From $42k Bank Teller to Self-Made Cloud Engineering Tech Millionaire

Lenny's Academy had a role open for a cloud training architect. All right. So this is what I did. I went in and I interviewed for that. I applied and I interviewed and they gave me a demo to do to see if I could teach this stuff right and I could understand the technical part. And this demo pretty much scared the shit out me because it was something I never did. Here I am. I performed in front of thousands of people, I did music videos. I went to conventions to sell sneakers with thousands of people in that conversation. But this little demo that was five minutes long had to do scared the living shit out of me. I did the video. They came back and they said the video was great, we loved it. You don't have enough experience for this role. All of the training architects have eight years of experience or more. Not knowing that, he already did this the day before. He said but I love your hustle, I love that you went out there and got certified. I love that you're just passionate about what you're trying to do. I created a role for you yesterday. He was like you got any questions. I was like, yeah, man, when do I start? And he was like go ahead and tell your wife that you accepted a position at Lenny's Academy. And I didn't even finish my lunch, I went straight to the baby. Put that two-in-snow to the set. Y'all lucky I don't leave this joint today. You lucky I don't walk out today. I'm telling you that right now. Don't make me mad, because my black ass will be in the car today.

Man, hey, how much was that salad. How much was that salad?

So he started me off with 90. I went from 42 K to total compensation package of six feet.

Cloud infrastructure is cold programming, ci, cd, monitoring, containers, orchestration and more. Here are some of the jobs that you'll be qualified for after completing the program Junior or associate DevOps engineer, cloud engineer, associate cloud automation engineer, cloud infrastructure engineer, site reliability engineer, cloud specialist, cloud developer and cloud sales engineer. Level Up in Tech has a 67% passing rate and they have helped over 800 students meet their goal of having careers in the cloud. If this interests you, please check out the description or check out the first comment pinned in the video to start your cloud career journey with Level Up in Tech. Well, I was going to ask you about your shoes, which I probably can throw that in there later because I have a question related to it. Anyway, I'm not going to say that, man, this is probably going to put you on the spot. I'm not going to tell you yeah, do top five, you're top five rappers. I think that's a good question for you.

Top five rappers, bro. Oh man, in no particular order, though. Okay, right now, like I still rock with a Kendrick, I'll listen to some Kendrick Yo, to be honest with you, man, kodak got it right now for me. I like Kodak, let's see. I mean, you know, if you want consistency, right, I mean you definitely take some Drake. You know who else? Right now I'm liking NLE Chopper records and I like there's a few of them, but I like the boys. I'm not going to say I necessarily like their records, but I like their raw and grittiness that they bring to the table when they rap. What is it? Contra, coast, coast, contra. I don't know if you heard of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they spit some fire man. But I'm trying to think of, like, when I put on something, what am I putting on? I'm putting on. I mean it could be anything from Toei Lanes to, yeah, anything from Toei Lanes to Meek. You know some of Meek records, you know definitely. But top five right now. If somebody came on and somebody said, hey, who are you talking about? Because I might have thought about them already, you know. And so I like. J Cole, don't get me wrong. I think he one of the best rappers, but like I don't listen to him, like it's one of those things like, so put it like this like yo, yeah, yeah, right. So like we know J Eminem, all of them up there but like I mean, I ain't gonna listen to J in a minute. You know what I'm saying. So you know, j Cole is the same thing. Like if you come through town, we there, right. But like right now, if I got to put on something, you know it's going to be, I like Lil Dirt, right, lil Dirt getting better, yeah, yeah, bro, I was literally about to say that right, like, well, I have, because, lil Baby, I'm a oh, one person. I'm gonna tell you straight up, there's two people that I really like. You know, money Bag, yo, getting better, and 4-2. I like 4-2, bro, like yeah, yeah, 4-2, come through. I like his energy, you know. I just like you know authentic, like it's some people that you can tell like you know, like my son, and no disrespect like my son listened to these rappers, like Tom, I can't even think of it Well, yee, and all this, my son 14. So he listened to like Yee, yee and all these other rappers and I'm like you know it just ain't authentic to me. You know, even though Kodak you know Kodak, you know still rap about the streets and stuff. I mean that's authentic, though he being himself you know what I mean he telling his story, he telling you the demons, he fighting to anything and that's what the artist is all about. And look, my son texts me now because he probably hear me talking about you. He's talking about no idol, you a lie, get out of here 18 and 19.

So they're like younger to me and they listen to like my younger brother. One of them tries to put me on a rapper's end Some dude named no Cap I heard some stuff about him. I'm gonna try to give him a shot.

Yeah, I think I heard him. No Cap. I mean, you know some up and coming rappers right now that are dope, but I'm not hearing enough of him right now. Right now, like I definitely listen to a whole Kodak album. I listen to that, you know, you know. So.

Yeah, Over the last couple of years. You know I'm gonna put them in the top five because I listen to him more often, frequently, pretty much the last three years. Gadi I've been listening to more Gadi in the last couple of years and I just like his, his growth, but also what he talking about and what he be standing for. Drake is also my favorite rapper because I've been listening to Drake since I've been like 15, 16 years old. We're going to the concert next month, so that's gonna be dope.

Yeah, I just went two weeks ago. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, he coming you and Dallas, right, yeah, he coming out of Dallas, that's, yeah, that's for sure. He coming out to Austin too, yeah, yeah, and it'll be.

I probably will say I think Kendrick is a slightly better rapper than Cole, but I probably will put Cole over Kendrick because I listen to Cole more than Kendrick. For you know Cole really his fan, his fan base is like around my age people that was in college and doing all this other stuff, like we grew up listening to J Cole and doing homework and stuff and then I really don't have a four or five. It's fluid. As Steven A say. It's fluid I used to like. Because I'm a big advocate for a person, I'm gonna say that people don't give him his props but when he spas on tracks I say when he rap like this, he like top five his era and that's big Sean like. When big Sean rap like what's that paradise?

It go.

I think it goes over people's heads when big Sean rap on like songs like paradise and sacrifice time. I missed the Anderson. I'm in the matrix and what I like. When he started rapping fast like that, I said you know you can't get it. You know what, before we intro the pot, I'm gonna throw two chains in there, because when you go back and listen to two chains, oh, he got better, chains got better and like his, as simple as bars, they hit, they hit. Like I go back and listen to chains all the time. And I start laughing like Chains Titty boy. Be in there, man, but.

Titty boy? Charlie, I don't know the Titty boy.

That's why I should make this back boys. I should make this page. Let me see some real quick, man, because that made me this throwback Thursday. Let me see some real quick, because I think I need to put this on the Patreon real quick. I think I need to put this on here.

Duffelbag boys. Yeah, yeah, sir.

I'm a guy, that was a guy. But that hook is iconic though Play a circle, play a circle.

Always.

That drop, everybody gonna get hyped in the concert.

The beat was crazy too.

Like your line always was big, earned by the record guy.

Get my head. Yo, yo, yo. I'm going to tell you this, though I'm going to tell you this that GZ gangster grills. That just came out, though couple months ago.

That's why you said that and that's the reason I said Gotti, because DJ Drummond Gotti, just so I showed you and Gotti sound like oh Gotti. So that's the reason why I threw Gotti.

Oh, so they just did a joint. Oh, I got to check that. Yeah, yeah, gaster grill never disappointed.

Yeah, definitely, but welcome back everybody to episode 98 of the tech talk podcast. I'm your host, HD, where we talk about everything from tech, careers, money, rapping, you name it. Today we got a special guest with us, None other than Mr Brody Palmer. You've seen him in publications like LA Weekly, NYC Weekly, Business Insider. He be on your LinkedIn's, your Instagram's. I haven't been on his Instagram yet, but I got some questions to ask them. Welcome in, welcome them into the pod today and he going to rock out with us, so let's go ahead and give him a round of applause real quick. Yo man, I appreciate you. We've been trying to do this, I think, for like the last month. We've been both pretty busy, but you know we're here now. We're here now, episode 98. I remember when you was getting hot and then I was just starting my thing and I remember everybody like around like three years ago and I really would just start everything and now look how far everyone's come. You know it's three years. So I thought it'd be fitting to definitely get you on the pod and I just want you to tell your guests well, the listeners a little bit about you.

Yeah me, brody Palmer, founder and manager. Member of Level Up in Tech. I've been in tech for almost six years, former banker before that for about 14 years. Come from a rural part of Virginia where you know just poverty and you know no opportunities. So I'm just like anyone of you and this is what I do the gospel preachers just getting people in tech and show them that they can do it regardless of the circumstance. If you want the bag, if you want to change your life trying to, you know, level up in these jobs that are out here in this field, you can do it regardless of what anyone say.

Man, that's dope, that's dope, and I forgot to tell you all while you're listening right now. If you're on Apple podcast or Spotify, please like us, leave a review, share it out so we can get some more subscribers, some more downloads. And if you're on YouTube right now, you know to hit that like button, subscribe and share it out for the YouTube algorithm. But so, briefly, let's touch on you growing up in Virginia, because one of the things we know with us is we don't see a lot of us at tech, like, even if you go to like I told people last year when I was at Afro tech, I said as many black people that is here, this is like this amount of us in the actual industry, and I just want to talk about that briefly, like, kind of like, maybe what you were exposed to or your mindset or how things were kind of growing up, Because for me, I know I didn't know anything about cybersecurity till I pretty much was out of college. So I kind of want to just talk about a little bit about, like, kind of like, your upbringing in Virginia.

Yeah, man. So my upbringing was pretty much, you know, the only exposure to tech we really had was like keyboard and class, right, so like when I was coming up. I'm 38. So when I was coming up it was more. So how fast can you type? That would determine if you got like the desk jobs or like the corporate jobs, right, they did little you know type of speed assessments on you. So as far as tech this is far as we knew like computers, right, didn't know anything about cybersecurity, didn't know anything about cloud computing, didn't know anything about any just IT infrastructure that was out there. So, to be honest with you, like we knew there was a tech industry and I knew there was a tech industry, but I always thought it was for, you know, people who really excelled in that stuff in school, like they came out the womb, understand as computers, understand the internet, and that's just what they did for the rest of their life. But it wasn't until, man, I was like 32, when I was working in the bank and you know, a couple of guys came in and their director posits was damn near like, well, not damn near. Their director posits was more than when I was making a month, and they was, that was the you know bi-weekly check. So I asked them I was like, look, what are you going to do for a living? And they said, oh, we're in tech. And I'm like tech, like what are y'all doing? And he was like, yeah, I'm a database admin. And other guy was like, yeah, you know, I'm an engineer. I forgot what type of engineer he said but what really really blew my mind was so in the country, as we call it, in the rural area of Virginia. In the country, half of the county was on files but the other half was on like still DSL, like CenturyLink slow speed, and where this dude lived, where both of them live, was on the half where the DSL was in the county. So he was like, yeah, I work for home and I'm like yo hold up man, this dude making that much money sitting at home working in tech and don't even have the right type of internet speed that we normally would see to get the job done. So I just got curious, man, I started diving into it, you know, to try to understand what I was going to do, because when I would think about tech you think about it's a broad industry, it's so many things you can do, so like what is right for you. So a hundred people told me a hundred different things and I was still confused as hell. So, you know, doing research, I did come across this thing called cloud computing technology and if we got a minute here, I really want to hone in on why that was so important to me. So I'm a sneaker collector.

And.

So what we did was, back in the day, like 2015, 2016, we used what we call sneaker bots. So sneaker bots were developed by these developers that we would connect with that would act as a human but be able to cart shoes quicker than a normal human can. Cart to shoe quick, check it out in seconds, while a normal human would take, you know, 30 seconds to a minute to try to get the shoe off a foot locker or Nike or whatever the case may be. One thing about it we were using these bots and we were installing them on Windows servers, on what I call, at the time, oz. I didn't know it was like AWS, right. So I was like, hey, we download these servers on Oz. So when I start researching, I see this technology called AWS, cloud Technology, microsoft, google. It literally blew my mind because I was using that and not even knowing it. Back in the day, anyway, and as I started researching more and understanding, hey, this is some shit that's really going to blow up and companies have to use it. I mean, we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook, you got Snapchat. All these apps use this right now. So why wouldn't this become a regular part of life? They don't want down the line and that's where ultimately got me thinking like hey, this is what I can do. Into tech, go into tech and do Definitely.

Now I'm probably a span a little bit more on that later on. That's a short version, guys, if y'all wanted to leave right now, but it's going to get much more interesting Now. I want to talk about your career in banking, right, like you know well, you're also I mean you're on live open tech and so you also have the coaching as well, and I do coaching and I work with people that come from banking backgrounds and one of the things they do worry about is maybe that transferable skills or things they can do. You know that they've been doing in banking for a while. So I kind of want to talk about briefly I guess you know why banking, and then a little bit I guess about I know you were there for about like 14 years, so a little bit I guess like how was that experience for you and how has it helped you, kind of like, and what are you doing now?

Yeah. So that's your question why banking? Right? So we're going to be super transparent on the show. I'm going to be super transparent, right. So when I met my wife at the time we was trying to court, you know, I was in the street trying to do my little thing, right, I had no job, I had nothing, right. And she literally told me she was like well, if you want to get with me, you want to be with me. You got to get the job period and I didn't have a background. You know, I've never got in trouble and anything. So what I did is I had a friend that worked at this payday loan company that was like look, I get your job here, just come in and dress up. You look the part I got you. So I came in there, put a suit and tie on and got the job. They started me off $9 an hour, all right. So from there I gained the experience of, you know, working in the financing industry because we had to deal with contracts. You know payday loans as people. You know getting money and paying it back every payday. So we had to make sure you get the contract signed every payday. We dealing with you know checks and teal money et cetera. And then it just graduated to where I wanted to move forward and I seen a banking job as a teller that was open and I applied because I was doing that. I mean, that's pretty much the job I was doing and that's how I got into the banking industry. So I just worked my way up, man, from teller one, two, three, then I got into the banking platform. So when you come into a bank, instead of going to the teller you go to the person in the suit to open the accounts and everything you know the talk to. And I just graduated from there, from banker one, two, three to assistant manager. And really my mindset was set on hey, man, if I can make like 50 racks, I can make 50 racks a year, I'll be good. Let me take care of my family, let me try to make a manager salary, I'm good. So think about really in hindsight, if you think about how small I was thinking right, if I kept that mindset we'd still be check to check right now, still be struggling right now. But ultimately, through banking, dealing with different types of people, it is sales, so you're forced to sell, especially when you was working at Wells Fargo and Bank of America. These companies push you to be salespeople, so I think over time it helped me develop a soft skill of communication and problem solving and thinking quick on my feet, right. So you're dealing with all types of customers every day, from nice customers to rude customers, for customers who have just unique financial situations. That you just got to think on your feet all the time and I think that enabled me once I was trying to get into tech, be able to communicate and have conversations and be confident. Because one thing I did notice when I was trying to get into tech those people that were interviewing me really look like they didn't want to interview me because they were more introvert than extrovert and sometimes introverts don't want to communicate with people some of the time, right, or a lot of the time. So I think me being able to have that conversation and keep the conversations going through the interview, ask questions and really just build a rapport helped me get into the industry a lot. And that's one thing. If you're in a finance industry, banking industry, you have those skills that you don't even know. You deal with customers every single day. You deal with unique situations every single day, so sometimes your roles in tech is going to be customer facing, whether it's internal or external, and if you understand how to communicate and just be yourself and be a problem solver and think quickly on your feet, I think you'll be successful, no matter what.

Bars, bars, and also, when you were talking, the last couple of episodes I've had. All of us have had humble beginnings because, even though you are, I'll just say you're a little bit older to me. I'll consider people to be way older than me. They're gonna be my pops or whatever. All of us still grew up in a time where think about it I don't know how things were in Virginia, but I'm from Louisiana, specifically Shreveport, shout out to Retro City and there was a time where you could raise a family, have a house, have cars, take your kids on vacations on a $50,000 dollar salary?

Yeah for sure, I mean, think about it. Somebody says, think about, let's be super honest. Somebody tell you back in the day man, I make $20 an hour. Oh, what the hell are you working at making $20 an hour? Hold on who paying that? Right? If somebody said back in the day $12 an hour? Where are you working at? That's $12 an hour.

That's facts and that's not too far along going. When I was 19, I was making $20 an hour and people was like, oh, where you work at. So, like this is the thing, Like I only say this because on this podcast I strive for transparency and to let the people know that sometimes you got to get out your own way and looking at all the people like what they're looking at you or some of the other people who are doing different things in text I was like a lot of these people are anomalies. You may get there, you may not, but you'll probably get to a place where you have a really good salary it may not be $300,000 and you own yachts and doing all these other stuff but I want them to kind of put their head down and just put the work in so they don't get dismayed when they come back and like maybe this is the offer that they offer. I'm like you got to start somewhere. You know like it's just a, you know it's a microwave society, and I did. Every time I'm on here I get a chance to reiterate, because once I see a person like you or like my god, bobby or Josh or Chloe, and now they see like what they doing, now they say, okay, I just put the work in. I can get where I need to be. That's all they got to do.

And stop focusing on everybody else. Stop comparing yourself to everybody else. Your journey is your journey. If I did that, then well, luckily for me, right? I didn't have no one to compare to, because, I mean, the only people I knew that was actually working in tech was the two gentlemen that I talked to before, and now it was just me just focusing on reaching the goal, just getting my foot in the door and getting out of banking. And you know, every day you got to put in that work. This ain't no, this ain't no. I'm going to work on a weekends type day. You got to immerse yourself in this stuff. If you want to be successful in it, that's it. You just change your attitude.

Thanks. I told the client that we had a consultation the other day and I told him I was like hey, you can go this route where your skillset is already taking tech sales and we can move over to do tech sales within cybersecurity. Or if you're really trying to go a technical route, then you got to be willing to put in that one, two hours every day and really lock in and still compete against people who've been doing this longer than you. So I was like the choice is yours. It could be done, but I just let you know what your options are. But so you already covered about moving with the ranks, but I want to ask you real quick what was that breaking point that caused you to leave banking? And also I want to ask you how was it having a family and working the job you hated? So I want to touch on those two things.

Yeah, so having a family and working, the job I hated was just, you know, all honesty, right. But for those that know me, like, let's start it off, I was a musician and you know I was pretty good. So we was in magazines and, you know, getting major publications, we performed with major artists and stuff. But what people don't understand is that that's a business in itself. So it take money to make money, especially in music. Right, I was clothing designer, I was a sneaker resell company and I you know celebrities buying sneakers from us, et cetera, and all of those things fail, right. And I always knew that, like, I was destined to do something more than being a banker. It's not wrong with being a banker, but I knew that I was destined to do something more than that. So, coming home every day and actually looking at myself like damn you about to settle, because once again I told you, I was like, look, if I could, just God, if I could just make 50,000, I'd just be all right, you know, let me just make 50,000. Because I thought that was the road, that was it. I'll be a manager and you know I'll ride my career out doing that. And you know it was frustrating too, because you know, you see, once again, like we had a conversation before this and I don't know if you want to dive into that, but you know, when I was rapping, we had, we were on stage and we were frequenting circuits and performing in venues as other major artists that are out today right, so I see them being successful. And I see other resale companies that I was connecting with just go off and just boom and sneakers, and I was like man, you know when is my time? Is it past? And I think the breaking point was one day or not, I think I know the breaking point was I came into the bank and this lady came in and she written me a new one about money that came out of her account that she spent. So for some reason she thought that I was liable to check to make to really help her understand where she spent her money, you know. And the thing she said to me was she was like Brody, let me tell you something. She was like go back on your computer, look at my account and look at how much money I got, and when you see how much money I got, that's the type of service I expect from you. And I was like damn that's how they talk to people now, like you know, like that's how we, that's how we doing that, like you coming in thinking you I supposed to bow down to you because you got a certain amount of money, and that was the point where I say I can't, I can't do this shit, I ain't you know, I can't do it, no more. I got to find something and I guess the stars aligned because a couple of weeks after those guys came in and I was like what do you do? And they told me, and I just took it from there. So I think it was that was the breaking point that really kicked me off to look for something else.

Yeah, that's, that's dope, and I think that's one of the things too that reminds me like I don't think I ever told this story, but man, these folks, these folks got to get there, he did shit. No Cal man that reminds me of, I want to say I was close to already leaving Target at the time. I worked at Target through college and in 2014's, when I got back, I graduated late 2013 and I worked there a little bit through 2014 before I started to help this for TSA. And I remember this irate customer who I think she was pretty at the time was mad at me because we went and sell her something that's on display and I'm like we don't sell that. Well, go get the manager. I said I can go get them. They going to tell you the same thing, whatever. They got mad. They tried to find my name and all of this. I was like, bro, I'm so done, like I can't. I'm so glad I'm going to be done with dealing with these people because, like I'm, I'm like I ain't going to take nothing from nobody and I'm only getting paid 775. This job ain't worth it, yo, like. That's why I don't understand. Hit the gunshot man because they need real man Like that's why I understand why when you go to fast food they'd be trying to be stingy with the sauces and stuff Like bro. They not even paying you enough to care. Hold on, matter of fact. Listen, listen, shout out to the women at Tick man. They had a black woman got caught. She made a fake employee at Wendy's and was paying them like 20,000.

I was like, hey, I've seen that joint. Oh, got them.

Hey, she needs a job somewhere. Like, shout out to her, because to work in fast food now is, unless you're working at Chick for Lake like you, not even getting paid. Decent you dealing with people, all type of customers, nah man, no, no people, it's, it's rough.

Attitude and we want, and we want everything quicker and quicker and quicker. Right, so a lot of people think, just because you work where you work and their customers they get to talk to you any type of way they like, as long as they say, do it, you gotta do it. And when you sit there and be like, nah, man, we ain't taking this no more, then it's like you out of pocket. When they been out of pocket from the get, go anyway. So look those people at the fast food companies. I can't take nothing away from you, but I will say this if you don't wanna do that, there's a whole shit ton of things you can do that's better. I promise you that.

I wanted to ask you about. I mean, you went into it earlier but I was gonna ask you about. You said you were using the bots and that's how you kinda had the revelation about cloud. And I think it's pretty cool how you could do something. Maybe that's unrelated to something, that you don't know what you're doing behind the scenes. But then you realize, oh, that's what that is, cause I've been telling people for years. I was like, hey, you know all the things people been watching, like on Netflix and Amazon Prime and all these things like that, like behind the scenes, that's the cloud, that's what's controlling all that stuff. I was like, so you've been interacting and using this stuff for a while. You just didn't know you were using it, and I think people's minds are blown when they find that out and how. So I know you said you want to go in the cloud and when you asked all these different questions, who gave you the most solid advice on jumping into the cloud? That's what I'll probably ask you like who gave you the most solid advice on what to do?

A lot of people, man you know, from, just you know, a homeboy, I mean. He was in tech really, but he wasn't in an engineering role that I wanted to go into. But, like you know, they just gave me starting points, right, and I just had to figure out what I wanted to do when I started thinking like going in the cloud. What I started to do really now I think about it is reaching out to folks that's on LinkedIn, and I started connecting with them. I started going to like meetups on meetupcom bro, they talking about some shit at that time, you know, and they were talking about using IngenX as a load balancer for Kubernetes. Bro. I'm just starting, I don't even know what none of that is, but I'm just there to act like I know, but just to shake hands afterwards, right, and get some advice. So I mean I would say, man, like over 100 people gave me just solid advice of where to go and I ended up on a platform called Linux Academy, because everybody said at that time it was a great platform to learn cloud, but it was so cheap. I was like something gotta be wrong with it and I don't know if we're going here yet, but you know. So I created an account and I started just learning, like just taking search, because people was like, hey, get your certification in AWS, you get a job. That's what they told me and that's what I listened to. I got three AWS certifications after it was all said and done and I used that platform to do it and going into interviews and they were interviewing me, asking me about third party tools, you know monitoring and observation and you know audits and all of this within the cloud. I'm like I don't know what you're talking about. The certification never taught me that. So right then, and there I knew certifications was just a foundation and fundamental step. I really had to learn how to solve problems. And I came back like, damn, you know, I was like yo, I don't know what to do and I was like, okay, well, just what did you remember out of the interview? Let's look at what they was talking about in the interview. Look at the JD job description for where you interview and take those skills and tools and services that they asked you to have and try to see if you can solve problems. And I did that and when I did that, I went back in and I got actually Linux Academy had a role open for a cloud training architect. All right. So this is what I did. I went in and I interviewed for that. I applied and I interviewed and they gave me a demo to do to see if I could teach the stuff right and I could understand the technical part. And this demo pretty much scared the shit out me because it was something I never did Like here I am. I performed in front of thousands of people. You know I did music videos. I went to conventions to sell sneakers, with thousands of people in that conversations. But this little demo that was five minutes long it had to do scared the living shit out of me and scared me to the point where I told my wife I was like I'm just gonna call it back and tell him I appreciate the opportunity but I don't think it's right for me. And she told me she was like if you don't get your scared ass in the living room and do this video, I'm gonna smack you. And I did the video and one thing I put in position was I did the video. It came back and they said your video was great, we loved it, but you don't have enough expense for this role. All of the training architects have eight years of experience or more. So I was like I was putting the position to pretty much say well, your product don't work Because you say your product can help people get into the industry. And if I don't have enough experience for anything that you have, how can somebody gain experience? You said your product was the product to give us experience. So what he did was this, not knowing that he already did this the day before, he said but I love your hustle, I love that you went out there and got certified. I love that you was just passionate about what you do and I was just passionate about what you're trying to do. I created a role for you yesterday. He's like this is a technical AWS support role where I will be in the back end working on the production environment. So if something breaks, a student has an issue with they can't get terraformed to deploy because of our environments, et cetera. I got to be the person that go through and fix this issue in our production environments and make the content right. And when he showed me the salary he was going to give me a job I was like bro, so you telling me, this is what you made for me and he was like yeah, so he's like, take your time, think about it and let me know tomorrow. Well, what did I know? He went on fucking vacation the next day. How are you gonna tell me tomorrow you're going on vacation. So I'm sitting there for a week with my wife like yo, did he offer me this or do I? Got an interview for this joint again. And you know, long story short, when he came back, you know we had another meeting and he didn't really offer me any job. In the meeting he was just talking and he was like you got any questions? I was like, yeah, man, when do I start? And he was like go ahead and tell your wife that you accepted a position at Linnis Academy. And, bro, I ain't even finished my lunch. I wish Drake to the bank had put that two-piece notice in. Y'all lucky I don't leave this joint today. You lucky I don't walk out today. I'm telling you that right now. Don't make me mad, because my black ass will be in the car today, man, hey hold on.

How much was that salary man? How much was that salary?

So he started me off with 90. So I went from yep. So I went from 42K and plus bonuses, right. So I went from 42K to total compensation package of six figures, I ain't gonna say overnight. But when I didn't think I was going to get the job and he offered me another role that he created, yeah, that shit took me to the moon. I sat there and looked at the salary for a whole entire week while he was on vacation and just looking at how life was about to change. Man, because think about it, man, I was $20 an hour, $22 an hour, something like that, and you know making ends meet. And you know my wife was making a little bit of money, a little bit less than that, you know. So, total combined salary, we was under 80K. And here I am, I'm making more than both of us in one job. So you know that shit changed our life.

Perfect man and I like that. You illustrate something that I tell people sometimes too. It's like if a company like you, sometimes they'll make a role for you. You know, if I was a preacher this one I'd get the organ. I'd tell somebody to get on the organ and I'd start preaching right now and I'd start shouting. But now, when he told you about starting and talking to your wife, they reminded me of my getting my first job at Intel. It was like I really only interviewed. I went to that. They had a job fair and then I interviewed with the dude. He wasn't my manager, but I talked to him. He liked me and then after that I didn't hear nothing for a while, followed up in January of late January of 2017. And then he hit me up. I was hooping one day at LA Fitness and I got an email from the other manager. It was like, hey, when could you come up here? And I was like shoot today. So I left the gym, I went and I put on a suit, all for like five minutes, no cap, and he was like oh, when can you start? I was like today. I was the same way. I was like, hey, I can start today Because that, because that, because that raised my salary like from I was getting at the time like 25. So we're going to say I was getting like 50K and so that raised it from like 50 to like 75. And so then you know you couldn't tell me that I was like oh yeah, I can, I can do some things now, man, I was happy. So I definitely understand that and I'm glad that's like a real moment, because these people listening, if they're on their journey, they're going to feel like they're one day too, and that's how it's going to be for them. They're like okay, this is because sometimes like, how do you that they cap ain't no way. Somebody went from making 42,000. Now they making six figures. I was like, no, it can happen, because it's not about what you were, it's about what you negotiate, yo oh my God, that's, that's what it is.

Don't get what you think you were if you get what you negotiate. And I mean for me, I took that deal right. I mean I probably could have negotiated, maybe, but I took the deal because it was just a life changer for me. But this is why I preach. I preach now and this is why you preach what you preach. We did it so like I can't tell nobody that you can't do this, and I'm going to tell you this too. I'm just going to be super transparent on how I feel about it. There's a lot of people in the industry that would tell you that you can't do it, and they'll say well, I'm going to tell you why I can't do it. Because you can't do it. Because when I was, it took me five years to get here, and by the time I got to this, I was already doing this and that. But that's you, that ain't me. You know what I'm saying.

So that's why I don't tell people to focus too much on my journey, because my journey, like you say, it was my journey. If I knew back then what I know now, I could have scaled way faster. So I tell people like, hey, you can do it. What you got to do is got to be more intentional. Now we have people like you myself, other people on YouTube, people on TikTok, linkedin. There's a lot of resources. Back then this stuff was gatekip. Ain't. Nobody told nobody how to do this. We had to figure it out. That's where the big boom three, four years ago, yep, and that's the thing right when I got into cloud.

One thing I did I think that actually helped me too was I was like, let me use all this stuff that I learned from banking, from music, from selling sneakers. I started to look at it like yo, if I'm an artist, how am I going to make myself hot in these LinkedIn streets? I'm an artist, how am I going to get myself hot? So I started just creating content to help people get motivated. That was behind me. I'm like I'm just learning this, but I know somebody probably behind me that don't know anything, that probably needs somebody a few steps ahead of them, like me, that can motivate them, say, hey, this is what's going on, this is what you need to be doing, and I think from there too. That helped me get into the industry, but it also helped me brand myself to. When I got into cloud, literally as soon as I jumped in and announced that I got a role, there were so many people that helped me get into the industry. There were so many people that was coming to me asking me for help, and these were people that were in the industry already for 10 years bro six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years and my first question was like what can I do for you? Because I think you should be helping me. But when I started to realize, when it came to cloud computing in 2017, 2018, a lot of people were anti-cloud. But a lot of people just worked in a row and didn't worry about changing, worry about growing. And now cloud computing was coming in. It's a new wave of companies were taking on this new technology that was cost efficient and allowed them to create disaster recovery scenarios, and they didn't know jack crap about it. So they came to me for help and I was like, okay, let's see what we can do. And I started creating personal plans for people, just off the rip, for free, like, hey, I'll sit with you, let me create this personal plan for you. And it just got so overwhelming. I was like yo, I'm spending a lot of time in the evening, outside of my work day, just working with people for nothing. And people were going on getting promoted and I ain't even gonna thank you. So you know, oh, hell, nah, hell, nah. She the one that put it in my ear. It was like you doing all this, you taking your time away from us. She was like at least get something for it. And that's where, at the time, we wasn't level up in tech, but that's where level of a broadest came into play, you know.

So egg way into that, because I'm going to tie this back in the level up in tech and then we'll actually get into level up and take some more. What did you learn from Linux Academy a cloud guru that helped you with? Well, first, how was that experience? And then, what helped you with deciding? Okay, I think I can also scale this on my own, like pretty much you're doing the same thing that they do, but now it's for you. So how was that experience and what did you learn?

So technically so, when I'm working in it, right, and you know, shout out to Linux Academy to give me my opportunity to get even production experience in the back end. But as I started to continue to brand myself on LinkedIn and I started to continue just learning and out to the business, what happened was I was starting to get a buzz on LinkedIn and every time I fly into Dallas, where the headquarters were, they wanted me to come into the design and marketing meeting and they will build marketing around me. It's like hey, we got this new idea, we want to know if you can inject us into your LinkedIn stuff. And I'm like, so. I'm like, so what's the check look like for that? Oh, no, no, no, I mean, you got your salary, we negotiated it. So this is where we. I was like nah, you know, so let me sit back and think on this. And I started to look at that platform had a lot of courses. So when you come in, right, it's a lot of courses, you could be whoever you want, right. But how do you become it? Right, it's cloud engineering courses, these, you know, tools that you need to use and need to learn how to solve problems with, and their certification courses. But, like, how do you do this step by step? How do you know you put in the right plan together to foster a new career? How do you know that you're learning to be able to solve problems? What type of problems can you really solve? Like, what are they really solving in the industry right now that you can showcase and be like I got it, I've known this. And how do you, like, showcase that? How do you interview with people to showcase that you're able to be an asset to them? All of these questions came into play that they couldn't answer and I'm going to be honest with you. I mean, you know the CEO sold it now. So my black ass went to him like a dummy and said, hey, this is what I see is missing on the platform, this is how we continue to help. And I'm going to be honest with you and my managers was like, nah, you know we're not going to go that route right now and you know pretty much, stay in your lane. So I said you know what? This is a niche that I see that they're not feeling, and I see this all the time because I'm helping people one on one. I'm going to do it you ain't going to do it, I'm going to do it. So I went to them hey, this is what I'm going to do. It's not a conflict of interest, because it serves, as you know, in this area. Sign this contract. They signed the contract and I think they signed the contract. They're like this is just going to be a hobby. Yeah, yeah, they signed it. And, like I said, you know, level of Broadest was born January 2020. And we started, you know, helping people from there and that's, that's the story.

Yeah, man, I'm going to give you a round of applause for that real quick, all right. So when it comes to level up and tech, what separates level up and tech from the other boot camps out there?

Yeah, so honestly right. I mean, we know there's other boot camps out there and programs out there, but we really focus on our strategy. We got a six step process where we help people come in with no technical background and end up landing a role. A lot of them end up landing a role within 90 days of graduating and what we did is literally just patent my experience, and I took my experience and put it into a program like. These are the things I did. I don't want you to make the same mistakes that I did, so I'm going to show you exactly what I did to help me get a job in 10 months. Right, and we started helping people become successful. So what we do is just focus on that six step process that we know works. We focus on branding Right Like, for instance, this tech can be learned when we focus on this mindset shift. You come in with the same mindset you had. If you're a banker, you're not gonna make it. You gotta immerse yourself and challenge yourself to change your mind about how you solve problems. You can use the soft skills of the way you solve problems, but now we're solving totally different problems and it's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt learning these things, but you gotta be open to accepting this way of learning and then from that acceptance, you can create your own unique way after you learn it right. So we started seeing more and more people become successful, and I think another thing that we focus on is what I started to look at was, after the people we have become successful go on and get jobs and they work there for a while, I started to look at how can we scale the business and how can we have more great people that I feel like myself to help coach these folks to success. And one thing we could have done was I could get somebody that has 20 years experience in tech. But number one, it's two things. Number one they couldn't tell you jack shit about going through level up in tech Nothing. They couldn't tell you how you're gonna feel. They can't tell you what you're gonna experience. They can't tell you how to get through problems that you're trying to solve. They can't tell you nothing about our process. And number two there's so far ahead. I feel that sometimes we forget the lingo that is just basic to us is next level to someone else, that they just don't understand us. If we think we're talking normal, we think we're just giving it to them and bite-sized chunks and like, hey, these are the basics. And they still like, bro, what is that you just said? What is this? So we needed somebody that was just maybe a year ahead of, someone that they still understand what the streak feel like, but yet they got their foot in the corporate and we started hiring those folks that were successful to come back and that model has been working for us, where every single coach now that's in level up in tech has been through the program, every single person. I got staff for 24.

Yo, that's fire. Because that is one of the things like how could I trust you if you haven't been through this? How can I believe you? And so I like that approach, I like that strategy, I like and it was something that you said that I want the key on and what was it? I wanna say it was about either your process, on how you did it and how your oh, I got it Mindset. Mindset is a big one that I talk about as well, like when people come to me and they say we had this concept, oh, I wanna be a penetration tester, I wanna be a sock analyst, whatever. Specifically, when it comes to sock analysts, I have a pen post on my LinkedIn and this is for the listeners of the viewers right now, if you wanna be a sock analyst but you don't know what to do, go to my LinkedIn and look at their pen post for those sock analyst scenario questions and just take a stab at them. Those questions really make them think because, like you said early on in the interview about you realize, search this one is gonna help you solve problems. Like they're paying you to figure out this stuff and be able to diagnose it. The certifications is cool, but it's mostly kinda like if it's not a practical certification. It's kinda like when you were in school and you had to write down either your spelling words or dictionary look at stuff in the dictionary. It's kinda like that it's good to know but it's not applicable. Yet you have to figure out why these things are in here and why they make sense of how they tie in together. So that mindset shift is it because I've worked with people whose mind has not shifted into being a sock analyst? I can't think literally like for some jobs, like you have to be able to think. There are some jobs that are a little bit more mundane and remedial where you're literally doing the same thing. It's a playbook you just do this, this and this and you're done with it. But for other jobs, you gotta figure out a scope. You may get hit with something you never seen before, like you were talking about back in 2017, 2018 about cloud computing. I remember I started my new job at Ophuls in like 2018, and either the end of the year or early 2019, I remember I saw my first S3 book of the year. I didn't have a cool in the world what a S3 book it was, so I had to go look at Amazon documentation and why it shouldn't be public and how to see if the public block access is put on it. I had to learn all these things and that's one of the things they're paying you for. It was a guy on LinkedIn the other day. He was trying to set up Sentinel and he couldn't figure out how to extract the raw log data. I gave him an answer because all I did was I typed in Google how to extract the raw log data in Sentinel and send them the stuff directly from Sentinel. I'm probably gonna reach out to him and was like this isn't necessarily a good look, because if you were trying to convey to us that you want to work with us, you couldn't even figure that out on your own and that's simple. And so that's one of the things you're talking about. Like, people ain't got time to tell you all the answers. I don't have the time I have to spend and train on you. I can't do what I gotta do, and that's what some people not understanding either. When it comes to them trying to pivot over, especially being technical, it's like, hey, a lot of companies don't have resources to train somebody for longer than a month or two After that. You need to. If you can't do that, if you can't do that, you gonna have a long day, you gonna be on a pip or you gonna be gone.

Yeah, and one thing so I want to reiterate what you said too. When you say it's simple, right, you can't do something simple, this is what he mean. He don't mean if you can't solve that simple thing right in there in your brain. What he mean is this if you couldn't Google how to extract this raw file and Sentinel, then where are you here? For, like Google, it's like so. I think a lot of us are scared to use those resources because you're scared at what it's gonna make you look like. We use it every day. I don't care if you've been in tech 20 years, you're going to use it every day, because it's some things that you just haven't used, that you need to understand how. So, if you're in a role, or if you're trying to get into a role, use Google, use those resources, use those documentations, because that's gonna show that you're self-sufficient and trying to figure out how to solve the problem. Now, one thing you can do if, let's say, if you looked up something on Google and it didn't work, now you have a base of what you tried so far, now you can say, hey, mr Manager, hey, mr Lead Supervisor, lead Tech, this is what I try to accomplish. This is what I expected the end result to be but this is the error I got and this is what I researched about the error and this is what I tried and it's still not working. Can you put me in the right direction on what may be the problem? That's great, but you cannot just not try anything and then ask the question hey, this isn't working. Okay, tell us what you tried so far. I mean, I ain't tried nothing yet. That's not gonna get you in the pit, that's gonna get your ass outta there quick.

And free game free game like he was talking about. I call it this exhausting all options. Go through confluence or whatever type of documentation. You guys look through all the documentation, list it out, tell the principal guy, hey, I tried this, this and this and it's not working. For a fact, I did this at Atovallot with our principal guy when I was trying to solve something. I said, hey, I did all this, I did this documentation, but my search isn't working right or I'm not coming to what I need to. Now I didn't like I said I just thought off knowing all these answers, but then I started getting them. I started he was saying, hey, you got time for a quick zoom and he would show me, because I was the only one coming to him having the issue and saying I did all this stuff and he was helping me. Some of the other people were just not reaching out to him at all. He used to actually say, hey, tell them guys that they got issues, reach out. And what this also did was because y'all think when y'all interviewing, they looking for somebody who know it all newsflash, they not. They just looking for somebody who know enough who can catch on fast, who's a good fit for the team, telling you for real, straight up. That principal engineer went on to always advocate for me and tell people, hey, he's the guy on the team to reach out to, which started giving me more confidence. And then in the client, the client was like looking out for me to wear in 2019, I got to go to Burbank and sit with the client because they requested me to come to meet them. So all this came from just putting in the work, not knowing everything, but doing my best and getting better at it. Once it was something I didn't know, but I was trying hard. So that's the thing you can't. Just I hate. I was a pet peeve from my hate. Can you hear me this? I'm like, or do not do this. I had an analyst used to do this all the time. He would ask us for help but wouldn't take notes, so he'd be asking us the same thing the next day. I'm like it got to a point where I just started ignoring him on teams. I'm not answering that. I'm not because I already know what this undo, right, and he's not gonna write it now.

Yup, they're drowning and, just like people who drown that can't swim, they're grabbing on to you and if you try to help them, they're gonna drown your ass too. They not even listening to you when you say, hey, listen, kick your legs. They're panicking, and what they do is some people take advantage of you, like, hey, you know I'm gonna hit broad, it's up, he got the answer, I ain't even gonna try to figure it out. So that's just how it works sometimes, man.

Reminded me of this dude on Twitter. That's always he's e-taxed a couple of us. He's like e-taxed like the other day it was like me Beast, my guy Tavion and my other guy Akin. He was like hey, what's the entry level search to get? None of us answered him. I put in my like my close friends. I was like bro, it's finna, get blocked. I was like I have a whole free e-book that's in the link of my bio. It says, hey, you wanna get in top security, click here. Not a lot of people, that's just pissing me off too. A lot of people will not click the link and they'll try to send me a message. I'm like, bro, did you click the link? But the questions you asking I've answered already. I've answered them. I don't have time to answer these things. No more, right, and they don't wanna answer.

So, look, that's the thing y'all gotta understand. If you come into something for mentorship, you come into a bootcamp, come into some type of coaching program, right, understand. Whether you invest in time, money or time and money, you're investing that to do it the process that they have been successful doing it with. If you come into their process and then try to change it to do it your way, understand that's not gonna work because you don't know how to do it and the only thing that's gonna help you is immersing yourself once again in this, changing your mind to say I don't know what I don't know, but I'm open to learning different things. That's gonna help me excel, and I may be scared to research this stuff and try things on my own, but let me put my foot out my comfort zone and do it, can I promise you, once you do it, once you do it twice, you do it three times, it becomes second nature to you and if you can do that for yourself, you'll put yourself in a position that when you get into your role, you'll see people who became complacent that's been there two, three, four years, and you'll outwork them to even know more than what they know right now. They'll come to you and ask you questions about working with Terraform or working with it, whatever, and you're like hold on, now you've been here for four years, you're not working with Terraform. No, I ain't never worked with it. So keep that mindset, because that's gonna help you be successful man. If you don't have that mindset, it ain't nothing. No one can tell you that's gonna help you take it to your next level, because you'll be sitting there stuck, because you think you know all the answers but you really don't and you're coming to someone for help and you're just too scared or just too stubborn to try it and you're gonna be on your own way. That's where the failure lies, because people are in their own way and they don't wanna open up and get out their own way.

That's facts, man. I want to ask how many people have has Level Up and Tech helped so far?

Like a rough estimate. So rough estimate about 800, I believe 800 people came through our program. Right now we have a average successful graduation weight of almost I wanna say 67%. Now I'm gonna tell you all this. I'm just being super transparent. When you see these boot camps out here, they talk about 92% graduation weight. 97% graduation weight. It's two things that can happen. One is pure bullshit. Or, number two, they built a model where they're charging you forever along. It takes you. So let's say, for instance, like use the and nothing against them, but using, like the Western Governors University model, you get a bachelor's in cloud computing. You pay every semester, you pay every six months. So if somebody needs to take six months to do this and they completed in six months, but you have taken now two years they allow you to do that. So if somebody says they have a 97% graduation weight, then you should ask out of how much time, right, did you allow them to do this in six months? Is this a year? Is it two years? Or are you allowing them to extend every time they need more time? Because there's so many variables that come into play with people being successful. Like, and I'm gonna bring it, I'm gonna be super transparent with y'all. Like you gotta understand, with level of the tech, just from our company, we deal with a lot of things, like, we deal with a lot of people who have problems at home that we tend to sometimes take on those problems and we wanna help, right, not saying and we don't have to, right, but it's so many variables, right? Somebody just has anxiety at home and they're depressed, right? Somebody's pregnant, right. Somebody lost a loved one, somebody's sick, somebody got in the car accident, somebody dealing with kids' custody issues, somebody's dealing with something that's keeping them from being successful, right? So when a company tell you 97% success rate, so you mean to tell me, out of every 100 people, you only have three that drop out? I don't believe that, based on my experience working in this business. Right, be honest with you. If you do your research out of online learning and training that means platforms, that means college and universities, that means boot camps and programs there's a five to 20% success rate. So that means, out of 100 people, only five to 20 of them actually making through and graduate in a certain period of time, or six months to a year. Well, it's fast pace. That's what we're talking about. So if people. If you got a program that's telling you, even if they're getting 40%, 50% success graduation rate, that is good numbers. You know I wouldn't do anything for 20% or 15%, but these are the real numbers that companies are not really talking about. And I think we pride ourselves on our numbers because we are fast paced and we have other options now that we allow guests to and we call our students guests. We allow our guests to, you know, take longer time but within our fast paced program we are getting results. And if you go on LinkedIn level up in tech, go on my page, ask anybody that's been in the program, you'll see that we're actually taking people from no technical background to cloud rolling six months. Actually, we just posted someone today that went through it. So you know, I wanted to break it down for y'all because a lot of people will come into a program and expect miracles, right. So the thing is, if you expect miracles out of programs, you damn sure better be ready to be a miracle worker yourself, right? If you want this in a certain amount of time, it don't work. Unless you work, we can give you the magic, we can give you the fountain of youth right here and say you're gonna live to you 500 years old and you're gonna look like you're 20. But if you don't drink it, it ain't never gonna happen. If you don't get out your head and follow the process, it ain't never gonna happen. So I know that was a long-winded answer to you. I just want to keep it real.

Sometimes you already answered the second question I had, so you already covered that once. I thought that was perfect. So this will make me move into a question. I guess, just for the listeners who are inquiring about either getting into the cloud or maybe your program, what would you say would be the basic foundational level skills needed to get started in the cloud?

First of all, understanding what is cloud right, understanding how that works, and once you get it, it can be basic right. You don't have to. Before I answer that question, I'm gonna say this you don't have to be an expert in this thing before you move forward. Some people think they got to understand completely everything about what the cloud is, how it works, how it operates, how it impacts businesses around the world before they take the second stuff. Just understand what is cloud computing right. Look at what cloud computing service provider you want to learn, right. America, we have three major ones that are Microsoft, that's Google and that's AWS. We got some private cloud companies as well, but typically you won't have a platform to learn on them because companies use them privately. But AWS, microsoft and Google pick one. It don't matter right. Which one's better, which one, it doesn't matter, you can learn one, all right. And the first thing you need to learn is, I would say, is server foundations whether you're using Microsoft, windows or whether you're using Linux and understanding a little bit of networking that goes with that, all right. So, if you can pick a cloud, learn the server foundations and or both right Learn Microsoft in Windows, because I think Google actually got a course where they teach you those fundamentals as well, and then you learn some networking essentials. You can start taking this thing everywhere. You can go cloud engineer, devops, engineer, systems admin, linux admin. You can go into security. You can do whatever with those basic things right there to start your journey.

That's dope man, because a lot of people don't know where to start and they, like I said, they focus on the paperwork first versus the actual skills needed to do the job. That's I'm big on, hey, every time someone asks me what's the search I need to do, this is, I say, you asking the wrong question. You should say what skills I need to know how to do in order to like. If you let's say, if you wanted to cook some food, you ain't gonna say like you know what to put the heat on first. You're gonna actually say what ingredients I need, you know what utensils I need, what type of chopping board, all these different, what do I need to make this burger? Right? Like, just keep it simple, like the Kiss method. If you just keep it simple, like you said, look at the. Look over the job description. It's gonna give you the pretty much the game plan on what you need to learn. Look over five or 10 of them, see what skills keep on reoccurring and try to learn it. That way you know. If that don't work on your own, which is my next question is you need to go get a structure path? I just made that post. I saw you like it the other day. It's like hey, you can either be YouTube university, udemy university, or be a structured learner. You know you could be either, or a mix of both, you know. So over the last couple of years we've seen so many people talk down on people paying for these courses or boot camps so I was like or even coaching. You see it all the time on Twitter. I'm like I've seen a lot of people that was doing YouTube university. That's still in the same place they was in three years ago.

Yo, yo, let's preach about that, bro, Cause that's that's one thing we want to. We want to. I'm glad you addressed that cause. I want to talk about that too. So this is the thing All right, regardless of you dealing with a coach program, boot camp, whatever you want to call it, we're so, we're so keen on trying to get stuff for free, and that's awesome. Free resources out there, right? However, those things are free. What you have to understand if you come to an entity or you come to a person to for help with your career, the price is the price, right. And let me let me break it down even further. Right, let's say, program like level up in tech? Right, we have coaches that that work for, for us All, right. So let's say, you one of those coaches, are you going to do this shit for pennies on the dollar? Or you're going to say my time is valuable, I'm not working for nobody, for no small check, right? So if you're going to say that if I'm going to be a coach in a program, they're going to have to pay me, pay me, good, then that means that program has to charge adequate amount of funds to be able to get you that good help, right, you can't complain. Or these programs $2,000, $3,000, you know? Well, listen, let's talk about this. It's going to make a lot of people mad, people talking about programs even $9, $10,000, but hey, you just paid a university 40 to $50,000 and you ain't even using your degree. You paid. You paid a university $40,000 or $50,000 only for you to be in a tech network group trying to figure out how to get in the tech. So what's the real cost here, right? So, even if it's free, you got to still have the understanding that you're going to invest something. That means your time. And if you're not disciplined enough to even invest your time to even work the free stuff out, then you better start thinking about like, hey, is this really for me? Because this is free and you still stuck in the same place? Maybe you need the mentorship, the kicking the ass, the guidance, the real structure path to help you move to the next level, and the price is going to be the price. You can't be mad at it, because this is what it costs to keep the boat running, to train you, to coach you. You know what I'm saying. At the end of the day, you just got to look at it like this and you going to your job right now, whatever you making, and, let's say, their customers say, hey, if your job sells something, your company sells something. That product needs to be cheaper. That means that company need to pay you less to come to work. You going to go to work with half a paycheck. So I'm glad you segmented it to this because I wanted to really just be super transparent about you know what we start thinking and tech and what we're expecting from mentors. Even like yourself, like myself. Other coaches are here. They're not listening. We are here to help and we're here to change the world, but understand we're taking time away from our loved ones and our family and other things we want to do to sit with you, to be able to help you. Get a bag. You get a bag for you to say what. All right, man appreciate it. We want some out of this too. We want to grow and be able to help our family out by helping you as well. That's what it is.

Well, actually I'm going to bring that up after this because I think that'll be. I have something else good for the hot tech section. This is also a random question right here. So two years ago I read the article that says you scale to 100K business. So now it's been two years since then. I was going to say is it safe to say that your business has made you a tech millionaire?

now yes, I'm like that's what it is. This will be doing it for right, where we want to help people change their lives and, in result, we get to change ours as well. So I'm always been an advocate of you don't get what you wanted to other people, get what they want. And we built this company where obviously a lot of people see the value in it and we want to continue to show the results that we've been. And I think out of all the cloud programs or bootcams out there, we're the only ones that show results the way we show them, and that's fact. I mean, y'all can say blah, blah, blah. Any competitors that's listening can say whatever they want. I'm not trying to compete, but I'm just saying we're showing results. So if you want people to see the value in your program, you should probably do the same as well.

Yeah, no, no doubt, like I told you, when we first talked weeks ago, I was like you're the only pretty much program that I have not seen any bad comments about. I mean, I'm talking about, like we know, people can be disgruntled because they didn't do their part of the deal, but I'm talking about if it's widespread, people feel a certain way, then that's normally when, okay, maybe there's more than meets the eye, maybe there's some decepticons over here, but I've never seen that about level up the tech, and so that was one of the reasons why I always wanted to get you on Cause I was like this is a standup program. Who's giving you guys a steal? Because I told him myself on the phone, I was like no, I think you need to up it for the, for the return on the best, for people are getting out. I said I think y'all need to up it because, like you said, people will go spend 30, 40,000 dollars at school and not learn nothing. They just learn how to pass this. Yeah, and you know, let's take on the idea two years and get a and got a masters and got and spent more money. You know and this is coming from a person who, unfortunately, well, my thing was a little different. I went back to a master's because I was working and I was bored and my plans was always to do the tuition reimbursement but I ended up leaving one company and then getting laid off. The other one falls it was able to do it. So that's a little bit different. I was trying to be strategic in there, but you know that's how life kind of played that out. But for the most part I tell people all the time because they was like you know, do you think I should just get a masters? And then my mind's like if you can get somebody to pay for it, cool, but it's not necessarily different. It just help you get whatever job you want. It might cut down on the experience needed, but I'm not going to just advocate for it, Although I do think the structure of a master's program is better than a bachelor's, because in the masters you actually do things that you may do for whatever job you want. Bachelor's is not necessarily like that. I do like masters more because masters must sound you have. Most of the time people who actually have jobs are already in a master's program and it's easier to work with or you understand the technology, and so I did take a lot of skills I got from my master's program into my roles with me now, which is one of the reasons that helps me stand out among everybody else. That's there.

And I definitely agree with you, right, like a lot of people are on, like, hey, college degree, do I need a college degree? Listen, do what you need to do to get into the role and then get them to pay for your college degree Period. If you're going to stay there, you're going to pay for the college degree. I would say, just to backtrack you know companies where the level of the tech or any other coaches they will have, they can't help everyone. They won't. What I say is they won't be able to please everyone. Somebody's going to be mad about something and unfortunately, you're going to have those folks on there talking about it, right? So one thing we know this as a business. We know we can't please everyone, but what we try to do is take what they say and improve. Here are devops shot. Devops is about improving it. Infinity loop, always improving, always improving. So if we can't take what they say and improve on it for the next person, we'll continue to have those problems. But you know, once again, just because if you're thinking about creating your own company or being a coach or whatever as well, you got to look at if they ain't talking about you, you ain't doing something. So you can't focus on what people have negative to say about you. You can only focus on getting better and focusing on what's working for you, and I think you know, in all, that's what makes our shop different from everyone else. You know, I think we're relatable. You know people see me out here and I'm not a person that just talking like I'm above anybody, I'm like listen, we make millions, guess what. You can make it too, and you could probably make more. That's the whole gist of the game. Right, we need to take the information that is taking us years to learn and be able to give to somebody to help them reach the same goals. And you know, weeks, months, you know, whatever the case may be. This is what chat GPT is out there for not to cheat, but to help accelerate your learning. Where all these, this information that taking people years to build upon, you can now ingest it and make it work for you in the next five minutes. That's what this is all about and that's our goal.

And now this is a little fun segment. I want to give you some hot takes that you may want to want to get into. I want to ask you what's some stuff that you want to get off on here that you can't necessarily say on LinkedIn?

Oh man, I will say I just said it one of them where you know I'm gonna be truly transparent Like I don't like when people just come into this industry and just search for free, free, free, free, free, free, free, free, free, because how are you gonna not invest anything in yourself, but you want a company to invest six figures and you ain't invest nothing into yourself, right? Once again, there are free resources out here that are great, but eventually you got to look at yourself as am I taking this shit seriously? What can I invest in myself? Listen, you can buy the skills, and what I mean is you can. Either you can sit there and invest two, three years in YouTube channels, or you can pay somebody to help you do it in six to nine months. Or you can pay a mentor with one-on-one consultation, like Henry does, and help you you know, two, three months, wherever stage you at, to get into it right, if you need tweaks. Oh okay, he told me I need to do this, I got the job right, but it's gonna cost you. That man ain't free. That man ain't sitting down with nobody for free. That man, listen, you see where he at right. He in the room. That means he got a house or something. That means he got bills to pay for all the electricity going on in the back, got bills right. So that means he don't have time and kids. That means he ain't got time to sit with you for free to help you and your partner and your kids level up in life and you don't give them anything right. So I think we need to start with that narrative and really just ask ourselves it how much do we believe in ourselves? Because if you're not, if you search it for free, free, free and you don't want to invest anything in yourself, that just tells us that you don't believe that you can do it and you don't want to waste the money, because you know if you spend the money, you're not going to be consistent in getting the job done, so you're looking for something that's low investment. So if, when you do quit on yourself, it's a settle that you're willing to walk away from, oh, I ain't, I ain't put no money into it, so I'm good because you go and quit on yourself, because that's what this is, what this all about. Number two it will be haters everywhere, people going to talk about you, no matter what. Listen, I don't reply to nobody that speaks negative about us on social media platform, and I'm going to tell you why. Because why am I giving that energy? If I'm giving that energy and respond back to them, that's exactly what they want. What we're going to put that energy into, what you should put that energy into, is just being successful. Keep going with your day. Leveling the fuck up Excuse my language, but leveling the fuck up ain't nobody out here playing. It's money to get it's? Your life can change in the next few months. If you just do what the fuck you supposed to do. Your life can change. Your family life can change Everybody talk about. I got to do this for my kids, you know. I got to do this for my mom or my dad. I just want to. And then it gets hard in two weeks and you quit. Where that? Why that you was talking about a couple weeks ago, and then you let people talk you out of it. It's going to be people out here that's going to tell you ain't no way you can do what you think you about to do because I couldn't do it. You got to get those people out of your circle. Don't pay no attention to people who come on platforms to talk about how their life was impacted negatively and you can't. It's no way that you can do that and the people that tell you that you can do that are predators in the industry. Trust me, we see what's going on, like people that have programs, people that are coaches that can tell you, hey, you can do this in this amount of time. It's people out there that going to tell you those people are predators because they told you you can have success. They feeding you false hope. They feeding you false lies. It's no way that you can go from zero experience to making high pain roll 90, 100 K intact. Let me tell you this we had somebody who was a nurse that came in her first tech role and got 165 K her first. Right now, will that be you? You probably most likely not Right, but it's possible. You don't tell me about what's possible if we see in it every day. So believe what you hear or believe what you see. The choice is yours.

That's what I wanted to say that's dope and you bought up a big point. You were talking about your circle and when you get into tech and then actually start moving up and start making more money, it's very imperative that your circle probably has to change. Unfortunately, because you have to like. For example, it's hard when you're making overs of $150,000 or more and then some of your old friends are still maybe 60, maybe $80,000. And they can't fathom you saying, hey, I'm looking for a role on my basis to 20 or something. They can't fathom it. You know they can't fathom and I've said this before. But one of my friends I made the video about how, when I quit my JP Morgan job you know that video titled hey, I quit my 175 K job and then he was like for that money, I was stayed. I was like well, that's why we different. You know, that's why you work, that's why you work where you at, that's why I work, right, Like, that's why it's like it's different. I don't focus Like anybody can just get paid somewhere and stay there. But if you know the skills you want to, you need, take you to the next level. You're not going to get them there. There's no reason for me to stay there and right, and so that's why it's always good to have people that know what that feels like, so you could be around them. If you get around those people, you'll possibly like people like close friends of mine are like either an engineering or a detection engineering or they have their own companies and we just talk about different things and so when we mentioned like salaries or money, it's like shoot, get it. They throw in the bag out there Like it's cool. So you got to, you got to change that. You know I got a buddy shout out to Tay man, tay is about what? Five years younger than me. We've been knowing each other for about six, six years now, I think. I think like six years, and he's always getting jobs with like that's paying like obscenes level of money. And you know, if you were to tell somebody who's making 30 K about you know what he makes or what you make, they would they would not believe it. They make right. They couldn't fathom it. They probably would try to get there or they would just tell you you're stupid, because why would you leave that Like that's a lot of money. Think about it Like before your, your mind was expanded about hey, if I could just make 50, like. I remember back in the day I was like shoot if I could make 80, because, like life, you know, I come from parents who probably never made more than maybe $50,000 put together, maybe back in the day. So if I never see that, I'm that and that's one of the things too like this ain't one of the political podcasts, but we like to be transparent. That's one of the reasons why the hood is the way it is and they never see. They saw people that was teachers and other type of jobs struggling. So whatever their auntie or grandma or somebody had, that's like the maximum or bare minimum for them. They say I'm good, you know, if I can get this, I can get my food stamps, I can, I can get on Medicaid, I can do all this. So I'm good, I don't need nothing else, and that's why it stays like that. So that's one of those things where you have to get exposure and that's one of the things to issue when I said about diversity. Reason why it's lacking is because exposure, and that's what this podcast also aims to do exposure. Now, some of you watching this right now would have never met this man that's on screen and now you guys say, oh man, I could be like him. I'm in banking right now. I'm ready to quit. How can I do what you do, right?

You got to do the hard work and put your mind to it and it's funny that you say that. Then, because it's two things right, I want to say when I was getting into tech and I got that first row or the total compensation was over 100. I told my mama. My mama said just be careful, because you know it's a lot of scams out here, and you sure it ain't a scam. And I was like mom, it's a job, what are you talking about? A scam? Because she couldn't fathom that Girl, like I used to, I was making 20, 21, $22 an hour. She couldn't fathom that I was going from the local bank in the area. So now I was making that money and I was at home. You know what I'm saying. And then when I start building level up attack and I started putting my content out there and stuff like that, people was coming to me. This is no lie, y'all, I'm not even in front, I'm not exaggerating or anything. People were coming to me like man I heard you bought some pyramid schemes, man. Like pyramid schemes, bro, like what. I'm out here helping people get into an industry that none of us really know about. And I think because where I'm from and we don't really know about the technology and understand the tech industry. It was foreign to some people and when I try to help people do it, they didn't understand why I was helping Johnny, why I was helping Marcus, why I was helping you know, suzy. So since they didn't understand it, oh, they got to be involved with some pyramid schemes, shit or something. I don't even know what they're doing. Hey bro, what's that thing, bro, that's doing? You got to know. Don't ask me, bro, that's your look skirmish to me, like what? That's crazy bro.

I kind of started like when I first started 2020, I used to post a lot of my content on my Facebook. I actually used to go live on YouTube and Facebook and LinkedIn and I stopped because I realized that wasn't my demo. These are people from the hometown. If they never really are going to support me, some of them don't want anything better for themselves, so there's no reason for me to even put that level of effort in talking to them and that's why I just left them and focused on YouTube, twitter, linkedin, instagram, tiktok because that's one of the things too. It's like it's crazy how people you never met will support you more than people you know in your whole life. They would pay the full price and not ask for no type of discount. I had a guy and I'm getting her on the pie too man, I'm going to send you her TikTok man, she keep it so thorough. I got to get her on. I think her real name is Jamisha. I got a double check, but her TikTok name is Tech Creativity, and a guy asked about getting a resume or something done and she said oh yeah, reach out to a textual channel. He got you. I had seen a strike notification. I was in Vegas at the time. Dude paid. We never talked, but just somebody who didn't know me. He paid whatever was on the site. So it's just like I tell people now if you're an entrepreneur or you're trying to do something, just focus on who your client is. If they complain about your price, they're not your ideal client. We don't go complaining to Mercedes and everybody about, hey, this made back too high, you're not their client. Go get your Corolla. Ain't nothing wrong with Corolla either, but you're not their client. They're not going to come down their prices for you.

That's funny, man, because we see it, and I will add to you too is you're doing something. Let's say if you are creating a business, right, don't let people that's local family change your business model. Oh man, if you do this, man, we probably rock what you mean. Or if you do this and bring this, or if you start selling this, I'll probably buy a whole lot, because soon as you change your business model to please those people, nobody going to show up for you and you're going to be broke. So focus on the nits that you know you can solve the problem and eventually, eventually, those people that say peer me a scheme or whatever they're doing, this scam going to come and they see so many people being successful with it. They're going to come and say hey, man, I'm trying to talk to you about your program. Man, I'm tired of this. Trust me, whatever you got going on, keep focused on not going or sometimes they will never do it because it's you.

It's because it's you and they won't do it. You see that with friends, family, they'll listen to anybody, you know. You tell them they're not going to listen and that's one thing. You got accepted. I had to accept it. I said, hey, I got friends. I realized, hey, you know, this group chat is about this is and is. I said years ago hey, you know, if y'all want to help getting cyber or something like, let me know. Or you know, you see them complain about their job and everything. But you're right here saying, hey, I can, I can help you. I didn't want to take it All right and so I just stopped. I said they want to be who they want to be. I got to accept that and that's what you're going to accept too. Because, think about it, it's so good when you're in the meeting and you see a lot of people that are like you or women that are like you and yawkin, you know, in the team chats and the memes you were seeing, like through the phone. So like it's just cool, like the environment, like it sucks when you're the only black person on the team but you don't have a black manager. Like you know, it's just different. You know, sometimes they know how to manage your style and how you operate, or certain things, certain jokes don't fly, you know, and and that's the thing, like we can, that could be whole other episodes when we talk about that. I want to try to wrap some of this up real quick, like far as what would be some things that you want to leave the guest with, like what would be, like maybe top three things or whatever you want to leave the guest of viewers with today.

So, whatever it is you want to be in tech, you can be it right. One thing you have to understand in order to be it, you need people around you that are doing it. And the third thing is, once you surround yourself with people that are doing it right, if you don't have money to invest, find a way where you can bring them value so they can give you that same value to take you to the next level. Or you got to look at you know, if I want these people around me and I want to learn from them, then I got to understand that my time, their time, is valuable as well as I value mine. And whatever the cost is, it's the cost Because at the end of the day, you got to ask yourself are you worth it? And if you think you are, then it's no amount of time and no amount of money that can keep you from being successful, because in the end it will all be value and worth it for you. But if you don't think you're worth it, then you're not going to make it anyway. So you know, believing your dreams, reach out, ask the questions. I know there's more than three, but you know, if you can believe it, you can achieve it, you know, and that's really, that's real talk If God put the dream in your heart. He already gave you the tools and resources to be successful. You just got to utilize them.

That's it, man, man, man, man, you know in the words of Deontay Ryder speak it, believe it, receive it. Y'all already know how I'm getting down with the pod. I appreciate everybody that's been tuning in. We have episode 98. We got two more episode 100. Probably have a giveaway coming up pretty soon for that. Also, you guys saw in the last podcast that I was right that my boy, boogie man Bud, is the unified, actually no undisputed champion of 147 pounds and he two times undisputed. And you know he had a fish fry with the big fish. You know Earl Spence and yeah, man, a lot of people don't know.

He got them boys scared, though he got Charles. Charles Boyce scared man. Yeah, yeah, yeah Charles.

White said yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of people don't know like before I started this channel like I had. I'm really a huge boxing fan, so I actually have a older channel. That's like why I used to do boxing. It's one of ways how I got better at doing this content that allowed a traveling era on that channel. I may start it back up. It's just a lot to do, but I appreciate you all for rocking me. Oh yeah, check it out. Subscribe to the Patreon. The Patreon will also serve as a buffer for memberships now. So if you want coaching but you want to be coaching like on a retainer, you're retainer coaching. You know? Join the Patreon. I got you. It's going to come with some perks, for sure. Also, just share this out. If you're looking to get into level up in tech, we're going to have some links pinned in the comments for you so you can go ahead and get that cloud career started. But, like I always say, until next time it's your boy. Hd Stay sexual and we out.