One suggestion on starting your journey into becoming a data consultant

#AgileDataNetwork

At #AgileData we are focussed on helping people become data entrepreneurs.  

Whether they want to start their journey by side hustling, or becoming a one person data band or grow their small data consulting companies revenue and margin, but not their team, we are keen to be part of their journey.

As part of this I talk to lots of people who are just starting out their journey and provide my experiences in founding and growing a niche data consultancy.

I was chatting to somebody the other day, about what I would do if I wanted to start that journey again (apart from starting with AgileData of course ;-)

A series of fortunate events

My journey into founding a Data Consultancy was more luck than planning.

I had moved from a safe job with a large global enterprise data software company and taken a risk and jumped into an early stage startup.  As part of that I had jumped into a role that I had been side hustling in, and I quickly discovered that at an early stage startup with massive global growth plans, you really need to have done the job before.  I also learnt that startups don’t pay the same as enterprise software vendors.

So for a bunch of reasons including those two I needed to leave the startup gig, I was lucky enough to stumble across a full time contract as a data consultant.  

From there it was a series of unplanned events until I ended up with a data consulting company, with a business partner, 5 people in the team and a handful of customers.

The benefit of hindsight

In hindsight would I recommend doing it this way again?

Yes and no.

Yes because it was a relatively safe way to do it, but no as it was an unplanned approach.  It could have gone badly.

So here is what I recommended.

Create some safety in which to experiment

First, figure out how much you need to live on for a period of time, maybe 6 months, maybe a year.  Save that money up as your bootstrapping fund.

Second, if you are in a relationship, married, have kids etc, agree with your important other that you are going to gamble that money to try and build a new career.

It’s highly unlikely that you will lose it all, but you need to treat it as a gamble where you recognise you might, that safety net will let you take calculated risks that you wouldn’t take without it.

Focus on what you enjoy doing

Third, figure out what you are good at, what you love doing.  The best way to find this is to sit back and observe what people ask you to do on a regular basis.  If you don’t hate doing that data work, that is your data super power.

If you are already doing that data work for organisations outside of your day job, even if it’s unpaid, then that is the thing you should focus on, the market is telling you it has some value.

Place three bets

Fourth, figure out three different ways you can offer that data superpower and get paid for it.

The typical ways are providing advice, doing the work, teaching them to do the work, reviewing their work, or creating a product that does the work.

These three things are still based on your data superpower, they are not three different superpowers.

For example it should not be:

“I can deliver you a data strategy, or I can build you data transformations using dbt”

But it could be:

“I can build you transformations using dbt, I can teach your data team to build transformations using dbt, or I can review the transformation built by your team using dbt”

By picking three of these offerings you have a better chance of one of them paying off and becoming the thing you end up doing a lot of. 

A product or a service

Get good at clearly articulating the way you deliver each of these three things, what is the “product or service” you are providing, what is the outcome the customer will get if they invest in that product and service.

Be very clear in your own head what the differences are.

And then only offer each potential customer one of those things, not a smorgasbord of all three.  You will need to get good at talking to potential customers and guessing which is the best way of delivering your support power for them.  Don’t worry if you initially guess wrong, you will, but you will get better over time.

Then once you have delivered one of them, try and deliver the next one to the same customer.

For example:

“Now I have trained your team on how to transform data using dbt, I would suggest I spend a day in a months time reviewing what they are building and providing some feedback on how they can improve I it going forward”

Focus on selling it as much as you do building it

Last, focus on how you will find new customers, or how new customers will find you.  

This is by far the hardest of the steps, but without nailing this one, you will end up using all your safety net and returning back to a full time job as an employee.

That bootstrapping money you put aside, that is the thing that gives you the urgency to succeed.  If you start to see that money dwindle and you haven’t managed to get a paying customer or two, you will end up iterating the product or service you are offering, or the way you are articulating it, or the way you are offering it, or the way you are trying to find customers to buy it.

And that’s the point.

You don’t actually know where you will end up, you need to iterate throughout the journey to get to a place you love.

If your not having fun your doing it wrong, or your doing the wrong thing

And my last bit of advice.

Make sure you enjoy the journey as much as you enjoy the final destination.