200: I Owe You An Honest Update

Hey guys, it's Avery. I owe you guys an honest update. So in this episode, I'm gonna talk about some of the setbacks I've been facing, some of the solutions I've found, and what's coming next for me and my life, and for this podcast and this YouTube channel in general. Uh, but first, this is actually my 200th episode. Of doing the Data Career podcast and posting it on YouTube as well. So, woo hoo party. Um, I started this podcast in April of 2021, so we're almost coming up on five years of doing the podcast. I did take like an eight month hiatus. We can talk about that later, but it's crazy. I never really thought that. I'd be doing this for five years. When I started the podcast, I just did it because I quit my corporate job and I loved podcasts and I loved data obviously. And so I wanna talk about data with other people and have more cool data podcasts, and it's crazy to see where it's grown over the last five years. I mean, we have 62,000 subscribers on YouTube, the podcast. Um, I wrote, I wrote down some notes. I hope that's okay if I read those. Uh, the podcast has 610 reviews on Spotify at 4.9 stars. It has 162 reviews on Apple Podcasts at 5.0 Stars. So like, that's absolutely crazy. Um, we've shared some pretty cool interviews, some pretty cool podcasts or success stories of students who've gone through my program and pivoted from, you know, whatever career they had beforehand into data analytics, which was super cool and I've learned a lot through the podcast, uh, as well. Um, okay. Now to the update, I wanna give you a life update. So the first thing is, if you're watching on YouTube, you obviously can tell I am not in my usual home studio. Um, and you've probably noticed for the last few videos I haven't been, and the reason is, is I actually moved to Spain for the first quarter of 2026 and. That's been really cool. It's had a lot of ups and downs. Um, one of the downs is I'm living in the coast Adel soul, which is the like sunny coast basically. Um, and it hasn't been sunny at all. I like left my jacket on just so I could show you. And I tried to like show you guys these windows just to see, it's like constantly raining. Um, which has just had its challenges because, uh, I'm here with my wife and. My two kids. Um, that's something that's changed since I started the podcast. I've had two kids in the last two years, so they're both really young and close in age, which is a huge blessing, but obviously just makes everything more complicated and we're staying in kind of like a small apartment. Uh, there's no place for me to record these types of episodes at home. And so I go to this coworking space. And in this coworking space, there's usually people working here. So doing an episode that kind of looks like this isn't really feasible. So I've been recording, let me show you. I've been recording in like these booths over there. Um, and they're just, they're just not very big, you know? Um, they're just not very big. So I feel like the video quality has been a little. Uh, interesting lately 'cause I've just been in these like tiny booths and I've been shooting on my iPhone. Um, and I just like learned some of the settings today that allows me to do like this 0.5, like more of a full frame video, which I was like, I wish I knew that when I was shooting in the booths. 'cause those booths are tiny. And also I finally figured out how to disable. Like if I do a thumbs up, the iPhone doesn't like, put the thumbs up emoji on the video. And I had some balloons in I think last week's video. So, uh, I'm learning all this as I go. I'm not obviously like. I don't have my nicer camera and my nicer mic. I'm using these mics and they just don't work. Right. So, um, that's why if you're like, where is he at? I'm in Spain. Um, by the time you guys watch this, I'll be headed home pretty soon. So, um, future videos will not have me in Spain, but, uh, the videos you're seeing right now, I'm in Spain, which has been awesome. It's been really cool to just like get out of the US experience different culture, work on my Spanish. Um, live by a beach. Uh, it's been, it's been really cool, but obviously it's had had some challenges for producing this, this type of content. Um, some other big updates in my life. Like I said earlier, I have two kids now. I'm a dad and that has become my first and foremost job. Uh, I used to be a data analyst and then I was a data scientist. Uh, and then I quit that job and I was a CEO and. Uh, a founder and a teacher and a podcast host. Um, but now the number one role in my life is father. And that takes a lot of time. Those of you that, that have kids know what I'm talking about. I swear. Just like putting my kids to sleep right now takes me two hours. Um, and then I spend like probably an hour, an hour and a half with the younger kid in the mornings before my oldest and my wife wake up. So it's just like three and a half hours is just like. My kids. My kids, getting my kids to sleep or getting them up in the morning. So obviously all you parents know, it's just a lot of time. So my time has gone really down in the last two years just because I'm focusing on my number one role, which is being a dad. Um, and another life update that I've been, I don't know why. I've been like procrastinating doing this and I've been like not embarrassed to share 'cause I'm not embarrassed about it. But I've been like waiting for the right moment and I just. Don't feel like there is a right moment. So this feels as good a time as any, um, that's been a pretty big adjustment I'd say to my life is last year, about a year ago, I was diagnosed with a DHD. Um, which is so funny because I never in my life thought I'd have a DH ADHD or I thought I did have a DHD. Um, but just after a bunch of like tests and therapy, it's like, oh yeah. Um, maybe I do have DH adhd. It took me about, uh, about eight months after I was diagnosed to actually like, start to believe it and, uh, actually get medicated. So, uh, I've been doing medication for like the last, let's see, about five months now. And it's been really life changing. Um. I like, feel like I can actually think and focus a little bit more. Um, and so I'm still like figuring all that out and figuring out how to stay organized. 'cause I'm just not organized. I'm not an organized person. Um, I don't schedule things well anyway, so this diagnosis of a DH ADHD has helped me understand myself better and understand the world around me a little bit better, and also given me the opportunity to get Medicaid, which has given me some focus, some focus time. But that being said, I'm still like a really hot mess in terms of my organization and thinking and, um, it's just something I'm working through. Um, for those of you who. You know, maybe don't have a DHD or don't really know anyone with a DH adhd, you're probably like, what is he talking about? And if you have a DH ADHD or you're, you know, you live with someone who has a DHD, you're like, I feel you. I know exactly what you're saying. Uh, but that's just been a big change in my life, uh, with the kids with A DHD. Um, and then also I've been, I've been trying to do more things other than the podcast, obviously the YouTube videos. Um, we've been running the accelerator, all these cohorts of the accelerator, which takes time and effort, which is the data analyst bootcamp that I run. And I also rolled out my own job board last year. My own little data, junior data analyst, AI companion. Last year we started taking the newsletter a lot more serious last year. Um, we try, we redid all of interview simulator from scratch last year. So it's just been, my mind's been in like a hundred different places and my time's gone down and I'm disorganized and I have a DHD. So, um, I tried to hire the last year or so to try to get some help. And I found some really awesome people, um, to help me and I've also found some really not awesome people, uh, to help me. Let, let me explain that here. Lemme make sure I'm not missing anything. Yeah. Um, so if you're a part of the accelerator, you know, I have Trevor and Cynthia who are two of the mentors in the program that you see a lot. And we have Isaac, our community manager, and they've been awesome. And they're really great in helping me in helping all the students inside the accelerator program. Um, but you probably don't see any of the people behind the scenes. So for example, I hired a podcast producer to like, help, um, with like show notes and just help publish things and coordinate guests and all that stuff. And, um, I had a, a decent one for a few months. Anyways. I found this producer, um, let's just say. They basically stole money from me. Uh, then I hired a different producer after them, and that producer was signed everything and then just never showed up to work. And so that was just like eight weeks of my life of the podcast life that was just like really hectic because I was basically doing everything, uh, while they weren't doing the work. Um, so that was a really big, uh, loss for me. Um, just mostly time, to be perfectly honest. Like mostly time. It was just. Exhausting. Trying to train them on everything and then to have them basically screw me over was not super fun. Um, so anyways, I've been trying to, to hire and that's been some of the issues. Um, hopefully by the time this video comes out, we're in a little bit more of a stable situation with the, uh, podcast producer, and it makes this process of actually getting these podcasts out to you on time and everything, right? Like some of you guys have noticed that some of the timestamps have been off, um, or links have been missing or those different things, and it's just kind of, because I'm trying to figure out how to get some help in that process. With that. Um, this is the honest update about like the podcast and the YouTube channel in particular. Now, that was kind of my life update and a little bit of a company update, I guess. But in terms of the life update, I wanna tell you guys, uh, a little bit about the, the podcast. So like I said, you guys are awesome. Like, thank you. I cannot thank you guys enough for listening, downloading, sharing with friends. Putting comments, writing a review, whatever, like, thank you guys. Like from my bottom of my heart. It's so crazy. Um, the amount of people that, uh, listen to me yap about data and, and careers and, um, I don't want to, I'll always be grateful for that, um, even if I don't say it enough. So thank you. I, I really appreciate it. Um. The podcast, you know, we've grown the podcast to one of the top data podcasts that there is. Um, there's only like, basically we're in the top five any way you look at it. Um, but I got to a point where we were getting 20,000 downloads a month. So that's like if I release four episodes, you know, one a week for. Weeks and a month about, um, the episodes are getting about 5,000 downloads, uh, a week, uh, for per episode. But I, we were stuck there for like eight months and I was like, how the heck do you grow a podcast? It's podcasts are so interesting because. There's not really like an algorithm necessarily, right? So it's not like you can just go viral with one episode and then, you know, you gain all these listeners. Uh, it's really hard to grow a podcast. And so, um, I really believe in education. Um, I've been able to, uh, like increase my income a lot through education. Um, and so I actually ended up joining this program, it's called Podcasting, like a YouTuber, um, from this guy named Jay Klaus. And basically. It's all about how YouTube's really important for podcasts now, and actually at the time, I had basically moved all of my podcast listening. From Spotify to YouTube. And one of the big reasons why is I have YouTube premium. And so there's like basically less ads. Um, there would be on Spotify and there's video and who doesn't like to watch sometimes, right? Um, and so I was like, oh, okay, I need to start taking YouTube more seriously. And so I started learning about, you know, how to actually create a good video podcast and how to do YouTube titles and YouTube thumbnails. And we tried to. You know, blend, uh, more, a little bit more YouTube. 'cause before we were a podcast, we did audio episodes that happened to go onto YouTube. Just a second happened. And if, if you're on YouTube, you can go scroll, scroll through, I don't know, basically stuff that's like a year and a half old, maybe two years old. And you'll see, oh, like he didn't really, you know, consider titles and didn't really consider thumbnails. And the video quality is just kinda an afterthought. Uh, but I started to really like double down on just video quality and good thumbnails and good titles. And kind of become YouTube first, who happens to just also post on a podcast as well. And that's been really cool because we've had so many more people listening. Like we have one episode on YouTube that has over 500,000, has half a million views. Um, and it took me so long to get to the point of my podcast where we even had half a million downloads in total. So we reached like a whole new audience, had a lot of success on YouTube, uh, like. Quadrupled our subscribers in a few months. Um, and that was, that was cool because we were reaching new audience. My message was getting to, to new people about, you know, you don't have to have a degree. You don't, you're not too old, you're not too dumb. This isn't too hard. The SPN method is the way to go. You need more than skills to land your first data job. You know, start with like the easy low hanging fruit skills like SQL and Excel and Tableau. My message was reaching a whole new audience and a lot more people. But at the same time, I almost feel like I was ignoring all of you loyal podcast listeners because these viewers on YouTube, they're great, and if you're one of them, thank you for watching. But they're not loyal necessarily. Like you podcast listeners. The podcast listeners, listen every week, the YouTube people, they come and they go, um. So that's just like a hard balance. It's like, I wanna be loyal to the podcast listeners, but I also realize that my message goes further on YouTube. So that's something I'm trying to balance. And, and also on YouTube, it's really easy to, like, if you want a lot of views to create content that maybe doesn't, it's not necessarily what people actually need. The stuff that that goes viral. It goes viral, but it's not necessarily like, it's like, it's like candy. It's like, oh, it's good, but it's like, this isn't what's going to make you grow into a strong data analyst necessarily. There's some stuff that I think that that overlaps, but this is something I've just been struggling with, um, and I've also been struggling with like thumbnails. Um, because like for example, I created, uh, a YouTube episode a while ago, and I, I have it pulled up here. What's it called? It is called, I mean, it was a podcast episode too, but it's called My Honest Thoughts on the Data Job Market in 2026, and I thought it was a really good video because it like talks about just actual data, what's going on. And the spoiler alert, the conclusion is we've been pretty stagnant. Things haven't gotten worse, but they haven't gotten better. My whole picture is, I actually think they'll probably get a little bit better this year, but not a ton. Um, data engineering's up quite a bit over the last few years, and it was just like raw, like, Hey, I don't think things are terrible, like everyone says they are, but I'm also not gonna say it's amazing. I think it's like, on a scale of one to 10, it's like a seven. I still am, I'm, I'm optimistic. Things could be better, but things could be a lot worse. And they're not as bad as most people are making it seem. And during this process, I made a thumbnail. Um, that, that said quit data that said quit data while you still can. And I don't believe you should quit data. Um, if you're trying to transition analytics, I think you should keep going. There's no reason to panic. Um, I'm not panicking. Um, but I made this thumbnail and I wasn't super proud of it 'cause it felt a little clickbait. Um, because I don't actually believe that. Right. But the interesting thing is, as I actually did an AB test, 'cause it's like, what does the data say? Right? Um, and I'm gonna just try to show you this, uh, this data right here, uh, with my laptop. If you can see it, hopefully you can see it. Ready. So if you can't see it, basically what it shows you is the thumbnail got 44%. The thumbnail that IAB tested here. That says, quit data while you still can got 44% of the watch time. I put a question mark at a quit data question mark while you still can question mark. And the watch time dropped to 20%. Basically 20% more people actually consumed the content. When I was like very negative. And YouTube, they just love negativity. And I am not negative. I'm not a negative person. I'm not pessimistic about the job market. I'm optimistic about the job market and data in the future. And that's just hard for me because it's like my message of positivity reaches more people with a negative thumbnail, 20% more. Like that's literally the proof in my opinion. Um, and I've tested this on a bunch of different thumbnails. But like, how do I feel about that? Um, because some people only see the thumbnails, right? Some people only see the thumbnails and they think that I'm saying to quit data, and I'm not saying to do that. So it's just been one of those struggles, like YouTube has all these extra complexities with like YouTubes and titles and algorithms. Um, and it's a blessing. It's awesome, but it's also, it's also a little bit overwhelming and, uh, a bit, a bit challenging sometimes. So, um, yeah, and that's another thing I need to talk about is like, let's talk about the elephant in the room, which is. Uh, ai, um. AI's here, like the last week. I'm recording this in like early February. Uh, I think a trillion dollars of like the US GDP got wiped out. Um, or like stocks, value capital because Claude released 4.6 and like these Claude plugins and capabilities and things like that. Like for example, um, FIG or Adobe, I think stock went down quite a bit. Because they, like Claude released, like this Figma connector thing. Um, I haven't used the, the Figma one from Adobe, but I used it for Canva, which is very similar. It sucks. It's terrible. You can't make anything. It's trash. But like their stock dropped a ton. So obviously AI's here, like, like a trillion dollars worth of money was lost because everyone thinks AI is replacing software and all these human workers and everything. Um. I don't think it's there. I don't think it's there yet. Uh, and I don't think it's, I don't think it's going to be there. Like we're to the point where it's like replacing software and all of us, and I have like this really back and forth between like, do I make more AI content? Do I like go all in on like data analytics plus ai? Um, or do I just completely ignore ai? Is it just like, 'cause like honestly, I've been trying to use AI. To save time in my life, to help make thumbnails, to help make titles for the YouTube video. And every time I do it, I'm just like, this kind of sucks. Like it's not that good. Um, and it takes me a lot of time to actually. Get AI to get mediocre results and it's like, do I even need to be using this at all? A lot of the time, I found that just keeping things simple, not using AI has been more efficient even with analyzing data. I know a couple episodes ago, um, I made a, a line chart showing meta stock against ExxonMobil stock, and I did it all via ai and it just would've taken me the exact amount of time to just do it myself with basically no ai. And so I'm really split. It's like, do I focus a lot more on AI or do I not focus on AI at all or do I do somewhere in the middle? And that's been a struggle for, for me to figure out. I don't know where I'm at on that stage. I don't know what, what you guys want. I don't know what's best for you. I don't know what I'm most interested in. I don't know. Um, but I think my after I've like thought about this for a while, I think my honest, my honest answer of what I'm actually going to do moving forward is I'm gonna try to do an episode every week. Two of the weeks are going to be like more podcasty, a little bit less YouTubey, and two of the episodes are gonna be a little bit more YouTubey and a little bit more podcasty. Um, I consider this episode a little bit more podcasty. This isn't gonna go viral on YouTube. This. Um, and that's okay because, um, I value speaking authentically and honestly over just millions of views. Not that I've ever gotten millions of views, but you get the point like. There's value in just telling you guys, updating you on my life. There's value in just updating you guys on this podcast, on this episode, uh, on this YouTube channel. Um, so the, the episodes on podcast and YouTube are pretty much exactly the same. Um, one's a video, one's audio, uh, whatever one you enjoy most, you can digest it there. Uh, and half of my videos are probably gonna be like, more like what you would expect out of a YouTube video, and half of them are probably gonna be more what you expect out of a podcast. Now that's probably like all the YouTubers would probably say that's bad to do because there's people on YouTube who only like eight to 12 minute long videos and that is all they'll watch. And if they get a video like this. That is now 22 minutes. They're not gonna watch it all. And you're confusing the algorithm. And to that, I say, screw the algorithm. That's what I wanna do. So that's what we're gonna do. So we'll have interviews that are, you know, maybe an hour long and we'll have episodes that maybe are eight minutes long, um, just depending on the week. And I hope that's okay with you. Um, yeah, I guess let me know if it is like, that's, that's the, the last thing I just wanna say is like. Tell me, you guys like in the comments, tell me what you like. Tell me what you don't like. Especially if you're a podcast listener. That's one of the hardest things about doing a podcast is there's no likes, there's no saves. Spotify just rolled out comments last year. There's like no feedback whatsoever, and it's like you're talking to 5,000 people every episode, but no one says anything. There's no clapping. Like, it's like, how the heck am I? Am I supposed to know if that was good or not? If you guys liked it or not? Uh, so if you're on YouTube. Let me know what, what should I do more on YouTube? Like what do you like that I do on YouTube? What do you hate that I do on YouTube? If you're on the podcast, if you're on Spotify, leave a comment. Tell me what you like. Tell me you hated this episode. I don't care. I just want honest feedback of what you guys actually like. I do this to try to help you guys and if I don't know what I was actually useful or helpful to you guys, then it's hard for me to to make smart choices. If you're listening like on Apple or some other podcast platform. Or if you're listening and you just wanna email me, email me. My email is Avery, just my name Avery at, and then my company name, data career jump start.com. Um, and you can just make like a subject like podcast suggestions. Like any suggestions you guys have, I'm open for them. Like I will read all those emails. I'll read all the comments here. I'll take into account what you guys are saying. And I'll try to improve, uh, the podcast going forward. That being said, I think, I think the podcast is decently solid right now. Like I'm pretty proud. Um, by now our, when this publishes our Nick won episode about sports analytics would come out, I'm really proud of that. I think that was a really informative episode. Um, I just did one about job scams that I feel is really important. I just recorded that. That'll be out already. I'm like pretty proud of some of the episodes we've done. Um, so I feel like we're in a good place. I feel like we can improve and optimize and get better down the road. And I'd love for you guys to, uh, do part of that with me. So if you're open to that, leave a comment. And, uh, once again, thank you guys for listening. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for downloading. Thank you for sharing with friends. Um, it is like mind boggling, like. The podcast is still at, you know, 20,000, um, downloads a month, more or less, and I'm just pulling up YouTube studio to figure out how many, uh, watchers we've had in the last month. And the answer is 170. So like, basically not quite 200,000, but let's just say close to 200,000 people. Are listening to what I have to say. And uh, that's really humbling that you guys take the time out of your day to do that because, um, I know you guys are busy. I know there's lots of different choices of media out there and the fact that you guys choose my episodes and you guys keep coming back, um, I don't take that for granted. So thank you guys so much and uh, look forward to hearing from you.