861: From Pro Athlete to Data Engineer: Colleen Fotsch’s Inspiring Journey
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This is episode number 861 with Colleen Fotch, Data Platform Senior Technical Manager at CHG Healthcare.

Welcome to the Super Data Science Podcast, the most listened to podcast in the data science industry. Each week, we bring you fun and inspiring people and ideas exploring the cutting edge of machine learning, AI, and related technologies that are transforming our world for the better. I'm your host, John Krohn. Thanks for joining me today. And now, let's make the complex simple.

Welcome back to the Super Data Science Podcast. Today we've got a special episode for you. I enjoyed speaking with the fascinating pro athlete turned data engineer, Colleen Fotch, that I ended up recording one of my longest podcast episodes in years.

Colleen is a collegiate swimmer. Colleen won national championships and set an American record in the relay. As a CrossFit athlete, she twice competed at the Games, which is the highest echelon of the sport. And then she simultaneously pursued a degree in data analytics while training with the US bobsled team.

An injury ended her Olympic bobsled team dream, but luckily she'd been pursuing that analytics career in parallel. She began working full-time as a data analyst four years ago and has now grown into a data engineering leadership role at a healthcare staffing firm called CHG Healthcare in Utah, where she serves as senior technical manager of their data platform.

Today's episode essentially has two separate parts. The first half focuses on Colleen's exciting journey to the highest levels of three sports, swimming, CrossFit, and bobsledding. That part should be fascinating to just about anyone. The second half covers Colleen's transition into data analytics and data engineering. That part will appeal to technically-minded listeners, particularly ones considering a career in, or early on in, a career in analytics or analytics.

Over the course of today's episode, Colleen details the connection between a competitive sports mindset and data career success, proven strategies for being hired into your first data role later in your career, why being quote-unquote not smart enough for coding was a mental block she had to overcome, how analytics engineering bridges the gap between data engineering and analysis, and the huge benefits desk-bound professionals can enjoy by including regular exercise in their week.

including tips and tricks for developing or growing an exercise habit. All right, you ready for this fun episode? Let's go. Colleen, welcome to the Super Data Science Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. Where are you calling in from today? Thank you. I'm super pumped to be here too. I am calling in from Lehigh, Utah. Nice. Nice and cold. What's Lehigh like? Is that up in the mountains or...

We do have a lot of mountains around here. So I'm about 25, 30 minutes south of Salt Lake City. Nice. Okay. So it's kind of like, I don't want this to sound like derogatory, but do people sometimes describe it as like a suburb of Salt Lake City or? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, it's a very residential, I would say Lehigh is definitely a little bit of a tech hub. We're kind of right in the heart of Silicon Slopes.

So I've got a few, a few tech companies, not too far away. Um, essentially that's the reason I moved to Lehigh was the company I was working for at the time is in Lehigh. So I literally moved about a 10 minute walk from my office, which was a nice commute. Wow.

That is nice. Yeah. And so you were introduced to me about a year ago by Joe Reese, who is a famous data engineer, a famous quote unquote, uh, recovering data scientist. I think he, I don't even, he has had on his LinkedIn description that that's like trademarked, but I don't know if that's a joke. Uh,

But Joe introduced me to you about a year ago. Joe was on the show in episode number 595 with Matt Housley, whom you probably also know. Oh, yes. Yeah. They seem to be inseparable. Yeah, I was on one of their Monday morning data chats on their podcast on LinkedIn a few months ago, which was really fun.

I think that that's when I wrote you down as a prospective guest for this show, too, because I must have seen clips of that. And yeah, you and I chatted about a year ago, but at that time, you had just started this new role. And so I was in my mind at that time, I thought Colleen should have a bit more time in this role to be able to speak about what she's doing there, which now we'll get to do in today's episode.

Yeah, absolutely.

Let's talk about your journey to here, which we almost never do that on the show. So I don't know if I've explicitly said this on air before, but regular listeners will not be surprised to hear that this is explicitly our format. In a lot of podcasts out there, they start off by kind of going chronologically through people's history. And usually that's kind of a boring thing to do because it's like, oh, you did your PhD there and then your postdoc.

And that typically isn't that interesting when it's like, oh, it's really this open source library that they've been working on recently and just published to the public. Like, that's what you should be getting to. And so I'm typically start with what people are doing now. But with you, what you did in the past was so interesting that I think we should start there.

So my research on you goes back to you being a competitive swimmer. So is that where we should start your story?

Yeah, no, I think that's a great start. I was a competitive athlete pretty much my whole life. I played a lot of sports, but swimming was the one that stuck. And out of all of them, I was the best at out of the other ones I tried, you know, basketball, volleyball, softball, all the things. And

Yeah, we moved around a bunch growing up and honestly swimming was kind of my safe haven. It was my immediate group of friends and which made moving around a lot easier. I'm the oldest of six kids. All my siblings swam at one point or another. So it was also great for my parents to bring us all to one place, go get tired and then pick us up.

And, and then I, so I actually went to Notre Dame my freshman year and swam there. And then I ended up transferring to Cal Berkeley and finished out my collegiate career there was on two national championship teams, which was amazing. My junior and senior year.

Was fortunate enough to be on a relay where we broke an American record twice, which was super cool. It has been broken since, but it was around for a bit, which was very cool. That was by far the coolest experience ever, along with winning a national title. And then made it to Olympic trials in 2008, which was crazy.

super fun as well. Um, and it was cool. Cause going into college, I, I was competitive at swimming, but I wouldn't say I was Olympic trials caliber or a Cal Stanford caliber swimmer. And I peaked a little bit later and which was one of the biggest reasons why I ended up transferring was, um, just ended up having very different goals. And, um,

You know, found a great team and coach going to Cal. And yeah, it was incredible. Far exceeded my expectations of what I originally had thought was in store for my swimming career. So that was awesome. That does sound like an amazing experience. And I candidly didn't know. So from my perspective, what I mostly know about you is your prowess as a CrossFitter because that's something that I compete at.

Uh, although to, to even use the verb compete with what I do is generous. Um, um, but, uh, I, yeah, so I didn't even know that you had these incredible record setting, uh, national championship winning swimming in your background. And then somehow you did. So, so then what's, what's the transition next? So I know, was it CrossFit was the next passion after swimming?

Yes. So after, so it's interesting. I, you know, it's funny to be sitting with you here today. I think if you had asked or told my friends,

you know, collegiate swimmer college self that I was going to be on a data science podcast one day. She would have never believed you in a million years. So when I was in college, I had a huge passion, still do, for, you know, fitness, athletics, being in the gym. And so I originally thought, you know, I want to be a collegiate D1 strength and conditioning coach. And so I

Right after college, I interned in our strength and conditioning department with our teams, got to work with a bunch of different teams, which was really cool. And then I ended up actually...

taking on the job as the swimming and diving strength and conditioning coach. So I actually got to coach some of the girls that were my teammates in college, which was really, really cool. And then I also got to work with men's water polo, men's and women's diving. And that was a super great experience. And while I was coaching, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for fitness because my entire life was

I was, you know, in the water or in the gym for, you know, five, six hours a day. And I wasn't training to be fit. I was training to win a national title or to go faster. And it was never just about general health and fitness.

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Hmm. That's what I was just going to ask for the distinction there because, you know, it kind of sounds like, you know, to be fast or to win a national championship, that sounds like being pretty fit to me, but I guess it is. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a by-product of, you know, wanting to be competitive and wanting to be faster and better, but that was never the goal. And so now that I was switching from that to, well, I know it's important for me to stay healthy and move every day, but I

I was like, why do I go to the gym now? Just to be fit? It seemed so, I mean, if I'm being honest, it seemed a little anticlimactic compared to my team's counting on me. I have to show up, the best version of myself for this. And so that was a big shift. And I knew I enjoyed and loved lifting, but I

I went through the phase of I don't want to get big. And so I was going on the elliptical for like an hour, but then going and doing cleans. And so, yeah, so I was like, I have no idea what I want to do. And a friend of mine, when I was interning, I was also working part time at a Lululemon. And a friend of mine

was telling me about CrossFit and I kind of heard of it. And I was like, I don't know, that seems kind of strange. I don't know if I want to do it. And she took me to a regionals in Northern California. And I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. I was like, this looks like so much fun, not really intending that I would compete, but we signed up the next day at a CrossFit gym in San Francisco. And I was hooked. I mean, I,

Beyond belief, I was going every single day, no rest days. I was so sore and I was like, I don't care. This is so much fun. Because one, I loved working out with other people. And then two, I loved the competitive aspect because I could walk in each day. There was a leaderboard on the whiteboard. I was like, all right, who's the fastest? I'm going to beat them.

And so that, you know, turned into, I did my first CrossFit Open, which for people that aren't familiar, the CrossFit Open is the first stage of getting to the CrossFit Games, which is the essentially the Olympics or the World Championships of CrossFit. Let's talk about that in a bit more detail because it's, I mean, it's something that I've competed in now for a number of years and it's something that any listener out there can do. If you are already a seasoned athlete, you could, like Colleen, go to CrossFit Open

already be a national title winning athlete.

and CrossFit is a great starting point for you. Or you could equally be somebody who has not really ever exercised and you could register for the CrossFit Open this year and that would actually be a great baseline for future fitness. So anybody in the world can register for the CrossFit Open. It's actually... So this episode is being released on February 11th and the CrossFit Open starts on February 27th. So...

If you're listening to this episode and it's new, or if you're listening to this in a January or February in the future, in a future year beyond 2025, this probably also works. You should be able to go to CrossFit.com and you can register for the open. And it's always been...

about $20 US. I don't know how that works in other countries. I don't know if it's just kind of like at foreign exchange rates or if it ends up being 20 euros or 20 pounds or whatever, but about $20, it's not very expensive. And you, uh, you're registered then for three weekends of competition and you can do this competition at any, uh,

CrossFit gym. So, uh, CrossFit gyms have coaches that are certified as judges of the open and they will stand there with a clipboard as you do whatever prescribed workout there is for each of those three weekends. Um, every once in a while they end up throwing like two competitions into one weekend where it'll be like a 15 minute cardio workout and then some kind of like strength thing for five minutes afterward. Um,

But basically, you end up having three or four scored events over three weekends. You don't know what they're going to be until the Thursday night, Thursday night, kind of North American time. And then you have until Monday to record.

record the score with a certified judge at your, at any kind of CrossFit gym that's in your area. And so it's a, it's a great way to get started and hundreds of thousands of people around the world register for this. And I'm going to kind of cut a little bit to where, so, you know, you join the San Francisco gym, you're doing it every day, you're looking at the leaderboard and, you know, the leaderboard just in your gym and saying, I'm going to, I'm going to beat everyone today. And yeah,

I expect that that accelerated pretty quickly given your athletic background. And so to skip the story ahead a bit, there's...

there's these different phases. So if you do well in the open, it used to work differently. And we can talk about your time a bit. You know, let's just talk about that. So in, say, 2014, for example, which it appears to be, according, I have your CrossFit stats up right now at games.crossfit.com. And so the first year that you did the open in 2014, you were the 491st fittest woman on earth from,

Hundreds of thousands of women. And that was good enough to get you into the Northern California regional at that time. And so there was at that time, the way that it worked is

They have these different regions. It ended up getting really weird and they got rid of it because people would just like move to like less competitive regions. But because there's so many people competing at CrossFit in California, you end up splitting California at that time, even into separate sub regions. And so I guess it would have been the top 30 women or something in Northern California would have been invited there.

to the regionals? Yes, I believe so. And yeah, so I had, I remember watching the CrossFit games in 2013 when they were still in Carson, California. And I remember, I think that was the first year that they put handstand walking, some other stuff, you know, year to year. That's what one of the things that CrossFit is known for is that

You know, you generally know what you're preparing for, but every CrossFit Games, every regionals, every open is going to be different, which is so different from what I was used to in swimming, where you specialize in very finite amount of events. It's not like I'm getting up to the blocks and they're like, just kidding. It's not a hunter fly. It's 200 breaststroke. Good luck. That would be very unfortunate.

So you really have to be prepared for anything. And sometimes new stuff shows up and you're like, wow, I'm doing that for the first time today. I hope it goes well. But yeah, I remember watching the 2013 CrossFit Games and I was hearing about the Open and I was like, this seems really cool. And like you were saying, CrossFit gyms will...

usually do what they'll call a Friday night lights. So they'll have people do these workouts in heats and it's really fun and people are cheering each other on and it's just a really fun community event. And I remember going into it thinking like, yeah, it would be cool maybe in a few years to get to a regionals or a CrossFit games or something like that. And I mean, I remember at the time I didn't have a chest to bar pull up yet.

And so I remember having probably a full on meltdown when, cause they definitely came up in that 2014 open, but somehow, you know, made the regionals. And I remember handstand walking was in that regionals and fortunately they told us in advance. So we got to test it out a little bit. So we didn't look, uh, totally ridiculous trying to do it there. Um, but I remember getting really humbled, uh,

Because I do remember when I was, you know, starting to get a bit more competitive and was starting to think, okay, you know, I really like going to the classes, but maybe I need to do some more supplemental training, stuff like that. And at the time, I really, well, I enjoy lifting in general, but strength was my strength. And instead of working on my weaknesses, I cherry picked a

I was like, Hey, I'm going to do more lifting. I was like those muscle ups. We don't need to do this. So, uh, so I got real humbled at, uh, the 2014 regionals. I remember there were, uh,

We had one workout that was 10 rounds of a legless rope climb. And that was very, very challenging. Also the handstand walking, but there were other things in there like a one rep max hang snatch, which I loved and some other, other things, but it was it was a super fun experience and definitely got me hooked on walking.

you know, just the mindset of, okay, I want to do this for a bit. And yeah, so just got back to training after that. And to underscore how wild just that is, and we haven't even really gotten to the

I mean, this story is just developing. Like this is like, we're talking about your first year of this sport. And trust me, listeners, it gets even more interesting. But even in that first year, you qualified for regionals on your first attempt. And that's something that there are tens of thousands of CrossFit athletes every year who are training full-time and have been training full-time for many years to try. When I say full-time, I mean, not...

Probably not literally full. I mean, they would be, it would be like their primary pursuit, everything about their life. They would only take a job that would allow them to be working out for maybe four hours a day, that kind of thing. So a lot of these people end up working in gyms, end up being CrossFit coaches. And there's tens of thousands of people like that around the globe who are just trying to get to that kind of level. And today that would be more called, although it just changed in 2015. I don't even know if we want to get into that, but that's it.

you know, that would be, you know, what we would think about maybe it's like semifinals kind of level now, although even that's been kind of easier. There isn't exactly a comparison for the regionals, but to be kind of the top 40 in your region like that, like that is, that is very, very fit. And it's a testament to, you know, all those many years that you were, uh, that you were pursuing, uh, swimming at such a high level. Um, and, uh, yeah, so 2014, you make it to regionals, which is a crazy feat in and of itself. Um,

And then 2015, you make it back to regionals. I don't know if there's like, I don't know like how far we should skip ahead. Yeah. So 2015 was, I honestly, I don't totally remember a ton about that regionals, but I do remember, I believe it was 2015, 15 points. So back then, like you were saying the open now is three weekends. Back then it was five weekends. It was five weeks. Yeah.

And 15.5, so that's the 15.1, so on and so forth. So 15.5 was the last open workout. Just like software versions. Yeah, exactly.

Except sometimes they feel worse as you continue to go on. Which I guess that could be in software too. Yeah, I mean, it could be like a Sonos release. Yeah, exactly. And in the fifth week, so 15.5 that year, I won that workout in the world, which was super... In the world! In the world, which was really cool. Wow, what was the workout? It was...

thrusters and rowing. So it was 20 or no, it was 27, geez, 27, 21, 18, 15, 12. I think it finished with nine. So you start with 27 thrusters, 27 calories on the rower, 21 thrusters and so on and so forth all the way down to nine. And to quickly, to quickly define for our listeners what a thruster is, um,

And there's been all kinds of terms in this episode that people may not know. I'll kind of quickly try to recap the ones that have happened so far. There was the muscle up you mentioned, which is like a pull-up, but you end up on top of the bar. So you're like doing a pull-up, but instead of just like getting your chin over the bar or getting your chest to the bar, you end up with your entire torso and head up over the bar and you're stable there with your arms.

So that requires obviously a lot of strength and agility. So muscle up, that's one, uh, you talked about snatch. So that's a barbell movement where you in one movement, you get the whole barbell over your head. Um, and kind of, yeah, just one swift movement. And then thruster is like you, you're standing on the ground with a barbell at your chest and you squat down to full depth. Your hips go below your knees and

And then you thrust upward with your whole body and you thrust the bar over your head. So like a snatch, you end up with a bar over your head, but in a completely different way. You do it from a squat. Yeah.

Yeah. So essentially like a squat to press, but you're using the momentum of your lower body. So it's not just a strict press. Um, but they are, I feel like that's a very CrossFit infamous CrossFit movement there. I personally, when I was competing, I loved them. I mean, they are very painful, but that was my jam. Uh, anything in a front rack position. I loved front squats. I loved, um,

cleans, anything like that. So that was really fun. But that was pretty wild. I remember doing it at that same CrossFit gym in San Francisco and watching Kara Saunders, who is a multi-year games athlete from Australia. Multi-year podium. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very good. And I remember watching her video and I remember doing it. And I remember looking at the clock when I was done. I was like,

did I just go fast? I was like that. There's no way I just did that. And then, and so it was pretty fun, you know, throughout, like you said, that would have been, I think I did it on a Saturday. So you're waiting till Monday to see if you actually won or not. And then you're, it's so funny too, because I think it's gotten a little bit better, but especially when you're

Really competitive in the space and during the open, you start to get really, really secretive about your times and your reps and you're not wanting to let anyone know because you don't want to let someone know because then they'll have a score to try to beat you. So it's very, very top, very top secret. But that's definitely what stands out as far as the 2015 season.

Wow. That is wild. And so, so you, so in 2014, you were the 491st fittest woman on earth in the open in 2015, you leapfrogged about 400 women to become the 113th fittest. Uh, and then, yeah, you, you went to regionals again. This time it was a whole California regional. You placed about the same there as the preceding year. Uh,

Then 2016, you continued to accelerate. You ended up being 80th in the world in the Open, which was fifth fittest woman in Northern California. And then in regionals, you finished seventh, which if I'm not mistaken, that's kind of a heartbreaking position to be in. Yeah, so they took top five. And I was...

I want to say I was in fifth going into the last workout. And I think if I'm remembering correctly, I was maybe within 20 points from a fifth place finish. And that was, yeah, that was a hard pill to swallow because, you know, especially as you get closer and you start envisioning

what that would look like. And you know, what's happened. You're like, Oh my God, just two years ago, just three years ago, I was watching the games for the first time. And now as long as I do well in this last event, I'm going to the CrossFit games. I'm going to the Olympics of CrossFit. Right. Well, and like you're saying at that point I had, as I became more competitive, you start to devote a lot more time and effort

Into this. And so you're like, all right, all of this hard work is coming together and this is going to be it. And then to have it so close and to not get there was, was really tough. Um,

But honestly, looking back, I think was a huge blessing. I was actually having some shoulder pain going into that year. Nothing crazy. And honestly, I figured, you know, I swam my whole life. I had had some shoulder issues throughout swimming. Nothing that would prevent me from swimming.

I could still snatch, do muscle-ups, all these things. It just wouldn't feel right. And so after that season, I ended up getting an MRI for peace of mind. I was like, I just want to know in my head that it's all fine. Well, lo and behold, it was not all fine. And my rotator cuff was 80% torn. And just an overuse thing. If anything, I think all of the strength building that I'd done in CrossFit in those past few years, I think honestly,

held it together for as long as it had been. And so I ended up getting surgery pretty soon after that. And then I knew that I could, the turnaround time would have been too tight to try and go individual.

Again, the following year. And so for those who don't know, for the CrossFit Games, for competing, there is the individual side of things and there's also the team side of things. And so a really good friend of mine, now one of my best friends, Molly Vollmer, who was also an elite level CrossFit athlete, she reached out with she was with NorCal CrossFit and she reached out was like, hey, we're going to put a team together. Do you think you'd be ready in time?

I was like, I don't know, but yeah, I was like, let's do it. And honestly, that was a huge game changer just as far as going through the rehab process and, you know, the ups and downs of that. But knowing that I was working towards recovery.

you know, my teammates were counting on me. I was like, I need to be ready for regionals next year. And so, and that was, it seems like the team thing is a common thread. I mean, you, you got the, the national or the world record, sorry, uh, in a team swimming event. And,

And so I can only imagine that, you know, competing as a team again on a team again in 2017 was great. And I think you I know that you I was taking a note as you were describing this kind of team competition to the audience. But I don't know if you said that. So the teams are two males, two females on a team. You might have said that. And I just didn't. Yeah. So that's how they are today. Back then it was three and three.

Oh, yeah. Which made it a lot, I would say a little trickier as far as just strategically and not to get too far into the weeds of CrossFit specific things. But we infamous CrossFit team implement is this thing called the worm.

So essentially it's this long sandbag that you move together and you have to move in at the same time as your teammates be really coordinated. Otherwise it is very difficult for everyone involved. And if you're all the same height, that's even better, which we were not, but that's okay. We made it work. But yeah, so we had, we had three and three, three girls, three guys.

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Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. And so, yeah, I guess the other kind of thing to bring home is that there are, you know, we've talked about the CrossFit Games and how that's like the Olympics. What makes it quite different from the Olympics is, like you said, you don't have specialists that specialize in a single event like the 100-meter sprint and then someone, a completely different kind of athlete that is swimming or doing the javelin. Instead, it's kind of like...

the decathlon where you have to be good at a lot of different sports, except as you already mentioned, it's even more diverse because it's not just like track events, which do sometimes actually literally get tested in the games. But it's weightlifting and very long distance cardiovascular stuff, like a marathon row one year, which is like crazy, a 42,000 kilometer marathon.

row is one of the events of like 10 events in a weekend. So, you know, so there's this huge amount of diversity, but everything, almost everything that we've been talking about in this episode up until now has been this individual elite category where, you know, there's just

Elite men, elite women, you're competing as an individual. There are also, there's other ways that you can get to the games. And recently they're now holding these on different days in different locations. But it used to be until very recently that you could also have, there was a teen competition with a couple different age groups as teens where you compete as individuals. And then there's also age group competitions.

Um, so, uh, you know, if you're 35 and over this kind of like five, there's group categories like 35 to 39, 40 to 45 and so on all the way up to, I think 65 plus might be the highest category. Um, so you have all these different kinds of individual, uh, tiers as kind of, um,

as the age, age group competitions. But the main thing is individual is the, is the individual athlete where, you know, theoretically anyone of any age, they tend to be people in their twenties, early thirties, maybe some people in their late thirties make it as, as an individual. That's where most of the attention is focused. However,

The team, which is a completely different kind of thing to all the individual stuff, which I've completely forgotten that it used to be three men, three women on a team, but now three men, three women on a team. Also, it gets a lot of attention. It's really those two things. It's the individual elite, so individual men, individual females, and

And then the team competition, those are kind of the three categories that people pay a lot of attention to. And yeah, it's really cool that you did that. You did that team as well. You know, there's, yeah, it's, it's fun to watch those competitions. They can do, they can do a lot more, you know, some movements where people are having to do things in synchrony somewhere you're not. Um, and that's also something, you know, if you're somebody, if you've been listening to this episode and you're thinking, oh, you know, I always love doing team sports, you know, and CrossFit is individual. That isn't really for me, but

by practicing in CrossFit, there are lots of local team competitions that you can do in all kinds of combinations, like male-female pair or same-sex pair. There's lots of different ways that it works together, and so you can have that team experience. Oh, team is so much fun. I mean, it was always the goal to get to the games individually, but

But I am so grateful that everything happened leading up to that for me to be on that team and with such amazing people. It's just, it's a totally different level of also, I mean, me personally, I will push myself. I mean, I'm able to push myself a lot individually, but there is...

something different when you know someone's counting on you. You're like, I don't want to do it for myself, but I'm looking to my right and left and I need to do it for them. So we're going to go to a dark place today. We're going to send it. It was so much fun. Yep, yep, yep, for sure. So yeah, so 2017, because of your rotator cuff injury, you compete on a team and you get...

You get first in California in the regionals, which means that for sure you stamp your ticket to the games for the first time. And so not only do you make it to the games, your team finishes fourth, which is crazy. That's super high. Yeah, we were. It's tough because, you know, you look at a fourth, which is crazy. I mean, fourth in the world. That's insane. We definitely were a bit bummed that it's one spot off.

I wasn't going to bring it up. I know, I know, but it's okay. We're still thinking. I mean, it was a ton of fun and

I think the training for it was also really fun because especially as an individual, there's not only a lot of long hours in the gym, but times, especially training for the games when you're by yourself, you know, you're, there's only so much peer pressuring you can do to get other people to join in on workouts. When finally everyone's like, Nope, sorry, I don't want to do any of your workouts with you. So it's kind of nice with a team. It's like, yep, sorry. We all have to do this together. So yeah,

that makes it a lot of fun. Yep. Yep. Yep. Uh, and then in 2018 you were, you know, you were able to recover and you got back to individual competition. You finished 71st in the world in the open. Uh, you made it to regionals again and it looks like you narrowly didn't make it to the games one more time. No, again. Yeah, that was, that was pretty brutal, especially I, uh,

My kryptonite that year was, well, you know, you could, I guess I shouldn't say blame, but there they added in not only handstand walking, but we had a handstand walk over a ramp and then down some stairs. So we were doing all kinds of stuff, but that, that definitely crushed that workout crushed me a bit, but I did do, I won two events there, which was super cool. Definitely. There was so much progress made at that point. I moved, uh,

from Northern California out to Arizona to train full-time. And at that time it was, I kind of had made a decision because up until that point I was working and training. So I was coaching and training at the same time. And at that point-

I was coaching CrossFit. So I had left, left Berkeley and I was coaching CrossFit, coaching group classes, and then also doing some individual coaching as well. And at that point it was getting so competitive. And I, for me, I was like, Hey, I want to go all in.

I need to devote not necessarily more training time, but more recovery time and just want to focus all in on this. But also at that time, I was still not totally sure career wise what I was going to do afterwards. And so I went back to school to get a master's in kinesiology, thinking that I was going to stay there.

was going to stay in that field. And so I was training full time and then I was in a master's program, a remote one through Michigan State. And so I was doing that, which was great because I got to do schoolwork kind of between sessions throughout the day.

and then yeah, 2018 was, was pretty brutal. Cause I also put myself in a position where I was in a qualifying spot. And I remember the last workout was thrusters and legless rope climbs. And I pushed myself so hard that I, at one point, I think I failed a thruster and, um, and that was essentially what cost me a spot. Yeah.

Yeah, so again, finishing seventh in the top five, making it from regionals into the Games. But then the next year, 2019, it's your best ever open finish, 33rd in the world in 2019, and you made it to the Games. Yeah, I did.

Yeah. And it was, so it was interesting too, that year they like, or like we've been touching on the, the CrossFit games when you compare it to other sports is still very, very much in its infancy. I mean, the first CrossFit games was in, I think 2007. So still very young sports still evolving. So things tend to change sometimes year to year. And so that year the games definitely changed. So that year they took,

national champions. And so usually at the CrossFit Games, there's for the individuals, there's 40 men and 40 women.

And this year, I think they took upwards of 100 women and 100 men. Yeah, because it was, like you say, the national champions. If you got number one in your country... And I get the idea behind it because you want to... It helps broaden exposure globally. CrossFit is concentrated particularly in the U.S. It is absolutely done all around the world, but there's a particular concentration of interest in it in the U.S. And so you end up...

it ends up being that most games athletes or at least close to half of games athletes in a typical year are American. Um, and so I, I totally understand the idea of from, from CrossFit headquarters to say, let's get, you know, someone from every country. Yeah. Kind of like an Olympics play essentially what it was almost made out to be. But it ended up being silly. Yeah. It wasn't my favorite. Uh, not gonna lie. Um,

And that, honestly, it was a great learning experience, though, to, you know, because I this is what I had been training for and hoping for for many years. And I think especially I think in sport, it's sometimes easy to fall into the trap of feeling entitled to a certain experience or because you train really hard and sacrifice and all this stuff. And then.

you start to realize that, okay, I'm not entitled to any of that. Like everyone's working super hard and it's just the way it happened. It wasn't the games that I envisioned or that I felt that me and a lot of other athletes deserve, but it was what it was. And I think it was a good opportunity for me to check into my

okay, why am I doing this? Because it can't all be for just this. And I think that's, you know, as cliche as it sounds, you do have to, you know, enjoy parts of the journey, not all of it. Cause I mean, especially in sport, there's going to be many, many days of, you know, there's no instant gratification whatsoever. It's very prolonged, but I think it was a good, good check-in. And I think it started to, um,

to shift my mindset of, okay, what am I going to do after this? And start to look into that and start to answer that question. Cause I think it's also easy to fall into a trap when you are in elite level athletics, which I experienced in swimming too, is you're so in the moment and you're so dialed in and so bought in and every decision you're making throughout the day is to compete and to be better than the next person. Um,

And it's easy to not want to think about what's going to be after because you're like, I don't need to. Like, we're just focused on this. And you feel that if you're spending any time focusing on anything else, that's taking away from the moment at hand. And I think that was a huge blessing to start to shift. Hey, what what are we actually going to do for this?

Because sport has a finite amount of time that you can do it. What am I going to do as my career after this? So I do think it was a good kind of shift into that direction.

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Well, and I mean, and congratulations on, you know, achieving, you know, you spent five, six years pursuing this goal of making it to the games. You made it, you placed 27th in the world, which is wild when you think like any, anybody at that kind of, you know, it's, it's insane. The kinds of things that people can do, uh, you know, anyone, anyone you can now look up on YouTube, uh,

look up, you know, a CrossFit Games event from any year, probably the most popular kind of ones will come up and they'll be interesting. And when you see what anybody at that level is doing, it's completely, it's the kind of thing, you know, I train for an hour or two, five days a week, but I can't even, there's no universe in which I could imagine doing any of the things that they're doing in the games, no matter how much I train, especially at my age, I guess. Yeah.

But yeah, so congratulations on that. And then you ended up... Thank you. So I guess as part of, you talked about kind of realizing what you want to be doing with the rest of your career. You kind of, at the same time,

It looks like you pursued kind of two options in parallel. So you had, you'd started doing, you know, as you were pursuing CrossFit full-time in those last, in the last couple of years that you were, that you were competing at a really high level of CrossFit, you were also doing, as you already mentioned, a master's in kinesiology and exercise science for Michigan State remotely, part-time. That looks like it took three years from your LinkedIn profile, but simultaneously, so then

After the 2019 games and maybe with things like the pandemic happening and the wrench that that threw into the works for everyone, you simultaneously, it looks like, pursued being bobsledding at the national level for the U.S. national team and doing a master's in applied business data analytics at Arizona State.

Is that right? Yes. So I, yeah, so I was finishing up my master's and I would say while I was doing that, you know, was starting to specifically think about, okay, what job am I going to get with this afterwards? And what am I passionate about? Also, if I'm being honest, the financials of being, you know, a strength coach, not a

Not too great. So I was like, okay, is there something else I could look into here? And my sister-in-law is a data analyst at Netflix. And I was starting to hear about the field and what that looked like. And without me really noticing it, I was essentially somewhat of a data nerd as far as tracking numbers for myself and training.

I, I love wearables. I love checking all the numbers. I like the documentation side of that and seeing kind of what I can leverage and move the needle on. And cause especially at that level of athletics, everyone's training hard. Everyone's lifting a lot of weight. Everyone's going really fast. So it's like, okay, what can I really move the needle on? And a lot of that stuff is lifestyle things, whether it's sleeping your nutrition and, um,

So as far as I mean, I was weighing and measuring all my food, you know, I'm doing like, when am I eating compared to when am I training? Okay, I need to be in bed at this time. And I need to get good quality sleep. So like, so checking all these things, and then also kind of overlaying that onto my workouts. And then so my coach can adjust things based on you know, how I'm recovering and all that, because it's a finite line between, you know, you need to push and you need to

spend time essentially suffering a little bit, but you can't put yourself too much in a hole to where you're now getting diminishing returns off of that. So, so kind of realizing, Hey, this seems like a really cool field.

Every industry is using it in some way or another. This seems really cool, but I know nothing about it. And I had never coded before in my life. I had, that was very foreign to me. And to be honest, I, I mean, my, so my dad's an engineer by degree, mechanical engineering. He's been in the tech space for a very, very long time and had always been, you

And, you know, like, hey, you should take a coding class here and there, you know, since high school. I was like, no, who wants to do that? I don't want to do that. So boring, computers. Well, and honestly, I think a lot of it was me standing in my own way of feeling like I wasn't smart enough to do that.

I kind of felt like, well, my gifts, my talents lie in athletics, not in anything. It's so interesting to me that that thought could ever enter your head because I have been really impressed so many times in this episode by how well you articulate any points and in my view, what a great job you do of thinking about the context that our audience might have and giving them the kind of key context that they would need given a part of your story. And

And I think that that, you know, that, that to me shows a tremendous amount of intelligence. So it's interesting that whatever feedback loops you were getting in earlier life, weren't giving you that same kind of reassurance. That seems so obvious to me sitting here. Oh, thank you. No, that, that means a lot. And honestly, that's the biggest thing I got out of my masters. I would say, I really enjoyed the program. It was a lot of fun, but I, this is now the, this

This is the Arizona State Applied Business Data Analytics Masters, yeah? So this was my kinesiology master. Oh, okay. I see. I see. So it's interesting because I, going back a little bit throughout high school and college, I honestly really struggled with balancing athletics and academics. Just the academic side of things did not come easily to me. So I was...

Honestly, easy, easily discouraged, which is interesting because I'm very not easily discouraged on the athletic side of things. I was like, it's going to be hard. Let's go. And it's interesting that it took me.

going back to school and realizing that I can transfer these skills from competing, from working hard in athletics to other things in my life. And I'm sure I could have done that sooner, but I didn't really have that aha moment until I went back to school. And that gave me, honestly, I think the confidence to enter into the data field because now all of a sudden I was like,

I feel like there's so many more options for me because I know I may not have the technical skill set yet, but I can do hard things and I know how to learn and I know how to be coached. And I'm not afraid of these things anymore. I can look at a bunch of code prior to actually knowing anything about coding. And now I'm not afraid.

You know, I'm like, okay, I've done these other hard things. Why can't I do this? And so that was extremely eyeopening for me. And yeah,

So then I started to look at degrees and I started to take, look in Coursera courses, like, uh, Sadie's SQL course was the first, first coding course I ever taught. Sadie St. Lawrence. Uh, if you listen to this show with any regularity, you will know her because she does our, uh, our kind of year, our predictions for the year, uh, for four years in a row now are, you know, so it's either the first episode of the last episode of the year. Uh,

To, yeah, make predictions about the year ahead. And she's actually done a couple of other episodes unrelated to that on the show as well. She's amazing. She has a sequel course. I think it's the one you're talking about right now. 700,000 people have taken her sequel course. Yeah, yeah. It was great. And honestly, it was a great... It was just great for getting introduced to sequel because I knew...

that I, along with the degree I was in, I just wanted to continue to make sure I was building the technical tool set

to get a job in data analytics. And while I was doing that, I, so like you said, the pandemic happened and the world shut down and the CrossFit season was very up in the air. And to be honest, after 2019, I wasn't super pumped about what the games was going to look like. And so at the time, a pilot, Kaylee Humphries, who has won multiple gold medals in bobsledding, actually for Canada, and then she's now on the US team,

Okay, so a pilot is one of the people in a bobsled. So you have four people in a bobsled, right? What are they called? So it's interesting. For the men, there's two-person and four-person. For women, we have monobob, which is just the pilot. And then we have two-person, which is the pilot and a brakeman.

So, yeah, so she was the driver. So you have your drivers who are actually steering the sled down the track. And then the brakeman, which I was where we give a really, we help push the sled at the beginning. We hop in, hold on, stay in the sled, make sure we're being very aerodynamic. So essentially you're just holding yourself in half as much as you can. And then at the end, you're the one who pulls the brakes. Yeah.

And so, which is very, very important because then you keep sliding and it's bad news. But, but so at the time I was still kind of up in the air. So I'm getting this data analytics degree up in the air. Wait, wait, sorry. One second. I have one more question about bobsledding. What do you wear on your feet? You wear ice spikes. Okay.

Are you wearing ice spikes? Yes. So essentially they're very similar looking to track spikes where the spikes are on the ball of your foot. But instead of track spikes, you know, you usually have what five to seven larger spikes. An ice spike has the entire ball. Your foot is covered in super, super tiny spikes that will cut your skin if you

you know, get, so they're very, very, very sharp, um, because they have to be, so you can run on ice and not fall over the place. Um, yeah, so that was, that was very interesting as far as there's so much about bobsledding that I'd watched bobsledding on the Olympics, but had no idea how people got into it, what the training looks like for it. And so, um, when the pie, so Kaylee reached out through Instagram, um,

And she reached out, said, well, actually, I think the most I knew about bobsledding was Cool Runnings, the movie. Great movie. And so she reached out and just asked, are you interested in potentially trying out bobsledding? And I said,

I was like, sure. I don't know how, you know, cause it's not like us basketball or swimming. You can't, especially in Arizona, you don't go to your local bobsled track and try it out and see if you're any good. Um, so, uh,

So at the time, the national team was training. So there's two tracks in the U.S. There's one in Lake Placid, New York, which is their main Olympic training center. And then there's one in Park City, Utah. And the national team was training in Lake Placid. And she said, hey, you know, you can come out here. There's a spot you can try it out.

And then at the end of the month, while you're out here, you can try out for the national team if you're any good and if you enjoy it. Because some people will go out there, go down the track and be like, nope, not for me. I'm fine. And which I don't really blame them. It's pretty wild. But and at the time with the height of COVID, it wasn't a, hey, you can fly and try it out for a weekend. I had to commit to being out there for at least a month.

And at the time, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be fully done with CrossFit, but especially given that my childhood into college dream was to make an Olympic swim team. I was like, oh, my gosh, any opportunity to represent my country and to go to Olympics, sign me up. Let's go. And.

So I went out to Lake Placid. They, we trained for a few weeks before actually getting on the ice. Cause you actually need the conditions to be cold enough for the track team to be able to lay down all the ice. And there's a lot that goes into that, but, and yeah, so then, and luckily they have a, essentially a pseudo training,

beginning part of the track that's on actual track material that you can practice getting into a pretend sled. So it's not the first time that you go on the ice that you're like, oh, I've never actually done anything like this. It's definitely very different. The pretend sled is like on wheels? Yes. So it's on wheels on a track and essentially it's just the skeleton of what a sled would be.

And so that way you're able to practice with your pilot work on getting in. Um, cause that, that was the biggest thing, especially when it was our first time me and a few, um, my, one of my good friends, Kelsey Keel, who also came from CrossFit, she was trying out bobsledding too, which was fun to have another person where we're looking at each other being like, oh my gosh, what are we doing right now? Um,

But yeah, so the first time I went down the track, the biggest thing was get in the sled. We don't care how fast you're going. You just need to get in the sled because if you don't get in the sled, it makes it extremely hard for the pilot because they don't have the counterweight in the back. So then the back of the sled is just flying all over the place and there's no one to pull the brake at the bottom of the track. So big no, no, not to get in the sled. And yeah,

So long story short, I went down my first time. It was crazy. I wouldn't at all consider myself an adrenaline junkie, but for whatever reason, I thought it was really fun. And I just really liked the idea of honestly getting to compete on a team again and, you know, potentially make a run at an Olympics. And so a few weeks later, tried out for the national team.

for the national team. And then that was 2021 with the intent of trying out for an Olympic team in 2022. And what happened? And I tore my ACL. Oh,

So prior a few months prior to the qualification process, starting for that Olympic year, I was training in the gym doing weightlifting, which is really frustrating that it wasn't a bobsled specific thing because it was, you know, I've lifted, I've done so many reps up to this point and for, and I've never had any knee issues or anything like that. It was just kind of a freak accident. And, um,

Ended up carrying my ACL and it was far too close to the qualification process starting. And I was like, there's no way that I'm going to be able to come back from this. And so that actually, so I was about to finish the data analytics degree and towards the end of that,

I knew that that was the goal, whether or not I made the Olympics or not. I knew that it was like my goal is to be a data analyst once I am done with this degree. And because I tore my ACL, I was like, well, we're going to start applying and interviewing a little bit sooner than expected. So I remember literally sitting up in bed post-surgery with my knee brace on, like starting to get my resume together and being like, okay, we're going to get this going with

With also in the back of my head of I hadn't really processed that this that I could be done competing forever, potentially. And that was definitely a big shift. And but again, I think now looking back, not that I would want to relive tearing my ACL, but I think it was a huge blessing because.

Long story short, I got my first job as a data analyst for Homey sooner than I was expecting. What's Homey? So Homey was a tech real estate company and essentially helping homebuyers more easily

buy homes, not giving as much money to real estate agents and using our application in the process. It's a huge racket in the US. The real estate fees are, it's crazy. I don't think it's like that. It's like so many things in the US are like supersized rackets, like healthcare being the biggest one of all. Right. But yeah, it's crazy. It's like this, there's this standard, the buyer's agent and the seller's agent both get 2%.

on a real estate transaction. And any agent that tries to undercut that system is excluded completely from the system. Yeah. So essentially, it was a flat fee for the home buyer. And then you would still have an agent involved. But the idea was not only that it was going to be good for the home buyers themselves, but...

But we were intending for the real estate agents to also be able to continue to produce more and more revenue because they could get more and more people through the process. And that was really great. That team...

Which it's, it's really cool because my manager at Homey, I now work with in my current job. So it's really fun that we somehow got to work together again. And so, so I, and I'm extremely grateful for him because he,

I mean, he helped start my data analytics career. I remember being a little intimidated, you know, putting together my resume and being like, okay, how do I let them know that this makes sense? Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, you read through what I had done and...

Like you're saying, you know, I was really proud of it. I was like, okay, this took a lot of effort and a lot of grind and work ethic, but it really doesn't on paper, at least does.

does not transfer over really, you know, it's not like, Oh yeah, competitive swimming, CrossFit athlete, bobsledding. Oh, data analytics for sure. Like that's not usually the trajectory. So tell us about that. I'm sure we have listeners out there who are thinking about getting their first data job. And for a lot of people that could be a data analyst job. So how, like what kind of recommendations do you have for people to take their background, uh,

and kind of shape it to look like, how did you get the interview? How did you end up getting hired at Homey? Absolutely. That's a great question. I would say that going back and getting...

Education in the field itself is not only helpful for whatever job you end up getting, but I think for building the confidence and also being able to speak to how you can provide value to your future team that you're interviewing with. Also, I mean, going through not just a degree like the one at ASU, but things like Coursera and all of that are just great. I mean, I still use that stuff to continue to build a technical experience.

and to just keep evolving because I think...

especially no matter what job you're at, sometimes you're really getting specific and into the nitty gritty on one thing and you don't want to lose that skillset that you once had. So it's always good to keep going back. But especially when you're first starting, I would say, especially in data analytics, I really prioritize SQL, did some Python, but a lot of SQL, also Tableau, Power BI was fixated on

On that, obviously, that's going to depend what tool your team is using is going to depend company to company. But but going after the more popular ones is really good and being able to speak to because those will transfer over. And that's not the learning curve isn't going to be super steep on those. But I also think there is a huge component to.

not just, and I don't mean networking in the sense of just, you know, meeting acquaintances and stuff, but really looking into, okay, what are the companies that I would like to work in? What are the industries I would like to work in? Do I know people that work at those companies, even if they're not specifically in data? Because I know for me, I got the interview at Homey because I had a friend who I'd worked with

in the fitness space who could speak to the kind of person I am, the team player I am, my work ethic. And she was working at Homey at the time, not in data, but she was on the product side and could get me a connect with the manager of data and was like, Hey, like, you know, so she could speak to the intangible things that I think are a little bit harder to put

Specifically on a resume, because I think, you know, we would all love to just put on a resume. Hey, I'm a hard worker. It's like, well, yeah. Okay, cool. But I have a feeling that when you're a national team bobsledder, one of the fittest people on the planet. Yeah.

a national title winner in swimming. There's a tiny, there's a few hints that you might be a hard worker. That's definitely fair. But yeah, like I think there's a lot that goes into also just going to meetups if you can, meetups in person. Obviously, you know, it's great that through social media and LinkedIn, we can meet people, you know, states or, you know, worlds away. But I think,

Going to meetups like there's a ton in Utah, which is really cool that I've really enjoyed going to even when you're not looking for a job. It's just fun to see what other companies are doing and just to interact with more and more people in the space. So I think that's a huge component is is being able to find someone in those companies that can flag your resume and just speak to to you as a person. And so people can get a more holistic picture of.

of what you're trying to do and what you would bring to the table. Yeah, meeting people in person at things like meetups. And when Colleen says meetup, she means meetup with a capital M. So you can literally go to meetup.com. Right, right, exactly. And there are, in a lot of the world, you can find a data analyst meetup or a data science meetup or an AI meetup. And you can meet people and you could show up and say, hey,

you know, I just listened to a podcast episode where a pro athlete became a data analyst and she said that it's a good career and I'm interested and I don't know much else right now. You can show up

to a data analyst meetup with that level of understanding of what's going on. And you will be welcomed. You might get free pizza and a beer. Oh, yeah. No, totally. It's always a good time. And like you're saying, I mean, I went to a data meetup not that long ago. Joe was there and the session was on AI applications.

And, you know, I'm not doing that day to day, but I'm like, hey, this is interesting stuff. And it's also fun to know if that does come up. And, you know, in my day to day job, I have connections now that I can ask questions and, hey, how did you handle this problem and troubleshoot and stuff like that? So I think being able to build that community, not just within your company, but outside

outside of it as well within the data space is just really fun. And it's fun to meet other people that are fired up about data.

Cause sometimes, you know, you talk to people and they're like, Oh, that sounds really boring. And I don't want to talk about that. So it's fun to find people that you can connect, connect with on that level. I'm sure no one on this, no one who's listening to this podcast would understand what you just said. Um, so yeah. Okay, cool. So that was some great guidance on getting going with a career in data. Um,

After that, you ended up working at Podium. Tell us about, so you had a data analyst role at Podium. What are they? What were you doing there? Yeah. So they are a software company. They originally started as helping local small businesses gain more Google reviews. So essentially helping them get more reviews, getting more good reviews so that when you search for...

Best tacos in Utah. You know, if you have the most reviews, you're going to end up at the top of that search bar. And essentially over the years, they've grown into having many, many other features of their product as far as SMS text marketing, just really helping the entirety of being able to connect really well with the business's customers without needing to hire more

a dozen more people to do that. So it really helped automate whether it was phones, emails, again, like text marketing, being able to follow up, build a relationship with your customer and continue that relationship. Again, without spending the immense amount of money you would need to build out a huge team. So we did work with big businesses too, but we were really, really passionate about helping local small businesses continue to grow, which was

really, really fun. And there I started in product analytics. I got to work with the marketing teams, customer success, finance a bit. And so that was really, really awesome. And I also, while I was there, I started to get into a lot more on the analytics engineering front, which was really, really fun, especially since when I got into data analytics, I specifically thought, okay, I want to be an analyst because I

The idea of doing visualizations and that storytelling, that sounds awesome. I want to stay as far away from coding as humanly possible, which is so ironic because it's one of the things I enjoy the most now. And I love the problem solving. I love just kind of going down a rabbit hole and zoning in and

putting the puzzle pieces together and, but also that was really fun to be able to do that side of things, but also know what,

what insights I'm trying to derive or what questions my stakeholders are trying to answer. And so being able to be a part of both of those processes was so, so cool and just really fulfilling and really helping. And that's what I really liked that I got to level up in that instance at Podium was not just, hey, we need this, go build it, but being a part of those conversations of

hey, how do you think we should attack this? Like what else is available? And being able to have that back and forth with stakeholders,

is really fun. And I think that's a really fun side of data analytics where you get to nerd out on that technical side of things, but you also get to create these partnerships and really drive change, which was really fun. And I learned so much being at Podium and it was, I felt like I really, really took off in my career and started to gain a lot more confidence

around what I could bring to the table because I think especially getting into data analytics relatively late versus someone that decides that they're going to be in data you know their freshman year in college I was like oh my gosh I have a decade to catch up on like here we go but

But that's also the cool part of data, that it's always changing. So you kind of are always new in some respect, which is really awesome, too. But yeah, and I had a great team at Podium, too. So that was a ton of fun. You used an interesting term. You said analytics engineering. And so is that the same as like data engineering?

So it's interesting that from what I've seen, I feel like it really depends on what company you're at because

Sure, sure. I'm asking just to get like a, I haven't, you know, I've been, like you say, there's new things happening all the time. I do 100 episodes of this show every year. I've got people from all different kinds of data backgrounds coming on, lots of people in data analytics, data science, data engineering. And I don't think I've ever come across someone say analytics engineering. Really? Oh,

very cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Teach me. Yeah, no, absolutely. So at least how it was in, cause it's interesting at a CHG where I currently am at, and this is, was similar at homey too. We had data engineering and then data analytics, and there wasn't an analytics engineering arm in it. And not to say that there isn't analytics engineering going on. I think it's just company to company, what they decide to form their teams as. So at, at podium, I would say, um,

as far as the funnel goes, data engineering would be your first touch point. As far as, hey, there's data somewhere, we need to pull it into our database. And they're working a lot on

ingestion, making sure setting up pipelines, making sure things aren't breaking. If they do break, they're the ones that are fixing that. And then the analytics engineering team would be more of the data modeling side of things. So they're going into, for example, at Podium, we were using dbt. And so

We're using dbt to model all this data because we have all this raw data, model it to allow for our stakeholders to actually use it in our data visualization tool. And so as analysts, we were primarily working in at that time in Tableau. And so we were definitely working cross-functionally with analytics engineering with the data modeling side.

to so they could better understand what we're actually trying to visualize, what's the story we're trying to tell, what's the question we're trying to answer. And so that's essentially how it kind of flowed as far as the data. It would start data engineering, analytics engineering, and then analysts. And as we continued to grow as a team, our analysts kind of became, started to do some of the analytics engineering work, which was really, really cool. And

I don't know, for me, that was really awesome because it allowed me to level up my technical skill set. And I mean, that's also super awesome when your job is the place that you're going and continuing to learn every day. And I think that's one of the things that I love about this field in particular is that, yeah, for sure, there's some days where you're like, okay, I have to do this process. We need this thing to be done.

But for the most part, it's this kind of fun world where you don't necessarily have to have done that specific thing before, but you know where to look and you've done certain things like it.

So, and in the process you're learning, okay, that definitely didn't work. Don't do that again, but here's the thing. And that's a fun thing too. I think, especially as much as I think we would all want to just say, oh yeah, everything worked out the first time I tried it and it was great. But you also realize again, cliche, but you learn so much more from the things that did not work. And you're like, okay, definitely not going to do that. Or that doesn't work for this specific thing.

But now I know it exists and I now know about it. And I think that's the thing, too, is just expanding your horizon of what's out there and what's possible. And I think that's so powerful as well.

just a subject matter expert in data, not necessarily that you have to have done all of these things. Cause I think when I first started, I remember being my first day on the job and reaching out to my sister-in-law who's a data analyst. And I told her, I was like, okay, I think I need to take these 10 courses like tomorrow because I don't know how to do any of these things. And she was like, Colleen, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Um,

Like you, but having the context of that, there are these tools out there and here's what you could do. I think that's really powerful. And that was really helpful,

to kind of broaden my horizon of what a data analyst could do. And as much as I love building out visualizations, but I love that there was this other component that I got to dive into and learning more about data engineering and what that looks like. And, you know, just knowing more about the process. And I think that context helps a lot when you are speaking to a stakeholder and it helps with knowing who to go to as well. But yeah,

Very cool. And so one thing that you mentioned in that transition from kind of data analyst focused more on visualization tools like Tableau and moving a little bit up the stack to analytics engineering, you were getting more into DBT, right? Yes. So tell us about DBT, why a company would use it,

how you interact with it, what it does. Yes. So dbt is a data building tool and essentially, Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So I actually think that it, I looked this up actually, I would say a few months ago, cause I wanted to double check. Cause I went to the dbt conference this year, which was a ton of fun. And it's,

I, cause someone had asked me and I was like, well, I believe it's scenes for data building tool, but I wanted to double check. I guess it used to, but now they have transitioned to just. So, but I mean, it's, it's still, yeah, but it's still data building tool. And so essentially we would work with, if we already had, uh,

the data in our database, but it was in a raw format and we need to expose it or surface it in a way for our stakeholders to utilize it in a visualization tool, we would go in, we would take the raw source of it, and essentially you're writing SQL, more or less. So dbt also does have

Python type of coding within it that allows you to, I would say it's, it allows you to do kind of SQL on steroids a little bit. So you get to do some different things with it that essentially allow you to, especially if it's something redundant in your code, they have different functions that allow you to just consolidate to speed things up, um,

which is really, really nice. And so essentially that's what we were doing as far as my day to day. So I was going in, I would say initially wasn't,

building out models from scratch, but I would be adding to models that were in there already. So adding different fields, adding a lot of business logic, because that was really important too. And what I really loved about dbt was that you can embed your business logic, your agreed upon business logic with your stakeholders and then have it documented. And that was a really, really big thing that I love. So dbt has a documentation part of their tool dbt docs,

that allows you to have definitions. And actually, they have an automated version of this now, which is fantastic. Because I'm not going to lie, when you're building out a model, especially from scratch, and let's say you have

30, 40 fields in your model, the last thing you want to go do is build out a document and then just write out all the definitions of all of these things, especially when you feel that, you know, for example, if it says created date, you're like, well, it's created date. Do I really need? But a lot of times you probably need that definition because created date might not mean what you think it means all the time.

It sounds like that's a generative AI assist coming in there. And it sounds like actually a great use of it. There's all kinds of times where generative AI is showing up in my life today. For example, I don't know, have you ever used or do you use a whoop for tracking your sleep? So I have an Oura Ring, but similar. Well, the whoop in the Gen AI mania of 2024, they incorporate it in this daily routine

Gen AI guidance thing that like I looked at it one time and I was like, oh, please never show me that again. It's just, you don't need that in your life. Like you're getting all the information you need. I don't need this kind of generalized, like just, you know, it's using general advice about fitness, which I guess maybe somebody out there is finding it useful, but it's like, um, you know, make sure you get lots of water in your day and like, just, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I'm sure we could go off tangent on that, but it is interesting how AI is so powerful and it's very cool, but it's interesting how

But it also doesn't need to be everywhere for certain things. But especially for... Oh, sorry, you were going to say... But yeah, but in DBT, automatically creating a documentation for all the fields that you have in a data file, that's something it can at least, you know, you should be reading over that and making sure that it's accurate. But, you know, it saves you the blank page problem. Yes. Well, and also now they have a feature where you can identify...

a field, I believe they're called doc blocks, where you can define a field, let's say in your initial staging layer model. And then you can reference that throughout all of the lineage throughout however that where that column goes or field goes in your downstream models, which is so nice, because then you just it's just efficiency, and you can spend more time

Working on the actual model itself, but I loved that component. And I also think it was really, really good because then it forces people

the data team to work with your stakeholders and really come to terms with, hey, this is our logic and this is our definition of this thing. Because you can't expect, especially if you're wanting to change how a team speaks about what, let's say, active customer means or something like that. If your data isn't representing that, that's going to be really hard to make that change with your conversations.

So having that not only for your stakeholders to reference back, but also when you have new engineers coming in, that's huge. When they're trying to learn what the data means and what granularity your models are and all of that stuff, that's just infinitely helpful. And so being able to be on a tech stack like that was huge.

So, so nice. And it, again, it can get kind of tedious, especially, but I mean, now that we have this generative process, it's, you know, not taking long at all, but it still was so nice to have that as, no, this is just what we do. Like any model that's created, like the, everything has to have a definition. So, so essentially that's what we were doing. And then, you know, started progressing to building out

models from scratch when we were getting new data in and then exposing that into tools like Tableau or Sigma and then building out dashboards

for our teams to be able to use. - What's Sigma? - So Sigma is another data visualization tool. And so it was really nice that, so Tableau, well, I guess you can run it a few ways, but essentially with Sigma, it sits right on top of Snowflake and works really, really well

with that. So that ingestion process was kind of removed. Anything we had in Snowflake, we could build off of in Sigma. And it was really good for, I would say that initially when I opened up Sigma, it definitely can look a little bit like Excel, which gave me, I was like, oh, I don't know. And then...

And then, especially because I feel like I'm sure lots of people in data can relate to this, but a lot of times you're trying to get people out of SQL or not out of SQL, out of Excel. Not all the time. Sometimes it's necessary, but for the most part, you want it consolidated. You want everyone to be looking at the same numbers. So there's consistency when we're speaking about making business decisions consistently.

But it was great because I think it has the capacity to allow for people that are in data analytics that are trying to do really high level analytics and insights with it. But it was great as far as for PMs and other people to get in there and they're really familiar with Excel. So they're like, oh, great.

This is great. It's just like Excel Plus and it has a lot of other features. So that was really great as far as adoption goes for both teams, which was really cool. Very cool indeed. All right. So now let's get to what you're doing now. So you've been at CHG Healthcare for a year. Your title is very long. I'm going to read what it says on LinkedIn. It says Senior Technical Manager of Marketing Technologies Online.

hyphen data platform. Yes. Yes. Do you want to tell us about that role? Yeah, definitely. So I'm on the marketing technologies team, which sits within our data platform team. And that's where also our data engineering org sits as well.

And so essentially what I've been doing for the most part is right now we're heavily supporting marketing. So we are consolidating, centralizing, documenting all of our marketing data. And because for a while it's lived in a lot of different places and, you know, this is not unique to CHG. This, you know, happens a lot. You've got a lot of disparate data. You need it in one place so you can make sense of it so we can see what's

customers engagement with our content along with where they are in the pipeline. And just for background, CHG is a medical staffing platform, so our company. So we are essentially the middleman between hospitals, our clients, and our providers trying to find and fill jobs for our clients.

And we do permanent placement, but we also do locum tenens, which is temporary staffing. So if a doctor is, you know, wanting to do a few months in Colorado and then a few months in Iowa and then California, they can do that through locum tenens and our reps are providing them jobs and looking for their next jobs on a regular basis. And, um,

So with the marketing technologies team, we're centralizing our data to surface those insights for our marketing to make sure that they're putting the money where it should be as far as getting awareness around low-competence and what we do, and then also re-engaging with our providers and our clients. And so we work a lot with...

setting up different tools in order to do that. And then as for me specifically, so that's essentially what I help

and working with engineers to make sure that we're on the right path with that. I also got to, for a few months, got to, we were going through a data migration and I got to work on the data engineering team, which was awesome, especially starting out at the company and learning all of new data.

And there's a lot of data, especially healthcare, there's a ton. And so being able to just right away kind of drinking from a fire hose, get in, learn the data and get to work with, which was really cool getting to work more on the ingestion side of data as well, because I had done a lot of analytics engineering, a lot of analyst work, but working more on, okay,

what's the best way for us to ingest this? How do we make sure, you know, deciding on run times and all of that stuff or when things are breaking and all of that. So just seeing a different part of the funnel, which was really, really cool. So yeah, so essentially day-to-day right now is very heavily supporting our marketing team, making sure that they have the data that they want and then also bringing it in and attaching it to

to the data we already have to make sense of it. 'Cause right, if we have a bunch of data, but it all lives in a bunch of different places,

that doesn't really do any of us any good. So, yeah. Yeah, so it seems to me like what you're doing now could be called data engineering. Yeah, I would say so. I would say that, yes, that is very true. I would say that day-to-day right now, I'm less in the weeds of actually coding. And I would say I'm doing a little more delegating than I used to at Podium, where at Podium, I was full-blown, hey,

You have this project to do, go do it. And then I do it and deliver. And now it's more so being a little bit more on the end of strategically prioritizing, figuring out what we need to do next, timelines, everything.

all of that stuff. And then also working with stakeholders, making sure we understand the requirements of what we need to do. But yeah, so a little more delegating than I was doing before. But yes, still very, very close to the data engineering side, which I really love. I love that component. I love the technical side of things. And I think I'll always stay close to that

And I think I just have such a passion for

just getting in there and building things. Like it's, it's just really fun. Like kind of silly, but over the Christmas break, I'd never built an app before, but I recently started using Claude AI and which has been really, really awesome and was tinkering around and I was like, Oh, I mean, it's not a pretty app by any means, but I was like, Hey, this is fun. And so I think stuff like that. And even for going back to the question about,

people trying to break into the analytics space, kind of trying to find where what you're just passionate about in general and data and that technical side intersect. Because that's where you're really going to start just kind of zoning in and you kind of forget that it's really even work or that you're trying to learn stuff, but you're just trying to figure stuff out. And that gets really addicting. And I think that's what

what really keeps me going. And I love that it's that piece of, and maybe this transfers back a little bit to CrossFit specifically of, you know, you show up to the gym and you're like, I've never done that before, but I'll figure it out. And so I think that has transferred over into the data side of things of, of,

I haven't done that exact thing, but I don't know. It's going to be fun to figure it out and getting to do that collaboratively. I think that goes back to even in the data space, finding that team and finding other people that are really fired up to build things, to change processes, to make things more efficient, and just joining forces because...

Those are the times when your job just doesn't feel like a job anymore. Like you're just on this hunt to make something better. And I, and again, don't get me wrong. Like there are times where you just have to, there's necessary evils of like, Oh, I don't want to do this thing. I just have to do it. Or you're working alone on a project and stuff like that. But there's so many moments in between where there's opportunities to make it really, really fun. And yeah,

I do think like, especially if you can, for example, like if you're trying to get into data analytics, like finding data sets on things you enjoy and tinkering around with that in a visualization tool, like if you're really into data,

baseball and you want to look up, you know, stats on baseball and put something together and stuff like that. So I think that definitely ties back into just finding, finding other things you're passionate about. Cause there's probably data that lives in it somewhere. Nice. Yeah. Very cool. Uh, that was an amazing story from, yeah, all of the,

world-class fitness sport things that you've done now into data analytics and really just getting started so it'll be exciting to see maybe we can check in again in a few years and see how your journey has come along in this field but to return back quickly to fitness you are not done it's not like you're sitting at your desk all day you still do crossfit most days i understand

Uh, so I would say that I do CrossFit style workouts, but not functional fitness. Yes, definitely. And yeah. Yeah. And so on that note, you, so there's a, uh, there's a company called proven PRVN, which is super well known in the CrossFit community because it is the company of Tia Claire Toomey, who is by far, she is, uh,

I think at this point, unquestionably the greatest CrossFit athlete of all time. And she's still active. Yes. So she, she's completely dominated the women's division every year. She's competed. She took a year off to have a kid came back and crushed everyone. And like by huge margins, it's,

There's never been anything like it in the sport. And she's still active. She might have more kids and she'll still just keep on going and getting first place, it seems. So Tia's company with her husband, Shane Orr, they have this company proven.

And it's kind of a proven workout program because it's what I think Shane primarily, her husband, you know, created programming that allowed the greatest CrossFit athlete of all time, the fittest person in history. And you have partnered with them.

to create something called Proven Go. So PRVN space go. I'll have a link in the show notes and this isn't a sponsor message in any way. I just think it's something really cool that you've done. And so this is a workout program that is designed to be very easy for somebody to follow if they have a busy lifestyle. Maybe they have kids that are traveling all the time with work

It allows you to work out with very little equipment or kind of hotel gym level of equipment if it's available. So yeah, tell us about how this happened, how you ended up being associated with the fittest person of all time and creating this program for her and her team. Yes. So yeah, another thing that I never thought I was going to have the opportunity to do, like you said,

not only getting to work with such amazing people from an accolade standpoint, obviously, like you said, she's won the CrossFit games many, many times is undoubtedly just the best CrossFitter. And not only that, but a great person. Her and Shane are just great people and they are such hard workers and which just makes it that much better to get to work with other people that again are, are,

Really passionate about building something great and definitely have the work ethic to back it up. And so I would say now a few, maybe even close to, I would say it was soon after starting my job at CHG, Nick Johnson, who's the CEO proven,

reached out and was like, Hey, you know, we want to partner up and work on a program together. And I remember texting. How does that, I mean, how does that, how does that, how does that come out of nowhere? Yeah. It's so, so it's interesting because I, um,

I forever am going to be, I love health and fitness. I'm extremely passionate about it. And for me, it took me a while to figure out what, going back to what my workouts were going to look like, because I had had this realization, I was like, and confirmation, I was like, I am no longer competing.

I am done, not going back. And I needed to figure out what fitness looks like for me going forward. And it's interesting because I would say for a few months after even being a full-time data analyst, I was not going for the gym as long, but I was still doing

Very intense workouts. And if you didn't know any better, you would probably think I was trying to go back to the CrossFit Games with the workouts I was doing. And I think that's just what I knew for so long. And I didn't really know what else I was going to do. And I think there was also, if I'm being honest, I think...

Now, looking back, there was so much of my identity that was tied up into being an athlete. And then I always think there was so much of my identity tied up into being super strong and good at all of these CrossFit movements. And I was kind of having a hard time letting that go, to be honest. And.

But I started asking myself, you know, when I'm doing muscle ups or handstand pushups or anything like that, it was like, why am I doing this? And not that you totally can. I could keep doing those if I wanted to. But I had to have a check in with myself of like, OK, what are my goals now?

What's the goal with Colleen health wise, you know, career wise, personal life wise, what am I working towards and do my workouts indicate or match up with those goals? And if I'm being honest, they were not, I was training. Like I was trying to go back to the cross games essentially. I wasn't, but that's what it looked like and felt like. And so, um,

Over a few months, I was starting to figure out and find a lot of joy into just going into the gym and moving and not getting really hyper focused on specific weight on the bar or time. Like it took me a long time to do a workout and not start a clock.

Because I was so ingrained in my head of, well, I need to know how fast I'm going. And then, you know, so kind of reprogramming my mind and not that I still, I very much still am competitive and I love getting to throw down with other people, but it was a good time to reprogram my mind of, okay, what does training for lifelong fitness and health look like? Because I want to feel good, not just now, but I want to feel good and strong and fit and

20, 30 years from now. And so I started to, you know, I think I was starting to post different types of workouts and those workouts were, like you said, they were minimal equipment, mostly using dumbbells, getting more creative with, you know, more body weight movements. You know, I travel and not

get super stressed out about, well, I can't get to the CrossFit gym I want to go to. So I'm like, well, I'm just going to do a workout in my hotel room. And I'd post about that. And it would just be, you know, lunges and burpees or something like that. And that really resonated with people of like, you don't always need the quote unquote right equipment or perfect setup and stuff like that. You can just sometimes just use yourself or just yourself and a pair of dumbbells. And so, yeah,

I think with what proven was trying to do with this program and this track, because there are other programs are specifically around CrossFit and this was going to be different and CrossFit in the sense of like competing. So needing to hit all of the movements that would show up in a CrossFit competition. And, um,

with Prove and Go, there isn't that, you know, those higher skill movements like a muscle up or handstand pushups or handstand walking, you know, it's, it's a little more different. So you have that functional fitness side with your cardio, but some bodybuilding exercises and really fun core stuff and just stuff that honestly, I was getting really, really passionate about doing. And I was seeing really good results without being in the gym for hours on end. And

And I think also why that resonated with me was, you know, I had a drastic shift of, okay, I'm working a full-time job and I, I don't want to be in the gym for those hours. I don't need to be. And I definitely cannot. I was like, I can't afford to be in the gym for three, four hours a day. That doesn't make any sense. And I started to figure out, and I think I also used to believe that I had to work out

at the intensity that I used to in order to look and feel a certain way. And then I started to realize, oh, I can work out in this new way and still reach my new goals now.

And I think that was really exciting for me. And so I was starting to share that. And I think that was one of the reasons why Proven and I really aligned on, you know, what they were trying to do and what was really passionate to me. And I think what's really fun for me with this program in general is, you know, I'm really...

working towards building a program that is rooted in the reality of people that are busy professionals, whether that's in a corporate tech space, whether that's being a full-time parent, just making it accessible for you to be really healthy and really fit and also enjoy your workouts. And I think it's also been really, really fun to see the community continue to grow because I

Like I said, that was one of the reasons I started CrossFit was to work out with other people. Obviously, when you have a really busy schedule and you maybe can't get to a class where you're working out with other people, it's really fun to be able to log in, do your Proven Go workout, and communicate with other people that are doing that same workout, but maybe not.

In a totally other state. And it's cool, just that community part of accountability. Because I think also when you get into the grind of being super tired, both mentally and physically from your job, maybe you had a hard week or parenting or whatever it is, it can be really easy to be like, well...

I don't have time or I can't get to that gym. And, you know, the excuses can build up. And I don't think anyone would necessarily blame anyone for not going, but I think it holds people accountable to be like, Hey, no, like,

let us help you and like, let us bring this to where you're at. Like you don't need to totally change your schedule in life. Like this can fit seamlessly into your day to day. And I think that's, what's been really fun. Yeah. I think it's great before I knew that this was going to be released as proven go programming. I follow you on Instagram. And by the way, Colleen has at the time of recording over 280,000 followers on Instagram. We'll have her, uh,

her Instagram handle in the show notes for you to follow her if you like. And you can see, you know, recently a lot of the posts are about these kinds of proven go workouts. But, but last Northern hemisphere summer,

before I knew that you were doing this perfect go thing, you were just posting workouts that I was like, Hey, I'm actually, I'm traveling in England this week. There's no CrossFit gyms nearby that I can get to, but it's a beautiful sunny day. This is a 35 minute workout or 40 minute workout. I can do it totally just with my own body weight. And so I, you know, jogged out to a, to a river in the English sunshine, English sunshine, which is a rare treat that must be enjoyed. And, uh,

And I, yeah, I, you know, I've done your workouts, thought they were great. You kind of get a full body workout while also getting cardiovascular in there. And yeah, you can do it, you know, in a pretty short timeline. So very cool program. I'll obviously have a link to Proven Go in the show notes as well. I think I already mentioned that.

So this has been an amazing episode, Colleen. This is the longest episode I've recorded in a long time. Oh, really? Yeah. Winner! No, I'm just kidding. And yeah, it's interesting how the first 40 minutes or so were kind of about sport. And so I kind of felt like, well, let's have a full-length episode then still about sports.

kind of data analytics and data science tacked on. So it's been an amazing experience. Before I let you go, I have, you know, in general, it seems like it's obvious to say that maybe you know some actual facts that you can cite about how fitness is

makes a difference to your happiness, to your productivity, to probably generally achieving your goals, whatever they are. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Oh, absolutely. I think that not only like you said from, I believe, and that's another reason why I believe in Prove & Go so much and why it's been really fun to share this with my coworkers too and get feedback from them too as well. That's been really fun. But I see it as a productivity hack.

Because working out and producing that amount of energy is going to help you show up your best in your work life, in your personal life. And I also think it helps with time management. I think if you're really regulated about like, hey, this is just something I do, whether it's 30 minutes, whether it's 45 minutes, being able to allot that time, I think allows you to prioritize things.

the right things. And it just, it helps with overall discipline. And I know for me that if I go a few days without working out, I don't feel the same. And I think I'm just, I'm probably less enjoyable to be around, not just to myself.

I do think that it helps. I think it helps with overall confidence. I think it helps how you just show up in work in general. And I mean, from, I mean, if we're talking from a scientific standpoint, it's just your body is going to function better if you're treating it better. So that goes in from just daily movement to what you're fueling your body with and also with sleep and daily movement is going to help those things as well. It's going to allow your body to, um,

actually function better throughout the day. It's going to help with your sleep and all of that. So I think that it's, it's interesting because I do think we're, it can be hard when you are very passionate and driven about your career or whatever it is, your work is going and you're like, well, I don't have time for that, but it's about making time for that because it's actually going to help this other thing that you're really trying to do well with.

And I think that also, I think a lot of people think you need to go zero to a hundred. Like if you're struggling to get one workout in a week and you're like, okay, I have this goal to do six workouts this week. It's like, maybe let's start with two days in the gym and going on more walks. I mean, that's, I think walking is so underrated because especially when you're, I mean, I know for me, I remember that was a real big reality check that

When I started my first data analytics job and I, you know, I'm tracking my steps and stuff on my aura ring. And I think I got like 800 steps one day. I was like, oh, no, this is not good because I was so used to I still worked out that day, but I wasn't moving. I was just sitting in my chair. And so I think being really diligent about not necessarily that you need to carve out all this time for whether it's the gym or whatever.

more walks throughout the day, but you can take the stairs instead of the elevator. If you have, you know, zoom meetings that you can pop onto and be on a walk. If you can take one-on-ones with your manager outside and go walking, like those are just little things that don't seem like they're a huge game changer. But if you think about the entirety of a year and just what, you know, going on a 10, 20 minute walk throughout the day and taking the stairs, how that adds up so much over time, um,

I just think that's huge. And I think especially in the tech space, I think it's, yeah, it's not looked at enough as a beneficial piece to your career and that it actually can help you be a better data engineer or data analyst or whatever your role is.

Great. Well said. And then, you know, something that you kind of, that you alluded to there, and then I'm wondering, you know, you have studied sports data for a long time. Obviously now you're a professional data analyst, data engineer. You're probably still studying a lot of data on yourself and your fitness. For me personally, something that I've struggled with, it's kind of similar to what you said there where, you know, somebody they're working on one day a week and they're thinking, I want to work out six days a week. I have a tendency to

to overtrain for where I'm at. You know, I kind of think there are people that I see at the CrossFit gym who are doing two hours of intense workouts five, six days a week, sometimes even seven. And

And I see them doing that and I try to do it for a week. And I then end up spending, you know, too much of my day just like lying on the couch or lying in bed. Yes. Just being like, oh no, what did I do to myself today? Like I had things to do and now I'm just too tired. Like I can't, I'm too tired to sit at my desk. Yes. Oh yeah. And I'm too tired to focus. So, you know, is there, you know,

maybe ideally, is there some kind of data that I could be looking at? I know, you know, with maybe like a whoop or a ring general advice, or, you know, is there maybe just some kind of, um, uh, rule of thumb or guidance that you have for people who tend to overdo it like me? Yeah, I would say, and that's the thing too. I think one it's checking in with what's the goal as far as, you know, how many workouts you're trying to get into, what those workouts look like, how long are they?

And then if let's say that is the goal to get five workouts in really high intensity and also knowing that throughout the week, it's probably good to maybe pick one or two workouts a week that you're just going to go full send at.

Because doing that every day just isn't going to be sustainable. But like letting yourself and I kind of go off of just how I'm feeling that day. If I'm feeling like, oh, I got so much good sleep, you know, stress levels are good and I'm feeling great. I'm like, OK, today's the day I'm going to push it. But then having the the wherewithal to kind of check in and be like, OK, I didn't get much sleep last night.

And, you know, and I personally love checking that like every morning I'm opening up the app and being like, I got my readiness score and my sleep score and which I really like. And sometimes, you know, you have to take that with a grain of salt because sometimes it'll be like, hey, you should just stay in bed all day today. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to do that. And I can't do that. But I think checking in with how you're feeling and and taking it slow, like having a progression to sleep.

the intensity or the amount of volume you're trying to do. I also think finding a program that makes sense for, um,

your schedule and your life. Cause I think it's really easy to, like you said, get caught up in, well, someone else is doing something or I saw this thing on Instagram and that looks really cool, but they may not have the same schedule with you as you, or like it's, it's demanding in a different way. And so I think one, making sure that,

The goals are set as far as like, what am I trying to do with my fitness? And that doesn't have to mean like, oh, I want to back squat this much weight and all of that stuff. It can just mean I want to feel good. I want to look good. And I want to enjoy my training. Like those can be goals. And so I think it's really about setting realistic expectations and goals.

If you're trying to get somewhere and you know that the gap between, you know, where you're at and where you're trying to go is maybe a little bit larger, having a solid progression to that. And like you said, not jumping into the deep end right away, because that's the thing too. Like you want something that I really believe that when it comes to whether it's nutrition, your health, consistency is everything, right? It's, you're not going to get really fit or really in shape out of one week of working out.

It's many, many days of making good, healthy choices. And that doesn't mean perfect. It means roughly 80% of the time, you know, you're doing, making these choices that are going to lead you to an overall healthier, happier life. So I think that's the biggest thing is finding something that's actually sustainable with

With also allowing you, like you're saying, if that's something that you enjoy, as far as like going into a CrossFit gym and like throwing down with your friends. Like I know for me, I'm like, if I did that during the week, I would be a pile of mush at work. My brain would not function. It would not be good. But I know on like a Saturday morning, okay, I'm not working on Saturday. So I have the luxury of like laying around a little more. So I'm going to send it a little bit, you know? So like just having...

Just kind of holistically looking at what your schedule likes, what your goals are, and then finding something that's sustainable. So you don't feel like you're doing kind of a yo-yo thing, whether it's, whether it's in the gym or with your nutrition. Great advice. I will do my best to listen to some of your answer, your most recent answer. Awesome.

So Colleen, you've been extremely generous with your time today. We've gone like almost an hour over the scheduled recording slot. Thank you so much. Before I let you go, I ask my same guests the same question.

Final two questions. The first is, do you have a book recommendation for us? Yes. So especially with us talking about getting into data, I highly recommend, and we brought up Joe Reese. He has an amazing book called Fundamentals of Data Engineering with O'Reilly.

And I still check this book, have read this book to this day. And I personally love it because I think, you know, I've read a lot of textbooks and this one I feel like is actually application based that I can actually take what's in the book and apply it.

to my job. And I think especially if you are, even if you're not, if you're looking into getting into more of the analytics side of things, I think it's super, super beneficial to understand how the data engineering side of the house works. And honestly, it's something that I wish I had

prior to going into my first job. So I highly recommend that even if you're not just starting out, I think it's a good thing. Good one to reference. Nice. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I haven't read that book, but it's extremely well reviewed. A lot of people talk about it. A lot of people post about it. It's one of those things I wish I had all the time in the world to be reading everything I could. And I certainly would have read that. Yeah. Um,

And then, yeah, finally, how should people follow you after this episode? Obviously, I already mentioned your extremely highly followed Instagram account. I imagine maybe also your LinkedIn. Where should people be following your professional work?

Yeah, absolutely. So like you said, Instagram, Colleen Fotch, and then on LinkedIn, I'm excited to start posting more on LinkedIn, both work and fitness related and how those things kind of marry together really nicely. So yeah, so on both of those. Awesome. Colleen, thanks again for taking the time with us today. I had so much fun. This time went by so quickly. It's been so awesome to have you

on the show. This is the first time we've ever talked about CrossFit at any length. Oh, awesome. It's been a big part of my life for over a decade. So to have an episode like this was super fun for me. I really appreciate it. Oh, amazing. No, this was great. Thank you so much.

What a wonderful story and conversation today with Colleen Fonch. In today's episode, she covered her athletic journey, including being on two NCAA National Championship swim teams, breaking an American relay record, and twice competing in the Global CrossFit Games, demonstrably placing her amongst the few dozen fittest people on Earth at that time. She also talked about how her transition to data started with recognizing how she was already nerding out on tracking training metrics, leading her to pursue master's degrees in kinesiology and applied business data analytics.

She talked about how she progressed from data analyst to analytics engineering roles using tools like dbt for data modeling, tableau and sigma for visualization, and working with stakeholders to define and document business logic.

And she filled us in on how she continues to blend her passion for fitness and data through Proven Go, a program she developed in partnership with CrossFit champion Tia Clare Toomey's company, designed for busy professionals seeking sustainable fitness long-term. And this episode was in no way sponsored by CrossFit or Proven Go. I'm genuinely just passionate about those products.

and companies. All right. As always, you can get all the show notes, including the transcript for this episode, the video recording, any materials mentioned on the show, the URLs for Colleen's social media profiles, as well as my own at superdatascience.com slash 861.

And if you'd like to connect in real life, as opposed to just online, I'll be giving the opening keynote at the RVA Tech Data and AI Summit in Richmond, Virginia on March 19th. Tickets are really reasonable for this conference, unbelievably reasonable. And there's a ton of great speakers. So this could be a great conference to check out, especially if you live anywhere in the Richmond area. It'd be awesome to meet you there.

All right. Thanks, of course, to everyone on the Super Data Science podcast team, our podcast manager, Sonia Bravich, media editor, Mario Pombo, partnerships manager, Natalie Zaisky, researcher, Serge Massis, our writers, Dr. Zahra Karche and Sylvia Ogwang, and of course, our founder, Kirill Aromenko. Thanks to all of them for producing another fun episode for us today. For enabling that super team to create this free podcast for you, we are deeply grateful to our sponsors. You can support the show by checking out our sponsors links, which you can find in the show notes. And

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Share this episode with someone who might enjoy it. Review the episode on your favorite podcast enjoying venue. Subscribe to the show if you're not already a subscriber. Feel free to edit our videos on YouTube into shorts. You can do that to your heart's content. And most importantly, I just hope you'll keep on tuning in. I'm so grateful to have you listening and hope I can continue to make episodes you love for years and years to come. Till next time, keep on rocking it out there and I'm looking forward to enjoying another round of the Super Data Science Podcast with you very soon.