why David Bombal became a hacker

Key Takeaways

welcome to episode four of the noobs podcast today we got someone real special cameron who do we have on today we have uh the master himself david bomble david bomble david say hi to everybody everyone but uh sorry cameron i'm not the master at anything i doubt that well i mean if if you're if we're the noobs and you're not a master then what's gonna happen here we're all noobs in this podcast i guess yeah i love the name i mean it's it's funny i was talking to some people in my team and it's like a fantastic name i think you chose really well because you know there's been some discussions online about like you know who knows what they're supposed to know and i think at the end of the day everyone's a noob in something uh yeah because there are doesn't matter what you do there are quite a few people out there who are like you can't make content on this you can't make content on hacking you can't do this unless you've been doing it for like 20 years which even they haven't do it for 20 years we we know that right but we'll get into that actually i want to get into that here in a second but first we got to kind of introduce who you are because like people may not know you if they've been living under a rock so david um who are you i'm some dodgy guy living in the uk um i'm originally from south africa have lived in the uk for a long time i've been like you talking about 20 years i've been in this game a long time um depending which game you're talking about but in it for a long time i got my cisco ccie which is like a good qualification in 2003 so yeah i'm i'm what a lot of people call grandpa on on youtube these days so like been around the block a few times seen a lot of technologies change and again really like the name because you know i i remember being the grandpa learning nt4 so windows nt4 and you know just as i got to know it it changed and i think that's you know chuck we can talk about that something about technology you know it doesn't matter how long you've been doing this you just got to keep on learning every day because as soon as you sort of feel you kind of know something it just changes and you've got to learn everything again so yeah i have a youtube channel chuck you and i've be you know been going back or how do you say we've we've spoken i don't know when we spoke first it was quite a long time ago i remember years ago it was it was back when we like actually back when we first started talking you had more subscribers than me that's changed a little bit yeah just a minute congratulations no and to you as well but like back then um i was just getting started i had no idea what i was doing i'm pretty sure we both had no idea what we're doing and um i think i had like maybe five t or maybe ten thousand subscribers and i got a message from you talking i know no no i know how we met you started it you know i started so i um i was making ccna content on youtube not like teaching it but just talking about like okay this is the certification you gotta get and i would always recommend your training on udemy as the course and um then you just reached out to me i'm like oh hey who's this david guy and at the time i think you wanted me to start making courses with you but i had already signed a deal with cbc to start working with them and uh we couldn't play together at that point yeah i remember i remember specifically it was like ios um how did i say like i configure ios like a boss or something like that was a course that i made and you you'd recommended it on a video and then i i'd seen you started to start to grow so i was look you know i was starting to do more and more on youtube in those days and i was i was watching you know who else is in the space and i saw you growing a lot and you you created something then we you know we started talking we've done quite a few things over the years but we seem to like we do something and then we do something else and but such is life and that's kind of the game of uh of youtube you know it's like you have to change rapidly all the time so like you and i man we've been making networking content for a while but then we kind of pivoted just because we we found interest in something else and we saw the industry changing i mean you you've changed people people give us flack for switching to these areas but you've had to change rapidly over over time like switching from like typical networking to voice and i love what you say it's all about writing those waves yeah even it's exactly right i mean i you know depends on how how old you want to you know hear the old war stories but i remember i talking about cisco so it's i did ccmp years and years ago i did cisco security professional years and years ago i remember teaching you know cisco ids and cisco products security products a long long time ago but yeah i just think you need to ride the waves and see what gives you the most return on your you know your time because we all have limited time i've said this a thousand times um so at that time you know i did traditional writing and switching but in those days voice of ip was becoming this big big thing and um yeah i rode that way for a long time but anyone who tells you that you need to stay in your lane hasn't been doing this long enough because in my opinion because you if you stay in your lane that lane is going to disappear i mean if you if if you're an old engineer and you you know the dial up i i mean i i did isdn frame l frame frame relay all those technologies but they all dead now so if you just stayed in those technologies you would die i mean chuck i mean it's i want to use this as a motivation for you and you know everyone else who's starting out who you know feels that um you know i can't broaden my skills or i can't jump from one thing to another i don't think that's true at all because just to use another old analogy if you were a pbx guy those are the guys that used to do the old telephone systems they all lost their jobs three quarters of our audience i have no idea what that is yeah exactly so just assume like ancient um telephone systems cisco started voiceover ip which you know today it's like david why are you talking about this stuff i mean everyone uses whatsapp or skype which we're using right now exactly skype you know revolutionized stuff cisco revolutionized the enterprise with voice of ip so um those guys who if they had stayed in that lane they were obliterated their jobs obliterated basically so i remember specifically teaching voiceover ip and there's a lot of opposition from these traditional guys but it was interesting the guys that changed were the guys that made it and the guys who refused to change well i don't know if they got jobs you know that's the problem in this game you know you learn or you die tough thing so um encouragement to use well chuck you know ignore the people that tell you that you should stick to one thing because if you do and that one thing is going to disappear very very soon so jump on everything that's new and you know expand your skills i think that's a big thing in today's world but cameron you're very quiet man you you're a lot younger than me so what do you think am i talking nonsense no i'm about to say like man that's some real motivation right there like if you really needed a push to jump into something different you're not used to i think that's it right there the the wise words of bomb yeah like that's kind of what you know for telling me not only are you the grandpa the father time of i.t but you also have intense motivation like on your twitter on your youtube and not just like video form but you have like these these pictures within the motivational poster kind of stuff that i i think i saw one guy like printed out everything you've ever done and like put it on his cubicle which is really cool that's hopping inside people you know it's funny chuck as i look at you and i you know you and i have had this conversation many times i look at you as the casey neistat of you know it that's the nicest thing you can say to me in the whole you're making this beard grow yeah but it's true you know it's like i don't want to stroke the ego too much cameron but uh i remember you know when i when i got to know chuck in the early days how um it's that whole thing don't feel that you have to stay in a specific path that your parents have given you or your teachers have given you or whoever you know go and do something different do what you wanted and i mean chuck you didn't i don't know i don't want to put you on the spot but i mean there was a time i remember when you when you had like ccna um and you and i were having these discussions you know do you go and get ccmp just to use cisco certs but like whatever cert it is that you you're after do you go and get ccnp do you go get ccie and i think you you win a different road and your success has just shown that um you shouldn't just follow in the footsteps of everyone else do what you you know what you feel is important because if you had just got searched you would have just been another guy with certs but you know look look what you've built um sorry go on no i appreciate that and you're exactly right because uh if you follow everyone's path the path they've laid out um you'll end up just like them um but if you end up following what you want to do what you find joy in and what makes you excited and you kind of mix up the game a bit and you follow what's going to be hot in technology that's where you have kind of that x factor that success that goodness it's just crazy and you and i have both kind of ridden that that uh that wave as well now i want to get it so there's a couple things i do want to cover in this podcast and i want to i want to give people kind of the preview first i want to cover some of the hijinks you and i have gone through like we've we've gone to cisco live together we've stayed in a hotel together we've done some fun stuff and i want to cover all that and also i want to cover like how you and i i mean people may not know this but we often talk a lot for three four five hours sometimes we talk youtube so we kind of have built our channels together and uh we even started a company and maybe we can talk about or we started one and then it didn't do anything so don't get excited anyone so i want to talk about this what kind of what's what happened with that and uh and then we'll talk about kind of the future of what you and i are doing on youtube if we can share some of just the previews maybe not the entire story but i know we both are always cooking up some fun stuff and i think it might be fun to to preview that for our audience so first first before we do any of that if you have not subscribed to david bomble uh if you haven't found him on twitter or instagram especially youtube go do that right now thank you at david bomble pretty much everywhere that's where you'll find them and uh appreciate it now i want to start with a bit of an origin story because people you know people like podcasts more long form we don't have to be quick like our youtube videos so i think let's tap into who is david bomble let's talk about your beginnings how did you become what you are today it's a long story chuck i mean we've got like days i hope um when you're when you when you when you're a grandpa like me you know it's it's a long story i didn't i didn't realize what i was asking no you're exactly right so lots of stories but i mean coming back to the motivational thing um and casey neistat i remember seeing a casey neistat video and i'll get i'll get to your your question in a second but i remember he created this motivational thing i i can't remember the exact name um on he's on his youtube channel it was like do more or something like that yeah something like that yeah and i mean that was um such a good video um i think coming back to motivation and i mean i'm a big advocate of that because if you don't have motivation you're not going to do anything but motivation per se is not worth much you've got to have like an idea of what you're going to do i think that's um what's fantastic about like the opportunity you and i have because we can get people fired up to do things but then we can also show them how to do it um like teach them technology show them the paths like if you want to go into cyber security go this this path or if you want to get into networking go this path so motivation is fantastic but you're still going to be able to do something with that motivation so i'll go back which by the way real quick just a quick plug i watched your raspberry pi video uh this morning very good now if i'm not wrong that's like one of your first raspberry pi videos you've done since the open flow video right yeah it's funny because i've had raspberry pi's forever and i've been like i wanted to do something with them and um you know chuck this is like you and i feeding off each other i mean i remember we had a call when i was in south africa once um i can't remember two years ago something like that and we were talking about like what's the next big thing cameron sorry we like old men going around in circles here but yeah we're getting talking we'll get to the story um i remember us looking at what's the next big thing and we kind of discussed getting into cyber and doing cyber security doing more of that because like like you've mentioned and i always say ride the waves and i did like open flow and i did network automation and you and i were riding those waves but you know this was another big thing that was growing um so you know through stuff that we talk about we we often jump into new topics and that was one of the topics that we spoke about many years ago but now i've gone off an attention and i'm so old i forgot what the question was origin story david bumble how did you become the david bomble i mean it's i think you know let's go back i was trying to i had to drop drop out of university because of lack of funds and i won't get into the details of that but basically i ended up working in a retail environment working crazy hours um it was tough and i think it's this is again chuck motivation for anyone who feels that they stuck in a dead-end place if you feel that there's no opportunity just you know take that thought and you know don't don't listen to that because there is always an opportunity um there's so many stories out there that are much you know more exciting than mine but basically i was in a retail environment and i decided to study on the side so i did a degree i was young cameron maybe a bit younger than you now but i mean i was working crazy long hours 60 hours a week whatever it was and then i was studying at night so i just was a machine i worked during the day and study it at night and i got a degree and now at this point in time i mean because again we're you weren't cameron i mean you were cameron's age but not now so the technology back then to study and get degrees was is not the same at all so like the type of school was it online school or were you like so this was a yeah the first so the first one i did i did a degree through what was called the university of south africa it's still there and they do like a um postal type degree in those days so there was no like real internet like it is today so that's amazing like that makes it even more like right now it's really really easy comparative to you know back then to get stuff done and study that was hard back then you had to do a bit more work to make that work well what's funny about that is whenever i was studying for my ccna i was watching stuff from david yeah and i was watching some of the gns3 stuff to get like real real laby experience and doing stuff with your network automation so it's funny to think like oh you're doing all this stuff back in the day where we have all this technology available now to watch and or people who provide free content like chuck and you like you david it's crazy to think about what it might have been like back then to study for ccna i can't yeah so those would be for ccna but i'll get to the ccna in a moment but it's the same kind of thing you know i was in i was studying a degree like a computer sorry it was information systems and accountancy yeah guys chuck don't laugh i'm really old but yeah in those days it was just books and i remember i had to do assignments and the the place where the university was you had to like give your assignment in um at a certain time and we always left it to the last minute obviously so we would drive like in the middle of the night to go and hand in our assignment before midnight it was not like online submission um but anyway so i did a degree like in three years part-time which was a full-time degree in three years just being a maniac but i mean i was a lot younger a lot more energy didn't have a didn't have a girlfriend you know all that kind of stuff so i but it was just like i was ambitious i wanted to get that done um and then after that we my brother and i did a uh mcse nt4 and we would drive to like an hour no it was actually about two hours at night so i would i organize with my boss to like work extra hours one day during the week and then one day take a few hours off so i could go earlier drive to you know this um training center and get my mcse and as soon as i got that um yeah i mean it's you you've how hungry are you that's always the the question how if you if you if you really want something how hungry are you to go and get that um so yeah we got our mcucs i am i got my degree and then through a whole bunch of things doors opened and i i started getting into it i was on a help desk it was like sort of my first job i did a lot of it's quite funny you know people people forget technologies just go round and round and round some of the first stuff i did was um like batch scripting like dos type scripting on windows so like when someone would log on to a computer i'd run a whole script to to set settings on their windows computer um so yeah that's sort of how i got into it and then around that time help desk windows support basic stuff i i heard about cisco uh cisco was just starting out like growing at that time and i um i went and all this was paid by myself really so i went and paid for some studying or some training and became a ccna and those were that what did that cost back then man i could remember it's uh it was in south african ransom i mean the prices all change so yeah it's uh it was it was expensive for me um but it it again how hungry are you um and i just saw that as an opportunity and that opened a lot of doors so i got into cisco um got a lot of opportunities to train and you know do various things in cisco and that's that's sort of the beginning chuck so i don't know how he how detailed you want it but um that was good i think and we've i i know a lot of your stories so you did skip some things which is totally fine but you gave us a good a good amount of information to know like how you formed into who you are and the amount of hustle it took like they see you and they don't know what you had to do and especially back then when it was significantly harder like the mcsc was like one of the only certifications out there that i think it might have been one of the biggest ones to even get in uh there was no ccna cisco was still a young company um you were kind of just paving the way for what it is today it was there was no like official blueprint on how to do this stuff yeah it's really funny i mean you navigate that yeah i mean it's like i i don't know how we came across that but that seemed to be like the best certification to get to break into it and that's why we did it i mean today it's there's a lot of options go do aws go do ccna do something find your passion you know jump in in in some technology it's i think it's a lot easier to break in today and there's a lot more demand um there's so many jobs i mean chuck i mean you guys are based in the states are you from what i hear coming out of the states it's that this is such a demand for skilled people and um yeah they're giving away jobs man they can't find enough people it's crazy yeah yes i mean i think it's a motivation for anyone who's struggling you know if you're in a dead-end job or you're doing something and you hate it um i love the stories i mean you get it every day as well chuck people who are medics or in retail or you know xyz whatever it is and they they break into i.t i think i tease is a fantastic field because you don't have to have some fancy degree you don't have to have some fancy scholarship to break in and i mean cameron you you've told your story i'm sure but it's the same thing you followed sort of chuck's journey haven't you same kind of idea do some suits and break in yeah yeah yeah whenever i mean i was not in any way a good high school student it's like i i wasn't he was grounded a lot when i was i was terrible at school but i've always liked technology so whenever chuck went and like i think you had got your ccna and were a network engineer probably about the time i was a freshman or sophomore in high school so by that point i was like all right it's pretty clear i already kind of know what i want to do like i was already really interested in what what he did and he kept almost every time i saw him around that time he was like what are you going to get your a plus we're going to get your a plus oh yeah yeah that was bugging you he's hounding me to get it yeah and i ended up getting that right before i graduated high school probably like a month before and then uh speaking of which job searching i think that's probably what people need like if you if you're struggling to find that motivation to start your your journey find someone that can bother you about it like get into a community like hey can you hold me accountable for like what i want to do and and tell them not to leave you alone and then right after i got my a plus it was when are you getting your ccna yeah it was just one new thing and then aws yes another agreed i mean if you can find someone to meant to you it helps a lot i mean chuck you were mentoring cameron along the way um and i did like i mean i remember you mentioning you you're building your discord and you and i both have discords um even if you that's where the you know it's so much nicer these days i mean the fact that we can talk like this um you can join these virtual communities you can there's a lot of people out there that will help you if you're struggling um and hold you accountable find a study buddy and you know study with someone else um you're not alone it's not like you're all stuck by yourself and no one's there to help you yeah yeah and it can feel that way if you don't reach out and you don't intentionally put yourself in those communities so yeah my discord david's discord is fantastic um both communities you can find some people actually put yourself out there you have to make an effort but anyway so where we're at in the david bomble stories david has uh you got your mcse um you did all the extra work and now you're working on a help desk uh and then you then you went and got your ccna right so you paid for that yeah so um and and we know this path ends and you get in your ccie so it kind of describe what made you or the story of how you went from ccna to ccie and the ccnp was even around back then was it no it was i mean so i am it's it's it's one of those like things in life you know if you put yourself out there you um doors open you've got to you've got to push um so it's a funny story i was um i was studying ccna but i was actually doing dev at that time so i was uh doing i got this opportunity to like write code and i got this opportunity to train mcsd so it's like developer sets um what were you coding in uh visual basic of course yeah of course of course of course i think you see something really old like cobalt or something i'm not that old assembly i'm old but yeah so i mean i um it's it's a funny thing i remember distinctly being on a bus and um there was this financial director and we just started chatting um it was like a company outing or something so i was a contractor doing like um mcsd training but we were invited to go on this um this company thing and i um got chatting to him and he was asking you know what am i doing and i was saying i was studying my i'm studying my i did my ccna on the side and then suddenly he was like interested you know wanted to know more about that and basically the long and short was i got an opportunity to start training cisco stuff so um when i spoke to the guy who ran the cisco division i mean he's an amazing guy he um he wanted to know you know why why i was doing ccna and you know sort of what my ambitions were and basically i joined uh became a cisco instructor right in the beginning um in those days there were there were like no cisco instructors so it was it was like gross growth growth curve like this um i like to say drinking from a 500 because you know there was there was no there were no cisco instructors there was very little information out there but he was great and again a great mentor so i think the the moral of the story is don't don't be shy to you know look for opportunities and even if you're not ready you know someone might see the potential in you and help you grow um and that yeah that had a big big change that helped me a lot so i mean i in those days there were no cisco instructors as i mentioned so we had to like study like mad men to to teach people because the stuff was growing um so yeah i was i i chuck you you know what it's like if the best way to learn is to teach yes if you can teach something it forces you to learn it and that helped me get my ccie because i was you know studying and teaching the stuff on this the whole time i basically lived and breathed cisco for for a few years um and i was very fortunate to get my ccie uh it was it was an experience and then that's amazing that's something i've always set my side on to get my ccie and now it's it's not in the cards for me i i don't want to put in the time for it and you and i have talked about that i'm like david check out my cci he's like you don't need it i'm like yeah you're right david you're right you got like how many how many youtube sides you got now is it like two million almost getting there don't jinx it one and a half so you've got like i mean it's it's that whole casey neistat thing again chuck it's like you can go and get certs or just keep doing what you're doing so i mean in your situation i don't think it's it's necessary um yeah i think back in the day for you as a an instructor it was almost necessary to say okay this guy knows what he's talking about because he has a ccie now we have the capability to make videos and demonstrate our skill set and teaching ability without voices without going through that process and um and i think that's what's funny is you know you got your ccie for cisco stuff but i think we're kind of doing the or you're kind of doing the opposite now for ethical hacking things yeah it's it you know it's like how do you it depends why do you do this i mean for a lot of us the reason why we get searched the reason why we get degrees is to get a job it's to get past the gatekeepers to to get to an interview and i think in the old days we've we've had this discussion many times in the old days the only way to prove knowledge or prove that you could do something was to get a degree or to get a certification but that's no longer true um cameron i mean if you're a young guy and you put your work on on the internet and put your code on github i would rather look at what you can do than look at your search i mean chuck you you interview like graphic designers and you know video editors stuff like that they the work that they do is much more important than whatever degree they've got or so they've got it's it's so funny you said that i was thinking about that analogy and i'm like i'm not gonna say that then you wouldn't send it for me but yeah like i don't look and try to find adobe certified people which that is totally a thing but i don't care about that like how good is your editing that's what i care about and that's and that's what people are looking for in hiring especially nowadays where you can make what you do so visual and so real on the internet you don't have to actually go out and get a real job to even show what you can do that github is insane you can spin up your own lab and give people access to it if i were starting from scratch now and i had to do that man i would make an insane lab as insane as i could and make it as public as possible and make sure hiring managers can see that that's the best way to do it that's one thing i've been noticing from people so when i was on my cloud team we would although club team was also in charge of interviewing anyone we were bringing on as well so we would do team interviews and there was one guy who ended up hiring who came in with the whole portfolio of stuff that he studied and he showed us actual like publicly facing websites that he had made using like serverless lambda and aws and we we're like okay that's pretty impressive this dude's already diving into the weeds yeah yeah yeah like cloud i mean you can actually do what you'll actually do on the job in your own cloud lab mostly for free and maybe a few bucks here and there and you can say yeah um you guys need that i did that like that's so cool oh it's unreal yeah i think the world's changed you know these days you can show your work i mean like cloud you can do a bunch um what's that cloud resume challenge uh that that's been going around uh cameron you know i there's this aws cloud resume challenge where you build your own website stuff like that i mean that's so much more valuable than just saying you've passed an asset in my opinion yeah you're doing it and i mean chuck we we've been talking about ctfs and like doing labs and stuff for a long time i mean that's fantastic that that's available because if you if you're if you've done a whole bunch of ctfs it means you've you you know what you you know a lot compared to someone who hasn't you know in in cyber security i think the networking is a bit behind with that um that's something we should talk about check we should do something but it's like you know it's more difficult to show you show you or show your experience it's very good yeah and i don't know if it'll ever get to that point i mean networking is becoming more to where it's it's more about development and programming and possibly there will be things but i don't know i still see the networking community being that um the hacking community has always been kind of like that like they have challenges they get together i just don't think networking has what it takes it's not big enough um which is part of the reason that you know you and i decided to take that dive into hacking because it's already so cool it's already cool people have built and i want to i just wanted to play with it i know you have the same kind of idea so now david i want to dive into i think what's the most interesting part about your story is how you went from because when people hear that you're training cisco you're going to classrooms and teaching people in person like that's what you were doing so how do we get to where you're making courses on udemy and like now you're the go-to guy for cisco ccna how did that start i mean it's it's you like we mentioned right in the beginning ride the waves and you know chuck you and i often talk about this look at what's coming don't don't think that the world's going to be the same tomorrow as it is today i so i'll use another story here there was i remember training i used to do a lot of classroom based training so you know train 10 guys or 15 people um some kind of technology cisco whatever um and that was very expensive i mean it was only thousands of dollars i mean you can still do today go to like the big training companies and pay thousands of dollars to to be trained by an instructor um it was very exclusive very expensive um you had an instructor for five days and then then you were on your own um and the world started changing i mean that's that's the thing keep looking at what's coming don't focus on the i always like i mean i'm an old man don't focus on the old technologies focus on the new stuff like i mean cameron if you were starting today i would say go to aws you know forget about like old stuff go and do the new stuff because that's where the jobs are and chuck it's quite funny you know we laugh about this but like anyone who says you know you need to have 20 years of experience before you can teach something obviously doesn't remember that a lot of technologies that are very important today didn't exist only a few years ago yeah i think the running joke is that um you'll see these like crazy job requests like i gotta have your ccie and your ccd and then and they'll joke oh yeah in like 20 years of kubernetes experience with exactly been around for like five years maybe even less than that i always say that with like the development jobs where they ask people to become ios developers and they're like oh you need to be you need to have like 15 years of experience with swift yeah like one of them came out like the language isn't even that old yeah it's ridiculous i mean look at the look at the new stuff so i mean i think that's a fantastic thing about it as well if you're starting today you've got zero experience don't don't study what i studied study what's new and important so like go and study golang as as a programming language don't study visual basic or something that's dead you know study the new stuff because you'll be the expert in six months time or a year's time or two years time or whatever it is the ramp up is so quick sorry go on quick detour golang or python i it's i still think python depends which depends which field you're going into but like python um for networking definitely python for uh cyber security still is the place but um you know you you've introduced so you've you've interviewed john hammond and so have i and he likes he was like you should learn golang and um the more i look at it i think it's it's really important so something i'll be focusing on as well is um it's got a lot of advantages over python so i think if you knew python is still hot today but it's like the um it's like the mature language golang is coming up the rankings so depending like all your audience is big chuck depending on you know where you're going i if you're doing cyber as an example i would do python because it's easy to start with but um start getting into golang as soon as you can because it's it's the new thing and now you know old man what was it what was the question again chuck you're talking to another old man i forgot to so i'll just ask another question so we can just brush over that do you feel like goling and python will kind of live together like they both have their same uh like they have benefits in other places or do you think that possibly golan can overtake python as like a dominant language or do you feel like they both have their own place for the moment i think it's they both got their got their places i think the you know what the problem is um you know we we we laugh about old languages but what are the banks run you know the uh you go you go to like a uh i just sort of you know the other day you go to like a retail environment or an atm and they're running old versions of windows a lot of the code and the mainframes is really old so old languages don't just disappear companies are not just going to go for the latest greatest new thing so i think for the moment both would be good uh to know in future who knows uh you know golang might take over from python i think there's too much legacy code and there's too much there's too much good stuff out there for python to disappear in in in the near future because you can just import a library and do something yeah it's kind of like one of those it's one of those things where like there's so much uh training for python where it's like it's the easiest thing to get into but to your point like riding the waves like if david came out with the goling course hmm or you chuck yeah i honestly i haven't even touched go lang i haven't touched it i don't care about it yet i know it's faster and i know it's better but i don't care i'm too old this is the thing chuck it's like when i when i study any programming language like python or whatever all that knowledge from the old visual basic stuff still helps and i mean you're doing this fantastic series of python on youtube um the knowledge is you know you know loops or loops doesn't matter which language you're in there's obviously changes but get the i think it's that whole thing get the principles understand the principles don't learn cisco don't learn juniper learn networking because if you understand networking you can take that to wherever you know if you're learning cloud then learn the principles of cloud because every cloud provider will have their own like funny you know implementation but if you understand the principles that's that's what you need to need to get don't focus on the terminology whatever understand the principles of programming like a variable et cetera et cetera yeah i found that uh that's something that was pretty true for i did like a little bit of studying for javascript but i'd already had a good foundation with python and i saw a lot of things overlapped and i was like okay that's that thing's really easy like that's just real it's just like python so i can definitely see how that carries over and same for learning basics and principles when you move to different uh fields like when i moved from network to cloud the networking stuff still applied and that was still a big part of what i was doing in cloud was still networking and it definitely came in handy yeah i mean that's the whole thing don't chase the certains like neil bridges always says don't chase the sir get the knowledge it's it's i think that that's that there's a lot of truth in that when you when you go through ccna or whatever it is you get the so to get the tick so you can get past the you know the gatekeepers to get to the job but if you get that understanding if you understand what you've learned that that stays with you and when you go from one domain to another if you understand the principles it's just going to help you so yeah exactly you go when you go to cloud you know chuck we do we do we're doing like hacking and i did a bunch of python videos of how to hack protocols if you understand protocols it's easy to hack them because you can see where all the vulnerabilities are if you understand how things work then it's easy to break much easier to break them i think um but if you if it's just a black box and you have no understanding of what it's doing you know it's very difficult yeah that's one thing people don't get about hacking is that like oh yeah i want to become an ethical hacker but what they don't realize is that you got to start with the foundational things you have to know what you're breaking before you can break it you can't just come into a network and go i want to exploit this network but you don't know what http is you don't know what tcp and udp are you're going to be lost you have to go back and learn all that from the from the ground up and that's that's the path you have to take or if you're trying to teach someone nmap and they don't understand like a tcp three-way handshake so yeah whenever you're trying to do like really stealthy scans like i don't even know what's going on i just know it's scanning stealthily yeah and that's how you make skitties exactly we hear that a lot don't we do yeah exactly i mean i mean yeah i've been in the game a long time and it's like that whole thing you know just keep pushing the envelope and learning and i i mean there's some i had a discussion with neil the other day and i mean it was there was some like discussion about you know should you go do a bunch of basic stuff first before you do hacking or should you just dive into it and i think you know sometimes we say you must do these thousand things before you become a a hacker he was kind of like you know what don't bother just go and jump into something like you that you enjoy and you'll see where your gaps are and then go and study the gaps because your the idea isn't to become a ccna if you want to become an ethical hacker you want to become an ethical hacker so go and do some stuff like nmap see where your gaps are and then realize you've got to go and study that stuff to actually understand what you're doing but don't feel you have to do like a whole bunch of certifications before you can even start using nmap because you'll lose all motivation by the time you get there yeah i think that's the key too is like you're saying um i think it's great strategy too like just to jump into ethical hacking like nmap and then realize you're your gaps i think what a lot of guys might end up doing is just jumping into nmap and just learning the tool and then moving on to the next tool the next tool but they never went back and learned those concepts so as long as you like write down okay i don't know what networking is i need to go go learn that real quick and like get a more holistic view of how networking works um i think you're gonna be safe now i remember the question so my old net memory came back uh we were talking about how you jumped into becoming a udemy instructor and one of the other udemy instructors in the platform i believe have you had a million yet are you like close no don't jinx a chuck [Laughter] i think it's like 900 and i haven't checked it's 940 000 or something 960 000 something like that guys let's help david get there yeah go away because you you have some free courses yeah yeah so just go become one of the students thanks yeah so i mean yeah it's good thing that you said that so the the whole thing was to like watch the trends watch what's coming and what i remember is instructors who didn't make the transition from you know classroom based training to online training again lost their jobs just going back to like the you know history just repeats itself so the pbx guys lost their jobs because they didn't jump onto the new technology i saw that instructors lost jobs or you know couldn't get work and had to change roles because things changed the days of like classroom based training were coming to an end i could see that you know i like to see the trends youtube was growing like mad you could see a lot of young people were creating great content uh you could see you know in my eyes you could see where the world was moving it was moving away from classroom based training to online training and you know i wanted to i wanted to change sort of what i was doing from like a contractor type person where i was just selling my time as an instructor to you know creating a business so i for many many years have started you know creating online type training material and um yeah when udemy came around that was fantastic because the going back in time one of the hardest things in the in the old days was to try and sell my video content against all the big names and those days there were some big name companies so you had to do google adwords and you know it was it was a nightmare to try and advertise or try and market your material and udemy was was a fantastic gateway for instructors because udemy does the marketing and you just focus on being a great instructor or being as good as an instructor as you can so yeah i started in the early days of udemy i mean i think the in the first month i made a dollar maybe two dollars so for a long time i was making like ten dollars maybe twenty dollars it was nothing um you know compared to where it's grown and i think that's just another indication is you know don't don't hate the days of small beginnings if you like or don't despise the days of small beginnings because things will start small but if you keep at it and you keep working on it it'll grow so i remember yeah very very little revenue but then you know because i was on the platform i made contact with the people at udemy they gave me an opportunity and another opportunity came and and then it just grew from there and udemy has become this game changer because why would you go and pay two and a half thousand dollars for i think it's four thousand dollars when i looked at you know recent price for a ccna course when you can get it for ten dollars obviously just about to bring that up because um you were i think you were one of the first people i i saw that was like okay right now they go to is you pay a couple grand for a course maybe a couple hundred for a course and that's that was the de facto standard for getting good ccna content you're like no no i'm gonna make it like 12 bucks and see how that works and and you still stand behind that and it obviously works that had to be pretty scary to make that jump because it's like uh am i just gonna give him my course for like pennies now like and that essentially sometimes that's the case right so how do you feel about that yeah i mean it's it i think it's different now because i don't run a huge organization i think you know these big companies have instructors and then they have levels and levels of management and they have huge overheads like buildings and equipment and stuff like that i mean i was like i can go and be in a contractor i could see where the world was going i mean that was already disappearing or i can try this so this i was i just went all in for that and yeah you're right i mean some udemy courses i might i might make 50 cents or a dollar on someone's purchase because i mean they could buy it for ten dollars but there's all kinds of fees that that get off or get taken off my attitude is an instructor like me can make enough money to be happy i don't have to be the richest guy in the world i i make enough money i i look after my team and i um i don't you know have to have a ferrari i don't care about things like that so but chuck you know things are changing again because i you know you're doing it and there's other guys on youtube that are doing it as well you know ten dollars for some people is is the price of a coffee but for for some people ten dollars is still a lot a lot of money it depends where you are in the world i mean if you come from certain parts of africa i grew up in africa and i've seen poverty like extreme poverty and i mean there's poverty in other parts of the world if you if you don't earn much then ten dollars is a lot but what you're doing and lots of other people are doing is they're putting free content on youtube and i think you know the world's moving again the days of like paying crazy amounts of money for online training are gone i think the price is going to come down more and more and more um i think you've seen the scenes you know in some of the cisco learning providers or companies and i mean i i i say disclaimer this is just my opinion you know who knows what's actually going on but um from what from what i've seen you know the old days where companies used to run many many cisco ccna courses like live training courses that diminished dramatically and i think that's going to be affected even more going forward because why would you as a as a young person trying to you know get into it go and spend two thousand four thousand dollars if you can get high quality content for free on youtube and chuck i have to you know i i like to usually you use you as an example because again you like the casey neistat of this of this game where you take high quality you know but it's the truth you make this really really high quality content and it's free on youtube so why would i go and listen to you know boring content perhaps um on some corporate platform when i can just go into youtube and learn about whatever you're teaching really high quality content for nothing so yeah the i you've got to keep your eye on where the trends where's the world going so from my point of view i see classroom based training that's kind of moved dramatically now to online training covert has only accelerated that things have changed people you know don't want to go don't want to go into the office they don't want to you know go to a classroom they want to do everything remote why would i pay lots of money to have an instructor just for a few days and then that's it it's done once the course is over whereas i can just get access to udemy courses for my lifetime for ten dollars twenty dollars whatever or if that's too much for me i can get ad um sponsored content for free on youtube and i mean you've got the membership site i've got a membership site you know why why pay huge amounts of money where you can support a creator like you um join your subscription service i mean i think your your subscription is way more valuable than what i have to offer um but yeah i mean you're in the early days you're in the early days i am i am i'm just rapping but i think you're exactly right how things are changing and i mean not to toot our own horns and i'm talking to toot right now that was weird but i mean the horn um you and i we we certainly have changed the way this kind of content is created um typically ccna content or any kind of technical training was death by powerpoint you would never see video you would never see someone's face and now that's more and more people are doing that because you and i have introduced that and they're doing that to keep up but they still can't touch the qual