this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore teams technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information to 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 blinky blinky tonight joining the round table we have aaron yo jeez i was about to pull out my my timer app to see how long you can keep that hang it's all comes from the diaphragm it's pretty good flexing on us all right andy how's your lawn how's my lawn how's your lawn anybody underwater kids around here know better than to get on my lawn aj it touches the porch it's mine they gotta train them young a little inside joke for the a1 team dan how's it going audi it's going good how do you pack it at howdy packet hi you're really rocking the new twitter handle man you're doing it justice i love him yeah thank you i uh i'm trying so howdy packet has arrived on the scene finally finally it was with it was worth the wait if you ask me oh well thank you uh so we were having some we're having a good time yes or this morning trying to figure out what sort of if you guys have an idea please send it to us we're trying to figure out a really good logo for dan and the best thing that we could come up with was like a cross between woody from toy story and the little paper clip the 3d paper clip that used to show up in windows when you would open a microsoft word document yeah clippy his name's goofy the thing that came to my mind was mr hanky because he goes anyway that's gonna be it you know that dan right that's totally yeah yeah i don't know we'll see all right we have another person with us tonight we will get to his introduction in just a second before we kick off this evening's discussion we want to shout out to carl in the discord uh he passed his end solid exam uh late last night that is the enterprise design exam yeah word is on on the street he took it at 11 30 pm he just kind of decided i'm gonna take this thing he knocked it out and this morning he posted on twitter and in the winning channel on our discord that he passed it so congratulations carl also congratulations to babesh as they go by in the discord for passing their jncia junos exam congratulations bob vash lots of winning going on in uh winning the discord we love hearing about that stuff so keep posting keep winning and uh we'll keep talking about it here on the podcast so tonight we are talking about what is a network engineer and this conversation came out of the discord and it all started when somebody got on and you know they were they were trying to figure out how do i become a network engineer i'm only a network admin now i'm just a network admin and i'm doing ios upgrades and i'm planning rerouting traffic and i'm doing all these other things and it's just like wow it sounds like you're already a network engineer you just maybe don't have the title and so i think there's a lot of people that can probably relate to that so we want to maybe kind of formally break it down like what is a network engineer and to kick us off tonight i'm going to throw it over to our guest he is zig zigga zig how's it going hey guys thanks for uh for letting me come on the show i appreciate it it's going great um i'm really excited to be here you guys thanks thank you so much for for joining us yeah man to uh to kick us off can you just give us a little bit of background on who you are what you do yeah yeah sure so um i'm zig zigga um by day i work at cisco i'm a customer delivery architect uh um supporting the usdod sector and customer experience and then um outside of cisco i run my own podcast youtube channel and some outside courses blog all those you know nerdy things that we have on zigbeds.tech that's just me i'm really just here to help people and guide them and kind of focus on design most of the time you know network design um and designing and figuring out why we are doing what we're doing at a high level one of my favorite topics i know aaron loves designing buddy love some salads i love salads actually that's my wife she loves salads not me that's one of those things where it's like oh that salad comes with meat i'm like how about you just shovel the meat onto my plate and you can have the lettuce and we'll share that's called sharing it's called compromise folks compromising that's right i'll eat a salad for like a week or two and then i'm like i can't do this anymore wait i need meat wait the same salad okay no i just wanted to clarify because if you were eating the same salad for a week that's going to be a little weird that would be brown lettuce i think right after a few days okay so we at least know what that you would use lettuce in your salad what about spinach because the would it would it wilt because i'm assuming iceberg right you're talking iceberg because if we had a romaine mix in there that was missing a lot of the clear pieces i feel like they wouldn't get as brown as quickly again also depends on where you store it right yeah i mean putting the salad back in the fridge while you're eating it anyway whisper thanks for joining us this is a salad conversation you know thanks this is a salad this is one solid conversation zigg thank you thanks for coming to aaron's ted talk yeah thanks i forgot i forgot to say that so this is my thing by the way i just say something ridiculous and then i go thank you for coming to my ted talk i appreciate it the best 30 seconds of your life there so zig thank you thanks a lot too you did probably thanks for coming man we appreciate it the reason why we brought zig on is basically that story that aj just told um zig you are an architect right um yes sir and you work at cisco so you know you've got a a vein into you know what we'll call the mothership it's like kind of why we all exist but we just don't really ever talk about it cisco is like this umbrella that we all kind of need for us to exist in this world that's weird i hope i can sleep tonight um can i have nightmares later today yeah i'm gonna be architecting design or like designs like it my life depends on it but i wanted a sign architect flashing in your head yeah i wanted two egress points but what are you gonna do for redundancy so so thanks for joining us let us let us talk real quickly because we know what you do when where you work but just so as like a reference point what sort of certifications you got that's this is a this is like a softball question because i know what you have but i i want you to humble brag about yourself for like two seconds yeah yeah sure so you're leading the witness right you're kind of know what i'm going to answer so yeah um cisco wise so i have uh two ccies uh the first ones are routing and switching or the old route and switch now it's the enterprise certification and then i have a service provider certification service provider ccie that's bad addition to the airport i'm just a nerd man you know i like the lab exams i like punishment you know yeah we're gonna have to talk about that at some point but uh yeah of course uh then i have the ccde as well i can't call that one out right the ceo you have you have to call that one out in your specific job title because that is like who you are right yes that is that is me man that is 100 me uh the ccd is and i don't want to go on a soapbox but i think it's the uh best certification there is um interesting hashtag goals goals hashtag goals yeah that's that's totally absolutely what i want to do i want to get the ccd that that would be cool i would love to have a ccd i would love to know a guy that did the same podcast as me that had a ccde and since zig has his own podcast that really only leaves you aj so you should probably you should probably just get to work well you guys know maybe in a podcast too maybe in a year let's see true true yeah oh yeah well we'll do that too maybe you can think of something cool for us to talk about um yeah so you have you have the ccde you have to the dual you have a dual cc ie one is in service provider little near and dear to my heart um those are uh it's like summoning a magical spell if you say service provider in front of andy because he'll all of a sudden all of a sudden everybody's on his lawn he's going to go ahead he's like who dare you how dare you talk about isps in front of me congress like putting a like a pentagram out with candles it's got a picture of att in the middle of it it's just a big pentagram with candles and he's out there having a seance at the ouija board he's like these guys sacrificing some old router yeah we'll sacrifice this asr right now right yeah that's what andy does before every maintenance window it's called blowing steam off guys is what it is so so zig i'm just going to ask you straight up what is the difference between a network admin and a network engineer give me actually let me rephrase that give me the biggest single most difference between a network admin and a network engineer it's okay if it's hard i i expected it no it's it's hard right and that that's the intent so let me you know we didn't so i wanna we didn't pre uh and nor would we any of these questions right so these are all real raw and in the wild at questions on the fly um so you know i look at it at a high level that a network admin and a network engineer i look at it as an evolution obviously which everyone knows but i think it's more to that it's more up to the point where network admin you're taking a lot of direction from someone you don't know how to compare things you don't know the protocols enough to make those decisions in real time and i think when you without the title right when you start becoming a network engineer you start actually making those decisions right you start identifying that hey i do need multiple exit points like you mentioned aaron or maybe i do need to do some bgp work um to do active active you know internet edge architecture designs um i think that's where that kind of goes to and if you have the title if you don't have the title i think that's semantics right i think it's all the way down to the fact that if you can actually start understanding the technology and making decisions around that technology then i think you're a network engineer so basically what you're saying just so i can i'm going to kind of paraphrase just a little bit yeah what you're saying is that the titles are just names right it's it's what you do based on how many how many decisions or how much control you have over change is really the glaring difference yeah i would say so in my eyes i mean maybe i'm missing some key point no but i don't think there's a wrong answer i i i which is why i asked it right because i think that all of us would probably give a different answer and we would all lead back to like a similar conclusion which is yeah there's an evolution there um but do you think that like because this is where i don't like the evolution part right which is like by making one the next step by default that makes one of those the last step which kind of by default really like lessens that a little bit like being the network admin right so is that always the case you feel like and i'm not saying that like an admin can't be a dual ccie like that i guarantee you that exists out there right um but what i mean is like is is that does that have to be like that like can you have a net admin that's like that does all those things that you described for sure right i don't think it's um i think it's subjective right i think that we have to say that from the get-go i think it's subjective to where you're at the market the company the role that you're filling right i mean i remember when i first started in the industry a long time ago um almost yeah 20 years ago i worked at a school district and they didn't have a network admin role they didn't have a network engineer role they had sysadmins that was it and that was for everything like we did networking work we did help desk like i was assist admin for an entire school district and you know i was the network guy i was a server guy i was the help desk i went and installed applications on pcs but then i went and troubleshoot the old switch that was there in the rack right so i think it's a very subjective to the vertical and the environment you're in um i think my you know quick definition could definitely apply to someone that's still a network admin right i think it's just a role designation within a company um but i do want to emphasize that when you start to making decisions right and i'll give an example because i think examples are key as a network admin someone's going to give you something that could be already scripted that could be you know maybe it's you're adding a new vlan it's just a basic vlan you're told to add a new vlan and it's scripted and you go add a vlan to 100 switches or 20 switches you know that's a probably bad example we'd probably automate that these days right but again you know evan a network admin would probably do that as a day-to-day task right whereas network engineer might configure those scripts to give to that network admin at a high level right they might be making those decisions on you know what is my router id for ospf right what is what is my area architecture for ospf as a quick example do i have one area error zero or do i have you know five different areas in five different area types whereas the network admin traditionally probably would be applying that configuration so so kind of the feed on the street yeah yeah exactly the grunts right the the front line the the guys that go up the hill first to get shot at right yeah yeah so here's another example you just you just got me on on a thought right so when i was deployed in iraq i was uh whoa first of all did not mean to take you there so sorry for that i'm not i also i was joking i was joking about me not being able to sleep later i totally understand the whole war thing i appreciate your service you've you've done an excellent job for us and i'm sure i could speak for everybody here thank you for that um but sorry if i took you to a bad place no no not a bad pace not a bad place just an example right so i would say that one and it just happened to be an example i was deployed in iraq and um i would say i was probably in that in-between stage between a network admin and network engineer i was just beginning to becoming more of a network engineer than an admin and i was on a trouble call i was out at a site and we had to configure this switch and i was teaching another person who was a network admin what the range command is everyone kind of knows at a high level what the range command is on like a cisco switch you can do a range of interfaces and you can shut no shut do the configurations right well i told them how to use the range command and i walked away because i'm like okay he knows how to do this he's learned it he can do it and when i walked away i came back 10 minutes later he bricked the entire site because he shut down every single port so now we had to actually go into the switch and console into it and break it and get in you know and reconfigure it the right way so i think that's that's a good example of putting it into perspective okay it may be so that's why typically because one of the things i'll throw out here is like experience right people always want experience when they're looking for network engineers um that that probably goes hand in hand with that because like if you would have been like an experienced network engineer your job then is to make sure that that process of them using the interface range command is scripted at least or or you're watching them do it all right yes yes maybe i walked away i probably shouldn't have walked away probably shouldn't walked away yeah i probably shouldn't have done that you know i probably shouldn't walked away in that situation i probably should have been over his shoulder making sure hey no you're going to break it you're going to break it yeah well you know it's funny we talked about this a little bit with uh with knox too because he brought up how like very early on in the show it's like very one of the very first episodes i was mentioning that like it's cool if you want to stay as this admin or not just assist as cis admin but like a network admin um because like you said it's it's kind of like the evolution right it's also where a lot of people start you tend to need less experience for a role like that getting out of the gate um maybe even less certifications or a lack thereof period so those are those have a lower barrier entry but at the same time there's nothing wrong with staying at that job for 30 years like there's nothing wrong with staying at any job for 30 years because what i think is cool about network admin it's kind of like the same way with sysadmins um you're right it's company vertical specific all that stuff like that right depends on how big your company is number one and all that but i think that like there's a lot of cool stuff that you get to do at that level because you're more of like a generalist right so like i i guess one of the good examples is is actually he works for aj which is taylor who we've had on the show the guy does everything and one of his things is that like it's because he's like being asked to do something and then he just goes and figures it out you know and then and then now he's that guy and i think he likes that and i really don't see him like this is just an example but i just don't see a guy like him leaving that because he would have to give up so much yeah money money talks but yeah and everything but aj's boss you know he's not getting any damn burn burn so i want to say a couple things if you don't mind because you hit a couple topics and i think that they're imperative or not imperative important to mention right yeah i think i think you can be in any role for as many years as you want to be right i think there's a happiness in a role where you could have a good work-life balance these days we call it work-life harmony all that good jazz right but i also think that there's a difference between saying that you have 30 years of experience in that one role and then 30 years of experience in multiple roles right i think there's things that you're going to see in potentially multiple roles then you wouldn't see in that one same role that you didn't move from right i think there's a different context there so if someone's looking to learn and evolve like was it taylor i think you said taylor right taylor yeah you know that sounds like someone that's very driven right if you're a very driven person i think that you're going to go far because you're going to constantly want to keep learning and if you constantly keep learning you're going to seek out those other situations those other positions even and you're gonna you know thrive on that ability to learn and and become better and and and kind of span yourself out into this market into this industry so so do you think then that somebody could just step off the street and be go to school whatever even actually go i'll take it to the extreme go get a ccie and then um just get a network engineer position without ever doing admin stuff oh yeah good i mean i think it's all perspective right and i'm a big fan of saying that i don't care how much experience you have um share that vacation hold on can you say that louder for the people in the back because i don't think anybody's listening to you because if everybody could hear you say that they would know that experience is just one of those things that they put on the job wreck yep i i don't know why you know and this is my viewpoint right so i have to be that clear on that like i'm not a big fan of saying that you need 10 years of experience in this role or five years or 15 years or 20 years right i want to know um there's going to be gates you have to get through right there's going to be requirements you have to get through and they're usually going to be certification requirements because at first you have to get to the interview right that is you have to get to the interview somehow now when you get to that interview all i care about is you can can you do the job and can you handle situations that are high pressure right because you're gonna have high pressure situations as a network engineer there's gonna be outages there's gonna be problems how do you handle high pressure situations so how do you ask that question sorry i'm not gonna cut you off but uh no actually no sorry i'm not gonna cut you off as i cut you off you did so so sorry you cut me off right no but but if i say sorry i didn't mean to cut you off it's like it didn't happen um so so how do you give us an example of you asking that exact question would you phrase it like that like let's say you're interviewing a candidate right now and you want to make sure that they work good under pressure work well under pressure how would you ask them that without just being like hey dude how good are you working under pressure yeah so i've learned this over the years right so i've had some candidates i've interviewed and have asked that question like oh i do great i'm awesome yeah like what would you say there right i'm like okay under pressure actually i fall apart under pressure yeah actually this is this interview i'm actually cracking right now because you're intimidating the hell out of me and i hate interviews so i'm actually just gonna head out it's been nice well so this is what i do uh and it might be right it might be wrong but it's worked uh a great amount a great amount of times my language is horrible today um it's worked a number of times so i actually set up a lab and i force all my candidates to go through a lab now i'm not saying it's a cci lab because it's not it's not a cci lab it's not even a ccmp lab all right like i want to see what they're going to do in a position that they weren't prepared for that's it i want to see you know i give them 10 questions most of them are basic questions hold on andy's shaking his head what's the problem andy no problem that sounds very familiar i've had interviews like that zeg where they they throw scenarios at me that i cannot handle because they want to see how i'm going to act under pressure and yeah at the time i didn't know that are they going to lie are they going to run out the door crying are they going to lie are they going to so what if i sat down i'm just gonna give an example here yeah yeah you sit me down you saw my you saw my illustrious resume and you're like i gotta talk to this dude um right it was really it was really my linkedin profile you were like wow this is really well written sir thank you also sweet headshot you're like i gotta have this guy in you sit me down you get me in front of the thing you're gonna see if i crack under pressure what if i'm just like typing away and i look at you dead in the eye and i go look bro i have no idea what i'm doing because i didn't think i was gonna do this today sorry are you gonna appreciate the honesty or are you gonna be like uh let's just part ways i'd be like look man not my day uh but i could get this for you so um i would definitely appreciate the honesty right i think christy is more important than anything else right so in that situation i'm personally grading um how you act in your personality in a situation right are you going to be truthful if you're not going to be truthful to me that's a problem right i want to know that you're going to be truthful and you're going to tell me up front hey i can't do this or hey i need some help right and maybe i can coach you right um in that situation for you let's say you came in and you started typing on the keyboard and i want to be clear uh in that lab environment this is how i set it up and it's high pressure right 10 questions they have the questions on a piece of paper they get one terminal they get access to 10 devices they have to answer those 10 questions in 30 minutes and everyone gets to watch their screen everyone on the team so what we do is it's a screen share i'll be honest with them okay okay one one question do you allow them to use the question mark is that doctor okay so let me put it in perspective guys they've actually had candidates tell me that they knew putty or they knew how to use secure crt and then i give them putty and they're like what's this we've actually hired people that have never been on the command line before um in the past and i'm just like how in the world you have your ccmp how in the world have you ever been on the command line it's a paper cert right it's someone that has a paper cert got through the recruiting process we hired them because they answered some questions right um before we added this lab environment i mean it's just not fair right i could see the situation i could see that now i can see that happening now because the ccmp is much different but prior to march i was doing more typing and configuring i mean obviously t-shoot right like that was hard and that whole thing was was that right i mean it's less configuring and more obviously t shooting but nevertheless like i knew what the problem was i knew what commands it took to fix it so that when i was going through the answers i was like yep yep but i could see the the paper part of that being a you know that's good to weed people out you know i just don't know how well i would do in that environment because like i don't cli i'm like you i don't cli every day i'm kind of an architect but it's not something i do so like it might take me a minute you know but that's fine like that's fine if it takes you a minute i mean you have access to google like it's like show me what you can do dude yeah well i could do brain surgery on youtube are you joking me like i don't know everything so so zig you guys were talking about experience right you don't like that experience gets posted in job postings right that's what we springboarded off of i i think i'm thinking of a guy i used to work with he was like a senior guy when i started and i didn't know anything and he had a theory which i think kind of rings true that most companies he thinks want five years of experience the reason being is 40 hours a week over the course of a year times five years is ten thousand hours and gladwell you know malcolm gladwell the ten thousand hour thing is a cliche for a reason so if you hire a guy his theory was if you hire a guy with five years plus experience he's not going to use an interface range command and shut down an entire site you know and because he has experience he's not a paper asserted guy so i mean i hear what you're saying that you know i hate when they put experience on a job posting but if you're hiring people right and they might be paper certain at least if they've worked in a production environment for five years they're not going to do something stupid that a guy who never touches anything has never worked in production and has a paper cert you know would they don't have that muscle memory they don't have that experience so you know i hate those postings to say you know triple c cie 50 years experience only it's bs we know that the job posting is bs but i think some of that exp at least from my old buddy joe's view was that a place doesn't want to hire a guy who doesn't know how to use putty who's going to kill a site because he doesn't know how the interface range works so such basic things that somebody with four or five years experience knows they've done it and so anyway that's my two cents on experience i think there's something to be said for having some experience in production there is supposed to be agree i'm not saying that you don't have any experience right i think i think the issue that i i really care about here is that um when we say you need five years of experience of doing something are you actually doing something that's that task for five years straight right like because again it comes down to you're not always doing that task every day right if it's asas or if it's routing or whatever you're you're potentially doing other things and maybe you're not as taxed or as busy um working on that one thing every day for five years so i think i think aaron wants to say something no no that's a good point to bring up because like dude what if i was just like so andy you do just wan right so like i know you like to say that but yeah sure well i heard it from you dad so i don't know so yeah so anyway so let's say you're siloed like andy has like silos in his company i do too so like each person gets their own little spot and let's say i was doing that for 10 years and i'm awesome at it like you asked me to do something that's outside of that you might as well be me who never touches anything you know what i mean which honestly is where i am now like i've been a wan guy for like eight years and we had to reorg and my job completely changed and now i'm not doing wan and i'm like holy crap now what's going on so yeah it's you're right like i have eight years experience as a network engineer but i have no idea what i'm doing right now but so but honestly no i love you i love when you say stuff like that like i know every time but every time that happens aaron like we talked about in the past i you know i turn around i'm surrounded by brilliant people i have no idea what i'm doing and in a couple years i'm like oh okay now i i i rise to the level of what i'm surrounded by so it just so happened recently what's the what happened all tie or high tides make all boats rise there you go andy yeah totally like the fake it till you make it one like that's a good one i like honestly i like to uh i like the getting where you fit in yeah yeah i mean a perfect example aaron i asked you earlier i zigg i have to turn up a wave circuit in a couple weeks i have no idea what a wave circuit is and i'm fighting with my telco guy for ip addresses and bgpas he's like dude you understand you're turning up a wave circuit right i ask garen i'm like what's a wave circuit you know what i mean and i've been a network engineer for eight years so like to your point i mean yeah you can't know everything right now it's the scene right so you might have experience but not in what you're looking for for a position maybe you know so again i think this comes back to less on experience i'm not trying to de-emphasize experience right there's a couple things i wanna i wanna point out right so the first thing is i wanna it's not always on experience it's the whole package right can you learn you can you learn right are you willing to learn can you be coached can you do you have the drive right do you have passion of this this job right this world this industry and if you have those things i don't care if you know less today than the other candidate right that doesn't have drive that doesn't have passion that can't learn right those are critical traits to any network engineer role in my opinion and that's not not network engineer but network admin network engineer network architect those are critical traits um now to andy what you said about experience and being in a different role our roles change all the time right our roles will change we'll have that next career move we get into a new role our our job tasks shift right when you're a network engineer you're more on the cli hands-on when you're an architect you're potentially less cli driven right but that doesn't mean i lose that experience right i don't lose that experience that experience is still part of my my entire package so for me i'm at 20 years in the it field but out of that whole time i worked on servers i've been programming i've done html i've done software development i've done networking i've done incident response i spent a year running a security operations center totally different field but it's still i.t right and all of that stuff brings me to today and i can use every one of those experiences to help me guide all my decisions with my customers on every single day and so for me i don't limit myself saying that yes i'm a network architect but i will have a talk with anyone on software software development cycles life cycles i'll have a talk on incident response we built out a sock for a customer a couple months ago and i'm not in a sock roll i'm not in a you know security operation center's role that's all based on experience sorry that's my soapbox i'll stop no no i think that's an important point there you know like where you came from you it helps you troubleshoot in your future roles i think yeah no experience is wasted is basically that right like i mean like i didn't have money for lunches like at school when i was a kid right but that experience doesn't go away you know like i i now understand the value of that you know what i mean so it's like is that pertinent to my everyday living absolutely not but but does it make you a person you know a certain type of person and does that experience still exist absolutely no so i i think probably what you mean um and correct me if i'm wrong here but like it's not that experience doesn't matter it's it's it's that that's like one of the lesser important things on the description itself right like there's a lot of stuff in there but for some strange reason we all do this for some strange reason we always like our eyes just zoom in to that part that says how many years experience i need like why is that there's like 6 000 words on this thing that mean abs and if you read it you're like none of this makes any sense but for some reason i'm going to go ahead and decide that they really knew what they were talking about with that part because the rest of the job description was so crisply written that must be true right like like you know was most was that the other slab that moses was holding on top of the mountain or whatever that got electrocuted like did it have all that stuff written in there must have 20 years experience i'm like no it sure didn't i think i think zig nailed it and it's something that other people have echoed too if you know how do you act under pressure what do you do when you don't know something are you driven do you have passion are you motivated are you ambitious we've heard that so many times that's really cool yeah it's the recipe of you know if you have those things if you don't know firewall you're going to learn it because you're that type of person that's probably what's more important when you get to the level in this career like network engineer level right i would say um you realize that you're never going to know everything right i think there's some naivety that's a word i'm making up words probably probably um words are not my language zeros and ones are my language naiveness there that's good now yeah i think you're right you got it you know yeah yeah they couldn't pronounce it nevertheless nativity nativity nativity naples florida um no but i don't know where i was going with that now way to go welcome to our discord channel let's be lucky we don't have gifts my friend that's where aaron says that's my ted talk and thank you for coming to my ted talk you know i exp i i'm guilty of this i look at experience although i make it a habit to tell every single person i i know like don't you dare look at that experience but sure as heck the second i open that job wreck i'm like how much experience do you guys want you know it's intimidating but it is intimidating but i'm gonna be in over your head right like if you're looking for a guy with 25 years and you got five you're like oh my god i'm gonna drown so riddle me this though how many times has this happened to you you see the job description got x amount of required years that you have to have ojt on the job training you need xyz certs right they have all these requirements they're like oh by the way it's for you know eighty three thousand dollars a year you have to have six ccies you're like okay they're always stringent right they're always the most stringent people the least amount of money are always the most stringent they're like you better be a freaking rocket scientist to get this job even though we're only going to pay you 75. but don't you think that the certs so because you mentioned the paper cert right like guy comes in can't even do the cc cli right he's like oh gosh i forgot i forgot what i was doing that would be me totally i'd be like uh where was i um i'm not that bad just to be honest i don't think that'd be you no it would it wouldn't but i'm just i'm just like you know kind of just playing the role here for a second because it very well could be you know a year from now who freaking knows i would be like loss on there but do you think that the the certs don't necessarily show uh that you are good at ospf area types but they show that you learn on your own and you can be taught yeah i mean i think so i think any of the search that we've mentioned right that there's a level of learning ability and and focus and achieving your goals right and that tells you a little bit about that person that character on those character traits we mentioned you know i'm a big fan of attacking your goals and that's kind of a term that i use and if someone is is driven enough to attack their goals if that's going after ccna ccmp and eventually a ccie or ccde then that's clear right they know how to learn and they know how to structure themselves in that test environment i think that's critical right that's a critical skill set that doesn't mean they know those those technologies still today right i'm sure i don't know everything i learned on my first ccie anymore but i don't do it every day right but i know where to find the information and i know enough to know hey i don't remember this i need to look it up i can't just wing it you know what i mean i can't just wing it on a lab environment or in a production environment i need to go actually figure it out um validate that i'm still thinking the right way and then do it don't you think that like most of that's like just wisdom though that comes with just living life like hey i know this i know this about life now right like i think like 15 years into my career i was like dude you don't have to be smart at all you just have to know a bunch of smart people like i thought that i unlocked the key to the city i was like dude i don't even have to i don't have to think or study about anything i just gotta i just gotta network right i mean i still do i still i still study i still do you know my own stuff but i'm saying i i could stop yeah yeah i mean you could i guess right but i think that i think that devalues yourself in some of these conversations you might know who's smart and who to reach out to but like in a situation where you need to have a conversation about a technology or a situation um you might be a little lacking right like like for example well yeah i am but well you know i wasn't gonna say it you know well you are talking to me about me so it just it does make sense not you okay that's fair that's fair i'm sorry he does look awful happy for some stupid i'm sorry dan you're my bearded friend i'm so sorry about it wait are we really calling that a beard are we doing that are we calling that a beard that's a bit it is that is a beer look at that because i got a beer weird it doesn't connect oh connects from here to here he's got a beard and a mustache two mustaches apparently is that because of the little spot in between yeah yeah left on the right it's there i have that too i don't get it but what i love is andy was making fun of me about my mustache when he has no mustache yeah that's how he can do that that's why that's that's like uh what do they call that uh certain liberties that writers take when they are telling a story right yeah i guess poetic freedom or whatever mustaches hey listen here just because my razor works yeah i thought it was shaving too yeah you got a beer too so i know everybody can't see us at home here but uh yeah it's cool not yet somewhere yeah yeah we'll find some pictures oh not yet interesting yeah we'll get there we'll get there yeah you know we would like to put these on the i feel like you know for whatever reason people would probably like to see us that's just me guessing and since i don't know the answer i can guess positively or negatively right i could be like people would love to see us i really have no idea but you know what actually that's the exact same mentality you have or should have when you're applying for jobs whether it's a net admin or an engineer they're going to love me why wouldn't they right why would you be like i don't they call me back like you know clenching your b-hole i hope they call me back what's positive affirmations my face yeah i always i always tell people this too because so we were just having a car because this is great because i like that i like this um selfishly so we talk about the difference between a net admin and a net engineer and then even like a sys admin or like a systems engineer or whatever like kind of like the evolution of where you could be um but like you know we back up far enough and like you said that's what gets you in because you mentioned that's what gets your foot in the door right because that's something i heard you say that seems to be the biggest that you did that that seems to be the biggest obstacle from what we've been noticing uh with like i'll just call like our community right like like the arda network engineering community like they people struggle and and i think it's because this is me guessing um i think it's because like first of all by nature when it comes to like our futures were like optim optimistically pessimistic and what i mean by like that is like certain things we we overthink joy about like gosh this trip to disneyland is going to be badass we never ever think like oh this this could potentially be awful if we go to disneyland and my two kids get the flu and all the bathrooms are shut down and all of a sudden it starts raining like no one no one ever thinks about that kind of stuff right they're like we're going to disneyland but for some reason when we're like applying for jobs and stuff we're like or we go to uh uh an interview and we leave and you know you know the feeling when you leave an interview you're just like drained you're like like like literally a weight has been lifted off your shoulders you're just gosh i'm wrecked emotionally exhausted um and the same with like sending out resumes and applying for stuff but the thing is we're always super pessimistic about that we're like yeah i don't know they probably won't call me back they want somebody who's much smarter than me you know um why why can't we just all agree that every time we send something out we just look intrinsically like i'll just give you an example i'm going to look at inner aaron here okay i'm going to send out my resume i'm going to look at inner air and i'm going to go you know what these folks would be freaking crazy not to love me and if i don't hear back from them that's because they're not smart enough to realize who i am like like let's let's just do it right now let's just shift the let's just shift the collective mind of of everybody that's listening to this like like guys you are guys and gals you are badass you've heard it on this the show this particular show you've heard like a ton of stories up into this point ziggs is no exception to that rule he just happens to know because he's been there for a long time you know he's got hiring wherewithal and things like that so he's been on both sides of the table so let's just all collectively agree that we're gonna think positively about our job future not just future in general but job future like how many people do you think if you polled them right now and you asked them hey do you think you're going to get cancer within the next 10 years how many people do you think would say yeah i'll probably odds are that i'll probably get it like how many people are gonna say that i i would be willing to bet that it'd be zero right yeah even though you could probably show them data that like hey you know two and a half out of the ten of you is gonna end up with something right so you gotta you gotta plan for that but we don't ever we don't do that with anything else it's like let's just think positively about yeah you know like yes i think aaron if i could get cheesy for a second please do exactly well exactly what you're saying somebody it reminds me like if you don't believe in yourself nobody will so if you're going into an interview and you don't think you're the shit you don't think you belong there am i allowed to say yes yep am i allowed to say the s word on this i'm sorry yeah no it just means it just means you mean business that's all i heard well here here's why i want to get a little cheesy is years ago somebody turned me on to this dude and he's way probably too woo-woo fufu for our audience but this guy named wayne dyer and he had this whole thing called the power of intention and basically what his whole thing was was that you know every action is predicated by a thought you can't pick up a glass of water unless you think about it so you can if if you can change to what you're saying your attitude your thoughts if you can change how you're thinking that can help you create what you intend to create in your own life so as an example the two network engineering jobs i've had both of which i was under qualified for and going back to the experience you know the the christmas wish list of what they wanted me to have my first job i had two percent of what they had listed in that thing and they gave me the job and the job i have now i had maybe 10 of that laundry list of things but i can tell you just from what this guy told me years ago that the two times i did that i went into those interviews saying i'm going to get this job i'm going to kick its ass i'm going to do the best i can and if they don't hire me all right man like that wasn't the spot for me i bombed both interviews and i got both jobs now we'll never know if because my mindset going in was like you're saying aaron that you know what i am going to think positively and say this is great and so so you know i i think that there's power in how we talk to ourselves and our thought process going into things and if you're going in with a defeatist attitude if you don't believe in yourself nobody will and it's an easy little tweak you can do but you know it's it's a it's a mental game i think interviews i think are a mental game it's like the same with you know remember the school dances like this is the same thing it's like as afraid as you were to talk to the opposite sex you have it's the same feeling you get like when you were in seventh grade and this is for guys and girls i don't care which one you are if like when you're going to apply to these you just don't want to be rejected because you think that it's going to take away like so much of you as a person but it just doesn't it's like all right i mean like the point i made earlier in the discord channel was like look those companies are already ignoring you right they don't even know you exist so if you apply unless they reach out to you things aren't changing like they still don't know who the heck you are you know and some automated thing tells you you didn't get in what do you freaking do you know where the per the point of this really is is that is just to kind of sum it all up right is like net admin net engineer it doesn't matter experience whatever certifications these are all these are all quote unquote requirements i would say personally the only thing that i feel like you can't get away with in the requirements field is something like a like a security clearance or something you know like that that's like a non-negotiable it's like hey you need this and you can't just get it right like you gotta you gotta go through a process but but all everything else that we've mentioned up at to this point which is whatever the job description says no matter what kind of like a little nomenclature or how many words they jam in there um it doesn't matter do a couple of things change your mindset and do not be afraid of rejection because it's not that bad i'll actually say this that going up to that guy or girl at the homecoming dance in seventh grade is much more difficult much more difficult than sitting in front of someone and having them ask you who you are like guys look i said this earlier too the one thing you know the best is yourself okay so if you cannot seem to formulate answers that revolve around you whom you spend 24 hours a day with seven days a week you should know yourself better than anything not not more than anybody else should but yes but also more than anything you should know yourself because like you can't escape yourself and like andy was saying before you even pick up a glass of water you're thinking you're in your head constantly that's all you're doing so it's up to you man just either keep on thinking that way or just take two seconds out of your day and try to fundamentally shift it the other direction i mean this isn't groundbreaking stuff here this is like how many books have been written about this stuff one thing i do want to point out though is is andy i forgot the guy's name that you you mentioned the guy who said all that stuff uh malcolm gladwell no not malcolm gladwell because i love that dude wayne dyer wayne dyer when you said that i saw dan smile and i almost felt like dan had a bad experience with wayne dyer and i'm dying to hear it but am i lying am i just full of it damn are you just smiling are you just having a good time over there which which part yeah remind me which part he mentioned he mentioned the the guy's name after he said he was talking about just that which is like hey you have a fundamental choice of like how you're going to think about things and he mentioned the guy's name and he smiled i don't know if you just thought it was a stupid name or he had a story about it but it sounds like you just thought it was a stupid name all right i'll shut up all right so i'll add some stuff if you don't mind yeah that's an important important conversation exactly and i think everyone that's listening can can get something out of it for sure um you have to be okay with having an open mind on everything you're trying to accomplish in life right so you know that that interview you gotta you gotta allow yourself to be positive right and not be stressed you you gotta allow yourself to do the best you can right be confident but not arrogant right that's the key be confident about what you know but not overly confident where you come off arrogant and rude and honestly use every every single situation as a learning experience like that's like when i'm ready to move to a new role not that i'm ever going to move to a new role anytime soon so just so that's clear but um when i'm ever when i'm ready to look for a new role i start interviewing because that is that is a skill set you need practice you need constant practice and i'd rather have practice on the 10 or 20 or 30 interviews that i don't care about yeah then not have it on the one i care about and fail right yeah so i want to have overwhelming practice getting all those kinks out know how i'm going to talk about myself and be prepared so i mean you know just practice practice you're right about that actually that thank you for saying that because that's actually what i started to say but you know the adhd sometimes it's got its own plans you know what i'm saying um so i took it off in a completely different way but no you dude you're right you're dead on um like you you literally have two choices on how you can look at things there's only two you can either think of it as a positive or a negative you have two choices and and whether or not you think you did you did you chose and you chose the negative outlook so if if you could just maybe this will help if you could just recognize that there's a decision point there take the other direction right i got this i know we say it out loud i'm quickly becoming this like motivational speaker dude like i'm all for it man i got tons of stuff coming your way so keep going all right yeah i love it i love it i can't wait for your actual tedx talk uh yes san diego i know official tedx it's just me like rambling they're like wait why did we come here i'm like and thank you for coming to my ted talk aaron do you know why we tend toward the negative all of us uh i i probably should given the amount of books that i've read including this like this like people say it's just a survival instinct the guy that the people who were hiding in a cave that assumed there was a tiger outside to think about how to react to them the optimists were like i gotta go outside today and get some sun and there'll be no tiger so we're fighting millions of years of evolution of survival we don't i think that's psychologically why we tend toward the negative so the point is you have to make a decision and you have to fight that if you can recognize the decision right i think that maybe that's the key is like knowing that you actually did make a decision when you didn't realize that you did right because i'm like maybe maybe us pointing that out right now people are going to go holy crap i do have a choice on whether or not i i think about this in a negative way or not and that's why like i'm here to help obviously i got you know it's hard to practice what you preach all the time i'm sure tony robbins you know people piss in his cheerios i'm sure right like he's full of crap like i'm sure he wakes up in a bad mood some days you know i mean and i do too we all do and that's okay but like i i'm i'm if someone needs the motivation like i got you i'm not saying that i got my own enough motivation for myself like i don't but it's a lot easier for me to tell you what you should be doing rather than putting that into practice for some strange reason maybe that's like the instructor or like the trainer in me right but it's true like i like i'm totally okay with looking at people's stuff like their resumes i'm looking at job descriptions and i'm like hey like this is what i would do it's not wrong or right maybe just a different approach go with this you know but like i got i got that in in gangbusters dude like i got more than that and then i know what to do with but it's like hey are you going to get this uh ccnp style insert by the end of the year probably not why because i'm too busy hyping other people up and i ain't got time for that do you want it bad enough though well okay so that that brings me to another question because um no i don't i can answer that very very empirically because i like i know you're going with that and i i feel the same way you'd probably do too um but you mentioned um attacking your goals earlier give me an example any goal any goal in your life i'll give you some of mine right well not not an example of a goal but how do i attack it you make this you make you make decisions that directly achieve your goals those decisions could be small decisions right so a small decision might be maybe you're trying to lose weight something not even i.t related right maybe you're trying to get healthy lose weight not saying you have to be like a full-time bodybuilder or anything but let's say for me personally i need to lose about 40 pounds so if that's my goal right then on a daily basis i should be i should mentally be focused on making the decisions to achieve that goal so if it's like tonight my wife wanted ice cream right so did i get ice cream for myself no because i want to lose weight now i could have made the easy decision and gotten ice cream i could have easily gotten ice cream and ate it and then tomorrow i've been like well i'm never gonna make my goal right i'm never gonna make that that that goal that i'm looking to achieve um but if i consistently that doesn't mean all the time that means consistently make valid hard decisions which are the right decisions i will achieve my goal so it's interesting that you said hard because i think that's the key uh so let me just tell you a little bit about my day today uh most of my day has been spent well when i wasn't arguing with andy uh the rest of my day that was like your whole afternoon no that's all about no no no because no it wasn't because i was in like five different chat rooms um andy only got a small piece he got 20 of my arguments uh the other bit of my energy was spent like basically doing this i was like let's go let's go let's go let's get this come on what are we doing let's go uh this is what i do every day man yeah i mean well it was to it was the guys in the discord that were you know we were just kind of chatting and i was like no no i was like first of all you guys ain't doing nothing right now you're just chatting with me i'm like get off your butt and go change this right like come on like sometimes you just need like a thing and i think like hearing you know your experience and maybe some of your advice as far as like what hiring managers do and things like that like that helps right and but i think that they always kind of look at it and and i'm generalizing like our quote-unquote community at this point but i'm going to use this opportunity for us to kind of speak for them because i i do think that they appreciate that to some extent and it's like i i think that the long view is maybe something that they miss so like uh like the short term is very near and present but like you said it's like you you need to even make it shorter term if that's the case if you're going to make it short term make it even shorter term and make it a minute-by-minute situation so just what is it you have to do today to get to where you want to be because you mentioned how bad do i want it um i think it's it usually comes down to uh the why right because uh motivation is finite like it and that's literal right like we know that because there's only so much like it it literally takes energy like your amygdala takes like all this energy it takes the most energy like your prefrontal cortex to process like decision making and things like that and it like literally drains you of calories which is why you feel tired because that's accurate you were actually thinking too hard most of that thinking was probably you talking yourself in or out of something all right like like well i don't know this says this i mean quite honestly what this comes down to is it's easy to do nothing and it's hard to do stuff and there are varying levels of hard but they all fit in the same category doing the laundry is is technically hard because it's not passive it's nothing right you still have to get up and actually do stuff it's kind of a pain in the butt but we can all probably agree even though none of us have done it but you that a ccie lab is much harder than laundry right so like they happen to be in the same bucket because they're both not just sitting on my ass watching netflix you know and that's that's that's a passive thing that's easy but like i don't know that habits are are necessarily like you know something that you need to always work toward either i just think that like when you're sitting there and you're making the conscious decision to watch netflix or to not watch netflix because that's a decision too that just recognize that you have that you're at a crossroads anytime that happens like right now am i thirsty enough because i saw aj drinking a beer am i thirsty enough to go get a beer the answer is no because i want to sit here and talk to you guys you're welcome i would rather hang out with you guys than drink a beer so no i think that's right on right like i think it's 100 um it's the decisions you make at the moment right like um and i'm not trying to make it all about me but i want to make it clear like i make decisions for my goals not not for me to be happy in the moment right and i don't always do that i'm not always consistent on it on a decision by decision basis but if you look at a snapshot over a week or a month i'm going to be 95 consistent right and that's the goal that's the goal is to be overwhelming consistent on your goals those little steps those decisions and then before you know it you're going to achieve those goals and that's a good way to look at it a good example yeah um how do i put it in perspective um so i used to say this if i plan to work out three days a week right if that's my plan to work out three days a week i'm realistically probably gonna only work out one day a week if that's what i'm shooting to do realistically the way my personality works i'm gonna find an excuse i'm gonna go you know sleep longer or whatever something's gonna come up at work and i'm gonna get one workout in nowadays i shoot for working out seven days a week because i know my mindset that if i wanna work out more than three days a week or at least three days a week i need to plan to work out seven days a week and what happens is i work out five to six days a week right that just happens it happens because i'm shooting for a higher outcome um another example right like i have a lot of goals and for me i get up at 4 30 in the morning every morning to attack my goals so i make the decision to set my alarm to wake up at 4 30. um for me it might be easier because of the military background right i'm used to getting it before 4 30 in the morning definitely um you know it is what it is right but i'm making a conscious decision when that alarm goes off not to go back to sleep right that's the easy decision right that's what i'm trying to say like it's so much easier to hit snooze go back to sleep comfort comfort of that bed you know whatever well i just pointed it out right like definitely making decisions to do things takes actual caloric processing you know what i mean like you could get hungry from thinking too much we've all done it we've all taken tests and we're like gosh why am i so hungry right or why am i so drained it's like you literally are trained because it's harder and i aj and i just talked about this um everybody was like kind of out so we aj and i had our own show for one night so that was pretty cool no rude interruptions but um just the two of us i'm kidding no so we aj and i were touching on this a little bit too um with like the decision-making process and like you know being like finite and you know how do you how do you do it and you know it's like that this is like one of the hardest things to do but in your case you're outsmarting yourself you're saying hey i know realistically i'll probably get three to four days in if i tell myself i'm working out every day that's great because then you can still take those like shortcuts right but you're still helping yourself what's hard for people to do is to see that like you because you're an example of that process working perfectly where as five percent of your time is probably you giving up five to ten percent and it's usually the other way around like ninety percent giving up right and so like what do you have what do you want what is it you're trying to get um it's hard to make those decisions it's even harder to apply them when you're not being rewarded because the things that we do on a daily basis as network engineers or network admins is that we typically study and read about stuff and there's no goal in sight we're chasing we're chasing a carrot on a fishing pole we're never going to get it you know just like those cartoons like those looney tunes we're never going to get the carrot um part of it is like that's what's so cool is because we get to constantly learn stuff but there's no there's no finish line so we never get to go ah but but it doesn't matter because you have one ccie and at some point you thought to yourself geez that wasn't enough punishment let me go get a second one and went through that whole process again right so so clearly you even got to what a lot of people especially like in our community would look at as this is the upper echelon of certifications like it's it's world-renowned cci it is it is the de facto like oh gee this is the cream of the crap top of the pyramid and you went out and got a second one because i'm willing to bet that once you got done with the first one there was some celebration there was some rapture there's a little rejoice there you guys were like hey this is great and then right quickly right after that you're like all right now what right like first of all your time is back i get addicted so well you get really good at getting really good at stuff that's that's the other part of it right it's like i love the labbing i love the and this is specific to me i love the labbing experience and just labbing all day and i just enjoyed it so much and then the the the thrill of taking the lab exam you know just the thrill of getting ready the rush of going to the lab exam taking it and not knowing if you passed or failed right um all that so i actually thrilled i actually enjoyed that did dude uh i'm just glad that you have not been introduced to any hard drugs yeah i'm a very having a very addictive personality and if you if you actually because you got addicted to ccies dude if anybody put a needle in front of you you're done for okay a sleeve of a sleeve of oreos i'm done sleeve oreos needle ice cream gone yeah sorry dude yeah yeah food is my my kryptonite seriously but i have to be mindful about the food like seriously like i mean when i did my ccie and i want to make it clear that like i have all these certifications right i want to make everyone know that i failed the ccna i found the ccnp like this isn't like i don't want people thinking that like i'm at this higher level and i'm like whatever untouchable because i'm not like this isn't they're hard exams i will say that all these exams are hard but they're exams so frame it up so it's something that you can obtain it's just an exam that's all it is it's a very hard exam but people can achieve it and you can achieve it too i always have this thought um anytime i'm doing anything like that like exams is one of them but even something as simple as like uh like let's say i was like mounting a ceiling fan or something right and the instructions were just wonky and i'm trying to figure it out i'm like what in the hell where does this piece go you know that type of stuff i i always have this thought in my head did the same thing on the ccnp every single time i think out loud to myself somebody made this another person created this and that person is not smarter than me okay like that is not happening to me i am not going to let the guy who created the ceiling fan instructions to outsmart me like just like i'm not letting the dude who created the t-shirt exam outsmart me that ain't happening guy or girl i don't care who it is like you're another person you might as well be sitting across from me right now i take that personal and i go in that with a vengeance i'm like i'm beating the heck out of this test i don't care what you say i've of course failed it several times but you know but that that's real right that's i think that's extremely real to explain to people right that that you still fail now failure is the best learning experience right failure is by far the best learning experience the only thing you can truly do and fail is not continuing right so but not making a decision um i think you can make a decision and it can be the wrong decision and then you learn from it but you cannot make a decision and then you you just fail because you didn't make a decision right and you dwelled and you didn't progress but as long as you make a decision and if you pass or fail you learn from that failure you i would agree like yes i good or bad i think like every everything you do of course you should be taking something away from cause like we pointed it out earlier it was the uh discussion about the uh uh gosh what is going on with my head right now um about failing come on guys me up here we'll be talking about it the whole time anyway but you you brought it up anyway so i mean like really it's like pretty much i think what we're learning here is like hey you learn pretty much in everything you do you have a choice as to whether you're going to look like in front of you and think of that positively or negatively you also have a choice as to whether or not you're going to recognize when you're at a decision point and decision points happen every two nanoseconds for you right like you know am i going to scratch my head am i going to adjust my glasses to bed am i going to go to bed yeah aaron you know you and i had this conversation while i was studying for encore and it kind of resonated with me right like life is full of micro decisions and so you know i i fell into habits of like playing games on my phone and you know yeah playing games playing games in the bathroom i mean let's be serious everybody does that right so yeah so well after you said that to me it was just like you know what he's he's right he's right so so instead of pulling up the game on my phone i pulled up a flash card app and i started doing flash cards and sure it was only like five ten minutes whatever but it made an impact because it was five or ten minutes several times throughout the day in the evening instead of like relaxing on the couch and playing games i pulled out the flash card app and i sat down i did flash cards instead of playing games i don't play games at all anymore on my phone it just i kicked that bad habit i spend time you know if i'm not reading a book uh i'll do some flash cards or whatever and all of that time adds up and it makes a huge impact and and just like zig said it's it's working towards the goals like what am i doing to contribute to the success of my goals yep yeah and again though i think the key there is what you just said is like you had the conscious thought that you knew that you were at a decision point so really what i would say as a takeaway for all this is start being aware or conscious of the decision points don't i'm not saying change anything about your decision that's this is baby steps just be aware of the the decision the decision is in front of you and be aware when it is that's all you need to do and at that point once you start to to realize hey i'm at a decision point right now because aj you did the exact same thing you're you're at decision points you pulled your phone out this is how far you got into the decision-making process you pulled your phone out and you made a conscious decision i'm not going to do this i'm going to do this instead so exactly so this up we're killing it here but we're also killing the hour as well zig do you have any final beautiful wrap wrap this thing in a bow for us dude wrap it in a bow man oh wow leave it to me right um so the whole preference was network engineer the role of network engineer you know what is it what does it mean all those kind of things right all those questions and i think we we identified the network engineer role at a high level i think we made it very clear that it potentially isn't necessarily based on experience but it's based on your your personality and your characteristics and the traits that you have and if you can do the job and if you can't do the job um and we talked about a lot about security certifications and whatnot right um i would say i would personally leave it like this you know you got to make decisions in life you got to make those decisions that really attack your goals and i hate to use my own term on that right attack your goals every day but you you really do need to be mindful of the decisions you make and like what aaron just said right i would i would frame it up over the course of a period of time so if it's a week or a month be open to seeing the decisions you're making don't make any changes right don't make any changes for the next week but be open realize those decisions you're making right and you'll realize real quick hey that's five minutes that's 15 minutes that's an hour right there i could easily be doing this right and then before you know it you'll start making those decisions and really attacking your goals and being successful and making progress yeah you probably will end up and this is just a guess like in those decision points where you're like you know you got the remote in your hand and you're about to turn on netflix it might get to the point where you know because since you're not changing anything like like you go to netflix but since you know you made that decision you feel guilty about it and maybe that's what gets you to you know change it but like like like zig said don't change anything just recognize the the decision point and then if you need to you know in the future once you've gotten good at recognizing those decision points just change it once a day that'll be your first step you notice a decision point make your one change for the day call it a day that's it so you don't have to study every day you don't have to study every hour you don't have to study six hours a day throw all that crap out the window you know you don't have to spend hours doing certain things follow the 80 20 principle if you don't know what that is google it um it'll save your life it will it will um and zig where can we find you i know you said at the top of the hour but but give us a another refresh of where we can find you on the internet of course uh my my site is zigbetz.tech so z-i-g-b-i-t-s dot tech and then you can find me on twitter that's a zig underscore zigga zig underscore z-s-i-g-a um and anywhere where that name is i'm on youtube and uh linkedin and everywhere else too yeah be conscious of the the last name it's z-s-i-g-a so there's a hidden there's a hidden silent s in there it is it's harder it makes it harder than it is i promise it's just a ziggurat i bet if you type zig you'll be good yeah just type zig you know there's not many here we go i'm not zig zig zigler i'm zig zigga so this is zig ziglar yeah you are you are the official unofficial spice girls lyric there you go yeah and with that you got to do it though you said it you almost made it i think it's like there he did it he did it oh yeah my wife uh just so everybody knows my wife used to love the spice girls probably still does don't you no she should no she said she did at one point she went through a phase she was a teenager we can't pick on her too much but she was 11. sorry it was worse than a teenager not even a teenager yeah she was a preteen so she got a little phase so she's very aware of the of the thing so she really got a kick out of the fact and i just did a spice girls lyrics so you welcome everybody um yeah so cool yeah look him up we'll put all that stuff in the show notes um i think i said something on top of the error that i wanted people to shout us out but i don't really remember but congratulations to carl and uh what is how do you say his name bavesh bavesh babash i was gonna hack that i was beavish um shout out to you guys for getting your search this week thank you so much for participating um until the next episode see ya 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 edge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering.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