Sailing into a Job with Navy Data!

Breaking into analytics isn’t easy—especially fresh out of school. In this episode of the Data Career Academy Podcast, I sit down with Aidan Karmazinski, now a Financial Analyst with NAVFAC (Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command), to hear how he went from applying everywhere with little success to landing a role with the U.S. Navy.

Aidan walks us through his journey: growing up in Maryland, studying business and accounting at Greensboro College, discovering analytics, and pursuing a master’s in Business Analytics at the University of North Florida. Like many new graduates, he started his job hunt with the “spray and pray” method—submitting endless online applications with little to show for it. After weeks of frustration, he changed course, asked for help at UNF Career Services, and discovered the power of in-person connections.

That decision paid off. At a career fair, Aidan struck up an hour-long conversation with the hiring manager who would become his boss. The discussion flowed naturally, mixing analytics ideas with real-world problem-solving and even a shared love of lacrosse. It turned into the opportunity that launched his career.

In this episode, Aidan shares what he learned about refining his job search, balancing technical and soft skills, and why face-to-face conversations reveal more than résumés or Zoom calls ever could. He also opens up about the challenges of starting out—like being humbled in technical interviews, figuring out which skills truly matter, and learning to provide insights that go beyond simply pulling reports.

Along the way, we talk about:

• Why changing tactics is better than doubling down on what isn’t working
• How to prepare for interviews without overselling skills you can’t defend
• The difference between “qualified on paper” and “the right fit”
• Using extracurriculars to show leadership and discipline (and why it worked for him)
• The importance of daily value creation: success at work is always rented, never owned

Aidan also highlights NAVFAC’s Financial Management Career Program, which gave him the chance to rotate through contracting, HR, budgeting, and analytics, and how those experiences accelerated his learning. On the personal side, he plugs his parents’ nonprofit, HHI Incorporated, which helps adults with special needs find employment—including his brother Alex, who has thrived thanks to the program.

If you’re an early-career data professional—or just feeling stuck in the job hunt—you’ll find practical lessons, encouragement, and a reminder that the right opportunity often comes from human connection, not endless online applications.

For more episodes and resources, visit themajordata.com or join my LinkedIn group for first looks at what I’m working on.

Semper Fidelis,
 Albert Bellamy

Transcript

Transcription
Hello, and welcome to the Data Career Academy podcast. This is a show dedicated to closing the information gap between data job seekers and hiring authorities about the challenging data analytics job market. My name's Albert Bellamy, I'm the host of the show. And it's my goal to highlight aspiring data analysts and their abilities in order to get them hired, to spotlight recent hires and how they successfully navigated the hiring process, as well as to find out from real industry experts what the job market looks like from the hiring side and how all of that can benefit you, the listener. So let's get into today's episode. Okay, welcome to the show, Aidan Karmazinsky. Nailed it. We did not sort out the name pronunciation. I've had a few doozies lately, so usually I make sure I know how to pronounce, but awesome. First chance there. I do have a little Polish and German blood in me, so I can get the Eastern European names. Yeah, I'm good with those. So, Aiden, yeah, great to have you on the show. We've been kind of Going back and forth for a little while trying to get things worked out. Wasn't sure we'd ever finally get the connection going. And sure enough, we managed to put it together. Welcome. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here. Glad it all worked out. Like you said, it was just scheduling stuff and, you know, life can get a little crazy. But I've been looking forward to this for a long time. So I'm looking forward to the opportunity to sit down and have a chat. Yeah. Don't worry. I didn't take it personally. Thank you. So Aiden is a financial analyst working at NavFact, which is quite interesting. Aiden and I have a bit of common history. We date back to days in Greensboro, and I was not in Greensboro, but working with John David Arianson and always liked to, I don't think we ever connected back in the day, but always liked to kind of bring the clan back together and make sure everybody's doing well. So Aiden, can you tell the podcast listeners a little bit about yourself? Yeah. Well, hello, my name is Aiden Karmazensky. I want to thank you again for having me on. I'm originally from right outside of Baltimore, Maryland, and went to school in Greensboro, North Carolina, where I met John David and got started on this track towards analytics. Initially, I was a business and accounting major. And I knew I wanted to do something a little different, but that general sphere is where I wanted to pursue. And then my school added a minor in business analytics and I've been hooked ever since. So went and graduated from there, went, moved to Jacksonville, Florida, got my master's in business analytics from the university of North Florida, and then started rolling into the job search, which is always a fun time. And met my now boss at a career fair and get to go and be a civilian working for the Navy. It's, It's been a very awesome experience. It's been great getting out of school and getting rolling. And I've learned a lot and I've learned what I know. And more importantly, I've learned what I don't know. And so trying to shrink what I don't know down as much as possible as any new hire I feel typically does. But so far, so good. Yeah, you've crested the Dunning-Kruger curve and you're looking into the valley and like, oh boy, so much to learn. Yeah. Yeah. So how long, so I said NAVFAC, me, you know, default right back into my military acronyms. So it is, tell the people what NAVFAC is. It's Naval Facilities and Engineering Command, which shocked me because that doesn't spell out NAVFAC. It doesn't. No, the Navy likes to do those little like three letter chunks. They don't do acronyms like normal folks. If I don't have to talk about Navy acronyms, I'll be happy. I know you understand. It's totally smart. Yeah, Marines don't like Navy acronyms either. It's like, why would you take little syllables? That doesn't make any sense. Oh my gosh, yeah. It's a whole ordeal. That was probably, honestly, other than just the technical side of things and the business function, the acronyms have been the most difficult part to learn. Yes, indeed. I could tell you some great stories about back in the days when we had physical paper publications checking into schools and having whole books of nothing but acronyms and terms and yeah, no, it's no fun. Um, I'm sure they're all electronic now, uh, the times being what they are. Um, so tell us how long, so you alluded to, you are not brand new at this job. It has been a little while. Um, so how long have you been at the job? You're, you're obviously, uh, you know, developed some expertise there already. Yeah. So I've been at the job for about 14 months now coming up on 15. Cool. Um, started three months out of school um once we got the ball rolling now it's uh started out everything was basically in greek that i was trying to learn i you know you understand the technical side but the actual business process side is a whole different ball game yeah and you know if you want to analyze you're going to be a data analyst or financial analyst understanding what the data means is arguably more important than being able to process the data in my opinion so uh it's been a It's been a great experience. I've been able to do different rotations. I'm in a new hire program called the Financial Management Career Program. I was able to rotate around. I've done two months in contracting. I got to go work in HR for a little bit. Got to work with our budgeting office and get to travel up to Norfolk in January. So get to go meet with their analytics team up there, which they run the analytics for most of the, most of NAPFAC just out of there. So it's an exciting experience. It's been a great learning experience. But, yeah, you know, it's been 15 months. It's flown by. Okay. Every day learning something new. So you graduated undergrad Greensboro College in 22. Then you went down. So you went straight into your master's program, like, full time? Yes, sir. Okay. And then graduated from that. So tell me about the job search because that's kind of the focus on the show. How was that for you? daunting to say the least uh when i first started i'm in the you know i went from greensboro to here and grew up in maryland so i didn't have as many local connections to play off of yeah so initially i tried doing what i'd imagine everybody does when they first start doing the job search and it's going on linkedin and going on indeed and applying to everything you can think of that looks like something you might want to do the old spray and pray oh my gosh i got so lost in the weeds it was incredible um so i got lucky though i went I asked for help, which, you know, it's hard to do. I didn't like doing it, but I went to the career offices at UNF and I met with a very nice lady and I just told her, I said, look, I've been, you know, I got my master's and it's been two, at the time it had been two and a half months and I hadn't found any job offers and I was hoping to connect with some alumni or something. And she said, here's a career fair. It's coming up in March. This is a great place for you to start. And then, you know, nothing comes out of it. Come on back and we'll figure something else out. And so I went to the career fair and I talked to my now boss for about an hour. And we hit it off. And from there, it was smooth sailing. But getting to that point, it was like pulling teeth. So how long did you spend doing a volume application process? And did you get any response from that? I would have been about two months, a month and a half. And yes, I did get some responses. There were a few companies local. It was another company that had a similar career program to what I'm in now. And so I got to a couple different rounds of interviews. Some were very quick and brief and it was kind of in, not a great fit. And I was told respectfully that they were going to pursue other avenues. And then there were other ones where I went to multiple rounds and just didn't get the job offer at the end. Okay. So enough progress to keep looking, but not, you know, With other options where I'd be like, oh, I'm so qualified for this. This fits everything I want to do. This is all my technical qualifications. It's an industry I'd like to work in, and you'd hear nothing. Yeah. That would be a little disheartening, but it was a pretty broad range. I'd say most of it was when I did a little Googling and found out about certain sketchier job postings with stuff and reposts and that kind of thing. I was like, okay, this is starting to make a slight bit more sense, but I didn't fully understand how competitive it was going to be. You don't know what you don't know. It was humbling, for sure. It was very humbling. Okay. Yeah, good to know. Did you get any feedback from you? You said they told you, hey, we're going in a different direction. Was there any reason why? Experience was the big one. I was fresh out of school and I hadn't had a job yet in the field. So I was trying to break in. And even newer jobs, they had people that were coming. If they didn't have direct analytics experience, they had financial experience or they had management experience or stuff like that. So that was the big one. It usually wasn't. No one said I was directly underqualified, but they hinted that I was not the most qualified. Yeah. And yeah, I did some content recently just talking about once you get, you know, getting into the interview room is about being being qualified on paper. You're submitting a resume. That's all they see of you. And so you don't have to be the best of the best to get down the funnel and actually get into the room once you're in the room. It's about being the best, but it's about being the best fit. So it's it's interesting that you highlighted, hey, went into a couple of interviews and the vibes just were not there. It was, you know, seemed a little off or, you know, it was kind of a shortish experience. And so, yeah, that that is the thing that I think people tend to discount that it sounds like you were tremendously technically qualified, but it just wasn't just didn't feel right for whatever reason. yeah no that was um it doesn't i never it's hard to not take it personal in the moment for sure but it's one of those things where it never came across as like a direct attack is so over the top but it wasn't a direct condemnation of like my character it was just it wasn't a good fit and there were some there were a few where i was like i don't know if i'd want to work there but there were a lot more where i think it was flipped and there's i don't know if this guy's the right fit um but yeah, it was just trying to pull stuff out of every interview and try and refine my job. That was the other thing too. It really helped refine my job search because I would go in and they would talk about the technical side of things. And I would realize that I was being a little too broad. Technically there was stuff that I wasn't as good at that they were really looking for. And I read the job interview or the job description solid, but I wasn't targeting my specific skills as much. So that was something I think I refined as we went along. Yeah, absolutely. And, um, Interesting. You identify, there were a couple of places where, you know, it wasn't just, it wasn't just them not feeling it with you, but it was, it was the other way around. Like you can pick up on the corporate culture in an interview and you as a candidate, you're fully able to say, Hey, this isn't going to work out for me. You're not, you're not a beggar. It's a negotiation. I'm lucky. My, my dad had a successful career and I'm very lucky to have him as a resource. And when I called him about it, I was talking about the interview. There was one that went poorly. Nothing bad, but just it wasn't. They asked questions I didn't know how to answer. It wasn't a great fit. It was just a bad interview. And I called my dad and I was so upset because I felt like it was all on me. And like, I messed it up and I definitely did. I did not do perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Sure. But he just said, you know, sometimes it's just not a good fit or it's not someplace you should work. That was what he was trying to hint at me. It's like, it doesn't sound like you would enjoy working there. So be upset that you didn't do great, but probably for the best. Yeah. And it sounds like you addressed that. certain shortcomings that you identified that, you know, even those interviews where maybe it was just a bad fit in general or you weren't feeling it or for whatever reason, it didn't wind up in a job match. You came away with certain lessons from it. Can you tell us what some of those maybe were other than obviously you identified that you needed to niche down a little bit? Yeah, niche down, definitely go in. I'd say a little more technically prepared in terms of it was first job. So the questions would be a lot of soft skills. And then I feel like I would do well with the soft skill questions and then the hard skills would come in. And I just didn't have, I didn't, I had the experience from school and doing projects in school. So I was able to speak on it a little bit, but I think if I had taken a little bit more time independently to really hone in on those and be able to talk about them a little bit more detailed, um, I think that would have been beneficial. Um, Do you remember what technical skills weren't up to par for some of these? What was it? Oh, something with machine learning. Okay. I'm trying to remember. I'm sorry. It's been a little bit. That's quite all right. Hey, this is over a year, man. I don't know. I can't remember what I had for breakfast this morning. But I referenced that I had an understanding of it and they asked me some more in-depth questions about it and I was not able to answer the in-depth questions. And that was one where it's like, okay, They always tell you, put whatever's on the job application on your resume. So it goes through the AI screener and all that fun stuff. But that doesn't, that sets you up to have an embarrassing question asked, which I can speak to. Absolutely. Yep. I've got a, that's not my story time, but I've definitely got a good story about something that I left on a resume. Honest mistake, but yeah, definitely led to an embarrassing situation like that. So yeah, you really want to make sure the stuff on your resume is you need to be able to talk about it in that interview. Yeah. You're going to embarrass yourself. Absolutely. Yeah. So awesome. I mean, all's well that ends well. What can you tell us about the interview at NavFac? Obviously. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, obviously it went better. Yeah. Well, the biggest thing, honestly, and it's, it's hard nowadays with all the online job postings, The difference between being in person talking to someone versus on a computer screen. I mean, I've been enjoying greatly our time talking on a computer screen, but it is not the same thing. So it's getting down and being able to kind of, you can talk, you don't have to worry about talking over with the audio cutting in and out and all that. It was just, we were able to have a free flowing conversation and it went down and he started, my boss was looking for people with analytic skills and he wanted data analysts to come in and help. kind of streamlined processes they had going on. That's what was all over my resume, and it's what I love to do, and it's what I love to talk about, and I love turning inefficiencies into efficiencies. And he would bring up some specifics from what they were doing, and I would bring up just some spitball ideas that I had just off of hearing what he had to say. And it was a better flow. I found a fit that someone that, I don't know, I guess matched my thought process, to put it. it was, uh, and then even like the soft skills. And then he saw like the, you know, then we just started talking and it was, he saw lacrosse on my resume and his son's played lacrosse. And we started talking about that and how that can relate into analytics and just, you know, you turn it, we turned it into an actual conversation as opposed to question, answer, question, answer, question, answer. You know what I mean? See, and that's interesting because I have my own biases. I do resumes for a living. So I have my own kind of, I have my own rules and then I have my own kind of things that I recommend for people. And one of the things that I'm generally pretty strict about is I don't believe in putting hobbies and recreational pursuits on a resume. So that is interesting that you managed to hit a touch point with him talking about, tell me about how you had lacrosse on your resume. Was it as an extracurricular? I got very lucky with that. It was, I received, I was an academic all American in college. So I put that down. Because I was like, that can translate. And then I was a team captain for two years in college. So I was able to put that down under leadership and under accolades. I was able to, I wanted to package it into no one's going to hire a lacrosse player because they quit lacrosse. Like that's not, you know, or whatever your hobby, if your hobby is canoeing, no one's going to hire you because you're great at canoeing. But if you can show why you've excelled in that hobby and what you've gotten out of it and what you can do to maybe translate that into future skills or future endeavors. I think that's where I was able to find the balance because I agree. And it was funny. I had everybody I know and their mother telling me, when I go into this career fair, do not bring up lacrosse. No matter what you do, do not bring it up. And I was like, of course, I'm not going to bring up, not going to go in and talk about anything like that. And of course, 10 minutes into my conversation, what does it start talking about? That's too funny. Yeah, that's awesome. But definitely in an accolade way, not in just a, yeah, I completely agree. Then no one needs to know you're happy. Well, I will say, you know, I feel like I'm self-aware enough that I thoroughly enjoy it when I find someone who has a contrary example to something because I always want to get better. And so, yeah, that was really interesting. But I'm going to turn this back to my own advantage. I always tell my students, my clients, it's all about portraying value. And so awesome that you you did kind of contrast or run counter to one of my biases. However, you turned it back to you use that to to express and communicate your value to an employer. And, you know, when you're coming out of school, there's just, there's only so many things you can put on your resume. I, you know, I flipped burgers at Wendy's. I like, you don't, you don't need, if you mowed people's lawns, that's not really communicating value. However, being an academic all American and a team captain shows a lot of noteworthy things about you. So kudos to you for sticking to your guns and Leaving lacrosse on your resume, at least for that first job. I don't think you'll need it so much in the future. Oh, it's never going back on the resume ever again. But hey, got your toe in the door. So well done with that. Okay. Yeah, talk about the, I mean, was there anything else noteworthy about the event itself? I mean, how did you feel? I know a lot of people kind of going into an in-person networking event, they're like, oh, this is kind of old school. I don't know if it's going to work out. already identified hey meeting someone face to face or some special sauce there um talk about that networking event what was that like for you it was great it was so nice it was it's all it's it's a little different i've been to some networking events that weren't career fairs and i enjoyed those and it was nice to get to meet people in similar industry and stuff like that but the career fair part i liked it because it almost not to oversimplify it, but it brought the LinkedIn and indeed job postings to right in front of me. So I was able to talk to people and instead of just sending an application, hoping I hear back, talked about what they do on a day to day. What is, you know, I didn't know what NAVFAC was when I went to this career fair. Most people don't know. It's funny. I tell people I work for NAVFAC and they're like, you're in the, they look at my hair and they're like, you're in the Navy. Like, no, not quite. Um, But they just seeing it in person, being able to talk, getting a better understanding of the jobs. And, you know, not everyone was hiring for what I was looking for. And that's OK, too. But just being able to kind of fully the dialogue before the formalities, I think, is very important because I think it was able to set stuff up and get a better understanding before we go to that formal sending in the application, going through the HR paper, going through the interview process where there's a list of questions I'm going to be asked. It was an opportunity just to kind of see what their corporate culture is like, see if I'd be a good fit, talk to the people who are working there, see what their opinions are of the company. No one's going to go to one of those things and slam their company. But you'd be surprised how many people at those things you ask, like, so do you like what you do? It's like, yeah. Okay. Yeah, there's a big pause and a clenched jaw like, sure. I'm being watched, so yes. Yes. Yeah, my boss is right next to me. Yeah. No, that's, yeah, that's interesting. I mean, it's difficult, you know, when you have a visceral reaction to something, we've all worked places that we hated. And so, you know, as much as you may have been conditioned to say, I'm fine, everything's fine. People have a visceral reaction to questions like that. So you can really, cool that you picked up on non-verbals and, you know, and again, something that doesn't necessarily translate all that well across a video screen, certainly not on a phone line or across a piece of paper, doesn't pick up sarcasm. Well, it doesn't pick up kind of that, you know, that momentary pause or that clenched jaw. So yeah, that's, that's super cool. Was that the only in-person event you went to? For the job search directly? Yes. I went to, it was a, you didn't need any after that. You got the job. That was kind of where I was preparing to go to a lot more and go that route and it ended up working out very well. So I know a lot of it's luck of the draw and, you know, it just happens, you know, I happened to run into someone who was looking for what I was able to provide. Yeah. But I went to a few, they weren't job events, but it was young professional networking events just to kind of see what people my age were doing and see what people, because it was, I think, The age range was 22 to 32, I want to say. Those people either fresh out of school or within 10 years of being out of school and figuring out where they had gone for jobs, talking about their interview and application process and stuff like that. That one was more, I'd say, just recon and figuring out information. Any chance I had, it was... I had absolutely no fun for those three months where I was struggling to find a job offer. So at that point it was like, all right, anything I can do to make myself a little bit better, I'm going to do. It's tough to enjoy that first one because you feel that kind of crushing weight of expectations. And, you know, you've been through so many years of school and now you're like, this is it. This is the big one. And it's, yeah, as, as the days kind of tick by, there is one thing that I really want to highlight from kind of way back at the beginning of the conversation. And that is that, Two things, really. Number one, that you changed tactics after, what about, you said about a month and a half. So six weeks, you tried the spray and pray, LinkedIn indeed, and then said, this ain't working, and you changed tactics. So kudos to you for that, because there are a whole lot of people out there just spinning their wheels, doing the same thing over and over again. And a lot of them come to me for advice. And my first piece of advice is, hey, this thing that's been failing for a year, maybe you do something different. But the other thing was that you asked for help. And yeah, there's really, it's tough. You know, we're not really conditioned for that. And yeah, and props to you and absolutely like, hey, University of North Florida, student services, well done wherever you are. I did not endorse the student services department there highly enough. They're phenomenal. I went in expecting a five minute meeting and she sat down with me for an hour. It was, I mean, top tier. Yeah, and it's, you know, what they all should be doing, right? I mean, what would you say it is you do here if it's not to kind of devote yourself to student outcomes to include making them employable? Yeah, if there's any students that listen to this, I can't recommend going and talk. They enjoy what they do. They're doing it for a reason, and they're good at it. And every alumni that connects through that school will connect through that student's So even if it's not something like me where they send me to a career fair that happened to be two weeks later or whatever it was at the time, the connections they have and the people they specifically talk to, it might be something like, oh, you're a data analyst. Okay, I just talked to this guy from Johnson & Johnson a week ago, and they were looking for some people, and they were checking around different schools to see who was graduating. It's a hypothetical, but they are – a great resource to have. And there's something that I, and I found out too, from talking to them, as long as you're an alma mater or as long as, sorry, as long as you're an alumni of university in North Florida, you can go to career services. Awesome. They have people in their thirties and forties that are switching careers, go in there and talk to them. Yeah. Amazing. And I would say, you know, we're seeing a North Florida's praises. Here's what I will say. Use your university student services, your career services office, You may find mixed results. I've definitely heard of and experienced ones that are not as devoted as that, and they're just there cashing a paycheck. Absolutely. But the other thing is, I would say probably most student services, most career services, they will serve alumni indefinitely. I'm pretty sure I could call up the University of Maryland alumni office at the career services, and they'd be happy to help me if I needed that. Yeah, they've got vested interest in making you successful because that makes the school look good and that makes the career services look good, or it should. So, yeah, props to you for that. Now, we've got to circle back to John David. And there are so many things that you said that brought kind of a smile to my face because you said, hey, there's a couple of times like maybe my technical wasn't, you know, the finest of all of the candidates, but I nailed the behavioral questions and the, you know, the kind of touchy feely part of the interview. And I kind of laughed like, hey, go figure. A John David acolyte is heavy on the soft skills and a little light on the tech skills. What do you feel like you learned from him? Because I learned a ton, and we talked about this a little bit before the show started. Tell the people what you learned from him and what kind of wisdom can you pass on to the huddled masses looking for a job? Well, I would say he was the introduction to my technical skills. So while they were lacking to where I wanted them to be in the long term, he helped me get those off the ground. He doesn't totally blow off technical skills. I don't mean to create the impression that he's a top. It was soft skills, and then it was really cool. We would get data from local small businesses, and they would ask us for insights. So he would go in and just nothing on the whiteboard looking at us like, all right, This company is a retail company. What do we think would be valuable for a retail company? Are they advertising? Okay, what's their cost per click? What's their cost per impression? What's leading into purchases and what's leading into one click and then off the website? So I'd say really looking in for insights and tailor making each product to each company and not just doing like a one size fits all, All right, we go into your database, we run some SQL code, and it spits out what it spits out, and we give it back to you. And we say, here's your data report. It was to really personalize it, I would say. So on the soft skills side of it, but he would really, I'd say, make everything tailor made to what you're doing. And look for something that other people might miss. And what was the last part of your question? I think, like, what's transferable? What can... you know, what advice can you give to job seekers coming up behind you? Um, well, I'd say once you're on the job, like the jump in my technical skills in the past 14 months has been substantial to say the least. So that will come with time and whatever process you're using with whatever company you go to, there'll be a learning curve of some sort. Um, maybe it's just terminology or maybe it's just acronyms or maybe it's, you know, it could be any, any sort of thing. But, um, Go in and I'd say the biggest thing is figure out what you think they would want for you to come up with. So for NAVFAC, it's building things and paying workers. And so what can you come up with, with building buildings and restoring buildings, and how can you make that more efficient? Or what can you bring to the table? If they give you a data report, what can you do with that data report to then make it into something that they can use? And why is no one else doing that? Kind of that makes, I'm not rambling too much on this. Oh no, no, this is gold. This is why I'm shutting up and letting you go. Yeah. I would say just whatever you can do for them, they make yourself valuable, make yourself an asset. Don't make yourself, you know, there's a lot of people that can pull reports and it's, you know, pulling reports is part of the job. It's 1000% part of the job. Uh, but what can you do on top of that? What extra value do you provide? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, and providing value, obviously that's the name of the game. The job search is all sales. You're trying to sell yourself as a candidate. So it's about conveying value at that point. But yeah, I mean, success is rented. It's, it's never bought. And so every day you've got to re justify your job. Absolutely. Yeah. That's, that's been something that has I've learned as we've gone along is that you can It's a Babe Ruth quote that I love. It's yesterday's home runs don't win today's games. You can go out and crush it on Monday, and you can come up with some new insight they hadn't thought of that can take this inefficiency and turn it into an efficiency, and everything's rolling, and it's great, and everyone's pumped, and then it's Tuesday. And if you don't do anything all day Tuesday, now you're a bum. No one's being rude, but you know what I mean? You haven't set the standard that you set for yourself. You haven't hit the standard you set for yourself. Exactly. Yeah. Can't look yourself in the mirror going home that day. You get paid every day. Exactly. Exactly. You got to earn that. And then, you know, it's not a, it's a privilege to be employed. It's not a right. Absolutely. Well, Aiden, do you have anything, any initiatives or anything that you want to plug? Is there a good book you've read recently? Anything you want to bring up for the people? Well, I'd always like to plug. On the side, I do analytics work and some back processing stuff. My parents run a non-for-profit called HHI Incorporated. It's out of Jacksonville, Florida. It's job placement and job coaching for adults with special needs. My older brother, Alex, has autism and he's just finished his fourth year of employment at Winn-Dixie. And their whole thing is making it so people that just need a little help getting employed can do that. So if anyone listening is in the Jacksonville area and they know of someone or, uh, either know someone directly or indirectly who that might be interested in that. I always love it's, you know, it's really cool watching your parents do something that's that altruistic. So yeah, that's been awesome. Um, especially something that's so obviously so important to the family. So, well, you know, it goes into the, uh, we all are a little bit of data analyst nerds at heart and they look for inefficiencies and there was an inefficiency in that for my brother where he wasn't getting, wasn't all the way to mistreatment, but it wasn't, let's just say inconsistent treatment from different people. And it was a change they wanted to make. So that was cool. And then I've automated their payroll for them and gone in and gone and look at what programs are making more money than others and which ones are, you know, it's a non-profit. You're not trying to make a bunch of money, but there were a couple of services where we were just throwing money. You want to spend as little as possible. That's kind of important too. Yeah. Exactly. so that's been awesome so i'd say that is uh one big thing i'd want to plug and then book wise i haven't gotten all the way through and it does not relate to data analytics at all but fear and loathing in las vegas if you haven't given it a read yeah i had heard about hunter s thompson i want to give it a shot and it is as crazy as i thought it would be it is yeah they couldn't uh That definitely couldn't quite, there's a few books that can't really be made properly into movies as good as the movie was for that one. But I've heard the movie was great and I've seen a little bit of it and I really enjoyed it. And Johnny Depp's awesome. Yes. Um, but yeah, you can't make that one shopper shot. You can a little bit of trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah. I always, always love. Yeah. I would say probably less than half of the books I read are analytics oriented. I definitely do a lot more nonfiction now than I used to, but awesome. Great recommendation. Okay. Well, Aiden, it has been a real pleasure and I'm glad we managed to, we managed to get connected on this and best of luck to you in the future. And any, any parting words? Well, you i just want to say congratulations on everything it's nice to see another john david disciple doing so well and yes you know looking at your linkedin your different job titles are making my head spin so you're most of them are made up aren't they all yeah i've got some fun stories about that too but yeah oh perfect but now congratulations on all the success thank you so much for this opportunity this has been very very fun it's been it's very cool following you along and You make what we do seem a little cooler and a little bit more casual, which is easy to digest. The technical side is 100% there, but I appreciate the tone at which you speak about this stuff with. It's entertaining and it's enlightening. It's refreshing. It's very refreshing. Thanks, Aiden. You're buffing up my ego here. I really appreciate it. Hey, you were telling me how good I did on stuff the whole time. I had to at least say it was nice. True, true. Well, Aiden, really appreciate you coming on the show. And with that, folks, Semper Fidelis, and I'll talk to you later. Friends, thanks for joining me for a great show. If you'd like to hear more, I'll have the guest's contact info in the show notes below. If you'd like to get involved with Data Career Academy and find out more about what we do, please visit my website, themajordata.com. You can join my LinkedIn group for exclusive free content and first looks at what I'm working on. With that, Semper Fidelis, and I'll talk to you later.