Skipped classes and a lost baseball scholarship made Jeremy Anderson drop out to join the Marines. Today he’s the CEO of a Cybersecurity company.
He got a baseball scholarship to college. But, since Jeremy Anderson skipped classes, he failed and ultimately dropped out.
Today he’s the CEO of Overwatch Technology, a cyber security company. Listen in as he shares his journey from high school to the Marine Corps and his transition to a civilian career life.
He discusses his experiences starting a business, addresses hiring people on the spectrum, provides advice to aspiring network engineers and highlights the role of business books and personal finance in his career.
Timestamps:
(00:00) — Intro
(00:50) — Cybersecurity: About Jeremy and his job description
(01:32) — Blueprint for success
(02:13) — Salary range for a C-Suite executive in MSP
(04:26) — High school experience/backstory
(05:29) — Making the most of a great opportunity
(06:16) — Books that had a great impact
(07:27) — Certifications acquired along the way
(08:28) — How long did you serve at the Marine Corps?
(09:20) — Getting a network engineering job offer
(09:58) — Transitioning to a career outside the military
(11:07) — Technical skills learned along the way
(11:55) — What came next?
(14:04) — Challenges faced transitioning into a business owner
(17:11) — How has the MSP industry changed over time?
(18:27) — Notable big wins in the first few years of business
(19:30) — Mistakes made along the way
(20:53) — What does enterprise software cost?
(22:13) — Biggest Career accomplishment so far
(23:15) — Finding passion for hiring people on a spectrum
(24:27) — Most difficult career experience
(25:08) — Any hold-backs/insecurities from the lack of a college degree?
(26:28) — Advice to 18-year-old Jeremy
(27:18) — Looking ahead: Future goals and business plans
(30:43) Industry insights: Advice for aspiring network engineers
Support/Contact Jeremy:
Books and resources mentioned in this podcast:
Need career or resume advice? Follow and/or connect with Jonaed Iqbal on LinkedIn.
Thank you for sponsoring our show. If you'd like to support our mission to end the stigma and economic disparity that comes along with not having a college degree, please share with a friend, drop us a review on Apple Podcast and/or subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/nodegree.
Remember, no degree? No problem! Whether you're contemplating college or you're a college dropout, get started with your no-degree job search at nodegree.com.
Transcript: The NoDegree Podcast EP177-Former Marine Corps Become a Cybersecurity Specialist–Jeremy Anderson
[00:00:00]
Intro Jeremy: Find network gear for cheap online. It can be used whatever. Just in your room, put it together, make this talk to this and this talk to this and this talk to this. If you do that, you're going to understand the basics of how it all works. And then once you learn that, there's no stopping you.
Episode start:
Jonaed: Welcome to another episode of the No Degree podcast. I want to personally thank you for tuning in and supporting our show. If you haven't yet, hit that follow or subscribe button. I encourage you, don't keep this to yourself. Share these inspiring stories with your friends, invite them to subscribe and connect with us on social media.
So today’s guest is Jeremy Anderson. What do you do?
Jeremy: I am the CEO of Overwatch Technology. And we are a managed services company that specializes in cybersecurity.
Jonaed: How would you describe that to someone who's in high school?
Jeremy: A lot of fun, a lot of troubleshooting and puzzle solving. What happens is, people may get breached, they come to us and ask how can we help them. We usually put some tools on, find viruses, malware, whatever it is on there. Any breaching that happened, ransomware, we tried to find backups and restore them. A lot of it is just what is the actual problem and then puzzle solving to find the answer to that problem.
Jonaed: Now, what would you say is your blueprint for success? Why have you been able to work your way up to C-suite executive?
Jeremy: A lot of it was just perseverance. When I first started in the industry, when I was in my 20s, I worked 90 hour weeks just trying to learn it all. I'm also a Marine. So, in my Marine Corps years, I was working 90 hour weeks, and they were training me as a network engineer. I got a great opportunity to travel, I got to go to Cuba and set up a satellite transmission service. A lot of what I know today came from my Marine Corps days.
Jonaed: The Marines, they definitely shape you and they really teach you work at a completely different level. Now, what's the salary range for someone who is a C-suite executive at an MSP?
Jeremy: There's a lot of frameworks around that. It's a great question. The framework that we follow, it's with TruPeer or TruMethods. Whenever I put numbers into a database that they've asked us to put together, so we know how our peers are doing. They start at 150,000. They expect a C-suite to be around that. Now, we're not all paid that. We have to get there first. I'm not that far away. Like I've built myself up in the lab since 2008. Many years I went less than $30,000. And my wife will help support us in those years. But I'm pretty close to the national average for a C-suite now.
Jonaed: And just to give more clarity that when you're a business owner, it’s like, you can choose to make more, but it's about, you know what, I can increase my salary by 30,000 to 50,000. Maybe I can use that to hire an extra person or maybe I can use a tool. So, it's about managing current pay and future growth. And a lot of people at this level are for always about future growth.
Jeremy: I would rather in the early years, pay myself less so I could hire other people to give myself more freedom to be able to do other things like voting and other stuff like that. Because we need that release of time, a lot of people will work themselves to death. And it's really not worth it. I'd rather hire another person and pay myself more. But we're getting to a really good spot here where there's 12 people on our team.
Another cool thing is we hire people on the Asperger's spectrum. That's been a fantastic thing, too. And then, like I said, I'm starting to pay myself, but it feels better than it used to. So, the hard work has come through and I really appreciate my team. In fact, one of the things that you just said is hiring more people is sometimes a better thing. I actually have left for three weeks and never gotten a phone call from my team.
Jonaed: That is the true dream of a business owner not getting a call.
Jeremy: That is true. My team is very solid. They're really good at what they do. And they've allowed me to have some freedom that I didn't have a few years ago.
Jonaed: That's awesome. Now, let's take it back. What's the backstory? How was high school like for you? And what did you want to be in high school?
Jeremy: In high school, I think I wanted to be a pro baseball player. I actually got a baseball scholarship. I failed out in college because I didn't go to class. That's why the Marine Corps happened. I needed discipline, and that's where I found it. But outside of a baseball player, I really did want to be in technology. I knew that I wanted to be a network engineer, but I didn't know what that meant yet. But as soon as I got in the Marine Corps, they taught me straight out of the gate, what to do in the technology fields and that's been great.
[0:05:01]
Jonaed: Now, how did you navigate that? Because you had to be a little strategic to get those technical positions in the Marine Corps.
Jeremy: Correct. My ASVAB score, which is the test to get into the Marine Corps or into the military was high enough. They wouldn't let me do anything but data engineering and that kind of thing. I even wanted to become a grunt, the ones that go out and fight. But they wouldn't let me because of my ASVAB score. So, I was required to either do that or intelligence.
Jonaed: What did you do to make the most out of the opportunity?
Jeremy: I think it was, again, the perseverance. Knowing that I needed to know more, I worked harder, worked more hours at the beginning, while I was young and able. It was a great place for my time. Also, I just really liked it. So, when I was working, like I said, I worked 90 hour weeks, it didn't feel like it. I had a passion for what I was doing. It really wasn't a problem for me. At the end of the day, I think hard work will really get you there. I read a lot of books, the military actually sent me to a lot of formal classes that I was able to get to, and they were formal technology classes. I didn't have to learn extra math and all of that stuff. I was able to go straight for the certifications that I needed for my job.
Jonaed: What were some books that had a great impact on you?
Jeremy: Mostly business books, because the technology is ones and zeros. That was the easy part, for lack of a better word. But a lot of the business books like EntreLeadership with Dave Ramsey was instrumental in how I built the business. I never got a loan, all the money that we made went back into the business and pretty much cash only. So, we were never in the red, we didn't have to catch up to anything. That's the key to it all, I think. The business books, learning how to run a business, learning how to do business, even if you're not the owner, even if you're not C-suite, I think you need to understand how business works in order to navigate in the job world.
Jonaed: What I tell people is even if you're an employee, you are your own business. You have some cashflow, you have some outflows, you have to manage things. You have to manage moving up, you have to manage your future and figure out which direction you want to go. I tell people, you need to really think of yourself as a business. And how do you navigate the business landscape for yourself? Now, you mentioned you got some certifications, what certifications did you get?
Jeremy: Learning Tree International is a place you can get certifications in the technology world. And inside of that there was a network degree or network certification. And then I also – I was a programmer to start with, that's the first thing I went to. When I went in the Marine Corps, that's what they trained me on was Pascal. And I am just not someone to sit behind the desk and only do that. So, I converted over into the data or network engineering side. I just couldn't sit and be a coder, just not who I am.
Jonaed: Yes, it's not for everyone. But it's good to know to understand how those things work, because it plays into other aspects.
Jeremy: As a network engineer, you really need to understand scripting, because it will solve a lot of your normal day-to-day problems and create reports and things like that that an engineer needs to know. So, knowing some scripting is always a good thing.
Jonaed: Good advice. Now, how long did you serve?
Jeremy: I was in just under five years. I really enjoyed what I did. The problem is, the Marine Corps taught me too well, so I was given a lot of job offers when I was getting close to getting out. It was really about the money. I was offered too much money to stay into a military job.
Jonaed: Do you mind sharing what that was around?
Jeremy: Sure. So at that time, I was making about $14,000 a year in the military, which sounds very low, but they also fed us and all —
Jonaed: So, you don’t have expenses. You didn't buy a car, right?
Jeremy: I did not buy a car.
Jonaed: Yes. Because that's the first common thing.
Jeremy: That is the first common thing, that and encyclopedias, I guess is what they come to find you to make you get loans for the silly stuff. But yes, so around 90,000 is what I was offered to get out, and I was making 14,000. It was not that hard of a decision.
Jonaed: Okay. Now, what job were you offered?
Jeremy: Network engineering position out in San Francisco area during the .com boom. Right at the beginning of that is when I got out of the military. So, 1997 was my —
Jonaed: Ninety thousand is like – that’s probably 180,000 right now.
Jeremy: But I also didn't spend as well in San Francisco either. I think I paid $3,000 for a one bedroom house back then. But it was a fun time. I'm glad I don't live in San Francisco anymore just because it's so expensive. There's so much hustle and bustle and then the .com boom became a bust. So, there's a lot of things that happened out there that I'm glad I'm not there now.
Jonaed: So, how was it transitioning to a job outside the military? What were some of the challenges you faced? And what were some things that weren't challenges for you?
[0:10:04]
Jeremy: Sure. The big thing was in the military strategies, if someone gives you an order, it gets done. And one of the hard things to transition into was civilian life where that's not the case. If you say something, it may or may not get done. So, it was very interesting to see that dynamic change. It was a challenge. But it also wasn't awful. If I was asked to do something in the civilian world, I continue to jump and get it done. That's just who I was. If I asked it of someone else that I wouldn't always get the outcome that I wanted. So, it was very interesting how to navigate that difference in attitude.
Jonaed: What did you have to learn to get used to that?
Jeremy: Humility. Understand that not everything needs to be done right now. And to organize my life in a way that I don't have to wait on someone else to finish something before I finish what I need to finish. That was the interesting part.
Jonaed: What were some technical skills that you learned at this job?
Jeremy: An extension of what I was doing in the Marine Corps already. When I got out, I was learning network management software. So, my first job out was software support, basically. But I was still a network engineer, I was just watching how network management software could help the networking side. A lot of the skills that I learned there is how to read the reports that came out of that.
Like what does it mean? What does deduplication, which is if one machine broke, and there were things behind it, then we needed to know how that affected the ones behind it. If that one was down and the others were down, then you knew that that was the problem. So, that was a lot of what we learned from that network management software was, what is the core problem when you see it?
Jonaed: Okay, so what came next?
Jeremy: Another network management software company. During that time, the dot coms were just booming, money was going all over the place. So, when we got calls to move companies, I didn't wait very long. Every step of the way was a little bit more money, a little bit more like management. I was able to get into higher management jobs and that kind of stuff, because the dot coms were really booming. And I had a lot of money to throw around. I don't feel bad that I change jobs very often. But I did change jobs fairly often during that time.
Jonaed: What is fairly often?
Jeremy: Probably 2-1/2 years was the longest I was at a place. And then a lot of them were one year and jump to another one type of job. So in that period of time, I think I went through six or seven jobs. And then in 2008, what changed my life was somebody I was working for said, you need to slow it down so we can charge more. And it clicked in my head that I needed to start my own company so I wouldn't have to deal with that. Also, more important than getting more money.
Jonaed: Hey, are you frustrated with your job search? Are you sending out resume after resume with no callbacks? If so, I have some good news. After three years of helping over 400 people land jobs at places like Meta, HubSpot, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Tesla, Disney, Sony, just to name a few, I have created a course. In the Get Your Dream Career course, you’ll discover best practices for creating a resume that stands out. You’ll also learn how to optimize your job search.
It covers every aspect of the job including resumes, application strategy, networking, LinkedIn profile optimization, interview guidance and salary negotiation. You will also get a behind the scenes view of how recruiters use LinkedIn to find candidates. And of course, you’ll get resume and cover letter templates. Get one step closer to your dream job. Sign up at the link in the notes below.
And I've seen sometimes in consulting, like, take a little longer, and all that. And it's one of those things like, I don't want to do that. It's not the right way to make money. So, how was it transitioning to your own thing? What are some things that, again, you were prepared for or more some things that you were not prepared for?
Jeremy: Hard work. I was already prepared for that. And to start my own business, there was a lot of hard work, a lot of sacrificing, making less money, probably half of the money to start out with, maybe even worse than that. What I was prepared for and I think that this was the military training in me was getting jobs done and getting them done right and having customer satisfaction.
Those were things that weren't really hard for me, customer satisfaction in particular. I feel like I have a lot of heart for the end users and the people that have hired us to do the job. And that part translates into almost all of my customers had been our customers since 2008. Very rarely do they leave us. I think that a lot of it is my team is that way, I'm that way. It's important to us that morals and character is part of what we do.
[00:15:02]
Jonaed: What were some of the challenges in the first few years?
Jeremy: Money. I’m going to say, number one was money. Coming out of the gate, you just think, well, it should be easy. It should be easy to sell this. It is not easy to sell it. Even today, in 2023, I look at businesses and go, I don't understand how you don't understand that cybersecurity is important. What we do to protect you is important. Most of the companies that I deal with, or who we try to sell to don't understand it costs money to stay secure, to keep breaches away.
That's the hardest thing for me even today. Understanding how they don't understand and how do we translate the importance? It's just like if you needed lights for your business, you need this too, the same as the light bulb, you need this. That's the hardest part of all of it is that understanding.
Jonaed: And that's something in cybersecurity that I've seen all the time, because companies always get hacked. And I'll explain certain concepts like people emailed me their resume, and has their full address. And I'm like, that's a privacy and cybersecurity issue. I was like, you upload it, you don't know how secure their systems are. You don't know who's accessing it, you don't know how it's getting passed around. And the fact is, they don't need your address just for the resume.
When you get hired, it's one thing and a lot of people are like, wow, I never thought of that. And I'm like, you know, they don't need to know whether you live in apartment C2, or D3. And oftentimes, I see that it's a disconnect with executive because I know they're like phishing, training and all that. And it's usually the same executive who fails every time, who's ordering a Whole Foods gift card or Amazon gift card for this other person.
Jeremy: Yes. We service a lot of law firms and they’re almost the worst. Yeah. You're the ones that are fighting the cybercrimes in court and everything. And then they have a password that is called Password. It blows your mind because they're dealing with it every day, but not really thinking about their own protection. It's kind of interesting to me.
Jonaed: How has the MSP industry changed over time? Because I know before it was more on-prem, and then now it's more of the cloud. What are some other industry changes that you've seen?
Jeremy: The on-prem to cloud is an important one. A lot of times people think that they're more secure if their hardware is in their location. That's not true today, you're actually maybe less secure. Because if you look at how the cloud is built, it's built to withstand a lot of breaches. Whereas, you really have to have a team that knows what they're doing for the onsite stuff. But people are still fighting that urge to move, which is very interesting.
I mean, the education on this needs to happen, because the on prem things really are the most breachable products. People don't keep their servers as secure as the cloud does. And I guess that's the biggest change is the mentality of my stuff is more protected, if I'm holding it, like if it's in my hands. And that that is not the truth in a lot of cases, especially in technology.
Jonaed: And people don't realize these data centers are built to withstand tornadoes and all that stuff. Whereas your thing, you could get flooded, you get water damage, you could get all these other things that you don't think can happen. But because your landlord didn't fix the pipe, and now all of a sudden you lost years’ worth of data. That's something to really consider. What were some big wins in the first few years for your business?
Jeremy: One of the biggest wins is a couple of law firms that have become great customers, they've been our customers, again, since 2008. The win of that though was to see how we were able to build out – we use Microsoft Teams a lot for especially our law customers. And they make a new team for each case file. What was interesting to see is they enjoyed that better than a lot of the law software like it was created for law software.
So, that whole light bulb moment when you see it clicked with the customer, and then they're like, “Wow, and you're saving us money. We're already using this product anyway.” That was a great big win for us is to be able to use Microsoft in a way that people were already paying for it but they didn't know they had it, which is cool.
Jonaed: That’s cool. And it's always cool. Because I know lawyers are not easy to win over. I've worked with lawyers, they're very stuck in their ways. And they're like, this is how I do things. So, to give them that, that means you truly did a good job. Now, what are some mistakes that you've made along the way that looking back, if you were to do it again today, you would have done it differently?
Jeremy: I would have spent less money on hardware we didn't need or software we didn't need. At the beginning, I thought because we had less people I needed more function from either hardware or software. I really did mess up a few times of purchasing software that was not worth it to our business. It costs more money than I expected. I should have read the fine print better, I guess is what I'm getting at with that.
[0:19:59]
And the other thing is just trying to save as much as I could when I was still working. I should have done that, because that would have been a nice nest egg to sit on. Because really, life was difficult for a year or so getting the business off the ground and being able to pay my bills too. I think I would have saved more money while I had the job.
Jonaed: I wish I had started even six months later, just having that little cushion. It's like you're just always making up for that. Because it's like, I thought I was going to make money a lot quicker. But look, it's just how things end up working out.
Jeremy: Yes. I mean, to really answer your question, I probably wouldn't change much, because I'm pretty happy with where I've landed. But I could have made it easier.
Jonaed: So now let's go on to – you said you spent things on software. Most people, they're thinking about, oh, I pay Netflix, I pay cable, I pay phone bill? What does enterprise software cost? Just so people have an idea.
Jeremy: I'm going to answer that by saying how much are all in seat price. If you are our customer, how much does our vendors cost? We're about $40 to support a customer today, per seat, per computer. We have to explain very well to our customers that's the reason we cost what we cost. And then potential customers don't get it until they actually see us working it or they've been breached. Now we're in here to help them. But I don't know that I can make it any cheaper than $40 and continue to support our customers and keep as many breaches as possible out. So I think that's around the right amount.
Jonaed: And then enterprise software can cost 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, sometimes even 100,000 per year, right?
Jeremy: Correct. Yes. If you add up the 40 per, and we have 1,200 endpoints. I mean, that's a lot of money in vendor costs.
Jonaed: And that's something that a lot of people don't realize. You think this business brings in 50,000 a month. Once you have employees, once you have software and all that, you're like, oh, you know what the expenses are 60,000. And then you need to get a certain number of customers where your break even and all that. It usually ends up that you as the owner, you're going to take the pay cut, so that you can keep it afloat. You make it manage. Now, looking back at your career, what would you say is your biggest accomplishment?
Jeremy: Hiring people on the spectrum. That's not necessarily my accomplishment, it's theirs. But what we've seen is people on the spectrum doing tickets and those kinds of things is great. But what's even better is watching them grow. What there's a struggle with is that sometimes they aren't great communicators, they’re not sure how to communicate, they're not sure what they're going to say to one another. And with the way that we built the company, a lot of them start out as tickets only.
So, they're behind the computer, they're behind – they're not really talking to anybody. And then they start getting used to communicating through that ticketing system, and then they'll make phone calls. And then we have people that actually go out on site that normally wouldn't have done that without the kind of training that they've gone through here. So, a lot of it is their personal growth and that makes me feel good. But I'm not the one who did it. They did.
Jonaed: I mean, you play a part in enabling that and being open to that. What got you so passionate about it?
Jeremy: In 2008-ish, I think it was then, I read in the newspaper that a guy graduated top of his class at MIT, and ended up committing suicide because he couldn't socialize enough to get a job. At that point, I thought, well, we have all this technology we could protect people from. It doesn't matter if you can socialize or not, I can put you behind it, a ticketing system, and you wouldn't have to socialize, that type of thing. There's a lot of power in technology that we aren't utilizing fully as a group of people in the world.
Jonaed: I have a friend who has a son on the spectrum. She mentioned he loved online learning, because it just worked for him. It was very structured; he knew what to do. He knew the lessons; he didn't have to organize as much and he could learn himself without distractions. I think we as society, we really need to understand that some people just work differently. We can't judge them on their weaknesses because that's not the environment they're in.
Everybody has certain things that they just excel in, and they have things that they're not good at. It doesn't make them worse people or less capable. They just have different capabilities. And I think it's good to be able to make sure that everybody has a place and has something that they can contribute. Now, looking back, obviously, you've worked a lot. You have a long career. What would you say is the hardest thing you went through?
Jeremy: I would say the lower parts of paying myself. When I was only able to pay myself like 30,000 and I'm married and my wife had to kind of support us through that, that was probably the hardest thing. Because as a go getter, I just felt like I needed to pay the bills, but I couldn't. And so, I think that was probably the hardest part. It was probably the lowest part but I'm also pretty optimistic so I wasn't afraid of it.
[0:25:02]
Jonaed: It's tough to go through —
Jeremy: You just to get through it.
Jonaed: Yes. It's just like, it's going to get better but it sucks right now, and I'll somehow manage. Now, during your time early in your career, did your lack of a college degree hold you back during that time?
Jeremy: Not at all. I think the big part is I went in the military, but I don't think that everyone that doesn't get a college degree needs to go to the military. It’s worked for me, like you said about the football player go into baseball. That may not work, but it all worked for me. And I believe that if I wouldn't have gone into the military, I still would have thought of something I would want to do. I would have built my own thing still. That's just who I am. I didn't like school to begin with. I wasn't good in high school. I mean, I got great grades just because I memorized it. I'm pretty smart. I just didn't like to study.
Jonaed: I get it. So have you ever felt insecure about not having a degree?
Jeremy: Not at all. I don't think everyone needs one. If you look at history, not everyone had a degree that made something of themselves. We got the Benjamin Franklins of the world that didn't like school, either.
Jonaed: And the fact is, especially now more than ever, there are so many more resources. There are so many ways to teach yourself. There are so many ways to get your hands dirty, do projects. Just like you show how you hire workers, and they start in one aspect. As they learn and get more comfortable, they kind of grow. Now, this is going to be a little different. If you saw your 18-year old self walking across the street today in 2023, what would you tell him?
Jeremy: Start the business earlier. Believe that it will happen. Because I think if I would have started when I was in my 20s, the energy level would have helped me get to a whole other level of business. That's what I would tell myself, start my business earlier.
Jonaed: I know exactly what you mean. Because I remember in high school, and I had jobs like early college. I was like, why are these people tired, and then you get older. You just start realizing how your body is not the same, you're not the same, and all that. But you know, we get wiser so we kind of have that trade off. But yes, that young, you have that energy. And then you can sort of work that 90 hour week, get little sleep, and you're good to go. Now it's like it, you feel it. So now, what are your future goals?
Jeremy: My future goal, I actually think that I'd like to sell the company in five years. I have another business idea for charities, create charity software that I think will work really well. I love what I do but I love building businesses more. So, I think that that's my next step is in the next five years is to find somebody that would take care of these current customers. But then I'll transition over to more software development. I won't do all that software development, but I’ll hire people that can and build up a good software company.
Jonaed: By then, it'll be like 20 years in the business. You've taken it from a small size to whatever and you have so many endpoints and all that. Sometimes it's like maintenance mode. And I find as a go getter, it's like, all right, what's next? How do I impact the world? How do I make a difference in a different way? And how do I do something now with all this knowledge I can solve a problem that I see and that I just care more about?
Jeremy: I agree. And the other thing is, I want more time for boating and things like that. So, I actually might become a captain and charter out boats. I live near the coast, ten minutes from the water.
Jonaed: Let’s actually talk about that. How does someone become a captain, get the boating license? What's the money in that? How does that go?
Jeremy: Less than $10,000 is your training. You don't have to get certain captain's licenses until the boat gets certain sizes. There's a lot more to it than just answering it. But living near the coast, there's all kinds of training programs and things like that. But I would say $10,000 or less I could get into a captain's chair. Now the boat is what's going to cost the most money, which is something that can be leased and that kind of stuff, too. I haven't gotten that far yet. In the next five years, if I sell the company, I'll probably get a decent sized boat and charter that out.
Jonaed: How much money is in it?
Jeremy: How much you can make?
Jonaed: Yes.
Jeremy: The last time I went out on a charter red snapper fishing boat, it costs 1,500 person. And there's usually five to ten people on a boat.
Jonaed: And that was for the day?
Jeremy: That was for the day. Gasoline prices are getting up there. It's harder to answer that question right now because I don't know how it costs, these charter boat captains. But they can make decent money. I think one of my captains that I chartered with, around 120-130 a year. That's probably a typical boat captain. And a lot of it's just how good are you at marketing yourself. I mean, the boat could sit there on the dock forever if you can't market.
Jonaed: I feel like you'd be just good like, hey, I got a boat. I feel like if you just go out there, it will be like, look, I got a boat. Let's talk technology in the boat. And you can pay me when we talk technology in the boat.
[0:30:00]
Jeremy: Yes. Exactly, No, it'd be great. And it's getting easier and easier with Elon Musk's satellite services and things like that.
Jonaed: Starlink is making a big difference.
Jeremy: Yes, it definitely is. I mean, Starlink is not just making a difference on the building community, but I have friends that live in the middle of nowhere and had the worst internet connections ever. And now Starlink’s made that huge change for them. And if you talk about the Ukraine, and that kind of stuff, Starlink has changed a lot of people's lives, I think.
Jonaed: It's crazy how just technology is just making things more accessible, just making it easier to learn, just making it easier to keep in touch with everybody. Now, what advice would you have for someone who's about 16 to 18 years old, who wants to sort of get into networking? What would you tell them to do to get started so that they learn and then they can get a job and set themselves up for success as early as possible, without going to college?
Jeremy: I would say something that I did is read the manual. When I got in the Marine Corps, I had a great staff sergeant that he wouldn't answer any questions, even though he knew everything. But he'd point to the book and say, this is what you need to learn. And then we would take hardware and learn it. So, I guess to answer your question, 16-18 years old, if I saw them, I'd say, find network gear for cheap online.
It can be used whatever. Just in your room, put it together, make this talk to this and this talk to this and this talk to this. If you do that, you're going to understand the basics of how it all works. And then once you learn that, there's no stopping you. Once you get the basics down, it’s not really hard work, it’s just puzzle solving.
Jonaed: Yes, you know, one of my podcasts – because a few episodes ago, he during an interview, talked about his server rack. And then that's what got him. it's like, how did you build it? What did you do? And again, it's one of those things that you get forced to learn. This is not working. How do I fix this? I need to buy this component trying to fix this, or this is not working and you're just forced to learn.
I find one of the best ways and that's what's great about technology is you can learn through projects. Projects just forced you to learn because it's like, this thing's not working, you got Google, you got to ChatGPT, forums, friends, YouTube, and you'll find it but you're increasing your knowledge base.
Jeremy: Yes. When I was growing into the network engineering stuff, I liked it when things were broken. That was my good day. That seems weird and counterintuitive, but every time something was broken, I'd learn multiple things from it, from that problem. One thing I am afraid of, for the 16-18 year olds that a generation of people is what I'm finding anyway, from as a business owner in technology is that now that we have tablets and cell phones, people think they know more about technology than they really do.
And they won't go learn more. So, like network engineering, it's hard to find a good network engineer today. I think a lot of it's because everyone feels like they're already a technologist, because they hold it in their hand all day long. And a 16-18 year old I'd say, don't have that attitude. Know that you don't know anything, and then go learn it.
Jonaed: What's interesting about kids younger kids, a lot of them have trouble understanding file structure. Because all of these tabs, you just go straight to the app, so they don't understand. Oh, there's a folder and I hate looking for files on my phone. Where is it? I just wish it was like the computer. I could click and I know how to go through it. And then I ask you, we recently read an article that said Gen Z falls for phishing — I forgot some type of scams are more often.
Because you just think like, hey, I'm on Discord. I know how these things work. But these scams can get really elaborate. And these people are really sophisticated in how they approach these things. I've even seen the smartest people, I think, Vitalik Buterin, he got sim swapped. And this is a very technology heavy guy. It's about security so it can happen to anyone. Again, security is something that you have to always think about.
Jeremy: It's not that hard to fall for it. If you're distracted and it's just possible to click on something, it just is. In fact, we do a lot of phishing training. We send a bunch of emails out to a whole organization and see how many people actually click it. I would say even today 2023, about 35% to 45% people click the links in it. Let's say there's 100 people that work there, 35 or 45 of them click it.
Jonaed: I knew that it would be above 10. But I didn't realize it would be 35 to 45. Do you see some organizations that have lower numbers?
Jeremy: Yes, they are not law firms.
Jonaed: What type of organizations would you say are generally like they're more just cybersecurity aware?
Jeremy: A lot of the medical facilities and I think it's HIPAA compliance is beaten on them so often, Although on the dentist side, we also service dentist, dentists don't get it for some reason. I do have one client that does so. Hopefully, when he hears this podcast, he's not going to get mad at me. I don't know out of ten customers that are dentists, nine of them aren't good at it. They’ll click on phishing all day.
[0:35:00]
I don't know why, because they're smart people. But just, it's inherently that way. And lawyers too, I just I don't understand. They don't know to not click that.
Jonaed: And you know why? I’ll tell you because I've interacted with these people. They spend so much of their time dedicated to learning one area that they don't have to be tech savvy. And then sometimes it's a combination of that. And then it's a combination of just because I'm smart, doesn't mean I can fix a router. It's just not my area of expertise. Just because you're good in one area doesn't mean that you can have a strategy for an MSP.
It's a totally different area and it's different. So, I think that plays a part. But thank you so much for sharing your experience. This is cool, and we need to get you back when you get to boating. You got to share an episode about how it is and the intricacies of that because I'd love to talk about that one day.
Jeremy: And I am starting another business, a mushroom farmer. I'm growing lion's mane and some of the other gourmet mushrooms. I don't have that up and running yet. But I would say within the next six months, I should be selling to restaurants.
Jonaed: That's cool. You're always doing so good. I'll buy some of your mushrooms if you sell. I love mushrooms. That's awesome.
Jeremy: Okay. Yes, sounds good. Well, I appreciate you having me.
Jonaed: Thanks for sharing your story with the No Degree audience.
Jeremy: Yes sir.
Another great episode. Thank you for listening. Hopefully this information was valuable, and you learned a lot. Stay tuned for the next episode. This show is sponsored by you. No Degree wants to remain free from influence so that we can talk about the topics without bias. If you think the show is worth a dollar or two, please check out our Patreon page. Any amount is appreciated and will go towards making future episodes even better. Follow us on Instagram or Snapchat @nodegreepodcast, on Facebook @facebook.com/NoDegreeInc. If you want to personally reach out to me connect or follow me on LinkedIn @jonaediqbal, spelled J-O-N-A-E-D, last name I-Q-B-A-L. Until next time, no degree, no problem. Nodegree.com.
[00:37:14] End of Audio