Consulting and Freelancing in Data Analytics: How I Built My Business

Name: Consulting and Freelancing in Data Analytics: How I Built My Business
Uploaded: 2026-10-25T12:07:44+00:00
Duration: 1 h 14 min 3 s
Channel: Alex The Analyst

00:00:00Hello everybody, I'm your host Alex Freeberg and this is the Alex the Analyst Show. Thank you so

00:00:03much for watching. Today we are going to be talking about consulting and freelancing in

00:00:08data analytics. I just recently did a podcast with Benjamin Rogogin, better known as Seattle

00:00:15Data Guy, here on YouTube where we talked all about consulting and freelancing in data analytics

00:00:21or just in the data space in general because he's in data engineering and we had a lot of really

00:00:26great questions about how to get into it, how you can start consulting and freelancing,

00:00:32how to get clients, how to do pricing, all of these things. And so I wanted to dive a lot

00:00:38deeper

00:00:38into that because although we had a really great discussion, you guys should go check out that

00:00:42podcast. I have a lot of different experiences in my own story on how I got there and then I'm

00:00:49just

00:00:49going to talk a little bit about a lot of different things about, you know, AI and the expansion of

00:00:56freelancing and consulting in the future that I definitely see as well as Ben does. I know he

00:01:00shares this same viewpoint. And so I have a lot to talk about. I'm going to start mostly with just

00:01:08how I got into consulting and freelancing because this is not something that I ever thought I'd be

00:01:12doing. How I started to grow clients, what kind of work I do, how I do my pricing. So I'll

00:01:19share kind

00:01:19of my pricing structure in essence. And then I'll talk a little bit about how you can get into

00:01:26consulting and freelancing and data analytics, how you can kind of get your feet wet and then grow

00:01:32that over time and then potentially do that full time like I do now. And then at the end, I'll

00:01:37talk

00:01:37a little bit about the future of consulting in data and where I think AI is going to kind of

00:01:44play a part

00:01:44in that. So we have a lot to talk about. This is not going to be a short one, I

00:01:48imagine, or it could

00:01:50be, who knows? But if you haven't watched this before, this is just my long form kind of pod.

00:01:56It's not a podcast. It's just me talking. But this is kind of my long form videos. So if I

00:02:04just go with

00:02:05the flow, I don't really cut anything out unless I say something really stupid or something I didn't

00:02:09mean to say. I don't think that's ever happened. Maybe once in the history of doing it, I have like

00:02:1320 some episodes. This is just long form. So you can just grab a thing of coffee. I don't have

00:02:18coffee today. I just have water, which I need to take a sip of. And so grab some coffee. Listen

00:02:27to

00:02:28this while you're on your way to work or at home with your kids. Your children would love to hear

00:02:34my soothing voice, I'm sure. Now, quickly, I want to talk just a tiny bit about the difference between

00:02:41consulting and freelancing because I throw those out in the same manner. I'm saying,

00:02:45you know, I freelance and I consult. I kind of just throw them out flippantly. Just, you know,

00:02:52whichever one I feel at the time best fits the situation. But there is a small difference.

00:02:57But genuinely, most people consider them very similar. But let me just kind of go a little

00:03:03bit into the difference. And I'm going to give you some actual like, not definitions, but what

00:03:10people, other people will say, and then I'll kind of give you my take on it and how I see

00:03:14the

00:03:14difference. So consulting usually involves something like a consulting company, where you have long-term

00:03:22relationships with, you know, a client or a company. And you build those relationships over a long

00:03:30time. Typically, freelancing, you're not building long-term partnerships. You're coming in to do a

00:03:36specific task or something that they need done. That can turn into a long-term consulting. But

00:03:42typically, when people talk about freelancing, it's just one person coming in to do a job.

00:03:49My cats are going crazy out there. I don't know. I don't know what they're doing. I hope you can't

00:03:55hear that because they are really loud right now. The scope of the work for consulting is typically

00:04:03a lot larger. That can be, you know, they're giving you information on a specific domain or

00:04:09a specific, you know, market that they're trying to target. And it could be doing specific work.

00:04:16Freelancing typically is coming in to perform a task. Not always, but they usually specialize in a

00:04:25specific area. And they come in and they do a task. Give me a second. I'm going to go just

00:04:31do this cat away. Actually at my door, just rubbing up against it. I love her though,

00:04:44but not that much, not enough for her to keep doing that. So that's kind of, that's kind of the

00:04:49scope of

00:04:50the work for consultants is a little bit broader and they'll do different services. Whereas freelancing,

00:04:56they have kind of a targeted small niche that they'll do just in, in typically it's more hands-on,

00:05:03more like actually performing tasks typically. Yeah. And that's kind of it. The other thing was

00:05:11a team collaboration. It says consultants usually work in, in larger firms or groups or freelancers

00:05:16are individual contributors. So all these things I think are pretty true. I call myself a consultant.

00:05:22I come in and I can help with a very large range of things. And I'm not going to get

00:05:29into all that

00:05:30right now, but typically I don't consider myself a freelancer, even though I am one person.

00:05:37I do plan on scaling my business maybe in the future, maybe like a year or two. I have more

00:05:44work than I can take on right now, but I then would have to put my trust and my brand

00:05:50and reputation

00:05:51in the hands of someone else. And at this moment, I just, I don't have the ability to do that.

00:05:57Or I

00:05:57don't know if, uh, if I can trust someone else, um, to do that because you know, if, if I

00:06:03hire

00:06:04someone on and let's call them John and John does a terrible job, chrises out some clients and they're

00:06:09like Alex analytics, that's the kind of people they hire. Uh, that would not be good. And that's

00:06:14the risk with hiring anybody, honestly. So, um, but I'll get into that more. Actually, I'll get into

00:06:19that more later. And I made a note of that just cause it is a, it is an interesting position

00:06:26to be in.

00:06:26All that being said, that's kind of the difference between consulting and freelancing.

00:06:31Now I'm going to talk to you about how I got into consulting. Um, and it started over two years

00:06:38ago. Now my YouTube channel was just starting to get off, like really get off the ground. I mean,

00:06:44I was hitting, I think about maybe 75,000 subscribers, maybe a hundred thousand, even

00:06:49somewhere in there. And I started getting emails because I put my email, um, on my LinkedIn profile.

00:06:54And I think on my YouTube channel for people to reach out if they had questions or issues,

00:07:00or we just wanted to chat. Uh, and I was also doing mentorships at that time. Um, so I was

00:07:06taking

00:07:06on one-on-one mentorships with people. I can't do that anymore because I have way too much on my

00:07:11plate

00:07:11now, but I had the time to take on one-on-one mentorship. So I had people reach out, um,

00:07:16and get

00:07:16that service as well. Now, um, I never in my life thought I would be doing consulting in any way.

00:07:25It

00:07:25just wasn't anything that was even on my radar, but it kind of just fell into my lap. Um, so

00:07:32about

00:07:32two years ago, I started getting emails saying, Hey Alex, I saw your YouTube video or I saw your

00:07:37post on LinkedIn. You know, that's really the only platforms I was on at the time. Um, and there's like,

00:07:41Hey, you know, we are looking for someone to come in and help us with this thing, which we know

00:07:47you're

00:07:47good at because we saw your videos. Excuse me. And so I was like, Oh, that sounds really interesting.

00:07:54Can you give me more information? They're like, yeah, you know, here's what we do. Here's what

00:07:57we're trying to do. And I'm like, Oh, that is something I'm actually pretty good at, you know?

00:08:01Uh, and they would be like, Oh, how much do you charge? I had no, no idea at the time.

00:08:05I was

00:08:06at the time, two years ago, I was charging absurdly low, uh, numbers, um, in the consulting

00:08:12world. I mean, I was, I was very cheap because again, two years ago, I was still, um, I just,

00:08:21Oh, I was, I was a data analyst still. I hadn't become an analytics manager, but I was making,

00:08:27you know, about a hundred thousand. Um, and then some money from YouTube, not much, but a little bit.

00:08:33And so I, I, this, it wasn't anything I was even thinking about or like trying to do. And so,

00:08:39you know, they'd be like, Hey, can you do this? And I'd be like, Oh yeah, I'll do that. And

00:08:42you

00:08:42know, like how much you call charge. I didn't want to do it hourly. And I still don't like

00:08:46doing hourly. Um, except except on very specific things. And that will get to that more in the

00:08:51pricing, but I give them like a lump sum. Here's what I'll do for that project. If it changes or

00:08:55the

00:08:55scope changes, we'll renegotiate and stuff like that. But it'd be really cheap, like 500 bucks,

00:09:01750 bucks. Um, and for the work I was doing now, I would charge like now I know pricing and

00:09:08how much

00:09:08I actually should price. And it's probably close to like 3000, $4,000. So it was, you know, I was

00:09:12charging very little, but because of that, I made a lot of really good relationships, um, with a lot

00:09:17of people in different industries and that kept happening. So two years ago, it was like one,

00:09:23one email a month, uh, would come in. And sometimes I'd say yes. Sometimes I'd say no, I'd say like

00:09:2850%

00:09:29of them. I was saying no to like, Hey, you know, it's not really something I'm interested in or I

00:09:33have too much work. Um, and that this, that's how I got work. I'm going to talk about how you

00:09:38guys can

00:09:38get work in the future. Um, how I would recommend going about it, but I'm just going to tell you

00:09:42how

00:09:42I did it. So that's, that's what happened to me. It was organic, natural growth of people reaching

00:09:49out to me because they saw YouTube or saw me on YouTube or saw me on LinkedIn. Um, which was

00:09:54just

00:09:54really neat in and of itself. Cause when I would respond back, I'd be like, Oh, that's so awesome

00:09:57that you're like a fan of the channel. Like that's wild to me. Um, but again, data analytics

00:10:03is kind of a niche in and of itself. So, you know, the people in it and within it, there,

00:10:08it is a, it's a community. It's a small niche. So that's how it started. Um, and slowly that

00:10:15turned into two emails a month or emails a month, 10 emails a month. That was over the course of

00:10:21like

00:10:21a year. Now, even to this day, um, I got another one this morning. I probably get several a week.

00:10:27Uh, four or five, six a week. So maybe like one per day, let's say now right now on my

00:10:35plates,

00:10:35I have YouTube, I have analyst builder, uh, I, which has launched. She's, you go check that out.

00:10:43Um, I do consulting slash freelancing is what I call it. I, and then I have, um, three kids,

00:10:50a wife, dogs, a family. So I have a lot, a lot, a lot on my plate. Um, and so

00:10:56in recent times,

00:10:57I'm turning down probably like 99% of these projects or stuff that's coming in. So I get

00:11:02to be really, really picky, um, which is really, um, it's a great feeling. Um, if I'm being like

00:11:10super transparent because I just get to do the stuff I want to do. Um, it's a real luxury. I,

00:11:16I, I feel very, very, very fortunate. Um, extremely humbled that people want me to work

00:11:21with them. Um, and because of that, I get to choose what I want to work on. And that's wild

00:11:26to me. I always worked in a workplace environment for the past five, six years where I am told

00:11:32what I do. This is what you do. This is your job. Even before I, you know, you get hired,

00:11:37you don't know exactly what you're going to do. You get into a job, they tell you what to do.

00:11:40You're always told what to do. Um, in a job until you kind of get towards leadership positions,

00:11:45but even then, um, but now I get full control over what I do. That to me, um, that to

00:11:52me was

00:11:52one of the best things that I started to see as I got into consulting. So anyways, I'm, I'm,

00:11:58you know, a data analyst. I've become an analytics manager. I'm still doing this consulting. It's all

00:12:01a side business. It's all on the side. And I start probably a little over a year ago now,

00:12:07because I've been doing it for almost a year, almost a year to the date. Um, I start picking

00:12:12up more and more projects. They're paying me really well. And I'm like, I start running the

00:12:17numbers. I'm like, wait a second, I'm working 10 hours a week on this project. And I'm making as

00:12:26much as my full salary for the, for that whole week. So like in 10 hours, I'm making as much

00:12:32as 40

00:12:33hours. Um, so like if you extrapolate that for a month, cause you know, that's usually what people

00:12:38think of I'm making as much in one week in our terms as I would in an entire month, which

00:12:46is,

00:12:46uh, mind blowing. I've almost kind of, I've almost, I'm almost double my salary. Cause I was making a

00:12:51hundred thousand. Then with consulting on the side, I was making close to 200, which again is just

00:12:58mind blowing numbers to me. I, I joke about this to this day with my wife. I was like, I

00:13:04never,

00:13:04ever, ever in my life thought I'd be making more than a hundred thousand. That was mind blowing when

00:13:08I reached that. And now I'm making 200. It just feels a bit surreal. Um, excuse me, I'll get some

00:13:15water. Feels very, very, very surreal. I don't come from money. Uh, my parents are teachers and,

00:13:24and, um, or he's a headmaster of a school now. And, you know, no one in my family makes that

00:13:32kind

00:13:32of money. So it's just very unnatural to me. It feels very weird to have, to, to make that kind

00:13:37of money. And so I started running the numbers. I talked to my wife. I'm like, Hey, I really,

00:13:42I really think I should think about maybe doing this full time because, and she had actually,

00:13:48she had actually been prompting me. Let me, let me take that back. She had been prompting me,

00:13:52Hey Alex, you might want to do this full time. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I've got a

00:13:55good

00:13:56career. I got my YouTube thing. I got to like think about, you know, cause I wanted to keep

00:13:59doing YouTube. So about a year ago, I was at like 300,000, 400,000 subscribers.

00:14:06And now I'm hitting, I just hit like 600,000 again, numbers, everything that's been happening

00:14:11in my career and in my life is just, I never thought it would happen. So just for context.

00:14:17So she's like pushing me. She's like, Hey, you should really think about doing your own thing.

00:14:20And I'm like, no, no, no, I can't do that. Eventually I'm, I'm start really running the

00:14:24numbers. I'm like, wait a second. I could, I could make a lot of money. I could make it,

00:14:29I could make it to where we don't have to worry about money anymore, which is again,

00:14:33not a concept that I was aware of. And I'm like, I could make like 300, 400,000. That's a,

00:14:39that's insane. Let me see if I have at the time as a year ago, I was me, I was

00:14:44getting like five emails,

00:14:4610 emails a month. And I was taking some on, I was like, okay, let me, let me think about

00:14:50this.

00:14:52I started looking at it more, talking about it more. I had developed relationships with

00:14:55clients. They had been recommending me to other people. I'm like, I think I really could do this.

00:14:59I think I've built enough of a brand around the consulting piece where I'm now like people know

00:15:05who I am and could just consulting. Give a second. I'm just doing a time check. Only 15 minutes.

00:15:11Um, and I start building that up and I start thinking, I think I can actually do this, but I

00:15:20need some more structure to it. I need to ensure that I can get this. So I kind of was

00:15:25waiting around

00:15:25for kind of a bigger project. And I was like, if I can get a bigger project, um, I'm going

00:15:31to,

00:15:31I'm going to quit. And so I keep doing my manager thing. A little background is I wasn't like super

00:15:40satisfied in the manager position. It was not everything that I had hoped. Um, and I'll talk

00:15:47about just for a second. You know, I, I got into management because one, that was what I always

00:15:52wanted to do. I always wanted to be a manager, become a director or be a CTO in like five,

00:15:5710 years.

00:15:59But as I got into it, um, it was really exciting for the first like six months.

00:16:04And then after that, I was like, it's more like project management, people managing. I don't really

00:16:13get any hands on projects. I don't get to work with anything. I'm reviewing code, but I don't get

00:16:17to write it. And then that I really missed it. So after about six months, I was like, and I

00:16:21stay in

00:16:21that position for over a year, but I was just like, I kind of miss it. This is not like

00:16:24what I want to do

00:16:25long-term this specific position. There are other manager position. I guarantee you that could have

00:16:31been a much better fit, um, in terms of like the balance between hands-on work and, and management.

00:16:39But I, we were just with consultants that we were hiring. There was a lot of hiring that I had

00:16:44to go

00:16:44through. It just was not fun. A lot of creating job descriptions and, you know, managing people with

00:16:50meetings. It just wasn't everything I'd hoped. It was really fun to build out. Uh, I'm going on a

00:16:55tangent, but it was really fun to build out. You know, we, I was on like a multimillion dollar

00:16:59project that I got to run on, uh, uh, main, uh, migrating from on-prem to the cloud, which was

00:17:08like a super cool project. Um, big budget, got to hire on some data engineers, different people,

00:17:13but again, just wasn't, it was not, I was not feeling super fulfilled. So now I was kind of at

00:17:19that point, I'm like, I'm not super excited to work in this position long-term for more than two

00:17:23years before I would go to a different one. Anyways, why don't I do consulting and just

00:17:26see how it goes? So I take the plunge. I tell my boss, Hey, I'm quitting. I'm starting my own,

00:17:32my own company. I'm completely quitting. Um, I really appreciate it. It's just not,

00:17:37not working out for me. And of course they came back with trying to keep, get me to stay,

00:17:42you know, promising this and that. And, um, again, I think I may have already done that and talked

00:17:48about that in another video or something, but I, I didn't take it. I was like, no,

00:17:52I really want to try this consulting thing. I really want to go out on my own. And so I

00:17:56quit.

00:17:57Um, and with that, I started taking on more projects and I also started doing more YouTube

00:18:05videos. So I had time. I kind of, I can choose what I do throughout the day. So I would

00:18:10choose to,

00:18:11you know, on one day during the week, I'd make like three or four videos. Then the other days or

00:18:16for the rest of the month, essentially I would take on projects. Now let's get into, um,

00:18:23how I, uh, I've talked, I've talked a little bit about how I got into consulting, how clients

00:18:26found me. I'm going to talk about what, what kind of work I was actually doing. And this stuff to

00:18:31me

00:18:31is really interesting. Again, a lot of stuff that I didn't know I had a skill for until I started

00:18:36doing it. I was like, Whoa, I'm pretty good at this. Or like the, the feedback that I'm getting

00:18:40from clients is that it was super helpful insights that I thought weren't like mind blowing,

00:18:48but I think sometimes, and this is something I found that sometimes companies need reassurance.

00:18:53Um, they don't always know for certain until they hear it from an outside perspective or a consultant

00:18:58where they're like, okay, no, he's right. He's right. He, we, we were doing this right. We just

00:19:02want to be sure. So let me talk about some of the things that I've been doing, that I've worked

00:19:07with,

00:19:07um, and I'm currently working on, excuse me. So this is a very broad range. You're going to be

00:19:15like, wow, this is just random stuff. Uh, it kind of is one thing that I found, and this is

00:19:20not

00:19:20something that I saw happening was a lot of companies have hired me on or product market fit.

00:19:27They create a product. They know it's useful. They know there is a market for it. Um, because

00:19:33they've worked in that area, uh, nine times out of 10, it's people who are working in an industry.

00:19:39They see a need that isn't being filled. They quit their job to create the startup. Then they get it.

00:19:46They create the product. Then they're like, okay, how do we market this best? Who do we reach out to?

00:19:50Who do we target? How do we market this product? Cause it's a really good product that has a niche

00:19:55that people would pay for it, but they don't know how to market it. That's that, that becomes an issue.

00:19:58So they bring me in and they're like, Hey Alex, we have this, um, tool that connects all these

00:20:04different data sources, brings it into a place. You don't have to migrate the data. We're just

00:20:08accessing the data systems, bring it into one place. You can join the data. You can do all

00:20:12these things, really cool products. This is something, this is multiple people have created

00:20:15the same thing. And I've helped multiple companies with this exact thing. Excuse me. And they're like,

00:20:22how do we market this? And I'm like, okay, this is a great fit because I actually used a tool

00:20:28exactly like this. I was a manager. I had to vet multiple of these companies who did something

00:20:36similar. And here's why I chose them. Here's how I chose them. And here's the things I was looking

00:20:41for. And here's how to, here's who you should be targeting. And so all of these things were really

00:20:47valuable to them. They were like, Oh, that's super good to know because I was on the buyer side or

00:20:53the

00:20:53customer side for the almost that exact product. I mean, we purchased a product like that.

00:21:00So that is something that I've done multiple times. And it's not just that that's just one

00:21:04example, but they're like, Hey, we have this product that does this. And I'm, and they're

00:21:08like, we want data analysts to use it, right? That's my niche data analysis. We want data

00:21:13analysts to use this. How do we get data analysts to use this? So that then their companies use it.

00:21:18I'm like, Hmm, okay, well, let's kind of walk that through. And then I just talk a lot with them

00:21:23about their products, about, you know, their, um, not just their product. Well, yes, about the

00:21:29product, but also there's subscribe. Is it a subscription? Is it, you know, an enterprise

00:21:34level? Is it targeted? You want to target it at the individual? Should individuals be using this

00:21:38like freelancers, like you and I should, are, who is your target audience? We start answering all

00:21:43these questions and I'm like, okay, here's what I think you should do. And then I give advice.

00:21:46So that's the part of consulting. That's not technical. Um, it's more domain experience and

00:21:52experience in management and being a data analyst. Um, I've used a plethora of tools. Here's my

00:21:58experience and here's how you can target them. And I, every single time I haven't ever gotten

00:22:02feedback where they're like, that's dumb. It's always like, you know, okay, that's what we thought

00:22:08we should do. We just wanted to hear it from you. Or they're like, Oh, we were doing it this

00:22:12way.

00:22:13This was how we were doing it. We weren't getting any traction. We're going to pivot

00:22:16our marketing to that. Um, and that one's always really impactful because it's like,

00:22:21we've tried it, you know, you helped us and, and now we're going down a different path that we

00:22:26think is a really good one based off your recommendation. Um, and then like six months

00:22:31later, they're like, Hey, we have a lot more clients. Thank you. You know, I always get good

00:22:34feedback and then they bring me back on. So that's another piece, um, is recurring work with

00:22:38multiple companies. Excuse me. I got a cough today. It's recurring work with clients, but not

00:22:45only that, uh, a tiny side note is that's how I also get other work is I do well with

00:22:51one company

00:22:52that CTO or that CEO that I'm working with of that company or the founder of the company who I'm

00:22:56working with. They then recommend me to another someone, uh, who doesn't, who isn't like a competitor

00:23:03of theirs, but it's like a friend of theirs and like Silicon Valley. I work a lot with startups

00:23:07out in Silicon Valley. Um, that's been really fun. Um, or just like in Texas, Texas and, um,

00:23:14Silicon Valley have been like my biggest, uh, client bases. That's just advising on product

00:23:19market fit, who to target, all these things. Those are definitely something I've been doing.

00:23:23Uh, the next thing that I've been consulting on, um, and I, again, I say consulting and then I'm

00:23:30going to say freelancing in a second. Cause again, I just shout, I see it. Another thing I've been

00:23:35consulting on, um, apart from product market fit, which is more on the marketing side is the actual

00:23:42product itself. So they bring me in and they say, we want you as a data analyst to walk through

00:23:48our

00:23:49product, learn how to use it, and then give us feedback on how we can improve the product itself.

00:23:56That one's really fun because I've used a lot of different tools. And what's really fun is I'll

00:24:02say something that I think is pretty obvious, right? But when you're building it, all of these

00:24:07people, most of these people are engineers because they're building the product themselves. They have

00:24:11a, they have a small budget. They're a small startup with three or four people. I come in and I'm

00:24:16like,

00:24:16well, that's actually super user friendly because of this. And they're like, oh my gosh,

00:24:20how did we not see that? I get that all the time. Like, how did we not see that thing?

00:24:25Um, so I was just checking the time. So they're like, how do we not see that

00:24:31this didn't connect with that? Or this bug was in there and that, that piece isn't working? Like,

00:24:36um, so I'm just coming into kind of QA is what I'll call it. I'm QAing a product as a

00:24:43data analyst.

00:24:44And that one, I've got to seen a lot of really cool products, which has kind of

00:24:47really kept me in touch with, uh, just the future of data analytics in general.

00:24:53So these are a lot of scrappy startups or, you know, medium sized companies, uh, with like 10 to

00:24:5850 people. And I come in and I recommend things. Now I've gotten to work on some, uh, review some

00:25:03AI products, which have been really neat to get hands-on experience with like futuristic AI stuff

00:25:08that they're really trying to, to build. Of course, all of these things I have NDAs on,

00:25:12I cannot name any specific companies. Um, and if I do name them, it's because I use them as a

00:25:20client,

00:25:20not as a consultant, every single one of these, I signed some type of legal paperwork where I

00:25:26cannot, uh, disclose or use or, um, talk about or recommend anything. Like the NDAs are like,

00:25:33you know, can't do it. Can't say anything. Um, and so, uh, give me a second. I'm, I'm checking my

00:25:41notes really quickly. Uh, so another thing that they asked me to do, and this is more on the YouTube

00:25:46side, right? I'm a YouTuber. I have a, I have a platform. People know me in the data community,

00:25:53uh, which is really neat. And they'll ask me to make internal or external videos.

00:25:59For example, so like I consider that somewhat on the consulting side. Let me move my

00:26:04to the touch. Internal videos are like, Hey, we have this product. We want people to know how to use

00:26:12it.

00:26:12Um, you come in and make some videos, the exact same style as you make your videos on YouTube,

00:26:17how you teach them, just walk through how to use it. Um, I don't do a lot of those because

00:26:22it's a

00:26:22bit pricey for the client because I have to do a lot of prep work. I have to learn the

00:26:27tool.

00:26:28I have to, they have to work with me to make sure I say certain keywords. And then third,

00:26:34I have to record it and edit it. That takes a lot of time. Um, on, and I'll get to

00:26:40pricing a little

00:26:40bit. Uh, on average, those types of projects are like 20 to 50,000. That's a lot of money.

00:26:46And that takes me a lot of time. That's months. That's like a month or two of work.

00:26:50Um, so not a lot of people end up taking my offers after I tell them that. And I, I

00:26:57price them high

00:26:57because I have so much other stuff. I can price my stuff higher and we're, you know what, now we're

00:27:02starting to get into, uh, into, um, into pricing. I'm going to take a step back. I'm going to finish

00:27:08the, the, you know, what I actually do. The third thing is I actually, there's more,

00:27:12more than probably just one, but the next thing that I do is actually hands-on work.

00:27:17So they have, and this is typically the stuff that I take on. It isn't, Hey, come be a freelance

00:27:22data analyst and just work with us, be on our team. Usually the only ones I've been taking on recently,

00:27:27we have a very specific issue. We do not know how to solve it. It's costing us money. And we

00:27:33need,

00:27:33we know that you're really good at X, Y, or Z Azure, Python, SQL, Excel, Power BI, Tableau,

00:27:41all things I would consider myself very, very good at now. Um, some of these videos that I made

00:27:45three years ago on Microsoft SQL, I've just gone way above and beyond that or Tableau were really

00:27:52simple projects in my personal life or in work. I've gone way above and beyond that. So now I'm going

00:27:58back and like, I need to remake some of these videos because I've just learned more. Um, and I become

00:28:03more of an expert in these areas. And so they bring me in and I'm like, okay, show me your

00:28:07workflow.

00:28:08Show me what's happening. Let's see why it's not working. Um, it's been, sometimes it's been as small

00:28:13as like, it takes me an hour to figure it out. I'm like, it's a data types issue. It's, there

00:28:19have

00:28:19been projects where it's as simple as that. It's a data types issue, or it's much more in-depth

00:28:24knowledge. You, I know why you think you can do that. And here's why. And they should,

00:28:29and I'm like, but it's this very small niche thing that Power BI does that you only would know if

00:28:35you've been using it for a long time, or you've dug into like document documentation, which I do

00:28:40for fun. Uh, when I'm in working on these tools, it's this really small niche that you just couldn't,

00:28:45didn't know how to do. And chat GPT, like a lot of these people were like, Hey, we looked on

00:28:49Google.

00:28:49We've tried to use chat GPT. We can't find the answer or we've used Bard or some like up-to

00:28:54-date

00:28:54thing. It's like, it's not working. We don't know what to do. I come in and I help with it.

00:28:59Um, those are just super fun because I get to work hands-on and I get to solve these really

00:29:03intricate problems that no one else on their team can solve, which I love because it's like,

00:29:07it's a real challenge. Um, super, super unique. That's what I would consider like the freelancing

00:29:13part of it. So, uh, now I'm going to get into pricing and then I'm going to

00:29:19talk a little bit about how you can get into freelancing and consulting wherever you're

00:29:25at. I'll talk about different, you know, where you're at in your career. Um, let me check

00:29:31one thing real quick. Okay. I'm still going. I need to grab some water.

00:29:38I'm coughing and I'm parched. Not a great combination. Let's talk about pricing. Early

00:29:45on, I was charging very little. Um, I would probably put myself at like $50 an hour. Um,

00:29:52and you have to think about it from where I was at the time. This is two years ago. I

00:29:56was just a data

00:29:56analyst. I was making about $50 an hour. So I'm like, Hey, why not just take on extra work and

00:30:04make

00:30:04more money? It's like doing overtime except without the, uh, the pay. But then I started to realize,

00:30:12I was like, if I did this full time, I wouldn't have insurance, 401k benefits, medical, nothing

00:30:17like right now. I'm in my full business, which I do. I have my own S corp. I used to

00:30:23be an LLC.

00:30:24I transitioned to an S corp because of taxes and to try to minimize, uh, how much I'm taxed,

00:30:29which is a whole different side of just owning a business, which I might talk a little bit about

00:30:32later at the end of this. Cause that is, you know, when you start doing consulting, you need to set

00:30:36up

00:30:37an LLC or some type of business in the United States. I don't know about international,

00:30:40but in the United States, you should definitely be doing that. Well, as I, um, I started realizing,

00:30:45I was like, I need to charge more because if I do this in the future, or as I start

00:30:51getting on more

00:30:52requests, I need to kind of price myself out of some and keep myself in of others. Now I'll make

00:30:59one small stipulation of this. I do work with a lot of nonprofits. If you're a nonprofit, um, and I

00:31:05am able to help you, I charge crazy low just cause I like giving back. So like if I would

00:31:11charge a

00:31:11private client at a startup, $2,000, I would charge like 500 bucks to a nonprofit. Um, I've still do

00:31:20that to this day. So anyways, I started low. I started building clientele, building relationships.

00:31:25As I did that, I started to raise prices, um, because I started getting more inquiries,

00:31:30more people. And I'm like, okay, if I said yes to everyone, I'd only be able to cap out at

00:31:34this

00:31:34because I can only work so many hours in the day. I need to, and I started doing a lot

00:31:38of

00:31:38research. So let me tell you, this is not all me figuring this out. I started researching this

00:31:43really in depth. A lot of people on YouTube and just Googling and like, uh, professors who would

00:31:50talk about these things. And they were like, you can't just keep your prices stagnant. Otherwise you'll

00:31:56have an influx of customers. You can't meet them all. What you should do is you should increase your

00:32:01prices where people are still, some people are priced out and some people are still in,

00:32:05where you're doing 10 hours. You used to do 40 hours of work for $50. Now you're doing 10 hours

00:32:11of work for $200. You're getting paid the same, but doing 10 hours of work instead of 40 hours of

00:32:15work.

00:32:16And then you can scale that higher. So that's what I started doing. I started slowly increasing my

00:32:20prices. Now I don't do a lot of hourly projects, but I kind of estimate the hours in my head

00:32:25and do a lump.

00:32:25I do a, um, I do a per project basis. Typically, even now I do somewhere between 200 and $250

00:32:34per hour in my head. I don't really take things hourly because I don't think that's fair to the

00:32:41client. Typically, usually it's like, if I think something's going to take five hours and it ends up

00:32:47taking 20 hours and then I charge the person four times more, I doesn't sit right with me. So I

00:32:52don't

00:32:52like doing that. I don't think that builds a good relationship. Um, unless I got it done for less,

00:32:56which sometimes happens. Um, but if it's like a specific problem, like I know how to do that,

00:33:04let's market at like, I'm going to say 10 hours that would cost $2,000 or $2,500. Um, that's,

00:33:12that's my estimate. Now, if I get in there, it's a much bigger issue. I'm going to go to them

00:33:17and I'm

00:33:18going to talk to them about that. I'm going to say, Hey, while I was in there, here's what I

00:33:21found.

00:33:21That is a much bigger issue than what we originally talked about. If you would like me to help you

00:33:25with

00:33:25that, here's what I'm going to charge. And then it's like, you know, 4,000, 5,000, 10,000. I

00:33:30don't

00:33:30know. Just depends. So I, that's how I do my pricing. Um, I have never had any complaints with

00:33:37it at all. I'm not even from one person, although I have had some people not pay and I should

00:33:41talk about

00:33:41that. Um, when you're doing this type of work, you do not have guaranteed pay. Now I learned

00:33:49quickly that I need to have contracts, right? And this is going more to the business side.

00:33:56So I'm going to kind of talk about this for just a little bit. I learned very quickly. I need

00:34:00to

00:34:00have a contract, um, a legal contract. Now, am I going to sue people? Probably not. Um, but I have

00:34:08a contract that says now today, I have a contract that says here are my exact stipulations. Here's

00:34:14exactly what I do and don't do. You cannot use my, cause now I'm like, uh, you know, I'm well

00:34:19known in the data community. You cannot use my, like my likeness, my endorsement for your product,

00:34:24unless specified in a separate contract, which I do that. Sometimes I do sponsorships and stuff

00:34:30for products I really like and use, but I'm like, there have been people in the past where I've done

00:34:34consulting for them. And then they go on their Facebook page or LinkedIn or Twitter or anywhere.

00:34:38And they're like, Hey, Alex, the analyst likes our product. I'm like, no, you can't do that

00:34:41anymore. Like that. You need to pay me for that. I'm like, take that down or pay me more money.

00:34:44Cause I was kind of over it. It happened a few times that, that is just a, you know, a

00:34:50unique

00:34:50thing to me, I think, but I had to start creating these really ironclad contracts. And I started

00:34:57having to take payments upfront or half upfront. Um, especially if I've worked with them before,

00:35:02I just do half upfront, but that's my typical, typically how I do payments is because I used to

00:35:09out on a several thousand dollars at a time. So it was like $2,000, never saw it, never heard

00:35:14from

00:35:14them, send emails, follow up emails, never heard back. I'm like, they're blacklisted. I'll never

00:35:19work with them again. And if anyone else I know, and I know I worked with a lot of people

00:35:22in the

00:35:23data community, anybody ever asked me advice on them, I'll be like, do not work with them.

00:35:27Yeah. It's just not a good look for people not to pay people for work. Um, so I have a

00:35:32good

00:35:32community of other consultants and people I talk to and, um, you know, it's, it's, it doesn't feel

00:35:38good to not get paid for what you do. So I have these contracts. I usually take half upfront,

00:35:43usually as well. Now at the final deliverable, I'll request their final payment before delivering

00:35:50the final product. That's another thing I do now. Um, because I've had it to where I had half and

00:35:56then

00:35:56half and I delivered and they didn't do it. So again, I learned, these are all things that I had

00:35:59to

00:35:59learn the hard way. I probably lost out on like $10,000 over the past two years, um, which isn't

00:36:05like a crazy amount, but it's a lot. Um, but $10,000 over the past two years of people who

00:36:09just

00:36:09didn't pay. Um, and you know, there was a, there was even one guy who I worked with, didn't pay

00:36:15me

00:36:15and then came back to ask me to do more work. And I said, I cannot work with you until

00:36:18you pay me.

00:36:19And in fact, because of that, I feel a little bit insecure that I'm going to get paid for this

00:36:24job.

00:36:24So if you want me to do this, you have to pay me upfront. I'm now taking upfront payment just

00:36:27for you.

00:36:28I was like, I still like your product. I still like, I still, I enjoyed working with you.

00:36:32That lack of payment breached my trust in the contract. And so all things I've had to work

00:36:38through and learn from, um, and things that if you have, if you get into consulting and freelancing,

00:36:42that you're probably gonna have to learn those things the hard way as well. Um, you'll, you won't,

00:36:46you won't believe me. You'll be like, no one will do that to me. And then you'll, you'll,

00:36:50it'll happen to you one day. And you're like, that is the worst feeling ever.

00:36:53I need to change how I do things to ensure that doesn't happen again.

00:37:00So I was grabbing some water, checking my phone to make sure my wife hasn't texted me. If she

00:37:04texts me, I like the text back. Even if I'm recording, I like the text back. Um, now I'm

00:37:10going to talk a little, cause that's pricing. That's pricing and kind of how I conduct business

00:37:13in general. Actually, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to interject. Uh, no, I'm going to add this to this

00:37:19next section, which is how you can get into freelancing and consulting. And I'm going to

00:37:26talk a little bit about like starting a business because if you're starting freelancing and

00:37:29consulting, you're starting a business, whether you'll see it that way or not. Let's say, so I'm

00:37:34going to do it on different levels. Let's say you, you have no experience and you are like,

00:37:41want to start getting some tasks or some data analyst experience. So you're trying to do freelancing

00:37:45and consulting. Typically it's people with experience that get that type of work, but not

00:37:50always. Here's what I recommend for those people specifically. Go on places like Upwork or Fiverr

00:37:57or other platforms that do that. You're not going to make a ton of money, but you will get experience.

00:38:03What you can do is bid on projects. So you have to be pretty vigilant on these. Um, I haven't

00:38:07done

00:38:07this myself. I'm a lot of this advice that I'm telling you now is advice that I've gotten from

00:38:11other people in the consulting world that started from scratch. They didn't do it how I did it,

00:38:15where I grew a brand. The Alex, the analyst brand is what I'm calling it, but just Alex

00:38:20Freeberg as a person. They liked me. They reached out to me. I didn't have to go out and find

00:38:24my

00:38:24own work, which is very unique. It doesn't happen. Um, from what I've been told, it does not happen

00:38:29that much. Um, so all the feedback that I've gotten from everyone is if you're starting from scratch,

00:38:35Fiverr and Upwork. Now I've hired people or subcontracted some very specific, very small things,

00:38:41um, in my, on my YouTube, like editing work and stuff like that. So I know how Fiverr works

00:38:46for data analytics. Again, I, I have a little bit of some, I have some trust issues when it comes

00:38:50to

00:38:51having other people do my work, but when I put a big project out, you can bid on these things.

00:39:00So what you need to do is go onto these platforms, see what projects are out there that are taking

00:39:06bids currently, or people can do that. You need to be like one of the first people. So you have

00:39:09to be,

00:39:09have alerts set. You need to be one of the first people on there. And what you're going to do

00:39:14is

00:39:14you're going to message them saying, Hey, I read through your project details. I read through what

00:39:18you're looking for. I read through your, um, all of your pricing. Here's what I can offer you.

00:39:23And I can do a really good job. Uh, you know, let's, let's see how we can work together on

00:39:27this.

00:39:27And then you have a conversation with them. You go through some of the details, then you get hired

00:39:30on. You're not going to get hired on the first, like several, probably it'll probably take 10,

00:39:3515 until someone's finally like, is like, Hey, this person wrote a good, really good message.

00:39:39Use chat GPT to write these messages, type in what they want, type in your skill sets,

00:39:44have chat GPT populate something, make it really personal, and then go back and change it a little

00:39:47bit. You know, don't, don't, you don't have to add, not everything has to be done by hand.

00:39:52Okay. These are, you know, things that everyone should be doing now. Do that, get that job,

00:39:59start working with them. They can become a repeat customer. You then have experience on these

00:40:03platforms. It takes time to get that first client though, or that second client. But then after that,

00:40:07then the ball starts rolling. As you get good feedback, you have more projects under your belt.

00:40:12That's how you start doing that. The same feedback will go for someone who has experience as a data

00:40:16analyst, but wants to get into consulting and freelancing. You can just go on these platforms

00:40:23as a side hustle. You already have a full-time job, but as a side hustle, go into these things

00:40:28and try to get a job. Now, if you have a good amount of experience, you don't only have to

00:40:33do that.

00:40:33Another thing you can do is now go and work with consulting companies. You can get experience

00:40:39as a consultant, then go and start your own company or take work on the side. There's a lot

00:40:45of consulting companies, a lot of small companies that are local that are, I think the best ones to

00:40:50go to. There are a lot of big ones like KPMG, OGs, Bain Consulting Group, Alex Consulting, not me,

00:40:58but there's one called Alex Consulting. There's another one called, not KPMG, it's going to drive

00:41:07me nuts. Let me Google this real quick because that's going to, oh, my chair is really squeaky.

00:41:12Big four consulting companies. It's going to come to me right when I see it. There's KPMG,

00:41:20PricewaterhouseCoopers, PWC. That's the one that I got offered a job at and I turned them down

00:41:23just for a senior data analyst position. The pay was great, pretty good. It was like 125 or something

00:41:31like that. I turned them down because the work-life balance is going to be terrible. And that's when

00:41:35I just started to start, decided to start my full-time, or I became an analytics manager.

00:41:39I got that job instead. I took that one. But then you can start reaching out to these companies. Now

00:41:45you have experience. These, again, I, those big consulting companies are better for brand name,

00:41:50but the smaller consulting companies local to especially metropolitan areas are going to be

00:41:57the ones that you have a better chance of getting hired onto. But all those ones, and there's another

00:42:02one, Ernest & Young, which is EY. They all, and there's Deloitte. They're all big consulting companies,

00:42:11right? So you can then start trying to get into those places and start working with them and get

00:42:18experience as a consultant. Most, almost every consultant that I've talked to. And my father-in-law

00:42:23was a consultant at PWC for like 20 years. He was like, he was a partner, like senior partner or

00:42:28something there. He almost advised me. He's like, I don't think you should, I don't think you should

00:42:33work at PWC. It doesn't seem like your lifestyle, which he was right. But you can get into these places,

00:42:39rise up. And then after three, two, three years, you can, oftentimes what happens is what he's told me

00:42:44is you'll get into consulting. A company will hire you on full-time as a full-time consultant just for

00:42:49them because they like you. They're like, Hey, we don't want to pay PWC prices. Um, and we're paying

00:42:54$200. You're only getting paid $65 per hour. We'll pay you $120 per hour. That saves us $80 an hour

00:43:02and we get you full-time. So numbers wise, that's why that happens. And they really like you have,

00:43:08you're good at what they do. You have good rapport with them. So that's another path you can take.

00:43:12Um, and then you can continue to do that, take on different clients, um, and build that up from

00:43:18there. The other biggest thing, and this is not easy and this is not something I think everyone

00:43:23should do. And I'm checking my notes right now. Don't, um, don't worry about me not looking at the

00:43:27camera unless you're not watching it. I get a lot of feedback that not a lot of people watch me

00:43:31when I

00:43:31talk on these. So I can just do whatever I want. I could be, I could be naked right now.

00:43:35I'm not,

00:43:36I could be, and no one would know it. Um, that'd be quite the, quite the show. Um, let me

00:43:43see how

00:43:43much time we got. I'm going to try to keep it under 10 more minutes. No, I might go over.

00:43:48I'm

00:43:48going to try to keep it under that. So along with that, I highly recommend, and this is not for

00:43:53everybody takes a certain type of personality. I just recommend documenting your, your experience,

00:43:59your life in consulting, data analytics online. Do it on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube

00:44:08channel, do whatever you want. I don't care. This isn't me, but I can tell you that even years ago

00:44:15when I was, my channel was smaller or my presence, especially on LinkedIn was smaller,

00:44:21I would get messages all the time. Like, Hey, you shared that article that you wrote,

00:44:25or you wrote this post that really connected with me and, or you should share this technical

00:44:29thing that really connected with me. And I would love to work with you. That happens too. It's not

00:44:33always my YouTube channel. A lot of times now it's on LinkedIn as well, where I'll just get a direct

00:44:36message on LinkedIn saying, Hey, that post really resonated with me. Are you open to work? We have this

00:44:40project. And so that's another big, big thing. Now it takes a lot of time, consistency, commitment.

00:44:49That's a long-term strategy. Um, a long, long, long-term strategy that took me. YouTube took

00:44:55me over a year to get like a thousand subscribers. It took me a year to get that over a

00:44:59thousand

00:44:59people on LinkedIn. These things took a long time. So that's a long con, but pays out dividends. Um,

00:45:05if you have a good brand online, so take that into consideration, I recommend it. Another thing

00:45:10with starting a business. And when you start seeing clients on the side, when you're working at a,

00:45:15and this is like business, this is more about starting a business. When you're working at a

00:45:21company, you're a W-2 employee. You're a, an employee of a company. So all your taxes and

00:45:27health insurance, all of these things goes under, um, your W-2 and you get taxed from Medicare,

00:45:35Medicaid, all these things. And you get taxed, uh, um, you know, 20%, 30%. Um, and I'm

00:45:45going to talk a little bit higher level on, on, on starting a business. Cause I've learned so much

00:45:49over the past several years of doing it. You need to start an LLC. If you start doing side

00:45:54business work, because you're going to get taxed on it. As companies want that as a write-off,

00:45:59they're going to write off, Hey, I worked with Alex Freeberg. Um, we hired him on as a 1099,

00:46:04uh, 1099. It's like dash NEC in the United States. So that for tax purposes, they listed me and

00:46:11they say, Hey, we paid him $10,000. If I don't list that on my taxes, the IRS is going

00:46:16to come

00:46:16for me. That is a fact. Um, hasn't happened to me, never been audited or never had any issues

00:46:21with the IRS, but it absolutely will happen if you don't. So what do you do? You can just declare

00:46:32that on your taxes as like supplementary secondary income. Then you'll get taxed at a higher rate.

00:46:38Don't do that. What you need to do is you need to start an LLC. It's super cheap. I went

00:46:43on like

00:46:43legal zoom.com, start an LLC in your state. You get paperwork. You get something called an EIN

00:46:50employee identification number. I was making sure, uh, I hadn't timed out. Uh, you get an EIN

00:46:57employee identification number. That's your tax ID for your business. Any money that comes in

00:47:02through consulting or any side gig, you put it in that account. You track your expenditure,

00:47:07and this is why you need an LLC. Track your expenditures. You track, um, anything that you

00:47:13pay money for through your, for your business, you track all those things and you can write that off

00:47:18as an expenditure. So let's say you start your side, get side gig. You're in $10,000 in your first

00:47:27year. Awesome for your side gig, right? It's almost a thousand dollars a month extra, $10,000 in a year,

00:47:34but you had to travel for one of it. Uh, so you spent a thousand dollars on airline or you

00:47:39had to

00:47:39buy a new laptop, which costs $2,000, a really nice laptop. Then you had, um, you know, you needed

00:47:45business cards and a website and you hired someone to, uh, for marketing all total. You spent $4,500.

00:47:52Those are all write-offs. So now you aren't, you didn't, you didn't just lose that. And you're saying,

00:47:57well, oh, you know, I made 10,000, but now I only really made 5,500. And so you get

00:48:03taxed though on

00:48:04that full 10,000 because that was income. So then you get taxed, let's say 20% and now you

00:48:10lose. And

00:48:11now this is, I know I'm going into the weeds here, but this is all important. Checking another thing.

00:48:17It's all important. Then you get taxed $2,000. Now that $5,500, now you really only took home

00:48:22$3,500. Uh-oh, that's not, that's not what you want. You want to keep all 5,500. It's not

00:48:29possible.

00:48:29But when you have an LLC, you write off that $4,500. You only get taxed on $5,500. And

00:48:37now

00:48:38they tax you a 20% of, uh, 5,500, which is only a thousand dollars. So now you take

00:48:43home $4,500

00:48:44instead of $3,500. That's a very small use case. They get it from my perspective. Let's say $200,000.

00:48:51That's how much I made, uh, for like consulting and all that stuff, like the, the past year

00:48:56with $200,000. Now that's a much larger number. So now I'm writing off consultants for my website

00:49:04and like all this bit, all these business expenditures. I can write off my house. I have

00:49:09a company car. Um, I have health insurance. I, my laptops, I wrote off all this camera equipment.

00:49:15I wrote off everything I can write off everything, um, that I use for my business. I can write off.

00:49:20Um, I actually, I think healthcare, I wasn't able to write off because of some rule.

00:49:26So if IRS is watching this, don't, uh, don't, um, don't quote me on that. Um, but anything you

00:49:34purchase for your company, more or less, you can write off. I hired an attorney. I hired an

00:49:39accountant. Those people I write off on my taxes, all these things. That's all I'm saying. So now

00:49:44$200,000 now goes down to like, let's say I spent 15 or 20 grand on that. Now it goes

00:49:47down to 180. So then I get taxed on 180,000 instead of 200,000. Right. You see that now

00:49:54a step above that you've been doing consulting for a while. You're making, let's say 50, 75

00:49:58grand. Now you might want to restructure as something called an S corp, which is what I

00:50:02am now. Um, my accountants really recommended, really recommended to me after I started making

00:50:0850. I was already making like a hundred and a hundred or so at the time. They're like,

00:50:12you really want to be an S corp for tax reasons. I now an employee, I'm an employee of my

00:50:16company.

00:50:16I'm the CEO, but I am an employee of my own company, Alex analytics LLC. Now, because of

00:50:23this, I, or my salary, I make 80 some thousand as a salary of my company. Then the other 120

00:50:32,000

00:50:32is revenue generated for the business. It was that distinction. So on the $80,000

00:50:38I pay Medicare, Medicaid. Um, I pay towards social security. I get taxed to, um, all these

00:50:47different things, right? So I get taxed higher for that 80,000 or I get taxed the same amount

00:50:52I do as an LLC, but only for that 80,000. The other 120,000 is profit for my company.

00:50:59I get

00:50:59taxed a lower rate. So now I get taxed, let's say 15% for the 120,000 I save. Like

00:51:04last year,

00:51:04I say, uh, the year before when I didn't have an LLC, I spent like 40 grand on taxes. It

00:51:08was

00:51:09horrible. Did not like it. This year I paid about a lot of the, this previous year, I paid about

00:51:1340

00:51:14grand, but I made a lot more. So I saved, I probably would have paid like 60 if I was

00:51:19still

00:51:19an LLC. So I went restructuring, I saved like 10 to 20,000. Um, and that's take home money in

00:51:24my

00:51:24bank account. So these are all things that you should consider when starting a business, you know,

00:51:28just, you don't have to do these things. It's just what I recommend, right? I'm just giving you my

00:51:33advice from my experience. Once you reach a threshold, being an escort, restructuring as

00:51:39an escort makes financial sense. So again, I know I'm going into the weeds here, but if you're

00:51:44watching this, want to start a business, I'm hoping that'll be good, useful information, right? Uh,

00:51:49because I didn't know any of that when I started, I figured out all that on my own. I wish

00:51:53I had a

00:51:53mentor in the consulting space. Like I wish I had talked to Ben more because he had been doing

00:51:58consulting. I wish I just had someone to talk to about this, to tell me how stupid I was at

00:52:02the

00:52:02beginning. That's what I'm trying to do for you, right? I'm trying to do that for you. Um,

00:52:07now we've been talking for a long, long time. I'm going to talk a little bit more. Uh, this could

00:52:12be as long as I want. I can make it three hours, but I'm not going to, I'll try to

00:52:14make it like an

00:52:14hour and a half, even under an hour and a half. Now, last thing I wanted to talk about was

00:52:21the demand for freelancers and consultants right now. And where I think it's going to be in like a year

00:52:26or two. And especially with AI, uh, that to me is one of the biggest factors that's going to,

00:52:32I'm going to talk about in a second. Now let's talk about demand for, for consultants and freelancers.

00:52:42There's always going to be a demand. Even today, there's a demand right now out there for freelancing

00:52:48consultants. I promise you, you can go on any of these platforms, look up analytics. You will find

00:52:53a lot of stuff on there. Now, sometimes they're really small niches. Like sometimes they're like,

00:52:58we need somebody with CRM experience through, um, this platform, or we need someone who really knows

00:53:05this niche tool. Like, I mean, this is a niche, but like, let's say they want someone who knows

00:53:10Salesforce really well, but they want someone who knows service now, Microsoft service now really

00:53:14well. All these little tools and niches, you'll see those all the time. Um, the ones that, um,

00:53:22I'm talking about are more like the general ones. Hey, we need someone with Python experience with

00:53:26SQL experience, um, or domain knowledge in this area with these skills. That's kind of like what

00:53:33I'm talking about. There's already, there's always a demand for it. Always has been. I just,

00:53:37you just aren't aware of it until you're aware of it. There's always a demand for it. So the demand

00:53:43right now is there. And what you really need to do is build up those soft skills with communication

00:53:48to pitch yourself for those that work. Well, of course you need the hard skills as well. You can't

00:53:54do without it. Now I do recommend if you're able to generate these things with AI, generate your

00:54:02responses and stuff like that with AI, just with the help of it. Don't let it all be, it sounds

00:54:06like

00:54:06a robot. Uh, cause sometimes it does, but you put your personality into it, but you know, think about

00:54:12what you'd want to say. How do you want to structure it? Use AI to help you with that. I

00:54:16do recommend it.

00:54:16I do that as well. Um, for certain people, for certain clients. Um,

00:54:24sorry, I'm checking my notes really quick. So the demand is there now. Let's say in a year or two,

00:54:31it gets a lot bigger. Now, this is not just my opinion, although I have talked about it quite a

00:54:36bit. I talked to a lot of other experts in the field and they all agree and say the exact

00:54:40same

00:54:41thing that I'm saying. So I feel very confident in this fact and we'll see if it plays out is

00:54:45that AI

00:54:46is going to exacerbate the need, or it's going to increase the need for freelancers and consultants.

00:54:54Now here's why. And here's what you need to do to kind of ride this wave. Uh, wait, what was

00:55:00that

00:55:00first part? Uh, here's why. Okay. I lost, lost track. Here's why AI is going to lead to that.

00:55:08Right now, most consulting is, you know, medium to small companies, uh, larger companies hire from

00:55:16large consulting groups like Bain and, uh, PwC and all these companies. Freelancing with almost

00:55:23anyone, uh, you know, small, medium, large, but at the small side, small to medium, it's not,

00:55:31um, a huge, huge thing for a lot of different reasons. One is budget. Smaller companies don't

00:55:38typically have as large a budget. Two is they like to hire on full-time. Uh, they don't, they don't,

00:55:46um, want to hire on people because they just want to hire someone on full-time to do this sometimes.

00:55:51And then the third thing is, um, oftentimes these small companies have been doing things the way

00:55:57they've been doing them for a long time, but AI is going to change that. Uh, I kind of, I

00:56:02don't know

00:56:02if I fully said that perfectly. I'm going to kind of restructure this a little bit with AI. A lot

00:56:09of

00:56:10small companies and mid-sized companies are going to have to advance a lot of things. I worked with

00:56:15tons of companies in the past year. Their infrastructure on in data is bad or poor. They do

00:56:22not have a dedicated data team. They do not use AI or know about AI in any capacity. They've just

00:56:28heard

00:56:28of it. What this means is there's going to be a massive demand for someone who knows AI or knows

00:56:35about AI or knows technical skills plus AI. A massive demand, especially at small and medium-sized

00:56:41companies for consultants and freelancers in this area of data analytics with AI. Um, AI isn't always

00:56:50going to, you aren't always going to have to know AI, but I think it's going to be a big,

00:56:53big, big

00:56:53bonus. Here's why we're going to see a huge surge. AI right now has not been crazy productionalized

00:57:00chat GPT. Yes. Bard, all these things, they're productionalized. You can pay for, or you can't,

00:57:05well, you can pay for chat GPT, right? But they aren't integrated with a lot of tools yet.

00:57:11For example, when Microsoft copilot comes out, they've been teasing that for like eight months.

00:57:15It still doesn't come out. When copilot comes out, AI is going to be integrated in a product

00:57:20on an enterprise level. People are going to specialize in using copilot to speed up different

00:57:26things. That is a niche market that's going to be emerging. And with that, all these small

00:57:30companies that are using all these Microsoft products who want to utilize them, have no idea

00:57:34how to do it, are going to hire consultants and freelancers to show them how to do it or create

00:57:38workflows or do things with these tools to speed up their work and get it done faster.

00:57:46So if you know data analytics and you know these tools, you can get hired on. If you don't,

00:57:52if you don't know AI at all, you can still get hired on to some of these companies because

00:57:55they're just going to be creating data teams. That's a different iteration. So some of these

00:58:00people have no infrastructure, have no data team. They're just going to be trying to hire

00:58:03on people for a data team to then eventually use AI in the future, right? But some of these

00:58:09people already have data teams, but they need these people to use AI. So they're going to hire

00:58:13in a consultant or a freelancer to come in, help their team understand how AI works,

00:58:18how they can do it. Now that takes some experience at some level because if you don't

00:58:22know data infrastructure or you don't know data modeling or you don't know data pipelines,

00:58:27like some data engineering concepts, it may be more difficult, right? Of course.

00:58:31But there are going to be a lot of jobs that fit in that previous category

00:58:34where they're just, they want someone to come in who knows how to use it. That's how

00:58:39you market yourself. Freelancing and consulting is about marketing, is marketing yourself. And

00:58:44that's why I was talking a little bit about creating a brand and it's hard to do, but long

00:58:49term is 100% worth it. So that is why I believe as well as many others believe that there's

00:58:58going

00:58:58to be a big demand in that cross section. And it's the same for data science. Data engineering

00:59:04as well. It just depends on what that company does, right? If they work on primarily data

00:59:09engineering, they won't hire that many data analysts, maybe one or two. If they're a data

00:59:13analytics company, most likely they're going to hire data analysts. There's a lot of analytics

00:59:17companies out there or small companies, you know, they're going to hire people on who know

00:59:21these things. You want to be one of those people who know these things. So how do you set yourself

00:59:25up for the future of consulting and freelancing in this space? I highly recommend getting plugged

00:59:29in to using some of these AI tools. You don't have to be the expert of experts,

00:59:34but if you understand it more than they do, that is already where you can separate yourself.

00:59:39Like for me, if I just knew ChatGPT really well, how to use it, how to use it for AI,

00:59:46how

00:59:46to do certain things with it, with data analytics, that would be a big upsell. You say, hey, I

00:59:52know how to use this tool. In the future, you'll be saying, hey, I know how to use Copilot.

00:59:58I've used it for all these things. Here's how I've used it in personal projects. You don't

01:00:01have to say, I just say, here's how I've used it. You explain some things you've done

01:00:06in the past to practice with them and use them. That's going to happen a lot in the

01:00:10next year or two where all these new tools are coming out, all these production level

01:00:14things, enterprise level things at Microsoft, at Google, at Dell, HP, larger tech companies

01:00:26like Amazon and Twitter are going to come out with AI tools. So if you know your niche,

01:00:31you know a tool or multiple tools, that is how you get this work. I've already started

01:00:36kind of creeping into the AI space a little bit with this. This company will be like,

01:00:42hey, we want to use AI. And I'm like, all right, well, let's take a look at what you

01:00:44have for your data infrastructure. Like, how are we going to use AI? I was like, let's look

01:00:48six months down the road because this is like future planning. Let's look six months down

01:00:51the road, a year down the road. Let's look at what you currently have and let's look

01:00:55at what you'll need. Now, a lot of that has come with a lot of research and a lot

01:00:59of work on my end to learn those things. So that's what you need to do too. So then I'm

01:01:04like, okay, here's how your current data infrastructure is. Here's how your data

01:01:07pipelines are. Not bad. We may be able to, even in the future, use AI to help with those

01:01:13things. But here's where you need to get in the short term or the midterm in order to

01:01:17start using AI and what it needs to look like, how it needs to be formatted, how it needs

01:01:20to be, you know, you need data dictionaries, you need, you know, processes and procedures,

01:01:26things that you can feed into AI, then you'll be able to use. So I've helped a few

01:01:30companies with planning for the future. These are things that you need to be doing

01:01:36as well, planning for the future. Start learning these AI tools, grow with these AI

01:01:41tools, follow that wave of AI, do not get left behind. I think in five years, and this is

01:01:50why I'm going to start making more videos on AI as more tech comes out in analytics. In

01:01:55five years, you can't just know the base skills. You'll need to know the base skills and how

01:02:01to use them with AI. Now they aren't going to do everything for you. They're going to

01:02:05get things wrong. There's going to be mistakes and you're going to have to be there to use

01:02:08them. They'll be a tool, especially in five years. I still think they'll be very infant

01:02:13level, even five years. In five years, you'll still need to know the skills. You'll just

01:02:18need to know how to use them faster and better with AI. And it'll help you learn these skills

01:02:22a lot more in depth. So don't get left behind. I myself am having to upskill. I have to do

01:02:30it myself. So in consulting and freelancing, that'll be an expectation in the future that

01:02:35you know how to use these things. And you can be one of the first people to start doing

01:02:39it and get that traction early, get that reputation early, start working with people.

01:02:49I'm looking at my notes. I don't have much more. What I will say though is I am, and this

01:02:55is just a note on AI, I am not super worried about AI replacing data analysts anytime soon,

01:02:59maybe in 40 years, 30 years. We'll be really integrated with AI so much so that we can kind

01:03:05of, we'll need like AI monitors, AI data analyst monitors. I don't know. Nobody can predict

01:03:12out that far. But in the next five, 10 years, a hundred percent, I am more, more, more, more

01:03:17confident than I've ever been now seeing all these new emerging products from Silicon Valley.

01:03:21I'm like, that's, you need someone who knows more than that. I've also been using ChatGPT

01:03:26a lot or code, and it's also not there on code. It's not crazy advanced. Like on Analyst

01:03:31Builder, you go on Analyst Builder right now, try a very hard question, even a very hard

01:03:35question, which is like in the real world, like a medium. In like a real workplace, that's not

01:03:40even like crazy hard. A very hard for technical interviews though, those questions, ChatGPT

01:03:46can't solve them. You know, there's so many limitations right now to where AI is, especially

01:03:52even in coding, that humans are going to be more necessary than ever. No layman is going to be able

01:03:59to use ChatGPT like a data analyst knows it for data analysis, right? So if somebody comes in,

01:04:04they're like, I want to be a data analyst. Let's use ChatGPT to do it. It's going to be very

01:04:08difficult, even with AI to do it properly. That's why data analysts come in. They know how to do it

01:04:13already, but with AI and they do it faster and better, that's when they need consultants. That's

01:04:17why they need freelancers. And they want to hire these people on all these small and medium-sized

01:04:21companies. They're going to hire on these freelancers, all these consultants to come in,

01:04:24build these teams, build these data teams from scratch that they never had. So I think there's going to be

01:04:28a big flood in the future for need of these things and eventually probably hiring on full

01:04:33teams as well, which you may want to stay on that team to do. So I've talked a lot. I'm

01:04:40starting to

01:04:40lose my voice. Yeah, over an hour for sure. All that being said, consulting and freelancing,

01:04:50highly recommend it. Love it. I think you should be a side gig at first, if I were to be

01:04:55honest.

01:04:56Try to get a job as a data analyst. If you can't, try to do freelancing and consulting, but

01:04:59it's easier to do it when you have experience. So it's just like anything. If you have experience,

01:05:04it's easier. So my recommendation would try to get a year or two or three before you start doing it,

01:05:09if you can. Start building it up as a side project. I would be a bad advisor to you if

01:05:21I said,

01:05:22just dive in, quit your full-time job and start doing it. It's hard to get clients. It's hard to

01:05:27keep clients. It's hard to get paid consistently. It's different than a full-time job, right? It's

01:05:32not as consistent a pay. It's not guaranteed pay in some instances where if you don't structure it

01:05:39properly. So, you know, just think about that. Really, really try. I would advise starting as a

01:05:47side gig and then building it from there. And eventually, if you can, if the numbers make

01:05:51sense, then go full-time. But it's risky. You have to pay for all your own insurance,

01:05:55all your own benefits, all these things. You're a business owner at that point.

01:05:59You have to think about it like that. And so, yeah, I hope that was helpful.

01:06:04You know, that's just my, that's my story of how I got into consulting. Very different than

01:06:10most people's. You know, I was just, it happened upon me, is how I like to say. But, you know,

01:06:17genuinely, I'm so appreciative of everything that I have and how I've been able to get here. It's been

01:06:23really amazing, genuinely. So, yeah, that's been, that's been my story. And that's how you can do it

01:06:32too. So, you know, if this is helpful, or if you have any questions, write it down below. I'll try

01:06:38to answer it. I try to answer most questions. Shoot me a message on LinkedIn. Follow me there too,

01:06:43because I post a lot of stuff. But I hope that's helpful. But that's, I threw a lot of information

01:06:48at you. But if you stuck around to the end, now, that really means, tells me that you are really

01:06:54dedicated to trying to get into consulting and freelancing and data analytics. And that is

01:06:59impressive. This is a long, this is a long one, right? So if you made it all the way to

01:07:03the end,

01:07:05one, congratulations. Two, I want to know that you made it all the way to the end.

01:07:10I think people who made it to the end are people who are hard workers, or people who are dedicated.

01:07:20And I have this thing where I do the vegetable of the week. Now, I don't do these weekly anymore.

01:07:24I used to way back in the day, but I do kind of short 10-minute videos now.

01:07:29So I think people who are this dedicated, I would consider them a meat and potatoes kind of people.

01:07:37A people who they eat and they get right back to work because they're hustlers and they're working

01:07:40hard. So if you watch the end, in the comments, write potato. If you write potato down there,

01:07:49I'm just telling you, and I truly believe this. This is not just, I'm not just saying it to be

01:07:54silly or funny, although the vegetables is silly. I truly believe that people who really invest in

01:07:58themselves and then apply those things into their life truly can make changes in their life.

01:08:04I did it myself. I watched people on YouTube on how to get into data analytics, and now I'm a

01:08:10person

01:08:10doing that. I truly believe that people are putting in the hard work who are really investing in

01:08:14themselves, and then they apply those things to their life. That's the key. You have to apply it.

01:08:18They apply those things to their life. They truly can make changes. That person is determined.

01:08:23They're willing to work hard to make it work. So write potatoes down below because goodness

01:08:28gracious, I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy. I like to eat. I like to work. Hard for my

01:08:35family.

01:08:36So that is the show today. That is the show today. Man, this has been a long one. Now, usually

01:08:44at the end,

01:08:44I just chitty chat with you guys for a little bit, but we've gone so long. I won't do that

01:08:48too long,

01:08:49but we're just going to chitty chat for a second. I've actually, and I know I've been saying all

01:08:56these things. I'm going to make a small caveat, and you'd only know this at the very end. This is

01:09:01just kind of more personal, but I've started declining a little bit more consulting work now

01:09:05because of Analyst Builder because it's been a lot of work. It's a lot of work, but I still do

01:09:12almost as much as I did before. I just work more hours. But it's a give and take. If you're

01:09:18working

01:09:18a full-time job, it gets busier. You take on less consulting work. Work gets slow at work. Take

01:09:26on some more consulting work. Just do it during your workout. Work remote. Don't let your boss know that

01:09:31you're doing it. That's what I did. And you start doing what nobody knows. But Analyst Builder has

01:09:37been taking a lot of my time. I'll leave a link down below for Analyst Builder. If you're trying

01:09:40to break into data analytics, goodness gracious, it's fun. It's really, really fun. I've had just

01:09:46amazing feedback. People love it. It's the best. Well, I'm trying to, I'm sounding like Donald Trump

01:09:51right now. No, I did generally. It's really, really cool. If you haven't heard about it,

01:09:54go check it out. You only know about it if you listen to the end. But yeah, it's been taking

01:09:59a little

01:10:00bit more of my time than lately. Also, all of my kids are doing sports right now. I'm Xander's

01:10:05soccer. If my son's Xander, I'm his soccer coach, which I did soccer for like more than 10 years.

01:10:12We won state championship my senior year as the captain of my soccer team. So I love soccer.

01:10:18So I'm a soccer coach right now. My youngest daughter is doing dance. My oldest is doing swim

01:10:25and volleyball. And now she's volunteering at a horse place where she gets to help with horses.

01:10:35She's volunteering. And so I've got a lot going on in my life. I'm just venting now. I'm actually,

01:10:40now this is just more venting than anything. So this is, welcome to my therapy session.

01:10:43Um, um, I just, I just been crazy busy and the holidays are coming up with Thanksgiving and

01:10:51Christmas and, you know, for other people like Hanukkah and stuff like that. It's, it's busy.

01:10:56I got family who wants my attention. I have no attention to give. I'm just kidding. No, I,

01:11:01um, that's actually one of the benefits of working in consulting and freelancing is you to make your own

01:11:07hours. That has been one of the best things ever. Cause now I get to take whenever I want to,

01:11:12I just get to work. Whenever I don't want to, I don't work. So I can take vacations when I

01:11:15want to,

01:11:16I get to not take vacations when I want to. Um, now that of course is seasonal. I can't always

01:11:22be

01:11:23on vacation, but I, there's a balance. I get to choose when I work during the day. Um, and I'm

01:11:29going

01:11:29to take time off for the holidays for sure. Absolutely. Um, geez, I don't know. I don't even know

01:11:35what I'm talking about anymore. You guys are great. The, usually the people who, who end up,

01:11:41saying potato at the end of the vegetable of the week. Those are the people that I like recognize.

01:11:44And I know, cause I've seen them on live streams or on LinkedIn. I like actually know who you are.

01:11:50I always, I always appreciate those people just cause I don't know. I feel like I, I do this to

01:11:55connect with you guys cause I love it. And I like actually having these conversations. Um,

01:12:01and it's just super fun. Like I love seeing, I love, I know so many people I I've met literally

01:12:07thousands of people. Um, cause my YouTube channel and LinkedIn, and it is, it is the biggest blessing

01:12:12ever. Just the best community, really tenacious and hardworking and just good people. Um, and so

01:12:22it's been such a blessing for me. I just love reading through the comments, especially on these

01:12:25videos. That's it. That's all I got for you. I'm going to head out of here. Um, I'll edit this

01:12:31video. I'll post it. It has barely any editing. I just gotta make sure the audio is good. Barely

01:12:36any editing. And, um, yeah, I'll talk to you probably the next one. I'm going to do another

01:12:41one. I don't think it actually, I don't think this is going to be, maybe this will be a long

01:12:47form one. I don't know on how I became an analytics manager. Cause that's a wild story

01:12:52in and of itself. So maybe I will do a long form one on how I became an analytics manager.

01:12:57Um, but if not, I'll do a short form one. I'm going to record that probably tomorrow.

01:13:03You don't care, but I care. All right, guys, it's, uh, it's time for me to get out of here.

01:13:09Um, excuse me. You waited around for that burp right there. I can tell I'm going to get out of

01:13:15here and you should too. So thank you guys. I really, really appreciate you staying around this

01:13:19long. If you haven't, if you stuck around this long and you haven't liked and subscribed by now,

01:13:23please do that. Uh, really helps with the algorithms as well as just my YouTube channel.

01:13:28Um, which is just, I love my YouTube channel. It's so much fun. Um, that's all I got for today.

01:13:33I love you. I care about you. I want you to succeed. I really do. So if you have any

01:13:38questions,

01:13:39just shoot me a message. I'll try to respond. My email has just been an absolute mess. I have like

01:13:43600 that I haven't responded to. I got it down to 200. Then within like two weeks, it was up

01:13:47to like

01:13:47600 again. I haven't got it back down yet. Email is not the best way to get to me anymore.

01:13:51It's,

01:13:52it's on YouTube or dead. All right, guys. Thank you. I appreciate you. I love you.

01:13:59Take care and I will see you in the next episode.

Consulting and Freelancing in Data Analytics: How I Built My Business

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