Since the Early 90’s I’ve had an interest and a lot of curiosity in IT, telecom, and electronics related areas. Early on there were times where these would get me into trouble, but though a lot of mistakes were made along the way, I did learn a lot from the journey.
Some highlights from times around high school and shortly after:
- I had run a bulletin board based on oblivion\II running on dos initially, then later os/2.
- I had added messaging groups that where synced and distributed within the US and Europe.
- I had been involved in some international teleconferences discussing and learning DTMF based telecom routing and signaling.
- I had built some electronic devices based on schematics found on bulletin boards, or based on interest in modifying items to serve different purposes.
After spending some time in college, and realizing that Biochemistry just wasn’t for me, and a dispute over the merit of fortan and cobal in the Electrical Engineering track, I decided to drop out of college. I decided that I would pursue my interests in IT instead, taking out a personal loan to take a certification course instead. I had been looking for a challenge, and chose to learn the OS that I knew the least about at the time, Novell Netware.
Novell seemed to work well for me, I quickly went on to finding work in that area, and becoming a Master CNE. I gravitated toward consulting, and became very good at not just Novell, but also Windows, Solaris, SCO, Linux, and cisco products. I had become certified in some, but not all, and while consulting had always been one of the most skilled and versatile people on my teams.
Some of the lessons I’ve leaned in consulting have been:
- People don’t always care that you know the answer, they care more that you know where to find the answer and in doing so can resolve their issue.
- Technical skills are only part of what is needed, Communication skills play a large part in consulting as well. You need to take time to talk to your clients and get to know them, their needs, and where you fit in to helping them achieve their goals.
- Mentoring and training others not only allow you to become stronger in the areas you are training, it also allows you to be more effective in your work.
Though I still work in IT, in more recent years I’ve been involved in some investing activities. I’ve come to the realization that many of these can be done with little time requirements if you get the right people around you.
Some of the investment activities include:
- The purchase and partial ownership of a local cleaning franchise.
- Rental property in multiple regions of the US.
- Short term lending, financing of inventory, and equity positions in local businesses.
Some community organizations and activities I am involved in include:
- First United Methodist Church Finance Committee
- ToastMasters