205: This Guy Became a Data Analyst in 6 Months (NO EXPERIENCE)

Speaker: 00:00:00

You can get paid to learn whatever you

need to, whatever they want you to do.

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It keeps life interesting for

me because I'm always learning.

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I'm always figuring out how to do

something and I'm getting paid to do it.

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That's Tim Beecher today.

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He's a senior analytics associate at

one of the biggest marketing agencies

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in the world, working from home,

making the most money he's ever.

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But a few years ago he was sitting in

a boring cubicle at the Better Business

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Bureau, making a hundred cold calls

every single day, begging strangers to

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hand over their credit card information.

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Not fun at all.

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And even before that, he was

changing locks out on houses in

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the Texas Heat as a locksmith.

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And before that, he completely bombed his

AP computer science exam so badly that

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he scored a one out of five and s off.

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Everything tech related.

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So how did he do it?

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Well, this is the story of how Tim went

from all of that to landing a senior

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level data analyst role with no analytics

experience, no computer science degree,

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and no connections in the industry.

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And honestly, the way he did it is

something that you could totally copy.

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It all started when Tim went to

Utah State to study psychology.

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He liked what he was learning,

but then reality kind of came in.

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He realized if he wanted to actually

do anything with a psychology degree,

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he'd need to go back to school

and get a master's, and that's

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like $30,000 in debt just to start

off making like 50 grand a year.

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So not really realistic,

so he didn't do that.

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Instead, he moved to San Antonio.

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He finished his degree online and

took the first full-time job he

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could possibly find as a locksmith.

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He was going house to house, changing

all these locks for new tenants in

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the blistering Texas Sea year round.

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It was really cool.

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There were a lot of situations where

I had to solve problems, and that was

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an important skill that I developed

and I had a good time doing it.

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And I did that for about a year, and

then I realized I didn't want to do.

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Blue Cotter collar work

the rest of my life.

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So after that, Tim pivoted

again this time into sales.

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He ended up at the Better Business

Bureau, cold calling business

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owners, trying to close them on a

membership in a single phone call.

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Literally hundreds of phone calls a day.

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Just to get the one close and 99.9%

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of those calls ended in rejection.

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Very difficult.

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And, uh, there was a lot of rejection

and I also realized I didn't want

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to do that the rest of my life.

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So here's Tim psychology degree.

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He isn't using a locksmithing career he

doesn't want, and a sales job he hates.

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He's tried three different paths and

literally none of them are working at all.

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And honestly, I think a lot of you guys

listening are going to relate to this

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next part a lot because a lot of you

are in the same exact spot right now.

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So one day Tim's talking to

his younger brother Steve.

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And Steve has just landed a job as a

data analyst to ride out of college.

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He's actually working

for an insurance company.

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Fully remote, good pay, and he's actually

really enjoying the work he's doing.

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He was explaining to me what he

does and the problems he solved,

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and it was fully remote for him, so

he didn't have to go into an office

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and he was making good money, and

I was like, wow, I want to do that.

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Now here's the thing, Tim has.

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Every reason to dismiss all of this.

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Remember, he scored a one on

his AP computer science exam.

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He went to an Excel workshop

in college and he couldn't even

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understand what a VLOOKUP was.

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And in his own words, he thought tech was

quote, the hardest thing I've ever done.

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But after looking into what a data analyst

actually does on a day-to-day basis.

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He realized something really important.

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It was like, oh, okay, I can do this.

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I don't have to, to be able

to code an, an app, you know?

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Yeah.

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I just have to be able to know

my way around, uh, a table.

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I can always Google

something if I don't know.

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Yeah, and honestly, that's something

I tell people all the time.

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Data analytics, it's technical for sure.

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I don't wanna make it sound like it's

not a technical degree, not a technical

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role, but it's not rocket science.

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It's not that hard.

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If you can learn PowerPoint,

you can use Tableau.

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If you can use Excel, you're

already halfway there.

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And sql, which is one of the hardest

things that I actually teach people,

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really only has about 17 core commands.

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So Tim, solo this.

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And he saw that the pay was basically

double what he was making in sales.

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And on top of that, he could work

remotely and, and this was huge for him.

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He wouldn't have to go back to school and

spend another 30 grand to get started.

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So Tim was kinda sold on becoming a

data analyst and he went on LinkedIn

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and started looking for people

who talked about data analytics.

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And that's where he found me

on LinkedIn posting about how

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to land your first data job.

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So after reading a couple posts,

listening to a couple podcast episodes,

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Tim joined my accelerator program and

started building projects from day one.

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I wanna be clear about

where he was starting from.

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Basically zero.

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Uh, psychology degree, failed AP test,

and basically no memory of what he

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learned about the VLOOKUPs in that really

short business Excel class he went to.

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But honestly, what Tim had is

something that a lot of people

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overlook and that is problem solving

instincts from his locksmithing

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job to sales and just figuring

out his whole career path and all.

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He was a good problem solver

and in data analytics that

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matters more than you realize.

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So with the accelerator program,

he learned the tools, he built out

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his portfolio, and then he started

applying for jobs and sadly, nothing

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really happened in the beginning.

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I wasn't getting as much,

much traction as I had hoped.

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And so for a minute there, I, I thought

about pivoting to, to something else.

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And truthfully, this is the part of

the story that no one really talks

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about because on LinkedIn, all you

see is the celebration post, oh, I

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landed in my dream data job, but you

never see the months of silence and

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rejection that happens before that.

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And it honestly got so

bad that Tim almost quit.

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But then he noticed something

that seemed maybe important.

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I saw other people that were in the

program landing jobs, and it was kind

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of the, the wake up call similar,

like, oh, hey, this person did almost

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the exact same thing that I did.

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And they're, they're getting jobs,

so it's possible other people in

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his cohort, people with similar

backgrounds, similar skill levels.

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They were getting hired.

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So instead of giving up, Tim

asked a really important question.

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He said, well, what are

they doing that I'm not?

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So what Tim did next is part of the

story that I really want you to pay

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attention to because it's the difference

between people who land jobs and

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people who keep applying into the

void in getting no callbacks ready.

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He stopped applying.

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He started reaching out to people instead,

specifically, he noticed that a few people

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from our accelerator program were actually

getting hired into one company, one of the

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biggest marketing agencies in the world.

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And there was a hiring manager who

wasn't even part of my program.

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I never even taught them anything

about data, but she followed my

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content and she really loved our

community, and she had already hired

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one of our students previously who was

actually doing really well at the job.

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She was really great.

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Set up, uh, like an intro call

and she went through my resume

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and went through my portfolio.

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She reviewed his stuff, she liked

what she saw, and she gave him

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a referral for an open position.

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Now, was this lucky?

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Yeah, I mean, it was, it was lucky

for sure, maybe a little bit, but Tim.

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Put himself into the

position to get lucky.

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He used our accelerator community.

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He sent the cold messages on his own.

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He did the uncomfortable work that

most people won't be willing to do.

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So that one cold message led to a

referral, which led to an interview.

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And here's what Tim did really well.

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He gets the interview at this huge

marketing agency company, and he is

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interviewing for a senior analytics

associate position at a marketing agency.

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But keep in mind.

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He has no real marketing experience and he

has no real analytics experience on paper.

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He should not get this job, but in the

interview, every time they ask him about

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his skills or his responsibilities,

he didn't only just answer their

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question, he pulled up his portfolio

online and walked them through a real

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project that kind of answered the

question for them, and they would ask

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me about, you know, the, the roles.

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Or the responsibilities that this job was

asking for, I could see, I could point

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directly to my portfolio and be like,

here's an example of when I did this and

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these projects that he was showing them.

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Well, one of them was a hackathon

that we ran in the program,

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like an internship program.

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You can think of it.

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Were a real newsletter company

gave us their raw data.

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We had the open rates, the click rates,

subscriber data, and we asked our

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accelerator students to analyze it and

give him actionable recommendations.

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So Tim actually worked

on this project solo.

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He wasn't the most technical

person in the cohort.

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He wasn't even the smartest, but he

did something that no one else did.

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He Googled what the morning Brew's

open rate was, because the founder had

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mentioned he was modeling his newsletter

after the Morning Brew, and he put that

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in the presentation as a benchmark.

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I think the thing that stood out

to me was that I had listened and

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I I had understood the business.

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Yeah.

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So I, I had put on one of the slides what

the, I think he was looking at open rates.

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I'd put like, what?

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I'd done a quick Google search

of what's the morning bruise?

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Open rate.

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Oh yeah.

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And I had put that on there and as just

like a comparison as a benchmark and be

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like, Hey, your open rate is this compared

to this, you're doing really well.

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And I think he had, he had pointed

that out that was, that was like no

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one else had had put something on that.

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And that was just for me, listening to

what the stakeholder wanted and knowing

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that, hey, this could be useful to him.

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So even though I didn't have

all the technical Python

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skills, R skills, whatever you

may have, the fact that I had.

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Understood the business and presented

it in a way that made sense.

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That went a long way.

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And that what my role is now.

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I mean, just think

about that for a second.

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He wasn't the best at sql.

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He wasn't the best at data visualization,

but he actually understood the

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business problem, and that's

literally what a data analyst job is.

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Take complicated numbers and turn

them into simple actionable insights.

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So back to the interview, he's

interviewing at this marketing agency

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and he had just walked him through

this real marketing analytics project

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where he analyzed email performance.

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For a real business, how do you

think the interviewers reacted to it?

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Right.

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Probably pretty well because the

interviewers didn't have to imagine

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whether Tim could actually do this job.

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He showed them real proof.

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He didn't make it a guessing game.

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He's like, here's the evidence,

and they offered him the role.

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So let's zoom out here and

look where Tim ended up.

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Tim's now a senior analytics

associate at one of the biggest

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marketing agencies in the world.

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One of his main clients

is actually LinkedIn.

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He's analyzing ad performance.

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He's building out Excel reports and

PowerPoint decks and working with

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Tableau dashboards, helping clients

make sure that they're not wasting

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money on ads, and he's continued to work

from home, a hundred percent remote.

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He moved back to Utah to be closer to

family and getting out of that Texas.

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He, and he's making the

most money he's ever made.

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The cool thing is he's also learning

new things on the job, which is getting

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paid to learn, which was the whole point

in the beginning that he didn't need to

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go back to school and he could actually

learn on the job and get paid to learn.

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You can get paid to learn whatever you

need to, whatever they want you to do.

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It keeps life interesting for

me because I'm always learning.

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I'm always figuring out

how to do something.

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And I'm getting paid to do it.

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And some of those tools at the

beginning that he was scared of.

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Well, now his day-to-day is mostly Excel.

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The thing he couldn't wrap his head around

in the beginning at that college workshop.

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It turns out when you learn by

doing real projects instead of

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sitting in a boring lecture hall.

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Things kind of click differently.

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We all learn better hands-on, and

the more hands-on projects that

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you can actually do, the better.

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So this is a cool story, but why

did I want to tell it to you?

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It's not because he's some

genius who cracked the code

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and pivoted from an absolute.

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Nobody to a senior data analyst, it's

because he's a normal person who tried

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a bunch of stuff that didn't work.

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He almost gave up, and then he did

three things that actually mattered.

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Number one, he learned the

skills basically from zero.

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He didn't know that much before,

but he learned the skills that were

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necessary to land this first job.

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Number two, he built projects that

proved he could actually do the work.

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And then number three, he used his

network, in this case, the bootcamp

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and the accelerator to get in

front of the right people, guys.

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That's it.

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That's literally the entire playbook.

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If you're watching this from a job

you hate, or a career that you feel

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like is going nowhere, or you're

staring at job listings for data

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analysts and wondering if someone like

you could ever land in those jobs,

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well, Tim was exactly where you are.

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Psychology degree, not data failed.

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AP tests for computer science can't code.

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He's a locksmith, a cold caller.

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But now a senior data analyst working

from home, you guys, the path is there.

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You just have to start walking it.

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And if you wanna follow the

exact same roadmap as Tim.

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Learn the skills, build real projects,

and then tap into the community

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that's actually getting people hired.

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You can join the same

bootcamp that he went through.

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It's called the Data

Analytics Accelerator.

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It's the bootcamp I run, the one

that I'm actually thinking about

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and working on every single day,

and I'll make sure I drop the link

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in the description down below.

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I promise you that no matter where

you're at right now, no matter your

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skills, no matter how technical you

are, you can become a data analyst if

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you take the right path, and I hope

you take a path similar to Tim's link

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in the description to learn more.

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I'll see you in the next one.