by James Burke
It’s hard to believe, but this week marks three years since Nick and I made the decision to begin working together. In light of these events, I thought it would be fun to spend a few minutes reflecting on our journey, and sharing some of the wins, trials, and tribulations that have brought us to where we are today. This week also represents another exciting occasion, so please stick around until the end for an announcement, as well as a preview of what’s to come at South Shore Analytics.
Humble Beginnings
In the middle of the Summer of 2022, I pretty much thought I had it all figured out. I had a great position working in Analytics for the Business Development team at Gopuff. I loved my team and my managers, and I felt excited about all the initiatives on the horizon. Perhaps most significantly, my primary coworker was an independent consultant and data wizard by the name of Nick Lisauskas – and we had such an effective and efficient working relationship that I didn’t think there was a single problem the two of us would not be able to solve.
Unfortunately, as anyone who has worked in tech knows, things can change quickly. The business made the difficult decision to layoff a portion of the workforce and much to my shock – I was on that list. I’ll never forget that feeling: sitting at the cramped desk chair in my New York apartment, staring at the screen in confusion as I was abruptly logged out of nearly all of my accounts. Before long, the confusion gave way to a bleak realization when my Slack pinged with a notification from HR.
I would love to say that I landed on my feet immediately and never looked back, but that wasn’t the case. Those following few weeks were a whirlwind. I had never been laid off before and even though I was assured it was not due to my performance, I couldn’t help but blame myself or wonder what I could have done differently. The good news is that I wasn’t afforded too much time to wallow. I had a wedding to attend in Chicago not long after, and since I didn’t have much else going on I reached out to Nick to see if he might want to grab lunch.
Though on the surface the purpose of this meeting was just a quick catch up, the truth is that I had an ulterior motive. I had no clue how I might broach the subject, or what exactly I planned to suggest, but I knew that Nick and I had the potential to do something special together. Simply put, whatever he had in mind – I wanted in.
What I could not have imagined was that Nick was thinking the very same thing.
Starting a ‘Real’ Business
Not long into our lunch that afternoon, Nick looked over to me and said something like “this might sound a little out there … but how would you feel about us trying to do our own thing?”
I was floored. The fact Nick wanted to work with ME restored a piece of my confidence that I didn’t even know was missing. Beyond that – it inspired me. It made me want to prove him right. To ensure that whatever it was that we decided to do, it wouldn’t fail because of any lack of effort on my part. I’d be lying if I said we came out of that meeting with a clear roadmap (hell, we didn’t even come up with the name for another month) but I felt confident in one thing: the two of us were going to figure it out.
After that lunch, we got to work immediately. We started reaching out to people we had worked with in the past – framing ourselves as a pair of do-it-all Finance / Accounting / Data / Strategy guns for hire. The lack of a clear niche made things a bit difficult, but it did allow us to be flexible. Whatever work came across – we took it. Building a deck, constructing a model, revamping a monthly accounting process … if we thought we could handle it (and spoiler alert – we always thought we could handle it), we said yes.
As you can imagine, these early months were incredibly stressful. Each day posed an entirely novel set of challenges that neither of us had a clear idea on how to handle. Suddenly we were legal, accounting, marketing, business development, AND execution. There wasn’t a leadership team for us to fall back on or a maligned manager for us to point the finger at. Every decision and outcome started and ended with us.
So, we did the only thing there was to do – we figured it out. We learned how to set up an LLC. We picked up new skills and technological acumen on a seemingly daily basis. We got burned on a few engagements and got a lot better at reading and writing contracts.
In the blink of an eye, a year had passed. To our excitement, the business had not only survived, but began to thrive. By this time, I could feel that Nick and I were growing not just as individuals, but as an organization. Though our headcount was still miniscule, our thinking began to expand beyond the moment and into many possibilities that the future may hold.
Taking the Next Steps
After a year of more or less ‘ad-hoc’ work, Nick and I knew we were ready for a different approach. What we wanted was to figure out how to better package and communicate our unique set of skills in a manner that the market would be receptive to. What we had developed (not entirely on purpose) was the ability to be true full data stack specialists. We had experience up and down the stack across a variety of key technologies. But perhaps most critically, we had spent so long solving unique problems for diverse businesses that we also possessed the ability to translate and communicate these concepts into digestible insights for the end user.
Thus, ‘Clarity – the 90 Day Data Stack’ was born. With Clarity, we made the decision to fully commit to delivering end-to-end data solutions. That meant taking ownership of every layer – from configuring the pipelines and to setting up cloud warehousing, to transformation and modeling, to visualization and stakeholder enablement. It also meant we could finally deliver what so many of our clients had been missing: a complete, tailored data ecosystem that not only worked on day one, but scaled with their business.
In the past two years, we have implemented these full stack builds for clients across restaurants, healthcare, tech, e-commerce, and more. We’ve built data warehouses from the ground up, replaced slow manual reporting with automated pipelines, and designed dashboards that executives now rely on for real-time decision-making. One client went from spending three days each month preparing board reporting to being able to pull those same insights instantly. Another reduced operating costs by identifying inefficiencies that had previously been hidden in siloed systems. A third reduced their annual software costs by over $20K nearly overnight due to inefficiencies we were able to identify and cure. Beyond the business wins themselves, we are so grateful for the many incredible leaders and operators we have had the privilege of working with. Delivering a solution that our clients find impactful and love using is one of the greatest aspects of our work.
What’s Next: An Announcement
Which brings us to the exciting part. We are thrilled to share that Christopher Prattos has joined South Shore Analytics as our new Analytics and Insights Lead. From our very first conversation, Chris reminded me and Nick of ourselves – curious, driven, and unwilling to accept “good enough” as a final answer. His mix of technical skills, consulting experience, and entrepreneurial mindset made it clear he was the right person to help us take South Shore to the next stage of growth. We cannot wait to see the impact he will have on our clients and our team!
A Final Thank You
To everyone who has been part of our journey thus far – whether you worked with us, referred us, read our posts, or simply offered encouragement – thank you. We are proud of what we have built, but even more excited about what’s ahead. If you or someone you know is in the need of high quality Analytics Assistance – now is the time to reach out! We’re building out our roadmap for the remainder of the year with Chris’s additional capacity in mind, and are excited about the chance to help more businesses along their data journey!
Thanks for reading! Want more? Check out our blog and our YouTube channel for deeper dives and walkthroughs. We’ll be back each week with more content – subscribe to stay in the loop.
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