 What's happening? Welcome back to the channel. Today I have a very special guest. It is Brandon, and he is going to tell his story of how he transitioned from being a teacher and getting into the technology industry. So, Brandon, thank you so much for coming on the channel. I really appreciate it. Pleasure to be here. Awesome. To start things off, I was very passionate about technology at a fairly young age. Some examples of this passion was I had a Mac and I was upset one time that I couldn't play computer games on it that are typically played on Windows. So, I made my first virtual machine at about a young age of 13 years old, all in the names of playing the Sims 2. And from that point on, we continued to just steamroll into being more invested into tech. So, whether it was taking a computer apart and putting it back together at a young age and understanding just how it all ticked, I seemed to have a very promising future toward a career in technology. That being said, we were a shy kid. We weren't very happy with our social skills. So, we shifted our focus into the social skills for the remainder of high school. And we were getting progress and we were really happy. We saw a lot of growth, whether it was me getting prom king at a specific point. I went from not being known at all to suddenly being one of the most well-known people at my school. And I wanted more. I remember going at a technology school and I thought if I go here, all those social skills that I've been building up are going to be gone. So, I shifted my focus into deciding to be a teacher because I always loved helping people. And I believed that I could be someone that made a kid like me that was super shy discover those social skills and reach their own higher potential. So, we did childcare for a couple years. We made strong impacts. And while I was doing this, I was a full-time elementary education and special education degree. I did full-time college online while running a school age program at the age of 19. I got a lot of social skills here and I got a lot of soft skills. I was able to create schedules. I was able to understand how to be a diplomatic person while talking to people you were doing business with. And I started to really enjoy that side. And that's when I shifted into a different gear, which is when I became an official teacher. So, for my very first teaching job, I was a special education teacher, but also an elementary education teacher. I worked at a behavioral school. It was a Title I Tier III school, which basically means that you're working in probably the toughest environment you can work in. All my kids were isolated, supposed to be taught one-on-one. That being said, you have one-on-one. You think, ah, I'm a teacher, eight kids, no problem. Well, you know, there's supposed to be one-on-one. So, we had some issues and we worked through those to the best of our ability. Now, that wasn't my problem. My big problem was a work-life balance. I came in my entire life wanting to be a hero. Little did I know that that desire was slowly burning me out. I was working 60 hours a week and I could not find time to breathe. It was around this time that I discovered course careers. I'm going to circle back to the summer before I started teaching first. I was watching a career tier list video by Shane here and I recalled information technology, S tier. I watched a video from him and Josh where he was interviewing him, telling him about how he gets people into the IT world. All right, now I'm going to go back to when I was burnt out. I watched a couple other videos just to make sure it was the right fit. I remember watching a digital marketing webinar. I remember watching the tech sales portion of course careers and then I stumbled on IT and something about IT to me really rang like this is the one. So, come November of 2022, which is just about four months ago now, I took course careers through Josh and I really, really liked it. Felt like I was learning a lot even though I hadn't been exposed to this stuff before and I felt so confident that I was going to be a great fit in tech that I ended up resigning just two weeks later after going through all the laps. Now, mind you, I was still working this 60 hour a week job because it involves a lot of prep, but I was dedicated to the cause and I continued to throw out applications while I was preparing videos on my YouTube channel to show that I know the content. Fast forward a month later, my last day was January 12th. I ended up getting my job offer on January 13th. During this time, I put in 126 applications, heard back from about 10 people and had about seven interviews. And also, once I was starting my job, I was still getting emails and calls and I'm still getting those right now. So, what I would do want to say is if you guys have not tried out course careers, whether it's for tech sales or for IT, I strongly encourage it because when you have a path that you've committed yourself to, college, right, you might want to be like, you might have that stubbornness and you might think, oh, you know what, this is the one that I want to do. I don't want to do a different career. But I also think it's important for you guys to think about the fits and what you think you're utilizing yourself best to. And I think if you can find yourself where you're utilizing your skillset to the best of your ability, you're going to find growth in your life and that's what I'm currently finding with IT because now, instead of teaching and being a little exhausted all the time, I'm not exhausted and I'm still teaching. I'm still guiding people toward a direction when they need help. And it just goes to show you that if you can find the right path, you can utilize all those skills. So now, instead of just utilizing social skills, I'm utilizing social skills, my passion for tech, my passion for learning new portions of IT because it's so broad. There's so many directions you can take it. And that's my story. Wow, that's an awesome story. And yeah, I'll say that. You mentioned to me off camera that you had basically taken a lot of different career tests and they all told you become a teacher, become a teacher, become a teacher. And you were already a teacher and you really didn't like the job, right? You like kind of like you explained. And that's one of those things is the career test can sort of give you a general direction on maybe what your strengths are. But at that point, you sort of want to look into careers that are going to help you utilize your strengths to the best of your ability. And IT is one of those career paths where you are going to be constantly teaching people. People will call the IT help desk. They're going to ask you, Hey, I'm having an issue with this or that. And you're going to be kind of walking them through the process of troubleshooting whatever their issue is in many cases, or helping them set something up, etc, etc. So there is a ton of teaching in that career path that's outside of, you know, the traditional like teaching or education career. So that's really awesome that you were able to best utilize your skill set. And then, of course, you're going to have so many different directions that you can move in the future now that you've secured that IT job. So just I think you briefly mentioned it, but you started course careers, I always like to clarify this. You started course careers on a certain date, and then you were able to secure a job on another date. How much, what was the time period there was I think it was about a month and a half or so. So I started course careers on November 24th. Now I finished the course probably a month after that. And then I got a job a month after that. So depending on how you look at it, I got a job a month through it, but you can also say it took me two months to get a job. If you count me buying the course and me figuring out whether or not it was really what I wanted to do, because I feel like that's going to be a part of the process with everyone too, right? That's one thing I tell people is, you know, going to college is one of the most expensive ways, not only money-wise, but also time-wise, that you could possibly figure out what to do with your life. And that's of course one of the value propositions. Everyone always says, oh, go to college and you'll figure out what to do with your life. Well, that's one of the least efficient, most expensive ways in the entire world to figure out what to do with your life. And that's why I kind of like these emerging industries and alternative education where you have these certificate programs like Coursera offers, as well as course careers, where for, you know, a very reasonable price in terms of your time and your money, you're not risking all that much, you can figure out, hey, is this a good career for me? And so it's possible in some cases, and I always tell people this because I don't want them to be disappointed, you might go into tech sales, for instance, and you figure out halfway through, it's not for you, you know, sales is not for everybody. But then, hey, you have these other options, you can try IT, you can try digital marketing. And chances are, one of them is going to stick and it's going to be a good, you know, opportunity for you, and it's just going to be a good match. So yeah, I really like that you mentioned that. So you kind of took about a month figuring out if it's a good match for you, and then you really committed to it for a month. So it took approximately two months total for you to secure the job. How was the course itself? How was Josh's course? So something that because I'm taking another class pertaining to IT right now about SQL. And something I love about Josh's course, and we were talking a little bit about this earlier, was that it implements a lot of different applications. But something else that's really great about Josh's course is he tries to simplify it as much as possible. He is giving you a lot of information, but he is also keeping it broad so you can branch out, which is the entire point of IT. Because realistically speaking, you're not just going to be, some people do it, but realistically, you're probably not going to be one-dimensionally doing the same thing for several decades with IT. You're probably going to go a lot of directions, which is why the course can go to a lot of directions. You start off learning about computer hardware a little bit. You start learning about the basics. Stuff you might have already learned about if you were in technology. But then you take those things, whether it's like knowledge of the NIC, the networking cable. You take knowledge of something like that, and you're doing networking at some point in the class. You're learning about static and dynamic, the IP addressing subnets. Then another second, you're setting up a VPN. Another second, you are setting up an active directory. All of these things are amazing skills to say you have familiarity with when you're doing an interview. You will have the right answers. They're like, oh, so how do you have familiarity with this? You say what you did in the course, and they'll be like, all right. Because it seems legit, and you are doing those things. Once you have familiarity of those things, you're opening yourself to dive deeper into those things. One of the things that got me a job was my knowledge of SQL or SQL, which to be honest, wasn't as big as they probably were expecting it. But since I had that baseline knowledge, I've been able to dive deeper into it as I've been working there. I know, and here's another thing too, always ask about onboarding processes while you're getting an entry-level job. Because a way to know you're really going to be valued is by seeing a company with a really good onboarding process. Because you can see a company that makes you sink or swim, and you can also see a company that refuses to give up on you and gives you all the support they can, which I'm blessed to say that I'm at a job like that right now. All right. So it took you about two months or so to get the job in a month of seeing if it's the right thing for you. Plus, you were working 60 hours a week. You were very busy, so you're probably doing it at a solar pace. If you don't mind, let's talk about the salary. You can give me a range if you'd like. You can tell me what the exact salary is if you're comfortable with that. But what kind of salary were we thinking of with an entry-level job in IT? I had two goals when I first started applying. It was at least get 20 an hour, and it was get a job within a month. And I am thankful to say that I achieved both of those goals. So yes, 20 on the dot is what I am making per hour. And honestly, when I was teaching, since I was at such a tough school, I was actually making $56,000 a year, which was a thing that I made sure to include while I was in my interviews so they could understand like, hey, I'm coming from a place where I know I'm going to make less, but I'm like committed to this path and that, you know, like I'm going to be making the most of the opportunity too. So when they would end up asking me, well, what's your desired salary? I would always just, some people like to say it higher. I set it 20 on the dot every time. And here is the beauty of it. I could tell I had the right work culture because they met me right where I wanted to. And that's another great green light signal that you are making the right choices in regards to finding the right work culture, because there's some people that fake it and there's other people that show it. That's awesome, man. So what would you say to somebody who is kind of thinking about possibly taking, you know, the IT course with Josh, but they're on the fence about it? What would you say to that person? I want you guys to come in with an idea of realistic expectations, first of all. So understand that you're paying to learn and that you need some time to put aside to do it. Because there was a lot of days where I could be like, I don't really want to look at these videos, right? So I want to first say, understand that you need to have a little bit of discipline to finish the course. If you want to be one of the stories where it's like, oh, hey, I did this fast. Good, but like, you know, make sure you're putting a little bit of time every day. It's not, it's more of a marathon than a race. You can watch one or two videos every day and before you know it, boom, you're done, right? So that was my first thing. My other thing is understand that $500 compared to college is nothing. Like I was working at my job and I was like, yeah, I'll throw $500 toward this because at least this way I'll know whether or not it's something I'm going to be good at. And it's better to spend money figuring out what you're good at than spending your life trying to be good at something that you're not the right fit for. Well, I will put a link down to Josh's free introductory course. He has a free introductory course. If you choose to buy the full course, I will also put a coupon code down there for 50 off. I believe it's Shane 50. I always forget, but I think it's like Shane 50. I'll put that down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. So any other like last moment thoughts or last last moment advice for people who are kind of figuring out whether IT is a good career for them or just any random thoughts in general? Subscribe to Shane Hummus. He knows how to get you on the right path. Definitely got me going on the right path. You know, gave me a lot of good options to look at. Another thought is subscribe to Josh. He's a great guy, like literally one of the most down-to-earth possible instructors you're ever going to have on the internet. There's some people that act super nice. And Josh is someone that is chilling and is discord saying, Hey, how are you guys doing all the time? Dude, he's so nice. Josh is really like the nicest guy. If you go into his discord, it's just a culture of people hyping each other up and being super kind, which is amazing by the way, because I still have that culture. I can still jump in that discord and ask a question about IT and people will eagerly answer and be like, you can do it. And why is it like that? Because Josh is like that. Check out this other video right here where I interview someone else who is also able to get a job in IT using Josh's course in just 10 days.