimizing your resume, like optimize for like not needing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And like you can do that by just becoming somebody that puts out educational content online, and then you get known and then you're top of mind and I think there's there's something to the cadence of it as well, because it's like people's memories are very short, so you might be the most awesome like analyst, but like if you haven't been in my feed for like three months, like you're just not top of mind, so just posting something regularly so that you're like not top of mind, right, so just posting something regularly so that you're like always top of mind.
Speaker 2:Then, like somebody's gonna get an, an email from a hiring manager saying, do you know anyone? Then they can say, oh yeah, like there's this guy that keeps showing up in my feed, or this girl or you know whatever. Um, that's the way I would go about. It is like make yourself top of mind as an expert in something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, it's um. Are you familiar with the con, the concept or the term vector force?
Speaker 2:Uh, I am not, but you have used it in our pre-call. Okay, that's funny. You should pause me.
Speaker 1:Like I don't know what you're talking about. You're you're speaking gibberish which, like I realize I'm a very online person, kind of like JD Vance. I think that's what the criticism he's getting right now. So Kevin Kelly is like an early internet evangelist and he wrote a blog in early internet days called A Thousand True Fans and he was talking about, if you can get a thousand people who give you a hundred dollars, right then you know, like you can, that's a hundred thousand dollars, right there. You can live off of that. Um, but he was also talking about I think in that article maybe it was an interview that I heard with him about like a vector force. You like I, I have positioned myself as a vector force, so I have a ton of people who want analytics jobs and then I also know a lot of people who need analytics.
Speaker 2:You're a marketplace.
Speaker 1:Essentially. Yeah, it's weird because it sounds a little bit grandiose to say that, but it's like it's true though.
Speaker 2:And you are a marketplace.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's money there. I mean I feel weird. I think I should be a little bit more transparent about money. But I probably made about $350,000 through LinkedIn over the years, through the courses, through selling my own stuff through it, and, yeah, it's like I see the economic value of it and it's I. I made the active decision to stop selling it because I feel like it cheapened myself in some way. You know, I like that social. It's like the. Do you want to cash out now? Because, like, if I were, if a company reached out to me and said all right, I'll do this for five thousand dollars, I'll find you a student and I'll bet them or I can, can just, you know, connect them, and then I've got a strong relationship.
Speaker 2:You've got like social capital that you're betting, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's like a, it's like a trade-off, of like do I want to optimize for now or do I want to try to build? You know, cause it's?
Speaker 1:it's weird, working a full-time job now and I will say this a good corporate culture is that I feel like I'm back in college right and and that that was like a complete paradigm shift of mine, because I got for years I told myself I'm unemployable, I'm professionally feral like I'm not, I'm not going to be able to work a full-time job and it's weird, I'm like I enjoy this and I hate that about myself on some level, but it's like no, I just need to update that script or that narrative in my mind about, well, I'm extremely financially stable, like I'm living off of about 50% of what I bring home each month, and it's like one way to frame that up is like every month I work, I buy myself an extra month of runway if I wanted to pull the plug and go and launch another business which is so much more responsible than like I had no business starting a consulting agency back in 2017.
Speaker 1:I turned my last internship into my first consulting client and I would just like I will say this I'm realizing there's a lot of skills that I didn't even realize I had because, like I would, I got real used to ambiguity. Like I would pitch clients to know about 80% of what I was talking about and had to go and fill in the other 20%, and I had to do that over and over and over again, and if I didn't do it, I didn't get paid.
Speaker 2:I didn't you know um. You can't know everything up front, like no, and it's like.
Speaker 1:It's like it's there's like a almost, like a political skill of like how to handle that Cause. You don't want to say that you don't know it, but you also don't want to say that you do know it. So it's like oh, I can look into that you know or like like it's, it's.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'll figure it out. This is actually the master. The master skill of my boss um is like he has like utmost confidence in his ability to figure stuff out, and so he sells stuff all the time that he like we don't know how to deliver, but like I shouldn't say this, but like a hundred percent of the time he's like knows how to figure it out, and it's just like yeah, well, I mean like comes through that like this is a problem I can solve.
Speaker 1:Yes, like well, I mean, let's, let's think through what's the upside and the downside of that.
Speaker 2:The downside to that is that you get stuck with the projects that you can't deliver on. The upside is that you get a lot more business than you know. I think the key is you have to have the capability Like, because there's a lot of idiots that have like utmost confidence but don't have the capability to back it up. The reason I work for this guy is because he has the capability to back it up. He's like one of the best technical people I've ever met in my life.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool. See, it's funny because I'm not a very technical person. I actually outsource most of my like coding work, or at least I have okay, okay, yeah, so it's like I could go, and I can go and find somebody who can figure it out for me and pay yeah, yeah, yeah, because you're a marketplace, yeah I guess that's true. I that's. That is an interesting way of thinking about it. Yeah, I guess that's true. That is an interesting way of thinking about it.
Speaker 2:You connect demand and supply.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've hired a few people through Upwork just to work on consulting engagements. But now it's like I've got a friend that's getting a PhD in machine learning at Georgia Tech for finance and it's like I can just go tap him and say hey, can you do this for me If he's got time for it yeah I mean, he's way more sophisticated with um like his, just the technical side.
Speaker 1:It actually makes me think of this story. So when I was in plateau carmel last year, I was at a coffee shop and this guy came up to me and was like hey, I took course. And it turns out that he was a guy that was working as a consultant for formula one, building out like he built out, an interface that like you know, how they talk to their through their like walkie talkies or whatever. It's not a walkie talkie, it's a headset, yeah.
Speaker 1:They're not like five-year-old children being like hey, so he built out a system that took all of that speech and turned it into text and it was streaming down so people could, like make sense of what was going on in real time. But yeah, but that's crazy because it's like there are people out there, once you start getting more traction, like I'm sure that there's more people in my network that could solve problems for me that I don't even know about right now.
Speaker 2:Right, totally yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, there's a benefit to building out, I guess, a following, I don't know.
Speaker 2:If you want to be a marketplace. Having a following is like that is the best way to build a marketplace.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, because a part of me is like am I just doing this for my own ego Cause? It's like I'm internet famous. It's so funny when I meet people and they're intimidated by me because they're like wow, I don't know.
Speaker 2:What you have a lot of followers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need more, though I'm working on it. So if you're, interested, we I'm open to like doing writing sessions with you If you, if you wanted to like, sit down and be like you know what is your core. What is your core thing? Break it down into like five to seven subtopics, and then that's your, your cadence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I.
Speaker 1:there is no science behind anything that I do, I can tell you've got a bright mind and you're like on it because of the posts, because you said it's all stream of consciousness for you. It is.
Speaker 2:I literally just like I have a thought and I'm like I'll share that. Like there is no science behind. Like I've got 17,000 followers through. Like zero science.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, that is a sign, I think, that like where could it be, if you actually like?
Speaker 2:If I actually applied science to it.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, it's not even science, like it's just a systems thinking approach to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's almost like therapy in a way. You know, it's like if you put a structure behind it, like you can think, you can take the themes that that you're kind of working on in your brain and then put them down on paper. It's almost like a form of journaling, in a way.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:But on that note, are you ready? Do you have any other thoughts on LinkedIn or do you want to dive into the topic of mental health?
Speaker 2:Let's dive into the topic of mental health. All right, because this is how we connected right Cause you yeah, Cause you, I think you you posted about bipolar.
Speaker 2:I did yes, cause I have bipolar. I was diagnosed in 2020, about four years ago and it was like totally it was a very work related incident as well, like the way that I got. I actually originally thought I had like ADHD and my husband's a doctor and I was like running in circles and just telling him like I have like sudden onset ADHD. I don't know what's going on, I can't read a paragraph Like I. Just I literally lost the ability to read and I was running like I had like this insane amount of like unbounded energy and was just transporting my body like 30 kilometers a day, like on foot.
Speaker 2:It's like mania and couldn't concentrate on anything. And two days later I ended up sending this insane email to Adam Solipski. If anybody knows him, he's the guy who was the most recent CEO of AWS. He's like one of the most powerful men in business. He was my CEO at that time at Tableau. And so I sent him this like crazy email where I was like it was the middle of the U S presidential election and I was like, hey, there's this guy in our German team, Timo, and we need to make him American so that he can run for president. And so I sent this email to literally one of the most powerful men in business, Like we need to make my colleague American, Run against Trump.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Did you respond?
Speaker 2:No, I responded about 16 times because I then had like racing thoughts and I then replied to myself and cc'd a whole bunch more people. By the time this email thread was done, I had cc'd a bunch of people in the leadership team. I added my partner, my old roommate, some friends, a random neuroscientist who was quoted in a book I was reading. It was just the most random collection of people and there was about 16 threads of me replying to myself and the HR team ended up being like okay, nobody's allowed to talk about this, this is a mental health crisis.
Speaker 2:And then my husband basically tricked me into going to the hospital. He was like forget what I said two days ago. We need, we're just going to like take this precautionary measure. And I don't know. He somehow tricked me into going into the hospital and I ended up being like an inmate for a month, like in a lockup unit. They were like you are severely manic. And what was crazy was there were people who came in with like schizophrenia, suicide attempts, like really severe conditions, sometimes both and they were like admitted and discharged in like less time than I was. I was still there dancing, like I just danced for a month around a psych ward like a crazy um so, yeah, because you're you're.
Speaker 1:this happened in the in england. So, yeah, I imagine it's different because, like, the whole history of mental health in this country is fast, like in in america is interesting because there was an experiment, I think in the 70s, where they admitted grad students into a psych ward and then they couldn't get out, so that was like a massive shift, and because what's unfortunate is a lot of the homeless population. They're just mentally ill and there's just no place for them in our society, which it's weird.
Speaker 2:I hung out with them, I was in a public hospital, so I was with a lot of homeless people for that month and I think, you know, one of the most humbling moments of my life was like. At the time I didn't think anything of it, but I think back to it now and like whenever I, if I feel my head getting big, I remember this moment and it brings me back down to earth. I remember this moment and brings me back down to earth. But there was this woman, tina, and she was I think she'd smoked for 69 out of her 70 years on earth and she was like just laying on the couch and very, very overweight. And she says to me like as I'm dancing around, she's like haven't you got any other moves?
Speaker 2:Wow that's amazing and I'm like I am being insulted. Yeah, like no, I don't have any other moves.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean, that's gotta be such a surreal experience of like losing agency.
Speaker 2:Like, yeah, but the thing is, you don't lose. You lose agency, but you, like, don't have insight into the fact that you've lost agency, and so the feeling of mania is actually very similar to being on like a drug trip right?
Speaker 2:no, I was talking about um being institutionalized oh, yeah, yeah you were aware of that right I, I was, but like I just made up a story about how I was like, yeah, I'm here because I'm an undercover agent, like, and I'm I'm like doing this research into the state of mental health, like system, and then I'm gonna go and like publish it in the BBC like I made up.
Speaker 2:I had a great time when I was there because I fabricated so many stories in my mind about why I was there and why it was like the right place for me to be at that time. Like it was horrible for my family, it was horrible for my friends. They were all very concerned but I had like no concern. When you lose your mind, you're like not worried.
Speaker 1:Well, what's interesting is, in a way, I don't want to. This might sound off, but let me finish the thought. You're kind of lucky that it's not functional for you Because, like, for example, kanye West, a lot of his musical insights come from the mania and he's like, built so like because I saw him on Joe Rogan and he was talking about how I don't want to get on this medication because then I lose my muse.
Speaker 1:Oh, totally Because there's a I think there's a fascinating connection between creativity and mental illness. Oh, there's something there, Without a doubt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I was like in the lead up to like it's a, you know it's a curve. Um, it's kind of a inverted u-shaped curve where, like when you're on the way up, you it's amazing, right, really creative. And, yeah, just, I think part of it is like mania, hypomania, let's call it is a feeling of great disinhibition, and when you lose your inhibition, it allows you to be a lot more creative.
Speaker 2:Because if you think about, like, what stops people from being creative, it's like they shoot down their own ideas before they've had a chance to formulate, whereas, like, if you're in the state of like extreme disinhibition, you stop shooting down your ideas and so they just like flow freely and you have more of them, but then it reaches a point where you've like lost your mind and then you are going down the earth and I had hit that other, that other end. Um, but in the lead up to this period I was writing like 16 pages a day, like just prose for Like. So yeah, that's so.
Speaker 1:Do you have bipolar one?
Speaker 2:then it's I don't know Cause in the UK we don't have that distinction. Okay, it's just have bipolar or you don't. But I have the kind where I have like severe mania, so I think that's bipolar one, but yeah bipolar.
Speaker 1:bipolar one is more on the mania side. Bipolar two is more on the depression side. Yeah, then think that's bipolar one. But yeah, bipolar bipolar one is more on the mania side, bipolar two is more on the depression side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then I would have bipolar one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because, yeah, like I, I think I've talked about this in a LinkedIn post.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've talked about on the podcast yet, but I'm coming out of the most severe depression that I've had in my entire life and it's weird because on all appearances, I would have made it Like I was living in Mexico off my passive revenue stream.
Speaker 1:I had an Airbnb that I rented for three months that was two blocks from the beach, rooftop pool, you know, like amazing food. The thing about Plato Carmen is that it's a digital nomad hub. So like I got plugged into that social scene immediately for other people looking to meet people like me. So I felt like almost like I was like back in undergrad or college again or it's like social and fun and people were available to where, like, as you know, as as as you get older, people become less, and like I was. I was joking with gary um when I saw him yesterday of I'm like jealous of my friend ryan's baby, because he's the baby she stole my friend away from me like I don't see him anymore you know, I mean, um, but it's like you grow up and you have less.
Speaker 1:You have less free time. But what's weird is that you know, while that happening, I was losing traction on my business.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, because part of how I was growing that business was like organic in-person networking. But, to be quite honest, though, I was like just burnt out on consulting. I just didn't want to do that anymore. Be quite honest, though, I was like just burnt out on on consulting. I just didn't want to do that anymore. So, like I tried to pivot into data literacy training. That got no traction on it. I mean, I got a few. I had had people reaching out to me to like hire me as a contractor to come train their company, but that didn't really pan out and it was like I don't know, I don't. I didn't really pan out. It was like I don't know, I don't. I didn't really want to be a contractor. I wanted to be more of like a business owner and provide a service offering.
Speaker 1:Um, so, around march, I decided to shut down the business and then I enrolled in a six-week outpatient dialectical behavioral therapy, like in a group setting, and it was interesting because, yeah, I saw people who were severely mentally ill and chronically so like it was really. It was so hard. I felt like I was, like I had severe. I just I felt like I was jumping out of my skin because, like you know, eight hours in a or six hours a day, you sit down and talk about your issues and like for me it was like the failure and loss of identity of being an entrepreneur and it was weird, um and like.
Speaker 1:What I kind of landed on was like this, this idea of like, surrender, like you just it's, it's like you let go of, because a lot of that was just like ego driven, but like, once you let go, and there's this concept called radical acceptance of like you just have to accept what's going on right now and you know, I live a lot of my like time in my mind thinking about what could be in the future and I think that's good. But I think you need to have a good ratio of like what is actually happening now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, To where? Like you know, I'm starting an agency when I was like 26 years old and had no experience or skills. It's like not what I would tell my students to go do. Like you should probably get work for a while and learn this and then start it.
Speaker 1:But you know I'm more like a lot. It's interesting because most of the friends that I track seem to be on the opposite end of the spectrum of like they they wish they had. You know, more confidence. Like I kind of tread the line of like delusions of grandeur or like being like too into myself, and I mean part of that probably stems back from like you know, I was the first born male in my family. I was adored and you know, like all of that.
Speaker 1:But the the getting back to the dialectical behavior therapy, like that really it sucked and I felt like I wanted to quit every day for the first two weeks. But then it was like weird because I started to kind of crave it. Like you would sit down, the way they'd structure the day you check in they have like a it's almost like what you see in the movies where it's like a circle and you sit down and you talk through your day and then it's like, um, you'd have to ask permission, like hey, can I give you a compliment or can I give you feedback on that? Um, and it's almost like you're.
Speaker 1:it's so antithetical to American culture because it's group based to where almost all my friends are entrepreneurs and we're all in our own lane, and I've kind of realized, like how lonely I've been because I've just been like doing my own thing. I have friends and I see them, but you know, like it's weird that, working in a corporation that has a good culture, I almost feel like I'm part of a tribe and I get to say the same, I see the same people, and it's very therapeutic for me, which is so weird. Like if you, if we could go back four months, I would be like that is a crazy thought, but it's true though. Like it really going through that and like really like breaking down all of these assumptions I had, has been, has been really, really valuable for me, and I feel like I'm switched from much more of a scarcity mindset to much more of a um, abundance mindset and just but I mean, that was my job for six weeks was to. I need to get my mental health sorted out.
Speaker 2:I'm also yeah, and it's one of the hardest things that you can ever do in life.
Speaker 1:But I mean, what an investment, though, right.
Speaker 2:It is. It's a very good investment, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I mean it's and I I'm hesitant to like post more about it because you're right, like in one of the posts that I saw, like it's there's a stigma around it and I think that's totally bullshit. And you know, kind of getting back to that frame of scarcity versus abundance, like, if, like, I went through this experience and if I could talk about it, it actually might, instead of be a hindrance to me and I it might actually endear me or, like you know, help other people and help like kind of grow that like marketplace idea that you you keep kind of harping back to yeah, I so I'm very public about, like, my condition, um, and I've actually never felt stigma or judgment, and it might just be because I have too many delusions of grandeur to pick up on the stigma, but the general sentiment that I've got from people is one of acceptance and gratitude, because it helps them understand something that they maybe have friends and family have experienced, um, and so it gives them like a window of insight into their friends or family.
Speaker 2:Um, like other people with the condition often reach out to me and are like, oh, you know, I feel so understood now, like let's have a conversation. So. I've found only positive things come from it and, like my boss at my last two companies, like my employers, were both very grateful that I was transparent about it. It just I don't know. It's just easier when people understand what's going on. So, yeah, I think it's everybody's going understand what's going on.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 2:Everybody's going to have a different experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. Well, I mean it also shows that you're proactive, active about kind of keeping, taking care of yourself, which I think is really valuable I try to be yeah, actually sorry. I had to go and find my uh, my charger. I'm so glad. So, those of you who are going to be listening to this, I'm in my parents house dog sitting, so uh, luckily the dogs haven't been acting up, which is nice, so, uh, cool.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I also like one thing we kind of talked about in like the uh pre-interview chat was I think there's like systemic bias against men within therapy. Is that because one-on-one therapy doesn't really work for me? Um, and I feel like most men are probably better off joining like a jujitsu gym where they get to do something physical. Um, I think that they're doing this in nordic countries where, like they have a village and then they just have a shed with work tools and men will work on something together and that's how they bond Right. Like women will talk and look at each other. Men are usually on the same side of the table looking at something, which I think it's like it's a very nuanced thing, but I think it it does really matter, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, because I was actually having this conversation with my girlfriend last night. I think the education system, at least in the united states I don't know about in the uk is biased towards women as well. It has become in recent years yeah, well, well, number one.
Speaker 1:It's like openly hostile towards men. I remember my freshman orientation. They said if you're drunk and she's drunk and you guys have sex, you're a rapist, which feels like really gross Because it's like, wait, it's, it's like number one. I think a lot of men feel like a predator until they're proven to be one of the good ones. And then also, too, that takes agency away from women. It's like, well, ok, so she can't consent when she's drunk, can she consent to drive? Like what if she like drove, got in a car, killed a family of four?
Speaker 1:That also feels like oddly underhanded, subversively patronizing towards women as well. But I mean, I, I get, I, I, I don't I'm hesitant to jump on these like hot button issues because, like I know, there's a lot of trauma around these kind of issues and I don't want to, like you know, touch on that and then them like, kind of like attack me because, like I'm, I'm part of, they see me as kind of like part of the problem right, yeah, it's tricky but and that's that's one thing that I've been thinking about is like hitting on thinking about my brand as it relates to what's going on in the world.
Speaker 1:Like I showed you that thumbnail of like Trump versus Kamala, and like the narrative battle of make America great again versus we're not going back, like that is a math, there's, that's a masterclass, and Words like wordsmithing, you know, because like that resonates so well for both of your bases you know, because I think men want to go back, or at least a lot of men feel, I guess, marginalized or pushed aside or not heard and that's why they're so pro-Trump and at the same time, women are feeling like we're regressing.
Speaker 1:It's such a weird political climate we're in right now and I'm not even going to, if I do, pull the trigger off making that content. I'm not going to take a political stance because, like, I'm not a political commentator, but I think it's an interesting like microcosm to like flush out an idea even more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, because narratives are powerful and like we all interact with them all the time, both externally and internally, and like being a little bit more I don't even know how to phrase that a little bit more intentional maybe, or like active and like thinking about the narratives that are surrounding you. I think is really important.
Speaker 2:I agree with that. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:Gotcha All right, so AI are you? Using it at all.
Speaker 2:I use it every day. I couldn't do a job without it? Yeah, totally. So I use it for coding. I have a really like opposite opinion to the vast majority of the world when it comes to AI. Everyone's like, oh, it's going to replace engineers and I'm like I'm going to become an engineer, that's maybe like maybe I'm the person that's going to replace the engineers, but like the time being, until AI replaces me.
Speaker 2:But I viewed it as an opportunity to improve my technical skills. Like my, my background is like math and so like algorithms come really naturally to me, but I've always been like it's been at an arm's distance for me to be able to implement those algorithms, Whereas now I can actually implement my own math and so like that's a huge superpower. So I'm working for a client right now. It's a hedge fund and they have this problem where their trading system doesn't expose the links between the buy and sell side trades. Without those links, you can't calculate stuff like profit and loss, because profit and loss is calculated across the trade pair, and so we have to go through the data and like work out what the links are based on patterns in the data, and it's a super complicated math problem because it's like if you incorrectly match a pair, then you lose that pair to match with the next correct pair, blah, blah, blah. So you have to get a really high match rate. Otherwise, like yeah, if you make a mistake, the cascading effect is massive.
Speaker 1:It's like millions of dollars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been working on like building this trade matching algorithm for them. It's something that they wanted to do for like five years, but just engineers the engineers that they hired were, like never able to do it because it's a math problem, and so it's like well, if you hire a math person and give them, like, the ability to code.
Speaker 2:that's a much more tractable approach to the problem. So when I, when I joined my current firm, I couldn't write a line of code, I couldn't read a line of code. I was like totally code illiterate and they threw me. They gave me this code base and they're like here's like what we've got so far, like make it work and I was like, okay, you're charging how much to the client for my time?
Speaker 2:Good God Pressure's on. So I just like threw the code base into chat GPT and was like tell me what this thing does. And code base into chat GPT and was like tell me what this thing does. And then it breaks it down and explains it to me and from there I was able to like learn how to read code. And then I'm like, yeah, once you can read code, then you can be literate and like, when you ask it to write your own code, you can debug it.
Speaker 2:And that I find is the most important thing with AI is like it's never going to get the right answer. So you need to be able to pinpoint where the error is. And so you have to have some level of code literacy to be able to say, like you know you made this error in this for loop or whatever, do this other thing instead. And so like I really I think I have a really good understanding of the logic of programming, but I'm like totally shit at like knowing the right syntax or like what function can I use with what data structure and that kind of stuff, and I really don't see it with that.
Speaker 1:I too am code illiterate, and you know whose fault it is it's Tableau's.
Speaker 2:Oh, that was like literally what we set out as like a mission was like let's enable real code to be able to do really powerful things with data.
Speaker 1:Well, cause, like I could, if I were being a little bit nefarious, I could say, oh yeah, I have what? Eight years of working with sql and it's like yeah, kind of, because in tableau built on a no sql framework no, it's built on a sql framework yeah, so it's like generate sql behind the scenes right yeah, so it's like I can come in.
Speaker 1:I guess I shouldn't say I'm code illiterate, because like I I can do like a if, then statement or something. But it's like basically tableau has been telling me like here's the right framework for that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But one thing that I have been. So I just, in my current role, I just got access to the SQL or the snowflake database. So like.
Speaker 1:I think I want to start getting into actually building out my own SQL queries, because that's one of the biggest holes that I have, I think, as a educator in the analytics space is that I don't know SQL. So, like I recently like took I just watched a YouTube video and like built out a very basic SQL database and like did some basic joins. I understand the high-level framework of this is how data works. These are all the different use cases. I think what it is is. I've seen SQL in the wild and some of them have 38 lines. I'm like this looks like the code to like launch a rocket to me. It seems so complex and what I'm realizing now as I'm saying this, it's like oh, this is probably just someone who isn't thinking very efficiently. I could be wrong, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like usually the like if you're really good at coding, you can be really concise.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, cause it's. It's almost like a glimpse into someone else's mind and how it works, and I don't want to be in that person's mind. It's like it's like when I share my screen and you saw that I had 38 tabs running on my Chrome browser. It's kind of like that where it's like all these different threads and it's like, oh, I'm not going to close this time, I might come back to it. So yeah, it's. Chatgpt is definitely a game changer, because when I reached out to my friend, michael Glarnek, he was saying that I could learn Python super, super quickly using ChatGPT.
Speaker 1:I need a use case and I need to tell ChatGPT hey, here's the use case, here's how the data is structured, how would you approach it? And then it will basically write it out for me, and then I can study the syntax and just kind of build out from there, which is it's interesting because the state of education is rapidly shifting and I think some educators are trying to fight against chat, gpt, and they're not going to win.
Speaker 2:They're not going to win, nope.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also, if you are a professor that is threatened by chat GPT, you're probably a bad professor. Right, right, because it's like rote memorization in the age of AI is just useless.
Speaker 2:There's no value, yeah Right.
Speaker 1:And it's. But what's kind of tricky on the flip side of that is like, how do you actually teach critical thinking? Yeah, did you feel like you developed the critical thinking muscle while you were in undergrad?
Speaker 2:grad school or once you started. I think I developed it when I started working. Yeah, I think I learned how when I started working. Yeah, I think I learned how to pass exams before then.
Speaker 1:Right, see, that's not how I teach. I don't have a final in my class. Like I have them, go out, find a data set. I mean, I have a ton of different data sets that like I can give them, and it's like I want you to think about what you want by the time you graduate and we're going to optimize your LinkedIn, your resume and your portfolio to that, and your final exam is your portfolio.
Speaker 2:And then also how you present it. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which like it's weird.
Speaker 2:It's a more useful practical output than, like, 80% of this exam.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, I was. I was joking with Terrell Tyson, who's the last podcast guest, about like well, I mean, what like we were going through? So Craig had pulled Kaggle, a Kaggle data source that looked at like lending trees, loan data, and then he did like a Power BI dashboard that like looked at the different types of loans, the seasonality, the topic, the size, um, and he had like actually created like a whole presentation to pitch him, um, and and then he had like gotten done and I was like, uh, terrell, do you think it might be more impressive? As if I gave him a test and he just got 100% on it. It's like, no, not at all, because, yeah, it's like.
Speaker 1:I don't know how education is going to work in the future.
Speaker 2:In the future, I know.
Speaker 1:Right, because it feels like it's antiquated at this point.
Speaker 2:Extremely antiquated. Yeah, I've got a six-month-old baby in my belly and I'm like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're probably thinking about that.
Speaker 2:I'm like I don't want to send her to school. What are they going to teach her? I don't know, because even when I look at how I'm learning to code, I'm like all of the code academies they teach you how to code are irrelevant. They they come nowhere here, like what I've just done with chat GPT, just like throwing a code base in it and being like tell me what this does, and like learning iteratively from there, because the way they teach coding is like from an atomic level up.
Speaker 2:So it's like this is an array, this is a list, this is a whatever the different data structures are and like these are the functions that you can perform on a dictionary. And like you're like you don't get to the like and here's what you can do with it and why it matters until, like you're like a year into your comp sci degree uh, you know, maybe not a year, but like it takes a long time to get to the why, uh and the what, um, whereas I started with like here's a use case and I'm like reverse engineering down to the atomic level where like okay, now, like three months in, I I start to have a bit of an understanding of the difference between a list and a dictionary and an array and whatever. So, yeah, it's like learning backwards from how things are traditionally taught.
Speaker 1:Well, so from a educator or content creator standpoint, I get it. It so I have certain courses on udemy or linkedin that, like during the pandemic, I created a 100 hour long course on power bi, like for the wow and what's funny is that by the time I had posted, they had done an update, so it was outdated yeah, and then I realized like, oh, I don't want to be in this arms race with the different tools of like having to go back and update everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the the move seems to be to create evergreen content. So, like my course on how data analytics for students, that's evergreen right. Marketing analytics, sales analytics, like that's, like those are frameworks and I get that, that's why they would want to approach it that way, from, like, a efficiency standpoint, because there's no way in hell that colleges are going to be able to keep up with that.
Speaker 2:They're just not nimble enough, they're too big.
Speaker 1:And it's funny because, um, you know, I I'm on the board at high point university in greensboro college and it's part of the reason why I'm not teaching at High Point right now is because you know it's a 30 minute drive and it's like that's what, if I'm teaching three, that's three hours of my week that I won't get back.
Speaker 1:So I don't want to do that. But also, too, like I have much more influence on the school at Greensboro College than I do at High Point, so I get to control my own class. You know, like I just met with the VP of admissions and he wants to like put me up on stage and we can film it and it's like that's great for my content and also like help me with my brand positioning Right. You know, I could have like a Jordan Peterson style talk where, like, I have a student and we can talk about like his success story of how he got in my class and he worked with one of my clients, got his first actual taste of real world analytics. He then brought that into his interview for an internship, killed like just knocked out of the park of the internship, got his first job. That'll have that whole narrative happened within the last year. Right.
Speaker 1:And it's like those are the stories that are narrative, happened within the last year, right, um, and it's like. Those are the stories that are going to help the vp sell more. You know, get more students in, because right now it's a crap shoot, like you're going to spend a hundred thousand dollars and you might not get what you pay for, or like I guess, like what do you even pay for? Because, like it's, what's crazy is, education is uniquely positioned in that students pay for it, but then they don't want to go to it.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like you're paying for this and you're not going to class Like what's.
Speaker 2:What is going on? Yeah, yeah, hmm. So, yeah, I don't have the answer, I just I agree with the problem statement.
Speaker 1:Well, I think the answer is Like what I'm doing this upcoming semester. I'll go ahead and pull my screen up again. So what I'm doing is I'm going to be live streaming my guest lectures on Thursday evenings.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 1:The first. The first guest lecture is going to be my intern who came into town, okay, last month or last week, and he number one, he's going to. He's going to give them a narrative arc of like okay, I got a job in analytics within the past year, here's my experience, here's how I approached it, just so they have a mental model of how to go about doing that. But then also too, so, yeah, so you know, he worked for me for two years and now he got he's already gotten a promotion within the first year of working, but what?
Speaker 1:he so awesome, so the potential activity is going to be the roadmap, but then also, too, he's using ChatGPT to automate a lot of his job and it's like I want a use case.
Speaker 2:Yep, isn't that? Awesome, that is awesome I want to use ChatGPT to learn Python. That's exactly what I'm doing that's amazing. So this is Michael Galarnik, right here, phd candidate at Georgia, how to use chat GPT to learn Python.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I'm doing. That's amazing, oh yeah, so this is Michael Galarnik, right here, phd candidate at Georgia Tech Finance. Yeah, right there. And then I got Solomon coming on. Gary Fly, john's the analytics manager at Home Depot. Joey Cheek's an interesting one, so he's an Olympic gold medalist in speed skating who's now the um executive vice president of the chamber commerce, and, uh, so I went through their incubator program. So I've got I've got good connections with the chamber commerce here in greensboro right, yeah, so I don't know if this feels like play to me yeah
Speaker 1:like I don't, like I like this has technically worked for me, I guess, because, like you know, like there's money in the podcast, but this feels like loose and creative and fun, and like I'm open to your input. I'm not like I feel like the last eight years I've like white knuckled my life where I'm like this has to work, and now I'm like the concept of surrender is like I'm like I'm relaxed, um I'm open to new ideas. You know, have traction, um, I mean, a big part of that is, uh, the finances, though, because when I was making the most money so in 2023, in the fall I had like three months where I made five figures in revenue through the Career Services program on top of my other revenue stream. What's crazy about that is that I was so stressed I was just like Uber Eats. On top of I was paying a personal chef to like cook my own meals and going out and doing this, and I probably spent like seven grand in November.
Speaker 1:I'm spending like half of that now, so I've gotten my finances in order, cause I also had 15 grand worth of credit card debt at that time.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:Cause. It was like cause, yeah, I had those three really high months and then that competitor entered the market at a quarter of my price. At that same time I had hired three people to help me run the program. Sales went to zero.
Speaker 1:I lost 15 grand oh god well, but I've got space from it now and it's like, holy, I've got such a different perspective on work, cause every day I walk in the fresh market, there's a part of me that's like, oh, it's still here, like it's still here, we can, I can still collect a paycheck, like that's not a worry that I have. And just having like base level of gratitude is such a different mindset. But also, too, I think having founders mentality as an employee is like such a different mindset. But also, too, I think having founders mentality as an employee is like such a different, like vibe and energy.
Speaker 2:Yes, I would agree with that.
Speaker 1:So, okay, I feel like the audience may not know what I mean when I say founders mentality. What can you explain? Like how you Founders mentality is like? And I say founders mentality, what can you explain?
Speaker 2:Like, like founders mentality is like, like, I feel like I have a founders mentality because I came from like a pre product market fit startup where I like poured my heart into building this product and and actually the hardest part of building the product was selling the product. Cause, like I, I really subscribe to the rob snyder view of the world that, um, he's like a, he's like a startup founder advisor on like go to market wait, rob snyder.
Speaker 1:I thought he was an actor rob.
Speaker 2:No, I think, hold on, am I?
Speaker 1:thinking of rob reiner.
Speaker 2:I think hold on. Am I thinking of Rob Reiner? Rob, no, it's, I'm going to look him up now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, rob.
Speaker 2:Snyder yeah, he's a fellow at the Harvard Innovation Lab. Anyway, his whole thing is, like if you want to like, like basically throw out the textbook. If you want to build a business, the only thing you should do is try and sell your product and like if people are buying, you're not solving a problem that they care about, and so, like, do the sales part first and then build the product once you've like sold it.
Speaker 2:And then the reverse, which has historically been build the product and then sell it Anyway so that's what I spent the whole time I was like the CPO, but I was actually like the CRO because I was just like militantly working on sales, because I'm like if we can't sell the thing, there's no point building it. So, yeah, what is founder's mentality? I don't know. It's like I've come into my next company with just an enormous amount of respect and gratitude for the fact that, like, my bosses are able to generate revenue. And it's, I think, unfounders mentality is like I think you should pay me more because I'm worth this. And it's like I'm like dude, I'm so glad that you're doing the selling and I'm not Like thank you for making a viable business where I can work on interesting things and like teach myself how to code in python, like right, I don't know like. So it's having much more gratitude for like the struggle of like actually making money, because yeah until until you are responsible for earning revenue.
Speaker 2:You don't know shit. That's kind of funny. I don't know.
Speaker 1:It is interesting because that's an angle I didn't even think about, of the like pay me more, you know. So I was talking about. Are you familiar with Davis Clark?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Okay, he's like all over TikTok and he's so funny and it's like Channel 5 did like a little mini documentary on him. So he's a guy that's like it's like a new shift in the culture where he's young, he's probably in his mid-20s and he's like I'm stoked. He's like I woke up. It's a riser routine. I woke up at 4 30 this morning. This morning I hit the gym, I got a nice pump in.
Speaker 1:I'm now on the subway, I'm here with my boys and we're getting hype because we're going to go in there and we're going to bring home the shareholder value and it's like and he's making TikToks about that and at first I thought it was a meme, I thought he was making fun of corporate percent, genuine, oh wow, and he has like 60 million followers. So it's like a cultural shift that's going on from you know, us millennials and like the gig economy and being like you know, um, self-sufficient and entrepreneurial, to where it's like no, we're gonna be in this big company and you know we're gonna be, you know, locked. It's basically like a frat bro, and I was talking about it with Gary yesterday. We were talking about who would you rather hire the golden retriever energy person or the angry black cat person?
Speaker 2:It's true, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, know, like the like, uh, the the marxist, communist mentality of like we need to seize the means of labor, it's, it's that is the antithetical of the founder's mentality it's an interesting conversation. I haven't had this specific conversation before? I don't think, but I'm starting to piece it together. It's also a broader trend that's happening with Gen Z, where there's a void between the men and the women and that the men are becoming increasingly conservative and the women are becoming increasingly liberal. I don't know what that's going to look like.
Speaker 2:I actually saw an Econom economist article about exactly that.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it's like yeah, it's like well, it's like, are we gonna have, just like, a population collapse? I don't know.
Speaker 2:Right, but also too.
Speaker 1:I've seen this with. So with one of my friends, ryan who's he's doing very, very well, he's got his, his marketing agency. Just got Ryan who's who's doing very, very well, he's got his, his, his marketing agency just got like major traction, like they they landed a deal and I think they're they're doing well into the millions of revenue at this point. I introduced him to my friend Kelly. He was like was very liberal and outspoken, but then they got together and all of a sudden now she's like well, you know, know, maybe we should lower taxes you know it's interesting very funny just like, uh, you know now that she's like wifed up by a wealthy guy.
Speaker 1:It's like you know, there's, there's some, I don't know, I it's. I was afraid to become a professor at first because it was like right around the time where, like, all the madness was going on on campus.
Speaker 1:And what's interesting at Greensboro college most of my kids are like pretty normal. There's there's not, like you know, extremist students that are in my classroom. So I'm pretty grateful for that. And I don't know, because I went to UNCG University of North Carolina, greensboro, and that campus seems split Like. On one side it's like all the artistic people and they're, you know, kind of in that like leftist, far leftist, and then there's like the frat bros who go to, like you know, the sports bar and watch sports and drink beer and play pool and it's right, it's weird because it's like.
Speaker 1:It's like separate cultures within one culture right, I don't know I mean. Well, so you're in london. I don't know if any of this, any of this, resonate with you like it's.
Speaker 2:It's like I hear about it, but it's not like my reality okay, well, yeah, what's gen z in england like? I, I think like I, yeah, I'm. I realized how old I am and like disconnected from gen z when I went out for dinner last week with a bunch of um, the european team at sigma computing. I don't know if they're like an emerging analytics company, that's like a tablo.
Speaker 1:I'm starting to work Gen Z slang in Facts.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I don't even know. I don't even know the Gen Z slang. I just learned yesterday that like high socks are back in. I am so behind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, high socks with sandals. I was thinking about like AI to create men. Gen Z men are getting perms now and I was thinking about doing an AI picture with me of a perm.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah. No, I'm like I need to get back in with Gen Z because I feel like I'm becoming disconnected from where the kids are at. Yeah, you want to get back in with Gen Z because I feel like I'm becoming disconnected from like where the kids are at.
Speaker 2:I went and hung out with all these people from Sigma and I asked them. I was like you guys are all Gen Z right and they're like yeah, yeah. They asked me, you're a millennial right. And I was like what else would I be? They were like I don't know, like the one above. I was like that's people in their like 40s, like.
Speaker 1:Gen X.
Speaker 2:It's like pregnant. Yeah, I don't know. I was like oh, how humbling.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating. I had no idea where all this was going, although I kind of to piggyback off some Gen Z slang like do it for the plot, that's a big one. Um, I'm kind of here for it all, like it's such an interesting time to be alive it is like think about what happened politically like joe biden was in the debate was incoherent.
Speaker 1:Then Donald Trump got shot. Then Kamala came out. Like if I saw a post on social media that was like if you saw, if someone wrote this in a like a TV show, you'd be like this isn't real.
Speaker 2:I mean the only thing that could make it better is if we took my German colleague and made him American, so he could run into president.
Speaker 1:That's true. Yeah, we need, uh, we need. That's awesome. Well, hey, bethany, I feel like we've, we've. How long have we been talking?
Speaker 2:It's an hour and a half.
Speaker 1:It's an hour and a half. So so I'm gonna, I'm gonna end the episode, um, but I'm down to chat a little bit more so we can drop names and say things that I don't want to drop out there. But thank you so much for being on. This has been an amazing conversation. I've really enjoyed your company.
Speaker 2:I've really enjoyed this conversation as well. Thanks so much for inviting me on the show, yeah.
