this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information that will expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome to the art of network engineering i am aj murray at no blinkyblinkie on twitter and i am so excited to be joined in person by everybody except tim tim's stuck on a plane for tim we missed him we'll see tim late tonight though andy laptop andy laptop on the twitters it is so good to reach out and touch you you're here oh my god after two years of doing this thing through a computer screen these people are real they live and breathe andy how you doing i'm good we should tell the listeners that i was so excited to see you at the airport that we left the terminal we went to the parking lot we got our rental car and then you put your luggage in the back and i'm like wait a minute where's my clothes i forgot my bags i had to go back in and get my clothes now it's this is words i don't know what to say this is crazy this is so cool i know and dan dan to my left at howdy packet dan drove on in from uh from nashville dan how are you i'm doing excellent aj it is a uh different different vibe being here in person yeah like this is kind of odd like in a good way and look at each other yeah i feel spoiled because this is my second time in like the year yeah getting to hang out with you so this is this is great yeah and just for everyone else uh if if you're watching uh andy is on the end there and that's so that me and him can't tackle each other during the uh that means i'm gonna get screwed up in the middle of a fight you know one of you guys is gonna swing for the other and i'm probably gonna catch it and here i am perfect on the end no problems with me no she set up the live stream for us this is the first time we're live streaming thank you so much lexi how are you how was your flight in you're welcome my flight was fine if turbulent oh yeah actually i thought i was gonna like miss a flight i had like a layover but do you know how i know you didn't fly delta no because you called it turbulence and not rough air they call it is that what they call it rough air on delta please remain seated with your buckle latched in case we hit rough air to make it like sound a little bit cuter and nicer just a little rough air it's all right yeah okay rough air that's so weird is it is it like a pothole i guess so uh so delta is to rough air as you are to potholes what are you saying let's talk about aj's driving i've heard that aj just flies over those potholes you've heard you've been in the car when you're in a rental that's fully insured that's just like a magnet the first thing aj said like texted all of us when he got here was like look at this awesome fucking car just so you all know we were at a barbecue joint in in it was uh chris denney and myself and uh we were waiting for andy and aj to pull in lex came in a little bit later um but aj picked up andy from the airport and they come flying into this gravel driveway in this what is it gmc yukon or whatever it is yeah 2022 baby yeah and and there's like this massive pothole in like right at the entrance and i'm like oh hey by the way watch out and he's like boy you're like watch out for that pothole i'm like i know i got it yeah and then like goes sliding into his his uh uh his uh parking spot there oh my god it was uh that sounds um majestic yeah it was flies it was this beautiful white vehicle flying through the air i was definitely fun i was definitely stunned yeah it's impressive yeah he's a stunt driver well how are you doing aj how was your trip here uh you know i can't complain um often so i've flown a lot in the last few years for work uh various trips to conferences out to see customers whatever the you know case may have been uh and i have had more than my fair share of problems with with uh the whole airline system i i knock on wood i've never lost bags um i've been stranded at the airport i've driven home from newark like twice i've driven home from dulles a couple of times as well that's like a nine hour drive but you know when you're faced with i can have you home in two days from now or i can go rent a car and be home tonight i think i know what i'm going to choose yeah absolutely yeah one of the one of those experiences was like a team building experience i flew my entire team down to a conference when i worked for another company and on the way back we got screwed uh so we all piled into the rental car and we headed on home yeah shit and see that's kind of like tim's story right now you know oh yeah let's have a moment i feel like we should have like an empty podium like mike stand yeah why didn't we think of that yeah yeah so so what happened with tim is he was supposed to be here last night at 7 00 p.m right yep that was his original yeah and then it got delayed yeah and then it just got canceled 915 i think yeah yeah and then they just canceled the flight yeah like really yeah you know uh big thank you to tim though for hanging in there he he was gonna see about going back home to nebraska uh but he hung in there and he found a flight to charlotte so after we get done recording this we're gonna pile back into the a1 rental and we're headed to charlotte to pick him up so we're we're very excited to see tim and unite this uh group of five for the first time ever and we're definitely going to be recording some more episodes before we depart asheville on sunday speaking to tim i'd like to direct everyone to the tv behind you tim is here hi tim yes i don't know if you can i don't know if the twitch stream could quite see it but he is flipping everyone off that that's my contact photo in my phone so when tim calls me tim ross there's the tim we know and love yes yes yes tim that's fantastic so tim is now delayed did we finish that story yeah tim is now delayed uh he had to spend the night in laguardia and uh this morning he tried to get a different flight to atlanta so we could get him here just a little bit sooner unfortunately that didn't work out uh but he did get a flight to charlotte so uh after we're done recording this episode we're going to pile back into the a1 rental and go pick up our boy tim yeah we're coming to him and just so everyone knows uh he stayed at corona hotel i forgot about it so we're going to that's an important detail yeah we have to get him tested so the coveted motel and now it's time for some wins somebody tell me what they said actually i thought i don't think there's any wins i'll give you i'll give you one of my wins hang on let me think for a minute my dog is potty trained oh that's a win no more pee pee and poo poop in the house that's a win that is one i had some really good barbecue today oh barbecue some really good barbecue yesterday too oh yeah and i have a feeling tomorrow there'll be some more barbecue oh yeah um tomorrow i know we're gonna have some good beer too yeah big shout out to chris denney because he has like been oh hey where do you guys want to go you know and yeah we're like all right i want barbecue all right let me tell you in what was the last one we were at l'oreal or yeah well yeah luella luella that's right so shout out to louelle if she's uh watching this i'm sure she's barbecue in north asheville fantastic very good very good all the salsas every one of them they were all good all the sauces there was a mustard-based one and oh yeah i like that one some long hush puppies that tasted delicious even though they looked a little you know weird i've never seen long hush puppies before they weren't good either they were good i'm a hush puppy guy and i was like what is this what is this we got some wins and uh do you want to read them like or you want me to oh i'll read one you can read another how many would i do how dare you whoops i'm trying to like scroll yeah it won't like there it goes there goes oh okay let's see oh damn we got a lot oh shit all right okay so we'll we'll take turns how about that so um you take jonathan sorry i'm trying to read something am i closer jonathan switch says thanks to tim i've begun creating anki cards today for my encore studies yeah all right yeah monkey's pretty cool yeah he kicked on courses for sure yep all right you take the ch miles me uh chmiles87 finished a bunch of terraform code for a blog post yeah yeah yeah share that blog post with us we'll post it on twitter from our account oh is that chris smiles uh maybe c h smiles probably chris is that you could be charlie mouse chachi miles cha cha i don't know okay yeah that's it's awesome um okay dan go ahead do the next one oh uh finished my eight week training now i'm taking slash solving cases like a ass grown wait an askground engineer that was uh s h joking kingo yes she joking go there you go awesome congrats andy uh one one ton is actually using ansible to upgrade ios on seven hundred plus vg three times and one night wow that is sick that is a huge wait did you already do it or is it gonna happen those are the because i'm very interested those are the cisco voice gateways right i have no idea well i was gonna ask that next vg310 oh yeah yeah okay those are like those little routers right yeah that's awesome that's really cool how many was it three thousand sorry seven hundred seven hundred three thousand seven hundred plus that's still that's a close to a thousand huge natasha one night that's awesome who's up aj go ahead all right up top natasha yeah all my switches that were daisy-chained are now set to go back to our core natasha congratulations that's a big win right there yeah wow that must have taken a long time she said it took a few months but it's done yeah wow nice look i i work where you know we have a campus like that and it that's dedication right there to get that all pulled back to the core yeah not only did she do that but she bought the encore book to start studying for ccmp yeah yes now wait just just so i know is this natasha that has the cool ass oh lights i don't know if she answers no she said that i thought i thought she did so okay i thought i thought i saw that yeah i like seeing her pictures of uh all the cool lights that she has i am such a fan of natasha she posts some of the coolest content yeah and uh she has like did you see all of her benchmades in oh yeah yeah she like like i wouldn't want to get in a fight with her i got one that's it oh my god that's great yeah that's great well congrats on all the wins y'all yeah it was a great winning section for being impromptu and yeah i know i kind of like this actually yeah we should do live more often i know last time we did live you kind of screwed it up with some frogs if i remember oh yeah i wasn't there but i've heard it yeah the riveting the bull frog that makes it better everybody needs a chorus in the background and here's a good win too uh a1 not ao and e a1 in asheville is a big win so i got to retell a story because uh you know dan just said ao and e i don't know oh yeah would you leave me alone no this was hilarious this was hilarious so we're all hanging out the barbecue joint yesterday and uh we all have referred to the podcast as a one right like a one song a1 and andy uh he's just like a-o-n-e and dana's just like what the this was yesterday what do you mean a-o-n-e all right a-n-d-y man you tell that story yesterday yeah last night you guys told that story to me as if it happened like months ago no nothing happened i want to i want to pivot and just mention that last night we had a wonderful fire in the fire oh my god yeah yeah for a couple hours having some drinks having some good conversation at one o'clock in the morning when we get back here with you oh yeah sounds great man yeah yeah should we go live then we should probably get more beer we should yeah this has been really nice like spending a couple years just hanging out on the internet together but to be like sitting around and eating so how did the fire how did this happen how did we get here man you know but like everybody sit around the fire where to start sparkle transition i mean i think it's i think it's all your fault right i don't know i mean if it is great i'll take credit for it but i don't know if it's my fault yeah definitely did somebody suggest it did a fan suggest it or were you just like let's fucking go live like what the live show how far back do you want to go i mean we usually go to the beginning everyone so what do you do today aj it was a cold day 1990 yeah that's when i was born oh she said to our birth yeah we're going all the way back all the way back do we want to go through the history back in 1880 with andy over there when dinosaurs roomed yeah i'll be back i'll be back is it really the the problematic to me no i'm sorry what so we're talking about the podcast itself right i i mean i when i think about like how did we get here that's that's what strikes for me right like we started this thing a little less than two years ago now in fact i in in 2020 in april of 2020 i think we were starting to talk more seriously about doing the podcast we we had started a study group and we had met a few times and we just had some like really good conversation and then i i kind of spit to the guys like hey i got this idea for a podcast it's an idea that i had had for like years but i was too chicken shit to do anything about it because i had no idea how to start a podcast and i knew that i didn't want to do one by myself because i think that i'm boring and i i like when i think about the podcast that i like to listen to it's generally more than one person or a group of people yeah so some influences that that were pushing me for this was um the beers with talos okay because it's it's just you know a few dudes and i guess you know talking about technology and what's going on in their lives and i don't know if they actually drink beers while they're doing it i don't think so but maybe um and then there is armchair expert with dax shepard okay yeah it's a good show i've heard that's a really good one i really like armchair expert because they talk about the messiness of being a human being and that's that's what i like to both pull in like i want to talk about the messiness of being a network engineer like everything that's being involved in that right um it's definitely messy we all know uh so yeah i mean those were kind of the two big podcasts i'm like what if we just mash this together we call it the art of network engineering because there was another podcast called the art of manliness and i don't know why they call it the art of animalist because literally anybody can listen to it and it applies to every human being oh yeah yeah it's not just about being that's how they get yeah yeah well i'm not allowed to listen to that podcast so i wouldn't know because it's the art of manliness if you're not a man you can't listen it's like yogurt for men or that dr pepper thing that happened when they were like it's not for women you remember those yeah i mean it was obviously a joke but like that was dumb as hell like dr pepper for men and then the can would like slam down on the table and then be like it's not for women i'm not kidding that was weird but what drew me to that was was the very concept of they call it the art of manliness but it's for anybody right so we call it the art of network engineering but i hope and i i believe i've gotten this feedback from people in the in the community that we resonate with anybody that works in i.t yeah oh okay well that's good uh also yes we are in an airbnb right now yes yes we like reorganized their living room this is actually the dining table so it came from what back back there me yeah we had to shuffle it around like get in here but yeah we're in airbnb but yeah so it it started as a study group we were kind of doing uh ccnp encore yeah encore uh because this was kind of kind of right when the the shift happened right right yeah cause everything changed in february of 2020 that's when cisco released the new curriculum and updated certification pass um and so we started in and and i had talked to people i don't know why i thought this was a good idea right i followed a bunch of people on twitter and and these were all people who were having trouble passing the the old style ccnp exams and so i was like hey do you want to start a study group and at no point did i ever invite somebody that had passed the ccnp so we're just getting a bunch of misfits together they're like oh let's take a bunch of people that are failing these exams and see if we can get a pass out of this yeah that's awesome yeah it was a really helpful study group like the accountability to you guys yeah yeah because i would say i'd be studying but not getting anywhere we're like well listen we're gonna do chapter one next week right so let's show up you know have read it we'll go through the material and and the accountability was was big for me and that's right like when covet kicked off and we were all stuck in our houses and we couldn't go out and be with our friends in real life and i kind of needed that then like right a different group of people i could spend time with because i couldn't leave my house yeah like it was really nice having you guys for a number of reasons you know i wasn't just studying right right like oh my friends hi it's tuesday what's going on well so the three of you guys were in that well and we also had a fourth uh uh eric he was with us yeah yeah i mean we had i talked to eric about doing the podcast and he just like i don't know yeah okay hey that's fair pistolera yeah yeah okay yeah really cool guy he's in our discord uh so if you ever get conversation with him um but yeah so and then and then you kind of came up with the talk about the uh it's all about the journey though oh okay because that really that kind of started first before yeah so it's all about the journey is the name of the discord community that we associate with the podcast and it's all about the journey the the title came uh in 2019 i was studying for the old style ccmp exam so route switch and t-shoot and um i was very public about the journey like hey gotta go take the exam today and hey i failed it again uh and so i posted a fail one day and uh kevin myers um had replied to the tweet and he said you know what pass or fail it's all about the journey and my head exploded i was like oh my god he's right it is because when i eventually passed like the the past was that much sweeter because of all the previous fails because of all the supportive comments i got from everybody in the community like if i had just gone and knocked that thing out i would not appreciate the ccmp as much as i do today absolutely so that just resonated so hard for me that i that's when we decided to create the community and originally if you were a part of the community way back then it was in slack yeah yeah it was in slack for the better part of a year is that still around no i closed it oh okay yeah i was like other people still in there lately so that started in 2020 no that started in 2019 yeah oh okay yeah wow the discord and all that stuff started before the podcast right yes yeah yes okay yeah okay so we were doing the the kind of like study group thing right okay yeah cool so when we started doing the study group thing we we had the study group in discord and dan was just like hey what if we moved the it's all about the journey over to discord because you could do the screen sharing you could do the voice chat yeah and at the time slack didn't have that capability okay so it just made sense like let's let's do that that's a feature that we can make use of and a lot of people use discord yeah socially gaming other clubs you know whatever it just made sense and what a great reframe like it's all about the journey because i had failed to see cna so many times i failed all the old ccmp exams so many times and have somebody say like it's okay like because then it kind of like got in the failure plex right yeah you know all of a sudden failure was normalized and said go because for me i thought i was a dummy because i kept failing exams and everybody else is like i look at somebody like you and you got like 3 200 you know search and i'm like he's got it 201 but then for you to share like be vulnerable and share your failures and then have kevin reframe it and then that that i'd always done from the start of my blogging because when i got on social media i saw a lot of people that were just oh i passed today i passed today i passed it nobody was talking about the fails and i was i was like i can there's no way i am the only one failing but see nobody talks about any of the down stuff on social media it's the curated reality it's this perfect world and in tech it looks like that too like all you see is all these wins and everybody getting all these certs like what the hell is wrong with me and before this community in this podcast i was sitting in that cable truck failing exams thinking like well maybe i don't belong maybe this isn't for me maybe i'm not smart enough but this community like no we're all failing exams every day like it's okay and it really is part of the journey because all that's studying you do to prepare you're learning stuff oh yeah like you're building up all that knowledge but when you don't get that win in that exam you're like oh yeah it's so much painful and so to hit on that a little bit when i went and got my cce and or was yeah yep um yeah uh i didn't have the community right right like i didn't have this and i had worked myself i'm a horrible test taker and i'd worked myself up so bad about how hard and difficult that test was going to be right and then like it's the only test i've taken right and so but i i know i like i i did good on that test nice and so when i got out of there i was like i don't know how to describe the feeling but i was almost like shaking because it was like it was just such a weight off my shoulder oh dude i know that feeling because i know him i had i had talked myself up to like dude this is going to be so this is going to be so hard you can curse i had tricked my mind into being like i can't defeat this thing me too with the csun yeah yeah in in uh and when i got done i was just like i don't know it was uh i don't know so i was of shaking because i i also passed the c sense so i i started studying for my cisco certs in 2018. i was an i.t manager for a global manufacturing company and i wanted to get out of the manager thing and go back into tech and i'd always wanted to see cna but i did my uh i did an associates i did a bachelor's and i did a master's and then i had a family and i had tried to study for shirts while i was in college and i just didn't work i didn't have enough time because i was working full-time and going to college um so i started studying for the ccna i first took the ccna at cisco live in 2017 and i didn't pass and it's funny because taylor and i both went to cisco live that year we both took the ccna exam and we both got the exact same score whoa no we sat nowhere near each other i hope you learned your lesson for someone who doesn't know you both fail right right so so uh we both studied off and on uh over you know the the following year um i had taken the ccna once or twice more and failed um and i was getting ready to go back to cisco live and i was going to book the ccna as my free exam and pearson said well hang on you already have the ccna scheduled i can't let you take it again or schedule another one that you haven't you couldn't move it like i already had it scheduled at a test center after like post cisco live and it wouldn't let me schedule the ccna again because i already had an attempt scheduled so i said all right yeah i'll take the ccent i'll just you know try that so this was cisco live orlando in uh 2018. and um i'm in the the ad hoc test center on site there at the the conference campus and i'm going through all the questions i'm like you know i think i think i might have this my last five questions were just absolute ball busters so any any thought of passing was just gone all right well i failed another one so then i hit next and i go on to the next screen and it shows me my score and it took every piece of willpower not to stand up in the middle of that test and scream at the top of my lungs and just pure joy and excitement that was just like biting my lip the entire way out of the test time yeah and and after i did it i felt so like silly you know like why did i work myself up on that because i mean it it was difficult but it wasn't like nowhere near what i was like psyching myself up to you know in in so i don't know i hope that resonates with anyone but before we continue uh there is a an amazing comment uh about it it says now andy laptop there's a haircut you could set your watch to grandpa simpson oh my god i saw that i had to stop it on that thank you thank you the theme of uh our our livestream you know amy's always had a great haircut i remember back back in the early days back in the early days of the pandemic when we're doing the study group it was like one month in absolutely everything in the world was shut down and andy shows up to the study group one night with this fresh haircut and everybody else is like starting you know starting to really grow out and like andy what the hell like you look good man he's like oh i did it myself got on youtube do you cut your own hair i did then oh i just got on youtube yeah man he didn't give himself a fade no but it wasn't it was like a boys too it looked great you know the chart in the barber shop the number two yeah that's what i do yeah that's why i'm laughing because i i'm like i want two a two on the on the sides and back and then get the top to kind of match but use scissors because it usually looks a little nicer than just straight up buzz what you'll have a chart that a universal chart yeah you just walk in like i wanted to on the back and sides what the fuck google image like you know uh long wavyish hair blonde you know and like like styled then you have to like cut out the print out and cut out the picture and bring it to your fucking like 200 bucks yeah oh 200 is cheap for if you're getting it colored anyway whatever someone just made a good observation where's our where's our beer at hmm are we well i have to drive later so i'm not going to crush too many beers two minutes this is not the live show this is the pre live show yeah at the live show right yeah yeah tomorrow's the one tune in tomorrow yeah yeah well i don't know are we live streaming tomorrow i hope not okay we might do this setup yeah i mean we could we could try this again i'm cool with it we'll try tomorrow let's see if christina has a webcam yeah yeah that's actually a good idea um it'll be similar quality if not so someone asked what's the topic of discussion tonight so we're we're going to kind of talk about we're going to go back in time because we want to reflect like you know we're here in person and we want to kind of reflect where we came from right um and especially for anybody who doesn't know oh yeah you know like we did we did do an episode what was it two years ago or a year ago or mm-hmm or what well remember early on we got to episode 10 and we're like we made it tonight for the previous like nine episodes yeah so we've been doing it forever yeah uh that if if we release this in order this will be episode 91 91 91 i thought we were going to hit 100 on the live uh it i knew it was going to be close yeah but it yeah we do need to plan something special for 100 we do we really do yeah a really good theme what do you all think let us know and yeah good luck to here we're going to crowdsource this instead of using our own like creativity do the work for it no yes but but as quickly as it's all gone by like a lot has happened in the last two years almost two years right and um i think that it would be cool to just kind of talk about that i i'm still amazed that the fans asked for a live show and i'm absolutely i'm still beside myself like i've been hanging out with you guys for the last you know 24 plus hours and i'm still like this is dan i'm a real boy and the same with you know andy and andy and lexi and tonight is going to be like the penultimate like once all five of us are in the same way yeah it's like it's like thanos when he gets all the you tim's that last stone that they're holding on to and then we're gonna snap and it's gonna be amazing and then the weekend will be over oh oh in person show in seattle i don't know that took me a while to drive yes dan it's called a plane i'm going to take two weeks off um i'll give you some edibles and you can just relax oh no okay i'm kidding i don't think that's good yet so yeah that's true um yeah so i like uh what is it gli i'm not sure who that is but they said from shit to shit birds that's a good that's a good theme let's make that the episode yeah and then cat5e in coffee oh well we're getting some good uh getting some good uh cat five you and coffee coming at you 5 a.m so we were it's all about the journey right we talked about that how it got started study group two-bedroom support system failure plaques yep accountability then we all kind of started talking about podcasting because i think it's something like you had mentioned that you had this goal look you just wanted to be on a podcast i just you didn't necessarily want to co-host a podcast you just wanted to be on a podcast it's funny when i think about my career but at that time i'm like i just want to be a guest on a podcast yeah like i've listened i'm like how cool would it be to like be interviewed so like bucket list is that just you know like because the people i would listen to on podcasts i'm like wow they sound so smart they're interesting and people like and then you come along and you're like hey do you want to start a podcast yeah yeah um because i had been doing the blogging thing for a while i started the blog in 2017. it and even though like the big thing was like youtube or whatever like i didn't want to jump straight to youtube i knew nothing about video content yeah uh so i thought that i would just do the blogging thing because i had done a blog previously in in my life so i knew what i was doing so i just decided to pick that back up and take a tech spin at it um and so i got to this point where just like i want to take my content to the next level and and i decided a podcast was the way to do that that was next level that was the next what i love you said is you wanted to tell the stories of like the non-internet famous people yes i thought that was cool yeah yes that grabbed my attention you know just the everyday man and woman doing the job absolutely what's involved absolutely because i don't really think anybody was doing that i mean you know i still want to talk to the popular people and we've certainly done that but i think the the more interesting stories the more relatable stories are the people that are just getting started today absolutely yeah and the people that are doing the job like yeah you know it's great to hear from the ccies ccds and and people that have achieved major accomplishments but they're at the top of the mountain right you know when you're trying to break in that's that's a little less relatable it's like that's where i want to be right how do i get there yeah but here's something that is really cool that i've loved about like we've talked to big names that i never would have thought that we would have talked to before oh my god and in in like they're humans right when we're talking to him on here it is like how did where'd you start at and it's like i was i was a waiter i was a waitress yeah you know whatever and and uh and then they got into it and now they're at the top like you know to us that we're like that's the peak that's where we want to get like you were saying right uh but they were talking about the struggles that they went through and that made it a lot more relatable right because like when i'm consuming their content it's like this super advanced shit that i don't understand and uh it's hard for me to yeah exactly it's hard to kind of you know get to that level just right away the biggest theme we found early on i think was that there was no one path right like there was just so many because i grew up thinking you had to go computer science may have said this a hundred times but computer science major get your degree that was my first major i failed out of calculus and c plus plus i'm like okay i guess i don't got to be you know i don't get to be in tech so i found a different route but then everybody we've talked to like like you said a cashier like keith barker was working as like a cash register guy somewhere and saw an id guy come in with a suitcase and that was his thing like yeah yeah and that dude's a freaking machine right but he started out just like any of us you know just not you're not born with it you don't have to go to you know school for like computer science i i love the time and time again it's just like yo anybody can do this hard work grind get in there like it's you know it's for anybody if you want it yeah just how much work you're to put in right right how hard are you willing to work yeah and i'm just like this much just enough just enough to seem like you know i'm trying not not trying yeah you can't say i'm not trying and we didn't know where to start so we're just like well why don't we just tell our stories right like episode one was like so who are you yeah what's the yeah what are your first like five episodes called right like what are they about i've been looking over here so the first one was just our stories we just interviewed each other and we're like you know who are you what have you done yeah i think we each took like 15 minutes and it's important to note there was a fourth person in the beginning if you have listened to the episodes aaron aaron engineered um i big shout out to aaron because he when he was in college he he managed the college radio station so he knew how to do editing and stuff like that so he he like knew how to put together a podcast oh nice and it weren't not for him like nobody had a clue how to do that stuff well he kind of drove the show right yeah i mean he was the one that was kind of like hosting i guess in a sense great at leading the discussions right and driving it forward and asking good questions that kind of thing yep yeah because when we first started i i don't even think i talked within the first 10 episodes what i loved about you dan was was we we would record an episode and then after we're done recording he's just like you know what what you said was like really relatable because i had to sing with a firearm like damn recording yeah just uh just so everyone knows like i'm not the social butterfly um when it comes to being in front of a large group of people uh so tomorrow is going to be interesting you'll be fine i'm going to be up here like that's what the beer is for yeah right in the beginning but like to see the metamorphosis that you personally have gone through has been really cool because like now you're not afraid to ask questions you know and you ask some really good questions i will ask a woman how old she is so the first episode was our story second was failure plaques we got into personal branding i mean it kind of started it was like a slow burn right like what do we knew you know what can we talk about yeah um and then our first guest was somebody that i was working with danny finan uh danny is an architect a principal architect uh for the enterprise networking team at red river which is my former employer uh danny was such a fun interview i mean the guy first of all he loves to talk um but he's incredibly smart um and it was just a really fun conversation um admittedly the first few guests that we had were people that were like my personal friends people that i worked with uh and i just kind of asked a few people like hey if i started a broadcast would you let me interview you kind of thing um and that really helped us get our interview legs under us right because i think it's one thing to interview each other because we had already kind of established this relationship with one another through you know the online interactions we had because i i mean i'd been following andy for a while and you and i had been talking for a while before we started actually like doing the podcast thing i i remember uh the you had on um instagram that's where i started right when i first heard about the community i wasn't on twitter i was on instagram yeah and um aj was you were you were going through aci at the time like i'd been following aj for a while and uh but he started posting about aci and i just gone through the aci as well like getting you know doing the discovery of the fabric and whatnot right and uh you'd posted a picture was it of the nine case i'm trying to remember so yes there was like some 9k photos i had done there were some books i was writing about aci yeah yeah and i and i think i just like messaged you and was like hey i'm doing aci work too you know and then here we are yeah in nashville right just kind of hit it off yeah and uh now i didn't know about andy though until we started the uh the study group yeah i remember following andy on twitter yeah that's that tickles me that you knew who i was before absolutely because i thought it was like you were legit presence like your blog i mean you had some really good content i i thought that your twitter handle like the permit ip i thought that was so cool like i just i did and i remember following you i liked interacting with you on twitter and you and i were both studying for the ccnp we were both failing the ccnp exams uh and so that's why i reached out to you and be like hey do you want to try to work on this thing together kind of thing and i'm so glad you did like it's been it's been so it's been so wonderful so i know we're going through the history but i'm looking in the chat here and jonathan switched 22. i guess we'll get to this maybe toward the end or maybe you're on a different show but he says i'm curious also um where is the show going from from here you know after the survey went out he's curious you know everyone's feedback and and what are people looking for that's a great question it is and it's something like i don't know if we know yeah you know and i mean it's kind of hard i don't think and you know what maybe we'll get to it later in this episode but uh a lot has been going on uh the past few months um and yeah we'll get to that later great question though thanks yeah yeah we had taylor knox was a big like when knox came out of the blue and it was early knox was a game changer yeah and it was early on in his youtube channel like lifespan too because he i think when he reached out he had just surpassed 12 000 uh subscribers on his youtube channel and i remember like without any interaction of him he had started saying like i don't like podcasts but have you heard of the art of network engineering yeah and he just started like really like blowing us up like he liked what we were doing and then he reached out to our twitter account which i was managing at the time and he was just like i'm gonna shout you guys out on my next live stream i want you to know that oh nice and i'm like dude like so awesome why don't we why don't you come on the show and he's like are you serious like i would love to come on the show so we we we recorded a show with uh with knox and um at the end of recording he asked us to come on his his youtube channel oh yeah yeah so he did um did he do a live stream or i think he just recorded something it was recorded but it was a lot of fun yeah he uploaded it yeah and i thought that was so cool like he he he was like you know internet celebrity he was a cbt nuggets trainer i thought it was really cool to get i think he was the first person of like note right that kind of took notice like hey i see what you're doing i like you i wanna i wanna share it out you know with my community so that was really cool yeah that's another machine right there and and that was like the first big surge that we got yeah yeah of followers you know because after he started talking us up we got like a ton more downloads more followers on the twitter account yeah we went from 500 downloads to 600. hey in our first month our first full month we had almost 3 000 downloads yeah really yeah yep you know where we're at now well um the last time i checked the stats we were approaching 350 000 downloads nice half a mil we're on the way yeah yeah we had no expectations either yeah like that's why like if like when i look at what we've done like we were just friends who got together we had a commonality it was fun we were enjoying it and i i think people kind of i don't know i don't know if our i don't want to say it was contagious but it seemed like the more we enjoyed it and had fun it just kept catching on and be like to watch the numbers take off like i can't believe it's like 30 something thousand downloads he's got 100 000 downloads inside of the first year so um we have some questions which which youtube or podcast episode has been the most popular or more popular than the other wow actually i would say lexie's was wouldn't it when that lexi's is by far been the most popular youtube channel mental health was a big one yeah that was a big you know what i there's there are very few things that we have released where beforehand i i wasn't like freaking out i was afraid oh yeah we recorded that mental health episode and you know you know it there's there's stigma around mental health but you know we were very honest about you know our experience with you know mental health and working with professionals to help you know get us back on the right track or whatever uh and so i remember that morning we were all really nervous about releasing that episode but we thought like there is no more authentic version of who we are and especially at that time in the pandemic that you know why not talk about this like if we're going to normalize things like failing then why not normalize something like like mental health and we still get really good feedback on that episode like to this day very recently we've had some good feedback about how it's helped people so and that was episode 30. so like for 29 we're building steam and we're you know and then all of a sudden like wait a minute we're still in the middle of all this stuff yeah and there's like we didn't want to just put on this facade of like everything's great and be like us we're like you know what we should really like tell people where we're at yeah and so i know that was a really popular one that's kept coming back timbertino was episode 31. oh so what i find really interesting about this is um this the thing that happened with tim burtino's episode also happened with lexi's episode for me and that that is when i listened to tim's episode it was that episode i listened to over and over and over and over again i listened to it probably a hundred times yeah i mean i know tim's voice is that sexy but there was just and especially that early on there was such an incredible flow between all the co-hosts and tim and there was this great back and forth and then halfway through the show tim flipped it on us and he started asking us questions and i just enjoyed that so much that i looked for opportunities to bring tim back on the show just like well tim's in charge of the blog and we're going to do the ccna blog series like let's bring tim back on and talk to him about that and then um you know we started to get into a situation where everybody was really busy and it felt like the workload was more than four people could handle and so i talked to the team and i was like what if we invited tim to be a permanent co-host yeah and before he could finish the sentence i'm pretty sure i was like hell yeah yeah yeah everybody was pretty excited about the idea and and what what i found funny is i didn't know it at the time but when tim came on the show it was his intent to get us to ask him oh yeah he told us that didn't he he told us about that he told that he told me that after the fact right that was a goal he was practicing he loved what we were doing and he wanted to be a part of it but he didn't want to ask us directly he just wanted to get us to ask him and so when i asked him he was like you know passive about it right he's just like oh wow i i really gotta think about that i mean that's like a commitment i wasn't expecting this um i'm really i just let me talk with the wife and the kids and make sure this is a commitment that i can make and and then he came back and he said yes and then later on he's just like you know i when i recorded the episode and asked you guys the questions like that's because i wanted to be on the show he was interviewing you yeah exactly exactly i want to work with this and he was involved early on with like faces of the journey right like he jumped right in and wanted to like contribute yeah and he he was doing the uh yeah the blog post yep yep the blog content yeah yep and he really he really added something special i think to the point oh yeah well his intros oh my god yeah yeah they're so awesome yeah the and then the the tim ross you know yeah added a little spice to the podcast really yeah it uh it was pretty awesome there's a really good intro coming up on wednesday oh really yeah oh yeah stay tuned it's a good one it's so good yeah it's very very good yeah tim yeah i love him and let's see here like so tim came on shortly after was it after or before peter brown peter brown yeah that was 32 right after 10 peter brown make it stick i thought that was so cool i mean we have since interviewed a number of authors but peter brown was cool because that wasn't a cisco press author that wasn't a technical book author that was like learning how to learn yeah here's a community full of people trying to learn difficult topics and we're going to show you teach you and and learn from somebody who understands the science of learning yeah how to do it and that book is uh make it stick by the way yes yeah yes very good book we have a question about what are what are our favorite bloopers oh definitely the one when uh aj was like ready to roll and was it me no i think it was andy well it was it was right here we just messing with aj when he's trying to start the show you guys love to fuck with me sorry yeah you guys never mess with me no but aj was ready to roll and then andy asked the question because andy is a question kind of person and uh and aj was like fuck andy god damn it it was eugene's episode rise together oh yeah yeah yeah yeah i think we have video of that one yeah yeah yeah because i'm like and you're like wait a minute i'm not recording i'm like god reaction is the bullfrog one the one where like dan gets up oh my gosh just started using riverside which is a service that we currently use now to you know we get our guest on there we can live stream to our patreons and um we decided like let's get a bunch of people from the discord we hadn't yet started the patreon uh and let's just test out this whole live stream feature and so this was the first time we were letting other people into this experience of recording an episode with us and um honestly i think that was also the first time we had ever screwed up the show for 10 minutes straight yeah but it was worth it oh yeah there's a blooper on our youtube channel you can go watch that yeah i was in a uh i was okay so just give a little background i was up in illinois in the middle of nowhere um and there's a shop beside the house and uh her grandparents don't have any internet right so no internet at all but i wanted to be away you know just so sure you know it wasn't causing any distractions well then the freaking frog helped us on that but anyway so i'm sitting in this metal shop and i have like very little service because i'm in a metal shop and uh then all of a sudden this you know bullfrog i said you know and uh and tim and andy made eye contact through the webcams yeah and then they lost it and i'm still trying to keep the show going and and like tim i think literally fell out of his chair and i'm like okay what am i missing yeah i don't i didn't hear it i didn't see it what's happening yeah and and dan like he was just sitting there like yeah i was ignoring it yeah yeah like he didn't hear it but andy and tim did uh yeah and so that that was interesting i think the best part is what followed after yeah so which is you you got up yeah and you went to go close the door yeah the big roll so you step out of the frame and you hear the metal door like dragging across the concrete floor yeah uh and then he disappeared that turned your cell signal or that turned that whole thing into like a faraday case yeah it killed my service yeah but luckily we were using riverside because your video kept recording even though you weren't streaming so we have all this great footage of you like walking back and forth and that's all in the blooper room yeah yeah and then he sits down and he's like dang it and it gets better let's go it's so good oh god that's my favorite blooper for sure yeah i think one of my favorites is uh early on we had interviewed uh the guy from australia yeah and uh and before before we started recording the episode andy gets on and this was like within minutes of getting into the google chat that google video chat with uh with him and uh and he was just like hey did the toilet spin the other way down there yeah i gotta know like counterclockwise yeah that was pretty funny he was just like i can put something in there so you can see it you know going the other way that was daniel is it yes i'm sorry if i butchered your last name there i'm really bad at that so yeah yeah that was that was a good one that was great yeah it's like andy out of all the questions you could have asked you know what else i love about our guest too he's one of many audi automation people that's like andy you can do it it's okay oh yeah we've had so many people like yo you you know you can do this yeah like that's really helpful especially because i kept freaking out about it and he said something which really stuck with me said you know why i got an automation because it gives me time and i can invest that time you know with my family and myself like that kind of changed it from like oh you know why do i have to do all this i don't like python right right time yeah who else do we have here uh i i just want to bring up that the people reaching out like how many people have reached out in different channels and like i'm just seeing something here on twitter this guy i've learned so many important things from their podcast from sour negotiation and developing your brand this is awesome and they're just excited that like we followed them right like oh my god they're you know somebody posted in the winning channel today like yeah you know i failed this exam or no the guy was saying you know i've applied to a bunch of jobs i can't get him but he put a screenshot up he's like but andy left him just you know viewed me on linkedin but just so many people reached out like you've helped me you're you know you've changed my life like that kind of stuff like that is something that i was not prepared for yeah um if they only knew it so being like being told that you've changed someone's life yeah yeah and but you know the first time somebody said that it's like no how yeah why that person's great what are you talking about that's what i'm saying but they only knew but then you hear the stories and it's just like well i used to work this really shit job with like low pay but now i'm making close to six figures like i can take care of my family we can go on vacations like you guys changed my life yeah kind of helped get through that right and and it was just one of those things where like once we started to hear that like i just wanted to help more and more and more and more right yeah yeah that was definitely not ready for that because i was shocked that we even had 10 downloads right yeah like i when you when you i'm gonna be honest like when you told me you were like hey guys what if we do a podcast i was like okay yeah this will be fun just to kind of talk shop with people that are in the industry right and uh but i didn't expect it to ever actually reach people right like you know um i so yeah when when you hear people who say like the conversations that we have like the mental health right you know a lot of people we got really welcoming uh feedback from that right right well let me tell you as someone who listened to you for a while before actually joining like yeah it y'all really did make a difference because i i started my twitter account and started getting into the community because i was desperate to find people other than who i worked with to like interface with who were into network engineering and when i found it it was just like you know because not only is it is there a community a pretty big community for network engineering but it's also a really awesome community and i think it's wonderful that you know y'all y'all help like with your platform you expose people to the community and the community to people and then they in turn you know help the podcast grow and it's just this wonderful like sort of cycle of like everybody helping everybody out and it's just so beautiful and i gotta say like when y'all read my name in the winning eno section a couple times and you know mentioned me here and there like it just absolutely made my day right like it's just i remember the day you joined twitter so do i me too because that first week that first tweet yeah the first tweet like i should be studying right now but i'm going to start a twitter account yeah and it's like i'm like she's speaking my language i'm going to follow him i know this is going to be good for you yeah absolutely nice when was that i don't know i was just everyone knows i live under a rock when it comes to twitter it was it was less than a year ago it was june 2021 oh damn yeah that soon yeah it was not that long ago yeah damn and look how far you've come since then yeah right i owe it to shit posting whatever works i know right you just throw some fuck words in there and start yelling about technology you're learning and everybody likes it right not only that lex don't understand yourself you've been a force you know you're honestly your vulnerability like wrestling with the material publicly i just suck at studying i mean i i appreciate that other people can relate to that because before you know i didn't start live streaming to just display how bad i am at studying like that was i was actually sort of trying not to display that at first and then it just sort of turned into well who fucking cares because there is no one listening to me right now i'd have like you know four people in the stream or whatever and you know i don't know i guess i guess being genuine actually people relate to that well you were normalizing the struggle you know like yeah we talked about normalizing failure and stuff like that like yeah just to struggle with the material you know and how hard it is and how frustrating it can be yeah yeah but but she got on there and was saying like i don't know this and that right there like it's so powerful dude seriously like i'd be scared shitless to get on the internet and say i don't know something and i was so i was so sort of ignorant a little bit naive about like the community i hadn't been doing network engineering for very long when i first started streaming on like rpan a couple years ago now um but like that sort of came about because i just i wasn't trying to really help anyone except myself i was just trying to like find something to keep me accountable for sitting still and reading something and taking it in right and i didn't realize at the time but there are a lot of people who also have that issue and it's nice to be able to like interface with them or people who don't have that issue but want to help you know having a stream where i'm just sitting there saying like i don't know what i'm doing is a great opportunity for someone who's an expert to come in and do that teaching that they want to do but maybe can't find an outlet for so yeah in in this you know having having that someone tell that story publicly like i mean kind of what we were just saying like you get on the internet and say i don't know but even when you talk about that stuff right like that's powerful for people to see because like a lot of a lot of what i saw on twitter or instagram and everything like that was major wins yeah you never saw it it's still it's still very similar you know it's still a lot like that today to be honest yeah and so when someone shows struggle it's like oh okay also i'm sorry but i've worked with a number of engineers now and like engineers of all varieties including network engineers a lot of them do not want to say the words i don't know oh yeah ever and i've had i've had so many well you know i've had a number of more people than i would have thought like tell me that i impressed them solely because i was able to say i don't know in like a meeting or on a live stream or wherever that's like magical when i was in sales the guy told me like when i was new he's like if you don't know something if you just tell somebody like i don't know but i'll find out yeah it's golden yep because they can sense when you're bullshitting i think a lot of people can and it doesn't help but enough about me thanks for thanks for bringing me on the podcast i think it was episode 48 we got uh our first sponsor yeah oh yeah yeah uh open gear open here opengear approached us uh and they loved what we were doing with the community they loved the the content that we were putting out and uh it was really cool they they sponsored an episode and they did an equal match of uh a thousand dollars that they were going to use to uh get some very limited edition podcast backpacks that only our fans got like we never got them i've never seen one i'm jealous i'm i'm hoping manny brought his so i don't see it yeah yeah i won't say it i don't see him um and and then not only that they reached out to jason gooly who gave them a bunch of cisco press books that he helped to author and write and they stuffed the bags full of the cisco press books and and we got to give those away to the community yeah and so let's sit on that a little bit about the doing giveaways and stuff because we need to get back into that we we do we do and and so we have gotten a number of sponsorships this year um but we knew that this event was coming yeah and um as as kind of a business decision we decided to hang on to the funds that we were collecting from the sponsorships to help fund the ability for us to do this trip right yeah um and and so the only thing so far that any of us have had to pay for out of pocket was our plan to get down here the the airbnb that we're staying in the rental car that we have all of the meals that we've eaten this week any extra gear that we bought to to get us here to be able to do this show was all paid for and funded by sponsorship dollars yeah which is it's absolutely incredible i never thought that people would want to know it's money to i want to reiterate what you said you said open gear reached out to us yes like we're just doing something we enjoy that we love and they were like hey we love what you're doing we see you we want to help how can we help right this wasn't like because there is no master plan hey let's get a bajillion dollars and make a bunch of bucks and get andy a tesla like that's not right that's not in the business plan no no and the guys named chris he found us yeah and started you know binging yeah and then reached out like oh my god i love what you guys are doing i want to talk to my boss like we need to get involved with you guys like what you're doing in the community is amazing yeah yeah which is awesome i think what resonated for us is that as a company that sells out-of-band management gear to network engineers they take the feedback they get from their customers extremely seriously yeah so you know when they're talking with the network engineers that either use their products or considering their products and they hear stuff like you know i i would buy it if it only did this or you know i love this feature but you know it really needs to do this too uh they go right back to r d and they work on getting that stuff in there because they want the products to add value and it's just like what what better way yeah and their their sole mission like when when they partnered with us uh they were like we want to be the friends yeah they wanted to be the friends of the network engineers yeah yeah and so it was it was an easy yes for me oh yeah you know because of that and what we didn't want to do is go hey everybody thanks for listening and for enjoying all this content now here's an long commercial yeah and that's why i loved open gear so much is like we wanted to tell the story of out of band and what that means and how it helps the network engineer and and they allowed us to do that which really i thought it was a good episode so i this weekend is possible because of open gear so i i just want to say that like open gear uh stepped up and they have sponsored the live event and they have taken care of the bill for tomorrow um but i'm super excited to meet dan baxter because he's going to be here tomorrow and dan is the uh se manager for open gear and we got to interview him uh and hear his story in his career um before we started to talk about what is open band and then of course the the open gear difference to out of band manager uh out of band management so yeah um it was really cool that as a sponsor they let us stay true to our brand and continue to talk with somebody about their career how they progressed how they got to where they are and dan's story was really cool because his intent was to be an art teacher yeah yeah and now he's the nsc manager for a company yeah just like what a journey yeah right yeah i don't want to run out of time before i mention what this podcast has done for me and i won't take a lot of time on it but i it didn't let's get a andy's soapbox out he said i think we've built i just want everybody to know that like i i hadn't written a blog post in like four years but i really sat down and thought about and i wanted to put into words what this show has meant to me like i said like i was not in a good place covered kids home work was awful and you know i wrote a post about how the podcast saved my life and i know it's like an overly dramatic title to maybe get some attention but honestly the the days we got together were the highlights of my week it was very hard at home i was not my best self and you know you guys just it gave me something to look forward to and like one of the darkest you know periods of my life which i can never repay that but you know like that's what it did for me we get all this feedback of the community like what we've done for them like this podcast has helped me in so many ways and even like in my career when i've been on interviews people say that they like listen to the show it blows me up i know like oh i know you you know hell's you know how's how do you pack it like it's good yes it's so cool they ask you about me yeah dude that's just funny coming that they would ask you about me of all well they can't find you on social media so they have to ask me he has an account he just doesn't use it i don't understand it if you ask me i will reply the bare minimum yeah i think the next episode from there that i want to jump to and it's a big it's a big jump but it's a worthwhile jump it's lexie's episode and like i said the same thing happened with lexi's episode that happened with tim's episode i probably have listened to lexi's episode at least a hundred times yeah and it was just another one of those like what a good conversation it's a great flow we all had so much fun yeah uh and it just made sense to ask lexi to join us permanently as a co-host yeah so we were after your episode which we were already like looking at you right really yeah yeah we were watching you on like your your shit posts and stuff like that and uh we were talking about how you know we we felt like that would be like i you know that's kind of how we are we don't take we don't take this too seriously we're open-minded about things right and and so uh so the cuss words didn't throw you off and uh uh and so we were kind of eyeing you before and then we had your episode and then it was like all right we should yeah we should reach out to you but what we did though is is before we asked her we we had planned and lexi offered to to take charge of it we did the women of network engineering yes an episode where that was great um that was your interview by the way i sure treated it like an interview i was nervous yeah you know you you championed you led the conversation and you did such a great job stirring the conversation like if people were going and talking and the conversation was flowing you you kept it going and then as soon as it started to lull you jumped right in with the next question and it's like we don't have to edit this yeah thank you that means a lot i gotta give credit to yvonne and micheline in that episode though they were they were so easy to talk to they're wonderful ladies with so much to say it's awesome yeah it's so it's awesome listening to them uh i want to take us a slight pause uh someone wanted to comment on the uh cable management game is on spot on the table in front of us that's that's all that's our van i want to say uh thank you um it you know i want to say thank you to my mom my dad thank you to the academy yeah now i mean we are network engineers right like cable yeah it would have been kind of sad if we hadn't cable managed this actually so yeah thank you for insisting upon that and then and then if you look at the colors here that is all aj it's so pretty so well it matches the outs on the board so yeah i know who's who's what before we completely pivot away from lex i just want to say that when we talked about tim it was an instant unanimous decision as soon as we had a discussion like hey what do you guys think yes yes absolutely yes call him now yeah and it was the same with lex this is a conversation like what do you guys think about lex i was like oh my god yes now like go ask her yeah well i gotta say after my episode i had a blast i think i remember laughing a lot or something i had a really great time with y'all uh and i remember like telling you know my partner afterwards like man that was so good i would i would not mind doing that again i was already thinking like man i would love to come back on if they ever wanted me to you know and here you are so nice to hear you're sitting here no now you will not get rid of it you can't get rid of me you flew all the way across the country i did you're welcome yeah i mean i do a lot for y'all yeah thank you you all mean a lot to me this podcast has been great it's definitely changed my life i know we'll cry tomorrow after the beers no thank you all genuinely it's been it's been great and i uh you know you've you've given me exposure that i wouldn't have gotten otherwise just being stupid and shit posting like i did and now you work on a fucking rocket i know it's awesome yeah thank you in a way i have you all to credit with like no no yeah i don't really know what got me that job i'm just going to call it twitter and social media in general i guess just being fucking awesome why didn't you mention somebody said it was your open learning and you're vulnerable yeah i mean once again i i don't know the specific thing but some you know the person who recruited me i think did mention like my live streams he caught my live streams found me on twitter yeah and uh yeah the you know specifically the learning live streams actually like somebody who can't stand studying watched you study on your live streams like it was entertaining it's insane to me because i don't get that many viewers on it and i'm not upset about it because it makes sense it's kind of boring i usually am reading out of a book and then complaining about it so i'm really glad this person did not think like ill of me because of that but i think your personality made it engaging and it was almost like you were teaching me okay you know thank you yeah yeah well like you know you have to like i like to restate things out loud like i'm teaching because that's how you learn right and you'd fight with the book and the grammar and fucking cisco press typos stop it with the title of cisco press and cisco press will never be a sponsor of network engineering yeah thanks thanks never say never i say it endearingly so scope of course it's just feedback you know yeah you should take the feedback and run with it yeah yeah for sure uh andy i see you have a whole list of episodes on there what are they i'm just writing stuff down i like it i like it so after lex i mean i'm i'm thinking like time to move on was a big one for me so like my relationship with the show has kind of been a high-wire act in that when we started i had a lot of conversations with my old company about like what i couldn't couldn't do couldn't say they thought i was gonna have to have social media training legal might have to sign off like i remember you guys like really dude yeah because it wasn't a problem for you so yeah i mean they let me do it they were supportive our our big svp came on this company-wide meeting with like an art of network engineering t-shirt i remember like telling everybody like tell me like you should listen to the show you sent us a screenshot i did yeah like you know so like their support was great but in the beginning i was nervous because it was a conservative like fintech place and you got to be careful sure um but the time to move on episode was tricky for me because i wanted to tell the story of moving on from there to juniper but how do you say why you left the place without saying why you you well yeah like because i didn't want to trash them because honestly there was no juniper without fintech there was no fintech without comcast like you know it's all it's you know it's all part of the story it's all about the journey yeah yeah but that was full circle that was a fun one for me and salary negotiation was fun just because i used to do that for a living yeah and i had somebody i had somebody reach out recently on linkedin and say hey i did the you know whatever one of the things we suggested and they just got like a twenty-five percent yeah you know like you know whatever it was so i mean we're just helping right that's all and i love that we're helping you who would have known that the way to negotiate your salary is to not negotiate it's a game and i only say that because that's what worked for me in my current role right like when when i was asked like all right how much money do you make what do you need and i was just like let me be honest with you yeah i don't feel like i am uh compensated for what i do and what i bring uh so why don't you come at me with a number i didn't say it like that but you know it's just like i'm curious to see like what knowing what you know what i mean for me and i have been completely honest and transparent with you about my level of knowledge my certifications and how i feel about them so why don't you what does that look like to you yeah what am i worth to you my god hello 50 more later yeah and it's such an easy hack right oh yeah but unless somebody told you that you know you wouldn't know unless somebody taught me that you know when i was selling right yeah but see i would try that and then they'd be like it'd be 50 below that has happened to me yeah yeah yeah did that crush you maybe not quite 50 below but it was definitely like oh not that much yeah yeah i had to negotiate that one up but it you know where we at on time do we want to get into like the challenges and where we're going or is that a whole different episode i mean i i'm fine going along and uh i don't know what we want to get into and what we don't but um well you know what i'm i will just jump right in so i'm going to save some for tomorrow i'm thinking specifically about challenges with sponsorships and yeah and business and like joy to business stuff and right so so last year and since we started this thing um i had been operating the business piece of it and in in all honesty it wasn't a it wasn't a business it was just me and my social security number uh and once we started to interact with businesses it's like well you know if there's there's no contract here and if a business decides to come back and sue me they can take everything that i own and my wife would probably be pretty mad at me so and they also said like we can't give you money yeah there was you're not that said you know you really should be a business and so in october of last year um i started a business you know the art of network engineering llc it's a vermont business co-vermont um and it was really weird in all of 2021 we had two sponsors we made less than five thousand dollars actually no last year we made a little over six thousand dollars between the patreon the uh shop and the sponsorship dollars that we had um and then it's it's like a light switch turned on uh hang on are we are we sharing like exact numbers no no i um in january four times as much as the whole year of pre-january we completely in january alone we nearly doubled what we did for the entire year of 2021 and then more just kept coming and we didn't see that coming we didn't have a plan for that we just kept accepting hey we got another sponsor uh and then we we look at this list of like oh now we have some work to do yeah you know and it's become a little bit overwhelming all of these commitments that we've made um and then there's a bunch of stuff going on in the background too like everybody's got a life everyone has and we have families and careers careers and all that stuff you know as as much money as we've made like it's it's not a few money right like yeah nobody's taking a paycheck on this thing i certainly i've never taken a paycheck on this thing i've never even paid myself back for the first 18 months yeah um you know i never got any paid back so i paid for all the you know the initial expenses for starting this thing up and that's that's still sitting out there it doesn't matter like it's fine um and so you know we didn't really have a business plan we didn't really see the growth coming that hit us uh and at one point there was kind of this like oh we could be podcast rich guys but i've realized i don't want to be podcast rich because it's okay just send me the checks as as fun as it is to create this content like the i now there's there's you know before the sponsorships there was this level of you know we did this because we love this and now we're doing this because we have to do this um and then you know some of the stuff that we've signed up for it's like yeah boy i can't believe me stuffed together because like when are we gonna do it yeah exactly exactly so so one thing um another angle of that too is when we kept accepting you know sponsored content i don't want us to turn into just a completely sponsored show right right like yeah you know it seemed like it was just one sponsored thing after another sponsored thing right and and right we we could have probably tried to space things out a little bit more yeah you know as as the approach that we have taken throughout the entire time of this like crawl walk run yeah and when it came to the sponsorships it was we've sprint uh and and so you know i i don't know exactly what's going to happen right but and that's why i brought this up because somebody asked in the chat like where are we going where's the show going so we're kind of in this transitionary period of like we're not sure right yeah we're not sure we need to have like a good business discussion and make some decisions about what does the future of the podcast look like and if that does not mean we're not going away right and full disclosure like we talked about and we haven't really uh implemented it but we talked about like okay so we don't want to become like a product show but if we took a certain amount of sponsorships we could do things to like help the community like we talked about maybe we could sponsor somebody and send them to like you know cisco live i mean like whatever it was we can get vouchers and training so there's good things we could do with that with those funds so it wasn't like oh i'm getting a tesla oh yeah yeah but the floodgates open we haven't i think because honestly like just producing the show and a little bit of sponsored content we've had too that's pretty much our limit like our bandwidth that's quite a bit right that's all we have i don't know when we're supposed to now focus on well how much are we going to give away and what is it and who is it and we got to get a plane ticket for somebody so it's you know like for me other than like the brief period where i wanted to be podcast rich getting these microphones not paid for out of my own pocket was like the pinnacle and and the only real goal that i had for for money making in the podcast right uh this is the shirt sm7b it is like the top local microphone uh that you can possibly get it's it's not cheap uh and then and so the vision that i had in the beginning was like i want this microphone and i want these mic flags yeah yeah i don't know why i just it's the thing aj was stuck on the mic flags it was awesome i didn't think i could sound sexier these are cool yeah they're very but this mic did it and even the board and the people here like really i think the focus has always been on community right i think the sponsorship like the amount that came out kind of at least for me kind of clouded some of that right because now there's money and business and yeah yeah and yeah that pull so it's this weird like we succeeded quote unquote like enough people listen that people wanted to give us money and now they're giving us money and we're like well wait yeah this feels strange and now so it's it's kind of a balancing act and i don't know where we're going from here but yeah we're in asheville there's like 50 something people that are showing up we were able to get these mics this board to run the live event opening like without open gear sponsoring this event this probably doesn't happen right yeah exactly so but here's another thing too is the the people in our uh patreon that give monthly yep like yeah how cool is that oh so what we had talked about i i think even in 2020 about starting a patreon because it's a very common way for content creators to to get some funds and we thought that that would be a way that we could get some funds in and at least meet the operating expenses of the cast right like you know if if we're not paying for this thing out of pocket great like let's and to be honest there's not a ton of operating expenses right like right yeah you know um well now that we've got this stuff and right now right yeah but but here's the thing is like i i think you know we were talking earlier um giving back to the community like i think yeah to have to have a stream of income that would allow us to a pay the operating expenses b allow us to you know hopefully consistently give back to the community you know like because in in the first six months or a year we did a few giveaways but they were very sporadic and they were based on donations from other people and right and so we we want to get to a point where we can consistently give stuff away and help people whether that's books or training or exam certification vouchers or whatever yeah but how cool would it be to give to be able to give like even g pro or or cml yeah or like physical labs yeah yeah like routers and switches or because i mean that stuff's expensive right like it's not it's not super cheap so and if if just us talking about this stuff can change somebody's life what what about putting that stuff into somebody's hands that could otherwise yeah exactly you know like yeah and then hopefully maybe they can pay it forward you know like if we give a book and then they finish it you know come back to us like we'll go give it to someone else yeah yeah yeah absolutely so that's what we've come up against is you've been running the business and i think it burnt you out yeah and yeah we all seem pretty darn busy the rest of the crew to like well who else can help run a business i'm doing rockets i'm about to have a baby i just got this big job like you know like none of us really have a ton of time right now so i don't know where abs right exactly so i don't know where we go from here oh yeah we have full-time jobs yeah i have day jobs and the podcast is not like transparently speaking the podcast does not make enough money for any one of us to consider walking away from our day but the sponsorships and the business end of it becomes another job right and that's not fun right you know what i mean so it's fun in the sense of getting to be you know being able to talk to the sponsors see their products because i i mean so part you know selfishly i guess uh i like doing that oh yeah i like i like being able to ask a sponsor you know like whatever their product is you just be like okay what's xyz how does that work you know or or what's what's some best practices kind of thing like i like hearing that from you know industry experts but um yeah no it definitely the editing the scheduling the you know all that stuff uh it takes time right oh yeah yeah and and like you said i mean we got families we got you know other things that we got i mean jobs uh and and so it takes it's it's consuming like pretty much most of everything we do is at night right i mean there was a point where you know we were making content three or four nights a week oh my god yeah it was it was pretty much like you know like we're trying to like create blog articles for the blog we're trying to create videos for the youtube channel edit the videos edit the videos we gotta edit the podcast episode we gotta post the podcast episode we gotta you know do the video version of youtube we gotta post something to our patreon you gotta add the two versions of the podcast one for the patreon ad free one for now like just you know every little thing we try to do business-wise seems to double or triple right the workload on the other end in the beginning like you know it was well if we if we did this it's really low-hanging fruit but now we have so much low-hanging fruit that it's hard to pick at all yeah right and and so i think to kind of answer that question is we might be scaling back in a sense yeah from like like you we have some youtube content uh content that isn't out yet that i do want to finish up since we recorded a lot of it and um but i don't think we're going to do as much youtube content no i don't uh i mean it's been pedaled to the floor right like we've just been like yeah head down pedal to the floor just so excited sure we overextended i guess yeah in a sense yeah right and maybe you know i mean it's not to say that we're never going to do youtube content it's just maybe if we get like a wild hair or something it won't be on the rig i want to keep doing the show i don't know what it means for sponsorships yeah yeah and i think we all need to take a deep breath at least myself you know we we haven't discussed it but like i do see a scenario where maybe we take the summer off and we all you know welcome a new child into the world and take the time that we need to take you know because if if we don't take that time we're going to hate this yeah and then we're just going to stop well because it's kind of turned into a job right right and and in working two jobs in your family it's like i don't know yeah yeah you know but i think if we take it more back and just focus on podcast episodes if we go back to our roots and why we started doing this thing in the first place right yeah go back to having the fun conversations and right space out sponsorships right like don't accept 20 sponsorships in one month kind of thing that's a bad idea right yeah it turns out it is yeah so just in case anybody else wants to start their own uh if you now if you can do it you know good for you but uh we'll release a podcast episode called things we learned starting a podcast yeah uh and i'll say too like the weekly pace right like creating content and posting it every week like we we don't have a backlog we as of right now like we have an episode we just released a couple days ago and we do have an episode ready to release next week but that's the first time we've had that in a very long time like we are recording on thursday night editing over the weekend and having something ready to release for wednesday morning and that has been the cadence and the tempo for creating a bag was tough because then we're doing two nights a week and then double the editing we had to record two nights a week so we could like edit and release one of those episodes and then we slowly built a backlog but still that was taking two nights a week just to record content in addition to taking the time to edit post you know whatever yeah so long story short we're gonna cut back a bit but we're not gonna disappear no yeah no and we're cutting down on we're not going to have as much sponsored content in your face probably right right right and be selective yeah and we've got some good we've got some good ideas going you know we still have a little bit more to to brainstorm i think but we had some good ideas that we we've talked about in the past for new episodes and topics and things to get into yeah so you know we're excited for the future but you know it may require a little bit of a step back in some areas right right yeah so that was that was a good discussion right there right on just one that we actually haven't had yet yeah yeah we just had it really you could be a part of that you guys watched live with us and we've always been transparent right with each other with the show like this is where we're at and that's kind of where we're at i'm glad somebody asked in the chat that wasn't that wasn't a planned you know this is spontaneous right like it was important to talk about that it has been since the beginning and i think that's been you know to a degree some of the the secret sauce that we've had is not we don't have a bulleted list of things that we want to cover we don't have a list of questions that we're going to ask right like this isn't a webinar we might each do that individually when it comes to interviewing somebody right like i'll go on to somebody's linkedin look at their work history and then kind of you know prepare in my mind some questions that i want to ask them but that's it's not like we do that as a team and we don't give a list of questions to the person we're about to interview like they're coming in here you know pretty blind and willing thankfully and that's the feedback we've gotten people love that it's conversational it feels like you're sitting around the table or a bar with like some friends i mean my parents both have listened to every episode they don't have a technical bone in their body but they just really enjoy the conversation you know yeah so one thing i also want to mention uh our time we're like at almost two hours but are we really yeah but here's what's really cool i don't know about you guys but uh being in person like i actually like this like i want to be like joe rose look i love you guys but i need a shower before we're up for another like ten hours okay we gotta get tim tonight yeah you're starting to smell a little bit everywhere well let's let's get to wrapping it up here because we are like an hour and a half of recorded content as the board time says um with live for a little longer though we might be able to yeah if you have questions you know i want to say thank you to the twitch stream thank you to lexi for setting up this account this is the first time i've ever done a twitch stream thanks she literally set this up like 20 minutes ago glio 1337 says in the chat a01 is cancelled got it no no no no no no um but you know we couldn't do this with you know one without the support of the community uh yourselves if you're watching the live stream uh i mean you know we couldn't do it without your support we couldn't do it without your kind words you know it's it's your feedback that we get that continues to motivate us to want to create more content so please keep that coming yeah especially if you want to see the show to keep going we need the feedback yeah well in in that's you know that's kind of why we always hit them with surveys and stuff because we want to be we want to be relevant we want to make sure that you know what you're wanting we're giving yeah right like yeah um and we got a lot of great feedback in the most recent uh listener survey and yeah it's a lot of good information that we can provide to you know potential future sponsors on you know what you guys are working on uh and what you're interested in as well so that that information all really helps um we we really couldn't do it without our patreons um you know we really appreciate the monthly donations that we get from them um so if you're interested in joining our patreon program you can go to patreon.com forward slash art of netenge uh we have three different tiers you can take a look and decide to generously donate and we can assure you that that money will end up going back into the community and it certainly helps us do these live events we do want to do more of them we don't know how many more of them uh we can do in a year maybe one or two what's next chicago pacific north what yeah i want to see a rocket yeah yeah okay can we do this i can't give like yeah i can't give like 50 people a tour of the rocket factory it's just fine can we go live you know i'll ask him make it happen i'll get us on that rocket we'll shoot up there it's gonna be great it's gonna be space yeah we're we're building the rocket as if it so it will be safe for people m1 do you have one of those capsules like on display somewhere like can we just sit in it and record a show in a capsule i don't think you can sit in it but we definitely do have one sitting around on the rocket factory floor that you can see we want to sit in it and record an episode we'll build a replica yeah you know what i'll i'll see what i can do okay yes i'll get someone to that's not enough significant pull up this company i've been at for three months as like a junior you know whatever yeah you got plenty of it so yeah we'll see we'll see so you're telling me there's a chance there's a chance hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net eng that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at artofnetworkengineering.com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you