Value Driven Data Science: Boost your impact. Earn what you’re worth. Rewrite your career algorithm.

[00:00:00] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Hello and welcome to Value Driven Data Science, the podcast that helps data scientists transform their technical expertise into tangible business value, career autonomy, and financial reward. I'm Dr. Genevieve Hayes, and today I'm joined by Danny Ruspandini. Danny is a brand strategist business coach and the director of Impact Labs Australia.
[00:00:25] He is also the creator of one shiny object. A program for helping solo creatives package what they do into sellable fixed price services. In this episode, we'll explore how applying a solo business mindset to your data science career can help you take control of your professional destiny, increase your value within organizations, and create opportunities that others miss.
[00:00:52] So get ready to boost your impact, earn what you're worth, and rewrite your career algorithm. Danny, welcome to the show.
[00:00:59] Danny Ruspandini: Thanks, Genevieve.
[00:01:00] Dr Genevieve Hayes: When it comes to building a career, every data scientist is running their own business, albeit most of those businesses are solo businesses with just the one client, your employer.
[00:01:12] Unfortunately, most data scientists don't realize this leading way too many to fall into the trap of believing their employer will take care of their career development by putting them on the right projects and making sure they get the training they need. Now, granted, sometimes that happens, but for many data scientists, their employers won't and don't.
[00:01:36] The bosses usually mean well, but they have other priorities such as building their own careers. Which means that to get ahead, you have to market yourself, find opportunities for yourself, and take control of your own professional destiny, all things that business owners also have to do. This insight first hit me after launching my own solo business, and the more I learn about running a solo business, the more I realized just how valuable these lessons would've been to me back when I was an employee.
[00:02:07] Now, Danny, you've been an employee. You've run a business where you've had employees. You now run a solo business, and you've also spent years working with other solo business owners to help them grow their businesses. So you've seen this from pretty much every angle there is. Based on your experiences.
[00:02:29] I'm curious to know your take on this.
[00:02:31] Danny Ruspandini: It's a really interesting one. I wouldn't have thought about marketing yourself as an employee from inside a full-time role, but it's a really interesting way to look at it. I think that with any role, whether it's data science or my field, which is creative industry, the way you show up at work can almost fall into one of two buckets, you can, as you say, show up and. Expect that someone's gonna look out for you, someone's gonna make sure you get the right training. You're working on the projects that bring out your strengths and they're just taking care of that for you.
[00:03:06] Or you show up as someone who's always looking for another opportunity. And that's not to say you want to be ungrateful or not committed to the work that you are doing, but you're always looking for that next step that. The project you are working on is not pushing you or you can see opportunities for the business that you could influence.
[00:03:30] It's always worth exploring those. So yeah, this is an interesting topic to dive into.
[00:03:35] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah, I think some people do get lucky and they do have employers who have their future completely mapped out for them, and I've seen that often happens with people who started as graduates. They enter into a graduate program and they do get put on a fast track to. Executive leadership, for example, but I've found it's actually very difficult if you didn't end up on one of those tracks, especially if you move jobs later in your career. Even anytime beyond pretty much late twenties, you don't have that nice career track mapped out for you. So you actually do have to take the responsibility, otherwise you can just end up falling into the trap of becoming a tactical resource who's there to support others.
[00:04:23] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah, and I think being in one place for a long time you can tend to, sometimes the benefit of that is that you'll sort of unintentionally inherit someone who may act as a mentor. And may might open those doors that are a little bit further ahead for you, and so you can lose that thread if you are moving between roles.
[00:04:43] So that's tricky. If I talk about it from where a solo business owner would approach this kind of thing. In a solo business sense, so as someone who's basically responsible for everything in their business, I'll speak from my perspective.
[00:04:58] So there are very few things that I outsource. I outsource bookkeeping because I'm not an accountant and I have no aspiration to be. I occasionally outsource some things around marketing with regard to strategy. But otherwise, I'm doing everything in here. I'm doing the sales, the delivery any invoicing and all that kind of stuff that would ordinarily fall into a department in a company.
[00:05:22] That all falls on your lap as a solo business owner. And one of the things that is obviously critical is. Making sure that the next project or the next set of projects are lined up. Otherwise you have no business to run. So, to your point, looking for opportunities, I work with creative types, so I work with designers copywriters, photographers, those kind of fields. So I'm in those communities a lot and I'm generally just sort of around answering questions, trying to be helpful without pushing what my services are.
[00:05:58] I'm just trying to be there to help. And if I bring that back to when I was an employee. The areas where I was hanging out were work. So I was at work and what I was trying to do at work was generally be helpful. I didn't have anything to sell, but I was there to be that resource. I was there to be the designer or the marketing support or whatever my role was at the time, and I'm just listening and I'm trying to help and.
[00:06:25] I hear the sales team saying that they're going to a meeting, they've got a presentation and they're gonna try and sell. I used to work in publications, so they're gonna try and sell eight page spread in the middle of this publication. And I hear them talking about it and I hear them strategizing and thinking about tactics and whatever.
[00:06:40] And I'm listening and I say, would a mockup of one that we did previously help you? And they might say, yes, that would be really good if we can bring an example. So it's just a small example to say that I'm just listening for opportunities where I can be helpful. And what that will lead to inevitably is
[00:06:55] when they sell that insert, then in inverted commas, I get the job of building the product, of building the thing. So I dunno if that tracks with how it works in data science. But for me, it's just keeping your ears open for opportunities within the building.
[00:07:11] Dr Genevieve Hayes: I would agree with you a hundred percent. Everything you described is what I've experienced both as a solo data scientist and working in industry. So. I also have a solo business. The only thing I outsource is my tax accounting because I'm scared of violating some sort of tax law and
[00:07:32] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:07:34] Dr Genevieve Hayes: But yeah, I do everything else myself. And I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn looking for opportunities, but the equivalent of LinkedIn within a. Office job is the corridors that you walk around the lunchroom, that you toast your sandwich in, everything like that.
[00:07:52] And in all those jobs, I spent a lot of time just having corridor chats with people, having chats in the lunchroom. It wasn't with some ulterior motive, I genuinely wanted to get to know these people, but through getting to know these people, it allowed me to understand. What their problems were.
[00:08:14] In some cases I'd just say, oh, have you thought about solving it this way? Which would end up with me being on that particular project, or in some cases just because they knew me better than anyone else. When they did have some problem, they'd say, oh, I know Genevieve can solve that. Let's go over to her and see if she can create this solution that we need.
[00:08:37] Danny Ruspandini: Right. So you're then becoming the go-to person within the company where people know if an opportunity. Has come up and they don't have an avenue to go down, you're probably a pretty good first port of call to run it past.
[00:08:48] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah, and the fact of the matter is if I look back at the people that I ended up doing work for, it was predominantly people who I already had that networking relationship with. It wasn't just some random person who I'd never spoke to in my life who had to ask directions to my desk.
[00:09:06] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah. Right.
[00:09:07] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah.
[00:09:08] Danny Ruspandini: This brings up something to share a little bit about the background of how I ended up as a mentor. So my 20 years of background is in graphic design and brand design. And I've run a business for a bit over a decade. And so people say, what do you say to people when you're at parties?
[00:09:25] And usually I don't like to talk about myself. I usually like to ask the other person about what they're doing and if there's any. Part of them that says they're either running a business or thinking of running a business or anything related to them being involved in owning a business. I kind of get glued.
[00:09:45] It's like a nerd out topic for me. I just wanna sit there and talk to them all day long about it, and I want to ask them questions. And it's something that I realized years after I was doing it that I genuinely show up for that. I'm not fishing for opportunities.
[00:09:59] I never had opportunities to offer them. I just liked the topic of business. I liked hearing how people came up with their products, how they do their marketing, where they find their customers, how they spend their time during the day, delivering all that stuff. So it's a real nerd out topic for me, and that is what kind of led me to coaching and mentoring.
[00:10:19] Because I was doing that mentoring informally. And to me that's how they're listening out for opportunities kind of thing shows up, if that makes sense. 'Cause we've talked about how you do it inside the office. You do that by being just a kind, nice, normal person who has regular conversations with people and.
[00:10:40] As you find opportunities. And it's not about finding opportunities in a selfish kind of way. If you're thinking about your career advances forward, as the company advances forward, you create opportunities for the company to grow or expand or market itself into a new area.
[00:10:58] And that's a new skill that you are gonna get to play in that. As you said earlier, that person who is bringing you projects probably wouldn't have thought to bring you.
[00:11:09] So that's the skill that I've. Inadvertently tuned where I'm. Having a genuine conversation with someone really enjoying that conversation and just showing up as a person who's listening.
[00:11:22] Where the opportunities came for me was later on where I realized I was having a lot of those conversations over and over and over again. I could hear the same things that people were struggling with over and over again in these conversations that I was just having as a friend. Then a lot of my coaching and mentoring products came from looking back on those conversations and saying People struggle with building products.
[00:11:44] People struggle with pricing. People struggle with guarantees. And that's where my products have come from. So within the work setting, it's a similar kind of thing where you talk to the sales team and they're always struggling to get something over the line because they don't have a physical thing to show.
[00:12:01] So eventually I started saying, how about I just make a physical thing for you to bring into your meeting with the marketing team? They have their specific challenges and we're just talking at the pub, or we're just talking at lunch or whatever, and they're saying, gosh, it's really hard selling these subscriptions.
[00:12:15] And I'm just like, okay, well what do you need? What would make it easier? And it's just an open conversation about. How can we help? So that's in my world anyway. I imagine the data science world is a little different 'cause I can create marketing assets to help the marketing team. But how does that work in data
[00:12:32] Dr Genevieve Hayes: exactly the same. I remember one project that I ended up working on. I was working with my counterpart in another team, and so. I was doing insurance pricing. They were doing the estimates of the future costs of insurance claims and their estimates fed into my pricing model.
[00:12:50] And there was one particular type of claim that was just going really bad, and we were both getting complaints from policy holders about it. And so I spent so much time on the phone to this guy just trying to sort it out, each of us could see. The problem from a different angle and eventually between us, we figured out the solution and.
[00:13:14] His model was built by a external consultancy. At this time, I think 10% of the staff ended up being made redundant. So we're going through massive job cuts. So there was no budget for external consultants. And I'm like, okay I could just build that model for you. It's just using these skills that I used in my PhD,
[00:13:33] and I mentioned that to his boss and she's like, okay. Sounds good. Go do it. And that's exactly what you just described there, just with data stuff.
[00:13:45] Danny Ruspandini: Something you just said then was a something I was thinking about where you went one step beyond the person you were working with, so you spoke to their boss.
[00:13:53] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yes. We were all in a big conversation. I wasn't actually going over
[00:13:56] Danny Ruspandini: Not going over his head. No. But sort of going a little further down the line. So this is probably a concept that would come in from solar business operation, is that we typically want to get an okay or a yes, an approval from the person who can say yes and not necessarily someone who's not in control.
[00:14:16] If you're at the point where I'm about to sell one of my services to a company, I obviously need the Yes from the CFO, the financial person rather than the project manager who doesn't really have a say in what money gets spent on what.
[00:14:32] Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But you wanna be talking to the right person. So just what you mentioned then, not about going over the person's head, but just being aware of who the person is that will ultimately have to say yes to the project you're proposing. There's a guy called Martin Stella who talks about sales for nice people.
[00:14:49] It's a beautiful framework and he talks about this thing called the. Secondary sale. And what he means by that is almost that exact scenario that you've just described then. So say your project manager who you are working with, and you've come up with a solution with that person and you both agree, yes, this is good, this is what needs to happen.
[00:15:07] Then that person's boss is the person who ultimately says, yes we can afford to fund this. So what the secondary sale is, is you assume that when. Your project manager and their boss have that conversation, you assume that you're not gonna be in the room. So you arm them with whatever tools and one page documents or whatever information they need to get that project over the line with their boss in the same way that you would if you were in the room.
[00:15:37] So you just give them the tools to be able to close that deal essentially. Does that make sense?
[00:15:42] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah. So it's a sale once removed. I get it.
[00:15:45] Danny Ruspandini: Kind of, yeah. It's like you assume that you're not always gonna be there to explain your part.
[00:15:50] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yes.
[00:15:51] Danny Ruspandini: So the person who's gonna be asking for the sign off. They're able to present it in the way that you would have if you were there.
[00:15:58] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Oh, okay. So it's giving them, say a briefing pack or some sort of documentation that they can
[00:16:03] Danny Ruspandini: Or a one pager or, and just thinking about what that secondary person said, their boss, what kind of things they're gonna be considering, when they're deciding whether it's a yes or a no. Is it just financial? Is it resources? Is it three or four other things? And then just sort of preempting what those discussion points are gonna be.
[00:16:21] Dr Genevieve Hayes: That's interesting. Reflecting back on my time when I was working in traditional employment I can see one of the things that I often did without even thinking about it was because a lot of people really struggled to communicate data science concepts. I would often write paragraphs that.
[00:16:42] These people who were trying to get approval for things I wanted to do could just cut and paste into reports and stuff. So what I was effectively doing there was making that secondary sale even without realizing it.
[00:16:55] Danny Ruspandini: Mean, right, right.
[00:16:57] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Ah.
[00:16:58] Danny Ruspandini: So again, as a solo business owner, we often have to deal with, if we're not talking to the financial controller we're talking to a project manager or someone who has to then go and seek approval. Then as much as possible, you ask them about what that person is gonna need, what they're gonna be looking for, to be able to sign off your project, and
[00:17:20] you help them do that.
[00:17:21] Dr Genevieve Hayes: If you can get in the same room as the person who is gonna do the signing off, then even better.
[00:17:27] Danny Ruspandini: Potentially. Yeah. Yeah. Depends on your business model there that's a bit more business tactic. 'cause for me personally, I don't like to be in those rooms. I like to be in as few rooms as possible. So I like to arm people with that kind of information. But yes, ideally, yeah.
[00:17:41] Dr Genevieve Hayes: One thing I've found being a data person, because often the person that you're dealing with. Doesn't understand data and isn't comfortable talking about it. They often do drag you into rooms to actually do the speaking yourself, because they're like, yeah, I'm gonna make a mess of this.
[00:17:55] Yeah. Can you just explain this to my boss? Yeah.
[00:17:58] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah, well okay, so pulling another idea from business sales it's absolutely no different when you're in employment. Is, what you're talking about there is the moving parts of how you're gonna build a particular tool, but why are you building this tool in the first place?
[00:18:13] What's the benefit? What's the reason that someone higher up would say, we absolutely need this tool? So then that secondary sale, you're kind of more talking about what's the benefit to the company, which is kind of, your original question, what's the benefit to the company and why are we gonna run this project Now, Genevieve becomes the person that we come to.
[00:18:32] Tactically, but what is the outcome? We don't really need to know how she's gonna do it right now. We just wanna know why we're doing it at all.
[00:18:39] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And that's things like increasing profits, reducing expenses, reducing risk reducing complaints.
[00:18:47] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Benefit. Benefit, yep. Bang on.
[00:18:51] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Awesome. So I'm sure you've worked with dozens of solopreneurs over the years. What are the top three skills that you work with your solo clients to build that you think employed data scientists should also be developing? I.
[00:19:06] Danny Ruspandini: That is a lovely question. And it's. One that's actually really tricky to get people to kind of see and then commit to. And one of the reasons I call my program when shiny object, is there are a lot of potential projects and potential benefits and opportunities that we could chase.
[00:19:23] And the short answer to your question is to focus on 1 thing at a time. As humans, we can only put our attention on one thing at any given moment, and particularly with people like, so I know designers and photographers very well. They've always got a lot of projects on the go.
[00:19:41] They're always got multiple clients on the go and they're trying to think of everything all at once. And for business owners anyway, and I'll come back to employees. For business owners, I get them to focus on one particular product. That they can sell over and over again. It's kind of how I was saying I was seeing the same questions come up in my conversations at parties and whatever.
[00:20:02] So they're looking for the same kind of project that they've delivered many times and turning that into a product and that becomes a thing they can market as an employee. Focusing on, so like your example, focusing on was that a project manager that you worked with or who that, that person that you worked with.
[00:20:18] Dr Genevieve Hayes: He was actually a data analyst.
[00:20:20] Danny Ruspandini: Whatever that person needs. Focusing on that one product that has a benefit that can move the company forward. I know it's simple to say and it's really hard to implement.
[00:20:30] It's probably a little bit easier as a business owner because you can sort of switch off certain client requests for a few days or a few weeks while you focus on your one thing and hone your one thing or dedicate certain days of the week to focusing on your one thing.
[00:20:48] But within the framework that I teach, the one thing eventually can grow into more products. And I imagine it's the same thing as an employee. Once you've focused down on one benefit or one problem that you're solving then there are multiple ways you can solve it. You can explore all the ways.
[00:21:03] So let's say the benefit that you are exploring is minimizing expenses. For the company, that's the benefit that you're shooting for. And if you focus in and say, okay, for Monday and Tuesday, every week, I'm gonna focus on finding ways to reduce expenses, then you have multiple ways that you can do that.
[00:21:25] But you've focused on one thing that you wanna solve.
[00:21:28] Dr Genevieve Hayes: A really good. This, this was, uh. actuary within my team. So in insurance, basically, you know how a individual would take out insurance to insure their house or car or whatever. Insurers will also take out their own insurance to insure against everyone claiming at once. And that's called reinsurance.
[00:21:53] So it's basically insurance for. Insurers and I was running a insurance pricing team and one of the members of my team, his background was working in reinsurance consultancy and within this team, just like you say, that.
[00:22:10] Your creative clients have lots of projects on the go. Everyone in my team had lots of projects on the go, but one of the things this staff member did was he started applying some of the techniques that he'd learned in his previous job to the task at hand.
[00:22:29] So looking at how would he optimize the reinsurance of. This particular insurer, and even though he kept on going with his regular tasks, he just kept coming back to that one thing. You know, how does he apply these reinsurance consulting principles to the current organization? And he did that once in a small way, and then that got traction, so he did it again in a bigger way, and he eventually carved himself a niche in that.
[00:23:00] Reinsurance space. And that's, a way that data scientists can do that within an organization. Yes, you're gonna have 2 million projects on the go Do automate as many of them as you can, but keep in mind that what you really wanna be aiming for is having a signature. Service, so to speak, that you become the expert on within your organization, and that could be like you're referring to before, you said that you got into the business coaching because that was what you are really attracted to and what gave you energy.
[00:23:37] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah, that's it.
[00:23:38] Dr Genevieve Hayes: If there's some sort of problem that you see within the organization where solving that problem gives you energy and you get good feedback from the people who are getting the solutions, then that's probably gonna be a good fit, and that can become your one shiny object that you build your career around.
[00:23:56] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah, you've said it beautifully, like you can't switch off the other work. And even with my clients, I never recommend that. We never try and throw all. The other stuff out and focus on one thing solely, but you carve out time to work on that one thing. Find out what it is.
[00:24:11] Like you say, there's something that lights you up and it's probably something that you naturally discuss or something that just bugs you when you see it. That it needs to be fixed and make it your little mission to solve that. However you can.
[00:24:27] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah, I mean, that's it. If you can find something that's your vision, then you're set.
[00:24:33] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah. Yeah. Particularly something that bugs you.
[00:24:36] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Oh yeah. Have you read zero to One by Peter Thiel?
[00:24:40] Danny Ruspandini: I have a long time ago. Yeah.
[00:24:41] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah, he's, he talks about the importance of having a vision so you focus on this one vision, and if you put all your effort into that rather than diversifying, then that's how you create. These wonderful monopoly businesses like PayPal and things like that,
[00:24:59] Danny Ruspandini: Right.
[00:24:59] Dr Genevieve Hayes: okay?
[00:25:00] Most of us are not gonna be able to create PayPal. Let's just agree on
[00:25:04] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah. And, and the one thing you focus on will probably change over time as well. If we've got time for one more quick example. When I was in publishing, we spent three to five days putting a publication to print from start to finish, and it was too slow.
[00:25:18] So one of my jobs that I became a little bit obsessed about was bringing that production time down, and it was about creating systems and sign off processes and things like that. But we got it down to two to three days which allowed us to then take on more publications. So it was a short term obsession, mini obsession to get that publication time down.
[00:25:39] And it was probably about four or five months or something. And then there were other things that we focused on, but for that short period of time, that was the one thing.
[00:25:47] Dr Genevieve Hayes: But that obsession you describe, that's what people respond to. People mirror the other person's energy. Have you noticed that in conversations, if you have someone, be it a friend, family member, coworker, whatever, who comes to you and it's like talking to Eeyore, you come outta that conversation feeling like you are Eeyore.
[00:26:09] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah. Yeah. It drains you down.
[00:26:12] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah. Whereas if you go into something and you're like, Tigger, then everyone wants to get on board those Tigger projects because the energy transfers and people feel energized after they've spoken to someone.
[00:26:27] Danny Ruspandini: Especially if you're talking about making someone's job easier or quicker
[00:26:31] Dr Genevieve Hayes: yeah, I've had that feedback with projects that I've pitched. I remember pitching a particular project, which was expanding the data science capabilities of an organization that I worked at and. It was about a year afterwards speaking to the head of HR who was at the executive meeting where I pitched this, and he said to me, I remember you coming into the executive meeting and pitching that, and I remember how excited you were about this opportunity and we all wanted to get on board because that made us feel excited about it as well.
[00:27:08] Danny Ruspandini: Very cool, very cool. Yeah, I think that's a bit of that. The things that light you up or that nerd you out or whatever that is, that's just naturally gonna show up, isn't it?
[00:27:18] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And no one can compete against that. If you are that into something, someone who's just doing something in order to tick the boxes is never gonna be able to beat you because they're doing the bare minimum. Whereas if it's causing you to nerd out, then you are going to go above and beyond just. Because that's what you want to do.
[00:27:37] Danny Ruspandini: Think you're right.
[00:27:39] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So for our listeners who are thinking, okay, I wanna start treating my career like a business, what's one step they can take tomorrow to start making this a reality?
[00:27:49] Danny Ruspandini: I think what we've been talking about. Finding a thing that either bugs you or that you really wanna improve or that you just want to become a part of. Find that thing and find your way in. Whether that's through a mentor inside the company or just by pitching an idea, like you said, find the one thing that you can influence that will drive the company forward, will let you shine some of your superpowers and focus on that for at least a short amount of time.
[00:28:20] Dr Genevieve Hayes: I would agree with that. So for listeners who wanna get in contact with you, Danny, what can they do?
[00:28:25] Danny Ruspandini: Yeah. Well, I'm on LinkedIn. I might be a little bit hard to find with my funny surname, but,
[00:28:29] Dr Genevieve Hayes: i'll put a link in the show notes.
[00:28:31] Danny Ruspandini: Thank you. If anyone wants to grab the framework, we've referenced a few times the one shiny object framework that's at iLabs, dot CC slash framework, so iLabs as in Impact Labs.
[00:28:42] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And I will also put a link to that in the show notes. So yeah, and I've downloaded it. It's a good read.
[00:28:48] Danny Ruspandini: Thank you.
[00:28:50] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And there you have it. Another value packed episode to help turn your data skills into serious clout, cash, and career freedom. If you enjoyed this episode, why not make it a double next week? Catch Danny's value boost a 10 minute episode where he shares one powerful tip for getting real results real fast.
[00:29:11] Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it. Thanks for joining me today, Danny.
[00:29:16] Danny Ruspandini: Thank you.
[00:29:18] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And for those in the audience, thanks for listening. I'm Dr. Genevieve Hayes, and this has been Value-Driven Data Science.