The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Darrick “DJ” Johnson, CEO, ITech E-Learning Platform

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Darrick "DJ" Johnson, CEO, ITech E-Learning Platform itech0.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Here's your host, Chris Voss. Welcome, welcome, welcome one and all to the big tent show in the internet sky, The Chris Voss Show, thechrissvossshow.com.

I just have to do that. It just makes everyone so happy. We're looking forward to CES Show, the CES Show 2023. Oh, my God, people, it's right around the corner. And we're looking forward to that. We're going to be interviewing a bunch of CEOs that we have slated for the show.

We always do our annual events at the big CS shows. What is there? NAB, South by Southwest, a bunch of the tech shows that are coming up, ISE in Europe. We're going to be doing on-site interviews at the shows and interviewing all the different tech CEOs that are out there, some of the different things. So stay tuned for that. Watch for what's going on there. That's going to be really exciting to see. And of course, we're excited to see CES coming up for the first time without the COVID problem, or at least we hope without the COVID problem, knock on wood.

But I believe next week we'll be interviewing my good friend, Gary Shapiro, who is the CEO of CTA and C and the CES show technically since CTA puts it on. We're interviewing him about everything that's going on, so stay tuned for that show. He's been a good friend of mine for several years, and he makes an appearance every year on the show.

So we'll be doing our annual get-together and shoot the crap like a bunch of old friends and talking about tech and all that good stuff. Today, we have an amazing gentleman on the show. He helps minorities get into Silicon Valley and get high-paying jobs and success in there. And if you're not familiar with Silicon Valley, they pay pretty darn well. And you can achieve some success. In fact, I saw a teacher recently leaving the teaching community to go to work for Amazon.

And it's a good community. It's innovation. And they seem to come out with all these really cool products that help us, except for that Instagram thing. That doesn't seem to have helped much. No, I'm just kidding. It actually has helped advance a lot of different people, especially into OnlyFans, I think, or something. I don't know. That's a joke, people.

Anyway, he is on the show with us today. But as always, we want you to put your arm around your friend, your neighbor, your relative, your coworker. Don't put your arm around your coworker, actually. I forgot. That's a bad thing. Don't do that. Just lean over to him and say, hey, have you heard about the Chris Voss Show? The family that loves you but doesn't judge you. You know, right now it's the holiday times. People are alone. They need a friend, you know. They need someone to reach out to and they need someone, a family, a community that loves them but doesn't judge them, at least

not as harshly as your mom does. Now go clean your room. Anyway, guys, go to YouTube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, Goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss. Go see the big 130,000 group on LinkedIn and join the Chris Foss Show newsletter on LinkedIn. That thing is killing it over there. We just love LinkedIn. It seems to be the only sane place left on the earth. Also go follow us on TikTok as well. Derek D.J. Johnson is on this show with us today. He is the CEO and founder of iTech.

And we're going to be talking about how he helps minorities get into Silicon Valley, which is a very important thing in STEM support. Derek, we'll refer to him on the show as DJ, was born in Compton, California. So he has this great success story coming out of that neighborhood. Of course, if anybody's seen the great, what was the movie Friday? What a great movie that was. A graduate of McPherson College and Georgetown University, DJ has worked in technology for over a decade. DJ launched his nonprofit organization, iTech, in 2019 and has helped place more than 1,200 people in jobs or mentorship programs in Silicon Valley

throughout his decade-long career in the tech industry. He's received over 1,000 rejection emails from companies in Silicon Valley. So this is going to be a great discussion from somebody who's seen it all. This motivated to think about the future plight of the younger generation in tech. He opted to prepare them to be accepted to the growing industry. Since the establishment of iTech, Johnson has donated more than 500 computers in hopes that his donations will make a difference for many individuals aspiring to become tech leaders. G.J.'s work has been featured in some of the top media outlets in the country, including San Francisco Post, the Silicon Valley Review, and the New York Weekly. Welcome to the show, DJ. How are you? I'm good, Chris, man. Thanks for having me, man.

I get a lot of requests to do things like this, but I turn most of them down. So something about your podcast definitely gravitated me this way. So I'm excited to be on and share my story with you guys today. And we're excited and honored to have you on. We're the cool show. We're also a fun show and we're an educational. So, so welcome to give us your.com. So wherever you want people to find you,

get to know you better on those interwebs is in the sky. Um, yeah, I got, uh, my LinkedIn profile. I could, I definitely could drop that in the chat.

Um, Derek DJ Johnson on LinkedIn. Um, I'm, uh, D Jack 24, eight on, um, Instagram. And then, um, I take 24, eight is where DJack248 on Instagram. And then iTech248

is where you can find us on Instagram as well. We're not in the Twitter-verse anymore. I don't have enough resources to run all this stuff like I used to. I mean, we don't know if this is going to be around next week. I know, man. It's crazy times, man. But yeah, if you want to check out what we're doing with iTech,

www.itechnumberzero.com so um that's where you can find all the cool stuff that we're doing and we're always on linkedin like you said i'm keeping keeping people updated seems like the only uh same place to be at this point in time it's the only same place to be and then i don't have thirst traps coming at me like there like an instagram where my head's just dodging. I'm like, can I see something that makes me smarter? It's a different time, man, a different time. It's kind of funny. I've seen a lot of people coming back to LinkedIn.

So let's talk about you. You grew up in Compton. Let's talk about what that's like and how that shaped you. Yeah. Grew up in Compton, California, me, my mom, my two sisters. I was fortunate enough to move to Arizona with my dad later in my life, right before I went into middle school. But, you know, thinking about those years with me, my mom and my sisters, and my mom was a school teacher, worked two jobs. I think that's

probably where I get most of my work ethic from, is from her just kind of seeing her work those two jobs and never once complaining. You know, obviously a lot of troubled things that was going on back in the day when I used to stay out there. Education was not a top priority, oddly enough, because my mom's working two jobs. My sisters obviously wanted to go outside and play. So funny enough, I always tell people this story. They're like, man, I can't believe you graduated from Georgetown and you work at Microsoft. I was like, it's funny.

I say the same thing because I didn't learn how to read until I was 11 years old. Really? Yeah, I didn't learn how to read and write until I was 11 years old. So, you know, it's just one of those things that, again, you know, I feel like, you know, my mom, she definitely did as best she could. But, you know, kudos to her. And I always tell her, I was like, I don't know if I could have done that as a parent, like knowing like, Hey, I don't, I don't have everything you need, uh, for the person you need to become. So I'm going to let you go and live with your father and, um, have that long term, like long distance relationship that we had to cultivate. So, um, definitely interesting

time. And I always think back to LA as home. Um, it's one of those things it's like, no matter, you know, where I go, I always think like, if I think like if I can come out of that, then I can come out of almost anything. I know. That's the beauty is your success story. A lot of people come out of these areas or areas that are blighted and as people struggle income, as people struggle income wise and, uh, out with a lot of other things that go on in those communities. But what made you, what kept you from going down like say the gang road or, or, you know,

getting involved in some of the bad stuff that probably was around you at the time? Man, I honestly, I can't say that I wasn't involved in, it was never in the depth that it was to the point to where I'm away in prison or anything like that or more likely dead. But I remember something that my first grade teacher told me. You know, she said, you'll be lucky if you even get a job at 7-Eleven. She's like, you're probably going to be in jail or dead before you're 21.

33 today, doing some pretty great things. I'm forever grateful and humble. But also, you know, I shouted out my mom. I got a testament to my pops, man. He, you know, he was like, hey, you need to come live with me. I'm going to teach you how to be a man. And probably sports, man. Football definitely changed my life forever. Like with even with all the stuff going on with like CTE injuries and things like that. I've had neck surgeries but um i wouldn't change it for a world man like football definitely made me a different person and um all

the stuff that i do great today discipline being on time uh being a great teammate helping my community uh putting others first that all came from football so um you know i was testing to my dad just taking me in and pretty much showing me the way because um you know he grew up in california he didn't want that the same life that he led for me. So he stepped up to the plate, as a father should do, and took me in and put me on the right path. You know, the odds, what your teacher spoke to, the odds of coming out of these communities that are marginalized is hard. We had the Fire is Upon Us author, Nicholas Bacola, on the show. And he wrote a famous book about James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, that famous debate that just,

Baldwin just crushes him on the debate, if you've seen that. And he mentioned to me during the show something that really haunted me and stuck with me. He said, you know, when I was growing up, I read it, I think it was 11 or 5, very early on in his childhood, he read that one out of three males in a family, one out of three will end up in prison. Just like guaranteed. And he goes, do you know what it's like to grow up thinking which one of the three of us is going to be he had three brothers or two brothers in him so he was looking from a very early impressionable age going which of one of us is going to prison is it me is it going to be one of his and the numbers did bear out one of his brothers ended

up in prison and and got involved with some bad stuff. But having to live with that perception is depressing. It can be depressing. I would be depressed over it. Living with it going, holy fuck, the odds are really fucking stacked against me. And then someone telling you the best you can do is end up at 7-Eleven. What do you feel helped you kind of get a vision out of shooting out of that? Was it your father's influence? Or was there some, you know?

Probably father and mother's influence. But it's funny you say like depressing, right? There's a quote, and I want to make sure I give the person the right credit. I think I want to say with Fred Taylor, but he said, exposure leads to expansion. Right. So when, like when I was living in that situation, that's all I knew. So it was just norm, right? Like you don't think, oh there's nothing wrong with this, you know, but then when you finally kind of get out of it, it's like, man,

that's not how, you know, people should be living, you know? And obviously like, you know, my mother kept us safe from everything. I bet she could. But there's certain stuff that you see at a young age being in that area because that's just where, you know, things go on at. But, yeah, man, I think, like, obviously, like, my dad, man, I mean, I remember when I first moved with him, it was definitely a culture shock. And it's, like, funny because it's for the longest

time i was like man my dad he must hate me man like because i'm cutting the grass i'm mopping floors i'm getting like cleaning up and it's like why do i have to do everything this way and like why does it have to be done at you know six seven a.m on a weekend like you know what i mean it's like why like what is the what is the point of all this? And again, I think he was grooming me to become a man of purpose, a person of good character,

doing things that people don't necessarily see, but that's ultimately what builds leaders, things that are done in the dark. So making sure that I was doing things the right way. And I think, you know, he kind of always told me, he's like, hey, man, like, I think you can be definitely way, way better than me. I've done a lot of bad in my life. He's like, but I want to make sure that

one thing that do get right is you. So you're probably going to hate me a lot of times, but just know I'm doing all this for your best benefit. You know, put me in the sports and I was really reluctant to do that. But, you know, he made me stick with it. And, you know, put me in the sports. And I was really reluctant to do that. But, you know, he made me stick with it. And, you know, a few scholarships later, some championships, Hall of Fame now in my college, had a chance to go play football internationally. You know, I'm better for it, man. So I definitely, like, thank the stars every night.

And I kind of sit up in bed, like, three friends back in Los Angeles that are all – they're both dead now um kind of you think i always think to myself like man like why me you know like but there was something that was that was deemed i guess early on that i was going to be one of the ones to make it and do what i'm doing now to help give back to so many you know a mother a mother tends to you you have to have both a mother and a father in your family, in my opinion, and a lot of researchers that we've had on the show. We've had researchers that have written a lot of books on boys, you know, the rise of the single parent home in America. In America, we have the largest single parent homes ever.

And I'm wondering how much of your, you know, bringing your father in. And, of course, sports is a man's thing. You know, we have a lot of these incel generations and these boys that are lost in emotionalism. And sports has been taken out of schools as well. And we see a lot of that with the shooters. Every shooter, and we've had authors on the show that have talked about shooters and the lack of fathers in their thing. So I'm thinking fatherhood. And, of course, you know, sports is a man thing. We're men.

We're designed to go out and kill. We're men. We're designed to go out and kill. We're killers. We're designed to go compete, to go fight, kill the woolly mammoth. It's all caveman stuff when it comes down to it. And I think having that, you know, also that sense of purpose. I remember with my dad, I argue with him a lot. He was like, you can blow the lawn. I'm like, this poor crap is bullshit. But men will teach, men teach their sons and daughters how to prepare for life.

You know, mom will call you and hug you and he'll scar your knee or something. And she'll usually give me some loving and, and, and patch up the thing. Your dad will just be like, suck it up. Life's not fair and get used to it.

And you're like, well, that's not very nice. But then when you get older, you're like, thanks dad for kicking me in the ass a couple of times. Yeah. I mean, you realize that's the, that's the real world, right? Like you get older, you're like, thanks, Dad, for kicking me in the ass a couple times. Yeah, I mean, you realize that's the real world, right? Like the real world doesn't give out hugs and kisses often.

Let me say that. You know, most of the time it's like, you know, we don't care what you got going on. You know, get better, do better, right? So that's what my dad taught me. And to your point about the sports, man, when I think of football um i think of discipline um having to wear certain uniforms um i played for one of the most winningest coaches in high school football history in arizona um and i just think about all the stuff that we had to do like we couldn't wear certain colored cleats um we had to like earn our gloves we had to wear like long white socks and it's like you look back on that like man why do we have to do that um but

it's all needed right to take today's society like there's certain things you look back on that, like, man, why do we have to do that? But it's all needed, right, to today's society. Like, there's certain things you can and can't do. And if you try to go against the grain too much, you know, you end up getting in trouble. And I've seen a lot of people, oddly enough, that couldn't become disciplined in football and are disciplined in life. And the results show. So how did you work your way into Silicon Valley? Interesting story, man. So I came back home from playing football over in Germany.

Was thinking I was going to end up being in the NFL. Didn't work out. So I always knew I wanted to get into sales. Didn't really know much about tech sales at the time. Luckily, one of my friends who was working in tech sales had told me about this job. It was literally 40 cold calls a day with another like 60 leads that kind of had came in that were considered qualified leads. So looking at like 100 calls a day for eight hours a day, five to six days seven days a week, five to six days a week.

That was like my first gig. So I got that job selling computer certifications for University of Phoenix. And I parlayed that skill into working at Dell Computers, where I worked there for almost five years. I took a break for a little bit, then jumped back into Silicon Valley right around 2019. That's when I came back in. But definitely one of those things where I think I was fortunate enough because I went to school for business. I literally just Google search one day. I said, what's

the best highest paying sales careers? And I think pharmaceutical sales popped up. And then tech sales was the second one. But only reason I didn't do pharmaceutical sales is most of those guys have to go into operating rooms to test out products, not anyone's blood. I'm the same way, man. You give me too much blood, even like a horror movie. You got to be around doctors all day. It's like, you got to be out. God bless. There's people that aren't like us that can look at blood all day and they can

scientifically approach it. So you, you, when do you go through the thousand rejections or a thousand interviews of, of trying to get a job in this field or how did the, how did the thousand play out? Yeah. It's interesting,

man. That story, like I always tell everybody that my brother's probably the only one who knows about that, like part of my, part of my life. So I was working in, working in tech, working over at Dell Computers, felt that I had been kind of like wrong. I probably should have just said I had a conversation with people at the at the job at the time, but ended up leaving Dell Computers.

So I left there. I had like probably probably on paper. You could say I probably have like close like five years experience, but it was like pushing seven. So I left there, decided to try to do my own thing, try to become like a sports agent, had that business going for about two years until it flopped right before 20, 2019. So I figure like, hey, you know, I try, try, try my hand at entrepreneurship didn't work. But I've seen people all the time, like stay home moms or somebody that's coming from like a finance industry or something like that. Somebody, people that have career breaks, which I've never, never seen somebody do before. And they come back and get a job, right? It's like, you know, no good deal.

So kind of how tech sales works is like, you know, you have like you have like your inside sales and you got like your hybrid, which is like inside outside. And you got like your field representatives was like the top of top of level. Right. So I was thinking like, hey, well, I know for a fact I'm probably overqualified for inside sales, which which I knew would be true. But then people kept telling me like, oh, well, you're not qualified enough to do hybrid. And you're definitely not qualified enough to be an outside sales rep. And I remember telling them, I'm like, hey, I'm more than willing to come back in and do inside sales. Like, you know, not a problem. Like, I feel like I'm definitely qualified. Had a lot of deals under my belt. Had a pretty good story. Had a good understanding of the tech industry. But yeah, I got rejected, man,

like literally like a thousand times. And to the point to where I had to, the only reason that I ended up getting back into Silicon Valley is a crazy story, too. So I ended up taking a job at Apple. Apple has like the seasonal roles to where you can be a they call them like Apple consultant. But they're pretty much just like they're glorified sales rep. like you come in trying to buy a new apple phone all that kind of stuff right so i ended up taking an internship i was 30 years old at the time working with 19 year olds but like oh like old guy in the room like they're talking about partying after work i'm like man i gotta go home i gotta go home go to bed. And I was also like in my MBA program at the time, too.

So I'm like, I got homework to do. Right. So oddly enough, man, like I ended up doing that for almost like a year. Actually, probably like six, six, seven months. Did that for six, seven months. Was still kind of interviewing. Ended up like bumping into somebody that was working at a company in Silicon Valley, gave me a business card, ended up getting a job with them. And I mean, luckily, luckily I was working that job at Apple. Cause I, if I didn't, if I was working a job at

Apple and didn't want to like, you know, go to the bottom, bottom of the industry, I probably wouldn't be sitting in this chair today. Cause like nobody was for some reason, like nobody was hiring me at all. Like it was the, it was the craziest thing ever and everyone told me that um I would need a master's degree in order to get a role with them and I already have my bachelor's plus you could say five years experience but no one would hire me. Wow so did you experience a lot of what you feel discrimination is minority because that's what you kind of helped do and with your i don't i don't even know if it was discrimination more so if it was just um i think that i and i always try to put myself in their shoes right i think they like okay well obviously he understands the business um you know is he truly dedicated is he gonna get an itch again to go back out and work on his own so there's

the investment kind of concern there right from their from their side. And I think the second piece, to be honest, I think they probably feel like, well, hey, if we do hire him, will he truly be happy in this role that he's clearly overqualified for? So I don't want to say like discrimination, but I think it was just one of those things where it's like, if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have done things differently. Because again, like now I know those hurdles that I had to overcome. And that's something that I always kind of talk to the people that I mentor about is like, hey, let's kind of think about this long term. Right. Let's let's not think about the next 24 hours. Let's think about the next 24 months, how this decision is going to affect you. And if you're OK with the consequences, then great. But last thing I want is for people to be having to sleep in their car, you know, donate blood, donate plasma to get by or, you know, driving Postmates.

I was like, there's no need for you to do that. I've already done that. So let's really get strategic with how we're going to approach this thing. There you go. So you spent 10 years in Silicon Valley. What's the proponent? You're working for these different companies. You work for Microsoft technically now. You do both. We'll talk about what that means. What gave you the proponent to want to start being a STEM advocate with your company, iTech? Yeah, it goes back to my job search and my journey, right? I remember going on these interviews and getting all those rejections.

I mean, what's the saying? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. So I'm like, maybe there's something I'm doing wrong, right? And I don't want to say like no one helped me, but the advice I got was very like, just very odd advice. Like I remember I met with one lady and she was like, well, maybe you shouldn't go by DJ. Maybe you should go by Derek. Like maybe that's like turning recruiters off. And I'm like, I see people with AJ all the time. Like was like my initials is what's stopping people from hiring me.

Got told to cut my hair like, hey, like, yeah, you know, you might want to, you know, cut your hair. Like it's, you know, it's giving off, you know, free, free, free, free Mason vibes. All just all kind of like just crazy outrageous stuff um or the worst of the ones where you know you get you reach out to somebody um they read it and never respond um and oddly enough they reach out a few years later oh we want to work with your company to help it's like dude i reached out to you three years ago and you didn't respond now you want me to help you because you see i'm in a position to do so like you know things don't work that way so um for, this is one of those things I was like, if I get in a position to help, I told my mother, I made a promise for her. I said, if I can get back in to technology and do

it the right way, I'm going to help as many people as I can, not ever have to go through what I went through because it was a battle, man. I think if I wasn't strong enough, I know a lot of people that probably would have broke for sure. Yeah. I think it's great that you've taken your experience and your success and all the hard work you've put into it and then parlayed it into this company to help other people do that and get into that. One thing I will fall back on what you said is there has been studies shown, and probably I think books written.

I can't think of any we had on the show, but I know there's been studies that have said that different names on resumes sometimes will trigger discrimination, racism, things of that nature, where people go, we know who this person is based upon the names that are on their thing.

And so there is that, a factor in the thing. I don't know if it applied to you, but you know, it's something we need to understand and overcome and realize that, you know, those, those prejudices are in the system that need to be removed. So you take your company and I think what's really great is you partnered with Microsoft, you partnered with Google, you're working on a few other things we'll talk about, but what you're doing is you're creating a community, you're creating a way, an e-learning information registration base where you can STEM help people get into Silicon Valley and get into these better jobs in Silicon Valley. Talk to us about that and give us a kind of overview of what iTech is and how it works. Yeah, so something that I kind of noticed early,

I guess like early on in my career, like coming back to the cloud is most of the people that look like myself, like they, they might've had a bachelor's degree. Some were like going for their master's degree, but then they weren't really like certified. Right. So just like a car technician, right? Like if they're working on a car, you want to make sure that they're actually certified to do the work regardless if they're in the industry or not. So I kind of noticed, I was like, well, man, like if they're going for these certifications and it's really important and that's something that you need to bring into the space, I was like, you know, how cool would it be if I just

like partnered up with some of these companies to help people get certified on their product, right? So it kind of kills two birds with one stone. One, it kills the, oh know i'm not i'm not technically ready or not i'm not technical enough but then the second piece was like it was actually helping like hey well i got a pipeline of minorities that they want to get into technology um but they know nothing about google cloud they know nothing about azure they know nothing about aws cloud so um all right amazon web services so um it was kind of like partnering with those companies to get creative around like, hey, how do I help you solve your diversity problem? But along with like pretty much introducing people that were looking to get into tech that weren't necessarily

programmers or engineers to get some of those non-traditional tech roles, whether it be a project manager like myself, tech sales, maybe business operations, all that stuff is needed. But when you have that certification, it kind of mitigates any of that concern around, well, are they actually interested because those search take you anywhere between a month, maybe two months to actually get and to actually retain that information to be able to speak to it is really important. So that's kind of how I was ultimately formed. That's awesome. So, you know, to me that makes sense because if you're trained on that particular product's thing, you know, people can go, oh, well, they know us. They know how our stuff works.

On your website, it says e-learning information. And then a note here about 200-plus games. Tell us about that. Yeah, so I got approached by a teacher. She saw what I was doing. Um, and she asked me, she said, Hey, like, you know, uh, some of my kids, um, obviously the inner city, she was like, you know, they only have access to the computer here at school. She was like, I don't know if you ever thought about, um, you know, having a part of your organization that solely focuses on early STEM development.

And that's how the e-learning game platform kind of came about. So I started to donate computers. One of my people that I work with was like, man, how cool would it be if you could literally have it to where every time you give away a computer, you're also introducing them to, you know, coding and learning at an early age. So I sat down with a few developers, talked with some people over at Roadblocks, Minecraft, Angry Birds. And I was like, hey, what would this even look like if you wanted to embed gaming with

coding? Is that something that can be done? Ended up securing the licenses and literally built a platform that runs on the cloud that kids can access the platform and learn how to game from ages 18, that's eight, all the way up to age 17 is what the platform is actually marketed and tailored for. So as they start at the beginning phase, they can literally migrate through the entire platform throughout their entire youth, pretty much career and, you know, develop skills needed to either go into computer science or just to get

exposed to technology to say like, Hey, this might be something I want to do. Maybe I want to build a game one day and I'll have that knowledge base to do so because of the platform that we built out. You know, the one thing I learned in my community or my companies is there is no, there is no one person who has all the great ideas because as a CEO, I, I tapped out early on. I didn't actually, but, but no, I, I, I, our rule around the offices were, were the only, uh, you know, whoever's got a good idea, uh, throw it

forth. We're, we're open to listening. You know, we don't discourage bad ideas, but there's, there's so many brilliant people that can come from so many different ways. And, and you never know. And sometimes they come out of communities that are marginalized and everything else. The CEO of, of Google was sleep, grew up, was born, raised, growing up on a, on a dirt floor, to be on a dirt floor in India. Steve Jobs was an immigrant, was the son of an immigrant from Syria, I believe, if I recall rightly. You know, and you look at so many different stories.

You know, Mark Zuckerberg was a guy, you know, sleeping on his parents' basement in the dormitory, just trying to get laid and created Facebook. Where he stole it from the Winklevoss to insert. I don't know. I'm just joking. Jokes here. Don't sue me.

But, you know, I mean, these and the other point I'm trying to move into in my weird-ass segue that's joking around is a lot of these guys that got successful in Silicon Valley, a lot of times very early on, they were exposed to this language. And we've also we've all learned that that uh i don't know that we all learned but i'll just make the assumption um to to make my point see how see how that works um stop segueing chris already but you know learning language at a very early age is really important because once you become adult you become

kind of fixed in your ways i I've tried to learn coding. It's really hard to do at 30 or 40. I think I was 40 when I tried to do it. I just, you know, I love my coder friends. I love my Silicon Valley friends. But, man, that stuff is hard. It's a language. And there's multiple languages, variations, you know,

all the different stuff that's out there. But they found that the best time to learn this, to teach this sort of language for coding is at a very early age. And I was exposed to the Commodore 64. That's how old I am. And we would type in these codes that we get from magazine and try, you know, we type in the word for word coding they give us and try and make the games work. And you're right, that gaming, you know, seeing, playing games when you're young, cause you like to have fun, but you're also like, Hey, why does this work? And how does it work? And how, and so capturing, like you say, those people at that young age, that's very impressionable where they can learn coding and they can do is a great conduit for Silicon Valley to tap into. Yeah. And I think that's why companies like,

you know, Microsoft find, find a partnership valuable with iTech right along, right along with Google and a few others that we work with. You know, my thing is, I think one thing that I have to tip my hat off to Silicon Valley for is they've never been conservative. You know, they've always been progressive, right? So, you know, the fact that I could work for the company that I work for and then also them to say, like, hey, like, we definitely see what you have going on outside of work. We want to want to help you scale that, right. Want to help you use the machine that we built to help reach so many others. Most industries don't allow that. And then something that also kind of hits home is like, you know, the way I can, I wear this kind of stuff to work around a

hoodie with some jeans and, you know, I'm, I'm customer facing. Don't have to, you know, pretty much like tone it down or put on a suit. It definitely speaks to like the value of where the industry is, the culture that's that's there. Now, I know from where I grew up, man, I can't think of how many times people came for career day. You know, they were in a suit and tie and you just kind of wonder like, man, I've never seen a suit and tie day in my life. Like, does this guy really relate to me or look like me? So I think it's a different impact when you can come in wearing the same shoes that they're wearing, you know, having a hoodie on and letting them know like, hey, man, there's a lot of us that look just like you that are doing some great things. And you don't have to, you know, dribble a basketball,

have a microphone to have an impact or to have, you know, option to create generational wealth, right? There's that option there that's in Silicon Valley. There's a long-term plan, and I'm walking proof and testament to that. You know, I learned this a long time ago. I wrote about it in my book. One of my early CEO mentors, my last CEO mentor that I worked for before I fully went to work successfully and built multimillionaire companies, he would show up to work in shorts and flip-flops,

and he was a big fat guy like me, and he would always have a little drop of food going down his thing. And he had a president who was the suit guy who would meet and deal with all the important crap you got to deal with in the banks and stuff. But I said to him one day, I go, hey, man, and this is the 90s. I go, hey, man, why do you, you know, I'm wearing a suit, you know, fitting in and I was young. And, you know, why do you, how do you, you know,

why do you don't dress like normal CEOs? And he goes, Chris, he goes, I work 12, 14, 16, 18 hours a day. Because, you know, he was running an $800 million company. And he goes, you know, he goes, I can work longer hours. He goes, I'm more in a mental state where I'm relaxed. And if I wear a suit, I feel really stuffy and I feel really formant and I feel really rigid. And he goes, have you seen my accountant, my CFO? He goes, he wears a suit and he's really rigid.

He's on his fifth bypass. And so after that, I started wearing shorts and flip-flops. And my boss, my employees would be, how come you don't have to wear a suit all the time? And I'm like, oh, it's boss appreciation day. And they go, but you don't wear a suit every day. And I go, every day is boss appreciation day. I wasn't that narcissistic, but I kind of was. But no, I like how at least Silicon Valley and stuff has kind of normalized this acceptance where the value of someone's mind, the value of someone's work, the value of someone as a whole is not based upon IBM's, you know, old model that they used to have.

Everyone has to wear a black suit, a black tie, and a black hat. You know, that 50s model that used to be a thing. And then somebody was like, hey, we should have colors. And people are like, well, that's heresy. You know, but thank God they did because, God, what a boring life, the black and white world. So you guys do e-learning information. And how does that work? Is it funded or supported by or given some sort of financing from the companies you're working with?

Is there a cost to it? How does the e-learning work? Yeah, so we got resources from Microsoft and Google that were able to kind of help us build out the platform on the cloud, thankfully enough. But honestly, man, like most of the stuff that we did for the e-learning platform came in via donation. So, you know, we got a good support system. You know, we do a lot of marketing on Instagram, Facebook and things like that. So we got a good chunk of money to build out the platform. It cost us, I think it cost us close close to thirty thousand dollars to build it out.

And the nice thing is I kind of did some market research in order for us to kind of keep it up and maintain it. Typical coding class costs anywhere between three hundred to five hundred dollars per month. Our class literally only cost, so the platform, it costs $100 for the entire year. And that $100 goes back into us building and monetizing and software upgrades and things like that,

making the platform better for the user. So a one-time fee, once you pay that $100, you have access to it for an entire year. And like I said, as we continue to upgrade,

modify it, you'll have to pay again, but it's just $100 for the entire year. It doesn I said, you know, as we continue to upgrade, modify it, you'll have to pay again, but it's just 100 bucks for the entire year. It doesn't cost you $500 per month to have access to the platform and learn. And it's free as well. And let's say I'm a parent right now of a young kid. How young would you advise, you know, getting into some of these things? I'm looking over the Microsoft and you've got Google Cloud certification. There's all the Microsoft certifications, AI engineer, app maker, business user, developer, data scientist. There's all the different Microsoft certifications that are important, I'm sure,

to learning to get in their thing, the Azure fundamentals. How young would you, if you're a parent out there listening, should I get my kid into this? How young is the target there that you would say? That's funny you ask, Chris. I saw a post on LinkedIn the other day. I saw a kid. I want to say she was 10 years old, 10 years old. She already had her AZ-700, which is like pretty much like a few levels above beginner knowledge.

She was 10 years old. So I think it's just one of those things. Obviously, I always tell parents like the earlier you start, the better. Obviously, you don't have to get them certified in Azure because it's going to change. But just getting that exposure right to, hey, what is cloud computing? What is cybersecurity? They watch Netflix. Hey, mom, how is, you know, Coke Cold Melon on the screen right now? We don't have a DVD of it, right? So just break it down, explain it to them that way. But I got my nephew. He just turned five years old. He's on the platform for e-learning. So the sooner the better, man, just

to give him that exposure and just start to work those muscles. Like you said, you know, learning a language at an early age is probably the best way to learn it and retain it. So the sooner you get them started, the better. That's if they show interest in it, right? Yeah. Get them involved. You don't want to force kids to do what they don't want to do.

But definitely, you know, questioning why things work is really important. I was just Googling here, according to scientificamerican.com, they said the great time to learn language for children is before the age of 10. And I know a lot of prodigies, and I think Mark Zuckerberg started coding at a very early age. It seems like a lot of people were successful. I mean, great guitarists, you know, Jimi Hendrix and stuff started playing guitar at 10 or 11, 8, 9. You know, it seems to be that there's a real shaping of your life at that point and what you're into.

But, yeah, like, I mean, one of my friends started coding at an early age. I think around 18, 17, 16, he developed a specialized email program that was award-winning and so unique that he literally got a call from Steve Jobs and Apple saying we want – it got written up in the newspaper. And they literally called him in Indiana and says, we want you to work for us. And he was like a prodigy. And this is what I was saying before. Anybody can have the best idea in the world. There's no monopoly on having great ideas. It could be the person who's an immigrant, a person who comes from a minority community. Any human being has that potential inside of them, but they also need to have,

there needs to be seeded that basis of knowledge or given some support. That gentleman I spoke about from Indiana went on to be one of the small team that built the iPhone. And we all know how that turned out. So yeah, a crappy subpar phone that's Android is better than anyway. I'm just doing the jokes around here. Everybody uses right away from the crappy iPhone,

iPhone 15 that's coming out here in the next few months, right? There you go. I'm going to use the wicked Apple. I'll have to tell you an Apple story. You may know Vandy Grignone's story, but I'll have to tell you maybe off the thing. If you go see a movie, he'll tell you about the fuck chop

designation that Steve Jobs gave him. But moving on, let's dig in a little bit more into your website, what you do. But I like this. There's so many different certifications of Microsoft that you have. And it just makes sense that if they learn these basic things, they can get into it. And as a parent, I told my... I don't have kids. I can only afford dogs. I told my brother with his kids when they were about eight, nine, I said, you should get them into Silicon Valley and STEM stuff and get them into that learning. One of the things you have on your website, you talk about an NFT drop.

Talk to us about what's behind that or what's going on with that. Yeah. So we actually have partnered up oddly enough with Coinbase around building like an NFT. So the premise there was going to be for us to pretty much give away, I think it was a hundred NFTs, pretty much going to like a luck of the draw to pretty much get college students exposure to the NFT, like blockchain space. Right. Obviously it was like really new, super trendy um still a thing uh but i kind of had backed off of it we're still kind of going back and forth we actually want to roll

it out still uh but it was already going to be a like a like a pretty much like a contest of people put their names in the hats and we're going to choose and select people that have one out of 100 students um and pretty much teach them in part in a partnership with coinbase around blockchain and um hopefully ultimately help them get jobs right because most of that stuff that that we have that we market towards like recent college graduates maybe like a mid-career professional looking to make a pivot um into technology so something that we're looking at in that t-space like man how cool would it be if um someone was to kind of get this digital asset aside from the monetary value, but actually being able to learn and get some skill sets to when they're done with school, they can go into a career path.

But the thing with NFT space, with it being where it is right now, crypto kind of being all over the place, we've kind of like pulled the reins back. I have to figure something out, though, because we did get a Microsoft Surface Pro 8 and an Xbox that's going to be raffled off as well as a part of the NFT giveaway. So I got to figure out what I'm going to do with that soon. But definitely more to come on that as well. I love the idea of giving away computers and trying to get more of marginalized communities and people computers early. I mean, in the internet, and there's just so much you can learn. And being exposed to that world, of course, will keep you out of, you know, joining gangs or getting involved in other things that sometimes in those communities, sadly.

Your platform includes 200 coding courses, or I'm sorry, 500 coding quests, 750 fun challenges, different things to engage people's brain. You also teach people different variations of coding and creative tools. Talk to us a little bit about that, if you would. Yeah, so that was something that we were kind of like looking at. So we were kind of like tempted. We're like, hey, well, hey, like if I'm a kid that's in maybe college and maybe I'm going through my sophomore year and they're talking about internships and things that I want to get interested in. Like, obviously, I don't want to go through, go back and have to redo classes because I'm not on track to get a computer science degree. What's the easiest way we can do something without having to go to a coding boot camp?

It's going to cost anywhere between five thousand to ten thousand dollars. So we were like, hey, well, I was like, why don't we just build in something to the e-learning platform to where some of these recent college graduates or people that are getting ready to graduate can start getting exposed to coding? Because there's there's two different type of coders, right? Well, three different type of coders and make sure I want to get murdered by Silicon Valley. So you have front end engineers, you have back end engineers and you have what's called full stack developers. Right. So part of those code languages, 700 learning games, all three of those different variations of coding is available. If you only want to do front end engineering, we have stuff for that. If you want to do back end, we have different games and skill sets that you can get for that. If you want to do full stack, there's a journey and kind of like a roadmap for you to get certified as a full stack developer as well that you can learn while you're still in school and not having to pay the $10,000 mark that it costs to be in a coding boot camp while trying to still remain in classes.

So that's something that we kind of looked into because we were kind of going back and forth around, do we want to do a coding boot camp? And something I kind of prided myself on, I was like, hey, I'm going to do the same thing that my mother could afford for everyone else. And I don't ever recall she did. She never showed it to me, her having $10,000 in her possession as a single working mother, along with the single dads that are out there working. They don't have that type of money to just spit out and kind of like throw away on a class or a course. Yeah. Being able to, being able to have access to education is really important. I mean, James Baldwin, the way he got out of the ghettos and things he grew up with, he would, you know, steal away and go to libraries and he would

have to go into other neighborhoods to libraries. In fact, he was, I think, almost arrested or he was harassed by the police and by librarians. But he would go learn stuff. And growing up and being able to get out of whatever you're into or whatever sort of environment you grow up in, being able to see a vision to get out of that is really important. You guys have placed over 200 people in technology. Over 500 students and career professionals are using your mentor numbers. And you've been able to help generate over $3 million in tech salaries for people of color. And you just started this in, what, 2019?

Yeah, 2019, man. I think, obviously, I'm no idiot or anything like, you know, I'm no, you know, I'm no, I'm no like an idiot or anything like that or not oblivious to what was going on when we started. I think a lot of it has to do with things that were going on around diversity and inclusion. So that was able to kind of help accelerate our numbers. But something I'm proud of is like, you know, I think I had checked before I jumped on the call today. I think our numbers for salaries is upwards of, I think it's $5 million

to date, along with an additional 300 jobs that we're able to place. So we're right around like 1,500 people that we've been able to place with jobs in technology, right? And I think the biggest thing that I think about is just the long-term benefits. Start talking about stock options, the amount of financial gain you can make, and then a network, right? So I'm definitely proud to say, like, you know, we're definitely a part of the solution and not the problem with just helping bring in the tools and resources to people. Because like you said, opportunities most times just come from, hey, what access do I have to information and what I'm actually going to do with it at that point.

So we've been actually being a beacon of hope for some of the people that probably feel like this wasn't a path for them two years ago. There you go. And you're partnering with Microsoft, Google, TechSoup, and Boost, I guess. And then do you want to talk about what we were talking about in the green room about another company or some other companies you've got that works? Yeah. So fingers crossed, man. We're working with Amazon Web Services right now to potentially launch.

So I'm an athlete, so I always got a game plan, right? So our long-term plan here is to hopefully end up being in the venture capitalist space to keep, so we'll keep what we have in store, right? So we're pretty much training kids in coding, helping them get scholarships into college. Hopefully they'll stay in the program through college and they'll help kind of build an application and things like that. And ultimately when they come out of school, instead of having to go into a incubator that they might not be able to afford or internship, they can pretty much come into our company and help us build out hopefully the next Facebook or Twitter or Uber or something like that. So that's what we're working with Amazon with right

now. So hopefully we can get the accelerator grant to start building our ideas and platforms all in Amazon cloud along with their funding for people of color. And hopefully we can get that going and we can start ramping that up and be having that VC platform rolled out here by 2025, fingers crossed. Definitely, definitely. In fact, I'm going to refer somebody to you. I know who used to work at Amazon, and he was a dealmaker, basically a VC-er for Amazon, and he could make deals.

So I'll have to refer him to you. I know he's doing different projects now, but I was going to say the VC business needs to have more diversity and inclusion in it. I know they're trying to make that work or they say they are, let's put it that way. And, but, but, you know, I mean, they take a lot of interns on.

There's a lot of people I know that go into that space and, and then eventually work their way up to where they become deal makers. You can sign deals and do deals. What, it would be great to have some of that. Is there a reason why, like, you know, it really makes sense to me that companies like Google or Apple or Microsoft or these companies should almost have offices in some of these marginalized communities like Compton and stuff to try and give a better reach out. Because like I said, there's no one who has a monopoly on ideas.

You never know where the great next big thing is going to come from. Yeah. And I don't want to speak for like Google or Microsoft or anybody. I know that they have people that work in that in that lane. Right. As far as like, hey, we're going to go to reach underrepresented communities and things like that. But I don't think they have enough resources. And also, like I tell people all the time, too, like if you're, you know, like myself on something I pride myself on is is doing at least four speaking engagements on each level. So I do four speaking engagements a year for elementary students, four for middle school, four for high school and four at the college level, you know, to, you know, help kind of spread the word. Right. Because they can't do everything on their own. And, you know, I'm you know, help kind of spread the word, right? Because they can't do

everything on their own. And, you know, I'm like, I'm a firm believer of like, okay, if you're going to complain about it, what are you going to do about it? So, you know, a lot of people sit around, we don't have enough this month. It's like, okay, well, when's the last time you went over to your local community college to let students know, like, here's the path that you need to get if you want to end up getting into, you know, a company like a Google or Microsoft or just tech in general, right? But yeah, I mean, I think there has been talks around going into those communities and, you know, doing certain things and stuff like that. I mean, one of our goals here with iTech is to ultimately try to have iTech Center

built in, you know, cities like Compton, Baltimore, you know, some of those underrepresented communities to where just like the Boys and Girls Club, you can go and learn about STEM opportunities. Right. Whether it be science, technology, engineering, math, you just go and get well versed on it. Shameless plug right now, my soon to be fiance, she has a STEM program as well, Black Girl White Coats, and they actually help go and learn about the technology industry along with the medical industry in those communities, like you said, that maybe some of these bigger companies are maybe missing or overlooking. Definitely. Definitely.

You never know where the next big idea is going to come from. I mean, you think about if we had some sort of conservative immigrant policy that would have blocked Steve Jobs' father from coming into the country. Crazy. You know, and so many great people. I mean, even with, you know, what we've seen recently with Twitter, you know, this is a big time where some of the greatest ideas come out of the biggest recessions. You know, the 2008 recession, we saw basically social media was created out of there.

And even, like, you know, VCs right now are ramping up going, we know what happens. Even when all these people are getting laid off, you see people that have gotten laid off from Twitter. Some, one of those guys, probably, I don't know. Twitter, yeah, between Twitter, Snapchat,

there's another social media platform that had laid off some people. Between those three platforms alone, like somebody out of there is going to come out with a crazy idea. And you just never know. And, you know, we're 10 years in. It seems like about every 10 years, I think there's some science to this or something from Stanford or Berkeley. But about every 10 years, there's kind of the whole new thing that comes out. And so we're definitely needing for it,

especially, you know, we'll see what, we'll see what happens on Musk and Twitter. Unless you're watching. But you know what makes me, you know, what makes me excited,

especially about like what we're doing, right. As I think about all those guys, like, you know, you talked about the guy that helps Steve jobs come up with his idea. Think about people that help, uh,

build Twitter. Um, they all had that platform and that runway to make mistakes, right? Like, I feel like there's a different type of, like, knowledge you obtain when you're working with some of these bigger organizations. And sometimes, you know, all it takes is that five, maybe 10-year mark for you to kind of learn for what you need to do,

get a little bit comfortable, have the financial backing, the network. And then, you know, you're like, hey, man, if they're doing this, maybe I'll go build my own thing because I have the resources and financial backing to go do it versus trying to, you know, get everything from, you know, from the ground up. And ultimately it dies because you don't have the resources and network around you to do it. So that's something I love about what we're doing as well.

Get those people in those rooms where they need to be so they can start kind of thinking about that next great idea. And, you know, I work for Microsoft for such such and such years but and i want to create the next you know iphone or some crap like that you know so it's really good there to have them in those rooms to get the opportunity and exposure you just never know no one's got a monopoly on ideas but the the person who comes up with the next big thing or you know it doesn't even have to be the next big thing it can be it'd be one of the next big thing or, you know, it doesn't even have to be the next big thing. It can be one of the next big things. It can change the world. I mean, you look at the impact that something can have, and it can be so huge.

And no one has been off the ideas. I learned that a long time ago because I ran out of them a long time ago. So this is great. I love that you're giving back, DJ. I love that you're helping your community. I'm loving that, you know, to me, a rising tide lifts all boats. And so giving back is really important in people's success. It makes the world better. And lifting everybody makes everyone better. It makes society better when it comes down to it. Anything more you want to touch on that we've kind of thrown in everything and gone over

everything? Anything more that we might have missed or anything? I think I covered everything. I am kind of holding it as a secret, but I am coming out with a book. I got a book company. They want to pretty much document my journey,

my upbringing, and then just my journey in the technology since it, come on, my upbringing and then, um, just my journey in the technology since it was so unique. Um, so I'll be coming out with a book here soon. Um, but yeah, other than that,

man, I was excited about what's to come for. I tech, uh, what's to come for the tech tech space, um, in general and just, you know,

happy to be able to be a service of to others. Cause I'm proud of myself on being a servant leader. So I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing. I'm glad you give it back, man. And the book will be awesome. I mean, you've got a great story coming through the journey that you went. And I'm sure your story will just get greater as time goes by. Thank you for coming on the show, DJ.

We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Chris. I appreciate it. There you go. And give us the dot com where people can reach out to you, maybe get the kids involved, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, www.itechzero.com is where people can reach out to you, maybe get their kids involved, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, www.itechzero.com is where you can be reached at. There you guys.

Share the stuff out, guys. Share the love. You can also donate at his website if you'd like to support the thing. If you're VCs and stuff, reach out to him and let's get help. Help us get going more. I mean, it's 2022. We should have computers for every kid in every damn school. Hey, man, I would love to partner with a VC firm, man. First come, first

definitely be prideful to represent you, man. We're looking for a strategic partnership with a VC firm. That would be phenomenal. Yeah, it's really disappointing this country can spend $8 trillion on wars that we don't win, but we can't put a computer and internet in every

kid's home. Come on, man. Story for another day, man. There you go. Well, thank you very much, Gigi, for coming on. Thanks, to be honest, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com for just Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com for just Chris Voss. Our big LinkedIn groups and all the things we do over there,

etc., etc. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out, DJ. Great story.