137: Get PAID $1000s to Master Data Analytics Skills in 2025?

So you want to be a data analyst. Well, there are three main ways that you can learn to become one. Number one, you can learn for free. Number two, you can pay to learn. And three, my personal favorite is to get paid to learn. And in my opinion, this is the best option. I mean, who wouldn't want to learn? To get paid to become a data analyst, but it might seem impossible, right? But in today's video, we'll discuss how I did that and how you can do the same, but let's start with ways to learn for free. There are lots of really cool ways to learn online. And if you're listening or watching this on YouTube or via your podcast player, you found the two best resources in my mind. YouTube and podcasts are free education that honestly, A lot of the time are better than the Ivy league educations, in my opinion. So if you enjoy learning for free and you enjoy learning on YouTube or via podcasts, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Subscribe to my channel because every week I am putting out free new data content and it'll help you learn. Now, of course, there are other resources like Khan Academy or W3 that will help you learn as well. These have pros and cons. The pro is it's free and it's easy to access. The cons are obviously there's not really any help if you get stuck. And some of the material can be a little bit superficial sometimes. And if you're feeling that way, well then of course you can pay to learn. There are so many ways to pay to learn. The number one way probably is by getting a college degree. In the past for data, most of the college degrees were like master's degrees or PhDs or something like that. But now there's a lot of undergrads in data science and data analytics as well. These routes are probably going to be the most expensive and they're going to range probably from 20, 000 to maybe 60, 000. There are some degrees that are going to be a little bit less, but regardless, this is a pretty expensive decision because you're going to be having a professor, you're going to be having TAs. You're going to be on campus a lot of the time, and it's just pricey. Then, of course, there are boot camps. A lot of these boot camps are going to range between 10, 000 to 30, 000. It's basically like a college experience packaged into a 6 to 12 month experience. A lot of these are going to be from universities, but they're actually not ran by the university. But they can be just fine, but unless you do a bootcamp like mine, the data analytic accelerator, that's affordable, it's going to be quite pricey. If you want to check out my bootcamp, you can look in the show notes down below. I tried to make it as good as a regular bootcamp, but at a fraction of the price. Then of course, there's the Google data analytics certificate or the IBM data analyst certificate or whatever. There's all these different little mini courses that you can take. These are obviously a lot cheaper, but once again, do not have any of the hands on. So you're kind of back to the free boat. It's just like premium free, basically, at that point, I don't actually recommend the Google data analytics, sir, or the IBM, sir, because I don't think they actually teach you all that much useful stuff. Sure. It's good stuff, but they give you too much. It takes too long and they're not teaching you the right stuff, but that's for another video. Let's talk about getting paid to learn. What do exactly do I mean by that? And here's the truth. It's going to be pretty rare for you to get paid to learn data unless you are employed in a data position. And that kind of seems like a chicken or the egg thing where it's like, or how am I going to get paid to learn data unless I have a data position? Well, I did a position. I probably already know data. And that's only half true. The truth is there's actually lots of data jobs where you don't have to know. All that much. You definitely have to know something, but you don't have to know everything. So it's like, there's data jobs out there where you only have to use Excel, or you only have to use Tableau, or you only have to use SQL. You don't need to learn Excel, SQL, Tableau, Python, R, JavaScript, Power BI, SAS. all these different tools, it's not going to happen. It's impossible to learn all those things and it's going to take you way too much time. So instead you can just learn the basics. You can just learn one and then get paid to learn the rest of those on the job. And you might be thinking, Avery, I don't believe you. Like how the heck, why are these companies going to hire me? Why are they going to pay me to learn these things? And it's actually very common in the data industry. Companies want their analysts. To learn and improve. And it's really a win win for everyone. If you want to look at it optimistically, it's very positive for them because you are improving and they're excited to have you improve and they're excited for you to continue to add to their organization. If you want to look at it cynically, you can think of they're hiring you underqualified and they're not going to pay you as much because you don't have all the requirements or you don't have all that experience. And it's actually cheaper. To hire you and train you than it is to hire someone who already knows and who's already qualified. They're just not going to bump you up nearly as much when you get qualified as they would hiring qualified. That's a cynical way of looking at it, but either way you want to frame it. These companies want to teach you. They want to help you improve. And the truth is, if they didn't, they would be screwed to be honest, because data is always evolving. Like it is impossible. To be in the data space and stay stagnant. If you stay stagnant, if you don't learn, you're going to fall off. And data is money. They can't afford to not be performing well in their data analytics division. So they're going to help you learn. So let's talk about the three different ways that they're going to help you learn on the job. Number one, companies will pay for your courses. And this can happen in a couple of different ways. When I worked for ExxonMobil, they honestly paid for my learning all the time. A very simple way that they'd pay for my learning is everyone at the company has a LinkedIn Learning account. Basically, Exxon pays LinkedIn a bajillion dollars a year for all of their employees to have unlimited access to all of LinkedIn Learning. So instead of paying whatever the 40 bucks a month it is to have access to LinkedIn Premium, including LinkedIn Learning, you get that for free. So when I was at Exxon Mobile, I took a Power BI course, I took a stats course, I didn't have to pay for any of them. They'll also pay for maybe like in person training. So actually when I was at Exxon again, I had the opportunity to go to downtown Houston and attend a two day seminar from the godfather of data visualization, Edward Tufte. In that training, I actually got all four of Edward Tufte's books, and I actually got to hear from him and learn, and I took so many notes, and I became so much better at data visualization. And I didn't pay A dollar for that training and actually when I was at the training, I still got my, you know, salary. It's not like I had to take off work to go to that training. It was absolutely unbelievable. Way number two that a company will actually pay you to learn is they'll pay for a degree. A lot of the times this will be a master's, but sometimes it can be a bachelor's degree as well. So this happened to me when I was at ExxonMobil, they helped pay for my master's in data analytics, even though I already had a data job, they were encouraging me to continue my education. This actually occurred with one of my students, Rachel Finch. Let's listen to what happened to her. You have a pretty fun announcement in your learning journey as well. You want to share with the audience?

Yeah. So I started my master's in analytics just a week ago now through Georgia Tech. So I will be taking that journey for a while. But I'm really excited about that too. And that was one of the, you know, negotiation points is after six months, my company gives a really large stipend towards education, which was just like what I would have had at Anheuser Busch is just a fraction compared to this. So it really am getting paid to learn that and in downtime on my job, they promote like the LinkedIn learning courses, get to watch a bunch of tutorials and Tableau and Power BI. So. Really what you say about getting paid to learn is such a big thing.

And this is totally common. A lot of the times companies will pay for master's degrees. A lot of the times you have to stay at the company X amount of years to get that full tuition reimbursement. But this is a great option, especially if you want to get a master's degree. The third way that a company will pay you to learn on the job is you just will learn on the job. Like that's just part of it. Like you cannot do your job without learning. And so I'm actually kind of embarrassed to admit this, but when I started my data job, I didn't know SQL at all, but obviously I had to figure out how to use it because they were using it on the job. And so I kind of just figured it out. Like I had some, my teammates helped me and show me, Oh yeah, this is how, you know, you write SQL code and your teammates, your peers, they're more than willing to help. And of course you can just use Google, any of the free resources that we talked about earlier to be learning these things. Instead of learning them on your own time and on your own dime, you're learning them at work, at a work computer, at your desk, on work hours, and man, that clock is ticking and you are making some cash along the way. So all this to say, my philosophy is let's get your foot in the data door as quickly as possible by only learning the bare minimum. Minimum, the basics, because you can spend the rest of your life learning Python, learning machine learning, learning D3, learning data visualization, whatever it is, mastering SQL, even like that stuff takes a lot of time and you don't have a lot of time. You don't have a lot of money. We got to get you in making more money as quickly as possible. So that way you can provide for your family. You can spend on yourself, treat yourself, go on a vacation. Like we need you learning on the company dime as soon as possible. And the way that you do that. is by learning the bare minimum and landing a data job as quickly as possible and then getting paid to learn the rest on the job. That's actually my whole philosophy behind my bootcamp data analytic accelerator is like, I want to teach you the bare minimum that you need to land a job. So we focus on Excel, SQL, and Tableau. We build projects, we focus on networking, and we're trying to get you a job as quickly as possible so you can learn the rest on the job. If you're thinking, Avery, how the heck do I do this? I understand. I want to do it, but how do I do it? Well, I have good news. I encourage you to sign up for my free data career newsletter, where I share strategies on how to do this every single week, all for free. And if you're ready to start learning the basics, I suggest that you start with this episode here on what data skills you should know and how to get started. I'll have that linked in the show notes down below as well. Good luck to you guys. And let me know how I can help in the comments down below.