 Hello everybody, I'm your host, Alex Freeberg, and this is the Alex the Analyst Show. Thank you so much for watching today. We are gonna be talking about consulting and freelancing in data analytics. I just recently did a podcast with Benjamin Rogogen, better known as Seattle Data Guy, here on YouTube, where we talked all about consulting and freelancing in data analytics, or just in the data space in general, cause he's in data engineering. And we had a lot of really great questions about how to get into it, how you can start consulting and freelancing, how to get clients, how to do pricing, all of these things. And so I wanted to dive a lot deeper into that because although we had a really great discussion, you guys should go check out that podcast. I have a lot of different experiences and my own story on how I got there. And then I'm just gonna talk a little bit about a lot of different things, about AI and the expansion of freelancing and consulting in the future that I definitely see, as well as Ben does, I know he shares this same viewpoint. And so I have a lot to talk about. I'm gonna start mostly with just how I got into consulting and freelancing, cause this is not something that I ever thought I'd be doing. How I started to grow clients, what kind of work I do, how I do my pricing, so I'll share kind of my pricing structure in essence. And then I'll talk a little bit about how you can get into consulting and freelancing and data analytics, how you can kind of get your feet wet and then grow that over time. And then potentially do that full time like I do now. And then at the end, I'll talk a little bit about the future of consulting in data and where I think AI is gonna kind of play a part in that. So we have a lot to talk about. This is not gonna be a short one, I imagine. Or it could be, who knows. But if you haven't watched this before, this is just my long form kind of podcast. It's not a podcast, it's just me talking. But this is kind of my long form videos. So if I just go with the flow, I don't really cut anything out unless I say something really stupid or something I didn't mean to say. I don't think that's ever happened. Maybe once in the history of doing it. I have like 20 some episodes. This is just long form. So you can just grab a thing of coffee. I don't have coffee today. I just have water, which I need to take a sip of. And so grab some coffee. Listen to this while you're on your way to work or at home with your kids. Your children would love to hear my soothing voice, I'm sure. Now, quickly, I wanna talk just a tiny bit about the difference between consulting and freelancing. Because I throw those out in the same manner. I'm saying, I freelance and I consult. I kind of just throw them out flippantly. Just, whichever one I feel at the time best fits the situation. But there is a small difference. But genuinely, most people consider them very similar. But let me just kind of go a little bit into the difference. And I'm gonna give you some actual, like, not definitions but what people, other people will say and then I'll kind of give you my take on it and how I see the difference. So consulting usually involves something like a consulting company where you have long-term relationships with a client or a company and you build those relationships over a long time. Typically, freelancing, you're not building long-term partnerships. You're coming in to do a specific task or something that they need done. That can turn into a long-term consulting but typically when people talk about freelancing it's just one person coming in to do a job. My cats are going crazy out there. I don't know what they're doing. I hope you can't hear that because they are really loud right now. The scope of the work for consulting is typically a lot larger. That can be, they're giving you information on a specific domain or a specific market that they're trying to target and it could be doing specific work. Freelancing typically is coming in to perform a task. Not always, but they usually specialize in a specific area and they come in and they do a task. Give me a second. I'm gonna go just do this cat away at my door, just rubbing up against it. I love her though, but not that much. Not enough for her to keep doing that. So that's kind of the scope of the work for consultants. It's a little bit broader and they'll do different services whereas freelancing, they have kind of a targeted and small niche that they'll do. Just, and typically it's more hands-on, more like actually performing tasks typically. Yeah, and that's kind of it. The other thing was a team collaboration. It says consultants usually work in larger firms or groups where freelancers are individual contributors. So all these things I think are pretty true. I call myself a consultant. I come in and I can help with a very large range of things. And I'm not gonna get into all that right now, but typically I don't consider myself a freelancer, even though I am one person. I do plan on scaling my business maybe in the future, maybe like a year or two. I have more work than I can take on right now, but I then would have to put my trust and my brand and reputation in the hands of someone else. And at this moment I just, I don't have the ability to do that or I don't know if I can trust someone else to do that because if I hire someone on and let's call them John and John does a terrible job, christs out some clients and they're like Alex analytics, that's the kind of people they hire, that would not be good. And that's the brisk with hiring anybody honestly. So, but I'll get into that more actually, I'll get into that more later and I made a note of that just cause it is an interesting position to be in. All that being said, that's kind of the difference between consulting and freelancing. Now I'm gonna talk to you about how I got into consulting and it started over two years ago now. My YouTube channel was just starting to get off, like really get off the ground. I mean, I was hitting, I think about maybe 75,000 subscribers, maybe a hundred thousand even somewhere in there and I started getting emails cause I put my email on my LinkedIn profile and I think on my YouTube channel for people to reach out. I think I had questions or issues or we just wanted to chat and I was also doing mentorships at that time. So I was taking on one-on-one mentorships with people. I can't do that anymore cause I have way too much on my plate now but I had the time to take on one-on-one mentorships. So I had people reach out and get that service as well. Now, I never in my life thought I would be doing consulting in any way. It just wasn't anything that was even on my radar but it kind of just fell into my lap. So about two years ago, I started getting emails saying, hey, Alex, I saw your YouTube video or I saw your post on LinkedIn. That's really the only platforms I was on at the time. And they're just like, we are looking for someone to come in and help us with this thing, which we know you're good at because we saw your videos. Excuse me. And so I was like, oh, that sounds really interesting. Can you give me more information? They're like, yeah, here's what we do. Here's what we're trying to do. And I'm like, oh, that is something I'm actually pretty good at. And they would be like, well, how much do you charge? I had no idea at the time. I was at the time, two years ago I was charging absurdly low numbers in the consulting world. I mean, I was very cheap. Because again, two years ago, I was still, I was a data analyst still. I hadn't become an analytics manager, but I was making about 100,000 and then some money from YouTube, not much, but a little bit. And so it wasn't anything I was even thinking about or like trying to do. And so they'd be like, hey, can you do this? And I'd be like, yeah, I'll do that. And you're like, how much do you charge? I didn't want to do it hourly and I still don't like doing hourly except on very specific things. And that will get to that more on the pricing. But I give them like a lump sum. Here's what I'll do for that project. If it changes or the scope changes, we'll renegotiate and stuff like that. But it'd be really cheap, like 500 bucks, 750 bucks. And for the work I was doing, now I would charge like, now I know pricing and how much I actually should price. It's probably close to like $3,000, $4,000. So I was charging very little. But because of that, I made a lot of really good relationships with a lot of people in different industries. And that kept happening. So two years ago it was like one email a month would come in. And sometimes I'd say yes, sometimes I'd say no. I'd say like 50% of them I was saying no to. Like, hey, you know, it's not really something I'm interested in or I have too much work. And that's how I got work. I'm gonna talk about how you guys can get work in the future, how I would recommend going about it. But I'm just gonna tell you how I did it. So that's what happened to me. It was organic natural growth of people reaching out to me because they saw YouTube or saw me on YouTube or saw me on LinkedIn, which was just really neat in and of itself. Cause when I would respond back, I'd be like, oh, that's so awesome that you're like a fan of the channel. Like that's wild to me. But again, data analytics is kind of a niche in and of itself. So, you know, the people in it and within it, it's a community, it's a small niche. So that's how it started. And slowly that turned into two emails a month, four emails a month, 10 emails a month. That was over the course of like a year. Now even to this day, I got another one this morning. I probably get several a week or five, six a week. So maybe like one per day, let's say. Now, right now on my plate, I have YouTube I have analyst builder, which has launched. She's, you go check that out. I do consulting slash freelancing is what I call it. And then I have three kids, a wife, dogs, a family. So I have a lot, a lot, a lot on my plate. And so in recent times, I'm turning down probably like 99% of these projects or stuff that's coming in. So I guess we really, really picky, which is really, it's a great feeling if I'm being like super transparent because I just get to do the stuff I want to do. It's a real luxury. I feel very, very, very fortunate, extremely humbled that people want me to work with them. And because of that, I get to choose what I want to work on. And that's wild to me. I always worked in a workplace environment for the past five, six years where I am told what I do. This is what you do. This is your job. Even before you get hired, you don't know exactly what you're gonna do. You get into a job, they tell you what to do. You're always told what to do in a job until you kind of get started to leadership positions. But even then, but now I get full control over what I do. That to me was one of the best things that I started to see as I got into consulting. So anyways, I'm a data analyst. I become an analytics manager. I'm still doing this consulting. It's all a side business. It's all on the side. And I started probably a little over a year ago now because I've been doing it for almost a year to the date. I start picking up more and more projects. They're paying me really well. And I'm like, I start running the numbers. I'm like, wait a second. I'm working 10 hours a week on this project. And I'm making as much as my full salary for that whole week. So like in 10 hours I'm making as much as 40 hours. So like if you extrapolate that for a month because that's usually what people think of. I'm making as much in one week in our terms as I would in an entire month, which is mind blowing. I've almost kind of, I've almost, I'm almost double my salary because I was making 100,000. Then with consulting on the side, I was making close to 200, which again is just mind blowing numbers to me. I joke about this to this day with my wife. I was like, I never, ever, ever in my life thought I'd be making more than 100,000. That was mind blowing when I reached that. And now I'm making 200 and it just feels a bit surreal. Excuse me, I'll get some water. Feels very, very, very surreal. I don't come from money. My parents are teachers and he's a headmaster of the school now and no one in my family makes that kind of money. So it's just very unnatural to me. It feels very weird to have to make that kind of money. And so I started running the numbers and I talked to my wife. I'm like, hey, I really, I really think I should think about maybe doing this full-time because, and she had actually been prompting me. Let me take that back. She had been prompting me, hey, Alex, you might want to do this full-time. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I've got a good career. I got my YouTube thing I got to like think about because I wanted to keep doing YouTube. So about a year ago, I was at like 300,000, 400,000 subscribers and now I'm hitting, I just hit like 600,000. Again, numbers, everything that's been happening in my career and in my life is just, I never thought it would happen. So just for context. So she's like pushing me. She's like, hey, you should really think about doing your own thing. And I'm like, no, no, no, I can't do that. Eventually I start really running the numbers and I'm like, wait a second. I could make a lot of money. I could make it to where we don't have to worry about money anymore, which is again, not a concept that I was aware of. And I'm like, I could make like 300, 400,000. That's insane. Let me see if I have, at the time as a year ago, I was getting like five emails, 10 emails a month and I was taking some on. I was like, okay, let me think about this. I started looking at it more, talking about it more. I had developed relationships with clients. They had been recommending me to other people. I'm like, I think I really could do this. I think I've built enough of a brand around the consulting piece where I'm now like, people know who I am and just consulting. Give me a second, I'm just doing a time check. Only 15 minutes. And I start building that up and I start thinking, I think I can actually do this, but I need some more structure to it. I need to ensure that I can get this. So I kind of was waiting around for kind of a bigger project. And I was like, if I can get a bigger project, I'm gonna quit. And so I just keep doing my manager thing. A little background is I wasn't like super satisfied in the manager position. It was not everything that I had hoped. And I'll talk about just for a second. You know, I got into management because one, that was what I always wanted to do. I always wanted to be a manager, become a director or be a CTO in like five, 10 years. But as I got into it, it was really exciting for the first like six months. And then after that, I was like, it's more like project management, people managing. I don't really get any hands on projects. I don't get to work with anything. I'm reviewing code, but I don't get to write it. I really missed it. So after about six months, I was like, and I stay in that position for every year, but I was just like, I kind of miss it. This is not like what I want to do longterm. This specific position, there are other manager position, I guarantee you that could have been a much better fit in terms of like the balance between hands on work and in management. But we were just with consultants that we were hiring. There was a lot of hiring that I had to go through. It just was not fun. A lot of creating job descriptions and you know, managing people with meetings. It just wasn't everything I'd hoped. It was really fun to build out. I've been going on a tangent, but it was really fun to build out, you know, we, I was on like a multimillion dollar project that I got to run on migrating from on-prem to the cloud, which was like a super cool project. Big budget, got to hire on some data engineers, different people, but again, just wasn't, it was not, I was not feeling super fulfilled. So I was kind of at that point, I'm like, I'm not super excited to work in this position long term for more than two years before I would go to a different one. Anyways, why don't I do consulting and just see how it goes? So I take the plunge, I tell my boss, hey, I'm quitting. I'm starting my own company. I'm completely quitting. I really appreciate it. It's just not, not working out for me. And of course they came back with trying to keep, get me to stay, you know, promising this and that. And again, I think I may have already done that and talked about that in another video or something, but I didn't take it. I was like, no, I really want to try this consulting thing. I really want to go on on my own. And so I quit. And with that, I started taking on more projects and I also started doing more YouTube videos. So I had time, I kind of, I can choose what I do throughout the day. So I would choose, you know, on one day during the week I'd make like three or four videos. Then the other days or for the rest of the month, essentially I would take on projects. Now let's get into how I, I've talked a little bit about how I got into consulting, how clients found me. I'm gonna talk about what kind of work I was actually doing. And this stuff to me is really interesting. Again, a lot of stuff that I didn't know I had a skill for until I started doing it. I was like, whoa, I'm pretty good at this. Or like the feedback that I'm getting from clients is that it was super helpful. Insights that I thought weren't like mind blowing. But I think sometimes, and this is something I found that sometimes companies need reassurance. They don't always know for certain until they hear it from an outside perspective or a consultant where they're like, okay, no, he's right, he's right. We were doing this right. We just wanted to be sure. So let me talk about some of the things that I've been doing that I've worked with that I'm currently working on. Excuse me. So this is a very broad range. You're gonna be like, wow, this is just random stuff. It kind of is. One thing that I found, and this is not something that I saw happening was a lot of companies have hired me on for product market fit. They create a product. They know it's useful. They know there is a market for it because they've worked in that area nine times out of 10. It's people who are working in an industry. They see a need that isn't being filled. They quit their job to create this startup. Then they get it, they create the product and they're like, okay, how do we market this best? Who do we reach out to? Who do we target? How do we market this product? Cause it's a really good product that has a niche that people would pay for it but they don't know how to market it. That becomes an issue. They bring me in and they're like, hey, Alex, we have this tool that connects all these different data sources, brings it into a place. You don't have to migrate the data. We're just accessing the data systems, bring it into one place. You can join the data. You can do all these things. Really cool products. This is something, this is multiple people have created this same thing and I've helped multiple companies with this exact thing. Excuse me. And they're like, how do we market this? And I'm like, okay, this is a great fit because I actually used a tool exactly like this. I was a manager. I had to vet multiple of these companies who did something similar and here's why I chose them. Here's how I chose them. And here's the things I was looking for. And here's who you should be targeting. And so all of these things were really valuable to them. They were like, oh, that's super good to know because I was on the buyer side or the customer side for almost that exact product. I mean, we purchased a product like that. So that is something that I've done multiple times. And it's not just that, that's just one example. But they're like, hey, we have this product that does this. And they're like, we want data analysts to use it, right? That's my niche data analysis. We want data analysts to use this. How do we get data analysts to use this so that then their companies use it? I'm like, hmm, okay. Well, let's kind of walk that through. And then I just talk a lot with them about their product, about their, not just their product, well, yes, about their product, but also is it a subscription? Is it an enterprise level? Is it targeted? You want to target it at the individual. Should individuals be using this? Like freelancers, like you and I. Who's your target audience? We start answering all these questions and I'm like, okay, here's what I think you should do. And then I give advice. So that's the part of consulting that's not technical. It's more domain experience and experience and management and being a data analyst. I've used a plethora of tools. Here's my experience and here's how you can target them. And every single time, I haven't ever gotten feedback where they're like, that's dumb. It's always like, okay, that's what we thought we should do. We just wanted to hear it from you. Or they're like, oh, we were doing it this way. This was how we were doing it. We weren't getting any traction. We're gonna pivot our marketing to that. And that one's always really impactful because it's like, we've tried it. You helped us and now we're going down a different path that we think is a really good one based off your recommendation. And then like six months later, they're like, hey, we have a lot more clients. Thank you. I always get good feedback and then they bring me back on. So that's another piece is recurring work with multiple companies. Excuse me, I got a cough today. It's recurring work with clients. But not only that, a tiny side note is that's how I also get other work. Is I do well with one company, that CTO or that CEO that I'm working with of that company or the founder of the company who I'm working with. They then recommend me to another someone who isn't like a competitor of theirs, but is like a friend of theirs in Silicon Valley. I work a lot with startups out in Silicon Valley. That's been really fun. Or just like in Texas, Texas and Silicon Valley have been like my biggest client basis. That's just advising on product market fit who to target all these things. Those are definitely something I've been doing. The next thing that I've been consulting on, and again, I say consulting and then I'm gonna say freelancing in a second because again, I just shout I see it. Another thing I've been consulting on apart from product market fit which is more on the marketing side is the actual product itself. So they bring me in and they say we want you as a data analyst to walk through our product, learn how to use it and then give us feedback on how we can improve the product itself. That one's really fun because I've used a lot of different tools and what's really fun is I'll say something that I think is pretty obvious, right? But when you're building it, all of these people, most of these people are engineers because they're building the product themselves. They have a small budget. They're a small startup with three or four people. I come in and I'm like, well, that's actually super user friendly because of this and they're like, oh my gosh, how did we not see that? I get that all the time. Like how did we not see that thing? So I was just checking the time. So they're like, how did we not see that this didn't connect with that or this bug was in there and that that piece isn't working? Like, so I'm just coming in to kind of QA is what I'll call it. I'm QA'ing a product as a data analyst and that one I've got to see in a lot of really cool products which has kind of really kept me in touch with just the future of data analytics in general. So these are a lot of scrappy startups or medium-sized companies with like 10 to 50 people and I come in and I recommend things. Now I've gotten to work on some reviews of AI products which have been really neat to get hands-on experience with like futuristic AI stuff that they're really trying to build. Of course, all of these things I have NDAs on, I cannot name any specific companies. And if I do name them, it's because I use them as a client, not as a consultant. Every single one of these, I signed some type of legal paperwork where I cannot disclose or use or talk about or recommend anything. Like the NDAs are like, you know, can't say anything. And so give me a second. I'm checking my notes really quickly. So another thing that they asked me to do, and this is more on the YouTube side, right? I'm a YouTuber. I have a platform, people know me in the data community, which is really neat. And they'll ask me to make internal or external videos. For example, so like, I consider that somewhat on the consulting side, let me move my touch. Internal videos are like, hey, we have this product. We want people to know how to use it. You come in and make some videos the exact same style as you make your videos on YouTube, how you teach them, just walk through how to use it. I don't do a lot of those because it's a bit pricey for the client because I have to do a lot of prep work. I have to learn the tool. I have to, they have to work with me to make sure I say certain keywords. And then third, I have to record it and edit it. That takes a lot of time. And I'll get to pricing a little bit. On average, those types of projects are like 20 to 50,000. That's a lot of money. And that takes me a lot of time. That's like a month or two of work. So not a lot of people end up taking my offers after I tell them that. And I price them high because I have so much other stuff. I can price my stuff higher. And you know what? Now we're starting to get into pricing. I'm gonna take a step back. I'm gonna finish what I actually do. The third thing is I, actually there's more than probably just one. But the next thing that I do is actually hands on work. And this is typically the stuff that I take on. It isn't, hey, come be a freelance data analyst and just work with us, be on our team. Usually, the only ones I've been taking on recently, we have a very specific issue. We do not know how to solve it. It's costing us money. And we need, we know that you're really good at X, Y, or Z. Azure, Python, SQL, Excel, Power BI, Tableau, all things that I would consider myself very, very good at now. Some of these videos that I made three years ago on Microsoft SQL, I've just gone way above and beyond that. Or Tableau were really simple projects. In my personal life or in work, I've gone way above and beyond that. So now I'm going back and like, I need to remake some of these videos because I've just learned more. And I become more of an expert in these areas. And so they bring me in and I'm like, okay, show me your workflow. Show me what's happening. Let's see why it's not working. It's been, sometimes it's been as small as like, it takes me an hour to figure it out. I'm like, it's a data types issue. It's, there have been projects where it's as simple as that. It's a data types issue. Or it's much more in depth knowledge. You, I know why you think you can do that. And here's why. And they, and I'm like, but it's this very small niche thing that Power BI does that you only would know if you've been using it for a long time or you've dug into like document documentation, which I do for fun when I'm in working on these tools. This is really small niche that you just couldn't, didn't know how to do. And chat GBT, like a lot of these people were like, hey, we looked on Google. We've tried to use chat GBT. We can't find the answer or we've used barred or some like up to date thing. It's like, it's not working. We don't know what to do. I come in and I help with it. Those are just super fun. Cause I get to work hands on and I get to solve these really intricate problems that no one else on their team can solve, which I love because it's like, it's a real challenge. Super, super unique. That's what I would consider like the freelancing part of it. So now I'm going to get into pricing and then I'm going to talk a little bit about how you can get into freelancing and consulting wherever you're at. I'll talk about different, you know, where you're at in your career. Let me check one thing real quick. Okay, so going, I need to grab some water. I'm coughing and I'm parched. Not a great combination. Let's talk about pricing. Early on I was charging very little. I would probably put myself at like $50 an hour. And you have to think about it from where I was at the time. This is two years ago, I was just a data analyst. I was making about $50 an hour. So I'm like, hey, why not just take on extra work and make more money? It's like doing overtime, except without the pay. But then I started to realize, I was like, if I did this full time, I wouldn't have insurance, 401K, benefits, medical. Nothing, like right now, in my full business, which I do, I have my own S corp. I used to be an LLC. I transitioned to an S corp because of taxes and try to minimize how much I'm taxed. Which is a whole different side of just owning a business, which I might talk a little bit about later at the end of this. Because that is, you know, consulting, you need to set up an LLC or some type of business in the United States. I don't know about international, but in the United States, you should definitely be doing that. Well, let's say, I started realizing, I was like, I need to charge more. Because if I do this in the future, or as I start getting on more requests, I need to kind of price myself out of some and keep myself in of others. Now, I'll make one small stipulation of this. I do work with a lot of nonprofits. If you're a nonprofit and I am able to help you, I charge crazy low just cause I like giving back. So like, if I would charge a private client at a startup, $2,000, I would charge like 500 bucks to a nonprofit. I've still do that to this day. So anyways, I started low. I started building clientele, building relationships. As I did that, I started to raise prices. Because I started getting more inquiries, more people. And I'm like, okay, if I said yes to everyone, I'd only be able to cap out at this because I can only work so many hours in the day. I need to, and I started doing a lot of research. So let me tell you, this is not all me figuring this out. I started researching this really in depth. A lot of people on YouTube and just Googling and like professors who would talk about these things. And they were like, you can't just keep your prices stagnant. Otherwise you'll have an influx of customers. You can't meet them all. What you should do is you should increase your prices where people are still, some people are priced out and some people are still in, where you're doing 10, you used to do 40 hours of work for $50. Now you're doing 10 hours of work for $200. You're getting paid the same, but doing 10 hours of work instead of 40 hours of work. And then you can scale that higher. So that's what I started doing. I started slowly increasing my prices. Now I don't do a lot of hourly projects, but I kind of estimate the hours in my head and do a lump. I do a per project basis. Typically even now I do somewhere between $200 and $250 per hour in my head. I don't really take things hourly because I don't think that's fair to the client typically. Usually it's like, if I think something's gonna take five hours and it ends up taking 20 hours and then I charge the person four times more, it doesn't sit right with me. So I don't like doing that. I don't think that builds a good relationship. Unless I got it done for less, which sometimes happens. But if it's like a specific problem, like I know how to do that, let's market it like, I'm gonna say 10 hours, that would cost $2,000 or $2,500. That's my estimate. Now if I get in there, it's a much bigger issue, I'm gonna go to them and I'm gonna talk to them about that. I'm gonna say, hey, while I was in there, here's what I found. That is a much bigger issue than what we originally talked about. If you'd like me to help you with that, here's what I'm gonna charge. And then it's like, you know, 4,000, 5,000, 10th, I don't know, it just depends. So I, that's how I do my pricing. I have never had any complaints with it at all. I'm not even from one person. Although I have had some people not pay and I should talk about that. When you're doing this type of work, you do not have guaranteed pay. Now I learned quickly that I need to have contracts, right? And this is going more to the business side. So I'm gonna kind of talk about this for just a little bit. I learned very quickly I need to have a contract, a legal contract. Now, am I gonna sue people? Probably not. But I have a contract that says, now, today, I have a contract that says, here are my exact stipulations. Here's exactly what I do and don't do. You cannot use my, because now I'm like, you know, I'm well known in the data community. You cannot use my likeness, my endorsement for your product unless specified in a separate contract, which I do that. Sometimes I do sponsorships and stuff for products I really like and use. But I'm like, there have been people in the past where I've done consulting for them and then they go on their Facebook page or LinkedIn or Twitter or anywhere and they're like, hey, Alex the analyst likes our product. I'm like, no, you can't do that anymore. Like that, you need to pay me for that. I'm like, take that down or pay me more money because I was kind of over it. It happened a few times. That is just a unique thing to me, I think. But I had to start creating these really ironclad contracts and I started having to take payments upfront or half upfront, especially if I've worked with them before I just do half upfront. But that's my typical, typically how I do payments is that I used to do it all at the end and I got skipped out on several thousand dollars at a time. So it was like $2,000, never saw it, never heard from them, send emails, follow up emails, never heard back. I'm like, they're blacklisted, I'll never work with them again. And if anyone else I know, and I know I worked with a lot of people in the data community, anybody ever asked me advice on them? I'll be like, do not work with them. Yeah, it's just not a good look for people not to pay people for work. So I have a good community of other consultants and people I talk to and it doesn't feel good to not get paid for what you do. So I have these contracts, I usually take half upfront, usually as well now, at the final deliverable, I'll request their final payment before delivering the final product. That's another thing I do now because I've had it's where I had half and then half and I delivered it and they didn't do it. So again, I learned, these are all things that I had to learn the hard way. I probably lost out on like $10,000 over the past two years, which isn't like a crazy amount, but it's a lot. But $10,000 over the past two years of people who just didn't pay. And there was even one guy who I worked with didn't pay me and then came back to ask me to do more work. And I said, I cannot work with you until you pay me. And in fact, because of that, I feel a little bit insecure that I'm gonna get paid for this job. So if you want me to do this, you have to pay me upfront. I'm now taking upfront payment just for you. I was like, I still like your product. I still enjoyed working with you. But that lack of payment breached my trust and the contract. And so all things I've had to work through and learn from and things that if you get into consulting and freelancing that you're probably gonna have to learn those things the hard way as well. You won't believe me. You're like, no one will do that to me. And then it'll happen to you one day and you're like, that is the worst feeling ever. I need to change how I do things to ensure that doesn't happen again. So I was grabbing some water, checking my phone to make sure my wife hasn't texted me. If she texts me, I like to text back even if I'm recording, I like to text back. Now I'm gonna talk a little, because that's pricing. That's pricing and kind of how I conduct business in general. Actually, I'm gonna interject. No, I'm gonna add this to this next section, which is how you can get into freelancing and consulting. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about like starting a business. Because if you're starting freelancing and consulting, you're starting a business, whether you see it that way or not. Let's say, so I'm gonna do it on different levels. Let's say you have no experience and you are like, want to start getting some tasks or some data analyst experience or you're trying to do freelancing and consulting. Typically, it's people with experience that get that type of work, but not always. Here's what I recommend for those people specifically. On places like Upwork or Fiverr or other platforms that do that, you're not gonna make a ton of money, but you will get experience. What you can do is bid on projects. You have to be pretty vigilant on these. I haven't done this myself. A lot of this advice that I'm telling you now is advice that I've gotten from other people in the consulting world that started from scratch. They didn't do it how I did it, where I grew a brand, the Alex DeAndal's brand is what I'm calling it, but just Alex Freberg as a person, they liked me, they reached out to me. I didn't have to go out and find my own work, which is very unique. It doesn't happen from what I've been told. It does not happen that much. So all the feedback that I've gotten from everyone is if you're starting from scratch, Fiverr and Upwork. Now, I've hired people or subcontracted some very specific, very small things on my YouTube, like editing work and stuff like that. So I know how Fiverr works. For data analytics, again, I have some trust issues when it comes to having other people do my work, but when I put a big project out, you can bid on these things. So what you need to do is go onto these platforms, see what projects are out there that are taking bids currently, or people can do that. You need to be like one of the first people. So you have to be, have alerts set, you need to be one of the first people on there. And what you're gonna do is you're gonna message them, think, hey, I read through your project details, I read through what you're looking for, I read through all of your pricing. Here's what I can offer you and I can do a really good job. Let's see how we can work together on this. And then you have a conversation with them, you go through some of the details, then you get hired on. You're not gonna get hired on the first, like several probably. It'll probably take 10, 15 until someone's finally like, is like, hey, this person wrote a really good message. Use ChatGBT to write these messages. Type in what they want, type in your skill sets, have ChatGBT populate something, make it really personal and then go back and change it a little bit. You don't have to add, not everything has to be done by hand. These are things that everyone should be doing now. Do that, get that job, start working with them, they can become a repeat customer. You then have experience on these platforms. It takes time to get that first client though, or that second client. But then after that, then the ball starts rolling as you get good feedback, you have more projects under your belt. That's how you start doing that. The same feedback will go for someone who has experience as a data analyst but wants to get into consulting and freelancing. You can just go on these platforms as a side hustle. You already have a full-time job but as a side hustle, go into these things and try to get a job. Now, if you have a good amount of experience, you don't only have to do that. Another thing you can do is now go and work with consulting companies. You can get experience as a consultant, then go and start your own company or work on the side. There's a lot of consulting companies. A lot of small companies that are local, that are I think the best ones to go to, there are a lot of big ones like KPMG, OG's, Bain Consulting Group, Alex Consulting, not me but there's like one called Alex Consulting. There's another one called not KPMG, it's also gonna drive me nuts. Let me Google this real quick because that's gonna, oh, my chair is really squeaky, big for consulting companies. It's gonna come to me right when I see it. There's KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, PWC. That's the one that I got offered a job at and I turned them down just for a senior data analyst position. The pay was great, pretty good. It was like $125 or something like that. I turned them down because the work-life balance is gonna be terrible and that's when I decided to start my full time or I became an analytics manager. I got that job instead, I took that one. But then you can start reaching out to these companies. Now you have experience. These, again, those big consulting companies are better for brand name but the smaller consulting companies local to especially metropolitan areas are gonna be the ones that you have a better chance of getting hired on to. But all those ones, and there's another one, Erdison Young, which is EY. They all, and there's Deloitte. They're all big consulting companies, right? So you can then start trying to get into those places and start working with them and get experience as a consultant. Most, almost every consultant that I've talked to and my father-in-law was a consultant at PWC for like 20 years. He was like, he was a partner, like a senior partner or something there. He almost advised me. He's like, I don't think you should, I don't think you should work at PWC. It doesn't seem like your lifestyle, which he was right. But you can get into these places, rise up, and then after three, two, three years, you can, oftentimes what happens is what he's told me is you'll get into consulting. A company will hire you on full time, as a full time consultant just for them because they like you. They're like, hey, we don't wanna pay PWC prices and we're paying $200. You're only getting paid $65 per hour. We'll pay you $120 per hour. That saves us $80 an hour and we get you full time. So numbers-wise, that's why that happened. And they really like you, you're good at what they do, you have good rapport with them. So that's another path you can take. And then you can continue to do that, take on different clients and build that up from there. The other biggest thing, and this is not easy and this is not something I think everyone should do, and I'm checking my notes right now. Don't worry about me not looking at the camera. Unless you're not watching it. I get a lot of feedback from, not a lot of people watch me when I talk on these. So I can just do whatever I want. I could be naked right now. I'm not, I could be. And no one would know it. That'd be quite the show. Let me see which time we got. I'm gonna try to keep it under 10 more minutes. No, I might go over. I'm gonna try to keep it under, that's no. Along with that, I highly recommend, and this is not for everybody, take a certain type of personality. I just recommend documenting your experience, your life in consulting, and data analytics online. Do it on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, make a YouTube channel, do whatever you want. I don't care. This isn't me. But I can tell you that even years ago when my channel was smaller, or my presence especially on LinkedIn was smaller, I would get messages all the time. Like, hey, you shared that article that you wrote, or you wrote this post that really connected with me, and or you shared this technical thing that really connected with me, and I would love to work with you. That happens too. It's not always my YouTube channel. A lot of times now it's on LinkedIn as well, where I'll just get a direct message on LinkedIn saying, hey, that post really resonated with me. Are you open to work? We have this project. And so that's another big, big thing. Now it takes a lot of time, consistency, commitment. That's a long-term strategy. A long, long, long-term strategy. That took me, YouTube took me over a year to get like 1,000 subscribers. It took me a year to get over 1,000 people on LinkedIn. These things took a long time. So that's a long con, but pays out dividends if you have a good brand online. So take that into consideration, I recommend it. Another thing was starting a business. And when you start seeing clients on the side, when you're working at a, and this is like business, this is more about starting a business. When you're working at a company, you're a W-2 employee, you're an employee of a company. So all your taxes and health insurance, all these things goes under your W-2. And you get taxed from Medicare, Medicaid, all these things. And you get taxed 20%, 30%. And I'm gonna talk a little bit higher level on starting a business, because I've learned so much over the past several years of doing it. You need to start an LLC if you start doing side business work because you're gonna get taxed on it. Does companies want that as a write-off? They're gonna write off, hey, I worked with Alex Freberg. We hired him on as a 1099, it's like dash NEC in the United States. So that for tax purposes, they'd listed me and they'd say, hey, we paid him $10,000. If I don't list that on my taxes, the IRS is going to come for me. That is a fact. Hasn't happened to me, never been audited or never had any issues with the IRS, but it absolutely will happen if you don't. So what do you do? You can just declare that on your taxes as like supplementary, secondary income. Then you'll get taxed at a higher rate. Don't do that. What you need to do is you need to start an LLC. It's super cheap. I went on like legalzoom.com. Start an LLC in your state. You get paperwork, you get something called an EIN, employee identification number. I was making sure I hadn't timed out. You get an EIN, employee identification number. That's your tax ID for your business. Any money that comes in through consulting or any side gig, you put it in that account. You track your expenditures and this is why you need an LLC. You track your expenditures, you track anything that you pay money for your business. You track all those things and you can write that off as an expenditure. So let's say you start your side gig. You were in $10,000 in your first year. Awesome for your side gig, right? That's almost $1,000 a month extra. $10,000 in a year. But you had to travel for one of it. So you spent $1,000 on airline or you had to buy a new laptop, which costs $2,000, a really nice laptop. Then you had, you needed business cards in a website and you hired someone for marketing. All totally, you spent $4,500. Those are all write offs. So now you didn't just lose that and you're saying, well, I made $10,000 but now I only really made $5,500. And so you get taxed though on that full $10,000 because that was income. So then you get taxed, let's say 20% and now you lose and now this is, I know I'm going into the weeds here but this is all important. Checking another thing. It's all important. Then you get taxed $2,000. Now that $5,500, now you really only took home $3,500. Uh-oh, that's not what you want. You want to keep all $5,500, it's not possible. But when you have an LLC, you write off that $4,500. You only get taxed on $5,500 and now they tax you at 20% of $5,500, which is only $1,000. So now you take home $4,500 instead of $3,500. That's a very small use case. They get it from my perspective, let's say $200,000. That's how much I made for like consulting and all that stuff like the past year. With $200,000, now that's a much larger number. So now I'm writing off consultants for my websites and like all these business expenditures. I can write off my house, I have a company car, I have health insurance, my laptops, I wrote off all this camera equipment I wrote off, everything I can write off, everything that I use for my business, I can write off. And actually, I think healthcare, I wasn't able to write off because of some rule. So if IRS is watching this, don't quote me on that. But anything you purchase for your company, more or less, you can write off. I hired an attorney, I hired an accountant. Those people I write off on my taxes. All these things, that's all I'm saying. So now $200,000 now goes down to like, let's say I spent $15,000 or $20,000 on that, now it goes down to $180,000. So then I get taxed on $180,000 instead of $200,000. Right, you see that. Now, a step above that, you've been doing consulting for a while, you're making like say $50,000, $75,000. Now you might wanna restructure as something called an S-Corp, which is what I am now. My accountant's really recommended to me after I started making $50,000. I was already making like a hundred or so at the time. They're like, you really wanna be an S-Corp for tax reasons. I now am an employee of my company. I'm the CEO, but I am an employee of my own company, Alex Analytics LLC. Now because of this, for my salary, I make $80,000 as a salary of my company, then the other $120,000 is revenue generated for the business, was that distinction. So on the $80,000, I pay Medicare, Medicaid, I pay towards Social Security. I get taxed to all of these different things, right? So I get taxed higher for that $80,000. Or I get taxed at the same amount I do as an LLC, but only for that $80,000. The other $120,000 is profit for my company. I get taxed at a lower rate. So now I get taxed at let's say 15% for that $120,000. I save, like last year I say, the year before when I didn't have an LLC, I spent like 40 grand on taxes. It was horrible, did not like it. This year I paid about, this previous year I paid about 40 grand, but I made a lot more. So I saved, I probably would have paid like 60 if I was still an LLC. So I went restructuring, I saved like 10 to 20,000. And that's take home money in my bank account. So these are all things that you should consider when starting a business. You know, just you don't have to do these things. It's just what I recommend, right? I'm just giving you my advice from my experience. Once you reach a threshold, restructuring as an S corp makes financial sense. So again, I know I'm going into the weeds here, but if you're watching this one to start a business, I'm hoping that'll be good, useful information, right? Because I didn't know any of that when I started. I figured out all that on my own. I wish I had a mentor in the consulting space. Like I wish I had talked to Ben more because he had been doing consulting. I wish I just had someone to talk to about this to tell me how stupid I was at the beginning. That's what I'm trying to do for you, right? I'm trying to do that for you. Now we've been talking for a long, long time. I'm gonna talk a little bit more. This could be as long as I want. I can make it three hours, but I'm not going to. I'll try and make it like an hour and a half. Keep it under an hour and a half. Now, the last thing I wanted to talk about was the demand for freelancers and consultants right now. And where I think it's gonna be in like a year or two and especially with AI. That to me is one of the biggest factors that's gonna, I'm gonna talk about in a second. Now, let's talk about demand for consultants and freelancers. There's always going to be a demand. Even today, there's a demand right now out there for freelancing consultants, I promise you. You can go on any of these platforms, look up analytics. You will find a lot of stuff on there. Now, sometimes they're really small niches. Like sometimes they're like, we need somebody with CRM experience through this platform. Or we need someone who really knows this niche tool. I mean, this is a niche, but let's say they want someone who knows Salesforce really well. Or they want someone who knows ServiceNow, Microsoft ServiceNow really well. All these little tools and niches, you'll see those all the time. The ones that I'm talking about are more like the general ones. Hey, we need someone with Python experience, with SQL experience. Or domain knowledge in this area with these skills. That's kind of like what I'm talking about. There's always a demand for it. Always has been I just, you just aren't aware of it until you're aware of it. There's always a demand for it. So the demand right now is there. And what you really need to do is build up those soft skills with communication to pitch yourself for those that work. Of course you need the hard skills as well. You can't do without it. Now, I do recommend if you're able to generate these things with AI. Generate your responses and stuff like that with AI, just with the help of it. Don't let it all be, it sound like a robot. Cause sometimes it does, but you put your personality into it, but think about what you'd wanna say, how do you wanna structure it? Use AI to help you with that. I do recommend it. I do that as well for certain people, for certain clients. Sorry, I'm checking my notes really quick. So the demand is there. Now, let's say in a year or two, it gets a lot bigger. Now this is not just my opinion, although I have talked about it quite a bit. I talked to a lot of other experts in the field and they all agree and say the exact same thing that I'm saying. So I feel very confident in this fact and we'll see if it plays out. Is that AI is going to exacerbate the need or it's going to increase the need for freelancers and consultants. Now here's why. And here's what you need to do to kind of ride this wave. Wait, what was that first part? Here's why. Okay, I lost track. Here's why AI is going to lead to that. Right now, most consulting is medium to small companies, larger companies hire from large consulting groups like Bain and PwC and all these companies. Freelancing with almost anyone, small, medium, large. But at the small side, small to medium, it's not a huge, huge thing for a lot of different reasons. One is budget, smaller companies don't typically have as large a budget. Two is they like to hire on full time. They don't want to hire on people because they just want to hire someone on full time to do this sometimes. And then the third thing is oftentimes these small companies have been doing things the way they've been doing them for a long time but AI is going to change that. I kind of, I don't know if I fully said that perfectly. I'm going to kind of restructure this a little bit. With AI, a lot of small companies and mid-sized companies are going to have to advance a lot of things. I worked with tons of companies in the past year. Their infrastructure in data is bad or poor. They do not have a dedicated data team. They do not use AI or know about AI in any capacity they've just heard of it. What this means is there's going to be a massive demand for someone who knows AI or knows about AI or knows technical skills plus AI. A massive demand, especially at small and medium-sized companies for consultants and freelancers in this area of data analytics with AI. AI isn't always going to, you aren't always going to have to know AI but I think it's going to be a big, big, big bonus. Here's why we're going to see a huge surge. AI right now has not been crazy productionalized. ChatGPT, yes, BARD, all these things, they're productionalized, you can pay for, or you can, well, you can pay for ChatGPT, right? But they aren't integrated with a lot of tools yet. For example, when Microsoft Co-Pilot comes out, they've been teasing it out for like eight months, it doesn't come out. When Co-Pilot comes out, AI is going to be integrated in a product on an enterprise level. People are going to specialize in using Co-Pilot to speed up different things. That is a niche market that's going to be emerging. And with that, all these small companies that are using all these Microsoft products who want to utilize them and have no idea how to do it, are going to hire consultants and freelancers to show them how to do it or create workflows or do things with these tools to speed up their work and get it done faster. So if you know data analytics and you know these tools, you can get hired on. If you don't, if you don't know AI at all, you can still get hired on to some of these companies because they're just going to be creating data teams. That's a different iteration. So some of these people have no infrastructure, have no data team. They're just going to be trying to hire on people for a data team to then eventually use AI in the future. But some of these people already have data teams, but they need these people to use AI. So hiring a consultant or a freelancer to come in, help their team understand how AI works, how they can do it. Now that takes some experience at some level because if you don't know data infrastructure or you don't know data modeling or you don't know data pipelines like some data engineering concepts, it may be more difficult, right? Of course, but there are going to be a lot of jobs that fit in that previous category where they're just, they want someone to come in who knows how to use it. That's how you market yourself. Freelancing and consulting is about marketing, is marketing yourself. And that's why I was talking a little bit about creating a brand and it's hard to do, but long-term it is 100% worth it. So that is why I believe as well as many others, believe that there's going to be a big demand in that cross-section. And it's the same for data science, data engineering as well. Just depends on what that company does, right? If they work on primarily data engineering, they won't hire that many data analysts, maybe one or two. If they're a data analytics company, most likely they're going to hire data analysts. There's a lot of analytics companies out there or small companies, they're going to hire people on who know these things. You want to be one of those people who know these things. So how do you set yourself up for the future of consulting and freelancing in this space? I highly recommend getting plugged in to using some of these AI tools. You don't have to be the expert of experts, but if you understand it more than they do, that is already where you can separate yourself. Like for me, if I just knew ChatGPT really well, how to use it, how to use it for AI, how to do certain things with it with data analytics, that would be a big upsell. You say, hey, I know how to use this tool. In the future, you'll be saying, hey, I know how to use co-pilot. I've used it for all these things. Here's how I've used it in personal projects. So you don't have to say, I just say, here's how I've used it. You explain some things you've done in the past to practice with them and use them. That's going to happen a lot in the next year or two, where all these new tools are coming out, all these production level things, enterprise level things at Microsoft, at Google, at, oh geez, Dell, HP, larger tech companies like Amazon and Twitter are going to come out with AI tools. So if you know your niche, you know a tool or multiple tools, that is how you get this work. I've already started kind of creeping into the AI space a little bit with this. This company will be like, hey, we want to use AI. And I'm like, all right, well, let's take a look at what you have for your data infrastructure. Like how are we going to use AI? I was like, let's look six months down the road because this is like future planning. I'll let's look six months down the road a year down the road. Let's look at what you currently have and let's look at what you'll need. Now, a lot of that has come with a lot of research and a lot of work on my end to learn those things, but that's what you need to do too. So then I'm like, okay, here's how your current data infrastructure is, here's how your data pipelines are, not bad. We may be able to even in the future, use AI to help with those things, but here's where you need to get in the short term or the midterm in order to start using AI and what it needs to look like, how it needs to be formatted, how it needs to be, you know, you need data dictionaries, you need, you know, processes and procedures, things that you can feed into AI then you'll be able to use. So I've helped a few companies with planning for the future. These are things that you need to be doing as well, planning for the future, start learning these AI tools, grow with these AI tools, follow that wave of AI, do not get left behind. I think in five years, and this is why I'm gonna start making more videos on AI as more tech comes out in analytics, in five years, you can't just know the base skills. You'll need to know the base skills and how to use them with AI. Now they aren't going to do everything for you, they're gonna get things wrong, there's gonna be mistakes and you're gonna have to be there to use them. There'll be a tool, especially in five years, I still think they'll be very infant level even five years. In five years, you'll still need to know the skills, you'll just need to know how to use them faster and better with AI. And it'll help you learn these skills a lot more in depth. So don't get left behind, I myself am having to upskill. I have to do it myself. So in consulting and freelancing, that'll be an expectation in the future that you know how to use these things and you can be one of the first people to start doing it and get that traction early, get that reputation early, start working with people. I'm looking at my notes, I don't have much more. What I will say though is, and this is just a note on AI, I am not super worried about AI replacing data analysts anytime soon. Maybe in 40 years, 30 years, we'll be really integrated with AI so much so that we can kind of, we'll need AI monitors, AI data analysts monitors, I don't know. Nobody can predict that that far. But in the next five, 10 years, 100%, I am more and more and more confident than I have ever been now. Seeing all these new emerging products from Silicon Valley, I'm like, you need someone who knows more than that. I've also been using ChatGPT a lot for code and it's also not there on code, it's not crazy advanced. Like on Analyst Builder, you go on Analyst Builder right now, try a very hard question, even a very hard question, which is like in the real world, like a medium. In like a real workplace, that's not even like crazy hard. A very hard for technical interviews though, those questions, ChatGPT can't solve them. You know, there's so many limitations right now to where AI is, especially even in coding, that humans are gonna be more necessary than ever. No layman is gonna be able to use ChatGPT like a data analyst knows it for data analysis, right? So if somebody comes in, they're like, I wanna be a data analyst, let's use ChatGPT to do it, it's gonna be very difficult, even with AI to do it, properly, that's why data analysts come in, they know how to do it already, but with AI and they do it faster and better, that's when they need consultants, that's why they need freelancers and they wanna hire these people on all these small and medium-sized companies, they're gonna hire on these freelancers, all these consultants to come in, build these teams, build these data teams from scratch that they never had. So I think there's gonna be a big flood in the future for need of these things and eventually probably hiring on full teams as well, which you may wanna stay on that team to do. So I've talked a lot, I'm sort of lose my voice. Yeah, over an hour for sure, all that being said. Consulting and freelancing, highly recommend it, love it. I think it should be a side gig at first, if I were to be honest. Try to get a job as a data analyst, if you can't, try to do freelancing and consulting, but it's easier to do it when you have experience. So it's just like anything, if you have experience, it's easier. So my recommendation would try to get a year or two, three before you start doing it, if you can, start building it up as a side project. I would be a bad advisor to you if I said just dive in, quit your full-time job and start doing it. It's hard to get clients, it's hard to keep clients, it's hard to get paid consistently. It's different than a full-time job, right? It's not as consistent a pay. It's not guaranteed pay in some instances where you don't structure it properly. So just think about that. Really try, I would advise starting as a side gig and then building it from there. And eventually if you can, if the numbers make sense, then go full-time, but it's risky. You have to pay for all your own insurance, all your own benefits, all these things. You're a business owner at that point. You have to think about it like that. And so, yeah, I hope that was helpful. You know, that's just my, that's my story of how I got into consulting, very different than most people's. You know, it just happened upon me. That's how I like to say, but you know, genuinely, I'm so appreciative of everything that I have and how I've been able to get here. It's been really amazing, genuinely. So, yeah, that's been my story and that's how you can do it too. So, you know, if this is helpful or if you have any questions, write it down below. I'll try to answer it. I try to answer most questions. Shoot me a message on LinkedIn. Follow me there too, because I post a lot of stuff. But I hope that's helpful, but that's, I throw a lot of information at you. But if you stuck around to the end, now that really means, tells me that you are really dedicated to trying to get into consulting and freelancing and data analytics. And that is impressive. This is a long, this is a long one, right? So, if you made it all the way to the end, one, congratulations. Two, I wanna know that you made it all the way to the end. I think people who made it to the end are people who are hard workers or people who are dedicated. And I have this thing where I do the vegetable of the week. Now, I don't do these weekly anymore. I used to way back in the day, but I do kind of short 10 minute videos now. So, I think people who are this dedicated, I would consider them a meat and potatoes kind of people. A people who they eat and they get right back to work because they're hustlers and they're working hard. So, if you watch to the end, in the comments, write potato. If you write potato down there, I'm just telling you, and I truly believe this, this is not just, I'm not just saying it to be silly or funny, although the vegetables is silly. I truly believe that people who really invest in themselves and then apply those things into their life, truly can make changes in their life. I did it myself. I watched people on YouTube on how to get into data analytics, and now I'm a person doing that. I truly believe that people are putting in the hard work who are really investing in themselves and then they apply those things to their life. That's the key, you have to apply it. They apply those things to their life, they truly can make changes. That person is determined, they're willing to work hard to make it work. So, write potatoes down below because goodness gracious, I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy. I like to eat, I like to work, are for my family. So, that is the show today. That is the show today. Man, this has been a long one. Now usually at the end, I just chitty chat with you guys for a little bit, but we've gone so long. I won't do that too long, but we're just gonna chitty chat for a second. I've actually, and I know I've been saying all these things, I'm gonna make a small caveat and you'd only know this at the very end. This is just kind of more personal, but I've started declining a little bit more consulting work now because of Analyst Builder because it's been a lot of work. It's a lot of work, but I still do almost as much as I did before I just work more hours. But you know, it's a give and take. You know, if you're working a full-time job, it gets busier, you take on less consulting work. Your work gets slow at work, take on some more consulting work. And just do it during your work out, work remote. Don't let your boss know that you're doing it. That's what I did. And start doing what nobody knows. But Analyst Builder's been taking a lot of my time. I'll leave a link down below for Analyst Builder. I mean, if you're trying to break into data analytics, goodness gracious, it's fun. It's really, really fun. I've had just amazing feedback. People love it. It's the best. Well, I'm sounding like Donald Trump right now. No, I did generally. It's really, really cool. If you haven't heard about it, go check it out. You don't only know about it if you listen to the end. Yeah, it's been taking a little bit more of my time than lately. Also, all of my kids are doing sports right now. I'm Zander, if my son's Zander, I'm his soccer coach, which I did soccer for like more than 10 years. We won state championship my senior year as the captain of my soccer team. So I love soccer. So I'm a soccer coach right now. My youngest daughter's doing dance. My oldest is doing swim and volleyball. And now she's volunteering at a horse place where she gets to help with horses. She's volunteering. And so I've got a lot going on in my life. I'm just venting now. I'm actually, now this is just more venting than anything. So this is welcome to my therapy session. I just been crazy busy. And the holidays are coming up with Thanksgiving and Christmas. And for other people like Hanukkah and stuff like that, it's busy. I got family who wants my attention. I have no attention to give. I'm just kidding. No, that's actually one of the benefits of working in consulting and freelancing is you get to make your own hours. That has been one of the best things ever because now I get to take whenever I want to, I just get to work. Whenever I don't want to, I don't work. So I can take vacations when I want to. I get to not take vacations when I want to. Now that of course is seasonal. I can't always be on vacation, but there's a balance. I get to choose when I work during the day. And I'm gonna take time off for the holidays for sure. Absolutely. Geez, I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore. You guys are great. Usually the people who end up saying potato at the end of the vegetable of the week, those are the people that I recognize and I know because I've seen them on live streams or on LinkedIn and I actually know who you are. I always appreciate those people just because I don't know. I feel like I do this to connect with you guys because I love it and I like actually having these conversations and it's just super fun. Like I love seeing, I love, I know so many people. I've met literally thousands of people because my YouTube channel on LinkedIn and it is the biggest blessing ever. Just the best community, really tenacious and hardworking and just good people. And so it's been such a blessing for me. I just love reading through the comments, especially on these videos. That's it. That's all I got for you. I'm gonna head out of here. I'll edit this video. I'll post it as barely any editing. I just gotta make sure the audio is good. Barely any editing. And yeah, I'll talk to you probably the next one. I'm gonna do another one. I don't think it actually, I don't think this is going to be, maybe this will be a long form one. I don't know on how I became an analytics manager because that's a wild story in and of itself. Maybe I will do a long form one on how I became an analytics manager. But if not, I'll do a short form one. I'm gonna record that probably tomorrow. You don't care, but I care. All right guys, it's time for me to get out of here. Excuse me. You wait around for that burp right there, I can tell. I'm gonna get out of here. And you should too. So thank you guys. I really, really appreciate you staying around this long. If you haven't, if you stuck around this long and you haven't liked and subscribed by now, please do that. Really helps with the algorithms. Well, it's just my YouTube channel, which is just, I love my YouTube channel. It's so much fun. That's all I got for today. I love you, I care about you. I want you to succeed, I really do. So if you have any questions or shoot me a message, I'll try to respond. My email has just been an absolute mess. I have like 600 that I haven't responded to. I got it down to 200. Then within like two weeks it was up to like 600 again. I haven't got it back down yet. Email's not the best way to get to me anymore. It's on YouTube or dead. All right guys, thank you. I appreciate you. I love you. Take care and I will see you in the next episode.