The Data Consultant Playbook From Code to Business Impact | Tony Zeljkovic

The transcripts are edited for clarity, sometimes with AI. If you notice any incorrect information, let us know.

Landing the First Consulting Client via Academic Research

Alexey: Hi everyone, welcome to our event. This event is brought to you by Data Talks Club which is a community of people who love data. We have weekly events. Today is one of such events. If you want to find out more about the events, there is a link in the description but also we have a Slack community. There is also a link in the description. Do not forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. There is a pinned link in the live chat that you can use for asking questions. Previously we used Slido for that. I cancelled the Slido subscription because it cost almost 200 euros per year. (0:00)

Alexey: I thought why do not I just code it myself. This is the first time we actually test this live. I tested it locally but nothing replaces testing in production. Please use the pinned link to ask questions. Maybe ask a question right now so I can see that it is working. (0:35)

Alexey: If something breaks we always have live chat as a backup option. Today we will talk about the data consultant playbook. How do we actually become data consultants? We have a special guest today, Tony. Tony is a hands-on AI data platform consultant who specializes in healthcare, life sciences, and insurance. (0:47)

Alexey: At his consultancy Norona Data, he works directly with organizations to architect and deploy scalable, automated, cloud-native data and AI systems. We also will be joined hopefully by Juan. Juan is an analytics engineer who you might know also from Data Engineering Zoomcamp. He was the instructor for the analytics engineering in dbt module. (1:12)

Alexey: I hope things work out and he joins because right now Juan did not join. I hope everything is fine with him. Anyway, we have Tony. Hi Tony, welcome. It is a big pleasure to have you here. We always start by asking the guests to go through their career so far. Can you tell us about your career journey so far? (1:44)

Tony: Of course Alexey, thank you for having me on. I really appreciate joining the show. My career so far has been quite unconventional. I started out doing bioinformatics research. I was doing this in various places in the Netherlands and the United States at Utrecht University and Stanford University. (2:15)

Tony: I did research in genetic modification. I worked on CRISPR Cas9 research, stem cell research, and all kinds of different clinical genetics. It was very academic. From there I started my consulting journey through the connections I made in academia. They were saying they needed somebody to help them out with some of their bioinformatics work at some of their companies. (2:36)

Tony: Can you please help us out? (3:01)

Alexey: Did you work as a PhD student or as a researcher? (3:07)

Tony: Not a PhD student. I was just doing research. This is late studies. (3:14)

Alexey: Was this during your masters? (3:14)

Tony: Exactly. I was a research assistant at the lab. (3:19)

Alexey: You graduated and did your masters. Then you immediately became a consultant after that. Did you ever work at a company for a data job? (3:24)

Tony: Not for a data job. (3:31)

Tony: This is what I am saying. It is very unconventional. At the time it was mostly because I finished up doing my interning and my research at Stanford. Obviously it is somewhat complicated to get a work visa if you are getting out of university. (3:37)

Tony: They really did need somebody for the company at the time. They said they were fine if they take me on as a consultant and if I work at a distance. That is kind of how things started. I have been doing that ever since. (3:57)

Alexey: It was about clinical research and genetics. Tell us more about what exactly you did there in the research. How is it related to data? For me as somebody who is not really there I do not really know. Probably there is a connection because now we are talking about data consultancy. (4:16)

Alexey: Maybe there is no connection and then step by step you eventually transitioned into data. Maybe you can tell us more. (4:34)

Tony: That is true. It is very unconventional I will say. The connection to data bioinformatics work is more academic. That is true but you are still working with a very large data set. If we look at a human genome this is hundreds of gigabytes of data for one person. (4:41)

Tony: You do need a lot of data skills that a data engineer would need to process that volume of data. Some of the initial projects or earlier projects I did were analyzing human genome sequencing data. I also developed new products for the diagnosis of sepsis. They are very both large and small data projects. It is very data heavy because this is very hard to interpret data. (5:05)

Tony: It is more statistics heavy. I would say it is more akin to data science work. From there I started building a reputation. I had a clientele and they started asking me different questions. I had people that were working in health insurance and healthcare companies saying they needed some help. (5:32)

Tony: At the time it was kind of out of my comfort zone. I was used to research data science work. They needed more data engineering help and platform help. It was definitely quite a career shift at the time. (5:52)

Transitioning from Research to Consulting

Alexey: I want to interrupt you because you casually mentioned that you started building your client base. How exactly did you do this? You were working with one client. Then you had multiple clients. How did the transition from having one client to having a client base happen? (6:06)

Tony: That is a very good question. This is also what we write about extensively in our book. It really is a long term process. You build relationships in various ways. It might be people that used to work at your first client's company. (6:28)

Tony: They go to other places and they had a good experience with you. They want to bring you on board and recommend you. It might be you go to conferences and you meet other professionals in the field. They might want to onboard you. It could even be certain articles you publish or older connections you had from university who are suddenly doing interesting things. (6:39)

Tony: I would not say there is really one way in which it happens. The most important thing is you need to be out there. You need to be public. You need to be constantly building and nurturing your relationships. Eventually something like that comes up. (7:05)

Tony: It is not always the answer everybody wants to hear. All the consulting work focuses on starting your newsletter to figure out how to get a client in two weeks. I do not think that is typically how it happens for me. It is also not how it happens for all the people that we have interviewed so far who have built similar things. (7:17)

Alexey: How exactly did it happen for you? You had one client. Then you had a client base. Was it somebody who worked with you but then moved jobs and invited you? How exactly did you build this or was it a combination of all the things you mentioned? (7:42)

Alexey: When you are just starting as a consultant you do not necessarily know all these things. Was it a conscious process that you wanted to follow? You thought you had one client but wanted to have a client base. Did you consciously go to conferences or write articles or follow where your network is right now and see how to get in touch with them? Did it happen more naturally for you and then retrospectively you learned that these things are good to do? (8:02)

Tony: This is a very good question. I will say the things I thought worked did not work. To answer your question I tried all kinds of things. You just throw all the effort and see what sticks and then eventually you have something that works out. If you have one client you are happy. (8:41)

Tony: You always feel the pressure of what happens if this stops. You wonder how to progress and make this more sustainable. (9:00)

Alexey: I would say in Germany you cannot even have just one client. In Germany it is against the law to have one client. You have to have multiple clients otherwise you are not a freelancer you are an employee. The company is avoiding taxes if they hire you and you are the sole client. There are also legal consequences at least in some countries. (9:12)

Tony: I had the same thing. I was initially based in the Netherlands which has a very similar legal framework. That definitely helps to motivate you. They will not complain in the first or the second year. If you do this for three or four years they will eventually come knocking on your door and say this is kind of weird that you are still working with one client. (9:31)

Alexey: The connection is breaking sometimes. If it happens I will ask you to repeat things. For now it is clear. It is breaking a little bit but I think we will survive. You started building your client base. (10:00)

Alexey: What happened next? Did you continue with clinical genetics or did you start something else? (10:21)

Tony: It has been a while ago nowadays. I started doing more data engineering work and data platform work. I noticed this is one of the things that I want to instill in people as well. Not every niche is as valuable. One of the things I struggled with when I was doing bioinformatics consulting at the time was the market was much smaller. (10:29)

Tony: It was much more niche. Because I do not have a PhD there might be some disadvantages I have in a more academically inclined field compared to some other people who have public track records of publications. I noticed that certain companies were difficult to sell to. They would say they liked me but they had other people that are more established and more public. It is an easier choice because the organization was all PhDs. (10:54)

Tony: If you want to hire another person they will be very uncomfortable not hiring a PhD or above for certain things. That is the moment I realized it is kind of difficult. I did work with some bigger vendors like Snowflake to try to partner with them and sell newer clients onto biotech. I was really going the implementation partner route for a while on the biotech side. I can definitely recommend this to people. (11:26)

Becoming a Platform Implementation Partner

Tony: If you have trouble finding customers becoming an implementation partner for any platform of your choosing can be helpful. It might either be a big platform like Snowflake or something smaller and more upcoming. That can be a really good way for you to get in front of clients. These companies usually have very big sales and marketing engines. They are constantly talking to new companies they want to onboard. (11:42)

Tony: They might not have the specific expertise to bridge the gap between their technology and what is specifically required and usually preferred in an industry. That definitely helped a lot. I got a lot of leads out of that. (12:22)

Alexey: Can you tell us more about this? We know that there are companies like Snowflake and Databricks. There are a lot of smaller companies. Especially with smaller companies I know there are companies whose work model is open source and they would rather focus on the product. Often they get requests from people who use the product asking for help to implement projects using their product. (12:35)

Alexey: If it is a small team they can say they are really short on people. What these companies do is they have this implementation partner program. As an independent contractor or freelancer you can join this network. Then we work with this company. I know that dbt is doing this along with other companies. (13:06)

Alexey: Can you tell us more about how I can approach a company like that be it Snowflake or dbt? How do I pitch my services there so they can help me promote myself? (13:25)

Tony: I will give you a couple pointers there. You have to think about two types of companies roughly speaking. If we are talking about a company like Snowflake, Looker, or AWS these big established companies usually have a very carved out implementation partner path. You can find it on their website. You can sign up and usually they want you to have certain certifications and courses done. (13:49)

Tony: That would be enough to add you to a certain tier in their partner list. With those companies there is more of an established path. You can usually find this on their websites. It is not very hard to find. If you reach out to someone in sales they will push you towards the right resources very quickly because they are always happy if somebody is doing their job. (14:18)

Tony: With the smaller more up and coming companies I would say dbt Labs is kind of in the middle there. With a smaller company you can just reach out to the people that are running these companies. You can reach out to someone doing go to market for deployed engineering or some of these newer titles. These companies are trying to take what you are describing and apply it themselves. If you find people doing these things in the platform you are interested in they are a really good place to start. (14:42)

Tony: You can reach out on LinkedIn and tell them that you really love their product. Maybe you post some articles and showcase the really cool things that technology can do in your niche or your industry. That already opens the door to talk with them. The most important thing when you are approaching anyone for a consulting gig is you have to try to make it a win win. You have to really think about what you can do to help them reach their goals and mission. (15:22)

Tony: The more you do that the easier it is to start a conversation and have them be open to help you out as well. For example with the smaller companies I have many relationships where I might find a customer for them. Let us say I am talking to a potential lead and thinking maybe this is not really something I can provide. I do know this smaller platform company that can help. They will give you a revenue share agreement sometimes. (15:52)

Tony: If you bring the client to them they will give you a percentage of revenue as a referral fee. There are multiple ways in which you can take the connections you are making and transform them into income for a consulting business. (16:29)

Alexey: From our discussion so far it looks like consulting is about connections. This is the difference. Let us say I am a data engineer or an AI engineer and I am good at my job. It is not that if I leave right now I will magically find a client if I do not have these connections. From what you described it is a very important part. (16:47)

Alexey: If I consider being a freelancer or consultant when should I start building connections? Should I already have a list? What is my plan if in one year I want to do consulting? Do I have a specific sequence of steps that I need to start doing now to be ready in one year? (17:18)

Tony: That is a very good question. When to start? I think the saying goes the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today. (17:37)

Alexey: Maybe we can talk about things that we should be doing and then we can realize that we are actually doing some things. If we talk about these things to do in order to become an in demand consultant these things will probably do a lot of good things for your career whether you want to become a consultant or not. Regardless of that if you do these things they are going to be helpful anyway. Maybe we can talk about them. (17:50)

Building Your Digital Footprint

Tony: That is exactly right. I think you are hitting right on there. What I usually like to tell people as an exercise is to imagine that people cannot see your CV. They cannot see any company you worked at. They cannot see any line item there. (18:20)

Tony: What would they be able to evaluate your skills and your reliability on? If the answer is nothing you have a problem. (18:40)

Alexey: What do you mean exactly? They do not see your CV but what else do they see? (18:52)

Tony: Think about it like this. If I were to buy a data engineering boot camp would I do it from you who has a lot of material out there? I can already view a lot of the free stuff. I can see what it is about. I can see your depth of knowledge. (18:52)

Tony: I can see your years of experience, your passion, your care, and all of these things. Would I do it with somebody that just has a LinkedIn page who is sending me a direct message? I think probably the first one. I think that is an intuitive understanding most people would have when they are buying something themselves. You just flip that and think how to build assets like that for yourself. (19:11)

Tony: The answer can be various. It can be videos, articles, or conference talks. You build all these relationships I just described and you try to make them a win win. I reach out to a bunch of data platform companies and ask them if I can help them with anything. I ask if I can help them find a certain client or a specific person. (19:30)

Tony: I am doing all these things to be more out there. People can really see what I am about and what I can do. That really helps to build things step by step. If you do not know where to start usually the easiest way is to try to find a local data community. You actually go out and meet people in real life. (19:51)

Tony: I know that is not possible for everybody. If that is not possible for you there are online communities as well like your own or the Practical Data community from Joe Reis. There are plenty of places where you can go if you do not have it around you physically. You start connecting and meeting with people. You want to be amongst other people that are trying to do the same thing because they can help you make the first steps. (20:16)

Tony: You are learning a lot through passive diffusion. You see how they are presenting themselves and putting themselves out there. You see what kind of niches people have and you start to think more about what you could do that is not served yet. I would say the best thing you can do is search people out as much as you can as soon as possible. That is the best way to start if you do not know where to get started. (20:43)

Alexey: Basically it boils down to two things. First is your digital footprint which includes all the traces you leave on the internet. Second is finding a community and being a part of it. Being amongst other people who are doing the same is very helpful. I often get requests for mentorship but I think that you do not necessarily need a mentor for freelancing, AI engineering, or data engineering. (21:09)

Alexey: A mentor can help but what is more helpful is finding a mastermind group. Mastermind can be a fancy word but it means a bunch of peers who are on the same page. They are not necessarily ahead of you or behind you. You are doing the same thing together. Because each has their own unique experience you can combine this experience and learn together. (21:42)

Alexey: If somebody else has a problem and they discuss how they solved this problem you do not need to solve this problem because you learn it from your peer. Having these kinds of groups whether you meet formally and call it a mastermind group or you just hang out by the water cooler at conferences is super helpful. (22:13)

Tony: Absolutely. Whether you are going into consulting or not that is something that will always help your career no matter what path you decide to go into. There are also concrete tactical tips around how you position yourself. One of the mistakes a lot of people make is they position themselves merely as a data engineering consultant or an analytics consultant. It is just focused on the technical part of the job. (22:38)

Positioning: Selling Business Outcomes vs. Technical Skills

Tony: This makes sense because this is what you have been training yourself to do for years. This is what you have been focusing on and feel comfortable with. You have to think about the customers you are trying to sell to. What are the things they care about? How do I portray myself as someone that gets them to that solution? (23:22)

Tony: If I were to sell myself to an e-commerce company and say I am doing data engineering consulting they might not know how that translates. They might not even know what data engineering is. It is difficult for them to connect the dots and see how that would be valuable. If I approach them with something like getting forty percent more ROI out of their marketing budget that is already more specific. You will notice between those two you are finding an industry and an outcome that you are trying to help them with. (23:37)

Tony: This can be scary for a lot of people. A lot of people feel uncomfortable picking one industry or niche because it feels like you are limiting yourself. You might think you could do data anywhere and it does not really matter. You have to think about it from the perspective of the buyer. If they do not know anything about data they do not understand much about how that translates to something they care about. (24:19)

Tony: You have to start with the things that are important for them and then work backwards to how you can provide that. Sometimes the answer is very simple technology. It does not need to be complicated at all. I would say that from a positioning perspective it is very critical. (24:43)

Alexey: I have a question about a very specific detail. You said instead of the strategy of spraying and praying you try to have a very narrow focus. You find an industry and you find an outcome you want to help the client achieve. Maybe we can work through an example here of how to actually do this. Does it have to be the industry where I work currently or how do I even go about this? (25:11)

Alexey: With the industry it is easier. If I work at a marketplace perhaps marketplace is my industry. I can find other companies who are doing the same thing. What about the outcome? I think this is the more difficult part. (25:49)

Tony: That is definitely not easy. The easiest place to start is a place where you already have domain knowledge. If you do have that available to yourself that is great. Not everybody might have this. Sometimes you might have to make a switch like what I did. (26:09)

Tony: The best tool you have to your capability is talking to people that work in those industries and asking them about their pain points. That is really the most important skill. If you talk to anyone that works in sales or in tech sales they will tell you that empathy and listening to people's problems is the most important. You might have to go to places you are less comfortable going to. If you were to get into healthcare you might go to a healthcare conference where doctors or insurers go. (26:28)

Tony: You might not want to find the technical people because there you might find more of the people that you are interested in helping out and selling something to. This is going to take time. This is why it is important to think long term about these things and have enough monetary runway and time to do this. It is not something you do in one week. It is not something you can read a book on and you are done. (27:09)

Tony: You need time talking with people to slowly uncover what these needs are. It is one of the more difficult things to figure out how to become an expert at something. Another thing that can help is finding publications they read. If I am going to sell to a CFO for data consulting for accounting I might help myself by reading something like the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times. I want to understand what terminologies they are using and what problems they are seeing in their industry. (27:34)

Tony: I want to understand the language of what they are talking about in their meetings. Then I have a way to talk that is engaging to them and they immediately understand. It is also a language thing. You need to figure out what is the language of the people you are trying to connect with. (28:23)

Alexey: From what I hear right now it looks like a huge lot of things you need to do. I am not a consultant even though I sometimes consult. Sometimes because of the visibility I have people ask me for help but this does not happen regularly. What you just described like reading the Wall Street Journal may seem like too much. I agree that it is very important but you do not just one day decide that you need to be there and go all in. (28:41)

Alexey: Probably this is a very step by step process. What is my first step? This is the ideal situation where I know everything about this domain knowledge. I talk to people and find all these pain points. I read the Wall Street Journal and can speak the same language with the CFOs. (29:25)

Alexey: That is me in five years. In order to be there in five years what are the steps I can take? I hope I was audible. Can you hear me? (29:45)

Tony: Again I would say you have to be out there amongst the people. That is the quickest way to learn. (30:14)

Alexey: I can hear you. (30:19)

Tony: Am I still coming through? (30:24)

Alexey: You are but your video is frozen. At least there is sound. (30:24)

Tony: The easiest way to come through is to go out there and meet the people. Whether it is physical or digital, physical is better I would say. That is the quickest way to find the places where people are that are already further along than you are. That is the easiest way to learn if you really have no idea what you are doing. Just be curious and talk to people. (30:32)

Networking Strategies and Finding Industry Pain Points

Tony: What do people in this industry actually do? What does your day job look like? What does your routine look like? I have noticed that being very curious about what other people do has really helped me. I get a better understanding of what I should be learning, reading, and understanding to be able to help them out. (31:02)

Tony: If you already work in a company you can already do this. You can reach out to people you might not normally talk to like legal, accounting, or sales. You might send a message and reach out saying you would be interested in helping out a bit where you can with data. You can ask them to walk you through what their day looks like and what they are doing on a daily basis. This is something almost everybody can do because most people are already working in a place where they can start taking some of these smaller steps. (31:50)

Tony: I assume that is a way to get started with that. (32:21)

Alexey: As a data engineer you take part in preparing the data for the dashboard with analysts or analytics engineers. As an AI engineer you develop some automation. Then there are some people who use this. Who are the end users? Usually they are on the business side and there are a few layers between you and these people. (32:21)

Alexey: You have your engineering manager and there are product people. Eventually there is an end consumer of this data. Instead of talking to your product manager it may help to jump a few layers and talk to this end user directly. This is the first step you can do. You can invite them for lunch and ask what they do and how they use the results. (32:51)

Alexey: You can ask how you can personally be more helpful. Step by step then maybe you can get to know other people who are doing something similar like the colleagues of this person. This is how you can do this. Being curious helps. (33:11)

Tony: Exactly. I think a lot of people underestimate how much is possible in the place they are working at already. A lot of people are very happy to tell you how their work works and what they are doing. They love it when somebody is curious and is willing to help. I am yet to see many times where that does not work to get your foot in the door. (33:30)

Tony: Let us say I talk to a bunch of salespeople in my company. I ask them what they read and what are the things happening in the industry. If I talk to three of them I already have an understanding and some things I can latch on to and do my own research on. Every time you talk to somebody in a certain role in your industry you learn their words and terms. The more people you have spoken to the easier it is to talk to the next person because you already have a bit of the background. (33:55)

Tony: Baby steps. Just look at anybody you know from high school, university, or the company you are working at already. Most people know hundreds of people. You can go through all of your old contacts and figure out they are doing something pretty interesting. You can shoot them a message and ask them about that. (34:23)

Tony: If you are earlier in your career you can say you are trying to get yourself established in this industry. You can ask if you can get five or ten minutes of their time to ask a couple of questions about how things work. You can ask what are some problems they run into. If you are further along you can think about the win win which I described earlier. Once you have a more established track record you can start thinking about what you can do for this other person to make them look good. (34:46)

Tony: You can help them reach their goal and then that opens up more doors. A lot of people have way more than they think to get started with. It is just a switch in your resourcefulness when it comes to people. (35:17)

Alexey: Thanks. I want to remind everyone that there is a pinned link in the live chat. You can use this link for asking questions. I do not see any questions and I am a bit worried if the app I have is not working or you are just not asking any questions. Maybe just ask something. (35:33)

Alexey: It does not have to be very meaningful. I want to see that it actually works. From our discussion so far I noticed that you really have to talk to a lot of people. I am an introvert. For me this was an acquired skill that required a lot of getting out of my comfort zone. (35:50)

Alexey: It still drains my energy when I do this. After meetups I have to crawl under my bed and take some time to recharge. It sounds like it is not for everyone. Not everyone will enjoy it. Some people really want to go deeper into their data platform and make it more effective rather than talk to people. (36:15)

Is Consulting Right For You?

Alexey: In addition to talking to people we need to do so many things that we talked about. How can I find out if consulting is for me? There are some attractive parts but also there are some parts that I might not enjoy doing. How can I figure out if it is for me and how can I safely test that? (36:45)

Tony: That is a really good question. I have been thinking about that a lot talking to other consultants that have gone down this route. I think you are hitting on a really good point that you might have to do things you are uncomfortable with. You are probably going to have to do a lot of things you are uncomfortable with. You are going to have to talk to way more people than you are comfortable with. (37:14)

Tony: You will not feel like it and you still have to drag yourself out to do it. You will have less time to spend on technical things because you will need to spend a significant chunk on marketing and selling yourself. That naturally means you will have less time for technical work. That is a given. How do most consultants solve this? (37:33)

Tony: They work unbelievable hours. Most consultants that I speak to usually work double work weeks and they enjoy doing it. The question is if you enjoy work a lot and can never sit still you might want to try that. You are going to be working anyway. For me personally I enjoy working twelve hour days. (37:58)

Tony: I enjoy working on weekends. I do because I like it. That is not for everybody. If that is not you then you might want to reconsider whether you want to do consulting. Let us say you are already doing a nine to five. (38:27)

Tony: You want to go into consulting later. You are going to have to work quite a bit outside of your day job to build up that fundamental base. It takes years. If you are not a little bit of a workaholic I would suggest not to consider it. If you are you just try it out. (38:40)

Tony: You start building the connections and seeing if you could sell consulting services. Try it out for a year. If it does not work out for you and you do not like doing it stop. That is the best thing I can say. I do not think there is any other way to know if it is something for you rather than trying it and putting in the effort. (39:03)

Tony: The good part is a lot of the things you do there are quite durable for your career regardless. Let us say I spend a lot of time going to conferences to make these connections and doing marketing. If I do not decide to go into consulting I still have all these assets in my CV and my public persona. It is much easier to find new jobs because people have so much more stuff to look at. Either way you are better off if you put in the effort. (39:27)

Tony: Whether that is something you want to do is a personal question that you need to figure out for yourself. (39:58)

Alexey: How does the market for consultants look like? We know that right now the market because of AI and recession is not super friendly to everyone. Some people cannot find a job for half a year or a year. For some people they just say they are looking for a job and in a month they have ten offers. How is it for consultants right now? (40:04)

Tony: I will say something that is maybe a little bit controversial. I do not think you should be focused too much on general market signals. There are people that make things work in bad markets and people that make things work in good markets. It is not really a relevant question. The question is how much do you want it and what are you willing to do to get there. (40:37)

Tony: The example you are giving of someone looking for six months for a job versus somebody looking for one month might have a couple reasons. It might be that this is someone that has just been doing their work and they have no network whatsoever. If that is you it is going to be harder to find a new job as well not just consulting. If you are specialized in a certain technical field and the market is demanding different things and you are not moving you are going to have a harder time finding a new job. Those things can happen to anybody in a good or a bad market. (41:00)

Tony: There is always a way to make it work if you are determined. You have to step outside of yourself and ask what are the tradeoffs and the sacrifices you are willing to make to get where you want to go. If it is too much for you then maybe you want to reconsider your career options. Now with AI a lot of companies are questioning if they even need as many technical people. They are wondering if they need specific technical expertise. (41:32)

Tony: As you have noticed I am consulting an AI platform as well that was data engineering and data platform before. You just repackage the skills and focus on a slightly different demand from the market because that is where the demand is now. I can say I am just going to close my eyes to it and just focus on what I already know. I can say I am not going to worry about it taking over the industry. Maybe it will not but you are going to have a harder time selling yourself. (42:04)

Tony: Do not worry if you are passionate. The most important thing is if you are passionate about what you do. If you are great at technology you love spending time in it and you have a good work ethic you will figure out a way to make it work. I really believe that. I would say do not worry too much about looking at the market. (42:39)

Tony: There are really two decisions you can make. Either you can go hands on and try to make it work in the market that is there right now or you make a career switch. Those are your two options. I would say that is really the perspective you have to have. You need to decide if you want to compete or step outside of things that you might not like as much. (43:07)

Tony: You can do painting or carpentry and that is fine too. I know a lot of friends that did that and they are very happy. (43:26)

Alexey: For you personally did you notice any problems with the market? (43:40)

Tony: I am noticing there is just different demand of people. If you think about software delivery as a pipeline it used to be that implementation was very expensive. It was very expensive for people that are really deep in programming and platform technology. You could have someone that might be very difficult to work with but they were really brilliant technically. Everybody would put up with it because they are the ones that get things done. (43:51)

Adapting to AI and Changing Market Demands

Tony: Now that is gone. With AI it is much easier to narrow the gap with a lot less effort. You even see PMs building products and CEOs building products. There is a higher bar. People will expect more work of you in the same amount of time compared to before. (44:17)

Tony: Again there are two ways you can respond to that. You can complain that there is more demand of your time and work or you can say maybe I can become more efficient. With all these AI tools it is possible to do more. There have definitely been some uncomfortable times where I had to change how I work and consult a lot. My workflow today is very different from one or two years ago and I had to go with it. (44:50)

Tony: I think that is super important if you are in consulting you have to be adaptable to the market. If you look at technology in the last thirty or forty years if you were a COBOL expert or Spark expert or Hadoop expert the value of those things changes more rapidly every time with a new technology iteration. You could have become a Java programmer and spent twelve years doing that. Now you have to become an AI programmer and you have one year to get good at it. It is moving a lot faster. (45:13)

Alexey: It is funny how you put Spark together with Hadoop and COBOL. Spark is still relevant of course. Maybe it is because I see it more and more considered like a legacy technology. Not to the same extent as Hadoop MapReduce but still when people start new projects you do not typically use Spark. You use something else. (45:45)

Alexey: I actually have a question finally. It looks like it works. We need to learn technical skills and be very good technical specialists. What are the non technical skills? We talked about many things but maybe we can have a list that is focused and concrete. (46:14)

Alexey: What are the boxes I need to check to be a consultant? (46:36)

Tony: If we are talking about the soft skills there are a few. First of all you have to be able to communicate well through written form and presentations. You have to be a really good public speaker in general to be able to work with clients well. The better you communicate the easier it will be to convert a conversation into a paying customer. Other things include networking which we already mentioned. (46:45)

Tony: You have to put yourself out there with articles and videos and go to conferences. You need to be very active with that. You have to be able to explain the ROI of your work. You cannot just say you built a dashboard and here are some insights. You need to be able to relate it to an outcome that matters to the business. (47:24)

Tony: Like the example we mentioned earlier it could be forty percent less ad spend or twenty percent less spent on customer acquisition cost. You have to be able to explain your work as the business outcome that it is going to achieve for that person. Of course there is the marketing and the sales. You need to have a pipeline where you have some assets that someone could read. If I am doing AI governance for example I would have a free twenty page ebook for them to read and funnel into. (47:47)

Tony: You have to understand how to build funnels. You need progressive steps in which people can engage with you from free and very distant to very intimate and high paying. I would say those are the basics. Then there are other skills and these are very regional dependent. Things like the accounting and the legal side are very dependent on where you live and the market that you are consulting into. (48:37)

Tony: I feel like those are important but I cannot really give you a general rule there because it is super dependent on where you live. (49:08)

Alexey: In Germany I would not do this myself ever. I would rather pay a professional to take care of that rather than dealing with all the financial stuff. Maybe in the Netherlands it is different but here I just dread the tax authority. (49:23)

Tony: I have accountants as well. I think that is a general thing. I guess the other thing there of course is thinking about running a business. One of the mistakes I made a lot is a very common thing with technical people. You might think you are spending 200 dollars a year on a service so you should just do it yourself. (49:41)

Tony: This is not to poke fun at you Alexey but it is something that is fun to do but sometimes it can work against you. You should not be afraid to spend money to get things done. An accountant would be a very good example. You can go in and learn all the financial rules but why would you if you can pay an accountant? (50:04)

Business Mindset: Investing in Tools and Outsourcing

Alexey: How much time will I spend on this? Maybe this time is worth spending on something else. (50:16)

Tony: You have to really think about making bets with your money. That might feel weird if you are an employee and you are not really used to thinking about money and yourself that way. Those are the things that can really make a difference in how fast you reach places. For the first half year in my business I spent a lot of time reading about Dutch tax law trying to figure out how to do taxes. I spent so much time and I did a worse job than my accountant. (50:27)

Tony: I paid less money than they made me back. From a logical perspective there is no reason to be afraid to spend that money. Even though you might have that little bit in your head if you are not used to doing things. Taking a subscription for 200 dollars a month with Claude Pro Max or a podcasting software like Riverside might feel uncomfortable. They are relatively small bets. (50:59)

Tony: You are wagering a little bit of money and maybe you are going to save a lot of time and be able to do things. If not you spend a little bit of money and it is fine. It is fine to take a little bit of a gamble with things. The very important thing to say there is you have to make sure that you have enough financial reserves to do something like that. Usually the advice would be to have anywhere between one or two years of savings. (51:28)

Tony: If you did not have any income today could you afford your lifestyle and rent for one or two years? If you have a bit of a caution like that you are going to be much more comfortable spending time looking for people. You are going to be more comfortable taking some of these risks and gambles. If you are thinking about consulting longer term really try to get yourself in a situation where you are not stressing out. You do not want to be in a position where you need to find a client next month otherwise you are broke. (51:57)

Alexey: It is very stressful. Unfortunately I was in this position. It is not fun. I survived and was on the verge of going to look for a job but I am here. Life happens. (52:31)

Alexey: What does not kill us makes us stronger. When you learn about these things from your personal experience next time you know you do not want to be in this situation again. You figure out what to do to avoid that. Perhaps you need to diversify your income so you do not put all the eggs in one basket. At the beginning we were talking about how having one client is very convenient but what if you lose this client? (52:57)

Alexey: This is exactly what happened to me. Once you lose the client and you had one big one what do you do now? (53:21)

Tony: I think what you are mentioning is also very interesting because the opposite is also true. If you are in a very high pressure situation you do a lot of work in a very short amount of time to make it work. (53:34)

Alexey: You do not want to be in this situation all the time because it is very stressful and you just burn out. (53:45)

Tony: Absolutely. I think you hit on a good point and this is something that I try to instill into younger people. When I was younger I thought I had a lot of time to figure things out. That is probably true but if you are too lax with your time you are not going to take as much action as you could have. (53:51)

Alexey: Deadlines help with that. (54:19)

Tony: Yes deadlines are very important. That is a very hard skill to teach yourself as a consultant and if you are building your own business. It is unbelievably hard because there is no boss or immediate danger telling you to do something right now. The better you are doing that for yourself the more things you will get done. For me personally it was turning thirty that made me realize I should do way more. (54:21)

Tony: It might be something else for some other people but it really helps. A lot of people overestimate how much time they have and underestimate how long it takes to get where they want to be. The earlier you can have that realization the better. It makes a huge difference in your career. For the people listening that are younger or at the start of their careers anything you do now is exponentially worth more. (55:04)

Start Early and Pay It Forward

Tony: It is really the best time to start. You might not have experience or connections but all the work you do compounds so much more. Start as soon as you can. (55:52)

Alexey: Even if I do not plan to work as a consultant it is helpful to leave this digital footprint we were talking about from early on. At some point if you decide to consult you already have an established public persona. (56:08)

Tony: A public persona is one thing but it does not need to be a public persona. I think the more important thing is thinking about how many people you are able to positively impact. If you focus on having a positive impact on as many people as you can in your personal circle that is a really important mindset to have early on. A lot of people start to care about these things when they need something from someone. The more you are able to pay it forward the better your position is going to be. (56:35)

Tony: Everyone should do this regardless of what your career plans are. As you say markets can go bad or they can go worse. The one thing that is constant is the people that you have in your network and the people you have helped out. My first client came about because I was teaching a colleague to program in academia for fifteen minutes a day. She was not my direct boss and we were not related in our projects. (57:27)

Tony: I thought I would help her out because nobody else was. A year later that converted to her sister looking for somebody to help with bioinformatics consulting. I did not think about that and it was absolutely not the goal. Because I was generous with my time and tried to help her she was generous too when I needed it. I think generosity is really the key. (58:02)

Alexey: Your connection is breaking again. I wanted to talk to you about your book and this is the main reason we are actually here together. We tangentially talked about some of the materials from there. Can we talk more about what exactly this book is who it is for and what it does? (58:55)

Tony: I am writing this book together with Juan who you might also know from some of the Zoom camps. The reason why we wrote this book is because we were getting frustrated with the material that was out there for the non technical skills for data people. There are brilliant books when it comes to how to learn technology like Java, Spark, or machine learning. When it comes to the non technical side of things the amount of books you can read as a data person are quite limited. If we talk specifically about books that talk about soft skills for data people there is really only a handful. (59:29)

Tony: Juan and me have both been consulting for years and we have always wanted to have a resource like this. We wanted to read about how to build a network and market yourself. We wanted to learn how to translate work into ROI for clients and how to communicate well. We have put all of our learnings from hundreds of people that we interviewed into a book. We want to teach people that are in the medium stage of their career who want to expand into consulting or management. (1:00:12)

Tony: It is very confusing and there are so many things you need to do and get good at. We have really done our best to distill it into something that is digestible and helpful for people. (1:00:53)

Alexey: If you are a data consultant then you can just be in a park and have calls there. You do not have to be in the office. You can just work from your phone. (1:01:18)

Tony: Yes. Or you do not get into the office that you booked. That is the other way to describe it. This is my yacht. I am kidding. (1:01:23)

Alexey: Are you based in Utrecht? (1:01:45)

Tony: No I am actually based in Dubai of all places. (1:01:50)

Alexey: How did you meet with Juan? You mentioned Utrecht University and I thought maybe you live there too. (1:01:50)

Tony: Juan and I met over ten years ago before both of us worked in data. We worked in Amsterdam and were part of a speaking club. We were building our public speaking skills at the time. That is where we met way before we even knew what a data engineer or a data analyst was. (1:02:04)

The Practical Handbook for Data Consulting

Alexey: I see somebody is asking what the book name is and where they can buy it. The book name is Data Consultant Playbook From Code to Business Impact. That is the name of the book correct? (1:02:37)

Tony: It is The Practical Handbook for Data Consulting. It is slated to be released in October if I am not mistaken. (1:02:41)

Alexey: I found it on Amazon too. Wait it is a different one. You just sent me a link. I will send the link and we will share this out. If somebody wants to find this right now if they go to your LinkedIn profile will there be a link? (1:02:54)

Tony: Yes. (1:03:26)

Alexey: Okay Smile02940 this is where you can find it. Thanks Tony a lot for joining today and staying a bit longer. I really enjoyed the conversation and thanks for sharing all these tips. I know we sidetracked from the initial plan but all the things you mentioned were very interesting. We should have another podcast interview with Juan where he will share some things. (1:03:26)

Alexey: I hope everything is fine with him. (1:04:00)

Tony: He sent me a message he got the wrong hour. It is fine. (1:04:06)

Alexey: We will figure it out because I think it would also be interesting to hear his perspective. Thanks everyone for joining us today and for testing the link with our question Slido replacement. It works from what I see. Now it will cost me around one dollar per month instead of 200 per year. It is a good ROI. (1:04:11)

Alexey: It was not created in one shot but with the money I already paid to Anthropic why not use it. Thanks Tony. Thanks everyone and have a nice day. (1:04:46)

Tony: Thank you. (1:05:04)