From Trade School to Cybersecurity Sales Engineer with Juan Mazo | Ep067

Manuel Martinez: Welcome everyone. My name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads, where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background and their experiences. For today’s episode I have with me Juan Mazo. He and I met a few months ago at a government conference. We got to…he was working one of the booths near where I was. We got to talking, some shared interests outside of work. It just happened to be around the time that the NFR, so the National Finals Rodeo, was happening. So we started continuing that conversation. Had a couple of ones after that and discovered we have a lot of shared interest both from a tech side, outside of work. So again, this is going to be a fun conversation for me. So with that I’ll introduce Juan.

Juan Mazo: Thank you for that. Thanks for having me over and my name is Juan Mazo. I currently work over at Veracode, I’m a solutions architect sales engineer, and I’ve been there for about seven years. I honestly love that job. It’s one of the coolest things that have happened to me. It’s a great opportunity for me. And one of the main reasons I want to say that is because when I actually started at that company, I was unemployed for two years. And the cool thing about it is I ended up in cybersecurity. Never really wanted to be in cybersecurity. I was always in IT though, right? So I ended up in this place. And the reason I really liked it is because it was a place where I didn’t think I had any real interest in it because I’ve always grown up around technology. But then when I got into application security, this is where you hear the stories of getting hacked, hackers, and things of that nature. And it really went down that route. And I’ve really enjoyed learning that for the last seven years.

Manuel Martinez: Wow. So then it’s interesting. I know we’ll get to why no interest and some of the things that you did before that, which probably again, trying new things. So I’ve talked about it plenty of times where I thought I wanted to be a network person. I had no interest. Or I thought I had an interest, got into it. I’m like, “Yeah, this is not for me.” And I pivoted around. So then if you can tell us a little bit about where you grew up and then eventually what you thought you might do for a career and then what you actually did to start your career.

Juan Mazo: Sure. So I grew up over in Connecticut, a small beach town called West Haven. And what was interesting there was I always knew I wanted to be in technology. An interesting thing that’s happened is ever since I was a young kid, I grew up with a really massive family. I have like 45 first cousins. And my family, when I was probably around seven, they would ask me, “What do you want to grow up to be?” And I would be like a cop, a firefighter, normal stuff. And then they said, “What would you want to do with your life?” And I was like, “I would always want to bring my mom’s family to America one day.” And they looked at me and said, “That’s really expensive.” And she’s like one of 10. So they always said, “You’re going to need to make a lot of money.” And from that point on, my answer to them immediately at that really young age was, “I guess I’ll just make a lot of money.” Now, I haven’t made a lot of money, but it’s relative, especially when you’re a kid, especially growing up. But then fast forward to around, I’m 14 years old and I go to trade school. And in trade school, you can learn to be a plumber, electrician, or work in technology, which is what I ended up doing. And I ended up picking a trade at 14. I remember we were all in an auditorium after going through every single trade freshman year of high school. And the principal says, “This is going to be your most important decision you’ve made in your life up until this point.” Again, 14 years old.

Manuel Martinez: You’re like, “Uh oh.”

Juan Mazo: Yeah. Well, everyone is sweating it a little. But I knew what trade I wanted. It was like machining, mechanic, or being in IT. And I kind of do the other things on the side. I’m really interested in manufacturing. I have a 3D printer. My sister’s in manufacturing. So we can chat about that stuff all the time. But ultimately, I ended up doing IT. So I ended up working in technology around 16 or 17, but around 15, I started doing IT work within my family. And then from that point, all the way through college, I ended up kind of having an IT business up. One of my aunts, my Tia Beatriz, love this lady. She opened a restaurant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, about the time I was born. But what I would do is I would go and post. She’s actually encouraging me, “Go post your phone number on one of those little ripped things.”

Manuel Martinez: “All the little bulletin boards.”

Juan Mazo: Yeah. And she said, “Post it here in the restaurant and people will call you.” And people would call me. And it got to the point where all the way through college, I always had what I like to think is beer money. Always. And it actually turned into a little bit of a business where I would keep 20 bucks of every repair. And I’d get a friend of mine and give them like $70 to do the whole job. But because the volume that was coming in, it was like plenty of cash for me. I did not have a lot of needs at that time. And eventually, I ended up working at a helicopter factory and IT support stuff in the college itself. But then my first real job out of college, I ended up doing trade floor support in the hedge fund finance industry world. So that right there was my first job out of college. And honestly, it was awesome because I was the youngest person on the team by a lot. I remember graduating college and all my friends are… It’s like June and all my friends are like, “Yeah, so I got this job lined up. I got this job lined up.” And in my head, I’m like, “Well, I don’t have any jobs lined up.” So I ended up going and applying. And I applied for like a month straight for jobs. It was literally my job. If I don’t have a job, I should be applying 40 hours a week. And I ended up getting a job interview. And I remember the… What’s the word? Not the headhunter, but the…

Manuel Martinez: The recruiter?

Juan Mazo: Recruiter, yeah. Headhunter works, but recruiter’s a little bit more professional. And I would never forget her first name. Her name is Claire. She says, “Hey, you’re about to have this call with the CTO of a hedge… Of a MSP integrators that works only at hedge funds.” And she’s like… So I remember she called me and I answered poorly and she said, “You need to pick up the phone and say, hey, this is Juan.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool. Sorry. I’ll do that.” And so immediately after I hang up about five minutes later, the CTO calls and I answer, “Hey, this is Juan.” And that was probably the first time I actually had like profession… How to be a professional IT person thing. And I’m in like the shop at the college where I was doing support there. And the conversation went well, I hung up. Five minutes later the recruiter called me up again and first words out of her mouth are, “What did you say to them?” And I was like, “Oh.”

Manuel Martinez: I’m in trouble.

Juan Mazo: Yeah. Like, “What do you mean?” She’s like, “They want to see you in New York tomorrow.” And I was like, “Oh, cool. All right. Well, hold on.” I’m like, “Still, I got to graduate, but I can do the interview and all this other stuff and I’ll figure it all out.” And I ended up getting that job and youngest person on the team stayed there for about two and a half years, learned a bunch.

Manuel Martinez: So before we get too far into it… So one of the questions I have is like, what types of skills do you think you learned and developed doing that? Like with your tia telling you, “Hey, put this on the job board.” And then you mentioned the recruiter explaining to you how to answer professionally. So I’m sure at the other time you’re like, “Hello.” Just like, “Hey, hello. Oh yeah, I can fix your computer.” Or what types of jobs were you getting? Was it just like basic PC support? I’m just curious.

Juan Mazo: No, that’s a good question. Right. Technology, everything is… In technology, anything technical you can learn, but then there’s like soft skills is what they call it, right? People skills. And so when I was a young kid, 14 through 21, 22, I learned a lot. I did a lot of small computer repair. Hey, my computer is broken and reformat. I was literally charging like 60 bucks to reformat machines, 100 bucks, whatever the price was to individuals. Once I started the volume stuff, it was a little bit different. But the interesting thing was I ended up partnering with one of my aunt’s friends. His name is Hector. He owns like a multi-services business where people, they only speak Spanish, but they want to do business in their language. And this is how he explained it to me. He said, “Hey, these folks are smart. They just don’t speak English. They want to do business in their language. I had advertised computer repair. I need someone to do that for me.” And so I would end up doing volume through him, support for home individuals and small businesses. I even ended up working with a car wash that I worked at originally. And then I ended up doing all their networks support, rebuilding their entire network, but it was all small stuff right? But yeah, typical computer repair, network repair, network setup. And the interesting thing is for the Spanish side of the house, I remember when I started working with Hector, I went on Wikipedia and was like, “motherboard in Spanish”. And so I learned a bunch of words that I needed to know to explain what I was diagnosing, troubleshooting things of that nature with those folks.

Manuel Martinez: And it’s funny you mentioned that because I’ve done, and a lot of it was over the phone or I would go visit family in Mexico and again, Spanish speaking, they’re like, “Oh, you know computers.” I’m like, “Yeah.” And they would go to troubleshoot, you’re speaking to them. And for example, even the @ sign, like, “Oh, just send me an email.” And I was like, I would spell it out. And then I was like, “The little symbol.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh.” Same thing, right? You’re looking it up to like, “What is the @ sign in Spanish? How do you say that?” And it’s like, “Arroba.” And I was like, “Dude, I would have never have guessed that.” So understanding that a lot of the words are the same, like technology is like, “Hey, if you say Windows, oh, you just kind of say it in a Spanish accent.” But you mentioned a lot of the people skills. So apart from understanding the language, the tech terms and the different languages, like what are some of those people skills? Is it kind of dealing with frustrated people? Is it also understanding, you know, like what? So one of the things I look back now and even what I do is sometimes the problem that they tell you isn’t really the problem. They’re just like, “It doesn’t work.” Okay, well, what does that mean? And a lot of times, especially when I was doing PC repair, is how to build trust with the person and say, “Hey, what happened? Like, how did it get this way?” And a lot of times they’re very defensive. They’re like, “I didn’t do it.” And I’m like, “No, no, no. Like, listen, I can sit here for an hour and try and troubleshoot and figure it out. Bro, just tell me. Like, I’m not here to judge. I just, I wanted to get this done in 10 minutes versus 60 minutes.

Juan Mazo: Sure. You know, I was just a very like honest person, individual. You know, the machine came in broken. They would give me some symptoms, right? And I was really good at fixing these things. A lot of times it was memory or if the hard drive was slow and it was like, you know, loading forever for Windows, so like new hard drive, right? So, you know, a lot of folks didn’t really care ultimately what it was that was broken as long as they can get it back. And do I lose my data or not? Right? What’s the cost behind it all? And so, you know, the people skills I would say is because there’s an aspect here where the technology is important for you to know. And then if you’re good at fixing things and you return a fixed computer, like, “Oh, this person knows stuff,” right? Like, and that goes a long way and then it’s all word of mouth. I fixed, honestly, my family was the first customers I had. They, I fixed all their stuff nonstop. Like, I would show up to grandma’s house and be like, “Computer’s broken again.” I’m like, “Cool, I’ll just fix it.” And ultimately they were like, “Oh, there’s people who are interested.” And then that’s when my aunt’s eventually like, “Oh, you should just put your phone number here.” And right? But then the social skills is more like a lot of folks are scared to try to do anything, right? Like an example, I have a really good friend. He still has a small IT business. And I remember this was during college. He said, “Hey, you want to go grab some beers? I know where the dollar beers are tonight, right?” This is my buddy Mark. I love this guy. And he would, one day I said, “No, I can’t.” And he’s like, “Why?” And I said, “I have customers to deal with.” And he said, “Customers? What are you talking about?” And this is in college. And then he looked at me and says, “I tell him, I’m like, “Hey, I’ve got to go fix some computers. I got to go pick them up, drop them off, whatever the scenario was.” And he said, “My own grandmother wouldn’t let me fix it, her computer.” And I was like, “Well, that’s interesting. All right, sure. I don’t know what to tell you, but I got to go fix these computers.” Next day, he comes to me and says, “Yeah, so I got my own customers now.” Yeah. And so it encouraged him. And so that level of social skills is to not be afraid to try something with folks, right? And this is a really sharp individual to begin with. So it’s almost like before the professional side of the house, I was someone who was, “Oh,” listening, “Hey, you have a problem.” Just actively having a conversation. And a lot of times someone will say, “Hey, you’re so and so’s son, I heard you’re good with computers. Can you come look at mine?” “Okay, sure. When do you want to do this? When do you have an opportunity for me to come by, pick it up, or see it,” or whatever the case was. And so that level of conversation and social skills is a little important, which I think when it comes to the technology side of the house, a lot of folks are a little awkward by default or very reserved, right? So I think those level of social skills are something that I kind of learned more from being around a massive family.

Manuel Martinez: Same. I attribute it now and looking back, because I’m in big crowds and I don’t know if you… I would say you kind of develop, right? Whether you’re introvert and extrovert, I’m extroverted just because, again, big family, a bunch of cousins. So then when I’m around big groups of people, it energizes me. Being at home by myself, working from home, I need to go out to networking events. I need to go have lunches because just kind of sitting there by myself, Zoom, it’s not the same thing. But you get me around a group of people and I get to talk and I’m like, “I can do this all day.”

Juan Mazo: Interesting. Me personally, I could stay home all day for weeks. As long as I have my core things that I need, I’m a happy individual. If I ever do feel the need that I want to go talk to someone, I will literally walk out to this bar in the art district and start talking to random people. So it’s like, I’m very weird in that sense, right? Because I have family who don’t want to be at home all day. They’re very extroverted. And I have best friends that are like, “Why do we have to leave tonight? I’d rather stay in the house forever.” So I’m very in the middle. I don’t know how.

Manuel Martinez: It just happens. Again, just being from a large family doesn’t guarantee that, but I think it does make you at least maybe a little bit more comfortable talking to people.

Juan Mazo: Exactly. And yeah, the first time I ever heard that, “Hey, I think you’re a very professional individual,” before going into the professional world, right? So still college, high school. My father had a friend who I picked up his laptop to work on it. And he comes to me after the fact and says, “The moment you came to my house and told me what you were going to do with this computer and how you’re going to… You spoke so professionally to me.” And I was like, “Oh, interesting. This is just the way I talk to folks.” But I think it’s… A lot of folks, for example, take a car problem. If you speak to someone who doesn’t know about cars and you tell them, “Oh, I got a little bit of oil leak.” They’re like, “Oh, I don’t know. Sounds like a huge problem. It should probably be a mechanic.” And that’s the level of conversation you’ll get out of most folks. Whereas with me, I’m a curious individual. I’ll probably dive into, “Oh, it’s probably something like this. You may want to… Is it leaking out the oil cap?” At that point, most folks are like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Right? So I think being able to pick up where folks know what you’re talking about and then ultimately, you build trust by default, by being an honest individual. Even saying, “Oh, I honestly think it could be this. I could be wrong. It could be another thing. You may want to speak to this person or look into this type of thing.

Manuel Martinez: So then now you’ve picked up these skills, doing it on your own and developing a business. And it sounds like you’re also encouraging and people are seeing you and they start their own business. So then you take all that information. You now start your first corporate job. So what was the experience there and that transition going from, “I make my own hours. I do what I want. I can take on clients. I can reject them.” Versus now, you have a structure and onboarding and they’re telling you what you are and aren’t going to do.

Juan Mazo: You know what was interesting there was, sure, I was a little bit autonomous in the sense of when you hire someone, you really don’t want to micromanage them. They’re there to take work off of your plate. And so I showed up to take work off of someone’s plate. So there was a little bit of a learning curve of how do I speak to these folks. Now, an interesting, that interview was interesting. The interview was great because they had some good questions in there of they were trying to understand how you would deal with these individuals. The customers I worked with were like all millionaires. The way the model worked was there was a floor in New York and I was in this IT room and everyone on that floor was kind of their own hedge fund, their own business. And so they asked me, you know, in this scenario, person A calls as their computer’s on fire. Person B says, “I have an issue.” They both are CEOs of their own company. Literally, they’ll make like $20 million a year apiece on their own, not the business, but on their own. How do you handle that? And so I had to come up with what they called the white glove service, like the ability to speak to these folks comfortably, confidently, understand what’s going on, triage and say, “Hey, come this way,” and that type of thing. There was another really interesting question, which was like, “All right, let’s say traders happen to bad day and they embed a keyboard in the wall.” That was the actual question in the interview. And I said, you know, I would just go get this person another keyboard. So I remember speaking to my manager after the fact, and he said, “You answered your questions really well.” So that’s that one, right? There was some technical stuff as well, where I just said, you know, if I had Google, I could get you a better answer. Which was true. He said, “Hey, honestly, you answered questions in a way that were really good.” And so you got to think back to when you hire people, you want to be able to get them to do work, you know, get the work off of my plate. And I think I showed that. And then kind of trialed by fire after that, right? If the phone rang, like you, you know, you had to pick it up and email support of all these various customers, migration works, sys admin work, network administration work. But all of it has this like, like layer of customer service and people skills. That is, it’s very high up, right? It’s white glove service to all these hedge fund managers. And that is a set of skills that I don’t think you can easily develop by working only in a helicopter factory, only working in like a software company, you know?

Manuel Martinez: Right. So then, you know, you kind of get in and you’re taking work off of people’s plates. So it seems like you like to take on responsibility. And again, probably from you also having people you’re like, I don’t want to do more work by having to tell this person, you got to do this, you got to do that. Like, sure, maybe they come to you for guidance or just like direction. But outside of that, you’re right, it is for them to work autonomously. What did you kind of learn in the two years there and decide, okay, it’s time for me to kind of move on? Was it you felt like there was more to learn? Is it just like, hey, I’m looking for a next challenge? Like, just curious, what made you ultimately decide like, you’ve got more experience and now you’ve got corporate experience. And did you think to yourself like, okay, now I’m more marketable, kind of going back to your childhood, like, all right, I’m going to make more money? Is it kind of, I’m looking for that next, you know, financial advancement?

Juan Mazo: Yeah no, honestly, the position itself was great, but it was very draining. So if you’re familiar with New York, or for anyone who is watching this and is familiar with New York, they have what’s called the Red Line. It’s a train station that goes all the way into Connecticut. And I was the second to last stop on this thing all the way deep in Connecticut. So it was like an hour and a half, two hour drive ride on the train. We had some customers in between that could drive to from time to time. But it was really draining. I saved a bunch of money by not having a life, because I would literally be on a train at 5.30 in the morning to get into the office around 7, 7.30 and come out around, get home around 9, and then have to wake up and do it all over again. And I ended up kind of thinking like, maybe I can find something else. I was at a point where I was kind of running. They had folks kind of running sites on their own, right? And no one called ever saying like, this guy is not solving my problems. So I thought to myself, I can probably be a sys admin somewhere. And I ended up looking around, I ended up running the IT department at a software company in the clinical trial space. They kind of did both. And I remember this was my first, like, I had a lot of experience hardening systems, right? You look up processes, and then you build your own processes on how to do it all. And then I said to myself, I can probably do this IT job. And it was going, it was actually a pretty big task. It was a cool job. It gave me a lot of interesting insights and opportunities that I lean on today, honestly. Because what ended up happening is I went over there mostly because A) it was closer. I would take a scooter there to work sometimes in the summer, 5, 10, 15 minute drive. Before I left that job, I saved a bunch of money and I bought a house. And I ended up becoming a landlord at 25, something like that. So I had like three apartments, moved in my family to the first floor. And I said, all right, I don’t need to kind of keep doing this. I do want to make a little bit more money, but I actually ended up taking a pay cut to become like the first IT person in this company. And from that point on, I ended up building out the IT department. And the interaction that will always stick with me is I remember there’s a piece of software that we wanted to get to a certain specific level of security, maybe like SOC 2 compliance, maybe road mapped onto that. Those are aspirations. And I was talking to someone in development in the cafeteria. And I said to them, hey, so what are you guys doing to secure the code? And she was like, stirring her coffee and looked up and said, isn’t that your job? And I was like, oh, man, this is like not what I want to do. Like I don’t want to like, I like security, but a lot of the security concepts and things of that nature were kind of like a really dry concept that I did not want to be a part of. I like doing the administration stuff. But while I was there, I actually ended up writing the first set of security policies for everything, whether it was the business, the software side, how we’re doing threat modeling. And honestly, it wasn’t something I did all on my own. I had a lot of help from other individuals in there who actually would pick up the like NIST 500 PDF and print it out and read it out and read it and be like, here’s your copy. And this is so dense. And now you go through it, you learn from it. And then you eventually, now where I’m at now, you understand how to apply it appropriately. And what’s interesting is somewhere between that job and this job, I assumed the world caught up and everyone kind of understands things better. It’s still the same. It’s a weird concept, especially something when you talk about like risk, how to secure things according to risk. And the biggest thing I missed, which I got, I think I’ve received a really good education now on it through experience is you can’t go to a business and say we need this thing because it’s what everyone else is doing. It’s what you’ve been taught. No, you need to tie it to, honestly, a revenue outcome, right? Hey, if you become secure, you’re going to be able to generate these audit reports on demand when you have a new customer. You’ll shorten the deal sales cycle and you’ll be able to close more business, which insecurity, a lot of folks, security, IT, a lot of folks think, oh, this is operations, your cost center. But if you can start having those types of conversations, you end up actually getting a lot of your initiatives approved. And I find myself speaking to a lot of folks who are doing this kind of for the first time. And I try to say, hey, why do you want to do this? And they’re like, oh, it’s important. Why? What does the business care? Is there an initiative? Even at the highest level, are people saying this is like something we want to take on, right? So not too sure where I was going with what was your original question?

Manuel Martinez: So it was just that it was just kind of like what are some of the skills that you developed and what made you kind of move on so that, you know, into this role for the sysadmin job. And it sounds like it was really a lot of just trying to be closer to home, you know, just being tired. Now, two questions that I have there is the first one is, you know, you’re having to develop a lot of these policies. You’re the first person, you know, you’re the first sysadmin. Was it just your past experience of kind of running your own business and doing things from scratch that made you feel comfortable and you’re getting experience to just say, all right, yeah, I can take this on. Like, I may not know exactly everything to do, but I know enough and I can figure it out because that’s a thing that everybody’s experience is going to be different. But a lot of people are like, well, no, I don’t know. Or like they move into that. And there’s a, you know, a lot of people feel imposter syndrome. And for me, I was always like, I don’t care what the job is. I may not have an experience. I know that I can and will figure it out. Is it going to take me a month? Is it going to take me five months? Like, I don’t know, but it’s going to happen. And especially, you know, you mentioned on the security side, like having to read and research. Is that something that you’re just naturally curious and want to learn and understand that? Is that kind of what drove you to say, oh, well, we’ve got to set up policies? Like, all right, well, yeah, you have other people helping you, but you still have to do some of the work yourself.

Juan Mazo: Yeah, I’ve always – one way I like to think of myself is I always like doing something I know very little about. And I’ll feel very comfortable doing it. Unless it’s like, hey, you have to do this novel thing for the first time, then I’m like, I don’t think I have all the knowledge for that. But coming into a company that was already 10 years old, they just never really had security policies in place. Where I was working at hedge funds, where one of the services we offered was like turnkey IT service, like day one, you’ll become compliant enough for the trading organizations or like NASDAQ or whoever it was where they say, you know, secure password, length, things of that nature. I took all that knowledge and was able to say, yeah, I can definitely do that for this organization. And then you end up kind of just learning. I’ve always felt comfortable doing things I didn’t know much about. And I think that’s, I think on its own, that’s a pretty good marketing banner. Like, I know a lot of folks who don’t feel that way, right? They’ll plan forever for this perfect thing, and then they’ll never execute on it. So being in technology, you kind of don’t always have those opportunities to plan things perfectly and make them happen. Alternatively, for example, I remember we had a big project refresh where we need to get everyone on Active Directory at that organization, because they’ve been around for 10 years and never had Active Directory. And I was able to say this is the day it’ll be done based on some rough calculations, was able to do that. So it’s, you know, one side is normal stuff, the other side is doing this risk based approach to software security and not knowing what that was about. But again, it was something I felt comfortable with. And ultimately, yeah, you, I wrote a lot of these policies, like V1 of those policies. And I think that knowledge there, you know, feeling comfortable enough to first understand what was the source documents saying, and then writing them so that they can achieve kind of those requirements. And actually writing policies, in my opinion, are kind of simple, because especially if you have a regulatory framework, you look at that, you turn it all into a checklist. And now you’re writing kind of policies to adhere to those requirements, because ultimately, folks are going to like look at your policy and some regulatory checklist and how are you achieving this, you know, okay, this is what you say you do. And then a lot of times they’ll look for the evidence of doing exactly that.

Manuel Martinez: And now, throughout their career, and kind of you mentioned it, where you’re at now versus kind of when you first started that tying projects to business initiatives, revenue generating things, what was that turning point where you finally said, oh, this is how I have to do it, because I’ve written a couple posts and I’ve talked to people about it. Like that was a skill, same thing, like you, oh, this is cool technology, it’s going to do all these cool things, right? Like, why are we going to do it? Well, because it’s going to help. And you do it and it either doesn’t get implemented, or if it does get implemented, nobody uses it. So you know, you’ve wasted a bunch of time and money doing nothing. It’s not until you tie it to something that the business cares about. Hey, this is going to save you money, make you money, it’s going to, you know, get you in compliance. Like, what was that moment where you’re like, oh, this is how I have to approach it.

Juan Mazo: Sure. So sales helped a bunch, right? Working in sales, seven years ago when I started, you kind of have to qualify and disqualify opportunities. And a lot of times I’d work with my reps, they would bring me opportunities and you want to make sure that they qualify the opportunity enough to say there is something here or there’s something that’s not here. And most times I would hear that, hey, you’re going to do a demo on this, you’re going to do a presentation because, you know, these are the requirements they need to pass SOC 2, they need to have SOC 2 in a year’s time. They say they will be scanning for security vulnerabilities in their code or code weaknesses, whatever the case may be. And then there is a budget set aside. And so you kind of hear that a bunch and then you’re like, okay, whenever you start any conversation with anyone at that point, you try to understand are these the cases or not. And the worst thing that can happen is you have an individual who kind of forced their way into a demo. So the customer side of the prospect and they say, yeah, no, I just got hired here. So right away you’re like, hold on, you don’t want to make changes. Speaking from experience, you do not want to make changes at this new job that you just got hired into. But a lot of folks feel like I need to make something happen. And so you’ll hear, I just got hired here, cool. So you know nothing about this organization because then you’ll start asking like who do we go to to get things signed? How much authority do you have to purchase with? And if they keep saying, I don’t know, we’ll ultimately end up in a conversation of if you go through this whole process, trial our software, and then we generate a quote for you, you’re going to go back to your business, your boss, and your boss is going to say, I didn’t even ask for this. And you got to understand what is the cost of a meeting. So our company, our whoever, whenever you’re working, you know, there’s your salary, the salary of your coworker on the phone call for an hour, and then you have that person’s salary for an hour. Now imagine they go and just start executing like a trial, engaging folks from other parts of the organization. Management knows nothing about this. And then they find out what are you up to? And they say we had like two or three one hour conversations, add up those salary numbers, that’s a lot of money lost, especially if there was never an initiative to begin with. So I’ll usually and this hasn’t happened to me in a long time. But when I if you cover like small business sales, that’s when you run into folks who are new. Maybe they were like me when I got my second job, right? Got into management. And you, you end up having to say if you want to have success at your job, listen to us. Number one, do you have an initiative? Yes or no? Number two, does your boss know that you’re talking to us? Right? Like find out if that’s true. And if let’s say you’re not talking to them, hey, go find out from your boss. Is there real initiatives right now? And number three is there’s a lot you can do for free, like quote unquote, right? Number one, they hired you. Most security folks, maybe they’re making somewhere around like 80 to $100,000. I said they just invested 100,000 into you. You need to show a little return on your own. Before you go and spend 50,000 100,000 another piece of software, right? So show some value, you know, get in there, start documenting applications. If you’re an app sec, right, start documenting the network. If you’re in the systems administration, start looking at what processes and procedures exist. And then start seeing if you can make changes that you yourself can be kind of the value add in your role to the organization. And then once they see a little bit of that, you might be able to go to your boss and your boss may say, hey, what kind of initiatives do you have for the year? What kind of plans? Or it might come from the top. The business might say, hey, you know, the reason most people get hired because of an initiative, right? They’ll say the reason you got hired is because we want to get more secure because we want to become publicly traded or whatever the case is going to be. So your boss gets hired, then those kind of initiatives end up on your boss’s shoulders and then you have to go help execute all those things. So it helps to learn that. And a lot of people don’t get that. Again, technology folks, social things, like it could miss them a little.

Manuel Martinez: Right. You touched on something there that I really, well, actually two things. The first one that I’m going to go is you mentioned from experience, you don’t want to make changes right away being the new person. What was that experience? Because it sounds like we’ve all had that. We’ve all done something where you’re like, oh man, like, and you learn from it. What was that experience where you said, hey, trust me, you don’t want to do this. What was that happened that you did?

Juan Mazo: Sure. So that was a fun one. I remember I was in that second job in this software sales company. And the first thing I said, everyone was coming to me saying, oh, you’re going to make all these policies happen. You’re going to make all these changes happen in the technology landscape. And I said, no, no, like I don’t even know what’s going on. But then you fast forward about a year and a half later and we were a big Azure shop at the time. And I was negotiating a quote for our spend. It was going to be like a million dollars a year, but our spend was already like way higher than that. So it was going to be a net savings. And so I just need to see what the quote was like. And this was a time when I don’t think much people knew how to even understand the prices of like compute. Right. This was like Azure cloud services, which I don’t know if you remember that, but that’s very old. That’s like 1.0 version of stuff. Right. And so I didn’t quite understand. I said, I just want to see it in the quote. And they said, cool, let me get your CEO’s email. And I was like, sure. And I hand them their email. And then the next day the CEO gets a quote for a million dollars through DocuSign, like, hey, just signed this now type of thing. And then it goes to the to me, it was like, oh, hey, sorry, like, hey, I’m working on this thing. You shouldn’t worry about it. And then legal gets involved and legal sent me this massive email, which I think was overblown. Like, I don’t know if I look at things now as if I if this was my business, how would I handle it? And again, CEO might have gotten mad and legal sent me this massive email saying why it’s a problem. And I and my boss says, yeah, you shouldn’t have given out the CEO’s email. CEO’s emails everywhere. You can go on Google and find it. That being said, it was like, hey, loud and clear. The only time moving forward, like any quotes or generate, I said I need to see it first. Like no, no one else. And and I try to help my during sales where I am now. I’ll tell folks like, hey, make sure like it’s going to this individual. And a lot of times folks know, right. But that was something where it caused a little bit of controversy at that organization. Like, why are you doing this? My boss is well aware of what I’m up to, you know, so this was his ask.

Manuel Martinez: Right. So it’s just like an optics standpoint because they’re like, oh, who’s this person trying to make this million dollar purchase? And they just they don’t have context. And you’re like, well, wait a minute. We’re not at that step yet. I’m just trying to do my due diligence and get to that point. So it’s really just kind of understanding that process.

Juan Mazo: Yeah. And this was all before cloud was like this was when cloud was the buzzword. Now the buzzword is what, AI? Right. Which I love. I don’t know if we spoke about this earlier when we met over the coffee shop, but there’s like these similarities I’m picking up. So when when I was at that organization, I said, hey, we need to migrate the finance server from the server room that is below a bathroom into the cloud. And they said, absolutely not. And so today I’ll speak to customers and I said, hey, we have this like AI thing and it’ll help write secure code for you. And they’ll say, absolutely not. And so I’m like, this is following the trend, the same trend.

Manuel Martinez: Yeah. Well, and you’re right. There are a lot of the trends, like a lot of that same thing. Like you get those like early adopters, like it’s the buzzword. We’ve got to do this. And again, we don’t know what the business problem is. We don’t know what the use case. We don’t know how to tie this to the business, but everybody’s talking about it. We’ve got to do it. The other one, and it kind of ties into what you were talking about, you know, different meetings because you and I had this conversation. We were at that coffee shop, at Mothership. We talked about, you know, doing that type of assessment of, hey, what’s this costing, right? Like we’re wasting time and money and people don’t see it that way. Like, oh, well, I’m just meeting with you. Well, yes. But there’s a cost to your time. There’s a cost to my time. The more people that we bring in into this, again, like if you look at it from a per hour rate, like even if you’re salary, you look at a per hour rate, like that’s what you have to think. Like, is it worth $2,000 for us to have this, you know, 30 minute, one hour meeting with 20 people? Probably not. So how did you come about kind of thinking in that manner? Because there’s times where like, I’ll think about it at some point, but it’s more like, hey, I’m just, I don’t want to waste time. Like this can be that famous thing. Like this could have been an email type of thing, but you actually approach that both in your professional and personal life. It’s like, what’s the dollar amount per hour? Is it worth, even from a personal standpoint, we talked about it. Okay. I can go change the oil on my car, right? Like if I have the extra time or I need that break, I’ll do it. But what is, what can I generate in that hour? And is it cheaper for me to do it? Or is it more expensive for me? Like, if I’m getting paid $100 an hour and it’s going to cost me $50 at the Jiffy Lube, like, how did you come about with that type of mindset?

Juan Mazo: That same job, that same job. They were very tight on their numbers. They ran a very human intensive, labor intensive portion of a business called clinical trials, which is essentially, it’s just, we need bodies, literally bodies to do this thing. And so I remember, I was on a phone call and there was a project manager on the phone call. And then I guess the way it works is the project manager will keep tab of everyone on that call. And they said, hey, for you, we charge like, I think it was a hundred or 200 bucks an hour. They’re like, you’re super expensive to get on a phone call. Like what, again, I was like, what do you mean? I had no idea what you’re talking about. He’s like, oh yeah. So like, you know, if I get on the call, it’s like 50 bucks an hour. You were charging 200 bucks an hour. Really? What? So he’s like, and then they dive into it even further. These are expensive phone calls. These calls cost the customer this much. And so then they look at it that way, right? Because they offer support and they charge per hour. Then the other way was same company. And we would have a massive meeting when we were creating, we were doing threat modeling. And threat modeling was like one of the most fun things I’ve done. And I still enjoy it. It’s like kind of like, Hey, how can we break in? And you with the right folks, it’s kind of fun and you can get paid for it. So the threat modeling that we did was for that piece of software. And it had legal representation, head of like the clinical trials organization, head of technology, the head of the various dev, like dev leads were in the calls. And you know, maybe some of the additional folks below all of them. And I remember the PM, the head PM on that her name was Kat, awesome individual helped me a bunch. I think she would beat me with books at some point. She was awesome. She was super nice. It’s nice to find folks like that who’ll invest in you. But ultimately, she would say these, these meetings are like two, three, four hours long, but we need them. And those are expensive. And you and she really, you’re the one leading these things. But she was really the one kind of keeping it all and going right. And, and so somewhere between those two kind of conversations, I end up or experiences, I end up learning, Hey, you know, what is my cost to do something, right? And at that time, I ended up starting a business on the side where I was like selling products online. And so you know, now for me, it was even more real understanding, hey, I’m paying this much in labor a week, my labor goes up, if sales goes up, then the profit margin needs to still be there or get better. So somewhere along those experiences, I end up learning, what is it going to cost to get things done? And becoming a homeowner, I had it easy in the beginning, because my family would just tell me like what the cost was. And the family price was always for me, still sticker shock at being a homeowner. I was like, what do I just got to this place? I got to replace mechanical on it already. And ultimately, you end up learning, okay, what is the cost of a given task, right? And, and, and at that point is when you start figuring out, you know, I can do it on my own, it’s going to take so many hours, and I could probably get it done. But in that time, can I do something else that could be more valuable, right? And a really good recent experience, which I don’t know if I shared that one with you with, it was a sink, my girlfriend said it’s leaking, it’s broken. I know exactly what we need to do. And she’s like, can you do it? And I was like, I don’t know if I want to do it. That’s number one. I don’t know if I want to get in there. It’s awkward, like scenario and setup. And then number two, I will definitely get to a point where I’ll be overwhelmed trying to fix this thing that’s broken, not having the right tools, having the right tools is a massive important piece. Right? And then, and if you get stuck with the wrong tools, you look up the river with no paddle. And it’s like, you’ve got to get it fixed because you can’t live with no sink, right?

Manuel Martinez: Your water’s turned off, right?

Juan Mazo: Yeah, it’s a problem, right? So I remember I was – I got into it, I was like, I think I can do this. The thing was so corroded. I actually got like halfway there. I disconnected the sink, which is the easiest part of the whole – everything else I was like, I can’t do this. So my girlfriend’s brother came in and he actually fixed it and did the rest of it. But even for him, it was a pain. And I was like, so this took us like three hours. And I went into my office, I did a little math, I said, under $100, like $100 an hour or less, get someone else to do it. So it was like, what is it? $120 and it’ll take the guy maybe an hour, hour and a half, roughly $60 an hour. Right? So yeah, I’ll pay that all day. Get me out of that scenario, I’ll come home and it’ll be fixed, it’ll be done.

Manuel Martinez: Right. And in that time, you’re probably doing something else that will either help you generate more money or learn a skill or you’re doing something else that’s even if you’re not generating money, it’s something that’s of more value to you.

Juan Mazo: Yeah, well, so it gives you a certain level of freedom to do something else. And honestly, I think one of the biggest things folks can do is invest in yourself, whether you’re reading books, listening to podcasts, going to these conferences and meeting individuals, right? And then from there, you can have even more interesting conversations kind of moving forward. So it’s important to understand when you should do something and when you should not do something.

Manuel Martinez: Right. You mentioned investing in yourself. And remember, I think we touched on it a little bit, like you’re building your technical skills, you have all these other things, again, reading books, taking courses, certifications, there’s a gambit of things that you can do. You and I talked about us, even if it’s just a hobby, a project, we talked about AI earlier and just like, hey, I’m playing with cloudcode and I’m doing ChatGPT and you are able to take those experiences, you and I met. Sure, I read and I talked to other people, but when I talked to you, you were talking about things differently like, hey, I even put my AIs against each other, right? Or my chat bots against you. I’m like, wait a minute, what? It gives you a different perspective. And I think that that’s that investment that you’re talking about, like, hey, I learned it. I played with these things. I can watch YouTube videos. I can do all the things, but then bouncing ideas off of somebody else. I think is that has been the biggest upskill for me. And really, I’m not saying everybody has to do it and it’s not for every situation, but at some point, you get to a point where, again, that cost per dollar, like I can go through, I can spend a week trying to learn and figure this out by myself. I can spend an afternoon with you and upskill that much faster. Now you might say like, hey, I get paid to do this professionally. I’m going to charge you a couple hundred bucks. And again, you kind of do that cost analysis and you’re like, well, this is a no brainer. I can spend 40 hours or can pay him for four hours. And now that other, you know, 36, I’m doing something else. So what are some of the things that you do to kind of continue to invest in yourself and upskill?

Juan Mazo: Sure. So by nature, I’m a very curious person. And if I meet an individual that has like an interesting – interesting approach to anything and it like resonates, I kind of want to dig in a little bit more. Right. But you know, one of the biggest things that happened is when I was 26, I read like 26 books in a year. So that’s like a book every other week. And that was the first time I actually read anything. And even then I cheated. It was all audible. One of the best books I can recommend anyone read is Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. Him and Tim Ferriss, they all talk about systems in a way. And you know, there’s this imposter syndrome as well, but you know, both of those books kind of address those concepts. And you end up making friends in weird places that you can have these really interesting, engaging conversations with. And then if you’re lucky and fortunate, those relationships go on for a very long time. And so I think some of the, you know, some of the things you can do to invest in yourself is having the right types of friends to have the right types of conversations with. Right. So like my family, I love them to death. We can talk sports all day. They know I don’t talk sports. Right. But I’ll be in the room. Right. I can kind of chop it up and I can pick a team at some point. But to really change the conversation that you’re having all the time helps. And a lot of folks would think, oh, I don’t even know what to say. Well, think about what room you’re in and what type of conversations are being had. And if those things are of interest to you. Right. So a really long time ago, my best friend lived in my town. And I remember we, every Sunday, this was back when I was still working in New York, I’d go and play video games with him every Sunday and watch anime. That was like a thing we did unconsciously. It wasn’t like it was scheduled as something I could do on a Sunday. And then he told me, yeah, I’m moving to Miami. And I was like, moving to Miami? And a lot of times folks say things and I would kind of let it go. It didn’t really register. I’m like, oh, he’s going to move for sure. Maybe. Right. And then the first Sunday comes where he’s not there. And I was like, dang, I don’t know what to do right now. And it was because we had interesting conversations, even though we were just playing video games. And it was, he started online business and was able to do a bunch of things that allowed him the opportunity to move to Florida to live in Miami. And I remember eventually I said, Hey man, I call him up. He’s like, what’s up? And I’m like, so you’re really in Miami. He’s like, yeah, you should come visit. And I’m like, okay. And like a week later I was visiting him in Miami. And, and I realized, you know, by chance I made these friends who invested in themselves heavily. This is one individual that whole group of friends are folks who, who, who will make the book recommendations. And I read them, you know, and so I would say, you’re going to meet folks, you’re going to come across content where it says, Hey, you should, you know, this is what I read. You should take a note and go read it. So it’s a little bit of the right folks, the right kind of things coming in and then executing on it. So those 26 books I read really did change my life, honestly, in a way where, you know, I ended up being unemployed for two years, but also I learned so much about marketing, about what I wanted about like happiness, like happiness, I think is one of the things that are the most important goals that individuals should kind of strive for. Because you’ll end up eventually at some point saying, I don’t know what I want to do. And when you get to that point, I highly recommend you just go start reading books. Because a lot of times books for me give me answers, I had no idea existed, or give me the words of what like, I think I’m feeling, right?

Manuel Martinez: Yes, 100%. Like that’s something that I, I’ve noticed is being able to express myself better. Like the more you read, the more you’re introduced to words, and I’m a big, I’m a big reader too. Like, I love the Kindle. And the reason is, is I will come across words. And I’m like, I used to have to pull out my phone or like, you know, in a book and you know, you Google it. And now I can just highlight it and gives me a definition, how to pronounce it. And I’m like, Oh, okay. And again, I may not use it, but the next time I come across it, it’s like, Oh, okay, I understand this. And I have been able to express myself better like, Oh, that’s exactly the situation I came across. Or I know what he’s talking about, because you start to resonate and understand. And sometimes you may not understand the words that or how to put into words, what you’re experiencing or what you’re thinking. The other thing I want to touch on is you mentioned, you know, I may not know what to say in these conversations, or, you know, I don’t know enough about what they’re talking about. And I’m curious if this is kind of your experience because you’re a curious person, so similar to me, like – I don’t care, I don’t need to know – then, ask questions. I think a lot of times people get intimidated, like, I’m going to ask a stupid question. I’m going to ask something that they’re just going to laugh at me. My experience has been the exact opposite. If you come in genuinely interested, like, Oh, Juan, you know, you mentioned this book or you mentioned this concept, like, tell me more about that. Like, I don’t understand it. People are willing to give you that information or at least point you in the right direction. Like, maybe you don’t have the time to explain it to me. But you might, Hey, you know what? Have you ever heard of this book, this podcast, this website? Go here. This is what you want to look up. 30 seconds of your time. Be like, all right, cool. And they continue the conversation. But now to your point, they’ve given you the information and now it’s on you to go through and say, okay, they mentioned this for a reason. Let me go look it up. And you might be like, Oh, okay. Well, that didn’t apply or that’s not what I thought it was. So is that something, like, where did you develop or come up with? Is it again, that friend that recommended, Hey, read this. And then you’re like, okay, well, I’m going to go do this. Is it just, you’re just seem like a natural doer as opposed to, I mean, not that you’re not a thinker, but you don’t overthink things. You just tend to go for it?

Juan Mazo: It’s a little bit of both. I think when you’re younger, you will kind of just do things. Right. And then when you get older, you start doing the, you get into the whole analysis paralysis situation. I mean, the first thing I ever sold was at 13, we, me and a buddy of mine printed pictures of Dragon Ball Z characters at school and sold them for like five, 10, 15 bucks. So super young, like, no reason to do any of this stuff. Right. So that’s the doer side. But then you, you, I don’t know how I ended up getting and executing things. Even today, if I have a curiosity, like, for example, I learned how to dump firmware on microcontrollers and chips and routers, whatever. And I did it because I always wanted to learn how to do that. And then now I have that body knowledge by executing on it. Like I read up on it. I’ll do research forever on stuff and then I’ll go ahead and do it. But it’s like, maybe that was something I did. But then it was my friends, my very close circle of friends who are, who, if you get into like the self-improvement world, everyone’s like, you don’t do enough execution. There’s a lot of learning and like constant learning, but there’s not enough execution. And like, you know, if it’s business learning, learning by spending a few dollars and failing at it. But I would say that a lot of folks never execute enough on their ideas. And, and honestly, it’s a little, I don’t want to say it’s sad, but when you see the idea and like, I personally just don’t have enough time to execute everything, right? Or, or also my risk tolerance is a little different. You look at an individual and you say, for example, I met someone who said they want to start selling all vegan smoothies or whatever. They said, I want to get a business. I want to rent out this place, this and that. I said, you shouldn’t do that. But what you should do is I like the idea, get on Facebook Marketplace and sell your vegan smoothies there and test the market. See if there’s a market for it. If people are going to ask, even if they ask, that’s already like a positive thing, right? And so I think when, when you don’t execute on what you learn, you, you kind of live in a state of dreams, right? And, and there’s this concept of if you tell someone, hey, one day I want to do this and they’re like, I really like that idea. You’ll get like a positive hit of dopamine. And in your reward system, you think, yeah, I achieved something, right? But you, you end up lying to yourself and you never get to do what it is that you’re doing. A great example is I have a bunch of family in Connecticut, but I live out here on my own by myself for the most part. And it’s, I do have really good friends that are here that certainly helped to transition a bunch, but it’s hard. It’s not something easy.

Manuel Martinez: And, you know, there’s one thing I want to touch on a few things, right? So you mentioned the, you know, the lack of execution and that’s something I heard. So Laura Acosta had said this and when she said it, I was like, oh my gosh, it’s perfect. It’s – knowledge without execution is just entertainment. So if you’re watching YouTube videos, if you’re reading, that’s just entertainment. It’s not, you know, you’re not building a skill set until you actually start implementing and doing it. And I love your Facebook marketplace ideas. A lot of times people think like, well, I want to start selling smoothies. They think, well, I’ve got to have a location. I’ve got to have a food truck. I’ve got to do it this way, but, you know, build an interest list and just see and say, hey, this is, this is something we’re developing and put that out there and see who might start building this or a wait list and, you know, email marketing lists. Like there’s a number of ways to execute that doesn’t necessarily mean buy a location and, you know, get into a ton of debt without testing the market first. That group of friends, right? So it sounds like that, that buddy of yours that kind of introduced you and is that, was that the start of you wanting to really put yourself in rooms or in conversations with people? Once you didn’t have it, like you didn’t realize it was happening, but once he’s gone and you’re like, well, wait a minute, like there’s, there’s something missing. He introduces you to like, hey, I’ve got this business and he’s probably talking to other friends. There’s these books, you know, you mentioned happiness, right? And a lot of people think like, you know, it’s, you know, frou-frou stuff, but it’s, it’s very important because if you’re not happy doing a job, like you mentioned, you’ve been at your place for seven years doing something you didn’t think was going to, but I’m sure a lot of that is also like you’re content with yourself, right? So talk about those two years being unemployed and what you decided to invest in yourself to eventually when you did get employed, now you’re in a better space.

Juan Mazo: Sure, sure. So, you know, I think, when I was younger, I said my whole goal was to get everyone on my mom’s family to have the opportunity to come to America. At the age of 24 or 25, I was there. You can go online and look up what it takes to petition family members. And I think once you make like 80 or $90,000 a year, you can bring in like unlimited family, right? It works that way. Like you need to have a certain salary to petition a certain number of family. And it’s like a little bit different if it’s like uncles and aunts type of thing. And I got to that point and I realized like I was 24, 25, my friend moved away and I thought to myself, what do I do now? Do I just like, you know, get married? I have a white picket fence. Like, is this it? And I thought to myself, I’m like kind of young though, 26, my friend just moved. And so, in those two years, when I first cracked open, the first book I read was How to Win Friends and Influence P.A. Pool by Dale Carnegie. And that was a cool book, but it was literally the first book where I’m like laying upside down on my couch on the in the AirPods, like listening to the entire thing and like consuming it, not just playing, you know, noise in the background. And you start to realize like I was, it wasn’t that I was unhappy, but I did feel like I made a lot of sacrifices to get to this point. Not having a life, like going to New York all the time, it was a huge sacrifice, but I saved a bunch of money. I was able to afford to purchase a home at the time. I didn’t know what decisions I was making, but it was it was all to get to this point where I can help my mom out. I did move my mom. This is very cliche, but I moved my my mom out of the hood. Right. And 2015, she hasn’t paid rent since then. So life is good in that regard. And so think about it, you’re 26, and you’ve achieved these goals that you had since you were literally a child. Right. And something that will happen is, if you your whole life, have tried to hit a goal for that long, knowing or unknowing, right, because there’s ups and downs in life, when you no longer have that goal, you will be depressed. You will fall into depression, you will say, I don’t I don’t know what to do. And and it’s because it’s the first time you get to kind of come face to face with your world’s reality. And at that point, you you’ve got to start figuring out what’s happened, what to do in your life, right. And the books really unlock that for me. And the books I read helped me number one, take these risks, calculated risks, where I was going to start this business, I gather all this knowledge. And honestly, you know, two years later, the businesses failed, every single business venture failed. But there’s so much valuable knowledge. I ended up coming out like with $20,000 in debt, which is cheap if you think about it, because school’s $400,000.

Manuel Martinez: Right, go to university for an MBA.

Juan Mazo: Yeah, yeah. So MBAs, if you go down even more, it gets – it’s pretty expensive. It’s not cheap. It’s not free. But I would say that the knowledge I got in those two years, a lot of it stemmed from I didn’t know what my happiness was. And then eventually I learned what my happiness was like, what is my goals in life. And those goals have really been kind of solid for the most part, again, from child to 24, 25, 26, realizing like I’ve achieved these things, right. And then, and then having to realize what’s next. And what was next was only in the books and in the relationships I wanted to maintain or even came across after the fact. So I would say the biggest things I learned, aside from the technical knowledge, right, I learned marketing skills and all these other other really good skills that are useful, especially as you get older. But the biggest thing I learned was, I knew what I wanted to be happy. Right. And I tell I tell my girlfriend all the time, I asked her, do you want to be rich? And she’s like, Yeah. And she asked me, do you want to be rich? I’m like, no, but you will be rich if that’s what you want. Because we can certainly make it happen. And rich, there’s, there’s a really good story for that one. But I told her, why do you want to be rich? And she never really had a good answer for me. But it’s fine, because I understand that. And I explained to her one day, if you become rich, and you are unhappy, you’ll realize how money doesn’t solve anything for you. And so I tell her, I don’t think like, I think I will be pretty great, ultimately, right. But I tell her, you know, I know what it takes to make me happy. A really good internet connection. I like being at home.

Manuel Martinez: I’ll be miserable without it.

Juan Mazo: Yeah, I know. I’ll be terrible. I have to go get a job. The ability to work on my car and then having a family. Like, I think if I have those things daily in my life, like enough to fulfill some of my hobbies to keep me interested and feed the curiosity, I’m happy. And I’m pretty sure with $100,000 living in the woods, I’ll probably be pretty happy, especially with my family’s all around. But then I tell her, because you have these goals, I will help support us to get to that point. And so in those two years, I learned a bunch of what I need to be happy. And I learned a bunch about like relationships and what it is that, you know, what you want and the opposite, you know, who you want in your partner, right, is very important. And how important those things need to be, how important you need to be aligned to yourself, how important they need to be with what they want. And I also have learned that your family and your network, you’re always in a state of exploring what their happiness is. Because I can only imagine how many times I’ve run into folks who don’t know that they’re not happy. And that comes off in a really, it manifests in a really weird way, right. And once you get to that point where you’ve where you help them see that, and it’s a heavy investment, which I don’t recommend you do it for everyone, right? I mean, that’s why therapists I think exist, right? But when you figure out what your happiness is, and you get your family to a point where they got to figure out what their happiness is, that right there is where I realized, okay, I have everything I have all the puzzle pieces, now I know what I need in life, right. And I think that’s important. I think there’s there’s a really good way to break down your goals that, that help you understand what you want to do. And honestly, this is an antiquated approach, because this is again, my friend gave me this, this little piece of knowledge efforts, which is you want your finances, there’s three things you can never outrun finances, like if you said, you know, you need to live somewhere you need to eat, you need money to some degree your health, you can’t escape that in any way, shape or form, it will catch up to you at some point. And then there is relationships, like you cannot go live in a cave. Like it’s impossible. So you want to learn skills around those three things. And all these three things will equal your happiness at the end of the day. Now he’s added dimensions to it. But I think keeping it simple has really helped me in the beginning to ultimately figure out that, you know, what will make you happy in life is what you’re going to be more than happy to wake up to every single day.

Manuel Martinez: No, that’s awesome. And you touched on a lot of things that I think similar to like I’ve been developing, like I knew it, again, doing a lot of self reflection, journaling, and you know, reading, understanding that said the words a couple times, it’s, you know, I call it three S’s, right? Sacrifice, success, and significance, right? Like, what am I going to sacrifice? What’s the success that I’m going to get out of it? But at the end of the day, like the significance that I’m going to have on other people is usually that’s where my happiness comes from, right? It’s, okay, this podcast, okay, I can, you know, sacrifice a bunch of my time, time with my family, you know, maybe my job, you know, volunteer work, like all these things that there’s a sacrifice to it. Now success can come from it, right? People know about it. I can establish these great relationships. But then really, for me, it’s significance. Like, what’s the impact that I’m having on other people? Like, oh, I’m able to share your story that hopefully somebody watching this is, man, you know what? That’s exactly what I needed to hear about. This is how I need to invest. Or like right now the job market is, you know, it’s not the best. And it might say, well, okay, well, I have this time. Sure. I’m spending a bunch of it applying and doing everything. Maybe I need to read or, you know, Audible, just something and find that thing that says, okay, I need to upskill so that I can get finances. I can, you know, I need to start building more relationships, meeting more people, having different conversations. And again, that’s, I don’t think I could have said any better than the way that you kind of explained it. You answered a bunch of my questions. We touched on probably not all of your career, but, you know, I think there was a lot of good topics around it that, you know, just haven’t been touched on. So, you know, again, thanks for bringing those up. As part of that, is there anything that I didn’t talk about, I didn’t ask you or things that you’re like, man, I really wanted to bring this up as part of the conversation.

Juan Mazo: I think we didn’t really get to touch on how, what I’m doing today, right? Why I’ve been there for so long. A lot of folks do the job switching. And what’s interesting is, I’ve always wanted to help the world in my own way. And I don’t have the Steve job skills, the Elon Musk skills. I don’t have those things at all. But I did want to help the world as most as I can with what I have. And working at this organization has helped me impact the world in a very different way. For example, family will say, oh, what do you do for work? And if I explain it, they’re just gonna be like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I’ll say, well, if you look at your phone, half the apps that you really care about, banking, insurance, health insurance, whatever, my company probably scans those for security to make sure that nothing bad happens on that side of the house, right? And so I’ve been with this company for so long, because I really do believe that they are the right solution for this application security industry. And it allows me to work with organizations who have a massive impact on a lot of people, right? And that’s something that I think, again, comes back to like, what makes me happy, right? I want to be able to help folks. And I think that wasn’t talked about enough, only, and it’s not even a bad thing, right? But it is something I want to highlight with individuals that I’m in this job because I like it, right? When I first was hired, I got to they, you know, they flew me out to Burlington, Massachusetts, and I got to meet a bunch of folks. And all these people made me feel so welcomed. Like, if you put me in a room with a bunch of people watching like football, I can get along. But I don’t know the individual football players. Like, I don’t, I’m not into it that way. But then when you put me in this room of my peers at work, I felt so normal for the first time. And I felt like I could talk about topics that no one would ever talk about. But we can all kind of pick it up relatively easy and have an opinion and discuss. And that is probably the first thing that made me realize like, oh, this is where my people are. This company, right? But then I went over to Defcon afterwards the following year. And I met everyone else who’s like them. And I was like, oh, okay, so this is this is my industry, right? Like, here in Vegas, we have a local chapter for Defcon. So every Defcon group has a group in your own state, maybe a couple. And it’ll be around your the major area code. So here we have DC 702, I believe. And these folks meet once a week. And I cannot make it to all these meetings. I’ve made it the first year I made it to probably about a few months worth of meetings. But now I kind of just go if I really get the opportunity. And I get to meet these folks and meet individuals who have interesting backgrounds, interesting projects. And you can have really cool conversations with them and learn from them, right? And and I think what’s important there is like, I am so happy being this like nerdy individual with these folks where I don’t feel like I have to hide much of my personality. And even in my job, I get to meet more individuals who are uniquely curious about these things that don’t make sense to most other folks. And that that does make me happy, right? If I ever need to break out of my house, and you know, it’s a Wednesday, because that’s when they meet up, I know that I can go meet up with them. And then even then, a lot of those folks have their own hobbies and interests, right? Like, I think I told you I’m interested in like making beer and working on cars, you’d be interested to know how many other folks in the technology field have these overlapping kind of interests. And you can really explore those things a little deeper than just as like, I like blue cars.

Manuel Martinez: Well, and I love that is finding your tribe of people, right? So that you say like, Hey, I get to be me. And it’s, again, you seem comfortable in any type of room. Like, sure. Do I know sports and like enough to kind of get by, but that’s not where you’re comfortable. That’s not for you. And at some point, you find your tribe of people, it could be at work, you know, and you’re pretty lucky to have that there. But then it can also be these groups outside of work, you know, and, you know, different organizations. And it’s not just professional, you know, corporate type of organizations, which, you know, I attend a lot of those, but some of these other ones, like there’s Brews and Bites, which is just a local – on the security side. And they just meet on the weekends and they just kind of sit and hang and talk about all kinds of things. They’ve got a Discord group with different channels. Like there’s ones on crafts, like people building all kinds of stuff. And, you know, I’m big into, and you can’t see them here, but like, I like the Lego botanicals, right? So I have those like in my office and just building those. And, you know, we share pictures like, Hey, check out this one that I built. And, Hey, have you seen this? And you find those people where you’re like, Oh, I can, I can be myself. I can talk about these things. And you’ll find people that have those same interests and say, Oh, well, I’m into Legos, but not the Lego botanicals. I’m into these other ones, right? And it’s still cool, but you’ll find those people like, no, the botanicals, that’s what I’m into. And that’s what I like, because I don’t have to water this damn plant, but it still looks nice. You know, so things like that.

Juan Mazo: You know, community is such an important aspect to learning, right? And something I would, I definitely have to put this out there, right? How do you learn anything, right? Get involved in a community. And the best places to find these communities are Facebook. So social media, in my opinion, is like really detrimental if you don’t know how to use it, right? Like if you start using a screwdriver to nail things in, like you’re going to have a bad time, right? So, so social media, the way I’ve used it, if you go on my Facebook, it is full of, first off, whatever car you’re into, if you’re into, get into that Facebook group, you’re going to learn. If you’re, if you’re learning, if you’re looking to buy a car, you know, I don’t know how reliable it is, get in the Facebook group for your car. And you’re going to see this whole community. If you go in there, you might be berated by saying, what are the bad things about this car, right? And like, why don’t you search, right? It’s like forums all over again, which that’s dating myself a bit here, right? But, but reality is that if you join these communities, same, same with the technology side. If you’re interested in like, like how awesome for me is it that I can wake up and I’m actually passionate about what I have to do for work. And, and I joined these communities and I learned more. So there’s communities and – my Facebook is just full of beer stuff, car stuff, hacker stuff. I get news that’s breaking and, and like, you know, I have my family there, right? But I’m not following the nonsense. I am not being told like, Hey, look at this stuff. Or look at no, like it is, it is a very curated algorithm for helping me, enabling me, educating me. And then through there, you can find other avenues. So I would say, you know, finding your happiness is important. And then some of the important things are how do you educate yourself? I’m a curious individual. If you look at my Facebook, it is literally like these specific topics. And once I’m out, like I sold my Jeep four years ago, two years ago, I’m out of that group. I have a lot of knowledge, but it’s –

Manuel Martinez: It’s not relevant now. Yeah. Because you have some other vehicle. So now I got to join that group and continue that thirst for knowledge and whatever it might be. And this has been a great conversation. Like every time I talk to you, I’m like, Oh, I just want to keep going because it’s just, it’s so fun. Because like, one, I think, you know, you hear it all the time and, you know, it sounds cliche, but irons sharpen iron, right? I talked to you, I learned something new and, you know, hopefully I, you know, the same goes back and forth. And you just, you slowly start to elevate each other. And you’re like, Oh man, I think differently now. Or, you know, the books you read, again, right after this recording, I’m gonna go and, you know, put it on my list. And, you know, again, that’s something that I will get to. And again, just sharing that information, building that community. And you’ll find the people that you resonate with, you know, the groups that I talk about may not be for you. And the ones that you talk about may not be for them as well, but you’ll find that group, you just have to make the effort. Again, I appreciate you coming on and taking the time and, you know, I apologize. Like, there’s just so many good things you had to talk about that I feel like we didn’t talk as much about career, but I think it’s all related, right? It skills that, you know, maybe some of the more personal, you know, interpersonal skills, some of the relationship skills. So, man I appreciate you.

Juan Mazo: No, thanks for having me here. And, you know, I think if you can get your career to align with what you do in your life or you want to do in your life, I think that’s even more important.

Manuel Martinez: Yeah. Yeah. You’re the second guest now that said that. And like, don’t look for work-life balance. Look for the thing that doesn’t feel like work that interests you and just get good at it. So, cool, man. And for everyone, again, that continues to listen, watch, and support. Thank you for taking the time and, you know, learning from all the awesome guests that, you know, we bring on to the show. So, until next time, continue to plug in and download the knowledge. Thank you.