My Story#

I was born into a working class family. I failed school, had two jobs by the time I was 16, and dropped out of secondary education. I lived on minimum wage for just over a decade, which is something I had grown accustomed too. It was the norm for me. I had debts I could barely pay and a crap apartment in an even crappier part of town. Here are the jobs I did until I went into full-time IT at 28 years old:

• Reception at a gym (approx. £14,000/year)
• Outbound sales via an automated dailer (approx. £14,500/year)
• Inbound sales (approx. £15,000/year)
• Warehouse work packing boxes, doing logics, and packing trucks with tins of dog food (approx. £12,000/year)
• Driver's mate (driving around delivering stuff) (approx. £9,000/year)
• Call center work for O2 (Telefonica), Vodafone, and for an ISP (approx. £16,000/year)

And probably some other minimum wage, crappy jobs my sub-conscience has suppressed.

Now I earn upwards of AUD$1,240/day (£683.8; USD$829.64; €792.9), own a home, a business and have $100k in the bank at any one time.

That's the "too long; didn't read" version. I've gone into more detail below for those who like details.

Going back in time#

When I was 12 years old my dad took me to a local college because they let you use their Internet connection - sort of like an Internet cafe - for free from 9-5. My parents couldn't afford the Internet at home. Whilst at the college I met David (now a good friend), who taught me C, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and showed me how websites were made. I was hooked.

I started learning more and more, eventually learning 8086 assembley language and writing my first virus: a PE file infector. I learned how-to use SoftIce to crack software running in memory. I setup my own web servers, IRC servers, FTP servers, and more. I experimented, failed, played around, built, destroyed, and more, everything I could.

But I never studied IT formerly. I went to college (not "University", for my American readers) and failed. I was born into a working class environment and family, so by the time I was 16 I had two jobs, so University wasn't even a choice. Instead I worked minimum wage jobs until I was 27.

Eventually I had had enough and I shifted into my first IT job, taking a pay cut of $1,314 per year. That reduction in wages didn't last long as I jumped to $27,600 per year just nine months later; then $30,230 six months later; $47,305 per year just nine months after that; then $59,130 just 13 months later; and finally, after turning contractor, I reached a high of $170,820 per year twelve months later.

Needless to say a move into IT changed my life completly. I cleared my debts and moved to Australia with my now wife - whom, by the way, I would not have met if I didn't go to an IT conference in Belgium. She was travelling Europe from Australia. So yeah, IT changed my life completely. Eventually I was able to build a business, move to Australia (again, after meeting my now gorgeous, wonderful, loving, supportive wife) and started teaching other people how-to break into this wonderful, cash rich industry.

Now I've been in the IT industry for many years and over that time I've reflected a lot on how I like to learn, and how others like to learn, too. This self reflection led to me producing video courses for others that attracted over 5,000 students. I also built a DevOps community on Discord known as The DevOps Lounge, which has reached nearly 3,000 members at the time of writing.

That's why I wrote this course and it's why I'm building a training center in Brisbane, Australia, which will be used to offer private training for anyone looking to accelerate their career into IT.

You can change your life too. That's what this course is for.

Now it's time to get the job done.