Episode 115
Convocourses Podcast: Leverage High Paying Jobs to do other things
https://www.youtube.com/live/Wu1DHW3VueA?si=DJqI_DDxphFRDOGK
### Introduction
- Brief introduction of Bruce, his background in cybersecurity, and the purpose of Convo Courses.
### Personal Journey in Cybersecurity
- Bruce's initial fascination with cybersecurity and IT.
- Transition from passion to profession.
- Reflections on career longevity and personal growth.
### Career Development and Financial Planning
- The importance of planning beyond the day-to-day job.
- Strategies for using income to build passive income streams.
- Real estate and publishing as examples of passive income sources.
### Advice for Aspiring IT and Cybersecurity Professionals
- Encouragement for newcomers to consider their long-term career goals.
- Importance of financial planning and investment in passive income.
### Networking and Mentorship
- The value of meeting people who have successfully exited the "rat race."
- Insights from mentors on building financial independence through passive income.
### The Evolving Landscape of IT and Cybersecurity
- Discussion on the impact of AI and technological advancements.
- Personal experiences and perspectives on the changing nature of IT work.
### Corporate Experiences and Personal Growth
- Anecdotes from Bruce's time in the corporate world.
- Learning from challenges and using them to pivot towards entrepreneurship.
### Entrepreneurial Ventures and Lessons Learned
- Experiences with blogging and creating online content.
- The significance of perseverance, experimentation, and learning from failure.
### Engaging with the Audience
- Q&A session with viewers.
- Advice on career choices, technical skills, and job market insights.
### Cybersecurity Certifications and Career Tips
- Discussion on CISSP certification and its value.
- Tips for gaining experience and standing out in the cybersecurity field.
### Closing Thoughts
- Summarization of key points discussed.
- Encouragement for viewers to think big and plan for the future.
- Invitation for topic suggestions for future discussions.
This format aims to capture the essence of Bruce's dialogue, providing clear sections that can be easily expanded upon with more detailed bullet points or narrative descriptions as needed. Each section would be designed to offer actionable insights, drawing from Bruce's extensive experience and personal journey within the field of cybersecurity and beyond.
Hey guys, this is Bruce and welcome to Convo Courses. Every week I do this and I'm talking about cyber security from a GRC perspective. I'm an insider. I've been doing cyber security for a very long time and normally I do this at one Mountain Standard time, but I had some business to do and as promised, I'm back. I'm a bit late because I had some stuff I had to take care of. What I wanted to talk about is what I do. When I first got into cybersecurity IT, I just did it because it was cool. It was fun. It was amazing. It's like magic to me. It's so amazing how it all works together and stuff. And as I've gotten older, it's just become a job. I'm not saying that that's bad or anything. It just is what it is. I've been doing it a very long time and now it's to the point where I got to think about, okay, where am I going with this? What's the end goal? What do I want to accomplish at the end of the road when this is all said and done? What do I want to leave to my family? When am I going to stop? So I've been thinking about that for quite some time, not just thinking about it, but doing something about it. And what I've been doing is using the income, my salary, my high salary to build passive income streams. And there's many, many things you can do for passive income. I just started doing something that worked for me and something that was more in my lane, which is like publishing and in real estate. So those are the things that I mainly focus on with my income. And it's just I guess I wanted to talk about it because it's important to think about where you want to go with this. Like if you're trying to get into cybersecurity, if you're trying to get if you just started IT or you want to get into it, you're a college student, you're in high school, whatever the case may be. And you're thinking, man, you know, IT is cool or I want to do it. It's a lot of jobs. They get paid a lot of money. It's job security, blah, blah, blah. At some point, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point in your career, you're going to have to think about where do I want this to go? What's the end goal? Am I just going to work a nine to five until I retire? What am I trying to do with this? And so that's what I've had to think about for the last 10 years. not just thinking about it but doing something about it so I just started trying different businesses I would use some of the income that I have to try different things and some of them worked and some of them didn't work sometimes it worked but it wasn't for me you know but the thing is you got to keep trying and failing just fail forward keep on trying different things um What's amazing is the people I've met. I've met some really amazing people who've done it all kinds of ways, all kinds of creative ways to get out of the rat race, meaning get out of the struggle. They don't struggle anymore with finances. They don't struggle with the treadmill of capitalism. They have mastered it. They have mastered it. And all the people who have mastered it all have passive income streams, I've noticed. They don't have to have a job. And I've met people who did it with real estate in different ways by either flipping houses or doing Airbnbs or doing tax liens, just doing rentals, regular rentals. I've met people doing property management. So there's many, many ways to do just real estate. And then I've met people who did, what do you call them? Homes for the elderly. I met people who just saved and put away a bunch of money in stocks and are going to be wealthy that way or are wealthy that way. I've met some people who did a combination of those things. I've met Just all kinds of people who did it their way. They were creative. One thing they all have in common is they have enough income to where they don't have to work a nine to five anymore if they don't want to. Some of them, they still work a nine to five because they're still like building a nest egg. And some of them, they have like a business and they like working that business. They like actually being there and working the business and all that kind of stuff. So seeing that these people kind of became like mentors to me. I would follow what they did. I would, I would ask them questions about what, how did they do it? What, what, what did they do? And all of them had to invest their own money or time to get to a point where to get to a point where they, their, their time was so valuable that they, that they didn't, It was more valuable for them to spend time on their business than their time at their job. So that's one thing I've noticed about a lot of them. And it's just something you should think about. And another thing is one of the reasons why you should consider doing IT and cybersecurity and progressing is that once you get to a certain income level, Obviously, your life changes. But one thing that happens is you have this surplus of income and you you've got to think about what you want to do with it. You have this little bit. It could be like an extra thousand. You like all your bills are paid. You know, you groceries are done like you. You're good. Right. You could probably even loan people money or whatever. Give people money, whatever. But you still have this extra cash. And so you got to think about, okay, what do I want to do with this money? And I would suggest that you invested in some kind of passive method of passive income. It doesn't have to be what I'm doing. It should be something that you find that works for you. And so that is a great reason to get into IT and cybersecurity because it's a high paying job. It's They're always going to need somebody doing IT. I know there's all these fears about LLMs and artificial intelligence and all that kind of stuff, but I would say that it's going to be more of a threat to not know it than to think it's going to just take all jobs. There's still... I don't think it's going to take all jobs. I think that's... hyperbole. I think it's just, we don't really know what's going to happen with it, right? One thing for sure that we know is it's going to change humanity. That's for sure. That's probably more scary. I'm surprised more people don't talk about that. What's more scary about AI is it's going to change us, just like this phone did, just like the internet did. It's changed us. We're no longer the same. We're not the same species that we were hundreds Before the internet, we're not the same. We're rapidly changing into something else. And I don't know what the hell that is, but we are not the same species that we were before. And AI is gonna speed up that process. We are gonna be different. And people keep talking about jobs. We have way more stuff to worry about than jobs. Way more stuff to worry about than jobs. It's gonna change us fundamentally as a species. And I don't know where that leads us to, but jobs is the least of our worries. That said, while we still have this thing going on, get into I.T., get into cybersecurity. You'll have all this extra income and it allows you to have a more freedom to build something that you for yourself and for your family. I'm somebody who comes from very humble beginnings, like I came from nothing and. I can tell you there's different stages and levels to this. When I first started out, like as a kid, we're struggling to survive. And so you're not thinking about necessarily, it's not real to you. $100,000 a year is not real. When you're struggling poor, it's just, it's delusional. I didn't know anybody who made 100,000 or maybe I did, but I didn't know that they made 100,000. I didn't have any friends that I knew made 100,000. It wasn't real. So it just didn't seem real at that level. It didn't seem real. And then once I started making my own income, I started meeting, my network changed. I started meeting other people who are also doing their own thing, other young people who are also doing their own thing, living their own life, doing their own thing. And I started running with that crowd. And then I started meeting older heads who are already doing, real estate and business and stuff they were talking a lot about it and I'd be like what is what what's this you're talking about this is while still in the military I got out of the military and I thought when I got out that I was going to get a corporate job make like 80 and and be cool and then just retire with that one corporation little that I know that corporations don't give don't care so much about humans. They care about the bottom line. They care about their money. So they're not really trying to take care of people. Maybe 50 years ago, they used to do that. But that's no longer the case. And I'm not trying to discourage you from going to a company. Yeah, by all means, do it. But just realize it's a stepping stone. And that's what I realize is that you're not going to stick with one company. Not anymore. Like I said, maybe 50 years ago. It's just very different now. And I got into the corporate world. I think the thing that turned me around with corporations, the thing that made me not lose hope, but think of them differently and see the reality of what was really going on is that one time my my wife at the time got really sick um she had like a pulmonary embolism or something like in her leg I mean she had like something in her leg like she had to go to uh the doctor she was out in the hospital for like three days and I asked I had just gotten hired and I asked the company I said You know, is it okay if I, I just bought a house, you know, we just moved in and we had a little baby and I said, hey, I know you guys just hired me, but can I get three days off because I need to take care of my kid. I don't have anybody here. I just moved to the state. And they were just like, well, we can't do it. It's against company policy. And it was some kind of politics that they were playing. My immediate supervisor basically wouldn't allow me to do it. It's just weird. And I'm just like, what? And it just dawned on me, these people do not give a damn about me. They really don't care. And I was like, well, why should I care about them? If they don't care about me or my family, then why am I sacrificing myself I'll do anything for these guys. I'm like, so I'm a fool. And after that, you know, it just, I just realized, man, I got to do something else. I'm not going to quit my job, but I got to figure something else out. Because if this is how it's going to be, I got to do something else, right? Because while I'm in the military, military take care of you. Military, like you have a brotherhood. If you stay with the military, you stay 20 years, they're going to give you retirement. It's not like that on the outside. And I, it just, it was a hard lesson to learn. And I said, okay, you know what, what I'm going to do is I'm going to start a business. That was the first time I was like, I'm going to start a business. And, um, the first business I did this now, this is crazy. First thing I did was blog. I made a blog and, um, it was back when blog could make a blog can make money. I mean, it could still could, but this was like, right. The early stages of blogs where blogs were brand new and people were making all this money off of blogs. And I started this blog and it got pretty popular, but now before it got popular, I remember I made 10 cents and I was super excited. I was like, I made 10 cents, you know, after writing a few articles or whatever. And the only reason I was happy is because I realized if I can make 10 cents, I can make a dollar. If I can make a dollar, I can make $10. If I can make $10, I can make a hundred dollars a day. If I can make a hundred dollars a day, you know what I mean? And that was true. what happened was the blog got really popular and it ended up landing me my first hundred thousand dollar job and allowed me to publish my first, uh, the first thing I published was like for a, it was like a pamphlet, uh, for this company. And, uh, they had me go around the world and teach, teach from this pamphlet that I wrote. And I made a little over a hundred thousand for the first time. So that blog, And one time I wrote an article, it went viral. It was making like $100 a day for a while, which at the time was crazy. And I don't know. It just opened my eyes. You never know what's going to work. So you should just try different things. And I've tried a lot of stuff, man. I've tried stuff that absolutely did not work. But I've tried things that really did work. And that's what you got to do. Just try different things. All right, I got some questions here. Thank you guys for watching. I appreciate it. Kind of a different flow right now. I just want to have you guys think a little bit bigger, especially if this is your goals. If you're trying to do IT, if this is what you're trying to do, start thinking about your future, what you want for your family far in the future, and what you can do. Somebody asked me or said, would you recommend starting at a big tech company or a small non-tech with higher pay long term. Think of it differently. What you want, the ideal job is one where you have a little bit of extra time. Like they're not, what do I mean by that? So what I'm trying to say is, I would take a little less pay to have a little bit more uh, a less stress personally. Um, but you could also go for high pay that will allow you to take some of that pay and re either reinvest it into a 401k, buy stocks, uh, buy bonds. If that's what you're into, um, play around with, with, uh, swing trading. If that's what you're into, try, try different things. You could use, if you make a, if you go to a big company and they pay you a whole bunch of money, um, or a small company and they pay you a whole bunch of money, use some of that money to invest it in. Try things, real estate, try stocks, try business, try different things. Use it as a stepping stone. As far as which one would I try, you said non-technical with higher pay or big tech. I'm just going to tell you from my experience. Smaller companies are more... There's more like a person to person feeling with smaller companies. I've worked from for literally like a two man company all the way up to multibillion dollar companies and international multibillion dollar companies and for the government. And I can tell you some of the best experiences I had was with smaller companies. And maybe this is just anecdotal, like maybe it's just my experience and maybe it's different for everybody. But in all the small companies I worked for, it was more one-on-one. I was a person. I wasn't just a number. At the large companies, I was just a number. I might have had a real good team and everything, but at the end of the day, they can replace you in a heartbeat. And because of that, they don't really value the person as much as they used to. But smaller companies, they really took their time to develop each person. And I really miss that feeling of being on this team. And with that said, when you're in a small company, it's kind of like you're in a big ocean being kind of rocked by all the market By the market that's happening, you know, whereas when you're in a big ass company, it's like you're on an ocean liner and the economy is rocking. But the boat is just going like this, you know, it's kind of wavering a bit. You're not being tossed on the sea by the economy or whatever's happening, market forces or whatever. So there's tradeoffs for different things. At the end of the day, it depends on what you want to do. Just think long term, like think big, think your entire lifespan and what you want. for yourself and for your kids and for your kids' kids. When it's all said and done, when you are nothing more than a memory, you want to have a look back and create some sort of legacy. This is one stepping stone in a long line of steps you're going to take. So just think of it. Think big is what I would say to make your decision. And that way, when you do make a decision, it'll mean something. It'll be one step in the right direction that you're going. So I hope that helps. I'm just telling you my experience with small companies and big companies and all that kind of stuff. If you went for the big money, non-tech big money, you can use that money to invest it and do what you want. And the big companies got a little bit more of... What feels like security and maybe have a little bit more time on your hands to mess around and you can use that time to tinker and mess with something else. Probably the money is what I would take, to be honest with you. Let me see. Forty Rock says a four rock says. Is IT cybersecurity still hiring? I have three years of technical support and two years of SQL development. I've been unemployed since November and I cannot get a help desk position. Open up what you're willing to take for Rock. What I would recommend is possibly going back into SQL development, be open to that, be open to technical support. um lean on your skills um a lot of times I'll give you an example of one time there was a time when I i was really wanting to get um into more technical stuff and I did I actually landed a job in a technical position as a field technician And I did know it at the time, but I took a huge pay cut because my...
