A little over a year ago, I was like many of you, tired and miserable, stuck behind a cash register on yet another Holiday shift. For many, the time and half alone is worth it, for others the extra money is merely a drop in the bucket that is the soul sucking misery of working retail. At some point we all desperately crave more, whether that’s a better job, more money, or more autonomy.

I was never much of a tech guy, sure I loved playing video games as a kid, but when it came to the guys building custom gaming rigs and doing custom fabrications to the Xbox consoles, I was just a bystander. Up until a year ago, 12 years of private/public school education, 3 unsuccessful years of University, and 5 or 6 years of retail experience resulted in merely mediocre Microsoft Office skills.

My coding experience amounted to middle school level copy and paste html Myspace templates; hell I hadn’t even heard of google or wikipedia until my junior year in high school. Growing up in the 90’s we had house phones with cords and payphones on the street (I still know how to call collect), tech was on the forefront and was just beginning to reach the masses. At that time the Internet was only available if you had a landline at the house, and the entire family would share one computer if there was one at all.

Needless to say, my technology background wasn’t deep, but my retail experience was, and the one thing I excelled at was selling. My dad was a car salesman for a lot of my youth, and whenever I was in the car with him, he was always listening to some “self-made guru” preaching about his method to getting wealthy. My dad would always tell me of how he had multiple chances to invest and go in on various business ventures in his younger days but he was hesitant and skeptical due to his lack of knowledge and understanding. So, as I got older I took on his enterprising spirit and became fixated on building my own empire by preparing myself to succeed where my father fell short.

Enter Technology. After multiple short-lived side hustles and suffering through more retail hell i finally decided to “seriously” give technology a try. I had no clue where to start. I was intoxicated by the “frontier” nature of the Interne Where one could spend nights coding and building apps and software and turn around to sell it for millions. I was entranced by the gleaming digital gold rush.

When I asked friends I knew who were in IT they would suggest getting a help desk job to get my foot in the door. I had worked retail most of my adult life, I was good enough with tech I could help my folks out with their problems, and I knew how to wirelessly connect the printer. But once I started looking at actual IT jobs my head whirred with all the technical jargon and computer terms that were so far beyond the realm of my understanding.

There was a time where good Tech jobs were reserved for Computer Science grads from Silicon Valley or the lofty heights of MIT. And while that still holds true for the more higher level positions in bleeding edge tech, the explosion of the Internet has done much to level the playing field. With the vast amount of knowledge available, and people to teach said knowledge one can become a successful tech professional while being completely self-taught.

Stories abound across the Internet of So-and-so who left their 9-5, taught themselves to code, and now make near six-figures building software. While this path is entirely possible DO NOT follow this path thinking you will be an overnight success. (More on this in another post).

The technology industry is growing rapidly, and the jobs aren’t keeping up. Google “tech job shortage” and read any of the myriad articles describing the knowledge gap widening with jobs exploding faster than the workforce can be trained. Traditional stalwarts of Computer Science degrees are being challenged by bootcamps, and startups who all claim they can make you a full fledged web developer in six months AND get you a job that pays $85K plus.

At this point in the game you can essentially teach yourself how to code, service computers, networks, etc, build a few pretty decent projects and interview yourself into a position. That’s what drew me to tech, the autonomy; the whole low risk, high reward proposition was something I couldn’t turn away from. I thought to myself, if I could just learn the digital survival skills to stake my claim on this new frontier, then I could carve out a nice virtual homestead. And that’s exactly what I’ve set out to accomplish.

If you’re still with me thanks for sticking around and reading my story. I hope that you can see from my experience that you don’t have to be some computer wiz, or child prodigy to start learning or even make the career transition into the tech field. What you will need is the passion to learn, the drive to continually move forward, and the humility to constantly seek growth.

With this blog I want to bring you along on my journey and show you what is truly possible. Stay posted to part 2 of this post where I’ll break down my journey step-by-step and teach you a few strategies for getting started on your new journey...