Drill to Detail - Drill to Detail Ep.114 ‘Building a Solopreneur Data Analytics Consultancy’ with Special Guest Christian Steinert

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Mark is joined in this episode by Christian Steinert to talk about his solo journey building Steinert Analytics, a data analytics consultancy transforming data into actionable revenue and cost-saving insights for Central Ohio's SaaS startups.Steinert Analytics homepageChristian Steinert LinkedIn Profile“Helping a Roofing Company Define Their Sales Process”“Transforming a Top 5 Fast Food Company's Operational Drive-Thru Reporting”

So hello and welcome to the Drill to Detail podcast, sponsored by Rippman Analytics, and I'm your host, Mark Rippman. So I'm really pleased to be joined today by Christian Steinert, who's joining us all the way from Ohio. So Christian, welcome to the show. Hey, Mark. I'm honored to be on the show. I've been watching or listening rather to this podcast for about the last two or three years. So it's definitely really exciting to be here. Fantastic. Fantastic. So Christian, just for anybody who doesn't know you, just give us a brief intro to who you are and let's start with that first of all. So who are

you and what do you do? Yeah. So I like to kind of classify myself as a business strategist and marketer and using data in that strategist piece very heavily. Originally have a marketing background. So I actually, formal education is all in marketing and then emphasized in digital marketing and information systems in university. I kind of leveraged that marketing background to ultimately deploy myself into sales operations, marketing analytics, and ultimately analytics engineering, which is now what I'm doing on a consulting capacity, but have a lot of different experiences across various industries from manufacturing globally to telehealth into commercial real estate investment management. So

I've seen a lot of different areas of marketing, marketing analytics, and then data analytics as well in my six plus year career so far. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. So Christian, the reason I wanted to get you on the show was I've been following, it sounds like a stalker, but I've been following your progress over the last couple of years. And there's a lot of parallels really between, I suppose, your career and my early career in that you are a solo entrepreneur at the moment. You're getting started, I suppose, really in the consulting world, data consulting world. And you've been quite good about documenting it and talking about the challenges and the

opportunities and your successes really with the clients you've been building up. So I thought it'd be interesting to talk to you and really sort of frame the discussion as a general, I suppose, discussion about modern data stack and data consulting at the moment, but also, you know, really maybe as an inspiration to kind of other consultants who might be interested in going down the same journey as you and I really. So that's the kind of background to this, but let's kind of set the scene really a little bit for people listening to this episode. And so you consult in the modern data stack, don't you? So give us a bit of a kind of briefing on what that is today, really, as far as you're concerned. Yeah. So the modern data stack, I mean,

proliferation tools and everything that makes, I guess, the barrier to entry to data engineering and analytics engineering even easier. Not having to deal with on-prem data warehousing management and whatnot, of course. But yeah, so the bread and butter of my modern data stack experience, and I think it's fitting being on this podcast, is in Looker, which I know you've had many other guests on before me that were either part of the Looker team, or I know you used Looker yourself, Mark. So that's really been the core expertise and really how I've been able to position myself as an analytics professional is through Looker. And yeah, I think that's been a huge unlock for a lot of my clients dealing with the semantic modeling, the LookML layer. But then the piece

that I'm starting to get into now as a consultant from an infrastructure standpoint too is the data integration layer, which I would like to touch on maybe as we go into this a little bit more. But I'm partnered with a tool called Kaboola, which is out of Prague in the UK, and they're starting to make a presence in the United States. And they're really a competitor to Fivetran, but a very versatile data integration tool that ultimately builds data applications. And their whole premise is, let's get actionable insights as fast as we can by lowering the barrier to entry on the data integration piece and being able to use this tool to create actual relevant data apps that you can take action on your data very swiftly. So that's kind of my newer fold of my skill set is not just the BI and the semantic

layering of analytics engineering, but also getting into more of that data integration piece now. Okay. So, and we'll get onto, I suppose, the particular niches you work in a bit, really, but you generally consult with, I suppose, small to medium-sized businesses. Okay. And so what challenges do you typically hear from them that warrant, like Kabula and things like data pipelines and so on? What's the kind of general business problem you're solving there? Yeah. So I guess, too, to take a step back, a lot of the small businesses that I've been working with are very immature in their AI maturity lifecycle. They're either at level one or level two.

I know, shout out to Vin Vashishta for From Data to Profit. That's a book that I've really been reading a ton and trying to absorb as much information because a lot of the clients, like for instance, with the roofing niche, not to get ahead of myself on the industry niches, they're not even at a stage where they haven't historically been at a stage where they're ready or they're at a maturity level for data infrastructure to begin with. But what I've seen is all of it's coming down to conversion rates and lead sources. And how are our lead sources actually converting to closed one revenue. Okay, interesting. So I remember years ago, there was an article that Tristan Handy wrote about, I suppose, the degree to which companies should take on technology at different stages in their sort of maturity.

And you mentioned there about data pipelines, Kabula and so on. And there's also, I suppose, the whole category of sort of data warehouses as well. And back in my day, when I first started consulting, to do a data warehouse required you to have a DBA, have an Oracle database, have servers and so on. But the cloud, to what extent do you

think the cloud has made that technology available to SMBs? And to what extent do you kind of think it's needed or is warranted and so on, really? Yeah. Well, I think just looking at my experience with Snowflake, I mean, it's everywhere now and it is making the data warehouse very, very accessible at a low cost. Obviously, you've got to be careful with optimizing your Snowflake instance specifically, but I think it makes it very, very easy. And then to layer another piece on top of that with Kabula back to my partner, they have a fully managed Snowflake data warehouse that sits basically underneath Kabula as the storage layer. So then you as the Kabula engineer or the data team manager of your company that

uses Kabula doesn't even really need to worry as much about optimizing the data warehouse. They take care of that. You just have to worry about getting the data, using the different components and then working with the data. And the whole idea is that speeds up your time to actually drive insights from the data that makes profitable decisions as opposed to being hung up optimizing all the backend infrastructure. But yeah, I think it does make it very, very accessible for small businesses, especially in the roofing niche, to be on the cloud and to use data warehousing in the cloud. Okay. So at the start of the conversation, you positioned yourself as being more of a, I suppose, a consultant to the business, really, as opposed to maybe a technology implementer. So

how do you kind of make the decision about when the problem is a technology problem and when it's a business problem? And how do you sort of decide when it's appropriate to bring in a tool like Kaboola, for example, or whether it's maybe a problem they can solve using Google Sheets and say GA, for example? Yeah, that's a great question. So yeah, I'm going through this right now with one of my roofing clients. And I think it really comes down to understanding their digital infrastructure workflows and how mature those are. So starting at their source system. So typically like in a roofing company to get industry specific or probably across a lot of different industries and small businesses, they've got a CRM, they have a marketing automation tool, they have

a financial management software like a QuickBooks, and that's pretty much their entire digital stack. So seeing how those systems are working together and how they're actually getting lead information entered into their CRM in a streamlined way is a big determinant as to how ready are you to actually connect Kabula, a data integration tool into these systems and pull that data into a data warehouse to actually start trying to drive insights from it. So I think a lot of the exercises recently have been, let's just export a lot of the data from raw reports, from the tools themselves, from the source systems themselves, and see what does the data look like? Just studying it on a very tabular Excel level, seeing what

data is missing. Why are there redundant job records specifically in the roofing space? You have a lot of job records and there's a lot of duplication going on with my current client. And so it starts there and then you take that and you have to talk to the people that are in charge of the digital and the operations pieces. Why is that actually happening? And it's interesting because as a full-time data engineer for a large corporation, like when I was working at the global commercial real estate investment company as an analytics engineer, I didn't get as much exposure to that and actually get the opportunity to be very, very close to the business and their workflows within the source systems. That was something that was newer to me once I actually embodied and embraced being a

consultant and getting into the consulting world and the critical business role that you play, not just the tech role. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So you mentioned about Kabula. Okay. So just tell us what that is and tell us why you choose that as a product to consult with for these kinds of customers and what kind of problem it solves. Yeah. So Kabula takes data from a source, or I like to say, I kind of just keep it generic, takes information from a source and basically spins it up in a way that's going to be presentable to the executives so that they can interpret it, understand it, and make decisions that drive profit with it. And so it's really just

that, again, blanket term data integration tool. But then the layer deeper with Kaboola is that there's really two folds. One, they refer to it often internally, I think at Kaboola is the Lego of data, because you can do so many kinds of data applications with it. They have connections for data destinations where you can write data to a tool like Streamlit and you can create customer sentiment analyses very quickly and swiftly on the fly. You can run all of the different Google reviews for a specific company through a chat GPT node that then spits out a sentiment score based on the open AI model. And so those are just a few use cases where it's very versatile, but it's also the second fold, a data cataloging tool. So everything that you're doing in Kabula, it has logs and documents when and who did something in all of your different data pipelines

on the platform. So that way, of course, you know, what do certain components mean? What pipelines are they associated with? What are the definitions of your fields and tables? And what source systems are they coming from? And then also the layer of protection to the data pipelines. If someone changes something, you know exactly when and who broke it or fixed it. Let's stay optimistic here. But that's just a big value add piece for Kabool. And yeah, I got connected to them, quite honestly, through just happenchance, just being active on LinkedIn, ran into the now field CTO, one of the field CTOs. And we just kind of started hitting it off and talking. And then I had him on my podcast, Data and Impact, actually, back in 2022. And then he knew that I was starting my consultancy. And I was very, very, very early stage then. And he had said,

hey, when you start getting clients, let us know. We'd love to help you drive data in your clients' organizations. And that's exactly what happened. So a lot of relationship focus there too. But yeah, it just kind of helps that I got certified in Snowflake with the Snowpro core in 2021. And Kabula is very partnered up with Snowflake. And then obviously Kabula uses Looker. So then I'm a Looker developer. So it's all, I feel like the ecosystem of tech tools that I've created to partner with for my business and use for my business are all very cohesive. But yeah. Interesting. Interesting. So, okay.

So AI, Gen AI and those kinds of technologies. So I imagine certainly for us, for our business, it's the thing that people are inquiring about when they come to us, you know, asking about us working with them. It often ends up driving work that is not AI around, say, maybe data integration and so on. But how are you finding the interest and uptake and success of AI with the kind of customers you're working with at the moment? And maybe any examples of that? Yeah. Interest level is extremely high. And I'll just stick with the roofing niche here, since that's kind of the lane that I'm going down right now. Interest for AI tools, whether in-house or third party is extremely, extremely of interest to roofers that are looking to exit. I think in the small business market and specifically- When you say roofers looking to exit, what do you mean?

Oh, yeah. Thank you. So primarily, like a lot of, not primarily, but a lot of roofing companies are actually looking to scale and then exit to a private equity firm. So they're looking to sell. So they're building the company to sell. And I think that's because roofing is a very, very standardized and reusable model. If you're able to build a roofing company well and have, you know, 40% plus profit margins, you know, You have your sales process nailed down. You have every task delegated to respective teams between sales, admin slash finance. You're able to make it reusable and repeatable, which is exactly what private equity companies, those are the types of businesses they

want to invest in. So roofing companies become very appealing to them. So in order to exit successfully, what I'll hear like my current client, the CEO of my current client, he's talking to a lot of PE firms. All they're talking about is systems and data analytics. And I think the idea of being able to integrate AI in some capacity, for example, right now, my current client in the roofing space is looking to bring in an AI bot for phone calling inbound and outbound. A very interesting use case, and they're using a third-party tool to do it. And to be honest with you, they haven't had a lot of success with it yet.

And I think a little bit of that is immaturity in their digital tech stack because the AI bot that they're using integrates directly with their marketing automation tool that they use. And there's been a lot of recent improvements and enhancements on that that they've been undergoing that I've been helping them kind of guide so that we can start getting good reports. But yeah, I think the interest is high. I think the implementation is difficult, especially with roofing companies looking to exit. I think a lot of them, it's not your typical roofing company of, oh, we've been around for 20, 30 years. We're family owned. My father started it. I'm running it now as the son. I inherited it. You see that a lot in the more blue collar businesses. This is more rapid growth. They went from zero to almost 10 million in revenue they're going to do in 2024 in less than three years, really.

So that amount of growth, you know, the systems and whatnot have kind of lagged behind. They've just been like, let's hit the gas and try to catch up later mentality because it's a sales business at the end of the day. It's not a technical business. It's a sales business. So implementation is tough for AI for sure. Okay. Okay. So, so you've talked, you've talked quite a bit about roofing businesses here and, and you are based in Ohio. Okay. And so, so it struck me that looking at your, looking at your online presence and your case studies, you've, you've kind of, I suppose you focused on a niche,

which is roofing businesses, which is supposedly a non-obvious one certainly to us in the uk you know to me um and and and there's often a a kind of i suppose there is a um general bit of advice in business which is to find a niche and serve that niche and and i suppose dominate that niche as opposed to try and be all things to all people right but but bi and data analytics is quite a horizontal kind of um sort of service area in that the same solution can work for lots of businesses. So what's been your philosophy so far and what's been your experience in this kind of niche versus generalization question? Yeah, it's a great question. And it's one that I've been battling, you know, really since I started the consultancy, because if you go on my website, right, you see small to medium-sized SaaS companies. And that's by design because historically, like I said in the beginning, a lot of my

experiences with software companies or manufacturing companies or just other things different from like a small business roofing type space. But I would say that starting out, in my opinion, so far, you have to blend both. You have to keep the end goal of a niche in mind, but you also have to get clients to keep the lights on. And so I would say that when you're starting out, it's okay to be broad. I think Y Combinator, they're going to push the niche, like a lot of the startup models. And that's great, especially when you're trying to find product market fit for like a SaaS company or something. But as a consultant in data, just like you said, it's horizontal. You have the flexibility to work with other businesses. And as you work with other

businesses, you're going to build extremely valuable experience still that you can produce case studies on. Because at the end of the day, in my opinion, data is data. And as long as you're getting that experience and then have the end goal of a niche in mind, as you trend towards that while also staying broad to start, I'm finding that that's what's working for me. And it's helping me continue to keep my business healthy while I continue to grow it. So the roofing industry, you're obviously focusing on that to an extent. What's unique about that industry for its data needs and what's kind of common really in there? Yeah. So the unique thing

is that it's a very underserved market. And after doing a lot of market research, talking to roofers, talking to business roofing consultants and working with my client, people are stuck in their ways. It's let's maybe have a, you know, maybe have a CRM. I mean, a lot of roofers don't even have like one digital system. Um, so the level of opportunity after, you know, and one key point too, is as you go into a niche tapping into podcasts specific to that niche. And so I've listened to a lot of roofing podcasts. And the one thing they always tie it back to is if you want to run a high margin, high growth, consistently good roofing podcast. And the one thing they always tie it back to is if you want to run a high margin, high growth, consistently good roofing company, you need data, you need your gross profit margin,

you need your sales close rate, you need to understand those metrics. And so I see all of these roofing companies that are really well run, maybe like seven, eight, nine figures in revenue, you know, using analytics, but they're not using it in a way that us data engineers or data management practitioners would like, you know, they have a CRM that they're exporting their sales revenue numbers out of. So I always tell like the COO and the CEO, when I'm explaining the value of what we do with data warehousing and creating a centralized location for all of your information that you can consistently pull from, you know, they're, they're, they're having one, one spreadsheet that has the gross profit margin at this number. And then another, you know, stakeholder or COO pulls the same report,

but with a few different filter criteria, and they're getting a different number for the gross profit margin that should be the same for the same timeframe. And then they're butting heads and they're wondering why internally, hey, what's right? Both of us have different numbers, what's going on? And so the big value add for what we do is that conformity and that consolidation in a data warehouse. And you just don't see that as much in the roofing space. And even talking to other roofing CRM executives, because they do exist. Roofing CRMs are a big thing. And they're like, well, we don't have any customers that talk about the need for a data warehouse. Why do they need that? They don't need that.

And it's kind of a bullheaded, stubborn approach. But I'm like, I think you're really missing out on an opportunity to take it one step further than just digitization, but data infrastructure implementation. And that's where I'm trying to press right now to see how the product market fit actually pans out. So how do you qualify your opportunities you have there? So you've got a roofing company comes to you and they're of a certain size. Do you look for there to be certain sort of things in place or commitments or people or whatever before you're engaged or do you engage with all of them or how do you decide which ones are going to be successes for you yeah i i think the ideal client right um it depends on the vision and

direction of their company um and if like i said if they're if they're looking to exit if they're really serious about growing to eight or nine figures, they are going to be a great candidate for selling the services that Standard Analytics offers. And so that's how I would qualify it, to be honest, is that vision and that direction. What's their intent? Because so many roofing companies, I think, like the smaller mom and pop ones, they've kind of been staying at that same revenue mark for years. And so it's not going to be as fruitful of an opportunity to try to sell infrastructure to them. You have to sell value to them. And I guess I could maybe step back a little bit and say that other smaller roofing companies, infrastructure aside, there's still data problems that need solving. It's probably just more a

matter of exporting things into Google Sheets and doing some quick analyses and maybe connecting a Looker Studio dashboard onto those Google Sheets and visualizing it that way. But for the ones that actually need a modern data stack implemented with in-house AI solutions and third-party AI solutions, you're going to need to see companies that are serious about growth. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. And so you've done case studies, you've been a lot marketing around that. How do you market yourself? Do you market yourself largely in media that is kind of roofing media or in analytics? Yeah. It's a great question because I have recently been battling with that positioning piece. I've invested in some media teams and whatnot, and I did have a series of roofing short form video content for Instagram, because roofers are a I posted those on LinkedIn too, but I've actually kind of stepped away from that for now. Um, and like I said, I think long-term the niche will, you know, naturally play out with the roofing space as I continue to find the product market fit and continue to go on this

journey with my current roofing client of building this product that I'm, you know, cause I'm ultimately going to try to productize is, is, is what my end goal would be with the roofing niche. But lately, if you'll follow my LinkedIn, you'll see a lot more small to medium-sized software companies is kind of more my focus from a marketing positioning framework right now. And I guess to my fault, maybe like a little bit all over the place, but I'm also just right now in the stage. And this is something, insight to other early stage data consultants is you kind of just have to throw stuff out into the ether and see what sticks and what's working and what you feel is giving your business a rhythm for traction

to get leads. And right now, the current approach of changing the positioning a little bit away from the roofing space and just focusing on putting out content for small to medium sized companies and SaaS companies is getting me a lot of traction on LinkedIn right now. So that's what I'd say. Okay. Okay. And also in terms of another niche, you focused on cabula and i think i think i've had cabula on the show before and i certainly know what cabula is but it's it's it's kind of it is a niche and it's that they're i suppose they're from the czech republic and and so on what's been the kind of the what's been the kind of the pros and cons and and kind of of and surprises and so on and benefits of focusing on a particular vendor, like say

Kabula is your, is your partner here. Yeah. So I think one of the things is, you know, they're not as present in the United States. So I'm really focused on helping them expand, at least in the central Ohio region for now, um, really the Midwest United States, um, with that comes, um, you know, definitely, I think it's harder to get traction with a tool that doesn't have as much presence in the United States. So from a partnership perspective, I'm trying to find a lot of leads. And then their focus for so long and understandably so has been on the European market. And they're just now starting to deploy sales reps and a sales team designated specifically to the United States. So when people think partnerships and getting a ton

of leads back and forth, it's a little bit more challenging when you're working with a company that's just starting to break and show their shell in the United States. But with that too comes, they have a very tight knit team and they have incredible support. So anything that you need, if you need them to sit in on calls with you, because you're new, like I am, admittedly, and new to the sales side of the business, right? I've been a data engineer for so long, the sales side is difficult for me. So to have them offer up their time to say, hey, we'll sit in with you on sales calls and help you guide these discovery calls

is a huge advantage, not only for my learning, but of course the higher likelihood for actually getting a new client and onboarding a new client. So with each come their challenges, but overall, yeah, it's been a positive experience working with their tight-knit team. Do your customers really care, though, about what the technology is? I mean, I've certainly found that where there's a high degree of trust and where the customer is maybe on the first stages of their data journey, the actual technology itself, the choice of it it isn't so relevant as long as you can guarantee

that that will work on their project. I mean, how have you found that's worked? And what about the kind of, I suppose the long-term maintenance of the things you build as well? Yeah, no, most of my clients, at least in the small business space, and I'll caveat it,

small business space, they don't care about what the infrastructure is. They just want something working where they can take away profitable insights. Like that's what they want. That's all they care about. They're like, why build something that looks flashy if it's not going to deliver us value? So that's what I'd say pertaining specifically to roofing there, really. I have had some larger clients, though. For example, I'm working with a top five fast food company right now in the United States and, you know, their infrastructure is, you know, heavy Google cloud. And, and, and that is very important to them. You know, they've gone through some other vendors and whatnot, I think in the past and,

uh, you know, Google has really, they found a sweet spot with it and they've been having a lot of success with Looker. And so like, there's, there's definitely, um, you know, that, that play from an enterprise level, um, long-term maintenance. So I would say, you know, part of the standard analytics process is in the end, you know, we work with the customer to offload anything when we build an entire pipeline from scratch. We're giving them the documentation pieces that they need for their next in-house data engineer to come on and take that on. Like my MedTech client, that's what we did. We just heavily documented everything. And then we transition them and we'll sit with them for a week or two and literally onboard whatever in-house engineer they have that's going to be long-term maintaining their data pipeline for the marketing and finance departments at this med tech company specifically is what I'm talking about here. So yeah, I would say just good

documentation and then just working with them on a timeline that they see fit to onboard and train the in-house talent or the talent that's going to be taking over the data stack when we leave as the consultants that are just temporary. Okay. So let's go on to the, I suppose the main topic that I want to talk to you about. Actually, your journey as a solo entrepreneur, as a consultant. Okay. So what made you want to become a consultant, first of all, as opposed to becoming part of the in-house team somewhere or working for a vendor, like for example, Kabula. Why did you choose to do this? Yep. So, and I told this story the other day.

It's number one, it's twofold. Number one, my grandfather actually started and ran Steiner Printing, founded in 1947. They actually just got sold in 2022, but they were a multimillion dollar printing company out of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. And so I always grew up around entrepreneurs. My dad was a private practicing dentist. So I think I didn't realize it at the time, but naturally I had always been around business owners. And that energy just kind of genetically, I think, inherently was just bleeding in me. So I think that's a big piece. I actually went to University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and got to sit with my grandfather a lot during lunches. We would go out because they lived in Oshkosh and I would get to pick his brain about entrepreneurship. Then I started taking business classes. Then I got into a SaaS startup while in college where we actually pitched it to two

different angel investor pitch competitions, kind of like a shark tank. And there's one called the Culver's Model Contest. It's sponsored by Culver's Fast Food. Craig Culver is one of the judges, the founder of Culver's Fast Food. And we ended up taking third in that pitch competition and winning $7,900 with cash and in-kind services. And feeling that liberation, I was just so like, this is so aligned with my passion. I want to find an avenue to get back into that when I'm out of undergrad. And that avenue was analytics consulting for me. That's what I kind of realized as I spent so much time upskilling in it. I was like, let's just try to make this a side hustle. And then the side hustle started to expand. I had my full-time job at the commercial real estate global company as an engineer. And then finally, August of last year, I said, you know what, let's grab the bull by the horns and just go for it. And that's exactly what I did.

Okay. So I suppose the interesting thing is, you know, over the last few years, certainly the trend has been people who are, you know, young and kind of ambitious and entrepreneurial go into products. So they all, you know, it's been so easy to get funding for building products that it's actually, you know, far more actually far more the case people would do that. So why did you choose consulting as opposed to say building a product really? And also why did you choose to do it on your own as well, which is interesting? Yeah. Number one, I think the consulting avenue was lower barrier to entry than starting a product, or at least I knew that if I could secure some contracts, there'd least I knew that if I could

secure some contracts, there'd be a higher likelihood that I could take that full time. And this is just me maybe being a little risk averse as opposed to just diving all into a SaaS product or something like that. So that's, yeah, that's the, I would say that's like a big piece. I think I'm a little mad to do this, to be honest. Because yeah, there's so many great consulting firms out there that you can get your feet wet and be a consultant without having to start your own brand and your own company. But I think I wanted to create something that was truly mine and to have the signer name kind of in lineage to my grandfather. This was a big win for me to just try and do this and very rewarding. And yeah, I think that's it. And then also kind of on the productization note, you know, now it's like,

as I'm getting into it, it's like, oh, like consulting is great. I kind of see the advantages or the pros of also trying to productize something about my service as well, which is kind of the route that I'm going in with the roofing niche. But you, you, you are sort of very much front and center in your, your marketing and the way you talk about very kind of, I suppose, very from the heart about sort of what you're trying to do in your approaches. So, um, so tell us a bit about your, I suppose your, your, um, your philosophy and approach around building your brand and, um, and what the role that you play in that? Yeah. So I would say that I pride myself on transparency. And then one of my other core values or one of our other core values at Standard Analytics is egoless candor. And I think that, at least in my experience, working in a lot of these larger enterprises,

engineers can have some ego about them at times. And I don't mean to like call anyone out. It's just what I've kind of observed. I think, you know, maybe that's why data engineering gets a bad rap or like, you know, they sit behind the scenes and they don't, you know, they're notorious for, at least the ones that aren't like recognized

by the business, they're not translating for the business. And, you know, they think they're smart. And so I try to position myself in a way that shows my vulnerabilities. It shows the weak points, the failures that I've gone through. I document that. I think I've been very public, at least in my opinion, about a lot of the failures or about some of the imposter syndrome that I feel occasionally or often as a new data consultant with six plus years of experience, but recognizing that there's a lot more tenured consultants and data engineering professionals out there than me. So that's kind of my thought is like, let's just stay transparent. Let's be egoless. And let's

just show the world that I'm doing this. And maybe, like I was telling Joe, I think my raw expertise is not coding and being a data engineer. I have learned it up to the point where I can deliver solid work. But ultimately, for me, it's who not how. I think there's going to be a team of standard analytics data engineers that are far better than me at code. And I'm just going to be the one as the lead technical product face delivering the data storytelling to the client. Your name is on the company. And one thing, and something I say to our potential clients and clients is my name being on the company is the ultimate guarantee that i will make sure this actually delivers for you i mean how do you how do you make sure this thing actually delivers and how do you

make sure that you aren't exited at the point the thing is built because actually that's when they really need you more than anything yeah um i i would say you know start with start with transparency like i was saying i think keeping an open line of communication for what they really need and what they're asking for is crucial. And then just giving routine status updates and checking in with them and making sure that you approach the build with an iterative mindset, not a perfectionist mindset. And I think that probably should have been the first thing I said. But yeah, I would say that piece is huge. For example, we're building the first version ones of a lot of these workflow analysis dashboards for the roofing company CRM right now. They're roofing CRM. And we built the V1 and now we presented it to them, but said,

hey, let's keep an open feedback loop. We'd like to get a list of questions and feedback that you have on the dashboard once you spend some time using it. And so that's kind of the phase we're in right now, where they're going to send, you know, a laundry list of questions and a laundry list of potential enhancements. And then we're going to kind of work with them to come up with something that is optimized from a data standpoint, but also, you know, optimized for, for also optimized for what they're actually wanting. But yeah, just being transparent and sticking with them and not trying to push a contract of infrastructure on them or try to push them on anything, really just stay open with them and

try to really understand their needs and deliver on that. So again, one of the things that was a surprise to me when I got into the solo consulting world and then obviously transitioned on, but was the amount of time that you spend doing something other than actually building analytic systems. So you become a consultant to actually become, to build these things for customers, but actually you spend actually most of your time doing finance and doing sales and so on. How have you found that? And have you found your ability to balance those things out? So you still deliver for customers, but you grow your business? It's really tough, but I would say it's probably a 70-30 split between CEO level activities and then 70% of my time is spent developing right now. And I think that's also just the stage I'm in, right? And some of the contracts I have and the

structures of some of the contracts I have take up a lot of my time because it's a lot of advanced look ML building and architecture and modeling work that I'm doing for them. So that's kind of the phase I'm in. But I always make it a point to have coffee chats at least once or twice a week. I try my absolute best to always be going to local networking events, trying to get my name out there, and then obviously talking to other business owners in the area of Central Ohio through coffee chats and virtual meetings and whatnot. So that would be definitely like a big way that I would balance it. And then two, attending events and conventions. I've attended a fair amount this year and I've actually got another

one coming up October 23rd to 25th. I'm going to RoofCon in Orlando, Florida. So that's a business roofing specific one. But there's always, at the end of the day, when you're starting out, I think, you're always going to be pulled back to building data systems and building business intelligence reports like I'm doing right now for one of my contracts. And that's just part of it.

Yeah. Okay. And you mentioned about productizing your services, right? So that is always the holy grail for consultancies. But what's your thoughts on that? And how do you intend to do that? And how do you think that will benefit you and customers? Yeah. So I intend to do that through, you know, the roofing niche and understanding, you know, probably what it's going to be. You know, I have one use case right now that I've confirmed and validated in the market that it is a reoccurring problem for a lot of roofing

companies. And that's understanding what lead sources are actually converting to close one jobs, like I said earlier. So I think, you know, creating like a lead control dashboard will be a big piece there. The thing that I think it'll do for my business is it's building the sell. I think ultimately I would like to try to exit something. I think, and this is a long, and this is a long-term pipe dream for me, right? Just keep that in mind, everyone. But I think ideally as a consultant, you're always going to have a level of hands-on work. And yeah, you can delegate it, but I think you're still going to have to be close to the client. You're still very involved in a client. Whereas I think

with a product going to market with it, it's going to lighten that load a little bit so I can almost buy back my time or at least leverage my time to be able to do more of the relationship building, the sales piece, really embody that CEO founder that I want to become as opposed to just being an analytics consultant. So I think that, and talking to Joe Reese too about this, that productization just helps you leverage your time better. So that's, that's where I see that being advantageous to the business. And yeah, the biggest, the biggest piece there though, is, is, is finding that product market fit. And I'd, I'd still say I'm probably pre-product market fit, right. And, and, and just talking and trying

to understand what roofers are struggling with. Is this a reoccurring problem and would this be valuable? And so far it's been fun, you know, getting to do that. Okay. So one last observation of mine is when you have your own consultancy or any business really, it's how do you avoid burnout? How do you know when to stop? Because there's always something that needs to be done and there's always a client piece of work or something you can sort of do. How do you avoid burnout and how do you keep yourself kind of sharp and healthy really? This is a great question. The number one thing I'd say is I go to the gym and that is my outlet. That is my favorite time of the day. It's early in the morning, I'll wake up at five or 6am and, and go

and, you know, hit, hit a lift and lift weights. And, and that, that helps me equalize and balance out. You know, it's interesting. I'm in this phase right now where I'm still so new to everything. And it's only been a little over a year that I'm, I've, I do, I'm one of those people that do feel guilty when I take time off or I take time away from being on. And I'm trying to get better at that because I have, to be honest with you, this week even, I woke up on Monday and I'd worked parts of the weekend and I was just like, oh, I just don't feel like coding all day today. And it's like, man, is this burnout? I'm not sure. It's probably burnout. Yeah, I think it is burnout.

And yeah, I would say the gym and then going on long walks and long bike rides on the weekends have really, really saved me. Also, I think getting out in nature, as cliche as it sounds, really, really helps me just clear my head and clear my imposter syndrome or whatever other doubts I'm feeling that week from all the things going on with running. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, the other thing for me is just passion for what you do as well. I mean, I've been doing analytics consultant for 25 years now, and I still really enjoy doing it.

I still spend evenings trying out new techniques and new sort of like new approaches, and I still really enjoy it, really. I think that's one of the – that's a good thing, but certainly the same as you, actually getting out there, getting some exercise, getting some fresh air is really important as well. And there's always something else to be done in the business. But it's, at what point do you think, last question for me, what point do you think you'd make your first hire if you've not done so already? And how do you decide amongst kind of hiring and contractors and partnerships and so on? Yeah. So I haven't made my first full-time hire. I do have one contractor that really is my

lead data engineer. He handles all of the code base for my MedTech client. He's helping me build a lot of the dashboards for the roofing company client right now. So I do have that contractor. And then I also just recently brought on a content marketer as well. And that was definitely a big step for me. It's not cheap. So anyone getting into consulting, hiring a marketer is not cheap, but I think a lot of people already know that that are in business. But yeah, the full-time hire, I think realistically, if I'm having a consistent, it's probably going to be a numbers game, like three to five contracts a month, consistently month over month, over month, over month. That is at that point,

you know, it'll make sense to, to bring on a full-time engineer. But right now the flexibility that the contractor provides me and staying lean in the current, as I'm still early, uh, has been, you know, it's been great. Um, and it still gives you that project management, that leadership, uh, that data leadership that you're, that, that I'm looking for. Uh, so it's been good. Fantastic. Okay. So it's been good. Okay. So to wrap things up then, how do people find out more about you and the services your consultancy offers?

Yeah. Number one place, right? Mark, we met here at LinkedIn. So I believe my LinkedIn URL, like in the URL, I think it's Christian Steiner 96. I think Christian Steiner was taken. So I had to add the 96,

which is my birthday year. So there's that. And then steinertanalytics.com. So S-T-E-I-N-E-R-T analytics.com. And yeah, that's, those are really the main things. And then Instagram too, if you're interested, steinert96. Great. Well, Christian, it's been great speaking to you and best of luck for the future and stay in touch. Thank you. Thank you.