Got Skills, Need Cash? Why Not Try Consulting
By: Brandon Cosley
Tags: Machine Learning Engineer, Data Science, Machine Learning, Consulting, Editors Pick

From Budding Data Scientist to Seasoned Consultant

If you are reading this, you’re probably a data scientist of one flavor or another. Or you have some technical chops, you like data, and you want to learn more about how data science skills can make you more marketable.

Whatever your motivation, if you fit either description above, consulting needs you. I realized early on that knowing how to work with data is a very valuable skill and lots of people and businesses are willing to pay others to help them with their data.

Despite the need, breaking into the field can still be a challenge. It isn’t enough to put up a website, let the world know what you can do, and wait. Trust me. I tried. And it didn’t work.

The problem is twofold. On the one hand, it is a lack of trust. As an individual consultant, it is hard for people to trust you when they don’t know you. The fact that most data are sensitive make this trust factor even more potent.

But maybe you knew that already and you do like I did; you start by trying to build trust. You meet with others, you get involved locally, you sell yourself. Herein lies the second problem; understanding. For those who begin to trust you, they may not understand how you can help their business because they don’t understand what you can do for them. More on this below.

What does work then? How can I become a consultant when I don’t even have a client?

For me, it all started with the “sharing economy.”

Lesson 1: Your Clients Are Waiting, And They Are Looking for You

Quick recap on my situation. Crappy job, low pay, lots of motivation to apply my quantitative skills for other things.

Eager to start generating a clientele, I pitched a website. I even set up some meetings with the local chamber of commerce and a business incubator. These early-stage activities led to a lot of meetings, and a few more meetings after those meetings, with even more meetings to follow those.

Ever heard the saying “Ask for money and you’ll get advice, but ask for advice and you’ll get money” or something like that? That is what those meetings felt like. Everyone meeting with me knew I was looking for clients/work/money and so they gave me a lot of advice instead. Remember what I said above about understanding? Well, I was building trust but the folks I was meeting with didn’t understand me.

What I quickly realized from these meetings was that I wasn’t approaching them with enough of my own experience. Experience I could share and get their advice on rather than trying to peddle my skills like a seedy seller of watches, pulling my overcoat open saying “see anything you like?” 😉

After meeting a lot of very nice professionals in my community, I was left with the same problem as before. How to get consulting experience, while trying to break into the consulting world? Seemed like a “chicken or the egg” type problem until I learned about the new “sharing economy.”

You see, it was during this same time that I was made aware of websites like Guru and Upwork. I remember reading my 500th blog on how to become a consultant where someone commenting in the comments section mentioned something about a client marketplace for people just like me.

Marketplaces like Upwork and Guru are places where needy clients can post ads for people, freelancers, individual consultants…me…you…to help them solve problems with their data. These marketplaces solve both the trust and understanding problems that newly minted consultants face when trying to cut their teeth in the consulting world.

In marketplaces, these individuals understand that they have a problem, and that the problem has a potential data solution. Moreover, the platforms allow for trust to develop by providing holding accounts for transactions that ensure deliverables meet expectations, can track hours, and allow for peer ratings on experiences.

I remember setting up my first profile on Guru.com. Once it was set up, I started putting bids on jobs that I thought I had a chance at. Was it an immediate success? No. I was constantly reframing, reformatting, and repositioning my online profile as well as all my bids. It felt like a lot of work but with little payoff. What I didn’t appreciate at the time was that I was learning how to market myself. I was learning what “kind-of” worked, and what didn’t, based on how far along my bids got.

I didn’t need to win bids to learn what was working in my messaging. I focused on whether clients would schedule a call with me or move me a little further in the evaluation process. Those were indications that I was getting closer. Those were indications that I was resonating. Those were the examples that I began to replicate and further refine until, wham, just like that I got my first client.

My first client started small. My rate was also small but all mine, minus the small fee Guru charges for their platform. My first client was a lawyer who needed help analyzing Medicare claims data in order to identify potentially fraudulent provider groups in homecare.

My solution was simple. Use outlier methods to identify outlier groups on key metrics like cost and hours submitted. It was a lot of work for a little pay, but it landed me a mention in Wired Magazine, and an ongoing relationship with a client that would soon pay me $200 / hour on retainer.

Though it took some time to get the ball rolling, it got to the point where some prospective clients would reach out directly to me requesting that I bid on their jobs.

In short, if you don’t have any eager clients waiting in the wings, consider starting out with these marketplaces.

You will learn how to communicate yourself, eventually land some jobs, and all of that translates to more experience. It won’t happen overnight, but it will start to happen.

Be bold enough to bid on jobs that sound intimidating and remember that data and technology are complex. There will be lots of ways to solve every potential client’s request. Focus on your unique approach and eventually you will find a winning formula.

Lesson 2: Form Partnerships

As you traverse the freelance universe you will soon learn that a great many requests are more complex than any single individual could be expected to solve. This is particularly true in data science because it is rarely data science that clients want. Instead, they want data science to be embedded in their product, solution, or process to have some effect on user experience.

In my experience, this meant that many bids, particularly the higher paying ones, required a developer. One of the most potent relationships a data scientist can form is with a trustworthy and skilled software developer.

Finding these relationships however is not easy and often requires both parties to be willing to do some free work together. Despite the challenge, the effort can definitely be worth the rub.

To help things along, I recommend coming up with a simple use case to use as an interview tool for potential developer relationships. A quick and easy proof of concept that requires your data science models to integrate with a full stack app can help to set a framework for seeing how you work with others.

It is also important for data scientists to explore different methods for exposing their solutions to applications. Some reasonable outputs include reading and writing from a database backend, learning how to expose your code as an API, or leveraging serverless cloud frameworks like lambda functions on AWS. The more developer tools you learn to integrate with the easier it will be to partner with a developer on future projects.

The final reason that partnerships are powerful is that your partners may have access to different audiences and/or will allow you to bid on projects that you may not have been individually qualified for in the past. These new projects that you and your partner are now able to tackle may also represent opportunities to upsell data science solutions as clients may not have realized their benefits.

Lesson 3: Build Your Audience

It should go without saying but all business is about finding, building, and nurturing your audience. Even consulting. Especially consulting. People do not buy businesses they buy other people. And people won’t buy you if they don’t know you.

As your experience grows, so too does the content available to you to share. You can share your experiences through writing, like I am here, through videos, or through code projects like GitHub.

If writing is an option for you, consider writing in ways that expose you to a wide audience. Refer to your writing on your freelance profile. Include your writing in your LinkedIn posts. Let everyone see that you work on cool stuff, know interesting things, and help to find creative solutions.

In that way, consulting is a lot like the business of content creation. The only difference is that we are creating content in a niche. That niche happens to be our data science skillset. Though it may feel like you have little to add to the already crowded voices on the topic, know that being a consultant requires getting over those doubts. It doesn’t matter that a million people have already applied PyTorch to build a vision model that identifies beer bottles in pictures. Be the one million and one person who did it in your way and tell people about it. Be transparent. Let others steal your mojo because at the end of the day, no one will be able to express it like you.

Like engaging to learn more about data science, career growth, or poor business decisions? Join me.