Erin Waldron: Founder of Data Dozen and Big Heart Hosting
I met Erin through a women owned businesses networking group here in Kansas City. A lot of the women in the group have marketing backgrounds, but Erin came with a data background and a refreshing perspective on running her own business. Like many of us in the group, she was managing her businesses (spoiler alert, she has two) and being a mom (spoiler alert, she has two children now too!). But the thing that impressed me the most about Erin is that she started her business so early on in her career. It didn’t take motherhood to push her into it. She was courageous, brave, and determined from the start, and it paid off!
Learn more about how Erin got started, her businesses Data Dozen and Big Heart Hosting, and her newest endeavor The Bar Chart Club.
Getting Started in Data Visualization
In college, Erin majored in poetry and minored in analog photography. When she graduated, she got a job working at a university as the receptionist of The Graduate School at Washington University in St. Louis where she was doing a lot of manual data entry.
“I was a pretty horrible receptionist because I always wanted to leave the office which meant there was no one there to receive people, so it was not ideal. But anytime someone came to campus to give a talk I asked if we needed someone from our office to be there to take notes.”
One day Tableau came to the campus to give a demo and Erin was quick to raise her hand to attend.
“I went and saw data visualized for the first time. I saw these charts and graphs that were really bringing this data alive. I understood it in a way that I never had before. At the time, it felt pretty revolutionary.”
Erin went back and told the dean what she had learned and how it could be beneficial to the team, and he agreed to send her to training. At the same time, there was an inspiring (and very patient) registrar who built databases and tables that tracked student data. Erin collaborated with her to turn the data into charts and visualizations.
“Other analysts in other departments started coming to me saying, ‘Hey how did you build that?’ So I started leading a weekly tutorial with Pat Howard, our registrar, on how to use Tableau and I absolutely loved it.”
Data Visualization Meetups
Erin considers one of her biggest professional successes the Tableau User Group she helped start and lead while she was working at Washington University.
“It was called WU TUG. Each Thursday morning I'd help lead or organize a Tableau tutorial for analysts on campus. Eventually, through word of mouth, the group ended up spanning all seven schools at the university. This was not something that was in my job description. It was just a labor of love with my colleagues. And it turned out to be the most uplifting professional experience I've had to date.”
It also helped inspire her to launch The Bar Chart Club in Kansas City. The club is a professional networking group that meets quarterly for anyone interested in making charts with data.
Starting Her First Business
Eventually, Erin ended up working in the Provost office in institutional research. Around that time Erin got engaged and started conversations with her fiance about leaving St. Louis to travel. This sparked the idea for Erin’s first business, Data Dozen.
“We were on the road for about a year after we left St. Louis. Any town we went to, I would reach out to the local university and say, ‘Hey, I'm in town. Would your graduate students be interested in a boot camp on how to use Tableau and how to visualize their data?’ And folks took me up on it.”
The universities that took her up on it include Harvard, Yale, NYU, Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and the list goes on! And the feedback from her training sessions is very impressive. . .
Now, Erin has expanded her work beyond universities and beyond Tableau.
“I started speaking at corporations and doing professional development training and that led to consulting projects, so now I do both. I can teach folks data visualization and I can customize it for their organization. It doesn’t matter if you’re building charts in Excel or PowerBI or Canva, there are good data visualization best practices that we can talk about.”
Starting Her Second Business
When Erin was traveling across Canada and the US, she lived full time in Airbnbs with her fiance, which is where she got the idea for her next business venture, Big Heart Hosting.
“Big Heart Hosting is an advice blog for Airbnb hosts. We take photos, we write blog posts, and we help give Airbnb hosts pointers on how to host better and how to make more money and attract guests. So both businesses were really born on the road during that year of living in Airbnbs, leaving St. Louis.”
Motherhood
In addition to running her own businesses, Erin is the mother of two young children. Her husband is a very involved father and she considers parenting a team effort.
“I love being a mom. I love my kiddos. I also have a phenomenal husband who is very involved. When I was thinking about my career and what I want for my life, and especially thinking about parenthood, I was very interested in having a career that I love while also having a lot more flexibility to be easily available if my kids need me.”
Erin finds that owning her own company allows her to manage her life in a way that she wouldn’t be able to otherwise.
“In general, if I get a call that someone has a fever, it's not the end of the world. I don't have to tell anyone. I can just clear my calendar, reach out to folks, reschedule meetings, and take care of my kids. And I also love the fact that my kids, especially my daughter, will grow up seeing me run my own business.”
Advice For Women Who Are Considering Starting Their Own Business
“The distinction that I would make for people who are considering starting their business or considering trying something new in their business is this: You don’t take action because you’re confident: instead you build confidence by taking action.
When you see people out there starting a business or trying something scary or even within an existing business, it’s not that they’re confident, it’s that they are brave. They might be scared and they’re still doing it. And you just have to have enough bravery (51% bravery, 49% absolutely scared to core) but you still do the action. And then the more action you take, the more confidence you build.
The other thing that I think has been very helpful for me is thinking about trying new things as an experiment. Instead of being devastated if something we try doesn’t work out, we should think of testing new ideas as a small experiment. See how the world responds. What did the client think? Does this work for the sales pipeline? Does this work for how to visualize this data? Whatever it might be. And make it time bound.
Those experiments allow me to free myself up a little to not feel like I have to know the answer of what’s going to happen in business. Instead, I’m just gathering the data and seeing what’s going to happen. Then I figure out what doesn’t work, get rid of that, and then double down on what is working.”
I’m so inspired by Erin and all of the thoughtfulness she puts into her career and her family. I treasure her as a friend and as a fellow female founder.
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