Techie Personal Finance Bootcamp
I help tech employees use their finances to create the life of their dreams by helping you take your financial confidence to the next level!Are you a tech employee who wants to learn how to better manage your finances?Working in tech you may experience extreme pay increases, which may allow you the ability to accomplish goals you've only dreamed of. However, if mismanaged, you can also find yourself stressed out and under pressure to increase your income in order to fit your lifestyle.The good news, is through education and a little bit of determination, you have the power to control your future and create your best life.Not only will we cover basic personal finance concepts, but we'll dive deep into tech specific benefits and issues that I regularly help my clients build strategies to maximize. (Examples: working for start ups, restricted stock units, stock options, and layoffs) Also, on a regular basis, I will have special guests that will highlight their stories with unique stories about their tech experiences.
Techie Personal Finance Bootcamp
Reinventing Yourself with John Marty
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
John Marty has had a crazy career.
After starting his career as a young entrepreneur he found a lot of success. However, things changed rapidly and he was soon unemployed with no real prospects.
Listen to the episode to see how he reinvented himself and is now a Product Manager at Amazon and uses his experience to empower others through content on LinkedIn, YouTube, and public speaking.
We cover the following in the show.
- Navigating Entrepreneurship
- Struggling with Unemployment
- Asking Yourself Meaty Questions
- Learning Through Reading
- Coding Bootcamp while Hating Coding
- Making Bold Moves
- MBA Wasn’t Enough
- Leveraging the Power of LinkedIn
- Researching College and Career Path
- Investments in Property
The Happiness Hypothesis
Man's Search for Meaning
John's YouTube: Career Strategies to Land in Big Tech
LinkedIn Profile
Fee-Only Financial Planner Fort Collins, CO
No prospect for a job. And man, I mean, I I literally was like, man, I was literally like I would break down crying in my car, and I I was just really struggling, man. Um it's it's hard to even put into words. And I just I walked in the desk buy one day and I was like, look, you know, would you be interested in hiring me? You know, I I I used to own a company and they were like, yeah, sure, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um, but previous to that, I was applying for all kinds of home automation companies thinking that I would be a gem for them, and I couldn't, I couldn't even get through the system, you know.
SPEAKER_00This is techie personal finance bootcamp where I help tech professionals in their 20s and 30s balance a great life today without sacrificing their future possibilities. I'm your host, Lucas Caseris, certified financial planner and founder of Level Up Financial Planning, where I help educate, coach, and build strategies with my clients to help them take their financial confidence to the next level. Here's an important compliance disclosure. This podcast is for informational purposes only and they're not to be considered recommendations. It is recommended to consult your trusted financial professional before implementing any information obtained from the technical personal finance computer. Before we dive in, I want to give you a quick warning. For the first few minutes of the episode, there was some sound issues with some like scratching noises, so just fair warning, it's not your microphones or anything like that, it's just some sound issues on our end. We did get it corrected by the five-minute mark, so hopefully you're still able to enjoy the full episode. Welcome to your techie personal finance bootcamp. I'm really excited because I have John Marty on the show today. It took a while for us to get the logistics sound, but now that he's here, I'm excited to see what value he's able to bring to you. And I just know there's gonna be a lot of gems in this conversation. Before we dive in, I'll give you a quick overview of John's background and what we'll be covering today. So before finishing college, he was actually an entrepreneur who experienced a lot of success early on in his career, but ultimately he found himself unemployed. John is gonna share with us how he navigated those tough experiences and how he strategically positioned himself to have Amazon reach out to him by leveraging the power of you guessed at LinkedIn. Thanks for coming on the show today, John.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, thanks a lot for having me, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we actually met originally just through your content on LinkedIn. So you you produce lots of different forms of content, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in detail. But uh one of the cool things that has happened since I've been following you is I get to find out a little bit more about your background just through the post that you're doing. And just the other day you posted it was a video, and I think it was for the event that you're going to speak at tonight for rework, and it mentions that just a few years ago, it wasn't too long ago, you were just working at Best Buy almost minimum wage. So tell me, you have a unique story. How is that the starting point to the story, or do you need to jump back a little bit further to kind of talk about where you were and how you got to where you are today?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. You know, that's just more of a quick snapshot, right? The the content mill on uh on LinkedIn can only handle about 40 seconds before people are like, skip to the next thing, right? It's gotta be short and short and sweet. But you know, for uh yeah, in 2020, you know, between like 2013-2014, I was working at Best Buy. I was working for $12 an hour. I had prior to that, back as a sophomore, mid-sophomore junior year in college, I created a um a startup with a buddy of mine. And the startup is called Access Audio. And Access Audio still exists. It's uh it's an electronics store, essentially, kind of like a mini Best Buy. And I started this this with him, uh, a good college friend of mine, and we were you know fortunate enough to grow the company to multi-million dollar sales. Um that company sold uh I sold it to him, you know, sold my shares to him in 2012. And then I wound up really wanting to dive into creating my own app and my own, you know, a different type of startup, right? So I wanted to do Internet of Things startup, and I was really interested in in um going bigger because mind you, I was in a small town. Durango, Colorado is a tiny place, it's 30,000 people in the whole county, right? So I think it was impressive what we were able to build there, but I wanted to take it to the next level. So I wound up going to Miami, Florida, met a uh partner through a mutual friend. He had a crazy successful international flooring company that was doing like $120 million a year. And he just brought me into this whole world of Miami. And you know, my wife and I moved down to Miami and you know, kickstarted this company, and man, like it was going great for a while until it wasn't.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04Um so there's just a lot of a lot of things wound up happening, just there were cracks in the business model. And back then, so right now you could walk into a Best Buy store and you can pick a light bulb and an internet of things and some voice device, Alexa, Google, whatever, and put them all together, and it's all gonna work for you.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_04Back in 2012, 2013, the idea of doing that was next to impossible. Yeah, so we've evolved a lot since then. And the only thing you could do with home automation technology back then was you would use these very large-scale integrated systems that you would pre-wire into people's houses and then put like iPads and stuff in the walls, right? So essentially what wounded happening was the product was great. The interoperability between all of the different types of products that we were putting together in the suite of products, it just started having problems in larger scale condos in Miami. And it, you know, just a lot of factors led to its demise.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_04Um yeah, so it very tough, you know, very tough. I I I had to walk away from that knowing that I was basically going to be totally broke in a very short period of time. And I had to quickly think about working for corporate America.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I then found out that nobody on earth would hire me. And I think the concept of somebody hiring a washed-up entrepreneur who has a generalist background just doesn't fit well into corporate America mold.
SPEAKER_00Huh. That's that's interesting. Because you think an entrepreneur that that could easily be like a sales role and and not at all, man.
SPEAKER_04That's great. Yeah, yeah, you know, and I've actually uh I've actually talked to a lot of people that have been in the same position. And uh as soon as you try to transition from entrepreneurship, unless you're in a very specific niche in tech or some very specific niche, uh it becomes very hard for people because when you're an entrepreneur, you're a jack of all trades.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And when you're in corporate America, you are a jack of one trade. So HR people, recruiters, they just do not know how to uh to don't they don't know what to do with you.
SPEAKER_00Okay, yeah. And so is that ultimately what led to like Best Buy? Just kind of filming. Yep.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I was I was really stressed out at the time. Uh baby, baby on the way, and at that point, I first child, right? So moved back to Colorado and no job and no prospect for a job. And man, I I mean I I literally was like, man, I was literally like I would break down crying in my car, and I I was just really struggling, man. Um it's it's hard to even put into words. And I just I walked into Best Buy one day and I was like, look, you know, would you be interested in hiring me? You know, I I used to own a company and they were like, Yeah, sure, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um, but previous to that I was applying for all kinds of home automation companies thinking that I would be a gem for them, and I couldn't, I couldn't even get through the system, you know. And so uh yeah, that's where, you know, that's where I really started, you know, trying to dig deep and think differently about my life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, how did that like and then you don't have to go into deep, deep details, but like how did your wife handle like this? Like she she was on board obviously for joining the business, the business ended up not working out. Like, yeah, that's that seems crazy. And I know like I started my business two years ago. It's been stressful for sure between me and my wife. Um, just kind of navigating, like, oh yep, we built up savings, uh, all this hard work, and now we're burning through it to to launch a business. And so, yeah, there's stressful times, even though we're on the same team and we're kind of all excited about what the potential future looks like. But yeah, what happens when that does kind of crash down?
SPEAKER_04Um, well, she was always really supportive, man.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome.
SPEAKER_04She was always really supportive. You know, and it was never about like the entrepreneurship or whatever, right? It was never about any of that stuff. And we've been married for 12 years now. So we just had our 12 year university. Yeah, man, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_00And more than one child now at this point, so it sounds just yeah, just just one, just one little guy.
SPEAKER_04Six years old.
SPEAKER_00Awesome.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, you know, I I think I I reflect a lot back on that period. It's like the it was the worst thing at the time, and turned out to wind up it turned out to be the best thing that happened to me because it was a deep reflection on what direction I was going to take my life. And it was a deep reflection on big, meaty questions that I had about happiness and fulfillment. And I spent hours and hours and hours reading books about these topics, trying to dig in and understand the wisdom of others. And uh it gave me a lot of clarity.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's awesome. And so how how did reading the books, kind of doing that research and and asking those meaty questions to yourself? Like, what would be like the one big, biggest, mediest question that you had to answer to start kind of moving down this path to to figuring out what's gonna be next and how things are gonna work out?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so it started with one thing, and that one thing was this concept of happiness not being a destination. And then it was this concept that not only is it not a destination, but happiness is not an attachment to external things. Right. So when I had my company, I was you know, I very much identified with this like $7,500 watch that I bought, right? And I very much identified with the vehicle that I was driving, right? I had this like I had this like Porsche cayenne, and um and when those things were basically stripped away, right? Then I had to realize, well, okay, I'm not these things, then what am I? And who am I? I'm not my job title, I'm not my car, I'm not my watch. And so that started this kind of deep thought process, which then led to a single question. And that single question for me was what would be the one thing that I would do for the rest of my life if I didn't need to make money doing it, and how does it help others? Yeah, because everyone in Greek philosophy, everyone in in in books that are deep thinking about meaning of meaningful lives and happiness, they all dive into these topics of like it's not about the money, right? It's not about attachment, it's about the internal work that you have to do for yourself, and it's about giving back to others, right? So I I then really started to try to figure out like I was weeding out that the answer to that question over and over again. Like I'm just like journaling like crazy, trying to figure out well, well, maybe it's this thing, maybe it's that's that thing. And the one big thing that really struck with me was like I have to help people with their journeys and careers and and and help them try to find fulfillment in life because I was going through that same struggle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And you that was an intense time and an intense experience for you, I'm sure. So it's easy. Yeah. Well, not not necessarily easy, but like you actually get the worst case scenario of you couldn't find a job and you and you went into it thinking that you were gonna be the bomb hire for for some of those internet of things companies and those internets. Right. And like you just got blindsided, like no one's talking to me, no one's opening the door. And yeah, that's right, man.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, I went from I went from like John on his high horse, John being able to say, like, hey, I had this multimillion dollar company in his 20s, then John being broke, then John not having a company, and John not being able to go to a party and say, This is what I do for a living, right? Like those were all big things that validated me. And and now I, you know, I've really disassociated myself with all of it, man. Like people see me on the surface and they see me working for Amazon, and I'm like, you know, I really I I never bring the topic up. I don't care about that topic at all because I feel that we are so much more than our resumes.
SPEAKER_02For sure.
SPEAKER_04And and we have these such rich stories. And I I I just had this meeting with a with an Amazonian today. Um she um, you know, I won't divulge names or anything, but she um we we had lunch and she was talking about her next move. And I asked her the same question that I was asking myself, like, what would be that one thing that you would do? She paused for a moment and she was like, she almost it seemed like she thought it would sound silly for me, right? Like I wouldn't be accepting of this message because that's not something that people in corporate America talk about.
SPEAKER_02Sure, right?
SPEAKER_04People talk about promotion, they talk about the area of focus that they're in, but they're not gonna talk about like that deep passion for something. And she talks to me about like she came from Morocco and she is um, you know, that girls in Morocco are told that the only way to have a life is to marry someone, and and you know, everyone there is extremely poor. And like I start digging in and she's diving into this topic that is lighting her up and making her smile, right? And she's wondering, how do I how do I get that message out to the world? Right. And I think a lot of people are afraid to share their stories with the world because the corporate construct makes you think that you cannot like your LinkedIn profile is your company's, you know, if you say anything on social media, it's like it's owned by the company because the company owns you there, they that's where, you know, that's the paycheck, right? Yeah, and I I c I categorically reject that concept. You know, I think we live in a time now where we should be empowered to do whatever the hell we want to do. And if if it's not about the money, even more power to somebody who dives into it because that's the thing that's actually fulfilling them. And over the course of five, ten years, if somebody keeps with it, guaranteed they'll be successful with it. So why not pursue two paths? Why not dive into both? Like, what could someone lose by doing two things at once?
SPEAKER_00For sure. Yeah, and I think a lot of people are are scared of that failure, that there's also the imposter syndrome that kind of sneaks in, like, oh, this is something so different than what you kind of associate you being or what other people associate you being. So kind of hit it on the head that's like we just get tied into all these things and what either corporate America or just society in general tells us that we should be moving down this path because XYZ. And I'm I'm telling you, I've it hasn't been until I started like my own company started like interacting with people in a totally different way than when I was an employee, hearing their stories and the things that make them different, where like the people that are the happiest, like truly happiest, are the ones that are kind of following those paths of the things that light them up. And yeah, it's not it's not about the money. Sometimes money comes along with some of those things, but yeah, it takes takes either intense work up front or or just kind of a long, long burning journey before the the money ever kind of shows up.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, that's right, man. That's right. And it's not, you know, it winds up not being about being an influencer, right? People people try to go out there and try to be an influencer, but if somebody wants to do that, they have to ask them the question like if somebody were to grill them on why they're an influencer, that story of why is what empowers them to other people, right? Like that story is what makes other people be like, wow, like this person deeply cares about this topic. How can I help them? Right. And what's interesting is that you know, 85% of people hate their jobs in corporate America, right? Yeah, they they they're actively disengaged, they're on Facebook and they're doing other, you know, as much as they can, right? Yeah, and so 85% is a massive number. And I I forgot the worldwide totals, but I think about that often, right? It's like if so many people are disengaged, we have incredible platforms out there that allow you to talk about whatever the hell you want to talk about and gain awareness to that. If you authentically care about it, then why not do it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it is scary for sure. Like you mentioned, like the people in HR um corporate. I know one of my uh my sister-in-law, years, years back. I don't even know if it was Facebook, I think it was when MySpace was still a thing. She like posted something, and yeah, it ended up leading to her termination. It wasn't, I I think she just said like she didn't like her job and maybe something about about a boss or something like that. But yeah, it's very easy for especially now with how how viral things can go, and just once things are out there, it's hard to hide them. So people hear stories like that and they're scared to be their authentic self and kind of share this because we we have the power as far as being able to share it, but we don't have the power to control necessarily how other people are gonna take it. And so, how do how do you talk people through balancing that because people could honestly ruin a career if they just went off the walls and they didn't like do it in a very intentional, very thoughtful way of expressing themselves?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, I agree, man. You have to be really thoughtful about it. Look, I mean, I had a situation even a few weeks ago where I posted a story about a guy at Amazon who had applied to 3,500 jobs. 3,500 jobs while he was going to school. Now, mind you, he was an international student, okay? But he wound up, and that, you know, visa problems and things like that, right? So that's the hurdle is even bigger for somebody like that. Yeah. He wound up getting an offer at Amazon, but out of 3,500 jobs, I believe it was only like five interviews that he had or something, right? And so here's this guy who did all that. I posted this story about like it's damn hard to get a job these days, right? And somebody in recruiting at Amazon saw a post and she's like, This thing has thousands of likes already. I can't even imagine how many views it has. Like, you must take it down. And she tagged her manager and her manager's manager, right? And I was like, and she thought that I was speaking about internal processes at Amazon. She thought that I meant he had applied to 3,500 jobs at Amazon.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_04Or there were 3,500 applicants at Amazon, right? And so people are gonna misconstrue your message all the time, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um especially on social media for sure.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I was like, look, I I'm not talking about company secrets here, right? I'm talking about empowering yourself in your career, right? So so clearly if somebody is trying to become an influencer and doing like jack things on you, you you you have to you have to play the right angle, right? If you're gonna do the jack things, maybe post it on YouTube, maybe, maybe keep it on Instagram, right? If you're gonna do something that is more professional related, more career related, any kind of entrepreneurial business focused, like do it on LinkedIn, right? So there's mediums for every type of thing that uh that is out there. Um, but yeah, I I mean I agree, people do have to walk a fine line. There there is fear. People have families, man, you know? But I think that I think it is imperative for people to get out there and start doing whatever it is they love doing alongside in parallel to what they're getting paid to do at work, because clearly what they're getting paid to do at work is not working for them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I just met with someone and she was diagnosed with cancer. Uh, luckily it's in remission right now, but kind of this experience has made her want to go down this path where it's not very lucrative compared to her tech position. And but yeah, she's having to and uh ask herself a lot of those media questions that you went through. those things were forced on you. This is definitely going to be more of a choice on her end to kind of make a massive shift and and kind of figure out how she's going to connect that path and create that path for herself. So yeah definitely it's it's tough.
SPEAKER_04It is man.
SPEAKER_00It is. It's easy for me starting a business. My my wife deciding that we want to take a different path like as far as how we're going to be kind of equally split in time taking care of the children. So obviously we're not going to be able to work full full-time capacity either of us. And so that that has financial consequences. So of course all of these things that are competing and and fear gets in there what people think you should be doing and not be doing definitely all gets in your head and then you have to navigate those things. So true. So I I know you mentioned a lot of those kind of deep thinking books. If you just wanted to give the top two I know you probably have a lot more than that for that. We can kind of close up this section we can kind of move on to the next question.
SPEAKER_04Yeah sure. So uh one great book is Happiness Hypothesis just all about kind of you know the history of happiness um happiness thinking in general and really dives deep into that another uh book that I really love one that has shaped my thinking a lot is uh Victor Frankel Man's Search for Meaning and uh it's a gentleman who went through a concentration camp um and after he got out of his concentration camp he wrote the entire book in eight hours and he really talks about how the only thing that we have is a choice to make the best of a situation right like we have the power to choose and it's fascinating coming from a man like that who went through the worst conditions in the world and being in a concentration camp and he says we have the power to choose right and so that's what made him survive. So even in the worst of circumstances like you know that's that was it for him. So um and he talks a lot about how success is really an unintended consequence of giving to others success doesn't come from thinking about success yeah right because that's just kind of this vacuous nebulous term right like I want to be successful what the hell does that mean as per whose standards yeah exactly like the the watch you had the cayenne like those things like to some people they would consider that success but you after having those other than not having them realize like that's the furthest thing from what success is that's right that's right yeah one thing that is tricky for all of us to do by far is just have that kind of wider perspective because we struggle to think outside of our own own head about our own being and what's going on for us.
SPEAKER_00And so we could like go to go to Starbucks and they don't make our drink right we could choose to let that ruin our day or like we can choose to be like uh maybe maybe I'm not gonna complain that maybe I'm just gonna enjoy this unique different flavor that I've never had before like but then there's people that have crazy experiences far worse and sometimes they take a better approach to approaching those things and maybe they have no other choice like as far as being able to to move on with life other than just say hey it is what it is what can I learn what can I take from this but so many other people have like really issues that are non-issues and we turn them into stuff that can improve our days just by that choice.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely everything is a mindset there was a there was an Uber driver that was uh asking me one day he got into a conversation with a gentleman who was a someone who worked in tech Facebook Google whatever they got into a conversation about salaries and this Facebook person or you know I forgot some tech company right and he said yeah a lot of the engineers make around $2500 a year right and he goes wait what and he was awestruck by the the like he couldn't even imagine he said he couldn't even imagine making $200 a day let alone $200,000 a year right and so you have somebody for example that might be in big tech who might be complaining about their life and that they don't have enough yet and there's a guy in an Uber who probably literally probably works harder than the guy who works nine to five as an engineer in tech and is not really any smarter necessarily but he figured out how to navigate the system. Yeah exactly you know that guy's dreaming about the day about making $200 a day right so I I just I you know that guy would take the tech worker's job without complaining and work three times harder because of his perspective on how hard it you know uh or how how much how hard he's working for such a little wage.
SPEAKER_00Yeah yeah yeah and I'm sure anyone listening can think of like a handful of people like those these are like some of the hardest workers I know but yeah they're they may pale in comparison to how much they make compared to some of the other people. Exactly man yeah everything perspective is an interesting thing for sure and and a lot of it does come down to how we want to choose to to make that next step or even if today was a horrible day at what tomorrow's gonna look like so that's right you you ultimately ended up getting positions being able to to get work do what do you attribute that largely to LinkedIn I know I I leverage LinkedIn pretty heavily for my business it's actually I've gotten more than half my clients since I've launched from LinkedIn. I love it. I'm pretty sure you love it too what what do you think and did it actually help you with your career?
SPEAKER_04Yeah man I mean LinkedIn I I firmly believe that LinkedIn is the future of work right it's it's it eliminates the need for somebody to even think about resumes and cover letters and whatever where I think LinkedIn goes and where I think the future of hiring goes is everything is facilitated through that platform. If people are basically LinkedIn is a massive search engine right and so what we're what we've been able to do is flip the model. And now if people choose to do it and this is part of my you know process part of my thinking process with people and and and and you know some of the workshops that I do is I want to get people to think about creating content as a way to attract opportunities to them as opposed to people you know blindly applying and praying for jobs. So I think that LinkedIn holds a massive place for that. And the reality is only 275 there's 275 million people on active users on LinkedIn only about 3000 of them post content once a week only about 15000 of of the the total population posts anything more than that. And if you were to segment that group of people at 1500 only maybe 1% of those are posting really good content right so we have 270 million person blue ocean strategy as far as getting your message out to the world and nobody's using it man. It is the biggest untapped opportunity in the world and so you know for me when I first landed my job after reinventing myself right I was working at Best Buy I was reinventing myself I maxed out on student loans uh doing an MBA program maxed out on student loans doing a software development program. My hypothesis was that I could get hired right by by someone in tech because I thought that's where the money was at. So what I wound up doing was uh I I I networked like crazy, got a job at American Express and I told myself at that point never again would I ever be in a situation where I where I would apply and pray for jobs ever that I wanted opportunities to come to me and the first question I asked was like where do I do that? Where do I leverage that? I landed on LinkedIn I created a stellar profile which was what LinkedIn calls all-star profile so basically it's a it's a 100% completed search optimized profile very easy to do if you just follow the rules but only half of the LinkedIn members even even do that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah so because I did that Amazon called me out of the blue asked me for a job and I didn't even have to do any work right and again you didn't have to stress out about oh like I do I have to email whoever's the hiring manager do I have to apply as blindly no they came to me. That's crazy yeah that that would be awesome if that's the way the future is it'll save a lot of wasted time for sure as you mentioned that one guy applying for 3500 3500 how much time did got wasted in it where you could have been using it more efficiently even hanging out with his family doing stuff he loves or of course doing work that he loves too of course of course that's really insane and so uh you mentioned going back to boot camp it's super crazy but it seems like you're of my last three interviews I've done for my show there's been some tie to boot camps and specifically galvanize and I realized that that was your case when I was kind of researching questions I I might be asking you and I was like yeah that's that's insane so do you feel like that that boot camp definitely was a a good good maneuver for you how do you kind of see I think I've seen you post content specifically about education related topics like what do you think the future of education looks like yeah man so uh two two things in there right so one thing is the boot camp scenario and I think yes galvanize for me was the reason the main reason I got my job at American Express yeah because they saw a tech background in me now it was a combination so the hypothesis was that I could paint a narrative of entrepreneurship MBA tech to pivot into product management because I saw that as a role that would make sense for my personality.
SPEAKER_04Turns out I was right but MB MBA alone wasn't gonna do it right so galvanize helped most people don't go through galvanize or any tech boot camp to specifically do product I found a way to leverage higher income and my personality you know together I also didn't want to be a starting engineer or do engineering at all because I friggin hate it. So you went to the boot camp how how was it for you if you didn't want to be an engineer or is it just something like you were just doing because you knew or your your hypothesis was those things were going to meld perfectly to where you wanted to be yeah barely got through it I was terrible I hated every second of it hated it and I knew I knew going in that I was going to hate every second of it right this was a strategic decision to say on my resume that I went through the pain of engineering school I came out the other end and I landed the job.
SPEAKER_00That was it that's crazy that that's a crazy crazy thought process. I'm glad it worked out for you because some bold moves but bold moves that's one of the things that probably entrepreneurship may have helped you with too right just being being able to trust in processes and and things like that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah man well I mean no I I at the end of the day I didn't even think tech school was something on the radar. When I was 18 months or no my my MBA was 18 months when I was halfway through my MBA I had applied to so many jobs like I was really really worried that I was not going to get any job and so you know other than the one I had at Best Buy. And so I had saw I saw some flyers about galvanize and they had only done six boot camps ever. Like I was the I think I was the sixth or seventh no I was the sixth so they had done five boot camps prior and they had just opened up so the concept of a boot camp wasn't even a thing really you know it was like one regional office five classes disorganized as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah how many things start out yeah yeah like it was a disorganized process in general right but it turned out it was it was successful and yeah I mean to your other question about the business model of these boot camps right um and and it could just be general that like the future of college education or getting like that experience to be able to actually be employed because that's that's the biggest issue is a lot of people are finishing college with I think the average is about $36,000 in student loan debt and they may not be getting the proper jobs to be able to cover that debt payment.
SPEAKER_04Yeah so schools are not inherently altruistic. Yep okay so they're in it to make money all right and people see university as this sacred place right they're going to take care of me and it's going to nurture me and I'm going to get a job afterwards right and if we look at it that way we're gonna fail because we have have to we have to recognize that the only person looking out for ourselves is us. And so we gotta actually do an ROI calculation on the numbers research the shit out of people who have gotten the same degree from that university who are landed in a role that you're possibly interested in or maybe the industry in general and see like what are they making? Go on Glassdoor what are people making as senior roles or junior roles um what's my ROA now versus five years from now right like these are finance questions that have to be asked right and what you say the average student loan debt right 37,000 I think for most schools it's much much higher you know if if you have a school that's $90,000 a year you're in dude you're in $360,000 over the course of 30 years amortized with student loan debt at 7% interest you're looking at thousands of dollars a month right and so you better damn well believe that only one percent of people in the United States make over $250,000 a year. Right? So if you steep yourself in reality you're you're recognizing that you have a massive hurdle and if you make that kind of money you're gonna be living in a city like San Francisco or Seattle where the cost of living is much higher right yeah and you gotta weigh out the options man if if if your student loan debt is 250 bucks a month or you know $400 a month and you net out an extra thousand dollars a month from doing that extra school okay maybe it's worth it man.
SPEAKER_00Sure well and I think one of the biggest issues too because I I work with people in the tech space and their student loans are nothing compared to a lot of other people and they still they still struggle with the idea of it and the stress of it. Yeah but in reality people just need to learn to prioritize some of their stuff like yeah those those incomes are gonna come but you don't have to act like you're you have that income now. Right right like I know when me and my wife moved out to Colorado we we didn't know what the future looked like for us because I was still I was working full time while going to school to become a financial planner and yeah like we got the crappiest apartment possible stuff was falling apart it smelled like they had a dog that um previously there that did not go outside to do its thing. And so my wife cried when we were just dating at the time she cried for like two or three months until that smell was finally gone and it was in the heat of summer and and we like gradually over time like built stuff up. We didn't say like we're going all out because my income in the future is going to be X amount or whatever. No a lot of people need to prioritize that. So with the the closing last few minutes here yeah we we did cover a lot of financial topics already but if you like wanted to time travel go jump in the back to the future DeLorean kind of jump back in time is there any financial decisions that you'd go and give yourself a high five for or just kind of like slap yourself on the back of the head and be like I wish I would have done this differently totally man so I I I guess there are no regrets really right because the failure of my company and the loss of all of that money made me think really deeply about my life and changed my whole perspective.
SPEAKER_04So I can't I can't discount that right however if I still had that money today or if I had that money back then if I would have thought differently in that period right let's say I maintain my perspective that I have today and magically still have that money. If that was the case then what I would do was I would invest in real estate for sure a hundred percent I think there's too much volatility in the stock market. I think that it is the only way to you know grow wealth and I'm finally in a position from Amazon what have you to be able to play in that game. Sure uh and and I and I very much want to um you know to to to buy multifamily properties that generate income because even if they you know the bottom line is even if they don't make any money as far as like a cash flow scenario someone else is paying down an asset that is growing over time and um yeah it's I so I think that's that's what I would do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah yeah and so I I see real estate and kind of the stock market being equal in terms of like long term value but when you look at the short term you shouldn't be expecting cash flow from stock investments because it is too volatile and you're not gonna allow it to grow and do the stuff that it needs to do. Same thing with real estate the the game plan with real estate is not to buy it and then flip it generally it's to hold it for that kind of appreciation and to allow those renters to to pay down that asset for you. That's right. But what a lot of people that I tend to run into that are just kind of early to trying to think that they're gonna become millionaires with real estate it's kind of like you mentioned like you're getting to the point where you can start investing in these things more fully so that it can have a better return on investment for you. It's not easy just starting out of the gate to get an investment property and it's definitely not necessarily going to be generating significant income to where it's passive income that you can be living off of today retiring like two years or three years. It's it's a building process just like it would be for your investment portfolio or for your just kind of life in general is like you want to be building these things you're not gonna be actively thinking that I'm gonna turn it on and then I'm gonna live off the income because there's still things that you have to invest in as far as repairs and you still have to pay taxes and insurance and things like that. And yeah the game plan is over time as those things get paid off and as the value of it grows it does give you that potential in five years, 10 years, 15 years where the income actually starts mattering and it's like oh that actually is valuable amounts of income that it's generating at this point.
SPEAKER_04Yeah that's right man and so yeah I mean when so we're you know we're looking at a house in Denver right and we looked at a whole bunch of different properties and one property in particular that we you know knock on wood we're gonna go under contract on uh in in in a few days here um but what's incredible about the property is that the zoning is such that I can build an apartment on top of the garage. The garage is separate from the house. Yep and what what I'm then able to do is not only am I gaining more square footage for the property in general. Yeah um so I'm gaining value more square footage I'm then putting a renter in there that would offset my mortgage on the home so much so that my expenses are dramatically reduced. Right. So I'm living at a home that I'm loving to live at somebody is paying down my mortgage I basically come in and I have you know maybe a $900 mortgage on a property that is worth a lot of money and you know so so the idea too is to as we grow in our income we shouldn't also be trying to grow our expenses we should be we should be trying to find ways to reduce our expenses as we grow our income and and try to be really smart about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah yeah because it empowers you to do a lot of different things and even even if there's things that you don't necessarily need to do or have to do it just gives you a lot of that flexibility and and I imagine just a lot of confidence. So and that's a unique setup too so awesome finding that opportunity a lot of times it's like oh yeah homes aren't usually meant to be able to separate them but every now and then good opportunities like that and that's right got to leverage it. Yeah that truly does create a unique situation where even though it's offset in your mortgage it's technically an influx of real real income at that point.
SPEAKER_04That's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_00So that's awesome. Yeah man cool well I appreciate you coming on the show today. I know you had to run but yeah thanks for coming on I know all my listeners probably just had a whole bunch they're gonna have to probably go through and listen to this again to pull out all the gems that you dropped down.
SPEAKER_04Yeah thanks a lot man yeah it was great uh great talking to you and uh when I move down to Colorado we'll have to get together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah of course and so really quickly if someone wanted to connect with you is a best way LinkedIn um how how would people interact with you?
SPEAKER_04Yeah so uh best ways through LinkedIn uh people message me all the time on there um if if if they don't get to me right away I I tell them to be persistent because I just get a lot of messages it's a good and bad problem to have. Yeah um and you know they can find me on my on my YouTube channel if they're looking for career advice just look for John Marty. And uh yeah those are the two main spots man.
SPEAKER_00Perfect yeah I'll get those links in the show notes and yeah that's again how I met John. He's really good at getting back um and and it did take persistence on my end. I think I reached out a second time like after a month or two and then you did you were totally on board once once we did get linked up then then I was kind of in that fear that eventually we we were going to make the show happen. So I really appreciate it. For sure man thank you for listening to Techy Personal Finance Bootcamp. Remember if you like what you've been hearing to subscribe review and share with your friends and colleagues I'm also still taking suggestions for future episode topics and guests. If you want to take your connection to the show to the next level you can find me on LinkedIn or on Facebook. Hitch me next time on techie personal finance bootcamp