A Program to Help You Break Into Tech + Bootstrapping a Startup Tech Company
[Music] welcome back to another episode of the figures tech talk this is a very special episode so this will be the first episode where we've introduced a guest and before i jump into introducing him i did want to say that this is very historical for us it is black history month that's pretty cool um for us to kind of share our story talk about the history that we're working on and the history we're making um so without further ado i'd like to introduce my guest mr tavion payton i'd like to say anything uh hey how's it going yeah yeah yeah man um me and say go way back by the way um i'm sure you guys know tay if you don't know tay uh on twitter you can follow him uh instagram as well tayontech.io uh and he's been making a lot of noise and technology especially for people of color for minorities and really anybody who's looking to make an entrance into technology so i kind of wanted to start that man like what's your story and you know what do you want to share with people what do you want them to know about your your journey in tech so my journey uh was very unique um originally me going to college um i didn't really know i wanted to do technology um i like to tell people all the time my first i think i changed my degree about three times before i actually decided what i wanted to do um my first degree or the first degree that i chose that i wanted to go for was business marketing um after that i thought i wanted to do law and then i thought i want to do political science but it was way too much reading it was way too much and um just from high school i had always been good with technology um i was always the guy in high school i was picking laptops jailbreaking iphones i was always taking apart all these different things and i was just thinking like why am i trying to just steer away from me going into technology but also another thing as well too i don't really know anything about the tech um the tech industry until i got to my sophomore year of college as well too so i don't really just understand all the different fields that were in that particular um industry so i really didn't know um until my sophomore year and when i finally got introduced to it um i was talking one of my professors and he just kind of brought up that hey you know you can you can get paid to hack and i was like are you lying like i was straight like bro you lying there's no way they're paying people to get like to hack when i'm seeing all this stuff on the news with people going to jail but trying to hack and stuff and so um i just really found out about it and i just fell in love and ever since then i've been to the tech industry so it's going on seven years now that i've been working into the tech industry and the corp corporate america so not only just like oh i've been practicing on my own but i've actually been in corporate america for about seven plus years now wow yeah that's that's amazing man go like if i take us back a little bit too i mean when we first became um when we first met each other we met we met on twitter by the way so um i had just moved to our college town denton texas uh at the university of north texas and i was looking for a roommate and so i came across him on twitter and you know our first conversation we jumped right into technology like i don't think it took maybe two dms for us to be go from you know are you looking for a roommate to technology and um when we did become roommates you know i i um i learned very quickly just how far ahead he was everybody else and um you know i saw him working contract jobs while he's still in college like working for working in corporate america um contracting what was it uh uh southwest or yeah southwest yep southwest airlines uh was the first the first time i had met him he was working there as a contractor and um you know that really inspired me too because i had been in technology since the fourth grade but i didn't have any guidance into like corporate or guidance into getting a job in technology you know i was kind of just doing it in passing and kind of trying to figure myself out in college um trying to figure out you know what would be the best path for me similar to him thinking of things like poli-sci or you know just anything that i might have been interested in but you know many people can relate when you go to college you don't truly you may not truly know what you want to do and um but he seemed to be somebody that i've i felt like had a much better idea than most people especially the people that look like us because you know most people who look like us young black men or women um it's like a lot of us are coming into college first generation or um you know haven't worked in corporate america maybe we've tried to run our own our parents or grandparents maybe ran their own businesses or we don't even know what our people did past our parents and grandparents so i mean it was just really um special to have came across tay and figure out the things he was doing but like what do you think um separated you from the rest because there weren't there weren't a lot of people who looked like you that were doing the things that you were doing so what do you think made the difference in you finding those jobs so early in your career okay yeah that's actually a pretty easy question uh i think the real like the thing that really separated me um once i had like those two major changes and when i actually kind of like found something that i really enjoyed like i was locked in i knew exactly what i wanted to do and i also put the wreck in to actually do that as well too so i know a lot of times people always kind of wonder like what's the secret to something or how can you do it it's really just consistency when it's all said and done like if you say you want to do something actually do it and that that really was for the most part i think that's what separated me from for the most part like after i made those two career those two degree changes um once i kind of found um the technology industry and i just really kind of locked in on it and i was just like hey this is what i'm going to do so it wasn't really no like super secrets or anything like that it was just me putting in the work to do it what it what did you do to land your first like real job opportunity oh so this is absolutely crazy so like uh the contract or the actual internship um let's start with the contract okay so the contract was wow so at this time i was actually looking for internships i was working at geek squad i was uh ara advanced repair agent i was a person back there that fixed the computers and all that stuff and so one of the recruiters actually came in he was getting his laptop fixed and um i was just pretty much like explaining him like what was going on with his computer i was just pretty much just breaking everything down and i was able to translate it to him and i actually kind of explained it to him as someone that's not really tech savvy he was like oh man like how old are you i told him i think i was like 19 at the time or something like that i was like i mean are you looking like to like get a job or internship or you know anything that you can just try to get some experience into i like yeah because at the time i used to always keep resumes in the car yeah so i had a resume in my car now that ashley um i can go grab my resume right now the car i have it and i can bring it back to you i love that so when i saw i gave it to him we just started talking he was like you're going to hear back from me um so like a couple days later he was like hey um i showed my resume i'm gonna search your resume to the hiring manager he really loved you he want to interview you got interviewed and like a week or two later i got the job and i quit best buy would you say that like those types of personal relationships that you build in the moment have been more um successful with finding jobs than just applying to jobs or yeah do you think they both kind of play hand in hand or um i think for us particularly in the tech industry um i would it's in or even just like period it's all about like who you know and what i mean it's not it's who you know and like it's it's not what you know it's who you know this is who you know um so the and that's honestly how all of my careers or all of my jobs came about um like my very first internship um i should take a pay cut uh it's considered a pay cut but i took a lower paying job because the person that i was going to be working up under he was well known in the security industry he was well known in dallas and he just had so much pull and like literally after um i ended up having an internship every internship that i had received after that was due to him or do some type of networking wow and so i can honestly say networking is probably the best route to go especially when you're making career transitions or even just trying to enter into the industry because i know for linkedin like that's what i always tell people go to linkedin especially if you're in the tech industry it's a gold mine and um every job every job i receive a full-time job i've received it through linkedin i haven't had to apply to one job wow so monster jobs they come directly to me hey you looking for a job sure why not and i feel like that's the way um i mean a part of me feels like we kind of have to shift the culture a little bit because i do feel like there's so many people with skill sets but because they lack um maybe interpersonal skills or they lack um you know just general knowledge on how to network networking strategies and things like that um their talent may like if it was solely based on talent they might be higher in these hiring pools but because there's other people who are getting referred and typically those that are getting referred i'm not going to say everybody but statistically speaking you know it's not our minorities it's not our underserved people it's you know people from other demographics where they're represented so like when i see those things i'm like i do want to help shift that culture but i also want to like like kind of get into or like stuff that we talked about which is like how do you get to where these recruiters are finding the talent like how do you get it to where you know you're not having to necessarily just put yourself out there as much as you're like like once you're out there it's just coming to you like like those are some of the things that i that um that i know like we've talked about uh that that i think are gonna be very vital in the future but like like where we stand today it really truly is about you know who you know and not as much about what you know and that's kind of sometimes scary too because you know that that i think is what kind of kills some people's momentum when they're trying to find jobs like they're like dang you know i i know all these skills i spent all this money going to boot camps going to um different conferences i wouldn't say confidence if you go to a conference you're going to network yeah that's the thing i wouldn't say yeah like certifications and training and stuff like that you know so many people spend so much time trying to perfect their craft but they're still struggling to find jobs in the market so my thing about that as well too when it comes to just like even certifications or boot camps or even just that i think the rare problem that people typically have especially when they come to certifications i don't even try to learn information they just want to get something under the belt and say hey i did this or hey i've completed this i've done that right like you can go these boot camps all you want you can take all the certifications you want to take but if you don't necessarily understand that information then it was pretty much pointless for you to do that and so a lot of times whenever people are trying to get into the industry and they are trying to make their transition actually try to get into you know the jobs most of the time it's the resumes like they don't even know like how to actually properly format their resumes they don't know how to like articulate um what boot camp they went to or what certification or what training they went to my thing is if you did the certification most likely you did some type of training whether it was self-paced or where it is you need to know how to like put that training or put that that was that information or the labs that you put onto your pr um on your resume i say for instance um certification and training you may do for that you can do that for like you know other learning or projects or whatever it was that you was doing while you was training you need to be able to articulate that because when most times when people are applying to these jobs and they're trying to make a career transition like say for instance if they were a retail manager their resume follows like retail management manager customer service and they just say have certification certification security plus yeah if i'm a recruiter this doesn't do what does it right it doesn't speak to this yeah i'm not looking for that yeah and so that's i think that's really the problem whenever they are spending this money to do this they're not properly um articulating or showing on a resume that they actually have the skill set to do that because people actually be surprised about the um the jobs they're doing right now that actually transfer over to being in the tech field so for those that are putting together your resume and you're looking to get into a field let's just let's only focus on technology you really have to focus on two things you have to focus on substance when i say substance i mean like what is it that's going to fit the criteria for the type of job you're applying to so the substance of your resume should reflect what type of job you're actually going to apply to but the second thing you have to be able to focus on is what i call information architecture and it's like how do you actually put it together like how do you take the experience that you have gained and like put it put it together put the information together to where you know somebody who's gonna actually read this is gonna be able to pick up on your actual experience so you take the substance you put it together in a way where um you know it's actually gonna sell you um in a sense so you know also think of like if you have experience somewhere how does that i think you actually had a post about this on the get me in tech uh uh page the instagram page where it talks about transferable skills like a lot of people they'll pick up on like many skills that could be transferred from one discipline to another but they don't know that they could use it so it's like you use the retail manager example um and there's somebody who's looking to transition into technology into technology they're not always fully aware that they could actually transfer some of those skills they picked up as a manager into it or another tech field where they might also end up being a manager just in a different discipline project manager correct you know just like small stuff like that um and then you brought up like certifications so how do you like take what you've learned like how do you actually put that on paper besides just saying here's the certification you know you can actually um put thing terms in there where it's like somebody's gonna pick up okay this person fully understands uh you said security plus so i'm gonna say like networking fundamentals or this person clearly understands how to do security audits you know like how can you put in this certification you put it on your resume like these are the things that i've learned that way it actually speaks more to your um actual skill set and they're not having to guess or wonder you know what skill do you actually possess versus you just saying you have a cert especially if like your your career experience isn't really as much relatable to it other than like if again the retail manager example the management experience but like if you don't have like those hard skills you know what other areas can you use them and it's going to be those things like you mentioned the boot camps the search and like projects that you might have done so i think it's good that you call those things out because not a lot of people are aware of like how to articulate the skills that they already have yeah and i feel like that's another thing that like a lot of boot counselors they end up doing as well too um they teach you skills that you need to do it or you know they try to teach you skills but they don't try to articulate and show you how you know to actually put that on your resume so it's just like all right well you took the bootcamp that's it okay what about resume like i took this like how am i supposed to market myself now i can't really show you that some do but for the most part a lot of them don't and and we can even take that back to college like yeah when we were in college i mean honestly um i didn't learn how to perfect a resume from a college um career center they i mean what they did was here's a template pretty much fill it out and you're good to go take this to a career fair yeah you know and and i think that's what so many people are experiencing is like they're relying on the resources that they're paying for to basically supplement them with what they need to get a you know a foot ahead in their careers when in reality it's just i mean i didn't have that experience at my college i've spoken with other people at other colleges who have also had a similar experience as mine as well so it's just like i think it's good um i think it's good for us to at least speak on these things because i know that people are experiencing um exactly what we might have went through at a point in time in our early yeah another milk too that i always hear about resumes especially at least it doesn't apply to the tech industry they were like oh make sure your resume is on the one page long i'm like how am i supposed to like show off all the dope stuff i'm done i can only do like one page like i i've done a lot of stuff so you can't keep me limited one page i mean now my resume is two pages but yeah that's also me up to as far as the tech industry do you think it do you think it also depends on like how much experience you have and what's relevant to the actual position yeah definitely so i have multiple resumes right right so i have resumes and i'm just like primarily only looking for like security engineer spots or maybe i'm looking for instant response engineer or senior security engineer so i have different uh resumes based on like what type of job i'm looking for tailoring them to the actual type of job right so yeah i'm kind of um i'm just slightly different so i have five years of career experience i typically keep mine on one but i also make sure just like you i i take the room so i don't like if if i'm applying for like a product management position um i'm gonna keep my experience strictly to product i'm applying to a ux position same thing i'm gonna only include my ux experience so i do know some people though like in your case where you've been working in cyber security for um so many years even though the roles might change you probably have a ton of experience that even though this might not be like a cyber security um um engineering role uh you know i still can speak on things that it might relate to and that experience should be on my resume yeah no that's and that's the thing about when it comes to security engineering because when it comes to security engineering like there are so many different disciplines that have to know like i have to know the next administration sometimes splunk administration data engineering vulnerability management instant response like it's just all these disciplines and as a security engineer they expect you to be able to deal with all these different things like we don't want you just doing this you're doing this this is this and that because at the end of the day i'm the senior security engineer so i should be able to secure any and all of these different type of um technologies so that's also another reason why my resume is also two pages long because maybe just one particular job i was doing a lot of the next administration and this shop right here i was doing pin testing and so when they see me having all that collective experience they're like oh we can use we can definitely use him for something or we can probably even consider him for a position that he even applied for so that's also kind of like and that's happened to me a couple of times actually so well tell us about um i kind of want to also hear you tell your story um just kind of shift gears a little bit tell your story about your business um get me in tech i want i want i want people to know what you're doing and what your goals are maybe even how it came about okay um so give me a tech actually came by like an accident like i always try to i always tell people i literally like accidentally got into entrepreneurship i never really cared for it yeah like i had always said i'm cool i make six figures in tech i don't have to do anything else right and so um how it came um i was always on twitter um i was always sharing like my experiences i was just pretty much sharing my tech journey i'm sharing my like financial journey of like you know me learning financial literacy me investing we just learned all these different cool things about money and about the tech industry and um every time like i talked about either tech or finance my page would just like blow up and so it got to the point like i just kind of make these long threads just detailing hey this is kind of why i got into the tech industry or hey this i got my first certification or just pretty much this telling people everything that i went through and something i noticed and i was always sharing my journeys and like some of the problems and like the trials and tribulations that i faced when i was going through that journey a lot of more people were saying oh i'm dealing with the same thing in my head i'm like dang i overcame that and this how i did it and by me sharing like all this information sharing all everything that i did or i overcame certain obstacles um in my journey i was like dang like people are really hitting me up about it and like it got to the point bro yeah even now like my dance is crazy like i was getting like 20 30 dm's a day hey i'm trying to get into the ticket and [ __ ] do you think you could help me out or hey like i mean i want to get into cyber security with some skills that could help me i would and at this point like it got so bad that i literally could not like i couldn't keep up with it yeah so i ended up coming out the name taeyeon tag i don't even know how i came up with that name it was like really catchy and so i was like all right this is what i'm gonna do when was this 2019 okay okay yeah 2019 2020 20 2019 i believe that's when that so 29th 2018 2019 is when i actually started documenting everything but 2020 is when like the tail tech thing came around or 2019 it was one of them so anyways um i thought i was like you know what i'm gonna create a blog i'm just gonna like most like the frequently asked questions i get i'm gonna write a blog about it and i'm just gonna post it and do it like that so even though i was still posting all these blogs people still dm me asking me the same exact question so i'm just like all right bro like i like at this point i'm like i i have to monetize my time like i've always been a type person i'm against like i believe information should be be free but my time shouldn't right right right so it was like at that point it was just like man like this is going crazy so i started like all right cool i'm gonna do consultation calls i was i think i was charging like 75 for an hour 75 to 100 per hour and i was getting like 30 consultations called a month and i'm just like like and i can't and i realized like everybody keep asking the same exact questions yeah and then as i said start having the consultation calls i started seeing people getting to the tech industry i should start seeing people get results and actually do that so i was like dang like i'm really i'm kind of good at this like i never really seen myself as a career coach or anything like that i was just pretty much being me and giving out free information and so like my father's literally like bro you need to create like a program to help people get to the tech industry and stuff like that and i'm just like i've always been against courses and stuff like that i'm like i'm not doing that right but then it's just like people like literally like nah bro do this dude like they ask me to do it so i'm just like i'm gonna do it and so i was just sitting there chilling just trying to think of a name of a company i'm just sitting there like this thinking like all of a sudden get me in tech like it's so catchy like oh i want to get into it give me a taste all right cool i'm gonna aim to get me a tech so i had dropped the program i think last april and uh it's been about what eight nine months probably wow i think i got about two thousand students enrolled right now and so that's amazing you begin jobs i've been having people get certified yeah i've been doing all a lot of stuff and crazy about it i don't even really just like post like oh yeah yeah like i'm gonna start but yeah yeah like it's been a lot of people even now like i had like today i was in a discord people said oh yeah i just got certified i just did this i'm like oh [ __ ] that's dope yeah yeah mind you two guys like um leading up to this so when he first started like taeyeon tech we used to be roommates yeah so he i mean i remember we used to be up sometimes man two three four in the morning um in the middle of the pandemic trying to build brands trying to build a business um you know he like he said taeyeon tech kind of started off as you know solo um um sole proprietor kind of route he was consulting helping people out and you know from there he took all of that hard time and energy and turned that into something even more valuable you know having two thousand plus course members is amazing um i also wanna know like what are your demographics looking like um so my demographic it's mostly minority men and women so um i think right now could be lying but don't don't take this take it with a grain saw i think about because i was just looking at analytics i think about 15 or 16 percent of the people that's enrolled in my course or black women wow and everything else black so that's 15 or 16 15 15 to 16 percent of women in my course enrolled are women um okay and then there's also another thing because like um i also was like something that i did like last mother's day um just like something for single moms and things like that because i know like the tech industry really can change your life and stuff like that so i think last year i think i gave about like 75 free spots for like single moms on mother's day i was just like hey if you sing a mom you want to like enroll into my give me a tech course send me an email send me a dm and i enroll you and i enroll like 65 80 people in there wow dang that's amazing congrats man so i also want to be able to tell um a bit more of our story and our journey now um you know you gave them your backstory if you've kept up with the series this far um you've heard some of my backstory and figures uh and you know i just want people to know kind of where we are and some of the things that we've come up with but before i share that if you haven't already please like subscribe leave comments um you know let us know how we can improve or like what more stories you might want to hear from us because we will be back with tavion uh on the show so uh without further ado you know i just want to be able to just share that like like we've both started our businesses but we're now into a partnership and uh we've actually uh started our partnership uh sometime last year i do believe 2021 i want to say like early early to mid 2021 somewhere around there uh and you know we're we're definitely carrying forward and moving in a much more uh modern direction doing a lot more to uh you know build a lot of buildings yeah a lot yeah yeah so um you know just you want to kind of share some of the partnership stuff that we have going on and things like that i'd be yeah so man it's honestly a lot um because men are both again uh we kind of both started running or trying to build our businesses in the pandemic and um he's always been pretty much good as resumes he's done my resume plenty of time career services and i was always kind of person like i was very hand like i knew about resumes and things like that but i was just really hands-off and it's just something i did not want to deal with versus him like he and think about like resumes he's also kind of bringing in like a ux ui design type of thing also with important information on resumes i've actually had a lot of hiring managers say oh my god like i love your resume like stuff like that so yeah like over time like i know with him like even just like the conversations we always have like at a time um like over the years and things like that like um business kind of started going very well for me um started building capital and able to ask them for me just exploit different business ventures and things like that but the thing about that was i just really kind of lacked creativity when it came to that portion of thing um really solid when it comes to technical stuff but he also has a computer you know you got a computer science background then you had the technical writing background and a product background i'm just like all right man at this point i feel like we can really like build some doses like we can build some dope at this point right right we were just kind of just sitting there just talking like about all these good ideas and then we were just like just started like writing stuff down at that point i was just like all right bro i feel like we should really just do a partnership for the most part and i mean as far as like the partnership it's basically like we're just combining everything um as far as like my self-paced stuff uh even my instructor led or even just career services to resumes but the craziest thing about that is that's not even like that's just really like low-hanging we really have kind of building uh i don't really give out too much i'm not even gonna say anything about it for the most part just because i don't want to buy the copy but it's gonna be crazy though it's really going to make people getting jobs so much easier um as well as in tech industry like it's going to be a killer it's going to be crazy yeah yeah i don't want to give too much details either but just know we're we're we're looking into the sas route software as a service route um and we'll see what we come up with from there we have a pretty good idea um but yeah we'll like i said we'll be back together on this show and what i wanted to kind of do um you guys have that have kept up have seen us talking more so about like um you know um specialized fields like i spent the first few episodes talking about product management but like this is a this is another iteration of the um of the actual tech talk series where we'll come on and like kind of share our journey as we're building um a product or building um a business together so that's something that i think you guys will take a lot away from especially if you're looking to get into tech because we're not only helping people find jobs in tech as like our passing but we're also building that like not just building a business but i actually mean building technology to do it so for those that are interested whether whether you're looking into just finding a tech career or something specialized like you want to be a dev or you're looking at product management you know you'll get a lot of different looks and feels just from some of the conversations that we're going to be having and sharing with you guys along on our journey so i thought that'd be really important for us to share and um you know here we are yeah pretty excited man so um do you have anything you want to leave people with any takeaway messages anything that you want people to know about get me in tech or anything like that yeah so one thing uh this is just like life like life advice in general um because again i'm on social media a lot and i see a lot of people um they feel like just because someone is doing something in particular and they're not pretty much there at that point bro everyone time is right on time like just because someone they're probably making a certain amount of money at a certain age like you never really know how much work they have to put in to get there so don't compare your your beginning to somebody in like that's that's the quickest way to just put yourself in like in a real depression state and just really feel like you're not doing just supposed to do like i see that a lot um i actually did that a lot when i first kind of started off showing entrepreneurship journey i'm just like dang like how's this person doing this how and then i just like realized like i got to stop doing it i got to take a step back and just kind of focus on my own thing once you just really start running your own race like the scholarship limit everything becomes so much more clearer you're not even becoming potential no one but yourself like never do that because it's a shame for you to be losing the competition that they ain't even know that was in with you so i'm just saying that um as far as like anything else i mean again you guys follow me on social media all my social media stay on tech my instagram is soundtechdio um i pretty much like always giving out content um where me talking about the tech industry or even me talking about financial literacy or investing tips or all those great things so uh yeah all right man well cool so um you guys have this information getmtech.com if you're looking for career services you can actually go to get me in tech sign up for his course and you'll get a free service through figures uh so if you guys are looking for those career services but also looking for a way in the tech that's your best way at the moment so please check us out and we'll be back on the next episode [Music] you
2022-02-15 06:24
