Trevor Fox broke his shoulder after being hit by a car, and the day after surgery he learned another professional baseball team had acquired his contract. Baseball never stops testing you, and that kind of whiplash sets the tone for this conversation.

Trevor built his career by leaning into discomfort. We go from Division I baseball at UC Davis to the 2008 recession, independent ball, and player-coaching in Holland and Australia, and then into tech, where the Blogspot he kept while playing abroad helped him land his first digital analytics job. From there: consulting at Li & Fung in Hong Kong, Postmates (first delivering by bike, then in a growth role), Panoply, Census, his own fractional growth practice.

In this episode:

• Why pitching is analytics thinking: spray charts, game situations, and a sport where the best hitters still fail six times in ten
• How Trevor taught himself Postgres and Redshift after Zillow rejected him for not knowing SQL
• Growth as structured experimentation on a metrics tree
• Doing your work in public, and how an old Blogspot got him his first analytics job
• Trevor says "SEO is pretty much dead" and explains what AI search means for organic traffic
• Running a consultancy around parenting, starting work at 5am

Links:
Trevor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevormfox
Trevor's blog: https://trevorfox.com
Spandrel: https://spandrel.org
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The conversation covers Hoyt's journey from a music-focused career to a technical content company, Early Signal. It explores his transition from music to data science & engineering, his autodidactic approach to learning, and the challenges he faced in finding resources for technical learning. Hoyt shares insights on the evolution of technical content and the impact of data tech startups on his work.

Takeaways

• Transition from music to data engineering
• Autodidactic learning approach
• Challenges in finding technical learning resources
• Evolution of technical content
• Impact of data tech startups on technical content

Chapters

• 00:00 Transition from Music to Data Engineering
• 02:55 Autodidactic Learning Approach
• 06:04 Challenges in Finding Technical Learning Resources
• 11:09 Evolution of Technical Content
• 19:59 Impact of Data Tech Startups on Technical Content